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This will be my first attempt at an 80% historically accurate setting. It will be around the 1660s and will go mainly around Morgan's pillaging of the Spanish colonies, including Panama. Updates won't be very frequent, because I will "search for history". I am sorry if the names of some of the cities are written wrong. I am trying to make them out from Latvian.

Be as it might with the updates, here's a prologue, or more like a history lesson:

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In 1492 Christopher Columbus found the first lands in the New World - the Bahama Islands, Cuba and Haiti. After about fifty years the Spanish Crown owned Central America, Mexico, the northern part of South America (which they called Tierre Firme or Continent's land) and the continent's western mountains.

In the Mayan, Aztec and Incas lands the Spanish saw wonderful gold and silver mines. From 1535 to 1660 they sent home these precious metals, all together worth about three billion dollars. It is believed that up to the XVII century the Old World's mines hadn't produced such quantities.

About five or six million Indians died in the first 150 years of Spanish conquests, most of them from infections and death in the gold mines in Mexico and Peru. Taking everything from the soil, the Spanish made their system of overseas pillaging.

Since the XVI century's beginning only one Spanish city had the right to make contact with the New World - Seville. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean two ports saw ship caravans coming from the Old World - Veracruz in Mexico and Portobello near Panama*.

Since 1537 there was a new and strict law - no trading ship may cross the Atlantic alone.

Already at the beginning of the XVI century Spain did not allow any foreign ship to cross the ocean to the west. With this the Spanish hoped to keep the gold for themselves and hold complete control over the export of gold and silver.

At first the law worked well. Partly it is because Portugal and Spain went on the great voyages overseas earlier than any other country. In 1493 pope Alexander IV divided the world between Spain and Portugal, but in 1494 both countries made a pact about their future conquest territories. The line was made and it divided the Atlantic Ocean from pole to pole. Spain had everything to the west, Portugal - everything to the east. And when after some years the maps were clearer, America, except Brazil, was on the Spanish side, but the Portuguese had Brazil, Africa and Asia.

But soon the French king Francis I declared that the Spanish and Portuguese show him where Adam in his testament divided the world between these two monarchs. With Francis' note French pirates started hunting for Spanish vessels. In 1522 the French captured king Montezuma's treasure, which Cortes sent to Seville.

Soon the English also joined in. Francis Drake was a real thorn in the side of the Spanish when he robbed a caravan carrying Peru silver near Panama, raided ports in Peru, Chile and Central America and even journeyed around the world.

The destruction of the Invincible Navy near England in 1588 resulted in a complete defeat of the Spanish on sea. Since the XVI century's end pirates from England, France and Holland have raided the Spanish vessels in America and in the Atlantic. More often and often these pirates would raid deep into Spain's held territories.

This resulted that in 1660 Spain had lost almost all of the islands in the Caribbean Sea suffering defeats from England, France and Holland and the raids of pirates.

In 1639 the French captured Tortuga, not far from Haiti near the Bahama channel, which became an important pirate island. The inner regions of Haiti were farmlands, which the pirates used to their liking. Hunters and cattle breeders provided meat for pirate vessels**.

The raids of pirates crumbled the strength of New Spain, providing the lands an easy bait for the new European colonial superpowers.

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* At first the rights belonged to Nombre de Diosa, just a little to the south, but since the XVI century the Spanish moved to Portobello.

** Without the salted meat no raid was even possible. In the local dialect the people called the meat bucan, but the pirates - bucaniers.