Calypso | The Pirate Capital

Located just sunward from Poli is Calypso, the pirate capitol. Essentially it’s a heavenly retreat: an entire green and growing world and no one to ruin it. The weather is generally temperate to tropical and while there is geological activity, it’s more or less stable. In every way that matters: it’s a safe haven for the pirates.

Pirate Life

Poli is an industrialized world. The workers there are building cities, factories, and mines wherever they can. Calypso however, is not. Living with the pirates is to reject everything that is corporatist exploitation. The pirates see Calypso as their home, not a resource to be mined and ruined. As such, there are a few principals to how they’ve built out the planet:

Preserve nature as much as possible
Do not destroy without purpose and justification
Do not mine or create factories for what can be found elsewhere
There is no limit to the underground depth of a structure, but the absolute ceiling for any building is 100 meters
Do not waste or pollute

The pirates’ general belief is to opposte what built the systems they’ve come to hate. Not just the cruel corporate rule, but the destruction it brings - to worlds and peoples’ lives.

Most of Calypso is minimally colonized. At least, so it seems. The cities are built underground, leaving the surface to be a mix of seeming national parks and untouched forests, with only small houses and huts to break them up. There are hidden hatches and panels that lift up to expose subterranean docks and shipyards. This approach has preserved the bulk of the planet and enabled the pirates to have fortified cities.

Key Locations

The Shipyards of Odysseus

In the myths, Odysseus was trapped on Calypso’s island until he built a ship to leave. The shipyards here are named for him and his skill to craft a ship from nothing but raw materials. Ships built here however, are anything but makeshift escape rafts. Given time and assets to build for themselves, pirate designs are among the most innovative - but not the most advanced.

While the workers of the Parthenon can create the most advanced and complex of systems, they don’t regularly operate the ships themselves. They’re geniuses and engineers, but it takes more than brilliance to create innovations. The pirates have large numbers of crews who both operate and design their ships. Through years of experience, disasters, failures, and successes, the pirate factions have learned what makes a great ship. They know where to add complexity and where to opt for simplicity. Their designs focus on foolproof systems and survivability.

The remainder of the city, outside the shipyards, is a center of research and peaceful living. There’s work here to invent better technology, it’s not uncommon for Workers and Researchers to migrate here after graduating from university on The Parthenon.

The Beaches of Ogygia

Ogygia was said to be Calypso’s home island. The pirates were smartasses to name an ocean Ogygia instead. This ocean lies at the equator and is ringed by continents and islands. It is a tropical haven. This stretch of ocean and its many beaches has become a retreat for pirates and tourists alike.

The developments on the beaches are mostly one or two story structures. There is a heavy focus on outdoor living, with breathable homes that embrace their surrounding environments. Here people can relax and enoy the sun, go for a swim, and have a good time. Everyone here is focused more on exploring life’s happiness. It can be a massive shift in culture, especially for thsoe on the bottom of the corporatist structure.

It’s often a shock for all outsiders for other reasons too:

There’s a sizeable nudist population and an active adult pleasure industry.

Going to the beach, one is likely to see naked people and even open acts of both love and pleasure. The fact of the matter is, most of these people don’t believe in restrictions. Life’s too short.

The Citadel

Orbiting over Calypso sits the Pirates’ station. It’s a hollow asteroid, roughly 100 miles across held in a high orbit. The interior hosts the actual station. The entries are all covered over by rock and rigged to move the rocks when opened. The thick iron and titanium rock makes the facility almost untouchable, it would take days of heavy ordinance to break it up. This is a mix of fortification, government center, and a hub of commerce. Access is strictly controlled as a matter of security.

If the other factions or even a rogue pirate were to try something against Calypso, this base would be the point of defense.

Inside pirates dock their ships for repairs, trade goods, and generally operate in secret. If anyone is ever found to betray this trust, the consequences are most severe. Rumor has it the last traitor is still alive, begging for mercy. He leaked his secrets 40 years ago.

The small population and high trust, high consequences make this essentially a crime-free area. Even a bar fight is met with sharp punishment.

The Name

Calypso was first named by the corporatist recon teams that initially scouted the system ahead of the big colonization move. The world was quickly compared to the pirates of old Earth. It was a tropical world, with plentiful oceans. It felt like living in the carribean with pirates all around them. There was soon a scheme in the corporatists:

If we give them a world of their own, they’ll want to use it. They’ll build, colonize, need resources. We’ll sell to them and soon they’ll develop. On the hard-ground down the well, they’ll stop being pirates.

The world was seen as a trap, just as Calypso herself trapped Odsyeous.

History didn’t play out that way. The pirate factions embraced having a world to build on, a home that wouldn’t be under threat, but they never abandoned their principals, culture, or roots. Instead the name and world were embraced as something to be conquered. They did not follow in the corporatists’ footsteps or plans. Instead, they built one of the most amazing places to live in the entire system.