Manipulator
Manipulator was a contemparary of Robertdonald. He served as king to Scallywag Syndicate and occasionally governed the islands they conquered, although he was mostly thought of as Robertdonald's alt. He was the one you got a tell from whenever you dropped a war chest on an island or were defending, providing mercenary services.
Early he was known as Dipwood, of the Sexy Swindlers, of the Azure Ocean. He started the crew because he felt The Salty Mouthfuls were inactive. He was one of the many Crimson Tide captains to merge into the Pirates of the Damned at the dawn of Midnight. After his return, though, he found he was hanging out with elite swordfighters very often and left to join Black Death, which was considered a hostile action since Pirates of the Damned and Black Death were considered enemies. He went on to win the Brawl portion of OCL Season 2 by being the one to knock out the other Black Death team during the match between them that determined the winner of the competition. At the end of his use of the character, he was 2nd on the Swordfighting rankings.
Unbeknownst to most of the ocean, he eventually became the pirate known as Manipulator. As Manipulator, he founded Scallywag Syndicate, along with Robertdonald. The deal was that Manipulator would spread The Mercenary Manifesto and get the flag known as a top-quality blockading enterprise, and in return he would not interfere in Robertdonald's blockades.
Things were going well, with Zeta II having the most powerful mercenary showing the ocean had ever seen at that point with a full four war frigates being loaded up per round for Scallywag Syndicate. A new deal was provided to island-wanting flags: Mercenary services would be provided, and the only costs were the government buildings of the island taken. With this, Endurance II and Zeta IV had most of its jobbers being mercenaries since the flags attacking were very small. However, people noticed the names on the buildings, and in the RAWR War it was assumed that these holdings were merely proxy holdings of Scallywag Syndicate itself. Before the war, Manipulator urged Robertdonald to cool it down in Ruby a bit, or else there would be repercussions, but he continued to egg them on and provoked the RAWR War.
The reason Scallywag Syndycate was used instead of the main flag in the Jorvik IV and Luthien II blockades was because they had been hired to defend Endurance III and Zeta V, but Robertdonald proceeded to focus on the attacks regardless. Afterward, Manipulator realized that he had gotten stubborn and broken the cardinal rule of not messing with Robertdonald's blockades, and stepped down. The reason Zeta and Endurance were attacked in the first place was because Manipulator had made it too apparent that he had allies, so while to the public it looked like Manipulator and Robertdonald had a falling out, there was something else going on.
He went on to join Calais' Harbingers where he assisted them against his former mates. The plan was to spread The Mercenary Manifesto by outsourcing it. At this point, paying jobbers had become a standard practice, even though there was no automated jobber pay system yet, but the concept of hiring mercenary crews or flags was still in its infancy. So, by offering a competing service Manipulator was getting even the most hated enemies of Robertdonald to hire him. The two were still good friends, with Manipulator once again donning a secret alt to assist Robertdonald whenever he could. Manipulator got bored of the work involved in handling the mercenary business, instead focusing on assisting Robertdonald's blockades until the latter got banned.
He still hangs out with the Salty Mouthfuls in their various incarnations across the oceans. Currently, he is Manipulative on Sage.
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