ID in Use:Gallic Royal Navy (Gallic Aristo) Tag:<AG] (Default) / <AG]VR (Capital) / <AG]C (Civilian fighters, Shuttles, Cargo, Liners). Short Goals:Protect the Monarch, Maintain the Aristocracy, Expand Solarism to All. Faction Type:Hardcore RP, multi-role gameplay aristocratic faction.
Short Description
“For savages, we have the Navy. For brigands, we have the police. For everything else, we have the Avant Garde - patriotism. Pure and unadulterated.” - Marquisat Guy Sylvestre, Seneschal for King Édouard the Just, 451 AGS.
“Our illustrious military fights to hold the line, our corporations keep the economy booming, but it’s the Guarde that occupy the space between. IDF executives - look at them in their pastel suits and you would not take them for men of the Garde - but they are. Equally, you wouldn’t take a Nox addict, smashing fortunes in the halls of Marseille for one of the Garde, yet most of them are. These are the dragons you’re dealing with - they see you starving on the street, they’ll give you a fortune before handing you to the police. Strange, dangerous characters, they are.” - Eulalie Girault, New Paris citizen.
“I know one thing about the Garde - they are out to enrich themselves. Soft-fingered; never done a day’s work in their lives. They are not soldiers, nor are they bureaucrats or businessmen, but they play act as both - they are the dragons, committed to widening their pile. I would happily arrest them all with them if they were not so damn essential to our Kingdom in the sun.” - Officer Thierry Thibault, Gallic Royal Police.
“Solarism is not a philosophy, it is not a religion. It is not a craze. It is nothing less than complete human truth.” - Aurélien Dufresne, Curator of the Vendome Residence.
Short Summary
The Avant Garde represent the royal retainers and popular vassals of the De France family. As an institution, the Avant Garde spans many of Gallia’s internal liege lords, mercantile bourgeois and communal land holders. With the majority of their influence in the Gallic Core Worlds, they represent a civil insurgency against Conseilard doctrine, using a mixture of propaganda, economic subterfuge to open warfare to neutralise internal threats that the police and the Military cannot lawfully touch. Maintaining an expansive range of private military companies and aristocratically owned logistic companies, the Avant Garde dabble represent the Royal cult amidst the great mass of the Gallic society.
Whilst entitled to significant use of military equipment through their political investment in the monarchy, the Garde are not the Navy, and are considered instead an extension of Gallic government. Guarde assets answer directly to their relative liege-lord, each other, and the De Frances themselves. Whilst often honourable to strangers, the Garde are zealously conservative by nature of their position, and can be frequently found making use of their position to actively enrich themselves - with a dutiful share for the Roi, of course.
Long Description
The Guarde is a blanket term for the union of Gallic landowners and their subordinates with vested interest in the preservation of the crown. They are Gallia’s tax collectors, private traders, propagandists, newly rich and high society figures - beneficiaries of a system under external threat.
The Avant Garde are the bridgehead between the primarily vocational Royal Navy, and the various confederations of noble estates spread around Gallia. Founded during the turbulence of the First Gallic War, the Avant Garde represent the incredible autonomy of the Gallic nobility compared to their Bretonian and Kusarian counterparts. A society in which wealth is an assurance of membership, the Avant Garde represents the massive fraternal bastion of Gallic Royal Practice - the high society retinue of the crown court and their well-to-do allies, responsible for the formalisation of Gallic cultural norms and the preservation of peerage against republican forces.
To the untrained eye the Avant Guard gives the perspective of a confederation of social clubs - a conglomeration of the well-to-do expending their assets for the purpose of ensuring advantageous social positions and the maintenance of their affluence - however, this perspective would hide the complexities of Gallic polity. In practice, the Avant Gard is the means through which the crown maintains direct control over the ducal systems of Gallia, through massive investments into the estates of the well-to-do few. This relationship is not one of appeasement - the Crown is repaid by significant interest into the Gallic propaganda machine, preferential resource allocation to the war effort, minimised unrest, and an extremely dependable counter-intelligence apparatus that has, to date, made Gallia extremely difficult to penetrate by foreign powers.
The Avant Garde’s primary success has been against the Conseilards of Marne, preventing the general spread of the revolution into worlds more keenly controlled by the aristos by catering to the whims of the domestic bourgeois. By catering to local trading parties through social favours and logistical support, the Guarde has managed to soothe Gallic-wide economic shortfalls in areas Gallia’s market economy has not been able to satiate, all the while whilst gently easing the pressure from local police and military stockpiles. Concerns over the increasing grip of the aristocracy over internal judiciary remains one of the primary selling points of the Conseilards, a sentiment the Guarde actively seeks to repress through both judicial and extrajudicial action. However, for the most part, the Guarde win the respect and admiration of the Gallic populace - if in part due to the considerable status of the Guarde as regional employers. Most notably, an individual may remain a member of the Guarde whilst pursuing employment elsewhere, as evidenced by the considerable number of the newly-endowed entering the Guarde.
The initialisation of Gallic trade into the Sirian worlds, coupled to the growing access of the Gallic citizenry to the Sirian neural-net, has undermined many of the narratives held by the crown as gospel truths. Far from entering a Sirius ruled by backwards and degenerates, the Gallic populace has experienced a sense of creeping remiss over the dissonances between the established narratives of the centuries, and Sirian truth. With the once marginal Conseilards gaining manpower by the year, the Roi has had difficulties keeping a staunch counter-education blanket over the general populace, in revolt-fraught systems such as Langudoc and Picardie.
The Avant Garde represent an enclave of diligent traditionalists possessing considerable experience of Sirian social conditions and their ways of life. Unlike the Ancien Regime of pre-contact military planners, the Avant Garde are a tight-knit cabal of the well-to-do and the crown court - an alliance of some of the most tenacious ideologues in the history of the Roi. Whilst the Navy proper focuses their efforts on extending their operations into the Sirian heartlands, a Commonwealth of the noblesse and the mercantile classes, drawing upon the massive economic throughput of the Sirian artefact market, have drawn upon the
The Avant Garde, despite can intensive use of martial hardware, does not operate under the direct control of the Imperial executive branch, and can be seen as a direct asset of the popular nobility and the crown court itself. The Avant Garde wields significant political acumen amongst the polity of Orleanais, responsible for the maintenance of the oft-deserted providing the out-and-out organisation with a considerable number of funds.
The Avant Garde have purchased extensive use of internally commissioned “Galions”, or general logistic vessels, used to peddle Gallic goods to the freshly developing Siriac export market, seeing foreign economic dependence as a means to expand the Gallic aristocratic apparatus into the newly pacified domains of the Royaume. Of particular interest is the spread of aristo institutions to the freshly Gallified systems of Leeds, Edinburgh, Orkney, and the Tau Worlds, keen to see the systems gently prized from the grip of permanent martial law without destabilising local security investment. To this end, the Avant Garde has steadily recommissioned large numbers of domestic defence retinues of the various local counts of the Core Worlds, throwing private security assets to the aid of the public good. Following the destruction of the Battleship Oubli at the hands of Bretonian Navy, the knights of the Garde have started to pour domestic reserves into the Leeds theatre, considering the vast resources of Leeds to be a potential economic windfall to La Garde’s considerable investments in the Gallic Metals Service and EFL. Forces of the Guarde can often be seen frequenting Leeds - their vessels highly ornamented and often unfilled from scarring or corrosion as can be seen on more combat-hardened models employed by the Royal Navy. Whilst a certain amount of institutional snobbery exists - the Guarde considers itself the creme of gallic society.
Decadence
There remains critics of the Garde that their hedonistic lifestyles are an abstraction of Solarist beliefs, enabling actions and conduct that would otherwise be viewed as savage anywhere else other than the mainstream of the Gallic upperclass. Whilst not exactly corrupt, the Guarde has a reputation for private libertine behaviour set apart from their starched exterior as determined by chivalrous ethics. Opinions on the Guarde vary wildly - the Garde are less popular in systems wherin the aristos have less say, whilst in systems such as Orleannais, they enjoy considerable popular acclaim and support for their general philanthropy in the systems. The Garde claim to represent the interests of Royalist Guals wherever they exist, be they in Sirius or in Gallia, and have a lax view of foreigners so long as they can be coerced to toe the line to Solarist principles. The Guarde maintain a general distain for the drugs trade, however, they represent the primary consumer base for the eternally popular resort system of Provence.
Whilst the Guarde hold an number of holdings accross the Gallic worlds, the Garde are known for their proclivity towards holding wild, exuberant parties in the halls of Gallia’s various pleasure palaces. Rare to acquire substances to support their hedonism are in keen demand - and whilst the Guarde disdain the Outcasts by principle, they are more than merry enough to liberate them of their Cardamine - for the sake of the Roi, of course.
The Avant Garde maintain a staunchly conservative, anti-Sirian worldview, pushing the perspective that it is Gallia’s manifest destiny to bend the Sirian worlds to heel. This can often result in abject mistreatment of occupied populations in areas where forces on the payroll of the Garde are assisting those of the conventional military police. The Garde, in essence, represent opposition - in Gallia, they are a fun-loving, raucous element of the social order. In Sirius, they are a terror.
The Royal Garde
The Garde maintain significant military air assets, serving in a similar manner to the praetorians of ancient Rome - a force-in-being to prevent the occurrence of coups against the De Frances, or similar dynastic squabbles as with those that catalysed the first Gallic civil war. Directly funded by the crown’s treasury and substantiated by the assets of its individual components, the Garde has self-financed a fleet of equivalent clout to that of a minor house as a personal defence force for the ruler. In practice, the fleets of le Garde are used as means of enforcing the will of the Aristos in civil disputes against the polity. Militia actors of Le Garde forces often experience alternate, if not inferior, training regimens to the conventional armed forces, and frequently cushier postings, their ranks frequently filled by minor, or financially unstable Aristos searching for a path back to wealth. Since Garde financed military schools represent a chance to reach the upper echelons of Gallic academia without significant personal investment, the Borgeoise frequently enrol their children to the potential aim of becoming assets of la Garde’s airwings or ground forces. The martial aspect of la Garde has been taxed considerably of late by its employment in the Sirian theatre, securing supply lines that the formal Royal forces cannot delegate sufficient assets to protect, acting as a rearguard-in-force. This status quo has not prevented certain more enterprising aristos from using the Garde’s considerable clout as a means to forge personal glory, making frequent pushes into the more conflict addled zones of Magellan and Manchester. Whilst the exact tally of Garde forces is kept formally in check by the GRN, there remains a certain level of civility between the services despite differences in station. The Garde often regale the GRN with expensive gifts and supplies brought with them from the Core worlds, and in return the Royal Forces remain permissive with letting flight operatives of the Garde accompany them in combat operations. Attrition rates of the Garde remain undisclosed compared to conventional forces - but due to the relative valour an otherwise worthless cadet branch of an aristo’s family dying in combat, it remains a significant source of attrition within lower ranking elements of the Garde.
There remain rumours that the Garde is hoping to secure itself new focus in the eyes of the king by something of a military expedition. There remain rumours that the forces of the Garde are eyeing both both the systems of Omicron Tau and Baffin in an attempt to catch the enemies of the Roi in their relatively soft flanks - Baffin, from the need to open a second logistics route into Newcastle, and Omicron Tau, from the prospect of unknown lucre hidden within the fabled Omicron regions. With both areas firmly separated from the grasp of the crown for the time being, it falls upon the Garde to man the second front, freshly emboldened by the newly realigned connection between Lorraine and Burgundy. It remains to be seen where the Garde’s limitless ambitions take them, and the crown they care to protect.
Primary system
Orleannais.
Invested in, or owned Stations
Vendome Residence, Orleannais (owned).
Fontainebleau Residence, New Paris (hired rooms).
Cannes Resort Station, Provence (owned).
Owned Cities and Landmasses
Ill de Luxembourg, Planet New Paris, Ile du Palais: administrative centre and Banking capital (heavy investment and local security presence).
Planet Orleans: Heavy investment into the local plastics industry and GMS assets within the system.
Solarism
Solarism is a theological philosophy based upon the ancient concept of divinity through right of land ownership passed down by autocratic primogeniture. The Solar King (presently, King Charles), is worshipped as an expression of humanity’s potential when working as aggregate. A solarist would say that hydrogen, by itself, is the least dense atom in the universe - but collect enough atoms together and you can light the dawn of life itself. Similarly, La Roi spreads its illumination over the colonies of man, bringing relative peace and stability to the heart of the Gallic worlds. So
Its philosophy goes as follows:
- An absolutist monarch can never do wrong so long as its policies are efficiently implemented. Failures of a monarch’s edict are never the fault of the edict, as they are the prime mover, not the acting force itself. Therefore, the King cannot be held accountable for perceived negative acts of the state.
This can be seen in the following example:
A master tells as servant to sell his cattle at the market, and the servant returns with less money than the value of the cow. This is not the fault of the master’s business sense, but the fault of the servant for failing to interpret his master’s orders advantageously. Equally, the King cannot be held accountable for negative social conditions in Gallia, crime, or repression; the responsibility lies with the criminals for their acts, the repressed for committing acts that render their repression essential for the survival of the state.
- Just as the essential forces of the universe are subordinate for forces of greater magnitude of complexity, nature provides the ideal template for a society. Individuals without titles are to be considered organs within the estate of those bearing titles, and their titles subordinate to the next largest point of rotation, and so on. This is called “Universal Servitude”.
- Any individual with the power and intelligence is capable of gaining rank as keenly was they can lose rank. Just as genetic predispositions are passed generationally,it is the purpose of each generation to optimise itself up the social ladder. For example, a individual who has been born into a title will always be worth more than one who has earned his title of equivalent rank by nature of parentage, but the children of one who has earned his rank will be of greater societal value than the children of one of equivalent rank, who has let his rank stay unchanged.
- It is the manifest destiny of human cultures, populations and achievements to be subsumed into the largest dominant body, for mutual survival. Cultural dictums and accomplishments are set by burgeoning societies, therefore, it is the human responsibility for inferior societies to join the legions of their superiors. By this infallible logic, all human Colonies are the De Jure assets of the Gallic crown, due to Gallia possessing the most prosperous human society ever yet discovered.
- The King and his relatives, being the most powerful individuals within the breadth of humanity, possessing the largest number of vassals of anyone within the human colonies, represents the Godhead of humanity - the true representative, in the flesh, of the entire Human noosphere. It is therefore the destiny of all humanity to bend knee to the Roi - the Sun King around which all other bodies gravitate.
- Democracy is an insult to the divinity of the Roi, the principles of Solarism, and encourages rule by rabble. Career politicians administrate from a position of charisma and ignorance, whilst aristocrats spend their entire lives being trained for leadership roles. Equally, elective decisions are merely a form of mob rule, whilst partisanship encourages infighting. Democracy is a stain that must be wiped clean from the Human consciousness if all men are to be prosperous. For example, the Sirian houses, all of whom have embraced some form of bureaucratic governance at some point, all have large, active revolutions, comparatively influential within their own houses compared to Gallia’s own. Dissidence is a blaspheme.
- Solarists are to act in accordance with the laws of chivalry; to treat others with respect, to treat opponents with dignity, and to preserve the purity of the Gallic race.
Solarism is the guiding philosophy of the Avant Guard, the royal court, and the DeFrance family at large. The belief has also gained significant support within the Normand colonies, hence the Avant Guarde’s relatively cosy relations with the Normandy duchy, despite the tepidity between Normandie and the military. Indeed, relations have grown so close since the fall of the Gallic war due to marital ties, the Normand and Gallic aristocracy can be said to be indistinguishable, despite the continued closure of the jump gates between the Normand and Gallic worlds. There remains a conspiracy within certain echelons of the Garde that maintain that the Marne system was never evacuated for the good of the people, but rather as a cede of the territory to the Normands in return for abating their assistance of the Conseilards.
Objectives of the Avant garde
The Avant Garde ostensibly promotes the steady liquidation of pro-Conseilard sentiment and the steady Gallicisation of all presently occupied territories, through a mixture of deportation, re-education and cultural indoctrination. The Garde’s perspective to the Siriac populace is predominantly permissive, providing captive Siriac populations do not rally behind resistance or reformist groups.
Their objectives can be summarised below:
- Crush all resistance to the crown in the Gallic aristocracy.
- Widen the titles and control of resources of the various Gallic lords and barons.
- Secure, by marital ties, a royal marraige with the De France and the De Normandie royal families.
- Regal the Siriac savages with the wonders of Gallic culture.
- Reform savages within the Gallic controlled Zone into obedient vassals.
- Secure the wealth of prosperity of Gallia from within.
- Conduct crusades to spread the light of the Roi into regions the fist of the GRN cannot tread.
- Prevent the Bretonians from reconquering Gallic territory.
- Covertly advance the agenda of the Dutchy of Orleans.
- Secure Gallic internal trade and logistics.
- Preserve the purity of relations between the Borgeoise, corporations, and Aristocracy.
- Secure relations with other Gallic internal groups.
- Mount a successful siege of the Champagne system.
- Party hard.
Diplomatic Relations
Friendly
Subject of le Roi.
Neutral/Warm
La Unione Corse.
Whilst the Avant-Garde remains suspicious of the Corsican mafia for their presence in Conseilard controlled zones, the Garde themselves are frequent customers of Corse enforcement services, along with the odd foray into illegality with their rampant consumption of Nox of which the Gallic Aristos are so fond.
Neutral/Suspicious
Non-subjected foreigners of any stripe, including licensed foreign Corporations.
The Garde retain the view that foreign corporations objectively represent Siriac imports, and thus, the spread of barbarian culture into Gaul.
Rheinlanders.
Grubby little men, who somehow the Crown condones. Charles be praised.
Kusarians.
Disgusting, funny-looking individuals, prone to surrender at the slightest tap. Charles be praised.
Enemies
Opponents of the GRN and GRP, and by extension, the Roi.
Opponents of the Roi are considered savages by the Garde, and thus Subhuman.
Bretonians.
Bretonians are held in slightly higher esteem by the Garde due to their maintenance of a politically active monarchy, despite the fierce war against them.
Les Conseilards, including Maquis.
The Council are considered an abomination against Solarism and traitors to the kingdom. In addition, they represent an existential threat to the numerous privileges the Garde enjoys.
Brigands.
The Brigands are nothing more than peasants with an attitude problem.
The Maltese.
A politically unstable government on the edge of Gallia’s border, concealing the gateway to the Omicrons. In addition, they possess the tastefully addictive narcotic cardamine that has been making such waves in aristocratic circles. The Garde would be more than happy to seize the means of production for themselves.
Socialists and communists of any form.
Disgusting.
All non-invited non-domestic foreigners breaching Gallia’s borders.
Savages, rampaging around civilisation? Intolerable.
The Falsely named house of Liberty, and the Commonwealth of Liberty.
A corpse. Overweight, uncultured, and covered with flies. Yet still it lives.
Nature of the Faction
This organization is a HARDCORE ROLE-PLAY faction, playing the role of a functional Gallic aristocracy. By joining this faction, you are showing a dedication to Gallic role-play and a significant amount of playtime in Gallia itself.
Command Structure:
Grand Maréchal
In command of the Avant-Garde.
Maréchal
Part of the High Command. Aids the Grand Maréchal.
Général
May command a battleship and its fleet.
Commandant
May command a battlecruiser and its squadron.
Capitaine
May command a gunboat and its escort, or command a strike wing.
Lieutenant
May fly strike craft. The fundamental rank.