REPO Recruitment Drive

“The word of a gentleman is as good as his bond; and sometimes better.”
- Charles Dickens


[REPO.] is currently in the midst of a recruitment drive. As a pirate corporation, we are sometimes faced with the dilemma of attitude and enthusiasm versus experience and skill. More often than not it is the intangibles (attitude and enthusiasm) that trump the more real-word attributes (experience and skill) of an applicant. The reason being, you can teach the latter, whereas personality is generally something much more ingrained.

A recent applicant to [REPO.], who had a very lengthy and impressive combat record, challenged our assertions of being Gentlemen Pirates by proclaiming that they do not exist. “I’m not looking to be a Gentleman Pirate.There’s no such thing. For as long as I’ve been flashy red I’ve never chosen ransom… I don’t ransom, and I probably never will” he wrote. Further, his outright declaration that TRUE pirates are simply “ruthless, cutthroat, individuals, who just don’t give a **** about the laws or the people” got us thinking. Is it possible that we at [REPO.] are deluding ourselves into believing that we’re an overly romanticized version of our true selves?

When I first began my quest to join a pirate corporation, and become a nefarious outlaw of the cosmos, I was inspired by a passage written by a renowned pirate named Skira Ranos. To paraphrase:
“I realized then that the Pirate Hunter, in his bloated Raven, was a conceited, self-righteous and unskilled windbag. Meanwhile his quarry, the pirates, roared deftly through space in their nimble frigates – cunning, colorful and cruelly proficient. My mind was made up in that instant; I wanted to be a pirate.”

I suppose there is a little poetry in the fact that Skira’s recounting of the moment which inspired him to become a pirate would be the very same thing that would inspire me (and countless others, I imagine) to become a pirate as well.

What struck me most about Skira’s tale was the implication that being a pirate could mean more than simply griefing or making others’ lives miserable – the implication that piracy wasn’t simply a way of flying your ship, but a way of living your life in New Eden.

Attempting to live a life of piracy suddenly meant that your word and your reputation were actually worth something, and they became a commodity on which you could make a living. Should the value of that commodity begin to erode through duplicity and dishonor, then so too would your way of earning erode, eventually leaving you to seek out other methods for generating income, or ways of rebuilding your reputation.

Now, to be truthful, I have yet to achieve a level of skill which allows me to fully fund my criminal exploits in New Eden through the acquisition of ransoms, yet it remains my ultimate goal and one which I believe is eventually attainable. It is only attainable though, through the careful creation of a reputation as a Gentleman Pirate, who can be trusted to honor his word whenever a ransom is offered.

Do other forms of piracy exist? Of course, and I’m sure that they each have their particular allure. However, I object wholeheartedly to the claim that Gentlemen Pirates do not exist. They most certainly do exist and you need look no further than the ranks of [REPO.] to find them.

-REPO Recruitment Officer