Amnesty Mission

An Amnesty Mission is one of several types of player-triggered Escort Missions appearing in Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004). Successfully completing this mission will cause one of the major nations to erase the Bounty on your head.

Triggering
Amnesty Missions are triggered by visiting a Jesuit Mission and talking to the Abbot. If the player has a bounty on his head from any of the four nations, there is a chance that an Amnesty Mission will be triggered.

Not every meeting with an Abbot will trigger an Amnesty Mission, even if you do have a bounty on your head at the time. Most meetings will yield an Immigrant Mission instead. There is a possible link between the chance to trigger an Amnesty Mission, the size of the bounty, and the proximity of the Jesuit Mission to Ports belonging to the nation that issued the bounty.

If the mission is triggered, the Abbot will inform you that one of his priests will head an expedition to a nearby Port belonging to the nation that issued the bounty. He explains that the priest will do his best to persuade this nation to erase the bounty on your behalf. You may refuse this mission if you'd like, in which case no Amnesty Ship is created.

Note that for this Escort Mission, you do not get to choose the destination Port. The game will select the nearest Port belonging to any nation that has a bounty on your head. If two or more nations have a bounty on your head at the same time, one is selected randomly as the target of this Escort Mission.

Ships
As soon as you leave the Jesuit Mission, a Jesuit Pinnace will spawn right outside, and will behave as a Mission Ship, following your Flagship as closely as possible.

This ship is known as the Amnesty Ship. A floating caption above it will read "Proposing Amnesty" for the duration of the Escort Mission.

If at any time you stray too far from the selected path, the Amnesty Ship will break off from your fleet and will proceed toward its destination autonomously.

As with any other Escort Mission, one or more Privateers will spawn at the Amnesty Ship's destination. They will attempt to intercept the Amnesty Ship as soon as possible. If any Privateer manages to reach the Amnesty Ship, it will engage it in naval combat and will likely destroy it within a few seconds unless successfully attacked by the player.

The nationality of the Privateer(s) is be randomly chosen as per the rules explained on the Privateer article.

Also note that the Amnesty Ship may come under attack from other ships that happen to be in the area, such as Raiders. This is circumstantial, and usually does not occur.

Reward
If the Amnesty Ship manages to reach its destination, it will immediately erase all bounty on your head from the nation owning the target Port.

A pop-up message will read:


 * "The priest proposing [nation name] pirate amnesty has arrived in [port name]."

An entry added to your Captain's Log will read:


 * "[date]: [nation name] offers Pirate Amnesty."

Since the bounty with this nation is now set to 0, subsequent actions seen as favourable by that nation will advance you towards your next Rank with that nation. unfavourable actions will accumulate a new bounty, starting at, as normal.

In addition, the Port Hostility level at the destination port will be significantly reduced, allowing you to sail into that port freely. However, it may or may not reduce Port Hostility at any other port belonging to the same nation.