​Battlefield Role: Heavy Seafaring Infantry
Vessel: Usually a captured and repurposed interceptor galley.
Weapons: Longswords and Hatchets.
Outfit: Partial plate over a light suit of chainmail.
Skill level: Proficiency in close quarters combat, especially aboard a vessel at sea. They also fight dirty, and are great at it!
Affiliation: Whaler's Bay
Doctrine: Amphitrite's Way of the Seafarer
Strengths: Dirty fighting and highly unconventional combat tactics makes them rather unpredictable opponents.
Weaknesses: They are quite greedy, so they are highly susceptible to bribery (as long as you can pay better than their employers).
Privateers
Not every amazon from Whaler's Bay ends up venturing far into the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean in search of massive sea monsters to slay. Many of them actually prefer to fight against someone of their own size, offering their swords and vessels in service of the highest bidder so they can attack other human beings instead of whales, sharks and giant squids.
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As such, the Privateers of Whaler's Bay prey on wooden vessels, especially of the merchant kind, eager to take all the precious merchandise and treasure that they might be carrying. Most of them have their own fast interceptor ships (usually taken from merchants as well and modified at the docks of the city of Beluga) and they often employ boatless Whalers to bolster their crew's numbers.
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Yes, that sounds a hell lot like piracy, isn't it? But don't ever mistake privateering for piracy, because (believe it or not) those are two very different things!
Of course, privateering involves doing a lot of highly unscrupulous things that only pirates usually do. Things like plundering coastal villages, attacking trade fleets and stealing from the innocent to say the very least. But two little fundamental discrepancies make all the difference in the world in between these two types of outright raiders: legitimacy and honour!
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That's because pirates are complete outlaws who have no dignity at all, attacking everyone without ever giving a single fuck to who are their targets. Privateers, on the other hand, are women of relatively high honour, who always keep their word, attacking only the targets which they are actually commissioned to attack, without ever laying a single finger on the people that are on their own side. They are basically paid to plunder, commissioned and legitimized to do so by Queens, Duchesses and Countesses alike, even receiving small titles and lands for their prolonged service, along with a fair share of everything they manage to loot (the rest of the plunder goes to the commissioner, obviously).
Privateers are, therefore, surprisingly loyal women towards their employers. Or at least as long as cash keeps flowing onto their pockets. They can be great allies in any war against a coastal enemy region, but one shall always keep an eye at any Privateers they eventually hire. The women of Whaler's Bay are very famous for their greed, so they are more loyal to coin than to anything else. Shall another "potential client" appears offering more coin for their services, they are very likely to turncoat. Unless, of course, you can still cover their new proposal and keep them under your leash.