Detroit

Detroit
Detroit 3151.svg
System Information
X:Y Coordinates19.15 : -452.551[e]
Spectral classG1V[1][2][3]
Recharge time182 hours[1][2][3]
Recharge station(s)Zenith[1][2][3]

The Detroit system is the location of at least one habitable world, Detroit III, and as of 3145 is located in the Victoria Commonality of the Capellan Confederation.[4][5]

System Description[edit]

Detroit is located near the Appian and Linhauiguan systems[4][5] and consists of a class G1V primary orbited by at least three worlds. During the thirty-first century a recharge station was in place at the system zenith jump point.[1][2][3]

System History[edit]

The Detroit system was colonized in 2488.[2]

Political Affiliation[edit]


Detroit III[edit]

Detroit III
Detroit.jpg
Astrophysical
System positionThird[1][2][3]
Jump Point distance9.75 days[1][2][3]
Moons2 (Livonia, Tecumseh)[1][2][3]
Geophysical
Surface gravity1.03[1][2][3]
Atmospheric pressureStandard (Breathable)[1][2][3]
Equatorial temperature33°C (Temperate)[1][2][3]
Surface water78%[1][2][3]
Highest native lifeAmphibian[1][2][3]
Landmasses2 (North, South)[3]
History and Culture
Population2,110,000,000 (3067),[1]
2,104,000,000 (3076),[2]
2,105,000,000 (3079)[3]
Government and Infrastructure
Political LeaderLenore McCabe (3067)[1]
CapitalAnn Arbor[3]
HPG ClassB[1][2][3]

Detroit III, more commonly known simply as Detroit, is the third planet in the system and over time has hosted a number of significant defense manufacturing companies and facilities. Detroit has two moons named Livonia and Tecumseh.[1][2][3]

Planetary History[edit]

Early History[edit]

Initial surveys of Detroit indicated that there were sizable ore veins located deep under the surface of the planet, but the planet itself was lacking in terrestrial life, making the likely rewards for colonization modest in comparison to the required effort involved in settling the planet. Detroit remained uninhabited until 2488, when a small number of families fleeing from the United Hindu Collective landed on the planet and established a small agricultural community. The early colonists endured a largely preindustrial level of technology for the next century as they seeded the planet with modest plant life; the growing viability of Detroit for human habitation eventually attracted investment from companies who were willing to extract the buried minerals, generating a modest but growing output. The site of the first settlement grew to eventually become Ann Arbor, the planetary capital. Only one form of native life on Detroit is capable of leaving the planetary oceans; a creature called the rainbow tree frog, which adapted well to the imported plant life and prospered, despite the inevitable human encroachment.[2]

Star League[edit]

During the final years of the Star League, a force from the Star League Defense Force, the Second Regimental Combat Team, arrived on world to investigate rumors of illegal weapon stockpiles. What they found instead was a full division of Taurian rebels that attacked them. The Eighty-fifth Light Horse Regiment was destroyed with a nuclear strike, the 147th Dragoon Regiment and the 1111th Royal Light Horse Regiment were surrounded and destroyed. The Twenty-fifth Striker Regiment was able to escape during the fighting, but took heavy losses.[40]

The Succession Wars[edit]

Detroit remained an independent Periphery world for much of its history,[6][8][13][15][18][19][20][26] although the resources produced by the planet led to the Magistracy of Canopus and the Taurian Concordat battling for attempted control of the planet during the First Succession War.[2]

Detroit held the dubious distinction of being involved in the only full-scale conflict to be fought between Periphery states during the First Succession War—or, for that matter, any of the Succession Wars. The Taurian-Canopian War, also referred to as the Herotitus Crisis or the 200-Hour War, was a brief and largely pointless campaign fought between the Magistracy of Canopus and the Taurian Concordat. The war was launched by Protector Semyon Calderon, who managed to convince the Privy Council that the acquisition of Detroit and Herotitus would expand the Concordat's resource base and help stave off an anticipated invasion by the Federated Suns.[41]

Given the distances involved, Semyon's claims bordered on the farcical, but held the promise of recapturing systems that the hated Star League had removed from the Concordat. Detroit and Herotitus were both resource-rich and self-sufficient worlds with relatively low populations at the time, and had been assigned a kind of protectorate status by the Star League, which was largely indifferent to the system other than making efforts to monitor development activity that might produce additional resources. While the Star League existed, Detroit had been administered by the Magistracy, but the military forces on the planet had been limited to simple paramilitary forces. With the collapse of the Star League, the Taurian Defense Force had quietly bolstered the garrison on the planet. In June 2813, Semyon launched his ill-fated offensive, and a TDF departed Concordat space, bound for Detroit and Herotitus.[41]

The attack on Detroit was commanded by Marshal Gertrude Blake-Andrews. Under the protection of escorting aerospace fighters, Blake-Andrews landed the Red Chasseurs, two armor regiments and two infantry regiments on Detroit, before attempting to engage the defending Canopian forces. Detroit's most notable military targets consisted largely of either spaceports or mining complexes, and Blake-Andrew's forces and the Magistracy of Canopus garrison started chasing each other across the planet. After Blake-Andrews forces avoided falling into a major ambush prepared by the Canopians near the port city of Dearborn, the tempo of operations on both sides dropped, settling into a series of traps and countertraps that both sides continually avoided falling into.[42]

The swift Canopian retaliation for the invasions, along with news of the disastrous battle for Herotitus, resulted in a quickly-negotiated truce signed on Detroit in February 2814, which included an agreement that Detroit, Herotitus and Spencer should all be reaffirmed as demilitarized system. The prisoners captured on the various worlds involved were repatriated, and Semyon was widely scorned by the media of both nations.[43] By the time word of the truce reached Detroit, neither side was engaging in more than probing raids and brief defensive actions.[42]

Two centuries later, when the Concordat and Magistracy began a joint colonization venture in the area dubbed the New Colony Region, Detroit was incorporated into that region.[27]

New Colony Era[edit]

The decision to construct a new BattleMech factory on Detroit was initially welcomed by the population of Detroit, who had grown tired of both being raided by pirates targeting the small industries on the planet and of being unable to either hire a force to defend those industries or develop such a force indigenously. Incorporation into the New Colony Region offered the prospect of protection from the Concordat and the Magistracy and led to Detroit successfully bidding to become the site of the new 'Mech plant - without the population realizing quite how large the facility would be. The number of production lines established and the immense level of foreign funding the plant attracted led to a huge immigration boom, bringing tens of millions of new residents to the planet and swiftly overwhelming the local immigration department. While the planetary government had greater control of immigration by the end of the Jihad, Detroit remained an easy place for those who were looking to disappear or fade out of sight.[2]

Protector Jeffrey Calderon was supposed to attend a summit between himself, Magestrix Emma Centrella and Chancellor Sun-Tzu Liao on Detroit in late 3060;[44] the Magestrix was seeking to bring the Concordat completely into the Trinity Alliance, thereby giving the two Periphery nations greater say within the Alliance, tempering the calls for additional troops to further the Capellan agenda within the Chaos March. The attempted assassination of Chancellor Liao on Hustaing by the Blackwind Lancers prevented him from attending, but plans for the conference continued.[45]

With both Calderon and Centrella present on Detroit, President Sherman Maltin and a significant percentage of the Colonial Marshals took both leaders hostage and declared that the New Colony Region was an independent state. The daughter of the Magestrix, Naomi Centrella, successfully petitioned Chancellor Liao to launch a rescue mission led by herself, but the weeks it took to train the MAF/CCAF combined task force and move them to Detroit gave Maltin's forces time to dig in. When the task force landed in February 3061 they faced weeks of combat against the defending forces, and while the task force successfully rescued the Magestrix after the battle for Government House, Protector Calderon was killed in the crossfire.[45] More than a decade after Jeffrey's death, disputes over whose weapons had killed the Protector continued.[46]

The repercussions of Calderon's death on Detroit were felt throughout all three nations; his death propelled the Concordat fully into the Trinity alliance and left both the Magestrix and her daughter in Chancellor Liao's debt, resulting in few objections from either when the Chancellor drew MAF forces into his war against the St. Ives Compact.[45] The popular mood amongst the Taurians was that the death of the Protector was somehow the result of Davion machinations, with the newly-appointed Protector, Grover Shraplen, dismissing any suggestions that other parties such as the Capellans could've been involved and arguing that with President Maltin dead as well, there should be no further Taurian blood spilled over the region.[47]

Grover Shraplen deployed more TDF troops into the New Colony Region in the early 3060s, hunting for "Davion agents"; protests and discontent throughout the New Colony Region increased as a result, particularly from the Colonial Marshals, who were the subject of considerable attention from the Taurian forces. Detroit was the site of the most violent protests, culminating in a mini-riot on 22 January 3063, a result of an aggressive house-to-house search by a TDF company looking for Davion spies agitating the locals to the extent that a local citizen called for assistance from the Marshals only for a firefight to result. That firefight claimed the lives of five Marshals, three TDF soldiers and the local who'd called for the Marshals in the first place, himself a Taurian by birth. The TDF also threw another of the locals in jail for trying to help his neighbors until a cooler head at higher levels prevailed and had him released. This led to the Magestrix calling for compensation for the victims and the withdrawal of the additional TDF forces from the New Colony Region, but while Shraplen's administration did agree to pay compensation and the company commander responsible for the action was recalled and cashiered, the TDF troops remained in place—and, disastrously, they continued to prove incapable of keeping the peace on Detroit while continuing to prevent the Marshals from doing so.[48]

In 3066, Detroit was a contested world; falling within the newly-formed Fronc Reaches, the Magistracy officially claimed the world as a protectorate, and had the Magistracy Highlanders in place guarding the military production facilities on the world.[1] In late 3067, it was announced by Magestrix Centrella that the Magistracy was annexing Detroit, but that the output of the military factories would continue to be equitably divided between the Magistracy and the Taurian Concordat[1] in the wake of the New Colony Region's declaration of independence under President Carver Trondel in February 3066.[49] The Magestrix cited the increased level of pirate activity within the New Colony Region as cause for deploying troops to secure the military facilities on Detroit.[50] Once again, Detroit became the flashpoint for political upheaval within the Concordat, as the crisis placed added stress on the Shraplen administration and led to Baron Cham Kithrong calling for the Protector to resign in favor of Erik Martens-Calderon.[51] Magestrix Centrella's diary recorded that she had ordered the Magistracy Highlanders to deploy to Detroit because she felt she had to protect the citizens of Detroit, both Canopian and Taurian, a decision prompted by incidents such as the 3063 riot and the panicked reaction of a Taurian trooper who fired into a mixed crowd holding a peaceful solidarity rally.[50]

Despite the inevitable international focus on defense-related industries in the 3060s, Detroit was also home to a number of other thriving industries, including agriculture and fisheries, making Detroit self-sufficient. With Detroit now a planet of interstellar significance, it was considered plausible that other industries would develop into the 3070s, including a tourist industry based upon the beaches of the White Sands archipelago and a pharmaceutical industry based around native creatures such as the rainbow tree frog. One major biochemical company, Bio-Edge Inc., had already been touted as a possible investor in Detroit, with rumors indicating that the Canopian company had considered opening a branch located in the largest city in Detroit's northern hemisphere, Michiana. Those plans were apparently put on hold in 3065 due to the rising tensions and unrest within the region, but the company was apparently interested in restarting their potential expansion onto the planet regardless of whether Detroit was returned to the Fronc Reaches or continued to exist as a Magistracy protectorate.[1]

The Jihad[edit]

On 24 March 3071, forces from the Capellan Confederation secured Detroit and its 'Mech factory on behalf of the Magistracy of Canopus.[34] Ownership of the Detroit Consolidated MechWorks—which was central to the economy of Detroit—would remain the main focus of the dispute between the Magistracy and the Fronc Reaches during the Jihad, which was unsurprising given that the factory could be considered the most advanced in the Periphery.[3] Where the factory had produced output bought by all three nations in the Trinity Alliance via a complicated order of precedence that involved calculations based on the initial outlay of capital used to construct the plant, losses suffered in combat and recent purchases had dictated the order of precedence, by the middle of the Jihad each of the three nations had adopted a different position on the revenue and resources generated by the plant. The Concordat position was that all three nations should benefit equally; the Magistracy believed that all profits belonged to the Magistracy given that Detroit had been incorporated into that nation, while the Confederation position was that profits should be split between the three nations on a per capita basis.[52] In contrast with the other factories on Detroit, the manufacturing plant constructed by Novis AT-H, Incorporated at the edge of the Warren Valley sprang up almost overnight and swiftly attracted a workforce.[3]

The planetary militia, based out of Ann Arbor, were pivotal in preventing the attempted invasion of Detroit by the Word of Blake during the Jihad.[3] The Blakists landed in 3071, intending to either seize control of Detroit or take the advanced manufacturing plants on the planet offline, but the tenacious defense put up stymied the Blakists, limiting the damage to the three major factories; while production was briefly slowed, all of the factories had returned to full production by 3079.[53] The attacking Blakist forces, elements of the Thirty-fourth Militia Division, didn't anticipate that the defending forces on Detroit would be difficult to lure out of their emplaced defenses; contrary to the Blakist predictions, the defenders remained in place, holding firm until MAF and CCAF units[54]—including the Third Canopian Fusiliers[55]—arrived and drove off the Thirty-fourth.[54] The consequences for the city of Michiana were severe, however; the largest city on North, Michiana was ravaged for two weeks by the Thirty-fourth Militia Division as the Blakists attempted to drag the Canopian Highlanders away from Dearborn. By the time the Thirty-fourth was driven off-planet, a third of the population of Michiana was dead and the city had largely been reduced to rubble.[2]

The resistance on Detroit was a contrast to the position of the other major military industrial facilities within the Magistracy at the time of the Blakist invasion; outside of those facilities on Canopus IV damaged during the battles on that world, the other major facilities cooperated with the Blakists.[53]

During this era the bulk of the planetary population of Detroit was kept fed by fishermen who lived on the various island chains, although Detroit continued to expand and develop; expansion efforts went as far as constructing a small chemical research and development firm on Livonia, although the facility was contained entirely within an interconnected complex constructed to keep the workers alive, as the atmosphere of Livonia is far too thin to sustain human life for more than a handful of minutes.[2]

The Dark Age[edit]

During the Dark Age Detroit was home to the headquarters for the Rimward Periphery operations of Interstellar Expeditions' Stellar and Planetary Exploration Department (SPED).[56] The combination of the ease of doing business within the Magistracy and access to Detroit's heavy industries actually meant that the Detroit branch of SPED was the largest of the various SPED branches operating in IE's Near Periphery Operational Area, although the focus was more on anthropology and archaeology than the stellar and planetary explorations prioritized by other branches of SPED.[57]

Military Deployment[edit]

3058[edit]

3071[edit]

The unit was stationed near the city of Dearborn on North.[2]

3079[edit]

3085[edit]

3145[edit]

- The unit was at 80% strength with a "B" equipment rating.

Geography[edit]

Detroit has two major continents named North and South.[3] Between North and South lies the Pontiac Sea, which is calmer than the other oceans on Detroit because of the sheltering effect of being nestled between the two continents.[2]

Planetary Locations[edit]

  • Ann Arbor: the planetary capital city, located on South[3]
  • Dearborn: the location of the Detroit Consolidated MechWorks and Detroit Consolidated Vehicle Works plants on North.[3] While the factories were originally located north of the city, Dearborn grew to encompass three sides of the sprawling industrial plants, leaving the northern edge free for future expansion.[2]
  • Detroit Proving Grounds: located west of Dearborn and Flint, the Proving Grounds are the site of 'Mech testing and militia live-fire exercises[2]
  • Flint: the location of the Detroit Consolidated AeroSpace plant on North,[3] and separated from the city of Dearborn by the Warren Fault
  • Michiana: the largest city on North; badly damaged during the Jihad by the Thirty-fourth Militia Division[2]
  • Warren: the location of the Novis AT-H, Incorporated plant on North[3]
  • Warren Fault: a deep chasm located between Dearborn and Flint, notable for providing cheap but dangerous access to expansive veins of mineral ore[2]

Industrial Centers[edit]

Map Gallery[edit]

Nearby Systems[edit]

Closest 36 systems (33 within 60 light-years)
Distance in light years, closest systems first:
Bellerophon 17.6 Nuncavoy 26.0 Polybius 26.9 Linhauiguan 27.0
Appian 28.8 Alloway 29.0 Zhaomaon 29.6 Huanghuadian 30.9
Thamel 37.9 Sacromonte 38.7 Spencer 39.4 Untran 39.4
Úr Cruinne 39.5 Don't 40.9 Herotitus 45.5 Ghorepani 47.0
Shaobuon 47.0 Mandalas 48.4 Joppa 48.5 Payia 48.8
Adrar 49.3 Contrilla 50.3 Lyreton 51.1 Kimi 53.1
Taygete 53.7 Cygnus 54.3 Repulse 55.5 Chandan 55.9
Rockwellawan 57.0 New Roland 58.0 Arn 58.9 Highwater 59.0
Renown 59.1 Segerica 65.1 Weldry 65.2 Independence 65.7

References[edit]

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Bibliography[edit]