To provide a clarificatory footnote to the Senate’s judgment here:
and in particular the term:
“uncivilized brigands of no worth”
The word that’s doing all the work there is brigand.
By a linguistic quirk dating back to the Selenarian/Cestian unification, Eldraeic has two very similar but distinct words. From the former, “brigandry”, meaning “being part of a group of the worst on land” and from the latter, “piracy”, meaning “being part of a group of the worst at sea”. As a consequence of this, there were long two separate crimes of brigandry and piracy, until the Great Clarification of 288 decided that this was redundant and made them the same crime, albeit chargeable under either name.
What is relevant here is that brigands, like pirates, slavers, terrorists, etc., are considered both outlaws and hosti sophi generis, the common enemies of sophontkind, and as such are not entitled to various niceties which honorable enemies or gentlemen of the slash-trade might be accorded.
There was, to be fair, once a certain level of controversy in the Conclave concerning the Empire’s policy of designating military units fond of warcriming and, in some cases, entire polities likewise as eo ipso brigands, but this has mostly died down outside the Socionovist Association, that containing the polities which are mostly likely to enjoy that kind of thing.
(It may also be worth a note for the chaps over in the Post-Contact Hilarity (eldraeverse.discourse.group) thread that the activities of modern-day Earth gangs are almost certainly brigandage by any reasonable definition and the interactions of this with interstellar law is likely to be fun.
Well, for someone.
Adventurers and warbarristers, mainly.)
