Liberty (franchise)

Liberty is a science fiction media franchise and shared fictional universe created by Travis Vengroff. It premiered via a self-released comic book titled Liberty: Defiance in 2010, and has since extended to other media. Liberty comic books are written by Vengroff, while fiction podcasts are directed and produced by Vengroff and written by his wife K. A. Statz. The franchise alternatively uses the name The Liberty Podcast to separate itself from similarly titled unrelated works.

Each work in the franchise tells a stand-alone story set within the same universe. Liberty takes place on a failed Earth terraforming mining colony on a desert-like planet beyond Earth's Solar System, which has been cut off from the rest of humanity for centuries. Over time, resource scarcity led to schisms in the population within Atrius, the planet's vast sole city, and the only area in which Humans live; Atrius is now split between a police state ruled by a totalitarian regime, and the Fringe, a post-apocalyptic-like area populated by lawless gangs.^[1][2][3]

Vengroff originally conceptualized and developed the world of Liberty for seven years, first as an idea for a film. After concluding that a film was unrealistic for financial reasons and turning to comic books, Defiance in 2010 was unsuccessful and remained an obscure one-off work.^[4] In 2015, Fool and Scholar Productions was formed to venture into creating fiction podcasts, premiering with the release of the serialized podcast Liberty: Critical Research, which was a success, and led to the expansion of the franchise (as well as the development of several unrelated Fool and Scholar Productions works). Subsequent works included the comic book Liberty: Deception, the anthology podcast Liberty: Tales From the Tower, and the actual play podcast Liberty: Vigilance, which uses Liberty: A.F.T.E.R, a tabletop role-playing game part of the franchise. All Liberty works have completed their runs, with the exception of Tales from the Tower, which is still ongoing.