User blog comment:Master Sima Yi/Assassinews 10-07-'13 — Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag pirate gameplay naval exploration/@comment-78.144.75.40-20130713102519/@comment-1153722-20130713204739

Well, the thing is that not all Assassins are really fond of the pirates either; pirates still kill innocents, after all. (Assassins also steal from innocents, so I figure that's perfectly fine.) But with ninja that's not really the same thing as the pirates founding a pirate republic separate from the British Empire. The ninja did have clans in places like Kōga, but they were not really their own entity or organization. They were agents, mercenaries; no freedom fighters either, or anything like that.