International Talk Like A Pirate Day: The Pirates of Zelda

Ahoy! Today it be International Talk Like A Pirate Day, where we remember the Golden Age of Piracy along with our mateys over a good mug of grog and a fine shanty. But on this fine day I would like to take you salty dogs on tour of the fine lads and lasses who sail the seas of Hyrule and beyond in search of treasure to find, cherish and bury at a later time in a different spot (which incidentally be the reason they be called sea dogs). Appearing in no less than seven main games, they be quite common foes and allies in the Legend of Zelda, and arrr all described after the break!

The first appearance of pirates is in Majora’s Mask in the form of Gerudo pirates. They are responsible for the theft of Lulu’s eggs and beating Mikau to the point of death. Link finds his body and hears his final request to retrieve the eggs. Link does so by sneaking into their fortress, making his way around using the Hookshot they had stolen from a fisherman and eventually has to fight a number of Gerudo and obtain the eggs. But as it turned out the Gerudo were lied to by Skullkid: he had told them that the eggs were the instrumental part to getting to a treasure in the Great Bay Temple. His lie made their greed get the better of them, leading to the death of Mikau and endangering Lulu’s children, making them amongst the most villainous pirates of the bunch.

Pirates next appeared in both Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, in the shape of skeletal Piratian. In Oracle of Ages they are quite important to the plot: 400 years prior to the start of the plot, the Captain of the Piratian (called Captain) was Queen Ambi’s lover. But one day he set sail and did not return, which lead Queen Ambi to start the construction of an immense tower that would serve as a beacon for him to sail back to Labrynna. Ambi’s Tower would later serve as the game’s final dungeon.

Captain however was not exactly lost at sea: his ship had gotten stuck in the Sea of Storms and with Link’s help managed to escape. He and his crew appeared again in Oracle of Seasons, where they stranded in the Samasa Desert and sank halfway underground into Subrosia alongside a good chunk of the crew. Captain refused to leave however: he had lost the Pirate’s Bell that Queen Ambi had given him and would not set sail without it. Again Link came to his aid: the hero found the bell and repaired it, allowing the Piratian to set sail once again. But being on land for so long had given the captain seasickness, so he ordered the ship to dock on the western coast of Labrynna. This in turn allowed Link to continue on his own quest.

In a linked game however there is a bittersweet reunion between Queen Ambi and Captain: while she is happy to see him again she understands he is a man of the sea and cannot stay on land too long. She promised to keep waiting for him and he that he would return.

The next time we saw pirates was in The Wind Waker: where Link was picked up by the pirate crew of the sassy Tetra and got aid in the search for his sister. The pirates are more akin to treasure hunters in this game: aside from profiting from returning lost children (it is not shown if they use intimidation or Sezna’s silver tongue to get what they want). Tetra is not too greedy in her hunt for treasure though: after rescuing Link’s sister they return her for free and she gives Link a head start to get to Jabun and Nayru’s Pearl. Later in the game it is revealed that Zelda’s crewmembers all have antediluvian (pre-flood) ancestors who were courtiers of the then-Princess Zelda… who in turn was Tetra’s ancestor.

Yet the most interesting thing is that in Wind Waker, Link himself can become something of a pirate: he can engage other ships in naval battles using his cannon, he has to track down a ghost ship in order to get to the treasure it carries and can find treasure hidden on islands with the aid of treasure maps.

With Link added to the ship’s crew, Tetra’s pirates reappear in the opening of Phantom Hourglass, where Tetra is taken by a ghost ship. Link gets separated from the others and with the help of an old man named Oshun enlists the aid of captain Linebeck in his quest to rescue Zelda. While Linebeck is as greedy and selfish as they come (at one point he withdrew his aid to Link when he realized that there was no treasure where he was told there was), he is not much of a pirate. He does however have an old acquaintance named Jolene who is a full-on pirate and out to get Linebeck. They had traveled together at one point (and it was hinted at that Jolene had taken an interest in Linebeck but he did not notice this) but this partnership stopped when he stole treasure from her, and now she’s chasing him to get revenge.

Jolene is a returning hazard for Link: she sails around the ocean in an attempt to track Linebeck down. If she spots his ship she moves to attack via a combination of torpedoes and attempts to board his ship: when she does so she crosses swords with Link. She always retreats before he can seriously hurt her, and with each fight reveals more and more of her history with Linebeck. Jolene bears something of a resemblance to the Gerudo pirates from Majora’s Mask, leading some fans to believe that she herself is a Gerudo. Enemy ships appear once again on the overworld, and Link can use his ship’s cannon to do battle with them.

The pirate enemies returned in Spirit Tracks, where they served as a hazard for Link as he made his way through the Ocean Realm. Often appearing in groups of three, Link had to juggle defending himself from their attacks, attacking them in return and going in the right direction on the tracks. There also appeared a woman named Joynas, who looks quite a bit like Jolene from Phantom Hourglass, but it is not known if they are related in any way. Who was related to his ancestor was Linebeck III, descendant of the first Linebeck. Instead of helping Link directly on his quest like his ancestor he was a lot greedier and sold new parts for Link’s train.

Finally there are the pirates from Skyward Sword. Long ago the Ancient Robot captain Scervo stole the Sandship from Skipper and his crew. Link fights the captain in order to get the treasure he guards, the Bow. Scervo is not as talkative as the other pirates in the various games and he’s very tough: he and his crew took over the ship far in the past, and in the current day only he survives while all the Ancient Robots have fallen to scrap. Later in the game Link faces Dreadfuse, an Ancient Robot much like Scervo but more advanced and deadly.

While Skyward Sword has the only successful act of piracy in the series the body of water the ship is in is the smallest: in the present day the sea has dried up and turned into a desert. Only by using Timeshift Stones parts of the sea returned, and the largest body of water appeared in the boss battle on the Sandship.

And finally, though not part of the main games, there is Captain Stalfos and his pirates who appear in Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. It is not known if they are related to Captain and his crew of Piratian from the Oracle games, or perhaps are the same. Upon meeting them there is a misunderstanding which lead to the pirates thinking that Tingle wants to join him, and they give him a quest to find three Pirate Items. Tingle manages to both obtain the items and rescue the pirates from one of their natural enemies who like to chew on the pirates’ bones, namely Tingle’s dog Barkle.

Meeting with Captain Stalfos the pirate captain tells Tingle that there was only one obstacle remaining between him and his membership of the pirates: to join Tingle must die and have all of his bones stripped of his flesh. Tingle was naturally opposed to this idea and had to fight the pirate captain, a fight which he won and got the Bone Ocarina as a prize. Later on in the game Tingle ran into Captain Stalfos again, who had his skeletal head possessed by insects. Tingle helped him get back to his senses, much to the gratitude of the captain who gave him an improved Bone Ocarina.

And that’s all the pirates who appeared in the games so far. Perhaps one day we will see these salty dogs again, as early as Zelda Wii U or in the possible Majora’s Mask remake. But for now, drink yer grog and dance yer jig and have a merry Talk Like A Pirate day, mateys!

Source: Talk Like a Pirate