[1 November 3071; Melissia] Pirates have plagued mankind since well before we escaped the cradle of Terra, and although we’ve expanded our realm to include other star systems and our experience to include hyperspace, we haven’t yet found away to erase our base ambitions to force our will on our fellow man.
The modern pirate is for all intents and purposes a nascent nation-state by himself. He recognizes no authority save that he imposes, and he takes pride, profit, or even pleasure in the degradation and humiliation of others. Very often he is armed with the latest in warfighting technology, up to an including advanced BattleMechs. Able to match most any police force or paramilitary group for sheer firepower, the modern pirate is almost unstoppable by anything except a frontline military unit.
But what drives them? Sheer greed? Economic studies have proven time and time again that, excepting the rare prize, piracy as a means of income just doesn’t balance out. Are these just simple dangerous criminals, then, for which we must (as members of a society that favors rehabilitation over punishment) hold ourselves accountable for? Is it possible that the criminally insane, mad sociopaths who disregard the common rules of society, can build such a coalition as a viable pirate force requires. Or, as noted pirate Helmar Valasek once stated, are they simply independent-minded people out to carve a place for themselves in a hostile galaxy?
Whatever the reason, no nation-state in the Inner Sphere condones piracy—excepting such questionable states as the Circinus Federation and the Marian Hegemony, Periphery states founded on little more than pirate practices—and every state is forced to guard against them. In the cauldron of the Jihad, however, this menace rises again and again as people are pushed beyond the boundaries of rational behavior by the stress of simple survival.