Maj Space: The Belt - Pirates of the Starstones (1st draft)

This is the first draft of the Pirate of the Starstones section
of The Belt, for Maj Space.

Comments?


Pirates of the Starstones - 15/Oct/06

For many centuries the dwarves of The Belt were little troubled
by pirates, but over the last fifty years, since the people of
Maj moved out into wildspace, they have become quite a problem.

At first there were military probes by various of the human
spelljamming empires on Maj, but these have mostly stopped due to
treaties of trade, exploration, and in some cases mutual defence. 
So, all that are supposed to be left are true pirates, answering
to no nation.  In practice there are still privateers, who with
their letters of marque supposedly only prey on the declared
enemies of their empire.  Then there are the Norse, who raid
anyone.

After the human pirates the Scro of Isis are the major problem,
though they as yet have few Helms and hence few ships.  Their
main interest is to acquire more Helms, and they are inclined to
be reasonably civilized about any captives, particularly those
that have fought well, and tend to ransom them rather than
selling them as slaves.

There are also some dwarven and elven 'merchants' from Hermes,
who trade when they can, but also steal when they can get away
with it.  They are noted in particular for 'claim jumping' as yet
unrecorded mining possibilities.  While unpleasant they are not
as a rule murderous, and will maroon captives, from wrecked ships
or jumped claims, on isolated starstones known to be used by
spelljammers for infrequent reprovisioning, and hence having
food, water and air.  Their normal theft technique is to board a
ship by stealth or rapid assault, subdue all crew who do not
fight back with lethal force and who refuse to surrender, and
take what they want, after damaging the rigging and rudder to
prevent pursuit.  They don't take prisoners for ransom or slaves,
often treat any injured to prevent them dying, and don't steal
Helms, so in return if they are identified and captured they
don't tend to be executed.

More desperate tend to be the (non-Drow) raiders from Arach, who
appear to have bought Helms from the Arcane/Mercane on some sort
of mortgage against their homes (and maybe even their relatives). 
These are Gnomes who want to acquire enough wealth so as to take
back and defend land lost to the Drow over the centuries.  The
Hobgoblins with their Ogre slaves have similar aims, but they
tend to be less fussy about how they treat captives, as they seek
to squeeze every last copper piece out of their raids.

Rarest are the Drow from Arach, who seem to have got some ancient
Helms and spelljamming vessels from out of magical stasis,
travelled to the Leading Trojan starstones, and there grown a new
crop of their thermo fungii ships.  It seems likely that the Drow
were stirred-up by attempts to mine adamantite on Arach, and have
decided that they want to go spelljamming again, as it seems they
did in the far past.

>From out-system have appeared a few Mind Flayer and Neogi ships,
and there are supposed to be some Beholder colonies getting
established in the wilder parts of The Belt.  Quite a few people
are worried about what will happen if and when out-system elves
arrive, possibly in force as the IEN.  Some of the more
perceptive suspect that the elder race of elves on Isis may help
keep them in line.

Some adventurers of various races have become 'pirate catchers',
and one of the most notorious of these, the 'Gallant Sprite', has
a very racially mixed crew, with a Dwarven (actually Dargold)
captain.

-- 
Dreamer
dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk
http://www.romsys.demon.co.uk/