09-28-2016, 04:50 PM
(yes again)
![[Image: UUUfLV0.png]](http://i.imgur.com/UUUfLV0.png)
Sypnosis
Humble beginnings
Founded over 300 years ago in the system of Hamburg, seventy years before the Eighty Years War, the Unioner movement was created from dispossessed Alster shipyard workers, formed in 512 A.S due to a catastrophic accident aboard Rheinland’s biggest shipyard that cost the lives of several hundred shipyard workers. Imperial Shipping, Republican Shipping's direct ancestor and the shipyard's owner, concerned itself little with such trifling details as worker health and safety, rationalizing that the occasional life pension or widow's compensation was nothing compared to the sum to be made from constant productivity, with little oppertunity for career advancement. Initially the Unioners was a purely sociopolitical movement - a unification of Rhineland’s trade unionists into a single, coherent entity. The Imperial goverment, eager to stave off republican ideals infiltrating Rheinland politics from Liberty, embraced the organisation, and granted the trade unionists a number of significant labour concessions. To be a “Unioner” was a source of pride, and the first major guarantee of post-colonial labour rights at which Rhineland lead the colonies.
The Unioner movement was formed to improve working conditions for the citizens of Hamburg aboard Alster, and, later on, the neighboring Altona station. The skills required to work aboard either station were highly specialized and quite esoteric at the time, and so the Union rapidly established dominance over its employers - benefits, bonuses and employee mobillity poured in, and Hamburg's industry began to change.
However, the Unioners, as the Sigma crises broiled into war, became a victim of their own successes; attaining so many government subsidies and concessions from Imperial Shipping that labor and production aboard the Hamburg shipyard and aboard Altona was no longer viable. ' They simply could no longer compete with the (significantly inferior) labour wages of the Kusari shipbuilding giants of Samura and Kishiro, and plummeted into financial deficits. Though the Eighty Years War's onset led to a dramatic increase in spacecraft demand, slowly pushing the Unioner movement from moderate leftism to a cool, protective nationalism, its conclusion, not to mention the Rheinwehr's shattering defeat at the Battle of the Yanagi Cloud, meant that Imperial (rechristened Republican after the Rheinland government was vanquished) was paying for a colossal worker horde without producing anything at marketable prices. Ironically, the Unioner’s well-intentioned efforts to improve the lot of the Rheinland people had backfired - Rhineland employment rights were so far ahead of the other houses, that Rhineland buisnesses had become woefully uncompetetive before their foreign anologues.
Republican's decision
The fledgeling Republican goverment, alarmed at the slow tanking of Rheinland’s space commerce, swiftly nationalised Republican. Desperate to show signs of economic improvement, the federal republic instituted legally mandated layoffs to the entirety of Rheinland’s shipbuilding industries, pledging to cut eighty seven percent of Republican’s labour surplus within five years. Republican no longer needed its workers - their highly specialized skills had initially led to the Alster Union's great strength - and so it callously disposed of them. Thousands of laborers were cast out to starve to death, any and all concessions to employees were immediately repealed, and the dockworkers of Hamburg were sold into slavery by the corporation they'd once had by the throat, in similar, if not worse, conditions as two hundred years previously. Even worse was the loss to Rheinland shipbuilding, traditionally competetive to Libertonian designs, as Rheinland’s displaced intellectual capital flooded up the adolescent jumpgate networks into the arms of Samura and DSE. Rheinland, previously a pinnacle of ship design, had become house shipwrights visit to die. Rather than improving the economy, Rheinland stalled.
At the turn of the 6th century, Hamburg's unemployment rate had topped 30%, a ridiculous figure even by the standards of the corrupted Rheinland government. A more radically-minded contingent of the unemployed shipyard workers resolved that, if the soulless Imperial suits had left them to die, and if the impotent Rheinland cabinet would let the corporation do as it pleased, they'd simply alter their fates themselves. Armed with the wealth of engineering knowledge of a Rheinland long past and a series of refuges amidst shipyards and refineries abandoned by the Cooporations amidst the economic crash, the Unioners were amply equipped to initiate warfare against the economic system that had betrayed them. Thus the Unioners as we know them at this time were created from the ash of the old - strikes, rallys and riots would evolve from political tools into the basis of geurilla war. The legal front of the Unioners would survive; as the Nationale Arbeiter-Arbeiterinen Partei Rheinland or NAPR, a radically rightwing, antiestablishment platform that rose off the general bitterness in Rheinland over the faliure of the Eighty Years War. Why couldn’t Rheinland be great again? The party asked, and kept asking. Why couldn’t Rheinland cooporations own Rheinland land? Why do Libertonian companies ensure our trade lanes? Why does most of Rheinland’s mineral wealth get exported outside Rheinland? Why can’t we have wage labour? How do we stop foreigners from diluting our society, controlling our goverment, undermining our security? How can we build a better Rheinland for Rheinlanders alone?
Though initially a comparatively small organization of a few thousand, similar to the beginnings of the LWB two hundred years later, the Unioners rapidly won minds, hearts and manpower as the Republic became increasingly oppressive. Whilst initially covert in their sabotage, the Unioners gained tactical accumen to match their technical accumen through the grind of experience against the Rheinland Federal Police. Their numbers skyrocketed after the Popular Revolt of 703 A.S., during which Rheinland's industrial heart made its last beat after years of weakening. Many more downtrodden throughout Rheinland realized their government's incompetence and incapability and their employers' Orwellian dictatorships - all for the sake of profit - and cast off their shackles to fight for independence. Yet again, ex-Republican employees, particularly Alster and Altona shipyard workers, formed the majority of the new Unioner recruits. Many Daumann and Kruger miners, for example, left to the newly formed Red Hessians to whom the Unioners exported combat vessels, whilst disgruntled academics at the New Berlin university created the Bundschuh. Every industrial and economic sector in Rheinland had its revolters - the ranks of the nationalists, romanticising the old labour privilges of the Empire, swelled, and the Unioners grew mightier.
Idealistic Fighters
When the first cell of Unioners rebelled and left Hamburg with a fiery farewell (in the form of a series of gravometric mines planted in the Alster docking bays), they needed a semi-permanent base of operations to launch their (remarkably brutal) reprisals against Republican and others. Freeport 2 in Bering tempted them (Freeport 2 had originally been a Republican supply depot, a fact many Unioners found amusing), and there they went. After twenty years of residence there, Freeport 2's Zoner owners had had enough - they issued the Unioners an ultimatum to get off their base. The Unioners, having grown comfortable in Bering, decided to leave the base, but not the system - they carved their own base, Pacifica, out of a sizeable asteroid in the western Tanner Field. Pacifica counts as one of Sirius' most well-hidden pirate bases; though located in a comparatively small system, it's out-of-the-way enough to remain completely invisible at long range, and is concealed among hundreds and hundreds of similar asteroids, as the Tanner Field covers all of Bering. The system's moody lighting, due to its yellow sun, lends Pacifica a tranquil, untroubled setting - quite at odds with its murderous inhabitants.
The Unioners are vicious, yet principled - they are profoundly reluctant to kill Rheinlanders in institutions traditionally associated with the nationalist right wing, expecially the military. They launch terrorist strikes of unparalleled brutality, even by Rheinland pirates' generous standards, against targets of opportunity throughout Rheinland. Whilst their infrastructure is less established than the Hessians and their diplomatic ties less intricate than the Bundschuh, the Unioners are capable of considerable havoc due to the general technical excellence amongst their organisation. Most Unioners can service their own ships, deconstruct a lock or plant a bomb, which makes incarcerating Unioners expecially difficult and one of the founding motivations for the construction of the Virlande supermax. Their arch-nemesis Republican Shipping and their points of origin, Alster Shipyard and Altona Station in Hamburg, are the Unioner’s favorite victims, matched only by their xenophobia for foreign shipping. The Unioners are also exceptionally vindicative towards the GMG, Interspace Commerce, DSE and Synth Foods, who it views as reprehensible.
The Unioners finance themselves, outside of the aggressive piracy and theft they're notorious for, by dominating Liberty-Rheinland Diamond smuggling - they run said Diamonds from Kreuzberg to Dawson, occasionally even further. The Xenos have been trying to encroach on Unioner routes for years and years, without any success to speak of. The Unioners have come into frequent shadow conflict with the Red Hessians over Diamond supremacy throughout the years - their relations, whilst historically strong due to Unioner assistance to the Hessians in their founding years, has always been a precarious one at best due to the extreme political differences between them, and occasional Unioner incursions into Dresden to pilfer Diamonds off the books has been met by savage Hessian attack. Most of the time, however, the Hessians tolerate the Unioners for the trade, shipbuilding prowess and logistical competence they provide, whilst the Unioners avoid antagonising the Hessians overtly out of fear of attracting Hessian firepower and antagonising their cosmic neighbours, the LWB. Though the Unioners remain dominant in the eastern Independent Worlds smuggling trade, they do so with caution; preferring not to antagonise the local Liberty Rogues or to draw attention to their divergences from the Coalition narrative of the Rheinland Popular Revolution. Unioner provisions are primarily pilfered off of trade convoys (as always, preferably those of Republican) throughout their zone of influence, although Kreuzberg in New Berlin is a reliable supplier of H-Fuel and Side Arms. The Unioners also put their hereditary ship-building skills to work for them, producing Basic Alloys and maintaining ships of factions Sirius wide. Much of the Unioners imported income comes from the fabrication of ships for foreign agencies (even if they are despised). It is generally accepted that if you can give the Unioners a ship design, something that they desire, and the materials to build it with, they will build you anything.
After the Nomad War
The years that have passed since the Nomad War have marked a time of tribulation and change for the Unioner movement. Though originally idealists and terrorists, some Unioners have degenerated into nothing more than pirates, hijacking shipments in the Independent Worlds and Rheinland indiscriminately. Membership hadn't been on the rise since the years after the Popular Revolt; Rheinland's government, though still corrupt, had stabilized somewhat and had begun to crack down on its pirate problems. Republican and similar corporations also began to flourish again, with the exception of Kruger Minerals, which was slowly being pushed out by Daumann. Events came to a head after the Nomad War - though this time of confusion presented a golden opportunity for recruitment, chaos and incompetent leadership within the faction, as well as the average Unioner losing sight of the organization's initial goal (however destructively implemented), led to the Unioners failing to take advantage of Rheinland's situation and to its subsequent weakening to enforce their ultmate political aims. The notorious Outcast and Corsair Alliances throughout Sirius also dealt the organization a severe blow - initially betraying all its fellow Rheinland pirate factions, excepting the LWB, who distanced themselves from the conflict, by covertly joining the Corsairs, the Unioners were consistently beaten back by its fellow unlawfuls with hardly any allied intervention. Unhappy with these results, the Unioners steadily cooled the Corsair Alliance, thus stepping their erstwhile compatriots, and retreated from the war, attempting to maintain a position of distinct neutrality between the Hessians and the Corsairs. This diplomatic bungling is also to be attributed, primarily, to lack of solid leadership.
The movement today
Recent events that affected the Unioners aside from these include, most prominently, the Rheinland-Liberty trade embargo. This proved to be a double-edged sword - though trade throughout Bering was throttled, thereby necessitating the faction to move more into Rheinland for successful piracy, so was lawful presence which allowed the Unioners to prove themselves capable of moving Dresden and Omega-11 Diamonds with unparalleled speed and precision, even though the Unioners have been alienating themselves further from the Hessians for various reasons, turning their eyes back towards an Alliance with the Corsairs, which appear to more then happy to find a save harbor within Rheinland. The Unioners in turn expect to be able to make their profits with the transport of Corsair produced Artifacts, should the Diamond trade with the Hessians break in.
The modern Unioner has quite lost sight of his ancestral objective, aside from a desire to wreak havoc upon Rheinland's corporations for personal gain. Piracy, theft and murder have become primary goals, although the workers' rights problem remains in the consciousness of many faction members. Unioners are to be spotted much more frequently throughout Rheinland, the outskirts of Liberty and even the Omega and Sigma Systems than they were two decades ago, attempting to increase their influence in these areas and they also have begun to intercept various life-giving House trade routes , causing them to be more of a serious problem for the Rheinland government and law enforcement units. Rumors indicate that Rheinlands leading figures actively trying to act against the movements increased activity have rather short lives.
However, this political largess seems short-lived, and some external commentators suggest that of late the Unioners have undergone something of a political rennaissance. The ascension of strong men from the ancestralised Unioner families has been accompanied by significant purges within the Unioner body - Unioners who exibit a lack of enthusiasm for the nationalist agenda have been quietly tipped off to the Rheinland Federal Police, whilst multiple propaganda pamphlets from Hamburg and Frankfurt preach against a condition staining the unioners and the popular revolution itself, defined as “political degeneracy”; an economic and social faliure of Rhinelandic culture induced by foreign interference into Rhineland and Rhineland’s way of life. The modern Unioner is a violent, frequently xenophobic, yet measured, disciplined character; equal parts engineer, smuggler, political agitator and desperado - a self-styled guardian of Rhineland and the Rhineland populace, to the expense of all those who dare fly in the way.
Goals
- Bias the popular revolution towards the extreme right of Rhineland politics by undermining the Bundshuh and the influence of Foreign powers.
- Elect the legal front of the Unioners, the National Labour Party (NAPR), to the Kanzlership.
- Provoke Rhineland into open war with the GMG.
- Rekindle the Liberty-Rheinland conflict.
- Control smuggling within the Liberty/Rheinland systems.
- Purge Rhineland of foreign cooporate and political intrests.
- Maintain close relations with the LWB.
Diplomacy
Rank Structure
![[Image: rfVyM43.png?1]](http://i.imgur.com/rfVyM43.png?1)
![[Image: tjGOFfw.png?1]](http://i.imgur.com/tjGOFfw.png?1)
![[Image: QTOLklR.png?1]](http://i.imgur.com/QTOLklR.png?1)
![[Image: kiGGCHQ.png?1]](http://i.imgur.com/kiGGCHQ.png?1)
![[Image: zSPpqkT.png?1]](http://i.imgur.com/zSPpqkT.png?1)
![[Image: TKfYWyz.png?3]](http://i.imgur.com/TKfYWyz.png?3)
![[Image: g0hummt.png?1]](http://i.imgur.com/g0hummt.png?1)
Known bases:
![[Image: pswyKJ1.png]](http://i.imgur.com/pswyKJ1.png)
![[Image: xa2hCc8.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/xa2hCc8.jpg)
![[Image: CcHtxei.png]](http://i.imgur.com/CcHtxei.png)
![[Image: VVjeUoa.png]](http://i.imgur.com/VVjeUoa.png)
![[Image: dCiSDPC.png]](http://i.imgur.com/dCiSDPC.png)
Zone of control
![[Image: qxaEIRL.png]](http://i.imgur.com/qxaEIRL.png)
Current roster
Forum Roleplay
6. To: Oberst Anika Haupt, VWA
7. To: The Unioners [Secured Transmission]
8. To .:j:. Sb: Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June In a Kenworth pullin' logs
9. To: Unioners UN| | From: Krüger Mineralien
10. To: The Unioners | From: Hogosha Association
11. To: The Order. Subject: Are your agents off their sodding heads?
12. To: To: Liese Schreier
13. To: UN| \\ From: [RHA]
14. To: Battlegroup Harmony, from der Alster Union
15. To: Auxesia, from the Unioners.
UN| ID:
THE UNIONERS
Sypnosis
The Unioners are a right-wing unlawful organisation descended from displaced Republican shipping workers from the fall of the Rheinland Empire. The Unioners wish to return Rhineland to the hardline protectionist labour policies of before and during the eighty years war, whilst manipulating the predominantly leftwing popular revolution to their own objectives. They attempt to destroy the trade corridors between Rheinland, Liberty and Kusari.
Unioners smuggle, commit acts of terror against foreigners and rival political institutions, and pirate traders. Unioners have few allies, but will build ships for nearly anyone not hostile to them with their remarkable shipbuilding abillities. Unioners are hostile to all Rheinland lawfuls, but will abstain from engaging Rheinland military when nessesary (due to their nationalist beliefs), and Kruger Mineralien when not carrying critical cargo (due to Kruger’s status as another post-Imperial institution).
Unioners smuggle, commit acts of terror against foreigners and rival political institutions, and pirate traders. Unioners have few allies, but will build ships for nearly anyone not hostile to them with their remarkable shipbuilding abillities. Unioners are hostile to all Rheinland lawfuls, but will abstain from engaging Rheinland military when nessesary (due to their nationalist beliefs), and Kruger Mineralien when not carrying critical cargo (due to Kruger’s status as another post-Imperial institution).
Humble beginnings
Founded over 300 years ago in the system of Hamburg, seventy years before the Eighty Years War, the Unioner movement was created from dispossessed Alster shipyard workers, formed in 512 A.S due to a catastrophic accident aboard Rheinland’s biggest shipyard that cost the lives of several hundred shipyard workers. Imperial Shipping, Republican Shipping's direct ancestor and the shipyard's owner, concerned itself little with such trifling details as worker health and safety, rationalizing that the occasional life pension or widow's compensation was nothing compared to the sum to be made from constant productivity, with little oppertunity for career advancement. Initially the Unioners was a purely sociopolitical movement - a unification of Rhineland’s trade unionists into a single, coherent entity. The Imperial goverment, eager to stave off republican ideals infiltrating Rheinland politics from Liberty, embraced the organisation, and granted the trade unionists a number of significant labour concessions. To be a “Unioner” was a source of pride, and the first major guarantee of post-colonial labour rights at which Rhineland lead the colonies.
The Unioner movement was formed to improve working conditions for the citizens of Hamburg aboard Alster, and, later on, the neighboring Altona station. The skills required to work aboard either station were highly specialized and quite esoteric at the time, and so the Union rapidly established dominance over its employers - benefits, bonuses and employee mobillity poured in, and Hamburg's industry began to change.
However, the Unioners, as the Sigma crises broiled into war, became a victim of their own successes; attaining so many government subsidies and concessions from Imperial Shipping that labor and production aboard the Hamburg shipyard and aboard Altona was no longer viable. ' They simply could no longer compete with the (significantly inferior) labour wages of the Kusari shipbuilding giants of Samura and Kishiro, and plummeted into financial deficits. Though the Eighty Years War's onset led to a dramatic increase in spacecraft demand, slowly pushing the Unioner movement from moderate leftism to a cool, protective nationalism, its conclusion, not to mention the Rheinwehr's shattering defeat at the Battle of the Yanagi Cloud, meant that Imperial (rechristened Republican after the Rheinland government was vanquished) was paying for a colossal worker horde without producing anything at marketable prices. Ironically, the Unioner’s well-intentioned efforts to improve the lot of the Rheinland people had backfired - Rhineland employment rights were so far ahead of the other houses, that Rhineland buisnesses had become woefully uncompetetive before their foreign anologues.
Republican's decision
The fledgeling Republican goverment, alarmed at the slow tanking of Rheinland’s space commerce, swiftly nationalised Republican. Desperate to show signs of economic improvement, the federal republic instituted legally mandated layoffs to the entirety of Rheinland’s shipbuilding industries, pledging to cut eighty seven percent of Republican’s labour surplus within five years. Republican no longer needed its workers - their highly specialized skills had initially led to the Alster Union's great strength - and so it callously disposed of them. Thousands of laborers were cast out to starve to death, any and all concessions to employees were immediately repealed, and the dockworkers of Hamburg were sold into slavery by the corporation they'd once had by the throat, in similar, if not worse, conditions as two hundred years previously. Even worse was the loss to Rheinland shipbuilding, traditionally competetive to Libertonian designs, as Rheinland’s displaced intellectual capital flooded up the adolescent jumpgate networks into the arms of Samura and DSE. Rheinland, previously a pinnacle of ship design, had become house shipwrights visit to die. Rather than improving the economy, Rheinland stalled.
At the turn of the 6th century, Hamburg's unemployment rate had topped 30%, a ridiculous figure even by the standards of the corrupted Rheinland government. A more radically-minded contingent of the unemployed shipyard workers resolved that, if the soulless Imperial suits had left them to die, and if the impotent Rheinland cabinet would let the corporation do as it pleased, they'd simply alter their fates themselves. Armed with the wealth of engineering knowledge of a Rheinland long past and a series of refuges amidst shipyards and refineries abandoned by the Cooporations amidst the economic crash, the Unioners were amply equipped to initiate warfare against the economic system that had betrayed them. Thus the Unioners as we know them at this time were created from the ash of the old - strikes, rallys and riots would evolve from political tools into the basis of geurilla war. The legal front of the Unioners would survive; as the Nationale Arbeiter-Arbeiterinen Partei Rheinland or NAPR, a radically rightwing, antiestablishment platform that rose off the general bitterness in Rheinland over the faliure of the Eighty Years War. Why couldn’t Rheinland be great again? The party asked, and kept asking. Why couldn’t Rheinland cooporations own Rheinland land? Why do Libertonian companies ensure our trade lanes? Why does most of Rheinland’s mineral wealth get exported outside Rheinland? Why can’t we have wage labour? How do we stop foreigners from diluting our society, controlling our goverment, undermining our security? How can we build a better Rheinland for Rheinlanders alone?
Though initially a comparatively small organization of a few thousand, similar to the beginnings of the LWB two hundred years later, the Unioners rapidly won minds, hearts and manpower as the Republic became increasingly oppressive. Whilst initially covert in their sabotage, the Unioners gained tactical accumen to match their technical accumen through the grind of experience against the Rheinland Federal Police. Their numbers skyrocketed after the Popular Revolt of 703 A.S., during which Rheinland's industrial heart made its last beat after years of weakening. Many more downtrodden throughout Rheinland realized their government's incompetence and incapability and their employers' Orwellian dictatorships - all for the sake of profit - and cast off their shackles to fight for independence. Yet again, ex-Republican employees, particularly Alster and Altona shipyard workers, formed the majority of the new Unioner recruits. Many Daumann and Kruger miners, for example, left to the newly formed Red Hessians to whom the Unioners exported combat vessels, whilst disgruntled academics at the New Berlin university created the Bundschuh. Every industrial and economic sector in Rheinland had its revolters - the ranks of the nationalists, romanticising the old labour privilges of the Empire, swelled, and the Unioners grew mightier.
Idealistic Fighters
When the first cell of Unioners rebelled and left Hamburg with a fiery farewell (in the form of a series of gravometric mines planted in the Alster docking bays), they needed a semi-permanent base of operations to launch their (remarkably brutal) reprisals against Republican and others. Freeport 2 in Bering tempted them (Freeport 2 had originally been a Republican supply depot, a fact many Unioners found amusing), and there they went. After twenty years of residence there, Freeport 2's Zoner owners had had enough - they issued the Unioners an ultimatum to get off their base. The Unioners, having grown comfortable in Bering, decided to leave the base, but not the system - they carved their own base, Pacifica, out of a sizeable asteroid in the western Tanner Field. Pacifica counts as one of Sirius' most well-hidden pirate bases; though located in a comparatively small system, it's out-of-the-way enough to remain completely invisible at long range, and is concealed among hundreds and hundreds of similar asteroids, as the Tanner Field covers all of Bering. The system's moody lighting, due to its yellow sun, lends Pacifica a tranquil, untroubled setting - quite at odds with its murderous inhabitants.
The Unioners are vicious, yet principled - they are profoundly reluctant to kill Rheinlanders in institutions traditionally associated with the nationalist right wing, expecially the military. They launch terrorist strikes of unparalleled brutality, even by Rheinland pirates' generous standards, against targets of opportunity throughout Rheinland. Whilst their infrastructure is less established than the Hessians and their diplomatic ties less intricate than the Bundschuh, the Unioners are capable of considerable havoc due to the general technical excellence amongst their organisation. Most Unioners can service their own ships, deconstruct a lock or plant a bomb, which makes incarcerating Unioners expecially difficult and one of the founding motivations for the construction of the Virlande supermax. Their arch-nemesis Republican Shipping and their points of origin, Alster Shipyard and Altona Station in Hamburg, are the Unioner’s favorite victims, matched only by their xenophobia for foreign shipping. The Unioners are also exceptionally vindicative towards the GMG, Interspace Commerce, DSE and Synth Foods, who it views as reprehensible.
The Unioners finance themselves, outside of the aggressive piracy and theft they're notorious for, by dominating Liberty-Rheinland Diamond smuggling - they run said Diamonds from Kreuzberg to Dawson, occasionally even further. The Xenos have been trying to encroach on Unioner routes for years and years, without any success to speak of. The Unioners have come into frequent shadow conflict with the Red Hessians over Diamond supremacy throughout the years - their relations, whilst historically strong due to Unioner assistance to the Hessians in their founding years, has always been a precarious one at best due to the extreme political differences between them, and occasional Unioner incursions into Dresden to pilfer Diamonds off the books has been met by savage Hessian attack. Most of the time, however, the Hessians tolerate the Unioners for the trade, shipbuilding prowess and logistical competence they provide, whilst the Unioners avoid antagonising the Hessians overtly out of fear of attracting Hessian firepower and antagonising their cosmic neighbours, the LWB. Though the Unioners remain dominant in the eastern Independent Worlds smuggling trade, they do so with caution; preferring not to antagonise the local Liberty Rogues or to draw attention to their divergences from the Coalition narrative of the Rheinland Popular Revolution. Unioner provisions are primarily pilfered off of trade convoys (as always, preferably those of Republican) throughout their zone of influence, although Kreuzberg in New Berlin is a reliable supplier of H-Fuel and Side Arms. The Unioners also put their hereditary ship-building skills to work for them, producing Basic Alloys and maintaining ships of factions Sirius wide. Much of the Unioners imported income comes from the fabrication of ships for foreign agencies (even if they are despised). It is generally accepted that if you can give the Unioners a ship design, something that they desire, and the materials to build it with, they will build you anything.
After the Nomad War
The years that have passed since the Nomad War have marked a time of tribulation and change for the Unioner movement. Though originally idealists and terrorists, some Unioners have degenerated into nothing more than pirates, hijacking shipments in the Independent Worlds and Rheinland indiscriminately. Membership hadn't been on the rise since the years after the Popular Revolt; Rheinland's government, though still corrupt, had stabilized somewhat and had begun to crack down on its pirate problems. Republican and similar corporations also began to flourish again, with the exception of Kruger Minerals, which was slowly being pushed out by Daumann. Events came to a head after the Nomad War - though this time of confusion presented a golden opportunity for recruitment, chaos and incompetent leadership within the faction, as well as the average Unioner losing sight of the organization's initial goal (however destructively implemented), led to the Unioners failing to take advantage of Rheinland's situation and to its subsequent weakening to enforce their ultmate political aims. The notorious Outcast and Corsair Alliances throughout Sirius also dealt the organization a severe blow - initially betraying all its fellow Rheinland pirate factions, excepting the LWB, who distanced themselves from the conflict, by covertly joining the Corsairs, the Unioners were consistently beaten back by its fellow unlawfuls with hardly any allied intervention. Unhappy with these results, the Unioners steadily cooled the Corsair Alliance, thus stepping their erstwhile compatriots, and retreated from the war, attempting to maintain a position of distinct neutrality between the Hessians and the Corsairs. This diplomatic bungling is also to be attributed, primarily, to lack of solid leadership.
The movement today
Recent events that affected the Unioners aside from these include, most prominently, the Rheinland-Liberty trade embargo. This proved to be a double-edged sword - though trade throughout Bering was throttled, thereby necessitating the faction to move more into Rheinland for successful piracy, so was lawful presence which allowed the Unioners to prove themselves capable of moving Dresden and Omega-11 Diamonds with unparalleled speed and precision, even though the Unioners have been alienating themselves further from the Hessians for various reasons, turning their eyes back towards an Alliance with the Corsairs, which appear to more then happy to find a save harbor within Rheinland. The Unioners in turn expect to be able to make their profits with the transport of Corsair produced Artifacts, should the Diamond trade with the Hessians break in.
The modern Unioner has quite lost sight of his ancestral objective, aside from a desire to wreak havoc upon Rheinland's corporations for personal gain. Piracy, theft and murder have become primary goals, although the workers' rights problem remains in the consciousness of many faction members. Unioners are to be spotted much more frequently throughout Rheinland, the outskirts of Liberty and even the Omega and Sigma Systems than they were two decades ago, attempting to increase their influence in these areas and they also have begun to intercept various life-giving House trade routes , causing them to be more of a serious problem for the Rheinland government and law enforcement units. Rumors indicate that Rheinlands leading figures actively trying to act against the movements increased activity have rather short lives.
However, this political largess seems short-lived, and some external commentators suggest that of late the Unioners have undergone something of a political rennaissance. The ascension of strong men from the ancestralised Unioner families has been accompanied by significant purges within the Unioner body - Unioners who exibit a lack of enthusiasm for the nationalist agenda have been quietly tipped off to the Rheinland Federal Police, whilst multiple propaganda pamphlets from Hamburg and Frankfurt preach against a condition staining the unioners and the popular revolution itself, defined as “political degeneracy”; an economic and social faliure of Rhinelandic culture induced by foreign interference into Rhineland and Rhineland’s way of life. The modern Unioner is a violent, frequently xenophobic, yet measured, disciplined character; equal parts engineer, smuggler, political agitator and desperado - a self-styled guardian of Rhineland and the Rhineland populace, to the expense of all those who dare fly in the way.
Goals
- Bias the popular revolution towards the extreme right of Rhineland politics by undermining the Bundshuh and the influence of Foreign powers.
- Elect the legal front of the Unioners, the National Labour Party (NAPR), to the Kanzlership.
- Provoke Rhineland into open war with the GMG.
- Rekindle the Liberty-Rheinland conflict.
- Control smuggling within the Liberty/Rheinland systems.
- Purge Rhineland of foreign cooporate and political intrests.
- Maintain close relations with the LWB.
Diplomacy
Allied
Landwirtrechtbewegung
Junkers
Friendly
Lane Hackers
Hogosha
Kruger
Corsairs
Liberty Rogues
Battlegroup Harmony
Neutral
Gaians
FL-ER
Daumann
Archangel Fighter Club
Mistrustful
Red Hessians
Hellfire Legion
Independent smugglers
Kusari + Gallic infected
Rheinland Infected
Unfriendly
Freelancers
Commonwealth of House Liberty
Unknown Zoners
Cryer
Liberty infected
Nomads
Hostile
Rheinland lawfuls
Xenos
Bounty Hunters
Bundschuh
The Order
Auxesia
The Core
IMG
Total War
Republican Shipping
GMG
ALG
BDM
The Outcasts
Independent pirates
Interspace Commerce
Independent Neural-net Division
The Bundschuh
Liberty corporations and lawfuls
Junkers
Friendly
Hogosha
Kruger
Corsairs
Liberty Rogues
Battlegroup Harmony
Neutral
FL-ER
Daumann
Archangel Fighter Club
Mistrustful
Hellfire Legion
Independent smugglers
Kusari + Gallic infected
Rheinland Infected
Unfriendly
Commonwealth of House Liberty
Unknown Zoners
Cryer
Liberty infected
Nomads
Hostile
Xenos
Bounty Hunters
Bundschuh
The Order
Auxesia
The Core
IMG
Total War
GMG
ALG
BDM
The Outcasts
Independent pirates
Interspace Commerce
Independent Neural-net Division
The Bundschuh
Liberty corporations and lawfuls
Rank Structure
Arbeiter - Worker
May fly any snubcraft of Unioner and Rheinland Origin available to him, without restriction. The Arbeiter is a member of the Unioner’s movement, but does not represent it’s aims. Any actions taken by an arbeiter may be discounted by the movement, due to their brash, young nature.
- Current: Liese Schreier, Taberius Jones , Ludwig Hoch
Oberarbeiter - Senior Worker
May fly any craft available to him, without restriction, up to the Gunboat level. The Oberarbeiter is a trusted and known member of the Unioner’s movemement. Oberarbeiters are the great mass of the Unioner movement.
Gefreiter - Freedman
May fly any craft available to them without restriction, up to the Gunboat level, and may request the command of a custom commissioned ‘Hel’ class cruiser, for necessary defensive purposes of Unioner installations and skirmishes against hard targets.
- Current: Johann Kraut, Reinhardt Krause
Vorarbeiter - Foreman
May fly any craft available to him, including a ‘Hel’ class cruiser, for any and all Unioner activities, as a full and trusted member of the movement. Considered a veteran in terms of political and military operations, their words should be heeded.
- Current: Karl Reise
Oberstarbeiter - Highest Worker
A senior member of the movement, they may fly any craft without restrictions. Representing the higher echelons of the movement, their words are to be followed by all other Unioners.
- Current: Morgan Koll, Ilsa Faust, Gunda Riehl, Bastian Lippert
Procurator - First Agent.
There can only ever be one. The Procurator is the formal second in command of the Unioner movement, the chieftain of the organisation when the Arbeitsdirektor is in exile and the guiding hand of the Arbeitsdirektor's will as his spymaster. Only the Procurator bears ownership of the remaining Imperial legislature artefacts preserved from destruction by the federals. It is his purpose to defend them from contamination, onto death.
- Current: Hermann Hossenn
Arbeitsdirektor - Work Director
The director and engineer of the Unioner movement, this individuals holds the highest authority within the movement. As the head and face of the Unioners, the Arbeitsdirektor may freely operate any vessel of installtion of the Unioners movement. Any orders given by the Arbeitsdirektor must be followed, unless a ⅔ Majority of the Arbeiters Council speak against it. The Arbeitsdirektor is the powerhouse behind the Union - charismatic, protective, shrewd, yet ruthless in action. The Arbeitsdirektor can be considered by the virtue to be one of the most dangerous man in Rheinland - or one of the most virtuous, depending which side of the political isle you are.
- Current: Hansel Garen von Himmel
Known bases:
Speyer Base
Speyer was established as a small outpost in the obsfucating Sudnebel of Southern Frankfurt in 822 AS. Though it presently is of bare-bones construction and built far beyond their typical territory, the Unioner Syndicate launches raids here against the nearby trade lanes and uses the base as a checkpoint for all sorts of smuggling - Diamonds especially. The station may only prove to be a temporary supply depot, as its cheap and comparatively simple internal structure suggests a desire to linger in the unfriendly region only as long as necessary before either their foes the Bundschuh or the Federal Authorities catch wind of their activities here.
Krefeld Base
Krefeld is a small Unioner controlled base within one of the many asteroid fields in the Koeln system. The base serves mainly as a guard point for the nearby Duesseldorf jump hole, with the majority of its traffic consisting of diamond smugglers and supply ships. Placed well on the outskirts of the system, Krefeld is regarded as a safe haven from lawful activity, and is an important place of contact between Unioners and Red Hessians in Rheinland, right after Kreuzberg Depot in New Berlin.
Leipheim Base
Secretly constructed in 762 A.S., Leipheim Base lies in the south eastern reaches of the Alps Cloud. Carved out of a large asteroid within the nebula, the base is home to a large number of Unioners, many of whom prefer the seclusion that Leipheim offers, compared to the more well known Pacifica Base in Bering.
The base has seen a considerable surge of activity as the Unioners rekindled their ties to the Corsairs. Artifact smuggling out of the Sigma systems often passes by Leipheim, and Corsair raiders have begun to use the base to stage attacks on the lanes. Surprisingly, the Unioners do not seem too concerned with this intrusion on their turf.
The base has seen a considerable surge of activity as the Unioners rekindled their ties to the Corsairs. Artifact smuggling out of the Sigma systems often passes by Leipheim, and Corsair raiders have begun to use the base to stage attacks on the lanes. Surprisingly, the Unioners do not seem too concerned with this intrusion on their turf.
Pacifica base
The history of the Unioners is intimately tied to Alster.
The shipyard opened in 412 AS, specializing in commercial transports and heavy lifters. Conditions were appalling in the yards, worker safety being merely a tertiary concern of the owners. Coupled with the excessively long spaceside rotations, the workers' morale gradually deteriorated until a major accident killed several hundred workers in 512 AS.
Three months later, the workers formed the Alster Union. Because of their highly specialized skills, the management had no choice but to capitulate to their demands. During the next century the union gradually strengthened and eventually included the dockworkers on the Altona Station above Hamburg. By the end of the 80-Years War, the union demanded increasingly high wages and progressively fewer annual hours. The system was out of balance. Republican was no longer competitive with Kusari shipbuilders.
With the war over, demand for ships plummeted. The bloated headcount of Alster was now a sore point for Republican Shipping, desperately trying to restore profitablity. Management was now back in the driver's seat after almost 200 years of acceding to union demands. They fired tens of thousands and won major concessions from the remaining workers, who lost centuries of gains in a matter of days.
As unemployment rocketed towards 30 percent in Hamburg, a radicalized version of the union reformed -- more of a revolutionary cell than anything. The presence of Freeport 2 in Bering proved alluring to the nascent Unioner movement of Rheinland during the unsettled times. Following the popular uprising of 702, the station's population exploded. In 720 the Zoners laid down the ultimatum: Take your criminal activities somewhere else, or have the Rheinland Police take you to Viernheim. They would sell basic supplies to the rebels, but no more. So the Unioners carved their Pacifica base out of an asteroid in the Tanner Belt. Over the years, the base received various upgrades, including a small shipyard module modeled as a miniturized Alster to build and maintain Unioner ships.
The Unioners today are known as some of the most brutal pirates in Rheinland, ranging from the upper Omegas even as far as Texas to the stellar North. Most of their attacks are focused on the Alster Shipyard in Hamburg, which has alienated them from some of their still employed brethren. The bulk of their Trade Lane raids are directed against Republican ships in New Berlin. Historically their Syndicate is infamous for holding little loyalty to anything but profit, with rumors suggesting that they have proven quite adept at smuggling a vast variety of goods and acting as middlemen for many groups, even those in conflict with each other.
The shipyard opened in 412 AS, specializing in commercial transports and heavy lifters. Conditions were appalling in the yards, worker safety being merely a tertiary concern of the owners. Coupled with the excessively long spaceside rotations, the workers' morale gradually deteriorated until a major accident killed several hundred workers in 512 AS.
Three months later, the workers formed the Alster Union. Because of their highly specialized skills, the management had no choice but to capitulate to their demands. During the next century the union gradually strengthened and eventually included the dockworkers on the Altona Station above Hamburg. By the end of the 80-Years War, the union demanded increasingly high wages and progressively fewer annual hours. The system was out of balance. Republican was no longer competitive with Kusari shipbuilders.
With the war over, demand for ships plummeted. The bloated headcount of Alster was now a sore point for Republican Shipping, desperately trying to restore profitablity. Management was now back in the driver's seat after almost 200 years of acceding to union demands. They fired tens of thousands and won major concessions from the remaining workers, who lost centuries of gains in a matter of days.
As unemployment rocketed towards 30 percent in Hamburg, a radicalized version of the union reformed -- more of a revolutionary cell than anything. The presence of Freeport 2 in Bering proved alluring to the nascent Unioner movement of Rheinland during the unsettled times. Following the popular uprising of 702, the station's population exploded. In 720 the Zoners laid down the ultimatum: Take your criminal activities somewhere else, or have the Rheinland Police take you to Viernheim. They would sell basic supplies to the rebels, but no more. So the Unioners carved their Pacifica base out of an asteroid in the Tanner Belt. Over the years, the base received various upgrades, including a small shipyard module modeled as a miniturized Alster to build and maintain Unioner ships.
The Unioners today are known as some of the most brutal pirates in Rheinland, ranging from the upper Omegas even as far as Texas to the stellar North. Most of their attacks are focused on the Alster Shipyard in Hamburg, which has alienated them from some of their still employed brethren. The bulk of their Trade Lane raids are directed against Republican ships in New Berlin. Historically their Syndicate is infamous for holding little loyalty to anything but profit, with rumors suggesting that they have proven quite adept at smuggling a vast variety of goods and acting as middlemen for many groups, even those in conflict with each other.
Wedel Mining Facility
Wedel is a Unioner base in Hamburg. Originally a Kruger mining facility, it was abandoned when resources in the Alsterfeld became too scarce to mine in 631 A.S., and lay abandoned for several decades. In the wake of their revolt, the Alster Unioners repopulated the base and partially restored it in 676 A.S., and started launching raids at Altona and Alster from it.
Wedel is a dangerous station. Many sections are still decompressed, and the Unioners seem in no hurry to repair them. The station is used as a waystation for smugglers heading into Liberty with Blood Diamonds and Artifacts. The Unioners skirt a dangerous road in dealing with both the Corsairs and Hessians to obtain these, but they and their Liberty Rogue partners benefit considerably from the trade.
Wedel is a dangerous station. Many sections are still decompressed, and the Unioners seem in no hurry to repair them. The station is used as a waystation for smugglers heading into Liberty with Blood Diamonds and Artifacts. The Unioners skirt a dangerous road in dealing with both the Corsairs and Hessians to obtain these, but they and their Liberty Rogue partners benefit considerably from the trade.
Zone of control
Primary: Hamburg, New Berlin, Frankfurt, Texas, Munich, Koeln, Bering, Hudson and the Sigmas
Secondary: Stuttgart,Bremen
Tertiary: New Hampshire, Dresden
Secondary: Stuttgart,Bremen
Tertiary: New Hampshire, Dresden
Arbeitsdirektor: Hansel Garen Von Himmel (@The Unioners)
Procurator: Hermann Hossenn (@Alexander)
Oberstarbeiter : Morgan Koll (@Arbs)
Ilsa Faust (@Frau Ilsa )
Gunda Riehl (@Arbeitskräfte)
Bastian Lippert (@Bastian Lippert)
Vorarbeiter :
Karl Reise (@conmann35)
Gefreiter :
Reinhardt Krause (@Gagadug.)
Johann Kraut (@CorrupteD)
Engel Wannderer (@Neon)
Arbeiters:
Ludwig Hoch (@Tabris)
Liese Schreier (@Syf)
Taberius Jones
Viktoria Harimanna
Jeniffer Soma
Procurator: Hermann Hossenn (@Alexander)
Oberstarbeiter : Morgan Koll (@Arbs)
Ilsa Faust (@Frau Ilsa )
Gunda Riehl (@Arbeitskräfte)
Bastian Lippert (@Bastian Lippert)
Vorarbeiter :
Karl Reise (@conmann35)
Gefreiter :
Reinhardt Krause (@Gagadug.)
Johann Kraut (@CorrupteD)
Engel Wannderer (@Neon)
Arbeiters:
Ludwig Hoch (@Tabris)
Liese Schreier (@Syf)
Taberius Jones
Viktoria Harimanna
Jeniffer Soma
Forum Roleplay
1. To: The Union From: Landwirtrechtbewegung
2. To: The Unioners || From: Lena Riemann
3. To:The Rote Hessen-Armee. Transmission accessible only by those of Command Rank.
4. to: Riehl, Gunda; Unioners movement
5. To: The Unioners [Secured Transmission]2. To: The Unioners || From: Lena Riemann
3. To:The Rote Hessen-Armee. Transmission accessible only by those of Command Rank.
4. to: Riehl, Gunda; Unioners movement
6. To: Oberst Anika Haupt, VWA
7. To: The Unioners [Secured Transmission]
8. To .:j:. Sb: Was the dark of the moon on the sixth of June In a Kenworth pullin' logs
9. To: Unioners UN| | From: Krüger Mineralien
10. To: The Unioners | From: Hogosha Association
11. To: The Order. Subject: Are your agents off their sodding heads?
12. To: To: Liese Schreier
13. To: UN| \\ From: [RHA]
14. To: Battlegroup Harmony, from der Alster Union
15. To: Auxesia, from the Unioners.
UN| ID:
die nationale Gewerkschaft der Alster ID Wrote:The Unioners are an unlawful nationalist insurgency descended from Rheinland’s GMG war trade unions, using piracy and smuggling to disrupt Wall Street trade practices whilst attempting to place the Neimannist faction into the Bundestag. They are opposed to to Republican Shipping, GMG, Interspace and the Bundschuh, which it sees as causes of Rheinland’s decay. They cooperate with the Corsairs, Hessians and Kruger.
Pilot carrying this unlawful ID is a member of the Alster Union, who:
▪ Can attack any ships within their Zone of Influence, except transports.
▪ Can demand cargo and credits from any ship within their Zone of Influence, and attack them if they do not comply.
▪ Can attack any ships smuggling cardamine or Synth products in their ZOI
▪ Cannot ally with any lawfuls anywhere except Kruger, or RM and BDM against foreign militaries and intelligence/paramilitary within their respective ZOIs.
▪ Cannot use any transports with more than 4,300 cargo.
▪ Zone of Influence: Rheinland, Sigmas 15, 13 and 21, Omicron Gamma, Omicron Xi. Cannot consider any Omega system ZOI except Omega 55. Has Liberty ZOI in Bering, Hudson, Puerto Rico and Texas only.
▪ Allowed ships: Fighters, Freighters, Transports, Gunboats, Cruisers.
-Money can be taken from UN|Bank