You can be cap'n, that's cool with me. A stuffy, law-abiding Norrington type could be plenty fun, then there's also the option of a sort of all-inclusive Spock to your Kirk who tends the ledgers, acts as ship's surgeon and gives regular counsel, etc., all while still being an outlaw on the high seas himself. One supplies more immediate conflict than the other, but both are cool ideas, and of course there's always the possibility of multiple characters.

Well, the Napoleonic wars were shortly after the American and French revolutions, lasting from 1803-1815, with some stops and starts. Horse & carriage would be the norm at that time, yeah. Trains and railway transportation didn't get popular/commercial until around the 1850s-60s.

Anyway, most of that seems irrelevant if we're to be at sea most of the time, but we can model the land-based stuff off the British Empire and dynastic Europe easily enough. So fancy clothes and wigs for the nobles, more humble stuff for the majority and rags for the more unfortunate. Think the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (they might be a deal before the era I'm referring to, though, I'm not sure; piracy as is commonly portrayed went back at least to the 1600s), Les Miserables, Master & Commander and most other pirate or swashbuckling media one might imagine.

just imagined a great scenario where our pirates are posing as nobles, perhaps even royalty. My pirate, your captain's lieutenant, is probably posh enough to pass off as one, so maybe he handles the talking if she's less schooled in her etiquette. He might even be impersonating the prince himself... and then the real one shows up. Cue a brawl and epic scrambling to escape to the ports.

Perhaps the prince will find his life a bit boring and tame and wonder what life on the high seas might be like, finding the female captain to be a treasure he'd love to add to his collection and her wanting nothing to do with him, save teaching him a lesson or two in common manner.

My conception of the prince thus far is that he believes in law and order to the utmost and his view on piracy is something of a mix of demonization and "love the sinner, hate the sin." Some pirates are too wicked and savage to save, but others must be brought back into the fold. His father the king takes more of a hard line; he means to eradicate them all and will adopt any means to do so, something which he and his son disagree on quite strongly.

If he's not merely taken as ransom, I imagine the prince might actively pursue "converting" or redeeming the captain and her crew himself. Of course, the likeliest scenario is that one follows the other.

Oh that's fun. I always love a good religious element in our stories. Saving that world or dirty pirates as it were will be fun. I'll make his sister a dreamer who's a bit whimslical and quite girly in appearance and stature.

So let's start with our pirates and we'll intro the other half of the story in the near future?

Do we need CS for the MCs?

If you like. I'd at least like to work on mine a bit more. The usual fare like name, age, appearance and maybe personality and a brief bio should be good. I'm going to use original names for places and things, not try to fit this into a RL historical context.

Okay, I've got some details for my character, but one idea I like is that our PCs have a history dating back to before yours was captain. She might still have already been a pirate by the time they met (if she wasn't just born into it, that is), but I kind of enjoy thinking she owes at least some of her rise to power to him. =P

I'm perfectly fine with the first mate being a bit older and having attributed to her fathers and now her success. Let's say her father died quickly of a heart attack or something and she's only 22. ??

Hmm, interesting idea! A sort of inherited right-hand man. I did imagine him being mid-30s, so unless you want to age her up and have them be peers first, that sounds fine.

EDIT: Though 22, geez. That sounds so young to me now, despite not being much older. I guess I just haven't had much experience with my own age group in a while. At any rate, they lived hard and hearty in those days, so it's not impossible.

Name: Dr. Gabriel Sharpe | Age: 35 | Gender: Male | Occupation: Pirate/Ship's physick/First mate
Personality: Dr. Sharpe is a pragmatist, bordering on a pessimist. He is seldom in the moment, caught up with identifying & solving problems at hand & anticipating others forthcoming. He is prone to sarcasm & gallows humor. He has learnt hard lessons of the differences between goodliness & lawfulness & generally disdains authority for its narrow & short-sighted views, intrusive bureaucracy & willingness to sacrifice innocent lives for vain endeavors & facesaving.
Expertise: Gabriel is a learned man, so knows his marks & numbers well & is a powerhouse of information on a wide range of subject matters. He is a surgical prodigy & a resourceful amateur chemist, able to concoct helpful remedies from sparing ingredients as well as more weaponizable solutions. His stint in the service has given him a modestly competent shooting hand & with the help of his former captain, he possesses at least a crude command of basic swordsmanship & knowledge of naval jargon & maritime warfare. As a merchant's son, he is also adept in speechcraft & haggling.
Background: Gabriel was born into a well-to-do merchant family in Amberdon, the capital of Leona. As the second son, he was thankfully less obligated to fawn & truckle to the Leonard Peerage for the sake of the family business than was his elder brother, though he did help out by managing its books & coffers.
Always fascinated by the function of things, Gabriel took a quick interest in anatomy, biology & medicine, studying all the old scholars & philosophers of those fields. This pleased his father, who paid for his entry into medical school, figuring the next best thing to a businessman for a son was a doctor (who could provide healthcare to nobles & other businessmen). Gabriel proved a brilliant student & a talented surgeon, but chaffed under the confines of the academic board, whom he offended & irritated many a time with the more outlandish & outdated ideas inherited from his esoteric self-education. After an incident involving the "illegal appropriation & unsanctioned experimentation of cadavers," Gabriel was threatened with expulsion, even imprisonment or hanging. His father made ample use of his purse to smooth things over, but Gabriel left the school anyway, fed up with their rigid & unimaginative policies. For this, he was summarily disowned & disinherited.
As it happened, war broke out with the Aquillan colonies across the sea around this time & Gabriel enlisted in the Royal Corps of Chirurgions, falsifying a doctorate. "Doctor" Sharpe was soon after given the post of ship's physick aboard the Spitfire, an 18-gun Brig Sloop-of-War. The ship regularly reconnoitered for the larger ships-of-the-line, delivered messages & personnel & evacuated injured or sinking seamen. It was here Gabriel first witnessed the tremendous waste of life so commonly caused by foolhardy naval commanders or the administrative muck-ups of their superiors, a thing which discouraged & disgusted him to no end. The breaking point came when his sloop was given part of the clean-up detail of the HMS Malburmont, a mammoth first-rate of 104 guns that had been utterly annihilated in battle with the Aquillans. Even after years of tending the sick & the dying, the sight of the officers aboard made him balk. When he learned offhand of the (surviving) captain's mulish refusal to withdraw during the hopeless firefight, no doubt costing many men their lives unnecessarily, he tracked down & nearly cuffed the officer himself, held back only by his own captain. He was transferred to a port of call for his own good, finishing out the war as a member of the island's hospital staff & staying on even after.
In light of their defeat to Aquilla, the Leonards began to throw their weight around on the island & other colonies on the pretense of curbing any more future dissent. Gabriel watched as its natives, many of whom he had come to call friends, were subjected to oppressive restrictions & petty humiliations by the very same navy he had worked to heal. The port became a police state & a mass gallows for roving pirates, the Empire's newest enemies & scapegoats. When rumors spread that the hospital was harboring some of these outlaws, the local authority responded with excess force, resulting in a violent engagement & the deaths of several patients, including widows & expectant mothers, the elderly & children. Because none of these casualties were Leonards, the whole thing was written off as collateral damage & quietly censored when reported to the powers back home.
Disillusioned, Dr. Sharpe sought solace in the bottle & considered returning to Amberdon to plead at his father's feet for mercy. But when drinking one night in a local pub, he spied one of the officers involved in the slaughter at the hospital, a man with whom he'd had words several times before. In his cups & feeling especially nihilistic, he confronted the man & things came to blows. Gabriel wasted little time; after he'd taken as many hits as he could suffer, he removed his pistol & shot the officer point-blank through the eye (an enormity he'd seen the man perform on one of the sickly children in his care). He would have been arrested & hanged the very same day but for the pugnacious intervention of William DeMarco, an infamous pirate captain who had stolen into port to rescue members of his crew from certain death.
Sharpe made a hasty departure with the pirates to save himself from the rope, earning his passage by mending their wounds & giving them insight into the navy's protocols. Originally expecting him to be a vicious cutthroat, Gabriel soon recognized Captain DeMarco to be a man of integrity (of a sort) & fervently loyal to his men. The two of them spent many an evening in the captain's cabin, discussing over fine food & drink such things as politics, religion, literature, science & philosophy & yet more of life's grand mysteries. Though the captain gave him the choice of any port from which he might debark, the fraudulent doctor resolved to remain aboard, becoming a right-hand to the pirate-king.
With his passing, Dr. Sharpe now endeavors to fill the same role for the captain's young daughter & successor, Andrea, a rather more willful & unruly commander...

Name: William "Lucky Bill" Dodd | Age: 50s | Gender: Male | Occupation: Pirate/Ship's quartermaster & master-at-arms
Personality: So-called "Lucky Bill" has a long of history of stumbling into or attracting trouble, something he has come to view with a fatalistic humor. Unperturbed, he is a firm, but rollicksome & protective big brother figure to his crew. If a man fails to carry his weight or steps out of line, he's quicker to give a good lashing with his tongue than his whip as past experiences disincline him toward's corporal punishment & he knows embarrassing a man a bit in front of his mates shapes him up far better. Otherwise, Bill slakes his thirst on life any way he can; drinking, dicing, whoring, singing, brawling & then some. He is loyal to his bones & will see an order carried out come hell or high water once given.
Expertise: Lucky Bill has lived more of his life on sea than land & knows the moody ocean as good as any man can. He has toiled at nigh every menial job aboard a ship & has an eye for half-arsers. He knows what his ship can take, as well as his men. Just don't expect him to have such mastery of the intricacies of shore life; he's as blue as they come & could offend the sensibilities of the vulgarest of slatterns.
Background: Served aboard various ships since he was a lad. Captured & sold into bondage as a young man, living several years slaving under the blistering tropical sun as a "redleg." Later broke free with some others, scraping by in the service of outlaws & pariahs he held little love for until falling in with pirate captain William DeMarco.