Agreed, side stories are fun but nothing beats the main story.
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Lex Sedet In Vertice: A Supervillain in the DCU CK2 quest
- Thread starter King crimson
- Start date
- Superhero
I don't think it hurts that Batman is generally easier to relate to, not just because he's a regular human who has to deal with regular human threats as opposed to Superman but also because at times Superman can feel too perfect, he struggles at times sure but he's called the big blue boyscout for a reason whereas while Bruce is a genuinely good person he also struggles with relatable issues more often, his anger and loneliness, the memories of his parents, the actual fear of death and even relationship problems since unlike Superman he doesn't have a single romantic interest he's kinda destined to end up with
Not to say that interesting and engaging Superman stories can't be written, because they absolutely can, just that I understand why most writers might prefer working on Batman
I always found that placement really weird because it means that this pirate paradise, or recluse isolationist island depending on the version, exists right between a bunch of much bigger and more important islands in the middle of water that is heavily trafficked and patrolled, how do they still exist? I feel like it'd make more sense in the western Mediterranean north of Algeria or something
Though while we're on the topic of North African countries, I'm not sure if it's ever been said but did Bialya have a coastline? I know it takes up some of where Libya us but I'm not sure if it's landlocked
Unfortunately I'm not very artistically minded but I might give it a try
Also it only just occurred to me that if we really wanted an island to build something on a combination of the Atlantean coral tech, our rapid growth formula and Ivy would easily allow us to make our own
I think for me the best way to sum up Batman's viewpoint on team ups is 1) If you don't live in Gotham and you're not working for him don't get involved with Gotham, 2) Batman is in charge and 3) He will make plans to take you out in case he has to
That's fair though I'd say that by his very nature as an uncaring insane person Joker has always been an embodiment of chaos but it has definitely been amplified in recent years
God I want to cast that spell on Janus but it's so difficult to justify spending the action on it! I wish we could do it as a personal action or something
Personally I really like the omakes and wouldn't mind some but I also do kind of just want to get the invasion finished first so that we can actually act on all of the plans we've come up with
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I like some of the side content, other side content doesn't do much for me; it varies.
I very much don't want you to feel burned out because you're feeling forced to hammer on a specific thing you don't feel the inspiration for. On the other hand, I can respect the idea of "just bull on ahead," since the last time we had a turn vote was roughly nine months ago by my estimate.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
I mean the answer I've got is a bit complicated. The first element to discuss is the impact of size. Coryana is tiny. Like it's probably comparable to a place like Tuvalu and Palau. This in turn likely means that it's got an absolutely tiny population. Malta only has about 500,000 people living in it (Major cities like London and New York easily have about 16 times the population of the entire country). Coryana is even smaller than Malta (hence why I think it is more comparable to Palau and Tuvalu). As such its population likely doesn't break 20,000. By necessity it's almost certainly going to be isolationist in order to maintain its sovereignty, simply because it cannot afford the manpower to interact with other countries as equals.
The second element comes down to resources. There are islands in the Mediterranean that do not have a lot of natural resources. A lot of Greek islands rely on the government in Athens to keep their populations afloat but Coryana doesn't have an equivalent as an independent country. As such the country is dependent on outside resources in order to stay afloat. This in turn ends up giving the government of Coryana to tolerate piracy, so long as it brings the necessary resources and wealth into the island and its government that it needs in order to maintain its existence.
The third element is the fact/alteration that Coryana simply isn't that big of a deal. Piracy is a problem but ultimately not a huge one and Coryana manages to stay just low enough on priority that nobody really bothers to fix it. Furthermore, organizations like the Many Arms of Death are not global threats and even with it as a pirate nation they aren't able to actively destabilize anything in the region especially when one takes into account the following point
The fourth element is that pirates in Coryana do not have to commit piracy off the coast of Coryana. The country is a haven for pirates and an excellent place for them to lie low but it is not necessarily the place that all pirates physically commit their crimes out of. The appeal of the location is that it effectively is immensely easy to hide in, it has no interest in extraditing pirates to other countries and actively wants them to be there and because there are so many criminals already there it's a great place to network.
The fifth element is that it is closer to the African side of the Mediterranean, and not the European side, which is generally easier to hide things from due. It's not north of IRL Algeria but it is north of IRL Libya (which I don't imagine is historically all that interested in working with Europe).
All of these elements come together to allow it to exist. Coryana exists because its government is extremely amenable to sheltering criminals, it's incredibly tiny and minor on the world stage, it's situated in a decently safe position and the more pirates are in the country not causing problems the more convenient it is to go there as a pirate.
I will say that Coryana is a "pirate haven" but in quest they are not raiding the Mediterranean from there and even if the entire island were to be arrested, you wouldn't be eliminating 90% of all piracy.
I'll have to double check my statements but I believe it is not landlocked and has a coastline (albeit not a large one)
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The big problem with putting your pirate haven in the Mediterranean is that it's a closed system with only two access points. Pirates traversing the Suez Canal or the Straits of Gibraltar are going to have to answer some awkward questions from the Spanish, British, or Egyptians.
I'm not sure it can be made to work very well...
Can we list known facts about Coryana to see how to reconcile things?
I'm not sure it can be made to work very well...
Can we list known facts about Coryana to see how to reconcile things?
I'm not an expert and I don't think we have a lot of in depth information but what we do know is:
In the comics
- It is 80 miles away from Malta
- It's both a major pirate hideout and a tax haven
- The island is ruled over by a group of warlords kept unified and in check by Safiyah Sohail, probably the most moderate of the lot and a former romantic interest of Katherine Kane, though I doubt they've met in quest
- One of the major groups on the island are The Many Arms of Death, a terrorist organisation that orchestrates very public attacks on locations with large tourist populations in order to create more global tension so they can sell weapons through their legitimate front company the Kali Corporation
- It's seemingly just a regular island with no significant pirate presence nor is it a tax haven
- It was apparently founded when a large group of women fled there to escape their abusive partners but were chased down by said partners but saved by an army of women
- Apparently where the blood of the female warriors was spilled a plant called the Desert Rose grew which can heal all illnesses and injuries
- Safiya Sohail is still in charge but she rules with an iron fist with the assassins of the Many Arms of Death being her enforcers
- It is extremely isolationist and environmentalist, refusing to export any Desert Rose or even let the rest of the world know about its existence, killing anyone who lets it slip
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King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
I mean it might be something that requires a bit of suspension of disbelief but my (oversimplified) solution is to make it not necessarily a place in which pirates use to rob others in the Mediterranean, but more a place in which pirates gather in order to find crew/supplies/information. I don't think it's a huge suspension of disbelief that in the DCQU there exist significantly skilled pirates who can misdirect/fool/bribe either the Spanish, the British or the Egyptians (especially when IRL from what I understand, Egypt already has significant issues with bribery and corruption). The most successful pirates are those who can fly under the radar and thus can avoid getting nailed on sight as criminals and get away with bribery a little more effectively.
I'll list out what I'm using as the "must retain" facts and if you come up with a better solution, I'm happy to use it. That being said expect a good deal of repeats from jonasquinn's bullet pointed list.
- Coryana is 80 miles of the coast of Malta
- It is even smaller than Malta
- It is extremely isolationist
- It lacks any resources besides being useful to pirates
- The government of the island has strong ties to illegal entities
- There are a lot of pirates who make use of the island
- The Many Arms of Death (which is reduced in scope in quest) is a criminal organization that operates out of there
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Can they be software pirates instead? I mean, it sounds like a great place to base a cybercriminal enterprise out of.
The issue with that is that it kinda changes everything else about the island, it goes from an island completely overrun by armed criminals and murderers to an island of hackers and online scammers
It also kind of suddenly makes them a priority for dealing with because organised cyber criminals can do a lot more damage than disorganised pirates
Sirrocco
Pedantic
I tend to think it makes them less of a priority, because the crime is nonviolent.
The issue is, if there's a pirate port, and its location is known, and it has no real power, then pirates can be tracked to and from it relatively easily. A that point, the only way to survive is to me so small-time and non-dangerous that no one who matters enough to do anything about it really cares.
Also, it could still be overrun by armed criminals. It can still be a general safehouse for crooks and ruffians of all kinds - a place to lay low, to meet with one another on neutral ground, to shelter assets and so forth. There's nothing saying that "the piracy part is computer crime" is going to cut down on the violence inherent in the rest of the system.
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Sirrocco
Pedantic
No reason not to do both? I mean, part of the idea is to get enough standard criminals to provide protection against violent assault... and makign it a horrible tax haven gives quiet political coverage.
It's nonviolent but still capable of doing way more damage than the occasional act of actual piracy
Sirrocco
Pedantic
People don't always function as utility-engines in that way.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
They cannot be software pirates instead. There can exist software pirates on Coryana in addition to literal pirates but to replace one for the other kind of violates the spirit of the original intent of the place. Coryana is meant to be a sort of homage to exotic fictional locales overrun by criminals in spy thrillers like San Monique in Live and Let Die.
That's not to say an island in which cyber criminals are all based off of isn't interesting but for me it kind of lacks the original flavor that made Coryana stand out and be interesting for me. I don't think Coryana stays Coryana without the literal piracy as changing it all to software piracy instead feels like it's trying to make fun of the very tropes the comic version is built on.
So, in the modern-day piracy isn't really a big priority for any country. Part of this is just because of quantity. There are on average about 200 reported cases of piracy every year. There are countless more cases of software piracy and they inevitably do a lot more damage. Apparently, tech companies are losing billions every year to software piracy. One's a much larger priority for most governments because one does a lot more damage and is significantly more widespread.
I mean that's kind of modern piracy in a nutshell. The most famous modern-day pirates are not people who make piracy their living successfully but rather people Paul Watson, a guy who committed acts of piracy against Japanese whaling vessels, or people like Abduwali Muse, who is famous for failing in an attempt at piracy.
Successful modern-day pirates are literal unknowns, indistinguishable from fishermen, don't rely on violence and in fact prefer to actively avoid shedding blood, rely on information from government officials and exploit the issues in arresting people in disputed waters or in searching for them in foreign countries.
I would also like to distinguish that Coryana is a pirate country and not a "pirate port". It's big enough that searching for any pirates who make it back there would generally be pretty hard (much like how you can't really search Somalia for pirates who landed there except to a more exaggerated/unrealistic degree). There are problems with the existence of Coryana if you were to look at things from an exceptionally literal standpoint and attempting to make things as realistic as possible but to some extent I feel that the pirate flavor of Coryana is well worth keeping.
Yes, there is nothing saying that it can't still be overrun by armed criminals but when you've changed the pirates entirely to people who illegally download software they haven't paid for, you've created a very big functional difference and it feels kind of trying to make a joke about the original concept.
The fact of "there are a lot of pirates on the island", which was a fact I think must be retained, doesn't explicitly call out for maritime pirates but the intent is very obviously there on my part and removing it makes the country feel "Coryana in name only" for me. There's nothing saying that "the piracy part is computer crime" is going to cut down on the violence inherent in the rest of the system but at the same time there is something saying that Coryana must have maritime pirates be not insignificant in its makeup.
The offered solution is not a viable solution within the guidelines I have initially set when adapting it and frankly if I have to go to such ridiculous lengths as using fallacious literalism (an extreme example of what I feel equating software pirates and maritime pirates as the same thing is arguing that someone to the right of you is correct in an argument they make because "they are right". It is fallacious and is intentionally manipulating things to skate by on technicalities while very deliberately avoiding the actual point of what's going on) to match the criteria set initially, I'd rather not include it in the first place.
Companies do though (or at least they actively try to) and companies are generally the victims of both software piracy and maritime piracy. Those companies then attempt to lobby the government in order to get the prioritization they want passed on criminalizing things. So, while people are not utility-engines, things that aspire to mimic utility-engines are actively manipulating governments to act in ways to protect their bottom lines and the company losing more money will generally be trying harder to come down on what's costing them money.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
1) Malta itself is tiny (about ten miles long, less than ten miles wide, with a second smaller island to the immediate northwest; combined the two can't have much more than 100 square miles of land). Notably, this makes "eighty miles off the coast of Malta" sound a little weird; it's like talking about being 3000 miles off the coast of Africa. By that point, you're so far away that the expression "off the coast" does not make a lot of sense. However, that's a detail and not your doing; I imagine you're quoting a source.
2) Coryana being significantly smaller than Malta (~50 square miles, say) inherently ensures that it will have no resources of real value. At some point there were probably sugar plantations there or something, but that's not going to matter now. There are probably ruins of a Carthaginian colony somewhere on the island, and the Romans would have conquered it. Dunno who would have held it during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, though I could make up something plausible.
3) Coryana being eighty miles from Malta in the direction of Europe would basically make it part of Sicily, so by process of elimination, it needs to be in the direction of the North African shore of the Mediterranean. That is to say, it's probably east or south of Malta; look at a map and you'll see what I mean.
4) As discussed, the fundamental problem with the 'piracy' angle is that it's in a place where a lot of developed countries can get at it easily, it's got no natural defenses worth talking about, and it's too small to put up much of a fight if someone says "fuckit, invading you now."
5) Actual pirates would have to operate a thousand nautical miles or more from Coryana to be relatively safe from just being dogpiled by major navies, so it's probably not a direct haven for them specifically. Combining this with (4)... This suggests that whatever aid it provides to pirates is very indirect, and possibly not known to the general public. For instance, perhaps Coryana, as one of the tiniest micronations on Earth, is a flag of convenience for ships that in some way support the piracy, concealed among a large number of other comparatively disreputable shipping that uses that same flag of convenience. Perhaps Coryana is like the Cayman Islands and other such places in that it's a convenient place to launder the money from piracy.
KnightofTempest
The Man who would be King
- Location
- Chicago
I mean, to be fair this is the DCU.
Santa Prisca is practically in the USA's backyard and yet a power-mad dictator totally reliant on the drug trade and fugitive mad scientists to stay in power was left there without so much as a special forces raid to halt drug smuggling into Florida or forcibly extradite wanted criminals like King Snake.
And let's not get into Corto Maltese, a state off the coast of South America completely owned and operated by organized crime. . .
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
You have a point.
On the other hand, Santa Prisca is bigger than some little island, and may have actual mountains and jungle for guerillas to fade into, so outright invading them is a pain in the neck. Likewise, at quest start it's the '90s, and cynically whoever was running Santa Prisca could probably have coasted through the whole Cold War just by being really really murderous to any communists in his backyard.
Corto Maltese, not so sure about- but notably, that's remote relative to the major global powerhouses, so having it be run by an organized crime syndicate isn't going to trigger the worst reactions as long as they don't cause too much offense and trouble elsewhere.
KnightofTempest
The Man who would be King
- Location
- Chicago
All I'm saying is that shit doesn't always have to make IRL sense here.
We literally just allied with a Talking Gorilla and a Brain in a Jar to beat back the invasion of a Robotic City Collector from space.
It's the DCU, shit's wacky yo. . .
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
You're not wrong.
And what I'm just saying is that there's different levels of weird shit.
Talking gorillas and brains in jars are things that don't happen in real life, that's one kind of weird shit.
If Joe Average goes into a biker bar and starts insulting everyone's mothers and no violence ensues, that's a different kind of weird shit.
If you have the expectation that human nature will work more or less normally, then frankly the second kind of weird shit is a lot more surprising than the first.
Having a pirate island there is the second kind of surprising, so giving it some thought and trying to explain seems reasonable.
And what I'm just saying is that there's different levels of weird shit.
Talking gorillas and brains in jars are things that don't happen in real life, that's one kind of weird shit.
If Joe Average goes into a biker bar and starts insulting everyone's mothers and no violence ensues, that's a different kind of weird shit.
If you have the expectation that human nature will work more or less normally, then frankly the second kind of weird shit is a lot more surprising than the first.
Having a pirate island there is the second kind of surprising, so giving it some thought and trying to explain seems reasonable.
King crimson
Confusion Will Be My Epitaph
- Location
- Los Angeles
Yup I am quoting this source (top left corner of the image should show it even if it is a little blurry)
My initial, fairly uninformed, placement of the island was a little north of the Gulf of Sidra, so I feel a little validated that what you're saying is basically reconfirming what I thought made sense actually makes sense.
I've got no issue with this explanation for things. Being used as a haven via making it a convenient entity to launder money (which the government would likely support due to that being income they can't naturally get with next to no natural resources) as well as a flag of convenience for them to fly works as it still achieves the basic function of "there are pirates on and making use of the island".
By the way @King crimson does Dr Wakati exist here? Because his inventions would be pretty damn revolutionary
Hell I'd even just like to grab that version of Clock King at some point
Hell I'd even just like to grab that version of Clock King at some point
Kir the Wizard
The Sun King
- Location
- Ukraine
It makes no sense indeed, but that's partly by design of the DCU, which handwaves geographical impossibilities with the statement that "DC Earth is BIGGER than real Earth, so both all real countries and fake countries fit, somehow". So in DC Earth there may, indeed, be a Coryana between Malta and Sicily, despite the impossibility IRL.
I actually accounted for that in my sidestories on Polkolistan, which would be around where Dagestan is IRL, so I allude to a non-existing piece of land BETWEEN Dagestan and Azerbaijan, that doesn't exist IRL.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I've always tried to quietly ignore stuff like that in my own headcanon, fitting any plot-relevant imaginary countries into the assumption that they displace something real.
For instance, when I wrote Zlatava (I think it was Zlatava?) for a couple of the Grand Tour omakes, I basically just ported real life Albania over to it and used basically real Albania, possibly with exaggerated traits (though everyone wanting to kill King Zog was only somewhat exaggerated).
For instance, when I wrote Zlatava (I think it was Zlatava?) for a couple of the Grand Tour omakes, I basically just ported real life Albania over to it and used basically real Albania, possibly with exaggerated traits (though everyone wanting to kill King Zog was only somewhat exaggerated).