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40k Fluff repeatedly mentions space piracy, both by xenos and by human scum (after all, space is the ocean, and oceans must have pirates…).

As far as I understand, when ships (potential pirate targets) travel from point A to point B they go out of planetary system A on realspace drives, then enter warp, and if Navigator does his job well, ships emerge just outside planetary system B, and go to the destination planet using realspace drives again.
Doen’t look much where pirates can come in, unless they wait at point B (thou any imperial planet at point B would probably detect them with long-range scanners and notify the Navy via astropats).

Solution?

There are plenty of derelict astroid stations, space stations, Rogue Trader-operated stations and other ports-of-call that do not fall under Imperial authority, either because the local authorities were bought off, captured, killed, or simply forgotten about due to bureaucratic inefficiency or clerical error.

And while ships do enter and exit the Warp generally on the outward-edges of various planetary systems... it's a very, very long flight into the inner ring of planets (as if you were traveling from, say, Neptune to Earth). There's *plenty* of time for pirates to attack your vessel, steal your cargo, and then make the jump to Warp before your Astropath can send a message to the destination planet, who then sends a message to the Naval assets of the sub-sector, who then find out where you're getting attacked, make their own jump to Warp space, and arrive at your location. That's a response time of days, if not weeks or longer.

Some pirate will wait in an asteroid belt, debris field, abandoned space station, or the halo of a system. (The ring of loose debris that marks the system boundary.) Some operate out of their own base, and go out to raid targets of opportunity, like poorly defended planets, outposts, and stations. Not to mention, there is more than a little precedent for ships attacking one another within the Warp and forcing their victim back to reality before attacking them.

In addition, most warp trips require several short stops for the navigators to rest and get their bearings. This might only be for a few hours or a day or two, but that's still time for a pirate that knows where ships are most likely to exit the warp to attack.

There's plenty of room in the galaxy for clandestine armadas to operate. The intrigue of ship tracking, warp rest stop camping and ship infiltration, etc would be such a good read.

I wonder what the xeno pirates, specifically the craftworld elder outcasts, actually steal.

DE-- slave, obvious
Humans-- everything
Chaos-- same
Orks-- slaves, everything

But the Craftworlders don't need slaves. And I don't see what materials the humans have that they would really need and could not get more conveniently by other means. Despite that, they are a major part of the background.

 Silverthorne wrote:

But the Craftworlders don't need slaves. And I don't see what materials the humans have that they would really need and could not get more conveniently by other means. Despite that, they are a major part of the background.

craftworld corsairs aren't really pirates in the stealing sense (excluding those that travel with the dark Eldar or lose themselves to the hedonism and decadence that caused the fall) a majority of craftworld corsairs continue with their craft worlds missions and act as their eyes and ears throughout the galaxy. There's an interesting story in the 4E codex about a corsair prince out of Biel-Tan who forced an imperial colony on a maiden world to surrender and moved them to a nearby inhabital moon. I suppose some craftworld corsairs could raid for food and other supplies like that though.

Luxury goods are luxury goods though, and the Eldar sure do like sparkly things


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another reason might be for Eldar raiders to do piracy but dress it up as a different race to drive humans into conflict with someone/thing else.

So more like privateers really than really pirates.

The Imperial Navy is big... but it isn't that big. Space? Space is really, really, really big.

Eldar Craftworlds probably deal more with anti-Xeno Rogue Trader fleets (which can also be very big, sometimes bigger, in numbers of ships, than a Sector Battlefleet) than they do with the Imperial Navy. Eldar Corsairs, then, are the picket-ships and the escort vessels that will defend the Craftworld by attacking an RT's vessels in another area in the same sub-sector, which causes the RT to send more of his/her ships over there to fight the pirates.

Do this enough times, and the RT has their ships out pirate-hunting in quadrants A, B and C, while the Craftworld slips by in quadrant D, and the Rogue Trader is none the wiser.

The eldar corsairs are a huge and diverse group;
-Some are exile CWE who travel alongside the craftworld and protect it. These guys raid enemy groups of the craftworld for additional supplies, are allowed some trading with the craftworld, and really are only corsairs and not eldar fleet because they don't walk an accepted CWE path.
-Some are a mix of anything and everything and operate completely independently. These guys range hugely as they are the middle group but they need raw materials and trade goods to trade with their CWE and DE cousins to obtain replacement weapons and vehicles. These guys just do what they want.
-Some of them are outcasts from commorragh where they cannot go back for one reason or another. They are essentially DE with higher risk.

As for intercepting ships. The distance between two planets is absolutely massive. It makes the surface of a planet look like a spec of dirt in comparison. If you have two planets and an asteroid belt between them there is a fair chance that pirates would take up position between. Most corsairs that I have read about have not talked about warp travel at all but instead seem to be solar system bound groups who are significant enough in number and forces to occupy an asteroid belt and make it too expensive for the IoM to root them out. Keep in mind that if the IoM shifts an imperial navy fleet from the eye of terror or from engaging a hive fleet to route out pirates then the IoM looses a lot more than a few ships they could loose entire solar systems.

Also remember that not all ships may be warp capable. Not sure if it's canon (meaning I found it on the 40k wiki), but I believe the Miserichord (sp?)is one such "generational ship"

Food for thought.

FM Argos

My understanding of the fluff is that its really only the larger Imperial Navy vessels that can make it from point A to point B in one go, the average 'civilian' vessel (and even the smaller military escort vessels) needs to stop a few times in between, thats how the establishment of the various trade routes came about, because ships travelling from important point A to important point B needed to stop at various non-important points along the way to refuel/repair, etc. Its during these stops that pirates become an issue, as you may be travelling through contested space, or in areas that aren't quite so firmly under Imperial control or aren't as well defended.

The sea.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
The sea.

Nah, piratebay.