In the year 2581, the Galaxy is mostly dominated by three star empires: Imperio Espada, Great Titania, and L’empire Renarde, though there are other important galactic powers at play such as the Konijnenrijk, Império Do Escudo, and the Kuşlar.

Though the humans of Great Titania were the first of these galactic powers to develop the technological capability to travel to and colonize the Outer Worlds, they squandered that opportunity to their own petty squabbles at home.

So it was the feline peoples of Espada and the canine peoples of Escudo that first swept across The Reach, colonizing planet after planet that were rich in resources.

The other powers grew jealous of Espada’s and Escudo’s wealth, and began grabbing what few worlds those two star empires had not yet conquered.

However, these “scraps” were not enough, especially for Titania. The empires did not want a direct war (yet), and so began the practice of governments unofficially sponsoring pirates to steal from enemy nations to bring that wealth back home.

The most successful of these privateers was Drake the Pirate King, better known as The Dragon by his enemies. While the Empress of Titania publicly disavowed his actions, she provided Drake with a fleet of fast and heavily armed starships to prey upon Espadan and Escudan vessels .

The Dragon’s Golden Fleet wreaked such havoc that Escudo abandoned many of its new worlds, and the provoked Espada dared to attack Titania directly.

With the help of Drake’s fleet, Escudo was dealt a disastrous defeat and the empress of Titania officially knighted Drake and declared him a hero of the empire.

With the chaos sewn across the galaxy, space piracy has become rampant. The vulpine empire of Renarde has taken advantage at every turn, playing Titania and its enemies against each other while profiting from their own privateers.

Many colonies are disobedient to their Imperial masters, to the point that pirates that hunt cargo ships bound for Titania are still able to take refuge in Titanian colonies like Neo York (so long as they put their spoils back into the colony’s economy).

The stars have become so wild with piracy that the feared Pirate King has, on orders of Her Majesty, become a feared Pirate Hunter.
Still, despite the dangers, there are many opportunities for illicit profit for those who are bold and cunning enough.

[Drake is the planned BBEG of the campaign if that isn’t clear]

A bit later than the 1500s, but the lack of anything analogous to the East India Trading Company still pops out to me.

I could work them in over the course of the campaign. Maybe have them be lead by Drake

Drake of course died before the East India Company was even founded but /shrug

I do like anthros. What's the effect on indigenous people, or are all these races Terra-derived and uplifted, to wit: a "humans-only" galaxy of a sort.

Each of the anthropomorphic species is from a different planet and is the dominant species of their planet

As for indigenous peoples, I’ve been debating how to handle that

A big part of piracy in the 1500s involved slavery, and like

The players are supposed to pirates but I dont want them to be slavers

I was thinking of having the planets in The Reaches be rich in resources by not have indigenous sapient life forms

It’s too messy a topic for a fun pirates game