Sirius is a big place, and in that big place are four "Houses". Bastions of human culture and progress after the Alliance's harsh expulsion from Sol, these Houses have stood for centuries, representing all that the exodus fought to achieve...
They're also at each others' throats. Kusari and Bretonia have been throwing punches for a decade. Rheinland and Liberty just started their little quarrel. And who does all the fighting? The soldiers, of course. While the civilians sit back and watch the world spin around them, it's the starfighter pilots and starship crews who are out there getting blasted, vaporized, asphyxiated, vented into space, and mentally scarred among other things.
Well, there comes a point when soldiers start to lose morale, and when morale is lost, "squads are broken", and when "squads are broken", soldiers do some unpleasant things. Like deserting. Just because these men and women are trained to be warriors doesn't make them any more or less human than the rest of us, so there will inevitably be those who determine that being in combat is a big mistake, and they have better things to do than be shot at for a low wage. Therefore they reason they might as well be shot at for higher wages.
But unlike your average ace mercenary who shows up out of nowhere, these brave men and women have to go AWOL and be put on the big bad Wanted List of their respective Houses. They've left their barracks with whatever they can carry on their backs, or more appropriately whatever they can fly underneath their feet.
After watching his wingmen explode into constituent particles for almost a year, one pilot in the Liberty Navy decided to take this leap. Captain Eric Kargin took his trusty Guardian out on a training mission one day and never came back. The Navy would have loved to simply put him up on the MIA board, but it wasn't long before the ex-fighter pilot showed up in the border worlds, demanding his "due" behind a payload of lasers. Between his raw experience as a pilot, his experience in planning and leading operations, and the fact that he had the whole galaxy to operate in, Kargin found himself in a curiously advantageous position.
His reputation in the military world began to skyrocket, in the oddest sense. Rumors about his exploits as a "man on the run" abounded, questions regarding his loyalty and purpose of fighting found their way through both sides of No Man's Land, and ultimately he was just short of having a poem written after him when pieces began falling into place. Those pieces were other soldiers, of all nationalities and backgrounds. They had chosen to flee the bloodshed, for a myriad of personal reasons, and sought out the only refuge they could readily find: their fellow soldiers, herded by Kargin. In the utmost vanity, the ex-Captain founded the "Independent Space Force" that would become stuff of rumors and the shame of Houses for years to come.
The Hawkbats are a conglomeration of AWOL soldiers, pilots in this instance, who have taken their military gear with them. Considered traitors and enemies of their nations, they cannot return home, but being the law enforcement of the sector they can't exactly kiss and make up with all the legions of brigands out there either. So what do they do? They band together and put their stolen government hardware to use to make a living any way they can.
Sirius has seen enough needless carnage to warrant some people wanting to flip it off and leave, and the Hawkbats are a nice place to resort to. Sure, they have their internal bickering since they were just as likely to be enemies the day before, but the funny thing about combatants in most wars is that they're not manic about their country's ideals and tend to make good friends with former foes. It is this cohesion, the bond between soldiers, which gives members of the Hawkbats a reason to stick together rather than join the likes of the Rogues or Mollies.
They are soldiers of fortune, in a manner of speaking, though they're just as likely to steal it as earn it. They are enemies of the state, whichever state you happen to pledge allegiance to. They are rebels with a cause: money, food, and a bunk.
Say hello to the Hawkbats.
DETAILS
The "Hawkbat Independent Space Force" is what amounts to a mercenary/pirate band made up of ex-soldiers, or more precisely deserters. As a result, they've taken what kit they can with them, and use it in whatever way they see fit. They don't have a base of operations so much as they throw together ramshackle transports and drift around, pirating and occasionally taking a dirty job or two.
That being said, there will never be an ID or IFF to suit them, or to suit their roleplay. The Hawkbats would be identified simply by the tags in their names, in this case "\HB/". Their IDs would be Pirate, but they would lack an IFF response; theirs would be outdated by their respective militaries.
REASONABLENESS VS PRACTICALITY
Now I want to make this abundantly clear: This is Not a "PVP Whore" faction. There is nothing anywhere in this game that indicates military fighters are better than their pirate counterparts. On the contrary, your average Gary and Mary merc and pirate seem to roll around in UA8 Codename-toting battlewagons, while the lawful factions tend to stick to whatever guns they've got. I don't need to go into that whole debate, but suffice it to say that if ships and weapons were "balanced" between each other then a group of mixed military vehicles does not give the Hawkbats any absurd advantage over other players any more than one Navy has against any pirate group.
Of course, I am aware of the reputations of some Navy ships, such as the Kusari fighters which are notoriously small and hard to hit. To that I say: Oh well. This is not going to be a "Kusari deserter" group, but a 'military' deserter group. For every Chimaera I want a Wraith, Guardian, and Templar to go with it.
Again, this is Not a PVP-only faction. Sure, it involves shooting stuff to bits like everything else, but it has rhyme and reason to it. Militaries everywhere will want to see the Hawkbats shot. Mercs will be given contracts to try to take them down (Let 'em try if they dare). Booty they steal needs a middleman to go sell it, preferably outside of the faction, perhaps an unlawful group of some sort could make a contract, thus making "friends". Factions can FR5 the hell out of the Hawkbats based on their whims; nobody said life on the road was easy but it can be done.
Don't think this kind of scenario could ever happen in Freelancer? Take a look at Starlancer. A huge story arc in its campaign involved the leader of your 45th volunteer squadron going rogue with a bunch of Alliance and Coalition pilots and pirating traders while under the guises of legitimate soldiers. If that can happen in the middle of the Sol War, it can certainly happen in the open spaces of the entire Sirius Sector.
THE SRP REQUEST
It'd end up looking something like this:
"SRP Wrote:- All ships considered "official' Hawkbats and under the jurisdiction of this SRP must have a "\HB/" tag in their name, must have a mounted Pirate ID, must have no IFF, and must be listed on a unit roster which can be referenced by the administrators.
- All officially \HB/ tagged ships are allowed to use military fighters from Bretonia, Liberty, Rheinland, and Kusari (No Gallic stuff yet, nor Outcast/Corsair. Just the four main ones).
- All officially \HB/ tagged ships are allowed to use class 9 military weapons so long as they match the type of vessel they are installed on (i.e. Hornvipers on a Wraith).
- \HB/ is allowed to fulfill semi-lawful and unlawful bounty contracts and take on-the-spot escort contracts (meshing together the pirate/merc ID).
SHIPS AND EQUIPMENT
Fighters/Bombers - The Hawkbats are made up of ex-military pilots who have undoubtedly brought their kit with them. This means that any given pilot has brought with them a fighter or bomber. As such, every member is allotted One military fighter type from any of the four main Houses. This serves as their "primary mount", and is equipped with military-grade technology. If a character so chooses to use a different type of fighter or bomber, or if the Hawkbats as a whole invest in such equipment, they are not permitted to add military-grade technology (i.e. Kargin with his Guardian chooses to get a bomber, but can't go back to the Navy to get one, so he buys a Roc off the black market).
Freighters/Transports - Since cargo pirating is what the Hawkbats excel at, they require heavy lifting capacity. As such, they are allowed to use any transport under the limitations of the Pirate ID, which is to say virtually every civilian and basic pirate ship up to the Pirate Train. Transports do not use faction-specific weaponry, but freighters do. In the event freighters are employed, they are not allowed to use military tech.
RANKS
The "Hawkbat Independent Space Force" is a fancy name for a bunch of disgruntled soldiers with guns. As such, they are just as fancy in practices such as rank. All of it is innocent fighter pilot vanity, and does not reflect the material situation of the Hawkbats.
General
The leader of the Hawkbats, currently Kargin himself. He's not a General of much, obviously, but it makes him feel high and mighty.
Colonel
A "second in command" rank, Colonels have jurisdiction in the field or in matters of diplomacy when the good General isn't around. That isn't to say they're completely independent; Kargin isn't averse to de-braining members of his outfit he considers liabilities, even if that includes the Colonels.
Captain
These pilots have basic jurisdiction in the field, often seen leading pirating detachments when the General or Colonels aren't around. Of course, with rank comes responsibility: Captains have to be on their feet, since it's their responsibility if it gets SNAFU on their watch.
Lieutenant
The bread and butter, most pilots are lieutenants. They've proven to the General that they're willing to operate within the Hawkbat organization without killing their fellow pilots and having hefty idealistic qualms about blowing up transports.
Recruit/Rookie/FNG
Ex-military pilots who seek to join the Hawkbats won't find the reception all that easy. It's a harsh way of life, and each member depends on each other in order to simply survive. As such, applicants have a trial period during which they have to prove their worth or suffer the consequences. The consequences are rather obvious: the Hawkbats cannot afford to have secrets bled to those that hunt them, nor can they afford to have multiple deserter groups running about, so if you fail, you get shot, or vented, or vaporized. Depends on the General's mood.
ORIGINS
Step one was the Starlancer reference above. The idea of what deserting soldiers would do in a futuristic space-bound universe intrigues me. They can't turn to crime groups that easily, or perhaps they have reservations against it. But they can't return home; it's the military, you're AWOL, you're to be imprisoned or shot. That's real life; there is no "resigning" unless you're dead or crippled. No such group seems to exist, and I don't count the Hellfires; they've thrown in somewhat with the unlawfuls and have this big ideological crusade going on. The average drafted Jimbob doesn't give a hoot n' hell about that kind of crap since as far as he's concerned he's a wanted man. To say nothing of the fact that it's Liberty only, whereas I wanted a more universal group.
Step two was a Star Wars reference. I love Star Wars, particularly the expanded universe; the authors do a great job of going into gritty, "realistic" details that the movies and games tend to shy away from. This is where the name comes from, if anybody's recognized it. The Hawkbats were a (fake) pirate group that stole Imperial military-grade equipment and used it to commit acts of piracy. Their namesake was the Hawkbat, a fictional animal which just as well might exist on any near-habitable planet in Freelancer, so I decided to keep it.
![[Image: hawbatsymbol2.png]](http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/8462/hawbatsymbol2.png)