Marauders

Marauders are armed nomadic salvage societies. Their ships carry their workshops, their stores and their people from one vulnerable system to the next. A successful clan steals enough to repair its fleet and move on. A powerful warlord turns that into a campaign of extortion and conquest.

They are not a playable empire, and they are not pirates scattered at random. They are a power of their own, with their own ships, their own strongholds and their own way of war. Where the clans came from, and who leads them: Clans, Contracts and Free Worlds.

Built from what they take

Marauders have their own shipbuilding tradition. Captured reactors, armour and guns are rebuilt into recognisably Marauder hulls: thick structural frames carrying slabs of dark iron and dull, oxidised bronze, broad plates in clan colours, oversized gun mouths and rectangular exhaust banks burning amber behind heavy armoured collars. Their big ships feel like mobile fortified scrapyards; their small ones like compact industrial attack craft.

Approach, strike, take, withdraw

A Marauder attack comes fast and hits hard. They concentrate everything on the first blow, take what they came for and leave before a supported navy can answer. Isolated ships, harvesters, freighters and undefended stations are their favourite prey. Heavy Marauder hulls are terrifying from the front and slow to turn: flank them.

The warbands

• Cutthroat: pursuit raider, rapid guns around a forward gun recess.
• Wardog: squat escort with wide weapon shelves, built to shoot down missiles.
• Howler: swept crescent of sensors and jammers that blinds the enemy.
• Reaver: the core gun raider, a wide cleaver head on a short, thick body.
• Impaler: two torpedo prongs around a deep slot, made to kill big ships.
• Ravager: an armoured central fortress between two low gun hulls.
• Brood Carrier: a frame around a long flight trench, launching Fang fighters and Maul bombers.
• Warlord's Bastion: the horde flagship. A broad armoured crown with a central keep and two forward gun bastions.

Every unclaimed world is guarded by them. Somewhere on the map, a Marauder stronghold waits behind its defensive platforms.

"Marauder warbands raid, scavenge and move on. When a warlord rises, the clans gather into a horde."