The Dreadfleet refers to the combined forces of multiple loosely aligned pirate groups of mostly goblinoids and species banding together under the ruthless Dreadlord Vex Totem. The dreadfleets each sail the ink of the Vandal Subsector under the various pirate lords of the Dreadfleet.

Their capital is the lawless pirate-controlled system of Journeys End where the only safety guaranteed is for those with the quickest draw or with a silver tongue and a generous wallet.

Nation Info
Motto	“Ahoy!”
Home System	Journeys End
Capital	Lv-212“
Species	Goblinoid
Government	Pirate lords
Strengths	Massive fleet and manpower force, Strong and fortified territory .
Weaknesses	Poor coordination/cooperation between pirate groups, Constant betrayl and plays for power among the various pirate groups.

The Dreadfleet, while only recently being called such, has been around for centuries but has never been so aligned as it has now. The lawless corner of the Vandal Subsector has always held tens if not hundreds of raider, pirate, and bandit groups all seeking to control the space in the subsector leading into both Hadals Chasm and also through the Summer Gate into the Tahlulah Subsector.

These groups more recently however have been brought to heel by the most powerful and notorious captain among them; The dreadlord Vex Totem, A ruthless and cunning captain with the greatest leadership skills and deepest charisma ever found among the backstabbing masses.

Vex, with his mighty Dreadfleet forced all the other notorious and powerful captains to parlay at the renegade moon of Lv-212 to sue for terms and peace after crippling many of them. And then seized control of what would become the Dreadfleet Territories and elevated his own trusted lieutenants over them as the new dreadlords alongside him.

The Dreadfleet was broken up among these captains with Vex holding the largest and most powerful ships to keep them under heel, but eventually, the power balance shifted and his own trusted lieutenants; Now his near equals, have devolved into the same backstabbing and conniving as all pirates are known for, with only the loosest loyalty to Vex and his ideals.

The Dreadfleet consists of tens of millions of men, women, and everything in between. While the fleets themselves are only the defacto military force, the territories themselves contain the majority of themselves spread across stations, and the moons of Journies End where most work as labor to support the fleets.

These people are by no means slaves, however. As by either circumstance, a desire for power by joining the fleets, being born there, or the most common denominator of captured ships having their crews unloaded in the Dreadfleet territories by the new pirate owners of their ships.

The majority population of the Dreadfleet are goblinoids, but a large minority consists of many races ranging from ratmen to humans living, working, or stranded in their territories.

Example of a small pirate crew; Three goblins, two Hobgoblins, and one Orc

The average attire and wear in the dreadfleet are a mix of leathers such as duster-style jackets, leather boots, and tricorn hats. Fabrics such as cotton or nylong shirts. And armors such as hardsuits or bodyarmor.

The actual fashion is reminiscent of older-pirate aesthetics. Tattoos, earrings or studs, and jewelry are very popular.

While most clothing is either unisex or similar enough between the genders there are some differences.

Men in the dreadfleet often favor tricorn hats, some kind of facial hair such as beards, goatees, or simply stubble, and when affordable wear duster-style longcoats which help to conceal weaponry. Weapons or items not concealed are often held on large and sturdy leather belts that either cross/criss-cross the chest or sit on the waist.

Ankle-length leather boots or well-worn leather gloves are common.

Men in the dreadfleet when not dressed as such may also favor hardsuits if parts of boarding crews, or rudimentary body armor (often looted or poorly repaired).

Female attire in the dreadfleet is not overly different from the males. Leathers and tricorns are just as in fasion but are often more intricate or expensive; Sporting trimming or embroidery. Knee-length leather boots or elbow-length leather gloves are in high demand among those who can afford them and colored sashes on either the arms, waist, thighs, or wrists are popular among females.

Jewlery such as earing studs or hoops, piercings, anklets or bracelets, or necklaces are highly popular among female pirates even more so than most female stereotypes where it is not uncommon to find a goblinette wearing nearly her weight in gold jewlery as a symbol of status or veterancy to have accumulated such wealth. Tattoos are also highly popular and some females in the dreadfleet treat their body as a canvas to show off making bodices, bikini-style leather braziers, and corsets are highly popular among female pirates who dont care to flaunt.

The Dreadfleet is a mertirocracy; Meaning that its leaders and government are neither voted nor selected but are an ever-changing roulette of those who have seized power through often underhanded means such as betrayal, blackmail, coercion, or mutiny.

The highest position of power are the Dreadlords who, while all holding the same rank all differ to Dreadlord Vex Totem as the First among equals.

The currently known pirate lords are:

All matters pertaining to the dreadfleet as a whole and the actions taken are voted on by the various pirate lords. These matters, however, are often very simple and often revolve around where each fleet can or should raid and the just as frequent vote called by several pirate lords banding together in an attempt to backstab one of their fellows in an attempt to steal their ships, men, or treasures.

Each pirate lord also have captains or commodores with their own fleets under them who answer to exclusively the pirate lord they owe allegiance to.

Each pirate lord has often a group, or groups, of their most elite and trusted men known as RedCaps due to the signature red caps they wear as a sign of rank and station. These redcaps are speculated to be dyed red in the blood of a pirate lord's enemies and rivals.

Redcaps are the most veteran fighters and specialists in any pirate lords forces and usually carry the better gear or equipment available and while their pirate lord might travel in a makeshift battleship it is most common for red caps to prefer actual military ships that have been captured as compared to makeshift retrofitted vessels; Making them just as dangerous in a void battle to have to come across a well equipped and competently-crewed vessel. Unline most pirates they are akin to an actual trained military force with the gear, discipline, and tactics to match and are worth well over a hundred times their number of simple pirates.

Redcaps also serve as elite boarding teams for their pirate lord when a particularly tricky vessel must be boarded or if the pirate lord wants a specific vessel captured with minimal damage.

All of this gives Redcaps an impressive and respectful reputation and few pirates would stand up to offend a redcap intentionally. Especially when seeing a group of redcaps often means a pirate lord or one of their high-ranking captains being guarded or escorted by them is not far away.

The dreadfleet is quite possibly the largest current military force in the Vandal subsector. If all the ships were to be counted across all the various pirate lords and aspiring pirate captains fleets the number would range into the hundreds. To complement this the near entirety of the dreadfleet territories population is driven towards supporting the fleets and their crews with its near entire industry being geared towards the logistics of such a force.

Finally, each and every pirate from the lowliest crewman to each of the pirate lords are committed to the advancement of the dreadfleet, even if it's only to one day attempt to seize control of it.

Many of the Dreadfleets strengths are also its weaknesses.

The size of their fleet is countered by the quality of each vessel being on average below the norm of any true military force. Each vessel is often a ramshackle ship that more often than not was built for purposes other than privateering such as hauling cargo or exploration and are often retrofit with mismatched weapons and systems with undertrained crews and are almost always unique in few ways that are beneficial.

To follow up on this, the fleets are often made of just as many mismatched ships as each pirate lord can scrounge and are devoid of proper formations or coherent size or class dispersion as each pirate lord will take the largest ship they can capture and retrofit it into a brutal mockery of a battleship with as many weapons as it can hold; Even if it cant.

This is not to say that there are no true military vessels in the fleets; as the occasional scout vessel or small force may be ambushed, but such vessels are more often than not much harder to keep and maintain or are outright stripped down and their armor and weapons jury-rigged into other ships.

The once referenced loyalty of each pirate in the fleet is also a great weakness to its whole. As each pirate first and foremost has their own goals and agenda in mind for their motives and is just as likely to betray his fellows for a modicum of power to his name as his a rival or sworn enemy. Even the pirate lords themselves; Given the power and the positions they hold today are at odds with each other and constantly betray, backstab, or plot against each other in a never-ending dance of knives, poison, and coercion.

The Dreadfleet as a whole represents a modest threat to the denizens of the Vandal Subsector. Their large amount of ships and strong manpower backing and dogma are more than enough to solidify their position and give any invading or hostile force pause.

It is only a moderate threat, however. As the un-unified force with its below-average ships are equally corned by the various pirate fleets and ships motivations to simply raid, plunder, or hijack. With few greater goals in mind leave the Dreadfleet as only a threat to those nearest to their territory and without the means to discourage their activities.

The Dreadfleet operates in a rather sizeable chunk of space on the borders of not only two other subsectors but also Hadals Chasm itself. As such they have a few notable locations to their name.

Journeys end is the home-system and overall stronghold of the Dreadfleet. The system itself contains no habitable planets but contains over fifteen moons among the 9 larger stellar bodies in the system with Lv-212; The tropical water-moon with its large archipelagos scattering its surface as the de facto capital of the dreadfleet.

Here, The laws are loose if non-existent at all and the only protection one has are his blade, his gun, or his actions. That is not to say it is completely lawless, as the larger and more established pirate crews and lords who frequent the errant moon do not often tollerate the annoyances of lesser pirates and often pacify or kill anyone who makes too much racket on their moon.

The system is also a major trade-hub for not only the pirates but also nearby nations who can easily offload junk and abundant resources in the system for cheap, fill their berths with those in the territory desperate for a new life away from the chaos and willing to work for cheap, or to hire pirates as mercenaries against their enemies for purposes of deniability.

The system is also a good place to buy cheap starships, or sell stolen ones or their cargo.

The system is not overly hostile to visitors, but one should never leave their starship unattended, or let their crew spend too much time on any of the moons if they want to still have a crew by the time they want to leave.

Fort Lecher is a large amalgamation of starships hobbled and practically welded together into a massive space-station. It is a massive-military outpost of the Dreadfleet and usually contains the fleets of more than a few Pirate lords at berth as they use the jury-rigged amplified sensors of the station to monitor and track FTL signatures for potential targets of opertunity.

The fort itself is also the closest Dreadfleet military asset to a nearby FTL gate and is the outpost for intercepting anything coming through it such as traders, merchants, or even sometimes military vessels.

It is here that most of the Dreadfleets assets and credits are laundered for the few legitimate business deals they do with nearby nations, and where one can view and buy or sell things the Dreadfleet offers such as the various ships it might sell in Journeys End or where one might post a listing on something to sell to the Pirates without wanting to risk the long and dangerous travel into their territories.

The more ominious and nefarious purpose of the station is, however, to butter-up passers by in their bars and establishments into leaking the contents of their ships cargo, route, or intentions. It is not at all unlikely that at least one crewman on any ship passing through the station was bribed into leaking details such as these or even helping the pirates set up a score on their ship for a share of the spoils.

As such the station is the most lawful place in the Dreadfleets territory and troublemakers are often silenced before they can stir up trouble.

Fort Roger is the second military outpost of the Dreadfleet and exists in the form of a massive hollowed out and mined asteroid. It serves much the same purpose as For Lecher with the exception that it mainly exists to discourage or intercept ships from passing through Hadals Artery.

Juliets Noose is the sole shipyard and is the largest manufacturing base of the dreadfleet. Here captured ships are stripped down, repaired, or retrofitted into ramshackle raiding vessels through means of strapping weapons never meant to fit onto such ships into places on them never intended to carry weapons.

The system is a venerable minefield of derilects awaiting repair or scrapping, and floating chunks of ship hull and plate. The system is a no-go for just about anyone without a pirate lords express permission and are usually shoot on site for anyone trying to sneak in by the starship weapons strapped to various platforms scattered across the system.

Unlike the forts near it, Hanigan Station is a proper space-station that was captured by the Dreadfleet and is its most legitimate venture. Bars, shops, lodging, refueling, services. The station offers a variety of services and utilities for travelers and is the usual first stop for anyone leaving the nearby FTL gate or the last-stop for those before heading towards it.

While the equipment in the dreadfleet is as varied as it is unique, there are some notable exceptions of common or popular equipment ranging from ships to weaponry to devices¹⁾.

The average weapon for the dreadfleet are a degree of small-arms that are powerful and easy for the undertrained pirates to use. These range from laser-muskets and rocket-crossbows to energy cutlasses and tomahawks. Whatever makes boarding or combatting easy.

The laslock or laser musket is a fairly popular staple for the raiders and pirates of the dreadfleet. Powerful enough to take down an armored human, light enough for a goblin to carry, and easy enough to operate; The laslock is arguably the most popular rifle in the dreadfleet. The laslock is a single-fire weapon that requires one to open a breach and insert a new battery cartridge, but it is a fairly easy affair that can be completed in a few seconds.

The laslock comes in many different flavors such as:

• Long-musket.
• Pistol.
• Double-barrel musket or pistol.
• Double-double musket.

With each variant firing all shots at once with a single trigger pull.

The rocket arbalest is a favorite among the redcaps of the dreadfleet. A five-shot, semi-auto crossbow-style rifle that fires a moderately fast and powerful rocket with minimum tracking ability. While not as powerful or as long-ranged as the laslock, the rocket arbalest makes up for the lack of stopping power with magazine capacity and accuracy with each rocket able to lock onto a target through the use of the bows scope and slightly alter its trajectory towards it.

The rocket arbalest uses as 20mm rocket propelled grenade that comes in many different payloads such as:

• High explosive (Default)
• Armor-piercing
• EMP (weak)
• Tracking bolt
• Flashbang
• Incindiery

The rocket arbalest has a side-fed stripper magazine that can hold five bolts. There are brackets on the other side of the weapon to hold five additional bolts. And more can easily be carried on a bandolier.

The rocket arbalest is not uncommon in the dreadfleet but neither is it well used within its ranks due to how coveted it is, resulting in many a pirate lucky enough to get his or her hands on one either having it stolen, or taken off their corpse when they end up in a tragic accident. It is the standard-issue weapon for redcaps and is most often seen in the hands of higher-ranked pirates on a ship such as the first or second mate.

The rocket arbalest comes in a full-size and pistol variants.

The Flechette gun is a hand-held pistol with six rotary barrels. The gun has a detachable magazine that contains two 30-dart drums for a total of 60 flechette darts. Each dart is enclosed with a caseless shell with a propellant that launches it out of the barrel with tremendous speed and velocity.

The tradeoff for having so much firepower is the insane fire-rate of the weapon and its difficulty to control making it wildly inaccurate in any case where the objective isnt pure saturation.

The flechette gun is popular in ship boardings due to its advantage in the close-quarters fighting of packed ship corridors.

The standard melee and boarding weapon for pirates of the dreadfleet is the energy cutlass. It is a conductive metal blade with a section lacking an edge that is energized and generates a reflective bean of energy along its edge that can cut through most surfaces or armors with relative ease.

The energy cutlass has a self-sustaining charge that only drains when the energy blade makes contact with mater, and as such has decent battery life enough to make it through a fight or two.

More popular among Hobs and Orcs than the smaller goblins the boarding axe is an intimidating axe with an energized head much like the energy cutlass'. They are extremely handy in cutting through sealed bulkheads, barricades, or armor.

Smaller and even throwing version of the boarding axe exist.

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• Player char created this on 2021/08/29 19:56.

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