Raider

A raider is a person or entity often regarded as a criminal by most galactic standards for the matter.

Raiders often operate in small groups and pry on galactic shipping lanes or remote areas for opportunities to blunder, kill, maim and torture. Raiders often have little to no actual driving purpose for their actions and they lack the needed numbers or organisation to act as formidable robbers or blunderers of many shipping lanes unlike pirates and their pirate clans. Raider groups have known to have attempted slave trading in certain cases, but such activity is not so much in their nature especially compared to the more traditional pirate forces.

The Gigerdi Alliance along with the UCP often regard Raiders as some sorts of unlawful combatants and treats them as such. Raider activity in the more civilized and more populated areas of the Alpha Quadrant is second to none due to centuries long actions against raider activity, but there are still wide areas in the Milky Way where Raider forces of various shapes, sizes and races feel active enough to carry out their destructive nature.

On a side note it can be said that the raiders and their activities are often completely spontaneous and random in nature. They often seem to lack the leadership and organisation to plan, execute and maintain larger operations with their often outdated, heavily broken and incomplete space vessels.