Arrr!!! was founded in 1999 by The Dread Pirate Roberts (’02) as Brown University’s only coed sea-shanty singing a capirate ensemble. In its nascent years the ensemble’s focus wavered somewhere between musicality and having a jolly good time, though the group almost always enjoyed a good share of both. Arrr!!!’s performance venues showed great variety, including Wayland arrrch sings, the Christmas organ concert in Sayles, raids on other a capella groups, Salem Massachusetts on Halloween, and illustrious yacht clubs. When not performing, this motley crew of pirates enjoyed themselves by throwing parties at which they would sing, consume massive quantities of alcohol, and occasionally watch piratey movies, such as Muppet Treasure Island.
The pirates enjoyed five relatively peaceful years (keeping in mind that peace to a pirate means something very different to just about anyone else) of singing, drinking, and carousing, until the Spring of 2005, when they were first attacked by a band of roving ninja. These ninja prided themselves by raiding pirate concerts and rehearsals, other groups’ performances, and the occasional innocent bystander. Unfortunately, these first raids were more perplexing than anything else, as the ninja would silently and covertly infiltrate performances, slink around in front of the crowd, and then leave just as silently as they came.
For the first several months of the ninja presence the ninja and pirates waged bloody war on each other, with ninja attacking pirates in their rehearsals and disrupting songs, and pirates conducting midnight raids upon ninja whose identities they had discovered. This continued until one of the founding ninja, who also happened to be a pirate, orchestrated peace between the two groups by having the ninja magnanimously bring the pirates tea at one of their rehearsals.
But this peace was not to last...