Discovery Gaming Community - The Arm Liberi - Liberty Insurgency

The Free Arm of Liberty's Department of Defence.

Tag: Patria|

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable." - President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Liberty through Strength. Harmony through Peace. Democracy through Vigilance.

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Brief faction summary:

The Arm Liberi are a faction of the Liberty insurgents who believe the Libertonian state has become dangerously corrupt and prone to subversion by the Nomads and special interests, irrevocably compromising the mandate of the Liberty Navy, police, and LSF. The Liberi aim to destroy the classical military industrial complex by reconstructing the federal government as a pure extension of the armed forces, handing over civilian matters to the star states of Texas, New York, California, and Colorado.

A History of Insurgency:

"We walk the path of the patriots who came before, carrying their battle flags in hand. Walking over the bodies of the fallen to cross the line. Our great house has been built on warfare. It has consumed brother, son, sister, daughter. Generations turned to create the forever-wars of the present. It was not always this way.

The strong must rise to the occasion. Semper Fortis." - Commodore Thastus, LNS Ragnarok.

In the year 800, two months before the start of the 9th century war, the experimental Electronics Warfare Battleship LNS Ragnarok vanished into the Magellan cluster, along with most of its accompanying battlegroup. Shortly thereafter, the Ragnarok was struck from the naval register, public historical records were expunged, and Liberty Homeland security apparatus within the LSF began systematically detaining and even disappearing elements of the warships’ logistics trains, and even the civilian families of force-critical servicemen.

The Ragnarok was but one of many similar atrocities, a small component of a train of historical fratricide and institutional conspiracy littering the steady Nomad infiltration of the Libertonian department of Defence. Entire force elements, including Marcus Walker’s Attack group South, were engaged by their fellow servicemen. Simultaneously, the president of the Republic, Barbara Jacobi, was abducted from the capital and interred unlawfully in the Alaska system. Within a matter of months, Liberty, the self-styled bastion of democracy amongst the sector, had fallen to the internal stresses of a cabal of a few compromised officials.

Whilst a handful officials responsible for the war were held to account, Liberty’s internal structure has changed little since the 800 crises. An extreme lack of transparency over the exact events that transpired during the war has led to an unceasing distrust of the Liberty Security Force. Governmentally, little has changed within Liberty; the president is still beholden to homeland security interests, and the unceasing privatisation of the police force has led to the navy taking up the majority of internal security tasks, widening tensions between the formally proud navy and the citizenry. The historic law enforcement motto of 'protect and serve' has become a matter of subjugation.

"It’s the first oath of any serviceman. To combat any enemy of Liberty, foreign or domestic. To never obey an unlawful order. Yet, we received unlawful orders. Day after day. " - Saraia Lopez, LNS - Acuity, Attack Group West.

Only an extreme minority of exiled servicemen within the Nomad War ever received formal pardons; the majority, including Admiral Thastus, were never offered clemency. An extensive diaspora of displaced servicemen developed over the intervening decades, settling in the turbulent Liberty independent worlds with a veritable armada of liberated military-grade equipment. If the Libertonian state was incapable of holding its own traitors to account lawfully, then, in the words of the words of an ancient precolonial president, John F Kennedy: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Spearheading the homegrown insurrection was Thastus’s own organisation, a blend of social libertarian ideas with a Stratocratic service-by-requirement military body, known as the Hellfire Legion, that earned the nominal support of the Xeno movement. Growing tensions between the duplicitous Lane Hackers and the inflexible Legion over the Libertonian cardamine trade soon boiled into a shooting war, the Legion moving to occupy the nascent Lane Hacker colonies in the Vespucci system. With a planet to call their own, the itinerant Legion could finally develop the support infrastructure required to maintain, sustain, and even replace elements of their battle-scarred fleet. With the future of the insurrection secured, the movement expanded, buoyed by an influx of Bretonian refugees from the fall of Leeds.

As a military without a formal chain of Command, the Legion were prone to internal struggles. A dictatorial board of ‘Lord Commanders’, effectively filling a provisional commander-in-chief role, suffered from infighting and fratricide. The Legion’s command structure rapidly decayed into a model of personal inspiration, rather than any unified tradition of service. Like their legionary namesakes, elements of the Legion high command would often exercise martial authority to gain power over one another’s commissions. This led to an unsustainably high rate of defections from the Legion, including one Joshua Hunt, a later founding member of the Auxesian anti-human movement. The legion became ubiquitous with a myriad of ethical misconduct which violated the founding principles of the Legion, including the development of bioweapons and sophisticated wetware VI. Disillusioned Legionnaires accused the movement of emulating the worst excesses of the government they once served.

In 818 AS, eighteen years after the foundation of the Legion, and fourteen years after the birth of the first generation of Guadalajara colonists, populist colonial leader Isaac Stone was elected President of the Commonwealth of Liberty – a nascent political body representing the forty-seven million civilians in Commonwealth space. Isaac claimed that the newly formed Commonwealth would provide the ideological centre for the Legion that the movement had started to lack - a representation of an ideal Liberty made new. The demonstration was compelling – the colony’s population and industrial capacity swelled over Stone’s tenure. Successive administrations of the Commonwealth enjoyed minimal corruption, and the Legion’s most draconian excesses were curtailed by increasing legislative oversight. All was not well within Commonwealth space – the rising populism of the movement created a sense within the Legion’s Xeno allies that the Commonwealth was attempting to replace them outright. By contrast, the Legion viewed the Commonwealth’s independent political agitation and increasingly separating the Legionaries from the wider house of Liberty they saw as their true home. For the next two years, tensions multiplied as the Legion found itself forced to focus on aggressive antipiracy efforts that distracted critical force elements from the wider conflict against the navy. Ironically, the same embitterment between servicemen and civilians that was scourging Liberty itself had become endemic in the Commonwealth. Unchecked, the Legion ran the risk of falling into infighting for a second time, undermining the progress developed by the only force in the house truly capable of challenging the Liberty Navy.

"I am not scared of your threats. We survived the Navy. We fight a war against Liberty and we are still here."

"We are not so desperate as to work for desperate men. " - Victoria Knight, LNS - Harmony, Liberty Seperatists.

In Liberty, twenty-two years after the Nomad War decimations, a familiar cancer Metastized within Californian fleet elements. The old battlegroup Harmony was reformed around the titular battleship, a veteran of the 800-war pressed back into service due to increasing Libertonian force commitments to the Gallic war effort. Throughout 823 AS, the battlegroup received additional officers, vessel commitments and officers, in a continual state of workup in preparation for any speculative Gallic incursion into California.

Yet the order of a conventional service life was grievously interrupted. In April of 823, a battlegroup Harmony picket destroyer intentionally opened fire on civilian vessels, slaughtering the passengers of an Orbital Spa and Cruise liner without authorisation or jurisdiction. Internal investigation by the battlegroup’s officers revealed patterns of aberrant behaviour within key command officers. Admiral Victoria Knight, the battlegroup’s senior commanding officer, attempted to secure support from the wider admiralty to discover the causes of the massive behavioural changes within her officer corps, and found her efforts repeatedly and insistently rebuffed. The situation escalated; by June, the Admiralty had fully cut off the battlegroup’s logistics chain. Without warning, the battlegroup became the target of an entire Liberty Navy task force, inexplicably bent on destroying the battlegroup. Convinced that elements of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were attempting to cover up massive acts of treason within the defence department, Admiral Knight resisted, retreating the battlegroup deep into the Alaska system with the support of the Director of the Liberty Security Force. The crisis escalated to a siege – Within two weeks, Alaska had fallen to the Navy, and the LSF director had disappeared, seemingly abducted by the department of defence. In a desperate effort, Knight led the remnants of the battlegroup and a scattering of LSF loyalists through the unstable New Hampshire anomaly and into the Bering system, receiving surprise aid from the Lane Hackers and the Unioners, who both sought to develop a new version of their old Legionary allies from the remnants of the battlegroup.

For the next two years, Battlegroup Harmony established themselves in the barren tanner belt, constructing Marshall station at the end of the old Hamburg Jump connection with Unioner and Lane Hacker support. Wily Unioner technicians even successfully refit the Harmony with black market drive systems, better adapting the vessel for a service life away from shipyards of Norfolk and Juneau. The battlegroup persevered, fostering careful support within resistance movements in East Liberty.

In Vespucci, the Legion’s discontent with the Commonwealth fermented into earnest independent action. Seeing many parallels between the Legion and the Seperatists, the Commonwealth began to deepen diplomatic ties between the Separatists and themselves, simultaneously alienating the movement to the Lane Hackers, and even moreso the Unioners, who were strongly resistant to the idea of Commonwealth ships operating from inside the Tanner Belt itself. The Unioners struck first, assaulting Marshall with Nuclear electromagnetic pulse weaponry. As the feud escalated, Hellfire legion ships, buoyed on by Commonwealth political support, skirmished with the Unioners in the depths of the Tanner belt. Despite outgunning the Unioners, an intimate Unioner understanding of the Belt and a three-century-old history of guerrilla warfare proved formidable against the combined Separatist – Legion elements.

The Liberty Navy, sensing the disruption in the Separatist’s lines and reinforced extensively by the end of the Gallic war, marched into Bering with the overwhelming intelligence support of a reformed, obedient, LSF. Marshal’s position soon became untenable, whilst the overstretched Legion forces found themselves cut off from any meaningful resupply and facing an entirely fresh Libertonian fleet element. In a desperate rearguard action, the combined Seperatist – Legion forces scuttled Marshal, abandoning Bering entirely.

The massive losses borne out by the Bering campaign sent a generation of wounded and embittered veterans back to Commonwealth space. Many believed that the original vision of the Legion had been enfeebled by Commonwealth politicking, whilst others saw the Commonwealth as a failed experiment, unable to protect the soldiers of the Legion or their brothers in Battlegroup Harmony from the exertions of the Liberty Navy. In the face of soaring unpopularity and rising solidarity between the Harmony survivors and the Legion, the two organisations combined command structures into a unified Liberty insurgency, overthrowing the Commonwealth utterly.

The year is 828 AS. It is nearly thirty years since the first formalised rebellion within the Liberty Navy. In the fires of reform, it is time for a new generation of philosophers, soldiers, politicians and civilians to build a lasting resistance against the Libertonian war machine.

We are the Arm Liberi. We walk in the footsteps of patriots.

History of the Arm Liberi:

"I don’t know what I’ve been told (I don’t know what I’ve been told), My EO’s blown a manifold (EO’s blown a manifold) Sound off (sound off) one two one two… "

The Arm Liberi is an emergent Stratocratic (by rule of those who engage in national service), institutional structure within the Liberty Insurgency Military, Economy, and wider Society. Drawn from ideological aftershocks of the Commonwealth of Vespucci, the Liberi alloy the ideological beliefs of the founder of the Liberty Separatist movement, Victoria Knight, the Arm Liberi incorporates the Neo-Hegellian beliefs of the extremist Californian Sociologist, Eliot DeCasdan. In effect, the Liberi blend an inherent distrust of the Liberty Homeland Security apparatus espoused by the Hellfire Legion’s founder, Drake Thastus, with a fear of alien subversion catalysed by the suspicions of the Harmony separatists. Equally, the objectives of the Liberi Insurgents go beyond both of their founding organisations; the Liberi have an explicit mandate to prevent Liberty from engaging in unjust, or pointless wars, and thereby shedding the lives of soldiers for corrupt purposes. Instead, the Liberi regard a tradition of pubic service, usually through the military, to be an ideal model for society, one that is inherently safer and less prone to self-destruction than current regime.

Officers of the Arm Liberi believe themselves to be direct continuations of the Navy of Liberty, and, by extension, acting in the defence of the Liberty populace, and even the government except for the executive and senatorial branches. The Liberi are convinced that a mixture of nomad-subverted, openly corrupt, and special-interest groups have subverted the apparatus of the state over the last one hundred years. With all legal routes for reform fundamentally denied by the system, the Arm Liberi believe that only the total collapse and reconstruction of the Military-Industrial complex can free Liberty from endless cycles of wars in the interests of the few.

Despite the Liberi’s extreme belief that there can be no diplomatic or political resolution to Liberty’s Military-Industrial complex, they share a few strictly-held maxims, codified within their oath of service. For one, the Liberi never use indiscriminate or non-selective weaponry, engage in planetary bombardment, engage in false-flags, or similar war crimes attributed to both the Harmony Seperatists and the Hellfire legion in the past. The Liberi have a spartan, rugged way of life, but they are ultimately earnest in their desire to create a better system for Liberty – albeit one enforced by martial law.
The etymology of the Arm Liberi means, quite literally, “Free Arm”, in Latin. The Liberi consider themselves to be another branch of the Liberty military, comparable to the navy, marine corps, army, and aquatic corps, but one that is free from unlawful orders.

Politically, the Liberi are nearly entirely a military organisation, and are markedly different from the Commonwealth in their desire to avoid turning the insurgency territories into an independent state under any circumstances. Much like the former Council or Enclave in Gallia, they consider Liberty to be their rightful nation. However, in a break from insurgency tradition, the Liberi understand the advantage of some political representation. Most Liberi consider Vespucci to be an equal state of the republic, referred to as the Star State of Veracruz, or simply the Lone Star State, to signify its separation from the rest of the republic.
Liberi ships share the same prefixes as the rest of the Liberty Navy, however, they use are marked with Patria-, the Latin word for Homeland, at the beginning of the IFF slot. Simply put, this denotes Liberi vessels as serving their home house, instead of a minority of special interest groups.

A Liberated Liberty:

The best description of the Arm Liberi’s attitude towards the role of the Libertonian state can be found in DeCasdan’s own words. He advocates for a small, transparent state, yet armed with massive institutions of national service. DeCasdan believes heavily in personal liberties, and any disrespect or intolerance within the Liberi is nearly unknown.

“Liberty is not just a name. It’s a manifesto. Liberty is a statement that each and every citizen is obliged to the right to live under the minimum of control. There is a difference between Liberty from oppression, and Liberty to oppress; as of right now, the overdeveloped military-industrial-police complex creates an underclass of millions who have their fates controlled by the law of concentrated power. This is more than an injustice -it’s a security risk. The Nomad war proved that only a few targeted officials inside our federal government needed to be enslaved, to in turn slave millions of citizens and servicemen.
Our people are strong, on an individual level. Our people are well armed, politically active, and proud of their nation. But their strength simply a sales tool for arms manufacturers – unless you are a major shareholder in LPI, you have no right to defend yourself. None of that power can be put to use when the average cannot spend this power. We have a wealth of strength which must be liberated. The federal government has failed us – the only great representation of the people that crosses all classes, all roles, and shares a law that is inherently fair, is the military. All other agencies of the state are held in the grip of thesis and antithesis. By the logic of strain theory, the majority of Liberty’s population are unable to reach a state of economic or social freedom as such a condition isn’t in the interests of the Cabal of the few.”

“We must smash the tools of control that use its military against the people, against itself. The military must be retooled, reformed, to defend itself against the warmongers. No soldier, and by extension, no civilian, will ever live free, if the military industrial complex is not utterly gutted from the ground up.”

The Star State of Veracruz:

The Star State of Vecracruz (SSV) is a nominal citizen's electoral presidency under the direct control of the Insurgency military, containing an inherited, streamlined system of command alloying direct democracy with service. A president is appointed along with a senator, due to the need to have a commander-in-chief and a general disinclination to break the received structure of military command within the insurgency.

Objectives of the Arm Liberi:

1) Expose, and destroy, the cabal of military higher ups dictating to the civilian government, known as the ‘Cabal of the Few’.

2) Secure proper veteran’s security for the millions of dispossessed veterans of the Gallic War.

3) Increase the autonomous power of the Star States of Texas, California, New York, Pennsylvania and Colorado, to prevent special interests from ever abusing federal power against the armed services.

4) Gut the gate network to Coronado and fortify the Omicron connections.

5) Institute a new federal election for the Liberty Presidency.

6) Curtail the powers of the department of homeland security, responsible for two separate Nomad incursions. Enact service by requirement.

Current Reputation:

Initial reputation is the same as the Insurgency stock IFF. This will evolve with RP developments.

Recruitment:

There’s no recruitment process other than flying around with you and confirming that you're a decent person with a good grasp of roleplay and english. Join our discord, fly with us, and if we like your character, you’re in. Our only request is that you understand the server rules, and do not engage with Oorp discord drama.