Cartago was a colony world of the Homeworld. The Homeworlders' occupation of the planet was centred around a domed city, known simply as Cartago. It was built close the green ocean, which was home to large, carnivorous chelonians. Silverleaf palm trees could be found near the shore. The "southern plate-steppes", under which aquifers ran, were home to the native Riverfolk.
It was ruled by the Governor, and the Governor's scion, the Corsair, was born on Cartago. As a young boy, he was accompanied to the Homeworld to undergo initiation; he was accompanied by the Monk, another colonist, rather than his father, who was busy with "an urgency in the Cartago colony". He attended Cahlough Academy for a while but found little in common between himself and the autochthonous Homeworlders, choosing to return to Cartago against the Governor's wishes. There, the Monk undertook the younger Corsair's education personally, teaching him fencing with the silverleaf palm trees for target practice. (PROSE: The Bloodletters)
Behind the scenes[]
The Corsair Queen watches the ransacking of Cartago over the curiously green ocean, as seen in Buccaneers Comics #25.
The Corsair as depicted in The Bloodletters is a fusion of two public domain comic-book characters, Joe Millard's "Corsair Queen" Lila Evans from Buccaneers Comics #25 (1951) and Chas M. Quinlan's "Corsair" Jon Gallant from A1 Comics #3 (1946). Both characters were originally intended to be humans in a historical setting. In this spirit, Ryan Fogarty's depiction construes "the colony of Cartago", the setting of Millard's Buccaneer Comics #25, as a colony planet instead of the 18th century British colony implied in the original. The detail of the ocean being green instead of the more familiar bluish colour is derived from a peculiarity of the colouring of the original comic, which did in fact depict the ocean-water as bright green.
In the first Corsair Queen story, The Tigress of the Seas!, shortly after the Governor (whose name was given as Cedric Evans) returned to Cartago from an official visit to another unspecified colony, Cartago was ransacked and burnt down by a pirate crew. Escaping with the help of a seasoned sailor nicknamed "Monk", whom the Governor had assigned to protect his daughter but who ended up teaching her "roughneck ways" instead, Lila snuck aboard the pirates' nearly-abandoned vessel and took control of it, before sinking the pirates' rowboats with their own ship's cannons. Taking control of the ship, she named herself "the Corsair Queen" and swore revenge on all other pirates, with the Monk remaining by her side.