Locations - the sea

We're done with characters for now... (well, as soon as I'll introduce others I'll talk about them too but... talking about them now would be a spoiler)... so let's talk about locations.

As I previously said... forget about the Caribbean!

The Pirate Balthasar is about barbary coast pirates so we'll definitely stay always in the Mediterranean sea. The places we'll visit will have no sandy beaches. There's a lot of volcanic islands with black beaches. The sea is turqoise here, not green or deep blue. It's clear and shiny, it's warm with small waves, has no white sharks (we've only sea like 160 of them in 30 years).

There are sharks though....

We have/had 80 different species of sharks here, 15 of which are, alas, extinct already and 5 of which are going toward extinction: verdesca (blue shark), squalo volpe (fox shark), squalo martello (hammer shark) , smeriglio and mako (this one's mean).

We'll see a lot of this guy for some reasons I will not explain now. It's a verdesca (prionace glauca), it's used for shark fin soup, it feeds on blue fish and has a deep blue skin. But you won't see it swim in circles around anybody and you won't see anybody walk the plank because "walking the plank" was invented by Hollywood and pirates would punish people in different ways... they were creative and cruel... but we'll talk about it another time.

Some of the islands we'll see are based on real island but I won't make names... except once, for Sicily.

The Mediterranean is populated by many different cultures and so the architecture, agriculture and landscapes will change.

A Greek island doesn't look anything like and Italian or ex-Yugoslavian island. Corsica and Sardinian were worlds of their own and the Spanish island (and Spain in general) still show a lot of the Arabic influence.

We will not go up North, as it was dangerous to the pirates to venture far into the Tirrenian sea. So we'll get to see a lot of the vulcanin islands in the South with their black beaches.

Raven Island (Isola del Corvo) will be one of them.

We'll also visit the Island of March (Isola di Marzo) and the Baronet's Island (which has nothing on it but goats hahaha).

Don't look for them on the map... they are not there ^_-- but I know where they are!

So, now that we've established where we are, let's set our navigation course. Take your astrolabe and your charts...

Oh, and grab your Piri Reis, we might want to explore Africa too although Alidivento will never go too far into the Atlantic Ocean... some pirates are superstitious!

Balthasar is one of them!