Open Letter to Ancient Legio

April 3, 2022 Arpeegy

Greetings Mastigrancazzi,

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Liberator Arpeegy, chief administrator of Liberal Resistance Maquis (MAKE) and military Sovereign of City State Democracy J3Q-5HN, duly appointed by Democracy’s Prime Minister and confirmed by Democracy’s representative Council.  Our Prime Minister has authorized me to deliver this message to you.

You need to know two things about our people. First, Liberal Resistance Maquis act as guardians for democracy. Members cherish the liberal ideals of liberty, equality, and justice for all people. Members will actively resist any government that removes civil rights from its citizens. They will also aggressively liberate oppressed people from illiberal governments that enslave them. Members use military tactics inspired by a guerilla resistance group found on ancient Earth.

What this means for you is we are uninterested in fighting for and keeping territory.  We also do not fight for such a lowly ideology of payment or money. We fight for freedom, glory, and, above all else, democracy.  We adopt system democracies and help them to overthrow illiberal governments.  We are not the enemy you want to make because we can liberate your controlled systems using your own citizens that desire freedom from your perverse feudal rule.

Second, we are formerly the military arm of Labour of Rhea.  We are patient and are accustomed to playing the long game.  We are used to moving influence in a system with 13 billion citizens, where daily efforts net a percentile of influence gain, and where winning liberation from truly “big fish” can take months or years.  Our experience in Rhea informed our decision about where to settle as our home system. We purposely picked Decean because it is a valueless backwater system with only 45,000 population.  This means that it can be easily liberated, with little effort, in mere weeks, even if a “Big Fish” came to visit and attempt to install an illiberal government.

Unfortunately for Ancient Legio, we find your illiberal and anti-democratic code to be repulsive to our foundational values.  You will never be allowed to settle within our home system. We welcome only fellow democracies. We will resist you, always.

However, we recognize our own actions may have inadvertently caused your violent invasion of our home system.  We greatly enjoy destroying pirates, and after settling this system, one of our prime hunting locations was in Dzivaruba. Ancient Legio benefitted by our efforts with an extraordinary jump in influence due to our bounty hunting.  This jump likely caused your faction to believe it was welcome to expand into our home system. You are not.

Since you are mercenaries and, apparently, only value compensation. I offer you a payout, and I highly suggest you agree to our terms if you wish to do other things in the galaxy besides sitting in Decean, forever, trying to maintain a system where you are unwelcome and will be gleefully resisted daily by our experienced military arm. We can continue to liberate Decean weekly or monthly, even if you did manage to conquer it.  You will never control it unless you are willing to keep the majority of your force in Decean as our resistance’s daily target practice.

Our terms are that you immediately move your forces outside our territory, stop taking missions from your invading faction. Allow your faction to retreat from our home system.  Instead, use your forces in Dzivaruba to lower your influence to 50% and we will be careful not to bump the influence up again.  Should we expand into Dzivaruba, we will not act to take it and will instead use it as a neutral zone.  Should our forces meet in other systems, then the first faction to control it will stay as its main government, and it too shall become part of the neutral zone with neither force going above 50% influence to prevent more inadvertent incursions.

Our payment for these terms is to not immediately begin democracy liberation operations in your area of control.  This will be a trap for you, since you cannot leave Decean if you conquer it, without us immediately regaining it, but at the same time, you do not have the forces to stop our operations if you leave the bulk of your forces sitting in Decean to be brutalized daily by our dedicated and experienced resistance fighters.

There you have it. Continue in your aggression and get stuck in a trap that will bog your faction down, forever. Decean is our home, you cannot remove us from it, but we can remove you from your control systems. Many of them, easily.

This is our payment for peace.  Choose wisely, and know we love to resist illiberal, anti-democratic, governments. You do not want to become our new enemy and take a staring roll in a new liberation storyline.

Leave us alone, and you too will be left alone. Those are our terms and our payment.

Best wishes.

P.S. Any Commander tired of fighting for money, and who would instead like to fight for the noble cause of democracy, is welcome to join Liberal Resistance Maquis.  Commanders that pledge their fleet carriers to become mobile city states, complete with whatever democratic government your people choose, are generally honored with the opportunity to serve as a military Sovereign within Liberal Resistance Maquis.  Our City States are communities of like-minded, and active, pilots all willing to put life and limb on the line to preserve and maintain freedom. We take a knee to no autocrat. We are slaves to no individual.