1: The Heist

For its entire existence, the world of Moll Primus has been a penal colony.

The planet was inhabited by the worst criminals and exiled aristocrats who chose the assignment over being fired or executed. The criminals raped the world of its resources and sent them on long-distance transports back to the central empire, and the governors made sure the convicts didn't kill each other, for the most part.

Then the empire was destroyed.

The officials panicked and ran, taking a lot of stuff with them. The convicts, by the time they understood what had happened, were stuck on the world. They splintered into little groups and fought over what was left. They would've destroyed each other had it not been for one man: a human named Erwin Mentak. A former army general, he brought the factions together, and united them under his banner. In only five years, the Mentak Coalition was born, and the former convicts made Moll Primus their home, and used the ships left over to create a pirate armada. Life was pretty good.

Ruthless, but stable.

All it took was a couple of shitty leaders. Before Mentak died, he set up a government of sorts: the head honcho was called the Hand, and the hand was regulated by a council, representing each of the cells on the world. It worked nicely, for hundreds of years, though I hear from the old guys its gotten progressingly worse with each new hand. Now the most recent hand has died, and tensions have hit the boiling point. I'm talking about all-out civil fucking war. The Coalition has dissolved into a bunch of hothead splinter groups and the remnant of the old government. Now these loyalists and rebels fight it out for control of the planet and the three mediocre colonies we had.

Forget this, you thought to yourself. It was time to cut ties and move on. After all, it's a big galaxy out there, there's got to be one decent spot where an honest criminal can earn a living without getting embroiled in wars.

Right?