Spacers Legion

Great Galactic War

―Motto of the Spacers Legion

The **Spacers Legion**, widely referred to as the **Legion** and internally known as the **Factions**, is an alliance of independent spacers who have declared themselves free from the governments of the United Colonies, the Herschel Nations and the Free Economic Zone. Founded during the Herschel Wars as a spacer militia, it seeks to uphold the sovereignty of spacer colonies and build a common spacer identity. Well-armed, trained by ex-military and adapted to living and working in space, the Legion is a decentralized fighting force consisting of everything from simple homesteaders to entire fleets of indepedent ships, all allied by their common cause of maintaining spacer freedom. Its decentralized structure reflects its goal of spacer sovereignty, and despite this it has been described as an emerging superpower.

## History

### Background

For as long as humanity has been a spacefaring race, some humans have lived outside the Earth in space stations. As humanity expanded and space infrastructure became more widespread, more and more people became adapted to living and working in space, so much so that living on a solid surface could become detrimental to their health. By the time humans discovered FTL travel in the late 22nd century, nearly a billion people were living exclusively on low-gravity worlds, moons and space stations; as a result, they were termed "spacers".

Already adapted to harsh living conditions and working in low-gravity, spacers spread into the extrasolar colonies much faster than the terrans and aresians. They made up the bulk of the colonies' population - a little over half the total by the mid-23rd century - and were already dividing into a number of tribes and cultures.

## Organization

As a non-professional organisation, the Legion's structure has traditionally been loose and divided into units as large as entire fleets or as small as individual terrorist cells. These units are spread across the entire political spectrum, although many factions have modelled themselves on 20th-21st century far-left revolutionary groups and follow the growing neo-socialist movement called "Mazovism"; as a result, the vast majority of the Spacers Legion are Dolorianists. However, several right-wing and far-right groups exist within the Legion's framework, such as the facistic spacer supremacist Hanseatic League that fought in the Great Galactic War.

In the wake of the Great Galactic War, the Legion has since restructured to more resemble a professional, organised fighting force. Similar to the Herschel Nations, each member of the Legion is fully autonomous; unlike the H.N., the Legion has no governmental structure at all, with members typically only gathering for trade or to provide military assistance.

### Legion Navy

> *Main Article: Legion Navy*
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The Legion Navy is the Legion's sole organized fighting force, consisting of several fleets each comprised of volunteer captains and navigators from the Legion's many factions.

## Factions

Although thought by the general populace as a cohesive group, the Spacers Legion contains many groups and factions, all on varying points on the political spectrum but all allied by the cause of collective independence.

In addition to the factions, or spacer clans, there are a multitude of completely independent settlers and homesteaders that rely on sponsorships from the Legion to settle otherwise abandoned or isolated worlds. These true independents typically consist of families or refugees from the major factions.