Thrust Vector Lore - The Consortium
The Consortium Capital of Fortuna
Secondary Dockyard District: Section 90
The war between the Consortium and the Syndicate has been raging since the beginnings of the Earth War. It is a conflict spanning hundreds of years and dozens of successor nations, with the battles right now mere stages to a much larger, unbroken line of history.
The Consortium, compared to the Syndicate, has been in place for a century or so longer. Its governmental stability mostly comes from its ruling party: the Board.
Consisting of a small group of centralized leaders, the Board is incredibly secretive on both its members and its inner workings. Those that have either testified or been judged by the Board in its entirety describe their decisive actions as a voting system, with the majority decision made over a final, end vote. The unseen faces of power speaking under voice distorters terrifying to those under scrutiny, and nothing less than lethal for those guilty.
Information about the Board’s decisions and the Consortium in general is tightly controlled. The Department of Truth is legendary in its applications of censorship and propaganda, with the invisible hand blurring the lines between reality and fantasy in ways indistinguishable even for the citizens of the Neutral City States. News reports are carefully crafted for future announcements, and combat footage edited towards heroism rather than truth.
But for as tightly as the Consortium is controlled by the Board, there is a singular free asset that has propelled the nation to its powerful position today:
The Markets.
Industry and Corporatization runs freer than anything in the Consortium, and its reflected by the sheer wealth of the city states underneath the blue and white stars. Massive amounts of capital shifts across Consortium airspace almost daily, the shadow war between corporate powers building small shipping companies into multi-million keb giants and shattering ancient Mega Corps on a whim.
The resulting culture has given the people of the Consortium a more hopeful and active ideology compared the Syndicate: the individual always has a chance to become powerful and rich if they try.
The actual chance of such a positive outcome is practically impossible for the singular entity at the bottom of the food chain, but it doesn’t stop many from throwing themselves towards their own individual ideas and work.
As much credit the Markets get for the Consortium’s powerful position however, there is another force to contend with. The Consortium Military is nothing less than the most influential force in the entire world.
The Board can exert absolute and total control of any part of the armed forces at will with no restrictions, but the main functions and actions of combat are generally left to the fleets themselves to decide.
This freedom allows for flexibility in what normally would be a clunky and difficult to manage Command and Control system.
The Fleets themselves can range from the grand First Fleet with its endless vessels and battleships all the way to the tiny Sixth with its handful of corvettes and destroyers.
Each fleet is fully independent of one another, every operation, every battle taken is done underneath the primary objective of the fleet: defense of the city states, shipping disruption, or intelligence gathering. Though sometimes fleet entities do overstep their primary objectives and branch out towards other spectrums of warfare.
Universal combat strategies against the Consortium are impossible because of this. Going against the First Fleet with overwhelming numbers would be suicide, yet such tactics are effective against the Seventh. Each fleet is unique. Therefore, every encounter has to be adapted to on the fly, the challenge of fighting the Consortium birthing legendary Syndicate Commanders.
In the sky, there is only war. The two powers of Syndicate and Consortium so utterly locked in conflict that there is no alternative, peace nothing more than a shunned fantasy.
For the Consortium and her city states, it is the reality of life.
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