We are most certainly not pirates! How dare you. Taenarum is a place for merceneries of all stripes to basically chill out and await further employment, our leader making his way there in order to hire/recruit a band of soldiers, probably on the orders of a larger entity. Likely he was hired himself and then used as a recruiter. If you want characters to already know one anothe, and both parties agree, then there's no problemo there. Make sense?