The Year is 1620 GE
On the Seventeen Yonder Islands, great pirate houses once ruled, before the Maritime Stratocracy of Guantil-ya hunted them down and decimated their ranks.
But to this day, there has always been a strong propensity for crime and magic of a... darker hue.
Little islands are littered here and there, and many of them are in legislative grey-zones, making them ideal hotbeds of what would be considered illegal activities in most places. Much of the worlds opium comes from the farms of powerful drug lords that have nested in the reaches of the Corsic Ocean and beyond.
Among these islands one has begun to become restless at night. Frightful phantasms cling to the streets, just in the corner of their eyes, and the dyke regularly breaks, flooding the streets, bringing dark tidings with it.
There is talk of monsters in the water, of the trapped souls of old pirate hordes, lead by long dead baba yagas, the pirate kings of yore.
but of course, such talk is just the product of the rural imaginations of backwater islanders... right?