The Keep:Pirate Cove

Description
Doing things the pirate way... Enter if you dare!

Our guild wasn't created by us - it was boarded, taken over, robbed of its gems, and renamed by our pirate crew. You can still see the wreck of one of its old challenges inside. Yarrrrrrr!

It all started with being greedy, robbing pirates. By Davy Jones's wriggly beard, we never intended to be useful! We were (and are) just living the pirate life - we boarded not just this guild, but many others, robbed their gems, and then either sank them or held them for ransom (so people who wanted an own guild but didn't have the necessary gems could claim them) or made them part of our own fleet. Soon it turned out that by doing so, we were contributing to keeping the Habitican seas free from old abandoned guilds drifting there aimlessly and cluttering up the shipping lanes. The Habitican Admiralty noticed that, too, and started helping us - much like in the olden days with letters of marque and privateering. So nowadays we actually fulfill a function (to remove inactive guilds that are no longer useful from the list of public guilds) - but we also still make a good profit from looting all those guild banks! And we don't forget to have lots of pirate fun and adventures, too. We've also fought the first Habitican guild-vs.-guild battle we know of, and might fight more in the future. And we're currently the only Habitican guild with more than four gems in our treasure chest!

Our captain is Mara the Marine Marauder.

By now we have a sister guild - the Elven Grove full of elves hunting old abandoned challenges. It has its own wikia guild page, too.

Challenges
Most of our challenges aren't inside our guild, except @Sphinx's Robin Hood challenge (running repeatedly, and won by @Dewines, @Riverstone, and @Sphinx so far) and the old sunken football challenge. Most challenges are outside in the guilds we conquer or engage in battle with, or in the The Bulletin Board 📌 or (rarely) in the Tavern.

The challenges regarding the conquered guilds are mostly about distributing shares of the booty (guild banks gems) among our crew. Most of those are won by us pirates, but if a landlubber stumbles into a boarded guild with booty challenges, e can usually win one, too.

Sometimes we also create challenges about holding a guild for ransom (finding a new captain for the conquered guild - not necessarily a pirate). If you want to create a guild but don't have the gems for it, just ask in our guild chat if we have one we don't have a use for yet! Usually we'll just give it to you without challenge. But if two or more people want to become captain of the same guild, or if we're not convinced of your guild idea or captaining skills, we might set you some tasks first (things like finding a good new guild name, writing a new guild description, creating a guild challenge, etc., and just generally convincing us that you'll be a good guild leader).

When we battle another guild, there's usually one battle challenge in that guild (with two habits, one for the pirates, one for the other guild, but otherwise identical). When the fight is over, there are "badge" challenges for the winners and the other participants, so everyone who participated in the guild-vs.-guild battle can have them in their profiles. For more details, see the section about guild batttles.

Current Actions and Adventures

 * Former captain @Jameson officially abandoned The Abandoned Camp (it had had that name even before, being more unofficially abandoned) and named @Mara the Marine Marauder the new captain, and was even generous enough to deliberately leave his gems in the guild. Let's not disappoint him in his hopes of hearing wild stories and rumors about that camp in the near future! Meanwhile, booty/treasure challenges are up. There are no plans yet as to what will become of the guild. There's a guild chat discussion going on about adding a pirate island (with a cove, a camp, a duelling ground, and a volcano) to the official map of Habitica...
 * @Riverstone boarded the long-dead "Lolz" guild and turned it into Pirate Foley - a guild dedicated to making a piratic soundscape Habitica audio theme, with amazing results so far! Contributors welcome!
 * Live a S.M.A.R.T. Life (an inactive guild connected to a no longer existing challenge in the The Newbies guild) was captured by @Ariel. True to the guild's original purpose, @Ariel made booty challenges referring to SMART goals(some of which can still be won). It isn't clear yet what will happen to the guild. (If you're looking for other guilds already using and discussing the "SMART goals" method a lot, there are already the Long-Term Goal Accountability 🎯 guild and the Organization Owls!)
 * After the guild was first sighted by @Ariel, @Phantom818 became the new captain of The United Strays of Maverica, a clearly dead guild which someone named @StrayMav created as a fandom guild for @StrayMav's own minecraft walkthrough videos. Booty challenges (which, luckily, have nothing to do with the original topic, and more with everyday health and productivity) are up now, and some can still be won. No one has shown any interest in repurposing the guild yet.
 * There are pirates, and there are landlubbing highway men, or (possibly legal) Road Warriors - with their own guild to share tips about all the things you have to deal with when you travel a lot. Nobody quite knows why a guild with such an interesting topic was inactive for so long. (Maybe because all the members were away traveling?) Anyway, the topic sounded too good to just delete the guild - so, after @Ariel had mentioned it, @Dewines asked around for potential new captains (the old one being inactive), and pirate @Rayn the Stormcaller volunteered, became the new guild leader, and will probably try to revive the guild. It's not clear yet what the guild bank gems will be used for - though topic-related challenges are maybe more likely than outright booty challenges.
 * @Llama Hobbit looked into some family-themed guilds - and found that the Family Guild was quited dead (and had never been alive at all). (Parents, don't despair - there are other active family-themed guilds, such as Parent Edition.) So @Llama Hobbit captured the Family Guild, and is now redistributing its family jewels with some topic-related booty challenges. (Two are still up for grabs!) After that, the guild will probably be sunk.
 * @Dewines had had the Order of Con Congeries in her sights for months. The topic (organizing Habitica meetups at SF/Fantasy/other conventions) sounded too interesting and important to just let the guild fade into oblivion. When @Dewines offered to revamp and promote the guild a little, old guild leader @Helmsman Of-Inepu responded at first, but then became inactive again. So, in the end, @Dewines was made the new guild leader. She renamed the guild Convention meet-ups, panels and other activities, gave it a beautiful new logo, and is generally trying to revive and promote it. @Dewines doesn't want to stay its long-term guild leader, though, and is looking for an interested and capable volunteer to take that position. This could become an important guild for the future representation of Habitica at cons! On the other hand, if it just won't stir, and no new guild leader can be found, it could also just get deleted. So the fate of this guild is still open.
 * @Ariel reoccupied the abandoned Laravel Lair (which was originally about the PHP framework Laravel) and set up some booty challenges having more to do with pirate lairs (i.e., making/keeping one's home comfortable). Some can still be won. After that, the plan is to delete the guild (unless someone wants it).
 * @Llama Hobbit found the Taxidermists guild to be dead and not worth of preserving. So @Llama Hobbit became captain there, cleaned up two old taxidermy-themed challenges with @Cantras's and @Alys's help, and went about dividing the booty with preparation-for-death-themed booty challenges. Most can still be won. After that, the guild will probably be a candidate for deletion.
 * EvoGen-X (a guild about a personal development company of the same name, both apparently owned by @Pierre Tremblay) was targeted and captured by @Ariel who aptly renamed it Group formerly known as EvoGen-X which will be deleted shortly. Booty challenges (having to do with generation X, not with @Pierre Tremblay's company) are up, and some can still be won.
 * @MEmry sighted and boarded the inactive CFA Students guild and (since CFA stands for Chartered Financial Analyst) set up some budget-related booty challenges. Some can still be won! There are no further plans for the guild yet.
 * @Luthien targeted the prayer-themed and very dead Divine Office/Liturgy of the Hours guild, became the new captain there, renamed it Formerly Divine Office/Liturgy of the Hours, and set up some booty challenges with common household chore tasks. Praying, cursing, swearing, or meditating while doing them is entirely optional - as long as you keep your home religiously clean! Some of the challenges are still up for grabs. There are no further plans for the guild yet, so deletion is likely.
 * Once upon a time (a few weeks ago) the guild Longhorns, escaped @Dewines's attempt to capture it - for a short while. @Wunderkind, a long-standing Longhorns crew member, took over captaincy there from the old inactive captain and renamed the guild State School Spirit. (In the course of those events, @Wunderkind also joined the Pirate Cove and became a Habitican pirate.) A few weeks later, however, attempts to revive the guild had failed, and @Wunderkind surrendered the guild to @Dewines. It is now named Guild up for grabs (was State School Spirit) and will probably be deleted soon. There are no gems left in it.
 * @MEmry and @Dewines are currently looking into Crafters of Tuzanor and trying to contact the current inactive guild leader. The guild has been inactive lately, and Knitting and Crocheting! already covers the topic. The guild will probably either get privatized, or boarding, plunder, and deletion can be expected soon.
 * @MEmry is currently decluttering the guilds list by scuttling her own guild Clutter Busters because another decluttering guild, the Decluttering Devils, has sprung up since. (But Clutter Busters was first!) Decluttering-themed booty challenges are up!
 * @Blue volunteered to lead the attack on We are the good Duck: (by messaging the guild leader and - if we capture the guild - becoming guild leader and creating the booty challenges. This very dead Korean-speaking guild has been in our sights for a while. Google translates the guild description to "Once you create the spring. Rules just two. 1 billion if anyone can join. 2. Please observe the respect and courtesy to others. Cursing and fighting can lead to banned. Joe Pheasant deokjil between good strong well above deokjil Good Doug. Arthur Rana letting the party or phrase, to do list, haejusimyeon you better find someone to use as a study group." and the one and only genuine post (from August 2015) to "Korean? Translater??? We Rani good duck ... geolkkayo are you talking about?". The guild leader last logged in 28 August 2015 (and we don't know yet if or how well he speaks English - @Blue hasn't sent the message yet).

Guilds in Our Sights
This is a list of guilds we're currently watching because, at first sight, they appear to be rather inactive, or duplicates of other guilds, or there is another reason why we might try to capture or sink them soon. (There is no guarantee though that the guilds are really inactive or otherwise useless, and that we'll really target them. So far, we're just watching them.) With the help of this list, suggestions made in Pirate Cove guild chat will hopefully not get lost. The list is in alphabetical order.
 * Aperture Science Adventure Enrichment Guild: Entertaining, but currently populated by guild creator + pirates (one of which does have a genuine interest in it though).
 * Australians on HabitRPG: Sighted by @Snellopy. Contacted in chat by @Dewines. Duplicates the more active The Land Downunder. Last chat February 2015. Guild leader @johnball has been active lately (last login 18 November 2015). No challenges, four gems.
 * Bar Slayers: Sighted by @Blue. Last chat January 2015, several pages of chat, guild leader last logged in August 2013, no challenges, no gems. Not contacted yet.
 * Bitcoin / Cryptocurrency Enthusiasts: Sighted by @Blue. Last chat September 2015 (and the post before was April 2015; there are several pages of chat), guild leader last logged in October 2014, three challenges (one with an active owner), four gems. Not contacted yet. Are the challenges interesting/helpful? Is there interesting stuff in chat? Should it all be moved into one of the other money-themed guilds? With that much chat and challenges, maybe someone even wants to keep and lead the guild?
 * BSD - Berkeley Software Distribution: Sighted by @Blue. Last chat February 2015 (9 short posts), active guild leader, no challenges, 4 gems. Not contacted yet.
 * CakePHP: Sighted by @Snellopy. Dead as a doornail, guild leader long gone, no challenges, four gems. Not contacted in chat or by message yet.
 * Chores (5 icons): Sighted by @Snellopy. An inactive guild with three simple one-task challenges (dishes, laundry, taking out the trash) which contain little icons (instead of emoticons) created by guild creator @Soloana (UID 819013f6-3bc0-4cbe-8127-6c23a2416041, last logged in 10 November 2015). Links to the three icons: dishes, laundry, trash. @Soloana originally planned to make more, but if she ever did, they can't be found in the guild. It might be a good idea to salvage the icons if @Soloana agrees to it (or if she doesn't answer and copyright allows it?), maybe put the icons in the 📜 Library of Shared Lists or a similar place, and then board the guild.
 * Copaxone club: Inactive. Owner is active but hasn't responded to private messages. The guild has a challenge with no tasks and the guild creator as its only participant.
 * Crafters of Tuzanor: The guild has been inactive lately, and Knitting and Crocheting! already covers the topic. @MEmry and @Dewines were looking into this guild and tried to contact the current inactive guild leader, with no answer. Then @Alys joined and asked the remaining active guild member @pmcatnip what e'd prefer to happen with the guild - @pmcatnip answered that either option is fine with em. The guild will probably either get privatized, or boarding, plunder, and deletion can be expected soon.
 * Culture Me!
 * E-Commerce: Sighted by @Blue. Last chat July 2015 (8 posts with several links and infos - are any of those worth saving/posting elsewhere?), owner last logged in 24 February 2015, no challenges, 4 gems. Not contacted yet.
 * Fit Anime Clan: Small (5 genuine members) but active (both chat and guild leader). More or less duplicates The Otaku Dōjō. @Mara the Marine Marauder contacted them in chat (30 November 2015) and asked if they want to keep the guild or move to The Otaku Dōjō. Waiting for reactions. No challenges, 4 gems (which the active guild leader will probably retrieve though).
 * Five for Fighting
 * FR: Arcane Members: Targeted by @MEmry. Last chat 14 October 2015 (only 7 posts), active guild leader, no other active genuine member, no challenges, 4 gems. @MEmry posted in chat over 2 weeks ago - no reaction. @MEmry messaged the guild leader 29 November 2015, guild leader answered that e is no longer interested in maintaining the guild. Guild leader will hopefully transfer leadership to @MEmry soon. Meanwhile, pirates have invaded the chat.
 * Gamification: Sighted by @Snellopy. Last chat 9 months ago, guild leader last logged in 27 October 2015, no challenges, 3 gems. Not contacted yet.
 * Habiticans on Facebook
 * Hellblazers: Sorry @Fear - you bravely won this guild from the pirates in the first place, but now it's inactive again.
 * If Not Now, When?: Sighted by @Blue. Dead chat (two posts, last December 2014), guild leader is active, one nice challenge (by guild leader, with gem) with list of common dailies (various household chores, exercise, mail/email/bills, ...) that might fit into the 📜 Library of Shared Lists or The Basics guild (though maybe they'd be overwhelmed with it). Not contacted yet.
 * ImgurFIT Guild: Sighted by @Blue. Last chat May 2015, guild leader last logged in March 2015, no challenges, four gems. Not contacted yet.
 * Kotoba Miners: Sighted by @keyes. One of several Japanese learning guilds (Japanese Deep Cave Adventurers, Kotoba Miners, /r/Team_Japaneseのギルド, The JRPG Club, The LearnJapanese Guild, Wanikani, and possibly some more). How many are there, and which are worth keeping? And who of the pirates can read the chat and challenges and see if there's interesting content? In this guild, last chat was in April 2015, guild leader is still active (last logged in 19 November 2015), there are no challenges and no gems, and their special learning method is via minecraft, with their own website.
 * Labdoo: @Ariel and @Blue are currently looking into it. Very dead chat, guild leader last logged in 4 July 2015, two abandoned challenges (one with gem), three gems in guild bank. Great topic (referring to labdoo.org, an organization which collects old computers and donates them to schools around the world), so the info (i.e., challenges) should probably be moved to another guild. Suggestions so far have been "Clutter Busters" (useful for those who want to throw out their old electronics!), "Conscientious Consumption", "Effective Altruists", "inHabitants of Earth: the eco-friendly guild", "Nerdfighters", "Sustainable Living". On 21 November 2015, @Ariel asked in chat if anyone's still interested in the guild - no reaction so far.
 * Lockpicking: Sighted by @McRadium. Last chat February 2015 (some interesting chat before, might contain information worth saving), guild leader last logged in July 2015, no challenges, 4 gems. Not contacted yet.
 * One Blood Guild!: Great topic, but has de facto been swallowed up by the Ghost Ship guild.
 * P90 Workouts
 * Paleo Diet
 * Parkour Practitioners!: Was suggested in guild chat, but doesn't look that inactive.
 * Perfect Day
 * Pirateship Guild: Old dead guild connected to the hackerspace p.irateship. Chat long dead, guild leader still active in Habitica, the other 3 genuine guild members inactive, no challenges, 4 gems. Guild leader has been messaged by @Dewines (no answer yet), pirates (from Pirate Cove, not from the hackerspace) have started posting in chat. Waiting for reaction.
 * Polyphasic Sleepers: Sighted by @SabreCat. A very dead duplicate of @SabreCat's active Naps of Power: Polyphasic Sleepers guild. Three chat posts (last one September 2014), guild leader was active recently (last logged in 25 November 2015), no challenges, 4 gems. Not contacted yet. @SabreCat will probably do the contacting because @SabreCat is planning to try to consolidate most of the sleeping-themed guilds - it's being discussed in @SabreCat's Naps of Power: Polyphasic Sleepers guild and in the Pirate Cove.
 * Resilience
 * Rock Climbers: Sighted by @Ariel. Could be merged with the more active The Climbers Guild. Chat is dead, guild leader last logged in 01 June 2015, no gems. Three climbing challenges, all by the guild leader, with no active participants. Not sure if challenges are worth saving (adopting and moving to The Climbers Guild). They contain one link to an interesting climbing technique video. Once the challenges have been dealt with, the guild should be ready for deletion.
 * /r/Team_Japaneseのギルド: Sighted by @keyes. One of several Japanese learning guilds (Japanese Deep Cave Adventurers, Kotoba Miners, /r/Team_Japaneseのギルド, The JRPG Club, The LearnJapanese Guild, Wanikani, and possibly some more). How many are there, and which are worth keeping? And who of the pirates can read the chat and challenges and see if there's interesting content? In this guild, last chat that didn't just say "Hi!" in Japanese was in December 2014, guild leader last logged in November 2014, there are no challenges and 4 gems, and their guild name is referring to this Japanese language learning Reddit website.
 * /SIG/: Interesting links, some challenges - someone put a lot of work into this. But is anyone still using it?
 * Social Justice Guild: Is there any other guild covering this topic properly? If not, this guild might be worth reviving. People keep joining and asking if it's alive. (There is Effective Altruists, though - should it be merged in there?) 6 chat posts ranging from October 2014 to 24 November 2015, guild leader last logged in May 2015, two challenges (one with an active creator - no other active participants, but nice challenges), four gems. Not contacted yet.
 * Slimming World Habiticians
 * Stack Exchange Addicts: Sighted by @Blue. Last post December 2014, guild leader last logged in January 2014, one abandoned challenge (might be worth moving to one of the coder guilds), four gems. Not contacted yet.
 * Stormageddon et al.
 * Sugar Slayers: Sighted by @Ariel. Last non-piratic post March 2015, 3 posts in total, guild leader last logged in June 2015, no challenges, 4 gems. The topic (type I diabetics support) is already covered by the more active diabetic support guild The SugarKill Gang. The app mySugr also gets mentioned in chat in both guilds, and there's no other information in the Sugar Slayers that needs to be saved. @Ariel "poked" chat on 24 November 2015 - no reaction. Looks ready for attack.
 * Team UfYH: The guild refers to the popular (Warning: Linked site contains swearwords!) UfYH website which is dedicated to providing motivation and checklists for doing household chores and making one's home less messy, and is apparently rather good at it. The guild was once very active, it has several challenges, and it's good at editing out the swearwords contained in the original UfYH website. The guild leader is still logging into Habitica. But guild chat stopped in May 2015. @Snellopy sighted the guild and Admiral @Alys already looked into it, but it's still undecided if the pirates will take any action at all, and which one. One reason to let it stand is that if it were removed, and a new one created later, it might not be so good at avoiding swearwords, and would create additional work for the Habitica moderators.
 * The 0/0 Club: This guild lost its purpose when the level cap was removed.
 * The Archons
 * The Chess Club: Last chat August 2015 (3 posts in total), guild leader still active, 4-5 active genuine members, no challenges, 4 gems. Contacted in chat by pirate @Blue (29 November 2015). Waiting for reactions.
 * The LearnJapanese Guild: Sighted by @keyes. One of several Japanese learning guilds (Japanese Deep Cave Adventurers, Kotoba Miners, /r/Team_Japaneseのギルド, The JRPG Club, The LearnJapanese Guild, Wanikani, and possibly some more). How many are there, and which are worth keeping? And who of the pirates can read the chat and challenges and see if there's interesting content? This guild looks slightly active, chat is sparse but existing (last post 24 November 2015), guild leader last logged in June 2015, there are no challenges and 4 gems.
 * The Omniscients: A nice thought, but already covered by the Today I Learned guild.
 * The Roman Soldiers: Spotted by @Dewines. No chat, active guild leader, the only other genuine guild member is inactive, no challenges, 4 gems. Not contacted yet.
 * Triathletes: Triathletes are few and very silent, apparently.
 * the social boldness challenge
 * The Society of Flash and Guile (Such a pity!)
 * UK PC Gamers
 * We are the good Duck: Korean. Google translates the guild description to "Once you create the spring. Rules just two. 1 billion if anyone can join. 2. Please observe the respect and courtesy to others. Cursing and fighting can lead to banned. Joe Pheasant deokjil between good strong well above deokjil Good Doug. Arthur Rana letting the party or phrase, to do list, haejusimyeon you better find someone to use as a study group." and the one and only genuine post (from August 2015) to "Korean? Translater??? We Rani good duck ... geolkkayo are you talking about?". Guild leader last logged in 28 August 2015, no challenges, four gems. Some pirates posted in chat (first on 19 November 2015) - no reaction so far. No one messaged the guild leader yet (but @Blue probably will). Looks ready for boarding.
 * Yandere

Guilds We Fought in Battle
So far, we have only fought one guild-vs.-guild battle:

As far as we know, this was the first guild-vs.-guild battle in Habitican history, and contributed to one of Captain Mara's contributor tiers in the "Challenger" category.
 * 1) We attacked Gryffindor Houseon June 15, 2015, and did battle with them for 13 days. As weapons, we used habits asking the participants to "Bravely complete, or work for half an hour on, a terrifying task!". The Gryffindors fought very bravely, and both groups were ahead at several times, but in the end, the pirates won!

We're hoping to do more battles in the future! If your guild (or other group of people) is interested, please let us know!

Captured Guilds
"Captured" means that at some point, one of the pirates became guild leader ("captain").

So far, we have captured 50 guilds in total. Many of those got sunk (i.e., deleted or made private) in the end. (If you want to know how many exactly, look at the section about Sunk Guilds - this wiki page is easier to update if the numbers only appear in one place.)

It merits mentioning that @Castanwydden had practice: While still being a land-based Welsh bandit, she single-handedly seized a guild named "Splash of Colorz (Adult Coloring Group)", then invited us pirates to join the fun, generously divvied up the plunder (4 gems), and challenged people to fight over guild leadership. @Gryffindor prismaticjill won, and that guild is now The Mindfulness & Stress Relief Guild. (It just doesn't count in our piratic tally because the whole thing happened on land and @Castanwydden was a highwayperson at the time - I guess that's the politically correct term for highwayman?) And even before that, @Castanwydden unanimously got voted into captaincy in the Welsh-themed Dragons of the Valley / Dreigiau'r Cwm guild (the old guild creator having long gone) and turned it into a living guild. We shared the booty, and also tried to find a new guild leader, but no one showed interest. So we set this spaceship on autopilot into the nearest star (by asking admin for guild deletion). It was the first of our captured guilds that we destroyed (closely followed by the Job Seekers Guild only a few minutes later).
 * 1) The pirate crew of the "Ching Shih" conquered the Pirate Cove (formerly a fantasy football fandom guild), robbed it of all its gems (except the one in the old sunken football challenge), and made it our home port.
 * 2) We boarded the guild now known as Ghost Ship (also wiki page) and found neither crew nor booty in there. It was formerly a Hearthstone fandom guild, now it is about topics related to organ (and blood and stem cell) donation and generally preparing for death (making a will, etc.).
 * 3) The captain of the Gaming Addicts Anonymous guild surrendered the guild to us. (Actually they just unexpectedly made Captain Mara guild leader without any reference to piracy, but joyfully agreed afterwards that we can count it among our conquered guilds.)
 * 4) We captured a Korean guild (with a Korean name Google translator couldn't make much sense of), shared its 4 gems among us and held the guild for ransom until brave marine @Fear came to the rescue (and renamed the guild Hellblazers). While in our hands, it had a poster of this Korean pirate movie as its logo.
 * 5) The leader of the "Challenge Yourself!" guild surrendered to us before we had even started attacking. We held that guild for ransom, too, and another scurvy (and, at that time, sniffly and sneezy) pirate named @Bloody Jenny Flint won it and turned it into The Ship of the Dread Pirate Roberts. It has ongoing "Merry-Go-Round" challenges now where people can win guild captaincy in turn, then make the next "Merry-Go-Round" challenge.
 * 6) Bosun @MEmry single-handedly captured the leaderless vessel Toothpick Factory (having obtained a letter of marque from the admins) and is now captain of said ship!
 * 7) We found another ghost guild that wasn't just memberless, but also nameless. After sharing the booty and enjoing this obscure hideout for a while, we lured potential new captains in from the Tavern (by challenge made by Bosun @MEmry). Now its new leader is @Castanwydden, its name is Venture outside your lair, and it's dedicated to venturing outside every day. It has a nice swimming pool, men serving pie, and occasional goats.
 * 8) The captain of Conscientious Consumption just gave up and left, and since Captain Mara already was first mate there, we got the guild automatically. @Lord Vlad boldly (and successfully) volunteered as new guild captain (keeping the guild's topic), and has steered it well since!
 * 9) We took over the famous old Habitican guild 📜 Library of Shared Lists! The admins (particularly @LadyAlys) desperately sought a reasonable, responsible and capable new librarian - but no one volunteered. So we pirates made the gallant offer to rob all the guild gems, wreak havoc and mayhem (and possibly burn the library down), shanghai a random guild member as the next librarian against their will, then sail off into the sunset. The admins found this acceptable. We did indeed rob all the four guild gems, and even gave some of them to those who helped us burn down part of the library (i.e., helped us find and delete, move, or change some of the old outdated challenges there). Then we got bored with all this paper, kidnapped and shanghaied Breadstrings as the new librarian, and took to the high seas again. Breadstrings (probably corrupted by the frustration of having to clean up the mess we left) has since revealed herself to work for the Ministry of Magic and look very much like Dolores Umbridge.
 * 10) When pirate @Sphinx started asking what the guild name "Jambiis GSD Squad" meant, we noticed that that guild consisted of a weird name, a long-inactive guild leader, no chat before @Sphinx started it, three pirates who had all joined in hopes of taking over the guild, and four shiny gems. So we handed the comatose guild leader the black spot and voted @Sphinx into captaincy - and admin acknowledged the vote. @Sphinx renamed the guild "Captivated Squad", made booty challenges, a captaincy challenge, a treasure map challenge, and then went on a much-deserved sailing holiday. When @Sphinx came back, some ideas (and various kinds of peppers) had had time to simmer in guild chat - and as a result, the guild became This is a Silly Place, with @Riverstone as its captain.
 * 11) "A Motley Band of Misfits" (who were mostly sleeping and had no gems nor challenges) was taken over by a motley piratic crew of misfits led by @NightOwl, who is now the captain there. And we misfits came up with the mischievous idea to turn the guild into The Bulletin Board 📌 - a guild where people can announce their new guilds, challenges, and other Habitican projects without the news scrolling into oblivion as quickly as they would in the Tavern.
 * 12) Welsh pirate @Castanwydden decided it was time for mutiny in a guild named "Killwaukee" where the guild leader and other members had been absent for over a year. And since @Castanwydden had already had plans to start a Long-Term Goal Accountability guild (as a sister guild to the popular Short-Term Goal Accountability guild), the guild became exactly that!
 * 1) The Star Craft II guild looked like one of those doomed to sink from the start - so, turning space pirates, we boarded it right away. The captain silently abandoned ship, leaving four gems as their only trace - we don't even know their name now. But we hope they got away safely in a snug escape pod and reached an inhabitable planet or ship!
 * 1) Some poor jobless Habitican created the Job Seekers Guild before finding out that The Jobseekers already exist, leaving the new guild (and all four gems) and joining the old one. @Castanwydden became captain there. Being Welsh and probably having a bit of Robin Hood in her blood, she sent four gems to the poor former captain, then set herself a challenge (with an actual task) to retrieve the gems from the guild bank. After winning that challenge, she sank the guild (by asking admin for guild deletion).
 * 2) @Riverstone boarded the long-dead "Lolz" guild and turned it into Pirate Foley - dedicated to making a piratic soundscape Habitica audio theme! Contributors welcome!
 * 3) Yet another case of a duplicate guild - @benoliver999 created the "Movie Lovers" guild (complete with challenge) before discovering the Habitica's Movie Enthusiasts Club and moving over there. The abandoned guild (with @Mara the Marine Marauder as temporary captain) was then called "Pirate Movie Lovers". Booty (4 gems) was divvied up. After that, @Riverstone got the guild and transformed it into a PvP/duelling guild called The Duelling Grounds which became very popular, with lots of action going on there!
 * 4) Former captain @Jameson officially abandoned The Abandoned Camp (it had had that name even before, being more unofficially abandoned) and named @Mara the Marine Marauder the new captain, and was even generous enough to deliberately leave his gems in the guild. Let's not disappoint him in his hopes of hearing wild stories and rumors about that camp in the near future! (This one clearly isn't a ship but a camp on land - probably some tropic island - but still a captured guild!) Meanwhile, booty/treasure challenges are up. There are no plans yet as to what will become of the guild.
 * 5) @orschiro temporarily gave @NightOwl guild leadership of the Sustainable Living guild. To quote @NightOwl, "It is on rent from its original owner, so it will not be captured, per say, more shaped into sailing form." Nonetheless, @NightOwl plundered the guild bank and set up booty challenges with eco-friendly tasks. For some booty, @MEmry ran a very successful challenge in the Tavern, and the guild grew quite a bit. Then the guild was given back to @orschiro.
 * 6) Habitica admin transferred captaincy of the long-dead "Forocoches" guild to @Mara the Marine Marauder (who temporarily called it ForoNaves, turning cars into ships). Booty (4 gems) was divided, then, with lots of teamwork, the guild got transformed into the Guild Leaders & Challenge Creators. @Riverstone took custody of the guild until a proper leader could be found. A vote was held and @NightOwl became the shiny new leader.
 * 7) Once, there were two public guilds named "Cute and Cool Things on Tumblr" - an active one (more or less) and an inactive one that basically just said "Go to the other guild". Habitica admin transferred captaincy of the inactive guild to @Mara the Marine Marauder, who changed the name to "Tumbling Pirates (Let's Rock this Boat!)" (using this game as a logo). Booty challenges were made - then (despite the title) the boat floated quietly for a while until @Lord Vlad came up with the idea for a Party Wanted International guild, and got the guild.
 * 8) @Riverstone wandered into Camelot and, finding it empty, claimed it for the crew. The castle's jewels were distributed to pirates who proved themselves worthy, and the castle became the headquarters of the Habitica chapter of the SCA, with @MEmry as its new castellan. It's now called Camelot has fallen to pirates and been reclaimed by the SCA!.
 * 9) Somehow, at an unknown point in time, in a mysterious fog, ownership of the Valley of Riddles unexplainably and unexpectedly changed and fell to @Mara the Marine Marauder. Who was the previous owner? @Sphinx? @Ben West? Someone else? When asked, @Sphinx spoke in riddles about tricky plans that unraveled over the years, communications with higher powers, and prophecies of challenges. Was it fate? @Mara the Marine Marauder had wanted to wrap up the old error-ridden Don't Walk the Plank challenge anyway... After all the old loose ends had been wrapped up, the Valley of Riddles suddenly became a lot less interesting - so it got sunk (deleted) and is now an oceanic trench. But you can still see the riddles on that guild's wikia page.
 * 10) The guild named AY410014Y tieto- ja viestintätekniikka pedagogisena työvälineenä was boarded by @Dewines who then gave it to @MEmry, who divided the booty and gave the guild the much more pronounceable name 52 Weeks.
 * 11) Meanwhile, the guild named MaluTVT kandi/graduryhmä (Oulun yliopisto / KTK) was taken over by @Riverstone who promptly renamed it Pirates o'Learnin and set up some learning-related booty challenges - the last of which got won by @Riverstone learning for a real life skipper's ticket. And like a typical beginner skipper, @Riverstone then wrecked the guild - but intentionally!
 * 12) @Riverstone also conquered the guild Twitch streamer support. @Riverstone temporarily named the guild "Twitchy Pirates" and happily started planting trees to make an old dream come true - the guild is now named Elven Grove and is dedicated to helping to keep all those Habitica challenges in good order. (And the booty from the guild bank was shared among the first pirate elves who cleaned up some old abandoned Habitica challenges in other guilds.)
 * 13) @Dewines captured a whole fleet of tiny inactive guilds at once, among them the Tindley Prep Scholars (which got destroyed soon after the booty had been divvied up)...
 * 14) ... and TechRaptor (also wrecked after booty had been shared)...
 * 15) ... and Rochester, NY - The Prosperous Nerds, which @Dewines quickly turned into the Tavern Challenge Overflow Chat guild, pocketing its gems and dividing them with booty challenges in the Pirate Cove soon afterwards...
 * 16) ... and The Edge (which already had a pirate topic, possibly referring to the game Nehrim: At Fate's Edge - which didn't save it from also being destroyed after all the booty challenges had been won)...
 * 17) ... and Michigan Technological University, which, after the booty had been shared, was claimed by @Phantom818 as their own private guild (for monthly tasks and the like).
 * 18) Meanwhile, another member of that fleet, the guild Longhorns, escaped - for a short while. @Wunderkind, a long-standing Longhorns crew member, took over captaincy there from the old inactive captain and renamed the guild State School Spirit. (In the course of those events, @Wunderkind also joined the Pirate Cove and became a Habitican pirate.) A few weeks later, however, attempts to revive the guild had failed, and @Wunderkind surrendered the guild to @Dewines. It is now named Guild up for grabs (was State School Spirit) and will probably be deleted soon. There are no gems left in it.
 * 19) After discussing at length what to do with which linguistic/language learning guild, pirate @Llama Hobbit became the new captain of #Add1Challenge (the old captain being inactive) and broadened the topic by renaming it The Language Hackers.
 * 20) --►Technology, Games & Mobiles was taken over by @Ariel and turned into the Organization Owls. Organizing-related booty challenges were made and won, and were so useful that @Ariel reran them afterwards (without booty). @Ariel also added lots of other organization-related challenges (often salvaged from other guilds where they were abandoned), and the whole guild is proving to be very popular.
 * 21) The Investors were rather inactive, and the topic was already covered by another more active guild (the Financial Discipline Group) - so @Ariel boarded them and invested the guild's four gems in booty challenges. After they'd been won by four other pirates, @Ariel claimed the guild as their own private guild.
 * 22) The members of the Interneters Anonymous guild can't have been very addicted to that guild - or it would have been more active. (And another more active guild - the Digital Addicts Anonymous - was already covering the topic.) So @Phantom818 captured the Interneters Anonymous - and even challenged the wild wide seas of the internet itself with booty challenges which dared participants to survive without internet for a day. After those had been won (yes! it's doable!), the guild was hacked into pieces and sunk. Not everything and everyone sailing the internet has to keep doing it forever!
 * 23) When @Wunderkind became the new captain of the Whovians, it wasn't a classic pirate takeover - the guild was very much alive and kicking (only the old guild leader was inactive), @Wunderkind was already a genuine guild member interested in all things Whovian, and there was no massive pirate invasion and looting of the guild bank. However, since the leadership change was initiated by @Dewines and since @Wunderkind is officially one of the pirates, this probably counts as a captured guild. (After all, pirates aren't traditionally known for modestly waiving bragging rights!)
 * 24) Live a S.M.A.R.T. Life (an inactive guild connected to a no longer existing challenge in the The Newbies guild) was captured by @Ariel. True to the guild's original purpose, @Ariel made booty challenges referring to SMART goals(some of which can still be won). It isn't clear yet what will happen to the guild. (If you're looking for other guilds already using and discussing the "SMART goals" method a lot, there are already the Long-Term Goal Accountability 🎯 guild and the Organization Owls!)
 * 25) Aboard the Tag Bombs guild, a fierce fight for captaincy took place between bold attacker @Dewines and the old zombified captain @Jynxed. (There were weird technical difficulties - @Alys changed leadership to @Dewines several times but it kept reverting to @Jynxed. A truly jynxed situation!) Eventually @Dewines gained the upper hand, quickly shared out the booty (via challenges), got everyone still alive aboard into safety, and then Admiral @Alys blew the Tag Bombs to kingdom come so it couldn't jinx anyone anymore.
 * 26) After the guild was first sighted by @Ariel, @Phantom818 became the new captain of The United Strays of Maverica, a clearly dead guild which someone named @StrayMav created as a fandom guild for @StrayMav's own minecraft walkthrough videos. Booty challenges (which, luckily, have nothing to do with the original topic, and more with everyday health and productivity) are up now, and some can still be won. No one has shown any interest in repurposing the guild yet.
 * 27) There are pirates, and there are landlubbing highway men, or (possibly legal) Road Warriors - with their own guild to share tips about all the things you have to deal with when you travel a lot. Nobody quite knows why a guild with such an interesting topic was inactive for so long. (Maybe because all the members were away traveling?) Anyway, the topic sounded too good to just delete the guild - so, after @Ariel had mentioned it, @Dewines asked around for potential new captains (the old one being inactive), and pirate @Rayn the Stormcaller volunteered, became the new guild leader, and will probably try to revive the guild. It's not clear yet what the guild bank gems will be used for - though topic-related challenges are maybe more likely than outright booty challenges.
 * 28) @Llama Hobbit looked into some family-themed guilds - and found that the Family Guild was quite dead (and had never been alive at all). (Parents, don't despair - there are other active family-themed guilds, such as Parent Edition.) So @Llama Hobbit captured the Family Guild, and is now redistributing its family jewels with some topic-related booty challenges. After that, the guild will probably be sunk.
 * 29) @Dewines had had the Order of Con Congeries in her sights for months. The topic (organizing Habitica meetups at SF/Fantasy/other conventions) sounded too interesting and important to just let the guild fade into oblivion. When @Dewines offered to revamp and promote the guild a little, old guild leader @Helmsman Of-Inepu responded at first, but then became inactive again. So, in the end, @Dewines was made the new guild leader. She renamed the guild Convention meet-ups, panels and other activities, gave it a beautiful new logo, and is generally trying to revive and promote it. @Dewines doesn't want to stay its long-term guild leader, though, and is looking for an interested and capable volunteer to take that position. This could become an important guild for the future representation of Habitica at cons! On the other hand, if it just won't stir, and no new guild leader can be found, it could also just get deleted. So the fate of this guild is still open.
 * 30) @Ariel reoccupied the abandoned Laravel Lair (which was originally about the PHP framework Laravel) and set up some booty challenges having more to do with pirate lairs (i.e., making/keeping one's home comfortable). Some can still be won. After that, the plan is to delete the guild (unless someone wants it).
 * 31) @Llama Hobbit found the Taxidermists guild to be dead and not worth of preserving. So @Llama Hobbit became captain there, cleaned up two old taxidermy-themed challenges with @Cantras's and @Alys's help, and went about dividing the booty with preparation-for-death-themed booty challenges. Most can still be won. After that, the guild will probably be a candidate for deletion.
 * 32) EvoGen-X (a guild about a personal development company of the same name, both apparently owned by @Pierre Tremblay) was targeted and captured by @Ariel who aptly renamed it Group formerly known as EvoGen-X which will be deleted shortly. Booty challenges (having to do with generation X, not with @Pierre Tremblay's company) are up, and some can still be won.
 * 33) The Northmen/Northwomen of Wisconsin were investigated by anthropological pirate @Ariel (who found them to be quite comatose) and captured by pirate @Phantom818, who set up some winter-and-Wisconsin-themed booty challenges. Once they were all won, the guild was set on a collision course with one of Wisconsin's infamous Great Lakes icebergs, broke apart and sank.
 * 34) @MEmry sighted and boarded the inactive CFA Students guild and (since CFA stands for Chartered Financial Analyst) set up some budget-related booty challenges. Some can still be won! There are no further plans for the guild yet.
 * 35) Baker Street Scribblers, a guild originally dedicated to writing (mostly Sherlock Holmes) fanfiction, was spotted by @Dewines who then contacted the old guild captain, @pangodillO. After @pangodillO had answered and confirmed that the guild was indeed inactive and could be deleted or repurposed, @Dewines became the new captain and cleaned up some old challenges (with @Cantras's help). @Dewines then renamed the guild haiku and made haiku-related booty challenges. Now the guild is teeming with cherry blossoms and 17-syllable posts.
 * 36) @Luthien targeted the prayer-themed and very dead Divine Office/Liturgy of the Hours guild, became the new captain there, renamed it Formerly Divine Office/Liturgy of the Hours, and set up some booty challenges with common household chore tasks. Praying, cursing, swearing, or meditating while doing them is entirely optional - as long as you keep your home religiously clean! Some of the challenges are still up for grabs. There are no further plans for the guild yet, so deletion is likely.
 * 37) At some point, @Mara the Marine Marauder became guild leader of the Wake Up and Smell the Coffee - Stop Snoozing guild. (The old guild leader either left or made @Mara guild leader.) But the guild was so inactive that @Mara didn't even notice until pirate @Blue posted in chat there to see if it was still alive. So @Mara evacuated the old members to The Sleeping Guild and blew up and sank the guild. (There were no gems left to loot.)

Let the future be as bootyful!

Sunk Guilds
"Sunk" means that the guild either got deleted or made private. Making an inactive guild private is frequently used as an alternative to deleting it because, in case any of the guild members ever returns to Habitica and would like to have the guild back or look something up in there, the private guild serves as a backup and can easily be turned into a public guild again. (In some other cases, though, old guilds get privatized because the new guild leader is actually repurposing them as active private guilds, usually with a different name and topic and no intent to conserve the old chat and challenges.)

In Pirate English, if the guild is described as "destroyed", "wrecked", "shot to smithereens", etc., that means it got deleted. If it is described as being sunk in one piece, e.g., "scuttled", "foundered", "submerged", etc., that means it was turned into a private guild (but will most likely be inactive in the future). If it "was turned into a submarine", it was turned into a private guild with an active guild leader intending to use the guild (often with a different name and topic). This terminology is just for the fun of gamification, though - it's not an exact science, please don't take it too seriously! If you use different descriptions when adding a new sunk guild to the list, no one will keelhaul you for it.

So far, we have sunk 26 guilds in total. We captured 13 of those first (they appear in both the Sunk Guilds and Captured Guilds list) and sunk the other 13 without capturing them. 16 of the sunk guilds got destroyed beyond repair, 8 got scuttled in one piece, 2 were turned into submarines.

We shared the booty, and also tried to find a new guild leader, but no one showed interest. So we set this spaceship on autopilot into the nearest star (by asking admin for guild deletion). It was the first of our captured guilds that we destroyed (closely followed by the Job Seekers Guild only a few minutes later).
 * 1) The Star Craft II guild looked like one of those doomed to sink from the start - so, turning space pirates, we boarded it right away. The captain silently abandoned ship, leaving four gems as their only trace - we don't even know their name now. But we hope they got away safely in a snug escape pod and reached an inhabitable planet or ship!
 * 1) Some poor jobless Habitican created the Job Seekers Guild before finding out that The Jobseekers already exist, leaving the new guild (and all four gems) and joining the old one. @Castanwydden became captain there. Being Welsh and probably having a bit of Robin Hood in her blood, she sent four gems to the poor former captain, then set herself a challenge (with an actual task) to retrieve the gems from the guild bank. After winning that challenge, she sank the guild (by asking admin for guild deletion).
 * 2) @Mara the Marine Marauder tried to capture the Joueurs Francophones de Roguelikes (they had gems!) - but oh, these Frenchmen! Their ship sank before we could board it. Must have had something to do with their colorful sails. (They had a nice guild description and leader message with pictures, so the guild was made private instead so they wouldn't get lost irretrievably.)
 * 3) @Riverstone decided that Pirate Island was not complete without a protective reef, and set about building one. Shipwreck Reef has begun with the scuttling of Executive Type, a ship full of typewriters...
 * 4) ... Mediocre People, which carried no cargo at all, but had a surprising amount of hammocks...
 * 5) ... FCS Ithaca, which had a decent challenge in its hold that was salvaged and traded away...
 * 6) ... and Under Construction, a partially completed ship that had lain untouched for more than a year, and which wasn't scuttled but rather wrecked beyond repair, and sunk in pieces. May the mermaids enjoy their new playgrounds! (Perhaps they'll learn to touch-type?)
 * 7) It looks like @Dewines and @Riverstone had a hand in the wrecking of the TheProf is in guild - but mostly it was guild captain @TheProf themselves who gave permission to destroy it, and Admiral @Alys who did the destroying.
 * 8) The "classroom guild" Newport Elementary grade 4 - inactive for about a year - had been in our sights for a while. When it was brought up in guild chat both by @LLamaHobbit and @Ariel, Admiral @Alys noticed it, too, and scuttled it immediately (also to protect the valuable secrets it carried - the names of the kids, some of which were probably real life names).
 * 9) The public guild Michigan Technological University(captured by @Dewines who also made the booty challenges) was given to @Phantom818 and privatized because @Phantom818 wanted an own private guild (for monthly tasks and the like). So this is the first guild that the pirates (or actually, admin at the request of the pirates) turned into a submarine (i.e., it was made private and is still used).
 * 10) Somehow, at an unknown point in time, in a mysterious fog, ownership of the Valley of Riddles unexplainably and unexpectedly changed and fell to @Mara the Marine Marauder. Who was the previous owner? @Sphinx? @Ben West? Someone else? When asked, @Sphinx spoke in riddles about tricky plans that unraveled over the years, communications with higher powers, and prophecies of challenges. Was it fate? @Mara the Marine Marauder had wanted to wrap up the old error-ridden Don't Walk the Plank challenge anyway... After all the old loose ends had been wrapped up, the Valley of Riddles suddenly became a lot less interesting - so it got sunk (deleted) and is now an oceanic trench. But you can still see the riddles on that guild's wikia page.
 * 11) The Investors were rather inactive, and the topic was already covered by another more active guild (the Financial Discipline Group) - so @Ariel boarded them and invested the guild's four gems in booty challenges. After they'd been won by four other pirates, @Ariel claimed the guild as their own private guild. (One more submarine!)
 * 12) Tindley Prep Scholars (an inactive guild captured by @Dewines) got destroyed soon after booty had been divvied up.
 * 13) TechRaptor shared the same fate - it was captured by @Dewines, then blown to smithereens after its booty had been shared via challenges.
 * 14) The same happened to The Edge - the guild was taken over, plundered (with booty challenges) and wrecked by @Dewines.
 * 15) The members of the Interneters Anonymous guild can't have been very addicted to that guild - or it would have been more active. (And another more active guild - the Digital Addicts Anonymous - was already covering the topic.) So @Phantom818 captured the Interneters Anonymous - and even challenged the wild wide seas of the internet itself with booty challenges which dared participants to survive without internet for a day. After those had been won (yes! it's doable!), the guild was hacked into pieces and sunk. Not everything and everyone sailing the internet has to keep doing it forever!
 * 16) The Mercury Guild was first sighted by @Ariel, then immediately broadsided and shot to smithereens by Admiral @Alys. (Yay for fast battles, quick victories, and joyful destruction!) Since the guild went down with all its treasures aboard, Admiral @Alys then generously put 4 shiny gems into the Pirate Cove treasure chest to make up for lost booty. Thanks @Alys - we know you don't have to!
 * 17) The COWMe guild - a guild created by @John Camden and dedicated to persuading and tricking Habitican admins (in most amusing and creative ways, and with admirable effort) into re-releasing the Winged Messenger set - was deservedly turned into an underwater museum because of its great habitistorical significance.
 * 18) Aboard the Tag Bombs guild, a fierce fight for captaincy took place between bold attacker @Dewines and the old zombified captain @Jynxed. (There were weird technical difficulties - @Alys changed leadership to @Dewines several times but it kept reverting to @Jynxed. A truly jynxed situation!) Eventually @Dewines gained the upper hand, quickly shared out the booty (via challenges), got everyone still alive aboard into safety, and then Admiral @Alys blew the Tag Bombs to kingdom come so it couldn't jinx anyone anymore.
 * 19)  The Family Playbook, an inactive family-themed guild, was first sighted by @Llama Hobbit. Since the old (formerly inactive) guild leader @Angela Henders logged into Habitica again after @Llama Hobbit messaged her (but didn't answer or react in other ways), the guild got scuttled intact rather than boarded and plundered.
 * 20) A guild named MaluTVT kandi/graduryhmä (Oulun yliopisto / KTK) was taken over by @Riverstone who promptly renamed it Pirates o'Learnin and set up some learning-related booty challenges - the last of which got won by @Riverstone learning for a real life skipper's ticket. And like a typical beginner skipper, @Riverstone then wrecked the guild - but intentionally!
 * 21) The guild Memphis (first spotted by @Rayn the Stormcaller) was blown to bits by Admiral @Alys before anyone could board it. (To quote her, "A speedy death is merciful. And very very easy. :)" Very true, at least for inactive guilds!) Again, very generously, Admiral @Alys then gifted the Pirate Cove with 4 shiny gems for its treasure chest to make up for lost booty. Thanks @Alys - you know a pirate's heart's desire! Also, Pirate Cove might now be the first guild in Habitistory which ever had 8 gems in its bank! (Time to share them out again with booty challenges...)
 * 22) The guild laranja (spotted by @Ariel - no chat, no gems) was shot to pieces without further ado by Admiral @Alys.
 * 23) De Grønne, an inactive Norwegian-speaking guild for promotion of a Norwegian political party (The Green Party) with two abandoned challenges, was investigated by @Llama Hobbit, then scuttled Admiral @Alys.
 * 24) The Northmen/Northwomen of Wisconsin were investigated by anthropological pirate @Ariel (who found them to be quite comatose) and captured by pirate @Phantom818, who set up some winter-and-Wisconsin-themed booty challenges. Once they were all won, the guild was set on a collision course with one of Wisconsin's infamous Great Lakes icebergs, broke apart and sank.
 * 25) At some point, @Mara the Marine Marauder became guild leader of the Wake Up and Smell the Coffee - Stop Snoozing guild. (The old guild leader either left or made @Mara guild leader.) But the guild was so inactive that @Mara didn't even notice until pirate @Blue posted in chat there to see if it was still alive. So @Mara evacuated the old members to The Sleeping Guild and blew up and sank the guild. (There were no gems left to loot.)

Conquering Guilds: Tips & Tricks
Before conquering a guild, you might want to know which end results are possible. These are: This usually happens if the guild is utterly inactive and/or useless, none of the guild members want to keep the guild alive anymore, and there's no interesting content in the chat or elsewhere in the guild that is worth preserving. (A guild can be useless while still being active - usually if another, more active guild with the same topic exists, and everyone decides to move over to that other guild and give up the "duplicate" guild.) If there are gems in the guild bank, the guild usually gets captured and plundered before deletion. But there's no guarantee for that - an admin may decide to delete the guild immediately, with gems and all. (Why wait when you can get rid of a dead guild now?) If the admin is generous, he can put the "lost booty" in the Pirate Cove's guild bank directly (that's how we got our unusually high number of gems there) - but that's a favor, nothing we are entitled to! Making an inactive guild private is frequently used as an alternative to deleting it because, in case any of the guild members ever return to Habitica and would like to have the guild back or look something up in there, the private guild serves as a backup and can easily be turned into a public guild again. Privatization is a good solution if the guild contains interesting content, or someone apparently spent a lot of effort creating it (for example by creating a special guild logo or a complicated challenge), or the guild has a serious and sensitive topic (for example offering support for people with a special health condition), or the guild leader hasn't been away from Habitica for very long yet. If a guild contains interesting content and gets privatized, only its members will still be able to see that content, though, and no new members can join or even find the guild without invitation. If the content (challenges, tips and tricks in chat, links in the guild description, etc.) would still be useful in other Habitican guilds, it should be "rescued" and moved there before the guild gets privatized or deleted. A privatized guild usually keeps its gems. (In some other cases, though, old guilds get privatized as a form of repurposing: There's someone around who would like to have their own private guild but doesn't have the gems to create one, and there's a guild that would otherwise be deleted - so that person gets the guild, the guild gets privatized by an admin, the new leader throws all the old members out, renames and redesigns the guild, and uses it as their new private guild, without intent to preserve any of the old content.) That means, the guild stays public but gets a different name and topic and a new leader. That usually happens if, at the same time, there are both a guild that would usually get deleted, and a person who would otherwise create a new guild. That means, the guild keeps its topic and stays public. In some cases, pirates wandering into a guild might serve as a "wake-up call", and the members might decide to try to improve the guild a little - find a new active guild leader, change and improve the guild name and/or description slightly, maybe broaden the guild topic, create new challenges, and/or promote the guild in the The Bulletin Board 📌 or the Tavern. But basically, the guild stays the same (and the guild members are in no way obliged to take any of these actions). This usually happens if pirates ask in guild chat: "Is this guild still active? Is anyone here still interested in keeping it?", and people answer that yes, they want to keep it. If it's already clear from the start that the guild will stay - for example if it's quite active but just has an inactive leader - this isn't usually a job for the pirates! If the active members want a new leader, they can request a leadership change themselves. To quote Admiral @Alys on the matter: "I'd prefer that the Pirates sought new leaders for only guilds that are dead, or near-dead (or ones where the current leader does want to resign, of course). I think it's best that you don't suggest to active communities that you might look for a new leader from outside the community. I'm concerned that it would make the guild members not feel at ease in their own space." Of course, you're free to join the guild and voice your opinions there - that you'd like to have the guild name/description changed slightly, that you'd like to have a new active leader who can do this, that you think the guild could benefit from being promoted in the The Bulletin Board 📌 or with an entry in the Guilds Guide or its own wiki guild page, or whatever - but that's not a pirate action, it's something that you can do as a guild member there, independently of the Pirate Cove (if you want to). You might also want to know some technical details - especially which of these things can be done by Habiticans themselves, and which can only be done by admins:
 * The guild gets deleted:
 * The guild gets privatized:
 * The guild gets repurposed:
 * The guild stays more or less as it is:
 * Guild deletion and guild privatization can only be done by an admin.
 * Guild leadership can be changed by the current guild leader or by an admin. If the guild leader is still active, it's usually eir decision to change guild leadership (or not), and the guild leader should do the change emself (unless there are technical difficulties, then the admin can help).
 * For moving old challenges out of to-be-deleted guilds, please check the details in our sister guild Elven Grove and their wikia guild page.

There's more technical info on the wiki page about Guilds (especially the sections about Transferring Guild Ownership and Guild Deletion) and the wiki page about Challenges.

If things don't go as planned, it can also be helpful to check for known guild bugs in the GitHub issues. For a more detailed search, here's GitHub's very helpful help page for searching issues. There is a label "groups" (meaning both guilds and parties), and here's the list of all open issues with that label - but relevant issues don't always get labeled. Apparently you can't add labels to issues as a normal GitHub user.

Some GitHub issues that are good to know about:
 * Guild leaders can assign a new guild leader - only, there's a known bug: The new guild leader can only be chosen from the first 15 members of the guild (the ones that are visible in the Members list). The bug has been documented in GitHub issues 2160 and 1806. Currently, there are two workarounds: You can either ask an admin to assign the new guild leader, or you can use the "plankwalking" method and kick members out of the guild until the person that you want to make leader is among the first 15 that show up in the Members list. (Obviously, this is rather rude and should only be done with small guilds and/or inactive members, and with proper warning.)
 * Issue 3937 is a precedence case where @Lemoness decided that "Guild leadership should only be reassigned when the Guild leader requests it, unless they've left the site completely for a long period of time, such as a year." However, some small inactive guilds got deleted or repurposed lately where the guild leader had last logged in more recently, sometimes only 3 months before deletion. In the end, it's the admins' decision - but the longer the guild leader has been away, the more likely a guild leadership change or guild deletion becomes. If the guild leader hasn't been away for very long (but doesn't react to messages and chat), it's more likely that the guild gets privatized instead.

There is also a Trello card discussing guilds.

So, now that you know about the technicalities, how do you start attacking a guild? If you know that no one else messaged the guild leader yet and if you're sure that the guild is a good candidate for boarding/deletion, you can message em before talking about the guild in Pirate Cove chat. If you aren't sure, please talk about it in Pirate Cove chat first.
 * First, find a good target! It should be a guild that has been inactive for a while, and/or has the same topic as another, more popular guild that it could be merged with. Many such guilds are already listed in the Guilds in Our Sights - you can also pick one of those and do the next steps with it if they haven't been done yet.
 * If no other pirate has done so yet, poke the guild a little to see if anyone in there is still alive: Ask in the target guild's chat if anyone's still interested in keeping the guild, or if it can be deleted or repurposed (or maybe privatized). If you don't know what to say exactly, check in the last few conquered guilds how things started there! Then feel free to use your own words, adapted to the situation in the guild. Give the guild members at least a week to answer.
 * Talk about the results in Pirate Cove guild chat - either before or after messaging the guild leader (see next step). Discuss whether it would be a good idea to target the guild, and what should probably happen to it (Boarding? Deletion? Repurposing? Privatizing? Or does one of the old members there want to take over and become guild leader?) Check if the guild is already listed among the Guilds in Our Sights. If not (and if it hasn't been discarded as a target), please add the guild to the Guilds in Our Sights list, or get someone who knows how to edit the wiki to do it for you. It is helpful if you add relevant details: When was the last (non-piratic) chat post? When did the guild owner last log in? Are there challenges in the guild? Gems in the guild bank? Interesting content in the chat, guild description, or challenges, that is worth saving? If there is another guild with the same topic, which one? Has the guild leader been contacted yet, and did e answer? Did the other pirates mention anyhting important in guild chat when the guild was discussed?
 * At some point, the guild leader should be messaged (if he didn't react in chat). This makes sense even if the guild leader hasn't logged into Habitica for many months because, depending on their settings, many Habiticans get email notification for private messages. In the message, the guild leader should be asked if he's still interested in the guild, or if it can be deleted/repurposed/merged with another guild, or if eh'd prefer if it was privatized. If the guild leader owns challenges in the guild, those should also be mentioned. If there are gems in the guild bank, it's fair to also tell the guild leader that he can get them back by making a challenge with the gems and declaring himself as the winner. The guild leader should have some time (at least a week) to answer.

... To be continued.

Guild-vs.-Guild Battles: The Technical and Organizational Aspects
A "guild vs. guild" (or "team vs. team" - not restricted to guilds) battle challenge can be made simply by making a challenge with only two habits which are identical except for one of them saying "Fight for team A!", the other saying "Fight for team B!". (Of course, the habits should also say what the participants are expected to do.) Then the Habitica Swagger API interface can be used to keep track of the overall values of the two habits. These habit values correspond (roughly, but close enough) to how often the habits have been clicked. The group with the higher habit value wins. The participants simply join the challenge, decide which team they want to fight for, and click the habit of that team whenever they do the work required by the habit.

If the challenge creator wants to find out who fought for which team, they can see this by looking at the CSV file which shows who clicked which habit. The CSV can be downloaded directly by clicking on the "Export to CSV" button in the challenge, or by using the Habitica Swagger API interface again. (Of course, you could also make a to-do "State your loyalty in the Extra Notes!" instead.) This can be helpful if you intend to make token challenges for all the winners (and maybe 2nd place token challenges for all participants of the other team) after the battle.

The habit values correspond to the sum total of work done. If you'd rather declare the winning team by average work done by each team member, you could also divide the habit values through the number of team members, then compare the results.

The mechanics are also discussed on this Trello card(in the April 29, 2015 comment).

The challenge should contain a disclaimer saying approximately this:

"Disclaimer: All this is supposed to be fun for everyone involved! You are not required to participate in the challenge, no matter which guild you belong or don't belong to. Also, if this challenge makes you feel uncomfortable, please talk to the challenge creator and/or the guild leader of [the guilds involved] and/or a Habitica moderator, and we'll try to fix it! We don't want to violate community guidelines and don't want anyone to feel really, non-fictionally, threatened."

If you are planning a guild-vs.-guild fight, it is good manners to contact the guild leaders of the involved guilds first (if they are active). If you're not planning a surprise attack, you can also ask the guild members first via guild chat. If you're not sure how to proceed (especially if one of the guild leaders is inactive), please read the community guildelines first, then contact a Habitica admin/moderator and ask.

The guilds involved should be chosen wisely - they should consist of members who actually like such a fight instead of feeling annoyed by it.

Different Flags
(Flags not shown to avoid spoilers and copyright issues.)


 * Standard: http://i.imgur.com/oOPGubk.jpg


 * Valentine: http://img0.etsystatic.com/058/0/8817204/il_340x270.716391514_krn0.jpg


 * Pi Day: http://i.ebayimg.com/00/$%28KGrHqYOKiwE5hhLRyDJBOep6qUI8!_35.JPG


 * Easter: http://s7.photobucket.com/user/Cookgirl/media/2013/EasterPirate_zps4e2c6e3a.png.html


 * International Talk Like a Pirate Day: http://wallpaperbang.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Talk-Like-a-Pirate-Day-19-Sep-Wallpapers.jpg


 * Halloween: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6045/6300391097_108bea7248_m.jpg
 * Thanksgiving: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3064/3063761200_3e481fdbee.jpg


 * Christmas: http://www.theflagshop.co.uk/ekmps/shops/speed/images/christmas-pirate-flag-5074-p.jpg


 * New Year: http://rlv.zcache.com/pirate_new_years_eve_party_invitation_postcard-r83e5412cda1d4e1886fbabd79d6db4b9_vgbaq_8byvr_512.jpg

Obscure Treasure Map to Pirate Music
Mara's recommendations:
 * Go look for Bilgemunky's old podcasts! (And then look for more from the bands mentioned there!) Try googling for "bilgemunky rss_feed_bmr", I found this to be the page with the best overview, and otherwise hard to find.
 * "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag" has a nice piraty soundtrack that can be found in various places on Youtube.
 * Then there are "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" (original and cover version) - also on Youtube.
 * And, of course, all the Disney-copyrighted stuff for "Pirates of the Carribean". Chicken_on_a_Raft.png
 * Thanks to @Castanwydden for digging up Jimmie MacGregor's version of "Henry Martin"!
 * Then there's also the chicken on a raft.
 * The halftime show at the Viking Horde vs. Sparrow Warriors Super Bowl III serves as a good excuse to put that link here, too.
 * And so much more...