Yarrr! There be Privateers in this sector o' space

The Ordo Castimon have crippled interstellar communicaion and travel, how are merchants and navies reacting?

Is the Task Force bound for Talaesia sanctioned by TerCon? Or is it a local commanders efforts? Have they recruited privateers and paramilitants? Can they be trusted?

Okay, so those questions might reveal some things about the story you didn't know, or they might confuse you. The key thing to ruminate on is this, the status of privateers.

For those who didn't know, a privateer is a sanctioned pirate. Nation's in the past, for example England, would grant merchant or pirate vessels letters of marque, making them extensions of the English navy, albiet independent extensions. They then had the right to attack, pillage, and claim prizes from enemy vessels.

I hadn't actually thought to myself that privateers would come into play in this story (admittedly, when the embryonic seed of this story began in my head a decade ago, space didn't factor in). The idea of privateers didn't seem safe to me, and for that I've kicked myself. Its that "unsafety" that makes them appealing now.

Can a privateer be trusted? Well, some might say yes. I'd say no. Any crew willing to pillage, plunder, possibly rape, and kill in the name of a nation whose basically paying them, I don't totally trust. It makes me think that somewhere deep down inside, that crew can be paid off again by some other nation. basically "Mo money mo power."

That isn't to say all privateers are greedy prigs. Some might be the pinnacle of loyalty.

But why, you might wonder, are Charter Signatory Worlds recruiting Privateers? Surely those ships they provide to TerCon are enough to ensure order! Well not now, no. Privateers will be considered a tradition for many worlds in local space, and are rarely used outside of a systems gravitational boundaries. TerCon has, up until recently, done a good enough job.

But the enemy is afoot, they've ravaged the space lanes and TerCon is stumbling to keep up. Worlds have had to recruit Armed merchants, even TerCon military has been forced to bolster their numbers. This should make for interesting stuff, the potential for a mutinous privateer is high.

Now, a note, these Armed Merchants don't organise well. They don't have a name, its not something silly like Space Patrol or Intergalactic Rangers. They've got ships, captains might know other captains, they might even work together loosely sometimes. This new issue of working in fleets might be a real kick in the ass.

That's it on privateers for now. As before, I have more to say, but it's not entirely done. I will come back to this, possibly even through all this out the window (it's happened), later. Tomorrow however, I plan to discuss the enemy, the vile Ordo Castimon. Figured talking about the enemy might get some interest.