User:Spartan G-23/Black Flag Syndicate

The Black Flag Syndicate was an alliance of human pirates and mercenaries. Formed in 2565 as a private security organization by Jaroth Morl, the Black Flags made much of their early money acting as enforcers for the UNSC in unstable colonies. Later on, the Black Flags would later take over many smuggling routes, and in the process, become enemies of the UNSC.

Formation
In the year 2565, many colonies that survived the Human-Covenant War began to experience instability. On the outer colony world of Sekemoto, warlords were taking control of the poverty-stricken rural regions. In order to prevent this, Jaroth Morl brought together a group of unemployed hunters, as well as former bandits and offered their services to aid the UNSC in several small towns. Through brutal efficiency, they managed to destroy several men with small militias and helped to stabilize the region. With his newfound wealth, Jaroth began to recruit more men into his service, and expanded the number of townships that they could operate in. He would eventually name his new organization the Black Flags, after the Black Flag Army of the Tonkin Campaign.

Expansion
With the wealth gained from Sekemoto, the Black Flags began to expand and offer it's services on other planets. They also began to undertake offensive operations on behalf of the UNSC, and eliminated several criminal outfits on the colony of Antares. Unbeknownst the UNSC, however, the Black Flags stole information of the smuggling routes that these criminal outfits operated, and would amass a fairly large number of them as time passed by.

Eventually, they would prey on these smuggling routes, and take over them, effectively becoming the single largest black market arms dealer on Antares. Using experience gained from these raids, the Black Flags would also begin to prey on merchant ships as well, and force ships to pay a "protection fee" when heading to Antares.

Outlawing and Conflict with UNSC
At first, the UNSC largely turned a blind eye to the activities of the Black Flags, due to their usefulness in the stability of Sekemoto. However, in 2573, the Black Flags raided a civilian vessel in the Gemni Belt System. The vessel, however, was actually an ONI vessel used to transport sensitive information. After killing the crew, the Black Flags would discover the information and attempted to sell it to the Covenant Remnants. This plan, however, was foiled by an ONI operative known as Arcanus, and a Special Operations Sangheili known as Kwas 'Pudm. In the aftermath of the incident, the number of government contracts the Black Flags undertook drastically decreased as the UNSC was trying to replace them. Fearing they would be outlawed soon, the Black Flags immediately turned on their former contractors and began to fund the instability of Sekemoto using their arms smuggling routes. The UNSC, in turn, would declare the Black Flags illegal and arrested several well-known members, Morl, however, would escape into hiding and ally himself with various anti-UNSC organizations, as well as take over much of the criminal underworld in the Outer Colonies.

Organization
As time passed by, the Black Flags grew larger and took on more duties. In order to reflect this, and to better organize the syndicate, the syndicate was divided into several groups, each with a different job.