Tier 4, Weak Hold The Acheron is a battlecruiser, sometimes engaged in piracy and sometimes its services are for sale to the highest bidder. The ship has been heavily modified and is remarkably stealthy for a vessel that size, nearly impossible to track, although she’s believed to have a home base hidden somewhere in the Tethys Nebula. Ships sent to investigate return either empty-handed or not at all.
Tier 4, Strong Hold The Syndicate is a wide-spread organized crime group and secret society, rooted in the Old Families who used to be the elites of the old Terran Confederacy. They prefer to talk about themselves not as criminals but rather as educated elites, who only try to do what is best for the Hades Cluster. The Syndicate makes hidden deals, extorts, corrupts, and generally makes sure that the "right kind of people" are in positions of power. They seldom get their hands dirty but they pay others to handle it for them.
Tier 3, Strong Hold An ex-Confederate army unit, gone mercenary. They pride themselves in being professional elites, a small private army for hire with high standards and a high rate of success. They specialize in infantry.
Tier 3, Weak Hold When the United Earth Directorate task force withdrew from the Koprulu Sector, many of their men were stranded and left behind. Company Romeo-9 was one such group. Sometimes mercenaries and sometimes pirate, Ro-Nine will do whatever it takes to carve out a new life for themselves. The group is small but advanced, having access to UED tech not available elsewhere.
Tier 3, Weak Hold, Status +2 Privateers for hire, rented by one company to fuck over their competitors. And next fiscal year, when contracts are renegotiated, the employers and the targets change but the job stays the same. The cunning and charismatic ‘Szalamandra’ turned her crew from a minor inconvenience into a major economic hazard. As the name suggests, they employ fire. Lots and lots of fire.
Tier 3, Strong Hold, Status -1 Security for hire. Heavy armors, tanks, bunkers, and surveillance are their bread and butter. Any pirates they capture tend to become brief sources of entertainment and stress relief before expiring.
Tier 3, Strong Hold, Status -1 A mercenary outfit which buys re-conditioned prisoners from New Danbury prison. The War Pigs are rough and tumble brawlers but ultimately get the job done. The secret to their success is simple: all ground crew is expendable. The Pigs are nothing but prison-bred, recycled meat
Tier 2, Weak Hold Helix Solutions had an idea: instead of re-conditioning prisoners with generic, barely controlled personalities, how about we experiment with creating personality templates for elite soldiers? And so began the Olympian Project, a literal character-building exercise to create perfect soldiers (the Ares template), commanders (Athena), snipers (Artemis), mechanics (Hephaestus), etc. Unfortunately, a prison crew with elite skills and unstable personalities proved to be more difficult to contain than the lab boys anticipated. The Olympians escaped and burned the Helix Solutions lab to the ground.
Tier 2, Weak Hold, Status -1 This perfectly legitimate business contractor is not at all the front of a smuggling ring.
Tier 2, Strong Hold, Status +3 A predatory and bloodthirsty crew for whom theft, murder, and worse is not just a job description – it’s a way of life.
Tier 2, Strong Hold, Status -3 Oro is an infamous figure, hyped up by propaganda as an almost inhuman monster. Truth be told, there’s not a lot of human left there. Most of his body is cybernetic, gold-plated on the surface which gave him his nickname. Depending on your tastes he looks stylish or gaudy, but it makes little difference when he and his crew come to take your cargo.
Tier 2, Strong Hold Commander Rackham was an important Confederate officer who hated the Sons of Korhal. So when they committed a coup and replaced the Confederacy with the Dominion, he knew it was only a matter of time before he would be found and executed for crimes against the state. But he had the last laugh anyway: he had prepared caches of resources and arranged for numerous prisoners to be released with special instructions. Now this band of thugs, dissidents, and misfits lives a life of piracy and makes trouble for the Dominion, exactly as Rackham had planned for them.
Tier 2, Strong Hold To root out the pirates hiding out in Gamma Kraken and the Tethys Nebula, Sigma Squadron commissioned a custom-designed squadron of Raven surveillance vessels, complete with special support and escort units, ace pilots, and various other improvements. Nobody knows how or why, but this elite squadron deserted almost immediately and became mercenary pirates, the very same types of people they were supposed to hunt. The Ravens lack raw firepower but are great at specialist jobs such as scouting, data theft, and battlefield support.
Tier 1, Weak Hold An outfit of salvagers and black market traders. Officially they’re not pirates, but if they receive a distress call and the target seems worth more dead than alive, then they’re more than willing to swoop in and finish them off.