Protectorate Info Thread for Paradise: 2778

Overview and origins

Founded over 500 years ago, following Humanity’s first contact with an alien race, the Unified Systems Protectorate is the meta-corporate entity which serves as Humanity’s leadership, in lieu of a proper government. Opinions vary as to where exactly it came from, a problem exacerbated by the Protectorate’s ruthless destruction of historical archives. Some believe it was originally created as a regulatory agency of the long-defunct United States to oversee colonization outside the Sol system, while the more predominant belief is that it was created as a joint venture between the largest corporations operating outside Humanity’s home system, as a form of in-house regulation. In any event, the Protectorate quickly outshadowed, and eventually all-out eliminated the governments of Old Earth that opposed it. The Protectorate was, for a long time, guided by genius. During its Golden Age, Humanity was an unstoppable juggernaut, her PMCs (Private Military Contractors) and fleets conquering the galaxy, crushing every xenosapient race they encountered, while the unmatched (if somewhat sprawling and disorganized) production power of Protectorate industry pumped out trillions of tons of material every Earth Standard Year.

Since then, the Protectorate, and the Galaxy in general, has begun to crumble. While the original founders and first few generations of the organization’s leadership were brilliant, if despicable in their ideology and motives, their descendants are vapid trust-fund brats, poorly educated and completely disconnected from reality. Nepotism, corruption, monopolization and the replacement of economic competition with armed corporate warfare have led to 300 years of slow stagnentation. Technology, science, art, music and culture have barely changed beyond the cosmetic in three centuries, few new worlds and no new races have been discovered. Leadership has all but dissolved, and the Protectorate has become increasingly disorganized, its member corporations devolving into a mass of carrion birds picking at their own corpse. Now, the Galaxy is held together by militant reactionism, paranoia and the ghost of the ideology that created it. Where once conquest and expansion ruled, now the Protectorate struggles just to maintain the status quo. As the Directors become increasingly divorced from reality, more and more power is handed over to the Adjutants, and the protocol enforcement divisions.

The USP has its roots in the very beginnings of human space exploration: earth's governments had been growing progressively weaker, with more and more power flowing to the military-industrial complex as areas of responsibility once the jurisdiction of governments were increasingly devolved and privatized. When the Alcubierre Warp Drive was first made practical by the introduction of antimatter reactor technology, the starships bore government flags, but were manufactured and manned by private corporations. Suddenly gifted with the ability to explore space at a previously unimaginable rate, humans expanded faster than governments could control. Instead, it was the private corporations which became the highest authorities on mankind's new colonies. It was a time of ultimate adventure and excitement, the galaxy seemed wide open, and humans felt that they were the Masters of it all. New Worlds and technologies were discovered daily, suddenly, there was a frontier again, and those who felt bored and constrained by life on Earth could turn to the stars.

And so it should come as no surprise that we fell back on those old stories that inspired us while earth was still an unexplored frontier. Imperialism, colonialism, manifest destiny, enterprise and the American dream. There were thousands of worlds out there, and any man could make a name for himself in this new frontier. Mankind had an opportunity, no, a mandate to conquer the Milky Way from arm to arm. And for a long time that went without challenge. Until one day, when humanity's starships touched on a world that already bore its own empire. This discovery, that we were not alone, sent shockwaves through humanity's very notion of itself. But unfortunately, this turning point was not to be for the better. This world was rich with resources, and the mining corporations that had first staked it out were unwilling to share with the native population. The natives, militaristic and at the peak of their culture's own wave of nationalistic imperialism, objected to corporate attempts to seize the treasures of their world. And rather than cooperate, humanity struck first. Bolt-action rifles and thin-hulled, gasoline powered tanks were no match for railguns, powered exoskeletons, casaba howitzers and the atomic bomb. And as the radioactive dust settled on a broken world, rather than face the horror of what they had done, humanity chose to justify it. Aliens were savages. Subhuman, inferior in the eyes of man and God. We were the chosen people, the enlightened. It was humanity's burden to bring civilization to these creatures. Our manifest destiny to conquer the galaxy and it's people in the name of God.

And when earth's governments objected to the slaughter, they too were silenced by the bomb. Fueled by greed, selfishness, arrogance, a corrupt ideology of objective self interest, and a twisted religion to justify their actions, the Protectorate was at the height of its power. With no higher authority to stop them, and an apathetic and ignorant population who would not bother so long as they had their bread and circuses, humanity's new captains of industry forged on. The conquered alien race was renamed, their history destroyed, their culture stamped out and the survivors put to work. Mankind's fleet was militarized, manned by PMCs contracted by the Protectorate, and for the next 200 years they blazed a path of terror across the Milky Way. No government, no law, no morality, just the law of the jungle, dressed up and paraded about as the ultimate freedom on the broken backs of the poor and the Alien.

And so the modern Protectorate was born. The Big Ten, the CEOs of the 10 largest corporations in human space, making up it's Board of Directors, and any corporate entity that did not wish to be labeled an unrecognized trade organization forced to bow to its will. The Protectorate is all-consuming; new worlds are doled out parcel by parcel to the Big Ten and other corporations in their favor, aliens are crushed and given derisive, mocking names, their languages, cultures and histories destroyed. Wealth, property and species decide a person's place in society. And for those who step out of line, dare to challenge the status quo or the dominant ideology, there are the Adjutants, armed with the twin enforcement agencies, SIPE and SEPE, waiting to crush subversion. Any person who tries to resist is sent to the penal colonies, the frontier that had once been so idealized, now a place of hardship and death. Any world that dares break away or establish a government is subjected to the horror of the Charon Protocol, the SEPE fleet's ultimate, world destroying weapon.

But the Protectorate is dying. A victim of its own success, destroyed from within. The harder they fight back, the more reactionary they become, the more inevitable their destruction. The galaxy is approaching another turning point. But will the new powers that emerge strive to be better than their predecessor, or will one tyrant merely be traded for another.

Organizational Structure

The USP is sprawling, loosely organized and slow to react or change. While in theory and name, the actual "protectorate" is quite a small organization, consisting of the Board of Directors and their supporting bureaucracy, in actual fact it effectively controls almost every organization in known space. Aside from the core group, the organization also directly owns numerous other corporations, including much of the galaxy's war fleet, the two protocol enforcement agencies, and a number of terraforming, security, and military companies. All other entities are bound to follow the protocol set by the Board of Directors, and more informally by the web of agreements, kickbacks, under the table deals and authorized monopolies that structure society from the shadows. The "Protectorate" that the average citizen typically sees is usually a contractor or subcontractor, authorized by the central organization to conduct business and enforce protocol on a world. Paradise, for example, is overseen and operated by a private corrections firm licensed by the Protectorate to operate prisons, detention centers, and really much of the day to day justice system.

Protocol Enforcement

There are two central branches of protocol enforcement: SIPE and SEPE. While the vast majority of enforcement is dealt with by security and corrections subcontractors, these two over arching organizations are primarily responsible for implementing it, and dealing with serious infractions. While protocol is the closest thing to law at this point, there's an important distinction: protocol, unlike a law, is not a rule that describes how things must be, it's a statement of what the Protectorate will do in response to certain actions. For example, murder is not illegal, but protocol states that if you do kill somebody the Protectorate thinks is important, such as an employee of a member company, they will respond by detaining you, and punishing you in whatever way they see is appropriate. As a result, protocol is quite flexible, and hardly universally applicable. If someone ordinary is killed, chances are the victim's family's only recourse is to request that the Protectorate arbitrate compensation, or hire mercenaries to exact revenge. If you have the money, you can subscribe to a security service that will attempt to prevent people from committing crimes against you, but for the underprivileged, and especially for Xenos, there is no real recourse.

Special Internal Protocol Enforcement, commonly known as SIPE (sigh-pay), would be roughly analogous to the FBI or a federal police force. Their primary duty is to investigate serious protocol breaches within the Protectorate and it's member companies. While they have paramilitaries capable of waging very limited warfare, their focus is investigation and small police actions, such as detaining corporate board members accused of violating agreements with the Protectorate, those who have committed crimes against people of importance, and people suspected of sedition or encouraging subversion. Think of them as the Space Gestapo.

Special External Protocol Enforcement, or SEPE (pronounced "say-pay"), on the other hand, is more analogous to the military. In charge of the various PMCs that provide the bulk of Protectorate military forces, their duty is to destroy or pacify rogue corporations and gangs, to crush rebellions, root out terrorists, or to subjugate newly discovered alien races. Actual troops under the direct employment of SEPE are primarily what one would consider special forces. Subcontracted PMCs provide the ground troops, while SEPE concerns itself with high-risk operations. To continue the Nazi analogy, they are the Space Waffen SS.

Adjutants

There are two forms of supreme governance: Sector and System Governors, and the Adjutants. Both are employed directly by the Protectorate, and have direct authority from the Board of Directors to make whatever decisions they deem necessary so long as it does not contradict the board. While Governors are tied to a specific jurisdiction (their galactic sector or planetary system), Adjutants have unlimited jurisdiction, and virtually unlimited power. Governors and Adjutants are the people responsible for making the whole system work on a day-to-day basis. The Board of Directors, in actual fact, is largely symbolic. The wealthy and privileged descendants of the original founders of the Protectorate, they are far more interested in leading lives of wealth and power than actually running the galaxy. That duty falls to the Governors and Adjutants.

Historically, Adjutants have been the more military branch. Supreme generals, responsible for leading campaigns, marshaling and coordinating military forces, and dictating overall strategy. Adjutants led the conquest of the alien races, and were dispatched to crush rebellion and enforce the status quo throughout the galaxy. They were the long arm of the Protectorate, Humanity's champions and a constant reminder of Human authority and power in the Galaxy. However, as a result of the Protectorate's stagnation the need for them, and thus their numbers, has severely diminished. Now, they serve as glorified janitors, sent to clean up other people's messes. Despite this, they still command immense respect and fear, and are known for their refusal to tolerate incompetence or failure. If an Adjutant arrives on a planet, everyone knows heads are going to roll. Most Adjutants are augmented humans, biologically, genetically and cybernetically altered to improve and enhance their physical ability and intelligence. As a result, their life expectancy is dramatically increased: most Adjutants today still remember the Protectorate's glory days 300 years ago.

Social structure and Xenosapients

Founded on ideals of individualism and human supremacy, the Protectorate relies on economic power to enforce a strict social structure. That is to say, the majority of the time, rather than relying on protocol or other official mandates to enforce inequality, they structure society in such a way that it is inevitable. Aliens are not "slaves", but the only industries and positions which will hire them only pay them in company vouchers, or force them to cover living expenses by accepting loans from the company that their salaries cannot possibly pay off. Positions of political power are not hereditary, but since political power requires you to own a large corporation, and ownership of a corporation is something that can be passed down through a will… You get the picture. Illusions of freedom, power, and choice are the Protectorate's specialty. This knack for blurring the lines between written protocol and economic reality, in addition to encouraging apathy in the population through copious and inexpensive entertainment and other distractions makes it very difficult to point fingers when somebody is being oppressed. And their founding ideology, the lie that anybody can be successful if they work hard enough, and that right makes might, justifies it all.

In practice, xenos are confined to ghettos (because urban development corporations have the religious freedom to only serve humans), forbidden from owning modern weapons (because arms manufacturers have the freedom to sell to whoever they want), incapable of getting any decently paying or respectable job (because employers have a right to decide who they hire), and prohibited from entering "humans only" neighborhoods (because the corporation or person that owns the land has a right to decide who they allow on it). While the Protectorate does not openly acknowledge an ideological or religious preference, it is fairly obvious that they not only favor the teachings of the Exodus Testament (a heavily edited and warped version of the Christian Bible which is printed by one of their shell companies), but actively promote the theology it espouses. Specifically that humans are God's chosen, created in His image, that it is our destiny to conquer the galaxy and bring the light of civilization to the various alien races, and that humanness is close to godliness (that is to say, the more humanoid you are, the better your race will be treated). This is perpetuated through and organization calling itself "The First Galactic Church", but more commonly known in Xeno districts as The Human Cult.