If you like you can look at the (sketchy, incomplete) GM notes as well.

Subversives

The Violent and Virile: Horizon People's Liberation Front

While there is a lower class I am in it. While there is a criminal element I am of it. While there is a soul in prison I am not free.
- Eugene Victor Debs.

The most dangerous (and effective) subversive group in Horizon is the HPLF. The Horizon Popular Liberation Front's policies are somewhat vague, as can be expected from a coalition of anarchists, Richterists (for more on Richterism, see here) and other revolutionaries. However, there are some points that they all agree on:

• Horizon is a dictatorship. Mayoral elections consist of the elite choosing one of their own to look after the elite's interests and keep the people down. The more rabid cells portray Colonel Zero as a bloodthirsty military dictator who is desperately searching for any excuse to impose martial law; more reasonable cells consider him a symptom of a wider problem, just one more corrupt man in a corrupt system. There used to be some cells who think he's alright, just somewhat misguided. Nobody trusted those cells - words like "moles" and "spies" and "Mayor's little bitches" often popped up when they were discussed, and eventually they disappeared, having met revolutionary justice.

• The rulers of Horizon will not be convinced to back down through negotiation. It simply isn't in their interest, and you can hardly expect people to willingly agree to relinquish the power they possess. Violent revolution is the only viable solution.

• After the revolution, we will institute a government which brings true freedom and prosperity to all the people of Horizon, not a limited minority. As you might expect, the exact form this utopian future will take is the subject of a hell of a lot of debate within the HPLF. In recent years, however, a certain amount of agreement has been reached on this issue. It is clear that under the HPLF the Mayor's Office will be scrapped, the aristocratic families of the Goodly Chamber will be stripped of their titles and the Chamber abolished, and the monopoly of the Merchant's Arm will be shattered. Crucially, the HPLF do not wish to expel the Embassies of the Four Nations - they realise that this would just cause a war and an occupation, and they hope to avoid it. It is not clear, however, whether the anarchist or the Richterist wings of the HPLF will shape any government which arises after the revolution.

• Indiscriminate violence is not in the interests of the cause. Bombing civilian targets is unacceptable; only legitimate combatants should be targeted. Of course, the definition of "legitimate combatant" changes from cell to cell. Just about all HPLF members regard the Watchdogs and the Legions as legitimate targets. Government ministers, the nobility, and the Merchant's Arm are also high on most HPLF cells' hit lists. Low-level bureaucrats and those who do business with the government or a nebulously-defined elite sometimes creep their way in. Once, rabid cells would lump in civilians who are not actively supporting the cause of revolution, but these were eventually expelled from the HPLF.

• Imperialists would impose a situation even more repressive than the status quo. We will oppose them absolutely. (Some cells consider the flaws of the system to stem, ultimately, from entrenched Imperialist attitudes.)

• The revolution in Lasinia has been betrayed by the tyrannous impulses of the revolutionaries. We will not expel the Soviet Embassy, but we will not do business with Daniel Priestly. (This was a controversial point in the early days of Soviet Lasinia - the HPLF had supported the Lasinian revolution, after all, and many of the more Richterist cells were reluctant to believe that their Lasinian comrades were becoming tyrants - but the excesses of the Lasinian secret police soon convinced even the hardliners that Priestly is a nutjob and Soviet Lasinia is a dictatorship.)

A number of underground newspapers are operated by HPLF cells - the most famous and widely-distributed being The Liberator (or The Lirbarote, as critics of its lax spelling and grammar record call it); however, unlike the DCH they do not restrict their actions to peaceful protest and propagandising. Attacks on government offices and assassination attempts on government ministers are a major security issue (although they are not very frequent - think "IRA during the 1980s" as opposed to "Iraqi insurgency"). The Watchdogs regard arresting members of the HPLF as a high priority, although the emphasis is on arresting them and putting them on trial as opposed to summarily executing them.

The Peaceful and Powerless: The Democratic Congress of Horizon

In theory, the Congress holds monthly meetings, the purpose of which is to vote on motions relating to the policies of the government of Horizon. The intent is for the Congress to effectively act as an "alternative legislature" for Horizon, a people's counterpart to the Goodly Chamber, a viable alternative government which could take the reins of power just as soon as the Mayor is peacefully convinced to hand them over.

It doesn't quite work that way.

The Congress is a giant talking shop, and really doesn't serve much function except to give people an opportunity to publicly air their grievances with the government (until their alloted speaking time runs out, or until they are interrupted by a point of order, or until the meeting chairman's gavel falls because the speech has breached a subsection of the rules, or...). The policy of egalitarianism, and the unwillingness of the members to accept the notion that some DCH members could be given more responsibilities than others, means that the Congress is a disorganised rabble. Meetings are frequently cancelled because nobody got around to booking the venue. Motions are debated for weeks and then quietly fall off the agenda and die.

Depressingly often, those motions which do get passed don't help the Congress's credibility much. Either they are patently unworkable, because they were forced through via an awful lot of chicanery involving quoracy, voting procedures, and so forth, or they are awfully close to the current policies of the Mayoralty. Motions in the first category tend to be repealed swiftly, but not until the newspapers have had a field day (the Congress will never live down the "this house proposes the dismantling of the Steam and the return to a communal, agricultural way of life" debacle); motions in the second category tend to stay on the Statement of Policies for a long time, as Congress members struggle to think up a plan which is a) better than the current regime's policy and b) will get enough Congress votes to be passed.

On the other hand, a stirring speech delivered at the Congress often grabs the attention of the newspapers, and can help one establish a reputation as a man of the people. Recruiters for the HPLF (and even the Imperialists) have been known to operate in the DCH, but they tend to be wary: it's widely suspected that the Congress is stuffed with spies from Colonel Zero.

The Demented and Defunct: The Emperor's Front (AKA the Imperialists)

The dogma of the Emperor's Front was simplistic, and barking mad - mainly because they took the ridiculous rantings of the Emperor during his last days as objective fact. They regarded the Four Nations as rebellious provinces, they considered any citizen of Horizon who didn't join the Imperialists and fight for the Emperor as a traitor deserving only of death, they wanted to put the whole world under martial law and they wanted to bring back the Emperor (who, remember, is missing, presumed dead).

The members of the Emperor's Front could be divided into two categories. On one hand, you had an ever-dwindling number of high-ups from the old regime, desperate to restore the power and respect they felt was theirs by right and unwilling to accept the loss of the Emperor. On the other hand, you had people stupid enough to believe the old wartime Imperial propaganda, xenophobic enough to want Horizon to conquer the world again, or mad enough to support the tactics of the Emperor's Front.

Ah yes, their tactics: the other reason why they were universally hated. Since they regard every citizen of Horizon who was not a member of the Front to be a traitor to the Emperor, the Front had no qualms about placing bombs in crowded places full of civilians. In fact, they seemed to exclusively attack civilian targets; they declared that only through creating a climate of terror could they rouse the people into action. "The people of Horizon will fear our very name!" they declared. "They will cease their resistance and they will join our glorious struggle! Then and only then will we take the fight to the Mayor!"

The tactics actually had the opposite effect. The EF's attacks were not frequent (again, think IRA in the 80s, not Iraqi insurgency), but they did make people angry and strengthened the already-pervasive anti-Imperial sentiments of the general public. The attacks on the Colonies, and the apparently motiveless murder of Mia Delan, were regarded as especially vile atrocities. Despite these attacks, the Year of Chaos didn't provide many other successes for the Front - one of their most important cells was raided partway through the year, removing a number of important Imperialists from circulation - including Duke Crowland, apparently the Imperialist leader - and another important Imperialist, Sam Perez (codenamed "Marshall Caline") was arrested and executed at the end of the year. Following the end of Perez, the Front fragmented - they had lost too many leaders in too short a space of time, and without direction they collapsed. They are now regarded as defunct - very occasionally lone nutcases or small groups of malcontents will commit atrocities in the name of the Front, but they are obviously mere imitators. The Emperor's Front is dead, dead, dead.

The Future

The Democratic Congress of Horizon's main problem is that there is an excess of enthusiasm and a scarcity of competance. It is stuffed with the sort of people who regard writing "LOVE IS SUBVERSIVE" on alley walls to be a bold act of defiance. What they desperately need is for the more sober heads within them to pull themselves together and begin guiding the movement away from immature silliness, so the DCH can start to look like a viable alternative government.

The Horizon People's Liberation Front's problem isn't so much competance as policy. They might be able to revolt and take over, if they were able to get their hands on enough supplies, resources, and backers, and they've been getting closer to doing that as of late. However, if they don't have a pretty impressive alternative to the current system in the pipeline, the city will just slide into anarchy, and the armies of the Four Nations will just roll in, declare martial law, and either carve up the city between themselves or reinstate the Mayoral system. On the flipside, if the Liberation Front comes up with a set of policies designed to mollify the Four Nations, they'll have kind-of abandoned their original aim of fighting on behalf of the people of Horizon. It is a dilemma.

Rumours

Colonel Zero doesn't actually have any spies in the Democratic Congress - it's such a ridiculous farce that his spies don't bother wasting their time on it.

There was no "Emperor's Front". It was an operation by the Mayoral Legions to keep the people afraid and unwilling to fight Colonel Zero. Now they've got the Prime Emergency for that instead, the EF has been wrapped up.

The Steam Union and the Horizon People's Liberation Front are best buddies: the HPLF is a Richterist outfit intending to impose socialism on Horizon.

The Emperor's Front was led by the Emperor. The reason they died out is that the Emperor's life was intimately connected to the life of his Palace: when it exploded, he died.