Somalia’s Pirates Flourish in a Lawless Nation

Summary

October 30, 2008: Piracy based in the Puntland province of Somalia preying on ships passing near the Horn of Africa has become rampant, disrupting regular commerce and leading to numerous cases of cargo stolen and people kidnapped and ransomed for money. This has had a strong impact on the local economy, where piracy is the only well-paying job and pirates can easily earn thousands of dollars per person on a single raid.

See Also

Pirate

• News: Somalia's pirate problem grows more rampant

Source

Bibliography

1. Original article

Game and Story Use

• The communities where the pirates live could make for excellent Adventure Towns for the PCs to visit, as both the danger and the rewards will be high.
• The PCs could be hired to free specific hostages or regain certain cargoes which are more valuable than the pirates think (perhaps expensive military or technological prototypes.
  • Perhaps their employer doesn't have the money to pay the ransom in full, doesn't trust the pirates to keep their bargain once the money is handed over, or opposes paying ransom to criminal on principle. Whatever the reason, the PCs have to find the hostages and free them without paying the pirates off.
    • Needless to say, they had better succeed the first time when they might still have the element of surprise - otherwise the pirates will be warned and able to defend themselves better, increase the ransom, or hurt or even kill the hostages in retaliation.
• In more sensible times, this sort of region would have been subject to a punitive expedition … if some modern nation were to "grow a pair" PCs could easily be part of a latter day example. Otherwise (perhaps as PMCs, they might be involved in something less overt (and ripe for betrayal by the comissioning state once the media start throwing a tantrum).