![[TORTUGA LOGO]](/comstar/gif/tortugadom.gif)
The Tortuga Dominions are a result of the Reunification War against the Taurian Concordat. During the latter stages of that conflict, the Federated Suns 237th Light Cavalry Regiment was all but destroyed in a wasteful penetration raid against the Taurian outpost of Sterope. Unable to hold their positions and unwilling to be thrown into the vicious fray somewhere else, the 237th opted to jump outward into the unknown. A generation after settling a small, pleasant world beyond the fringes of the Federated Suns, the newly formed Pirates of Tortuga began operations against their callous former comrades in the Federated Suns.
With equipment and machinery won at gun point from half a dozen
Davion worlds, the Tortugans began to expand their
foothold in their new world. Within a century, they were stable and
self-sufficient enough to begin colonization efforts of their own. By the
early 2700s, the Tortugans had settled five neighboring star systems.
Abundant radioactives and raw materials on these newly claimed worlds helped
the rise of what has since become known as the Tortuga Dominions.
Of all the Bandit Kingdoms in the Periphery, the Tortuga Dominions maintain the largest spacefaring navy. Estimates place the size of the Tortuga jolly rogers at about 15, though a lack of spare parts and machinery has forced the Tortugans to cannibalize several of these.
In the last two centuries, the Tortuga raiders have struck deep into the Federated Suns and the Taurian Concordat. Already known for utter depravity and ruthlessness, it appears that the Tortugans are becoming more desperate as their planets are now finally beginning to run out of resources.
Over the years, Tortuga has been stripped of almost all its ore, and it is currently nearing ecological exhaustion. An estimated sixty thousand brigands of every description inhabit Raiders Roost, the sole settlement on the planet. Most live in conditions of near destitution, as the major share of captured booty goes to Dame Trevaline's most experienced cutthroats.
Formerly a mercenary unit known for reliable and honest service, the Fusiliers have degenerated into little more than bandits. They currently control the Tortuga Dominions, filling the power vacuum left by the resounding defeat of Pauly "Lady Death" Trevaline by the AFFC armed forces in 3042. From Dominion territory, the Fusiliers conduct frequent raids against worlds in several enarby realms, and also attack Federated Commonwealth planets near the Periphery border.
In the mid-3030s, when the AFFC briefly made the Tortuga Dominions one of its major targets, Paula Trevaline shifted her operations to the Taurian Concordat and the Mica Majority. Neither Periphery state could offer much resistance to the pirates - the Mica Majority because it lacked large-scale military resources, the Taurian Concordat because its Protector refused to recognize any threat aside from a possible Federated Commonwealth invasion. When the AFFC turned its attention to preparations for the War of 3039, Lady Death and the Tortuga Pirates were free to raid with impunity. From 3033 to 3040, the bandits of the Dominions seemed unstoppable.
After the Tortugans resumed raiding Federated Commonwealth worlds in 3039 and 3040, the commanders of the AFFC decided to end the pirates' reign of terror once and for all. In 3042, the AFFC High Command sent the Ninth Regimental Combat Team to the region of space where they believed the Dominions to lie. After two months of searching for the Dominions' capital world, the Ninth RCT landed on Tortuga Prime, taking Lady Death and her troops by surprise. The Ninth overcame the pirates after several pitched battles, capturing Lady Death and decimating her forces. Upon their return to the Federated Commonwealth, the Ninth RCT delivered Paula Trevaline to a maximum-security prison on New Syrtis, where she remains to this day.
Fervently glad to see the backs of their brutal pirate kings, the remaining residents of the Dominions continued to scratch out what livings they could on their resource-depleted worlds. The once-fearsome bandit kingdom existed as a leaderless collection of subsistence-level planets until 3054, when Fuchida's Fusiliers arrived on Tortuga Prime.
The Fusiliers broke their contract with the Federated Commonwealth in 3051, after the AFFC ordered them to the Clan border without giving the mercenaries any of the cutting-edge technology with which it had outfitted its own troops. Fearing that the Clan forces would cut them to ribbons, the Fusiliers refused their orders and took matters into their own hands. The mercenary unit raided the Precision Weaponry plant on Tancredi IV, capturing large amounts of equipment and severely damaging the facility in the process, and then high-tailed it out of the Commonwealth. Cutting through the Outworlds Alliance territory and stopping only to raid for food and water, the unit wandered the stellar desert just beyond the Alliance's borders. After a brief stop in the Mica Majority, where they reportedly acquired more supplies and some gold through legal means, the Fusiliers continued their journey. Aside from a brief skirmish with warriors from the Brotherhood of Randis, who defeted them in a fight over a BattleMech cache on the world of Antallos, little was heard of the rogue mercenary unit until 3054, when a Periphery trader traveling between the Mica Majority and Concordat space stopped over near Tortuga Prime to look for customers. Fuchida's Fusiliers reportedly threatened to blow the trader and her ship from the sky, at which point the trader left Dominion space in haste.
Unit Name Experience Regiments Homeworld
Fuchida's Fusiliers Veteran 0.33 Tortuga Prime
(CO: Major Twylla Sumeral)
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#include
<stddiscl.h>
Will Day < wd