CONCORD Assembly
The Consolidated Cooperation and Relations Command Assembly, or CONCORD Assembly as it has become known, was founded over a century ago, after the five empires initially established contact with each other.
From the outset interstellar relations were strained. That being the case, the main purpose of an agency like CONCORD was to ease the tension and create a foundation for peaceful cooperation between the empires. This endeavor is widely regarded as a success, given that while several flare-ups have occurred, and indeed the empires have come to blows since CONCORD’s formation, a situation of all-out war has been avoided through careful mediation and negotiation.
History
CONCORD wielded very little power for the first few decades of its existence and was used essentially as a form of mediation between the administrations of the empires. Initially, the fledgling organization had little diplomatic sway, and regulation enforcement would time and time again prove difficult for its agents, as they were overruled by local law enforcement and legal representatives from the sovereign authorities.
It was not until eighteen years after its founding that CONCORD gained the respect of the international community. After the battle of Iyen-Oursta—the bloodiest and most costly engagement the Gallente-Caldari War had seen in decades— both sides were tired of fighting, though long-entrenched hatred and pride prevented either side from asking for a cease-fire. CONCORD took the initiative, and in just under six months managed to negotiate a peace accord between the federation and the state that ended the war and endured for almost a century.
In the last three decades, CONCORD’s authority and influence have expanded even further, particularly as interstellar trade has grown into the cornerstone of New Eden’s economy and the age of the capsuleer has dawned. The growing power of CONCORD has, however, often raised concern within the empires that the organization could begin to exercise leverage in areas which have until now been regarded as the respective nations’ internal affairs. CONCORD is now no longer regarded as a neutral ground for the empires to hammer out diplomatic agreements.
It has become an independent institution that sets its own rules and regulations, which it is both willing and able to uphold. The organization’s ever-expanding bureaucracy over time subtly smothered its allegiances, so that it neither swears fealty to nor answers to any nation. The only hold the empires had historically possessed over the organization—that of financial support—has in addition been almost completely erased, as revenues from customs, confiscation of illegal goods, license sales, and infrastructure management are more than enough to keep the organization in the black.
The organization does, however, continue to serve its original purpose: to maintain peace between the core empires, even if at times conflict may occur under strictly regulated conditions. A perfect example of this was during late YC 110, when a fleet belonging to the Minmatar Elders and the Thukker tribe conducted a strike against the organization’s core communications hub, crippling its rapid-response teams and enabling the Elders to mount a large-scale offensive against the Amarr Empire. This marked the beginning of what would become known as the Elder War.
CONCORD returned to a semblance of functionality in short order, but the damage was already done: tensions had boiled over into conflict. While CONCORD imposed peace enough to maintain the status quo and keep New Eden from slipping into anarchy, the hostilities already invoked would not be quelled. Using auxiliary forces composed of capsuleer paramilitaries as defined under the CONCORD Emergency Militia War Powers Act Rev. 2 of YC 110, the nations of New Eden today fight a war via proxy under the watchful gaze of CONCORD, which still struggles to rebuild and redefine itself after suffering that colossal blow to its infrastructure.
Structure
The inner workings of CONCORD are democratic in nature, with each of the five empires technically possessing equal say in all matters, although typically a nation’s actual pull more often than not will come down to the persuasiveness of its delegates on the Inner Circle’s debating floor. In reality, while the process is billed as democratic, the ultimate decision lies with a majority vote by the five heads of the Inner Circle based on the presentation of content delivered by the delegates of the empires.
The CONCORD Assembly itself is divided into three main divisions, each of which handles a certain aspect of the organization’s relationship with the empires and independent capsuleers. These divisions are all bound by the fourteen articles of the Yulai Convention and all associated approved amendments.
Inner Circle
The Inner Circle is the top-level department of CONCORD. The assembly’s policies are discussed and decided on during Inner Circle meetings, which are usually closed to everyone other than the five heads of the Inner Circle and the five delegates from the core empires. In the early years of CONCORD, the members of the Inner Circle were nominated by the empires, whereas today they are employees of CONCORD. This ensures that their loyalty is no longer bound to any one empire, but rather to CONCORD itself and its policies.
The Inner Circle is responsible for all high-level decision making within CONCORD, as well as the passing of new legislation and approval of amendments to existing legal documentation. The Inner Circle’s council is made up of the chief executive and the heads of the Inner Circle’s four branches: intelligence, administration, advisory, and internal security. Each empire selects one delegate to the Inner Circle who is responsible for bringing her government’s concerns to CONCORD in weekly status meetings. These delegates, with due reason, also have the authority to request that the Inner Circle convene in an emergency situation.
Directive Enforcement Department
The Directive Enforcement Department, also known simply as the DED, is the police force of CONCORD and maintains by far the strongest armed forces and fleet in New Eden. The prime responsibility of the DED is to track and bring to justice high-profile criminals. To this end, it often hires independent contractors, such as bounty hunters and private investigators, to assist with its actions. The DED handles the licenses and legal issues of all bounty hunters for the empires, although some of the empires have bypassed the DED’s approval under extenuating circumstances. Typically the most notorious criminals are simply marked as free-for-all targets by the DED and are assigned a bounty, allowing them to be brought to justice by any capable party.
The DED also assists in aiding customs officials in patrolling areas where smuggling is rife. In addition, the department takes care of all kinds of security issues regarding high-profile meetings and conferences between the empires, providing venue security, vessel escorts in space, and personal bodyguards. DED forces also often support local law enforcement in dealing with large-scale criminal activity or similar matters. For this the DED often uses their special forces unit, named Special Affairs for Regulations and Order, or SARO.
SARO is widely regarded as the most extensively trained, skilled, and hardened law enforcement agency in the cluster, and its exploits are a constantly recurring subject in popular entertainment across New Eden, though to vastly differing degrees of realism. SARO is used mostly in hostage situations, tactical assaults on heavily armed pirate havens, and similar high-risk engagements with a low margin for error.
Secure Commerce Commission
The Secure Commerce Commission, or SCC for short, wasf ounded with the realization of the need for a centralized, impartial agency to govern and manage interstellar trade and mediate on trade-related disputes between the empires.
As soon as individual regions began to set up trade routes and a regional market network of trade hubs emerged where traders were able to view everything for sale anywhere in the region and put their own items up for sale, there arose the need for a centralized agency responsible for interstellar commerce and the regulation and monitoring of trade. As a division within CONCORD, the SCC is jointly run by the empires and thus ensures a safe and universally regulated trade environment for all merchants, regardless of their nationality or creed.
CONCORD oversight ensures that the SCC, although effectively under the control of the empires in its jurisdiction, acts under the strictest neutrality codes, the same as Interbus and other empire-run institutions. This is to ensure that all dealings are not only secure, but are in line with both local and CONCORD law, with no chance of governmental interference and no possibility for discrimination based on a merchant’s origins.
Also governed by the Yulai Convention, the SCC ensures fair trade for all merchants and independent capsuleers, along with monitoring and regulating corporate trading and exchange of currency across interstellar borders. The SCC also contains a subdivision known as the Commerce Assessment Department, or CAD, which specifically oversees interstellar trade agreements and monitors cross-regional trade.
Fleet Composition
While the actual capability of CONCORD’s fleet remains highly classified, the origins of the technology behind it are widely known under the assembly’s own freedom of information clause within the Yulai Convention. Consisting of only three basic hull types, the fleet benefits from a mixture of technology from all four empires that produces what most consider to be the ultimate in state-of-the-art combat vessels.
While exact technical specifics are unknown, it is widely known that the vessels utilize a sensor system like no other, possessing sensor subsystems from all four core empires that run both ladar and radar arrays, as well as gravimetric and magnometric pulse scanning. All CONCORD vessels also utilize a Carthum Conglomerate–sourced antimatter reactor unit design, as well as interleaved tungsten carbide armor plating from Khanid Innovations.
Shield systems are sourced from the laboratories of the Ishukone Corporation, along with onboard Quantum computing systems, with oscillator capacitor reservoirs provided by Roden Shipyards, and plasma propulsion systems from Boundless Creations.
With a universally recognizable profile, the external designs of CONCORD’s fleet have remained the same for almost a century, making them unmistakable whenever they are spotted patrolling the space lanes. However, beneath the surface, the vessels receive regular and extremely rigorous updates, with the DED’s operational policy denoting an inspection and refit requirement for every six months of service to ensure that all vessels remain at the cutting edge of technology.
Marshal-Class Battleship
The Marshal class is probably the most iconic of all battleships in the cluster and is instantly recognizable as a peacekeeping vessel wherever it may patrol. Based on the subframe and keel design of the Amarrian Apocalypse-class battleship, the Marshal is regarded as the most solid heavy-weapons platform in existence, with its basic hull design having been in service for ninety-five years as of YC 115.
Constantly in a state of update, the vessel’s highly advanced subsystems are able to support both turret and launcher capability simultaneously, in addition to providing the infrastructure for some of the most versatile defensive capabilities in existence. This ensures that the Marshal remains a fierce assault platform, always at the forefront of the battle, with the staying power to match its offensive ability.
Enforcer-Class Cruiser
Based on a hybrid of the subframes of the Moa-class and Vexor-class cruisers, the Enforcer utilizes many of the existing subsystems from the two cruisers it shares its origins with. An extremely iconic ship featured in most of CONCORD’s anticrime and recruitment media, the Enforcer is designed as a fast-attack cruiser for mobile patrol and customs service.
Billed as the most versatile cruiser class in the cluster, it features an extremely powerful antimatter reactor unit sourced from Carthum Conglomerate. This is rumored to encourage most combat-seasoned DED officers to outfit it with oversized propulsion modules in order to take advantage of its light, flexible, and fast subframe.
Pacifier-Class Frigate
Notorious in the outer regions, the Pacifier-class frigate has made its name as the premier fast-attack frigate in the cluster, laying waste even to the Angel Cartel’s legendary Dramiel class. Based on the relatively heavy Punisher-class chassis, the Pacifier benefits from a scaled-up and oversized Boundless Creations–designed plasma propulsion system based on that of the Rifter-class frigate and shares most of its targeting subsystems with the Wolf-class assault frigate.
With an oscillator capacitor reservoir that rivals those of most light, fast cruisers, the Pacifier is ideal for extended periods of fast pursuit and serves as the primary scouting and interdiction vessel for the Directive Enforcement Department. Among smugglers, the Pacifier has the reputation of being almost impossible to outrun in pursuit and has led most in this profession to resort to all kinds of tactics in an effort to avoid coming into contact with the vessel outright.
Notable Characters
Odo Korachi
Korachi is often seen on patrol in command of a Marshal-class battleship and leads the DED’s Genesis Fleet, which is primarily charged with peacekeeping and ensuring a state of relative calm among the independent capsuleer population. Born in YC 33, Korachi served with the Caldari Navy for a little over a decade before resigning his commission and requesting a transfer to the Directive Enforcement Department. Approaching four decades of service as of YC 115, two of those spent as brigadier general of the Genesis Fleet, he is well known for his sarcastic wit and no-nonsense, direct approach to ensuring that CONCORD law is upheld.
Irhes Angireh
Regarded by her colleagues as a woman who remains impossibly difficult to read, Angireh has served as the chief executive of the Inner Circle for eleven years as of YC 115. Of Amarrian descent, she emigrated to Yulai from the empire at the age of eighteen, in YC 55, as the daughter of the former Amarrian ambassador to the Inner Circle, Sokra Angireh. After over fifty years serving with the Inner Circle, she remains a stoic, logical, and almost cold presence at every Inner Circle meeting and a force to be reckoned with in the council’s debating chamber.
Arve Vesren
One of many capsuleers serving with the Directive Enforcement Department, Vesren answers only to Kjersidur Elladall, chief executive and commanding officer of the DED. A former Caldari servicewoman of some fifteen years, spent as a wing commander with the Lai Dai Protection Service, she has served the Directive Enforcement Department for a little over three decades as of YC 115, nine of those years as director of operations, with an impeccable service record.
Vesren is regarded as a driven, ambitious, and direct woman, unafraid to challenge the leadership decisions of those above her and swift to dispense justice to the full extent of the law. Most criminals see the direct attraction of her attention to their business as an immediate swan song, a notification of their imminent removal from the criminal underworld, the physical world, or both.
Eman Autrech
A man of Gallente blood born in the Caldari State, Autrech is the unsung hero who some believed prevented complete economic collapse in the wake of the One-Day War on June 10, YC 110, by preventing the four core empires from ceasing trade after the attacks on CONCORD headquarters and demanding that the Interstellar Stock Exchange remain open.
Educated at the Caldari State’s Science and Trade Institute, Autrech is regarded as one of the most intelligent business and trade moguls in the cluster, with his finger firmly on the pulse of interstellar markets. He has served as CEO of the SCC for twenty-six years as of YC 115, and his devotion to ensuring the fairness and equality of interstellar trade has earned him a great deal of respect among his colleagues.