Corsairs (Freelancer)

The Corsairs is a fictional criminal organization from the Digital Anvil/Microsoft game "Freelancer".

Overview

During the Exodus, the sleeper ship Hispania was damaged, though whether it was battle damage or sabotage, remains a mystery. It limped to the Sirius Sector, but eventually gave out in the mysterious Edge Nebula. Roughly half of the colonists decided to abandon thair failing vessel, and launched from the ship into the star system now known as Omicron Gamma, where they colonized the small habitable world of Crete. Their descendants would eventually evolve into the largest criminal organization, and would eventually become the biggest enemies of their "brothers" the Outcasts, who control a vast drug empire spanning the entire colony.

The Corsairs were at first relatively poor compared to their drug running brothers. The location of their homeworld Crete near a Red dwarf star is fairly barren, and has little arable land suitable for farming. They were forced to build their cities in the mountain regions, so that the little usable land would remain free from urban development. This is the root cause of the Corsairs greatest problem, famine, which claimed the lives of many early colonists. They first became aware of other humans when they discovered the Zoners, a neutral group of traders, who did not care who they sold their goods to or where their money came from. This allowed the Corsairs to get the supplies for their blooming empire, which was rapidly expanding along the independent worlds, and had begun to emerge into the Bretonian House.

However, the source of their new found wealth came from a new trade that had blossomed around Sirius' higher class, which was the trade of alien artifacts from the now vanished "Dom Kavash" civilization. The Corsairs have a special ritual, which involves a boy on the verge of becoming a man, to fly into a mysterious jump hole on the edge of the system, and retrieve an artifact from the system's inhabitants, which were "not human." It wasn't until contact was firmly established with the houses that the worth of these strange objects was realized, and the Corsairs began to make a large profit from their rite of passage.

Since this, the Corsairs have vastly expanded their influence, and now have large, permanent bases throughout Sirius, though they are most strongly concentrated along the lower edge of Sirius. The Corsairs also have gone on to become one of the best ship builders, using the large deposits of metal found in their native system to build some of the best ships in the sector, including their pride and joy, the Titan very heavy fighter.

The Corsairs are one of the most honorable groups and are currently involved in several major battles between the Outcasts, the Red Hessians, and the Bounty Hunters Guild, who occasionally manage to penetrate the Corsairs Home system, though these incursions usually don't last long. However, they have yet to put their greatest plan into action, which is to take over the House of Rheinland, in a daring invasion, using their influence in its neighboring systems as a first step.

They have already begun to gather forces near Rheinland Jump holes, but only time will tell if they can overcome one of the best navies in the entire Sector.