Tortuga Dominions

The Tortuga Dominions is a Bandit Kingdom in the Periphery from which occasional raids are launched against the Federated Suns and the Taurian Concordat in search of plunder.

Founding
The beginnings of the pirate realm known as the Tortuga Dominions were laid during the later stages of the 20 year campaign against the Taurian Concordat conducted by the Star League as a part of the Reunification War. A unit from the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns, the 237th Light Cavalry Regiment, was all but destroyed as a result of a wasteful raid against the Taurian world of Sterope. The survivors of the 237th found themselves unable to hold their position and generally unwilling to return to Federated Suns space only to be thrown back into the fray again; instead, the members of the 237th decided to head out further into the Periphery.

The group found a small, pleasant world well outside the borders of both the Federated Suns and the Taurian Concordat and settled there; shortly afterwards, they began raids against Federated Suns worlds as the newly-formed Pirates of Tortuga.

Star League Era
Buoyed by equipment snatched, stolen or captured from a half dozen different Federated Suns worlds, the Tortugans began to expand their holdings on their new homeworld, Tortuga Prime, and within a century the pirate band had reached a point where they were self-sufficient enough to begin efforts to colonize worlds beyond Tortuga Prime. By the early twenty-eighth century the pirates had expanded into five additional systems, and the resources found on those worlds - particularly raw materials and radioisotopes - fueled the rise of a pirate nation, the Tortuga Dominions.

Succession Wars
As the Succession Wars engulfed the remains of the Star League, raiding forces from the Dominions would conduct raids that stretched deeply into the Concordat and the Federated Suns, earning a reputation for utter depravity, cruelty and ruthlessness; towards the end of the 3rd Succession War these raids were driven by a lack of easily-scavenged resources on the various worlds of the Dominion, and although the pirates had been forced to cannibalize elements of their navy, the Jolly Rogers fleet of roughly fifteen vessels constituted the largest pirate navy in any of the bandit kingdoms of the era.

First Prince Ian Davion of the Federated Suns used the Wolf's Dragoons mercenary brigade to teach the Tortugans and their leader, Lord Kalvin Bar-Dyness, a punitive lesson in 3007. Gamma and Delta Regiments landed on New Hati in September, with Delta Regiment concentrating on wearing the pirates down while Gamma Regiment to encircle the brigand positions. The pirates managed to stage a breakout, but took heavy losses before escaping, and the attack effectively discouraged the Tortugans from raiding the Federated Suns for several years afterwards.

The Jihad
During the early years of the Jihad the pirates of the Dominions were raiding as far afield as the Outworlds Wastes, striking at worlds such as Ddraig and coming into conflict with forces like the Brotherhood of Randis. The pirates also found themselves in the unusual position of being invited into a number of former Federated Suns worlds; in a fit of irony, the newly-independent Malagrotta Cooperative sought to defend itself from increasing pirate activity by issuing Letters of Marque to any pirate band willing to sign on to defend the Cooperative. This led to some of the more famous and numerous bands including the Death's Consorts relocating to the Cooperative.

By 3079 pirate activity out of the Tortuga Dominions was at its lowest ebb since the fall of the Star League; with the destruction of Tiqualme's Consorts - formerly Death's Consorts - and the large number of fellow Tortugans and denizens of the Pirates' Haven the Consorts had recruited during their efforts to rule the Malagrotta Cooperative, morale among the surviving pirates in the region was correspondingly low.