The Palatine System is the capital of the Empire Cluster and the financial heart of Freelance space. Where other Empire systems are dominated by single corporations, Palatine is neutral ground—the place where the great mercantile families meet, negotiate, and occasionally destroy each other through purely economic means.
Palatine occupies a central position in the Empire Cluster, connected by well-established trade routes to all the corporate systems. This location was chosen deliberately when the families decided they needed neutral territory for their Exchange—somewhere no single corporation could claim dominance.
The system itself is unremarkable astronomically: a yellow dwarf star with a handful of rocky planets and a thin asteroid belt. What makes Palatine valuable is purely political. It belongs to no single family, governed instead by the Exchange itself.
The crown jewel of the system is Palatine Station, a massive orbital complex that houses the Exchange—the closest thing the Empire Cluster has to a government. The station handles more financial transactions in a single day than most worlds see in a year.
The station is deliberately opulent. Where Constitution Station in the Confederacy has a working-class character, Palatine Station is designed to impress and intimidate. Marble facades (imported at enormous expense), gilded corridors, and architecture that screams wealth at every turn. The families want visitors to understand exactly where the money is.
Nerva is the system's only habitable world—a temperate planet with carefully manicured estates, exclusive resorts, and the private residences of the cluster's wealthiest citizens. Living on Nerva is a status symbol; the waiting list for property runs decades long.
The planet has minimal industry. Its economy runs on services catering to the ultra-wealthy: private security, luxury goods, exclusive entertainment. The permanent population is small; most of Nerva's residents maintain their primary business interests elsewhere and treat the planet as a retreat.
Commodus is Nerva's opposite—a rocky world given over to warehouses, data centers, shipyards, and the unglamorous infrastructure that keeps the Empire Cluster running. Someone has to process all those financial transactions, store all those records, and maintain all those ships. That happens on Commodus.
The workforce here is largely transient, rotating through on contracts before returning to their home systems. Conditions are adequate but hardly luxurious. The corporations that own facilities on Commodus are more interested in efficiency than employee satisfaction.
The Exchange is headquartered on Palatine Station and serves as the Empire Cluster's governing body, trade organization, and supreme court rolled into one. It sets standards, arbitrates disputes, and coordinates collective action among the mercantile families.
Membership in the Exchange is technically open to any corporation meeting certain financial thresholds. In practice, the major families control enough votes to determine policy. Smaller players have a voice; they just don't have power.
The Exchange's most important function is maintaining the financial infrastructure that makes trade possible across Freelance space. Letters of credit issued by Exchange members are honored everywhere. Contracts arbitrated by Exchange courts are enforceable through economic pressure. Insurance backed by Exchange guarantees actually pays out.
This infrastructure is the Empire Cluster's real power. They don't need warships when they can simply cut off your credit.
The Palatine System was settled relatively late in the Empire Cluster's development, chosen specifically as neutral territory when tensions between the founding corporations threatened to tear the Cluster apart. Rather than fight a war no one could win, the families agreed to establish common ground.
The Exchange was founded here in 2412, initially as a simple trade organization. Over the following decades, it accumulated power—first as an arbitration body, then as a standard-setting organization, and finally as the de facto government of the Cluster.
The system's neutrality has been tested several times. Corporate conflicts have occasionally spilled over into Palatine space, and more than one family has attempted to seize control of the Exchange. All such attempts have failed, usually because the other families united against the aggressor. Whatever their differences, the mercantile houses understand that the Exchange's neutrality benefits everyone.