The Alliance is not a terribly tight-knit polity; the six Provinces that make it up are each governed by their own mostly-independent High Admirals, and the Crews living across its isles and waters have no great loyalty to much beyond themselves, which makes any attempt to exert control over the entire nation difficult, at best. It was born as a loose alliance of pirate captains and admirals who came together to throw off the Imperial yoke and end the Occupation; the Admiralty that now rules the Archipelago has to be careful not to squeeze too tightly or give orders that the Corsairs will refuse to obey, lest they be unseated and replaced with someone less objectionable to the freewheeling tastes of Jadeite culture.
Corsairs in general have a dual perspective on authority. They treat their Captain and/or Commodore with respect and obedience, believing that to do otherwise is to harm their Crew; if they disagree with their Captain, their duty is to either hash things out and air their grievances in private or to leave and find another Crew with a Captain they can respect. However, anyone in a position of authority outside of a Corsair’s Crew can be questioned and talked back to as much as the Corsair thinks is necessary and they can get away with; even the Lord Admiral of the Alliance has to deal with a remarkably high degree of backtalk and questioning of their orders.
Rules that aren’t part of the codes of a Corsair’s Crew are usually seen as more like guidelines than hard and fast laws to be obeyed unthinkingly. There’s a cultural understanding that rules usually exist for a reason, and the average Corsair isn’t going to break laws just to prove they can, but at the same time there’s an instinctive response when confronted by a rule or law barring them from doing something of “do I actually need to follow this rule, if it’s stopping me from getting what I want?” It makes for a fractious society where you can never really rely on the Corsairs around you following the law, if there’s a large incentive to break it.
Many Crews build rules into their codes dictating which laws and treaties of the Alliance their members must respect, in an effort to avoid trouble with the authorities, but such provisions are inherently a choice that each Crew decides on their own — the only time the Admiralty has attempted to dictate such rules on the Crews of the Alliance, the Lord Admiral was assassinated and the entire Admiralty upper echelon voted out and driven into exile.
Leaders in the Alliance, whether of small Captains, Commodores, or the Lord Admiral herself, are expected to do what’s best for the people they’re leading. Given the peculiarities of Jadeite culture, though, there’s a lot of leeway in what that means — some Crews are focused on the prosperity and protection of their members, while others focus on fame and fortune over any concerns for safety or thoughts to the future. The best and most highly-regarded Captains ensure that their Crews are well-paid, well-stocked with Grog, and get exactly as much adventure and glory as they want.
The path to leadership in the Alliance is one of continually cultivating the loyalty and power of your Crew. The first step is to convince your Crew to elect you as their Captain, and from there it’s a question of how big, famous, and/or powerful you can make your Crew before you hit retirement age. The most well-known and capable Crews have their Captains and Commodores groomed for admission into the Admiralty’s upper ranks, possibly all the way up into the Lord Admiral’s flagship.
Outside of the Admiralty that loosely governs the Alliance, there are three well-understood levels of leadership positions that a Corsair can aspire to: Captain, Commodore, and finally and most prestigiously Admiral.
Captains are the leaders of a Crew, no matter how large or small it might be. Captains are selected by their Crews, usually through democratic vote but sometimes by simple acclaim. To keep their position, a Captain will need to demonstrate both their ability to keep their Crew supplied with coin and Grog, as well as a knack for finding and guiding the Crew through hunts that they find fulfilling (or at least profitable). Popularity with your Crew is always a good thing, but giving the Crew a purpose and a vision to hold them together and keep them focused on working with one another is the most important thing, from a Jadeite perspective. Corsairs understand how fractious they can be, and greatly admire anyone able to weld a bunch of disparate and freewheeling people into a unit capable of accomplishing great deeds.
Though a few Captains maintain their position through threats and brute force, such methods are viewed by the vast majority of Corsairs as both morally wrong and utterly counterproductive. The right to freely leave a Crew is one of the few laws the Admiralty prosecutes whenever and wherever it is violated, and without the ability to effectively enslave the members of a Crew there are few Corsairs who would willingly work for such Captains.
Captains whose Crew grows large enough to require multiple people to manage it effectively, especially when their Crew’s assets include multiple sailing vessels, are known as Commodores. The multiple Crews under their command, each with its own Captain, together make up a Flotilla. Commodores must deal with much more logistics and politics than the average Captain, and have much less control over the fine details of their Flotilla than a Captain does over their Crew, making it a position that only a few Corsairs really enjoy filling. Still, the scale of a Flotilla and the forces and resources at the command of a Commodore make the position into something that guarantees a certain level of respect from any Corsair, and many Captains dream of achieving the title of Commodore even if they may not really look forward to the minutiae of the job.
Those select few who are chosen to lead the Alliance’s Fleets to war are known simply as Admirals. Given that there are only three Allied Fleets active, there are limited opportunities for any Corsair to advance to this level of authority within the Alliance. That doesn’t keep the Shantymen and Locker Priests from telling dozens of tales about the feats and accomplishments of Admirals present and past, though, and Corsairs idolize the nation’s few Admirals as masters of naval strategy and embodiments of the ideal Jadefang commander.
Each region within the Archipelago is governed by a High Admiral, selected by the Admiralty in Throneport and confirmed by an anonymous vote of the Captains whose Crews are based within that region. The Admiralty’s selection is made every six years based on a silent auction amongst the candidates — each puts up an amount of coin, resources, and/or military forces that they’ll promise to the Admiralty, with the highest bid earning the nomination. While many other nations view this as the height of corruption, the Corsairs view it as an openly meritocratic system that ensures both that only successful Captains gain political power and that the Admiralty has enough funds to keep the Alliance functional without requiring terribly onerous taxes on the average Corsair and their Crew.
The critical part that keeps the system functional is the confirmation vote of the Captains. If a candidate for High Admiral is not viewed as capable or trustworthy by the Crews they wish to rule over, the vote is quite likely to go against them, preventing an unpopular governor from taking office no matter how good they are at making money to buy the office. What’s more, the Admiralty keeps whatever they bid regardless of the outcome of the vote, and the candidate with the next-highest bid goes up for a vote immediately should the first candidate be voted down. Only once a High Admiral is voted in are the remaining bids belonging to those who never went up for a vote returned to those who made them. The Admiralty actively encourages unpopular candidates to run in order to rake in more funding, though most Captains with the cunning to build up enough coin to consider running for High Admiral are also able to tell when they wouldn’t be able to clinch the confirmation vote.
The number of High Admirals has fluctuated over the centuries since the Alliance was formed, maxing out at ten and going as low as four. The current regions have been fixed for the last seventy years or so, and aren’t likely to shift unless significant economic or demographic upheavals hit — which, with the start of a new Churning, could well happen, regardless of the Alliance’s hopes otherwise.
Each High Admiral inherits a staff that collects economic and demographic information from the Crews of the region they govern, as well as a tax collector’s office and small flotilla of war ships for internal security; each branch of the High Admiral’s staff is functionally its own Crew or Flotilla. The High Admiral is expected to set policy within their region, protect the shipping lanes, and enforce the laws of the Admiralty to the extent possible given their resources.
The Grand Council Of Admirals And Maritime Law, otherwise known as the Admiralty, is what passes for the national government of the Alliance. It has the power to pass laws that (in theory) apply to those living within and passing through the Archipelago, and to enforce those laws with its fleets and marines. Its ability to tax is entirely relegated to the High Admirals who govern the various regions of the Archipelago, as each High Admiral tithes two-thirds of the taxes they collect to the Admiralty for the upkeep of the Alliance’s armed forces and national infrastructure.
The Admiralty is structured as a set of twelve Flotillas, each commanded by a Lord Commodore who is tasked with overseeing a particular sector of the Admiralty. With the exception of the Argent Sails, the Lord Commodore of each branch of the Admiralty is nominated by the Lord Admiral and confirmed by a vote of the High Admirals, with any ties being decided in favor of the Lord Admiral’s nominee. The new member of the Admiralty inherits the existing Flotilla left behind by their predecessor; most Lord Commodores merge their former Crew into their new Flotilla to act as a personal guard and envoy, though it’s not unusual for many of their Crew members to depart to find a Crew not in government service (and not under quite so much scrutiny from the Argent Sails).
<aside> ⚓ We are still working on the other seven branches of the Admiralty; stay tuned.
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The final branch of the Admiralty is the Lord Admiral, who acts as the head of state for the Alliance, commander of the Alliance’s Fleets, and whose signature is necessary for every law or major expenditure that any of the other members of the Admiralty wish to put into effect. Lord Admirals are selected from amongst the current Admirals, High Admirals, and Lord Commodores by a ranked-choice vote of all the Captains able to attend the funeral or retirement ceremony of the previous Lord Admiral. Candidates who put their name forward and fail to clinch the vote are banned from holding an Admiralty office for the rest of their lives, which has so far mostly kept the contest to only the most serious of candidates.
A Lord Admiral’s second act in office (after nominating their own Lord Commodores) is to secure the succession of power should something happen to them by designating who amongst the Lord Commodores will take over as acting Lord Admiral until a new head of state can be elected.
The current Lord Admiral is one Celia “Silvertusk” de Baldovinos, an orc in her forties who is known for her cunning plans and talent at managing people, as well as for leading from the front during her early years as Captain of the Bitterfang Crew twenty years ago. She rose to the position after a decade of climbing the ranks of the Admiralty, and is widely regarded as an adept leader with a light touch on the helm who can be trusted to handle the coming storm of the Churning.