Free Planets Alliance

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Battle Emblem of the Free Planets Alliance

The Frontier Planets Alliance, more commonly known as the Free Planets Alliance, is a conglomorate of 14 colonial planets. Formerly members of UNISET, signatories to the FPA are each expected to contribute according to thier means to protect one another from common threats in the Northern Frontier including but not limited to: Famine, Piracy and invasion from hostile nations. In many ways the FPA is not a fully fledged nation and indeed the FPA charter falls far short of a true constitution in matters of law. Until the beginning of The Second Seccessionary Conflict in 2862, the FPA existed in secret as a private agreement between the 14 planetary presidents of the FPA and their immediate retinues.

## FPA Military

The FPA Militia is armed almost exclusively with heavily modified civilian grade equipment and improvised weaponry. That being said, the engineering prowess of the northern fronteirsmen is renowned all across the galaxy and enemy commanders underestimate the FPAs military capabilities at their own peril. Most FPA ships and weapons are repurposed from industrial or mining equipment completely by hand. Skilled workers volunteer thier time around the clock to keep the FPA militia armed and operating.

With minimal armouring owing to thier origin as repurposed civilian vessels, FPA corvettes do not hold up well under enemy fire. They compensate for this limitation largely by being fast and agile craft. FPA corvettes are designed predominently for defensive roles and excel at filling the battlefield with hazardous obstacles to provide the militia with a home-field advantage.

FPA Capital Ships run the gamut from nimble assault craft to heavily armoured behemoths but all tend to be focussed on putting out sustained damage to enemies with a wide array of relatively light but fast firing capital ship class weapons.
Due to their improvised nature and the relative disorganisation of the FPA Militia, no two FPA capital ships are exactly alike. This makes the FPA a dynamic and dangerous enemy to encounter on the battlefield. Military analysts are quick to point out that maintaining a fleet of completely unique warships is not economically sustainable and leaves the Militia in a poor position to scale, however this is of little consequence to the commanders who have to face them in battle.

With a fleet of only 8 Capital ships at the beginning of the Second Seccessionary Conflict, the FPA is slightly underequipped to protect its own borders, and indeed the only reason they have been able to survive so far is due to the fact that both UNISET and Lemais are more interested in fighting eachother than re-conquering the new seccessionary state.

## History

### The Northern Frontier

After the founding of the Lemasian Empire, the rich resources of the Lemasian Region were rendered economically inaccessible, and UNISET falls quickly behind the fledgling empire in the race for Rare Earth minerals. The Star Eater initiatiave is once again called upon to incentivise and facilitate rapid UNISET territorial expansion. A second exploration boom begins in UNISET space, spurred by government incentives. The Great Houses of Sol once again begin producing massive survey and colony ships to pan the galaxy for minerals and ores to feed the economic machine of UNISET. An initially promising prospect is discovered 300 light years to the galactic North of earth. UNISET colonists establish settlements in the Northern frontier in 2793, and supply chains for food and other consumer goods flow in from the core systems. For a time, the Northern frontier provides a key strategic source of Rare Earth minerals and settlers striking out from the core systems under the promise of wealth and stability, flood North in huge numbers. The optimisim was not destined to last, however, and by 2830, improvements in long-range surveying technology have lead to several viable prospects being discovered in several systems far closer to the core systems in the East and South and UNISET cast its gaze to establishing new colonies there.

With new prospects in abundance, UNISET and the Star Eater initiative supply chains were stretched thin. More and more resources are diverted from the Northern frontier to newly established mining outposts closer to the core systems. Thanks to the Geraldine reforms, colonies in the region are unable to grow the produce needed to sustain the local population and with the price of mineral resources driven down by the newer, more plentiful mining outposts near the core worlds the Northern Frontier slides into a severe economic recession. Widespread poverty and starvation wrack the frontier and planetary presidents lobby Earth tirelessly to re-zone the region and allow local agriculture but to no avail.

### The Northern Supression

With the re-integration of the Lamasian province further driving down the price of mineral resources, the situation grows worse in the Northern Frontier. Increasingly desperate citizens of the frontier turn to piracy, stealing the meagre UNISET supplies which still trickle into the region to try and provide for themselves and thier loved ones. The more law abiding citizens of the region begin protesting Earth’s decision to leave the frontier to languish and several movements take hold advocating for the separation of the Frontier region from UNISET. Riots erupt on a routine basis in all 14 major colonies of the Frontier. After decades spent in suffering, Earth finally began to take notice of the situation in the North, but not in the way any of the frontiersmen had hoped.

7 Prosperity class capital ships are dispatched from the Core Worlds to the Frontier to supress the civil unrest and smash the pirate fleets. In accordance with the re-integration treaty they are accompanied by 3 Lamasian Gilgamesh class warships and several squadrons of Authority corvettes. Some of the larger rebel groups in the Frontier launched a hodgepodge defensive fleet of mining ships adorned with myriad improvised anti capital ship weapons in an effort to protect thier homes from the supression forces but they are no match for the professional-grade warships of UNISET and Lamais. Several rebel camps on the Frontier Planets of Euterpe and Euridyce are destroyed from orbit. The Hope Settlement on Sothoth II having long been a hub of underground rebel groups for more than a decade is destroyed by a Lamasian warship causing thousands of civilian deaths and finally quelling resistance in the Frontier after 4 years of conflict.

### The Free Planets Alliance

In 2862 Sarah Vandermeer, The president of planet Euterpe writes the Frontier Planets Treaty. Signatories to the treaty agree to cooperate in preventing piracy and provide joint protection for the supply lines, as well as rationing and distributing all imported resources amongst themselves according to the needs of their respective populations. The treaty is signed by all 14 colonies in the Northern Frontier forming the Frontier Planets Alliance. To the signing presidents and thier immediate retinues the treaty had a different, unofficial name: The Free Planets Alliance. The presidents unanimously agreed that thier aim going forward would be to establish self-sufficiency from UNISET and secceed as a one group. Beneath the watchful eye of UNISET, the 14 frontier presidents begin to personally organise highly secretive illegal farming and capital ship construction programs in preparation for thier grand exit from under the thumb of their erstwhile opressors.

### The Second Secessionary Conflict

During the unprecedented Lamasian 'Campaign for the Homeworld' in 2871, the Lemasian Royal Navy unknowingly assaulted 2 members of the FPA. As the defacto leader of the faction, President Vandermeer attempted to negotiate the withdrawal of Lamasian troops from the Frontier but fearing UNISET trickery the Lamasians refused. Unwilling to abandon thier sister planets but seeing opportunity in the chaos, Vandermeer orders the unveiling of the FPA’s secret fleets years ahead of schedule. Given the backwater status of the Frontier, Lamasian high commandhad not seen fit to garrison more than a single Capital ship for the defense of either. The FPA’s new warships, repurposed from the husks of collossal mining barges and passenger liners lifted off from the surface of the very planets that the Lamasian ships were orbiting. The Lamasian commanders, seeing warships rising from civilian cities, assumed the cities to be secret UNISET military bases and shelled them from orbit in an attempt to disrupt the incoming opposition. The Alliance’s improvised battleships fared surprisingly well against Lamais’ bleeding edge vessels, and both Lamasian ships were destroyed at the cost of only one FPA carrier. With thier secretive and somewhat incomplete battle fleet unveiled, the FPA's planned timeline to secceed from UNISET had been vastly accellerated.