Flying Pirates

Ya-hooo! Oh wait... No no no no no!

Why are people afraid of pirates? No, not just because they are pirates. Because they kill, raid and plunder, listen to no authority (not true) and heed no law (completely untrue), and are frankly just drunk all the time (seriously?). Why are people afraid of these specific pirates? Because take all that, crank it up to 11, remove any comprehensible logic in favour of total unpredictability, and make pursuit of scientific experimentation their sole goal in life. What could possibly go wrong, right?!
They do not even act like normal pirates! Well, most of the time. It is a complete gamble, passing by islands and towns taken up by a gang of Flying Pirates. One time it is peaceful and quiet and you get songs and welcomes and (hard to refuse) invitations to their party, another time - dozens upon dozens of pirates rush at you with sorts of weird inventions, that make them extremely hard to stop. Gliders are a particular favourite of the Flying Pirates (guess why?), giant man-made birds in the sky (birds do not curse as foul). And why, what for? Nobody knows. The Flying Pirates can easily let past a ship laden with richest of riches, and then attack a poor fisher's sloop.
And why, what for? Nobody knows. The Flying Pirates can easily let past a ship laden with richest of riches, and then attack a poor fisher's sloop. They do not aim to kill people (although they do), but rather to make them play the pirates' weird games - going through labirinths, solving puzzles, overcoming challenges. Succeed and you will be let go, might even win some prizes - including pirates' own unique inventions! Refuse and...you will go in anyways, but it would most likely be a one-way trip.

Structure

Do you really think someone as chaotic as the Flying Pirates could have a proper system? Well actually, they do. At least all evidence points to it. Although they operate in separate crews of vastly different size (and not always with a ship), they clearly have active contacts with each other. How else to explain that any successful invention, once tested on a few groups of whoever happens to be passing by at the time, seem to appear in every single crew of Flying Pirates. Really, they develop and spread technologies quicker than any nation in the world! Despite not really being a nation.

History

Unfortunately, the Flying Pirates do not really publish their own history books (at least here) so we will have to go by the rather scarce public information. The name is rather fresh, all but 15 to 20 years old, which we can assume is the period when the Flying Pirates have invented their diabolical machines. Or maybe it is just the time Julen de Herrera heard of it - sailor lore is not as well recorded as we would love to have it. The stories of strange pirates date back to 40, maybe 60 years ago - they certainly did not fly back then, but were weirdly well-armed for any pirate crew of the time (for any crew, really).
Obviously local governors have attempted to destroy the Flying Pirates, several times. Did not seem to go very well for them, despite the initial successes. Soon the pirates were mostly left alone, only held in check so they do not try to attack the main colonies - which the Flying Pirates rarely did anyways. They much prefer finding an empty island and making it their own, after all. According to my studies, most attacks on inhabited islands were actually carried out by copycats and not the Flying Pirates themselves - a distinction few in power pay any mind to.