Irregular Forces

"No government can be everywhere."

— Mercenary Guild Handbook

Overview

Irregular Forces is a broad term used to describe armed organizations that operate outside the authority of recognized governments, military organizations, or licensed security institutions.

These groups range from small bands of raiders to large separatist movements capable of controlling significant territory. Some are criminal enterprises motivated by profit, while others pursue political, ideological, or religious objectives.

Although the Great Houses maintain powerful militaries and extensive security networks, the sheer scale of inhabited space ensures that irregular forces remain a persistent feature of life throughout the Core.

Origins

The continued existence of irregular forces is largely a consequence of geography, history, and scale.

Most inhabited worlds are not uniformly developed. Population tends to cluster around major cities, transportation corridors, industrial centers, and orbital facilities, leaving vast regions sparsely populated or rarely visited.

Many planets also contain large quantities of abandoned infrastructure dating back to the Empire, the Dark Age, or earlier colonial eras. Forgotten mining camps, depopulated settlements, abandoned military bases, obsolete transit networks, and partially reclaimed urban districts can be found throughout the Core. Some have been documented and preserved. Others have simply been forgotten.

As worlds age, layers of development accumulate. New cities are built atop old foundations. Industrial regions expand and contract. Colonies are founded, abandoned, and resettled. Entire communities may disappear without significantly affecting a planet's overall population statistics.

For this reason, few worlds are comprehensively mapped beyond their inhabited regions. Governments maintain detailed records of major population centers and critical infrastructure, but many remote regions remain poorly surveyed. Old records are often incomplete, contradictory, or centuries out of date.

Most worlds are also too large to police comprehensively. Governments concentrate their resources around major population centers, transportation corridors, industrial sites, and strategic infrastructure. Beyond these regions, law enforcement and military presence often becomes increasingly sparse.

These conditions create ideal environments for irregular forces. Remote wilderness areas, abandoned settlements, forgotten military installations, and isolated mountain ranges frequently serve as refuges for groups seeking to avoid government oversight. Many organizations establish hidden bases within regions that may be visited only rarely by authorities.

Strongholds and Hideouts

Contrary to popular perception, most successful irregular forces do not operate from temporary camps.

Many occupy abandoned settlements, forgotten military installations, decommissioned industrial complexes, mining colonies, or other relics of earlier eras. Some strongholds originated as legitimate communities that gradually fell beyond effective government control, while others were deliberately established in remote regions chosen for their isolation.

Large organizations may control entire valleys, island chains, mountain ranges, or sparsely populated regions. The most successful groups often develop workshops, landing facilities, supply depots, training grounds, and defensive networks capable of supporting long-term operations.

Some strongholds have existed for generations and become communities in their own right. Children are born there, economies emerge, and local identities develop independent of the governments that nominally claim the territory.

Bandits and Raiders

Bandits are among the most common irregular threats throughout the Core.

These groups survive through robbery, extortion, smuggling, protection rackets, and attacks against isolated settlements or transportation routes. Most begin as small criminal organizations, though successful groups can grow into regional powers controlling substantial territory.

Bandit organizations emerge from many sources. Some are founded by criminals and opportunists seeking profit, while others originate from failed separatist movements, collapsing frontier communities, abandoned military formations, or mercenary companies that have fallen upon hard times. Throughout history, poorly disciplined companies, abandoned garrisons, and unpaid soldiers have occasionally drifted into piracy, banditry, or outright rebellion.

While smaller organizations may rely primarily upon conventional vehicles and infantry, larger groups frequently field mechs acquired through theft, salvage, black market purchases, battlefield recovery, or defections from legitimate military forces. Veteran mech pilots are highly valued and often command considerable authority within bandit hierarchies.

Many prominent bandit leaders are former mercenaries, discharged soldiers, failed revolutionaries, or local strongmen. As a result, some organizations possess surprisingly sophisticated military capabilities despite their criminal origins.

Pirates

Pirates operate primarily in space, targeting civilian shipping, isolated colonies, frontier traffic, and lightly defended commercial routes.

Most pirate organizations rely upon speed, surprise, and superior local knowledge rather than overwhelming military strength. Successful groups carefully select targets, avoid major fleet engagements, and retreat before authorities can organize a response.

Many pirate crews operate from hidden bases located within remote systems, abandoned stations, asteroid belts, or poorly monitored regions of space. The largest organizations often maintain support networks involving smugglers, corrupt officials, black market traders, and informants.

Although heavily armed pirate fleets are uncommon, some pirate lords have accumulated sufficient wealth and military power to dominate entire sectors for years before being removed.

Smugglers and Criminal Syndicates

Not all irregular forces rely upon open violence.

Smuggling networks transport contraband, restricted technologies, weapons, stolen goods, and other illicit cargo between worlds. Criminal syndicates often operate extensive commercial networks that may span multiple star systems.

Unlike bandit groups, syndicates frequently attempt to infiltrate legitimate institutions rather than oppose them directly. Bribery, corruption, money laundering, and political influence are often more valuable than military strength.

Nevertheless, major criminal organizations commonly maintain private security forces and mech units capable of defending their operations. Some possess resources rivaling those of minor governments.

Separatists and Insurgents

Some irregular forces are politically motivated rather than criminal.

Separatist movements seek independence from existing governments, while insurgent organizations attempt to reform, weaken, or overthrow established authorities. Such groups often emerge in regions where local populations feel neglected, exploited, culturally distinct, or politically marginalized.

Many separatist movements view themselves as legitimate governments-in-waiting rather than rebels. They frequently establish administrative structures, taxation systems, local militias, and territorial claims within areas under their control.

While some movements remain peaceful, others develop into major military organizations capable of fielding conventional armies, mech formations, aerospace assets, and long-term resistance campaigns.

Mercenary Operations

Mercenaries are employed extensively throughout the Core, both in the suppression of irregular forces and in proxy conflicts between the Great Houses.

Security and Suppression

Even the Great Houses cannot continuously patrol every trade route, investigate every report of suspicious activity, or maintain garrisons in every remote settlement. Mercenary units therefore serve as a flexible reserve force, allowing clients to respond rapidly to developing situations without sustaining the enormous expense of expanding their standing militaries. Governments, corporations, settlements, and private citizens regularly hire mercenaries to combat pirates, bandits, smugglers, separatists, and other irregular forces.

Common contracts include:

• anti-piracy operations
• bandit suppression
• convoy escort missions
• settlement defense
• anti-smuggling raids
• counterinsurgency operations
• recovery of stolen property
• reconnaissance of hostile territories

Many assignments involve lengthy search operations, anti-piracy patrols, and the systematic elimination of hostile strongholds hidden within remote regions. Others involve border disputes, covert raids, security operations, military advising, or deniable actions carried out on behalf of larger powers.

As a result, irregular forces remain one of the largest sources of employment for mercenary organizations throughout human space, though they are far from the only source.

Proxy Warfare

The Great Houses also frequently employ mercenary units to supplement military operations, wage proxy conflicts, provide plausible deniability, secure remote territories, and respond to emerging threats.

The boundary between mercenary and irregular force is not always clear. Not every raid or ambush is necessarily the work of irregular forces. The Great Houses and other powerful interests frequently employ mercenary units as proxy forces. Although rival governments often recognize the true sponsors behind such operations, the use of mercenaries helps contain disputes that might otherwise escalate into open war. Raids, sabotage, border actions, and industrial strikes carried out by mercenary forces have become an accepted, if unofficial, part of interstate competition throughout much of the Core.

As a result, organizations publicly or officially identified as bandits, raiders, separatists, or local militias may in reality be acting on behalf of larger political powers.

As one popular Outer Worlds saying puts it:

"The difference between a bandit, a rebel, and a merc is who signs the paycheck."

Government Response

The Great Houses devote considerable resources to combating irregular threats.

Military patrols, intelligence operations, security forces, local defense organizations, and licensed mercenary units continuously work to suppress criminal and insurgent activity. Strategic transportation corridors, major cities, industrial centers, and critical infrastructure receive particularly heavy protection.

The distribution of irregular forces is not uniform throughout the Core. Activity tends to be lowest within the Central Worlds of the Prime Meridian, where population density, military presence, law enforcement, and surveillance infrastructure are at their greatest. Worlds such as Citadel and the capital worlds of the Great Houses maintain extensive security networks that make it exceedingly difficult for bandits, pirates, or irregular mech formations to operate openly.

This does not mean irregular activity is entirely absent. Smuggling, organized crime, espionage, and other covert operations still occur even within the most secure systems. However, heavily armed groups rarely survive for long once detected. Any significant bandit force, pirate base, or unauthorized mech formation discovered near a major population center would likely face an immediate and overwhelming response from local authorities.

Beyond the Central Worlds, irregular forces become increasingly common. The Outer Worlds, Upper Meridian, and Lower Meridian generally possess lower population densities, fewer security assets, and larger expanses of lightly monitored territory. These conditions provide greater opportunities for bandits, pirates, smugglers, separatists, and other irregular organizations to establish strongholds and evade authorities.

A Permanent Reality

Despite centuries of anti-piracy campaigns, military operations, and law enforcement efforts, complete eradication of irregular forces in the Core has proven impossible. Every successful operation removes one threat, but new groups inevitably emerge elsewhere. A destroyed pirate fleet may scatter into several smaller organizations. A defeated bandit leader may simply be replaced by another. Suppressed insurgencies often reappear years later under new leadership.

For most governments, irregular forces are not a problem to be solved permanently but a reality to be managed continuously. Success is measured not by elimination, but by containment.

As long as worlds remain vast, borders remain porous, and authority remains imperfect, irregular forces will continue to emerge wherever opportunities exist. Some are motivated by greed, others by desperation, ideology, ambition, or simple survival. Their causes vary, but their presence remains remarkably consistent across cultures and eras.

For many citizens, irregular forces are a distant concern encountered only through news reports and security briefings. For others, particularly those living in remote settlements and isolated regions, they are an everyday reality.

The Core may be the center of human civilization, but beyond the reach of its institutions there will always be places where other powers take root.