Alster Union

This is a player faction. For the affiliated NPC faction, see Unioners

Unioners
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Origin	Rheinland
Alignment	Unlawful
Profile
Date of founding	512 A.S.
Founder(s)	unknown
Base of operations	Pacifica Base, Bering
Primary role
Undermining Republican Shipping
Secondary role
Attacking foreign and domestic shipping, removing Xenos from Bering and Hudson

Synopsis

The Unioners area terrorist group composed mainly of dispossessed Rheinlander shipyard workers who engage in brutal reprisals against Republican Shipping Inc.

The Unioners range between Planets Bering and New Berlin, hemmed in by much more powerful competitors. Most of their strikes consist of attacks on Altona Outpost and the Alster Shipyard

The Bulk of their tradelane attacks are on Republican Shipping in the Independent worlds.

Unioners Key trade is the smuggling of Diamonds from Kreuzberg to Dawson in Hudson.

Often, you can find Unioners buying supplies on Freeport 2.

History

PROLOGUE

Ancient Unioners are today known as an old outlaw group composed of dispossessed Rheinland shipyard workers who engaged in brutal reprisals, chiefly against Republican Shipping. According to the researches conducted for the modern history of Rheinland, expansion into the Independent Worlds changed the agenda of most Unioners from terrorism to piracy and dismantled the already feeble chain of organization with every individual spreading around the universe in quest of his personal passion.

Depressed with the disappointing results of their former alliance with the Corsairs and trying to maintain neutral relations with the entire outlaw organizations of Rheinland, the Unioners are one of the few pirate factions, which refused to pick a side in the Hispanic conflict taking place between the Outcasts and Corsairs.

Born over 120 years ago in the Hamburg system, subsequent to the Eighty Years War, the Unioner movement was created from dispossessed Alster shipyard workers, formerly members of the infamous Alster Union, formed in 521 A.S due to a catastrophic accident aboard the aforesaid 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.

The Alster Union was formed to improve working conditions for the Hamburgers aboard Alster and later on neighboring station Altona. 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 with benefits and bonuses pouring in, while Hamburg's industry began to change.

The Union, over the centuries, attained so many government subsidies and concessions from Imperial Shipping that labor and production aboard the Hamburg shipyard and aboard Altona were no longer viable - Imperial could no longer compete with 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, 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.

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 had once had by the throat, in similar, if not worse, conditions as two hundred years previously.

A more radically-minded contingent of the unemployed shipyard workers - at the turn of the century, Hamburg's unemployment rate had topped 30%, a ridiculous figure even by the standards of the corrupted Rheinland government - resolved that, if the soulless Republican 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. Thus were the Unioners created.

DIVISION ERA

Though initially a comparatively small organization, similar to the beginnings of the LWB thirty years later, Unioner membership skyrocketed after the Popular Revolt of 703 A.S., during which Rheinland's industrial heart finally stopped its 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 form the Hessians, while students at the New Berlin university created the Bundschuh. Every industrial or economic sector in Rheinland had its revolters - the ranks of the populists swelled, and the Unioners grew mightier.

A NEW HOME

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 and 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 so 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.

STRIFE FOR DOMINANCE

The Unioners have been vicious and unprincipled, as they relentlessly launch terrorist strikes of unparalleled brutality, even by Rheinland pirates' generous standards, against targets of opportunity throughout Rheinland - their arch-nemesis Republican Shipping and their points of origin, Alster Shipyard and Altona Station in Hamburg, are known as their favorite victims.

The Unioners finance themselves, outside of the aggressive piracy and theft they are 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 conflicts with the Red Hessians over Diamond supremacy throughout the years - their relation have always been a precarious one at best, and Unioner incursions into Dresden to pilfer Diamonds off the books have been met by savage Hessian attacks.

Though the Unioners succeed to remain dominant in the Independent Worlds smuggling trade, they have nearly always been forced off Hessian turf, and the Hessians retain control of Diamond sources outside of Junker bases. 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 supplies them with H-Fuel and Side Arms.

The Unioners also put their hereditary ship-building skills to work for them, producing Basic Alloys.

THE TRIBULATION

The seventeen years that passed since the Nomad War have marked a time of tribulation and change for the Unioner movement. Though originally idealists and terrorists, many a Unioner degenerated into nothing more than a pirate, hijacking shipments in the Independent Worlds and throughout Rheinland indiscriminately. Membership haven't been on the rise since the years after the Popular Revolt; Rheinland's government, though still corrupt, have stabilized somewhat and began 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’ failure in taking advantage of Rheinland's dire situation and to its subsequent weakening. This also caused a vicious shattering among the ranks of the Workers Front which was formed and organized by an old BDM operative, Bernd Schuster - It is rumoured that Schuster lost his most trusted wingmen against a GMG battle group during a covert operation he was assigned to and accused some of the BDM operatives due to lack of precise intel, which resulted in his instant banishment from the organization - shortly after the infestation of Dresden with the emergence of Das Wilde.

NEUTRALITY

The notorious Outcast and Corsair Alliances throughout Sirius also dealt the Front a severe blow - initially betraying all its fellow Rheinland pirate factions, excepting the LWB, who distanced themselves from the conflict, by joining the Corsairs, the Unioners were consistently beaten back by its fellow unlawfuls with hardly any allied intervention. Unhappy with these results, the Unioners and remaining operatives of the Front aborted the alliance, thus alienating their erstwhile compatriots, and retreated from the war, attempting to maintain a position of distinct neutrality. This diplomatic bungling is also to be attributed, primarily, to lack of solid leadership.

MODERN TIMES

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 is throttled, thereby necessitating the faction to move into Rheinland proper for piracy, so is the lawful presence, and the Unioners have proven to be capable of moving Dresden and Omega-11 Diamonds with unparalleled speed and precision. The organization of the Xenos under the Xeno Alliance, however, has lately begun to make the Xenos less gnats to be swatted and more of an actual contender.

Modern Unioners have quite lost sight of their ancestral objectives, aside from a desire to wreak havoc upon Rheinland's corporations for personal gain. Piracy and theft became primary goals, although the workers' rights problem remains in the consciousness of most faction members. Unioners are to be spotted much more frequently throughout Rheinland proper than they were two decades ago, and they started to intercept various life-giving House trade routes, most prominently the Diamond/Niobium run between The Ring and Planet New Tokyo.

Although the Unioners seemed to be receding more and more into the annals of Sirian history during the past decade, due to the Liberty-Rheinland trade embargo, diplomatic crises, and internal chaos and disorganization, recent developments indicated an upheaval within their ranks.

THE INCARNATION

After two decades of villainous deterioration among the Unioners of the Independent Worlds and Rheinland, a young Rheinwehr corporal stepped forth to alter this forsaken fate, which was destined to behold a corrupted phase of chaos.

This man, known only as Klar, after being released from custody on 811 A.S, began committing various acts of deeds including terrorism and piracy, as well as attempting to corrupt the governmental structure in a way that few could know. Despite the relentless efforts the Federal Police put forward to locate him, he managed to remain secret, labored for a new cause and constituted an opposition diplomatic movement against the fascist regime led by the chancellor of Rheinland.

Prior to the undergone embargo between the Rheinland and Liberty houses, he had an adequate amount of loyal partisans under the shelter of the Bundschuh. While the reason for this aid is still being disputed, some researchers claim that the Bundschuh agreed to provide arms for a new movement of Unioners after receiving an oath of protection and support for their diplomatic efforts.

Although Klar’s popularity was growing stronger among the new generation of Unioners, there was still an obstacle on his path before declaring total independence. The pirates of Pacifica were a hindrance for his plans, which made him decide to take over Alster by launching a surprise incursion from Bruchsal with a crowded group of his fanatics on 816 A.S.

Shaken by this unexpected bane of Alster, the military of Rheinland instantly dispatched half of their active battle groups from New Berlin to Hamburg in order to reclaim Alster. Until they reached there, Klar and his companions slew every reluctant person of Alster who declined to join their cause and retrieved anything valuable along with the Republican staff who obeyed them instead of being murdered. Klar succeeded in three important things with this movement. The military lost its reliability for a considerable period, Klar and his followers captured some vital information, stockpiles, and additional crewmen while the pirates of Pacifica were taunted in a way that they almost lost the last bits of hope to rebel against this new threat.

The military found nothing but a ruin and a resentful derelict of brutal carnage once they reached Alster. Klar pulled his blockade back to Bering as he knew they wouldn't stand a chance against the superior military but pushed forward to claim Pacifica and rid the remaining defiant pirates, some of whom fled before the followers came while a few called for emergency aid from the Zoners, but were shot instead because they had infiltrated the Freeport territory without authorization.

Pacifica, and shortly after the whole Tanner Belt, were claimed by Klar after seven hours of struggle, with history marking this triumphant generation as the Alster Union - this latest evolution commandeered from the corner stone of Unioners' roots. Despite the glory, Klar went missing after presumably leaving the management to Albert Profrock who is recognized as one of the leading figures nowadays.

The Union is still famed with its struggle to capture Alster back in Hamburg. There are also several rumours claiming that the Union are laboring for additional bases within the depths of Rheinland while the struggle for Alster is just a distraction to keep the military at bay as they complete their secret installations and settle there once and for all.

Technological Developments

It is long due that Unioners have been using vessels designed by different corporate organizations. However, something strange happened on the latter stage of 816 as Unioners announced that they were on the edge of finalizing the design of a new prototype.

Named as “Arbeiter” after the completion of various formulations and engineering labor, which yielded a successful mix of Rheinland’s power array and civilian aerodynamics, this ship is attributed to be remarked as the first very heavy fighter Unioners succeeded to produce since forming the Alster Union on 512 A.S.

Although now few believe that they will be capable of securing a mass production, various speculations have arisen since then about the possibilities of Unioners shaping an advanced craft of highest calibre with such limited resources. Not only is this disturbing news for the military, but it is rumored that Unioners are unlikely to authorize the external sale of their own ships due to being produced under hard conditions.

Diplomacy

Faction	Relationship
None	Allied
Republican Shipping	At War
Rheinland Federal Police	At War
Rheinland Military	At War
Bounty Hunters Guild	At War
Xenos	At War

Owned bases

• Pacifica Base, Bering

Other bases populated

• Kreuzberg Depot, New Berlin
• Planet Hamburg, Hamburg
• Freeport 2, Bering