Liberty

Liberty -- otherwise known as the Republic of Liberty -- is one of the five recognised Houses of Sirius, alongside Bretonia, Gallia, Kusari, and Rheinland. The Sleeper Ship Liberty was sponsored by the United States of America and was the first to arrive in Sirius, settling on Planet Manhattan in 1 AS. Liberty colonised the systems near the center of the Sirius Sector where there was the highest concentration of main-sequence stars and Earth-like planets.

Republic of Liberty

Head of State

President Mildred Hawthorne

Founded

1AS

Core Territory

New York Alaska California Colorado Pennsylvania Texas

Zone of Influence

Bering Cortez Coronado Galileo Hudson Magellan Ontario Vespucci

Government

Liberty's capital is Planet Manhattan in the New York system. All of the branches of Liberty's government are based here, which includes the Supreme Court, the Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the Office of the President.

Libertonian Senators are elected on a system wide-level to represent Liberty's core territories. Representatives are elected to represent either terrestrial districts, or orbital districts which are often made up of several facilities grouped together.

The president of Liberty serves a five-year term. Elections were most recently held in 827 AS and 832 AS, successfully electing President Mildred Hawthorne of the Manifest Destiny Party.

Notable political blocs in Liberty include the militaristic Blue Star Party, the largely mercantile Liberty Reform Party, and the nationalist Manifest Destiny Party.

Recent History

History of Liberty , Liberty Timeline

The Colony Wars: 800 AS

The prelude to the Colony Wars was marked by several armed incursions into Liberty space by the Rheinland Military, such as the attack on Willard Research Station. Following similar reports from Bretonia and Kusari, the Liberty Navy were ordered to high alert. Shortly after, Rheinland launched a further raid into New York itself, prompting President Jacobi to declare war in retaliation. As Rheinland's Northern Fleet invaded Kusari, the Liberty Navy clashed with the Western Fleet in Bering and Hudson. At this point, President Jacobi was taken into custody by a Navy-backed coup orchestrated by Admiral Bill Baldwin.

Establishing a military government, Baldwin immediately declared a truce with Rheinland and began to redeploy Naval forces to the Kusari border. Before further hostilities could be initiated, Rheinland's Chancellor Niemann disappeared, Admiral Baldwin was placed under arrest, and President Jacobi was restored to office. Jacobi quickly issued pardons for the surviving conspirators who had acted against her, before sealing all files relating to the incident under executive order. The Colony Wars are widely considered to be among the most chaotic and confusing periods of Liberty's history.

Core Territory

Economy

Liberty operates a capitalist free market economy, characterised by the privatisation of many core state functions, including policing. This modern economy is built around two vastly different poles: the "Big Three" dominated services and high-tech sectors -- which have historically been used to exert influence and control over the other Houses -- and menial labor provided primarily by vast prison complexes, desperate Bretonian refugees and the impoverished population of Texas.

Ageira Technologies fiercely guards the secrets of Trade Lane and Jump Gate production at their Pueblo facility.

Liberty's technology-driven influence is best exemplified by the Trade Lane and Jump Gate infrastructure that is fundamental to the operation of the Sirian economy. For centuries the production of these parts was an exclusive monopoly of Ageira Technologies. This allowed Liberty to charge exorbitant licensing and installation fees to the other Houses, reaping immense profits through the long-term debt structuring of loans offered by Interspace Commerce.

Liberty has historically allowed market forces to outsource the majority of its resource extraction and basic manufacturing sectors. This is one of the primary complaints of the Xeno movement, after Liberty's blue-collar workers were left unemployed by imported raw resources from Rheinland, alloys from Bretonia, and the loss of civilian shipbuilding industries to Kusari. While this arrangement has made Liberty highly reliant on foreign trade and products, it has proven to be incredibly profitable for Liberty's corporations and upper classes.

Liberty's black market is a prime destination for most kinds of illicit contraband in Sirius. In particular, Manhattan is the main market for both Cardamine and Artifacts. In recent years, LSF operations successfully broke up several large kidnapping operations that were trafficking Slaves to the Edge Worlds. Numerous senior LPI officers were implicated in these schemes.

Mined Resources

Ore	System	Location	Corporation
Copper Ore	Coronado	1H	DSE
Helium	Pennsylvania		Freelancers
Platinum Ore	Galileo	4D	DSE

High Risk Commodities

Commodity	System	Sources
Ageira Gate and Lane Parts	Colorado	Pueblo Station
Biodome Materials	California	Riverside Station
Bio-Neural Processors	Alaska	Prudhoe Skunk Works
Copper	Coronado	Scottsdale Base
Detroit Light Arms	New York	Detroit Munitions
Platinum	Colorado	Planet Denver

Contraband

Commodity	System	Sources
Black Market Pharmaceuticals	Colorado	Ouray Base, Attica Ultramax
Counterfeit Computerware	Ontario	Cochrane Depot

Law Enforcement

Liberty Navy

The flagship of the Liberty Navy is the Battleship Missouri, currently stationed outside Norfolk Shipyard.

The Liberty Navy is responsible for protecting the economic well-being of Liberty through military force, both within the boundaries of the colony and in the independent systems that border its territory. Following the war with Gallia, the Navy has taken a more hands-on approach to the lawlessness of the unaligned worlds surrounding the Republic, to the detriment of those who thought themselves free of House interference.

• Battlecruiser Yellowstone, Coronado.
• Battleship Alma, Pennsylvania.
• Battleship Arkansas, Texas.
• Battleship Concord, California.
• Battleship Missouri, New York.
• Carrier Ohio, Colorado.
• Norfolk Shipyard, New York,
• Planet Erie, Pennsylvania.
• West Point Military Academy, New York.
• Willard Research Station, New York.

Liberty Police, Inc

The LPI are best known for their vast orbital prisons, such as the LPI Huntsville. These serve as factories to enhance the corporation's bottom line.

Liberty Police, Inc. (LPI) is a private company that handles the policing of Liberty space to interdict contraband and wprevent attacks on civilian and commercial traffic. Interstellar human rights organisations have long criticised the Republic for their reliance on private policing, citing the massive incarceration numbers and booming crime rates in Liberty as arguments against LPI's efficacy. The company, however, argues that these facts only justify further contracts with the organisation, as Liberty's needs for policing grow ever larger.

• Fort Bush, New York
• Harrisburg Station, New York

Liberty Security Force

The Liberty Security Force (LSF) is the intelligence branch of the Liberty armed forces, operating in secrecy to ensure the free flow of goods and services in the Liberty economy. LSF agents are infamous for their broad authority and oversight over the rest of the armed forces, operating with immense strategic freedom due to a constitutional provision mandating that they answer directly to the Office of the President.

Corporations

Ageira Technologies

Ageira Technologies, one of the "Big Three" Liberty companies, is responsible for the development of Jump Gate and Trade Lane technology. Ageira maintains a special relationship with DSE, who primarily constructs Jump Gates and Trade Lanes on behalf of Ageira. Their monopoly on Gate and Lane technology has become threatened in recent years, with the arrival of Gallia and developments in jump drive technology by Kishiro Technologies.

Cryer Pharmaceuticals

Cryer Pharmaceuticals is headquartered in Liberty and markets a wide array of both commercially available and restricted-class drugs. Their most (in)famous product is Stabiline, an expensive synthetic pharmaceutical that staves off the effects of Cardamine withdrawal. The threat such a medicine poses to the Cardamine trade has resulted in numerous vicious Outcast-led attacks on Cryer facilities and personnel.

Deep Space Engineering

Deep Space Engineering is a Libertonian industrial corporation which specialises in heavy industry and shipbuilding. They partner with Universal Shipping and Ageira Technologies. Deep Space Engineering is responsible for building and maintaining Trade Lanes and Jump Gates using Ageira's technologies. In recent years, DSE has once more begun to expand its resource extraction operations, owing to deposits discovered in the Liberty border worlds.

Interspace Commerce

Interspace Commerce (IC), one of the "Big Three" Liberty companies, is a financial juggernaut and responsible for the financing and insurance of many of the largest corporate and civilian undertakings in Sirius, as well as the operation of the USI Trade Lane system. Their decision to underwrite -- or cancel -- route coverage results in massive swings in supply and demand overnight, a power that activists and House governments alike frequently criticize.

Synth Foods

Synth Foods is the Liberty firm responsible for the revolutionary food product Synth Paste, and a highly successful line of food-producing biodomes. Many outworld organisations like the Zoners rely on Synth Foods biodomes to provide sustenance far from civilization. Synth is one of Liberty's largest and most influential corporations, owning the majority of the land on Planet Stuttgart in Rheinland. Synth is subject to terrorist attacks by farmers rights group in both Rheinland and Kusari.

Universal Shipping

Universal Shipping is one of the "Big Three" Liberty companies and specializes in the shipping of high-risk, high-value cargo, most notably Ageira's "white boxes" containing Trade Lane and Jump Gate parts which are shipped to DSE construction sites across Sirius. Their close business relationship with Ageira, combined with their high-value cargo, makes them a frequent target of Lane Hackers and subsequently a frequent claimant of IC insurance.

Criminal Activity

Lane Hackers

The Lane Hackers are a criminal group with the technical expertise to monitor and disrupt Trade Lanes for the purpose of seizing valuable cargo. Many of the founding members of the Lane Hackers were former technicians and experts within Ageira, Interspace, and DSE, and this intimate knowledge of Liberty's high-tech corporations combined with an uncanny technical prowess have secured Lane Hackers as one of the most effective and efficient criminal organizations in Sirius.

Liberty Rogues

Rogues are a motley assortment of petty criminals who operate mainly in Liberty, attacking targets of opportunity and fencing illegal goods. By far their largest working arrangement is with the Outcasts, smuggling their Cardamine deep into the core of Liberty. Competition over the drug has swallowed up entire gangs, and shortages following the Maltese slave revolt all but collapsed the long-standing alliance between the Lane Hackers and Liberty Rogues.

Outcasts

The enigmatic Outcasts are the principal producers and suppliers of the drug Cardamine throughout the Sirius sector. Outcasts are not native to Liberty, travelling there to deliver Cardamine to distributors. Once their deliveries are complete, many Outcasts will turn to piracy and pillaging before heading home. The LSF considers Outcasts to be well equipped, more skilled and far deadlier than other Liberty criminals.

Xenos

The Xenos are a Libertonian isolationist terrorist organization opposed to any trade or interaction with foreign entities. For many years, Liberty Police Inc. effectively suppressed Xeno activity, with many Xeno pilots either killed or captured. These crackdowns have largely backfired however, as the Xenos increasingly recruit huge numbers of new members from the prison system. Growing isolationist sentiments, foreign wars with Rheinland and Gallia, and the overbearing brutality of the LPI have driven a massive surge in Xeno activity.

[[Category:Liberty]] [[Category:Houses]]