Player's Handbook · Chapter 1

Welcome to the Dark Caribbean

Perhaps you were once a decent person. That was long ago, and in another place.

Now you are a lowlife. A scoundrel. A pyrate.

The islands were supposed to be paradise — deserted beaches and bountiful treasure, free for the taking. Then thousands of people left their crowded, blighted homelands and settled here, and on one particular solstice the sea gave back its dead. Screams came over the sand. Things crawled out of the black waves. Whole settlements were blotted out inside a season.

What survived is this: fortified ports, bled-dry empires, and a black market built on ASH — the dust left behind by destroyed undead, which turns out to be worth more than gold and to do remarkable things to a person who eats it. Nobody is seriously trying to stop the dead from rising. There is too much money in it.

What you actually do

You crew a ship. You take prizes, rob ports, dig up things that were buried for good reasons, and spend the proceeds in a single catastrophic night ashore. Then you do it again with whoever is still breathing.

What this game is like

It is fast, it is funny, and it will kill you. A character is made in about ten minutes, because you will be making more of them. There are no levels, no experience points, and no guarantee that you get better — advancement can lower your abilities as easily as raise them.

Three things to know before your first session:

You roll for everything. You roll to hit, and you roll to not get hit. The GM never rolls a die against you in combat.
Zero is Broken, below zero is dead. There is no dying-and-stabilising. There is a table, and one entry on it is "instant death".
The Devil's Luck is your only mercy. Spend it. Hoarding it is how people die with two points left.

What this game is not about

Pirate Borg is about grog-swilling pirates, undead galleons, arcane treasure, and high seas adventure. It is not about slavery, sexual violence, or genocide. Those are real horrors of this history. Treat them with the respect they deserve or leave them out entirely, and go hunt some skeletons instead.

Manual updated Aug 17, 2026.

Pirate Borg [CRAFT Version]

The Drowned Chain

A grimdark pirate world for you to have fun. Eight islands strung across a dying sea, a free port that has not fallen yet, and a world that keeps moving whether or not you do.

Crafted by

@Chzp

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CreatedAug 7, 2026

UpdatedAug 19, 2026

A World That Does Not Wait

Somebody hangs each month, or the port stops being safe.

Eight islands along a drowned mountain range at the dead end of the Dark Caribbean. The wind and the current both run south, so getting in takes a week and getting out takes a month. Everything that dies in the northern sea comes ashore here eventually, still moving.

Gallows Reach is the only free harbour in four hundred miles, and it is free because the gallows on the headland are never empty. While a body hangs there, nothing dead crosses the tideline. It has been sixty-one days since the last hanging, the fog has come in against the wind, and the Court is looking for a name.

Nineteen clocks are running. Coquina drowns on schedule whatever anyone does. The Company is buying the salvage reefs quietly, Fort Perdition has had no supply ship in seven months, and nobody on the Chain is waiting for you to arrive. Every person here wants something today, knows something wrong, and is allowed to tell you no.

Built on Pirate Borg: d20 plus an ability against a difficulty rating, players roll to attack AND to defend, zero hit points is Broken and below zero is gone.

Glimpses

Author's note

A world for Pirate Borg [CRAFT Version], which supplies all the rules, classes, equipment, arcana and bestiary used here. Pirate Borg is by Luke Stratton / Limithron and is published under the MORK BORG Third Party License; MORK BORG is copyright Ockult Ortmastare Games and Stockholm Kartell. The living-world layer — the turn cascade, threads, and NPC agency — is modelled on the approach of the Realm Realistic Flow Engine by Vocal_Misfit, rebuilt on Pirate Borg's mechanics rather than imported.

Inside the World