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I have been reading the Pact Worlds book and it came to attention that the Free Captains have their headquarters based in the Pact Worlds system which is home to various factions that would like to see them dead. Their headquarters know as the Broken Rock is a 450-mile-wide asteroid (similar to Ceres) so it's not exactly hard to notice. The only explanation as to why this asteroid has not been atomized is:
To keep law-enforcement organizations such
as the Hellknights and the Stewards off these ne’er-do-wells’
backs, only Free Captains and those they vouch for know the
exact location of Broken Rock. In the event of an attack, an
array of automated capital laser weapons known collectively
as the Broadsides defends the asteroid.
Pact Worlds pg 82
You would think factions like AbadarCorp, Stewards, Hellknights, Knights of Golorion, and the various militaries of the Pact Worlds would have the resources to track down this one base that has been used for centuries.
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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
There are also a wide variety of criminal elements with a vested interest in the Free Captains as an asset they can point at their rivals: The Aspis Consortium, the Golden League, unscrupulous corporations, possibly even the Veskarium, to name just a few. Such groups would happily funnel lawyers, guns and money to keep the more Lawful factions off the Captains' back.
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Archpaladin Zousha wrote: ...Such groups would happily funnel lawyers, guns and money to keep the more Lawful factions off the Captains' back. Cue Warren Zevon?
Archpaladin Zousha wrote: There are also a wide variety of criminal elements with a vested interest in the Free Captains as an asset they can point at their rivals: The Aspis Consortium, the Golden League, unscrupulous corporations, possibly even the Veskarium, to name just a few. Such groups would happily funnel lawyers, guns and money to keep the more Lawful factions off the Captains' back. I feel that wouldn't stop groups like the Knights of Golorion.
Yet unlike the Stewards, the Knights feel no need to honor local laws they consider unjust—theirs is the law of Heaven, and mortal
structures that violate it deserve to be broken.
Starfinder Core PG 478
Its seems that the Free Captains have been operating out of Broken Rock for centuries so that would include during the Silent War so I would imagine that the Pact would not tolerate a major outlaw group attacking supply lines. Honestly, it's the issue that somehow the Free Captains are able to hide the location of their headquarters even though its smack dap in the middle of the Pact Worlds system. It wouldn't take much for a group like the Hellknights to capture someone who would know the location and just use magic to forcibly extract the information. Or even just using scrying.
One solution would be to move the location of the Free Captains' main base to the Drift. That way it cannot be found by tracking ships or scrying. Groups might know its in the Drift somehow but they do not know how to determine the exact location due to the weirdness that is the Drift.
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The reason the Free Captains exist is the same in Starfinder and Pathfinder.
It was decided that "pirates are cool" and so they are there, despite all the logical flaws surrounding their existence.
I imagine the authorities know where the planetoid is, but they don't know which one of many it is, and searching a bunch of dwarf planets just hasn't borne fruit yet.
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The Free Captains exist because once you take them all down, another dozen rise up in their place. This is because we know poverty exists in Starfinder and as long as there is inequity, there will always be people desperate enough to correct that inequity with whatever opportunity they can grasp.
Just like in the real world: Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
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thecursor wrote: The Free Captains exist because once you take them all down, another dozen rise up in their place. This is because we know poverty exists in Starfinder and as long as there is inequity, there will always be people desperate enough to correct that inequity with whatever opportunity they can grasp.
Just like in the real world: Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
Poor people usually don't have access to starships (unless you really play with starships being essentially free).
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Ixal wrote: thecursor wrote: The Free Captains exist because once you take them all down, another dozen rise up in their place. This is because we know poverty exists in Starfinder and as long as there is inequity, there will always be people desperate enough to correct that inequity with whatever opportunity they can grasp.
Just like in the real world: Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
Poor people usually don't have access to starships (unless you really play with starships being essentially free). I doubt people desperate enough to become pirates have any moral qualms with stealing a ship.
Poor people might not have legal access to ships.
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In all honesty, it is likely a mix of organized pirates being far more preferable to disorganized ones, and those with wealth and power not caring enough to root them out so long as their interests in the area are protected. Remember, an organized group is something you can deal and negotiate with.
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Think too on the amount of resources it would take to muster up a fleet capable of doing this. Military actions take time and effort, and the factions you list would have to expend capital to do so. The benefit of eliminating the Free Captains may not be worth that expense - for now.
I also suspect the Free Captains are the sorts where - if Broken Rock were attacked - they would scatter and reconvene elsewhere. Broken Rock would inflict some casualties on the enemy, and some Free Captains would die. But the faction would not be eliminated and the problem would not be solved.
The Pact Worlds could ostensibly eliminate piracy the way the British did: Warships in every corner of the system, hunting them down. But unlike the Age of Sail British, the Pact Worlds are a fractious confederacy that lacks the political will and unified fleet necessary to do this.
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Brother Willi wrote: Think too on the amount of resources it would take to muster up a fleet capable of doing this. Military actions take time and effort, and the factions you list would have to expend capital to do so. The benefit of eliminating the Free Captains may not be worth that expense - for now.
I also suspect the Free Captains are the sorts where - if Broken Rock were attacked - they would scatter and reconvene elsewhere. Broken Rock would inflict some casualties on the enemy, and some Free Captains would die. But the faction would not be eliminated and the problem would not be solved.
The Pact Worlds could ostensibly eliminate piracy the way the British did: Warships in every corner of the system, hunting them down. But unlike the Age of Sail British, the Pact Worlds are a fractious confederacy that lacks the political will and unified fleet necessary to do this.
The factions I listed would have had centuries to build up a fleet to take out a single base. Reading the books it shows the Hell knights having massive mobile citadels that are armed to the teeth or how about the Knights of Golorion with their cathedralships and cruisers I feel that if both these factions pool their resources together they could eliminate a single astroid. If the pact worlds are so fractious how the hell were they able to fight against the Vesk for 200 years and then fight the Swarm and win.
I am aware destroying the headquarters of the free captains would not result in their complete destruction it would still deny them a very valuable port and see them scattered. If none of these factions can do this one task that they're meant to do then they are beyond incompetent.
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The Vesk and the Swarm are existential threats to the Pact Worlds. The Free Captains are not.
Sending Citadel Ships to hunt down a small asteroid in the Diaspora is a terrible waste of resources, and potentially makes them vulnerable to other opponents.
If you want to set up your campaign to have pirates being hunted down unmerciful, by all means do so. If your issue is how can pirates survive in the face of the other factions of the Pact Worlds, there are many explanations available.
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They say it's the same asteroid. But are the pirates telling the truth? Tall tales and pirates go together pretty well.
It seems totally possible that the Free Captains' HQ has been turned into rubble (atomised sounds expensive) more than a few times, but nobody can prove it.
It must be really frustrating to spend half a day reducing the defenses of Broken Rock to rubble, losing several ships in the process, and sending in the landing forces only to discover all the remaining gunners had piled into a few shielded ships and escaped into the drift or crammed into some null space chambers and teleported away to leave an empty husk.
One can safely assume, of course, that everyone but the stay behind gunners escaped via regular ships fleeing into the drift as soon as strong enough forces approached.
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Honestly, if you take out the Free Captains, all you have left are honorless brigands. At least the Free Captains have a sort of "honor among thieves" vibe.
You generally want pirates that will ransom off the crew of your ship, or even just stick them in lifepods to wait for help to arrive. More notorious, uncontrolled pirates may just space the crew to avoid the fuss.
Brother Willi wrote: The Vesk and the Swarm are existential threats to the Pact Worlds. The Free Captains are not.
Sending Citadel Ships to hunt down a small asteroid in the Diaspora is a terrible waste of resources, and potentially makes them vulnerable to other opponents.
If you want to set up your campaign to have pirates being hunted down unmerciful, by all means do so. If your issue is how can pirates survive in the face of the other factions of the Pact Worlds, there are many explanations available.
Oh I have no doubt that they would be pirates in the Pact Worlds system. It just seemed odd to me that none of the factions within said system seem to muster the resources just to track the base down. Also the asteroid is by no means small it's over 450 miles wide which I believe makes it near the size of Ceres.
When I talked about the Citadel ships I meant the Hell Knights were able to afford and man these ships they should have had the resources needed to take down a base of pirates.
I guess I will just resort to headcanon. The asteroid base is "officially" a freeport that "totally" doesn't provide a stopping off point for pirates. In reality the true base of the free captains it's somewhere drifting in the drift always constantly on the move which makes it near impossible to find as whenever groups like the Hell Knights or Stewards get intel on the whereabouts of the base it would already be long gone.
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zezia wrote: I have been reading the Pact Worlds book and it came to attention that the Free Captains have their headquarters based in the Pact Worlds system which is home to various factions that would like to see them dead. Their headquarters know as the Broken Rock is a 450-mile-wide asteroid (similar to Ceres) so it's not exactly hard to notice. The only explanation as to why this asteroid has not been atomized is:
To keep law-enforcement organizations such
as the Hellknights and the Stewards off these ne’er-do-wells’
backs, only Free Captains and those they vouch for know the
exact location of Broken Rock. In the event of an attack, an
array of automated capital laser weapons known collectively
as the Broadsides defends the asteroid.
Pact Worlds pg 82
You would think factions like AbadarCorp, Stewards, Hellknights, Knights of Golorion, and the various militaries of the Pact Worlds would have the resources to track down this one base that has been used for centuries.
Because Paizo thought it would be cool to have pirates in the home system.
With drift drives, there really isn't a reason to have your pirate base in a populated system.
zezia wrote: Brother Willi wrote: The Vesk and the Swarm are existential threats to the Pact Worlds. The Free Captains are not.
Sending Citadel Ships to hunt down a small asteroid in the Diaspora is a terrible waste of resources, and potentially makes them vulnerable to other opponents.
If you want to set up your campaign to have pirates being hunted down unmerciful, by all means do so. If your issue is how can pirates survive in the face of the other factions of the Pact Worlds, there are many explanations available.
Oh I have no doubt that they would be pirates in the Pact Worlds system. It just seemed odd to me that none of the factions within said system seem to muster the resources just to track the base down. Also the asteroid is by no means small it's over 450 miles wide which I believe makes it near the size of Ceres.
When I talked about the Citadel ships I meant the Hell Knights were able to afford and man these ships they should have had the resources needed to take down a base of pirates.
I guess I will just resort to headcanon. The asteroid base is "officially" a freeport that "totally" doesn't provide a stopping off point for pirates. In reality the true base of the free captains it's somewhere drifting in the drift always constantly on the move which makes it near impossible to find as whenever groups like the Hell Knights or Stewards get intel on the whereabouts of the base it would already be long gone. As a couple others have said, it's entirely possible that they have tracked the base down, lost some ships to it's defenses, then found it abandoned, because it's pretty damn hard to mount an attack totally by surprise, and drift engines are really good at getting away with a few minutes notice.
Then the pirates made a new base, in a new asteroid, called it broken rock and pretended the authorities never found the 'real' one in the first place.
Edit:
johnlicke90 wrote: With drift drives, there really isn't a reason to have your pirate base in a populated system. Then there's this, Broken rock might also be in another system entirely, and the whole story is a setup to send the authorities on a wild goose chase.
Garretmander wrote: zezia wrote: Brother Willi wrote: The Vesk and the Swarm are existential threats to the Pact Worlds. The Free Captains are not.
Sending Citadel Ships to hunt down a small asteroid in the Diaspora is a terrible waste of resources, and potentially makes them vulnerable to other opponents.
If you want to set up your campaign to have pirates being hunted down unmerciful, by all means do so. If your issue is how can pirates survive in the face of the other factions of the Pact Worlds, there are many explanations available.
Oh I have no doubt that they would be pirates in the Pact Worlds system. It just seemed odd to me that none of the factions within said system seem to muster the resources just to track the base down. Also the asteroid is by no means small it's over 450 miles wide which I believe makes it near the size of Ceres.
When I talked about the Citadel ships I meant the Hell Knights were able to afford and man these ships they should have had the resources needed to take down a base of pirates.
I guess I will just resort to headcanon. The asteroid base is "officially" a freeport that "totally" doesn't provide a stopping off point for pirates. In reality the true base of the free captains it's somewhere drifting in the drift always constantly on the move which makes it near impossible to find as whenever groups like the Hell Knights or Stewards get intel on the whereabouts of the base it would already be long gone. As a couple others have said, it's entirely possible that they have tracked the base down, lost some ships to it's defenses, then found it abandoned, because it's pretty damn hard to mount an attack totally by surprise, and drift engines are really good at getting away with a few minutes notice.
Then the pirates made a new base, in a new asteroid, called it broken rock and pretended the authorities never found the 'real' one in the first place. Doesn't seem that way. In the Pact Worlds book it states that the Free Captains headquarters has been inhabited by said group for centuries. Also it never states that any faction had found the location of the base.
johnlocke90 wrote:
With drift drives, there really isn't a reason to have your pirate base in a populated system.
Since drift travel pops in at absolom station, if you're drift traveling in you're putting your ship in range of their cannons, and if your ship got caught raiding last week they're probably going to use them.
So you have to stay using local travel, you can drift out, but then coming back becomes problematic. MUCH better to stay using local traffic.
zezia wrote: Doesn't seem that way. In the Pact Worlds book it states that the Free Captains headquarters has been inhabited by said group for centuries. Also it never states that any faction had found the location of the base. And they wouldn't have if the base being the original one was a lie, hidden in another system, or simply hidden with good enough magic, possibly in the shadow plane, etc., etc.
It's not going to be a spaceport sitting on an asteroid with a big neon sign saying 'here be pirates' after all.
BigNorseWolf wrote: johnlocke90 wrote:
With drift drives, there really isn't a reason to have your pirate base in a populated system.
Since drift travel pops in at absolom station, if you're drift traveling in you're putting your ship in range of their cannons, and if your ship got caught raiding last week they're probably going to use them.
So you have to stay using local travel, you can drift out, but then coming back becomes problematic. MUCH better to stay using local traffic. Is there a hard rule you can't drift into other parts of Golarian's solar system?
You should be able to do it as long as there are other drift beacons, which pirates could set up.
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Master Han Del of the Web wrote: In all honesty, it is likely a mix of organized pirates being far more preferable to disorganized ones, and those with wealth and power not caring enough to root them out so long as their interests in the area are protected. Remember, an organized group is something you can deal and negotiate with. That wouldn't stop Hellknights.
Xenocrat wrote: It must be really frustrating to spend half a day reducing the defenses of Broken Rock to rubble, losing several ships in the process, and sending in the landing forces only to discover all the remaining gunners had piled into a few shielded ships and escaped into the drift or crammed into some null space chambers and teleported away to leave an empty husk.
One can safely assume, of course, that everyone but the stay behind gunners escaped via regular ships fleeing into the drift as soon as strong enough forces approached.
It still means that pirates lose one of their only safe ports which severly limits their ability to maintain their ships and sell their loot.
Also, when it is so easy to escape through the drift then piracy becomes impossible.
zezia wrote:
I guess I will just resort to headcanon. The asteroid base is "officially" a freeport that "totally" doesn't provide a stopping off point for pirates. In reality the true base of the free captains it's somewhere drifting in the drift always constantly on the move which makes it near impossible to find as whenever groups like the Hell Knights or Stewards get intel on the whereabouts of the base it would already be long gone.
And how do the free captains find their base?
No matter how well you hide it. One defector or captive and the liberal use of Mind Probe will reveal its location. Even Speak with Dead can give you enough information so that you at least know where to look
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Well, if the Free Captains are smart, and one would think that to survive this long against so many enemies, they must be... then Broken Rock may be a home port, but maybe only for temporary use. If you want to keep your home from being blasted, perhaps Broken Rock isn't a secret, but also home to a large civilian "non-pirate" population. In other words, perhaps they hide in "plain sight." Any attempt to 'atomize' Broken Rock would result in a cry of injustice the likes the Pact Worlds would have never seen in their lifetime (with so many civilian deaths for so few pirates).
I would also point out that the term "headquarters" is a rather loose definition for the Free Captains. After all, if each captain rules his own ship, it more like a confederacy (each 'ruler' having his/her own voice rather than a centralized governing body). Destroy the 'headquarters' and you won't really harm the powerbase since each captain is his/her own ruler anyway. You'd only eliminate one source of resources.
Worse, there's no guarantee of taking out the pirates since they mostly 'live' on their ships and only return to Broken Rock for supplies and the occasional meeting. And worse, Broken Rock is not the only port that does favorable trade with the Free Captains. So you'd have an uprising from several other locations still yet to be determined.
On top of that, the Vesk would not obliterate a civilian population no matter how many pirates they could eliminate. That wouldn't be honorable. And the Stewards, well, like the UN peacekeeping forces, they do condemn piracy, and they probably help fight piracy in specific locations (just like UN Resolution 2442), but to eliminate piracy completely is not within the scope of their power to do so (they don't have that many Stewards or resources at their disposal with everything else they do).
So as you can see, there's lots of reasons why Broken Rock still exists even if it is well-known.
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Or there's the old GM special:
"Huh. It IS odd that no one's taken out the Free Captains yet, don't you think? Maybe there's something more to it... *wink/nudge*"
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Ixal wrote: Master Han Del of the Web wrote: In all honesty, it is likely a mix of organized pirates being far more preferable to disorganized ones, and those with wealth and power not caring enough to root them out so long as their interests in the area are protected. Remember, an organized group is something you can deal and negotiate with. That wouldn't stop Hellknights. That's a fun way to argue! Let me try!
That wouldn't stop the Free Captains!
johnlocke90 wrote: BigNorseWolf wrote: johnlocke90 wrote:
With drift drives, there really isn't a reason to have your pirate base in a populated system.
Since drift travel pops in at absolom station, if you're drift traveling in you're putting your ship in range of their cannons, and if your ship got caught raiding last week they're probably going to use them.
So you have to stay using local travel, you can drift out, but then coming back becomes problematic. MUCH better to stay using local traffic. Is there a hard rule you can't drift into other parts of Golarian's solar system?
You should be able to do it as long as there are other drift beacons, which pirates could set up. All of the Pact Worlds is near space, Absalom is just a specific option to go faster.
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Master Han Del of the Web wrote:
That's a fun way to argue! Let me try!
That wouldn't stop the Free Captains!
Do you have a point? Guess not. Not surprising really...
The Hellknights don't negotiate with pirates anyway and are fanatically devoted to order. They would certainly blow up the base, no matter if it kills civilians or not.
There is no logical reason why Broken Rock has not been destroyed, invaded or at least blockaded besides "Paizo wants pirates, so here they are".
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Ixal wrote: Do you have a point? Guess not. Not surprising really...
The Hellknights don't negotiate with pirates anyway and are fanatically devoted to order. They would certainly blow up the base, no matter if it kills civilians or not.
There is no logical reason why Broken Rock has not been destroyed, invaded or at least blockaded besides "Paizo wants pirates, so here they are".
I was more commenting on how dismissive you were to my points without doing one of these boards' customary painful breakdowns. Your response seemed to be 'because Hellknights' but okay, time to give you enough points to make a knife collector happy.
-The Free Captains are a stabilizing force in the Diaspora and happy to let you go on your way as long as you pay them protection money while killing off less business-minded raiders. Digging out the Free Captains means destabilizing the region and puts the occupying force in direct responsibility for everything that happens next. (See the Afgan and Iraq wars)
-The Diaspora is a crowded rats' nest of potential dangers.
-Digging out the Free Captains is a dangerous and likely embarrassing task that represents a massive sink of resources and mounting casualties. (See Vietnam)
-They, ultimately, are not a big threat and mostly stay confined to the Diaspora.
-This isn't WH40k. No one can punch outward at all threats, both physical and ideological, at all times. The Hellknights do have to manage their resouces and keep forces in reserve for actual existential threats. Just because an organization holds to the rule of law above all else does not mean they are going to pursue that ideology to their ruin. We are past the age of Lawful-stupid.
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Ixal wrote: Master Han Del of the Web wrote:
That's a fun way to argue! Let me try!
That wouldn't stop the Free Captains!
Do you have a point? Guess not. Not surprising really...
The Hellknights don't negotiate with pirates anyway and are fanatically devoted to order. They would certainly blow up the base, no matter if it kills civilians or not.
There is no logical reason why Broken Rock has not been destroyed, invaded or at least blockaded besides "Paizo wants pirates, so here they are". pg. 156 of the Pact Worlds book states "to many Pact Worlds governments, the mere existence of [Hellknight Citadels] is a dangerous provocation." I'd read this that the Pact Worlds don't just sit idly by while the Hellknights use their massive death ships in Pact space.
There's also pg. 81 which states "the majority of [Hellknight] concerns keep them in the more civilised corners of the Pact Worlds" and a couple of pages later where they explain how one of the members of the Pirate Council is trained as a Hellknight, so you can easily infer that she knows how to keep them off the scent.
The book also states that Hellknights operate almost exclusively in small groups and it requires a supreme order of some kind to even be able to bring a Citadel to bear.
That isn't to say Broken Rock being completely hidden necessarily makes sense, it's a very large settlement to have never been discovered, but in my mind the lofical answer is that everyone is too busy and the Free Captains don't cause enough trouble to justify doing much about it. The Pact Worlds agreement only applies against extrasolar threats so they won't put up a united front against the Free Captains, most of the megacorps are happy to just pay protection fees (stated in Pact Worlds) and most independent organisations are too busy dealing with bigger problems and/or each other to merit a full-scale assault. It's even stated that the Iomadaen church and their fleets have a very tense relationship with the Hellknights and their ships have fought each other at times. I don't think the church of mercy would be okay with the slaughter of thousands of innocent lives.
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I'm curious, what makes you think Hellknights or the Knights of Golarion (or both together) have the manpower to scrub the system clean, let alone the firepower ?
We have no numbers that I know of, and I can guarantee neither of those are popular everywhere and with every government. Vigilante justice, or the occasional bounty hunting, tend to be frowned upon by legitimate authorities.
And you do not deploy massive armies in-system without their express agreement.
For that matter, most orders of Hellknights have more pressing matters than pirate hunting. The Gate, Pike, Nail and Pyre have business elsewhere. Who knows what Furnace and Eclipse's deals are.
The Scourge and the Chain are the only obvious ones.
On the other hand, Pirates need allies, because stealing stuff only gets you so far if you can't sell it. And there are many, in the system alone, who wouldn't mind supporting them as one does a business partner, including a few with actual Pact World member status - something neither Knights have.
Besides, when would such a tremendously large scale operation have taken place ?
We have roughly 3 centuries post Gap. First few years/decades have to be people coming to terms with it and relearning hown to live normally. Then the Silent War takes up 255 of those years. Then the swarm incursion.
And that's without taking other more specific events into account : there's been a system wide plague, two alien races appearing seeking refuge, the android rights struggles, the Lashunta-Formian war went on right until 30 years ago, the forever dangerous Corpse Fleet, vicious "frictions" between established Pact World nations (Sovyrian vs Apostae), the entire world of Akiton basically becoming bankrupt following the sudden and unexpected obsolence of thasteron, and the first, ever so unfriendly contact with the Azlantis ... To name a few.
The less than 30 years since the Swarm is about the only moment when the world isn't on fire and going after highwaymen can be a reasonable use of such major resources.
And dealing with piracy isn't easy.
The Rock itself is more a matter of convenience than a strict necessity. Blowing it up might annoy the Captains and slow them a bit, but only for a time.
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Master Han Del of the Web wrote:
I was more commenting on how dismissive you were to my points without doing one of these boards' customary painful breakdowns. Your response seemed to be 'because Hellknights' but okay, time to give you enough points to make a knife collector happy.
-The Free Captains are a stabilizing force in the Diaspora and happy to let you go on your way as long as you pay them protection money while killing off less business-minded raiders. Digging out the Free Captains means destabilizing the region and puts the occupying force in direct responsibility for everything that happens next. (See the Afgan and Iraq wars)
-The Diaspora is a crowded rats' nest of potential dangers.
-Digging out the Free Captains is a dangerous and likely embarrassing task that represents a massive sink of resources and mounting casualties. (See Vietnam)
-They, ultimately, are not a big threat and mostly stay confined to the Diaspora.
-This isn't WH40k. No one can punch outward at all threats, both physical and ideological, at all times. The Hellknights do have to manage their resouces and keep forces in reserve for actual existential threats. Just because an organization holds to the rule of law above all else does not mean they are going to pursue that ideology to their ruin. We are past the age of Lawful-stupid.
You are imagining things.
1. There is 0 indication that the Free Captains are stabilizing anything
2. In a head on confrontation they are no match for national navys or private military groups like the hellknights.
3. They can't stay in the Diaspora as there isn't much to pirate there
4. And because there are so many threats around the Pact Worlds and other organizations (should) have a fairly large standing fleet. Yet during peace time leaving the fleet sitting around would be wasteful. Pirate hunting is one of the things you can keep the fleet occupied with.
Pirates as presented in various Paizo products make 0 sense. Historically pirates survived in two ways. Either have the backing of a government, making retaliation impossible without declaring war or by hiding within a civilian population which results in the same situation as point 1.
Having a independent pirate base robs them of their only defense, as it gives the military a clear target no one cares about.
Also, without contact to normal society the pirates can't sell any cargo they capture. Who should buy it? So they need to take care of it themselves which makes it very likely that they are found out and then blown up.
In the same vain, who would supply the pirates with all the stuff they need? Starting with basic things like food up to high tech equipment for their spaceships. You, normally, need quite a large industrial base to manufacture such equipment which a single pirate port won't have. And when they need from buy on the grey or black market with a hefty markup and increased risk of being found. But the economy is screwed up bug time in Starfinder anyway.
And there is the problem that piracy in Starfinder would be pretty hard to do. Because of how the drift works you do not have stable trade routes, so the pirates can't interdict ships there with a reasonable chance of success. And attacking ships coming out of the drift, or going into it would put them too close to planets and they would get shot down.
So the only thing they could even prey upon are low tech freighters without a drift engine. Not the most profitable undertaking, especially considering how large space is and how limited sensors are.
And with that money they should maintain combat ready ships and a whole station?
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Plot hooks.
The phrase y’all are looking for is “plot hooks”.
Ixal wrote: Master Han Del of the Web wrote: In all honesty, it is likely a mix of organized pirates being far more preferable to disorganized ones, and those with wealth and power not caring enough to root them out so long as their interests in the area are protected. Remember, an organized group is something you can deal and negotiate with. That wouldn't stop Hellknights.
Xenocrat wrote: It must be really frustrating to spend half a day reducing the defenses of Broken Rock to rubble, losing several ships in the process, and sending in the landing forces only to discover all the remaining gunners had piled into a few shielded ships and escaped into the drift or crammed into some null space chambers and teleported away to leave an empty husk.
One can safely assume, of course, that everyone but the stay behind gunners escaped via regular ships fleeing into the drift as soon as strong enough forces approached.
It still means that pirates lose one of their only safe ports which severly limits their ability to maintain their ships and sell their loot.
Also, when it is so easy to escape through the drift then piracy becomes impossible.
zezia wrote:
I guess I will just resort to headcanon. The asteroid base is "officially" a freeport that "totally" doesn't provide a stopping off point for pirates. In reality the true base of the free captains it's somewhere drifting in the drift always constantly on the move which makes it near impossible to find as whenever groups like the Hell Knights or Stewards get intel on the whereabouts of the base it would already be long gone.
And how do the free captains find their base?
No matter how well you hide it. One defector or captive and the liberal use of Mind Probe will reveal its location. Even Speak with Dead can give you enough information so that you at least know where to look That's why I said the base would constantly be on the move so that even if a defector or captive gave the current location it would be useless in a matter of days if not hours. Though that doesn't change fact that if the base was infiltrated by a spy who could just leak the information. Perhaps through some unknown means (gotta have some mystery) can be trusted Free Captains would be able to find the base. Something akin to Alluvion.
While starship crews occasionally wander through the Drift
looking for valuable scrap or hidden treasures, trying to
locate a particular location within the Drift, such as a known
site, is exceptionally difficult, requiring a successful DC 30
(or higher) Piloting check. Most Pact Worlds residents know
how tricky it is to return to the same place again and again,
though stories exist of exceptions that result from magic
items, divine fiat, or mysterious “beacon codes” provided by
the Church of Triune. This is especially true of Alluvion, the
Drift’s de facto capital city, which Triune has publicly claimed
as its divine realm. Travelers can accidentally end up in the
city during the course of their regular jumps, but reaching the
city on purpose requires divine coordinate codes granted by
the church, often encoded on limited-use items that interface
directly with a ship’s Drift engine systems
Dead Suns - 4 - The Ruined Cloud Pg 47
zezia wrote:
That's why I said the base would constantly be on the move so that even if a defector or captive gave the current location it would be useless in a matter of days if not hours. Though that doesn't change fact that if the base was infiltrated by a spy who could just leak the information. Perhaps through some unknown means (gotta have some mystery) can be trusted Free Captains would be able to find the base. Something akin to Alluvion.
While starship crews occasionally wander through the Drift
looking for valuable scrap or hidden treasures, trying to
locate a particular location within the Drift, such as a known
site, is exceptionally difficult, requiring a successful DC 30
(or higher) Piloting check. Most Pact Worlds residents know
how tricky it is to return to the same place again and again,
though stories exist of exceptions that result from magic
items, divine fiat, or mysterious “beacon codes” provided by
the Church of Triune. This is especially true of Alluvion, the
Drift’s de facto capital city, which Triune has publicly claimed
as its divine realm. Travelers can accidentally end up in the
city during the course of their regular jumps, but reaching the
city on purpose requires divine coordinate codes granted by
the church, often encoded on limited-use items that interface
directly with a ship’s Drift engine systems
Dead Suns - 4 - The Ruined Cloud Pg 47
And how do the captains find the base themselves? For the base to have any worth the captains must have information how to get there and that information can be extracted. And if one thing is sure to draw attention then it is a irregularly moving asteroid/small planetoid.
Even when the captains do not know the precise location of the base and just fly to a location, transmit a signal and let the autopilot take them there with no record where they were going, it still would give enough of a hint where to search for the base to be found quickly.
Ixal wrote: zezia wrote:
That's why I said the base would constantly be on the move so that even if a defector or captive gave the current location it would be useless in a matter of days if not hours. Though that doesn't change fact that if the base was infiltrated by a spy who could just leak the information. Perhaps through some unknown means (gotta have some mystery) can be trusted Free Captains would be able to find the base. Something akin to Alluvion.
While starship crews occasionally wander through the Drift
looking for valuable scrap or hidden treasures, trying to
locate a particular location within the Drift, such as a known
site, is exceptionally difficult, requiring a successful DC 30
(or higher) Piloting check. Most Pact Worlds residents know
how tricky it is to return to the same place again and again,
though stories exist of exceptions that result from magic
items, divine fiat, or mysterious “beacon codes” provided by
the Church of Triune. This is especially true of Alluvion, the
Drift’s de facto capital city, which Triune has publicly claimed
as its divine realm. Travelers can accidentally end up in the
city during the course of their regular jumps, but reaching the
city on purpose requires divine coordinate codes granted by
the church, often encoded on limited-use items that interface
directly with a ship’s Drift engine systems
Dead Suns - 4 - The Ruined Cloud Pg 47
And how do the captains find the base themselves? For the base to have any worth the captains must have information how to get there and that information can be extracted. And if one thing is sure to draw attention then it is a irregularly moving asteroid/small planetoid.
Even when the captains do not know the precise location of the base and just fly to a location, transmit a signal and let the autopilot take them there with no record where they were going, it still would give enough of a hint where to search for the base to be found quickly. That's why I mention that through unknown means only Free Captains can find their way to the base in the Drift.
Perhaps through some form of magitech implant that is exclusive to a Free Captain allows the safe navigation to the base. So whenever someone tries to access the implant it self-destructs. Also, while an irregularly moving asteroid/small planetoid would attract attention in the Material Plane it would not in the Drift as it stated that "trying to locate a particular location within the Drift, such as a known site, is exceptionally difficult". Remember this version of Broken Rock is constantly on the move.
I am not trying to come up with an idea that is completely foolproof and has no plot holes because at the end of the day Starfinder is still Science Fanasty. I am just trying to come up with alternate ideas that preserve the setting and being able to withstand scrutiny for more than a few seconds.
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I dunno, the general reasoning of "Due to the current stellar-political climate and activity of other more existential threats, the amount of hardware and manpower needed/would be lost dispersing a bunch of pirates is not worth it compared to largely tolerating the current state of affairs where they just rob/racketeer a bunch of merchant ships" fits fine as far as I can see.
There's a whole host of bigger threats than some pirate yokels lurking around and the various heavy hitters either have to deal with those or can't afford to gut their fleets clearing some relative small frys preying on shipping due to opportunistic "allies" or those same threats.
Tarik Blackhands wrote: I dunno, the general reasoning of "Due to the current stellar-political climate and activity of other more existential threats, the amount of hardware and manpower needed/would be lost dispersing a bunch of pirates is not worth it compared to largely tolerating the current state of affairs where they just rob/racketeer a bunch of merchant ships" fits fine as far as I can see.
There's a whole host of bigger threats than some pirate yokels lurking around and the various heavy hitters either have to deal with those or can't afford to gut their fleets clearing some relative small frys preying on shipping due to opportunistic "allies" or those same threats.
That would be fine for the moment, but this has been going on for 200 years.
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Tarik Blackhands wrote: I dunno, the general reasoning of "Due to the current stellar-political climate and activity of other more existential threats, the amount of hardware and manpower needed/would be lost dispersing a bunch of pirates is not worth it compared to largely tolerating the current state of affairs where they just rob/racketeer a bunch of merchant ships" fits fine as far as I can see.
There's a whole host of bigger threats than some pirate yokels lurking around and the various heavy hitters either have to deal with those or can't afford to gut their fleets clearing some relative small frys preying on shipping due to opportunistic "allies" or those same threats.
I don't know. The fact that the Free Captains has maintained its headquarters in the same location for centuries does not speak well for the Pact Worlds or groups like the Stewards or Hellknights. I'm not opposed to the existence of the Free Captains the real issue that I have is that somehow their main base had gone unnoticed for literal centuries breaks my suspension of disbelief.
Edit: If I were in charge during the war with the Vesk I would not want this group of pirates in my backyard attacking my trade routes. What if the Vesk were to supply them with weapons or pay them to increase their attacks on supply lines. They would be too much of a security threat.
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If the free captains weren't doing the raiding chances are pretty good an even worse group would move in
BigNorseWolf wrote: If the free captains weren't doing the raiding chances are pretty good an even worse group would move in
Which worse group has taken over once Nassau in the Caribbean came back under British control and the pirates were hunted down?
Or when the European nations finally bombarded and later invaded the Barbary Coast to stop piracy?
Those groups didn’t have magic science teleporting spaceships and nukes.
Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote: Those groups didn’t have magic science teleporting spaceships and nukes. Everyone in Starfinder has teleporting spaceships and nukes. Thats another can of worms with the world building in SF.
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Rohne wrote:
On top of that, the Vesk would not obliterate a civilian population no matter how many pirates they could eliminate. That wouldn't be honorable. And the Stewards, well, like the UN peacekeeping forces, they do condemn piracy, and they probably help fight piracy in specific locations (just like UN Resolution 2442), but to eliminate piracy completely is not within the scope of their power to do so (they don't have that many Stewards or resources at their disposal with everything else they do).
So as you can see, there's lots of reasons why Broken Rock still exists even if it is well-known.
The Vesk have conducted Genocide at least twice and some of commanders are more than willing to kill civilians. After all whats honorable is debatable.
The Stewards deal harshly with the most bloodthirsty Pirates according to sourcebooks as an example for others, this might mean that they accept some piracy given that its not cruel or overly violent. They probably do have resources and power for it though. They have huge net of allies that could aid them in attacking the Pirates. It might thus be that they allow the existance of it because they can monitor and survey it as well gather all the scum of the galaxy in one place.
But it does not make sense that KoG, Hellknights, Stewards and others know the location yet don't blow it to hell/heaven. I always playes it as them NOT knowing where it is. Or that HQ is like a town of ships that move every now and then.
Ixal wrote:
Which worse group has taken over once Nassau in the Caribbean came back under British control and the pirates were hunted down?
Or when the European nations finally bombarded and later invaded the Barbary Coast to stop piracy?
The Brittish and Europe, respectively.
Just a different form of piracy.
But that is a debate for another forum.
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I don't know if it's been mentioned or not but one thing to consider is that the Diaspora is significantly bigger than our solar system's Asteroid Belt. If one were to add up all the material in the Asteroid Belt it would be about equal to 2% of the Earth's mass.
The Diaspora, on the other hand, is made up of the material of two whole planets. We don't know how big Damiar & Iovo were - the impression I always had was that they were in the Castrovel/Golarion/Verces/Eox/Triaxus range but I can't find anything to back that up. If there has been a definite answer on this, please correct me.
But even if they were comparable to Akiton or even Aballon, you're still looking at five to ten times the material, minimum. So it's a bit more plausible that there's enough material out there to make hiding in the Diaspora plausible enough when all the other factors are taken into consideration.
zezia wrote: Brother Willi wrote: I guess I will just resort to headcanon. The asteroid base is "officially" a freeport that "totally" doesn't provide a stopping off point for pirates. In reality the true base of the free captains it's somewhere drifting in the drift always constantly on the move which makes it near impossible to find as whenever groups like the Hell Knights or Stewards get intel on the whereabouts of the base it would already be long gone. I think this is a great way to make it work for your campaign.
I was also thinking that an asteroid of the size described would be really, really easy to hide in the diaspora. I imagine the Free Captains would probably put some time in to create fakes as well, so that there were always a number of potential "Broken Rocks" for well-armed factions to go after.
Is anyone else kind of interested in a mix-up between the Hellknights and the Free Captains as part of an AP now?
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