Terse Period

The Terse Period is a name given to a roughly 20-30 year era following the end of the Kamian Succession Wars, categorized by lawlessness and a dramatic rise in space piracy. The era is sometimes romantized as "The Golden Age of Space Piracy".

Background

Following the end of the war, a very large quantity of weapons, particularly high-endurance warships, made it's way onto the black market. Previously, such items were few and far between, with very tight controls being kept especially on weapons, and the rarity of military-grade spacecraft keeping such things in check.

Most of the material came from the Alliance and the larger member worlds, who were quick to disarm once the fighting had ceased. Smaller ships, such as frigates, corvettes, and cutters, were the first to go. Such vessels had been built in huge numbers during the war for scouting and patrol duties, and were comparatively not much needed in peace time.

Ship Acquisitions

Spacecraft came into the hands of pirates ine one of three ways:

Legitimate Sales

Following the war, many ships were stripped of their armaments and resold on the secondary market. This was a fully legitimate and legal system to dispose of surplus war materials, an indeed small numbers of vehicles had always trickled into the civilian sector this way. Ships were intended to be repossessed as liners, tramp traders, and mail ships. Any number of roles existed whereby a combination of speed, high endurance, or just especially well-made ships were highly sought after for wholly legitimate reasons.

Often times, only very summary efforts had been made to "de-militarize" the warships before sale. This typically consisted of unloading any remaining munitions, and removal of the high-power components used in energy weapons. Railguns(legal for civilian ownership and use) were left fully intact and operational, along with the myriad of support systems. The directed energy weapons, which should have been removed entirely, were only stripped of those components considered valuable for resale--often being sold in lots alongside the ships themselves.

Vessels were typically sold at auction, but aside from registration with the Alliance Space Commission, not much effort was being made to track them after sale. This is how most of the smaller ships came into pirate hands.

Salvage

While a great many surplus warships were disarmed and resold, quite a few were set adrift. Many smaller nations, operating space navies for the first time, did not have the resources to repair damaged craft and left them. Others, which had challenge crew requirements, were abandoned for being uneconomical to return. Officially, such ships were supposed to be "scrapped in place"(destroyed), but in many cases were simply abandoned. In at least the majority of cases, the crews took the precaution of firing off any consumable ordnance(such as missiles and torpedoes) but a considerable number of warships were left fully operational and with partial compliments of very dangerous weapons.

In some cases, these ships were claimed at legitimate salvage, but with piracy being a common side-hussle for salvage crews, it wasn't much better. A ship found deralict and towed to a legitimate port(here defined as "any solar system with a habitable planet") can be claimed as salvage. All a crew must do is put a salvage lean on it, at which point the government who owned it had a certain period to claim the ship and transport it to their home base. There were millions of these vessels officially "owned" by the Alliance, who lacked the resources to retrieve even a fraction of them(in fact, more than a few such ships had originally been abandoned by the Alliance).

A salvage crew who had claimed such a prize was then free to re-sell the ship. Since it was no classified as "salvage" this meant there were no restrictions and no registration. It could be sold to anyone, at any price, and the crew legally allowed to profit by it. Some attempts were made to put a stop to such operations, but the resource-strapped Alliance could do very little.

The Gudersnipe Foundation was a bit better in dealing with the problem. Large numbers of ships had been built under license or supplied under lend-lease. Whenever the Foundation received word that a ship of theirs had been claimed, they could respond. Most often a Crimson Blade patrol was dispatched and granted authority to evaluate the claim and deal with it according to their own wisdom. Most often this involved scuttling the ship or otherwise rendering it inoperable, depending on the nature and repute of the salvagers. Called "breaker teams", these task forces succeeded in keeping a large number of ships out of pirate hands, but had limited authority.

Theft

Once again because of the rapid disarmament and general post-ware chaos, many vessels were simply stolen outright, in some cases even by their war-time crews. Anything smaller than a cutter was easy to sell off and re-purpose for civilian use, but the larger ships, frigates and destroyers in particular, were primarily earmarked to be mothballed and laid up for future use. Destroyers, which had been built in huge numbers, mostly belonged directly to the Foundation, and had only been on loan to Alliance and member worlds. These ships in particular needed to be returned, and so were mostly put into a warm standbye-mode whereby they could be stored for several years and reactivated as crews became available to fairy them to Crimson Blade reserve fleets.

Due to generally relaxed security, it was not difficult for unscrupulous types to sneak aboard and steal such vessels. Destroyers were particularly prized, being the largest of the sub-capitols and the smallest to have significant armor. These were also about the largest ship that a pirate crew could hope to easily manage, and man without cost over-runs. However, it should be noted that larger vessels like cruisers and even one battle-cruiser were left to this fate. These being too costly to operate, they were often taken away to secret bases to act as defensive power for short-lived "pirate states" that existed during the Terse Period.

Of destroyers, they posed a very significant threat. being both heavily armed and armored, they were well outside the threat armed merchant marine ships could deal with, and definitely outclassed the small home guard and patrol ships usually dispatched to deal with pirates. A pirate crew manning a destroyer was effectively invincible, and could raid with impunnity.

Weapons

The railgun had always been legal for civilian purchase and operation, as well as small kinetic missiles. Manufactured civilian-grade weapon systems were expensive, inaccurate, and could typically only fire a few shots at a low rate. This was not due to any regulation(as there was none) but the simple realities of building sophisticated weapons. Revenue service did not have a large profit margin, and civilian arms manufacturers lacked the resources and technological know-how to build more sophisticated equipment.

The kinietic missiles, similarly, were costly to built and good only for a single use, and lacked accurate targeting systems. While they were built to be compatible with millitary-grade launchers, they were not very useful except perhaps as a show of strength.