Jones' Gang
From 4th Edition
| Jones' Gang | |
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| Status: Building a Criminal Empire |
While not an adventuring group, per se, Jones and his men are still a colorful bunch. They operate out of a ruined city on the coast of Calimshan whose name has been lost to the ravages of war. Despite this locale, the band originates in Amn, where Jones and the rest have citizenship and privateering rights. As long as Jones does no harm to Amnish merchants, the nation of Amn will pay him and his band no mind and even offer limited protection in certain situations.
While it is true that Jones is a pirate, his money-making schemes are not limited to attacking merchant ships (though he does do quite a bit of this) and recently he has made most of his money shipping illegal merchandise, buying and selling in the region's Black Markets. He's also not above some old-fashioned adventuring, if the prize is rich enough, and his team have retreated some significant caches of gold and jewels from the southern jungle.
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The Scorpion
The Scorpion is Jone's two-masted clipper ship with enough room for 20 guns, 30 crew members, and limited cargo space. It can out-pace almost all merchant vessels and can even put up a fair chase against naval pursuit ships. Jones has owned The Scorpion almost as long as he's been a pirate, having stolen her from a wealthy Amnish noble early in his career.
Although her fast speed can be attributed to her excellent design, she is equipped with certain enchantments that help her carry out her unusual missions. A kinetic ritual offers limited automated mobility for environments that are unsuitable for wind power, such as the narrow river winding through the ruined city, and a chameleon enchantment can be activated for a limited time to conceal the ship from anyone trying to spot her from a distance.
Jones
Jones him self was born and raised in Crimmor and spent his early childhood working for the local thieves' guild where he became known for his brash attitude and considerable luck. Eager for bigger and better things, Jones teamed up with a brute named Dog and pulled off a daring bank heist that netted them enough capital to escape from Amn and set up an independent operation in the south.
Jones usually acts before he thinks a plan all the way through and has an unrealistically optimistic vision for how his schemes will turn out. While this does create come stress between himself and his men, enough of his schemes pan out that he is forgiven for his failures. Nonetheless, he typically is on the receiving end of some extreme skepticism whenever he unveils his latest hair-brained scheme.
Jones optimism extends to his good friend, Dog, whose frequent power grabs are met with an unhealthy amount of forgiveness. Jones reasons (correctly) that he is smarter than Dog and can thwart whatever Dog throws at him while at the same time taking advantage of Dog's considerable talents while engaged in a mission.
Dog
Dog is a hulking brute of a man, born unnaturally huge and strong. He grew up in a small town in central Amn where his freakish nature prevented him from ever being accepted. Rather than resign himself and his raw strength to the live of an outcast farmer, Dog traveled west to the coast where he sought to improve his condition by the merit of his fists (which, indeed, were filled to the brim with merit).
When he was approached by Jones, looking for some muscle for his bank job, Dog seized the opportunity and has worked for Jones ever since. Regardless of some tense moments, the two are good friends who have worked with each other for many years at this point. Despite his appearance, however, Dog is fairly intelligent and believes that he is more qualified than Jones to run his operation, leading to frequent acts of subversion and coup attempts; that said, Dog has enough restraint not to let his ambitions get in the way of a mission, and even if Dog were successful in deposing Jones, he certainly wouldn't hurt him.
In spite of many attempts, Dog has never been successful in taking over, due in no small part to the (correct) opion of the rest of Jone's men that life would be a lot worse under Dog than it would under Jones. At his heart, Dog is a bully with a big chip on his shoulder, and should he ever take over, Jones' Gang would likely disband.
Arat
Arat is the overworked details-man of the group. He takes care of the day-to-day operations of the gang, managing the crew's needs as well as maintenance and ship supplies. He also acts as an impromptu negotiator/baby-sitter for Jones and Dog, trying to channel their madness into successful schemes and prevent it from raging out of control and hurting either moral or the physical bodies of the gang's members.
Despite his regularly pessimistic attitude, Arat does have a certain fondness for Jones and Dog that keeps him working day after day to keep their organization running. He is also the gang's treasurer and keeps his motivation up by awarding himself a significantly larger portion of the loot than anyone else.
Candy & Jasmine
These giant lizards are employed by the pirates to carry loot through the desert from their hideout to the port city of Memnon. The beasts are naturally acclimated to the sandy environment and can swiftly move through loose sand, almost as though they were swimming.
The pair was captured by Dog while the gang was searching for a rumored lost treasure, deep in the jungles of Chult. Dog wrestled them into submission himself when they attacked the pirate's camp and quickly taught them to respect him. He took quite a shinning to the lizards and succeeded in domesticating them in a remarkably short span of time. He named them after a pair of strippers he used to know, and nobody in the gang has ever dared ask him why.
