THE UNITED PLANETARY FEDERATION

The United Planetary Federation of f.y. 95 is a brutal dictatorship bearing no resemblance to the ideas and institutions of the originial UPF.

The New Frontier

The UPF is governed by a series of draconian measures known collectively as the “New Frontier Initiative,“ chief of which is the New Frontier Act.

Citizenship and the Morality Index Number

In the New Frontier, a Morality Index Number(MIN), assigned at birth/decanting to each being in the UPF, determines who receives citizenship and thus civil and personal rights, with lower MINs being granted less rights than higher MINs and those with the very lowest MINs(01-10), also known as proks, born into utter and complete slavery—incarcerated in Non-Citizen Containment Matrices or NOCCMs(no' see'ems)—the property of the Council of Worlds and those UPF citizens with MINs of 50 or above.

The Morality Index Number also determines what type of job a being is allowed to hold, how many hours he is required to work per day(with proks being forced to work 20 hours a day)and the maximum daily pay he is allowed to receive.

A variety of factors go into determining a being's MIN, including socioeconomic background, gender, race, family, and job history.

The minimum MIN required for UPF citizenship is 25. Citizens at this minimal level of citizenship are required to work 15 hours out of every 20, can hold only the lowest paying jobs(or positions in the Spacefleet/Landfleet) and can only earn a maximum pay of 75 credits/day.

The highest MIN is 100, supposedly representing a person who is 100% morally pure. Only one person in UPF soil—the President himself—can have a 100 MIN at any one time.

Members of the Council of Worlds hold MINs of 96-99, while high-ranking government officials hold MINs between 90-95, their immediate subordinates holding MINs of 85-89, their immediate subordinates holding MINs between 80-84 and so on, each higher MINs being held by an exponentally smaller group of people.

In short, 75% of all beings in UPF space have MINs between 01-10, with another 15%, acting as slave overseers, holding MINs between 11-24, 9% of the UPF's population holding MINs between 25-50, and 1% of all beings in the UPF holding MINs 51+.

(NOTE: In game terms, roll d100 for each character who starts in UPF space, rerolling any result below 25 and above 50.)

MINs can only be improved after death, when the local Morality Review Committee(see below) examines the being's life to see if he is worthy of being cloned, and, if so, whether or not the clone is worthy of promotion to the next higher MIN.

Conversely, MINs are easy to lower over the course of an individual being's life. Such demotions are entirely too common events, taking place for any reason or none at all(or, as one UPF citizen was reported to have said,“creets and chuckles“) , with the worst fate imaginable for a citizen being “reassignment,“ in which his mind is downloaded into a cloned body of a murdered prok.

New Frontier Culture

The New Frontier Act outlawed all “non-Frontier“ cultures, banning everything from the Yazirian clan system to Dralasites(at least the few “tame“ ones in UPF space) discussing philosophy (or making jokes) in public. It established the True Faith as the only “correct“ religion of the New Frontier, declared Pan-Galactic the only legal language spoken, mandated that marriage is an act sanctified by the One True God, only between those of appropriate moral standing(MIN 26+), and, strangely enough, outlawed procreation, making such punishable by slow, humiliating public death, during which the offender is forced to apologize for procreating, before being forced to beg for death.

The Taxation And Responsibility Acts

Two other cornerstones of New Frontier Culture are the Taxation and Responsibility Acts.

The former calls for citizens with MINs below 50 to give up 75% of their daily pay to the UPF government, to fund, amongst other things, the maintenance of the Spacefleet, Landfleet and SSD. It futher mandates that these citizens file an Income Tax Record every Federation Day, during which time they must pay additional tax equal to 25% of their annual income.

The Responsibility Act, passed in f.y. 76, decriminalized all criminal acts, outlawed any sort of public assistance, dismantled all fire and emergency services throughout the New Frontier, overturned centuries of workers' rights and protections, and banned civil lawsuits, on the basis that certain people choose to involve themselves in circumstances they knew were bad for them to begin with, “and the time, energy, and money of the New Frontier should not be wasted in helping the less morally endowed of our people avoid responsibility for their consequences of their irresponsible actions[as President J.C. Billingslea put it].“

Morality Review Committees

Each world in the UPF has a Morality Review Committee, consisting of all citizens with MINs of 75 or higher, assisting the planetary governor in ensuring the goals of the New Frontier are being met on a daily basis.

Along with smaller MRCs in every city and town, the planetary MRC serves as legislature and inquisition, passing laws governing the “moral health“ of every citizen under its domain and, with the help of the local SSD commanders, reviewing the daily lives of its citizens, not just to ensure their conformity to the agenda of the New Frontier, but also to evaluate their fitness for cloning(or, to put it in their terms, “whether or not the One shall write their names into the Roll of the Living.“)and their “place[MIN] in the “life to come,“

The average citizen does not know who is on his local MRC, nor is he ever allowed to see their proceedings for himself...ultimately, he finds out he is in trouble with his local committee only when the SSD's enforcers come to take him away to be executed or—for the truly unfortunate—reassignment.

The Great Encyclopedia

An ongoing operation of the SSD's Department of Public Truth and Morality(see below), the New Frontier's Great Encyclopedia Project involves the centralization of all knowledge into a single electronic archive(the Great Encyclopedia) accessible only on the Mosaic by those with MINs 30 or above.

This centralization involves the destruction of more than 150 trillion printed books and data cubes every ten hours by the scrubbers, the deletion of entire databases of information from every part of the Mosaic, and, all too commonly, the deaths or reassignments, on an hourly basis, of tens of thousands of beings whose only crime was possession of information deemed dangerous to freedom, democracy and the continuing security of the New Frontier.

The Draft

All citizens with MINs below 50 not otherwise serving in assignments deemed “mission critical“ under the New Frontier Act are required to serve twenty years in whatever branch their local Morality Review Committee deems most suited to their level of moral commitment.

Failure to submit to the draft is punishable by reassignment.

Citizens from the UPF's established military officer families(i.e., the clones of previous officers) are required to serve twenty years in whatever branch their local Morality Review Committee deems most suited to their level of moral commitment. Officers, after forty days aboard the Strategos(see below)enter service either at the rank determined by their MINs or at a rank several levels(three at most) below their final assigned rank, these latter officers waiting for openings above them to advance to the rank they were meant by the MINs to hold.

Conventions

Citizens address their moral superiors as “Master,“ while the President himself is addressed as “Progenitor.“

A citizen who fails to give his superiors the deference due them will be reassigned.

UPF Government

The President

The President is the UPF's chief executive, chief legislator, final judge and supreme commander in chief of the Spacefleet, Landfleet and SSD, presiding over the Council of Worlds and governing with virtual carte-blanche authority since the bombing of Creed(formerly Morgaine's World)and Gran Quivera twenty years ago.

Granted perpetual emergency powers by the Council of Worlds, the President is answerable to no one, serving until death, when he is replaced by a member of the Council of Worlds.

The Council Of Worlds

The Council of Worlds is the UPF's legislature and court of final appeal. Meeting year-round in the Council chambers in Port Loren, on Gran Quivera, the Council consists of the CEO of PGC-Streel and one represenative from each UPF member world.

Council members are selected by the President and serve exclusively at his pleasure.

The Military Staff Committee

The Military Staff Committee is comprised of the Spacefleet Fleet Admiral, the Landfleet Field Marshal and the SSD Director-General,one of whom is appointed by the President tp preside over the others as Chief of Military Operations.

All three members of the MSC are selected by—and serve at the pleasure—of the President.

The Special Security Division

The UPF's Special Security Division, or SSD, handles all internal law-enforcement and external intelligence gathering in the UPF, with the power to act as judge, jury and executioner in all criminal cases.

The only law-enforcement agency in UPF soil, the SSD is singularly ruthless in the pursuit of its duties, its black-uniformed Tactical, Provost Marshal, and Special Operations Departments' enforcers practicing casual brutality as effortlessly as breathing, while the insidious tactics of the Criminal Investigation and Internal Surveillance Departments' operatives—especially in the way they shamlessly earn the trust of their victims, only to casually betray them—have done more to isolate the beings of the UPF from one another than any other act or institution of the New Frontier.

Amongst the SSD's other branches are the Department of Public Truth and Morality—the “scrubbers“—charged with the dilligent removal of any idea conflicting with the culture of the New Frontier or any fact which the New Frontier might find inconvenient, the Behavioral Sciences Department—the “technicians“—feared as much as the Tactical and Special Operations Departments for the casual sadism involved in their techniques of torture and interrogation, the Containment Department—the “brutes“—the UPF's brutal prison guards, and the often-underfunded and undermanned External Operations Department—the “spooks“—charged with all espionage, sabotage, destablization and other such operations against the Free Alliance.

All departments of the SSD use Landfleet ranks.

Spacefleet

The UPF's space force, the Spacefleet is ruthless in its twin duties of maintaining the subjugation of the UPF's worlds and eradicating the Free Alliance.

With warships ranging from Stinger starfighters to massive Leviathan-class dreadnaughts, the Spacefleet numbers 110 task forces, each bearing the name of the dreadnaught serving as its flagship.

A task force numbers 216 warships, divided into four task groups of nine task units of six warships apiece, as follows:

Task Group Alfa

Task Unit 1

One Leviathan-class dreadnaught

Five Exalted-class destroyers

Task Units 2-4

Two Exalted-class destroyers

Four Marauder-class war cruisers

Task Units 5-7

Two Maurauder-class war cruisers

Four Hatchet-class corvettes

Task Groups 8 & 9

Two Shadow-class escort carriers

Four Hatchet-class corvettes

Task Groups Bravo-India

Task Unit 1

Six Exalted-class destroyers

Task Units 2-4

Two Exalted-class destroyers

Four Marauder-class war cruisers

Task Units 5-7

Two Maurauder-class war cruisers

Four Hatchet-class corvettes

Task Units 8 & 9

Two Shadow-class escort carriers

Four Hatchet-class corvettes

Spacefleet Rank Structure

Spacefleet employs the following rank system:

Landfleet

Short for Space Landing Fleet, the UPF Landfleet replaced the Frontier Marines as the Federation's ground forces. Like the Marines, they are primarily powered-armor infantry, supported by ARCVs and some aerodyne tanks.

They also have complete control over the transports and dropships which bring them into battle and the starfifghters and bombers charged with direct infantry support, all of which only contributes to the resentment between Spacefleet and Landfleet.

Inter-service rivalry between the two is bitter and all too often violent, forcing SSD provosts stationed on board Landfleet and Spacefleet vessels to stay on their toes. This rivalry is deliberately encouraged and fed by the President, the Council of Worlds and the Military Staff Committee(see above)so as to keep both services' energies too divided for anything even remotely resembling a coup d'etat.

Landfleet employs the following ranks:

The Strategos

All inductees into the UPF military are assigned to the Strategos, a modified Leviathan-class dreadnaught, for basic training, where they are subjected to forty days(spent either in space or in the Void) of coldwire(cryogenic VR) training, political indoctrination, behavior-adjustment threapies, physical fitness drills and live-fire exercises against the inmates of the NOCCMs, all designed for enlistees and officers who will obey orders to kill their own families without a second thought.

Those who wash out of basic training are either reassigned or lobotomized and cybernetically “enhanced,“ depending on their overall usefulness to the New Frontier.

Planetary Government

Simply put, there is no place for planetary sovreignty in the New Frontier.

All member worlds were required to disarm their militias and dismantle their governments, submitting themselves wholly to the will of the President and his Council of Worlds.

Nor are they allowed to secede from the UPF, needless to say.

Each member world is governed by a planetary governor, appointed by the President from all UPF citizens with MINs 75+, with the sole requirment for office being the prospective governor have a higher MIN than any member of the planetary Morality Review Committee.

Governors serve at the pleasure(and/or whim)of the President, their local represenative on the Council of Worlds and the members of the planetary Morality Review Committee, in that order, with any governor failing to secure the support of any of those three finding themselves either executed or reassigned.