Detroit

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Detroit

Note: X and Y are coordinates (light years on XY plane) relative to Terra at (0, 0)

Detroit
System Information
X:Y Coordinates19.15 : -452.55[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 at 3145 is located in the Victoria Commonality of the Capellan Confederation.[4][5]

System Description

The Detroit system 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

The Detroit system was colonised in [[2488].[2]

Detroit III

Template:InfoBoxPlanetStandard 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

Early History

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 pre-industrial 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

During the final years of the Star League, a force from the Star League Defense Force, the 2nd 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 85th Light Horse Regiment was destroyed with a nuclear strike, the 147th Dragoons Regiment and the 1111th Royal Light Horse Regiment were surrounded and destroyed. The 25th Striker Regiment was able to escape during the fighting, but took heavy losses.[6]

The Succession Wars

Detroit remained an independent Periphery world for much of its history,[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] 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 early twenty-ninth century.[2] 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.[15]

New Colony Era

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 realising 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 immingration 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 to 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;[16] 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.[17]

With both Calderon and Centralla 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.[17] More than a decade after Jeffrey's death, disputes over whose weapons had killed the Protector continued.[18]

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.[17] 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.[19]

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 the 22nd of 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.[20]

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 Centralla that the Magistracy was formally 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.[21] 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.[22] 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 favour of Erik Martens-Calderon.[23] Magestrix Centralla'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.[22]

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 rumours 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

On the 24th of March 3071 forces from the Capellan Confederation secured Detroit and it's 'Mech factory on behalf of the Magistracy of Canopus.[24] 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 to be found 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.[25] 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.[26] 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[27] - including the Third Canopian Fusiliers[28] - arrived and drove off the Thirty-fourth.[27] 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 co-operated with the Blakists.[26]

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 to thin to sustain human life for more than a handful of minutes.[2]

Political Affiliation

Planetary Rulers

3067

  • Lenore McCabe (3067)[1]

Military Deployment

3071

At this point the Canopian Highlanders were stationed near the city of Dearborn on North.[2]

3079

3085

Geography

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

  • 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 seperated 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

Nearby Systems

Systems within 60 light-years (distance in light years)
Closest systems first:
Linhauiguan 27.0 Appian 28.7 Cluff's Stand 29.6 Tincalunas 30.9
Wyeth's Glory 37.9 Spencer 39.4 Achtur 39.4 Úr Cruinne 39.5
Herrmaz 45.5 Ghorepani 47.0 Liu's Memory 47.0 Mandalas 48.4
Joppa 48.5 Payia 48.8 Adrar 49.3 Lyreton 51.1
Kimi 53.1 Cygnus 54.3 Repulse 55.5 Rockwellawan 57.0
New Roland 58.0 Jia Tian 58.9 Renown 59.1

References

  1. 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 101, "Planet Profile"
  2. 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 Masters and Minions: The StarCorps Dossiers, p. 178, "Detroit"
  3. 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 Objectives: Periphery, p. 17, "Detroit"
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 Era Report: 3145, p. 39, "Inner Sphere - [3145] Map"
  5. 5.0 5.1 5.2 Field Manual: 3145, p. VI, "Inner Sphere - [3145] Map"
  6. Field Manual: SLDF, p. 154, "Independent Regiments"
  7. 7.0 7.1 7.2 Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 92, "Magistracy of Canopus after Age of War (2571) and Fall of the Star League (2750)"
  8. 8.0 8.1 Era Report: 2750, p. 37, "Inner Sphere - [2750] Map"
  9. 9.0 9.1 Handbook: House Marik, p. 34, "Free Worlds League after First Succession War - [2822] Map"
  10. 10.0 10.1 Handbook: House Liao, p. 39, "Capellan Confederation after Second Succession War - [2864] Map"
  11. 11.0 11.1 Handbook: House Liao, p. 40, "Capellan Confederation after Third Succession War - [3025] Map"
  12. 12.0 12.1 Handbook: House Marik, p. 42, "Free Worlds League after Third Succession War - [3025] Map"
  13. 13.0 13.1 13.2 Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 92, "Magistracy of Canopus after after Third Succession War (3025) and after FedCom Civil War (3067)"
  14. 14.0 14.1 Era Report: 3062, p. 12, "Inner Sphere - [3057] Map"
  15. 15.0 15.1 Handbook: House Liao, p. 60, "Capellan Confederation after Operation Guerrero - [3058] Map"
  16. Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 60, "Sound and Fury"
  17. 17.0 17.1 17.2 Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 62-63, "Detroit Debacle"
  18. Masters and Minions: The StarCorps Dossiers, p. 183, "Recent Events"
  19. Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 64-65, "Achilles Heel - Events in the Concordat"
  20. Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 74-75, "I Regret I Must Declare Martial Law"
  21. Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 65-66, "Rumblings of Rebellion: The Fronc Reaches"
  22. 22.0 22.1 Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 70, "Taurian Troubles"
  23. Handbook: Major Periphery States, p. 67, "Restoration: The Calderon Protectorate"
  24. 24.0 24.1 Jihad Hot Spots: 3076, p. 15, "Timeline of the Jihad"
  25. Masters and Minions: The StarCorps Dossiers, p. 176, "Detroit Consolidated MechWorks"
  26. 26.0 26.1 Objectives: Periphery, p. 15, "Industrial Update"
  27. 27.0 27.1 Masters and Minions: The StarCorps Dossiers, p. 170, "Tracing Steps"
  28. Masters and Minions: The StarCorps Dossiers, p. 180, "Canopian Fusiliers"
  29. Historical: Reunification War, p. 159, "Inner Sphere - [2596] Map"
  30. Field Manual: SLDF, p. vii, "Inner Sphere - [2764] Map"
  31. Historical: Liberation of Terra Volume 1, p. 11, "Inner Sphere - [2765] Map"
  32. Field Report 2765: Periphery, p. 35, "Magistracy Armed Forces Deployment Map - [2765]"
  33. Handbook: House Marik, p. 38, "Free Worlds League after Second Succession War - [2864] Map"
  34. Handbook: House Liao, p. 49, "Capellan Confederation after Fourth Succession War - [3030] Map"
  35. Handbook: House Marik, p. 51, "Free Worlds League after Fourth Succession War - [3030] Map"
  36. Historical: War of 3039, p. 133, "Inner Sphere - [3040] Map"
  37. Era Report: 3052, p. 10, "Inner Sphere - [3050] Map"
  38. Era Report: 3052, p. 22, "Inner Sphere - [3052] Map"
  39. Handbook: House Marik, p. 54, "Free Worlds League after Operation Guerrero - [3058] Map"
  40. The Periphery, 2nd Edition, p. 112, "Magistracy of Canopus & New Colony Region"
  41. Inner Sphere, p. 98, "Near Periphery Kingdoms Map""
  42. Era Report: 3062, p. 29, "Inner Sphere - [3063] Map"
  43. Handbook: House Marik, p. 56, "Free Worlds League after FedCom Civil War [3067]"
  44. ' Jihad: Final Reckoning, p. 42, "Inner Sphere - [3067] Map
  45. Jihad Secrets: The Blake Documents, p. 65, "Inner Sphere - [3075] Map"
  46. Field Report: Periphery, p. 20, "Magistracy of Canopus Region Deployment Map - [August 3079]"
  47. Jihad: Final Reckoning, p. 63, "Inner Sphere - [3081] Map"
  48. Field Manual: 3085, p. vii, "Inner Sphere - [3085] Map"
  49. Map of the Inner Sphere 3130
  50. Era Report: 3145, p. 11, "Inner Sphere - [3135] Map"
  51. Field Report: Periphery, p. 10, "Regimental Status"
  52. Field Manual: 3085, p. 149, "Deployment Table - 3085"
  53. Objectives: Periphery, p. 17, "Detroit Consolidated MechWorks"
  54. Objectives: Periphery, p. 17, "Detroit Consolidated AeroSpace"
  55. Objectives: Periphery, p. 17, "Novis AT-H, Inc."

Bibliography