The Three World Empire was the first of the conglomerate nations, formed in the 2080s so the United Kingdom, Japan, India, and other states could pool people and industry for colonies off Earth. The name came from Earth, Mars, and Titan, the first three worlds with human settlements. By the 2180s the Empire held the oldest extrasolar colonies in the Outer Veil and the Core Systems, a region called the Anglo-Japanese Arm, while the United Americas watched its borders and Weyland-Yutani held a seat in its parliament.
History
Formation
Before the union, the United Kingdom and Japan opened the first colonies on other planets and moons through the British Weyland Corp and the Japanese Yutani Corporation. In the 2080s those two states joined India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, Fiji, and other countries, pooling industry for colonies beyond Earth. The United Americas followed in the next century, leaving the United Nations Interplanetary Corps in 2103 and signing the Washington Treaty in 2104. The Empire's mark was a triangle of red, white, and blue geometric bars.
Inner Core Secession
In 2147 Alexandria, a Hyperdyne Systems colony inside the Consortium, declared independence during an ICC review. The Three World Empire refused a civil war that would wreck the world, and the other Consortium colonies followed in 2148. The United Americas entered when Helene 215, site of a Colonial Marine headquarters, left as well. Allied Command blockaded the disputed routes for two years while Colonial Marines and Royal Marines Commandos fought the Consortium's combat synthetics. The 2151 New Deal recognized the Inner Core System Colonies, returned Helene 215 to the Empire, banned synthetics from combat, and dropped the Hyperdyne investigation.
Governor K. Watabe would not accept those terms. He asked the Union of Progressive Peoples for troops to push the Colonial Marines and the Royal Marines Commandos off Helene 215. The fight was against the Tokonigara and Shinowa colonies and their Union allies. The two marine forces drove those allies off the world and restored order.
Relationship With The United Americas
Relations between the Three World Empire and the United Americas stayed mostly peaceful into the 2180s. The United Americas was wary of Imperial expansion and watched the shared borders. Relations with the Union of Progressive Peoples were hostile. In the War for Korean Independence the Empire fought on Korea's side after the United Americas refused to take part.
In the 2150s the United Americas annexed the Khadaji system, including the water colony called the Wells on Lebanon II, which the Empire had settled in the 2120s. The annexation followed a raid on a secret Union supply base on that moon, and the United Americas also claimed rights over Helene 215. Marines crushed a revolt on the moon in 2154 and remained there. Spring water, iron, and uranium left the Wells at a premium while the colonists lived in poor conditions.
New Earth Plague
In 2157 the New Earth Colony, one of the Empire's longest-running settlements, was hit by an airborne flesh-eating bacteria. The New Earth Plague spread through the planetary settlements and moons of the HD85512 system. Within a single work shift the skin bloated and mottled purple, and by the next shift flesh had started to rot. The Interstellar Commerce Commission ordered a quarantine and told the United Americas and the Three World Empire to blockade the system.
BioNational and Weyland-Yutani scientists worked with the Colonial Marine chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear group, but the bacteria adapted and no cure was found. The Commission then ordered the system sterilized. About 40 million people were killed, and New Earth was abandoned. Detection buoys and three Colonial Marshal frigates patrolled the system so scavengers would not carry the plague out.
A manufactured crop blight, used by the United Americas during the Dog War, spread by accident and wrecked the terraformed ecology of several older Weyland colonies. In 2163 the Pang Ho Treaty applied the Commission's extrasolar quarantine rules to the United Americas, the Three World Empire, the Inner Core System Colonies, and the Union of Progressive Peoples. The treaty did not ban biological weapons. It made transporting them prohibitively expensive.
Australia Wars
In 2172 food riots in Australia grew into an attempt to leave the Three World Empire. Rebels took the government, and the Empire sent its forces to retake the country. The fighting spread to Australian-founded colonies and ran until 2182. It ended when the United Americas struck the capital, Canberra, with a nuclear weapon. The rebels surrendered, the previous government was restored, and the Empire remained one state.
Linna 349
Inspired by that revolt, the forest world Linna 349 moved toward independence under Shane Boulton. Harare and Neusheune had been settled in 2110 on that humid Outer Rim world in the Tartarus sector, with forests, lakes, a highway net, and nomad tribes beside the two official colonies. The export was timber from native thorny Karyta trees, plus lanthanum and lutetium. The wood also carried the Yellowbelly beetle, a pest that infested other colonies.
The Empire asked Allied Command for troops and offered tariff and export treaties. Rebels nicknamed Bug-Boys, after the Colonial Marines treated the early raids as a nuisance, then received heavier weapons from an unidentified supplier and crippled the USS Sulaco with a strike from orbit. The Marines returned with ships, tanks, and heavy gear, broke the revolt, and left an occupation after the Empire asked them to withdraw. About 30,000 civilians and 1,000 United Americas security personnel were on Linna 349 in the 2180s. The Sulaco was repaired after the strike, and by the 2180s Boulton's side and the Empire were both working to push that occupation off the planet.
New Albion
On 17 July 2186, Prime Minister Maurice Pepper put the British colony New Albion on a war footing and declared it separate from Britain and the Three World Empire. Pepper pointed to the Hasanova cover-up and to raids along the Frontier. The trade ship Victory found the Independent Core System Colonies oil world LV-187 empty, raised a flag, and claimed the site. The press name for the break was 3WExit. David Barnett's 2022 novel Alien: Colony War covers that secession, including New Albion Royal Marines who took more than 150 eggs from a hive under LV-187's fusion reactor.
New Albion was LV-593, a world about a tenth the size of Earth, in the habitable zone of a yellow sun. After the declaration the Empire cut diplomatic and defense ties with New Albion and with any colony that backed the break. Local troops wore the patch of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment. The warship HMS God's Hammer, formerly an Empire hull, went over to New Albion. Unconfirmed reports named sympathetic colonies in the Weyland Isles.
Governed Territories
The Three World Empire governed its member states on Earth and its colonies off Earth. The extrasolar colonies, including Corona Colony, were grouped as the Anglo-Japanese Arm, along with its holdings in the Sol system. Most of the off-world colonies lay in the Outer Veil and the Core Systems, with a thinner spread into the Outer Rim and the Frontier. Through the century before the 2180s the Empire terraformed much of the Outer Veil. The Union of Progressive Peoples later annexed many of those worlds and strip-mined them, which left a belt of barren planets. The United Americas held only the American Corridor there, a strip about one parsec wide that freight crews used to reach the Outer Rim.
Earth
On Earth the Empire was the United Kingdom, Japan, India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, Fiji, Australia, and other states. The United Americas held North America, Central America, and South America. The Union of Progressive Peoples was formed by China and Russia. The seats of all three governments were on Earth. Mars and Titan were Imperial capital worlds along with Earth, the three worlds the Empire was named for. Terraforming had made Mars home to more than 20 million people, and Titan's domed communities held about 7 million.
Neroid Sector
In the Neroid Sector, near Union space, Weyland-Yutani ran research stations left from the Weyland era and stored toxic waste and surplus chemical weapons on abandoned worlds. By 2140, after an unidentified contagion forced quarantines across the Frontier, the Empire sent Frontier traffic through Anchorpoint Station in the Outer Veil.
Fiorina 161, nicknamed Fury by the inmates, was in that sector. It had been mined for platinum for decades until the ore ran out. Weyland-Yutani then converted the works into a Class C work prison and a lead works for radioactive and toxic waste, and leased the site to the Three World Empire. At its height the prison held thousands of people, and it closed in the 2170s to a custodial staff and fewer than two dozen inmates. In 2179 an emergency escape vehicle from the USS Sulaco crash-landed there after the loss of Hadley's Hope on LV-426.
Sector 3847
Sector 3847 was one of the first parts of the Outer Veil found to hold mineable resources, and it grew into a settled district of large colonies on the Anglo-Japanese Arm. Gorham's Folly, catalogued as JPG-770.03, was a terraformed world in that sector, run by the Three World Empire and Weyland-Yutani. After the Union of Progressive Peoples annexed the first Gorham Mining Colony in the early 2100s, industrialist Charles Gorham founded this colony in its place.
Mine shafts at Gorham Colony went down 42 kilometers, the deepest dig in the Outer Veil, through rocky plateaus on a world with breathable air at about 35°C. About 700,000 people lived there, and miners arrived on 18-month contracts while service androids did much of the support work. Trade routes ran from the planet to the Core Systems and the Outer Rim.
Disputed Sectors
On the Outer Rim, part of Borodino Sector was openly disputed Frontier between the United Americas and the Union of Progressive Peoples, and a Union system could lie next to an American one. Colonial Marines fought the Tientsin Campaign and the Arcturan Conflicts there. Some worlds in the sector declared independence, and others were protected by the Inner Core System Colonies.
Tartarus Sector had large stretches that no one government had settled, and other parts were taken by both the Anglo-Japanese Arm and the American Arm. The Outer Rim Defense Fleet worked from Liberty Echo, and the Frontier ran through the sector. Linna 349, an Empire world there, remained under a United Americas occupation. The American colony Torin Prime had never recovered from its failed break with the United Americas.
Government
The Three World Empire was a parliamentary social democracy with a constitutional monarchy. The former royal families of Britain and Japan had intermarried, and the monarch was a figurehead with little real power. An elected prime minister led a parliament of representatives from each territory and former nation. On the Frontier, a provisional governor set the policies, taxes, and tariffs that the colonies actually lived under. The Empire's currency was the Three World Imperial yen, and those accounts were electronic credits rather than cash in hand. The Empire, the United Americas, and the Union of Progressive Peoples later banned combining human DNA with other living beings, while mechanical changes to a body stayed legal.
Provisional Governor Vihaan Reddy, of British-Indian descent, ran the Frontier colonies. Other senior officials left their families on Earth or in the Core Systems. Reddy brought hers to the Frontier and lived inside a government compound, separate from the colonists outside the walls. She aimed for those new colonies to reach the same footing as the Outer Veil settlements of the previous century, and she called for United Americas troops to leave Linna 349.
Armed Forces
The Three World Empire fielded an extensive navy and the Royal Marines Commandos. The Commandos were well trained and smaller than the United States Colonial Marine Corps. Frontier colonies the Commandos could not cover were protected under defense contracts that placed Colonial Marine units there. The Imperial Armed Space Forces were the service over the Commandos. Weyland-Yutani backed the same frontier with technology and mercenaries. The Empire also ran a merchant fleet. Minos Station, over the ice world LV-895, built parts for that fleet and for the military behind a Weyland-Yutani cover as a mineral works.
Weyland-Yutani
Weyland-Yutani was the only organization other than a state with a seat in the Three World Empire parliament. Rumors in the 2180s claimed that the company had replaced key members of parliament with android duplicates, and no such duplicate had been exposed. Another rumor had the company building a bioweapon the Empire could launch from orbit. As relations between the United Americas and Weyland-Yutani worsened, the Empire was between the two. The Empire preferred the existing balance to a war, and it expected parliament to restrict the company if Weyland-Yutani pushed further.
Behind The Scenes
Ron Cobb's crew-insignia sheet for Alien drew a triangular patch and captioned it as a symbol of the Three World Empire. A United Kingdom patch on the same sheet is dated from 2088 to 2102. The triangle note connects the mark to settlements on Mars and Titan, then marks the patch as a collector's item associated with the United Americas. In the later roleplaying game the Empire is its own power, and the name comes from Earth, Mars, and Titan.
Free League's Alien: The Roleplaying Game in 2019, and the 2025 Evolved Edition after it, are the main accounts of the parliament, Governor Vihaan Reddy, the Royal Marines Commandos, and the colonies on the Anglo-Japanese Arm. Andrew E.C. Gaska's Colonial Marines Operations Manual in 2021 places the Imperial Armed Space Forces over the Commandos and covers the Inner Core secession, which that book calls the Core Conflict, along with the New Earth Plague, the Australia Wars, and Governor K. Watabe's uprising on Helene 215.
Conclusion
The Three World Empire was the earliest of the interstellar unions, formed in the 2080s from Britain, Japan, and the states that joined them, and named for Earth, Mars, and Titan. In the 2180s it held the Anglo-Japanese Arm under a prime minister and a royal figurehead, with Weyland-Yutani in parliament. The New Earth Plague killed about 40 million people in the HD85512 system, and United Americas troops remained on Linna 349 after the Australia Wars. In 2186 the British colony New Albion left the Empire and claimed the oil world LV-187.
Appearances
- Alien: The Roleplaying Game (Free League, 2019) and the Evolved Edition (2025)
- Colonial Marines Operations Manual by Andrew E.C. Gaska (Free League, 2021)
- Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, "Scylla and Charybdis" by E. C. Myers (Titan Books, 2022)
- Alien: Inferno's Fall by Philippa Ballantine (Titan Books, 2022)
- Alien: Colony War by David Barnett (Titan Books, 2022)
- Aliens: Bishop by T. R. Napper (Titan Books, 2023)
- Alien: Enemy of My Enemy by Mary SanGiovanni (Titan Books, 2023)
- Alien: Seventh Circle by Philippa Ballantine (Titan Books, 2025)
- Alien: Cult by Gavin G. Smith (Titan Books, 2025)
- Alien: Perfect Organisms by Shaun Hamill (Titan Books, 2025)
Tag Categories: Colonial Marine Lore | Alien Lore
