Hochiken People's Assembly

The Hochiken People's Assembly (HPA) is an interstellar, multi-system government. It was formed in 590 after a military coup against the Hochiken Republic.

Goals[edit]

Despite the dictatorial nature of the central government, this polity is not unified in its goals. Even when its leaders aren't bickering amongst themselves, some of them engage in projects that destabilise the rest of their subsector. Individual ship captains are known to embark on private ventures. A HPA warship might decide to rob a passing vessel despite being assigned to protect local shipping, or a security contingent might start running a protection racket.

History & Background (Dossier)[edit]

One of the largest of the Gateway Sector multisystem governments, the Assembly sprawls across much of both the Atoon and Denkard subsectors and extends beyond the sector boundaries coreward into Stars End Sector. The capital is located on Granth (Gateway 1601).

In something of an irony, while notoriously hostile to most nations in the region, the HPA has stable relations with the K'kree client state directly to coreward.

Recent Politics[edit]

Concord (Gateway 1410), a formerly independent world on the Atoon-Windfleet border, was recently annexed outright, and there is a continuing struggle for political control of several of the metal-rich systems of the Heptad within the Plavian League. Recent raids on several of the Heptad worlds, notably the water world of Vosrin (Gateway 1512), have brought the HPA to the brink of war with the neighboring League. The HPA accuses the Plavians of interfering with its internal affairs and waging "economic warfare" in the form of trade sanctions and embargoes against Assembly trade goods.

Privately, it is likely that the Assembly would welcome a war with the Plavian League, which the HPA military views as weak and divided. The worlds of the HPA are poor in natural resources and minerals, especially heavy elements. Control of the Heptad, especially metal-rich Windfleet and Tash, would solve many of the HPA's problems in this area.

The HPA also suffers from an accident of astrography, which again is prompting aggression. By chance, fourteen of the HPA's twenty-nine systems are separated from the rest by a three parsec gulf, meaning that only ships capable of Jump-3 or better can make the crossing between the Assembly's two halves. The Assembly government is keenly interested in acquiring a Jump-2 route, which would be possible if two independent systems, Orcana (Gateway 2105) and Tarkaan (Gateway 2107) could be brought into the empire. The Granth government has been putting intense political pressure on Orcana recently in a bid to force them to join the Assembly. The HPA has declared Orcana a blockade interdiction zone, and vessels may be subject to boarding and search by HPA warships.

Another threat to the region's stability is the recent Treaty of Granth, which makes the HPA and the Viyard Concourse nominal allies. This is viewed as a clever move on the part of Hochiken leader Kalen, who with this single act has ensured that the Plavian League's Galian allies will be tied up in any future sector war fighting the Concourse and will be unable to substantially help the Plavians.

Most observers feel that a sectorwide war with the HPA as the principal belligerent is inevitable, especially now that the Treaty of Granth has been ratified by both parties.

Government & Politics (Leadership)[edit]

The Hochiken People's Assembly is characterized as having an average degree of centralization, which gives local, regional and planetary governments more power than most multi-state nations, but sacrifices uniformity on many issues. The Hochiken People's Assembly is classified as an Assembly, a form of Federation with strong autocratic trends and a head of state who is a charismatic dictator.