BLACK HEARTS / BLCKHRTLEG

No one knows exactly when the Black Hearts were formed — only that they emerged in the void left by a failed uprising, their origin whispered in the static of outlaw channels and encrypted comms. Some say they were once a UEE covert ops unit, disavowed after a mission that erased an entire colony from the Starmap. Others insist they were pirates who found purpose in vengeance after watching their world burn under corporate bombardment. The truth is buried in the same silence they wield so well.

The first confirmed appearance of the Black Hearts came during the Pyro Exodus, when entire convoys of refugees vanished in the dark between jump points. The stories that followed were strange — entire fleets reappearing, their cargo holds empty and the survivors shaken. “Black Hearts…….” were all the remnant could or would say. It was not greed that drove them, but something deeper, darker. The design was pure precision — a surgical hit piece, a statement written in the absence of light.

Over the decades, the clan grew into a nexus that thrived where law and order dissolved. They learned to move unseen through the chaos of trade routes, infiltrating databanks and raiding convoys under the cover of solar flares. Their ships — black-hulled Shivs, stealth-modded Sabres, dire Wolf’s, Asgards……….the list goes on — became legends among both outworlders and mercenaries. Each vessel bore a single insignia: a polished steel heart encasing emerald skulls, representing both strength and dread.

Leadership of the Black Hearts has always been fluid, bound not by rank but by reputation. The current figures whispered to command them — known only as the “Heartbreakers” — are said to have eyes that see in the darkest recesses of deep space, veterans of the Messer wars who turned their talents against those who betrayed them. Under the Heartbreakers’ guidance, they were transformed from renegades into a force of menace. They sell nothing but fear — destabilizing networks, vanishing high-value targets, and removing the egos of the arrogant and haughty.

The Black Hearts do not recruit; they select. New members are chosen after surviving a trial known as “The Eclipse”, where a candidate is left stranded in a derelict sector and must find their way back with a Crime Stat worthy of the honor. Those who return bear no emblem — only a heart-shaped scar burned beneath their flight suit, invisible to scanners, marking them forever as one of the culled.

Even now, when the comms crackle with distress signals and ships go dark without a trace, pilots whisper the name in dread: Black Hearts. They are the shadow between stars — loyal to no system, no flag, no cause but their own code:

“Forge your own fate.”

It is said that their heart-beat haunts the constellations and the dreams of those within.