The Test of a Pirate

If your a pirate in DDO, the place to head to is Three Barrel Cove.  Three Barrel Cove is basically the haven for the pirates of the Thunder Sea.  The quests found within Three Barrel Cove are basically focused on your ability and skill to see if you can meet the demands necessary for the life of a pirate.  One of these quests is The Scondrel’s Run.  The Scondrel’s Run is one of the premier tests for any would be pirate.

Upon hearing this, one would think that the quest is filled with traps, challenging obstacles and puzzles, and the need to defeat other would be pirates.  However, for the most part, The Scondrel’s Run doesn’t contain many of these features.  Perhaps the most surprising is that the enemies you encounter are primarily minotaurs (although you do encounter a few earth elementals, scorpions, and bats). I would expect to be facing off against other pirates, whether they be human or some other type of humanoid.  Not necessarily minotaurs.

Erdrique making his way through The Scondrel’s Run.

So I began to wonder what would be a plausible explanation for the minotaurs to be the primary test for new pirates.  I then wondered if this was due to some type of arrangement made between the pirates of Three Barrel Cove and one of the minotaur clans present in Xen’drik.  I can see the pirate captains and leaders forming some type of loose arrangement with the minotaurs.  Perhaps the pirate leaders have contracted out the minotaurs to test out any new recruits, with the added benefit they can do whatever they feel with anybody who can’t pass the test.  This would explain why the minotaurs are present in Three Barrel Cove (besides those few who are actually pirates themselves).

However, what clan these minotaurs are coming from is still unknown.  There are a few possibilities but I’m entirely sure I have enough information to make a connection to any of them.  Of course, I could be completely off base and maybe the minotaurs are in Three Barrel Cove because they migrated there on their own and made a home in the mines and now the pirates just exploit this opportunity to use it as a test.  But then again, that would favor the strong possibility of the minotaurs getting extremely upset and attacking all of the pirates of Three Barrel Cove and I’m quite certain that the pirates wouldn’t want that.

Definitely some interesting connections there.  Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting in The Scondrel’s Run.