Players’ Information:
The players are in a tough spot, down on their luck and down to their last credit and living hand to mouth in the local Startown. A local pirate gang has been making the news for their brazen and brutal nature. Several ships in local space and in the surrounding systems have been shot to pieces, their crews tortured and spaced by the “Main Rouge Sang” (ancient Solomani French, for the Red Bloody Hand, an ideogram of which is also left behind in the aftermath of the raids.
The local navy is powerless, as the world is off the beaten path of the spacelanes and the local officials have been screaming for help to the central government, albeit to no avail as the last two jump couriers never made it past the pirates. In short, things are beginning to get tense on-world as the world is a net food importer and the government is beginning to mention things like “crisis” and “rationing”. The government has put a bounty on every pirate, dead or alive, but there has been few takers.
The players should be in a Startown bar, nursing their last drinks for a while, when in strides Jak Pagonis (or whatever name suits your campaign). Jak by reputation is a “man’s man”, a decorated hero of the last war who was forced out of the central government’s navy because of politics, or so the story goes. He has taken down pirates across the subsector, and has done it in style. He and the 4 man crew of his converted Scout ship have prices on their heads from half a dozen pirate bands throughout the subsector. They dress and look the part of “bad guys doing good things that need doing”.
Pagonis will get everyone’s attention, loudly. He will say that he knows where the pirates are, and he knows they have more than one ship, but he’s ready to lead a force of his fellow spacers to do what the local navy can’t or won’t do. So, who’s with him?