Human Nature Question re: Marauders

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Ursus Maior

That and then the question: "What is a marauder really?"

Marauder is more of a foreign appellation. Most groups wouldn't call themselves that, unless you're looking for a fancy name for your military unit. Thus, marauder is more a catch-all term for bandits and raiders, possibly ex-military, but also could just an armed gang.

So, where do they come from and what did they do before? Marauders fill up a power vacuum and usually don't stay marauders for very long. It's a hazardous occupation, so you either establish an area where you can run a different, less dangerous scheme, or you become a roving party. Those usually end messy, once someone else claims the territory as theirs and achieves some local support.

Once marauders have their hide-outs known, they're usually hunted down pretty quickly. It's really a no-brainer for local power structures to do so: lines of communication and commerce become safer, local people happier and you get to show your strength, keep the weapons and re-distribute the possessions and stolen goods of the marauders.

The Twilight World, c.2000, is a pretty chaotic place, where power structures either don't exist, are spread exceedingly thin, and/or strained to the breaking point. In any failed state, marauders (call them what you will) tend to appear, and are extremely difficult to stamp out.

Take, for instance, 14th century Europe, especially France during the 100 Years War. Kings/national governments were too weak to eliminate or even control large "marauder" groups. Once a "Free Company", as the English called them (Condottieri, in Italian) had fulfilled its mercenary contract, or become dissatisfied with the terms, it often turned to banditry to support itself until the next contract could be secured (in France, demobilized mercs were called Écorcheurs- literally, "scorchers")- this could often take quite a bit of time. Free Companies would routinely ransom entire villages until paid off to leave. Villages that couldn't or wouldn't pay would be pillaged- the classic protection racket. This sort of thing was also pretty common during the 30 Years War.

In modern times, one sees this sort of thing in places like Somalia, where the line between insurgent, terrorist, and bandit is blurred almost beyond distinction. Mexico isn't quite a failed state, but there are large areas of the country where criminal groups or paramilitaries are the de facto local authority, and pretty much do what they like with impunity. This has been going on for a couple of decades now, and the Mexican gov't, even using the national military to supplement local and federal police forces, has so far failed to eliminate these myriad groups or bring them to heel.

In conclusion, I don't think the marauder problem described in T2k lore is at all overblown. I think marauders would be a persistent, endemic problem in warzones and failed states all over the world. Poland, for one, qualifies as both.

-