Here is the first ever update on the Argonaut Privateers Project being written by  zucca,  fleshballoon, and myself! These updates will fill the readers in on what's going on in the Project such as world building content, factions, races, and other facets without revealing plot sensitive material. Or at least try to, I'm looking at you, Zucca!

In the distant future, an intergalactic war escalated from a social rebellion to a major conflict between the invasive Alliance* and the vengeful Confed of Galohan. The ending aftermath resulted in the collapse of the Alliance and many planets are trying to rebuild. With a very limited, post-war military presence, a new age of privateering came about to protect merchant ships and travelers from the rising tide of pirates, raiders, and rogue states.

With the Alliance gone, many of the former planetary members sought assistance from a private military firm called the Clementine Security Company. After the planets had invested so much into the Company, the company had gotten so large that it became the government for the planets and filled the political vacuum. Thus, bringing forth the founding of the Clementine Judiciary, an ultra-libertarian coalition of planets controlled by an organization ran like a mafia of old.

Factions-

The Confed of Galohan:

The Confederation of Galohan, or the "Confed" as it is often informally called, started out as a cultural bond formed between the planets of Galohan and Earth. In the 2070s on Earth, many nations were on a collision course of another world war when resources became almost completely inaccessible due to natural disasters. As if sent on high, Galo researchers sent out to explore the stars shared their technology to help control the weather and prevented a conflict that would have destroyed at least 300 million lives. United in prosperity, Earth and Galohan formed their bond and created a union of culture and trade. This union continues to last for centuries and well into the current time of the Argonaut story. However, despite having such a lasting union, there were many detractors. These detractors consists of ultranationalists from Earth and those who believe in the racial philosophy where a society can only function by creating ethnically pure societies. While the True Bornists are a minority in terms of demographics, many conflicts often broke out between the Confed and the True Bornists. This lead to some planets being completely lost to Confed or the True Bornists being forced into exile.

The Clementine Judiciary:

After obtaining power from the former Alliance members and other planets seeking protection, the Judiciary purposely created a legal system that heavily goes against the totalitarian doctrine of the Alliance by creating a very open free market and very limited government involvement. It's speculated by many people that the new system was simply used to ease tensions between the former Alliance planets and the Confed. Others say that the system was intended to help ease the new government's responsibilities of serving its people and letting them handle their own problems. The latter theory later became more credible after the Judiciary passed the "Sanctioned Retribution" Act. The SRA allows the Judiciary citizen with the warrant from a judge to exact his or her retribution against an aggressor, such as vandals and those who perform in economic intimidation, by taking and/or destroying an equal amount of the aggressor's property. This lead to major businesses very leery of secretly doing underhanded actions out of fear of a rival business having the legal authority to commit structural demolition in retaliation.

The Private Sector:

The Private Sector is less of a faction and more of a meeting grounds in empty space for businesses.

The Age of Privateering-

Before the war, that Alliance planets attempted to rein in more control of their people and in response, people rebelled and formed their own groups. Many of these groups often took on the moniker of being "privateers" as they've attacked Alliance supply lines. This in turn had everyone refer to the rebellion as the Privateering War. Eventually, the privateers were slowly being overwhelmed by the Alliance and retreated at the then neutral space of the Confed. Fearing that the Confed was secretly supplying the privateers to push an ulterior agenda, the Alliance believed it was necessary to remove the Confed out of the equation immediately. The plan was to attack the Confed planet of Constantinople, the primary hiding area for privateers, by releasing a gas made from a mind altering drug called Cameron's Delight. Cameron's Delight, or CD for short, at first causes the mind to feel as though the person was going through genuine joy. But when the user goes into immediate withdrawals, the user becomes extremely violent all while thinking the user is in grave danger.

The intention of the Alliance plan was to force the Confed into being more focused on crowd control on a planetary scale and bar the privateers from ever using Constantinople as their secret supply depot. Tragically, the CD gas proved far too effective and often drove many of the victims into committing suicide attacks. To compound the problem to catastrophic proportions, the suicide attacks wasn't exclusively done by the average person but also the engineers of energy reactors who no longer saw a point in surviving. These engineers purposely had the reactors go into explosive meltdown, eventually causing the entire planet of Constantinople to become completely irradiated. The Confed immediately responded by declaring nuclear war against the Alliance, ultimately bringing the end to the Privateering War.

Both during the period prior to creation of the Judiciary and the present, pirates threatened merchant colonies, raiders enslaved unprepared colonies, and overzealous leaders of rogue states committed purges of colonies that have gotten too close. With the Confed still reconstructing from the Privateering War, many planets became desperate for help and called upon veteran privateers to act as emergency auxiliaries and guardians against those of ill intention.

Intergalactic Travel-

To make it possible for travelers to go across galaxies, travelers must rely one the use of Einstein-Rosenberg Bridges or "ERBs" for short. ERBs are created by forming an energy gate big enough for the ship to fit in. This process requires a massive chunk of energy to maintain the bridge and that the bridge *must* be big enough to fit the ship in. If a ship goes inside an ERB that is too small, the ship will instantaneously be forced into an indestructible tube which can destroy the ship completely. Another drawback for ERBs is their limited range. This can wildly vary depending on how much energy the ship can produce to maintain the bridge. On the plus side, digital data can easily be sent through an ERB without ever stressing the energy consumption.

A Tale of Two Kilas-

As some of you may know, Kila Sanchez, as shown here: http://iron-confederate.deviantart......etch-392136874 , was previously decided that she would not be included in the ARPR project. However, during the writing process of a story chapter, the writing team decided to reevaluate Kila to see if whether or not she would detract from the main story. Now, if Kila does get the role, some of you will be asking, isn't Kila in a story project called "2088?"

I'll answer this question by saying that the reason why Kila can be in two stories is because I'm using the clause called 'I can do whatever I want with my characters as I damn well please!' But seriously, the two Kilas are from two separate universes.