Blackwater cove is an "independent settlement" located on the northern tip of Vashti, the largest, middle island of the channel islands that are located between the mainland and Cartouche. Vashti technically belongs to Krag-a-Krach, but try telling that to any of the inhabitants; today Blackwater Cove is a small seaside town famous for its population of pirates, whose presence puts truth to the lie that Vashti is in anyway under the control of the Krachi government.
Discovery
Blackwater Cove started out as a Grugga village. Like almost all words in Anura, the original name of the village was utterly unpronounceable to the Krachi explorers, so the explorers gave it a new name: Blackwater Cove, named after the black sands that make up the beaches of this specific stretch of coastline. No one knows the founding date of Blackwater Cove; the tribal elders keep an oral history of the island, but the timeline is vague - all that experts can say for sure is that it's been around for a couple hundred years to possibly thousands. After Krachi explorers found the village, that was that for a while. They laid claim to the island but didn't find any resources they needed to exploit from it, so the villagers were left in peace as the newest subjects of the Krachi empire.
Independent Settlement
The seas of Morgrave are nightmarishly dangerous, but for some reason the warm, fairly shallow waters of the Cauldron are relatively safe. Out of all the lands of Morgrave, the warm jungle towns around the Cauldron are the only ones with any sort of seafaring culture to speak of. And with boats come pirates - kith who make their living by plundering port towns. Pirates were generally few in number because the port towns' main income was usually fish - that is to say, raiding a fishing town is not very profitable.
But about a hundred years ago, advances in naval technology made braving the Cauldron even safer (and therefore more profitable). With rich targets in abundance, piracy grew into a golden age. Early on, a Minotaur pirate captain known as Dreadsails bribed the Grugga chieftains with plunder from captured merchant vessels to allow his crew to stay at Blackwater Cove. Today, pirate in Blackwater Cove outnumber the native Grugga about 10:1, but it's a peaceful union. The Grugga mix in fairly well with the pirates, some even joining the crews. With more and more kith disenfranchised with the nations, that ratio is growing more and more out of proportion. Some come to Blackwater Cove for the freedom, some come from the money, some come for the opportunities, and some come for the filthiest whorehouses in all of Morgrave.
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