Imperial & Federal Military Frontier

The Imperial & Federal Military Frontier is a border region surrounding the Imperial and Federal Union, serving as a buffer zone against incursions and raiding from pirates and other external threats. The military frontier consists of worlds administered as military colonies, with colonisation rights granted to groups in exchange for promises of military service on the frontier. Drawing on terms from the time of Old Terra, settlers and soldiers of the military frontier are called grenzers. The military frontier is a dynamic organisation, with the oldest worlds of the frontier eventually being subsumed into the R.u.B Union as either member states, Imperial Estates, or immediate Erblande territories.

Worlds granted to the military frontier are usually granted separately from standard colonisation rights, and tend to be granted to groups that might be otherwise incapable of putting forward a more traditional Colonial Petition for a key world. In recent years, the military frontier has been heavily settled by non-Imperial or Federal citizens, many of whom are refugees fleeing from conflict regions. This has led to criticism by certain organisations that the Military Frontier is oppressing the refugees, and sacrificing them in favour of Imperial & Federal citizens.

Background

Painting of a grenzer on the military frontier world of Misaka in the Kanata Barrage. The depicted grenzer is of the Homo sapiens hirsutus subspecies common on Nakabean worlds and who form much of the Kanata Barrage. The grenzer carries a carbine variant of the Earhard-Sanders Rifle.

The Military Frontier developed as the R.u.B Union's colonial fringe began to press spinward, out of the Aquila Cluster, and into the Delta Quadrant's Talosian Expanse. New colonies were often exposed to raiders and pirates that had relatively free reign of the void beyond the Aquila Cluster's spinward fringe. Simultaneously, domestic pressures within the traditional core worlds of the R.u.B Union had begun to grow, especially focused on alleged corruption within the Commissio Neo Acquistica. One of the more common complaints was that the Commisio had been disproportionately favouring the nobility and other elites in its grants of colonisation rights, leaving many petitioner groups without potential colonisation efforts that had often been the subject of heavy, long term investment.

The Military Frontier was first proposed by the R.u.B War Office as a solution to both of these concerns. Although R.u.B expansion had proceeded rapidly, many of the worlds that the Comisio Neo Acquistica was considering opening up for petitions were considered too vulnerable to allow settlement. The creation of the Military Frontier would simultaneously create a military force capable of securing the worlds they were settled on as well as new colonies, and provide a politically safe outlet for many groups who found their petitions to the Comisio repeatedly rejected.

The War Office's proposal called for colonisation rights to be granted to petitioning groups on certain key worlds, with the expectation that the new colonists would organise themselves into militias, and conduct patrols of surrounding space. In exchange, the new colonists would be granted Imperial Immediacy, and not be placed under either a Federal State or Noble Estate. Furthermore, the R.u.B Union would help sponsor the initial colonisation costs, and the colonists would not have to pay the Kontribution, and would also benefit from favourable adjustments in tariffs and other taxes.

The first worlds of what would become the Rhinewacht Line were settled in the late-700s P.L. and were highly successful, helping to reduce pirate and other hostile activity against new colonies dramatically. The Frontier was expanded dramatically, and soon became the vanguard of R.u.B colonisation efforts.

Administration

The Military Frontier is directly overseered and administered by the Imperial & Federal War Office and the Hofkriegsrat. The War Office has strong representation before the Home Office's Commissio Neo Acquistica, which will generally grant frontier worlds to the War Office for incorporation into the Military Frontier. Once the world in question has been granted to the War Office for purposes of incorporation, they are transferred Frontier Department. The Frontier Department is responsible for providing funds and support for the Military Frontier.

Once a world has been transferred to the War Office's Frontier Department, it is the responsibility of the Department to assign it to an appropriate Governor-Captain, who will in turn bear responsibility for settling the world. As all worlds of the military frontier are under permanent martial law, the Governor-Captain holds complete authority over the world they have been granted, and delineate sub-commands as necessary.

Divisions

Palatine March

The Palatine March protects the fringeward border of the R.u.B Union to rimward of the Lusatian Veil. The Palatine March is anchored by the 'Twelve Paladins', a series of twelve fortresses established and manned by the Duchy of Carolingia, along with the usual array of frontier worlds and settlement awards.

Military

The military forces of the R.u.B Military Frontier comes in the form of grenzer units on the ground, and Volksmarine in the void.