Marauders

Marauders
Description
Race(s)	Goblins Hobgoblins Hulk Orcs
Capital Planet	Gora
Membership
Notable Members	Atix Shrillshatter Bolts Captain Apaugh Captain Grognark Captain Orokk Chief Mauhúar Chief Mawlukah Chief Radgrad Fena Firebottom Fetch Gritter Rocketrider Guhr’hauk Klunk Sparkwrench Krazee Gobby Marshal Tung Mucky Vook Nuts Nyx Shadowclaw Sergeant Ugurik Shade Zyn Skulkshot
Planets	Cabot III Gora Lanthis IV
References
Mantic Store	Firefight Deadzone
Sources	Warpath Universe Sourcebook

Marauders are a faction consisting of Orcs, Goblins, Mawbeasts, Hobgoblins and Hulks

About

Since their earliest encounters with Orcs, humans have consistently underestimated their kind. Brutish and bestial in appearance, with tough hide, sloping brows and oversized teeth, it is tempting to dismiss them as simple barbarian savages. In actual fact, Orcs are possessed of a cunning intelligence, able to learn new skills quickly and adapt their tactics dependent on the foe they faced. The first Corporate encounter with them on one of their many homeworlds ended in massacre. Ever pragmatic, the Council elected to make use of these creatures for its own ends, offering them the opportunity to work for the GCPS as mercenaries. The Orcs, for their part, were happy enough to fight anyone at all if there was a reward in it for them, and thus the Marauders came to be.

Since the cataclysmic event known as the Mandrake Rebellion, Marauders have been replaced in the employ of the Council by the Enforcers. The Mandrake wars caused the Marauders to scatter to distant corners of the galaxy, gathering in small bands to operate as mercenary rogues, a tradition they continue to this day.

Whether the Marauders encountered in the present day are the same ones who fought for the Council in days gone by, or their descendants, or simply Orcs trained as mercenaries, nobody knows for sure. As ever, they are happy to fight for everyone, from aliens to less ethical corporations and occasionally just themselves. Some of them will be in a Deadzone for the loot, some on commission from a Corp looking to steal a march on its rivals, and some just for the heck of it. Whatever their reasoning, underestimating them is generally the first and last mistake that any enemy is given the opportunity to make.

History

Natural Violence

Even among a galaxy of aggressive races, the conglomerate of species known as the Marauders stand out in their ferocity and natural violence. Raised from single-planet barbarism by the Galactic Co-Prosperity Sphere to be their perfect soldiers, the Marauders turned on their masters in a rebellion so stunning in its intensity that the GCPS was almost destroyed. Only their usefulness as shock troops stopped their complete eradication, although it is now a naïve or desperate civilisation that hires too many of them at once. The near destruction of the GCPS sent shockwaves across the stars, and whenever Marauders gather in number every sentient race holds its breath.Today the Marauders are nomadic, plying the galaxy as pirates and soldiers for hire.

They are the best mercenaries money can buy, and they know it. Their services do not come cheap, but they do not care who they work for; all that matters is the fight and the payoff. That is not to say they will not also fight for themselves, and when every other species in the galaxy will do everything it can to stop the Marauders establishing their own civilisation, that fighting can be brutal. And nobody does brutal as thoroughly as the Marauders.

What can be said about the Marauders which isn’t already known by every sphere citizen? That they have been at one time humanity’s greatest assets and at another its greatest threat? That it was the Marauders who have so far come closest to destroying human civilisation? That even now, with their numbers decimated and their continued existence due solely to the Council of Seven’s restraint, they continue to be held at arms’ length and in distrust by every corporation? Yet even after all that, GCPS generals galaxy-wide are more afraid not to use them in battle. Because if they do not, their enemies might.

The popular image of the Marauder is almost comic in its excesses; the wide maw with over-biting tusks, the leathery umber-green skin, and the looming, muscled bulk, carrying as much weaponry as a whole marine squad. It would be humorous, if it were not so accurate. Marauders have worked their way to being the GCPS’s zeitgeist as the quintessential boogieman – terrifying, but not without an allure which sees them remain a fixture within human armies as well as making up their own piratical bands and mercenary companies. They remain as dangerous now as they ever were, and more so because of just how unpredictable they are - how do you protect yourself against the perfect enemy if even they don’t know what they will do next?

The name ‘Marauder’ is the designation for the species native to the planet Gora which, through common usage, is now a collective noun for the entire grouping. The most common species within the Marauder genus is the Orc, and it is hard to imagine a creature more naturally adapted to warfare. The second most common creature in the Marauder ranks are Goblins, commonly referred to as ‘stunts’ by other Marauders. At the other end of the size spectrum are the Hulks.

Society

As a whole the Marauder species make a united culture. The violent, physical nature of its internal interactions seem to outsiders that a Marauder tribe is at constant war with itself, but that would be to miss that the violence within a tribe is part of its non-verbal communication.

Marauder society is extremely hierarchical. Unless a clear structure is present nothing will be achieved, and orders will be ignored. One individual needs to be in charge, and if two Orcs are placed in a room the first thing they will do is fight to see who the dominant individual is. The purpose isn’t to kill, just to establish who is going to give the orders. Marauders respect strength, even Goblins who sit at the bottom of such an order would not dream of taking orders from an Orc who couldn’t kill them as easily as look at them.

This structure is a vestige from the tribal times on Gora, when all that mattered was a chieftain’s chopping arm. That was a simpler time however, when aspects such as orbital trajectories, ballistics, three dimensional tactical awareness, munition and air management was not required in a potential leader. But while tactical nous is now mandatory in a Marauder chief, it is still secondary to pure physical might.

“Not worth killing.” Orc insult

First Contact

Much of the Marauders’ known history can be tracked alongside the GCPS’s. However, evidence of a long history is buried deep within Gora’s earth as fossils and relics, and in the limited oral history of the Marauder clans. There is archaeological evidence of various proto-civilisations throughout Gora’s history, but equally abundant at each stage are the signs of a violent erasure just as the culture would have begun to gain a foothold; an eradication of such totality that an external, more advanced agent would be suspected, but only if the nature and capabilities of the natives were not known. Because, as became apparent, Gorans are aggressive to an extreme absent from any other race. To an extent, Gora’s past patterns of societal development and extermination followed the same of ancient human history, but the difference on Gora was that the cycle did not end – peace never reigned long enough for a stable society to out-compete warring clan life. And so, when humans arrived, the Gorans were still fighting with a level of technology not much different from Old Earth’s medieval period.

What the first interactions between humanity and Marauders were like will never be known. In 644AE, a fully-crewed expeditionary force was still cheaper than automated long-ranged planetary reconnaissance drones. It was fully expected that any alien civilisation could be communicated with and a trade relationship established, or, preferably, be brought under corporate hegemony.

The likes of the Gorans, however, had never been encountered.

A Klandax Corp. expedition landed on Gora in 644AE, and immediately began transmitting reports of a hostile, primitive indigenous race. Then the reports stopped and no further telemetry was received. The loss of an expedition was not particularly unusual, but the speed with which it occurred was. Automated distress transmissions received indicated that total loss of personal occurred within seventy two hours of contact. Klandax responded, dispatching a full military strike force to recover the expedition’s equipment and establish a firm claim on Gora before other corporations took advantage of their inability to seal exploitation rights. This force, under Commander Prakal Mitrandesh, arrived insystem to find the expeditionary ships adrift and unresponsive. Mitrandesh, unwilling to take risks with the unknown planet, positioned the fleet and landed his entire force of 5,000 marines along with their armour and support, while shuttles departed to bring back the expeditionary ships.

Had Gora been populated with any other primitive race, Commander Mitrandesh would have performed this operation without incident, and the Co-Prosperity Sphere’s history would have been very different. But Gorans are not like other races.

The first weapon of a corporation military landing on a primitive hostile world is shock and awe – seventy tonne landers puncturing the clouds and slamming into the earth, massive landing ramps yawning open to disgorge hundreds of armoured soldiers, banks of dust clouds thrown up like thunderheads as immense frigates displace the air. The sheer noise and movement of a mass military insertion is a weapon in itself. But despite the military vessels being surely the largest artificial structures they had ever seen, the Gorans met the corporation troops as if they were equals, and despite being armed with bows and blades managed to kill hundreds of marines before being fought off.

The initial attack repelled, the Klandax forces prepared to call in orbital bombardment to end the conflict, but the expeditionary shuttles ferried back to the military fleet had not been empty. While trajectories and ordnance was being prepared on Mitrandesh’s fleet, hundreds of Orcs burst from hiding on the expeditionary shuttles and poured into the military ships. They tore through the service personal and under-prepared security contingent with ease, leaving the ground forces open and unsupported. Mitrandesh had makeshift forts constructed from prefabricated walls, but the Gorans adapted, abandoning frontal assaults in exchange for war on their terms – guerrilla fighting, and using their manoeuvrability and local knowledge to lure the corporation marines into unequal close quarter combat. In little time the Gorans learnt to use the fallen Marines’ weapons. Armed with arrows and knives the Marauders killed hundreds, with laser rifles and grenades Klandax’s initial force of 5,000 was cut down until, less than five standard days after insertion, the emergency beacon was triggered as Commander Mitrandesh’s final fortification was overrun.

The initial response from Klandax HQ was to firebomb Gora from outsystem, leave the planet to smoulder for a decade, and land again when it was sure everything was dead. The mission was given to General Julius Klimt, a soldier with a long and celebrated career, who summarily disregarded his orders and instead landed on Gora alone and unarmed.

General Klimt had a reputation for shrewd and unexpected tactics, and had spent days observing data recorded from miniscule spy drones dispatched to the planet’s surface. He saw in these dangerous creatures a far-reaching potential. No other race so far encountered demonstrated such an easy grasp of military theory, or such obvious joy in its application. The wiping out of a full corporation strike force was rare, and never from a civilisation lower on the tech tree. General Klimt knew that if he could bring these creatures under his command Klandax would have the single most potent army in the galaxy.

General Klimt flew himself to Gora’s surface. What happened there is not known because the General travelled alone, but before departing he remarked to his fleet commander that in the creatures he recognised a cohesive social hierarchy and a greed not so dissimilar to some of humanity’s baser elements that they could not find common ground. What is known is that the General spent three days on Gora’s surface before returning to the fleet. He had visibly aged in that time, he looked exhausted, his dress jacket was gone and the clothes he wore were stained, torn and bore a smell none of the Klandax general staff could identify.

But with him came the chieftains of three of the largest clans of Gora, and the Global Co- Prosperity Sphere would never be the same again.

The Expansion

Under Klimt’s supervision, hundreds of Gorans were moved off planet and began basic training in line with corporation military doctrine. As anticipated, the aliens demonstrated an uncanny aptitude for warfare. They took to the drills and manoeuvres as if born to them, and sometimes had to be forcibly reminded that these were simply exercises, and to not use their rifles as clubs when their harmless training ammunition ran out. Their first live mission was to quell a minor rebellion on New Lagos before it could turn into a major one. When they were unleased on the rioting population the subjugation was so swift, so total, so bloody that the term ‘Goran’ ceased to be used among the human troops in Klandax’s army - replaced with ‘Marauder’.

The scale of the massacre on New Lagos could not be kept secret, and while General Klimt may have intended for the Marauders to be solely used in Klandax’s military, soon every corporation wanted their own Marauder regiments. Once the Marauders themselves found this out they were quick to grasp the concept of negotiation and of their worth in a demand-based economy.

What followed was the swiftest expansion in the Co-Prosperity Sphere’s history. The Marauders were discovered at the very beginning of the Fourth Sphere expansion; vast tracts of the galaxy were open and ready for exploitation. It was an opportunity for a golden age, and these systems had to be grasped before they could be claimed by other civilisations. The Forge Fathers, Asterians, Tsudoshans and more had woken up to the threat to galactic stability humans posed with their rapid expansion, and the corporations had no interest in sharing the worlds with anyone else.

Every week saw new systems brought under corporate hegemony, many more than could have been achieved by human arms alone. It became much easier to incorporate already-inhabited worlds through force than negotiation. There were advanced single-planet civilisations made extinct by this phase of the GCPS’s expansion, entirely uncatalogued and forgotten thanks to the frightening speed a planet could be conquered by Marauders.

Humanity’s relationship with other civilisations saw its own change. Emboldened by their success at carving a path across the Fourth Sphere, many corporations began using the threat of their Marauder battalions as bargaining chips in negotiations. This lead to the Capture of Lagann in 687AE. Mars Corp. had bought the exploitation rights to Lagann, but arrived to find a Bitasverd Forge Father clan Ward ship already in orbit around its equator with formations of Brokkrs on-planet. Mars Corps.’ expedition was led by General Ellen Ekpo, and among General Ekpo’s command was Apaugh, captain of two divisions of Orc Commandos. Following Mars Corp policy a negotiation meeting was requested with the Dwarf Clan Lords, but the meeting was abandoned almost immediately by General Ekpo when the Forge Fathers refused her demands. It is believed that General Ekpo deliberately orchestrated this outcome, issuing a list of demands she knew the Dwarfs would not accept purely so she could unleash her Marauders. The Capture of Lagann, as the conflict became known, was over within a 60 days. General Ekpo’s strategic aim was not to capture the planet whole, but to roll over the Dwarf forces with such ease as to demonstrate what a battalion of unrestrained Marauders were capable of. It was a task Captain Apaugh relished, and within two months his Commandos had slaughtered over four thousand Brokkrs and Steel Warriors. It was a price Clan Bitasverd was unwilling to pay, and the Dwarfs left the system beaten. Lagann was the first time a corporation used Marauders as a tool of diplomacy, but it was not the last. Other civilisations came to abhor contact with humans, and to fear the use of their armies. The Marauder-driven GCPS expansion seemed inexorable, but that was about to change.

The Mandrake Rebellion

By the mid 850’s Marauder muscle had become the engine of the Co-Prosperity Sphere. In the preceding two centuries more planets had been settled by humans than the six before.

The corporations were richer than ever, and their trade relationships with alien races were overwhelmingly in the humans’ favour. For the Marauders’ part, they had what they wanted – a constant stream of enemies to fight and an un-ending supply of credits flowing their way to spend on everything the sphere had to offer. It was truly a golden age, and like all golden ages no one saw its end coming.

The Mandrake Rebellion has been documented in detail thousands of times over; its causes, inception, key players, and the statistics of planets irrevocably lost to the scarrings of war. But for the Marauders it began with the ambitions of Romasko Holdings’ CEO Gavriel Mandrake and an insignificant planet named TCx87653c.

Marauders were to be used as pawns in the plans of the individuals who would go on to control the Council, and a set of conditions where they would be certain to rebel was artificially engineered.

They were to be put down, and then replaced by the already-conceptualised Enforcer Troopers. But the plan did not accommodate for three pieces in the game. The first was just how many Marauders would be gathered together to act as the touchpaper for rebellion. The second was Chief Mauhúar. The third was just how virulently eager for war Marauders are.

It was just bad luck that the coup’s plans came to fruition just after TCx87653c had been conquered, when 20,000 Orc Commandos were still present on-planet, and that Chief Mauhúar - commander of the Red Hand mercenaries - was among them.

The Mercenary Age

A question often asked is “Why weren’t the Marauders exterminated after the Mandrake Rebellion?” A logical enough question with an equally logical answer; they were simply too useful.

The Battle for Nihil Rex wiped out over eighty percent of the then Marauder population. Those that survived were either in bands too small to be a threat or were hunted down by the Enforcers. The remaining Marauders were too scattered to be a danger to any significant population. And, more importantly, outwardly held no resentment to the GCPS for the war which nearly exterminated them; they had fought, been beaten, and that was it. The practicality their race is known for won out, and the corporations and Council of Seven were more than willing to allow them to remain in a small capacity. After all, corporations still had dirty work which needed doing, and the Council did not want to send their new Enforcers into situations where they could die unnecessarily.

There was, however, one safeguard put in place. Despite the Orcs’ eventual defeat, the Mandrake Rebellion remains the closest brush with destruction the GCPS has faced, and the Council has no desire to risk another uprising. So it established the Black Company; a covert Enforcer battalion with the sole mission of keeping the Marauder population at a manageable size. Their mission sees them tagging and tracking Marauder bands, and when a group approaches a size that could not reliably be put down by local forces the Black Company move in. Usually this action takes on the nature of an ‘accident’ – a catastrophic McKinley drive malfunction, or a contract to raid a biotech lab that happens to contain deadly airborne toxins – in order to avoid antagonising other Marauder commanders. This policy is deemed so crucial to the GCPS’s continued peace that it is executed directly by the Council of Seven to keep its existence on a need to know basis. So far the clandestine policy has remained secret, but there are always individuals with a lust for power who would not think twice about using such knowledge for their own ends.

Outside of sphere-sanctioned engagements, Marauders have slipped seamlessly into the roles of pirates and guns for hire, and are the mercenary of choice for anyone who can afford them. The same qualities which made them the crack troops of the GCPS translate to the galactic common market, and it is expected that on any waystation or spaceport of reasonable size there will be at least a few Marauder captains ready to take a commission at a moment’s notice, so long as there’s some payment up front.

And then there are the galactic trade lanes and the pirate fleets which prey on such places. McKinley drive travel is still restricted to the rich and important, and at any given moment there are tens of thousands of vessels plying the established routes between systems. Long haul carriers, colony ships, dust miners, science vessels, and more – each carrying something which can be sold for a nice profit on the black market, and in the vast emptiness of space the only law is who has the most guns.

Marauders have no base of operations as such. They live a nomadic lifestyle, going where there is work to do, wars to fight, bones to break. Where they lay their gun is home for the night. A band may have a favoured space station where finding work is easier, but if that particular well dries up they have no issue finding another. However, they still consider Gora their home. This may be for more practical than sentimental reasons however, as it is on Gora that they draft new recruits. While all the Marauder species can breed elsewhere, the unique harshness of Gora with its scouring radiation, ferocious weather, and the collective hostility of its plant and animal life breeds a hardness into the creatures that survive to adolescence. Such is the importance of Goran Auxiliaries that an attempted annexation of it by Carver Inc. prompted the Council of Seven to pass an un-amendable law prohibiting any corporation activities within a 100,000au range of the planet, under threat of Enforcer censure.

Dirty work

Despite the multiple secret programs set up by the Council and other advanced races, the Marauder’s resistance to the Plague remains a mystery. This has led to a lucrative trade in the systems and stations along the Death Arc for Marauder companies selling their Deadzone related services.

There is also a growing number of Marauder captains venturing into Containment Protocols for their own benefit; looting abandoned planets and using the spoils to build their own warbands. The Three Fingered Thrau, Red Maws, and Will Kill for Credits gangs have all built what amount to their own armies this way, and are more than capable of overcoming smaller planetary defence forces.

The Enforcer Black Company can only neutralise so many Marauder warbands, and if the rate of the Orc forces continue to grow it’s only a matter of time before colonised planets become at risk.

Structured Chaos

One of the most dangerous aspects of a Marauder army is how deceptively organised it is. While most species become less savage as they develop, if anything Marauders have reverted to a tribal barbarism. Their recruitment into corporation armies and the training they received allowed them to funnel their aggression down specific paths, and the corporation generals who adopted the first Marauder battalions and thought instilling martial discipline would bring the aliens under control were proven very wrong.

However, while Marauders have for the most part kept the structure imposed on them since before the Mandrake Rebellion, no two captains will organise their forces the same way. Teams of similarly equipped Orcs and Goblins will be grouped together for specific battlefield purposes, but the nature of a Marauder warband is fluid and ever-changing. Casualties are high, employers can change day to day, and loyalties shift and schisms form within the bands themselves. The Orcs’ pragmatism feeds into this instability however; a fight is a fight, and that is something an Orc never passes up. A Marauder warband can adapt to any situation in a way no rigid military can, which means no enemy commander will know what kind of army they will face.

However, they will know to at least a degree how the Marauders will be armed. Marauders are not an artificer race, their temperament is not suited to the precise engineering necessary to make reliable weaponry. But they know a good gun when they see one, and in the GCPS arms dealers tend only to care about getting paid, not about where the weapons go. It’s from this free market that more than a few Marauder captains have commissioned arms suited to their stature and specific needs. Most of these new weapons have not been the most practical, but a few have found their niche in Marauder armies. The most common of these unique concepts is the H.E.W. technology. Inspired by the Genling 88 Burst Laser carried by Enforcer Striders, H.E.W., or ‘high energy weapon’, technology is based on laser weaponry, but where Enforcer rifles direct controlled beams of energy through artificially refined crystals to produce high-intensity laser bursts, H.E.W. technology relies on a combustion chamber filled with a pressurised hydrogen gas mixture to excite the lower power emitters Marauders must rely on. This is not to say H.E.W. weapons are not effective. Per energy input they outperform a similarly heavy Genling weapon every time, but at the cost of reliability and safety. Backfires are common, but in exchange you get a weapon capable of puncturing a tank.

On a smaller scale, Orcs and Goblins’ preference is for solid shot rifles, finding them more durable than their laser counterparts and easier to repair in the field, and the Orcs at least don’t care about the kilos of extra ammunition the rifles require.

For when something heavier is required, and a Hulk is not available, there is the Ripper suit. Another product of the Marauder’s tactical ingenuity, the Ripper is almost a mini-Strider. A powered exoskeleton of a tungsten-weaved alloy with a role as simple as it is effective – to allow an Orc to carry more and heavier weapons. The powered servos give the operator increased strength – if such a thing is imaginable in an Orc – and makes the trooper a mobile weapons platform. In confined spaces the suits give the Marauders and almost unbelievable tactical advantage.

Stereotypical of Orc technology is the Sky Scraper jump pack. Essentially a misnomer, although the pack does allow the wearer to jump through the air up to fifteen metres, its primary intention is to allow the Orc to leap from an aircraft from up to 10km and freefall directly into combat. The pack kicks in at 750 metres, arresting the fall at the last moment, and giving the commando some time to pick exactly where in the battle they want to land. Despite the risks, the packs are accepted by many Orc commanders as an alternative delivery system to traditional dropships. Orcs prize a warrior spirit highly. Those that possess a certain kind of fearless aggression are said to have ‘madd’ur’ak’, a gift from Da’grak, the Spirit of Death. The Skyscrapers are one such group of death-defying warriors. For these elite orcs, the thrill of combat is simply not enough. For them, battle is best approached at speeds faster than sound. Using jetpacks, some of which are heirlooms that date back to the Mandrake Rebellion, these orcs might deploy from Vulture dropships just inside a planet’s atmosphere, screaming down onto their enemy’s position in a blaze of fiery fury. Sometimes, the age of their kit and the sheer danger associated with their deployments means some Skyscrapers inevitably will not survive the journey. There is always another orc ready to take up a ‘pack when a place in a chalk becomes available though. How better to prove yourself to every other Marauder?

Every Marauder carries a hrunka, a wickedly sharp piece of steel as long as a man’s forearm. Although all follow a common pattern, long and pointed like an Orc fang, every one is unique. By tradition, an Orc forges his own blade in a ship’s foundry, though he is forbidden from doing so until he has slain his first enemy in battle, thus ‘earning his knife’. It is thought that a Marauder will never unsheathe his hrunka unless he intends to draw blood with it, so any approach by an Orc with this weapon drawn must be presumed to be hostile intent.

Mercenaries Groups

• Red Hand Mercenaries

• The Three Fingered Thrau

• Red Maws

• Will Kill for Credits

• Cygni Crew Mercenary Company

• Nuts and Bolts

Dreadball Teams

• Greenmoon Smackers

• The Destroyas

Gallery

• Marauders Model
  Marauders Model
• 
  Marauders Logo

External Links

• Mantic Store Firefight Marauders - https://www.manticgames.com/firefight/marauders/ Firefight

• Mantic Store Deadzone Marauders - https://www.manticgames.com/deadzone/marauder/ Deadzone

Warpath, Deadzone, Firefight, Star Saga, Dreadball, and Epic Warpath and all associated names, places and things are TM and copyright Mantic Games. Artwork and logos used with permission. This wiki is not an official Mantic Games publication.