Lets talk about Junkers.

[Tenacity]

Junkers work individually or in small groups composed of friends or business partners - but they are not divided. If you cause enough trouble for one junker, you'll wind up dealing with the whole group.

Think of them as a union of sorts. Officially they're salvagers who retrieve valuable equipment from scrap fields and derelict ships that they come across - often that equipment can turn up a very good profit (weapons, secret data, etc). In that regard, as salvagers, they work alone for the most part - one salvager doesnt want another coming along and trying to compete with him, so they spread out and leave each other alone.

However, there's more to the group as a whole - the junkers run the single largest black market and smuggling ring in all of sirius. They cover almost every system in rheinland, liberty, and bretonia - they even exist in many of the omicron, omega, and tau systems. The only place that junkers arent found is kusari - because the hogosha and kusari government have banded together against them to keep out the 'foreigners'.

So you really have to look at junkers, overall, as a very large corporation. They all profit from the black market and smuggling trades, and they all participate in those trades. They work together and share the wealth - much like a company without a central head of operations. Each junker base has elected 'officials' that manage business on that base and make sure things dont get out of hand. If someone causes trouble for their business, these officials put an end to it - either through bribes, blackmail, or assassination.

EDIT:

As for how 'educated' they are... I'd say very, at least in the field of politics and subversion. Junkers are experts at manipulating people, and you have to be damn smart to do that.

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