The Empire Cluster is a collection of five star systems dominated by powerful mercantile families and corporate interests. The financial hub of Freelance space, the Cluster proves that you don't need a government to have an aristocracy—you just need enough money.
The Empire Cluster was settled later than many Free Colony regions, founded by wealthy merchants and investors seeking to establish trade networks independent of League corporate control. They brought capital, connections, and a vision of Freelance space as a market rather than a frontier.
The founders chose strategically located systems along major trade routes, establishing waypoints that would become essential to commerce across Freelance space. Their wealth allowed rapid development—proper stations, established infrastructure, functioning governments—while other colonies were still struggling to survive.
By the 2400s, a handful of powerful families dominated the Cluster's economy. These weren't hereditary nobles but mercantile dynasties: the Mercers, the Valdez-Kowalskas, the Okonkwos, the Rashids, and others. Their wealth came from trade, banking, shipping, and the thousand services that make commerce possible.
The families competed fiercely among themselves but united against outside threats to their collective interests. They established the institutions that make trade possible—courts that enforce contracts, banks that honor letters of credit, insurance that covers losses. In Freelance space, where law is optional, the Empire Cluster offered something valuable: reliability.
When the Confederacy was founded, the Empire Cluster initially supported it. The mercantile families saw opportunity: a unified Freelance space would mean larger markets, standardized regulations, and protection from the great powers.
They sent Conrad Mercer, young heir to the Mercer trading house, as their delegate. What happened next became the stuff of legend—and humiliation.
During the chaotic early days of Constitution Station, Mercer got into a dispute with Maggie Harker, the delegate from Ashfeld, over office space. When Mercer reportedly made a dismissive comment about "slag pushers," Harker's response was direct: she cold-cocked him.
The Empire Cluster withdrew from the Confederacy within the week.
The official reason was the "unacceptable treatment" of their delegate. The real reason was more complex: the mercantile families had seen how the Confederacy would actually work, and they didn't like it. A government where a factory worker could punch a Mercer and be celebrated for it was not a government they wanted to join.
For over two centuries, the Empire Cluster has maintained its independence. They trade with the Confederacy, do business with Confederate citizens, and generally maintain cordial relations—but they will not join, and they will not forget the insult.
The irony that Conrad Mercer eventually married Maggie Harker is not lost on anyone. Their union has created an unofficial back-channel between the Cluster and the Confederacy, but it hasn't changed the fundamental relationship.
The Empire Cluster is governed by money. There is no formal political structure—instead, the mercantile families and major corporations make decisions through negotiation, contract, and occasional economic warfare.
The Exchange - The closest thing to a governing body, the Exchange is officially a trade organization that sets standards, arbitrates disputes, and coordinates collective action. In practice, it's where the major families negotiate power.
Corporate Courts - Contract disputes are settled by private arbitration services. These courts have no legal authority in the traditional sense, but their decisions are enforced through economic pressure. A company that ignores an Exchange ruling finds its credit rating destroyed, its insurance cancelled, and its trading partners suddenly unavailable.
Private Security - Law enforcement is privatized. Corporations maintain their own security forces; individuals purchase protection from licensed firms. The quality of justice you receive depends largely on what you can afford.
This system works—for those with resources. The Empire Cluster is efficient, prosperous, and stable. It's also profoundly unequal. If you have capital, the Cluster offers opportunity. If you don't, it offers employment at whatever wage the market will bear.
The Empire Cluster's economy is Freelance space's economy in concentrated form.
The Cluster's banks are the financial backbone of Freelance trade. They issue letters of credit honored across the region, provide loans to merchants and shipowners, and manage the complex web of debts and obligations that make interstellar commerce possible.
The Mercer family's trading houses are particularly prominent, though the Okonkwo banking consortium rivals them in pure financial power.
The Cluster's location on major trade routes makes it the natural hub for goods flowing through Freelance space. Goods from the League, the Terrans, and independent worlds all pass through Empire Cluster ports, paying fees at every step.
The major families maintain their own shipping fleets, but they also provide services to independent traders—cargo insurance, bonded warehouses, broker services, and the financial instruments that let small operators compete with corporate fleets.
In the dangerous business of interstellar trade, insurance is essential. Empire Cluster firms dominate this market, offering coverage for everything from cargo loss to pirate attack. Their actuaries have calculated the risks of every trade route in Freelance space.
Insurance also serves as a tool of control. Ships and captains who cause too many losses find their premiums rising until trade becomes unprofitable. It's a quiet form of regulation that requires no government.
Empire Cluster culture is built on commerce. Success is measured in wealth, status in capital. The mercantile families sit at the top of a hierarchy everyone pretends doesn't exist.
The culture values:
There's a veneer of meritocracy—anyone can theoretically rise through talent and hard work. In practice, family connections and inherited capital provide advantages that talent alone rarely overcomes. The families intermarry strategically, forming alliances through wedding contracts as binding as any trade agreement.
The Cluster has distinct social strata:
The Families - The mercantile dynasties who control the major institutions. Perhaps a few thousand individuals with real power.
The Professional Class - Managers, lawyers, accountants, skilled specialists. Well-compensated, comfortable, but ultimately employees.
The Working Class - Station workers, ship crews, service employees. They keep everything running and see little of the wealth they help create.
The Margins - Those without steady employment, living in the cheaper sections of stations, taking whatever work they can find.
The Cluster's defenders argue this system is more honest than the Confederacy's pretense of equality. At least here, everyone knows where they stand.
The Empire Cluster maintains no unified military force. Defense is privatized, like everything else.
Corporate Security - Each major family maintains its own armed vessels, officially for protecting their shipping. These forces are substantial—the Cluster's corporate fleets rival the Confederate Defense Fleet in total tonnage.
Mercenary Contracts - For operations requiring more force than corporate security can provide, the Cluster hires mercenaries. Several reputable firms maintain permanent contracts with Exchange members.
The Collective Defense Clause - Exchange members agree to mutual defense against external threats. If the Cluster were attacked, the combined corporate fleets would respond—not out of patriotism, but because an attack on one threatens the business of all.
This decentralized approach has weaknesses. There's no unified command, no strategic planning, no military tradition. But the Cluster has never needed to fight a real war. Their wealth makes them valuable to both great powers, and their location makes them difficult to threaten without disrupting trade everyone depends on.
Complicated. The Cluster does extensive business with Confederate worlds and citizens. Trade flows freely. But the political relationship remains frozen where it was in 2448.
The marriage of Conrad Mercer and Maggie Harker has created an unofficial channel for diplomacy. Both governments use them when they need to communicate without formal negotiations. It's an arrangement that works precisely because it's personal rather than official.
Some in the Cluster have suggested rejoining the Confederacy. They are generally outvoted by those who remember—or whose families remember—the humiliation of 2448.
Respectful distance. The two Clusters represent different philosophies of independence. The Highlands Cluster thinks the Empire Cluster has betrayed Freelance ideals for profit. The Empire Cluster thinks the Highlands Cluster is charmingly naive about how the galaxy actually works.
Trade occurs because trade is profitable. Beyond that, they have little to say to each other.
The League and the Terrans both value the Empire Cluster as a neutral financial hub. Neither wants to see it absorbed by the other, or by the Confederacy. This gives the Cluster leverage it exploits ruthlessly.
League corporations do extensive business through Empire Cluster banks. Terran merchants use Cluster insurance and arbitration services. Both great powers find it convenient to have a neutral zone where business can occur regardless of political tensions.