The Big Mom Pirates

The Big Mom Pirates are an infamous and powerful pirate crew led by the Yonko Charlotte Linlin, better known as "Big Mom", and they are in control of the powerful nation of Totto Land, with their captain ruling it as its queen and their base of operations being Whole Cake Island, the country's main island.

Due to their actions and role, they are the main antagonists of the Whole Cake Island Arc, and one of the central antagonist groups of the Yonko Saga. The Big Mom Pirates' Jolly Roger is a skull with thick lips and wearing a pirate tricorne based on their captain's appearance, on a fluffy background (which could represent Linlin's hair in some fashion) with several candy canes crossed behind it (one on the right, three stacked together on the left), in place of normal crossbones. A tree is seen coming out of the cane on the bottom right. Like the Whitebeard Pirates, the Big Mom Pirates have a simpler Jolly Roger, consisting of the normal skull-and-crossbones, but retaining the large lips of the original.

Like most Yonko-led crews, the Big Mom Pirates are organized around a central group of pirates that sail directly under Big Mom, and various subordinate crews that work directly on her orders, allowing the crew to operate as a massive pirate fleet. The Big Mom Pirates are heavily built around the members of the Charlotte Family, with the children comprising a large portion of her crew as well as her executives and most capable fighters; however, it is unknown exactly how many of her children are direct members of her crew. Big Mom is seemingly addressed by all of her crew, family or not, as "Mama".

The crew's hierarchy is similar to the Donquixote Pirates and the Beasts Pirates, with there being a captain, several elite officers, many regular officers, and a legion of lower-ranking members. In this case, Big Mom acts as the captain, with the Three Sweet Commanders working directly under her. In turn, other children of the Charlotte Family and combatants answer to them. The bulk of the crew is composed of tens of thousands of homies, particularly the chess peacekeepers, and people of various races.

Crew Strength

Captained by a Yonko, the Big Mom Pirates are one of the four most powerful pirate crews in the world. Several members shown have been proven to be formidable fighters, able to battle and take down notable and infamous rookie pirates such as Caribou and some members of the Worst Generation. Due to Big Mom being able to place souls into animals and inanimate objects, she has innumerable legions of warriors known as "Homies" that can overwhelm even strong opponents, especially within Totto Land. The Sun Pirates, a powerful crew of fish-men, were frightened at the possibility falling out of favor with Big Mom and fled when their captain officially severed ties with her.

Furthermore, Linlin has many islands under her control besides the archipelago of Totto Land, and the citizens of Fish-Man Island, fearing her wrath, agreed to produce the ten tons of candy she orders every month. It is common knowledge to everyone in the New World that Big Mom's "invitation" to her tea parties is in name only, and that it is an absolute summon order. It is said that even demons from hell will attend the party when invited by Big Mom. Refusal would result in the invitee being sent a box containing the head of someone they personally know, even if that person is someone of notable strength or in another part of the sea beyond the Calm Belts and Red Line; this demonstrates how far-reaching the crew's power is.

As a Yonko, Big Mom partners with several crews and groups through political marriages to increase her crew's strength, such as the Fire Tank Pirates and Sun Pirates, although both of those crews went on to defect from her. The crew is also connected with the activities of the Underworld, especially through its involvement in brokering, as Big Mom would appear affluent enough to commission the likes of Caesar Clown into conducting clandestine research on her behalf with proper funding. Pekoms and Tamago were also seen paying attention to Caesar Clown's broadcast of an illegal chemical weapon of mass destruction. Big Mom also attempted to form an alliance with the notorious Vinsmoke Family to get the technology of Germa 66, but after failing to assassinate the family, the two groups became enemies.

Even without Big Mom in the equation, the rest of the crew carries enough power and influence to do a wide range of activities. Big Mom fully entrusted some of her subordinates to massacre entire islands to steal cake ingredients, and the members of her crew are very confident in their ability to dispose of enemies without Big Mom having to get involved at all. Four powerful pirate crews belonging to the Worst Generation invaded Big Mom's territory, with three of them being forced to flee and one becoming subservient; of those crews, only the Fallen Monk Pirates actually managed to make an impact in their invasion, and all of them were quickly dispatched before they could meet Big Mom herself. Charlotte Brûlée compared the vast difference in power to hitting a wall, saying that challenging them would only cause the challenger to fall into despair. The fact that many of Big Mom's subordinates are frightened of her despite having great power of their own indicates that the full strength of the crew is well beyond what most other pirates can reach or even fathom.

The military might of the crew is immense, consisting of tens of thousands of homies and soldiers. A mere fraction of Big Mom's forces was able to overpower a fatigued Monkey D. Luffy, although not without suffering heavy casualties, including the destruction of most of the Chess Peacekeepers. When Big Mom joined her crew in battling Luffy, Sanji, Capone Bege, and the entire Vinsmoke Family, they won easily with no casualties. Another testament to the size of the crew is when the Germa 66 defeated Charlotte Nusstorte and his ten thousand-strong army, the rest of the crew was unfazed by the enormous loss, not even noticing it. When Linlin personally arrived at Wano along with some of her strongest children, Kaido mentioned that it could escalate into an all out war with his own crew.

The sheer number of ships in the crew's possession gives them considerable naval superiority over most pirate crews; even though some were sunk by Eustass Kid, and Daifuku himself destroyed many Tartes when trying to kill Carrot, these losses did not seem to impact the crew in any noticeable way. Each island in Totto Land has its own Tarte, but there seem to be many more in reserve, and a single fleet of these ships is enough to completely besiege an enemy vessel. The crew, particularly the executives who command fleets, have proven capable of effectively coordinating their ships' movements. With their Territorial Sea Slugs making it impossible for any ship to sail through Totto Land undetected, the crew's fleet makes it difficult, if not impossible, to invade Totto Land and especially Whole Cake Island, as well as escape. The Straw Hat Pirates were only able to easily make it to Whole Cake Island because Big Mom was luring them into a trap there, and Urouge managed to escape after being presumed deceased.

It was said that if an island does not pay its tribute, Big Mom will destroy it using her army of "monsters". Since Big Mom has turned Totto Land into a place for all races to live in harmony, and had kids with multiple races, her crew is extremely diverse and has been shown to feature almost every race, even rare ones such as the Three-Eye Tribe, and the various abilities boasted by these races. The most notable exception is that there are no giants in the crew because of Big Mom's enmity with them, although she herself possesses equivalent size and strength and intends to make her family just as large.

Like many elite New World pirate crews, the Big Mom Pirates have far more Devil Fruit users in their crew than is typically seen in less perilous seas. Most of them (such as Charlotte Cracker, Perospero, Mont-d'Or, and Big Mom herself) are shown to have very powerful or useful abilities and are highly skilled and creative in their usage. As a result, attempting to engage her crew (especially several members at once or deep in their territory) can be extremely unpredictable and dangerous for the unprepared. The higher-ranking members of the crew are also extremely proficient with Haki, as Big Mom possesses Haoshoku Haki, and of the Sweet Commanders, Cracker has extremely tough Busoshoku Haki while Charlotte Katakuri has Kenbunshoku Haki so advanced it allows him to see a little bit into the future. According to Vito during Big Mom's tea party, there are several members of the crew that he considers to be "monsters" besides Sweet Commanders Katakuri and Smoothie, which includes several of her eldest children: Charlotte Perospero, Charlotte Compote, Charlotte Daifuku and Charlotte Oven.

Despite their enormous manpower and reputation, the Big Mom Pirates are not invincible, which the Straw Hat Pirates and their allies ultimately managed to prove. Although the Big Mom Pirates were usually at the advantage in their conflict and the Straw Hats were forced to flee, they were successful in taking out legions of Big Mom's troops and destroying several of their ships. In particular, Luffy managed to defeat two of their Sweet Commanders, and three crews allied with them (the Fire Tank Pirates, Sun Pirates, and Germa 66) turned against them and contributed to their losses. While the overall significance of the Big Mom Pirates' losses in this instance is unknown because of how immeasurable their numbers are, their reputation was still greatly tarnished by Morgans in the World Economic Journal due to the Straw Hats' actions.

Also, Big Mom herself is by far the crew's biggest fighting asset, with Perospero believing that her death would spell doom for the rest of them. However, her mental instability due to her food craving disorder can sometimes make her a danger to the crew as well, as no one else in the crew has shown the ability to physically stop or subdue her. When Big Mom got a craving for wedding cake, Perospero knew that she would destroy the entire crew in addition to everyone on Totto Land unless the cake was made.

The massive number of Devil Fruit users in the crew can also be a large weakness to the crew when they go out to sea, as when they attempted to go against the Beasts Pirates and navigate the perilous waters around Wano Country, a single attack from King immediately put them in danger.

Big Mom began her pirating career at the age of six after unknowingly causing the disappearance of her foster family. Streusen witnessed the incident and decided to befriend her and managed to influence her. They eventually went out to sea to create Linlin's dream utopia, and Linlin created her main weapons Zeus and Prometheus to attack villages. Linlin received her first bounty of Beli50,000,000 and as she grew more powerful and fearsome, her bounty raised to Beli500,000,000. Over the course of 42 years, Big Mom gave birth to 85 children from 43 husbands. While she would discard all her husbands, many of her children would become members of the Big Mom Pirates, and she would marry them off to other crews and organizations to form a blood-bond between them, automatically recruiting them into her army. With a network of powerful pirate crews and her children as the backbone of the very central crew, Linlin would eventually earn her moniker as "Big Mom" and become one of the Yonko. She never allowed anyone to leave her crew alive, instead presenting what she deems as a fair compromise to those who wished to, but rigging it to ensure the defectors and the associated organization would lose their lives.

At some point, Big Mom commissioned the rogue scientist Caesar Clown to research artificial gigantification, that she may satisfy her long-held dream to have a Tea Party with her children at eye-level. Caesar's efforts ere able to accelerate and extend the growth of children, but with long-term health issues. Knowing that permanent artificial growth was impossible, Caesar took the money anyway to finance a lifestyle of excess.

Three years before the start of the series, the Big Mom Pirates overwhelmingly defeated the trespassing Nox Pirates, and Pekoms defected from the latter to the former. While Big Mom killed Zepo of the Nox Pirates, she had mercy on the captain, Pedro, and gave him a few more years to live by not taking all of his remaining lifespan.

At some point, Big Mom and Vinsmoke Judge arranged a political alliance between the Charlotte and Vinsmoke families. Per Big Mom's policy, the alliance was to be sealed with a wedding between the third Vinsmoke son, Sanji, and the 35th Charlotte daughter, Pudding, during a future Tea Party. However, Big Mom's true plan was to massacre the Vinsmokes during the wedding in order to gain full control over their kingdom's advanced technology. The wedding has been continously delayed due to the Vinsmoke Family being unable to locate Sanji who has been living under a low profile in Baratie.