((Since we're "between episodes", I thought I'd add this as background material that most everybody should be familiar with, as well as providing a bit of a teaser as to future storylines...))
COLONIAL NAVY MANUAL, SECTION 47D: Non-Colonial Humans
Not all men accept the wisdom of the Quorum or the light of the gods. As large as the Children of Kobol are, there have been more than a few over the years who have forsaken their brothers and forged their way into the darkness. Religious dissidents. Criminals. Madmen. Those who refused to accept the end of slaving. Separatists who were on the losing side of the Unification War.
They bought or stole ships and ventured beyond the Colonies, beyond the warmth and light of Helios.
Most died.
But some found ways to sustain life. Planets with just enough air to breathe, comets with just enough water ice to use. Some of the ships had hydroponic gardens. But in the end, it was never enough to be sustainable. And so they crept back into the light, to steal from those they had forsaken.
Some claim that the Colonial Navy has outlived its usefulness, that with the Cylon threat a distant memory, we have nothing to protect against. But the pirates and the scavenegers...they are always out there, waiting for a hapless freighter filled with food, or a transport filled with people who could be pressed into slavery. They are a threat that will last as long as the human race does.
Threat Profile: PIRATES
While there is no single "class" of pirate vessel, all of Colonial design which have been reverse-engineered into vessels capable of hostile action. Some have scavenged weapons from Navy wrecks, others have weapons left over from the Unification War. A small handful were purpose-built warships from losing parties like the Tauron Naval Service or the Virgon Royal Navy. But in many cases, they are simple freighters or colony ships which have had much of their interior stripped out and replaced with weapons or traps. A frequent trap is to send a distress beacon and await a well-meaning rescuer to come alongside. The generally poor maintenance on such vessels gives credence to their story of equipment failure. Then when the unsuspecting vessel is at its most vulnerable, they strike with hidden weapons or board the vessel with armed men. The ship disappears and the fate of its crew is bleak indeed: spacing or slavery.
If on patrol in the outer system or beyond Helios, you are of course required to respond to all civilian distress beacons but be cautious.
Threat Profile: SCAVENGERS (or "Scavs")
Where pirates are the predators, scavengers remain to clean up the kill. Less directly confrontational, they drift around just off the commerce lanes, looking for ships who have have fallen afoul of natural dangers or mechanical failures or even picking through the wreckage of old battles and pirate attacks. Their ships may be minimally armed (more to discourage pirates than anything else), but they are no less merciless in their treatment of those they find. Slavery is the more common fate, as scavenger vessels frequently have more space to hold captives. Some scavs are exclusively slavers, looking for vessels in distress or even targeting fledgling colonies without a Colonial Marine presence.
The Pelamon-class is their preferred design, but obsolete models such as the Gracchus or Antaeus are more common.
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