Niverton Base

CLASS: Sediment

GRAVITY: Complete

DOCKING: Yes

AMENITIES: Yes

CREW: 1110

Pennsylvania houses a large populace of Liberty Rogues, many of whom are family members of other Rogues who operate in more dangerous areas of Liberty. Niverton is a relatively safe hideout for them, since the base is fairly remote and does not see a lot of Navy or Police scouts intruding on it. The asteroid field is nearly impassable for capital ships, so even if the Navy would discover Niverton, there is not a whole lot they could do about it.

## Bribes & Missions Offered

* Liberty Rogues
* Outcasts
* Lane Hackers

* Liberty Rogues

## News

Once they had captured the Outcast, the Rogues broadcast a message to their cartel, threatening to kill the hostage unless they were promised regular Cardamine shipments to keep turning a profit. The response was quick, and far more brutal than they could have anticipated. All six of the Rogues were found killed after several days of silence, with no Outcast hostage in sight. While it is unclear exactly what happened, the message was very clear to any who might tug at the Outcast leash; the reprisals would be unforgiving, and serve as a reminder that anyone can be replaced.
While many other Rogue groups have sought to distance themselves from the actions of the young and brash, grumbles of discontent have nonetheless been heard around our bars and bunks, and it is unclear if this is truly the last we will hear of conflict between us and the Outcasts.

The Outcasts and their most loyal agents stepped in almost immediately in anticipation of something like this happening, and set new rules for distribution according to set keys. A small group of Liberty Rogues defied them and followed their own rules of distribution, but they didn't fare too well - the Dons, despite the ongoing crisis in Malta, do not tolerate insubordination.
For this reason, several powerful Junkers and Rogues immediately decided to dilute Cardamine instead of redistributing ostentatiously against the wishes of the Outcasts at the expense of their clients, thereby raising their own shares. Fortunately for these savvy businessmen, word did not reach the Outcasts until some time later, and thanks to an improved network of cooperation, most of the organizers were able evade Malta's assassins.
However, all these measures had only limited effectiveness. Many end-clients and casual Cardamine users have been forced to seek medical attention due to their deteriorating health due to potentially fatal withdrawal symptoms. It is not known how many Cardamine users eventually died because of the shortage, but it appears to be in the order of single-digit percentages - much to the very verbal displeasure of the Outcasts themselves.

While this troubling trend is observed throughout the Sirius colonies, Liberty is bearing the brunt of the crisis among the four major Houses. Remarkably, even Rheinland, where historical data indicated low Cardamine consumption, has witnessed a notable rise in medical cases linked to the illicit narcotic. Experts postulate that the extensive black market responsible for Cardamine distribution might be facing a shortage, or worse, that Outcast factions deliberately curtail the supply to bolster demand. Regrettably, no law enforcement agency has been available for comment on these concerns.
The long-standing debate over Cardamine's controversial nature, juxtaposing its euphoric and purported medicinal qualities with the genetic alterations it inflicts upon long-term users, continues to echo. A key point of contention revolves around the plight of innocent consumers caught in this crisis. Yet, according to independent polls, a substantial majority of our viewers maintains that the substance must remain banned.
In response to this escalating crisis, Cryer Pharmaceuticals has announced a forthcoming press conference. During the event, the company intends to unveil plans for an expanded production of Stabiline, their touted "wonder drug". This announcement promises affordable access to Stabiline for all patients grappling with Cardamine withdrawal, sparking a remarkable 15%% surge in Cryer Pharmaceuticals' stock following the revelation.

Professor Nagel and her team are certain the Pulse originated from outside Sirius, but are otherwise no closer to identifying its source or mitigating a future Blackout event. "Following the Blackout, we began to see immediate signs of jump hole destabilization in multiple different regions, with many ultimately falling out of phase alignment altogether", she commented. The dramatic upending of Sirius' jump hole network has already prompted many groups to abandon stations and withdraw from systems that appear to risk being cut off.
While months-long trips between the stars are possible thanks to the Liberty Engine and many centuries of innovation, few ships are designed or provisioned to make such arduous journeys. Those who were displaced by Sirius' redrawn map hope that system connections will return, while adventurers and explorers rush to discover new routes.

In the video, a number of restrained people that have been identified as former residents of Planet Vespucci, board a Dromedary-class vessel registered to a freelance trader Vincent Ruthen. They are under supervision from several LPI officers, who exchange words with the ship's crew. Private investigators have trailed the ship, determining that it did not land at its purported destination of Gas Miner Naha in the Sigma-13, instead electing to travel away from civilized space into the Edge Worlds. The people aboard it have effectively vanished from the colonies.
This is the latest case in a streak of such disappearances, with investigators estimating as high as ten percent of all inmates thought to be awaiting their trial in LPI internment camps have been covertly shipped off-world for unknown reasons. The fate of these people is yet unclear, but theories range from secret trials to unethical experiments aboard Atka. Outraged by what is apparently an LPI-sanctioned human trafficking operation, protesters flooded the streets and had to be dispersed by police riot control squads.
A Liberty Police official has denounced allegations of corruption, stating that "All interned personnel are secured and all prisoner transfers have been done within the framework of the legal code". He refused to comment on the evidence presented, dismissing it as "slanderous fabrication against the good, hard-working officers of Liberty law". Meanwhile, political opposition already promises increased oversight over the law enforcement corporation for the next election cycle.

For some time, it had been alleged that Insurgent and Xeno-backed cells had been stirring trouble on Erie, inciting violence in the population and seeking to turn the planet into a second Veracruz. Never, however, had such open acts of terror been visited upon the governing Libertonian forces.
The response was quick and decisive. In coordination with the LSF, Vice Admiral Hamish aboard the Battleship Alma lead a Liberty Navy task force directly into the system in Operation Pesticide, escorted primarily by Siege Cruisers, Gunboats and fightercraft, with many of the Navy's capital warships tied in the Vespucci campaign or ever watchful at Liberty's borders. They were met by Zoner Q-ships based from Bethlehem, with many coming from as far as Galileo or even the Sigmas, accompanied by a motley assortment of freelancers and other anarchist elements. Leading the Zoner line was a Aquilon-class carrier, the Pinnacle.
While the Pinnacle came under heavy bombardment from the Alma and her task force, supplies quickly gathered onto Zoner transports from Erie attempted to run the Navy blockade. While some transports were lost to Navy bombers, others yet escaped to parts as of yet unknown. This 'victory', however, came at a heavy price. The Pinnacle was lost with most of her hands still on board and the rest captured, while the Liberty Marines landed virtually unopposed, quickly securing population centers for both the safety of Libertonian assets and the civilians on Erie itself. The Alma is settled now into the low orbit of Erie, a constant reminder to those below that they are under the protection of the Liberty Navy. A comfort to some, a dire warning to many more.

Upon further investigation, the Navy has successfully identified the ordnance being transported as being sourced from Rheinland. Going as far as to state that they contained serial codes which correspond with weaponry used by Rheinland's own Military. Naturally given the circumstances around the discovery of these weapons and Liberty's history of hot and cold relations with the neighboring House, it is expected that this development will lead to further scrutiny when it comes to potentially suspicious activity.

## Rumors

* If you need to hop over to Allentown, the Junkers are always eager to buy some H-Fuel off of us. That's basically the way the relationship goes between our factions. We steal it, they buy it, then they sell it back to the fool we stole it from. Everybody profits. Well, everybody important, I mean.

* I can always tell when they're comin' off a Cardi high. A guy will believe anything then. Heh, I convinced one of those poor sods he was an Outcast freighter captain and his ship was about to leave. 'fcourse, the -real- Outcast freighter captain wasn't amused. No, that Cardihuffer is floating around outside somewhere now.

* Slaves? Cardamine? Yea, we got a lot of both, but you'll get none of it unless you got the dough to pay for it. We're not running a charity here, and fools that think we do tend to find themselves on the wrong side of an airlock if you catch my meaning.

* his system used to be a place to lay low, now the resistance has gone and ruffled the damn Navy's feathers of all things. Patrols launched from the Alma make it possible to really hang around the lanes for too long. Smuggling things in and out is also starting to prove more of a hassle than it's worth, Junkers are going to start asking for hefty premiums.

* It's a Rogue's life for me all the way! There's no other life for a real man, let me tell you. Sure, I'm sure a life on a cargo hauler ain't bad, if you don't mind all the boot-lickin', hiney-kissin', fake-smilin' foofooness you have to put up with from The Boss Man. No siree, I'll take a Bloodhound any day over that. A man needs to earn his keep in the galaxy the old fashioned way: with his guts on the line and leading the way.

* Now a Junker, that's a high class o' yokel, fer certain. Them Junkers been all over Sirius, rootin' 'round in junk piles and snoopin' out secrets and such. That's why they're called Junkers, ya know, cause they's always in the junk fields. And that ain't all, either. Them Junkers is whatchya call industriouslyness. Yep, they're plenty industri...uh, whatever. They got a whole smelter operation down in Porto Rico where they smelt the junk into really first rate, high class, uh, junk. Then they sell it to the shipyards. Now that's what I call business sense, it is.

* We get our own H-Fuel hauled up from Buffalo Base, for the most part. The pickings are pretty slim in Pennsylvania. The navy guards their H-Fuel shipments like it's solid Gold. Wait just a minute... Maybe it is Gold and they just want us to think it's H-Fuel... Genius. No, not the navy. I'm the genius for figuring out their plot!

* Medical care on a Rogue base has never been the best as I'm sure you know. Fortunately, Rochester's Junkers have a nice racket going on Denver, and they are able to ship us cut rate Pharmaceuticals. The trip getting here is pretty ugly, but there's no substitute for good drugs. The legal kind, I mean. For the illegal kind, there's all sorts of options.

* Back for more, are you? Looking for trouble? This ain't a Zoner bar. We don't like brawls here, especially from outsiders. And we don't ban firearms. Keep that in mind, bub. Now shove off.

* I wasn't always a Rogue, you know. I started out a Boron miner on Pittsburgh. But I lucked out one day and punched a LPI Captain in the nose in a bar brawl, and ended up on Sugarland with the best crew of real men I've ever met. Yep, they was Rogues through and through, and I've been one ever since. Sure, I get called criminal, fiend, murderer and so forth by the so-called polite society in Liberty. But the one thing they don't call a Rogue is sissy. Not to his face and live they don't. Oh, and that cop got what was coming once I got out.

* Those Rogues on Sugarland, why they put some real brass in my spine, they did. I growed a pair o' stones there the likes o' which you ain't never se... EGAD! Blue-eyed Bill just walked into the bar! I owe that dude 15 credits and I'm late on the vig. Where's the back door, I gotta hightail it outta here 'fore he eyes me!

* We also get H-Fuel from Beaumont in Texas. See, first we Rogues steal the H-Fuel. Then we sell it to the Junkers in Texas. Then they sell it to us here. Then we sell it to the Junkers at Allentown. Then they sell it back to the fools we stole it from to begin with. That way, everybody important makes a fat profit. You know, if all of Sirius ever wised up to the Rogue way of doing business, we'd never have an economical recession ever again!

* LPI has really committed with Erie, which in turn means that Liberty is looking to lock down on the Colony and add it to the collection. Commercial traffic is on a steady uptick, but of course the Hackers are cherry-picking the best loot for themselves rather than sharing. The Zoners are easy pickings though, so I'll stick around a little while longer before I go try my odds with Eska's pack in Cortez.

* This system used to be a place to lay low, now the resistance has gone and ruffled the damn Navy's feathers of all things. Patrols launched from the Alma make it possible to really hang around the lanes for too long. Smuggling things in and out is also starting to prove more of a hassle than it's worth, Junkers are going to start asking for hefty premiums.

* And let me tell you somethin' else. We ain't crazies like them Xenos. No sir. We're whatchya call respectable and stuff. That's right. We don't take no account o' where you're from when we rob ya, like them Xenos do. Nope, we don't care if you're from Liberty, Kusari, or Timbuktookee, wherever that is. Them Xenos are a bunch o' wild hateful rats and they ain't got no place in Liberty at all. And that's why we hates 'em, it is.

* LPI has really committed with Erie, which in turn means that Liberty is looking to lock down on the Colony and add it to the collection. Commercial traffic is on a steady uptick, but of course the Hackers are cherry-picking the best loot for themselves rather than sharing. The Zoners are easy pickings though, so I'll stick around a little while longer before I go try my odds with Eska's pack in Cortez.

* Some people think of Pennysylvania is in the core of Libery. Out here on Niverton, we know it's just the Southern end of a North bound donkey. Almost all the transports going through this system are carrying industrial products, so there's not much opportunity to loot the finer things in life. To get Luxury Consumer Goods, we actually have to smuggle them in from Newark just like the rich fatcats on Curacao. We'll pay you handsomely for them, though.

* Niverton has been struggling financially for a while. In their efforts to make this base too remote to be located by the navy, its founders forgot to make it close enough to profitable supply centers. We do manage to secure a small supply of labor to ship off to Malta's Cardamine fields, though. We can't compete with Buffalo's profits, but we manage to survive.

* Disgusting and decadent. That's Liberty summed up in two words. It is also excessively wealthy. Cardamine allows us to siphon a lot of that wealth into our pockets, from both the Rogues and the addicts on Manhattan and Los Angeles.

* The Rogues have their uses. Along with the Junkers, they keep the plantations on Malta well supplied with laborers. I'm not sure where they all come from, but I suppose we don't need to care, or worry about them leaving. After a few weeks on Malta, escape means certain death.

*NOTE: Page generated on the 28/10/2023 at 17:59:46 UTC*