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I'm starting a novel upon a band of mercenary bandits in Warhammer 40,000, but I can't find much upon Bandits in 40k except for those who turned to Chaos (Which would be meh to write about).
So do any of you dakkanauts or dakkanetts know where about Bandits, Pirates or mercenaries might live in the galaxy?

Cheers

There'll be dozens of unscrupulous characters in the underbelly of any Hive City, so that'd be the natural starting point for the characters.

If you're looking for something a little higher up the pecking order, Rogue Traders are basically Privateers (given licence to do whatever they want so long as they do the odd favour for the Imperium like contacting/locating new planets/collecting tithes ect.) They're often very over-the-top characters of loose moral alignment, so it's perfectly possible that one would, for whatever reason recruit some of the aforementioned hive dwellers to pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer their weasely black guts out.

So that could be an interesting angle to take, a trader that becomes bored or disillusioned with his imperial role and going pirate, recruiting a hive gang or two for crew.

Pirates and brigands are noted as living on the fringes. Whether that means on a planet in areas that are hard to get to like mountains or canyons or the underhive, or off planet in asteroid fields or uncharted moons thats up to the author. For pirates they can't be too far off the beaten track or they wouldn't be able to raid the space lanes, so usually there is some kind of dense space feature that can't be patrolled effectively that is close to a primary trade route, either out to the system warp translstion point, or on an interplanetary trade route in system.

Or maybe on a spaceship!

Maybe on a rocky, more inhiospitable out of the way planet to base on, near mian space lanes but not the kind of planet the impuirum bothers to pay too much attention too. Maybe dangerous space conditions or just not worth the time to patrol very often.

But crews could be from anywhere, from former captives to undrhive gangs and deserters of the impirial guard and more.

Pirates can be as varied as the human population which is massively varied and diverse,

near planets were the warp is unstable, making it easy for them to raid slow moving convoys and hard for the imperium to respond to the threat. i would imagine in hostile sectors as well were the pickings are easy and minor incidents would go unnoticed due to the larger wars. also traveling using there ship(s) as there homes and maybe never returning to the same world again.

Hollowed-out Asteroids are traditional, I believe.

Some of the more notorious pirates hide out in the Webway. Preying on those silly Mon-Keighs and their sub-standard ships.

And as mentioned, just staying on a moving ship is pretty good. You'd need to bring in beer and entertainment but that's what some hidden remote asteroid base is for. Or trading with corrupt Imperial officials or Xenos.

The hidden base is more for repair and refits of ships in "dry dock".

Spetulhu wrote:
And as mentioned, just staying on a moving ship is pretty good. You'd need to bring in beer and entertainment but that's what some hidden remote asteroid base is for. Or trading with corrupt Imperial officials or Xenos.

So you stop at Cammoragh for Drugs, Sex, and Rock 'n' Roll?

 baxter123 wrote:
I'm starting a novel upon a band of mercenary bandits in Warhammer 40,000, but I can't find much upon Bandits in 40k except for those who turned to Chaos (Which would be meh to write about).
So do any of you dakkanauts or dakkanetts know where about Bandits, Pirates or mercenaries might live in the galaxy?

Cheers

Space-faring pirates especially flourish in the Eye of Terror and the Maelstrom, but you can find pirates pretty much anywhere in 40K. Non-chaotic pirates tend to make their port of call near isolated chokepoints of stable warp routes. They're not exactly on the fringers per say, you'll probably start to find a bunch of pirates starting at the middle to the end of the Imperium's space.

Actually feth it, I'll just draw it.



OK,

Yellow are stable Warp Routes

Blue are Planets

Red is fortification

And Green are Pirates


This is just a crude example of how space pirates work and set up shot usually. To the left in the red circle is a BIG intersection in the warp. Planets there are bloated on wealth by serving as middlemen- lots of wealth comes in and leaves the sector. Because of such wealth, the sector is guarded by the Imperial Navy, so only extremely stupid and short-lived pirates will attempt to raid that intersection. However to the right, there's another warp intersection where wealth leads the affluent middlemen and pours into nearby sectors who pay higher prices for goods from the middlemen because they don't live near the intersection. Lots of trade, lots of valuable ores, food, luxuries, etc. What the pirates will do however is set up shop in an asteroid field, a desolated deserted group of planets, etc. Once they've set up a port of call, the pirates will wait for passers-by. As you can't really turn in the warp, this means the ships moving to trade with the other sectors have to stop and recalculate to make a turn. When this happens, the pirates jump them while they're vulnerable and take out their engines for boarding.

Also, just a note that pirates cannot excessively attack ships, they have to do so in moderation. Too many ships disappear, and it no longer looks like your usual warp accidents (which are fairly common, but still not too numerous) but piracy. Then the Imperial Navy, or if you've REALLY pissed somebody off, Space Marines stop by and turn your skull inside-out.

Okay thanks for the advice, it's very helpful!