A closer look
Being a legendary pirate is all fun and games until a coalition of incredibly wealthy, heavily armed German merchants decides your head needs to come off. Klaus Störtebeker and his Victual Brothers terrorized Baltic shipping routes until the Hanseatic League finally hunted him down. Legend dictates that right before his execution, he struck a deal: any of his men he could walk past after being decapitated would be pardoned. His headless corpse managed to dramatically shamble past eleven men before the executioner tripped it. The Hamburg senate executed them all anyway, because merchants rarely honor contracts with headless thieves.
