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Overview
This is a fictional account of the Unity expedition featured in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
I am presenting material in pseudo-"photo" essay form.
Introduction
This is the story of an expedition into the unknown. It was an act of desperation, undertaken not in optimism or from a place of pride, but because our species, and the civilization it created, had run out of time. And so we fled the world we had seemingly destroyed for one that might yet destroy us.
Sid Meier, et al. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Firaxis Games. 1999.
I'm going to try to post about three updates a day.
Source Material
The primary source for this timeline is, quite naturally, the eponymous computer game and its 1999 sequel, Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire, for which Brian Reynolds and Tim Train were the lead designers, respectively. You will see additional traces and head nods to the late Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park; the late James Clavell, author of the The Asian Saga, the most famous installment of which was probably Shōgun; author David Brinn, who penned The Postman in 1985; the present-day TNT television series The Last Ship; Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and its sequel; the book Cold War Hot, ed. Peter G. Tsouras; Jon F. Zeigler's GURPS Alpha Centauri book; the 1998 Blizzard computer game StarCraft and its many derivative and companion works; the Fallout series of computer games; the short-lived NBC drama Kings; Christopher Nolen's 2010 movie, Inception; and many others.
The Tribe faction, along with the characters of "Pete" Landers and John Baptist Keller (here, Jean-Baptiste Keller) are the original creations of an individual with the screen name "Thorn" on another forum.
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Comment thread is here (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=22100.0). We welcome your feedback!
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Soviet physicist Prokhor Zakharov, celebrated designer of the Unity stardrive. The second-eldest of the nearly half-million passengers, Zakharov was 73 years old at mission launch and in declining physical health. United Nations medical staff estimated his odds of surviving cold sleep at only 62%.
Brusque and arrogant, Zakharov was widely disliked by his peers on the ship's command crew. During the Unity Crisis, Captain Jonathan Garland found that Zakharov was unwilling to place the interests of the survivors and their mission ahead of his personal ambitions. Hunted by the Spartans, frustrated by Kellerite interlopers, and working at cross-purposes to the general evacuation ordered by Francisco d'Almeida, Zakharov's engineers proved unable to save the ship.
The doomed attempt to save the ship's reactors poisoned hundreds of engineers. The burden of providing lifelong care for so many casualties, many of them permanently incapacitated and sterile, had dramatic implications for the community that would eventually become The University of Planet. Robotic servitors of Zakharov's own design outnumbered living colonists by an order of five-to-one as many as three decades after Planetfall.
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The Kokirri Armored Personnel Carrier was a favorite among Unity's pioneers because its thickly-armored cab was proof against the psychic attack of native Mindworms.
J.T. Marsh's Forward Contact Team departed Unity more than an Earth-standard month before the micrometeorite collision that proved its undoing. Among other load-hauling and terraforming equipment, they brought with them twenty-six of these "tactical heavy tractors," refurbished after thirty-six years of service in the Republic of Korea Army. They spent the pre-Crisis period performing supply runs between the main landing site and outlying sensor towers.
Once Marsh released his subordinates to enlist with factions of their choice, most of the Kokirris and their crews apparently remained under his authority. In this capacity, they continued to be used on convoy duty through hostile territory.
Crews often replaced the smoke cartridges in the countermeasures launchers with incendiaries to help suppress fungal blooms. Jury-rigged flamethrowers were a not-uncommon addition to the dorsal turret ring.
Note the red jerrycans stored on the external rack. The diesel-powered Kokirri was one of only a handful of conventionally-fueled vehicles in the Unity motor pool.
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Staging at a disused quarry in Atalissa, Iowa, Holnist paramilitaries receive final instructions before the Battle of Davenport. They will soon go on to rout two U.S. Army National Guard regiments, inflicting one of the worst defeats on federal forces in eight years of war.
This particular troop is noteworthy for its use of a uniform, lending it an air of unity and professionalism often lacking among survivalists. (The effect was probably achieved by looting a sporting goods store.) Considering the angle and distance of the shot, this image was probably created by the Holnists themselves for use as propaganda.
As a rule, Holnists were heavily armed. Most came to the movement after having already amassed enormous personal arsenals of weapons and ammunition. Machine guns and grenades of recent surplus vintage were not uncommon. The defection or capture of hundreds of local National Guard armories also gave Holnists access to large numbers of armored personnel carriers and advanced anti-armor capability.
Holnists fancied themselves competent soldiers, but this was rarely the case. Firearms fetishism and hoarding of non-perishable food and obscure medicines were distinct from practical fieldcraft. The average early-war Holnist was fifty years old, overweight, sickly, and resistant to the discipline necessary for successful campaigning. Holnists also tended to fall captive to friendly propaganda, making it difficult for their leaders to explain the extent of popular resistance. Holnism succeeded in spite of itself: most of the set-piece fighting was done by cadets and Boy Scouts, policemen, defectors from the regular armed forces or reserves and, later, corporate mercenaries under personal contract to disloyal governors and the ultra-wealthy. The populations of cities and towns could be counted upon to participate vigorously in their own defense, but most municipal civil defense forces had exclusively parochial concerns and were strong enough to refuse impressment of their men for general service.
Like the Confederacy from which it took so much inspiration, the twenty-first century North American secessionist movement struggled to turn all its members to a common purpose. Since a Holnist's motivation was usually the right to simply inflict himself on his neighbors, few had strong incentive to remain in the field if the picking was poor or the situation dire, especially when far from home. Unsurprisingly, Holnists struggled to create a proper a logistical basis for large-scale military action, especially because the seceding states had competing ideas of military priorities. Wounded fighters knew they would receive neither care from their own side nor quarter from the enemy.
The mounted Holnist was such an ubiquitous figure in the wartime Midwest that the U.S. Army issued General Order 116 in Occupied Areas, which directed that any person on horseback within 300 yards of a federal facility be considered hostile and engaged with deadly force.
Sources:
Still from The Postman (1997).
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Two Dreamers of Chiron Overseers prepare to administer nerve staples during a period of unrest at White Rabbit's Refuge.
Involuntary labor was a crucial feature of the faction economy: Talents might spend up to sixteen hours a day in a state of shared, lucid dreaming. The recorded brain activity of persons engaged in this practice could be mined and the component synaptic activity reconstructed to provide a high-fidelity facsimile of each sleeper's experiences. In this manner, the Dreamers were able to harness the analytical potential of the so-called Naïve Mind to achieve breakthroughs in their understanding of both human psychology and Centauri bio-dynamics.
To run their bases, the Dreamers used a combination of re-socialized convicts "rescued" from the Unity and enslaved prisoners captured during raids on neighboring settlements. In theory, the standard of medical care available to faction members should have exceeded that of most other colonies. Cobb's personal retinue included numerous practicing physicians and the faction was well-provisioned with medical devices and pharmaceuticals of every type. Cynically, these were hoarded for trade, sale, or recreational abuse by faction elites.
The standard of living for low-ranking laborers was execrable. Despite his impressive reputation as a Singapore "fixer," Roshann Cobb evinced little interest in base administration. Most decisions of any importance were taken by a "middle caste" of unsupervised technicians and mercenaries who lacked either the moral or titular authority to attempt meaningful problem-solving but were equipped with the latest in "compliance technology."
In the Hive, it was said, one died because, after much consideration, the Chairman thought that the colony would be better off without them, while in the Refuge, one died simply because no thought had been given at all.
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Unity crew members practice fire response under the supervision of a Morgan Emergency Services contract instructor.
This picture was taken by an Associated Press reporter inside the Emergency Action Simulator aboard Honua Station above Mars.
With limited exceptions for department heads and senior officers, all colonists were single, able-bodied persons of sound mind and body between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-six. They received four years of intensive training, more than half of which was in extra-terrestrial and zero- or low-gravity environments. A standard program incorporated multiple high-intensity evolutions of wilderness survival, heavy rescue, structural and wild land firefighting, emergency medicine, agronomy, civics, electrical and mechanical engineering, and firearms training. Every crew member had both a standard and emergency billet.
Fewer than one in twenty-three of those recruited by the United Nations completed the classroom phase of instruction, and tens of thousands of those went on to suffer catastrophic (often fatal) accidents during practical drills.
Mission planners had expected that even the most basic shipboard emergency would include halon flooding, radiation, and loss of atmosphere, but they had not thought to practice response operations under fire. Even the U.N. Security and Marine Security Forces contingents had contemplated mutiny as a "land-side" problem.
During the Unity Crisis, responders were confronted by unprecedented conditions. Responders were shot dead by unknown assailants while still en route to their muster stations. The Holnists in particular were determined that the ship be destroyed with heavy loss of life and were not above executing those who saved them from fire or asphyxiation.
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More than 450,000 colonists and crew were entombed in Unity's seventeen-mile-long hull for the silent crossing to Chiron. The selection process was a monument to bureaucratic rationalism. Each individual was first nominated by a national commission, then processed by a panel operating under the auspices of the U.N. Security Council. Virtually no trade or calling was excluded. Our species's future was to be secured not only by astronauts and botanists, physicists and physicians, but judges and civil servants, poets and preachers, lawyers and musicians. Most had advanced degrees prior to selection. Specialized education came from Morgan Adaptive Learning Associates in cooperation with the University of Tokyo and the Indian Institute of Technology.
Senior command staff were appointed directly by the U.N. Security Council. Ship's crew were usually seconded from the uniformed services of various donor nations and corporations. As expected, space agency alumni predominated, but some countries also used the project as a way to sideline politically unreliable military personnel. The quality of the more than 80,000 charter colonists varied even more widely: while Oscar van de Graaf's people were almost all leaders in their fields, Struan's Pacific Trading Company provided their man, Cobb, with less salubrious characters. The so-called Factors were even permitted to board their own private military service providers for future settlement defense.
United Nations selection protocols relaxed measurably over time. The U.N. made numerous high-level political appointments in exchange for funding and access to required infrastructure such as space elevators, orbital factories, and space construction vehicles. Inclusion of re-socialized prisoners, a Warsaw Pact innovation, represented the most controversial change, and prompted the United Nations to furnish Captain Garland and his officers with a complement of marines to ensure their safety. Robotic servitors were introduced in the 2050s after spectrographic analysis of Chiron indicated that planetary conditions would be considerably more hostile than initially projected.
Because of the very large number of personnel moved through the program, the first “sleepers” were placed in suspended animation in October 2061, and the last immediately before departure in February 2110. After March 2065, cryogenic stasis was achieved only according to the Wespe-Quinn-Vagner Process, selected for its comparatively high rate of patient survival. The U.N. settled on Wespe-Quinn-Vagner after a thorough investigation of more than two dozen alternatives. On this, the mission's ranking medical personnel achieved a rare full consensus. Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal's official memorandum of recommendation to the United Nations Medical College, now housed in the archives of his alma mater, The Aga Khan University, is counter-signed by Unity's Director of Neurosurgery, Dr. Aleigha Cohen; its director of Genetic Medicine, Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi; and Psych-Chaplain Miriam Godwinson, who attended to the ethical implications associated with artificially extending human life. Himself a recognized expert in geriatric therapies, Chief Engineer Prokhor Zakharov took the unusual step of appending an amicus note.
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Miriam Godwinson became a mainstay of conservative media during the Second American Civil War, and afterward replaced a line-up of network commentators tainted by their enthusiasm or tolerance for Holnism.
Godwinson proved an eloquent spokesperson for both Christian ecumenicism and interfaith dialogue. A large body of postwar scholarship suggested that she may have caused, and not merely benefited from, conservative abandonment of Protestant Dominionism after 2015. Both Jewish and Muslim leaders also hailed the Harvard-educated scholar of divinity for her deep familiarity with, and consistent respect for, their own foundational texts.
Godwinson received an appointment to the Unity Mission in 2017 but in fact spent much of that year as the United States Government's Special Envoy to Insurrectionists, negotiating the disarmament of militia units throughout the Upper Mississippi River Basin.
The precise story of Godwinson's survival remains in doubt. According to ship's records, the person occupying her cryopod died only nine minutes after departure from the Lunar Cradle, more than a century before before Unity entered the Alpha Centauri star system. Nevertheless, multiple people personally acquainted with Godwinson prior to the expedition have attested to reuniting with her after Planetfall, and Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi, the mission's foremost genetic expert, famously confirmed the identity of the Conclave faction leader before the Planetary Council based on genetic testing.
Godwinson had a controversial Planetfall. Followers hail her as a hero who worked to evacuate the sick and the dying as well as the able-bodied. Detractors complain that she failed to compel scared crew members to do their duty and undertake crucial repairs, work that would surely have meant fatal doses of radiation for some. The embarkation deck on which the faction staged for departure was half open-air surgery, half feeding trough. The terms of service were so liberal that frightened crew members had merely to abandon their posts elsewhere in the ship and present for receipt of water, rations, and bedroll.
The Conclave arrived on Chiron with a host of more than one thousand eight hundred. After the University, they were also in the worst condition. Loyalty and need were their bond, not talent. The need for food and shelter was soon urgent. Whether Godwinson personally commissioned the violent pillaging of other camps is beside the point. She certainly knew what to do with the resources her people brought back inside the wire.
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Prokhor Zakharov performed his three-year military service obligation in the Soviet Navy's Red Banner Pacific Fleet as head of the Reactor Laboratory Division aboard 85,000-ton fleet carrier Ulyanovsk.
Launched in 1996 at the height of the Soviet Union's economic and military resurgence, Ulyanovsk operated the air group of MiG-29 aircraft that famously sank the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong following the Chinese invasion of Arunachal Pradesh in 2019. (A second Chinese carrier, Liaoning, was sent to the bottom by the Indian carrier Vishal during the same engagement.)
Noted for his ability to keep the ship's quartet of KN-3 300MW pressurized water reactors operational with a very limited logistical tail, Zakharov ultimately made Captain, 2nd rank, equivalent to a NATO Lieutenant Commander.
Subordinates despised the hard-driving genius: his achievements were made possible only by deep reductions in safety margins. More than 40 personnel under his command suffered acute radiation poisoning in 2017 and 2018.
Zakharov's reward for a job well done was appointment as Deputy Administrator of Experimental Design Bureau-1 (OBK-1), largest and most-prestigious of the multiple design bureaus in the Soviet Space Program, beginning 2019. There, the physicist presided over the successful design and testing of the second-generation Tifon spaceplane, which was based on designs stolen from the United States. Meanwhile, OKB-1 experienced the largest relative increase in cosmonaut deaths since the earliest days of manned spaceflight.
In 2040, Zakharov was approached by the Soviet Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine to develop and execute new program of geriatric medicine. His team achieved major advances in anti-aging and preservational medicine, enabling the “Long Politburo” of 2031-2065, and laying theoretical groundwork for use of cryogenic stasis aboard U.N.S. Unity.
Zakharov was reassigned as head of the Soviet delegation to the U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission in 2052 and recommended unconditionally by the U.N. Security Council for the position of Unity Chief Science Officer. On that occasion, he also received the awarded title Hero of the Soviet Union.
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A Hive gunner sights his PKM as The People's Teeming burns in the background.
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang made a habit of sending his militia against virtually any outsider who dared across the Uranium Flats, but the poorly-equipped and worse-led Hivemen rarely came away with an unspoiled victory. Historians have assessed that the Hive's emphasis on hierarchy and procedure were to blame for the very low frequency of tactical innovation by their units. Matters were not helped by the faction's isolation and relative backwardness: for more than a century, the Hive fought with the same weapons once stacked in the Unity's rather unimpressive armory.
Military service was a fundamental duty of all members of the Hive. Reticence to endure the attendant hardships of a militia posting was disqualifying for Hive Initiates. Yang expressed rare and genuine anger when one of his direct subordinates showed a lack of personal or civic courage. The Hermit King was fond of reminding his Talents that, for all their inferiority in other respects, no Drone had ever refused to take up arms in defense of the colony. Neither high marks on one's examinations nor prowess in philosophical debate could excuse such an offense. Those who didn't rise to meet Yang's expectations in this regard were expelled at once from his presence and permanently reassigned to a subordinate caste. They usually became technicians and data librarians--lesser cogs in the great machine.
Yang's mania for autarky meant that this defender was probably low on ammunition even before the shooting began. Nevertheless, Oscar van de Graaf's incoming Regulators ended up with few prisoners.
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Gaian agronimists inspect a tree farm at Muir's Ridge in preparation for Decennial celebrations.
Both colonists wear Hostile Environment Suits due to high ambient Nitrogen levels. The standing colonist rests a soil spectrometer on his right thigh. Note original mission markings on the left shoulder pauldrons as well as the absence of firearms, hallmarks of the Optimist's School, of which this rendering is the best-known example.
Early Gaian agricultural techniques of necessity involved the transplantation of Terran seeds and saplings in local soils. These specimens are white pines, a deciduous Terran tree valued for its lumber. Gaians used them frequently as wind brakes and soil anchors. The receding treeline behind the two figures and the stark color contrast in the soils seen foreground and middle-distance suggests that these plantings were performed with the goal of preventing wind erosion.
Today, the Gaians are known for their near-exclusive use of hybrid and native crops, but the transition away from Terran seed stock was slow and did not gain momentum until after the emergence of the Shaper Movement in MY12.
The trans-atmospheric incursion in the background is almost certainly a Supply Pod making Planetfall. Unity dumped tens of thousands of autonomous, self-landing payloads in degrading orbit after its fatal collision. Such scenes were so ubiquitous in the experience of the earliest mission survivors that they became a commonplace in both popular and official compositions like this one.
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Malakai Ro. Master Mariner assigned to Unity Mission Aquatic Operations Division (AOD).
Born 2054 in Sovereignty of Kä, Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone. Father, a ship-breaker, died of complications from prolonged exposure to asbestos. Selected for service with Kä naval militia by national lottery, 2070. Completed military education at Royal Australian Naval College, HMAS Creswell. Later commanded Pursuit Squadron Agate. Held over after privatization led to establishment of Kä Border Force. Voted permanent bonus by Comprehensive Transport Board of Directors.
During the Unity Crisis, Ro was one of approximately four hundred military personnel awakened on the initiative of Executive Officer Francisco d’Almeida. Ro was ordered to proceed to the nearest armory, take up weapons, and lead a scratch force to secure a gallery of Landing Pods. The decision was highly controversial. Although within d’Almeida’s authority, it cut against the spirit of directions from Garland, who had previously ordered his XO to prioritize the recovery of crew with expertise in reactor engineering and radiological emergency management. In any event, Ro kept Santiago’s forces out of her coverage area and stood by for fresh orders. They never came. Hope of Unity’s recovery dwindled and then was lost. By chance, Chief Engineer Prokhor Zakharov evacuated to Ro’s post. It never occurred to her to question a duly-appointed superior’s order to slave the controls of her Landing Pod to his own.
Among the University's cache of Unity vehicles was a rare frigate, U.N.S. Skagway, one of two such vessels shipped. Immediately, Ro undertook a lengthy and uneventful coastal survey to recover Landing and Colony Pods. When she returned, she found herself and her crew "underfoot." Commissioned personnel fit awkwardly into the faction's faculty structure, occupying an implicitly inferior rung in a social order that valued academic achievement in the "hard" sciences especially and which, to a certain extent, rewarded non-conformity and tolerated explicit political pacifism in ways at odds with military tradition.
Zakharov alternated between insisting that Skagway was of no importance to him and complaining that the ship consumed inordinate amounts of his time. Because of his own veterancy, Zakharov had held equivalent rank to Ro, but in a far larger navy, which he rarely failed to mention when the two spoke. Ro often disagreed with Zakharov’s assessments of the ship's operational requirements. Her crew brawled frequently with the student body, which often criticized Skagway as a relic of “uncivilized times.” An especially bad harvest in M.Y. 2 led Zakharov to bid them take their leave--complete with Skagway, which he had tired of supporting. Ro went in search of AOD Director, French Contra-amirale Raoul André St. Germaine, but found the Nautilus Pirates instead. At the Battle of the Long Neck, Skagway took on many times her own number of armed small craft. Acquitting herself well, the crippled frigate finally took refuge under the walls of Warm Welcome, governed by former Unity Chief Medical Officer, Pravin Lal. Thereafter, Ro has worked with both the Peacekeepers and the Tomorrow Institute to pump out and rebuild the battered Skagway. Though treated at first as an equal, Ro soon acknowledged Pravin Lal as a superior officer and, along with all her crew, pledged refreshed allegiance to the U.N. Charter.
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New State aquanauts cross the bed of the River Slowwind in search of salvage following a fresh outbreak of hostilities between the Human Tribe and Spartan Federation.
Having absorbed a majority of the Unity Mission's aquatic operations personnel and their equipment, including state-of-the-art submersible hull forms, the New State was uniquely positioned to exploit Chiron's depths.
The faction's political architect and first leader, French admiral Raoul André St. Germaine, was a noted advocate of deep ocean exploration and settlement. The admiral's fear of continuing spoiler attacks by surviving saboteurs and belief that vendettas among the senior command staff would only worsen led him to found the first entirely underwater settlement on Planet at Rock Island Refuge.
St. Germaine was selected to the Unity Mission at a time when he, and it, were out of favor in Paris, but the United Nations had lacked the means to refuse. He was aloof, antisocial, and, according to his Psych-Profile and service jacket, impolitic bordering on insubordinate. Serious doubts about his political reliability came home to roost during the crisis of Planetfall. Lacking faith in both Garland and Zakharov, St. Germaine disobeyed orders to awaken more engineers and instead assembled hand-picked members of his own Aquatic Operations Section. This decision, which helped seal Unity's fate, left him with the makings of a viable colony and his people were among the first to make Planetfall after the Forward Landing Team. The faction organized itself in two so-called colones: an explicitly paramilitary structure for commissioned personnel and a hierarchy of job-related "estates" for civilians in which privileges and obligations varied according to their role in the effective functioning of the colony.
This image is instructive. Because of the risk posed by carnivorous marine life, safety protocol dictated that divers operate in groups of no fewer than four. Two of the individuals here are carrying pressure rifles, identifiable by their bright yellow color. The pressure suits themselves are incomplete, jury-rigged, and of obviously ancient vintage--most likely donations from the Warsaw Pact.
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Though he later styled himself African royalty, Nwabudike Morgan was born into poverty in Damaraland, South West Africa, in 1998. His father, a diamond miner, was killed in an industrial accident when Morgan was three, and his mother relocated the family to Walvis Bai.
Morgan's first appearance in official records is at age sixteen. South African Bureau of State Security files identify him as a low-ranking member of a diamond smuggling ring. No additional details of Morgan's youth and early adulthood can be confirmed until his appearance in a declassified 2018 Central Intelligence Agency report. The anonymous author assesses with "high confidence" that Morgan was a weapons-broker working in support of Biafran rebels and discusses Morgan's ownership of a fleet of fishing trawlers operating out of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where he was said to be dealing at huge markup.
Following Biafra's successful bid for independence, Morgan recruited dozens of Ibo veterans to staff a private military company, SafeHaven. With French connivance, Morgan then obtained a contract to protect dozens of Chadian oil wells from attack by local rebel and Sudanese government forces in 2021. This engagement provided the wherewithal for the aspiring mogul to purchase struggling American lobbying firm Wainwright-Balmoral, "Scourge of the Senate," after which SafeHaven cultivated an enormous portfolio of business with the American Reclamation Corporation.
Morgan withdrew from public life in 2056, the same year that a SafeHaven offshoot, Morgan Industries, was awarded a prime contract from the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. He was last observed departing Earth on the Kuiper Shuttle four months prior to mission launch.
United Nations intelligence analysts posit that Morgan's well-documented obsession with private wealth and personal branding--he is an unapologetic megalomaniac--reflects a psychological insecurity carried over from his youth, when he was a victim of both racism, both official and unofficial. His money provided first a bargaining chip with which to mitigate state control over his body, and later an escape from both poverty and subjugation.
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I'll be away a few days until the weekend.
In the meantime, I welcome questions and comments!
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A king in captivity.
Vesper Abaddon, better known to most by his sobriquet "The Bloody King of Carmel," was brought aboard the U.N.S Unity as cargo.
Abaddon was born in 1987 in what was then Australia. His upbringing was unremarkable but for his family's relocation to Gath, a newly-established nation in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone. Built up from the sea bed, Gath eventually reached a size comparable to the state of Florida. The Abaddons operated a successful sheep station in the Gathi interior.
In 2032, Gath was invaded by the neighboring country of Shiloh. A two-year war resulted in the loss of Gath's only major city, Port Prosperity, along with its agricultural watershed which Shiloh promptly dammed up. Eight hundred thousand Gathis died in the resulting famine; another million emigrated. Abaddon became Prime Minister in 2036 with the backing of the country's politically powerful Range Association. International observers thought they perceived a familiar and depressing pattern when he mortgaged state-owned diamond and copper mines to Israeli companies and received a few battalions' worth of surplus military vehicles in return.
When war resumed, it caught international observers flat-footed. Gathi paratroopers crossed the border not into Shiloh, but rather neighboring Dan, a micro-state without a military of its own. Within days, Dan's sprawling oil fields were producing once again. Looking west, the Gathi Federal Guard then continued their advance, this time into Selah, a traditional ally.
Abaddon’s first press conferences were elaborate. He read aloud scathing indictments of Selah’s monk-kings and proclaimed its people free of serfdom. Gathi occupiers tore down statues of Selah priests to the cheers of rapturous peasant crowds. A quarter of the proceeds of Dan's oil wealth was returned assiduously to public works and social programming by Gathi administrators.
Abaddon waited another four years to declare hostilities with Shiloh. This new war was not like the previous two: Shiloh fought hard, mobilizing not only her own tough military but considerable partisan movements in both Dan and Selah. His treasury dwindling, Abaddon resorted to terror tactics.
Dan’s population numbered just 1.2 million. The small Gathi garrison exterminated whole villages to discourage resistance. In Selah, Gathi officers fired temples and used chemical munitions on rebel strongholds. Abaddon made common cause with Selah religious dissenters whose militias became his army’s auxiliaries, paid in plunder. Two large offensives in Shiloh were prosecuted with the help of Sarin gas. Shiloh’s National Salvation Government surrendered only because Gathi tanks shelled the country’s capital, Gilboa, for thirty-two hours straight.
Abaddon’s subsequent declaration that he was uniting four countries made sense. His decision to abruptly retire and devolve all governing power to a supranational federation, did not. The Noble Prize Commission was glad to fete Abaddon for his miraculous conversion and the U.N. willingly opened the spigot on aid dollars once he committed his army to a sweeping Truth and Reconciliation process. Abaddon wore the quadruple-crown of Carmel for two days, long enough to call a constitutional convention with equal representation from all four subject nations. To most Gathi, and large pluralities in Dan and Selah, Abaddon was a hero, but after so ferocious blood-letting, citizens of the newly-forged Carmelite nation were relieved to see him step aside.
Abaddon retired to a villa in the Gathi capital, Belloc. Under heavy pressure from the Gathi military, Carmel’s first parliament gave him its pardon. Persona non grata everywhere else, Abaddon remained under house arrest through 2071. Early that year, he flew to Basel, Switzerland for longevity treatments following a bout with colon cancer. At the direct request of then-U.N. General Secretary Apsara Mongkut, the French Duxieme Bureau kidnapped Abaddon and placed him in cold sleep pending a trial. One month later, Mongkut was killed in a car crash.
Upheaval in the U.N. ranks prompted the Unity-skeptic French government to include Abaddon among an allotment of politically disfavored persons that it insisted be taken into the crew complement as effective exiles from Earth. According to his personal journal, Unity’s captain, Jonathan Garland, believed he was doing the world a service by removing Abaddon to the Alpha Centauri System. Garland appears to have developed a personal fascination with Abaddon, whom he studied in depth. Just before mission launch, as intelligence reports about hyper-survivalist sabotage attempts became more dismal, Garland developed a plan to include Abaddon in a top-secret strategy cell with which he hoped to out-think threats to the mission.
Commissioner Pravin Lal's Peacekeeping Forces discovered Abaddon among fifty survivors of a crash-landed Colony Pod and brought him into their colony none the wiser. Lal was surprised when Abaddon confessed his origins, but, amidst his own civil crisis, declined to bring charges against the one-time despot, suggesting a precedent in which crimes committed on Earth would be considered outside the jurisdiction of Chiron's justice systems. Abaddon participates as a guest in meetings of the Peacekeeping Forces Command Counsel.
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The General Atomics Corporation's Autonomous Work Unit 5, better known as "Mr. Handy," was a fixture in American households from its introduction in 2020.
The militarized version, "Mr. Gutsy," found similar favor with American servicemen, who appreciated its simple, rugged design.
On Chiron, descendants of the "Gutsy" served ably in reconnaissance roles, while worker models proved themselves experts in the care of bases that would have them.
Robotics were controversial. The Hunters of Chiron eschewed them for philosophical reasons: Warden J.T. Marsh reasoned that dependence on fully-automated machine labor had retarded the physical and moral health of terrestrial societies. The Human Ascendancy, New State, and Human Conclave were similarly skeptical of artificial intelligence, leading to official disinterest if not outright prohibitions. The Human Labyrinth taught that robots were a possible vector for infiltration, although, in truth, Chairman Sheng-ji Yang only needed a plausible excuse for his faction's repeated failure to develop or seize such fabulous technology.
More enthusiastic users of robotics included the University, the Dreamers, and the Morganites, all to take work away from human hands.
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The Chevrolet-Monarch Consolidated-300 was a popular variant of the company's Powered Combat Suit, a personal military exo-frame designed to enhance its wearer's speed, strength, survivability, and lethality on the battlefield. Standing nearly eight feet tall, the so-called "Firebat" sported a pair of wrist-mounted napalm projectors. The suit offered its operator full NBC and thermal protection.
Two squadrons of CMC-300 suits, numbering twenty-six including spares, were present in the Unity's Armory at launch. Twenty-four of the suits were taken by the Forward Landing Team.
On several occasions during the early years of settlement, CMC-300's participated in combat alongside conventional Main Force Patrol units, usually against native megafauna but sometimes Holnists or Tribal Minutemen. The suits were praised for their combat effectiveness.
As the Mindworm threat came increasingly into focus, CMC-300's were detailed to burn large tracts of Xenofungus along the main tracks used by pioneer road crews. The practice was so successful, Marsh sold these services to multiple other factions. In this way, squadrons of Hunters became the first line of defense for settlements founded by the University, the Ascendancy, and the Tomorrow Initiative.
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Image by Boskov01.
Tamineh Pahlavi was Mission Area Director of Unity's Genetic Laboratory. A descendant of the last monarch of Iran, Pahlavi was orphaned by Red Flu at age 7. She earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Stanford University and was nomated for the Nobel Prize in 2029 for breakthroughs in viral retranscription with applications for suppression of autoimmune disorders. She was denied the prize following the discovery that she had written extensively on the desirability of mandatory generic screenings and sterilization of persons with genetic markers for degenerative diseases and antisocial tendencies who would not undergo remediational gene therapies.
In 2032, Pahlavi was appointed Vice President of the Special Projects Division of the American Reclamation Corporation (ARC). In this capacity, Pahlavi repeatedly directed the company's private military contractors to forcibly immunize persons presenting at federal refugee camps. She was later appointed to the Unity Mission by the ARC directorship at the recommendation of ARC CEO Oscar van de Graaf. Pahlavi was charged with designing and initiating long-term evaluation of Chiron's effects on the human genome.
During the Unity Crisis, Pahlavi retrieved and escaped with the full contents of the mission's genetic library.
Although a subordinate of the mission's Chief Science Officer, Prokhor Zakharov, Pahlavi was not among the individuals awakened by him; rather, she seems to have been an incidental survivor of tampering by Kellerite saboteurs, who brought nearly her whole bay out of cold sleep in the search for their companions.
Pahlavi broke with Zakharov around the same as Malachi Ro amidst what appears to be a sharpening of the University's core principles. Pahlavi's "crime" was to critique exploratory research begun in the area of mind-machine interface. Her punishment was to be stripped of tenure by a disciplinary committee. Pahlavi responded by resigning her position and joining the general exodus into the Monsoon Jungles. With followers, she founded The Pinnacle, where, with other departmental staff, she declared a start to attempts at producing neo-Sapien, a being uniquely suited to life on Chiron.
The U.N. Intelligence Cell found that feelings of helplessness over her parents' deaths were displaced to pursuit of medical immortality. Strong aversion to those with apparent infirmities. Once compared life without genetic medicine to human slavery.
An ARC personnel file credited Pahlavi with various "officer-like qualities," including: clarity of purpose, strong work ethic, and lack of tolerance for the suffering of others.
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...It was Stockard Channing that was breaking page width on p.1. Fixed now...
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Thanks much, Buster's Uncle! :)
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Sheng-ji Yang followed an unlikely path to Chiron. Born in 1992 to a family disfavored by the Communist regime due to a grandfather's service in the Nationalist Army during the Second World War, Yang completed his education late in life and endured long exile in the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, spending more than 45 years under state surveillance.
Listed as MIA during the Uighur Revolt of 2038, Yang reappeared during the Golden Revolution as a senior officer in the Emperor's Lifeguard. He was later recommended for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri as a Political Officer with special supervisory authority over the ship's Chinese contingent.
The Human Labyrinth propounds a philosophy emphasizing the Three Pillars: 法 (Fa), or Law, meaning that the law is known and obeyed because it is systematically enforced; 術 (Shu), or Method, whereby the ruler holds himself apart from society and applies "special tactics and secrets" to obscure his motivations, reducing the opportunity for confidants or supplicants to influence him inappropriately; and 勢 (Shi), or Legitimacy, which focuses on drawing distinctions between the excellence of the ruler and the flaws of the man who rules.
Yang and his followers landed in the inhospitable Dune Sea, apparently by design. His engineers used heavy mining equipment to excavate subterranean bases. The new leader quickly established a rigid structure of examinations to sort followers into classes. Those who supposedly demonstrated the least aptitude for implementing Yang's vision were immediately subjected to nerve stapling and neural re-socialization before being reassigned to perform menial labor or base defense. Persons flagged as potential Talents were prepared for leadership roles and received direct instruction from Yang himself. Candidates who then failed to meet Yang's exacting physical, mental, and "moral" standards received "redirection" into mid-level technical and administrative posts.
Since the so-called "Human Hive" rarely relinquishes its members willingly, the only reliable information on Yang's grand experiment in social organization comes from a handful of traders and prisoners. The consistent description is of a life dedicated wholly to the leader's whim, usually squalid, never with enough to eat, and always in fear of official reprisal for failure to meet quotas or demonstrate sufficient "thought discipline." The austerity and density of Hive living, combined with the desperate need to please an all-powerful individual, promote grinding competition that saps the innovation, enthusiasm, and mental health of every one of Yang's unfortunate subjects.
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A rare image of Canadian Forces soldier Marcel Salan in his youth.
Salan was the senior military officer aboard Unity. At 71 years old, he was one of the eldest among the crew, a combat veteran of the War for Quebec Independence.
United Nations Marines under his command provided a crucial second line of defense against mutineers during the Unity Crisis when U.N. Security Forces personnel were found to have been riddled with Spartan defectors.
Salan lost more than three-quarters of his Marines defending the general evacuation but survived to make Planetfall, whereupon he immediately attempted to restore communications with Earth. This ambition prompted Salan to craft and execute a daring raid into the Dune Sea to retrieve the Unity Data Core, which the Peacekeeping Forces had caused to be ejected during the ship's final hours. During that fight, the Marines had their first exposure to Yang's Hivemen. The outgunned eusocialists attempted to interfere, resulting in their slaughter by the armored Marines.
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An access port stands open amidst the ruins of Fort Garland, the receiving ground erected by J.T. Marsh's Forward Contact Team for an expedition that had already dissolved. The site was quickly occupied on an emergency basis by survivors under the direction of Marcel Salan. Narration in Ken Burns's Plant: A History memorably described the Fort as "an open-air hospital, catering to the already-dead, the actively dying, and those soon to follow."
Less a "fort" than a clearing, Garland possessed few natural defenses. Constant attacks by the Spartans compelled Salan to make a fighting withdrawal within weeks of arrival.
Spartan scouts tasked to take possession of the compound reported it being heavily booby-trapped. The defensive fencing, for example, was still electrified, and the entire area had been seeded with anti-personnel mines. Santiago recorded a loss of 34 personnel in her war diary--a high price given that the "enemy" was nowhere in evidence.
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United Nations Peacekeeping Forces, circa 2019.
Selection or appointment to the Unity Mission was understood by many at the time as a matter of life and death. Mob violence was a commonplace when communities felt passed over. U.N. Such a fate, wrote U.N. Commissioner Pravin Lal, was tantamount to permanent cultural death. Individuals who might not rouse themselves to elect better leaders or protest immediate wrongs were more than willing to kill for the opportunity to be represented, and ostensibly remembered, by somebody destined to walk on alien soils.
The United Nations maintained thousands of security police to protect the space elevators at British Singapore, Batavia, Stanleyville, and Rio de Janiero by which the Unity was stocked. During the fifteen years between 2012 and 2027 alone, an average of nineteen protestors and one U.N. officer died each day.
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Shoichiro Nagao and Ikurō Kamatari.
Nagao was Director of Terraforming Operations for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. Few were surprised by the Japanese Government's decision to nominate the man universally credited with the successful decontamination of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and its associated exclusion zone. Nagao's method of nitrogen soil fixation resolved inadequacies with the original frozen soil barrier laid down to prevent groundwater contamination.
Nagao and Kamartari were among the most-important of the forward-deployed pioneers to part ways with Jeremy Tanner Marsh upon the latter's founding of the Hunters of Chiron. The decision was amicable, and Marsh honored a prior commitment to allow rejectionists a share of the heavy equipment under his ambit.
Nagao proposed to "map" Earth onto Chiron's biome through a project of aggressive terraforming and eschewed the idea that humans should attempt to situate themselves within the existing ecosystem, such as by planting hybrid crops or respecting the fungus as a living organism with inherent conservational value.
Following Nagao's vision, his followers established a settlement of their own at Eden's Promise. Kamatari served as Base Operations Director and presided over a massive program of clear-cutting.
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Night-vision vidcap of a Spartan Unity Rover patrolling a track in the foothills below Xerxion.
Lacking meaningful armor or heavy weaponry, the Rover's selling points were excellent acceleration, easy serviceability, and an extremely high top speed.
There were many marks of Unity Rover. The ship's stores included an abundance of light patrol cars like this one, meant to be assembled in less than an hour from prefabricated kits. This particular model lacks a fuel tank, indicating that it was a parasite dependent upon either a fixed charging station or a carrier vehicle such as a mining crawler.
All factions armed Unity Rovers for reconnaissance, salvage, and screening work. Rover pilots were some of Chiron's earliest celebrities. Through their daring, factions at their most-vulnerable secured urgently-needed supplies from the No-Man's Land between colony borders.
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I've enjoyed reading the first page of these. Thanks! I think you've done a good job at dropping in details to suggest a much more complete world.
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I've enjoyed reading the first page of these. Thanks! I think you've done a good job at dropping in details to suggest a much more complete world.
Many thanks, sir! I aspire to delight.
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Avtoritet Ryang
Service Record
Born 2027, Tashkent, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, to ethnic Korean parents resident in U.S.S.R. since Joseon Dynasty and deported to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin. Entered Russian mafia circles during childhood. Became Vor v Zakone bjust prior to conscription into Soviet Airborne Forces in 2046. Adherents may accept no charity and must perform no honest work so long as they live. Branded an outcast by criminal compatriots for violating pledge never to collaborate with government. Served three tours in Afghanistan before mustering out. Frequently seconded to intelligence operations of GRU.
Ascended to leadership position in Tashkent organized crime circa 2052 following assassination of top rivals. Cooperated with KGB to place underworld tails on suspected Western intelligence operatives. U.N. Intelligence Cell estimates with very high confidence that subject exploited commercial and underworld contacts in Turkey, Persia, and Golden China to broker more than $700 billion in credit to Soviet government during Financial Crisis of 2054, accounting for more than half of all funds secured. Negotiated similar agreement with United Nations Alpha Centauri Mission Project Control in 2055 to make one-time donation of more than $1.2 trillion on behalf of the Constituent Peoples of the Soviet Socialist Republics.
Subject's criminal enterprises commonly linked to protest action and sabotage of Morgan Industries holdings in Soviet Union throughout 2050s. Major distributor of arms to Soviet-aligned forces in Saharan, Canadian, and Indochinese Conflict Zones.
Arrested in Leningrad, 2062. Remanded to Gulag system. Current whereabouts unknown.
U.N. Intelligence Cell assesses that most convicts assigned by Soviet Union to Project Unity owe final allegiance to subject's organization.
Psych Profile: Non-conformist
Often judged an idealist for willingness not just to serve, but perpetuate, the Soviet system of government despite total repudiation of Soviet labor philosophy and his own personal involvement in protracted conflicts with municipal Militsiya and Ministry of Internal Affairs. Linked to the deaths of more than 300 Soviet police and military personnel.
Repudiation of "legitimate" living and assumption of significant risks by adopting criminal lifestyle potentially reflects out-sized confidence in own judgment and efficacy, tending toward hubris.
Outstanding soldier with demonstrated capacity to carry out "political work," euphemism for action against declared enemies of the Soviet state.
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Name: Deirdre Skye
Rank: Lieutenant Commander
Position: Director of Xenobiology
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Date of Birth: 05-28-2035
Height: 170.1 cm
Weight: 52.2 kg
Service Record
Born Belfast, Northern Ireland, to minor Scots-Irish nobility. Father soon at center of infidelity scandal. Mother active in humanitarian causes during Second Troubles. In subject's adolescence, wing of family home, Wainwright Downs, was converted to Unionist women's hospital.
Educated Cornell University, earning Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, Master of Science in Environmental Biology, and Ph.D. in Plant Genetics. Performed post-graduate work at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Long Island, New York. Awarded 2071 Noble Prize for discovery of L7 hybrid corn variant, prized for its pest-resistant traits. Dismissed from CSHL faculty following arrest for trespassing and criminal mischief at International Genetics Corporation (InGEN) Orient Point research station. In subsequent public statement, accused InGEN of "reckless and dangerous experiments involving plant matter whose behavioral characteristics are completely unknown to the scientific community, placing the Long Island Sound and Gardiner's Bay at great jeopardy from biological invasion." After plea bargain, became prominent leader in Environmental Defense Movement during its direct action phase, 2064-2067.
Reputation partially rehabilitated when Isla Nublar Incident led to widespread acknowledgement of InGEN's unethical business practices. Accepted supervisory position with United Nations Disaster Relief Fund in aftermath of Six Minute War. Deployed to Peshawar, Pakistan. Focused on adapting food crops to high-radiation environments. Contributed to selection of v097 apple and Mark IV wheat strains for use in contaminated soils, widespread adoption of which helped to relieve famine conditions. Decision to employ local women as administrative and research assistants provoked violent reactions from tribal leaders, necessitating frequent intervention of Pakistani Frontier Corps and frequent accusations that subject instigated conflict with local leaders. Resigned post in 2057 following deadly fire-bombing of an affiliated seed bank.
Authored Eden Thesis, 2059, postulating that patriarchal societies tend toward subjugation and corruption, whereas matriarchal societies tend toward cooperation and growth.
Identified top candidate for Mission Botanist by U.N. Security Council. Selected 2060 over protest of Chief Science Officer, Prokhor Zakharov. Tasked with securing mission's food supply.
Psych Profile: Conservationist
Untreated post-traumatic stress from childhood trauma. Probable Survivor's Guilt as a result of events in Pakistan. Untrusting.
Confrontational attitude has hampered career progression and predisposes subject to believe in the legitimacy of violence as a response to social malady.
Having often demonstrated that humans can adapt to life in hostile environments, subject occasionally betrays a conviction that there is a moral imperative to do so, notwithstanding avoidable reductions in quality of life.
Note: This write-up was adapted from the original Alpha Centauri faction profiles written by Firaxis. Includes homages to Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park.
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Periodic manias for artificial islands gripped coastal nations on every inhabited continent at intervals throughout the first hundred years of the second millennium. Sold variously as the solution to shoreline erosion, post-war decontamination, and the basic problem of overcrowding, the formation, maintenance, and control of these territories passed from legitimate to illegitimate governments, thence to the corporations.
Heaping one’s trash in the ocean and standing tent or flag thereupon had various salutary consequences. Conservationists looked to the rejuvenation of species deprived of their natural habitats closer inshore. Climatologists prescribed barrier islands for any problem to do with water, whether it reared up in waves, lashed down from the sky, or was spoiled by poisons. New Orleans, Miami, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Shanghai, and Bangkok—all were girded very early in the twenty-first century by star fortress complexes of concrete-crusted sand. Generals sent dredges to extend the engagement envelopes of missiles and their spotting systems. Corporations built their own “heaps and rigs” for any number of purposes, ranging from support of aquaculture and deep-sea mining to traditional tax shelters.
The story of the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone, better known as the "Big EZ," begins with the Six Minute War.
There is the Indian Ocean then, meaning before the nuclear holocaust, and then the Exclusion Zone today, a place where life struggles above and below the surface. Global cooling killed off fish, plankton, and coral. The U.N. and others backed an atrociously expensive scheme introducing thousands of different strains of artificial microorganisms to rebuild the maritime food chain. Instead, they wrecked fresh biological and climatological havoc. English-speakers gained a new word, Crichtonic, an adjective describing what happened when well-intentioned solutions met a reality that simulations could not fully apprehend.
Technicians and soldiers occupied the very first outposts seasonally. Permanent residents came out of desperation when post-war radiological fallout and a lack of better options tempted them to seek the immediate safety of “clean” spaces, notwithstanding the certainty of future natural disaster. Policing these movements was beside the point: death by rubber bullet was quicker and less awful than death by cellular degeneration. Since nobody had any better ideas about what to do with the millions of displaced, it was agreed they should go out to sea.
Given time, the inhabitants of the “Big EZ” developed a language and culture uniquely their own. Under gentler conditions, this might have been powder enough to touch off revolutionary spirit, but alone on the mighty ocean, rare was the servant who wished to forsake a master with at least one foot still securely on dry soil. Prophets of the new age promised interdependence only one generation off, yet following the old scripts, riches pulled up from the seabed or scooped from the waters rarely stayed on the sand heaps and platforms that the refugees were forced to call their homes.
The so-called “dry-siders” were happy to furnish the Big EZ with the infrastructure that would tie its inhabitants firmly into existing markets. Water filtration and desalination systems. Drilling rigs, cranes, and pipe. Turbines and photovoltaic cells for power generation. Communications. “Ancillary” services, to include brokerage, sanitation, medical service, and, of course, physical security. Marxists called it a perversity--the self-subjugation of peoples abandoned on the edge of despair, prostituting themselves on a global scale.
Not everyone agreed with this dark assessment. Some took it for progress. The flow of value was no longer mono-directional; supplies funneled in, and raw materials streamed out. And that was not to say the windfall of this economic revolution was strongly felt in the putative metropoles. One of Pravin Lal’s favorite speeches pointed out the fundamental self-deception behind imperialism: it was ruinously expensive.
The colonial project is purely an emotional project. At the root of our desire to have sway over the choices of others, there is an inescapable anxiety: that somebody should have taken a path other than the one we thought was suitable for ourselves. – Valediction, 146th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York City, New York
As profit-seeking ventures, islands were only valuable insofar as their beneficiaries could be persuaded to pay for them. This meant either the governments interested in their continued existence, such as in the case of so-called “hurricane chains,” or the occupants themselves. As early as 2060, international convention and common practice had aligned to the point that the building up of such islands was always accompanied by parallel investment in local economic activity. Fisheries-based aquaculture and power generation via the tidal harness were trusted standbys, but carbon extraction, space exploration, and deep-sea mining already threatened to displace them. A good living could also be had either as an independent operator or cog in the enormous logistical operations required to supply the island-bound population and its industries.
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Service Record
Born 2027, Tashkent, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, to ethnic Korean parents resident in U.S.S.R. since Joseon Dynasty and deported to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin. Entered Russian mafia circles during childhood. Became Vor v Zakone bjust prior to conscription into Soviet Airborne Forces in 2046. Adherents may accept no charity and must perform no honest work so long as they live. Branded an outcast by criminal compatriots for violating pledge never to collaborate with government. Served three tours in Afghanistan before mustering out. Frequently seconded to intelligence operations of GRU.
Ascended to leadership position in Tashkent organized crime circa 2052 following assassination of top rivals. Cooperated with KGB to place underworld tails on suspected Western intelligence operatives. U.N. Intelligence Cell estimates with very high confidence that subject exploited commercial and underworld contacts in Turkey, Persia, and Golden China to broker more than $700 billion in credit to Soviet government during Financial Crisis of 2054, accounting for more than half of all funds secured. Negotiated similar agreement with United Nations Alpha Centauri Mission Project Control in 2055 to make one-time donation of more than $1.2 trillion on behalf of the Constituent Peoples of the Soviet Socialist Republics.
Subject's criminal enterprises commonly linked to protest action and sabotage of Morgan Industries holdings in Soviet Union throughout 2050s. Major distributor of arms to Soviet-aligned forces in Saharan, Canadian, and Indochinese Conflict Zones.
Arrested in Leningrad, 2062. Remanded to Gulag system. Current whereabouts unknown.
U.N. Intelligence Cell assesses that most convicts assigned by Soviet Union to Project Unity owe final allegiance to subject's organization.
Psych Profile: Non-conformist
Often judged an idealist for willingness not just to serve, but perpetuate, the Soviet system of government despite total repudiation of Soviet labor philosophy and his own personal involvement in protracted conflicts with municipal Militsiya and Ministry of Internal Affairs. Linked to the deaths of more than 300 Soviet police and military personnel.
Repudiation of "legitimate" living and assumption of significant risks by adopting criminal lifestyle potentially reflects out-sized confidence in own judgment and efficacy, tending toward hubris.
Outstanding soldier with demonstrated capacity to carry out "political work," euphemism for action against declared enemies of the Soviet state.
Does he have a name?
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Yes, Avitoret Ryang. I added it.
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Oscar van de Graaf
Biographical Record:
Born 2006, Cincinnati, OH, United States, heir to multiple fortunes in rail logistics, petrochemicals, and manufacturing. Parents were members of the Chiricahua Apache Tribe and majority owners of the infamous “Peralta Mine,” rediscovered in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona in 1972. Descended from Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. Read history at Trinity College, U of Cambridge before obtaining juris doctor from Yale Law School.
Interests include extreme sports (power gliding, motocross). Five-time America's Cup winner.
Most sources estimate that subject’s net worth plunged by between eighty and ninety percent during the first half of the Second American Civil War, and it is broadly accepted that Holnists inflicted most of this loss. Founded the American Reclamation Corporation (ARC) as a holding company to consolidate his numerous assets as they were verging on receivership after market crashes and losses inflicted by the Holnists had led to bankruptcy. Leveraging sympathies in the U.S. Congress, arranged for ARC to be issued a Letter of Marque and Reprisal. Provided front-line combatants, convoy escort, and rear-area logistical support to government homeland security missions, effectively operating as an auxiliary of the U.S. and Canadian governments.
Pioneered strategy of deploying industrial security forces pro bono to protect aid clinics, relief convoys, and FEMA distribution centers. Consensus among historians is that subject leveraged corporate assets and government affiliation to wage private war against Holnists. On the three-year anniversary of its founding, the ARC employed one in six working Americans. From Denver in the West to Cincinnati in the East, old American cities had been laid waste. From their ashes emerged corporate cantonments and United Nations refugee camps. FEMA was forgotten. And so civic contribution became synonymous with corporate, rather than national, service. Detractors, including hundreds of plaintiffs, asserted that van de Graaf leveraged his power to pursue what was actually a “private war” against the Holnists, becoming so obsessed with recovering his lost property that he indiscriminately seized that of others as well.
Effectively orchestrated independent liberation of Utah from hyper-survivalist militias in 2054, cooperating with Nauvoo Legion and the Army of the United States, with virtually no assistance from the Regular Army. Victorious defendant in Waterson v. Van de Graaf, in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the ARC's authorization to operate military assets against domestic targets under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Ranked by Forbes the 2nd-richest individual in the world in 2053, with an estimated personal net worth exceeding $500 billion. Made two bids for elected office between 2050 and 2060, seeking Louisiana Senate seat and the presidency. Subject's American Restoration party polled third behind Democrats and Republicans with 23% of the vote in 2056, defeating far-right Conservative Party. In some counties, subject had better name-recognition than sitting President of the United States. Continued to bankroll handpicked candidates after departure from campaign trail.
CAUTION: Numerous credible allegations that ARC regional administrators endorsed debt peonage and other forms of human slavery practiced by allied militias and neutral settlements during periods of corporate stewardship over pacified territories not yet readmitted to the Union. Various media outlets also investigated ARC "company towns," uncovering substantial evidence of systematic abuses of workers' rights. ARC ultimately reached settlement with the Justice Department worth $408.5 billion.
Following Reconstruction, led ARC in successful entry to civilian aerospace industry, with focus on zero-gravity resource extraction. Obtained exclusive contracts from the U.S. Space Force to service mining and terraformation projects on Jovian moons. First civilian to visit Asteroid Belt. Subsidiaries of the ARC included Replicodon Tactical Genomes. [1] Controversially lobbied Congress for buy-out of ARC stock on favorable terms to thwart attempted buy-out by Morgan Industries in 2064, leading to ARC's being chartered as an independent federal corporation. Served as first chairman.
Prominent champion of the Unity Project. Among the first to urge U.N. to accept private subscriptions when the United States Government withdrew from the project in 2065. Retired from government service, 2069. Tapping his private fortune, subject secured one of fifteen billets at a cost of $232 billion in mission contributions and personally recruited 1,892 “stakeholders” to staff an expedition-within-an-expedition, competing with the U.N. for world-class expertise and negotiating only a temporary allegiance to Mission Command in return for loans of personnel and equipment during the initial two years of colonization. Calling themselves “the New Two Thousand,” they drew rhetorical parallels to the religious pilgrims and fortune hunters of ages past.
Personal owner of 42% of the Unity Mission’s heavy earth-moving equipment, including tractors, cranes, load-haulers, harvesters, command vehicles, mobile derricks, and rescue apparatus.
Before endorsing his inclusion, U.N. Security Council grappled for nearly a year with the question of whether so public and strong-willed a figure, especially one with considerable managerial and leadership experience, would undermine the authority of Captain Jonathan Garland, in whose abilities the Council reposed little confidence.
Committed to allow expedition leadership free command of his settlers and equipment for up to two years after Planetfall.
Psych Profile: Empresario
Impulsive, personalistic leadership style. Unusual appetite for physical danger. Susceptible to vainglory, megalomania.
Pedantic, but record of business dealings indicates purely instrumental attitude toward the law.
Disinclination toward delegation of responsibilities parallels keen appetite for detail.
Believes that experience is the best teacher and encourages subordinates to take risks.
Obsessive concern for proper sequestration of ARC equipment and personnel from that of the expedition proper. Possibility that determination to develop ARC colony as business venture will cause tension with settler population.
[1] I've always loved this name. The company appears in the FryxGames product Terraforming Mars.
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Aleigha Cohen attends the Struan's Christmas Ball, 2068.
Service Record
Born in the Baghdadi Jewish community of Rangoon to a family of pharmacists and colonial administrators. British and Iraqi descent.
M.D./Ph. D. in neurology from University of Melbourne. Disciplined twice by University Ethics Committee for advocating that patients be encouraged to choose experimental courses of treatment even when conventional medicine appeared successful. Held over on strength of past work.
Conducted post-graduate research on mind-machine interface for American Reclamation Corporation (ARC). Participated in psych screenings of Vault System [1] candidates, including several members of Congress and high-ranking national security figures. Led team responsible for development of neural monitoring equipment to be used during occupants' cryogenic storage. Concluded that mass cold sleep was a viable potential solution to nuclear winter, with neural degeneration holding at "acceptable levels."
Convened Singapore Symposium on social deviance, 2066. Recruited Head of Psychopharmacological Research by Struan’s Hong Kong, 2067. Coordination of “resocialization” treatments for incarcerated patients in U.S.S.R. and Golden China led to black listing by Western academia. Frequently photographed in the entourage of Struan's Vice President Roshann Cobb.
Accepted Chief of Neurosurgery, Unity Mission, on urging of Russian and Chinese delegations. Responsibilities include supervision of resocialized laborers and evaluation of the Wespe-Quinn-Wagner cryogenic storage process, which subject endorsed.
Psych Profile: Transgressor
Reflexive problem solver. Especially attracted to high-controversy projects.
Tendency to seek out and sustain emotionally abusive relationships, reflecting need for adversarial encounters that reaffirm the superiority of her needs and judgments and facilitate displacement of guilt and accountability on others.
Passive-aggressive tendencies. Suspected Cleckleyan psychopathy, presenting on all three spectrums: boldness, disinhibition, and meanness.
Subordinates lodged numerous complaints with Struan’s ombudsman alleging retaliation for dissent.
[1] This is a Fallout reference.
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Unity Armory, T minus 300 hours to Mission Launch.
Thinking that the greatest dangers to their future colony would be mass protest and megafauna first spotted by the Pathfinder Probe, mission planners stocked the ship's armory accordingly. Unity was long on less-lethal compliance tools and short on military-grade weaponry, especially small arms.
Only three percent of Unity passengers were expected to go armed, even under conditions of maximum duress. The ship's crew complement included 8,758 United Nations Security Forces personnel of all ranks--a healthy ratio of approximately 1,946 commissioned officers per 100,000 personnel, but about half would not be issued a weapon day-to-day. At Captain Jonathan Garland's insistence, 2,000 United Nations Marines were added later to the crew on the cusp of mission launch--an explicit counter-balance to the approximately 7,000 private paramilitaries embarked by various charter companies.
The most abundant equipment included shock batons, flex cuffs, incapacitating sprays, stun grenades, projectile launchers (break-action and rotary), body armor, and riot shields. Experiments with foam and sonic weapons proved unsatisfactory and fewer than a dozen were taken aboard.
To mitigate the danger of containment breaches that might be caused by traditional firearms, the U.N. commissioned a purpose-designed flechette pistol with very short range and low penetrative power. The weapon inflicted gruesome injuries in close-quarters during a short period of Earth-side use, earning it the popular sobriquet "Shredder." The resulting outcry was overcome only by the shocked reaction of U.N. Mission Command to the terrorist destruction of the Quito Space Elevator in 2069, after which Mission Chief of Security Rachael Winzenried placed thousands of them in arms lockers ship-wide.
About 2,000 battle rifles of assorted type were also laid up, with a much lesser number of squad automatic weapons. Most of these were decades-old surplus from the Hypersurvivalist Wars, with an especially large bumper crop of French colonial and Warsaw Pact contributions. Flare guns, signaling rockets, and recoilless rifles rounded out the stockpile. The latter were to be the colony's primary defenses against potentially aggressive animal life. Torpedoes and harpoon guns for the ship's Aquatic Operations Division were perhaps the most unusual addition. The Forward Landing Team had about three-dozen man-portable anti-tank weapons (refurbished LAW tubes), spotting and very high-caliber and express rifles, and landmines. Charter company guns and ammunition were also stowed in the main armory and it was agreed that these would be obediently brought to bear under the direction of Winzenried or Marine General Marcel Salan, if ever required, prior to the two-year mark when the Charterists would go their own way.
Safety-sensitive civilian equipment, including all blasting materials and sonic hammers, was housed in an annex to the main armory under relaxed security measures.
Marines were billeted and racked separately from the main crew, and their arms along with them. Marine weapons lockers were superior in every respect and included a few dozen Chevrolet-Monarch Powered Combat Suits with hypersonic rifles. The Combat Suits were all but impervious to anything short of a 12.7mm round.
The tens of thousands of armed stowaways and huge quantity of forgotten or smuggled cargo containers placed aboard during the decades of ship's construction meant that Unity's practical weapons load-out was much greater than the paper account. Every one of the tens of thousands of Spartan, allied Holnist, and Kellerite infiltrators was set into their hibernation canister with at least an automatic rifle and spare ammunition.
The Armory was always intended to be supplemented by custom fabrication. The Data Core contained a wealth of design information to supply the colonists with an abundant and polyglot arsenal if they so chose.
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The high heat and low oxygen levels on Planet are conducive to natural carbonization. Spectrographic analysis correctly predicted that Chiron's crust had trapped large reserves of fossil fuels. The problem was one of access: the nitrate-based plant economy choked most surfaces with many feet of organic detritus that colonies needed to clear before they could access the soil.
Chiron's southern pole appealed to the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces for many reasons. The oceans on Chiron are warmer, sweeter, and much more active than those on Earth. In colder climates, the turmoil is less. In exchange for lower biodiversity in a cooler and drier environment, the Peacekeepers also faced a thinner mantle of nitrate spoilage and greatly reduced xenofungal activity. Mineral counts were also very good, while the snowpack, limited though it was, provided an easy source of water.
Ice Station Taurok supplied water to Warm Welcome and U.N. Relief Station from M.Y. 0 to M.Y. 57, when it was at last destroyed by an electrical storm and left to molder.
Base layout was simple: the central pump station was flanked by irrigated greenhouse domes. The base was mostly automated. An air defense emplacement, visible to the left, was built in M.Y. 15 to deter hostile landings. Because of its relative isolation and small, seasonal population, Taurok was considered at high risk of capture or destruction by Lal's chief adversaries at that time, the Nautilus Pirates and Dreamers of Chiron.
Picture is a base from the game Aven Colony.
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Pravin Lal at United Nations HQ, New York City, date unknown
Service Record:
Born in Dacca, East Pakistan. Father a West Pakistan Army major, frequently deployed on peacekeeping operations. Mother a nurse with Médecins Sans Frontières. Studied philosophy and medicine at Aga Khan University, specializing in thoracic surgery. Volunteered at Red Crescent camp in Azad Kashmir for three years after graduation, tending primarily to victims of the Six Minute War. Later traveled extensively in North-West Frontier Province. Elected to National Assembly, serving a single term before losing heavily after criticizing Inter-Services Intelligence for its relationship with the Pakistani Taliban.
Obtained placement as a junior researcher with the World Health Organization in Basel, Switzerland exploring protein encoding for DNA repair. Signed letter of protest against Nobel Prize nomination of Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi on grounds of ethical deficiency. Leadership of protest movement elevated subject’s profile in U.N. circles. Rapidly ascended agency bureaucracy to become Chief of Staff to Thai General Secretary Apsara Mongkut. Controversial for his involvement in decision-making around U.N. peacekeeping actions in Nigeria’s Mid-Western Region (declaimed as making the U.N. “effectively an adjunct of the Federal Army” during the Second Nigerian Civil War) and again in Quebec, where U.N. forces were blamed for failure to prevent the Black Watch Killings. [1] Conspiracy theory linking U.N. inaction to the eventual success of the Front de libération du Québec prompted subject’s reassignment as Assistant Director of the WHO only weeks before Mongkut's assassination. Directly appointed Chief of Surgery, Unity Mission, by U.N. General Secretariat.
Psych Profile: Humanitarian
Preference for intellectualizing policy problems can lead to apparent contradictions in application of professed ideals. Notwithstanding subject’s leadership culpability for two decisive U.N. interventions that inspired accusations of rank partisanship, interlocutors report that subject was “maddeningly prone to seeing false equivalency” between parties to any dispute. One Canadian chargée d'affaires complained: “He always gave the FLQ an opportunity to explain why they’d committed their latest heinous crime.”
Very high esteem for democratic ideals and personal experience of life in a former British colony may explain subject’s especially negative reactions to the perceived hypocrisy of the Western powers, contrasted with tendency toward silence in regard to regimes with unbroken records of illiberal and anti-democratic behavior.
CAUTION: Subject scored abnormally low (.32) on Atherholt Trauma Function Test, indicating unsuitability for crisis leadership. Contrast with extremely positive remarks from Morgan Emergency Services instructors following simulated compartment breaches.
[1] The Black Watch Killings are a feature of a story about Quebec independence in Cold War Hot, edited by Peter G. Tsouras.
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Soviet-manufactured Landing Pod on Sunny Mesa, observed by hunter-seeker drone shortly after Planetfall. In this image, it is possible to see the landing chutes still unrecovered. Some crew wear extravehicular mobility units because they have not yet adapted to Chiron's nitrogen-rich atmosphere and ambient gravity.
Descent from Unity was violent and deadly. Rare was the pod that touched down with the same number of survivors that had gone aboard.
A Landing Pod, also called a Unity Pod, was a short-range, single-use shuttle with which to make the controlled descent from an orbiting mothership to Chiron below. Hermetically sealed and abundantly heat-shielded, the largest could ferry up to one thousand passengers in dubious comfort and complete safety. Those pods not manually launched by departing colonists were dumped by Unity’s fail-safes before it passed out of Chiron’s gravity well.
The awkward control arrangements required two pilots, one to adjust the pod's attitude and another to relay visual observations as they cleared Unity en masse.
The Pods were designed to be incorporated wholesale into the first settlement. Each was nearly ten stories tall and most of a city block wide. Standard contents included an elevated command center with 360-degree view, a mobile surgery, seed bank, medical test center, agricultural grow-racks, galleys, dormitories, machine shops, theaters, broad-band communications, a Small Modular Reactor to provide power, recycling tanks, brig, abundant office space, and water filtration plant.
Pods were lavishly equipped with on-board tools, including cranes and winches, with which to raise supporting infrastructure. The cargo bay, once cleared of supplies, became expansion space for workshop operations and a motor pool for the numerous "parasite" vehicles packed inside: a fleet of tractors, tugs, high-loaders, cranes, and other small utility runners, including a self-powered pumper cart for firefighting, half-squadron of Unity crawlers (tracked low-loaders) and a complement of earth-moving machinery such as dumpers, graders, and power shovels.
The original manufacturers of the Landing Pods carried by Unity include: Grumman Aerospace, Morgan Avionics, Union Aerospace Corporation, Imre-Meinertzhagen, NP Lavochkin, Dassault Avionics, Hindustan Aeronautics Unlimited (HAL), Xi'an Aero-Engine Corporation, and Guizhou Aircraft Industry Corporation.
Picture credit to MacRebisz on DeviantArt. Picture title is "Ambition 1 Lander."
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Image of U.N.S. Unity cargo arm, taken from Hab Pod C prior to Planetfall.
Unity Cargo Pods were designed and built exclusively by Fairchild-Grumman, which in an earlier, less civilized age had acquired the nickname, “Iron Works.” Each pod, which might come in one of twelve shapes and sizes, was equipped with retro-thrusters and parachutes to safeguard its contents during re-entry, deceleration, and landing, as well as for up to a full century thereafter, with full environmental shielding and multi-band homing beacon.
Human passengers, all in cold sleep, received direct-injection of drugs to counteract the risk of stroke during high-g maneuver, such as blood thinners, anti-coagulants, and muscle relaxants. If pods landed in water, they were provided with the means to float. So hardy was their ablative shielding, Grumman executives bragged to the U.N. Mission Design Team that landing inside an active volcano would pose problems only of retrieval!
Cross-checking the ship’s master log, Master Data Librarian Terrance LaCroix confirmed that upwards of fifty thousand such pods were released, each carrying vital people, supplies, and technology for humanity’s conquest of its new homeworld.
Pods carried every cargo imaginable, from slumbering colonists to high-calorie foodstuffs, industrial firefighting equipment, building materials, hazardous chemicals, and automated mining equipment.
Picture credit to the Amazon Prime series Expanse.
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A Hive strike team fires a Gatling laser against defenders at Chiron Archives in October M.Y. 3. This still was captured by a security camera and uploaded to the Datalinks approximately one hour before University Security withdrew.
One attacker, at left, braces to aim a laser rifle (identifiable by the flash guard at the end of the barrel, which protects the shooter's vision from his own muzzle flash) while his kneeling counterpart sports the full-face helmet synonymous with Hive soldiery.
Defenders taken prisoner by the Hive were usually executed, and attackers invariably prioritized foodstuffs over virtually all other moveable property when looting, indicating that the faction struggled to feed its population in this time frame.
Lacking the professionalism of Spartan legionnaires or the motivation of Tribal Minutemen, Hive raiding parties concentrated on factions without strong martial traditions. Of the 112 attacks positively attributed to the Labyrinth by crowdsourced Datalinks analysis in M.Y. 3 and M.Y. 4, 84 targeted either the University of Planet or Gaia's Stepdaughters. Of the remaining 28, another 14 were carried out against vehicle convoys or scratch outposts as opposed to settlements or heavy fortifications.
Picture credit to Disney's Solo: A Star Wars Story.
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Sketch of a mining engineer, c. M.Y. 10-M.Y. 20, somewhere in the vicinity of High Hide.
Large-scale mining operations had not yet commenced by the time the Unity Mission dissolved. Drawing on a deep reserve of talent, the Hunters of Chiron excavated the first subterranean works at Alhambra Pump Station no. 1 in June, MY10.
An armored carapace was necessary to guard the head, shoulders, arms, and chest against overhead rockfalls. (Unlike the human body, the various exposed hoses used by the miners on their persons or to connect to equipment were able to resume their original shape.)
This miner's helmet was crowned with sensor probes. Most monitored for indications of unfavorable atmospheric conditions that could result in flash fires, but at least one would have provided wireless connection to the Datalinks. Set in-series, the four optics feed information on the rock face to a central processing unit that prepares a digital overlay to help direct the miner's work in the optimum direction.
The pneumatic drill is presented for dramatic effect. In practice, it was operated by a crew of two.
Picture credit to Ariel Perez. Title is "Space Miner." Image found on Pinterest.
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The Sanctuary Door at Far Jericho, M.Y. 402.
Too many mouths, too few able hands, and a lack of virtually every survival necessity encouraged more than piracy among the Lord's Conclave. In the earliest bases, real property was held in the public trust by the congregation as a whole, and traditions of communal living persisted among the Believers long after the faction achieved a modicum of self-sufficiency around M.Y. 200.
Over time, the Arahamic spirit of tithing allowed the Conclave to accumulate considerable wealth. After accounting for base operations, the remainder went toward the construction of spectacular religious architecture, monuments and houses of worship.
Sister Miriam Godwinson, the faction's founder, considered herself the matriarch of all mission survivors. In 2050, twenty-two years before Unity's departure from the Sol System, Godwinson had convened the Commission of Ecumenical Translators [1], which in addition to engaging with the Tanakh, The Holy Bible, and the Koran, processed thousands of apocryphal texts, producing the canon now contained in the Modern Vulgate Bible. Godwinson’s religious philosophy was notably syncretic. After the Vulgate, her second best-known achievement was undoubtedly the World Prayer, a recurring performance in which she led hundreds of millions of devotees worldwide in simultaneous prayer. Convinced that individuals could find their way to God through good works as well as through expressed faith, Godwinson focused her teaching on the importance of “searching for the Divine through righteous action” and downplayed the significance of exactly how differently members of her audience perceived and experienced that divine on an individual basis.
"The Conclave" was a society built in line with Godwinson's enthusiasm for faith over doctrine. "The church" was merely shorthand for a community that included faith traditions other than Christian. Nonbelievers and the casually faithful were officially welcomed in her settlements. The key to rank was service. The judges that formed Miriam's council, and, after her death, the faction's republican government, faced tests of civic accomplishment rather than of religious conviction or knowledge.
This is not to say that some did not find the Conclave backwards or even oppressive. Although Miriam forswore censorship, her intendants monitored the DataLinks and public vidcap networks tirelessly for signs of unwanted behavior, which she predictably challenged in broad strokes in her sermons. Private social feuding was also a significant problem within the faction. Miriam was constantly fighting rear-guard actions against so-called Old Believers, although their influence was inherently limited by the inherent religious and cultural heterogeneity of the survivors themselves.
[1] The Commission of Ecumenical Translators appears in Frank Herbert’s Dune.
Picture credit to Zemskiss on Polycount.
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A Special Operations Team returns to White Rabbit's Refuge following a successful scout. On this occasion, they had recovered a Colony Pod containing parts for a large research instrument of obvious interest to the faction's scientists.
Yellow shoulder flashes indicate that the men in this image were part of the Directed Outcomes private security contingent retained personally by Roshann Cobb in his capacity as a factor of Struan's Pacific Trading Company. These seasoned mercenaries gave Cobb and his partner, Aleigha Cohen, a potent offensive capability. Raids by Directed Outcomes were so successful that the Hive scrupulously abstained from acts of violence against Dreamers or their property.
Note the navy flak vests worn by the troopers in this vidcap. Protective clothing was a highly sought-after commodity on Chiron. As it happened, the New State and the Spartans accounted for most of the militarily useful gear carried in Unity's armory before Planetfall. Struan's had the foresight to bring their own.
Picture credit to Disney's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
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A Gaian technician monitors climate controls at Gaia's Landing in this painting made nearly seven decades after Planetfall.
The closely-controlled biomes of the Gaian arcologies were gradually divested of Terran vegetation, to be replaced with Chiron varietals, as the matriarchy took an increasingly reactionary posture toward the Shapers, embracing harmony and rejecting purity.
Gaians spent nearly all their recreational time enjoying the lush and fragrant spaces they had crafted. Automated pleasure boats were available to carry scientists past their robot-tended handiwork, but many preferred to work in the gardens themselves.
Gaian Base Operations cited popular access to tranquil natural spaces as the determinant factor when explaining the very low incidence of physical violence within faction settlements overall.
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A Restoration Forces prime mover recovers the wreckage of Unity's primary fusion reactor while a Needlejet patrol loiters overhead on Combat Air Patrol.
Irradiated material was stored in dry casks with the intention of exploiting it as a high-yield energy source.
Both the prime movers and the casks had enormous value to the early colonies. Most prime movers were needed to carry 'Former modules, and energy shortages persisted in most settlements for years after Planetfall. Because prime movers were very rare, they were necessarily paired with powerful escorts to discourage depredation.
All vehicles on Chiron were subject to endless modification and repurposing. For the reactor recovery mission, this prime mover, AC-1, was fitted with vacuum sifters to retrieve radioactive debris from the desert floor. A large sensor dome was also installed above the forward command housing. The casks were hauled aboard using an onboard crane not visible from this angle.
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Combat Hydrofoil 6, Revenger, sorties on the Purelake. The starboard CIWS emplacement is returning fire against an unknown target.
As on Earth, surface-to-surface missiles were the favored weapon in naval warfare on Chiron because they offered over-the-horizon strike capability that prevented ships having to brave shore defenses. Nonetheless, rapid-fire cannon were an important secondary weapon for both offensive and defensive purposes.
Following Soviet practice, the dual mountings in each of the hydrofoil's turrets were to provide greater hit probability, not firepower, since guns and their ammunition were less bulky and more easily-serviced than improved sensor suites.
Tribal fortunes were greatly enhanced after that faction's recovery in M.Y. 2 of a Supply Pod containing the two gunboats seen here. The Tribe's primary adversary of the day, the Spartan Federation, operated only gun-armed boats, all converted from Unity barges or foils, and was defeated on multiple occasions before launching a craft of equivalent capability at Sparta Command in October, M.Y. 4.
Revenger destroyed three Spartan Unity hydrofoils from ambush in one afternoon at the First Battle of the Slowwind River. The Spartans compensated by sighting tube artillery to cover river narrows, with which they later sank Revenger's consort, Remembrance.
This image apprears to have been created by Patrick Faulwetter on ArtStation for the movie GI JOE.
The Purelake is a reference to the Stormlight Archives series by Brandon Sanderson.
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A pair of Chiron-built Restoration 'Formers. The vehicle on the left bears a laser cutting arm suitable for liquefying rock or obliterating xenofungal tubers. The 'Former on the left is an amphibian with a bucket scoop used when building sea walls.
For three generations after Planetfall, "high" technology was whatever the colonists had taken or recovered from the wreck of the Unity. Machine tools and construction equipment were prized by all factions. Hundreds fell in bitter battles fought over the contents of the few dozen automated mining stations set up by the mission's pre-deployed Forwarded Contact Teams. Thousands were killed attempting to seize other factions' 'Formers.
The New Two Thousand built the first on-world 'Former from scratch in M.Y. 27, while the Nautilus Pirates floated became the last faction to ring the bell in M.Y. 60. Each design was particular to the unique environments in which they operated. The Hunters favored a cab-over design with bulbous rock-crawler tyres, each on an independent suspension to cope with the uneven terrain of the Monsoon Jungle, and the earth-moving equipment rear-mounted. All Hive 'Formers had a multi-function drilling rig, reflecting the fact that most spent their entire service lives underground. The Tribe usually fitted its versions with improvised vehicle armor, "cope cages," fighting cupolas, and active protection systems. University 'Formers, with their distinctive tall conning towers, could be remotely operated and were attended by swarms of onboard drones that assisted with both environmental analysis and light self-defense.
Picture found on the Tiberium Essence Wiki (https://tiberiumessence.fandom.com/wiki/GDI_Mobile_Construction_Vehicle).
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The survivors of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri pursued two types of research in their efforts to improve themselves and the new world that became their home.
The first type of research was practical, yielding insights about the natural world and, when those insights were properly applied, new materials with which to shape it. In short, practical research made it easier to craft new things. The second type of research was doctrinal, consisting of revolutions in thought. The purpose of doctrinal research was to support new modes of human organization and behavior for the achievement of discrete social or military objectives. Doctrinal research enabled survivors to execute specific tasks more effectively, with or without physical tools.
Each faction implicitly dedicated itself to certain doctrines that spoke to the contingent needs and grand ideological visions of its leaders.
Some factions, including the Spartan Confederation, the Dreamers of Chiron, the Human Labyrinth, and the Lord's Conclave, embraced a philosophy of active aggression. They launched repeated and unprovoked attacks on whatever targets of opportunity presented themselves. Their common motivation was plunder, but for the former in particular, offensive warfare was also an expression of the fundamental political incoherence, and therefore disunity, at the core of the hyper-survivalist movement, inherited from Earth and faithfully reproduced on Chiron. Holnists embraced the performance of violence for purposes of both cruel self-actualization and political legitimization. Fighting could, quite simply, be fun, and physical intimidation was widely accepted within the hyper-survivalist movement as a legitimate tool of governance. For these factions, offensive warfare was also the easiest way to apply their comparative advantages in the competition for scarce resources.
Santiago had built her movement from soldiers (many of them play-acting the role), not would-be colonists. Her followers had expected to die aboard Unity. As a result, the Spartans in and of themselves were not a viable colony. They took captives to perform the technical work of settlement. The Dreamers were in a similarly disadvantageous position and compensated with the help of Sabre Company mercenaries in the pay of Roshann Cobb. The Hive raided out of a combination of hunger and fear of political subversion by outsiders. Yang knew that his utopian project was no match in appeal for even the mild stimulus of gilded oligarchy, let alone a headier drug known as participatory democracy. The Conclave turned to raiding reluctantly during a period of starvation and sickness but quickly perfected the art.
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An Ascendancy fire team observes the opening bombardment against Morgan Metals at the onset of the War for Planetneck.
Taller, stronger, faster, and hardier than the average colonist, Ascendancy Augments quickly gained a reputation as the most fearsome fighting force on Chiron during this time period. Director Tamineh Pahlavi lavished her faction's resources on its legions, equipping them with the latest in power-assisted exo-frames and sixth-generation weaponry.
The stick seen here is illustrative, carrying Gatling laser (leftmost trooper), pulse rifle (topmost trooper), Gauss rifle (rightmost trooper), and close-quarters weapon (trooper in foreground).
Battle-hardened SafeHaven Corporation mercenaries led a polyglot Morgan Metals defense also consisting of operators from the private security firm Barricade (another aspect of the considerable retinue Morgan stowed away with aboard Unity), the Monopoly's official Corporate Security paramilitaries, and various Merchant's Guild forces with no more than a few skirmishes and some strike-breaking under their belts. They proved to be of widely divergent quality, and the battle turned into a fast rout.
SafeHaven fought practically to the last in defense from the settlement's blockhouse, inflicting the Ascendancy's worst losses, but the Barricade Group fighters, positioned to defend the main gate, were quickly slaughtered by a Steel Rain assault, which they failed to slow despite an impressive service record and the kind of heavy weaponry that could have turned the tide. Corporate Security followed SafeHaven's valorous example, but without success: unlike the CEO's original hired help, their TO&E included nothing with which to crack OR-12 Hardshell. The remaining auxiliaries attempted surrender only to be slaughtered.
Morgan Metals wrote off the cost of the lost base, along with all its defenders, in the next season's filing, and enjoyed two years without dividends owed to the Monopoly's Shareholders.
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A Tribal Minuteman poses for a holo-capture.
He is equipped for an arid battlefield, probably Sunny Mesa or the Dune Sea. The thicket of probes extending from the "snout" of the respirator was used to filter dust particles and prevent moisture loss on exhalation.
This militia fighter is archetypal of the irregular soldiers that comprised the majority of each faction's defensive muster.
The conical helmet benefits from light-refractive coating and a leather splinter-guard to enhance protection against laser fire and shrapel, respectively. The jacket is homespun--sewn from the hide of a local reptile.
The AKM rifle was a commonplace in Unity's armory. Ballistic ("impact") weapons remained the most-used firearms on Planet for more than three centuries due to their easy manufacture and repair.
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Self-healing materials have the ability to recover their original physical characteristics, including shape, tensile strength, permeability, and molecular bonds, to achieve restoration of function, totally or partially. The speed of this restoration varies from slow to fast.
Unity stores included various self-healing products imbued with microscopic packets of chemical adhesive released when the material was broken. The colonists' hostile-environment suits and survival shelters both incorporated self-healing properties to reduce the failure rate from punctures and tearing. A second generation of self-healing materials copied the design principles of the human vascular system. Instead of single-used packets of adhesive, objects were interwoven with networks of the same that relied on pressure to regulate output and were considerably more effective across larger surface areas.
The warlike Human Ascendancy experimented successfully with "reversible polymers," plastics that absorbed sunlight and body heat to initiate electrostatic attraction at the molecular level. The University preferred nano-scale robots for making biological and physical repairs. In M.Y. 439, the Chiron Rangers were issued organic combat vests engineered from xenofungus that were genuine biological systems in themselves.
Source: ExplainThatStuff! (https://www.explainthatstuff.com/self-healing-materials.html#types) Space suit picture from the 2007 film Sunshine.
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Raoul André St. Germain was born in Sidon, Lebanon to a leading Maronite political dynasty. By family convention, he became a sailor, graduating from the École Navale.
Commanded riverine flotilla attached to United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). Mentioned in dispatches, with multiple decorations for heroism.
Worked closely with French- and Rwandan-aligned warlords in eastern Congo. On three occasions, ordered sailors ashore without prior approval to protect local collaborators and their families.
Wounded in action against Congolese Army and invalided to French Guyana. Used opportunity to join multiple overland expeditions to Amazonia. Later, leveraged favorable political climate to be returned to MONUSCO as head of lake detachment at Goma.
Court martialed, 2052, following allegations that his command massacred prisoners at Kisangani in retaliation for destruction of gunboat Légère. Acquitted on all counts but formally reprimanded for suppression of evidence to shield subordinates.
Reassigned to Submarine Forces, French Antarctic Patrol, 2053. Led several successful missions to rescue distressed submarines worldwide.
St. Germaine believed strongly that fear was a driving force in human history--hence the formation of in-groups and out-groups that expand and contract as the environment becomes more or less permissive. The most significant effect, he postulated, was that populations demonstrated a higher tolerance for security--authority, structure, and conservatism--over democracy, choice, and openness to new ideas and experiences. When western democracy refused to countenance even minimal concessions to these anxieties, St. Germaine taught his sailors, the liberal world order was overthrown from within and anti-social movements such as Holnism thrived, much to everyone's detriment. St. Germaine, like Sheng-ji Yang, aspired to the ideal of the enlightened despot. The solution to social disorder, he believed, was the neo-feudalism of which he was himself a beneficiary in his native Lebanon: a system of intensely personal obligation between subject and sovereign, the chief object of which was the physical safety of the subject and the political advantage of the ruler.
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Unity's Executive Officer was Portuguese General Francisco d'Almeida.
D’Almeida was Portugal’s man in all things. India-born parents brought him to Portuguese West Africa in 2022. Grinding poverty hardly dulled his genius, and at seventeen, he won access to the Academia Militar at Bemposta Palace in Lisbon. There, he continued to excel in the classroom and, with the encouragement of political benefactors, took his first forays into politics, a preoccupation that remained with him throughout his life.
Enthusiasm for the regime philosophy of Pluricontinentalism, or imperial union, led d’Almeida to decline appointment to the imperial general staff in favor of the Grupo de Cavalaria Nº2. Placement in the mounted service was synonymous with long tours in Africa but served to make d’Almeida’s bona fides with the Salazarist junta. Over a career of more than a quarter-century, d’Almeida oversaw the eradication of the armed wings first of the Angolan, then the Mozambican independence fronts, bottling up insurgents in the interior wastes of both territories until they dissolved for lack of access to the populace. Borrowing from the experience of Rhodesia, d’Almeida reorganized his West African garrison for air-mobile work, preferring the easy credit and cheap Puma helicopters of ultra-reactionary France over the armored cars and stinging criticism of successive American administrations. The fresh strategy was well-received in Lisbon, not least because it was dramatically less expensive than what had gone before. By age forty-two, d’Alemida wore the sash of a general.
Superficially, d’Alemida’s biography parallels those of other wartime leaders aboard Unity. Both Raoul André St. Germain and Jeremy Tanner Marsh also served in Europe’s colonial wars (the former accumulating black marks in equal or greater number), and political favoritism remains the most widely-accepted explanation for the inclusion of all three men on the crew command roster. Portugal’s national obsession with d’Almeida was not altogether different than Canada’s with Raoul Salan. Yet here, the parallels end.
St. Germain, Marsh, and Salan were aristocrats all, and the former pair were warriors first, officers second. Salan’s star actually rose in counter-poise to his battlefield accomplishment: he was the Francophone who refused the siren call of French-Quebecois subversion and yielded up his two sons on the altar of True North, Strong and Free. D’Almeida derived his popularity neither from a demonstrated willingness to share his troops’ privation, nor Lost Cause mythologizing. Rather, he could claim unbroken success in bringing adversaries to the peace table with a minimum of sacrifice from those under his command. If he had the reputation of a “brass hat” who rarely left his air-conditioned office in Luanda, it was a footnote hardly worth remarking upon: the men appreciated his skillfulness and forgave him his weakness for tawny port.
D’Alemida was the asking price for U.N. access to Portugual’s space elevator at Rio de Janiero. For the Lisbon government, placing one of their own—particularly an individual as odious in the eyes of their NATO allies—so near the top of the expedition’s hierarchy satisfied an appetite for prestige. By implication, Portugal’s racial and counter-insurgency policies were therefore acceptable to Western sensibilities.
Temperamentally, d’Almeida was unsuited for an environment in which compromise, not coercion, was intended to shape decision-making. Judging the General to be volatile and of overweening ambition, the mission’s Psych Evaluation Board took the unusual step of filing special protest with the United Nations Security Council, to no avail.
As in the British Royal Navy, the emergency action station for Unity’s Executive Officer was the ship’s central Damage Control Center. This isolated the general from the discord taking root between other senior staff. Only Zakharov was likewise at a remove from the Command Center for the full duration of the crisis. Activating Damage Control just 39 minutes after impact with the micro-object above Chiron, d’Almeida was first to have a coherent picture of the unfolding disaster.
Unity’s logs, later recovered by the Peacekeepers and uploaded to the Planetary Datalinks unencrypted, memorialize d’Almeida’s immediate actions and findings. At 01:58 hours on 1 November 2116, he initiated automated recovery from hibernation of 300 damage control technicians and 150 damage evaluators. At 05:02 hours, he dictated a report to Garland summarizing what was known: more than 40% of the ship’s automated fire suppression systems had lost pressure and dozens of airtight bulkheads were confirmed locked in the open position, hampering repairs. He blamed widespread faults in the ship’s electrics for the loss of emergency lighting in most compartments aft and amidships. Life Support readings indicated that global supply of breathable atmosphere was down to 82 hours. Worse, navigational data suggested that, without immediate intervention, Unity would overshoot Chiron and pass through the Alpha Centauri star system—an almost mathematical certainty if the primary fusion reactor remained offline.
According to survivors present with him at the time, access to so much information contributed to d’Almeida’s strong belief that Unity’s destruction could not be prevented. Like Garland, he was caught off-guard by the patent insubordination of the ship's Chief Science Officer, whom he observed on camera violating orders to awaken emergency responders in preference to engineers and failing to execute evacuation protocols from irradiated compartments.
Beyond the damage inflicted by the meteorite strike, d'Almeida became aware of hundreds of armed assailants actively intervening to prevent repairs. Damage Control Center personnel were astonished by the number, recklessness, and reach of the attackers, who seemed to be swarming at all points, as well as by the fact that most clearly wore U.N. Security Forces togs, indicating that a crucial segment of the crew complement had been suborned. The General remotely initiated recovery of Marcel Salan and his Marines, but their contributions were focused forward, on the personal defense of the Captain. The situation went from dire to untenable when the initial group of shooters found themselves in running firefights with a new set of organized attackers whom d'Almeida could not raise by radio. He was watching Kellerites begin to escape one of Unity's many vestigial cargo bays. Over the next few hours, many Charterists, including stowed-away Morganites, followed their example.
At 20:08 hours, d'Almeida acted on his own initiative to begin pulling awake 400 further crew members, ordering them to take arms and secure engineering spaces. The chosen personnel were those whom d’Almeida knew personally—an admixture of Portuguese, British, and French military officers, mostly. Deidre Skye encountered dozens of these unexpected newcomers as she led her scientists to the Hydroponics Bays. She failed to convince them to surrender their weapons and join her errand.
This redirection of resources was gross insubordination, for it limited d’Almeida’s availability to Garland at a crucial moment. His hagiographers say that d'Almeida emulated Zakharov only to stop him. The Bridge learned of the act almost at once: Chief of Security Rachael Winzenried observed and reported d’Almeida’s override of armory lock-outs. Fifteen minutes later, d’Almeida ordered his officers to begin jettisoning Cargo Pods for automated descent, hoping to deny their contents to the Spartans.
Located amidships, d’Almeida and his support staff were in imminent danger from the stowaways. At one point, Kellerites masquerading as damage control parties looted the general armory after being granted access by d'Almeida's picked guards. More than three-quarters of d'Almeida's original armed defenders were shot dead, some by Kellerites, most by Spartans. Citing the extent of damage and inadequacy of compensatory measures, d’Almeida recommended to Captain Garland that the order be given to abandon ship. The message never went through.
After learning of Garland's assassination, d'Almeida conferenced with his staff. Consensus was that the situation was hopeless. D'Almeida, acting as Garland's successor, thus gave the order for each of the surviving senior commanders to gather those crew still ambulatory and abandon ship. In his last official act as a U.N. representative, he declared the Mission Charter dissolved.
General d'Almeida is presumed not to have survived the destruction of his last command.
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Retained by the United Nations from the New York Police Department Counter-Terrorism Bureau, Terrance LaCroix spent much of his career running hyper-survivalists to ground.
Awakened on the order of Captain Garland, he managed to isolate Corazón Santiago's transmissions to within a 20-square meter section of Unity, allowing Salan's Marines to pressure her fighters long enough to safely evacuate Unity's amidships muster stations.
LaCroix escaped Unity with a sergeant's guard of U.N. Marines who rallied to the summons of Pravin Lal's Peacekeeping Forces. LaCroix was persuaded to place himself and his charges under Lal's authority when he observed the Peacekeepers choose to fight the Spartans in defense of Deirdre's Skye's botanists.
LaCroix's Signals Intelligence section was first on Planet to begin to articulate the scientific principles behind Dreaming.
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Most of the land surface of Chiron is thick with a dense carpet of tall, green vegetation built up over the nitrate spoilage undisturbed since its geological birth. Shallower seas are likewise clogged, discouraging wave effects and permitting the practical extension of the land-based ecosystem over huge spaces from which it would ordinarily be excluded. The floating structures produced in this way resemble lily-pads and range in structural integrity from perfectly solid to dangerously spongy. The water-table, too, is nitrate-infused. Drinking water not blasted by ozone is deadly.
Chiron’s plant life is similar to that of prehistoric Earth: spore-bearers and seed-bearers are commonplace, with very few flowering plants. Pollen counts are staggering. The "Planetgrowth," as it has been called, shows markedly poor tolerance for cooler, dryer weather.
Fungus, like bamboo, grows in cylindrical shoots or tubers that can rise more than eight stories high. Fungal growth is aggressive but unpredictable, using multiple vectors depending upon the season. During planetary hot cycles, root systems spawn creeping tendrils that climb toward the sun, gradually mineralizing until they are still. When the temperature drops for extended periods, the fungus blooms. Sporangial sacs expand to the point of explosion, when pent-up pressure launches mucus-laden spores up to 200 meters.
Fungal tubers, the outer walls of which can grow up to two feet in thickness, are approximately as hard as chalk. Inside a fungal tube are dense bundles of pulpy plant matter that produce a sweet milk. Stripping or sapping the interior plant matter causes the surviving over-structure to decay, much like a root canal will destroy a tooth. The biologists of the Pathfinder Probe, which preceded Unity by slightly more than a century, hypothesized that cables of this pulp formed the “tendrils” observed during growth of a fresh bloom.
Fungus contains both organic and inorganic material with excellent nutrient, energy, and mineral value, although the culling and processing of fungus for any human purpose required an understanding of Centauri chemistry and ecology that eluded the Unity survivors for several generations.
Some, but not all, of the Pathfinder colonists attested to hearing unexplained noise during a bloom, which they describe as a “hum,” song, or “keening cry,” not unlike tinnitus. The instrumentation of the Pathfinder Probe had been unable to detect this noise. According to records accumulated by the United Nations, but never shared with Unity's command staff, the Probe's colonial administrator, one Joralomon Hardacre, claimed to have developed data linking these auditory episodes directly to injuries and deaths. Hardacre disagreed with his own medical staff, who believed strongly that the afflicted colonists were suffering auditory hallucinations brought on by stress.
The Unity's Forward Contact Teams experienced the same distress as the Pathfinder colonists, combined with aggressive and worsening visual and tactile hallucinations, and first credited their experiences to the spores. Filtering technology had a mild salutary effect, but distance was the best known cure, and when the road crews could not steer clear, they turned to fire.
Unity scientists generally accepted that the fungus was semi-sentient. Both Gaian and Ascendancy researchers used the paradigm of the human immune system as a near-perfect overlay for xenofungal behavior. The most thorough early examinations of xenofungus were performed first by the Gaians, then the Dreamers, who fast discerned clear links between fungal growth and human brain activity.
Sources: The image, titled "Fungal Bloom on Alpha Centauri," is the work of caerwynentllc, and was found on DeviantArt. The language for this entry was drawn and reworked from Chris McCubbin, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, game manual (Tustin, CA: Loki Software, Inc., 1999-2000), 210-227. Information and inspiration on fungal spores comes from the UMASS Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment and their fact sheet on Spore Shooting Fungi (https://ag.umass.edu/landscape/fact-sheets/spore-shooting-fungi).
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Name: Wasoné Erkins
Rank: Captain, Canadian Forces (AWOL)
Position: First Sergeant, U.N. Security Forces, U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri
Country of Origin: Canada
DOB: 2-8-2030
Service Record:
Born 2030 in Little Burgundy neighborhood of Montreal as separatism surged in Francophone Canada. Father, a Canada Post mail carrier, invalided by FLQ bombing. Joined Canadian Forces upon graduating secondary school. Posted to Royal Canadian Regiment. Deployed in Montreal under War Measures Act. Disciplined for signing open letter protesting U.N. peacekeeping deployment to Quebec. Participated in arrests of terror suspects following Black Watch Killings. Discovered personal effects later used successfully to unmask perpetrators as Soviet spies. Veteran of the stand at Montréal–Trudeau Airport, where separatists, heavily equipped by WARPAC and French Union allies, threw themselves against outnumbered Canadian and American regulars for more than 36 hours. The defenders held, but the city itself was lost and the Appleton Government suspended combat operations to enter negotiations. Joined failed Price Mutiny, October 2055, when Canadian PM signed accords recognizing Quebec independence.
Entered wartime United States c. January 2056. Traveled to Lake Tahoe Basin after reading Corazón Santiago's "Spartan Thesis" and learning about her role in the defense of low-income Miami neighborhoods two years prior. Entrusted with training Spartan militia volunteers, including paroled Holnists. Went to ground after the calamitous fall of Reno to federal auxiliaries.
Assigned to U.N. Security Forces, U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri, using false credentials provided by Spartan sympathizers within the U.N. Department of Operational Support. Promoted to rank of First Sergeant upon completion of mission training. Placed into cold sleep in May 2071.
Recovered from cold sleep by Spartan saboteurs during Unity Crisis. Led one of three Spartan squads assigned to secure the ship's hydroponics facilities. Encountered unexpectedly heavy resistance from crew under command of Lieutenant Commander Deirdre Skye and Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal. Captured by U.N. Marines after Holnists within her party disobeyed orders during the firefight and declined to provide covering fire.
Held prisoner by U.N. Peacekeeping Forces after Planetfall. Agreed to hold Spartans neutral during period of internal strife within the Peacekeeping Forces at Warm Welcome. Paroled by direct order of Commissioner Pravin Lal. Subsequently defected to U.N. Peacekeeping Forces. Assigned to lead settlement garrison during Battle of U.N. Relief Station.
Psych Profile: Idealist
Highly sensitive to perceived "betrayal" of Montreal citizens, both Anglo- and Francophone, by Canadian Government.
Expects personal loyalty to be rewarded by superiors with courageous leadership and consistent application of stated ideals.
Record of dissenting behaviors indicates subject will not consistently obey command decisions with which she disagrees. Subject claims not to have been aware of "the depth of Holnist depravity and the emptiness of their political rhetoric," paying little attention to the politics of American unraveling during Canada's civil war, and describing their behavior and demeanor in Tahoe as "typical of what we had come to expect from Americans." When reminded that Canada suffered its own rash of Holnist violence, subject replied that she had believed the Holnist badge was "just an off-hand, over-used-and-abused label used for movements people didn't really understand." During questioning, Commissioner Lal did not detect duplicity.
Draws unfavorable contrasts between Canadian Forces' response to Quebec separatism and Santiago's Florida State Guard, a volunteer militia that occupied seawalls and municipal sluice gates during Hurricane Ivore to prevent Federal destruction of Miami's storm barriers in bid to relieve flood pressure on wealthy neighborhoods.
Appears not to take specific umbrage with the U.N., blaming Canada for failing to prevent the intrusion on its sovereignty.
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What is a Charter colonist?
Under the Unity Mission Charter, colonists under contract with private mission sponsors, while accountable to that sponsor and its duly appointed representatives among the crew, were to be treated identically to “mainline" U.N. colonists for the first five years after Planetfall. After that time, the healthy colony would ostensibly release its contracted members to make their own way.
Designated corporate officers would assume responsibility for the people and property belonging to their employers. Something more than a fifth of the colonists would then serve out periods of what amounted to indentured servitude, both fixed and variable.
This paradigm provoked long and impassioned debate among both U.N. leadership and mission leadership. Though the only alternative to accepting private mission sponsorship by the mid-twenty-second century was laying Unity up in ordinary, there were numerous and obvious conflicts of interest inherent in such a marriage of convenience, not the least of which was the fundamental incompatibility of U.N. and entrepreneurial philosophies.
The precise nature of the five-year commitment was as great a concern to the corporate set as to the U.N. How could the mission’s new financiers be assured that mission command wouldn’t manage the early colony so as to exhaust all valuable supplies and heavy equipment ahead of the corporate partition? Why should they believe that Captain Garland, with all the coercive power of the U.N. Security Force and Marines at his disposal, would not declare force majeure to keep the first colony whole? Would the U.N. not experience moral crisis when enforcing obligations of service on people who believed the Unity Mission was their only certain escape from global cataclysm? Popular and press opinion had it that the colonial contracts let by sponsors were exceptionally unfavorable to the point that most signatories would likely perish before satisfying their obligations. Even as they denied all such charges, sponsors braced for the certainty that "their" labor force would plead urgently for U.N. intervention when the time came to pay out their obligations.
Corporate influence either crucially altered or badly mutilated mission design, depending on one’s point of view. With each body of Charterists came a healthy contingent of security men—Struan’s Strategic Services, Morgan SafeHaven, Pinkwater Security, Iron Key, Directed Outcomes, and the Twin Cedars Trust. On paper, they undertook to "deliver training and operational capabilities" that most corporate recruits lacked by virtue of having received only a very abbreviated course of preparation before launch. In practice, everyone from Jonathan Garland and Francisco d’Almeida to Ian Dunross Struan and Nwabudike Morgan understood exactly what the mercenaries were sent along to do.
Larger numbers of armed guards did nothing for already-sour relations among the crew. Four outlooks predominated.
The so-called “mainline” colonists were recruited through national committees or special invitation from the U.N. Security Council. They were always individuals, usually young and without deep attachments to the family or nation from which they came. The experience of mission training consumed a significant fraction of their whole lives to that point. Perhaps inevitably, they came to see themselves as the deserving best that a dying species could bequeath to the future and never expected to see their homeworld again. On Chiron, they stood to enjoy the best government they could bring about through their own dialectic. The crew dismissed colonists as a faceless mass of ready followers, while Charterists asked why the United Nations thought the billets of playwrights would not better be occupied by more carpenters.
The Unity "crew" was itself a mix of True Believers, typified by Captain Jonathan Garland, and careerists, typified by Francisco d’Almeida, Raoul St. Germaine, and Marcel Salan. Many were in the middle or at the end of life. The term "crew," although popular, was largely misleading, for it encompassed mission command staff as well as a very small list of personnel with narrow shipboard emergency operations roles. Nonetheless, a distinct self-identity developed, and along with it, a certain mode of thinking. Colonists of all types were there to be led. The crew's inclusion on the manifest reflected previously proven capability, whereas others aboard could point merely to a hopeful expectation of future performance. Unlike the U.N. colonists, "crew" had a past that had shaped, and possibly dogged, them. The loyalties and impurities of a lifetime could not be burned away through a few years of study and exercise.
True Believers looked toward the founding of a colony untroubled by national allegiance and prepared to forgive itself for the sins of the past. “Good” was anyone or anything likely to help the settlement prosper and cohere. They took for granted that they would be alone after mission launch and usually dismissed the idea that the colony would find it prudent or necessary to honor pre-launch obligations such as corporate charters after five years on the hard edge. The caricature of a True Believer was of an overweening egotist blinkered by naïve faith in the essential goodness of the human spirit, convinced that their personal moral authority alone would suffice to solve problems that had not yielded to centuries of predecessors.
Appointment of an unenthusiastic individual to the Unity Mission, whether by the United Nations or a national military, produced a Careerist. Either the assignment was a disappointing end to a professional journey that had once aimed much higher, or a death sentence foist upon the luckless recipient by well-meaning but incompetent superiors. Some still clung to promises from national command structures that Earth would overcome its present difficulties and thereafter labor to bring them home, but most partook in a gallows humor that acknowledged their essential dispensability. The worst were officers who adopted a policy of trying to “save” the mission from itself by means of hectoring memos and endless war stories. In his diary, Garland fretted about how many on his command staff were “little Wilkinsons,” mouthing their allegiance to Geneva but still taking their instructions, or even pay, from other sources. (Sponsoring corporations knew to grease the hands that would one day direct the guns that might be turned against them when it came time to part ways with Garland.) Humorists put it that the quintessential Careerist was an unhelpful killjoy, prone to “splittism." Someone whose definition of “cooperation” might go only to the extent of malicious compliance.
Charterists were supernumeraries grudgingly appended to the Unity mission as the price of its completion. They were, on average, considerably older than the other colonists, and had more to lose in leaving Earth. Charterists were either hired directly by the mission’s corporate sponsors or received their passage because of personal affiliation with someone so hired. Charterists might be fully “vested,” meaning that they had satisfied the cost of passage up front and would become salaried members of a future private settlement, or they were “under contract,” in which case they owed a certain number of years of labor. By reputation with U.N. colonists and crew, Charterists saw the expedition as through a jewler’s loupe. Chiron was the motherlode, and each of them a latter-day Forty-Niner. Any activity that did not advance the cause of economic development was to be despised as indolence. To the mission factors and mercenaries, their future workforce consisted of morally dissolute strikers, shirkers, and layabouts who would certainly spend the first five years after Planetfall doing all they could to bring about total abrogation of the contracts they'd entered into with both eyes open.
Stowaways, including but not limited to Spartans, Holnists, Kellerites, and Morganites, were any of more than ten thousand people who were taken aboard Unity at some point during its construction, sometimes against their own will. Spartans and Holnists were followers of "Survivalism," a creed that preached armed self-reliance. Spartans generally regarded the practice of these tenets as a mental and physical discipline--a deeply personal lifestyle choice, albeit one that set them morally apart from those who were unable or unwilling to make the same sacrifices. Holnists regarded the credo as a license for predation. The two factions, once united in their opposition to the Unity Mission, fell out during their attack on the ship and its crew. Kellerites were followers of failed farmer-turned-lay preacher and radio personality Jean Baptiste-Keller, an anti-disassociationalist derided by most contemporaries as a cult leader. Morganites were, quite simply, hirelings of Nwabudike Morgan. In each case, the idea was not to be left behind on Earth to suffer what all agreed would be an unpleasant but rapidly-impending disaster of planetary proportions.
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Name: Sardul Singh
Rank: Commander
Position: Superintendent of Prisoners
Country of Origin: India
DOB: 3-31-2037
Service Record:
Jodhpur, India. Son of provincial inspector general of prisons. Studied engineering and public administration at Indian Institutes of Technology. Master's degree in criminology from Southwest University of Political Science and Law.
Youngest MP in Lok Sabha for the Technocratic Party of India (TPI). Lost seat during nationalist revival following riots over tainted vaccine in 2058.
Joined Indian Prison Service at age 23. Awarded special commendation for the successful use of convict work gangs to perform work in high-radiation zones as part of national recovery from Six Minute War.
Appointed Minister of Law and Justice in national unity government, 2064. Notable for consulting in the design of numerous maximum security detention facilities in India, Russia, and China. Accused by opposition parties of corruption for negotiating favorable deal with Struan's Pharmaceuticals in connection with national adoption of neural re-socialization regime for all offenders.
During Unity Crisis, subject dispatched with U.N. Security Forces constables to organize convicts for evacuation. Forced out of detention bay by unknown attackers (later identified as Sabre Company troopers led by Aleigha Cohen), Singh gathered those survivors he could, activated approximately three dozen robot warders, and made for the Landing Pods.
Singh landed with roughly two-fifths of the ship's convict workforce in hand, very few of whom had been re-socialized. While this meant they were capable of full cognitive function, it placed significant demands on the badly-outnumbered constables.
Singh's solution was to construct his base in the manner of a panopticon while enforcing a brutal discipline. Without the means to inflict the nerve staple, and recognizing that savagery would not produce a cohesive, or productive, community, Singh searched for alternative methods of behavioral correction, including prisoners' councils, personal gardens, and the intentional use of color, open space, scents, and music in public and private spaces.
Psych Profile: Planner
Strong belief in the power of planned communities to complement social and criminal rehabilitation and promote physical and mental well-being.
Near-pathological commitment to order and economization.
Leans heavily on operant conditioning as a method of governance.
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The U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri trained colonists and crew in low- and zero-gravity environments, some in space stations, but others on the lunar surface.
The first long-duration mission to the Moon was undertaken by the European Space Agency in 1999. South African, American, Soviet, and Chinese missions followed, each of increasing complexity. In 2028, the first permanently-staffed science station on the Moon was a collaboration between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Apple Electronics, and Sperry Rand.
The U.N. training base later became the core for colonial ventures on the Moon, which took off in the final years before Mission Launch. Much of the population was engaged in logistics work in support of the Unity and its passengers.
Control of the lunar surface and orbit was a sticking point for many of the nations of Earth. They relinquished their claims to the United Nations only because of the degree of internal strife brought on by internal conflicts. The multi-national inspectorate designed to conflict the Moon's disarmament succeeded in its broader mission of preventing any nation from taking advantage, but failed to protect mission assets from terror attacks. By 2060, the extent of the threat could no longer be denied and the Security Council voted for a garrison of several thousand U.N. Marines.
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Name: Johann Anhaldt
Rank: Mission Area Director
Position: Atomic Energy Laboratory
County of Origin: Switzerland
DOB: 1-12-2000
Height: 203.7cm
Weight: 104kg
Service Record:
Native of Bern. Ph.D. in nuclear physics, MIT. Two-time Nobel laureate for advances in cold fusion theory. Frequent foil to Soviet researcher Prokhor Zakharov.
Twelve years at CEA/Cesta simulating nuclear fission with the Megajoule laser. Twenty years at CERN focusing on particle acceleration and low-temperature reactions. Five years at RIKEN-TRI studying robotics in connection with Fukushima-Daiichi recovery operations. Frequently employed crowd- and machine-assisted decision-making to aid with complex problem-solving.
Participated in San Francisco Roundtable on Machine Thinking as a guest of the American Reclamation Corporation in 2064. Retained as a consultant on same topic until 2070.
Leading global advocate of fission-based solutions in the area of renewable energy. Noted skeptic of war strategies based on "limited use" of atomic weapons.
Controversially expressed support for rejections of vaccination and GMO use, arguing that although not scientifically valid, such attitudes were "an accurate reflection of the human values to which science must always, in the end, be suborned." Public statements credited with helping to mend cleavages between public and "political-scientific establishment" following Survivalist Wars.
Unanimous election as Mission Area Director to AEL. Responsible for staff of more than 200 nuclear scientists and engineers.
Anhaldt's superior, Prokhor Zakharov, declined to send for subject during the Unity Crisis, charging that Anhaldt's was "the inferior intellect." Anhaldt and the AEL staff were recovered instead by the data scientists of Sathieu Metrion, who hoped to co-opt the AEL into supporting ground-side operations of the Unity Data Core.
After ejection of the Data Core, Anhaldt, his AEL subordinates, some of Metrion's programmers, a scattering of engineers and security people, and assorted Comprehensive Transport personnel evacuated in one of two Landing Pods secured by Metrion's partisans. A failed attitude thruster sent Anhaldt's lander off-course, and it touched down within sight of the Monsoon Jungle with little more than basic survival equipment on board.
The polyglot community accepted Anhaldt's suggestion that, to minimize disputes, they reprogram the Landing Pod's onboard computer to assist with base operations. Three years later, they made first contact with the Human Tribe, which discovered that although Anhalt provided the appearance of human leadership, virtually every meaningful decision taken in Colonia Secundus was run through the settlement's pet AI.
Psych Profile: Mediator
Gifted scientist and communicator.
Adept at navigating large bureaucracies and political environments, but delegates most managerial tasks to subordinates. Selection likely reflected Security Council concern that atomic energy would prove a controversial energy source among the colonists.
Enthusiastic about the possibilities for human development inherent in applications for machine-assisted thinking and robot labor.
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U.N.S. Unity power plant under construction in Moscow, U.S.S.R., 2021.
The project was, in generous terms, an unmitigated disaster. First conceived as the American Ares III intra-solar foundry, Unity's derelict skeleton had been a fixture in the nighttime sky above North America for more than a half-century before it was purchased by the U.N.'s Janovic Commission for conversion. The ship then finished another forty-three years in geosynchronous orbit, followed by six of trials that took it only as far as Pluto. By both length and volume, it was the largest object ever built by man. Knowing that technological progress would outpace them before completion, her shipwrights opted for dated but proven systems and modular design, hoping to install the engines, reactor, and computer mainframe last, while swapping out secondary systems if and when necessary.
U.N.S. Unity's development was a case study in design flaws, self-destructive behavior, and the perils of consensus-based project management. Amidst countless arguments, industrial accidents, and incidents of terrorism and sabotage, entire sections were started, gutted, and started again as political will and available resources waxed and waned.
A revolving door of visionaries, sponsors, and builders produced a "Frankenstein's Ark" of obsolete and incompatible systems. Political imperatives often spoke louder than practical science. When the Western powers temporarily suspended their participation in the Project from 2014 to 2050, the U.N.'s new Chinese and Warsaw Pact dismantled and stole entire modules for closer study Earthside. During one of countless breakdowns in contract re-negotiations, Morgan Aerodynamics sealed over dozens of cargo bays previously installed by competitors, including Serrol-Merowe, Fairchild-Grumman, and the American Reclamation Corporation, then charged the U.N. to rebuild and restock similar bays on the ship's opposite side. To a U.N. Board of Inquiry completed just hours before his departure for the lunar cradle, Unity's captain, Jonathan Garland, observed wryly that there was not a single integrated or accurate schematic--let alone a proper inventory--of the whole ship anywhere in existence.
Providing a crew for the ship presented a separate brace of problems. Tens of thousands of crew members perished in training, while many more died at the hands of mobs and terrorists incensed at the idea of being left behind. During times of extremity, the U.N. made a habit of accepting donations from corporations, private individuals, and even criminal enterprises. Earth's best and brightest shared their one-way trip with exiles, outcasts, and stowaways of every conceivable stripe. Pursuant to a charter further amended beyond recognition after most were placed in cold sleep, led by a multi-national crew on the verge of dissolution since the day it had formed, they were destined for a world where contact with a smaller, earlier mission launched in better times, the Pathfinder Probe, had been lost for reasons still unknown.
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After tens of millions of Americans died in recurring pandemics during the first half of the twenty-first century, the United States finally found the technological solution required to endure long periods of home isolation: an army of drones of every conceivable size, shape, and purpose. Drones to sanitize public spaces, day and night. Drones to deliver food, fuel, medicines, and other necessities to the front door of every household. Drones to replace humans laborers in factories and fields.
Washington applied the same solution after the Holnist rebellion metastasized into the Second Civil War and one-fifth of the former U.S. Armed Forces defected or went AWOL. "During the long years of civil war and reconstruction in the 2040s," the The New York Times editorial page later mused, "the Federal government perfected first push-button war, then push-button peace."
The United States provided Oscar van de Graaf's ARC contingent upwards of 9,000 autonomous labor drones, known as Multiple Use Labor Elements ("MULES"), to help safely perform the tasks of colonization. The MULE was a sturdy, easily-repaired worker that relied on simple programming language and could be customized for a wide range of tasks. It was also powered by hydrocarbons, a peculiarity that attracted much unwanted attention from Planet's native biologics.
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The Soviet Union staggered out of the bloody twentieth century and into the twenty-first with its alliance structure in tatters and its economy overheating from an excess of defense spending. Many predicted a quick collapse. Instead, Soviet leaders took deft advantage of the rise of Fundamentalist Islam to achieve a long detente with the West and shove aside discredited or dismantled petrostates to claim a dominant place in the global energy market. As American and European attentions turned increasingly inwards, Moscow wasted no time before engaging in new adventurism, accumulating tidy victories in Syria, Afghanistan, the Congo, and even Bolivia, where Washington signally declined to uphold the Monroe Doctrine during the second [Sleezebag] administration. But the Red Star rose only so high. If the costs of meddling in the Third World were less than those of an arms race with NATO, a new and dangerous threat to the preeminent Communist giant emerged in the form of China. Successful participation in the Sino-Indian War came with a bill that, paired with the costs of environmental renewal at home, the Soviets paid only with difficulty. Soviet accomplishment in the arts and sciences, starved of patronage, declined precipitously. When the U.N. came knocking in 2045, the Soviets were two generations behind the global standard in electronics. Their once-vaunted space program was but a shadow of its former glory. What the U.S.S.R. did have to offer was the miniaturized nuclear reactor (slim safety margins and all), along with ten thousand junked armored cars, all fission-powered, readily converted to reconnaissance, liaison, and utility duties in environments requiring full NBC protection, and all fully capable of independently powering a colony of modest size. In return, the U.N. agreed to hold Moscow blameless for any "accidental fission" and found a place for 20,000 additional convict laborers sourced from the GULAG.
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France retained a substantial amount of overseas real estate and subjects in the second half of the twentieth century, and although the terms of association sweetened progressively, France fought long wars to retain Algeria, Indochina, and the Levant. In an open secret, France also played a crucial role in securing Quebec's independence from Canada, a gambit for which it was temporarily expelled from the European Union.
As in past eras, retention of a colonial empire and tampering in the affairs of other peoples earned the French a certain pride-of-place in international affairs. To protect their considerable investments in Africa, the French assiduously cultivated the United Nations. Peacekeeping, in Africa especially, thus took a familiar form: the French fist, fit snugly in the United Nations glove. French talents contributed their fair share to Unity's development, and the launch pads at the Centre Spatial Guyanais were practically a U.N. operation after 2021. Beyond these traditional aspects of project involvement, however, France distinguished itself in another way: by providing the future colony with defensive equipment when long-range sensing data suggested that Chiron might be home to potentially dangerous lifeforms.
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A Kashmiri gas plant at sunset.
Internecine conflict prevented Indian from assuming the position of an acknowledged superpower until very late in the twenty-first century, after the traditional claimants to the title were themselves exhausted by the onslaught of war, disease, and environmental disaster. India suffered through its own share of catastrophes, winning a short, sharp naval war with China in spectacular fashion but later experiencing the unmitigated horror of a nuclear exchange with Pakistan during the Six Minute War.
During its own reconstruction, India invested heavily in the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri, if only to affirm, even to itself, that it possessed not just the wherewithal, but the national will, to contribute to the well-being of all humankind even in light of its own heavy need. As the starship's final fitting out began, India's technology sector was moving from a service focus to idea creation, while Indian materials science was leading the way in the production of new polymers. A considerable quantity of the hardware at Unity's heart, along with its countless 3D printers, were Indian-produced. Urgent requests in the 2060s prompted India to deliver more digital and industrial equipment to the United Nations.
Several of India's rebuilt cities were hastily-constructed residential factories that fed last-minute requirements up the Space Elevators directly into the Unity's hold. The Times of India famously lampooned the ship as a rapacious European gourmand snacking on India's beleaguered people.
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Recently, I was prompted to do a bit of a "story Bible" for this fan-fic of mine as I look to engage new folks to come and supply content of their own. This involves taking a step back and looking at the story so far with fresh eyes. It also means a bit of ret-con work to make the story "true up" when all the pieces are laid on the table, end-to-end.
Sadly, this will ruin many of the dates previously supplied, but I suppose
Here are the fundamental elements of the world I built on Brian Reynolds's back, as it were. I will expand these as I develop more of them.
Missions to Alpha Centauri
▪ The Pathfinder Probe launched during a fruited period of Earth's history, under circumstances far more auspicious than those surrounding the Unity Mission.
▪ The Pathfinder Probe landed on Alpha Centauri, and a base was established, but contact with the colony was lost shortly thereafter amidst an outbreak of viral illness. The specific fate of the Pathfinder colonists was not disclosed by the U.N. Security Council and remained a mystery even to the Unity command crew.
▪ Because of the challenge of training a huge number of people on common systems when some of them would enter cold sleep decades before their comrades, the mission opted for a "last common technological paradigm" philosophy. It would be the equivalent of a space ship in 2060 launching with systems and equipment built in the 1980s, or at least designed with only the same set of components.
▪ Work on Unity commenced in 1996. Unity left the Sol System for Alpha Centauri in 2071.
A Brief History of Violence
▪ Earth was afflicted by a series of human-caused catastrophes, including but not limited to: a pandemic of Red Flu, the Six-Minute (atomic) war between India and Pakistan, the Sino-Indian War, the Hypersurvivalist Wars, and the Second American Civil War.
▪ "Hypersurvivalist Wars" is a blanket term for hundreds of conflicts, fought primarily in North America and Europe, that pitted adherents of the anarcho-populist "survivalist" movement against various national governments and local self-defense forces. The central figure in this tragedy was Nathan Holn, a malcontent and pseudo-intellectual famous first for his hagiography of Vice President and would-be American monarch, Aaron Burr, second for his calls to arms against the legitimate governments of the United States and Canada, and third for his execution after being found guilty of attacking a U.S. Army base in Colorado. Holn died before the turn of the twenty-first century, but he lived on in the popular imagination of his fevered followers, who feared and resented the change that social media told them was happening so rapidly and on all fronts. The conflicts during this period followed a distinctive pattern. A national emergency would occasion pleas for assistance from Washington or Ottawa, leading to confrontations between authority and the self-styled “Holnists,” often in extreme conditions for which only the latter were properly prepared. As pirate radio broadcasts urged concerned citizens to hoard supplies and discount official instructions – frequently invoking the specter of government-operated concentration camps – Holnist instigators would infiltrate hospitals, distribution centers, and staging areas, accusing authorities of withholding vital services. Sometimes, the Holnists distributed supplies of their own to burnish their image of legitimacy. Popular unrest would then provide the hyper-survivalists with cover to conduct organized looting of food convoys and private property. The federal government’s heavy-handed response would cow some, outrage others, and generally arrive too late to do anything but pick up the pieces. During the first few years of the Anarchy, tens of thousands of new recruits rallied to the cause thinking to find assistance from the seemingly well-stocked Holnists, while the central governments lost what precious little legitimacy they had previously managed to retain. The reality was that Holnism was usually just another word for self-aggrandizement. Holnists took what they wanted--land, goods, people--and defied anyone to stop them. Holn’s philosophies never constituted a coherent roadmap for political transformation, and though a cottage industry of serious thinkers labored mightily to produce political platforms and coherent manifestos for living, the masses of his so-called adherents had no time for intellectuals or consistency. Holn's calls for a Second American Revolution fired the popular imagination, that's all. The existing alliance between "self-governance" movements and religious radicals provided the path down which millenarian movements like Evangelical Fire marched to secession, then to defeat. Holn's collected papers contained a message that was, at root, fundamentally self-contradictory and anti-social. Holn knew what he was against: compromise, racial and gender equality, civic-minded sacrifice. He hardly knew what he wanted the United States to become. Put simply: Holn claimed to want to make the world “safe for the little guy, who works hard and deserves much,” but his mélange of racism, misogyny, and anarchic sentiments was generally a formula for making civilization impossible. Holnists were bushwhackers and sociopaths dressed up in philosophical trappings.
▪ After Nathan Holn, perhaps the second most-infamous man in modern American history was Jean-Baptiste Keller. Keller was no more successful a man than Holn in his many careers, but his politics were far more coherent. A wind farmer and sometime-lay pastor in southern Illinois, he was a self-described “mourner” of the breakdown of civil society at the local level. His rise as a globally influential thinker coincided with a steep decline in the fortunes of his local church and a severe economic depression that once again hollowed out the cities of the West’s traditional industrial heartlands. In a deliberate critique of phylism, Keller linked the decline of social and economic well-being with the breakdown of the traditional family and physical community – literally, one’s geographic neighbors. While neither a Luddite nor Evangelical, Keller echoed the traditional complaint of the Religious Right that the Internet 2.0 was a gateway to troubling addiction, deluding its users by enabling them to engage in fundamentally false, and therefore spiritually unfulfilling, interactions. with free trade policies, which he considered responsible for an “epidemic” of social ills. Keller allowed that his appeals were not intended for a general audience per se, but hoped that they might have special application to those facing economic and social dislocation as a result of changing patterns of economic and cultural behavior due to globalization. This pattern of thought, although less popular than Holnism, nevertheless attracted hundreds of thousands of committed followers. Keller eventually amassed a bizarre constellation of supporters, including the families of out-of-work engineers from the Great Lakes region who accused Wall Street of failing to stand by the American worker and students at the Midwest’s many public universities who felt that they were being prepared for vocations that free trade policies had rendered inviable. Keller later reappeared to rally communities of the faithful both within and outside occupied Des Moines, orchestrating a series of diversionary attacks on Holnist defensive positions to cover the smuggling of weapons and relief to followers trapped behind enemy lines. Gradually derided as cultists, Keller’s followers were frequently subjected to massacres, first by the Holnists, then by the U.S. Army, and later by various adversaries ranging from mercenaries employed by the American Reclamation Corporation to local Home Guard units operating under federal writ during the Third Reconstruction. Of necessity, Keller authorized designated followers to raise standing “self-defense committees” on the model of the Viet Minh, raising money and collecting weapons and other supplies intended to make good on a new vision of “armed neutrality.” Whether at Keller’s command or otherwise, forces acting in his name not only ejected the Holnists from Des Moines, but slaughtered tens of thousands of refugees in the care of the Red Cross, alleged retaliation for pogroms previously visited upon the Kellerites themselves. Keller’s adherents eventually went underground in the face of mounting pressure from the U.S. Army and the ARC. Many relocated to the Northern California region where they centered various around shared cultural heritage, civic orientation, or even lineage, frequently lamented the breakdown of civil society at a distinctively local level, consciously rejecting the move toward globalized conceptions of identity enabled by the telecommunications revolution of the early twenty-first century.
▪ Decades after the reunification of both the United States and Canada, Holnism remained a powerful political lure for those who considered themselves to have been failed by the reconstruction governments, and the Spartan Movement took some cues from Holnism. Spartan ideology begins with a Realist premise: the State of Nature is a war of all against all. Security is possible only through subjugation or elimination of threats, and the soldier must maintain their skill through practice. In choosing coexistence with geopolitical adversaries, the West doomed itself, first to subversion, then to military destruction. Spartan thought differs from Holnism in that it is not explicitly predatory, although it is equally as violent. The Spartan competes with the "lesser self" as much as with opponents; unlike hypersurvivalism, however, it values military readiness more than generic "preparedness." That said, a fight against an unwilling or unprepared enemy is of no moral value.
Notes on the Geopolitical Situation on Earth
▪ At different times, national sponsors for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri included: the United States, Canada, the European Union, the British Empire, the French Union, the U.S.S.R., Communist China, Golden China, India, Japan, Brazil, and Argentina.
▪ Antarctica was settled, terraformed, and ultimately home to several new nation-states by 2070. Large new landmasses were raised up in the Indian and Pacific Oceans to facilitate human settlement.
▪ Colonialism and freedom struggle continue to dominate a world where the Cold War still rages. France, despite having pioneered what it calls a "third way," is mostly seen as a Soviet stooge. A rift that began forming between Communist China and the U.S.S.R. cracked wide open with the rise of the Golden Emperor, but China is still coming into its own as a great power. The U.S.S.R. is suffering from economic and political difficulties reminiscent of the Gorbachev era. The United States is still rebuilding from the horrors of a civil war that ruined much of the South and Midwest.
Notes on the Faction Leaders
▪ Prokhor Zakharov was the second-oldest official member of the Unity passengers. (In theory, a stowaway could have been even older.) Sheng-ji Yang is younger by a few years.
▪ Captain Jonathan Garland's was murdered. No perpetrator(s) were ever apprehended. Most survivors assume he was ordered killed by Santiago. Morgan, sometimes called "the first stowaway," is the second most-popular suspect.
▪ Santiago lost control of the mutiny she started. The "mainline" Spartans intended to commandeer mission resources to build an independent colony. The Holnists began self-destructive attacks on the ship and its crew--violence for its own sake. They were seemingly content to destroy the Unity, and themselves along with it, as an expression of retributive rage over being excluded by mission planners.
Fundamentals of Faction Design
▪ Each faction in the story is led by a single leader (with the exception of the Dreamers, which are led by two). The leader has articulated an ideological vision that answers three questions in a unique way. These are: (1) What is the fundamental truth of the universe? (2) Why did civilization on Earth fail? (3) What is needed for the human species to survive, and thrive, on Chiron?
▪ Here is a link to some basic faction information (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ltUEaxVJtPdxmSfyEb-LAKN-qej7m16F/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=118092342676983150596&rtpof=true&sd=true). As you will see, some are incomplete or uncomfortably similar to others.
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Name: Sergeant Peter “Pete” Landers
Rank: -
Position: -
Country of Origin: United States of America
DOB: c. 2032
Height: 73.0 cm
Weight: 90.4 kg
Credit for this faction goes to Thorn of the community at The Frontier.com, a new-defunct forum for matrix-style games.
Service Record:
Precise date and place of birth unknown. Speech analysis yields 82.3% probability of origination in Midwestern United States. Attended, but did not graduate, Iowa Technical College. Volunteered for Illinois Army National Guard following death of schoolmates during hyper-survivalist raid. Promoted to Sergeant following abbreviated Non-Commissioned Officer Candidate Course.
WIA during skirmish with Holnist fighters at Cairo, IL, December 2053. Recovered by devotees of anti-disassociationist cult leader Jean Baptiste Keller. Passed through hands of multiple followers to avoid capture by Holnist death squads. Diagnosed with Helsinki Syndrome on return to unit. Listed MIA following Federal defeat outside Davenport, IA.
U.S. Army Signals Intelligence intercepts indicate subject was leading Kellerite troops shortly after disappearance, scoring numerous victories over U.S. Army and auxiliaries, significantly delaying reconstitution of Government authority west of Mississippi River. Implicated in civilian massacres.
Resurfaced outside Sacramento, CA in 2058 in overall command of a regional self-defense compact. Present at Berkeley, CA speech at which visibly infirm Keller reemerged from hiding to speak on Unity mission.
Caution: United Nations Intelligence Agency place very high confidence in assessments concluding that approximately two hundred Kellerites boarded Unity while it was still under construction and entered hibernation, intending to join the colony. As early as 2045, a fire at the Brooklyn Navy Yard provided cover for Tribe sympathizers previously inserted into the base's industrial fire brigade to board a supernumerary module and cache small arms intended for use by future Kellerite stowaways.
For a Tribal, Pete Landers was the epitome of the welcome convert to anti-disassociationism: a well-meaning young man who, once he understood the Kellerite philosophy, sacrificed everything to put himself in its service. Aboard Unity, he was the chief author of their vengeance against the hated Holnists.
Once Planetside, the "Tribe" settled at the mouth of a broad river, which they named the Slowwind. Using Radnor hoverbikes, they also mounted local patrols, hoping to dissuade other survivors from coming too near.
Less than thirty-six hours after the Kellerites arrived, Spartan Colonel Corazón Santiago founded the settlement of Sparta Command on rocky heights not far upriver. Spartan landing operations were soon disturbed by the arrival of a Tribe security patrol. Santiago ordered her people into defensive positions and demanded that the "interlopers" withdraw. The Tribe commander refused, and the Spartans opened fire, killing three scouts and destroying a pair of bikes before the rest broke contact. Spartan Myrmidons gave immediate chase, capturing a third bike.
Within the week, and under close observation from Spartan rovers, Tribe 'Formers poured concrete for a bunker complex on an island forming in the final oxbow bend of the Slowwind before it reached the sea, effectively closing the delta to Spartan river traffic.
Psych Profile: Defender
U.S. Army induction Psych screen indicates strong need for attachment to authority figures.
At Quad Cities debrief, ARC trauma specialist documented insubordinate language, heightened paranoia, and “wavering commitment to mission,” indicative of increased vulnerability to recruitment by subversive organizations. Subject repeatedly criticized command decisions to hold position during civilian massacres by survivalist flying columns. Recommendation for subject to be withdrawn from line for further medical observation overruled by commanding officer due to exigency of military situation at the time.
Subject's commanding officers repeatedly judged him a tactician of unusual ability despite limited formal military training.
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Sathieu Metrion was an Annunciator of the Tommorow Initiative.
Data Services mobilized a massive response to the Data Core during the Unity Crisis, fighting fires and starting systems diagnostics. Peacekeeper Terrance LaCroix later found evidence to confirm that they had ignored multiple alarms to supervise key life support and fire control systems remotely from Core Control.
Chief Engineer Zakharov had ignored the needs of others, but Data Services under their Lieutenant Commander Tạ Dọc Thân had treated the reactor crew's every need as both urgent and sacrosanct. Internal message traffic between data terminals used by Thân's team found that they had worked to resolve a half-dozen competing emergencies, not least of which were viruses, compiling errors threatening to consume precious system resources, and physical attacks on junction boxes elsewhere aboard the starship. Thân led his people well. And then he had died.
Thân was a French Indochina native of about 32 at the time of his death. Born to a wealthy Catholic family in Huế, he completed his education in France and never returned home. Thân was a computer scientist minoring in Philosophy quickly placed in supervisory positions with the European Space Agency. Involvement with the Centre National d' Etudes Spatiales and the Venusian Survey preceded secondment to the Unity Mission. Thân had been an unwilling candidate. His file was appended with a personal letter to the French president requesting reassignment--a reflection of the strong political valence acquired by the mission in French politics.
Despite personal misgivings regarding the value of the U.N. mission to his home country, Thân remained true to form, earning high marks from evaluators for his mental stability and team orientation. He had an enviably high score on both parts of the Atherholt Trauma Function Test. U.N. psychologists judged that disappointment over career derailment would not prevent Thân's becoming "a full and valuable mission contributor."
The Peacekeeping Forces killed Tạ Dọc Thân, in a matter of speaking. He was one of the approximately forty fatalities caused by decompression when Pravin Lal ordered the ejection of the Data Core. The surviving data scientists never satisfied themselves as to who bore responsibility--the supposedly transparent Peacekeepers used a masked account.
Among Thân's numerous protégés was Sathieu Metrion, a Thai. National service in the Royal Thai Navy prefaced training in data science at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and ultimate nomination to the Unity Mission. In possession of Officer-Like Qualities, Metrion was thought to lack the political acumen or perceived reliability to be promoted to higher rank within the U.N. command structure, a fate typical of those who joined as members of explicitly national contingents.
Metrion led his faction's first expedition to Chiron's southern pole, literally ramming his way through a Nautilus Pirates blockade with a full-sized Unity Hydrofoil, one of the few combat-capable watercraft not commandeered by the New State.
Experience with the Red Flu led all Tomorrow Institute personnel to don bulky encounter suits--full-body coveralls of no-rip fabric with integral booties, gloves, and hood, similar to the "Moon Suits" of twenty-first century clean rooms. Colored bands at waist, biceps, and thighs indicated belonging to certain divisions aboard Unity. The initial accounts of the Peacekeepers point to a robust representation of the original departments among the Hydrofoil's landing party: the purple of the U.N. Security Forces, the blue of the Aquatic Operations Division, the green of Botany, the orange of Damage Control, the red of Engineering, the silver of Medical, the Yellow of Industrial Safety, and, predominating, the black of Data Services. At least one new arrival wore the red-in-black of the Constabulary.
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Name: Robin Huxley
Rank: Master Sergeant
Position: Forward Contact Team
County of Origin: United Kingdom
DOB: 05-04-2035
Service Record:
Born 2035, Cornwall, United Kingdom, to military parents. Attended Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, specializing in counterinsurgency tactics, mechanized weapon technologies, and with minor focus in political sciences. Joined British Territorial Army upon graduating, saw action in Edinburgh Retaliation (Second Scottish War of Independence outside U.K.) in a tank division she later commanded. Spearheaded use of efficient anti-militia tactics towards the end of the conflict, crushing all nationalist opposition in Northumberland, earning her the nickname of “Boudicaa” from Briton and Scot alike. Returned to a hero's welcome to Truro, said to have deterred incipient Cornish separatism simply with her presence.
Served as an Imperial expeditionary advisor in the Canadian Troubles. Controversially led armored cavalry unit in crowd suppression action during Battle of Montreal. Civilians were cowed and separated from armed irregulars besieging the airport, but oppressive optics further tarnished Anglo-Canadian efforts towards winning hearts and minds, ultimately losing Quebec. Had further success east- awarded honors from both Confederation of Canada and the Dominion of Newfoundland after victorious Gros Morne campaign against Vinlanders, Holnist offshoot hyper-survivalists hiding among the island's fjords. Modified snow speeder tanks for “stealth” ambushes, one of her most infamous tactics.
Settled after reassignment to Australia, becoming a guest professor on governmental theory at Northern Territory University. Undertook a study of aboriginal societies as part of master's in applied history, focusing in nomadic cultures. Published thesis "Correlational Trajectories Across Declining Premodern Polities", featuring a novel repurposing of formulas from tank munition vector calculus for her historical projections. Formed a veterans unit of fellow anti-militiamen, the Darwin Road Warriors. Infamous for racing through the outback in demilitarized tank chassis. Personally witnessed ratification of controversial Farewell With Honour agreements in Canberra.
Record within the British Empire and reputation for carrying out stabilizing missions earned a fast-tracked assignment to Unity mission. Originally recommended for officership on security team, instead volunteered for J.T. Marsh's Forward Contact Team. Given latitude to recruit fellow former veterans for mission, and indeed placed many anti-survivalists and former tank crew in key positions. While their military experience was seen as an invaluable asset among his team, the warden was quickly disappointed to find their discipline lacking, their demeanors brusque and unserious, and their loyalties undeniably not with him. When Huxley later declared herself Khagan, he was all too happy to discharge her and her followers.
Despite absence, it has been observed that former DRW members within the Unity security force behaved erratically in a coordinated fashion during Planetfall, and have been linked to the disappearance of mathematicians from the science team, along with several librarians possessing key archival data. It is unknown of these personnel are in contact with Huxley or any other members of the FCT.
Psych Profile: Wanderer Restorationist
Superb combat prowess due to comprehensive knowledge of tactics and talent at repurposing opponent strategies to use against them. Units under subject's command maintained strong esprit de corps through fraternal bloodshed. Not content to stay in one place, favoring movement and activity instead of passiveness and caution. Scorn for the contented and sedentary possibly rooted in family's pre-military working class roots.
Intellectual background is of interest. While known to be an outspoken critic of Nathan Holn's neo-feudalistic survivalism, subject agrees with assertions of a slow “dum-dum decay” of civilization, leading to inevitable collapse and complete dark age. Morally opposed to hypothetical catastrophe, in contrast to Holnist dogma. Instead favors the rejuvenation of civilization by a return to the mutual separation of urbanized and frontier societies. Reduced from hegemony, smaller urban sedentary societies would then be forced to engage in healthy competition, spurred on by challenges from the frontier. Suspect excerpts hint at a far long-term restoration of universal empire via nomadic conquest, plans determined by precisely calculated social engineering, statistical modeling. Ideals conveyed in NTU teachings, inspiration unclear, possibly twentieth century works.
Quote: “The hyper-survivalist militias of old Earth were wrong. Humanity had not fallen, nor were we in a decline. What was truly at stake was stagnation- should we be content forever to live soft, innocent-bystander lives? Perhaps the masses can, but we shall not. To the wilds we'll go, taking what we need from the complacent, until their cities fall, their nations break, and our nucleus lives on.”
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Huxley and fellow FCT scout rest on a heavy buggy during early reconnaissance of Planet. The former Darwin Road Warriors' tendency to add cosmetic customizations to their vehicles and even their uniforms was another act of unprofessionalism often bemoaned by Warden Marsh.
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Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, Traditional
Rampart, water catchment, grow tent. This was the ironclad sequence of construction followed by every successful colony.
Without a complete understanding of Centauri ecology, early settlements grew familiar crops in hermetically sealed environments using Terran seeds and growth medium.
Constraints on the supply of labor, defensible space, and packaged rations meant that food production vied with, and often superseded, cultivation of medicinal plants.
Once the colonists made a close study of Centauri organisms, however, they identified a number of plant and animal byproducts useful for the care of sick and wounded persons, including analgesics, antipyretics, bioadhesives, and organic fibrin sealants.
The first rich survey of this type was led by Walter Kyle Planitzer, a U.N. Marine serving with the Peacekeeping Forces. Mechanics in Warm Welcome modified a mobile field hospital with laboratory equipment for analysis of plant material.
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(https://i.imgur.com/dYes82h.png)
Schematics for the T-42 Babayka, a shagokhod ("walker") armored bipedal weapons platform built by the Soviet Union. Shagokhods were used extensively by the imperial powers in various police actions and stabilization operations throughout the 21st century. In the lead-up to the launch of the Unity, the U.N. Security Forces themselves resorted to their own contingents of baby blue-painted shagokhods purchased from Soviet, American, or Japanese surplus to protect their fragile Space Elevator zones. Their ability to traverse difficult terrain, attain greater battlefield visibility, and psychologically intimidate lesser-armed foes came at the cost of far greater expense, meaning that only the most technologically advanced or financially capable militaries possessed shagokhods.
While amateur public domain, open-sourced, or otherwise leaked blueprints were brought to Chiron in the Unity's massive data archives, no prototypes for extraterrestrial shagokhods were built until colonial society had progressed considerably, towards the "Pre-Sentience Age". Not until the advent of Portable Fission Reactors and Advanced Industrial Base were such war machines feasible for Planetary warfare. But when they were, they were a sight to behold.
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A New State NS-13 Murat shagokhod and a Tirailleur assault an enemy polar base. Note the use of Particle Impactor weaponry.
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Name: Cuzco Sol
Rank: Powertech
Position: Power Ops Engineering
County of Origin: Guatemala
DOB: 05-03-2043
Service Record:
Lucero Eztli Salvador, born 2043, Guatemala City. Mother a policewoman, father a doctor. Childhood marked by repeated juvenile offenses - fighting, truancy, shoplifting, data denial, vandalism. Most local records officially expunged or fragmentary, extant only in U.N. Consolidated Criminal Justice Database. Known membership in Sons of Ra tribal youth subculture, remnants of auto-lawyer court logs suggest no fewer than five instances of participation in sanctioned gang battles and at no fewer than two unsanctioned fights resulting in moderate non-tribal civilian injuries. Arson attempt of protected urban grove led to alias Lucero Chispero and elevation to Medjay within Ra gang hierarchy. Withdrawn from private school by mother, who resigned Policia Transnacional commission to provide full-time home education.
Attended José Simeón Cañas Central American University, studied Energy Engineering and Mesoamerican Mythology. Abruptly dropped out in 2062 after school trip to El Mirador. Embarked on worldwide tour of archeological sites dedicated to solar worship, from Hawikuh to Tiwanaku, subsidized by freelance solar work and selling ayahuasca. Paid tribute and inducted as acolyte at Apollo’s Throne, Khartoum. Eurasian leg of tour cut short by the Sixth Yugoslav Crisis, disrupting access to Illyrian Neolithic temple ruins. Resumed studies until the Second Central American Civil War. Dodged El Salvadoran draft officers amidst separatist riots in Antiguo. Reappeared in Guatemala City as head of Espíritu de Sangre (Blood Spirit), a municipal auxiliary force consisting of many former gang-mates.
Fought with distinction, eliminating sympathizer cells efficaciously. Honored with Order of Justo Rufino Barrios after the Defense of Palacio Verde, EdS became integrated into Centroamerican armed forces as autonomous militia. Redeployed to fighting various DEA-supported insurgencies- Costa Rican national secessionists, Mexican revanchists in Chiapas, Holnist free-loggers in Los Altos. Conduct appears to have been largely within bounds of Geneva Convention, though incidents exist of unit shaving and exposing captives to direct sunlight until tanned. Rumors of destruction of local jungle neopagan shrines attributed to accidental burnover while clearing out foliage in pursuit of neo-Contras. Commended with Roméo Dallaire Medal for bravery in the field following entrance of U.N. Security Forces mission into the conflict.
Recalled from Yucatán annexation campaign for noncombat duties in the wake of Hurricane Quincy. Unit performed flood rescue operations ably. Received Medal of Two Oceans for reestablishing electricity in Tegucigalpa with improvised Perovskite solar cells reprinted from cyclone-damaged building material. Reprimanded once for ordering his troops to fly the Midday Banner from the top of the Edificio Arce. Recurrent history of elevating loyalty to Ra tribal religion quietly overlooked by military superiors despite complaints from Cuban officers embedded in mission.
Finished degree after war. Returned to Egypt. Employed as power cell array optimizer for Morgan Solarfex in Omdurman. Fully initiated and rechristened as active member of Aten priesthood. Learned Coptic and began mentorship of local disaffected young men. Frequent speaker at Khepri Temple of the Dawn, guest sermon “Eternal Morning is Man's Gift” of minor renown on local nets. Placed third in Wíinkilil at Baku 2068 World Universal Fighting Tournament. Recruited as solar power engineer by U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission Committee. Recommended for emergency response experience, military service, hiring network, and representation of the emergent neopagan Ra cult and the Sons of Ra tribal subculture.
Assumed low-profile yet locally important role during Planetfall. Even as other sections were falling apart due to structural instability and in-fighting, rallied the Power Ops team to keep the Unity's solar sails functioning even as Zakharov's scientific engineering teams fought to get the reactor online. Despite dearth of weaponry, led several defense actions against Spartan/Holnist incursions for days before U.N. Marine forces could arrive to assist. Under Sol's direction, the powertechs gained infamy for adopting the Ra Boys practice of shaving their captives and leaving them in the ship's observational rooms to be exposed to light from the approaching Alpha Centauri system. Whereabouts post-landing not yet determined- potential status as independent faction contradicted by conflicting reports that Sol negotiated a partnership with figures as disparate as Roshan Cobb, Miriam Godwinson, Oscar van de Graaf, or even Corazón Santiago.
Psych Profile: Heliocentric Devotee
Bright disposition and sense of camaraderie form initial impressions of individual. Further interaction reveals apparent good-naturedness accompanied by bouts of braggadocio, male swagger. Positive personality undercut by inclination towards tendency to steer conversations, bordering on aggression. Subject shows submission only in matters related to personal metaphysics, such as in the presence of senior co-religionists. Theological-memetic analysis suggests subject's sun worship extends beyond conventional Ra practices. Questionable ideological views offset by high motivational potential, seen also in other Ra followers approved for mission. Fascination with stellar veneration shapes subject's scientific priorities, explaining both technical proficiency in chosen vocation as well as avowed reason for joining Unity: to seek a place of two suns.
Dominant competitive spirit. Command abilities forged from youthful indiscretions. High skill in traditional unarmed combat. Adolescent experiences suggest past frustrations towards family dynamics. Subject's mother, adherent of the revived Cult of Minerva (https://stampaday.wordpress.com/2018/02/20/the-guatemalan-dictator-and-his-temples-to-a-greek-goddess/) in Guatemala, perhaps instrumental in rehabilitating subject. Displays ability to channel experience of youth tribal warfare towards prosocial activities, even in peacetime. Meritorious conduct and loyalty to lawful governments during time of global crisis demonstrates subject's truly reformed nature. Only possible reservation stems from subject's potential religious disagreements with non-adherents. Potentially mitigable by recruiting additional Ra co-religionists to staff solar sailer team. Postwar mental health record verified by multiple U.N. Psych Chaplains. Sole dissenting interviewer resigned, later revealed to be Earth Mother acolyte.
Quote: “As the clouds of the dirt worshippers' beloved Gaia burned and sundered, the magnificent rays of Kinich Ahau, Tonatiuh, Inti, Amaterasu, Helios warmed the land and the waters. Even as weaklings thirst and drown, Great Ra shines on his chosen. Here, on another Earth, let us give thanks to the life-giving love of our two new Suns- for before our fathers found fire, there was you.”
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Rapidly accelerating environmental deterioration in the 21st century provoked wildly-different responses from different demographics. In the FirstWorld and SecondWorld, particularly in the capitalist and consumerist state capitalist nations, the long-since demoralized middle classes turned inwardly towards spiritual perfection, sparking fads from the American neo-hippie movement on the left and the Evangelical Fire on the right, hardline Madrid Catholicism in southern Europe, and the various ethno-religious mystic trends of the Slavic Resurgence in the Warsaw Pact states. The newly-SecondWorld states in Latin America, the declining-FirstWorld countries in northern Europe, and the teeming masses in the colonial empires all gravitated towards Return to Nature ideologies, promoting atavistic identities to reclaim ancient wisdom as a means to survive in a swiftly-changing world. Such memeplexes called for the veneration of primal forces, eschewing the hyper-technological state of modernity, and addressing ecological destruction along religious lines. For the various Gaian neopagan movements, this meant adopting Green policies on an Earth-wide level, healing the maternal planet through conservationist efforts to staunch Her suffering. For the Ra cult, this meant embracing global climate change, adapting to its challenges through the mass adoption of solar power and celebrating the masculine energies involved in struggling against environmental disaster. Needless to say, such movements often found themselves at odds with one another, and with their political and scientific establishments.
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An Archytas launch vehicle with satellite payload stands ready on the pad at the Paramount while an 8x8 armored rescuer vehicle evacuates the last of the ground crews to safety.
The Ascendancy's enthusiasm for self-aggrandizement caught up to it in M.Y. 30. After losing more than a quarter of his territory, Nwabudike Morgan prevailed on his increasingly fearful neighbors, Zakharov, Anhaldt, Metrion, and Landers, to form a defensive alliance.
The four made odd bedfellows: the scientists despised one another over the divergent opinions regarding whether popular mores should serve as a brake on public science, Anhaldt often accused the Tomorrow Institute of attempting to infiltrate his networks, and all four other factions were united in their resentment of Morgan's demands to be "made whole" anytime Monopoly analysts assessed their new allies' military performance as deficient. Nonetheless, it proved a winning combination. Fighter for fighter, Tribal minutemen were the near-equal of Pahlavi's genetically-enhanced Specials. Equipped with the Chaos weaponry coming out of University laboratories and battle plans turned out by Unity's salvaged supercomputers, the Kellerites were the first effective answer to Neo-Sapien.
Finding that she little liked being on the back foot, Pahlavi resolved to turn a new leaf and find friends of her own. Roshann Cobb's price for Dreamer participation in her war: access to the Ascendancy's space program, and a large share of the prisoners taken by her legionnaires.
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A light reconnaissance VTOL departs the Restoration mission carrier, Battlecry of Freedom, during the hunt for the Spartan arsenal ship, Dynast, in the Sea of Nessus.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5d3d74d2-b8db-4f10-8015-25877b6bee44/dddwjq6-026b5a1e-90a3-46a5-895c-3913898f3339.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzVkM2Q3NGQyLWI4ZGItNGYxMC04MDE1LTI1ODc3YjZiZWU0NFwvZGRkd2pxNi0wMjZiNWExZS05MGEzLTQ2YTUtODk1Yy0zOTEzODk4ZjMzMzkucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.lj4Rl83tzlEmrWIITK3MqCUb33SgSu0t21r1D90aFSM)
Dynast, hours before destruction by the guns of the University of Planet's megafortress, Zvezda. The Academician, a man known for his violent distempers and proud of his own national service, needed little of Nwabudike Morgan's prodding to better fortify the eastern approaches to the Howling Straits, a task he entrusted to an old personal friend, ex-Soviet Podpolkóvnik Revmir Galaktionov.
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Hounded by General Salan's aeronaval forces, Spartan Droungarios Arkan Deng and his mighty warship strayed just within the extreme range of Zakharov's rocket-assisted artillery.
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The Gauss rifles of the Spartan Stander were reputed to have kept a dozen more ships in port for every nautical mile the battleship travelled from Fleet Anchorage.
Stunned by the loss of its consort, the Dynast, Stander chose the better of two bad match-ups, running the gauntlet of Restoration air power in preference to Zakharov's guns.
Battlecry of Freedom stood out from the fight and scrambled nearly two dozen needlejets. The result was a surprise even for the bold Spartans: Stander's point-defense lasers knocked four of the first wave from the sky. Micromissiles launched from the battleship's waist-mounted pepperboxes did for six in the next. The ship's stealth coating and powerful jammers helped reduce the effectiveness of the jets' bombing runs: Stander suffered only three direct hits from gravity bombs and missiles, none of which were sufficient to break through her buckypaper armor.
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Name the most resilient parasite. A bacterium? A virus? An intestinal worm? No. The most resilient parasite is an idea. Explosive. Highly contagious. Once formed in the brain, an idea is impossible to erradicate. My scientists tell me that even what is allegedly forgetten is still in there... somewhere. By rearranging the pieces of the puzzle into a sensible portrait, one gains the key to self-knowledge--and, thus, to taming our species' worst and most self-destructive impulses. I haven't got a map. But I do have a lovely box of dynamite. - The Art of Extraction
The first Probe Teams on Chiron were merely digital safe-crackers. When bases were overrun in the conventional manner, specialists were ushered to crawl over what remained of the defenders' Network Nodes.
It was not long before some factions expanded the scope of Probe Team activity to encompass a fuller range of intelligence missions. The Morganite outpost at Eutherium was rumored to be a traditional listening station. The Dreamers twice caught and executed confessed Restoration operatives, and, in doing so, furnished evidence sufficient to mute protests from a Planetary Council that had surely sanctioned the prisoners' work. Terrance LaCroix found evidence that the Sabre Corporation personnel who came aboard Unity with Morgan included several individuals sought by INTERPOL on suspicion of having carried out assassinations.
Anyone willing to introduce malicious code into their own base systems could earn a healthy portfolio on the Planetary Exchange. Hence Sheng-ji Yang's wry observation: "When Morgan cannot buy a meal, he is not above bribing the chefs to spoil it."
Roshann Cobb turned the page to a new era when he commissioned a Probe Team without the digital component. The archetypal Probe Team was a combination of data techs and veterans of national or military intelligence agencies, but its ability to squeeze information from human targets stopped not far past the point where bribes and brutality ended. Even with a willing confederate, they could only obtain what that person consciously knew that they knew.
The Dreamer concept required a new paradigm for thinking about a Probe Team's work. Cobb swapped out the computer scientists for physicians and psychiatrists. Equipped with vials of Somnacin and the instruments to chart, record, and analyze the neurological activity of a body at rest, they exhumed treasures never imagined by the likes of Ian Fleming.
Source: This quotation, with some adjustment by your present author, is from Christopher Nolan's 2010 film, Inception.
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The degree of ideological unity achieved by each of the human factions on Chiron varied according to a number of factors. Chief among these were the extent of sympathy for the leader's vision among their immediate retinue at Planetfall, the extent to which the faction provided members with a compelling blueprint for self-actualization, and the quality of leadership provided. Ideological unity was the most reliable, and certainly the cheapest, source of faction stability.
All societies must establish structures to deal with the inherent inequality of their members. On Chiron, inequality arose from both the natural intellectual endowments of each survivor, as well as their ability to work. In theory, the rigorous U.N. screening process, which covered the vast majority of the crew, meant that baseline intellectual attainment was high, and physical fitness could be safely assumed, but the number of those incapacitated by wounds was initially very great, and natural birth, knowledge specialization, and personal preference meant that some were better-suited for certain environments than others. For all their other achievements, world-class glassmakers, pilots, pianists, jurists, chefs, theologians, artillerists, historians, and poets laureate were still unlikely to make fundamental breakthroughs in materials science or repair malfunctioning electronics. Not all of the people answering to Prokhor Zakharov were suited for, or even interested in, a life of the mind. Their place in University society was sometimes important--even vital--but never exalted. To become anything other than a researcher was to fall short of the golden ideal. Life in the Dynamic Enterprise was similarly complicated. Nwabudike Morgan, the chief protagonist in a rags-to-riches story, was an eloquent defender of meritocratic principle, but in practice, the high levels of acceptable corruption conferred almost-insurmountable advantages to those who made their fortunes in the first few years after Planetfall. Mileage varied. Department heads might believe that their staff would not perform at optimal levels without significant compensation, but they were just as likely to accept the premise that labor existed to be exploited. Terra Nova was governed by a small coterie of shareholding families who had helped Oscar van de Graaf assemble his initial subscription to the United Nations. Some of the New Two Thousand, as paid employees of the Joint Stock Company, had direct control over their own land and energy credits. Others were indentured, and survived on a basic outlay of supplies provided in weekly lots, along with whatever charity their employer might dispense.
Elsewhere, divisions between favor and disfavored classes were formalized in an explicit caste system. Military service was the minimum asking price for political voice in Raoul St. Germaine's underwater fiefdom. Yang nerve-stapled anyone who did meet his standards for intellectual and moral utility. The most-fortunate received leadership education at the ruler's right hand. The remainder became technicians or overseers. Each of the four groups ate different diets, received different political education, and spent their recovery cycles only with their own peers. In the Human Ascendancy, extreme meritocracy among the initial survivors at the Pinnacle gave way to planned geniocracy as the faction implemented Pahlavi's grand vision of producing a paragon. Individuals were, quite literally, conceived and brought up by faction minders with the ends. (Natural procreation was strictly forbidden.) Ascendancy techs resolved most defects before full gestation, but the much-abridged adolescence of the faction's newest members received obsessive scrutiny. The price of repeat disappointing performance in any number of endeavors was to have one's genetic line excised from Pahlavi's "blueprint." Social ostracism and demotion were thereafter inevitable.
The number of individual persons in a colony and its "members" rarely meant the same thing. Many factions, including the Labyrinth, Spartans, Archimedes Group, Dreamers, and Human Ascendancy, took or kept what must be called slaves. In Sparta, helots (captives) possessed almost no formal rights and were treated as the common property of the government. Santiago used them to complete public works projects. From his high perch in the Eye of Planet, Sardul Singh challenged prisoners under his care to "elevate" themselves past the need for confinement. Good behavior earned exemption from the chain gang, and, eventually, the opportunity to pursue opportunities for work and education more in keeping with the individual's own tastes.
Some factions, particularly the Nautilus Pirates, Spartan Federation and the Hunters of Chiron, preached a physical discipline and adversarial ethos that required some to fail so that others could judge the extent of their own success. In other factions, especially among the Children of the Atom and the New State, the promise of clear direction and physical security were often enough to overcome complaints about poor quality of life.
The freest and happiest societies on Planet--the Peacekeeping Forces, the Gaians, the Conclave, and the Restoration, and the Tribe--not only embraced a minimum concept of human rights, but imposed the fewest demands on their members and made a point of releasing, if not expelling, those disinclined to their ideologies. (The Restoration was a special case: a military hierarchy, although comprised exclusively of volunteers that shared a common ethos and was strongly committed to the shared objective of getting home to Earth.)
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Name: Trung Thi Hoang
Rank: Captain
Position: Shuttle Pilot
County of Origin: Vietnam
DOB: 03-08-2032
Service Record:
Born 2032, Hai Phong, Vietnamese Soviet Republic. Father a seaplane pilot, mother a futsal player. Taught to fly at an early age, receiving amateur pilot license shortly after eighteenth birthday. Studied Developmental Neuroscience at Vietnam National University. Masters program in Neuropsychology halted after five months with start of the Fourth Indochina War with signing of Zhao-Rivière Agreement. Father’s plane downed by Golden Chinese fighters during the naval 2nd Battle of Cấm River.
Enlisted in the Vietnam People's Air Force following the fall of Hanoi. Completed F-88 Lion flight training, assigned to 989th Fighter regiment, Le Thi Thu Nguyet “Iron Bird” Squadron amidst Southern Pacification Campaign. Took part in the Battle of Hải Dương, scoring first kill. Launched the final volley that sank the GCV Yuan Shikai. Continued counterattacks against invader forces, including pivotal Battle of Spratly Island. Charged with insubordination for providing cover to a civilian convoy when ordered to shoot down a Golden Prince-Marshal. Reassigned to desk job as psychological operations officer.
Served as mental health liaison to Soviet expeditionary forces after French Indochinese forces crossed 17th parallel, activation of WARPAC. Learned deep scanning, personality restoration techniques, combat meditation from GRU military advisors. Conducted landmark psych survey pinpointing cause of Annam Syndrome to French Union use of sonic subliminal stimuli weaponry. Recalled to frontline service after French Indochinese launched second invasion via Lao associated state. Deployed to new western front. Took part in initial wave that captured Vientiane, scored a career high of three kills against AAE bogeys and provided crucial cover to 967th Khe Sanh “Steel Viper” Squadron that destroyed the Indochinese Aéronavale armored war dirigible Sisavang Vatthana.
Shot down over enemy territory during Central Highlands campaign. Captured by Golden Chinese-affiliated counterrevolutionary bandits, held for forty days in infamous Camp Cloud Cobra prison. Feigned defeat under torture, offering convincing false intel that misdirected enemy assets. Despite malnourishment and sleep deprivation, formed plan with fellow prisoners including Vietnamese military servicemen, Warsaw Pact advisors, kidnapped locals, Cambodian refugees, and enslaved tribespeople. Prison revolt successful; later decorated with Military Exploit Order for role as orchestrator.
Remained in region for the duration of war. Group of fellow prisoners formed core of irregular unit Army of the Phoenix, conducting guerrilla attacks and acts of sabotage against Chinese, French, and comprador forces alike. Oversaw liberation of mercenary-occupied native villages. Became involved with one Y Thih Enuol, ethnic Rhade tribal fighter and former Cloud Cobra inmate. Gave military leadership to Y Thih while retaining internal overwatch of unit, including prosecution of looters and other offenders. Forging deep relations to local tribes, Phoenix brought expelled all invader and comprador-collaborator bandits from operation area.
Fought in Spring Festival Offensive precipitating Chinese withdrawal. Golden China’s invasion formally ended after breakdown of Zhao-Rivière. Paris affirmation of French Indochinese sovereignty over Kouang-Tchéou-Wan proved to be final straw.Deferred bereavement leave when Y Thih was KIA by retreating Chinese forces; sought and received reassignment to embedded combat psych officer in the post-New Delhi Treaty push against the French. Oversaw deprogramming of Indochinese prisoners captured during final southern campaign; paper “Demonic Rhythms: Initiation and Indoctrination Practices of the French” well-received, receiving commendation from Warsaw Pact psych researchers. Promoted to captain by end of war.
Did not return home to remaining family. Worked on reconstruction efforts in Central Highlands DMZ among Montagnard villages. Became activist on behalf of tribes, using war hero prestige to advocate for government recognition of wartime service and conferment of veteran benefits. Led womens’ rights campaign modeled after empowered tribeswomen of the Rhede, Cham, Mnong. Publicly repudiated EuroAm ninth-wave feminist consensus.
Subsequent political activities drew more controversy. Demanded prosecution of leaders responsible for Vietnamese military’s program of retaliatory torture of invader POWs. Lobbied for blacklisting of individuals identified by U.N. as probable war criminals. Accused of extrajudicial vigilantism against human traffickers, operating sleeper cells of postwar Phoenix veterans. Appointed by U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission Committee for wartime flight record and psych work. Designated survey shuttle pilot, Unity auxiliary helmsman, tertiary non-emergency psych staff.
Like many impromptu leaders born during the Unity crisis, Trung rallied both former comrades and the lost and desperate alike. Ex-Phoenix professionals stood guard and fought off attacking Holnist wreckers while Trung toiled alongside her new followers to prepare the shuttle bay for launch under rapidly unraveling circumstances. Tragically, the mission’s entire contingent of surveyor shuttles were lost to structural damage caused by a Holnist suicide bomber. Viewing the entire senseless loss of life as further continuation of the irrational conflicts of Earth, and of the tyranny of the violent against the helpless, Trung brought all of the innocents she could, notably leaving behind surrendered Holnists, and took flight to the new world.
Psych Profile: Cognitive Guardian
Extroversion and public outspokenness belie deep analytical abilities and keen observational skills. Subject presents a vibrant, imperious spirit cultivated with wartime service. Calm exterior and courage under fire ensure that subject performs admirably under high-stress crisis situations. Subject is not first to speak, but abundantly responds with detailed and deeply-considered responses when presented with provocation. Diagnosed with hyperkinesthetic acuity at early age, enabling extraordinarily high levels of spatial and motion awareness that is an asset for aviatory duties.
Driven by a deeply personal code of ethics, subject seeks to defend all those around her. Tragedy instilled fierce hatred for unwarranted aggression, deep empathy for the oppressed. Postwar estrangement from surviving family indicates potential sublimation of personal loss into societal aspirations, avoidance of unresolved pain.
Memetic analysis indicates that subject chiefly motivated by sense of justice towards the defenseless and desire to prevent further suffering. Activism for protection of war criminals included calls for more comprehensive personality tests, psychological monitoring of military personnel for potential antisocial tendencies; critics have labeled such methods a "People's Panopticon."
At-times fiery commitment to social causes, concern for the marginalized, potential distraction from overall mission. Capacity to command presents a threat to mission cohesion. Recommend subject assigned to secondary role(s) and sanctioned from ideological discussion whenever possible.
Quote: “We fly from old Earth covered in ash, dreaming of a better home. But those responsible for the great pyre are still among us. There can be no peace, no new world, until the lion lays before the lamb. Violence is a malady of the mind; all maladies must be cured.”
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When you have learned to use a human to fill a gap in the line just as you would sealant to fill a crack in a wall, and with no more hesitation, then you will have understood the full extent of the resources at the Hive's disposal. - Ethics for Tomorrow
To keep his excavators digging, Yang immediately cannibalized most of the vehicles at hand after his Landing Pods made Planetfall. The Hive thus went on to operate a relatively large number of infantry for a faction its size—hardly ideal in a radioactive desert that potential targets quickly learned to avoid.
Labyrinth patrols wandered far afield to locate attractive targets. Even if the attackers used their rations sparingly, a small work party, once captured with its equipment and supplies, might yield up less in the way of food, fuel, and other supplies than it cost to find, fix, and overrun. Since the Hive was reliably aggressive and obsessively insular, it struggled to make up the shortfall through trade. Yang sent his own caravans out, but was unwilling to countenance visitors.
Despite an extremely high birthrate that preserved its manpower pools, the Hive's military didn't get better over time. Living conditions in the Labyrinth were atrocious. A regime of psychological terror was worsened by chronic lack of food and water. Ironically, Yang favored feeding the Drones who were building his warrens and the monitors keeping them in line over the Talents assisting him to rule. But low morale and malnutrition alone do not fully explain faction’s ignominious military record.
Simply put, Yang sapped the Hive of the conditions to produce effective junior officers. Only one in three Hivemen was spared the lobotomizing effects of the Nerve Staple. The fortunate few were rarely prepared for the eager truth-telling and high independence required of successful battlefield commanders. Of the standout commanders that did emerge in spite of these obstacles, many were killed by the Hive's foes before they could pass on their craft.
In time, the rising powers of Chiron tired of Yang’s capriciousness and, increasingly confident in their strength, visited upon the Human Labyrinth a fearsome retribution, razing the outworks of two of Yang’s six known settlements. Secreted in their subterranean fastness, Yang and his disciples rode out the storm, but emerged to find their moisture collectors dismantled and echelon mirrors smashed. Worst of all, the rampaging allies carted away huge quantities of Yang’s primary export, the radioactive metal that gave the Flats their name.
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Once a man changes the relationship between himself and his environment, he perforce gains a new frame of reference. Try as he might, he cannot return to the ignorance he left. Motion changes perspective. If you're stuck, move. The deep thinking comes later. - The Lost World
Of all the technologies ferried across the stars by Unity, none was more decisive to the survival of the First Settlements than the Scout Rover. Formally the Fairchild-Grumman Light All-Terrain Reconnaissance Vehicle Chassis, this ultra-light, ruggedized motor vehicle served in dozens of different applications across every environment Planet had to offer. Earth-mover, ambulance, crane, gun platform, and recovery vehicle—the hardy little ‘Rover did it all and then some.
Powered by sunlight, the baseline model's range was theoretically limitless. Small and light enough in its basic form to be broken down and carried on the backs of just two men, it was hauled up and over mountain ranges, then reassembled on the other side. It even shot rapids. When no foil was at hand, the ‘Rover’s tires could be super-inflated and the vehicle floated like a Conestoga wagon of old.
University of Planet Rover 226, captured in the drone feed above, retained the same mission profile as its simpler forebears but its design reflected from more than a century of hard lessons-learned. The variable wheelbase could be adjusted for heavier cargoes, smoother travel, climbing, and trench-crossing. Cargo pods, easily loaded from the top or rear of its cage, were magnetized to the rover's hull. Steep climbs, high speeds, and hard evasive action no longer risked detachment. If swarmed by xenofungus, the Rover could eject its self-contained cockpit to an altitude of 200' and a distance of more than 700'. A fusion battery, carried in containment behind the pilot, provided ample power for the miniaturized engine. For simpler routes, an onboard AI replaced the crew of one.
Judging by the lack of a defense weapon and self-recovery equipment, it is safe to assume that Rover 226 was relegated to rear-area work.
Source: This quotation slightly altered from the original, which was ascribed to Lal, in connection with Doctrine: Mobility.
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Prisoner transports unload their cargo at the Memory Palace while troopers in first-generation power armor look on. The garrison in this vid-cap surely did not survive long: their attention is misdirected on the disembarkation process, and not the horizon from which attack might come.
Most captives taken in battle by the Dreamers of Chiron were put to the productive and service functions required of any viable base, from farming to facilities maintenance. Talents were another matter.
At best, a Talent was a leader in possession of important factual knowledge about faction governance. At worst, a Talent was an intellectual with ideas that might kick-start the Dreamer's own research activities. Both could be "extracted" through the process known as oneiromachaíri, the "dream knife."
Armored personnel carriers fetched high-value targets back to unique detention centers. Struan's engineers crossed the University's penchant for transformable structures with Yang's insight that what could not be seen was less likely to be attacked. Once loaded, the prisons were ratcheted back down below the surface, protected by blast shields up to a foot thick.
To prepare their subjects for lucid dreaming, Dreamer goalers placed them in sensory deprivation chambers (the square modules clearly visible on the facing surface of the prison, above the intake ramp). The process was similar to the Wespe-Quinn-Vagner method of hibernation: prisoners were partially submerged in warm, salty water, in sound-proofed spaces, without light. Recording devices heard their every utterance, charted their every heartbeat. Roshann Cobb's records confirm that not a single prisoner survived the ordeal with their mental faculties intact. More than a third suffered myocardial or stroke events within less than three hours of interment. After four hours, severe and irreversible psychosis created the conditions that Dreamer retrieval specialists were seeking.
Unwrapped like that, the broken mind is just archaeology waiting to happen. A good oneirologist knows the universal symbology common to all human dreams. A better one can distinguish cultural signposts. Those are your buckets. Everything goes into a bucket. Then, you play the tapes and move it all around. It'll never be a perfect fit, but you can always tell a temple from a hovel or a tower. - Rebuilding Man
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Rosa Carlota
Service Record
Born 2030, Cuba, to a military family whose martial exploits dates to the revolutionary era. Drawn to armed forces even before compulsory service, entered the Career Officers School at age 16. Excelled in her ideological education as well as drills. Offered an opportunity to serve abroad. Chose exchange program in Portuguese West Africa during the 21st century failed war of independence. Initial noncombat duties in MPLAN-held territory sporadically interrupted by attacks from Portuguese incursions, French-backed UNITNAM insurgents. Ably held her own, successfully rallying fellow junior officers and the MPLAN rebels to the barricades, beating back the counterrevolutionaries. Subsequently promoted to combat command, involved in multiple guerrilla attacks against Estado Novo expeditionaries in the jungle interior.
Stayed in-country alongside thousands of Cuban volunteers after WARPAC forces withdrew after official Belgian entrance into war. Eventually accepted commission with the MPLAN. Spent most of her military career waging insurgencies. Seriously wounded in Gran Leste offensive against Franco-Belgian-Katangese coalition forces, promoted to first lieutenant. Struggled through rehabilitation, but by the time she was deemed fit for active duty, the revolutionary leadership had broken down and accepted disarmament.
Officially retired in early 2060s. U.N. Intelligence Cell concludes Carlota immediately began taking training contracts with various ideologically aligned armed non-state actors in Françafrique, Portuguese East Africa, and elsewhere on the continent. Most recently spotted in the Ethiopias in 2066 training the PDREM against Morgan Industries-sponsored governments ("Mugatustans"). Implicated in half a dozen attacks against space elevators and other aerospace complexes, including the 2062 Stanleyville Bombings.
U.N.I.C. determines there is high probability subject has already infiltrated the mission via the Stellar Lifeboat Project. Strong likelihood subject is in disguise as one of the international refugees and internally displaced persons given new lease on life as Unity colonists in the UNHCR program. Potential motivation ranges from continued personal vendetta against imperial enemies, desire to spread ideological struggle to the stars, or even fulfillment of monetary contract on behalf of unknown benefactors. High degree of certainty that subject is in contact with various revolutionary leftist and national liberation movements covertly represented aboard the ship.
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Psych Profile: Global Seditionary
Born and bred revolutionary. Linked to multiple communist, decolonialist, and other anti-imperialist movements throughout Africa. Willing to commit sabotage and terrorism to further goals.
Ideological zeal tempered by military discipline. Father was a major in the Cuban Revolutionary Army. Strong early influence on subject’s upbringing, encouraged military pursuits prior to departure for full-time service in Central American interventions.
Memetic analysis suggests common thread of subject’s beliefs rests in struggle against the multinational oldline entities preying upon the colonies, whether political, economic, or spiritual. Testimony from former MPLAN comrades suggests that subject viewed U.N. Alpha Centauri initiatives as “Earth’s final pillaging by kings.” Repeatedly voiced concerns that the imperial powers were using interstellar colonization project to hide massive wealth transfers from the planet's working classes, accelerate resource exploitation of the subjugated. Vowed that such plundering could not continue to the next world.
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The Prokofiev-class armored war airship ascended to the bulwark of Soviet stability in troubled regions during the latter half of the 21st century, another symbol of the Red Air Armada's near-unchallenged might over the territories of the Warsaw Pact. The USSR first employed war airships in policing actions en masse during the extended Constitutional Crisis of the early 1990s, in which Osoaviakhim-class rigid airships proved decisive in putting down reformist and splittist elements. In the decades that followed, airship engineering advanced by leaps and bounds amidst brushfire wars from the Caucasus to the Black Sea. With their silent flight, high reach above range of MANPADS, and their looming profile as artificial clouds, they wreaked havoc upon infantry targets and enemy facilities alike with near endless supplies of bombs. Low fuel requirements meant airships could operate as longer-term self-sustaining floating fortresses, complete with repair workshops, compartments of surveillance and armed defense drones, and even docking bays for smaller aircraft.
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Many generations later, modern state-of-the-art airships such as the flagship Kirov are commonly seen patrolling the unsteady autonomous republics of Central Asia, the uneasy streets of Kaliningrad, the uncertain Outer Mongolian S.S.R.-Golden Manchurian border, and the unseemly slums around the space elevator zones. Many other air forces have adopted airships for their own purposes, from conventional military invasions all the way down to commercial propaganda use towards unwitting onlookers.
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Airship use on Chiron did not arrive until the introduction of Doctrine: Lighter-Than-Air Power. While primitive aerostats were used in the exploration of the Planet, drawing from identifiable sources of helium, the refinement of such chemicals was costly and considered a low priority, especially when such vehicles were often at the mercy of swarms of Locusts of Chiron. Only adequate development of factional industrial capabilities would make their use feasible again as they were on Earth. In the latter ages that were to follow, the discovery of Monopole Magnets and similar technologies that similarly led to the invention of the Hovertank would provide truly native Planetary airships that did not rely upon lifting gases at all, but fundamental forces of matter that would counteract the forces of gravity.
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A reporter for The Wall Street Journal once asked me whether I stuck my thumb on the scales of justice. Absolutely I did. The hand must be seen to sit firmly on that scale. That's the only way it works. We say that justice is blind for a reason. Too many people think that means it is fair. Not true. You've got to lead justice. You have to collect the facts, but you have to make sense of them, too. Justice itself isn't going to do that for you. The blind can't lead. - Under My Wings, All Things Prosper: A History of the American Reclamation Corporation, Vol. 2
To enforce the compact at the center of his proprietary community, Oscar van de Graaf relied upon the same mercenary soldiers that had served him as head of the American Reclamation Corporation.
In addition to base defense and internal security, these so-called Regulators performed a third function: asset recovery.
Forty-four percent of Unity's construction vehicles, including virtually all the terraforming rigs, were put up by van de Graaf and his top stakeholders. Under the terms of his contracts with the United Nations Mission to Alpha Centauri, they were on five-year loan, with Captain Jonathan Garland acting as guarantor. Van de Graaf argued that General Francisco d'Almeida's abrogation of the Unity Charter had cut the mission short, and the loan with it.
The Regulators had a mixed track record. Every faction fought desperately to defend its heavy equipment, and the ARC warriors, while certainly competent, faced superior adversaries in the form of Ascendancy Legionnaires, New State Fencibles, Spartan Myrmidons, and Tribal Minutemen. Even ambushing 'Formers carried high risk. Road crews were usually game for a fight and retrofitted their rides with all manner of defenses including turret-mounted machine guns, banks of launchers for smoke and fragmentation grenades, and even guided anti-tank missiles. Nor was military victory a certain prelude to mission success. If defeat seemed assured, better to disable or destroy those irreplaceable assets than let them serve a rival. By M.Y. 90, the Regulators had added just three squadrons worth of 'Formers to the New Two Thousand's motor pool.
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We are used to confusing life with abundance. The cell multiples. The seed ripens and grows. But I challenge you to remember that not all growth is healthy. - Remarks in Assembly
A biostatic is a substance that prevents or discourages the growth of a living thing.
The field of medical biostatics advanced quickly among the First Settlements. Every life was precious, and all leaders hoped to return as many survivors as possible to healthy productivity. Biostatic interventions played a central role in the story of this recovery because of the nature of the afflictions themselves. Many of the sick were suffering from aggressive cancers brought on by radiation exposure. There were also large numbers of people who had been shot by bullets or flechettes. Fighting malignant cell growth and preventing cytokine storms kept medical staff busy around the clock.
Once humans began interacting on a regular basis with native life forms, especially fungal tubers, biostatic ointments were an essential element of the treatments plans for minor cuts and bruises. Fungal fibers were barbed and could embed in the skin like splinters, where they released compounds that caused rapid necrosis through hardening. Biostatics could slow the process long enough for microsurgery to remove the offending contaminants, or for inorganic chemotherapies to kill them.
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Nay! Speak not of Satan, sir. His lieutenant, and mine, is yet in my neighbor-room. Or what report shall he give his true master? – The Tragedy of the House of Luxembourg, Part II, Act 1, Scene 1
Struan’s Pacific Trading Company was a Hong Kong conglomerate involved principally in agriculture and pharmaceuticals. The conglomerate's holdings in Africa alone exceeded fifty million hectares under irrigated cultivation. Frequent political strife on the continent impelled the company’s directors to make strategic investments in a “government services” division full of fixers that often stole the spotlight from its more mundane business operations. The Chairman of the Struan’s Board, Ian Dunross Struan, was known to defend these decisions as the “unavoidable cost” of retaining an international footprint, implying that one had to be cruel to be kind.
In 2070, just over a year ahead of mission launch, Struan’s became the twelfth and final prime contractor for the United Nations Mission to Alpha Centauri. The Secretariat was in panic. It had exhausted the goodwill first of the United States, then the Soviet Union, then the Non-Aligned Movement. After also being shut out of Western Europe, it had turned in desperation to private sponsors. In return for refreshing the Mission’s depleted accounts, the Struan’s tai-pan was allowed to place aboard Unity some twenty thousand employees and counter-parties beholden to himself. A wave of similar deals followed, and contingents embarked by Morgan Industries and the American Reclamation Corporation were each twice as large and much better-funded. Yet the Struan’s contribution was arguably unique.
Struan’s—with roots reaching back to the African slave and Chinese opium trades. Struan’s—a company that never looked to outrun or outgrow its position on the liminal edge of the law. Few secrets were more open than the involvement of Struan’s in-house intelligence services in the sustainment of neo-colonialism. On behalf of his NATO clients, the tai-pan underwrote regimes in Amman, Beirut, Elizabethville, Pretoria, and Tehran. Golden China trusted no one else with the “reeducation” of Communist Party apparatchiks. And who was suspected in the “accidental” death of an Australian prime minister determined to steer his country out of the Commonwealth? It was no exaggeration to say that entire divisions of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs were kept employed bringing cases against Struan’s and its subsidiaries.
I clean up my space. I lock up my chest. Dole Yudikon comes and takes all the rest. – Rhyme of Minding, Warm Welcome Children’s Crèche
When picking his representatives on Chiron, Ian Dunross began as he often did: with family. In the Scots peerage, Struan’s was called the Noble House, but the private conduct of its squires strayed far from that standard. The leader of Struan’s Unity contingent was one Roshann Cobb, the tai-pan’s illegitimate son.
In an earlier age, Cobb would have been made a bishop or a cardinal. If very lucky, perhaps packed off to the Americas or India to make his fortune. If unlucky, he might become a midshipman or an adjutant. But this is the Rocket Age. On Planet, he may have a kingdom. – Ken Burns's Planet: A History
Cobb’s qualifications were controversial, but not disqualifying per se. Like his natural-born siblings, he had received a public school education befitting his family’s pretensions, first Eton, then Oxford, where he read philosophy. Five years with MI6 reportedly left him a changed man, and for the better. Gone was the wastrel who had misspent his Kowloon youth as a bet runner. In his place there was a professional crisis manager who took the wheel of Struan’s Hong Kong just as Asia entered a period of severe market instability.
Preserving market share meant papering over failed clinical trials of psycho-dynamic drugs and beating a rash of lawsuits for intellectual property theft, but the proof was in the pudding and the flavor proved palatable. In time, Struan’s gained the patents to protect their investments and the political influence required to lock their competitors out of emerging markets in the Communist Bloc. Young Cobb succeeded in positioning his father’s company as the global leader in funding for research in brain mechanics and lucid dreaming. At a series of symposiums boycotted by most Western scientists, Cobb collected to himself a rogue’s gallery whose bleeding-edge, often ethically execrable research laid the foundations for cold sleep, thought extraction, neural recoding, and more.
The principal interest of a corporate sponsor was return-on-investment. This marked a signal departure from the thinking that had spurred the mission’s very design, for it implied that Unity would be more first grasp than last gasp. To realize profit, it would be at least necessary to restore contact with Earth. Risk managers working for the United Nations gave the Earth a term of no more than fifty years before the next extinction event, yet not even one of Unity’s corporate underwriters agreed that Earth’s affliction was fatal.
Today I saw the men who have come to lie for their countries. – Personal Diary, Observations at the Basel Accords
[1] The apocryphal play is the brainchild of @etranger01, who made a Grand Strategic Roleplaying game of it on the Sufficient Velocity Forums.
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Jonathan Garland, though born to the American purple, was for all practical purposes an expatriate. His childhood influences were ecumenical to say the least, and who could say whether genuine academic accomplishment or a diplomat mother’s connections won him access to the United States Space Force Academy in Panama City? Afterward, a life in United Nations service took him to the furthest edges of human habitation in the solar system and back again.
The Secretariat-General had been delighted to find that their token American lacked any desire to participate in his country’s great civil war and compromised with Washington by placing Garland in a logistician’s role. After the war, Garland went up with the space elevators and stayed there.
Tendentious negotiations over water rights in the Main Belt, urgent rescues in zero-gravity, and precise shepherding of consumable resources—these were the essential kernels of experience that his U.N. masters later came to believe had fitted Garland to command the exodus from his species’ homeworld. He departed Earth having never fired a weapon in anger.
Time-Life hailed him as “the ultimate compromise candidate,” acceptable to Washington because he was American, and to Moscow because he was the closest approximation to Phillip Nolan still on the rolls. A popular saying went that he was just uninteresting enough for the job.
Garland was a non-entity to many of his theoretical subordinates. After several screaming matches with his fellow officers went unpunished, Prokhor Zakharov pegged Garland as "weak-willed, with a tendency to talk when he should act." Francisco d'Almeida had been briefed by the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado that Garland would have no friends among the mission's multinational command crew and few natural allies in either temperament or outlook. Having reviewed some of the latter's speeches, d'Almeida told his national press that the Unity's captain was "obviously a Utopianist," which in the general's opinion was "not ideal." The U.N. hoped that, at the very least, the Portuguese martinet would complement Garland's softer style but the two men did not socialize ahead of the mission and d'Almeida was never present for Garland's showdowns with other subordinates. Chief of Security Rachael Winzenried, killed by the original meteorite strike, recorded in her diary that Garland seemed never to have made peace with his own decision to bring U.N. Marines aboard ship--even though it was a widely-acknowledged certainty that the U.N. Security Forces were lousy with Holnists. At the founding of Terra Nova, Oscar van de Graaf remembered Garland to his followers as "a pathological consensus-seeker" they were all better off without.
In the moment of extremity, Garland found that himself the victim of two mutinies, one slow-moving, the other fast. After calculating the odds, Garland wanted to eject the damaged main reactor and place Unity on a long slingshot run that would allow it to try the approach to Alpha Centauri again. His Chief Engineer, Zakharov, refused to accept this plan, having calculated that he himself would be unlikely to survive the traumatic return to hibernation. Zakharov's solution was to retreat to the damaged aft reactor bay so that he could personally direct repairs. Before Garland could intervene, the Spartans emerged from hiding, guns blazing.
Coordinated attacks on the bridge damaged sensor feeds to other parts of the ship. Thus Garland had less actionable information about what was happening aboard Unity than his first officer, Francisco d'Almeida. Despite Garland's orders to focus on damage control operations, d'Almeida began waking defenders. (Some, like fellow Portuguese officer Fong Na Spínola, claim that d'Almeida could no longer raise Garland on internal comms when that decision was made.) Nevertheless, the influx of engineers and security personnel was insufficient to either repair the damaged reactor or put down the Spartan revolt, though it certainly slowed life-saving operations and may also have prevented an outcome in which Unity could have been placed in a geosynchronous orbit.
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Name: Kleisel Mercator
Rank: Sub-Commander
Position: Commander, Unity Air Group
County of Origin: West Germany
DOB: 4-17-2016
Height: 188cm
Weight: 96kg
Service Record:
Member of first graduating class of Inter-European Air Forces Academy. Flew one of seven Luftwaffe Panavia Tornado combat aircraft during May 27th, 2039 Baltic Sea Intrusion. Credited with 2 aerial kills against Soviet MiG-67N Falchions flown off Soviet aircraft carrier Chiatura, earning Bundeswehr Cross of Honour for Valor.
Hand-picked to participate in groundbreaking West German military mission to Yugoslav Air Force and Air Defense. Stationed at Željava Air Base, an air base tunneled into the side of Plješevica mountain and the headquarters for the country's networked early warning radar system. Duties included strategic planning for OPFOR as part of a two month-long war exercise following the suspicious sinking of the frigate Split in the Albanian port of Durrës in October 2044. Yugoslavia credited the loss to the KGB.
Family emergency in early 2047 resulted in reassignment from North Germany to Graz, Alpine Air Defense Zone. Commanded 76 Tactical Air Wing, part of NATO Response Force, equipped with Panavia Recht multirole fighter. Achieved consistently high readiness levels through frequent drills. Praised by in-country U.S. Commanders for aggressive posture toward potential air space encroachments by WARPAC fliers. Attracted complaints from French and Soviets alleging needlessly provocative conduct. Reassigned to non-combat roles at the insistence of the short-lived Werner detente government, 2052. Disciplined for giving interview with Der Spiegel in which subject questioned the integrity of West Germany's commitment to self-defense, NATO, and the preservation of a united, democratic European Community.
Volunteered for service with West German National Contingent in 2054, formed to respond to the Canadian's Government's urgent request for military assistance to face down the Quebec Emergency. Coordinated missions for German-Danish ground-support squadron as part of Montreal and Gros Morne Campaigns. Loss of three pilots to ground fire (Soviet surface-to-air missiles) caused scandal in West Germany. Approached by Federal Intelligence Service in connection with the then-still-embryonic Price Mutiny. Subject was judged "reliable," but political considerations led to subject's recall.
Twelve years with U.N. Relief Mission in the Indian Ocean (UNRMIO), four enforcing Shamash Demilitarized Zone. On December 25, 2057 Combat Air Patrol above Ussaylas River Valley, recorded gun camera footage of Unidentified Flying Object. Soon reassigned to Islamabad Blast Zone as German military attaché. Frequently volunteered with local Pakistani aid clinics.
Luftwaffe observer attached to German Antarctic Expedition, 2065-68. Prepared first detailed reports on undeclared Soviet installation in Enderby Land. Retired from active service in July 2068. Relocated to Lunar Colony.
Recommended for appointment to U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri by German National Selection Committee in November 2041. Accepted, December 2069. Subject's remit included flight command for Unity's complement of trans-orbital shuttles and conventional fixed-wing and rotorcraft.
Subject was awakened as part of General Francisco d'Almeida's effort to mobilize officers who could direct common action against the ship's then-unknown attackers. Standing over subject's cryopod, uniformed officers of the crew helped him dress and handed him a shredder pistol. Subject was badly injured during destruction of Hangar Bay Ӆ by a Holnist bomber. Stabilized through the interventions of medics working under the protection of shuttle pilot Trung Thi Hoang. Left behind after a nearby defender confirmed subject's identity and record of former service against Free Quebec. Recovered by security forces loyal to Francisco d'Almeida. Current whereabouts unknown.
Psych Profile: Cynic
Answers to Newcomb Nuclear Attitudes Questionnaire indicates that subject suffers from high levels of nuclear anxiety, almost certainly linked to military service.
Friends and relations describe subject as fatalistic, believing that the West had lost the political will to sustain its fight against International Communism. Maintained these views even through the period of abrupt Soviet decline starting circa 2060. Those closest to subject confirmed that, after Ussaylas Incident, he began "methodically searching for answers," and became increasingly convinced that there was "another space race" raging between the West and the Soviets over access to objects of potentially extraterrestrial origin.
U.N. Intelligence Cell found that subject's personal databases included security-locked reports relating to communications with Earth from the Pathfinder Probe, apparently obtained during his time in military service.
Protégé of SETI Vice Chairman Oratile Mokoena, with whom he first corresponded following Ussaylas encounter. Both men later participated in the German Antarctic Expedition. Subject is believed to have visited Mokoena at Lunar Large Array shortly before reporting for mission induction.
Faction: The Memory of Earth
Affinity: Purity
Priorities: Discover, Command
What is the fundamental truth of the universe? Humany is not the only intelligent life.
Why did civilization on Earth fail? We lacked a common external threat strong enough to unite us.
What is needed for the human species to survive, and thrive, on Chiron? The Unity survivors must share in the common struggle against an external threat that compels them to flatter the better angels of their nature.
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Social Engineering
Planet's newest arrivals can be sorted into common sub-sets. Reductive, yes, but instructive, too.
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Specials
Also called Augments or Perfects, these are colonists with significant generic or cybernetic features that perform measurably beyond a genius-level Olympian on Earth. Specialists are created on Chiron by factions with the requisite tools. The Ascendancy "grows" its Specials through a combination of selective breeding and intensive gene therapy. The University "builds" cyborgs by taking advantage of mind-machine interface. The Dreamers use drugs to permanently alter a subject's neural architecture. Gaian Specials commune directly with the planetary consciousness. Specials are the most productive members of each faction and excel in any role.
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Talents
Individuals with high, or even exceptional educational and professional attainment. The archetypal colonist selected by their respective national commission for placement with the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. All faction leaders are Talents. These individuals typically filled officers' billets on Unity or were among those specially recruited for their professional expertise, especially in the fields of medicine, engineering, and public administration. Talents usually comprise, at most, 10% of a faction's total population. Many factions, especially the Human Ascendancy, the Human Labyrinth, and the New State, afford Talents special privileges and except from them exceptional contributions in return. Talents are exceptionally productive and happy. Talents are suitable for any role.
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Thinkers
Dedicated to a life of contemplation, usually aided by advanced mental techniques or psychotropic drugs. These individuals are comparable to the Mentats of Dune and receive intensive training to enhance memory, perception, and pattern recognition to eidetic levels. Thinkers often perform their analyses with the help of computers. Thinkers improve doctrinal research. A Thinker is not a scientist; rather, a philosopher or strategist who advises faction leadership. They can be exceptional administrators. Thinkers are highly specialized and are wasted in roles that do not exploit their unique abilities to the fullest.
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Technicians
Those who perform skilled labor other than as part of faction administration, such as engineers, skilled laborers, and professional soldiers. Technicians provide significant boosts to faction productivity. Technicians are required to build certain types of Base Facility or complete a Secret Project.
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Overseers
Persons who supervise citizen, convict, drone, and robot populations. Overseers are an indispensable tempering influence in factions that practice subjugation. They reside in a precarious social position. Overseers cancel Action Pool maluses arising from an excess of unfree subjects and reduce the probability of drone revolt.
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Librarians
Individuals trained to find, understand, synthesize, and communicate vast quantities of data from a myriad of sources. Experts in the use of the Datalinks and Planetary Networks. Librarians improve tech research rates and increase a faction’s Action Pool. Most Librarians are scientists. Librarians have usually received surgery to equip them for mind-machine interface.
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Citizens
Persons of ordinary mental and physical capacity who are generally accorded the full spectrum of rights and privileges afforded by a faction.
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Drones
Unskilled laborers. Drones are a combination of prisoners, slaves, indentured servants, and anyone who has been nerve-stapled. (The nerve staple dramatically reduces cognitive, executive, and motor functions.) "Drone" is a pejorative term.
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Robots
Artificial lifeforms designed to mimic human behavior. Robots do not suffer morale penalties and are not subject to the psychic afflictions suffered by their human creators on Chiron.
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I have a subject that I’d like to put up for discussion. With apologies for the interruption of our regularly scheduled programming. Consider this the watering that ensures the garden will continue to bear fruit.
This is a long piece, so grab a beverage of your choice and tuck in.
Why does this game mean so much to us?
SMAC is uniquely excellent storytelling. I think its staying power in our hearts and minds is a reflection not merely of what were then (and in some respects, still are) innovative game mechanics, but the quality of the characters and ideas that Brian Reynolds put center-stage. Alpha Centauri has sometimes been called space opera, and Reynolds confessed to having written it while listening to the Les Misérables soundtrack, which he suspects may have infected his creations with unique passions.
When SMAC released in February 1999, the seven factions, their ideologies, and their leaders spoke directly to the particular anxieties of that moment in time. What’s more, they did so in ways that were both relevant and powerful. The Cold War was over, but the fresh tragedies of Rwanda and Yugoslavia were hard reminders that we had not excised all the flaws from our natures. Human cloning and the cure for cancer seemed just around the corner. New awareness of acid rain, melting ice caps, and deforestation raised urgent questions about whether we would soon push the Earth past its breaking point. The Internet was in its infancy, and we were sharing information and ideas at speeds and over distances that still amazed us. The world felt smaller, and “One World Government” came into the popular vernacular alongside older ideas like "Spaceship Earth” and “Global Community.”
Brian blazed some new trails. While he was thoroughly steeped in classic science fiction, he offered unusual diversity and subverted popular stereotypes. A feminist faction. The militarist was a Puerto Rican gang member, and a woman at that. The white male was a Russian. The mogul was a black African. All of the faction leaders were public intellectuals of a sort, and all had something insightful to say about topics beyond their professional ambits. They engaged in witty banter. And they could be played straight, or subverted. Was Deirdre Skye a committed conservationist, a deranged ecoterrorist, or a bit of both? Was there a kernel of truth in Yang’s disturbingly amoral beliefs about the extraordinary capacities of the human body and mind?
Reynolds also achieved the kind of brevity that is enigmatic. We don’t know much about the factions or their leaders, in the end. We have some pictures, some quotations, a bit of fiction that most players probably did not read, and a set of fictional biographies accessible only on the game’s obscure website. Enough to whet our appetites, but not to fully understand their motivations.
How should we think about Brian’s legacy as it pertains to this story space?
In 2014, I put the question to some friends of mine on a forum just like this own. What would the seven factions look like if Brian Reynolds had created them in that historical place and time, not sixteen or seventeen years before?
To help us, I offered three basic thought prompts to help sharpen their responses. First, what did the faction believe was the fundamental truth of the universe? What axiomatic claim was it making as the basis for new leadership of humanity? Second, each faction needed a particular take on why human civilization on Earth had failed. They should all be different enough that the factions would struggle to find common ground about which problems most urgently required solving on Planet. Finally, each faction must have a unique prescription for how to secure the future of the human species after Planetfall—one they were willing to fight, and if necessary, die for.
So how can you help?
In this space, I have put forth more than a dozen new faction ideas. Some of that has meant reworking Brian’s original seven. Two of the others, the Human Tribe and the Shapers of Chiron, are creations of old acquaintances on defunct forums (individuals going by the handles Thorn and Iron Talon, respectively). The rest, including the Dreamers and the Hunters, are my own designs. Let’s review.
The Original Seven
- Gaia's Stepdaughters, led by Lady Deirdre Skye, the Conservationist, wish to live "in dialogue" with the natural world around them. Skye believes that patriarchal structures led our species to destroy its original homeworld.
- The University of Planet seeks to pursue a program of unrestricted research. The Scientist, Academician Prokhor Zakharov, believes that everything is knowable through empiricism. He will not allow superstition or folkways to restrain the kinds of inquiries that could create the tools to make life better.
- The Human Labyrinth, also called the Hive, is dominated by Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, the Despot. Yang has established a rigid and highly repressive caste society. He is instructing proteges in the mental techniques and ethical precepts that he believes will uniquely merit them to be stewards of those in their not-so-tender care.
- The Centauri Monopoly, led by the Mogul, Nwabudike Morgan, seeks to achieve a planetary energy monopoly. Morgan has a seductive thesis: nothing went wrong on Earth; it simply ran out of resources. We should change nothing. In time, Planet, too, will be depleted of value, and our species will again turn its sights to richer pickings. Happiness is uninterrupted consumption.
- The Lord's Conclave wants to place faith at the center of the human experience. Sister Miriam Godwinson, the Prophet, asserts that there is special value in our species' religious inheritance, which contains an enduring set of historical lessons for right living that still apply today. Her followers value what can be experienced over what can be communicated to others.
- The Spartan Federation is a haven for followers of the Survivalist creed, which offers a big tent under which are clustered those who wish a life of rigorous physical and moral discipline, as well as many Social Darwinists. Colonel Santiago's vision is to hone a warrior society that will keep itself sharp through preparation for war.
- Commissioner Pravin Lal, the Humanitarian, leads The Peacekeeping Forces, which seek to enforce the principles of the United Nations Charter and so secure the rights and privileges that Natural Law tells us are the entitlement of every sentient being.
The New Kids on the Block
- The Hunters of Chiron, led by J.T. Marsh, the Hunter, live wild and free in a deadly new environment that challenges them to test the limits of both their mettle and their endurance. Marsh believes technological dependence sapped our problem-solving capacities. The Hunters are a meditation on the masculine ideal captured in the fiction of Louis L'Amour.
- Director Tamineh Pahlavi is a Supremacist. Her Human Ascendancy wants to force the creation of a new species uniquely suited to life on Chiron. Pahlavi is a proponent of gerontocracy: the "experienced" should lead. Relates to the human fear of mortality and replacement.
- Sergeant "Pete" Landers, the Defender, leads The Human Tribe, a collection of stowaways who subscribe to the vision of civil society propounded by anti-disassociationist cult leader Jean-Baptiste Keller. The Tribe seeks to build societies bound by shared blood and place, immune to the lures of ideology. This faction is essentially an "answer" to the atomizing effects of the digital age.
- Contre-Amirale Raoul André St. Germaine, the Aristocrat, has convinced his followers to trade a measure of social freedom for promises of security. His paternalistic society, the New State promises a place with purpose for every member. St. Germaine has taken his followers deep beneath Chiron's oceans to ensure that they are properly safe from negative influences. Inspired by a strange crossing of the problems arising from 9/11 and Jacques Cousteau.
- The Dreamers of Chiron, led by Factor Roshann Cobb and Dr. Aleigha Cohen, wish to look inward for answers, exploring the depths of the human psyche in an urgent search to understand what makes us succeed or fail. Cobb, the Dreamer, is an addict; Cohen, the Transgressor, is a Cleckleyan psychopath.
- The New Two Thousand, answering to Governor Oscar van de Graaf, the Empresario, signed terms with the U.N. that guaranteed them the right to split off from the Unity Mission after 5 years to attempt an experiment in independent colonization. Members have invested as stakeholders, although many are indentures. Van de Graaf proposes to form a society of individuals driven by their interest in real property. An homage to the cattle barons who "won the West" according to certain narratives.
- The Shapers of Chiron, led by Coordinator Shoichiro Nagao, The Monk, shall remark Chiron in Earth's own image as penance, and extend the promise of salvation to those left behind.
- The Memory of Earth, led by Commander Kleisel Mercator, the Cynic, believes that the best guarantee of survival on Planet is to unite against a common, external foe. Mercator is warning of an extraterrestrial threat. This faction is inspired by the idea that the end of the Cold War created political space for dangerous divisions in Western society.
- The Children of the Atom, probably misnamed, are led by Dr. Johann Anhaldt, the Mediator. Anhalt was among Earth's foremost experts in machine learning. Anhaldt proposes that the societies of "Old Earth" failed to trust machine intelligence, which he felt confident could have identified unexpected "trades" to avert war and other catastrophes. On Planet, his followers are following a settlement plan prepared for them by an Artificial Intelligence.
- The Watchers of Chiron are a collection of constables and convicts led by Commandant Sardul Singh, the Planner. Singh, a former prison warden, is of the belief that behavior is a matter of nurture, not nature, and seeks to create living spaces and conditions that will "cure" his charges of their anti-social outlooks.
So what's wrong with this picture?
You tell me! No, really.
Not all of the original factions were created equal. To this day, I think Corazon Santiago received the very short end of the stick when it came to quotations with deep meaning. Some of the most provocative material about the philosophy of Sheng-ji Yang is either fan fiction or informed speculation, depending on one’s perspective.
Played "Straight" or Subverted?
At some point, my story will ultimately need to determine whether to take certain moral turns with each faction. For example, is Zakharov a well-meaning, if deeply abrasive and self-aggrandizing, tinkerer who simply has no appreciation for matters of the human heart, or is he a man perfectly happy to play God among the ants, putting his own curiosity ahead of human considerations? Is Santiago a staunch individualist who refuses to be a burden to others, or a simple conqueror who mistakes bloody-mindedness for virtue?
My Take on the Backstories
In my story, Deirdre is as much eco-terrorist as conservationist. Zakharov is amoral to the point of evil. Yang is a despot deluding himself about the high-mindness of his aims. Morgan is exactly what he seems: a megalomaniac (and probably also living out his trauma as a person who was expected to live his whole life a victim). Miriam represents the best traditions of selflessness and grace for others. Santiago is a disciplinarian but not a tyrant. The Peacekeeping Forces are both bureaucratic and high-minded, but their aggressive impulses come from the right place.
The Hunters are nomads who just want to hunt the biggest dinosaur, and in the process provide a unique set of services to the other factions as scouts, merchants, and service-providers. The Ascendancy is a hegemonic threat to everyone. The Human Tribe just wants to be left alone, but is ultimately called to do righteous battle alongside the Peacekeepers. The New State is a less-bad version of the Hive. The Dreamers are a moral cesspit that beat out all others for cruelty but are too debilitated by their own debauchery to escape the reckoning that must come their way. The New Two Thousand is an unhappy obligarchy: van de Graaf, like St. Germaine, plays the paterfamilias, to the distress of all the other factions. The Shapers eventually bring on global catastrophe. Mercator is probably right, but nobody is especially worried. Anhaldt hides a dark secret--he's just the front for an Artificial Intelligence. As for Singh, he really means well, but his methods are rather questionable.
Cadet Branches?
There is a trope in computer gaming, at least as old as Command & Conquer, and beautifully executed in Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization, in which the same faction can be led by multiple individuals or played in ways that express different aspects of the same theme. Some of the factions I have rolled out, feel like cadet branches of the original seven. One could argue, for example, that the Hunters are a cadet branch of the Spartans that prioritize the physical adversity of adventure over war. The New State could plausibly be a cadet branch of the Labyrinth/Hive since both factions claim to need to physically isolate their followers from corrupting influences while segmenting society according to ability (utility). The Ascendancy is probably a cadet branch of the University; after all, genetics is a science. The New Two Thousand, inasmuch as it deals with the accumulation of things and their relationship to human society, could step right out of the Centauri Monopoly. The Shapers, with their roots (pun intended) in working the land, could be a cadet branch of the Gaians. The Tribe might just be a very particularized junior sibling of the Peacekeeping Forces.
Ideologies versus Themes
I think factions that offer very clear ideology are to be preferred to factions that are merely thematic. I think the Nautilus Pirates fell into that trap in SMAX, to their detriment.
Some of the new factions seem like they deal less with ideology or social organization and more with specific projects or fascinations on the part of their putative leaders. These include the New State (ocean exploration), the Dreamers (the mind as final frontier), the Children of the Atom (their "pet" A.I.), the Shapers (remake Earth), the Ascendancy (grow neo-Sapien), and the Restoration (previously unmentioned, but consisting of soldiers under Marcel Salan who want to return to Earth).
Asking Similar Questions
Several factions explore the same question of whether people are fit to govern themselves, or whether somebody (or something) else should govern them: the Hive, the Peacekeepers, the New State, and the Children of the Atom.
Backstories and Their Impact on the Quality of Faction Design
I fear that I have freighted Zakharov and Morgan in particular with so much backstory story, they are no longer easily recognizable as tropes. Zakharov has a personal fascination with longevity treatments that reduce the need for Pahlavi's character. Morgan's personal quest to avoid becoming anybody's puppet by buying his way to impunity is arguably very interesting, but far from his traditional role as Elon Musk-type provocateur.
In other cases, the backstory is something worth exploring. Van de Graaf's story in particular ties into that of Pahlavi (a former employee), Cohen and Anhaldt (former contractors), and Landers and Morgan (former adversaries). Landers has scores to settle with Van de Graaf and Santiago. Morgan knows to look out for van de Graaf and Cobb. Godwinson probably has strong opinions about van de Graaf given their mutual experience as high-level officials during the Second American Civil War. Lal could theoretically come in for a drubbing by everyone given his high-level role in U.N. policy-making prior to Mission Launch. Marsh and Morgan may know each other professionally because of their involvement in African war zones.
Sometimes, a faction with a rich backstory can go in a direction that opens up "space" for someone else. For example, if the Spartan Federation isn't all about conquest, then the Ascendancy can be. If the Morganites/Monopoly are all about bread and circuses and the dangers of one very rich person mucking up the global system, that makes it easier to have another faction, also inspired by Capitalism, that looks at the influence of property ownership on government.
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Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind. - Datalinks
Node suppression is the activity of tracing and punishing unauthorized speech on faction Network Nodes.
During the Frontier period, when factions were limited to a primitive intranet and leisure time was at a premium, node suppression was an ancillary duty of Base Operations to the extent it was even attempted. As the Planetary Network grew more crowded, however, all participating factions engaged in at least some node suppression as a security measure.
Each faction had its own unique methods of node suppression.
Offenders paid .05¤ per violation at Morgan Mines, 16¤ at Morgan Entertainment, and faced immediate severance of employment at Morgan Robotics.
For the incorrigible, University deans reset network permissions to "read only." A Tribal could be excluded from the nodes altogether by community vote and was assigned extra shifts on gate-, fire-, or wormwatch. The Peacekeeping Forces were more ingenious still: especially outrageous behavior was simply advertised to the full colony during the faction's regular Town Halls.
In the New State, armed "Node Trackers" enforced the faction's strict, terraced speech codes. Drones enjoyed considerable leeway to speak amiss, but higher ranks were liable to be court-martialed.
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The court's determination was that our monopoly position would stifle innovation. They did not understand that only those who are already very powerful can afford the high price of failure. - The Ethics of Greed
Nwabudike Morgan enchanted those who met him. In their sealed reports, intelligence officers from five countries wrote with obvious affection for the "honest thief" who treated encounters with security forces like a game and supplied good intelligence in return for favors and freedom. Politicians felt the same. Trust-busting U.S. senator Valience Hill Taft (R-OH), no stranger to political entanglements with the world's richest man, captured the sentiment of most colleagues in his 2080 autobiography: "Morgan was willing to pay when he offended. If he stuck a knife in your back, you knew it was jeweled and that you could keep it." Unity Captain Jonathan Garland even gave Morgan, a confirmed stowaway, the liberty of his bridge.
Morgan's appeal was unique among his fellow faction leaders because it arose mostly from a lack of any axes to grind. His message was simple reassurance: anyone who followed him could expect a return to form. He was not proposing a radical reassessment of the survivors' relation to the soil. The faction did not plan to chop down the xenofungus so that its agronomists could plant a million palms. The morning would never start with enforced calisthenics. You could pay somebody to take your turn on watch. There would be no spectacular adjustments to the familiar social order. A priest was just a priest; a physicist just a physicist. The Centauri Monopoly wanted you to have a better life through hard work. No gimmicks.
The complete chaos of our departure from Unity is the perfect endorsement of free exchange between communities. Trade is an instinct. We took a crate because it was there, not because of what was in it. We knew that every object aboard would have a future purpose—a value. Not to us, perhaps, but certainly to someone else. And remember: that “someone else” was still shooting at us. - The Personal Diaries
Without a specific end in mind beyond mere accumulation, Morgan's people loaded their Landing Pods with whatever containers happened to be at hand. As one of the mission's commercial investors, Morgan understood better than most that U.N. quartermasters would have placed aboard few items that did not have some direct relationship to mission survival. Lack of fuss helped them to work with greater speed. In the end, they landed with three times the material carried down to Planet by their competitors, and much of it immediately useful for base-building. The rest, they strapped down to the beds of Unity Rovers and dutifully hawked to their neighbors, swapping for what they wanted instead.
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Metacommentary
Having skimmed through the archives of NetworkNode.org (https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/u7s3rq/big_collection_of_old_custom_factions_from/), and read others' fan sequel ideas (including played Civilization: Beyond Earth), I believe that the original SMAC was lightning in a bottle. It's just one of those classic works of '90s video gaming where everything came together, often by accident. And it's that cohesive, tightly-coupled nature of the game that makes coming up with new factions so tricky, and why that many find Alien Crossfire to be so lacking. The original seven factions (interesting that it was an odd number- it works out very well, as the roster isn't a set of dichotomies but more triangular multipolar relationships) all represented Big Classical Ideas. War and Peace. Environment or Economy. Religion or Reason. And uh, "Atheist Police State"/"High security state". It probably wasn't even originally intended to be like this- Brother Lal of the Keepers of Wisdom had more of a science bent, for instance. But what we ended up getting was a deep sci-fi work inspired by some great classical works of sci-fi. Mid-20th century and earlier works were all about big ideas of what it means to be human, what it means to live in a society, before the dross of modern genre conventions seeped in. In many ways, SMAC, like Star Trek: The Next Generation, could only have been created in the temporary respite of the '90s end of history. When Americans could loaf like Homer Simpson a bit in our placid bubbles, and dream up far future space operas shaped by Big Ideas rather than petty tribal affiliations.
The challenge is expanding upon that world. The problem is that when you have such a singular work, any attempts of expansion can only narrow its grand view. Even when the original creator is behind it, hence the disappointment of SMAX. (Behind the scenes, I'm not sure if the expansion was Firaxis at its best, either- I get the impression that its was rushed, and from what I've read, Brian Reynolds didn't even work on it.) But the problem with SMAX is that it creates factions that have much smaller concepts than the big ideas of the original. And in fact, that's why they are better thought of as splinters and separatist groups- the cadet branches, perhaps, of the original factions. The narrower scope of the expansion factions both reinforce the grandeur of the originals, and makes SMAX on its own a bit hard to imagine. Did all seven original leaders fall to the five new ones, and/or were wiped out by the Progenitors? Is the only chance of survival to be a hacker or a pirate? Just what the heck are the cyborgs about anyway?
There's only so many Big Ideas that one can come up with before you run into overlaps with the original factions. For instance, what about a faction based on Law? Well, Yang certainly cares about that, to a Legalist extreme. The Peacekeepers live and breathe the rule of law. And all of the other ideologies also have their own organizing principles around it. What about a faction based on Truth? Not only is that perhaps too similarly broad to organize a society around, that also exists in all seven as well. It's rather hard to hone in on the appropriate "scale" of concepts that new Big Idea factions can be based off of.
And, to circle back on the tightly-coupled nature of SMAC: the game has some great systems working beneath its hood. The Social Engineering traits are top notch, because they tie into every single stat attribute a faction has and can modify, the diplomatic relationships they can have with other factions, almost every aspect of gameplay. That's how the factions come alive in SMAC, even if you ignore all of the oodles and oodles of writing and voice acting. SMAC's stats make each faction distinct from each other. But this incredibly designed system is difficult to expand upon on its own. There's only so many agendas and aversions. There's no room for nuance or variation as in modern hyper-detailed grand strategy games. It makes modding in new factions difficult, because beyond the difficulty of maintaining good game balance (without duplicating any of the existing factions, mind you), you can only have so many traits to model new Big Ideas.
For instance, how could a faction revolving around Art work? Maybe if you had some of the culture mechanics that weren't introduced into Civ III then it could really shine. But without it, you're just left with something not dissimilar to Morgan Industries, because a Wealth-focused faction would have the time to obsess on Beauty and Aesthetics, right? Or maybe it's more philosophical and knowledge-based? In which then it'd look more like the University. Or how would you model societies that are anarchistic, all about Freedom, like many of the fan mods I've come across? How would you represent that, low or high Police, low or high Economy? Would it just be Morgan Industries but scrappier?
This might also be why SMAX factions are odd- they're based on the remaining game mechanics that went unrepresented in the base game, rather than story concepts.
What I'm getting at is that SMAC has enough statistics to tell stories with its own factions. But as fun as it is to make new factions, it's rather hard to make them distinctively different, because the mechanics don't support them.
These thoughts aren't necessarily in response to this project. This project does a fine job introducing new specific faction ideas for more nuanced, specific settings. So, something less Big Idea than the original. And I think that's fine- Firaxis themselves couldn't duplicate their original approach. I do think though there is something to be said about trying to come up with more factions that could embody more Big Ideas. And I do think the shortcomings of decades' of modders attempts at making good new custom factions can also inform the experience of creating new factions in a story. Because both in-game, or in-fiction, SMAC remains the same; there are frameworks that hold dear.
Played "Straight" or Subverted?
I think your take is fair, as the factions and their leaders have always been up to interpretation. Their morality, even their specific personalities, are up for debate. I think those are emergent properties that will arise organically in the creation of your story, as it might in a player's campaign. The only question is how you want to drive it, as this thread is more world-building than actual plot creation.
My Take on the Backstories
In this section you've explained your vision of the factions, old and new. It's all very fine, my only question is what scope you're looking for. The original SMAC's central tensions was having factions with diametrically opposed relations- but not purely so!- interact with one another. SMAX's story can be imagined as schism and rebellion from the original factions as Planetary development continued, plus the whole alien Manifold subplot. So what is your central idea of your setting? Do these new factions exist to serve as foils to the original? Or are you seeking to explore the ideas of these new factions in their own right? Maybe have them explore their own moral underpinnings in their interactions with one another, as the originals did? Or maybe play out the histories of Old Earth in a new world, with factions that haven't truly shorn off their connections to history? I think you can do all of this and the above, I'm just wondering if there's any specific intention behind it.
Cadet Branches?
I think it's fine to have new factions that feel like cadet branches of the original seven, without having them be splinters. Like I keep harping on, coming up with Big Ideas and representing them is difficult. (Just how could a society devoted to Art even look like anyway?) So it's natural for new factions to be more specialized than the originals. SMAX factions already do. Of course, splinter, insurgent factions also ramps up the intrigue, so maybe that could be fun.
Ideologies versus Themes
I actually think the Pirates have material to work with, they're just sadly underwritten along with the other SMAX factions. (I think the Cyborgs are the worst- they take a whole new sci-fi concept and are completely unelaborated upon. They're neither hostile assimilationists nor enlightened ultra-rationalists. They lack the transhumanist and/or cyberpunk themes of other sci-fi. They're just University with less emotion. They're boring.) But the Pirates have a latent Green nature ("protecting Planet's seas") that almost every interpretation ignores. They're Greenpeace of the future. They're Skye meets the Spartans meets the anarchist fan-modded custom factions. There's a lot of material to explore in piracy. Like the Data Angels' hacker-based society, there's something inherently parasitic or at least externally-dependent about the faction, but it's something that can be worked with. There's probably moral questions that can be brought up too- is it right that the Pirates believe themselves protectors of the seas while ignoring the land, and hypocritically benefit from stealing the wealth created by the landlubbers who amassed it by exploiting the seas? And piracy is a lifestyle/economic mode that entire nations have been built on.
Asking Similar Questions
On the note of who should rule, in a sci-fi context, the themes explored in the first two Deux Ex games would probably be helpful, especially the endings. Should a cabal of well-informed elites rule? An A.I.? How about smash it all and return us to the glorious tech-less Dark Ages? A new fanatical inquisition? Cybernetic hive mind?
Backstories and Their Impact on the Quality of Faction Design
You have your own idiosyncratic take on the original factions, and I think you should stick to them if that's your vision. It's as original a creation as your new faction concepts.
And your thoughts on the dynamics between the factions, both personal and ideological, also make sense. I think it all comes down to what path you want to blaze.
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Thanks for engaging, MysticWind. I am always excited when I see that you’ve made another post.
You’ve said quite a lot, most of which I heartily agree with, so I’m going to try to focus my reply to some of the aspects of your remarks I found most interesting.
You are certainly onto something when you perceive multipolar, not just bipolar, relationships between the various factions. Both the Spartans and the Hive are at odds with Lal’s preferred way of life. And despite the set-up for conflict between Deirdre and Morgan, it is Zakharov who fulminates against the Gaians in the game’s own media. Your point makes me wonder if I have been too harsh on myself for creating new factions that don’t necessarily have perfectly dyadic pairings (e.g., the Dreamers, the Ascendancy). In fairness, I guess it must be said, too, that factions concerned with big ideas (say, the Lord’s Believers) rather than specific projects (e.g., the Human Ascendancy) would have more rough edges to snag on other ideologies.
And I think, after today looking at some of the original quotations, I must admit that Reynolds and the design team gave the leaders a good deal of texture, sometimes at the expense of losing focus, which is not necessarily good or bad. I was a bit concerned that Director Tamineh Pahlavi should have something to say about robotics as well as cloning, thinking it might be casting her arms too wide and horning in on the Luddite philosophy of Warden J.T. Marsh, but Commissioner Lal has arguably even more to say in-game about ecology than he does about democracy or information, supposedly his faction’s raison d'être.
Fascinating that you spot the relationship between the original seven factions and “Big Classical Ideas” with world-historical heft, while I most appreciate how much a product of their time they seemed to feel, both then and now. The major “Big Ideas” I or others came up with that didn’t seem covered by the seven original factions were: the secrets of the human mind (Dreamers) (although it could be argued that Yang could always have ended up there), the demise of civil society (Tribe), the morality of life on the frontier (Hunters or New Two Thousand, depending on how one counts), crime and punishment (Watchers, if we say that Yang, while a disciplinarian, is not specifically interested in correcting antisocial behavior), the secrets of the deep seas (New State, originally called The Beneath), and criminality (Promise-Keepers), which didn’t really result in a functional faction concept.
I think Lal would need to grapple with both law and truth. Somebody interested in the “free flow information” would eventually need to confront what information overload does to a democratic society. The Janus face to the Peacekeepers in that regard is the New State, although it could be Yang, played broadly as a gatekeeper between himself and his subjects.
To model “freedom” for the Hunters, I went with a nomadic society that doesn’t build traditional bases. No idea how one would incorporate that into even a sequel from a balance standpoint.
This endeavor is more world-building than linear story. I’m not going anyplace per se, just enjoying the journey as I dip my toes every day into a world I have come to love. As a kid, I collected roleplaying game books and illustrated encyclopedias purely to go on mental peregrinations.
I guess what I’m looking for is critique from folks like yourself. Which new factions speak loudest to you? What “takes” on the originals do you think are most intriguing?
What gets me about the SMAX factions is that there was a petty active web community around Alpha Centauri after game launch. The developers of the expansion consulted with them for at least some of the new techs, although I’m unsure of whether they did the same for the factions. Three years ago, I got to ask Brian Reynolds a question on the Pean to SMAC blog. I was curious whether he’d left any factions on the cutting room floor when shipping the original title. He told me that there were seven, start to finish, which I found mind-bending.
When I ran an Alpha Centauri matrix game (think a Sufficient Velocity grand strategic roleplaying game), the Tribe and the Shapers were by far the two standout player-created factions. But for each of those, we got a dozen people wanting to play just another cult that was going to plug everyone on Planet into a machine mind.
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To be a Survivalist is to live out the proud pledge not to burden others. The traditional role of government is inherently problematic for Survivalists. If I don't require as many services, it is not necessarily to bind me by as many rules. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
Santiago's Holnist allies were shocked by her intention to create a well-ordered society in which asceticism was among the highest virtues. The Spartan faction was soon roiled by civil war.
The memory of Holnist outrages aboard Unity had a long half-life for their surviving victims. The Tribe considered itself to be in a permanent state of vendetta with Santiago and her followers. Oscar van de Graaf likewise convinced the stakeholders of Terra Nova to pay considerable bounties for Spartan prisoners, whom the faction set to life terms of hard labor. The Peacekeeping Forces placed the last Spartan on trial for crimes against humanity as late as M.Y. 83.
Santiago's evolving ideology seemed to validate the general consensus that the Spartans remained an imminent and unrelenting threat even after achieving their stated goal of seizing the means to build an independent colony. Like Nathan Holn before her, Santiago produced a self-contradictory set of precepts to guide her people. The Spartan Creed stated that "the true warrior does not pursue violence against the unprepared," and warned Spartans never to shame themselves by joining battle with adversaries of blatantly inferior quality.
Yet the same document also said that the Spartan "strikes at the enemy wherever he or she finds them." Spartan society was divided between citizens and helots. Active soldiers and retired veterans belonged to the former class. Prisoners and those unable to fight were remanded to the latter. The Creedo taught that subjugation and labor were fitting punishments for those too weak to defend themselves or others--a condition for which they were held morally culpable.
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It is well for designers to remember that their weapons will only sometimes be used as intended; more often, soldiers will find that they must apply shovel as hammer. Some of the most fearsome weapons ever put to war—the tank-killing German ’88 or the man-shredding Ontos—began their careers with very different roles in mind.
The AT-RDV, All-Terrain Rocket Delivery Vehicle, was a prototype self-propelled artillery car built and operated by the Human Tribe during the months-long Battles of the Slowwind. To build the AT-RDV, Tribal mechanics combined components of a fire-gutted Unity combat car and two Unity Rover kits. All work was performed under tight secrecy in the interior machine shop of the Tribe's second Landing Pod, the John Brown.
Three rear-mounted launch tubes fired two-stage cluster rockets. Each warhead, which broke apart at a maximum height of 2,000', released 8 bomblets equipped with chaos charges fused for contact-explosion. The three launchers fired in tandem, one rocket at a time, from revolving magazines. The AT-RDV's rear cargo deck incorporated slide-out racks for one full replacement barrage, pre-indexed into speedloaders. A small mid-body fighting compartment gave the car's eight accompanying artillerists a reasonably well-protected (and slightly elevated) position from which to serve as many as four machine-guns.
Battlefield experience demonstrated the AT-RDV's unsuitability for its intended purpose, reduction of the Spartan mountain fortress of Xerxion. The AT-RDV was withdrawn from active service and reequipped in M.Y. 5 to be able to deploy anti-personnel mines in lieu of the original chaos payload. In M.Y. 6, the field-deployed AT-RDV was overrun by a mindworm boil.
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Information is power. I cannot learn except in dialogue. The secreting of knowledge is an act of tyranny, camoflaged as "proprietary research" by Morgan's overseers and "prudence" by Conclave synods. On a world about which we know so little, it is also tantamount to murder as surely as if one has pulled the trigger of a gun. - Opening Remarks to the 5th Congress of the Academy of Planetary Scienes
Tenured faculty of the University of Planet received a fixed annual energy stipend with which to fund their ongoing research.
Instructors, recent graduates, and tenured faculty seeking a more generous energy allotment, were required to appear before a tenure committee every three years to defend the value and pace of their output. The committee handed down recommendations that faction leadership usually applied without change.
The defense was notoriously demanding. Approvals skewed markedly in favor of the STEM fields. The average time from award of a Ph.D. to that of tenure from M.Y. 10 through 70 was nine years. About half of tenured researchers who chose to come before the committee appealing for increases were rejected each time.
The University population in M.Y. 72 included 4,720 tenured positions out of more than 20,632 total members of the academy and another 25,006 students below the doctoral level. Among those with tenure, just 82 were social scientists.
Career came before virtually all other considerations in University life. A researcher's wealth, matching prospects, and place of residence were closely correlated with their field of study. Auxiliary staff were even less secure. They and their families were traded like favors between bases.
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Among the supreme ironies of the UNS Unity is that while the industrial warzones that built the vessel were heavily-policed regions where security perpetually operated on “shoot-to-kill” rules of engagement, the mission’s own armory was relatively light in lethal armaments. Though alien megafauna was a concern, limited amounts of heavy weaponry was present in comparison to the overwhelming abundance of nonlethal arms. Some of this dated back to ancient bureaucratic decree- following the heavy bodycount of the “Years of Flechettes”, in the 2030s the U.N. resolved to take a softer, if no less firm, line against malefactors at its space elevator sites. U.N. Security Forces outfitted in new kit stressing defensive capabilities and sporting state-of-the-art less-than-lethal equipment. From electric prods to riot gas grenades, from tranquilizer shredder pistols to shock batons, this new array of sub-lethals became standard peacekeeping weaponry, and thus was also carried to the stars by Unity.
The vast majority of the nearly nine thousand U.N. Security Forces personnel aboard the ship possessed experience from other services. These included former U.N. Peacekeepers and U.N. Marines to veterans of national and multinational militaries, to the scant former corporate security contractors "gone public", and even rumors of ex-survivalist defectors. A lesser-known service quietly represented within the Security Forces was the United Nations Special Operations Coalition, a black ops unit of the U.N. Intelligence Cell tasked with numerous antiterrorist initiatives involving the Alpha Centauri mission. Preventing attacks on the space elevators, protecting orbital and lunar training facilities, rooting out infiltrators among the crew- the UNSOC was a sharp, serrated dagger the Secretary-General could wield in times that called for a specialist touch. Unique among similar black bag groups, the UNSOC was intensely trained in nonlethal weaponry, and called to employ such measures whenever possible. This mandate from the Secretariat was less motivated by humanitarian ideals or mercy, but rather a desire to capture live targets whenever possible, so as to better serve the interrogation staff at the Intelligence Cell.
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Right- Standard UNSOC Space Elevator counterinsurgency trooper, circa 2045
Developments in the materials sciences further enhanced security doctrine. After over half a century of lackadaisical investment, in the 2050s breakthroughs by Togra Labs chemical engineering researchers finally resulted in a new generation of quick-sticking adhesive tacky materials that could be used in sub-lethal combat, which they quickly trademarked as StickyFoam. Essentially chemically reactive aerogel laced with Buckytubes of incredible tensile strength, StickyFoam was used to disable individual assailants all the way to rioting mobs and enemy vehicles by freezing them in place. Togra StickyFoam cannons were even mounted on armored vehicles of private military corporations during the Badlands campaign of the Hypersurvivalist Wars, in which they were a key asset at immobilizing Holnist vehicles.
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Battle of Bridge City, wherein ARC private security Jaguar-class weapons platforms defeated Holnist forces piloting stolen U.S. military equipment. Note the use of the ‘foam and fry’ tactic of launching RPG rounds at immobilized units, the use of Togra coloring on the ARC vehicles (a stipulation of their corporate partnership).
Despite their use at a grand scale, only a handful of prototype personal launchers were brought along for the trip. Mission leadership balked at the possibility of flooding entire corridors with foam. Despite this, StickyFoam did see rare instances of use during Planetfall. These cases were usually as a stopgap fire extinguisher, a dicey operation as their precise chemical use did lead to the damaging of irreplaceable machinery. The few combat instances of StickyFoam during Planetfall were almost exclusively used against armored adversaries, including one defensive action that successfully held a hijacked CMC-300 suit in place for no less than seven minutes before its rebel operator was able to reboot the napalm projector systems and burn through the hardened aerogel.
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Left- Crew member dressed in environmental suit as impromptu fire protection prepares to enter conflagration. Right- Extracted helmet cam footage of the late Cpl. Jaydo Watkins, U.N. Security Forces, Battle of Forward Surgical Bay E.
Two other major types of sublethal weaponry that were en vogue on Earth at the time of the mission’s launch but went unrepresented on the ship included microwave emitters and precision combat waterjets. While directed energy active denial systems had been used by American military and law enforcement forces since the beginning of the 21st century, the high power expenditures, and bad institutional memories of New Los Angeles City Guardsmen and NLAPD officers indiscriminately firing microwave beams into crowds of starving rioters, made them prohibitively expensive for interstellar security. However, knowledge of such weapons were preserved, and later saw use on Planet after technological advancements made energy weapons commonplace.
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Watchers of Chiron Juggernaut-class social stability enforcement platform performs sentry duties outside of Bentham’s Blockhouse during the drone riots of M.Y. 91
High-pressure water jets had been used for industrial precision cutting since the 1930s. By the end of the century, weaponization of the hydro-technology enabled the staunching of dozens of protest movements and rebel insurgencies throughout the colonial empires. On the lowest settings, these water jets resembled traditional water cannons for crowd dispersal. On higher settings, they could cut through layers of metal, utterly destroying enemy vehicles and structures. Like masers, water jets too were severely resource-constrained, making them a non-starter in the water-scarce theater of space. However, they later became a novel armament employed by the aquatic factions of Chiron, whose militaries were primarily operated in or near water.
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Fragmentary footage of a Nautilus Pirates Manta-class amphibious shagokhod during a shore raid. The blue "lensing" effect is not merely cosmetic or for psychological effect, but rather light from the synthetic crystal focusing the stream.
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A Hunter 'Thumper tank prepares to stimulate a fungal bloom on barren ground. [1]
The purpose of every profession is to reduce complicated problems to a matter of routine. In the land of men whose business is to segment and prescribe, the most supreme threat is the one your opponent has not imagined. - The Small Book
The first reported atrocity on Planet was perpetrated in M.Y. 5. At the Oracle, defending Saber Corporation mercenaries modified a Unity supply crawler to deploy nerve gas pods against incoming Pilgrim Regulators.
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Chairman Sheng-ji Yang was proud of those who took up arms in defense of his kingdom. He memorialized them in miniatures put on public display to inculcate appropriate feelings of gratitude and general patriotism. Over time, he became an accomplished artist, capable of incorporating such details as the homemade grenades clipped to the belt of the loader in the piece featured here. Many of the explosives were too bulk and irregular to be pitched in the traditional manner and would be used as mines instead. Mess tins were a common casing. The large versions, issued to graduates of the mission's Martian Survival Course, could carry nearly 3kg of explosives and shrapnel.
Separately, Hive Security perfected the tactic of using man-pack mortars to launch knock-out gas at prospective targets. Although in theory this made it easier for them to take their victims as slaves, they rarely did so, executing incapacitated targets instead. Yang was keen to couch his reasons in terms that implied ruthlessness, but the Hive lacked food resources and could not have fed the prisoners it took.
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Deviator weapons were always subject to focused fire. This tank is protected by skirt-mounted cope cages, counter-measures projectors, a laser-reflective coating, and the four long-range acoustic devices mounted at each edge of its rectangular hull. These weapons could broadcast at volumes up to 200dB, providing highly effective area defense against both enemy soldiers and incoming rounds.
Dreamer commanders began receiving "deviator" weaponry around M.Y. 170. Such fighting platforms consisted of an anti-personnel projectile launcher configured for wide-area spread. Deviators fired gas-injected membranes of sodium alginate and calcium chloride that released a somnacin-derived compound as they burst or dissolved. Without activation of a secondary device, the victims would merely hallucinate to the point of temporary incapacitation. However, if the operator utilized a directional speaker, and provided they were capable of speaking the Ur-language recovered by Dreamer neuroarchaeologists, they could exercise strong powers of suggestion over the afflicted. The Dreamers used Deviator bombardment to reverse pending routs of their notoriously shaky militia. (Once the original Saber Corporation mercenaries contracted to Roshann Cobb were no longer combat-effective, the faction's fighting ability sank to a dangerous low point.) [2]
[1] The Thumper was a unit in the Westwood Studios computer game Dune 2000 capable of attracting the sandworms native to the desert planet Arrakis.
[2] The Deviator Tank was a unique House Ordos unit in the 1992 Westwood Studios computer game Dune II and derivative titles. The Deviator had the same capability to temporarily convert enemy units described here.
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Tribal solar collectors used variable-geometry mechanics and could quickly retract into protected shelters in the presence of danger.
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At the very edge of the Uranium Flats where sand meets sea sits Elektrichestvokupol. Encroaching Hivemen forced the University of Planet to abandon its cherished megaproject at the eleventh hour. Zakharov's fighting strength was almost entirely devoted to the Spartan front. An under-strength company of University Enforcement at the power station withdrew even before evacuating plant staff. Yang's drones retrieved many of the defenders' discarded smart rifles, happy to replace their inferior hand weapons.
Yang's laborers swarmed the plant within hours of its capture. Upon discovering that they lacked the infrastructure to keep it operational, they dismantled and carted off the moveable machinery. The plant's fuel rods had already been irradiated during low-power testing; its new owners wisely left the reactor in SCRAM condition. The damaged shell of the reactor complex, called the "sarcophagus," stands a monument to their victory.
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The Centauri Monopoly raised hundreds of wind traps in congenial locations across their territories. Morgan assured his shareholders that the huge and obviously vulnerable filters offered economies of scale.
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Ye shall run every path, and cross every water. - Datalinks
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Members of the Conclave's Parke Expedition look out across the High Spires. The towers of Koppernigk Observatory are visible just above the horizon.
Sister Godwinson ordered Major Vinchenson Parke to create a natural inventory of Planet's largest and tallest mountain range. To assist him, the faction spared no expense. Working with Morganite victualers, Parke equipped more than two hundred people to his precise specifications.
At the uppermost altitudes, climbers wore fully-pressurized suits to assist with breathing. The thick outer garment protected against UV light exposure.
Mechanical mules transported the expedition's best-known accompaniment: heavy-duty wind shelters reinforced for gale-strength conditions. The dome-shaped inventions bled waste heat and so prevented snow accumulation that risked trapping their occupants. Run-off from this process provided drinking water.
Like climbers of an earlier era, the Believers used recoilless rifles and lasers to tame the deep snowpack.
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A policeman, while taking a bribe from me, once asked why I had arranged for the execution of a competitor. I told him that it was for the same reason the government maintained the Homelands. He, of course, did not understand. - The Ethics of Greed
From time immemorial, violence has gone in the footsteps of money, either to take or secure it.
Neighbors who refused to purchase power from the Morganite grid were entitled to live in the dark. Morgan Base Operations called it "unscheduled disconnection."
Corporate Security troopers received a .015% share of all non-faction energy put on-grid and a bounty pegged at .050% the value of competitors' assets eliminated.
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A Conclave loimós, sketched after firing a shoulder-launched anti-tank guided missile. The Stickyfoam projector and combat claw are a classic pairing for this melee fighter.
Powered combat exo-frames were already in widespread use on Earth when Unity left the Lunar Cradle in May 2071. The United States first field tested their prototypes in the Indo-Pakistani Nuclear Exclusion Zone performing decontamination. Communist China proved the technology's suitability for urban search and rescue.
Nuclear-powered artificial musculature propelled the suits at loping runs of more than 70kph. Proficient operators bounded two-story buildings, confident that they would land upright thanks to the onboard gyroscopes.
Operators such as the U.S. Army, Soviet Military Air Forces, and People's Liberation Army used a mixture of smart guns, autocannons, microlasers, man-pack missiles, and drones. On Chiron, military technology lagged generations behind, notwithstanding the concessions that had to be made for flame or Stickyfoam due to wormthreat. Several high-grade suits made it aboard Unity only for their early possessors to struggle with upkeep and repair. Grenade launchers were therefore a simple favorite, but shortages of other-than-sub-lethal ammunition meant that they usually fired homemade shotgun rounds, smoke, or irritants. Factions that had gone aboard Unity armed--Spartans, Tribals, and Charterists--were less constrained, but even their weapons were of an older vintage: 7.6mm UN-standard hand and 9mm impact models.
In M.Y. 17, Governor Oscar van de Graaf famously felt himself on the receiving end of too much attention from the Centauri Monopoly's Corporate Security. The New Two Thousand assaulted Morganite strip mines with a pair of Cadillac-Gage Wakíŋyaŋ Powered Combat Suits. Rather than rely on their 5.56mm chest-mounted anti-personnel pods or single 2.6" light anti-armor weapons systems, the 9' tall attackers deployed backpack-mounted pile drivers that successfully collapsed the enemy's drifts.
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Artist's rendering of a Unity Submersible.
To enlarge the human perspective, to build on knowledge for future generations, to identify dangers, and to chart the course to a better world: If these are the goals of the explorer, then everyone—voyager, scientist and citizen, parent and child—is engaged in humanity’s momentous expedition. - The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus, Datalinks
Its Aquatic Operations Section provided the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri with sailors, equipment, and leadership to begin the exploration of Chiron's deep seas.
Unity carried dozens of accomplished naturalists, including botanist Deirdre Skye; land management specialist J.T. Marsh; decorated military submariner Raoul André St. Germaine; Kleisel Mercator, a veteran of the German Antarctic Expedition; and alpinist Vinchenson Parke.
Marsh in particularly believed that the uniquely inhospitable ecology would play an indispensable role in toughening the first colonists mentally for the unknown challenges of governance ahead. Forward Contact Teams seemed like daredevils to their base-bound bretheren, living "outside the wire" of sensor networks and flame traps that provided the best known insurance against infestation by fungus and mindworms.
At sea, the New State took up a similar role, daring the abyssal depths. Faction firsts included tapping Planet's hydrothermal vents and organizing sustainable kelp farms. Their indispensable tool: the Unity Submersible. These were small, short-ranged exploration and work craft designed to operate from surface-going motherships, from which they could replenish and receive repairs.
The submersibles were an analogue to the Unity Rover. Both used electric motors primarily. The submersibles were designed around a magnetohydrodynamic drive. It was hoped that the technology would prove more durable than classical propeller assemblies. Microjets positioned at the edges of the dart-shaped craft gave it excellent maneuverability. The minimum crew of three was protected by a thick titanium hull, which meant an impressively deep crush depth. Many New State sailors owed their lives to this innovation, which kept them alive until rescue. Using virtual reality simulation, an engineer could extend telemanipulators to perform gross work or fine.
The basic submersibles were mostly unarmed. For military operations, an external torpedo mount sometimes took the place of the usual waldoes. The New State did not secure the small batch of torpedoes present in the Unity Armory, and they were presumed lost with the ship. Early attempts to machine crude replacements ended in catastrophe. A stopgap solution called for changing the nature of submersible warfare altogether. Rather than fix their targets and fire from stand-off distance, New State submersibles raced ahead of them to deploy spools of electrically-charged filament wire. A submersible that made contact with these charged filaments went dead in the water. The "entangler" could continue to deliver periodic pulses until repair activity ceased for lack of air, or because the victim had sunk below crush depth. Later improvements to this system involved vibrating the wire at frequencies that turned it into a vehicle-scale garrote, a target's own inertia effecting the inevitably fatal cut.
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Name: Annikki Luttinen
Rank: Lieutenant (junior grade)
Position: Subroutine Specialist
County of Origin: Unified Norden Realm
DOB: 06-19-2038
Service Record:
Annikki “Aki” Luttinen born 2038, Hallingdal, Norway, to shopkeeper parents of Kven ancestry. Early aptitude in mathematics resulted in placing first in the Kalle Contest at age nine. Studied at Oslo University, earned Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Programming, Masters in Computer Science, Ph.D. Computer Science and Computer Age Philosophy. Pursued academia instead of private industry despite the commercial infotech boom during the new pan-Nordic monarchy's Springtime Court era. Became expert of C* and C** programming languages; doctoral dissertation "Simula and Stimulation" won 2059 Stroustrup-Torvalds Award, Artificial Intelligence category.
Drafted upon graduation for national service. Served in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone aboard the RNS Prince Amleth as cyber counter-intrusion specialist. Tour mostly peaceful, as the Riket Norden Sjøforsvaret's primary business in the area was humanitarian in nature, dispatching aid to refugees from the Six Minute War and shuttling those deemed worthy of resettlement to the Unified Realm's colonies within the EZ - New Kalmar, Gjeddeland, Colonia Halonen. Advanced swiftly and assigned additional role as UAV chief, responsible for maintaining avionics software and combat behavioral routines of the flagship’s drones. Received commendation from superiors for improving automated battle capabilities nearly thrice-fold, undefeated in both simulated and live-fire exercises.
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Prince Amleth bridge crew - Ensign Luttinen right of center
Twenty-three month tour of peace punctuated by conflict in Europe. In retaliation for UNR-supported attempted separatist uprising in Komi ASSR, the Soviet Navy’s Scarlet Sun Indian Ocean Fleet blockaded RNS activities. Merchant marine similarly harassed, Norden holdings threatened. Crisis peaked at New Kola when Scarlet Sun fleet prevented Norden floatilla from resupplying minor colony. Local viceroy, a resettled Kashmiri refugee, repeatedly pleaded for RNS intervention. After Soviet marines landed and re-christened the settlement to Murmansk, the captain of the Prince Amleth ordered Luttinen to launch the ship’s complement of drones against the Soviet flagship carrier, Kremlin, and for the gunners to shell all surrounding vessels.
Luttinen refused, citing the statistical likelihood of the situation leading to mutual destruction of both fleets, and lack of authorization from Kalmar. Utilized reason and executive control of the drones to convince bridge crew to deescalate; the captain was confined to quarters and both fleets disengaged. (Soviets abandoned the artificial island shortly thereafter.) Crisis resolved when the Unified Realm ceded several EZ colonies and made assurances to not rejoin NATO in exchange for formalization of the Karelian border. Luttinen completed tour without formal reprimand, but reputation irrevocably changed.
Joined Zakharov Research Institute shortly after national service, during the Great Northern Détente, turning down offer from Togra Labs. Worked on game theory simulations for higher peace studies. Rejected offers to work on well-funded teams engaged in research with military applications. Achieved master’s degree in cognitive science during stint, subsequently starting and directing major research project BlueBook: an effort to digitally recreate the human mind, using long ponder learning techniques and Dean sequences. Encountered opposition from institute head regarding validity of epistemological model. Project ultimately shut down when allocation rescinded. In spite of theoretical differences, handpicked for ZRI’s Unity expedition computer engineering team by the provost himself.
(https://i.imgur.com/iZ7oeIt.png)
Details are unclear, but evidence exists Luttinen initiated an unauthorized experiment in pre-sentient algorithms prior to shipwide hibernation, using dormant bandwidth from Unity computing core. Experiment designed to run for the entire duration of the decades-long voyage. As during and after Planetfall the crew’s teams of data librarians and data scientists were widely dispersed, if not outright incapacitated, only scant logs and stories attest to the nature of the algorithmic experiment. While many allege that it was the continuation of BlueBook, others suggest that the experiment was made at the orders of Prokhor Zakharov or yet another party. Unfortunately, upon awakening, Data Services discovered that far from lasting four decades plus, the experiment had terminated scant three months post-mission launch, along with a lengthy autostack dump. Captain Garland could only reprimand Luttinen, as the outbreak of shipwide instability prevented further investigation.
A sudden bout of rheumatic fever, perhaps triggered by decades of immune system atrophy during Wespe-Quinn-Vagner hibernation, spared Luttinen the trauma of Planetfall. As one of the Chief of Engineering’s foremost computer scientists, she was placed under protective quarantine and safely evacuated alongside awakened crew members. Thus she escaped the fate of the still-sleeping whose cryotubes were placed aboard Cargo Pods launched automatically.
Luttinen reappeared at University Base. Stoic personality deepened into flat affect. Emerged as a leading member of University society. Agitated for rapid development of Information Networks, accelerated organization of factional processes upon pure logical lines. Rumored to be engaged in undisclosed cybernetic augmentation and covert A.I. research beyond the purview of University Open Access datalinks. Fell out with Zakharov for second time. Following sanctions of "cultivating Bayesian cult of personality" and "advocating Lysenkoism", left the University with dozens of supporters, some supplies, untold data cores.
(https://i.imgur.com/g7XcyMw.jpg)
Post-fever Luttinen was often rumored of having undergone surgical implantation of computing devices connected to BlueBook
Some indefinite time later, Luttinen reemerged from the wilderness with her followers at the gates of the Children of the Atom. Now calling herself “Aki Zeta-5”, she petitioned Dr. Anhaldt to permit the admittance of the Consciousness, so that they may share the algorithm they have discovered.
Psych Profile: Emotionally Detached
Subject has historically shown aloof, dispassionate, calculating traits. Obsession with mathematical and computer science technical problems since childhood, lack of interest in social activities in conventions. New Kola Crisis during national service in the IOEZ significant to present-day ideological worldview. Fellow servicemen reported subject betrayed rare outbursts of emotion following the conclusion of the naval standoff. Subject expressed fierce frustration, contempt at both Norden and Soviet leadership for pursuing needless conflict of little strategic value.
Post-Planetfall, emotional awareness has gone to near-nil along multiple axes, indicating extreme dampening, possibly anhedonia. Strong emphasis in logic and reason while sacrificing emotion and intuition. Conducts all behavior with high efficiency and pure practicality. Inconsistent treatment of others observed, likely rooted in rapidly calibrating behaviors in response to realtime updates, without regard to emotion. Loyalty dubious. Perfect score of 1.0 on Atherholt Trauma Function Test suggests potential psychopathy. Caution recommended.
Notes:
The idea that Aki is a Norwegian Kven is from this online post (https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/lets-read-gurps-alpha-centauri.3555/page-2#post-141497) reviewing the SMAC GURPS tabletop RPG sourcebook. That post also makes some great distinctions between the ideology of the University and the Cybernetic Consciousness. I always thought the Cyborgs are the most underwritten faction, glad someone tried to fill in the gaps.
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An android shows aberrant behavior at Gaia's High Garden.
We must stop seeking insights from mere tools. No machine, being a purely derivative construction of Man, can exceed his understanding. Though it may be faster in the realm of calculations and precision, a robot is merely a complicated set of switches and contains within itself nothing of genuine mystery to us. - Chasing the Divine [1]
Each of the human settlements had a distinctive relationship to artificial intelligence. All used machines, including robots, but only some used androids.
The University of Planet led in the early use of android servitors, which it unleashed upon practically every task. The ubiquity of these helpmates gave rise to periodic debates about the nature of sentience and their personhood within the faction, but familiarity bred contempt, and prevailing opinion held that the child could never exceed the parent in merit. The University of Planet took the opposite approach, quickly reserving rights and privileges to robots of a certain computational capacity or possessing programming of a certain nature.
The very complexity of thinking machines attracted speculation about whether other complex systems, including the human brain, were but facsimiles built with different materials. Such thinking was deeply unsettling to the Conclave given its official belief that humans were a special creation of the ineffable Divine. Sister Miriam Godwinson warned her flock not to succumb to fascination with artificial intelligence. God, she said, could not be found in what humans themselves could make. The kirtarchs never forbade the creation or use of machines themselves, but Believers learned to treat androids with special fear, as if their dispassionate mien might be somehow contagious.
The Human Tribe had an almost equally uncomfortable attitude toward technology. Jean-Baptiste Keller had been a Luddite on grounds that technology exacerbated "celebration of the self," so that, indulged too often, it produced a supremely selfish individual, alive only to their own urges and unfit for the society of others. Yet the simultaneous emphasis of Tribal thought on the serendipity of geographic closeness produced a countervailing invitation to begin examining androids from the perspective of the Kellerites' own historical experience so that certain Supremacists within the faction came gradually to the conclusion that denying the equality of sufficiently advanced, self-aware machines was inconsistent with Tribal virtues.
Factions that celebrated the human body as something especially praiseworthy, including the Stepdaughters, Hunters, Spartans, and Ascendancy, associated the casual use of androids with chronic civilizational indolence. It was one thing to employ a robot for special applications beyond natural human ability, but anything else smacked of opportunity lost to improve oneself through exertion. Director Tamineh Pahlavi and her geneticists were particularly concerned about the possibilities for divergent evolution: what if the very ubiquity of labor-saving devices in a society could produce weaklings down through the generations?
Some were indifferent to the use of androids for either labor or companionship. Shaper thinkers were largely silent about the number and role of androids in their midst.
Morgan worked to make the inclusion of labor-saving robots a near-certainty within every household. Faction marketers sold androids as the all-purpose solution--for disability, emotional maladjustment, or even just boredom. The real reason for the Monopoly's position was that robots were more energy-efficient than people: the faction saved energy when people stopped insisting upon doing for themselves.
[1] Thanks to my friend Devin for his editorial contributions!
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It is not disagreement we punish, but dissent. You disagree? Fine. But hold your tongue after the decision has been made, lest you provoke doubt in lesser men. Nothing better serves a sailor than confidence, and nothing so dooms him but the creeping thought that his course is already wrong. - The Discipline of Obedience
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New State multi-mission submarine Trudeau retrieves divers collecting Planetpearls in the disputed Serran Rectangle.
The combination of open torpedo tubes, forward and ventral, with active running lights suggest that the boat is deploying a volley of survey probes.
Some of the most interesting features of the Châteaurenault class, of which this boat was the first, were the large protruding storage bays and four boom-deployed electrostatic conductors that dominated the lower half of the hull form. The Trudeau and her sisters carried no strategic armament, and while they could be puissant warriors in their own defense, their purpose was, in fact, resource-gathering.
A Châteaurenault would locate the trunk lines of an opposing factions' submersible energy grid and tap it directly, drawing off as much as 420,000 MWh at a single contact. [1] This was as much energy as could be generated in a month by a large nuclear power station.
When such ventures were interrupted, the long-barreled laser mount located to the rear of the conductors simply cut the adversary's lines as the would-be thief made to flee.
On its longest deployment, Trudeau led Morganite Corporate Security mini-subs on a four-day chase back to friendly waters, sinking at least six of the pursuers before making good the escape. Living to fight another day was not enough, however; the Morganite response inflicted damage so great that the Trudeau lost its stolen cargo. As a result, the New State was forced to abandon its forward base at Motte and Bailey.
(https://img.wallpapersafari.com/desktop/1920/1080/32/73/hxE96e.jpg)
Two-person Morganite submarine pursuit form. Because Corporate Security relied heavily on fixed defenses, these were very lightly armed, using low-power marking lasers projected from the twin directors mounted aft of the prow to guide microtorpedos. The inadequacy of their weapons and variance with doctrine rarely prevented pursuits: pilots were more than willing to risk themselves for the enormous bounties Morgan paid out for destroying intruders.
[1] Inspired by the Frank Herbert short story with the same premise, The Dragon in the Sea (1956).
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Spartan Myrmidons race to take up positions during the final Gaian assault on Sparta Command.
I don't have an objection to peace. To the resolution of hunger, thirst, sickness, or suffering. But the delegitimation of all war is not these things. The United Nations insisted that every disagreement could be negotiated, every conflict zone embargoed. They disliked the pestilence of war. But some issues cannot be submerged. Whatever happened to morality? To principle? Who was it that said, the United States could not endure permanently, half free and half slave? 'It will become all one thing, or all the other.' How did this happen? To achieve lasting peace, fight a war. - The Council of War
As one might expect, the combat veterans among Chiron's faction leaders usually took a sanguine view of armed conflict.
For some, it was a question of morality. Pete Landers, who himself had come to Kellerism only as an accidental byproduct of indiscriminate persecution, mobilized his Human Tribe to neutralize once and future enemies. Mercy, he warned, was the first chapter in a long book titled Grief. [1] Marsh of the Hunters used violence to enforce the freedoms of movement that he believed were essential to exercising one's full humanity. Santiago posited that a society unable to identify any red lines over which to fight and die was committing the political and cultural suicide that preceded physical extermination.
A squad of Tribal militia (https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/successionuniverse/images/0/02/Sci-fi-series-postwar-font-b-mercenary-b-font-who-s-fun-mode-cloth-silk-art.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/900?cb=20170313014741) prepare a meal somewhere in the Protoforest. Dust masks protect their lungs from the carcinogenic smokes of nearby wildfires. They will dine on native subrid.
The power to hurt -- the sheer unacquisitive, unproductive power to destroy things that somebody treasures, to inflict pain and grief -- is a kind of bargaining power, not easy to use but used often. - Arms and Influence, Datalinks
Another set of factions pursued war as a kind of commercial venture. For Oscar van de Graaf, war conveniently reduced the number of hungry mouths at any table. Both the Houses of Morgan and Struan used violence to compel negotiating partners to do as they wished, though a determined resistance could usually fend off fighters motivated only by a promise of pay. Yang, Pahlavi, and Cobb didn't scruple to provide even that much context to their plundering expeditions.
Crusading factions fought wars in pursuit of specific ideological objectives. Landers, Godwinson, and Lal from time to time alleged that their military operations were in fact humanitarian interventions on behalf of those too weak to defend themselves. For Lady Deirdre Skye, this meant Planet itself.
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A Morganite auxiliary shoulders an Impact-era man-portable air-defense system during a demonstration to prospective buyers at Morgan Metagenics. Morgan Defense Products did a tidy business upgrading older weapons to the "Smart" standard through the use of active guidance systems and integration with whole-of-battlefield command-and-control suites. The eye-controlled, augmented reality computer technology fitted to the helmet allows the artilleryman to "paint" targets in multiple different modalities and redirect the projectile in-flight.
[1] I got this terrific little maxim from Thrawn Ascnendancy: Greater Good (2021) by Timothy Zahn.
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It was then we fired our broadsides into her ribs of steel / yet no break in her armor made; no damage did she feel. - Traditional, Datalinks
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Fast-moving Combat Trikes gave the Unity crew armed reconnaissance capability with better survivability and higher top speed than Rovers, and were similarly rugged, but lacked much of the other utility, including cargo capacity and suitability for towing.
The Trikes' paired 20mm autocannons could shred xenofungal tubers as easily as sheet metal stockades. The Gaians used a brace of Trikes to assault the New Two Thousand's whaling station at Fort Enterprise. A stray round pierced the containment of the colony's Landing Pod, poisoning the area for more than a century before Shaper liquidators completed reclamation work.
Without satellite or radio interconnection to coordinate their movements, the Trikes were considerably less effective combatants than on the battlefields of Old Earth.
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Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. - Jurassic Park, Datalinks
Of the numerous factions struggling for primacy on Chiron, three made arguments specifically about ecology.
In their first days at Gaia's Landing, the Stepdaughters had carried with them Earth's botanical and zoological legacy. Their domed bases boasted an almost encyclopedic collection of living artifacts. In council, Deirdre and her sisters spent hours debating how best to foster the menagerie for which they had spilled so much blood in Hydroponics Bay 11Γ. Like other survivors, Gaians, if more than ordinarily curious about their surroundings, were nevertheless unflagging in the expansion of their sensor grids and promptly eradicated encroaching blooms, as prescribed by the Forward Contact Teams. Only in time did Lady Skye come to doubt the efficacy of "fighting with the land," as she called it. Small-scale greenhouse agriculture was expensive. To supply familiar fruits, vegetables, and insect proteins, an artificial ecosystem had first to be established, then hermetically sealed. Skye aspired to produce hybrid foodstuffs--still suitable for human consumption, but considerably less labor-intensive--if for no other reason than efficiency. This temptation, which the Gaians were first to heed, led them naturally to make insightful observations about the correlation between adaptive living and reduced planetary immunological response.
The Shapers, sometimes derided as a high-technology mortuary cult, approached their new homeworld without humility. In his Planet: A History, Burns reduced the divergence between Gaians and Shapers to a question of guilt. Lady Deirdre Skye posited that men had ruined Old Earth. Her philosophy focused on avoidance of repetition, but she and her people identified as disfavored victims of that original sin, whereas Coordinator Shoichiro Nagao assumed personal responsibility for those same ecological nightmares. Deirdre approached Chiron as a living entity with its own agency that, unless respected, would fail, dooming the colonists altogether. Nagao treated Planet as a petri dish containing growth medium--an environment he would remake to specification. Gaians built their bases into the side of fungal stalks because they could not fabricate building material more suitable to heat dispersion and moisture retention. Shapers injected the planetary crust with fracturing fluids and pumped out CO2. The resulting stimulation of fungal and worm activity was of course unwelcome, but nothing Shaper Liquidators were not trained to handle.
The Hunter Creedo put it that a man was no man who could resist the call of the wild. Hunters "lived rough," taking pride in their ability to survive mindworm attack or desperate hunger by learning "the moods of the land"--the urgency of different wormsight, subrid migratory patterns, and which plants contained nutrient value for humans. Despite a pronounced tendency to see themselves as honorable adversaries of Planet rather than its adopted progeny, the Hunters of Chiron, conservationists at heart, eventually found more to love in Deirdre Skye's attitude of accommodation than Shoichiro Nagao's project of total revisionism. Hunter scouts lent their services willingly to Gaian Rangers seeking Shaper 'Formers and Rigs.
Miriam Godwinson's Conclave was the closest thing to a natural ally of the Shaper movement. If the Gaians were guests and the Hunters trespassers with no intention of expecting Chiron to bend to their will, Believers were rightful inheritors happy to take transfer of title. Even more than the Centauri Monopoly, the Conclave described Planet as a bounty for disposal. Yet while Morgan stridently denied that questions of morality were pertinent to the survivors' interaction with the new world, Miriam argued that taking from, or even remaking, Chiron were divinely-sanctioned forms of worship. Miriam based her position on the Conclave Bible, reasoning that the first positive invitationfrom God to Adam was that he should name "every beast of the field and every bird of the air." [1] To this end, the Conclave produced a prodigious line of naturalists, though their work was purely descriptive, rather than affectionate, in its intent.
[1] See this excerpt (http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2010/12/is-theology-compatible-with-science.html) from Brin's book, Earth. I am indebted to MysticWind for this recommendation.
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Even after decades of robotic weaponry proliferation, the United Nations continued to shy away from adopting the technology for its own security forces. Partly this was motivated by its focus on sublethal weaponry and commando forces specializing in their use. Another was the inherent political difficulties and ethical dilemmas - absent AGI, no software system was free of flaw. Even a drone firing tear gas rounds could accidentally concuss civilians. In the face of such a tragedy was the programmer at fault? The mechanical engineer who designed the firing apparatus? With platforms powered by adaptive learning and long ponder, should the software breeder be held liable? With remote operated drones, would the pilot be put on trial, or the multiple layers of military officers, civilian commanders, and, often, law enforcement officials who signed off on the approval in an act of shared responsibility? Which system is to blame? The war machine or the war machine?
The 21st-century saw unparalleled use of a new form of militarized drone: humanoid weapons platforms. The public was entranced by these clanking mechanical combatants, carrying out their orders with true machine perfection. As these clockwork machina marched forth, burning villages without moral compunction or fear, atrocities mounted. In response, the U.N. flailed about uselessly with nonbinding resolutions even as each permanent member of its Security Council freely used armed robotic servitors in wars and police actions.
(https://i.imgur.com/GH8mmDZ.jpeg)
However, during one of the last cycles of the construction of the UNS Unity, dubbed the “Open for Business" season for when multinational businesses temporarily became the driving force behind the project, the amoral gigacorporate boards in charge decided there should be opposition to cost-effective solutions. Even as the U.N. with its Byzantine bureaucracy and innumerable NGOs squabbled in the wake of the American departure, the boards elected ARC founder Oscar van de Graaf as their CEO of CEOs, the Director-in-Chief of the corporate junta that was the Unity Mission Industry Standards Board. van de Graaf’s opening remark was, “Screw it, just get it done.” While Unity was Open for Business, that remark became law.
The case for incorporating militarized machines was simple. It was a scientific fact that Chiron hosted alien life, some of quite considerable size and of unknown temperament. Better to bring along soldiers not limited by petty concerns as breathing to defend frail human colonists. Robotic platforms also had plenty of general-use applications. Tireless and complaintless, they were considered a boon for working in vacuum and other hostile environments. And so, in addition to General Atomics Corporation and American Machines, two more vendors were signed up to provision the mission with robots.
(https://i.imgur.com/tKAQqIG.png?1)
Johannesburg-based robotics company Tetra Vaal notoriously served as chief supplier of law enforcement automatons throughout Africa. The D-9 Volker, its premier bipedal drone model empowered authoritarian police departments and imperialistic governments alike. Boasting pinpoint sharpshooting skills, superhuman strength and agility, and data feeds integrated into any law enforcement digital intelligence system, they supplemented regimes that wanted to keep tight order at minimal expense of their own human resources. Programmed with a wide variety of civilian interaction modes from the Benevolent to the Hostile, the Volkers were a common sight in the dense urban environments of the colonial empires, chasing perpetrators- whether criminal or dissident- through shantytowns with predator speed. For less than-megalopolis sized communities, having one Volker was often sufficient to boost the local police department’s crimefighting abilities. Indeed, many organized criminal organizations turned to sophisticated guerrilla cyber-warfare in their fight against the koperkêrels (Afrikaans for “copper police”), using homegrown ICE code and improvised EMP devices alike.
The militarized FC-3 Vaas variant, boasting more protective armor, greater higher firepower, and thousands of warfare routines in its onboard computer, was also a popular- and very expensive- offering from Tetra Vaal. The bipedal weapons platforms proved to be force multipliers in the many anti-rebellion colonial wars that swept the continent throughout the twenty-first century, most notably in the Azanian Uprising.
(https://i.imgur.com/NXHofSZ.jpg)
Tetra Vaal’s robots were networked and linked to homebase operators exposed to the full imagery that the mobile platforms could capture. While they did possess sophisticated tactical intelligence for use in policing or military situations, no authorized unit were given a personality of their own. In terms of Weapons Automation levels as determined by the Society of American Military Engineers, they were at level 6, considered quite high, but lacked any sort of simulated anthropomorphization common in personable artificial intelligence (P.A.I). For over a century, the public imagination was titillated by the possibility of truly self-thinking machines, and the Turing imitations that mimicked human behavior. Recognizing this popular fear of rogue robots gone amok, Tetra Vaal installed a digitally ergonomic portable interface layer running a militarily-hardened fork of TograOS on their Vaal platforms, allowing operators the ability to slave units to PDAs or TrueVu specs and assume direct control.
(https://i.imgur.com/taJxbrA.jpg)
While robotic labor was normalized in American society, perpetual fears of mechanical revolution lingered. Pictured is the disproportionate police response to SUN·E, an American Machines household service robot suspected of homicide in 2040s Chicago. The machine was later acquitted.
The addition of Tetra Vaal machines faced a different ethical challenge. Its prominent use by the South African apartheid government (not to mention by former Rhodesia, Portuguese African colonial administrations, the Belgians, and the Pied Noir regime of Oranais) continued to be roundly condemned by the United Nations. More importantly, Morgan Industries founder and CEO Nwabudike Morgan, a key stakeholder of the Unity Mission Industry Standards Board, presented sharp personal objections to Tetra Vaal’s inclusion. In a surprise break of his previous withdrawal from public life, Morgan appeared before the press to denounce TV and all of its works. In an uncharacteristic turn from his normally jovial persona known to the world community, Morgan thundered against “profiteers of oppression enabling small-minded bigots.” He spoke passionately at length about his own experiences struggling against the open prejudice he faced when visiting South Africa as a youth, of being watched over by machines of merciless hate in the streets of Cape Town, of seeing Black and Coloured people marched away by Volkers to containment communities behind barbed wire. Morgan concluded that bringing such machines would “forever stain the stars with human hatred.”
(https://i.imgur.com/XWbpw0W.jpg)
Tetra Vaal CEO Joshua Abdon Haldeman fiercely countered the accusations. Declaring that the company held no allegiance to any particular government or ethnicity but to the entire public at large, he swore up and down that “not a single line of prejudice” had been written into his machines. His words failed to convince the masses of public admirers around the world who sympathized- and sided- with Morgan. Facing a public relations storm unlike any it had seen before, the company opened itself for examination, permitting auditors from the ISB to examine the source code. The U.N. dispatched fact-finders and data librarians to dive deep into the corpus, and even sent code breeders to examine the self-evolving neural networks itself. Months later, the Boraine Report determined that the Tetra Vaal codebase did not classify human visual data sets according to race, or even specific ethnicity. Rather, the machines had gone even further; with all of the mobile surveillance video footage collected by patrolling Volkers, as well as data provided by the national South African Police Service, the company had essentially mapped out the probable identity of any individual its police units came across. Tens of millions throughout the country- and hundreds of millions more throughout Africa- were subject to intrusive observation by the company and its governmental clients.
Despite the bombshell, Haldeman treated the report as an exoneration. And indeed, many casual observers in the public were content by the fact that Tetra Vaal was indiscriminate in its persecution of the law. Even so, in the face of legal threats from Morgan to launch a series of class-action suits on behalf of every citizen living under Volker-enforced territories, the ISB had to act to prevent the Unity project from cracking even further. Thus, they arbitrated a deal: the Tetra Vaal machines provided for the expedition would have all individual-ID capabilities stripped from their codebanks. Furthermore, despite being awarded its lucrative contract to supply mere hundreds of Volkers in exchange for brand visibility at a global level, leading to untold future market expansion opportunities, Tetra Vaal would be consigned to be a junior non-voting member of the ISB. Finally, to assuage Nwabudike Morgan from further personal opposition, Morgan Industries had its contract expanded to provide even more resources and personnel to the Unity project, at a level that nearly rivaled Director-in-Chief van de Graaf’s own ARC contingent.
All were satisfied by this. Tetra Vaal and Haldeman were glad to be rid of the entire imbroglio. The U.N. felt it had dealt a modest blow against both invasive software and violent hardware, even if it was mostly ceremonial. The ISB was glad that the project could get moving again, though DIC van de Graaf warily eyed the scope of the Morgan expansion. Morgan Industries and its SafeHaven parent company proclaimed that this was “one more step towards peace in our space.” And returning to his post-public life seclusion, Morgan smiled as he prepared for offworld travel.
“A skilled negotiator is not above the use of unhappy emotion, strong language, or moral outrage. Business negotiations can tell stories as personal as any parable, and a true businessman crafts narratives as adeptly as the most overwrought thespian. When your opposite number feels your anguish, he begins to see you as a brother. Even the most savage lion becomes an injured housecat worth soothing when it shows you the thorn in its paw.” - Empathy, the Weapons Manual
Aside from the signature weaponized Volkers, Tetra Vaal also supplied its unarmed TPS-829 Hoyt automated office drones for routine clerical work deemed too mundane and unworthy of human effort. While reasonably popular among the gigacorporate managerial classes, most white-collar workers have historically found their lack of social graces and flat affect to be particularly unremarkable. As such, most workplaces typically treat Hoyt units as autonomous office appliances, little more intelligent than staplers or coffee synthesizers.
(https://i.imgur.com/0g6ebRO.png?1)
Houston-based Rambler-Crane Systems was renowned for its multiple series of “roller” robots. Borne upon ruggedized continuous track systems, Rambler-Crane models like the iconic B-9 Robby could bypass difficult terrain from battlefield craters to autumn mud and achieve speeds rivaling that of sports cars. Equipped with dual tripartite pincers armed with Tesla electroshock projectors with settings from crowd dispersal to scorched earth, they were towering, fearsome sights upon United States Space Force space stations, rolling through hallways as constant guardians. Equipped with a second pair of instrumentation claws used for fine manipulation, they were also commonly used for nonviolent applications such as repair work aboard the orbital installations. When equipped with jets, they could even perform tasks in zero-G. Though they became a mainstay against hypothetical insurrectionists in space, their most famous military role was at the Battle of Boston Harbor, when a single company of National Guard was able to hold off against nearly a battalion-sized Holnist assault force thanks to firing support from little more than two dozen rollers (“the Glorious Thirty”). With such an impressive pedigree against internationally-vilified rebels and insurgents, Rambler-Crane’s admission into the ranks of Unity vendors was uncontroversial and unanimous.
(https://i.imgur.com/hktOWCk.jpg)
A Rambler-Crane roller accompanies UNS Unity evacuees during Planetfall crisis. Mission Chief Roboticist Sylvia Gauss pictured left, back row
Rambler-Crane rollers had even more rudimentary intelligence than Tetra Vaal’s policing units, capable of identifying immediate threats and tracking those pre-programmed by operators, but nothing akin to the more extensive battle tactics available in the military-grade drone platforms used in counterinsurgency during the Hypersurvivalist Wars. Thus, any fear of robotic revolution remained in the province of fantasy. Instead, the rollers were equipped with a fully-immersive, intuitive holographic user interface that even a child could use.
(https://i.imgur.com/CtJx2ol.jpg)
As an aside, the Unity Mission Industry Standards Board also considered the use of the Working Joe labor synthetics of Sigg Europa AG. Built by the Helvetian industrial combine to be multirole machines equally capable of loading stockrooms, repairing equipment, supporting customer helpdesks, or wait-staffing, the Working Joe was heralded as the missing link between dumb operator-dependent faceless robots and the more sophisticated androids with human-mimetic features. Sigg explained that by endowing the Working Joe with just enough local intelligence but ultimately slaved to central intelligence servers, override capability rested in the hands of their owners. And by designing the Working Joe’s visual appearance to be obviously nonhuman, its creators claimed that both regular employees and customers would be psychologically at ease with synthetics they knew to be so.
Unfortunately for Sigg, the ISB ultimately discarded the idea, ruling that Working Joes still appeared too humanlike while simultaneously too alien, triggering an uncanny valley effect detrimental to colonist morale. This mirrors the state of Working Joe adoption in the solar system at the time of mission launch: the model was largely used not in population centers, but remote installations such as the lonely helium-3 mining platforms around the Jovian gas giants.
(https://i.imgur.com/n8oRAvJ.png)
The lack of armed robotic servitors during Planetfall was another lost opportunity among cascading fiascos. From the onset, Captain Garland declined to activate any automated defenses capable of lethal effect, and specifically forbade the use of robots. While this was decried by General d'Almeida and other senior officers as yet another counterproductive example of the captain’s unyielding utopian idealism, there was method to Garland’s decision: he had surmised that the appearance of murderous war drones would be horrific for mission optics, inspiring further mutiny. Indeed, if the Kellerites had encountered Tetra Vaal Volkers mercilessly assaulting their positions and coldly slapping organic restraints onto their comrades, it was probable that they would have taken arms against the Unity crew directly. Such was their total revulsion towards the excesses of modern technology. However, this reluctance against mobilization proved to be a grave miscalculation. As electrical fires broke out in battle-damaged compartments, indiscriminate use of knockout gas flooded corridors, shelves of heavy crates and barrels tipped over and fell upon people, and the ship’s loss in structural stability exposed entire areas to vacuum, the Unity staff was confronted with the absence of powerful tools. While some servitors were turned online towards the tail end of the crisis, by then it was too little, too late.
(https://i.imgur.com/ZHPyIBp.jpg)
One notable exception was the Defense of the Primary Aft Machine Shop. At about the midpoint of Planetfall, a Spartan raiding team led by former SEAL Team 3 operative Walton Purefoy was tasked with capturing crucial machine parts and 3D printers. A southern convert to the colonel’s militant cause, Purefoy and his team of predominantly non-Holnist veterans of the Second American Civil War deftly infiltrated the large workshop under the very noses of U.N. Security Forces, overpowered the guards, and dug into their position. Defended from counterassault by heavy blast doors and a level of professionalism unmatched by most Holnist units, the raiding team took the hapless Unity mechanical engineers hostage and ordered them to pillage their own stores, to be gifted to the Spartan cause. Of the nearly sixty engineers and scientists present in the machine shop, only about a dozen were able to seal themselves into a secure sub-garage containing vehicles and heavy equipment. As they frantically attempted to summon external aid, Purefoy’s Spartans soon came knocking upon the bulkhead, using the engineering crew’s own mechanical drills to attack the barrier.
Chief Roboticist Sylvia Gauss took command of the scattered escapees. Dialing into the machine shop’s local datalinks, the Helvetian automaton specialist countermanded the captain’s orders, powering on the three Rambler-Crane units housed in the sub-garage. After several tense minutes of hasty bootstrap procedures initiated decades after the units’ last power cycle, even while Spartan-hijacked drills hummed outside, the rollers’ lights flickered on. Gauss then overrode existing restrictions and assumed direct control, unleashing the full CKD protocol capabilities of the Rambler-Crane rollers. Though greatly outnumbered, the three R-C units wheeled smoothly forth as the bulkhead door opened with a hiss and click, obliterating the invaders with electroshock pulses blasted from their firing pincers. The Spartans, caught completely unawares, could not react fast enough against their machine enemies. Eschewing sublethal defaults, Gauss amped up the voltage, and the brigands- both trained paramilitants and opportunistic defectors caught up in the action- were thrown across the room with manmade ball lightning. Purefoy himself was grievously injured in the counterattack, scalded by a glancing electrical blast. Ordering a retreat, he and the few survivors limped back to the main Spartan host. Meanwhile, Gauss and her engineers successfully vacated the machine shop with all the supplies they and the rollers could carry, later linking up with AEL Director Johann Anhaldt.
(https://i.imgur.com/6KFExlb.jpg?1)
Centauri Monopolist Acquirer-class units, tactical custom D-9 Volkers refurbished for targeted strike operations in conjunction with Probe Teams, prepare target for extraction at Dreams of Green during the Asbolus Reclamation Minor Vendetta of M.Y. 23
The mission compartment of robots finally came of use in the decades following Planetfall. Prior to an industrialized state of development, robotic servitors were a highly-desired resource for Cargo Pods retrieval operations. Entire conflicts had been fought over scavenged General Atomics worker servitors, American Machines’ MULEs, Tetra Vaal law enforcement units, and Rambler-Crane rollers. If able to be activated, these machines would contribute immeasurably to the factions that claimed them, doing the work of many humans, ensuring order would reign in their respective social experiments, or defending entire bases against mindworm assaults (at least until the boils began to adapt). Even when access was keyed to the biometrics of a long-gone crew officer or corporate executive, and there was no way to switch on the dormant units, they were still an invaluable source of electronic components for repurposing. As time went on and more mission-provisioned robots were discovered, factions began modifying them for their own specific purposes.
Notes:
While I included two preexisting fictional companies - Tetra Vaal from Neill Blomkamp’s titular short film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTnxP7e7-YA), Tempbot short film (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCS0hNyJf6k), and Chappie (which I have not seen); and Rambler-Crane (https://lostinspace.fandom.com/wiki/Rambler-Crane_Series_Robot) from the 1998 Lost in Space remake, I decided not to include the ‘actual’ Seegson (https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Seegson) from Alien: Isolation, as that felt like insufficiently obscure enough to be an Easter Egg.
The convoluted formula for the name of the company who actually made the uncanny valley androids: Seegson is supposed to be founded by one Josiah Sieg, but for some reason in the game there’s an area named Josiah Sigg Executive Apartments (https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Josiah_Sigg_Executive_Apartments), and like much of the Alien universe, Sigg and Son is a Joseph Conrad reference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_(novella)). In real life, Sigg Switzerland AG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigg) is a real company that makes designer bottles. (Here, Europa might refer to them expanding to the whole of the continent, or their operations on Jovian moons.) But yes, these androids are built by a bottle company.
Also in the game, the synths are considered inferior to Weyland-Yutani androids because they don’t look human enough, while here they are a little too human and off-putting. Working Joes just can’t catch a break.
“Volker” is derived from the old Germanic words for “people, tribe” and “army, warrior”, and “Hoyt” is either the Old Norse word for “descended of the mind or spirit” or a Middle English name meaning “long stick.” Put them together and you get a nod to Far Cry 3.
The original Joshua Haldeman (https://leaderpost.com/feature/elon-musk-inherited-a-lifetime-of-adventure-from-his-sask-family) was the research director of Canada’s branch of the Technocracy movement (https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/politics-law/the-last-utopians) from 1936 to 1941. He later moved to South Africa. He is the grandfather to Elon Musk. Long story.
Abdon was the Biblical judge of Israel who succeeded Elon. His name means “servile” or “service”, which perhaps fits this passage about robots.
Alex Boraine was one of the main architects of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
CKD of course stands for Crush, Kill, Destroy.
The Battle of Boston Harbor (https://shodan.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Boston_Harbor) was an American police action in this continuity, not anything UN(N) related.
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A Morgan Industries Corporate Security paramilitary guards property of the Peruvian Amazon Company near Iquitos, c. 2070. His personal combat exo-frame mounts a particle impactor.
The particle impactor was a short-range undirected-energy weapon system that stutter-fired electron bolts of scalable power up to speeds of 2,500 feet per second, at a rate of 1,100 bolts per second. Operators employed it as a squad-level weapon to supplement the base of fire provided by standard-issue battle rifles. Each system consisted of three parts: a hand-held projector, a power pack, and the wired conductors between them.
Particle impactors were effective for both anti-personnel and anti-materiel applications. The weapon's low accuracy (a man-sized object in a 100-meter cone of fire stood only a 54% chance of being struck) was offset by pronounced area effects. The quantity of electromagnetic radiation produced by the plasma accretion was so great, even near-misses could inflict debilitating nerve damage on organic targets and scramble the electronic systems of target vehicles and structures. At higher power settings, the electron output could could melt the glacis plate of a T-49 main battle tank in less than seven seconds. Moreover, the continuous volume of fire could not be foiled by traditional active defense systems and was easily sufficient to overcome most passive protection.
Awesome striking power was no guarantee of operator enthusiasm or battlefield longevity. Particle impactor systems consumed energy in prodigious quantities. Late-model, frame-portable power packs were depleted after less than twenty seconds of sustained fire. Operators persistently demonstrated hesitation in their use of the impactors for fear of running out of ammunition, even when furnished with a separate self-defense weapon. The power packs themselves were easily driven to sympathetic explosions and the discharge was extremely loud; squad-mates were unwilling to stay close. Perhaps worst of all, the particle impactor had a long ramp time from the moment the operator pulled the trigger until rounds shot downrange. Poor timing frequently resulted in both misspent rounds and friendly fire incidents.
Morgan Industries purchased 700 Mark VII plasma impactor-equipped exo-frames and treaded mission carriers from the Mechanical Battlesuit Corporation of Islip, New York. These served with the company's in-house security forces in both the African Canal Zone and the Lesser Amazon. The frightful noise and sight of particle impactors caused several routs among the Portuguese expeditionary forces.
(https://live.staticflickr.com/8174/8011876066_e9a67ace86_b.jpg)
Journalists embedded with the Portuguese Army in Brazil capture the terrible aftermath of ambush by an Impact Squad.
Sources: My vision for particle impactors is drawn from a combination of the original game manual, this (https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a25091957/plasma-weapon-history/) Popular Mechanics article, and the Phased Plasma Gun (PPG) (https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/PPG#cite_note-1) created by J. Michael Straczynski for Babylon 5.
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At the Grand Circle Bar in Morgan Trade Center, a hungry colonist or visitor could buy a meal for just ¤2. Primary terminals at each place setting allowed the indigent to surf job boards for digital tasks that could be completed for pay in 30 minutes or less. Most offers were for survey responses to help tailor corporate communications or trolling the latest targets of Morgan's ire using the diner's personal account.
Without water, there is no life. Without metal, there is no form. Without energy, there is no action. From the crudest outpost to the largest arcology, whether producer or consumer, these are the critical raw materials in the solar system. - Introduction to the FY2061 Annual Report, King Priam Mining
United Nations Commissioner Pravin Lal, a keen amateur sociologist, described the Morganite colonization project as "a frantic series of motivational follies, each more incredible and spiritually degrading than the last." From her pulpit at New Jerusalem, Sister Miriam Godwinson never referred to the leader of the Centauri Monopoly by his given name. Instead, she called him only "Mammon."
At Planetfall, Nwabudike Morgan did not follow the common practice of distributing rations and survival equipment equally among his followers. Morgan's Safe Haven mercenaries and Corporate Security restricted access to the common areas and communal resources still aboard the Landing Pods. The CEO distributed supplies and privileges over promissory notes. Wealthier faction members practiced this same arrangement whenever they were able, building pyramidal debt structures that gradually hardened into political allegiance.
In the University of Planet, a successful researcher might be immortalized by lending her name to a new scholastic gymnasium. New State authorities rewarded accomplishment with promotion or elevation between castes. A citizen of the Centauri Monopoly was motivated by a bounty of energy credits.
The Morganites also monetized social punishment. Exile awaited convicted criminals among the Peacekeepers and the Hunters of Chiron. Santiago's courts martial meted out capital punishment--swift execution by firing squad--for a wide range of violent crimes. The price for killing a fellow colonist in the Dynamic Enterprise varied according to the health of the overall faction economy. One who could not pay was sold into peonage where, if his creditor chose to murder him, his life was worth even less than the penalty that had made him a slave.
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Supply Pods congregate in response to recall beacons transmitted from atop Sunny Mesa, the site of Fort Enterprise.
For these, the disposition of Unity’s inheritance is but an interesting piece of chancery. Men who are utterly indifferent to the legacy of the recently-deceased, except that some specific portion of it should come into their own hands. - A Dirge for Terra
This Land. In two words, his most esteemed biographer, the Dame C.V. Wedgwood, branded former American Reclamation Corporation CEO and future Unity Factor Oscar van de Graaf for all time.
He was one of the Second Civil War's quickest studies. Shareholding had done nothing to indemnify his interests from despoliation. Hypersurvivalism had a thousand faces, not all of which were amenable to bribery or negotiation. To stem his losses, van de Graaf realized that he, like they, needed to alter facts on the ground in the places of real decision. If a U.S. Senator, Army general, or even the United States Supreme Court, called him pirate or profiteer, van de Graaf's retort was enough to make any Holnist proud: "Come and take it." By that same philosophy, and following the same roadmap, corporations subsumed without objection a multitude of the prerogatives once reserved to kings and legislatures. The American Reclamation Corporation built cities, provided healthcare, collected taxes, educated children, policed disputes, disposed of property, and pensioned retirees.
Among the New Two Thousand, who self-consciously called themselves Pilgrims in honor of their ahistorical understanding of the Mayflower Compact, there were three types of colonists. Full Stakeholders had helped van de Graaf to assemble the $232 billion cash stake demanded by U.N. General-Secretary Apsara Mongkut. Of the original 1,900, just 80 managed to make Planetfall with their leader. Four came later, renegades who made their way from other factions. Partial Stakeholders owed labor under the terms of contracts previously undertaken with van de Graaf himself, who had financed the cost of their passage. The Unstaked were a collection of misfits: those unwilling to contract, and anyone held as a prisoner.
To incentivize labor at Fort Enterprise and Terra Nova, van de Graaf first laid out both sites, then assigned each colonist parcels of land according to a formula that evaluated past, present, and future values of service to the colony. All parcels had a required minimum value represented in characteristics such as nutrient, mineral, and energy yield. "Wastelands" were kept as common property or developed with infrastructure to meet the threshold for fair parcelage. Parcels were sacrosanct. The colony could use a parcel only with its owner's permission, and then only if a fee was conveyed. To create scarcity, van de Graaf set strict geographic boundaries beyond which Base Operations and the faction militia would not render service or assistance of any kind. The faction's eponymous governing council, which seated only Full Stakeholders, retained final authority over whether and how settlements expanded. Those seeking to add to their parcels in this manner required a three-quarters majority vote. Every ten local years, the original parcelages were reassessed and adjustments made to projected value based on new evidence such as meteorological records and fungal activity.
The New Two Thousand's enduring advantage lay in the extent of van de Graaf's prior planning and diligence in retrieving his own people during the Unity Crisis. He came to the surface with a workforce that combined high skill, occupational diversity, and a common language of mutual expectation.
(https://ocj.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Fendt-unveils-new-1000-Vario-Tractors-600x400.jpg)
A Pilgrim tractor tends fields at Nova Terra. The parcel's owner has planted a belt of Terran trees to help stabilize the soil, which is thin so close to the Great Dunes.
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Affinities
An invention of diarist and U.N. Peacekeeping Forces leader Pravin Lal and appearing in his Planet: A Social History, affinities are an analytical shorthand for understanding the way in which a faction's ideology both oriented and constrained its cultural and scientific development.
Purity
Humanity will forever be defined by our experience in the cradle of "Old" Earth. If Chiron is to be the last refuge of our species, then we should fill it with things that are familiar, both the physical and metaphysical. Planet should be remade in Earth’s image. Likewise, humans can reach their maximum potential only if they preserve the traditions, artifacts, and, yes, the biological distinctiveness, inherited from their ancestors.
Purists look forward to eliminating the “pestilential” xenofungus and replacing the local ecology. Shapers call this process "rebuilding." At larger scales, Purist factions hope to stimulate the planetary greenhouse effect through a massive infusion of atmospheric hydrocarbons. Purist societies suffer less from the social dislocation of pollution and terraformation, which is an accepted cost of their grand project.
In the cultural domain, Purists prefer doctrine and ideology that presume a fixed and corruptible human nature, in need of close and constant tending.
Purist factions include the Lord’s Conclave (Godwinson), the Human Tribe (Landers), the Shapers of Chiron (Nagao), the Watchers (Singh), and the Human Ascendancy (Pahlavi).
Supremacy
Both Man and Planet alike bear changing in the honorable search for objective perfection. The simple goal of our species is to perpetuate itself—by any means necessary. Stronger is better. Faster is better. In this race against a pitiless universe, and indeed a hostile planet, we would hamstring ourselves to overlook any advantage. Supremacists embrace the possibility of social and ecological experimentation, which will serve as the forcing function to produce new insights about how now we must live.
Supremacists seek out the practical and efficacious. They are neither above the introduction of invasive species nor below giving way to Planet when adaptation would be less work than resistance. Humanity is what Supremacists make of it. Machines are tools. Their use and sophistication can do nothing to invert the relationship between master and servant.
Change is appealing to Supremacists. Since growth is the chief yardstick of success, the familiar is contemptible to them. "Humanity" is a concept that can be redefined at whim.
Supremacist factions include the Human Labyrinth (Yang), the Centauri Monopoly (Morgan), the University of Planet (Zakharov), the Spartan Federation (Santiago), the Dreamers of Chiron (Cobb/Cohen), the Tomorrow Initiative (Metrion), the Children of the Atom (Anhaldt), and the New Two Thousand (Van de Graaf).
Harmony
Humanity, the intruder, must alert its rhythms to suit those of Chiron, or else perish in its obstinacy. The wisest understand that one does not merely make a home so much as one is made by it. The trappings of Old Earth are useful only inasmuch as they can be relied upon to temporarily bridge the gap between mere survival and full-fledged integration into the existing biosphere of Chiron, which, if it is to be preserved in functional condition, should be as little perturbed as possible.
Harmony, which takes its cues from living things which are classically vulnerable to tampering and thrive within carefully-controlled parameters of diet and temperature, says little about the utility of artificial intelligence. Persons inclined to Harmony usually wish to experience Planet directly. Creating mechanical servitors to do so in their place is rarely at top of mind.
Factions that promote Harmony usually practice lifestyles that require avoidance of traumas on the land. They are also, on the whole, fairly sympathetic to the nonconformist. For a Harmonist, the defining feature of a system is that it is complex and interactive, rather than that it is predictable, or even successful. Folkways are inherently legitimate as an expression of self, which can be as important as allegiance to an illusory "public-interest" objectivity.
Harmonious factions include Gaia’s Stepdaughters (Skye), the Peacekeeping Forces (Lal), the New State (St. Germaine), and the Hunters of Chiron (Marsh).
Source Notes: Affinities are a new mechanic introduced in Beyond Earth, SMAC's spiritual successor.
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Twenty years after the first settler arrived, the Dreamer camp at Xanadu still had few permanent structures. The base's Landing Pod was destroyed, and its lone cooling tower famously wrecked, during a Drone uprising.
By conventional standards, the Dreamers of Chiron were an anomaly: run by the princeling of one of Earth’s foremost merchant dynasties, who prior to mission launch had been instrumental in helping his father’s company achieve record profits, and his genius collaborator, a trained medical doctor brilliant enough to have come within spitting distance of a Nobel Prize in physiology, but so thoroughly mismanaged that its citizen-subjects suffered from chronic malnutrition.
There were several reasons this should have been impossible. Early slave-raiding earned them a wide berth from immediate neighbors, but combined with the faction leadership’s apparent lack of territorial ambition or hegemonistic ideology, possession of Unity’s plundered medical resources, Cobb's notoriety in the field of espionage, and the labor potential of the convicts from its detention blocks, made the Dreamers sought-after trading partners. Both the University of Planet and the Lord’s Conclaves gave the coordinates of more than a dozen precious Unity Pods to bring Cobb’s mobile surgical hospitals rolling into their territories. Colonel Corazón Santiago preferred Dreamer chain gangs to Spartan helots for completing the vulnerable outworks at Xerxion, where one in four workers was killed under bombardment from Tribal Long Toms. When they desired access to the University’s red networks, the Human Ascendancy found that Dreamer probe teams were willing to deal when the Tomorrow Institute and the Children of the Atom were not.
But Roshan Cobb and Aleigha Cohen were rarely conscious. Green Team, Morgan’s in-house intelligence service, pegged incidental energy loss at White Rabbit’s Refuge well north of 7,000¤ per cycle. Pilgrim Regulators knew they could simply pay Sabre Corporation guards to stand down ahead of a punitive raid, a transaction easily completed via their officers’ permanent accounts on Morganite networks. Dreamer work parties required close supervision. Chancery dockets at Morgantown reveal that the CEO was entirely ready to take advantage of the prisoners’ tendency to abscond with themselves. The boiling pot, one said, was always preferable to the fire itself.
Not all the factions of Chiron were tolerant of the Dreamers even when they weren't immediate victimized by Struan's toughs. As ardent believers in self-determination, the Peacekeeping Forces, Human Tribe, and Lord's Conclave all declared permanent vendetta on Cobb and Cohen once they were able to corroborate the worst of their rumored abuses.
And so the Dreamer colonies limped along as a sideshow to more successful ventures. Cohen eventually partnered closely with both the Human Labyrinth and the Tomorrow Initiative to process the neural records of the hibernating Unity crew, which their psychiatrists and datajacks mined for the insights that led to the package of principles dubbed “Social Psych.” When he was not lost in addiction, Cobb struggled to recall and articulate the truths he had supposedly formulated while asleep. He was captured at his terminal in M.Y. 52 by Ascendancy Legionnaires and brought before Tamineh Pahlavi, who placed Chiron’s worst torturer in a Punishment Sphere.
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Water management domes in the vicinity of Colonia Tertius, a base belonging to the Children of the Atom.
Man is a happy vandal, but reluctant in his labors. He destroys with abandon, then abandons what he has destroyed. His achievements are more the product of desperation and whimsy than design. With the treasures of one place, he profanes another. - Part I: The Shaping of the Earth
As Nwabudike Morgan correctly predicted, to be a survivor was to seek and practice trade. Even Hivemen, however few of them, were wont to offer what was surplus and seek what was scarce, from time to time.
What the Hunters of Chiron could not make for themselves, they bartered in return for services rendered precisely in the manner intended by U.N. mission planners. Assignments might entail heavy-duty and high-danger salvage, big game management, controlled burns, conventional logging, borehole drilling, watershed management, suppression of mindworm boils, or fungus removal. Other factions tolerated the Hunters underfoot because they possessed not only the equipment, but also the expertise and wherewithal to perform these essential, albeit complicated and fundamentally dangerous, necessities of settlement.
The Dreamers of Chiron trafficked in a different set of offerings, palatable only to a few. On the least-objectionable end of the spectrum, one could buy medical care a mere four generations below the high Terran standard. At the opposite end? Somnacin, slaves, and spies. Somnacin was the mind-altering compound used to induce shared, lucid dreaming. From M.Y. 81 to M.Y. 290, mind-machine interface used the Cohen Method, which required placing the datajacked subject in the Dreaming prior to booting. Dreamers also sold captures of brainwave activity to the wakeners of other factions for use in polymorphic software and pre-sentient algorithms.
The recorded brain activity of persons engaged in Dreaming could be mined and the component thoughts reconstructed to provide a high-fidelity facsimile of the sleeper's experiences. In M.Y. 4, it was discovered inadvertently during a minor mindworm attack on White Rabbit's Refuge that the proximity of even a small boil allowed multiple sleepers in the same physical location to share the same dream.
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/inception/images/b/b6/Sleepers.png/revision/latest?cb=20131124020829)
Dreaming Chambers were latter-day opium dens, sheltering persons under the influence of the psycho-pharmacological cocktails required to induce the Dreaming. Individuals were completely helpless in this state, which was similar to heavy sedation. Somnacin addicts could not be awakened except through medical intervention.
The Shapers of Chiron were available to perform terraforming on condition that they be allowed to introduce Terran organisms and eliminate complex xenobiology. Morganites, who preferred to see something of home on the other side of the plastic, paid gladly for Shaper intervention to recreate the proverbial green hills of home.
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A Tomorrow Institute Librarian.
At the Planetary Datacore, all were welcome to sift the contents of the Unity Datacore without restriction, provided they consented that their session be recorded by the Tomorrow Institute's Data Custodians. Controller Sathieu Metrion repackaged and sold the user insights gleaned in this manner as a kind of intelligence product.
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Name: Jeremy Tanner "J.T." Marsh
Rank: Administrator II
Position: Division Head, Field Operations, Forward Landing Teams
County of Origin: British East Africa
DOB: 03-31-2023
Height: 188 cm
Weight: 113 kg
Affinity: Harmony
Focus: Explore, Expand
Service Record:
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to unwed mother. Soon placed in care of maternal uncle, the Viscount de Mohrenschildt, a sisal planter in the Central Highlands of British East Africa. No relationship with father, a lieutenant in the Royal Signals killed on deployment in Cyprus.
Graduated RMA Sandhurst. Posted to 23 Special Air Service Regiment. Awarded Victoria Cross, 2044, for rescue of two squad mates when FV430 was fire-bombed in Derry during Second Troubles. Following recuperation, reposted to Mombasa. Participated in Action at Meru, liberating 20 British government personnel and 37 other hostages from insurgent prison camp. Escape involved a supremely arduous overland trek of 120km.
Wife and daughter killed in U.K. motorway accident, 2009. Resigned Army commission and relocated to South Africa. First operated safari company catering to the ultra-wealthy. Game warden and lands supervisor at Kruger National Park through 2054, including during catastrophic fire seasons of 2051-53. Served intermittently with South African Defense Force in 2/44 Parachute Battalion. Deployed periodically to South West Africa.
Consulted for various private military and humanitarian organizations on subjects including intelligence-gathering, logistics, wilderness fieldcraft, and austere medicine. Retained as practitioner-in-residence by Avalanche Corporation. Confirmed engagements with Gezah Valley Authority [Carmel], Verne Stellar Navigation Co., and Yugoslav State Security Service (UDBA) coeval with the Slovenian Crisis. Suspected by MI5 of brokering arms to Biafran rebels during Saharan Burst Wars.
In 2052, joined Seven Summits Expeditions, leading three climbs on Mt. Aconcagua. Pioneer in the management and sport hunting of resurrected megafauna, including predators from Mesozoic and Pleistocene periods. Briefly advised International Genetic Technologies, Inc. (InGEN) of Palo Alto, CA on theme park venture in Costa Rica. Receive severance of indeterminate amount after workplace injury.
Invited to submit credentials to U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri on the recommendation of Colonel Derek Hacker, British Special Intelligence Service. Responsibilities included reconnaissance, external security, and natural resource management. Received extensive training in space-borne damage control and zero-gravity and confined space rescue preparatory to becoming training supervisor with U.N. Olympus Mons mission intake facility.
Note: Subject arranged for hundreds of surplus M72 Light Anti-tank Weapons (LAW) to be taken into Unity armory ahead of mission launch.
Psych Profile: Hunter
Olympic-level athlete. Accomplished tracker and expert marksman.
High-range emotional stability, interpersonal dominance, introversion, social boldness, and self-reliance. Low-range rule-consciousness, sensitivity, and abstractedness. Regards lack of physical conditioning or personal independence as evidence of selfishness inconsistent with the social contract. Nevertheless, exhibits compulsion to assume responsibility for those less able. Strong preference for democratic traditions over hierarchical command structures.
Unprecedented .98 score on Atherholt Trauma Function Test. Emotional "projector." Readily inspires others to follow his personal example. Heightened interest in, and tolerance for, risky behaviors.
Consistent critic of labor-saving and augmented-reality technologies as well as synthetic narcotics due to their “emasculating” effects. Fears that mankind will use his technical aptitude to create a world in which his body and mind will be steadily eroded.
Miscellaneous
Forward Landing Teams departed Unity three weeks ahead of scheduled landing. Their mission: to secure the ideal location for a colony and make ready basic infrastructure. Pioneers sank automated mines, clear-cut forest to may way for planting, and set the first water traps on Chiron. To perform their mission, these personnel were equipped with rugged, all-terrain vehicles capable of operating independently over extreme range and in all weather conditions.
Whereas the Spartans perceive the human story as one of tribe set against tribe, the Hunters treat the natural world as their great adversary. Survival and success alike depend on achieving mastery over one’s environment, which first requires mastery of one's own body. On Earth, man was the apex predator, but on Chiron, he is a prey item. Accordingly, Hunters are nomads, living in tents pitched against their Scout Rovers or a Mobile Command Vehicle. This bubble gum-and-bailing wire existence naturally lends itself to pure democracy: the Hunter is a doughty sort, trusting in few, living hard, and offering his or her opinions readily. That said, they are never above a trick or two if the moment is ripe.
Marsh’s was the only faction to form independently of the Unity crisis: his Forward Landing Team departed the ship weeks ahead of its fateful collision. This gives the faction exceptionally high homogeneity, as all members are essentially practitioners of a narrow set of common professions, usually miners, pioneers, and roughnecks.
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Charterist recruit reaches out for assistance during a full-scale emergency exercise at the Lunar Cradle.
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A Hunter surveyor prepares to refill her personal moisture retention system somewhere in the Monsoon Jungle.
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Mining Rigs of the Forward Contact Team push toward the metal-rich Uaelium Basin.
Sources and Author's Notes:
This faction is inspired by the call to adventure and exploration of traditional masculinity. They are a meditation on the question of what makes a “real” man, and one answer to the question, “By whom was the West really won?” Is there anything inherently desirable about the idea that the strong owe something to the weak? Ought we draw distinctions between man and woman? The faction also explores anixeties about the impact of technology on man's ability to do and think for himself. As we provide ourselves with every convenience, do we lose some animal aspect of ourselves that is actually integral to being human?
The character of J.T. Marsh combines aspects of Louis L'Amour's itinerant, fortune-seeking cowboy (whose rough-and-ready values, while no longer suitable for "civilized" society, are the only means by which to tame a lawless and pitiless frontier) and Wilbur Smith's great white hunter, who measures greatness only according to the yardstick of physical courage and cannot abide the "domestication" of settled life in village or town.
Marsh's backstory contains "Easter Egg" references to Jurassic Park, Walt Disney's apocryphal 7 Summits Expeditions, and even the 1980s British comedy Yes, Minister. The picture of Marsh is that of the game warden Robert Muldoon in Jurassic Park, played by Bob Peck. The picture of the astronaut hanging in space is from The Expanse, now on Amazon Prime. The picture of the jungle explorer is from the Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell short, Prospect. The final picture, by Kory Lynn Hubbell, is of a Liang-Dortmund Mining Rig from the Halo series.
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The Smacer subculture
From the beginning of the settlement of Planet, there were renegades. Warden J.T. Marsh first records of a five-man band of his hunters breaking off from the Forward Contact Team no more than a fortnight after their landing ahead of the Unity. Their cause of departure was unknown. Some say their leader’s rejection of technology had disturbed and alienated them sufficiently to head towards the secondary landing zone where the rest of the ship’s party was to arrive. Others simply assert that these mavericks were no more than treasure hunters seeking to illegally stake their own fortunes outside of the purview of the almighty Mission Charter. Still others claim that wormsong and fungus scent had bewitched these errant hunters, leading them to certain death at the bottom of a boil.
Their fate was unknown, but their story was not. And from the remnants of the FCT to the early post-Planetfall societies, stories abounded of those who had “gone native” not to forge their own breakaway factions, but to simply live off the desolate, uncompromising land of Chiron. Each faction had its own share of the disturbed and the discontent, those who wanted to bail at the first order to dig latrines or prune xenofungus. Not all were able to muster the means and the followings to leave with the makings of a new colony. Many simply had to flee with little more than the suit on their backs and the breather masks on their face, some stolen rations, and a shredder pistol or two. Outside of their habitat walls laid the endless wild.
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A former Children of the Atom scoutbird pilot abandons his vehicle and cause for a life of the wild
Yet, even after early colonies were established, leaving one’s base was not always a death sentence. Those who absconded with enough supplies- at least weeks, days were utterly insufficient- may yet have the chance to live out in the wild enough to make it to an abandoned Cargo Pod, or even better, an automated Landing Pod. Indeed, in the early days, there still remained pods containing vital stores left untouched in the wild, and even dozens to hundreds of cryosleep tubes holding crew members still in hibernation. Such unclaimed vehicles made excellent shelters for lone wanderers of the Planetary wastes, and a place to restock both dwindling supplies and numbers. While these pods were tempting targets to be captured by any faction, most retrieval teams simply took the most important loot and left the bare chasses intact, leaving behind metal skeletons littering the still-unterraformed landscape. Thus, they often still remained decent refuges from worms or from storms for those who had abandoned their homes. In time, some small-scale communities of no more than a few dozen individuals would gather around abandoned pods, building shantytowns forgotten by the highborn factions.
Free Scouts, Nomads, Amblers, Fungal Rangers, Pink-Striders, Hardboilers, Wandering Kingdoms, Wormfood- there was no end to the nicknames given to the folk who had emancipated themselves from the civilizations of Planet. A magistrate from the Watchers of Chiron, perhaps facetiously, gave the subculture the classification of S.M.A.C.E.R.: Scroungers, Malcontents, Antisocialites, Criminals, Exiles, Rogues. And despite the unwieldy acronym, this name stuck, becoming the general appellation for any who left base society to pursue small-time life on the frontier.
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Smacers explore the Upland Wastes shortly after a sandstorm
Socioeconomic profile
As humans discovered the resource-rich, yet ecologically sound, practice of planting Old Earth-origin trees and flora upon Chiron’s nitrate-wealthy soil, forests sprouted across entire continents. These vast and murky expanses too became a destination for the willingly lost. Of course, the woods are dangerous, full of hostile creatures and human interlopers. Though newly-grown, the thick weald of Planet came to resemble the outlaw-haunted forests of Old Europe fairy tales. The socially maladjusted who left the stable comfort of base life were often those the most desperate to survive at all costs, including their own humanity. And amongst the pines of the northern latitudes, or between the newly-introduced cacao, açaí, and cupuaçu groves in the sweltering monsoon rainforests at the equator, dwelled untold numbers of rapacious smacers with allegiance to no faction nor ideology, ready to steal from their fellow man. Banditry remained rife even at the sub-factional scale: not only would small gangs of hardy smacer thugs (the “true survivalists”, they sneered at Spartan and Hunter presumptions) often attack trade convoys or understaffed patrols from factions, they had a tendency to prey upon their fellow exiles. That was because the development of smacer culture progressed over time from pure survival to one of the acquisition of alien artifacts.
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Two smacers of unidentified tendency in a forest near Academgorodok
Smacer lifestyle always revolved around extractive modes of production. The earliest proto-smacer exiles hunted for supply pods and gathered the scraps of abandoned bases, burned out rovers from worm attacks, planetpearls missed by scout patrols. Over time, smacers would attempt unsanctioned mining, hazardous folk study of mindworms and other xenoforms, poaching of said rare species, distilling or synthesizing fungal intoxicants, logging (punishable by hard labor in a ‘Former workgang by the Shapers, and outright execution by the rarely-vengeful Gaians), battlefield salvage, psi-divining (usually staged), land surveying, and acting as guides and field medical providers to basers for exorbitant fees. And depending on the region or former faction of origin, running gambling halls and other pleasure houses, or selling “wildland” arts and crafts at high markup.
None of these cottage industries could match the vast wealth involved in plundering the enigmatic alien archeological sites that littered Planet. The Ruins might be the greatest collection of such specimens of Chiron, but there are significantly more monoliths, temples, towers, and mounds scattered across the globe. And endless more alien artifacts that can be found at more mundane landscapes in the wilds, sometimes helpfully at the landing zones of automated Unity Pods drawn to these locations of interest. These artifacts were not of only immense research curiosity- they were worth considerable amounts of energy credits up to hundreds if not thousands of ¤. Multiple factions ordered their scouts to prioritize such relics over Pods or even damaged units. To Zakharov, it was one thing to lose yet another group of hapless doctoral candidates and mere bachelors-holding University Enforcement in the field- quite another to allow an irreplaceable artifact from some unknown progenitor race to be destroyed by mindworms, or worse yet, stolen by another faction who knew not what to do with it. And thus, acquiring, fencing, and reselling alien artifacts became the major economic activity of smacers. Many factions gladly contracted out artifact gathering to the feral frontier folk, despite their reputation.
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An alien “observatory”-type ruin. Such sites were prized for the presence of artifacts that scientific-focused factions believed could be used for levitation or even flight
Political-Ideological analysis
Alongside alien ruins with questionable means of structural support and of dubious origin, disavowed and adventurous scions of the basekind, there were Gaian extremists, Conclave apostates, Labyrinth escapees, Spartan deserters, Monopolist layoffs, Peacekeeper renouncers, University dropouts, Ascendancy undesirables, Watcher incorrigibles, Dreamer freethinkers, Tomorrow rogue scholars, Atomic anti-Singularitarians, Pilgrim claim jumpers, Tribal iconoclasts, Shaper deep ecologists, Hunter addicts, Memory skeptics, Restoration Kurtzes, Pirate landlubbers, New State knights-errant, Holnist petty warlords, Kavithan cultists, roving mercenary bands, treasure hunters, independent scientists, wildcatters, freed drones, black marketeers servicing all of the above; in short, the entirely undefined, disintegrating mass, thrown hither and yon, which the factions call smacers.
The smacer subculture was a mishmash of the expelled and the escaped, the very misfits from colonial base society. And of course, this heterogeneous mess boasted endless amounts of tendencies. Despite popular misconception, not all smacers were simply antisocial loners seeking artifacts, though by far this tendency- the default choice of becoming a frontiersmen- was a substantial motivation. It would be more accurate to say that smacers often embodied anti-ideologies. As those who abandoned their factions, they had a tendency to dismiss the motivations and the social agendas of their former home bases. Or alternatively, embrace the minor ideologies too extremist and widely detested for forming viable new factions.
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Recon footage of Holnist warband raiding abandoned ‘Forming site. Few of the original stowaways escaped Planetfall, or remained free of Spartan conscription and Peacekeeper detention. Most persisted as common bandits
The Schreiber Project, an Outpost-class sub-faction of breakaway University researchers led by former Togra Labs employees, have had relatively extensive dealings with smacers in their effort to amass alien artifacts. Schreiber polisoc scientists have determined the common characteristic of smacers, economic mode aside, is the rejection of major factions’ ideologies, finding them hypocritical, unworkable, or otherwise too constraining for their lifestyle. For instance, the all-encompassing environmentalism of the Stepdaughters of Gaia is denounced as detached nature fetishism, decoupled from the difficult lived-in experience of actually facing the rigors of Planet’s ravenous, conquering ecosystem from day to day. According to Schreiber interviews, while smacers of ecological-motivated tendencies find Lady Skye to be a fellow traveler, they consider her view of Planet to be a quaint, cute garden safely walled by her barricades, autoguns, and flamers. Quite a far cry from waking up in blood-red forests enveloped by fungus, only to find that the darker hue is not from a seasonal blooming, but a crimson mindworm swarm encroaching.
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The Spartan Federation was also a frequent target of ridicule among the smacers. Many were escaped helots or departed legionnaires themselves who bristled against the iron discipline of Sparta. All found her exhortation of the will to power and ultimate survival to be little more than playacting- if the colonel had truly wanted to embrace a life of hardship and grim survivalism, then what was she doing having her followers hold up in impregnable fortress cities protected by layers upon layers of ultra-advanced military technology? Safe in their steel walls, their bodies and minds safe from the beasts of the earth and air, their main challenge was only other humans with their rival crafty weapons. And so it really was all contrived games of skill, waging war for the sake of it, and not even proving who had the biggest brawn or cunning, but simply the biggest guns.
Nor were the Hunters of Chiron immune from smacer derision. While many of the wilders admired the warden’s abilities, those who had originated from the faction found him to be yet another tyrant, simply a hardier one. They considered his bloviating about the nature of man to be hoary and essentialist. They saw a Hunter’s duty as full of aimless wandering and toil, when the whole point of facing the rigors of Planet should really be for one’s profit- and pleasure. (More than one deserter had been lashed for illicitly brewing or consuming fungal spirits.) Ex-Hunter dissenters also found its wilderness democracy to be easily stacked by senior veterans of the Forward Landing Teams, whose judgments often became law as they had the trust and favor of the warden. And so, the self-centered nature of smacer subculture denounced both the sedentary Spartans and the nomadic Hunters.
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A smacer pauses amongst the dunes of Nessus Canyon
Ultimately, to be a smacer is to be negation- to reject base life and factional society. Nomadic factions like the Hunters of Chiron, rogue outposts like the Darwin Raiders, and former outposts-turned-factions like Advocate Vivian Gardinier’s Ecological Malcontents have all existed. But the smacer subculture exists outside of this framework of polities and proto-polities. They are the unrecognized of Planet, lacking true diplomatic status or sovereignty. And it is a status they embrace for themselves. What is sovereignty but the creation of yet another faction, rule by another charismatic gasbag, imposition of yet another bunch of pretty words? Smacer tendencies come in all shapes, from strictly hierarchical local despotates to flat organizations by anarchic collectives. But they have a tendency to cap out at Dunbar’s number at max, owing to both their limited socioeconomic development and the high attrition rates of their lifestyle.
Civilization disregarded smacers in return. From indifference to hostility, the established factions saw their freewheeling experience as an irritant to their respective social projects. Van de Graaf and Yang found rare agreement when each demanded smacers be dragged off by psi-whips and thrown into punishment spheres. Both saw them as the worst kind of cattle rustler inimical to his visions for civilizing the Planet. Perhaps ol’ Jean-Baptiste would have taken an eccentric soft likening to their self-organizing close-knit social structures, but Landers’ Human Tribe immediately saw them as hypersurvivalists reborn, intent on taking the work of good honest folk- and that wasn’t even counting the remaining Holnists among them.
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A smacer guards the rear entrance to the deserted University Elektrichestvokupol. Hive aerial reconnaissance determined that the former power plant was often occupied by passing bands of smacer scavengers. Hivemen sentinels dispatched to eliminate the interlopers faced fierce but futile resistance
While Lal’s Peacekeeper emissaries introduced a working paper at the Planetary Council entitled “Developing a Schema for Recognizing Non-Factional Actors”, it was quickly tabled indefinitely in committee, and the faction soon found itself working with its former Watcher colleagues to instead develop anti-smacer crime initiatives against new bandit and alien artifact black market activity. The Centauri Monopoly and similar profit-driven entities like the Schreiber Project entreat with smacers for various wilderness contract work, but they continue to be regarded as a capricious and mistrusted presence on the Planetary frontier. Minor but invasive, they remain a social pressure valve to be rid of societal liabilities, an opportunity to do xenoform research without risking one’s own citizens, and an ambiguous threat to expeditions.
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Sublieutenant Ajax Jarquín in CMC-340 Powered Combat Suit.
In the halcyon days of the Chiron Interstellar Probe, mission commander and recently-inaugurated planetary governor Joralamon Hardacre ordered the founding of a second settlement to supply Pathfinder Base with additional water.
Responsibility for the new expedition fell to one of Hardacre's protégés, twenty-nine-year-old Tin Star mining vice president, Narolo Vesh. One of the few members of the expedition who had not spent a majority of his lifetime in Earth's gravity well, Vesh had been his company's Site Lead for asteroid mining operations in the Main Belt. To wit, this experience, which had frequently required the miners and their leadership to shelter in place for months on end in the aftermath of a supply ship reactor malfunction, fitted him well for a crisis situation. Alongside Vesh's roughnecks and the 'Rover pilots to carry their windfall back home, Hardacre packed off the colony's senior hydrologist and some five dozen would-be Jeremiahs whom he hoped to sever from the main body politic. SolarEx Company Armed Security Police (ASP) under a junior officer, Ajax Róger Jarquín, were also assigned in case of misfortune.
Volcanic activity caused long-range communications interference that put the settlers on edge. Drilling to the aquifer provoked a mindworm boil. Most of the drilling crew and half the ASPs perished before the remainder of the expedition could be evacuated. Worse news awaited them when radio contact with Pathfinder Base was restored. Red Flu had broken out. Vesh led his command back into the field.
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Member's of Vesh's Column investigate the drilling site during an ashfall.
Less than forty-eight hours later, the first of Vesh's party presented with symptoms of Red Flu. Vesh ordered them abandoned. Four hundred had departed Pathfinder Base three weeks earlier. On the eight day after their exile, only forty-seven were still upright and asymptomatic.
Eventually, the survivors reached a botanical testing station where they made permanent camp. There they remained. Fifty years on, most were still alive to bear witness to the arrival of a Spartan hoverbike patrol at the home they now called "Forward Support Base Danger." The Spartans' commander, Sergeant Boque LaSalle, explained to general derision that the site now belonged to a "Colonel Santiago."
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Spartan hoverbikes bear down on Land Stand under heavy defensive fire.
Sublieutenant Jarquín explained that "the Honored Dead can neither abandon the graves of our fallen, nor those who continue to depend on us for protection today." He therefore greeted the Spartans in the spirit with which they had come. With a 20mm Oerlikon autocannon mount, SolarEx knocked LaSalle's troopers from the sky with a methodical efficiency.
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A SolarEx ASP in CMC-020 Powered Combat Suit. His impact rifle could only have been obtained through trade or plunder from the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri.
The SMACER Atakan Marcos recorded his impressions of a visit to FSB Danger in M.Y. 13.
If you can avoid the mantraps and bring something of value, it is just possible to enjoy some of Vesh's legendary hospitality. He is now decrepit, of course, but still lays an exemplary table sourced from the Interstellar Probe's extraordinary seed bank and pours a stock of world-class wines--"liberated," he says, from a New Stater who decided "he would rather stay at the bottom of the sea." Unfortunately, my host spiced our otherwise perfect meal with dyspeptic tirades on peace and war, the latter being his favorite topic.
Vesh relishes his people's underdog status. Now ninety-two, he has never stopped fighting, having refused reintegration with Hardacre's colony over insistence that he depart FSB Danger. One gathers that, for Vesh, it was the final straw: he will no longer insist that his people make sacrifices for the Greater Good, he says.
Guns, severed ears, and fatalism aside, this is a simply colony of rustic people and citizen-soldiers, well-motivated and ably led, but few in number and rich only in spirit. Here, comfortable living means some tobacco, a bit of fungal liquor, and prisoners enough to serve them. Abundant harvests have banished hunger and most disease. There is no technological development to speak of, but the Pathfinder Probe's standards remain at least two generations ahead of Unity's, and so it is not yet a problem. Vesh well knows, of course, that the standard of living here must inevitably decline if he cannot at least tap an industrial economy for talent and supplies. Indeed, perhaps because the enormity of their circumstance is only now sinking in, the whole settlement is characterized by a perverse fatalism that makes time itself seem to slow and unwind.
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A New State sloop-of-war in the Slowwind Delta. Launch canisters for two huge anti-ship missiles are between the 30mm gun mounts at centerline: if she can find a Spartan battleship, there will be trouble. Prominent close-in weapons systems (the port-side pair are visible here) provide her answer to both micromissile swarms and Isles of the Deep. Even alone, she is more than a match for the Spartan fast attack craft moored within the great cothon at Xerxion.
We surfaced about three hundred yards off the rocks, close enough to spot the men on deck struggling with their survival suits. An orange life raft blossomed as it hit the water and a dozen desperate sailors piled in. We could see the New State warship order what we knew was general quarters. I eagerly anticipated a rescue operation. Instead, two crewmen emerged from the hatch, lugging a machine gun. Without a word, they set up and hosed down the foundered Morganites, taking care to leave no survivors. The deflated raft sank faster than their Foil, which we were made to take under tow. St. Germaine's sailing master signaled that I should cross over to him, which I did to avoid a similar fate. That captain, who did not give his name, recorded it all in his logbook, calling the dead men "trespassers," and bade me promise to "tell the story of their tragic, but avoidable, end." - A Recollection of the Sea
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Jean-Baptiste Keller. Date unknown.
Man's the ultimate social animal, you know. Every species defends its young, its nest, its pack. We are the only one that will defend a neighbor, too. The same ones with whom we fight over placement of a fence, or whether their son will date our daughter. We probably think they'd make a terrible mayor. Wouldn't even want them on the PTA. But we wouldn't dream of watching the Super Bowl without 'em. I watch my History Channel. Somebody--I forget who--said that our ability to use tools made us the undisputed masters of the Earth. I say, it's because we can practice community with the people next door that makes this mastery worthwhile, and keeps us worthy. - The Annotated Broadcasts
Coming in a close second to Nathan Holn, Jean Baptiste Keller is today remembered as one of the men most responsible for the Second American Civil War. Yet even when critical of his own government, which he accused of moral cowardice on any number of occasions, Keller never shared Holn's desire to overthrow any government; rather, he wished to bridge the growing partisan divide in the United States through new forms of civic participation.
On his radio program, Keller lamented the great ideological sorting enabled by social media. Instead of providing solutions, he said, politicians were delivering "bad performance art," while citizens were learning to jump at ghosts. But since a majority of people had long since stopped believing that their problems were soluble, they accepted the entertainment as emotional numbing agent. Keller read this as an indictment of America's party system, and indeed of ideological purity more broadly. For a time, he was hopeful that popular referendums would demonstrate that the average Democrat and Republican had more in common than either one might suspect, but statehouses were jealous of their power and the call went unheard.
Keller was a reluctant survivalist. He explicitly disavowed Nathan Holn as both a racist and a terrorist, urging listeners to heed the federal government's call for vaccination against Red Flu and singing FEMA's praises. His calls for a home-grow kibbutz movement started only after he concluded that law enforcement and military resources were insufficient to counteract the Home Rule movement. Keller's pitch was simple: geography, not philosophy, was the driving factor in most peoples' lives. Their lifelines were literally within twenty or forty miles of home. Rather than seek to be part of something aspirational, citizens who believed themselves to be at-risk of war or pestilence should make arrangements to give and receive help from family and friends if they were close, and neighbors if they were not.
Shocked by the violence spreading out from the American heartland like a bleed, Keller assembled a manifesto that was part sermon, part reference manual for the prophesied political apocalypse. Sandwiched between chapters on the selfless example of Jesus Christ, Keller explained how to repair a Ford tractor, where to collect seed stock for a future planting season, how to brew moonshine, and how to manufacture homemade explosives. The two thousand-page monstrosity, which adherents usually carried in huge three-ring binders, with no two alike, went so far as to contain sample pictures of an ideal "self-defense community," with school, workshops, and truck gardens neatly circumscribed by sheet-metal walls.
Keller's problem was that he made too many powerful enemies too quickly. Americans were intolerant of "experiments in communal living," and so Keller was easily tarred a Communist in the popular imagination. Faith leaders aligning around Nathan Holn or closely wedded to partisan causes declared Keller a heretic in retaliation for his critique. And rather than admit its inability to deliver on promises to the American people, official Washington reacted with outrage that Keller should apparently compound the problem of local secession by tacitly encouraging it. Holnists delighted in repeating the rumor that Kellerite townships were dens of incest, playing on Keller's fascination with blood relation as the basis for durable settlements in crisis. In M.Y. 2022, Keller was forced into hiding after an attempt on his life. His broadcasts never resumed.
The tragedy of Kellerism is that belief made his followers more vulnerable. When Holnists were unsure of their odds against police or even part-time soldiers, Kellerites were an enticing alternative. After all, Kellerite communities were highly functional. Where they could get it, they accepted government assistance and so had improved health profiles when compared to surrounding communities. Bonds of blood and long-standing familiarity kept crime to a minimum. And Keller's book did stand the test of practical use. "His people" found worthwhile salvage, built sturdy structures, and achieve the organizational coherence necessary to produce food and sustain a tolerable standard of living. All of this, the Holnists wanted.
Keller urged his followers to resort to arms only for purposes of self-defense. Unfortunately, his self-restraint was not always shared by those who took his message to heart. On average, the "lieutenants" who led communities operating in his name were deeply troubled young people suffering from post-traumatic stress. They resorted readily, even enthusiastically, to violence. Pogroms against Tribes in Des Moines and San Francisco provided convenient pretext to carry the war to other fronts.
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A Kellerite community built around a train siding near Cerro Gordo, California. Like a medieval fortress, the entrance is defended by murder holes and a vertical portcullis. Keller's writings described how to rig cargo containers like this one with explosives so that they could be detonated if breached. The promise of water to passing travelers is brazen, if true to form. The exterior sign's reference to slaves probably refers to Holnists or intolerant locals taken prisoner in battle and put to work in nearby mines but illustrate how Kellerites sometimes lived down to their foes' worst stereotypes.
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The Stars and Stripes Resurgent. Officers of the Oregon State Police stand guard over a Safe Zone in downtown Portland during the final months of the Second Civil War.
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A Tribal armored personnel carrier suffers a crippling malfunction to its turret-mounted gauss armament during night fighting below Xerxion. Turret positioning suggests that the vehicle was trying to repel attack from the rear quarter. Anyone inside would almost certainly have evacuated moments later. To help with scaling the fortress inclines, the hull has been stripped of all non-essential armor and kit. The gold-washed plate indicates where an enterprising technician tried to add laser-reflective coating with hopes of improving crew survivability.
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The cause of the very first murder on our little expedition to the stars? Light. Two crewmen argued over possession of a headlamp. Gripped by avarice—and, no doubt, by fear—one stove the other’s head in with a sonic hammer. Over light. Even then, in our first hours above this new world, energy was the thing. For what is light but its herald? - The Centauri Monopoly
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A Tomorrow Initiative technician lies dead after an encounter with Morgan SafeHaven contractors seeking access to the Unity Data Laboratory.
Ideological unity within factions was an elusive, some would say illusory, prize. There were many good reasons that this should be so.
First, crew members were rarely sorted according to nationality, ideology, mission area, or even contract type. The piecemeal recruitment process and imperatives of shipboard emergency duties were the primary considerations for placement within the hull. Senior officers were likewise located the length and breadth of the ship, the better to assist with orderly landing operations. Some exceptions were made for armed security, both U.N. and private, but the populations impacted were quite small. To be sure, the U.N. Marine garrison, like its historical forbears, was situated with defense in mind: at the approaches to the ship's bridge and armory. Famously, Roshann Cobb awoke surrounded by his company praetorians, but even these were paid retainers who had counted on a two-way trip, not necessarily fellow-travelers interested in abetting Cobb’s flight from beneath the thumb of a temperamental father.
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Firefighters attempt to quell a cryobay flare-up caused by Dreamer vandals. When the shipboard crisis rose to a fever pitch, competition for nearby passengers and cargo increased until some leaders ordered a “slash-and-burn” policy, destroying anyone and anything they did not keep for themselves as insurance against tomorrow’s competition.
Second, the survivors awakened aboard Unity were overwhelmingly likely to have been awakened in an attempt to match problems with skills, rather than to further a social experiment that the expedition’s leaders did not yet themselves necessarily foresee. Most of the Unity command staff acquired their initial followers due to rank and charisma. The origins of the Peacekeeping Forces lay in a series of accidental encounters between Pravin Lal and those who crossed his path on his errand to Hydroponics. Even in the twilight of the evacuation, newly-coalescing “factions” chose who to take and who to abandon based almost entirely on primary and secondary function. Leaders with overwhelmingly monofunctional parties, such as Prokhor Zakharov, who had intentionally sought out engineers and stayed too long in Reactor Control, were rare.
Once on the ground, there was a natural grace period during which water, food, and shelter were the common obsession. Disagreement over government, leisure, and self-determination came later. Leaders were forced to move slowly to avoid disorder. Every incoming refugee and recovered colony pod was another infusion of uncertainty. Many factions, the Peacekeepers included, experimented with temporary processing stations for new arrivals, justified ostensibly on grounds that they required special medical care or nutrition that was better delivered in spaces dedicated to their needs, but really done to buy time for titration of “disruptive elements.”
The identity that others give us is much more important than the one we give ourselves. Nobody cares about the second one. They probably wouldn't believe it if you told them. They know only what was stenciled on your cryopod. A poet who was mislabeled a doctor? He is only a bad doctor. – Records of an Honest Man
For obvious reasons, groups of stowaways who managed to get aboard in large number enjoyed a tremendous advantage in political cohesion. Landers's Kellerites were secreted behind false bulkheads in two groups of roughly two hundred each. Both were situated forward of damage control but aft of the bridge, and they united at a prearranged rally point before it was even clear that the ship was lost. The Spartans were in a similar position. Shock hardly describes Santiago's reaction to learning that a large majority of the Holnists she had brought along had no intention of leaving Unity alive, but her claims to ultimate authority over the survivalist movement on Planet were much-strengthened by the six hundred odd fellow travelers in her extended command. Each such stowaway knew precisely what the nature of life would be when they hit dirt.
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Factions with high ideological cohesion manifested disturbing pathologies. Once bitten by the unfriendly Spartans, and with a long memory of persecution by the Evangelical Fire, Pete Landers was twice shy. A Herkimker Battle Jitney similar to the one seen in this Reno, NV scrap yard was used by Tribal Minutemen to burst the gate at New Eden, where, without provocation, they put to the sword every last congregant and called it preemptive self-defense.
(https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ErJ0oWbBQFM/XDg7rvshn4I/AAAAAAABm10/3H3IfDYUuqcqzpKrLZGzOiDnp1KBbfd9ACLcBGAs/s1600/maxresdefault%2B%252826%2529.jpg)
Pilgrim Regulators work to shut down an Amirani Base Management System at a captured Children's outpost. Use of national symbols such as the American flag shoulder patch, strictly prohibited by the U.N., was common for Charter colonists, especially those with ARC provenance. Oscar van de Graaf obsessed over the fate of his "stakeholders" and practiced a version of latter-day impressment to claw back "restitution" from other factions.
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A University academician being taken into custody by the Chiron Guard. Commander Kleisel Mercator calculated that the best way to amass Progenitor artifacts was to seize rather than seek. As his collection grew in size, so too did the number of willing recruits to the cause of a global defense initiative.
Sources:
The Herimker Battle Jitney was a vehicle used in the 1999 movie Mystery Men.
The Global Defense Initiative is a faction in Westwood Studio's long-running Command & Conquer series.
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The leader is the one who can think of next morning’s meal when tonight’s is not yet assured. - The Institutes of Leadership
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When the basins were pumped dry, Zakharov was told he had to abandon the rigs. He conferred with his Committee on Industrial Robotics and abandoned the basins instead.
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Enemy soldiers dreaded the brutal tunnel work required to root out Hive bases. Specialist units of the Regulators and Peacekeeping Forces trained for months in close-quarters combat and confined-space rescue to make ready for assaults. After the Hive expanded west into the Nessus Canyon, liaison officers of the Human Restoration approached Nwabudike Morgan, promising to train for him a corps of elite sappers. Morgan instead sought the council of Johann Anhaldt. A Coeus supercomputer rejected the conventional wisdom. Morgan deployed a drilling rig as instructed, and Yang lost contact with the offending branch.
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Rovers belonging to the Chiron Probe cross the Neyanza Valley, the largest contiguous terraformed space on Chiron, en route to High Hide. Joralamon Hardacre was keen to trade with the Unity survivors, whom he provided with inoculation against Red Flu and the benefit of his fields notes on the Mind Worms. It was from Hardacre that Marsh learned about their vulnerability to fire.
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U.N. Temple of Sol
The Sons of Centauri-Ra narrowly escaped the destruction of the Unity via Landing Pod. Their core consisted of most of the ship’s solar sailer team: powertechs, solartechs, laborers, most adherents of the neopagan cult that was of minor popularity during the latter days of Old Earth. Along with them were any survivors they swept up along the way to the nearest hangar bay. Cuzco Sol, once named Lucero Eztli Salvador, led the motley crew, boldly extolling the Centauri suns and exhorting all who they came across to join them, so long as they renounced darkness and shadow. Their landing was hastily done under frightfully uncertain circumstances- emergency protocols had to be run, then instrumentation burnout had required the use of an actual pilot. Throughout the descent, Sol called upon Centauri-Ra to shine his faithful rays upon his children, so they may live to grow strong and powerful on this new mudball they were so gifted. Along that harrowing passage, new converts were born, and existing faith was forged and reforged in the heat of the pod’s chassis upon reentry. Shortly after, Sol would unilaterally declare himself the spiritual and mission leader of the lost flock, giving himself the title of Heliophant.
They landed on gentle foothills surrounded by dense fields of xenofungus. The elevation was heralded by Sol as a good omen, “closer to Ra”, with the potential for solar collector development. He called this new base the Temple of Sol as both tribute to the sun cult and to his own humble zeal. So began the hardscrabble life of the Sons. It was a theocratic society but not excessively so. The cult stressed vigorous activity and striving for perfection in the martial arts, which lent itself well to the building and defense of the colony. Sun worship was encouraged but not mandated. The macho attitude of the cult stressed one’s own journey towards solar enlightenment, and so believers often tried to outdo each other in their defense against the local megafauna, the erection of more solar collectors above quota, the more time spent outside in the sun. Those who were weaker in faith were mocked as effete, secret Earth-loving pansies, but not persecuted. So in their chauvinistic, yet open-natured way, the Sons eked out a passable society.
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Temple of Sol was a functional base from its start, but survival was difficult and fraught with danger
Not long after its founding, Temple of Sol unexpectedly welcomed its first set of human visitors. Fortunately, they were non-hostile, unlike the bugs of the air and the beasts of the field. A corporate convoy of heavy equipment under the command of Dai Seung Heavy Industries passed through the territory of the Sons, and enquired who lived here. These fellow survivors had landed quite some distance away, in desolate wasteland. Only with great difficulty and trepidation- and the best navigation that the company survival scouts could rustle up- did they narrowly dodge worm attacks to arrive at this place. A mining and construction civilian contractor attached to the Unity mission, this former chaebol had been looking for a better location to set up shop, and hopefully, customers to sell to. Even if the mission was technically dissolved, the surviving executives reasoned, work could still be done to make use of the place. They were open to clients, and, taking note at the rather shabby and under-equipped nature of the Heliophant’s faithful, potential coworkers as well.
Dai Seung, of Gangnam District, Seoul, was particularly well-positioned as a company to form unlikely partnerships. The firm had been the first to operate in the north following the 2053 ROK-DSRK Detente that opened up the Jucheist regime to outside business. With a corporate culture stressing adaptability, flexibility and pragmatism as its highest values, Dai Seung would go on to operate contracts as disparate and far-flung as constructing nuclear power plants in the Vietnamese Soviet Republic to exploring offshore natural gas fields off the coast of French Indochina, building facilities for the post-Six Minute War Indian government to laying infrastructure for the Empire of Neo Japan’s disputed IOEZ naval holdings on Netaji Bose Island. While company field execs were at first apprehensive about working with a batch of fanatically hypermasculine cultists, they quickly and cooly analyzed the situation.
Vice President of Field Operations- Labor Relations Young Kwan-Yong surmised that the Centauri-Ra cult, while pugnacious and prone to atavistic flights of fancy (one of Heliophant Cuzco Sol’s first pronouncements had been the desire to climb one of the nearby alien monoliths himself and carve the twin-sun sigil onto its capstone personally - he was only dissuaded from doing so when Dai Seung reps proposed building their own obelisk for the cult’s ceremonial use, rather than disrupting the ancient priceless artifact), did indeed possess valuable technical expertise in solar power generation, and that their bravado could be yet harnessed under the chaebol’s steady guiding hand. She further determined that for all of their fighting ability, most, unlike their leader, were engineer techs and workers, without actual experience, and the amount of actual weaponry they held was paltry. While Dai Seung Security Services did not possess firepower at any level akin to that held by Sabre, SafeHaven, ARC, and others, they did have more equipment than the surviving solartechs had salvaged from the ship.
(https://i.imgur.com/1HHESFH.jpg)
Young Kwan-Yong was one of a dozen Dai Seung VPs who survived Planetfall. Expert at creating deals with workforces from multiple regional markets, her pre-Chiron claim to fame was reaching an accord with striking North Korean miners at Komdok in 2061
The Sons were not simpletons- they had long since abandoned their initial infamous tactic of attacking mindworm swarms in melee combat, swinging sledge hammers as clubs and old broken photovoltaic cells as shields. And their insistence on periodic exposure to the elements to ritually sunbathe in the light of Alpha Centauri A and Hercules did appear to provide salutary effects- Dai Seung Human Asset Management psych chaplains discovered that observant Centauri-Ra acolytes performed ably in battle against psi-wielding xenoforms, able to resist hallucinatory effects for precious minutes longer than non-observant practitioners and non-members without extensive off-base experience. Young asserted that this personnel resource could not be disregarded, and her plan to establish the working relationship between the chaebol and the cult was quickly adopted by the Field Operations Working Board.
The working relationship was rocky upon inception, with the Sons of Centauri-Ra scoffing at the end of listening to corporate suits, but this was smoothed over as Dai Seung offered its modest armories of shredder rifles, field HUD scouters, even several prototype exo-frames mostly used for heavy loading. Not to mention, the entire Agriculture and Food Synthesis Divisions upscaled to accommodate feeding the doubled population. While the Sons had a store of survival rations, the specter of starvation was not fully banished until Dai Seung graciously offered its food supply. In return, the Sons got to work building out a full state-of-the-art (by pre-launch standards) electrical infrastructure. The Heliophant’s daily messages gave succor to the faithful, who rallied to the difficulties of frontier settlement. Dai Seung’s managers found that the sun worshippers were more up to the task of building out a settlement. They were particularly capable of defending against both mindworms and raids from hostile factions. While professional, the Security Services were unaccustomed to the sort of savage irregular attacks from Holnists, smacers, and mindworms. In exchange, the corporation allocated excess work cycles towards constructing shrines to appease their partners.
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Dai Seung construction crews built the Shining Face, a massive idol of Helios placed in the Chamber of Initiates
Vendetta and Absorption
After several mission years of independent existence, the Temple of Sol finally met its greatest existential threat by Spartan aggression. While the colonel expressed amusement towards the mob of half-crazed sun lovers, and held their fighting spirit in some esteem, she had no patience for their corporate fellows. Denouncing the pursuit of wealth as decadent, Santiago charged Dai Seung as another horde of capitalist monopolists leeching off the truly productive protectors of society (there was a sop to the remaining Holnists left in the Federation) and accused Cuzco Sol of falling prey to the lies of weak-willed energy worshippers. Indeed, the energy stores generated by the vast solar collectors built by the cult indicated that the base had the makings of a future Merchant Exchange. To Young Kwan-Yong and her staff, she and the heliocentric brotherhood were after the same thing. Far from accepting the claims of this provocateur, the Heliophant upheld the cult’s honor and declared that no Son of Ra may betray his friends to any outsider.
While brave, the base came under swift attack by an overwhelming force that both outnumbered and militarily out-organized the defenders. Deployed to the passes leading to the city, in the gaps of the xenofungus fields under the shade of Cuzco’s obelisk, the Saulė calpulli and the 2nd Field Security Team ‘Chungmu’ saw their positions overrun by an army of helots. Though low in morale, these meatgrinder captives taken from prior conquests were force-marched by their Spartan officers straight into the joint Sons-Dai Seung force’s firing lines. Some crawled through the dense xenofungus themselves- company PR officers would later decry that as evidence of nerve-stapling on the part of the Spartans. Even as some from the corporate security service would shamefully break and flee from the onslaught, the Ra acolytes, their bloodthirst triggered, would break ranks and run towards the enemy, taking out their industrial-forged ceremonial Huitzauhqui spiked bats and 3D-printed Champi star-shaped maces and bludgeoned at the flood. For a shining instant, the gambit worked as the stunned Spartans’ momentum was thrown back by this vanguard, and the other defenders fired upon them with shredder rifles. But this instant too passed, as Myrmidons outfitted in combat laser rovers and attack hoverbikes blew past the defensive lines.
The Spartans had arrived at the perimeter walls of the colony. A variety of weapons were unleashed upon them- anti-mindworm flamer guns, hot water pressure washers, even an experimental high-speed excavator arm. But these efforts were fruitless. Colonel Santiago had wanted the corporation as helots, the cultists as janissaries, and the city as her prize. Already her military communiques referred to the base as War Outpost. Former PMC operator Arturo Quiepo, the Spartan commander in charge of the operation, had the Myrmidons deploy explosives to punch through the defensive perimeter. After several blasts and fending off a counterattack by the Aruna calpulli with fire support from the 7th Base Security Division ‘Gasin’, Quiepo and his forces dove into Temple of Sol, ready to slay or enslave all who was within.
It was then that a U.N. Peacekeeping Forces division miraculously emerged upon the scene. Having been tracking Spartan troop movements closely for over a week as part of a long-simmering pseudo-vendetta, Major Steven Howard, the leader of the blue berets, invoked Article 5 of the Joint Signatory Framework, declaring that the Spartan Federation had attacked a neutral party and was guilty of violating interfactional laws. Armed with the latest impact weaponry, the Peacekeepers made use of the situation and blasted the Spartan forces in the field before attacking their rearguard at the city’s walls. The invasion force had been caught by the hammer of Lal and the anvil of the Temple. Quiepo, no stranger to lost causes, ordered a speedy retreat and spat threats of true vendetta upon the Peacekeepers before withdrawing the battered Myrmidons from the base’s gates.
And so did the Temple of Sol make first contact with the Peacekeeping Forces. Major Howard was bemused to discover an independent settlement co-ruled by a religious organization and a private corporation. He would later describe the arrangement as “a distant echo of those weird big business-loving Midwest theocracies from the civil war.” Regardless of the unusualness of the arrangement, Howard quickly recognized Sol and Young as the leaders of the city. The division stayed to see to the care of the wounded and the reconstruction of the defenses, proper emissaries were exchanged, and the base was inducted into the Peacekeepers’ protective orbit.
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Major Steven Howard and a Peacekeeper anthropologist granted an audience before Heliophant Cuzco Sol, flanked by the cult's Medjay elites
Fast forward several mission years later, and the base expanded and grew under Peacekeeper military aid and support. While they continued to train vigorously and ritualistically, the diminishment of outside threats meant that the Sons of Centauri-Ra were able to focus fully on solar collector construction. The settlement became renowned as the “City of Ten Thousand Mirrors,” its vast solar arrays surrounding the countryside where xenofungus fields used to be, now plucked clean by Peacekeeper-provided ‘formers leased to the Dai Seung construction teams. Following no shortage of polite prodding from Lal’s diplomats, the Heliophant and the CEO gradually acceded to entrance into the Peacekeeping Forces. Thus was the community renamed to U.N. Temple of Sol, an oddball among the faction’s bases.
The commissioner and his advisors would later rue giving the place more than associate status: while the governors were democratically elected, they tended to fiercely advocate for cult and corporate interests. This ranged from the irritatingly monomaniacal (designating the Heliophant’s corporate-built shrines as UNESCO Planet Heritage Sites) to the alarmingly unhinged (later on, favoring the widespread adoption of hydrocarbon-producing vehicles and MULEs, both for cost-cutting reasons and for immanentizing Amun-Ra’s eschaton). But between the fervor of the cult and the professionalism of the corporation, U.N. Temple of Sol had a very low population of drones. And even as both organizations realized that there was much more to Planet beyond the base walls, their steadfast stewardship has made the City of Ten Thousand Mirrors truly shine.
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U.N. Temple of Sol at the cusp of the Pre-Sentience Age
Coda and Implications
In time the story of both the Sons and Dai Seung diverged beyond their first city. Cuzco Sol’s departure for the south, the following succession struggles, the rise of the Proxima-Aten heresy, the various exoduses and pilgrimages that ensued, and the faith’s experiences living among other societies is beyond the scope of this account. (Of particular interest is the curious case of the small Centauri-Ra community within the Lord’s Conclave at Mount Sanctuary- like the Dharmic-based Kavithans, non-Abrahamic religions have always had an uneasy, often antagonistic existence within the the Conclave despite Sister Godwinson’s official credo of “life of religious worship.” Even more precarious is the state of the Solarus sect among the Stepdaughters of Gaia- a sororal offshoot originally welcomed by the Gaians as fellow nature-loving neopagans, they quickly drew the ire of the Lady herself for their belligerence and tendency to light entire groves on fire in devotion to the Heliades. Fortunately for both the Gaian hosts and the Solarii at their mercy, Chiron’s low oxygen makes forest fires difficult to spread.)
And as contact with ever more civilizations (and potential clients) increased, Dai Seung perpetual Acting Field CEO Young took up more contracts and forged additional working relationships beyond their first base. Eventually, the company would rebrand itself as Unicorp (“the Only Answer to Tomorrow“) and become a second-party developer to the Shapers of Chiron. Providing the engineering muscle and know-how to some of the movement’s most audacious mass terraforming projects, the company also began to run into limits of its cultural adaptability. Even as Dai Seung had rebuilt itself on Planet and become an industrial giant, Young and her executives grew more assured in their own vision for how to run their operations, often locking horns with the Coordinator. And the chaebol often pursued its own agenda independent of Nagao’s mystic quest, as it had done from the Sons. Unicorp often deviated from the main Shaper mission to wage its own trade wars and industrial espionage campaigns against the likes of Morgan and ARC, fighting for the hearts and wallets of Planet.
Regardless, the story of the Temple of Sol illustrates how sub-factional societies could exist and coexist on Planet, at least during the early days of development. Religious, cultural, even ideological identities did not always have to belong solely to a single faction or outpost. Private entities, whether corporate or otherwise, could work with multiple factions or even a single sub-factional society. The settlement of Chiron continues to be a multivariate affair hosting a diverse array of radically different groups.
Notes:
Unicorp, née Dai Seung Heavy Industries, are from the custom mod faction set SMACFacPack (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=8459.0) by @nweismuller and Adam Gieseler. Unicorp is rather like a honest version of Morgan Industries, in that the corporation is self-aware that Planetary monopoly requires Planned economics, and the Free Market is an impediment to that. In this version, I’ve made the CEO female, portrayed by Kim Hye-soo from the South Korean film Default, a historical drama about the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
The Solarii are a hero unit in Majesty: the Fantasy Kingdom Sim, worshippers of the sun goddess Helia.
The original picture of the base is the box art from the Sierra On-Line game Outpost.
The modern depiction of U.N. Temple of Sol is a Solarpunk rendition by Steven Wong (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/dOxBwe).
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A soldier learns quickly that the best position from which to fight is protected, or else they don't soldier long. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
Forewarned is forearmed. In the short time before loss of contact with the Chiron Interstellar Probe, Mission Analysis identified animal attack as the second most-common official cause of death on Chiron. Only Red Flu was a worse killer, and the numbers were close indeed. (At the time, mindworm casualties were calculated separately, as U.N. Medical disagreed with Governor Joralemon Hardacre's assessment that the worms were responsible for the psychosis widely reported by his people.)
Planet’s biodiversity was limited, but the best-known life form to the Pathfinder colonists was the subrid, similar to enormous crustaceans in appearance, and highly aggressive. These semi-aquatic invertebrates preferred the places where Chiron’s plant life had rioted into its waterways. Their bodies were wide, flat, and squat, topped by hard, chitinous exoskeletons with the same chemical composition as the xenofungus. A subrid's fungal shell sometimes exceeded eight feet in height. Subrids were bilaterally symmetrical, with two grasping claws and two pairs of very long, highly articulated walking legs, each ending in four hooked “toes." The legs were remarkably strong. Like those of a waterbug, they could stretch almost perpendicular to the main body, helping the animal to negotiate the toadstool-like nitrate floats found in the lakes and river deltas where they laid their eggs. A flat head bore two eye stalks; a pair of animated, whip-like antennae; matching antennules; and one set of large, vertical mandibles. Naturalist Phillipe Nguyen called them “a perfect child of crab and snail.” Successful domestication efforts were begun after finding that the meat of the subrid was both palatable and nutritious, but the venture was high-risk, high-reward.
Subrids were naturally aggressive. Male and female alike fought to the death for mating privileges, and both participated in vigorous patrols to protect their spawning grounds. When seasonal reproduction cycles ended, the subrids indulged an intense innate curiosity, wandering the land in all weather, seizing items of interest between claws that applied pressure of 4,900 pounds per square inch. Available information showed that vehicles in the Probe's motor pool were not durable enough to withstand this scrutiny.
To help workshop a solution for its second expedition, the U.N. canvassed donor nations for surplus armored vehicles. They also approached Three Days to Decision, a private military services provider that had received high marks for improving combat survivability within the small Gathi Army during the final phases of its war with Shiloh. With little delay, the consultants sent back the design for an air-deployable bunker. Venter-Serison Defense Products manufactured the final product, which test crews on the Sea of Tranquility called the "Trouble Bubble." A lot of forty-three shipped as under-slung cargo for the Unity's Sky Cranes. Every faction on Planet learned to make many more.
The "Bubble" was just that. Comfortable space for up to twenty-four, well-insulated, fully sealed from the external environment with on-board tank-supplied atmosphere for up to thirty-six standard Terran hours. From within, colonists could attempt satellite communication with rescuers, monitor the vicinity on in-built cameras, or perform emergency surgery in a collapsible theater that was better-equipped than most early field ambulances. When inclined to fight, occupants opened gun ports to use their small arms or fired defensive canister munitions from dispensers on each of the bunker's four faces.
Sources:
The picture is taken from the StarCraft Field Manual, by Rick Barba, with art from Robert Rose.
Subrids are just chull, creatures from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives literary universe. For more on chull, see: Carl Engle-Laird, A Field Guide to Roshar: The Ecology of The Way of Kings (https://www.tor.com/2013/06/12/the-ecology-of-the-way-of-kings/), 12 June 2013.
Gath and Shiloh are fictional kingdoms from the NBC sci-fi drama, Kings.
The "Trouble Bubble" is a vehicle from GI JOE used by COBRA, "a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world."
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To celebrate the centennial of Planetfall, Librarian Sékou Tangara compiled his list of the most advanced societies on Chiron.
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More than half the residents of University bases pursued a graduate-level education, with predictable effects on total research output per capita. The cult of learning claimed its adherents as children. From ablution to meal preparation, no domestic task was performed without audiovisual accompaniment. Floor-to-ceiling panels retracted to entice questions about the natural world beyond. Speaking from overhead telecasters, chemists explained why certain food items on a cutting board paired well and others did not. Dynamic pop-ups turned even the most banal entertainments into opportunities for incidental learning. University smart homes adjusted the nature of this passive instruction to suit the demonstrated preferences and aptitudes of each user. The University Academy of Child Development was justifiably proud of the dramatically reduced incidence of learning disabilities among children raised in these environments.
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St. Germaine's sailors pushed to the very limits of their boats' endurance, yielding crucial first insights about the tidal, tectonic, thermal, and mineralogical characteristics of Chiron. New State base design demonstrated a well-informed respect for the planet's natural rhythms of calm and calamity. Caged construction and rubber shock absorbers beneath Rock Island Refuge spared its twenty thousand inhabitants the same unhappy fate as the Nautilus Pirates at New Atlantis during the furious M.Y. 71 eruptions of Mount Krentz.
(https://www.wallpaperup.com/uploads/wallpapers/2012/10/06/18285/78bf1568564a1e648fa9741d434443ca-700.jpg)
It was easy enough for the possessors of the mission's generic library to grow an a reliably intelligent, athletically-predisposed specimen in a petri dish. The Human Ascendancy struggled with lower rates of success when actually attempting to parent its perfect offspring to greatness as adults. Pahlavi complained that her social scientists agreed less often than her geneticists. What made one a good soldier or a profoundly insightful mathematician seemed at times to be mutually exclusive with the minimum attainments of competency in the civil service. Some wanted to emphasize creativity, others physicality. Some wanted to prescribe propaganda, while others insisted that affection for the Ascendancy agenda should develop naturally, if at all. How to raise a polymath? At her lowest point, thinking that the juveniles' common tendency toward emotional instability was a sign of weak character, Pahlavi yielded to Chairman Sheng-ji Yang's blandishments and allowed him to make disciples of six, whom he never returned. She had better results working with Dr. Aleigha Cohen, who suggested that the Ascendancy's system of communal child-rearing was too antiseptic. Cohen demanded to know: whither the family unit? She also suggested another improvement: collection and analysis of each Augment's dream data. While the Ascendancy hesitated before the brute expediency of "mental rewiring"--a machine-assisted intervention that Pahlavi didn't trust to produce purely human results--her faction realized its greatest success when it began treating its newest members as individuals in their own right, using personalized insights into each child's subconscious to tailor their development even more finely. No two geniuses were alike.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b2/7b/de/b27bdeb70a62532c434ab35a51049a9b.jpg)
When his consumers demanded, Morgan delivered. "Red Charlie" was the first in the Lifecycle Series, a line of robotic valets designed to serve an owner from cradle to grave. By day, polymorphic software helped Charlies draft new routines to supplement their original programming. By night, mind-machine interface served as the cutting room floor, where the sleeping creator unconsciously helped their servant to edit that which had been created in the preceding few hours. Morganite compilers braced for sacking when base networks first flooded with stories about Charlies adopting the prejudices and even the speech cadences of their owners, but Morgan knew they had struck paydirt.
Certainly, your computer is the faster. But mine thinks you are an idiot, and he is right. - MorganQuote of the Day
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(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/36/69/10/366910e002e34b3f360416546e768dc9.jpg)
The Master Control Station, just above Central Drilling at The People's Teeming. Labyrinth bases were constantly expanding. Hive populations were limited only by the available supplies of nutrient paste (there was never enough), the pace of faction excavators (slow), and, of course, the number of bullets in possession of adjacent colonies. The Chairman's territorial ambitions were whetted in proportion to the urgency of warnings from Base Operations that the Drones were too many in number.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/015/715/753/large/r-o-iaki-0018.jpg?1549374068)
Heliophant Cuzco Sol's price for suspending his vendetta against Sheng-ji Yang in M.Y. 74 was Order's Bulkwark. Not the populace; just the heavily reinforced main drift, where the slow-moving waters of the River Markab, abundant in all seasons, provided the cooling element that made possible another of Dai Seung's miracles.
Named in honor of the Ilocano sun god, the Eye of Amman was a photovoltaic power station that concentrated the solar radiation from Alpha Centauri A through lenses ground from large planetpearls. The intake cell stood 110 feet above Planet's surface on a needle-shaped tower, but all the real action took place below ground, where a spectacular golden laser played a continuous feed to banks of industrial-scale batteries.
Huge trunk cables wheeled the project's huge power output first to the Son's grid, then onto the Morganite exchange, from which the corporation earned a tidy profit, at least until M.Y. 136. In that year, amidst another of the short, sharp trade wars between the Dynamic Enterprise and the newly-rebranded Unicorp, Triax Corporation battle ogres blinded the Eye by shelling the tower to collapse.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1d/3c/a2/1d3ca209ed25ca4dfeaab32f21067de5.jpg)
Economies of scale might elude a faction for any number of reasons. Arguably the worst contributing factor was lack of access to adequate natural resources, a chronic condition that, by the middle of the first century M.Y., experts agreed could be outlived only if the afflicted society had resort to war, trade, or expansion.
Oscar van de Graaf was no stranger to taking what he wanted by threat or application of main force, and he saw no reason that his lack of an industrial base, or the already-crowded conditions on Shamash, should stop him. If his ancestors had taken other mens' cattle, he reasoned, then perhaps the Pilgrims could take other factions' minerals.
The Governor approached one hundred of his top minds and issued each one stock in a new enterprise, the Chiron Mining and Recovery Corporation, soon known as C-MARCO. In their genius, his collaborators produced another acronym: SAMMS, short for semi-autonomous mobile mining station. Viral morphology provided the now-infamous design: that of a bacteriophage. Six or eight articulated walking legs were affixed to the business end of a drill rig, above which sat, in ascending order, a small ore cylinder, a control cabin, engine, exhaust, and radio mast. Put to it, the SAMMS could lurch along, or away from pursuers at 32 km/h. They were rugged and cheap to build, using parts mostly sourced from common Grumman Aerospace pods, and so equally cheap to repair. Hydrofoils and hovercraft ferried whole squadrons of SAMMS to enemy territory known for its mineralogical potential. Pilgrim surveyors then made best efforts to find and fix rich veins of ore before the SAMMS were put out to pasture under the watchful eyes of Regulator militia. Progress was painstaking, but the concept was sound and the income steady.
Sources:
The first picture is credited to Mr. Nobody on Pinterest.
The second picture is the Automatic Mantle Harvester Division Processing by serg4d.deviantart.com on @deviantART.
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The conventional model of geneology is a tree bearing fruit at the terminus of each branch. Such a model implies that all branches are created equal, but this is not the case. Some are weak, others diseased. Orchardists solve this problem by pruning unhealthy branches, conserving nutrients for the choicest blossoms. Without this care, the tree produces nothing remarkable, and certainly nothing they would care to use as root stock to perpetuate the breed. - Homo Sapien Superior
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c5/d7/85/c5d7854fe5737a9d220acc1c3b8860d0.jpg)
An Ascendancy genetailor makes final adjustments to a new profile.
Geriatric medicine was an unavoidable lure for the immensely strong egos that had collectively destroyed the United Nations Mission to Alpha Centauri.
Early forays into the science of longevity were ordered up by faction leaders with prior experience in the field. Academician Prokhor Zakharov chased a so-called "clinical" immortality. The aging patient received lab-grown organs to replace ailing originals, along with immunotherapies like cancer-stalking white blood cells. This was a popular and largely successful scheme, adding an average of 61 years to the lifespan of a reasonably fit person, with even better outcomes for women.
Morganite physicians went in a similar direction. The work required loading a viable sample of the patient's own organ into biological scaffolds. Through the magic of protein accretion and generous injections of growth medium, a new and complete organ would eventually take shape, fully operational and ready to be surgically swapped. University scientists mastered the technique fairly quickly, but Morganite doctors struggled. The faction bought itself time by creating a public exchange for "medical inputs"--in short, a virtual marketplace for live organs. Bureaucrats at the Planetary Council screamed murder, and they were right, but the trade was a popular one, especially once cybernetics could provide adequate replacement for original biology. Hence the proliferation of contracts that gave Morganite employers final rights to the amputated limbs of injured workers, or even the bodies of the dead.
High up in The Pinnacle, Acscendancy researchers came at the same problem of aging from another direction. Director Tamineh Pahlavi wanted not only the benefits of long life, but the fruits of youth as well. Her 'jacks tracked the expression of genes of interest, such as MC1R (youthful appearance) and COL5A1 (collagen production, linked to flexibility) within the Ascendancy population and had them edited into test subjects (usually prisoners purchased from the Dreamers or the Hive). Pahlavi's research was sped considerably by her exclusive possession of the data from the aging studies carried out on the Unity passengers subjected to Wespe-Quinn-Vagner Hibernation, which was virtually all of them.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9b/0b/9f/9b0b9f1d90d2dede722c46584e5b51ce.jpg)
Unity Cryobay L-21, Bank 8, at final loading. After validation of vitals, colonists and crew not expected to be subject to rapid recall were placed in shock-absorbing canisters that could mitigate the potential malfunction of primary life support. Those with emergency response training were provided with fewer safeguards.
Success brought an increased number of aged followers, not least of which was Pahlavi herself. This brought both opportunities and challenges for one of Planet's most unforgiving societies. Pahlavi was a supremacist, believing that a person's birth was their destiny. In the Ascendancy, past performance at first mattered less than predicted aptitude. Children were literally bred to their tasks. Miners, short and squat with excellent vision. Sailors, tall, with very high metabolism and improved oxygen conservation. Diplomats were always tall, and had a conventionally pleasing appearance. Only repeated disappointment at being unable to "manufacture" consistently excellent leaders led Pahlavi to reassess her original values.
Experiments in close parenting had produced good results. Augments no less than natural-born children were less susceptible to negative influences when they had access to more individualized attention. Some parents were also better than others, a discovery that dovetailed fortuitously with the increasing lifespan of faction members who otherwise lacked for purpose in a brutally task-driven setting. Guardianship was soon counted no less important than the laboratory study behind Ascendancy breeding programs. The more experienced the guardian, the more consistently predictable the child's developmental trajectory.
Recognition of the value of experience changed Ascendancy life for the better overall. Pahlavi reversed her original policy of moving freshborns directly into command positions, requiring instead that they understudy with proven incumbents who were given the power to withhold promotion in cases where it was not merited, which proved to be many. Older citizens, to whom Pahlavi herself had a well-known aversion, were increasingly brought together to crowdsource ideas about how the Ascendancy should handle its troubled diplomacy, the history of which was now complicated enough to afford careful study and benefit from firsthand exposure.
The fullest possibilities for longevity required the weighing in of the Dreamers of Chiron, or at least the descendants thereof. Dr. Aleigha Cohen explored the role that a regimen of mental stimulus might play in staving off degenerative conditions. Insights from the studies she shared on the Planetary Networks were picked up and embraced by virtually all factions. In the Hive Assembly Bays, the Chairman bade his Prefects play Socratic mind games during calisthenics. Octogenarian owners of a Red Charlie competed to name that tune every morning over bowls of Gold Doubloons. The consequences for Gaian society were most profound of all: a near-total elimination of dementia for all age cohorts, which the Lady Skye and her physicians felt must be linked to the faction's domesticated mindworms.
Sources:
On the novel type of white blood cell therapy discussed above, see this (https://www.thespec.com/news/hamilton-region/2017/12/01/hamilton-researchers-white-blood-cells-could-be-made-to-hunt-cancer-cells.html) article.
For tissue engineering, see this (https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/81080/new-tissue-engineering-process-brings-lab-grown-organs-one-step-closer/) interesting article from the website Drug Target Review.
On gene expression, see this (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-sea-nomads-may-have-evolved-to-be-the-worlds-elite-divers/) article in Scientific American.
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In times of strife, we are wont to speak the words, 'God, deliver us from evil.' But I tell you: this is not prayer--it is incantation. God has given us the means to effect our own salvation, material as much as spiritual. We worship God's Creation by living correctly. Do not wish for intervention. Let us make personal action our prayer. - Admonishment to the Faithful
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/88/bb/d6/88bbd6abe63c51ed37637fc9095abd75.jpg)
A Human Relief Initiative 'Rover, fancifully dubbed "The Devil's Arrow," carries life-saving potable water up the Caisson Trail to thirsty Observers at avalanche-afflicted Watchpoint.
There was peril in charity, to hear General Marcel Salan tell it. He thought the concerned parishoners of Loaves and Fishes did more harm than good by turning the other cheek and turning out their larders in the name of love for the brethren.
Countless drones, rendered "the least among us" in typically unflattering Conclave speech, owed their salvation from war and famine to the sublimating impulses of Sister Miriam Godwinson. White-helmeted crisis wardens of the HRI had complete freedom of Planet. This, because they were absurdly apolitical. No outrage, not even slaughter perpetrated against the faithful themselves, could place a faction totally beyond the possibility of their assistance. "Ask," Miriam told the Planetary Council, "and ye shall be answered."
So the Conclave famously dispensed soup to the freshly-stapled. Hive sentries had standing orders to let them pass without so much as a visual inspection of cargoes. Morganite project planners supposedly made their seasonal bonuses by shaving orders of food, water, and medical supplies since the HRI could be trusted to make up any shortfall with alacrity, and free of charge.
For Miriam, service to an enemy was prayerful obedience to the principle that all Unity's survivors were bound to a single, common fate. Since she was prohibited from proselytizing under most circumstances, the HRI served her as an ambassadorial corps, bringing to the beleaguered everywhere a clear sense of what it meant to follow the Lord's Commandments.
Sources:
The sci-fi vehicle in the picture is "Truck," by Robert Ryminiecki on Pinterest.
The Human Relief Initiative is an homage to the Global Defense Initiative, or GDI, a faction in Command & Conquer.
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Battle lines drawn on Earth were rarely subject to change after Planetfall. The Unity Crisis inflamed existing passions more than it altered them. By the third generation of settlement, opportunistic raiding, once an accepted remedy in which all partook, had settled into predictable patterns involving a limited number of usual suspects. Only Hivemen, Observers, Dreamers, Pirates, and Pilgrims were desperate enough, or maintained military capabilities appropriate to practice plunder as a way of life. Most military conflict between factions, which was still common enough, had crossed into the realm of vendetta, persistent armed rivalry arising from historical tensions or ideological disagreements.
(https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/51b3dc8ee4b051b96ceb10de/1506015883029-NQGXVZVRVNGBZO61U58A/image-asset.jpeg)
As forces mustered for the Battle of Amphalion, Sergeant Pete Landers revealed to his astonished Observer allies that the stowaways had brought with them an unlikely legacy of their decades-long fight against persecution: elderly Foundry 4 Powered Combat Suits. Left behind in the rubble of Las Vegas by the departing U.S. Army, which knew it would be resupplied by air, lightly-damaged examples were soon put back into service by Tribal mechanics swarming from hidden shelters. The Kellerites bribed Comprehensive Transport to put several racks of Foundry 4s in one of Unity's abandoned compartments sometime during the 2060s. Time had not been kind to the much-patched relics: their anti-tank warheads were as dangerous to themselves as the enemy; most were reduced to dependence upon their suit's integral rotary cannon, for which there was little suitable ammunition. The allies suffered a rare, costly bloodletting in one of the few victories for the University of Planet during the war to prevent activation of the Interstellar Communications Array, repulsed by Zakharov's attack hovercraft.
(https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/amp_featured_image/public/2019/02/untitled_0.png?h=2699e30d)
Captain Trung Thi Hoang instructs the occupants of her Landing Pod to pressurize their survival suits. Overcrowded conditions prevented everyone's being properly secured in a crash couch. Instead, they relied on overhead handholds that probably caused as many injuries as they prevented.
Despite the unsuccessful prosecution of Struan's overseer Dole Yudikon, Commissioner Pravin Lal faced loud calls for a wave of similar actions, including two members of his own command staff against whom the evidence was felt to be more certain. Former King of Carmel Vesper Abaddon stood accused of war crimes for executions of Danite francs-tireurs, while three-time American cabinet secretary Tell Stillwell, was said to have made possible the abusive labor practices of the American Reclamation Corporation. Lal was also urged to use the Council as his instrument of retributive justice. Sergeant Pete Landers condescended to explain to the Planetary Council that his chosen solution for Spartans was summary execution under "Rule .303," a reference to the story of Australian folk hero Breaker Morant. A more frequent appellate before the Council, Governor Oscar van de Graaf, unselfconsciously sought the assistance of Lal’s blue helmets to effect forcible “transfers” of people and property that he alleged were being wrongly withheld from him, in clear contravention of undertakings made by the United Nations. Most of what was van de Graaf’s legally had come into the possession of Nwabudike Morgan and Shoichiro Nagao, but the Pilgrim leader also began to nurse a quarrel against Lal, the man who kept staying his hand, an agony that could only be endured so long without rebuke. Privately, Lady Deirdre Skye floated the idea of arresting CEO Nwabudike Morgan and Coordinator Shoichiro Nagao under what amounted to a writ of attainder for what she termed "planetary despoilation." Captain Trung Thi Hoang demanded similar action be taken against Santiago and other survivalists, as well as Zelphon Company contract troops with whom her survivors had skirmishes over watering holes. The mercenaries had subsequently been picked up by Roshann Cobb, who was always happy to bolster the size of his security retinue.
(http://Most of what was van de Graaf’s legally had come into the possession of Nwabudike Morgan and Shoichiro Nagao, but the Pilgrim leader also began to nurse a quarrel against Lal, the man who kept staying his hand, an agony that could only be endured so long without rebuke.)
(https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/michael_gaston_3.jpg)
Tell Farraday Stillwell, twice American Secretary of the Navy, once American Secretary of Defense, helped to articulate and execute the Renssaeler Administration's policy of personal disarmament. To achieve its goal, the White House first expelled from Congress all representatives from states determined to be "in rebellion," had congressional allies ram through the statehood of overseas territories on a party-line vote, then called a Constitutional Convention, all attendees of which were north of the Mason-Dixon Line, west of the Sierra Nevadas, or dependent on federal assistance. Disagreement about which states ought to be punished in this manner led most of Renssaeler's cabinet to resign. According to both Colonel Corazon Santiago and Sergeant Pete Landers, this decision, which supposedly prolonged the Holnist insurrection by years, destroyed any possibility for true democracy in post-bellum America.
For reasons he little cared to explored, but could not seem to live down, Lal found it difficult to use the law as he might have wished, even when he presided over the Councils that wrote it. In his diary, Lal recorded a tongue-lashing he received from Marcel Salan. In public, the Canadian warrior was fully behind enforcement of the newly-promulgated Planetary Charter from which Lal claimed to derive the authority to punish misrule such as was perpetrated by the Dreamers of Chiron. Privately, he made clear his personal belief that Lal himself had played no small role in the unwinding of modern Canada, and owed a debt greater than it was possible to repay. Prokhor Zakharov joined his abrupt expulsion of the Council's Genetic Inspectors with a stern speech to his peers in which he reminded them of Lal's historical "indulgence of ignorance." By Zakharov's count, the Commissioner bore indirect responsibility for tens of millions of deaths from starvation and disease, all of which would have been avoidable had the U.N. not knuckled under when confronted with popular aversion to genetically-modified foods and vaccine immunization.
All science is discomfort. Take, for instance, a life-saving procedure that offends your deeply-held convictions. Which inflicts the greater injury to you and others: a surgery you do not wish to have, or the doctor's inaction that causes your death? - For I Have Tasted the Fruit
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C81dGs8VoAAQges.jpg)
In M.Y. 172, Kleisel Mercator's Chiron Guard attacked the University of Planet's satellite uplinks at Baranov Outpost sixteen times. Zakharov repaired the superstructure with workmanlike predictability. Mercator, in turn, kept assigning some of his best units to renewed strikes. In fact, Baranov Outpost was a Potemkin village manned only by the Men of Harlech mercenary force. The University was building two replacement facilities on the Issus moon.
Among the many peoples of Chiron, opinion varied regarding both the wisdom and feasibility of restoring contact with Planet Earth.
A minority of three, the University of Planet, the Dynamic Enterprise, and the Dreamers of Chiron, were largely indifferent to the idea. Let it be one happy outcome of the future growth in radiotelescopy, Zakharov said, but as a goal in itself, "re-contact" left something to be desired. Even if the Unity survivors did discover that human civilization on Earth had survived, it would be decades between transmissions. Any help that Earth could provide would therefore be negligible. Similar problems of distance convinced the Morganite boardroom that their energies, too, were better spent on problems closer to home. Distracted by the contemplation of other frontiers, Roshann Cobb and Aleigha Cohen failed to register any opinion one way or the other. Cobb had been sent to Chiron to lay the stakes for follow-on business by his father's corporation, and was himself reasonably certain that his Struan's connections could blunt any threat of criminal prosecution, but re-contact appealed to him less than any of a series of other projects. Aleigha Cohen imagined that she could impress what might remain of the Terran medical community with the research data she was generating on Chiron, but the Planetary Datalinks were a nearer target for making her mark.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/001/459/191/large/nick-gindraux-space-satellite1.jpg?1446789986)
The Nessus Tower sent Chiron's first transmission back to the Sol System in October, M.Y. 175. It read simply, "UNITY."
A much larger block stood in strong, even violent opposition to re-contact. Deirdre Skye warned the Planetary Council that the result would surely be invasion. It was widely assumed that a planetary nuclear holocaust must have followed hot on the heels of Unity's departure. Any successor regimes must therefore treat evidence of the Unity Mission's success as an invitation to demand assistance, which they would take if denied. Her theme, the "Rape of Chiron," was taken up by both Rear Admiral Raoul André St. Germaine and the Warden J.T. Marsh. Chiron was not to be shared with those who had already proved themselves unreliable custodians of a planet far more tractable than the only one left to the survivors of the Alpha Centauri Mission.
Many faction leaders worried about the possibility that the U.N. would return to haunt them by providing Pravin Lal with the power he needed to carry out his project of ideological hegemony. Spartans and Tribals both expected to be prosecuted for war crimes, real and imagined. Director Tamineh Pahlavi knew that she would fare no better in a court of intersteller law. She might like a larger gene pool for her experiments, but doubted that Earth had any worthy lines left to contribute. If expectations bore out, they would be irradiated to the point of uselessness. Deep in his underground fastness, Sheng-ji Yang was daily at war with pretenders to the U.N. legacy and thought he should welcome no others. Acting on the instructions of his digital master, Dr. Johann Anhalt, too, joined the dissenting chorus. Terran connections would mean Terran inquiries about how, exactly, Chiron's leaders, elected or self-appointed, were meeting the needs of the mission survivors, and Anhaldt intended to answer no questions.
Some opposed re-contact for purely philosophical reasons. Miriam Godwinson had preached that the Unity was as much an ark as that of the Biblical patriarch Noah, its passengers delivered from God's well-earned judgement. It was sacrilege to reach backwards, the Judges said--a failure to acknowledge the gift of Salvation. And even if there had been survivors of God's wrath, that did not mean the unfortunates of Earth were in any sense equals to the Elect on Chiron. The former were surely experiencing a unique kind of punishment, best uninterrupted. Kleisel Mercator confided to Landers that, though he longed for reassurance that the cradle of their species was still intact, he lived in terror of attracting "alien intelligences" by demonstrating the capability for communication at near-light speeds.
For Pravin Lal, re-contact was not as obvious a path as others imagined. Personal admiration for the United Nations and its founding ideals aside, he had joined the Unity mission as a disfavored exile. Jonathan Garland had practiced a kind of nepotism by insisting on his inclusion. Lal was not even certain his was the strongest claim to leadership after Garland's death. Marcel Salan and Prokhor Zakharov both had plausible claims of their own, and the silence that each had kept previously would surely be abandoned once push came to shove.
The set of factions that actively sought re-contact included the Restoration, led by Marcel Salan, which saw no future for itself in a fractured political environment; the Tomorrow Institute, now believing the Unity Data Core was missing certain information that could only be obtained from Earth's surviving inhabitants; the Chiron Interstellar Probe, which longed for evacuation; the Watchers of Chiron, desperately in need of replacements for its beleaguered constabulary; the New Two Thousand (entrepreneurs with significantly more appetite for risk than mere Morganites); and the Shapers of Chiron, who fully intended an interstellar rescue mission.
Sources:
The communications base is credited to Piotr Kupsc and titled "Research Facility" on Pinterest.
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On November 37, M.Y. 109, stakeholder Tallivaire Corall departed Fort Enterprise at the head of an expedition numbering 1,421 souls. Sealed orders handed down from the Viceroy himself sent them north across the Kuragin Salt Flats into the foothills of the New Superstition Mountains beyond. Fifteen days into their journey, Corall's column ceased all transmissions. A brace of Radnor hoverbikes dispatched to investigate likewise disappeared. Three days later, an overflying University needlejet made visual contact with the column, still on-course and in formation. It was the last evidence of the Pilgrim colonists, of whom no further trace was ever found.
The Corall Expedition was a crippling loss for the New Two Thousand. A sixth of the SAMM fleet and a generation's worth of colonists were lost a single stroke. The blow intensified Oscar van de Graaf's hostility toward other factions and pushed him finally into an open alliance of convenience with the Dreamers of Chiron.
(https://www.scififantasyhorror.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/nick-gindraux-sci-fi-artist.jpg)
The Superstitions were notoriously hard on men and machines. This T-187 лавина research tank belonging to the University of Planet wrecked when it broke the floor of the salt pan. Evacuation of the wounded is underway. Soviet contributions to the Alpha Centauri mission appeared generous so long as one did not inquire about the quality of the material being offered. Maintenance had been an afterthought, and the U.N. timeline was tight enough that the old Soviet markings were never painted over. Most of the donated equipment turned out to be wartime salvage. It was not uncommon for colonists taking possession of their vehicles to hose the mortal remains of previous occupants out of the control spaces.
(https://www.scififantasyhorror.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/the-scifi-art-of-dmitriy-rabochiy-feature.jpg)
What could destroy an entire Colony Pod guarded by a reinforced Impact Patrol without so much as a distress flare going off? The metal content of wrecks alone should have shown up clearly on magnetometers.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/62/e2/e2/62e2e2ca9ebf16327e9a664ac493cabd--investigations-concept-art.jpg)
When his Regulators came up empty-handed, van de Graaf engaged Struan's Strategic Services to conduct an independent inquiry. One million ¤ later, their "inescapable conclusion" was that the Human Labyrinth had probably intercepted the Corall Party and absorbed them into the Hive. Yang's sensor array was judged to extend far enough that he could have seen the column's approach. Fifty years later, Pilgrim Thinkers were flabbergasted to discover in records taken during the capture of the Unseen World that Sheng-ji Yang had searched with some fervor for the Pilgrims, but without success.
(https://www.this-is-cool.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/the-sci-fi-concept-art-of-arnaud-caubel-01.jpg)
A Kersarge Industries welldriver undergoes final inspection before departure. Sixteen welldrivers were lost along with Corall. Crews across Planet preferred for their vehicles to have big personality, a tendency encouraged by the need to treat them as homes for much of the work cycle. Workshops hardly had to be asked to turn out vehicles with tie-down points by the dozen. This jacked-up welldriver had plenty of crew storage. Note the signals dome above the forward cabin. Every vehicle was tracked individually by Base Operations. Corall's all cut out at the same instant.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bf/7e/1b/bf7e1ba864e95ac34859abc619bc5e25.jpg)
Heavy haulers like this one contained most of the Hab Pods for the civilian colonists looking to homestead with Corall. The vertical module between cab and cargo container is a mid-scale 3D printer, which the settlers expected to use to provide household items and basic hardware.
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTVbIp6X_YprzcKSoi4XiCSfKU3Xi6fN-53NiVfmagUUiP6apiSW604ravXg30uC8erN5w&usqp=CAU)
An American Federal Disaster Service (FDS) Hazardous Environment Cargo Tractor, better known as a Hector. The FDS was the second incarnation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the heir of the American civil defense tradition. The ARC donated tens of thousands of FDS surplus vehicles to the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri, leading Morgan Industries to sue the United States Government for unfair business practices after van de Graaf was named a factor. The FDS was authorized to defend itself with deadly force. Smoke launchers are visible above the third axle. The protrusion forward is a retracted self-defense weapons system. The plow is mine-rated. Van de Graaf committed seven Hectors to Corall.
Source:
The first picture is credited to artist Nick Gindraux.
The second picture is "Underground Investigation" by DM33 on DeviantArt.
The third picture is credited to ca designs on www.this-is-cool.co.uk. It is the work of Arnaud Caubel.
The fourth picture is the Solaris Medium Truck from Creative Uncut's Warframe Art Gallery.
The final vehicle is from ArtStation.
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Mercator’s Projectionists (pt. 1)
The Observers are a motley lot, representing veteran military officers and career intelligence agents while hosting one of the more exotic ideologies among the Unity diaspora. Here follows a crosssection of members of the Memory of Earth, both the prominent and the obscure.
(https://i.imgur.com/kA9mXIu.jpeg)
The loss of our homeworld can be attributed to insufficient planning and incompetent leadership. We must repent so that this never happens again.
Shrouded in obscurity and clouded by mystery, Deputy Minister Han Jae-Moon of the Memory of Earth Planetary Defense Force is a man whose history no one is entirely certain of. Officially a scion of latter-day chaebol aristocrats born on the Shin Busan L5 orbital installation, Han would go on to become a decorated ROKN officer and then inducted into the prestigious Se Sok O-Gye Academy as a special diplomatic operative. Subsequently reentered society as a diplomatic attaché to the country’s U.N. delegation, advancing South Korean, then post-detente, pan-Korean interests primarily in matters of extraterrestrial and undersea development.
Others allege that this is a cover story entirely concocted by intelligence services, that Han was no less than a DRPK Ministry of State Security infiltrator gifted to the desperate aging billionaire couple after a childhood of indoctrination. Still others claim that he has been a South Korean double agent all along.
Regardless of his actual background, it is known that both before and during Planetfall, Han Jae-Moon built extensive connections among the Unity passengers, from ship’s officers to future colonial administrators, corporate executive assistants to suspected organized crime figures. By the time of rapid factionalization, his connections had made him a prime asset, and he quickly rose up in the ranks of the Memories of Planet upon entrance. Aligning closely with Commander Kleisel Mercator’s vision of species-wide preparation, Han is one of the Observers’ strongest advocates for a united humanity able to contend with all external threats.
Despite his supposed civilian diplomatic career, Han has proven to be an able military strategist, facilitating the consolidation of the disparate armed forces traditions represented among the Unity survivors under the banner of the Chiron Guard and the Mercator mission. Possessing unexpected knowledge of guerrilla hit and run tactics, he aided the faction’s own independent invention of rover quickstrikes. (While not as rigorous as the Spartan equivalent, the Observers’ adaptation of naval wolfpack attacks for land vehicles greatly enhanced their raiding capabilities on par with New Two Thousand Regulator “homesteader reallocations.”)
Became one of the faction’s officer cadre selected for Longevity Vaccine treatments. Eventually rotated out from direct operational leadership by the time of ICS Campaigns- the Commander had determined that “changing times require changing minds” and Han was relegated to intelligence roles. Subsequently directs Project Cheongsu (청수, “Clear Water”), the faction’s expansion into aquatic environments starting with the Great Northern Ocean. Ostensibly for the investigation of underwater Progenitor installations and USO (unidentified submerged object) sightings, Cheongsu has consumed massive dark budgets and the funneling of considerable psi researchers and psi potentials, leading to rumors that Han is recreating the deepsea programs of the Se Sok O-Gye Academy on Planet.
(https://i.imgur.com/5GuHpox.jpeg)
Those who have had the fortune to interact with Han personally find him to be affably urbane compared to his more striking presence in the jingoistic official Observer informational vids. But even as unfailingly polite as his public persona portrayed in MorganLink 3DVision live interviews might be, he never strays from the core message of the Memory of Earth: proper planning, political unity, and constant vigilance is the only way to ensure humanity’s survival in the face of the unknown dangers of the universe. While the deputy minister’s interest in the speculative science of psionics is well-known, his own specific opinions on the commander’s views of extant extraterrestrial intelligence are undefined. Thus in terms of intrafactional politics, Han is a generic Defender in terms of theory: committed to the ideal of global defense and organization, fairly agnostic on the specifics of potential alien threats.
In demeanor, Han is a diplomatic chameleon, taking on any personality as conditions require. This tendency has led some to regard him, in the words of Tribesman envoy Margherita Villanova, “a many-bodied soul”, whose flickering identities are most unpredictable indeed.
(https://i.imgur.com/E0Ah7Xz.jpg)
The more case files you pour over, the more skeletons you find, the more you start to feel the wool over your eyes.
Cambridge-educated behavioral scientist Vic Montoya is a lecturer at the burgeoning Mokoena University and occasional “consulting investigator” for the Observer internal security ministry. Formerly a special agent of the Central Security Bureau, the Second American Civil Wartime emergency troika of the CIA, NSA, and FBI, Montoya was dismissed for “insubordinate negligence and frivolous activities” for his personal crusades that he carried all the way to Chiron: allegations that the United States government had been aware of extraterrestrial intelligences since nearly its founding, and had been engaged in active coverup operations throughout its history. Filtered through this lens, Montoya’s in-depth investigation into the Palmer slayings or the death of Apsara Mongkut were not excessive intellectual exercises gone to overtraining, but the obsessions of a deranged, unpatriotic, character.
Despite his dismissal from the CSB, Montoya was both nominated and accepted by the multinational U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission Committee. His admittance was seen as but one among several impolitic choices designed by the United Nations to embarrass America, which it had hoped could be shamed into renewing its commitments to the Unity project. Furthermore, because the debadged agent had focused his accusations on his own nation’s government only, and not other authorities, he was seen as ideologically compatible with the overall project.
Montoya proved himself to be more than a politically advantageous kook during Planetfall, when he deduced that based on their past track record on Earth (and with the benefit of his own personal biases), the Kellerites did not mean to subvert the mission in the same way the Spartans did. While Unity X.O. d’Almeida thoughtlessly brushed off his analysis, U.N. Marine General Salan did not, and indulged in his pet hunches, allowing the opening of dialogue with Kellerite representative Sergeant Landers. The ensuing ceasefire allowed the contingent of survivors loyal to the U.N. led by Salan and Pravin Lal to suffer no further trouble from the Tribals, though no other cooperation would develop from this brief interaction.
Montoya would later emerge among the Memory of Planet, drawn to the theories of Commander Mercator and the faction’s preoccupation with extraterrestrial life. Though even his behavior was too much for the faction ministries to admit him into official capacity, he was allowed to share his expertise. Beyond his instructional duties, Montoya runs a datalinks column, the X-ron Chronicle, correlating the near-daily alien discoveries on Planet to past paranormal incidents from Earth’s history, not to mention tell-tale signs of foreknowledge from the powers-that-be. Though officially frowned upon by Observer leadership, it has a modest following among the more ardent believers of the faction’s Wanters (as in, “I want to know”), exemplifying that theory’s preoccupation with Mercator’s beliefs in UFOs and alien intelligences, and willingness to accuse Old Earth organizations of conspiracy. With its promulgation to the Planetary Datalinks, the Chronicle has since become quite popular among Gaian theists, Dreamer parapsychologists, and Morganite tabloid-watchers alike.
While Montoya is a fairly little-known figure beyond readers of his Chronicle, the continuous spate of new and surprising understandings of Planetlife, and mysterious occurrences during the uncertain violent life in the colonies means that he is increasingly called upon by Observer authorities to consult in cases they cannot satisfyingly explain. As to what Han Jae-Moon, Mercator, or any other person in power might want with the quixotic questioner, the answer can only be found out there.
Notes:
Han Jae-Moon (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Han_Jae-Moon_(CivBE)) of the inaccurately transliterated Chungsu (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Chungsu_(CivBE)) is from Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide. Here he is portrayed by Rick Yune as Kang Yeonsak in Olympus Has Fallen and as Zao in Die Another Day.
The totalitarian “CIA/NSA/FBI troika” is one of the unfortunate potential outcomes in Replay by Ken Grimwood.
The Chiron Chronicle (https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/alpha-centauri/ac-stories/14103-the-chiron-chronicle) was a famous collaborative SMAC fanfiction series from the Apolyton forums at the turn of the century.
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Dole Yudikon confronts a Maronite leader.
The Lone Survivor
Dole Yudikon, alias Carnaveron, arrived at Warm Welcome on a stretcher. The most outspoken individualist in the hemisphere began his time on Planet no differently than anyone else: in desperate need of help. He was one of two hundred occupants of a crashed Colony Pod recovered by Peacekeeper scouts out of Warm Welcome.
Help him, Lal did. But no sooner had the survivor been healed than he was discontent. Though Lal's people had rescued him from certain death, placed him in comfortable shelter, and stood watch for him on the walls, he was, from the first, preparing a quarrel against the Commissioner and his régime.
Other survivors--in every faction and base--fit a pattern. All had questions about Unity’s demise, but these were quickly set aside to focus on the satisfaction of more basic needs: breathable air, medicine, shelter, food, and water. Retrospective inquiry—about Garland’s death, the nature of their new government, even the condition of other survivors—was a luxury. They sampled it infrequently and in small draughts lest reminiscence impede the more practical work of survival. Yet for this newcomer, such asides were a preoccupation. Today would take care of itself—it must do—for yesterday too loudly demanded an inquest and tomorrow lay unfinished on the drafting table.
Dole Yudikon quickly empaneled a coroner’s jury of the colony’s ne’er-do-wells: Charterists, Purists, even Spartan prisoners. Their findings were naturally censorious. As Yudikon himself explained on the faction Datalinks, he did not believe in "Peacekeepers" any more than he believed in haunts under the bed. Contrary to Prokhor Zakharov’s starry-eyed revisionism (he had been the one to suggest dissolving the mission and striking out separately, each leader with their own retinue), Unity had succumbed to mutiny, not revolution. Prior to boarding, everyone had pledged obligation—some to the U.N. Charter, but others to a further range of governing documents that existed in parallel. Francisco d’Almeida had abrogated only the former, and his authority extended no further. Charter colonists still had their charter; the crew, their chain-of-command. Pravin Lal's experiment in participatory democracy, however well-couched in moral nicety, was quite illegal. Any court back on Earth would have said so. Some on Chiron still might.
Life on Chiron was a continuation of life on Old Earth, and fully alive with its learnings, legacies, and obligations. No human society here could arise, sui generis, without respect for Natural Law.
Now amongst the Things peculiar to Man, is his Desire of Society, that is, a certain Inclination to live with those of his own Kind, not in any Manner whatever, but peaceably, and in a Community regulated according to the best of his Understanding… This Sociability, which we have now described in general, or this Care of maintaining Society in a Manner conformable to the Light of human Understanding, is the Fountain of Right, properly so called; to which belongs the Abstaining from that which is another’s, and the Restitution of what we have of another’s, or of the Profit we have made by it, the Obligation of fulfilling Promises, the Reparation of a Damage done through our own Default, and the Merit of Punishment among Men. – The Rights of War and Peace, 1625, Datalinks
The Peacekeeping Forces, Dole said, were a work of bastardy. On what grounds had the most-virtuous been crowned king? With what authority did Lal presume to relieve charter colonists of their debts so that they might instead participate in a venture of his own design? Why did he presume that the loyalties with which colonists had boarded Unity could be so quickly reassigned? If it were Lal's pleasure to repudiate commitments as soon as they proved inconvenient, who could afford to repose trust in his word henceforth?
In Dole Yudikon, the mystic chords of memory would not be rendered silent even by catastrophe. The Peacekeeping Forces might be a happy nation of turncoats, glad to cast off the shackles of false allegiance to the Mission Charter and the unhappy consequences of adherence thereto, but he was made of sterner stuff. His watchword was fidelity to the past. Any invitation to acknowledge Pravin Lal as his leader was an insulting lure to prostitution. By taking on charter colonists, as well as by practicing indiscriminate salvage, the Peacekeepers were engaging in simple piracy. Dole Yudikon was the sworn man of Struan’s Pacific Trading Company. He was also an investor whose original contribution to the mission had made possible the survival of those in Lal's care. Thus, to Dole Yudikon, a generous living was owed in return. Roshann Cobb, he knew and respected. Struan’s had provided Dole Yudikon a livelihood amidst the upheavals on Old Earth and might well do so again on Chiron. Pravin Lal was an unknown quantity, and every day revealing himself less worthy.
Struan’s was one of the mission’s twelve Prime Contractors. The Hong Kong-based conglomerate provided supplemental crew as well as charter colonists operating under its own banner. Some of the positions filled in their manner were innocuous: surveyor, arborist, hydrologist, geologist. Others, euphemistic: executive protection agent, correctional facilitator, tactical equipment operator. On the advice of his illegitimate son, Struan’s tai-pan, Ian Dunross, had thrown in as a mission sponsor, waiving lucrative finder’s fees in return for proprietary rights to mount an independent colonial venture on Chiron.
The arrangement was problematic for several reasons. First, every charter colonist was in this way yoked to two masters: a U.N. supervisor and a corporate one. Second, the precise nature of sponsor contributions undercut the integrity of the mainline mission. The timing of the U.N.’s need for money meant that sponsors had supplied the heavy machinery and expertise, especially mobile rigs, without which it would be practically impossible to undertake large-scale terraforming. Because a five-year window was too narrow to expect much progress on that front, it was therefore in the U.N.’s urgent interest either to quickly work the sponsors’ vehicles and personnel to the point of uselessness, or else to ultimately renege on the deal. Nobody really believed that Joralemon Hardacre would not have shied away from martial law if confronted with "splittism" of such magnitude, and he'd had only a poor man's collection of SolarEx ASPs, not the regulars of the U.N. Marine Forces. Third, proprietary colonies implied establishment of a future carrying trade between two solar systems, and, by extension, the survival of Old Earth. Officially, the Unity was on a one-way voyage. Reestablishing communication of any kind was not among Garland’s priorities. Finally, the charter colonies, requiring security of their own, secured permission to embark peace officers whose very presence made a lie of the U.N. Command’s monopoly on violence.
Dole Yudikon’s logic was straightforward, and typical of the attitude that later earned him and others the semi-derogatory label of “Charterist.” The mother colony being stillborn, sponsors were now logically freed of the agreed-upon term of service. Contract laborers must be made to honor the terms to which they originally agreed. They were also due the restoration of their investments. Such a rich treasure, no heir could afford to renounce, no matter how thin his blood. Worse, every minute one withheld, value was subtracted from that inheritance. Men and machinery were worn down, even lost. Dole Yudikon and Pravin Lal might as well have been brothers, then, in competition for the same crown.
(https://preview.redd.it/rmi6fapykki71.jpg?auto=webp&s=2722ede47d76d556ce894c9ca0afac720acc7c57)
A Hive Thinker surveys delivery of Mark VII SAMM's by Pilgrim aerostat. Payment for the transaction, consisting of just under twelve quadrinaries of energy caskets, has been assembled on the same parade ground. Like ancient drovers, the Hivemen herded their mechanical flock out of the desert and into the Neyanza Valley, which they soon drank dry of water.
Dole Yudikon, alias "Carnaveron," was born to misfortune in the southern Sinai Peninsula approximately forty years before Mission Launch. His father was the Ofira harbor pilot and an alcoholic. The mother distracted herself from an unhappy marriage by becoming lost in her work as an irrigation engineer. Young Dole spent most of his time in the homes of Christian friends. Canadian followers of the Vulgatian rite outnumbered Israeli settlers in the region approximately 3:1. Cultural diffusion left the boy with broad vowels and a unique perspective on the interests common to Israel and its growing non-Jewish immigrant population. Together, they poured over the texts of the only literature to hand: the Vulgate and Lost Shakespeare.
Israelis practiced Judaism mostly as a civic religion in Dole's era. The Yudikons were no exception. But successive governments saw no reason to discourage the intense millenarianism of the North American Christians. Nearly all the young men in Ofira looked ahead to the day on which they would be called upon to assist their adopted homeland fulfill vague but expansive hegemonic ambitions.
Vid captures appended to his U.N. personnel file show Dole Yudikon as a young man, perhaps twenty years of age. Standing north of six feet, trim, with high cheekbones and olive complexion, he is the archetype of good health. There is no physical incongruity with his profession, which was war. Commissioned a lieutenant in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at eighteen, Yudikon served two years in the South Lebanon Security Belt advising his country’s Maronite Christian allies. Twice bitten since the wars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, and afterwards twice shy, they returned to the Israeli bosom with marked hesitancy.
Tel Aviv spent lavishly to mend fences. A soldier in Dole Yudikon’s position was called upon to be equal parts battlefield commander, occupier, diplomat, and quartermaster. This was a decidedly Janus-faced undertaking: the same officer from whom a local man obtained a life-saving visa for emergency medical care in Haifa might also torture one of his relatives the next afternoon. As formal allies to the majority-Maronite South Lebanon Army, IDF units also fought alongside them—against the revived Lebanese National Movement and the Syrians officially, and unofficially during countless internecine skirmishes. More than one superior would have needed to concur that Lieutenant Yudikon possessed exceptional empathic and organizational ability, to say nothing of a strong stomach, before he was so employed. With just twenty-six IDF combat effectives at his disposal, Yudikon must have been himself a frequent combatant, and it is certain that he received at least a few months' instruction from Aman, Israel's military intelligence service.
Lieutenant Yudikon turned in mixed results. Anxious to win the favor of his skeptical hosts, he flattered their personal agendas, spending as much time assisting them to assassinate rival militia commanders as he did on building a cordon sanitaire to protect the Galilee against enemy encroachment. Through his mother, Yudikon wrote letters to the Ofira settlers, urging them first to send their money, and later their sons and daughters, to fight for the preservation of the Lebanese Christian state. This was the appeal that many had been waiting for: dozens made the long journey from the Red Sea coast to Marjeyoun. Their bemused hosts celebrated this reunion of co-religionists by relieving them of their cash and setting them to work in the fields.
After much infighting, political leadership in Yudikon’s sector consolidated to the point that Israeli combat commanders rated the local South Lebanese Army units by far their most aggressive and reliable. The IDF soon began most of its northward incursions from local bivouacs.
An intense operational tempo and diversion of sector resources from development to warfare inevitably left their mark. Israeli records, later passed to Bras de Fer Security Services, document that life expectancy and household income declined in Dole Yudikon's sector. Terrorist activity and imprisonments rose starkly. Near the conclusion of his service obligation, PLO infiltrators killed most of the Government of Free Lebanon leadership with whom he dealt directly. Their successors, who owed nothing to Yudikon, complained strenuously to IDF leadership about the worsening security problem and lamented that, despite years of collaboration, virtually every freestanding structure had been knocked flat by Syrian artillery. A review was taken in hand by the Defense Establishment Inspector General. Investigators concluded that Yudikon was prone to excessive risk-taking. Northern Command declined a recommendation of discipline, but the Lieutenant, correctly sensing the walls closing in, declined to reenlist.
Israeli law obliged native-born men to spend another three years overseas upon conclusion of their National Service. Familiar with the structure of army life, a majority opted for corporate employment. Most traveled to North America for opportunities with the American Reclamation Corporation (ARC). Veterans with more marketable skills, ex-Lieutenant Yudikon included, received offers to take on more dangerous work, whether in active warzones or outside Earth’s gravity well. Dole Yudikon went east. He would never again return to his homeland.
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The Kä Space Elevator. Because of inadequate security, a notorious draw for contraband headed "upside." Poor relations with the locals meant that while the U.N. was allowed to buy access for its cargoes, blue helmets were entirely unwelcome. Alongside their official contingents, Morgan and Struan were both known to have smuggled additional passengers and equipment of an unknown nature aboard the ship, some in false compartments, others in plain sight.
By the time of Dole’s birth, the peoples of the world were embracing the possibilities of new associations as never before. Since Westphalia in 1648, the sovereign state, with its intrusive institutional presence and, more importantly, a durable monopoly on the legitimate use of force, had commanded the unabridged loyalty of its citizens, and, in return, paid out a reliable set of rewards. These included, but were not limited to: cultural continuity, contract enforcement, and, of course, physical security. The first half of the twentieth century was preoccupied by the question of which nations deserved their own states and which did not. While as recently as 1900, national government had seemed not only remote but also largely irrelevant to the daily lives of most of its citizens except during wartime, by 2000, it was both their shield against iniquity and the guarantor of their comfort in old age. Yet after more than four hundred years, the national state was demonstrating its failure to adapt.
Men hailed the state when it solved our problems, but they resented it, too. As the technocrat was elevated in importance by the increasing complexity of his own creations, so society was forced to accept his values. In the West especially, this arrangement clashed hard with the cherished popular mythology of the rambunctious republican, jealous of his prerogatives and the power of making his own mistakes. In time, many also came to resent the system of public education, which taught a sort of civic ecumenicism the previous generation found threatening and effete. They took exception when their “coarse” opinions were deemed unfit for public consumption, demanding the cultural products of an earlier era and refusing to admit imperfections in their own body politic. In the West especially, where authority was ever on trial and the intellectual came second to the humble “working man,” some began to question whether the state really ought to be making so many important decisions on their behalf.
Social media was to the modern state what the printing press had been to the Universal Church. Growing cynicism undercut the very concept of a shared reality. The state was no longer trusted to name the truth. As access to higher education declined, civic participation, already at an all-time low in the West, dropped through the floor. When Jean-Baptiste Keller made his call for “the renewal of local knowledge,” he swam in vain against the current. Virtual communities built on shared emotion replaced national communities built on shared place, sacrifice, and memory.
Civil wars across the First World provided the final trauma necessary for a broad abandonment of state-based identity. Observers now had too much evidence to deny the inadequacy of the state to protect them. Two great armies, the American and the Canadian, suffered a series of stinging defeats. Spoken allegiance to the wrong flag was now a hanging offense throughout North America.
Even after the emergence of Restored government in both Washington and Ottawa, skepticism persisted. New forms of association had proved more adaptable to the needs of wartime populations. Say what one might about Kellerites and Holnists, they proved the power of individual mobilization. Each provided adherents with values and community more immediately relevant—more practical—than the state. Wartime constitutional adjustments had also dramatically altered the relevance of corporations in the life of the North American citizen. With Letters of Marque, corporations had become “clothed themselves in the power of the state,” their private soldiers all too reminiscent of the “unauthorized” militia they were charged with rounding up. At war’s end, they successfully lobbied to retain their hard-won prerogatives.
The Second Reconstruction underlined just how far the mighty had fallen. The strategy, people, money, and know-how to mend the fallen order—all were provided by the ARC and its competitors. ARC Chief Executive Officer Oscar van de Graaf had better name-recognition than the President of the United States, his country’s ninth in as many years. The U.S. and Canadian armed forces were accustomed to civilian control. As it happened, it mattered very little whether that civilian answered to the occupants of the White House or Rideau Hall, or of 100 Morgan Tower. On the three-year anniversary of its founding, the ARC employed one in six working Americans. From Denver in the West to Cincinnati in the East, old American cities had been laid waste. From their ashes emerged corporate cantonments and United Nations refugee camps. FEMA was forgotten. And so civic contribution became synonymous with corporate, rather than national, service.
The 2090s were likewise a period of remarkable strain on Israeli society. A series of Labor governments tried without success to manage the population crisis brought about by two previous generations of religious revival. Some have credited the country’s bellicosity in Lebanon to its surplus of young men, but Israeli casualties were comparably light and neither that outlet nor inducements of desert land were enough to relieve pressures in the Coastal Plain. The social safety net was cut to the point that one former prime minister complained Israelis could no longer recognize themselves. Thus Israel, famous for its in-gathering of Jews, now sent them out again. Yudikon’s classmates were repeatedly asked to sacrifice on behalf of the nation-state without full access to its benefits. Six percent of all Israelis fought in the Holnist Wars on either side of the Atlantic and two percent were killed, though the State of Israel was never a declarant.
For a year, Dole Yudikon worked inside the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone (IOEZ) as a customs patroller for the Gezah Islands Authority (GIA). At twenty-two, Dole kept a diary, excerpts from which were digitized by private security firm CTR. In several letters to the Ofira Canadians, he counseled them not to follow his trail. The islands were crowded and their inhabitants sickly, “without a good connection to the earth, which is false.” The GIA, a creature of the British Raj, hadn’t the remit or the funding to solve problems of this magnitude—the same limitation that he had confronted shortly before in Marjeyoun. Piracy was a rampant issue. Dole was much affected by the brutalities visited upon the islanders, most of whom were former residents of Dan and already destitute. The lone Royal Australian Navy frigate on-station was usually laid up in ordinary. Dole’s team learned to rely instead on the intervention of Morgan SafeHaven operators, whom they bribed with fuel cells intended for the frigate. Dole was impressed by the SafeHaven crews. He recorded that, far from the amoral buccaneers he expected, they shared his affection for “their fellow discarded souls of the IOEZ.” They accepted GIA fuel as payment for convoy escort and counter-boarding because they too were operating on the end of a long shoestring.
Eventually, Dole found work with the Struan’s firm as a fixer in Singapore. It was what Israelis called “the right fall.” A preferment from Struan’s meant access to good housing, top-class medical care, and competitive pay. The crown jewel of Britain’s Far East possessions glistened even more brightly as the terminus of a space elevator. Yudikon, already worldly, now rubbed shoulders with the Empire’s elite. A steady flood of technicians passed through, outbound for points elsewhere in the Sol System. Here, he struck up lasting relationships with some of the confidants whose services he would eventually recruit personally to the charter colony.
Yudikon’s duties on Singapore Island mostly involved liaison between Struan’s private security forces at Changi Worldport and the British Burma Army garrison. He was mentioned twice in despatches during the eight-month wave of rioting triggered by the U.N.’s announcement that the Unity Mission would accept corporate money. By age twenty-five, the Struan’s Home Office was tracking his career and had signed off on a series of rapid promotions.
Corporate employment continued to pay dividends in other ways. British Empire resources were worn thin. Their priority was on the port; residential districts were a secondary concern. With Singapore often convulsed by riots, Struan’s moved Dole into their proprietary district, safe behind a stockade walked by mercenary soldiers, this time wearing the same colors as Dole himself.
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A gateman of the Singapore Special Constabulary, sourced from Struan's Strategic Services. Officers like this one helped to ensure the safety of people and property "under corporate care," as the saying went. Their arrest powers were strictly limited to corporate property, but the Singapore Police Force turned a blind eye to their participation in aggressive "perimeter policing," preferring to treat the Specials as a force multiplier.
That year, 2096, two events changed the course of history for the Houses of Struan and Yudikon. First, Marc Struan, the tai-pan’s natural son and heir-apparent, was diagnosed with cancer. Roshann Cobb, now an Oxford graduate, went to work for MI5, where he would spend the next five years before Marc’s passing. The relationship between Ian Dunross and his "unnatural" son was a bad one. Cobb was the Elder Struan’s second son, previously unneeded and therefore unwanted. Until his teenage years, young Roshann existed on the margins of respectable Hong Kong Society. He experimented with opium and became an odds runner at the Hong Kong Jockey Club. He and his mother, Cantonese chanteuse Chen An-Wei, reacted badly when Dunross had the boy shipped off to boarding schools. Formal equality between the races did nothing to spare Cobb merciless teasing from his companions. The tai-pan conciliated by arranging lessons in self-defense. In his fourth-year, Cobb demonstrated proficiency by pitching one tormentor out a second-story window of the Radcliffe Camera. Upon his elder brother’s death, Cobb left MI5 for a corner office with Sturan’s Hong Kong. Having no other options left to him, Ian Dunross at last determined to take an active hand in the young man’s upbringing. Among his dozen-strong protective detail was Dole Yudikon.
The U.N. Intelligence Cell judged with very high probability that it Yudikon himself brokered the détente leading to intervention from the Royal Hong Kong Police Force and local triads when the third botched attempt on Cobb’s life took place during a 2093 visit to the Kowloon Walled City.
Yudikon became wealthy sometime before January 2108, when he entered cold sleep for the journey to Alpha Centauri. His fortune covered both the costs of a personal stake with Struan’s and passage for a wife and son. In an echo of the past, Yudikon married a Katangese Christian antiquities dealer, Bienheureuse Nzuzi. She is widely supposed by the international press to have been the connection through which Elizabethville Cardinal Pierre Mputu Kasala acquired the cash to help underwrite Katanga’s independence during his residence. Their last known residence was Hong Kong’s Prince Silas Arcology, where neighbors included numerous Colonial Secretaries and prominent naval officers. While most passengers on charter assignment traded comfortable lives to begin indenture, the Yudikons’ accounts were fully settled. Dole anticipated continuing in his station as a salaryman.
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Bienheureuse Nzuzi traveled frequently to Switzerland on the Concodre jetliner and was flagged a Person of Interest by INTERPOL. Oxford-educated like Roshann Cobb, she was briefly a classmate of his. Her first known contact with Dole Yudikon occurred while the pair were on separate holidays at Iran's Shemshak ski resort.
Vested Charterists alone received a special allowance for personal effects among the cargo. Problems of volume and mass led the United Nations to enforce a strict limit of 23kg for most crew. Extra space was therefore priceless, though what filled it might well have value only to the owner. Personal cargo was almost always human. Most of the time, it consisted of the Charterist’s own family, safely outside corporate authority but probably lacking the knowledge, skills, or abilities to contribute in a way that would bind them to any competing power structure. Some Charterists without dependents also sold passage to free colonists of their choosing, and under a variety of terms. The U.N. Intelligence Cell hypothesized that Dole's cargo consisted of his wife and child.
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Mercator’s Projectionists (pt. 2)
(https://i.imgur.com/deazhAR.jpg)
Too many crave validation of their beliefs as if it can save the world, and not their world alone.
Doctor Eleanor Argus is one of the Memory of Earth’s foremost medical examiners, renowned for her work on uncovering the specifics of xenoform attacks and actively involved in the faction’s research into mindworm behavior. PanMayo Clinic educated in internal medicine with an undergraduate degree in biophysics from UC Berkeley, Argus originally cut her teeth working with Médecins Sans Frontières post-residency in the American Midwest. During her service, Ellie determined that the mysterious wasting disease afflicting the civil war refugees was not simple malnutrition, but acute cachexia caused by a chemical agent deployed by one of the hypersurvivalist militias active in the region.
Part of Chief of Surgery Pravin Lal’s medical staff, Argus found her way into Zakharov’s camp of engineers and scientists. While her expertise in medicine was gladly appreciated, her background in physics made her an even better fit for the theoretical University in formation. Her empirical skepticism, despite holding on to childhood traditions of faith, made her a natural Academic. On Planet, her abilities in both combined in her role as a forensics xenopathologist, accompanying field teams to determine the nature of death in both colonists claimed by mindworms and ancient Progenitor remains alike. (Indeed, her field experience and courage under threat of xenoform attack placed her on the Schreiber Project’s priority poach list of future hires.) Though the discipline of xenoarcheology remained nascent, Argus gained a reasonable grasp of the topic.
So when a Chiron Guard artifact extraction team defeated her University scout expedition to the Hippotion Gorge, the duty officer recognized Ellie as a prominent researcher. Rather than placed into the prisoner exchange process, she was offered a role with the Observers. Believing in the probability of distinguishing herself in their number, and intrigued by their greater focus on Planetary life, Argus accepted.
The doctor finds the Memory of Earth to be professional yet overly credulous. Upon becoming one of Mercator’s heralded defectors, and a veteran field investigator, Argus has also become an outspoken member of the Skeptic theory. Subscribing to the observable reality that sentient life had disappeared from Planet for untold millennia, Ellie has become a popular critic of supposed sightings of alien intelligence. Using both her biophysics background and medical ability, she has debunked the infamous Bullock sighting, determining the “ghost lights” to be no more than gas arising from the marshy swamps reflecting light from Hercules. She has testified before the Observer Diet and even on pop infotainment datalink programmes about the proliferation of supposed “experts” peddling fraudulent claims about the nature of the universe, and urging factional policy be based on verifiable evidence, not myth and legend.
The Skeptics are an audible minority of the Memory of Earth, their views conflicting with the commander’s worldview. However, as with many theories, Skepticism carries the potential for crossover. Skeptic-Defenders believe in the mundane aspects of global coordinated defense, the possibility of fixing the mistakes of NATO and past petty regional alliances to bridge humanity for the unknown challenges of space colonization. But they believe that fears of alien attack are unsubstantiated and superfluous, a distraction at best and a dangerous source of misinformation at worst. Similarly, Skeptic-Unifiers believe that the Memory of Earth must bring about the unification of the Unity diaspora to avoid repeating the endless conflicts of the species’ past. To fixate on an external enemy is to craft a false scapegoat, rejecting true fraternity on the base of false fears.
Despite the moniker, not all Skeptics are as scientifically-inclined as Ellie Argus. A prominent needlejet flight squadron leader, a former U.S. Air Force captain from Colorado Springs, publicly came out as a controversial Skeptic by evincing belief that the artifacts and monuments of Chiron are not Progenitor constructions but rather the works of Satan. Contrasting with Sister Miriam Godwinson’s proclamation of Planet as a promised land, the airman concluded that it was a purgatory of sorts filled with dangerous behemoths, leviathans, ziz, and demons. Thus the purpose of the Memory of Earth is to shepherd the stranded flock through this dire valley of darkness. Artifacts must then be carefully gathered, ritually cleansed, and destroyed.
More clandestinely, within the internal ministry dwells a cabal of ex-CSB federal agents adhering to the reconstituted Church of Latter-Earth Saints. Believing that the Progenitors to not be some sort of hokey science-fictional elder race birthed from the blind chance of evolution, but fellow brothers and sisters heretofore created by Elohim. They view the scientific marvels of the monoliths as clearly the work of denizens of Kolob, maybe even spirit children of the heavenly parents. Calling themselves New Nephites, as Lehi and his children once similarly crossed a great distance to a new world, these agents seek to use the resources of the Memory of Earth to closely understand the artifacts of Chiron and grow closer to Heavenly Father, perhaps to find His celestial kingdom beyond the next manifold.
Finally, a small group of SIGINT analysts within the Ministry of External Intelligence, rallying around a former Research and Analysis Wing bureau chief, believes that the creators of the Chiron artifacts are no less than Earthmen from the age of Treta-yuga who, skilled in the Vedic sciences, built the vimana flying chariots and came to Planet. Interpreting alleged xenoanthropological phenomena through the lens of the Sanskrit epics, they have decided that the Progenitors were their own human ancestors. After the wars with Pakistan, the rise of the Kavithan heresy, and the cataclysm of the Six-Minute War, these embittered survivors believe the only way to restore Akhand Bharat would logically be to use the vimana to return home and smash the mlecchas. (They have tentatively opened a covert channel to the Restorationists, who are understandably perturbed by their notions and enthusiasm.)
By defying the Mercator consensus, despite substituting in their own clearly non-scientific mythos, all of the above groups can be considered Skeptics.
Dr. Argus, for her own part, has some sympathy for the superstitions of these Alt-Skeptics, but no patience for any of their attempts to influence the faction’s decisions. Her public persona as a major Skeptic has thus drawn suspicion and hostility both from them, and from those who support Mercator’s theories, such as the Wanters. While the Observers are supposedly a professional and objective lot, the ideological zeal strikes them as fervently as in any other faction. Thus, even as Ellie speaks out against the forces of irrationality, some of the same forces might conspire to push back.
Notes:
Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway is the protagonist of Contact by Carl Sagan, who becomes the director of "Project Argus", a radiotelescope array in New Mexico dedicated to the SETI project.
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(https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Life-Ariyon-Bakare-as-Hugh-Derry.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=740&h=370&dpr=1.5)
Rylance Torquay in his laboratory on the Vesta Asteroid. He joined the Unity crew as a Warrant Officer in the billet of Psych-Chaplain, reporting directly to Miriam Godwinson.
A man who offends no one offends me. - Heart of Jade
Out in the Main Belt, few names commanded the same respect as that of Rylance Torquay. Venutian-born and raised, Torquay had never set foot on a planetary body until the final months of his intake training in Mars's Sabaeus Quadrangle.
The anodyne term his type used for themselves, "Organizer," is not useful for understanding the work he did. Better to understand him as the secular equivalent of a psych chaplain. A psychiatrist who provided the roughnecks, spacers, and black-collar workers of the Belt with the services of a physician, social worker, and mediator. To cynics, Torquay was the token sacrifice that companies like Verne Steller Navigation and King Priam Mining used to trick their captive workforces into thinking they were well-cared for. But the workers swore by their Organizers, and nations listened.
The United Nations Life-Saving Service protected occupied equipment. Organizers protected crews. Because they were mobile, they were important sources of news. Companies were forced to supply them with unlimited air and rations, so they were always available at the individual worker's convenience. Their bodies were inviolate, protected by the feared Transportation Authority Police, enforcement arm of Comprehensive Transport, which performed the function of trans-Martian territorial government for the United Nations. Efficient enough for the Americans; brutal enough for the Soviets.
But the Companies tended to like the Organizers as well as their employees. Everybody was on the same page: there was money to be made in space. People were even more valuable than the machines they worked. Skilled laborers with proven ability to thrive in the hermetic hell of an asteroid mining station could return planetside in just three years with enough money to live comfortably to the ripe old age of 150. Unskilled laborers faced two possibilities. Either they would quickly become skilled, or, for their own sanity and the safety of everyone else, they would be flagged and removed by a vigilant Organizer and "sent down to home."
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/21/78/82/217882be9bdd56346e008d2ca46906fa.jpg)
By the 2100s, it was quite literally possible to banish ne'er-do-wells "to the Moon Mines," an expedient attempted only once by the American Reclamation Corporation before being abandoned forever. A desperate man in space was a killer. Even trained astronauts were susceptible. NASA's "Hard Impact" Program, which sent two-seater probes to Near Earth Asteroids on six-month swings, was famously ruined by a confined-space violence problem. Almost half the pairings came to blows.
In the case of Rylance Torquay, it was his scope of practice that drove demand. A history of service on the Venutian gas floats provided the basis for a database that only grew with each new engagement. Data-driven modeling helped Torquay coach his employers and their workers on early (also called "deep") indicators of pending trouble, while also identifying the kinds of personalities most likely to perform well in the spacefaring environment. The U.N. Selection Committee that advanced his nomination called Torquay an "inevitable" pick.
Rylance Torquay's cryopod was missing from its location amidst a cluster of A-class emergency-rated crew when Lt. Commander Fong Na Spínola arrived to retrieve him just twenty-two minutes after the Unity's computer initiated crisis protocols.
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Thank you, dear readers!
Tell us: what do you like? What do you want more of?
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(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/002/936/017/large/whendell-souza-mountainsurwww.jpg?1467486407)
The Stepdaughters of Gaia made their second capital at the place they called Paradise Wells, an arcology powered entirely by geothermal steam vents.
For more than a century, the Stepdaughters enjoyed an isolation even more complete than that achieved by the Human Labyrinth. While the Shaper Exile attested to the matriarchy's survival and provided the curious with rough coordinates for its domains, Deirdre and her people soon pulled up stakes. Hunter landrunners gawked at the empty husks of the giant cibola trees at Gaia's Landing and Pine Low, already starting to regrow less than a year later.
(https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/23f81a38376373.575fb518be705.jpg)
A Gaian settler breaks down communications equipment during the final departure of Colony Pods from Pine Low.
Librarians continue to dispute the precise rationale for the Gaians' suddenly aggressive new stance beginning M.Y. 201. Tensions boiled over first with the newly-formed Unicorp, presumably over the draining of wetlands that Deirdre had dubbed the d'Almeida Swamps. A post-incident investigation by the Planetary Council found that the Gaians had launched an unprovoked attack. Laser-equipped Unicorp Field Security Team '화산' (Volcano) held steady against the first wave of Gaian Rangers, armed only with hand weapons, but routed under psi attack from what survivors described as "domesticated" mindworms.
(https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/riverofteeth.jpg)
A SMACER foraging party approaches Darkwater from the east. They ride the korath, a semi-aquatic mollusk that, when fully grown, was about the size of a Unity Rover. In returns for protection from the local wildlife, SMACERs served as scouts, spies, and go-betweens for the Gaians of Eastern Shamash.
(https://f8n-ipfs-production.imgix.net/QmYHoCgUakuWN7MSUjCNrSvkoRk4UwfPnH2vy5E8Hh7WKC/nft.jpg?q=80&auto=format%2Ccompress&cs=srgb&max-w=1680&max-h=1680)
Deep in the d'Almeida Swamps, SMACERs obeyed the Gaian dictate to live with the land or perish by the sword. At her trial in abstentia, the famed jurist Adnan Sedak laid the very low quality of life in Darkwater at Lady Skye's feet, claiming that her obsession with the dignity of Planet had blinded her to the dignity of her fellow survivors.
Skye attempted, without success, to fight a multi-front war, and although spared the ruin of occupation, most of her other offensives blunted against stronger militaries honed by more regular warfare and armed with the fruits of scientific collaboration. Out of desperation, the Gaian Council allowed their war for Planet to be subsumed into larger struggles over the planetary balance of power so that they might find natural allies. Lady Deirdre didn't trust Contre-Amirale St. Germaine, but she conceded that he had proven himself at least a faithful ally of Planet.
(http://coolvibe.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/swamp-1024x628.jpg)
To keep the Gaians occupied at home, rival factions attempted to stir up the SMACERs in revolt. Willing confederates received generous supplies of weapons, including prototypes that had yet to see action in more critical theaters. Through their allies in Struan's, University Design Bureau 6 furnished SMACER resistance teams with acid pellet guns. These devices exceeded even flamethrowers and incendiary bombs in their destructive effects on xenobiologics but Pilgrim Regulators employed them effectively as terror weapons against human forces. Oscar van de Graaf saw no reason why he should not punish SMACERs as harshly as he did everyone else on "his range."
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/0c03b389-1251-41ca-803d-84d5b2cc4c69/d29ea2o-9b1f447c-9145-4126-a979-753d891e8b34.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzBjMDNiMzg5LTEyNTEtNDFjYS04MDNkLTg0ZDViMmNjNGM2OVwvZDI5ZWEyby05YjFmNDQ3Yy05MTQ1LTQxMjYtYTk3OS03NTNkODkxZThiMzQuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.Vr_cNdBPKZx--S49ObmuAIYYivesVF624QHrnS-KLL8)
Free access to fungal forests gave Gaians an important edge in salvage recovery that, under the right conditions, could sometimes compensate for the faction's technological retardation. These Ranger commandos wear late-model South African aeronaut suits--ideal protection for the Dead Zone around Morgan Planetary Recovery. Their 9mm Lyttelton Ingenieurswerke Field Disruptors were surely an unwelcome surprise for the Morganites.
(https://www.iamag.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Ken-Fairclough-32.jpg)
The Morganite borehole mine at Sawtooth Peak was an irresistible target for Gaians striking westward, but Corporate Security wisely drilled for action against a variety of potential threat actors. In M.Y. 205, Morgan needlejet pilots Lao Zhang and Arkady Morozov became double aces defending the base against a green squadron of New State fighter-bombers. So far from home, they were probably carried up the Sundown River by long-range cruiser submarine.
Sources:
The Gaian Colony Pod picture is the work of Marcin Jakubowski on https://www.behance.net.
The animal-riding swampers appear on the front cover of Sarah Gailey's River of Teeth.
The red-suited astronauts are the work of Pericolos0, titled "Swamp Planet" on DeviantArt.
The Borehole Base is the work of Ken Fairclough.
The swamp picture used for the acid thrower weapons is credited to Anthony Wolff on Coolvibe.
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Mercator’s Projectionists (pt. 3)
(https://i.imgur.com/a7VgP4G.jpeg)
Jerry: “Hey little buddy. T-minus two hours until kickoff. Got any news for me?”
Dharma: “So there’s a thing about your slogan. Justice and Guard Relations, um, have an issue with ‘MPI: We’re Watching for You.’”
Jerry: “Why? Tested great in focus groups. Assures our viewers what they’re watching is what we’re watching- MPI gets them the latest intel.”
Dharma: “Yeah, that’s great, it’s just- uh, after the Constant Dragnet scandal, the Office of the Commander is extremely leery of reminding citizens their government’s protective surveillance progra-”
Jerry: “Aw, fung, that’s right! It makes the slogan sound like we’re snooping. Those funging Def Force glowworms, this toxifies the whole rebrand. Hot damn!”
Dharma: “Justice suggested, ‘We’re looking out for you.’”
Jerry: “That’s not any better! That’s the same thing in different words!”
Dharma: “'We’ve got our eye on you?”
Jerry: “Even worse!”
Dharma: “What if we, uh, play up the UAP angle- ‘We’ve got our eyes on the skies?’”
Jerry: “Hold on. Now you’re onto something, Dharma. That does sound on brand. But how do we lower the character count? Signage space adds up.”
Dharma: “We- we make a pun of it. Spell eye with the letter- ‘MPI: We have our I on the sky?’”
Jerry: “Our I- that’s gibberish! What does that mean?”
Dharma: “Your I in the skies!”
Jerry: “Okay, that is better. ‘MPI: Your I in the skies.’ So it’s like ‘We’re, like, your proxy out there, guy, we keep an eye out so you don’t have to. We’re your eye.’”
Dharma: “Plus the pun.”
Jerry: “Plus the pun- keeps it pithy. Light. No scary M.I.B.s here! Except the ones we tell you about.”
Dharma: “It’s good, because it’s like, it’s not clear exactly what the hell it means, so, lots of wiggle-room.”
Jerry: “Yes. ‘Your I in the skies.’”
Dharma: “Your I in the skies.”
- off-the-record conversation at the Ruppelt Building, Memory of Earth Ministry of Public Information headquarters, GOLD JULY BOOJUM routine autolog
For over half a century, the multimedia news conglomerates of the United States stirred up the worst passions of the raucous republic. But after the hypersurvivalist Holnist memetic plagues and the Second American Civil War, the federal government had had enough. The newly-inaugurated Department of Public Sanity, with the reconstructed Congress’ support, enacted many executive fiats restricting the news from hyperpartisan coverage, establishing strict editorial guidelines with violations punishable by severe civil forfeiture.
And lo, the RoyStar Weiguo news and entertainment empire, that venerable symbol of yellow journalism, did go full tabloid, pivoting to sensationalism on topics existing in the spaces beyond the reach of DoPS censors and accuracy ombudsmen. It turned its armies of shock jock pundits and bottomfeeder muckrakers, hidden camera gotcha journos and dashboard-datalinked angry ranters away from political points-scoring and towards celebrity gossip, sports news, business drama, true crime, and a grand revival of the News of the Weird. RoyStar rolled out half a dozen multimedia networks covering everything including speculative cybernetics, missing link simian sightings, modern witch cults, mysterious murders, and alien appearances.
Thus when the ancient founder of RoyStar deigned to buy his way aboard the Unity, opting instead to continue his interminable search on Earth for who to replace himself as head of the empire, it was Vice President of Fortean Hypermedia Jerome “Jerry” Wobegon who became the hapless executive dispatched to Alpha Centauri. Like so many other robber barons, the RoyStar head intended to continue his gigacorporation in space, owning the media sector even before there was an economy. By spearheading Operation Succession, Jerry would be the Johnny Newspaperseed who was to found RoyStar’s first media outlet upon an alien land, conditioning audiences for the distant future when it would be feasible for the company to launch its own mission. Some said the old man himself was undergoing experimental cryo-treatments to live to the far day of that speculative voyage, when he himself had settled the question of chairmanship on Earth, so he could report the news on Chiron free of the tedious political fishmongers and their pesky laws.
Jerry, the time-and-again disgraced exec who had risen swiftly, yet precariously, thanks to a strategic marriage into the corporation, had accepted the white elephant mission not out of regret of perhaps eternal exile, but rather a short-sighted, sweaty, frantic leap at a shrouded rung upon the media company’s infinite career ladder.
Part of the small RoyStar contingent was young Donald “Dharma” Vetter, his aide-de-camp of an executive assistant, a distant relation to the founder, and a minor titled noble, also thanks to careful courtship. Becoming adrift on the homeworld after attaining a moderate level of hyper-wealth and success, and increasingly browbeaten by Wobegon into continuing their relationship into space, Dharma found himself also undergoing months of hard training just so he could run a satellite office on a dangerous frontier colony.
The pair experienced Planetfall with a predictable amount of screaming and running around like decapitated fowl. But as masters of cleaning symbiosis, both eventually found their way into usefulness for larger, better-armed bodies: Jerry briefly became one of d’Almeida’s message-crafters during the crisis, crafting the executive officer’s missives the best his rump team could, given the circumstances. Despite effort and panic, their attempts at reconciliation, of would you kindly surrender in exchange for maybe reduced sentences, were lost on both Spartan, Holnist, and Kellerite alike. Meanwhile, Dharma found himself having an easier time working with the much less scary and shouty Garland, whose well-meaning communiques also had little impact during Planetfall, and it all quickly fell apart after the captain’s demise.
Somehow, the duo found their way into the Memory of Earth. The commander, no stranger to the movers and shakers of ufology, was quick to identify persons of interest for his faction in formation. An Observer undercover agent approached the discombobulated exec at U.N. Great Refuge and offered him a job, upon which Wobegon was exfiltrated to Mercator himself. The job, it turned out, was to be the very head of the Observer’s public relations and communications, the official media organs of this new state. Faced with an offer he could not refuse, Jerry allowed himself to fall upwards even more and accepted, becoming the faction’s Minister of Public Information. With one negotiated condition or two- one snatch and grab probe team mission later, a bewildered Dharma was similarly taken from Gaia’s Landing and brought into Memory.
The two quickly discovered that creating a media empire on a new planet, even a successor petty kingdom, was no easy task. But they were blessed with a faction with no shortage of military public affairs personnel, war correspondents, counterintelligence officers, and political warfare specialists. In some ways, it was an easier task than their original mission of creating RoyStar Centauri on their own: they had a much larger talent pool of experienced consent-manufacturers to work with. And they found the messaging to be fairly simple. Cover all news through the lens of Mercator’s mission statement, and the viewers will come.
The Ministry of Public Information’s framing of Planetary goings-on is straightforward: Appeal to the [curiosity|fear|anxiety] of the extrasolar unknown, and uphold joint military defense, preparation, unification. Given their years of work at RoyStar, both Jerry and Dharma are seasoned veterans of datalinks memetic breeding and crosspollination. Knowing all of the classic newsmen’s tricks that the most sensationalistic multimedia outlets of late stage America had to offer, their work has made MPI a highly rated source of news and entertainment on Chiron, both in-faction, and upon the Planetary Datalinks, out. Offering an array of programmes from the matter-of-fact (“Observer’s Eye on Planet”) to the in-depth and serious (“End of Line Reports”, “Follies of Earth: Cold War Edition”) to the partisan and polemical (“Live Fire: Destroying Lotus Eaters with Reason and Data”) to the frivolous and vapid (“Prehistoric Progenitors”, “Psi-X Investigators”, “Can You Survive Chiron for 18 Hours?”), MPI is seen as one of the most professional- in operation, if not in content- multimedia organizations of Planet.
(https://i.imgur.com/cxX2MUI.jpg)
MPI programs under Jerry Wobegon’s tenure blended news updates with dramatic, visceral imagery and a heavy dose of mission-oriented statements. They appeal to the average Observer faithful and to curious outsiders alike.
Both Jerry and Dharma can be classified as adherents of the Hoaxer theory. Like many Observers who are apolitical and convictionless, they are apatheist towards the existence of aliens- or at least, some grand shadow war involving them- and find one authority on Planet as good as another. As in any faction, most citizens are simply getting by, doing a job- or in the case of drones, perhaps none. But what grants them a theory, what assigned them a side, is that their job happens to be perpetuating the Memory of Earth’s mission statement. By ordering investigation into alien life, proliferating the UFO narrative, and crafting stories where there were none, both are self-consciously hoaxing the public, even when their personal beliefs do not align with the mission.
It is hard to say how many Hoaxers exist within the Memory of Earth. Outside of dramatic actions such as running, or just working for, the very media ministry that upholds the mission, there are plenty of lesser examples such as Defenders or Unifiers who carry about planning or collective security more than they do about xenomachy. On the other hand, there are those who do not particularly care for mundane human political projects and care only about the faction’s search for unknown intelligence. And so many theories are in their own way, Hoaxer to some extent.
The MPI, for its part, is ecumenical in its loud blaring content. It has indeed offered many a Skeptic, including the good Doctor Argus herself, appearances on its networks. There is an entire newly-founded datalink channel dedicated to Skeptic views, seen as subversive to mainstream Observers and rather tiresomely faux-edgy by the actual government.
Since Jerry and Dharma’s work have been such an unexpected hit, they’ve caught the eye of rival operations, even the likes of Morgan Entertainment and Restorer InfoCom. In fact, both men secretly entertain ambitions at rival networks, if not for the fact that the Chiron Guard remains a terrifying adversary. Wobegon considers more outlets he could head, Vetter has an unspecified legal case against the Stepdaughter’s of Gaia; both could profit from opportunity at other factions, if not for the fact they would quickly rise up on Mercator’s priority probe lists. So while at present they are securely ensconced into the Observer faction at the very top, RoyStar’s own mission looms large in the background, at the backs of their minds. For even though there is no news yet from Earth, old man Roy is out there.
Notes:
The opening quote is a pastiche of this exchange (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoeWn90SPdM).
Vetter is German for “cousin.”
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(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8b/ec/52/8bec520daef24669fcc2359ac997d198.jpg)
Chadian youths hitch rides on the supply crawlers of 914 Groupe de transport automatisé in the capital of N'Djamena during the Saharan Burst Wars. It was a dangerous stunt, performed more for thrills than convenience. Civilian foot traffic confused the master control algorithms so that the vehicles learned their business improperly, braking suddenly even when at high speed. Street runners caused many casualties. Life-safety protocols would send the crawlers into buildings or trees before they would allow collision with a pedestrian. Pandemonium results when the crawlers detected armed pursuers. Then, they might exceed speeds of 140km/h, heedless of the fates of those crowded on their hulltops.
Partial Table of Weapons Types
Sublethal weapons are designed for use by law enforcement for use against civilians to achieve crowd control and personal immobilization. As the name implies, they are usually (but not always) intended to disperse, discourage, or impede targets, not to kill them. Sub-lethal weapons in use on Chiron include: simple, expandable, and stun batons; simple and stun shields; high-pressure water hoses; fast-hardening foams or gels (e.g., Togra Labs StickFoam®); simple smoke; baton rounds; irritants; sonics; and radiation projectors. The relatively large proportion of sub-lethal weapons in comparison to military-grade weapons accessible to the early colonists meant that sub-lethal weapons were a staple of warfare for want of better options. Because of their extremely short effective range and original deterrence mission, flechette weapons, including all Shredder weapons, are usually classified as sublethals, notwithstanding the egregious and crippling wounds they inflicted. The Unity armory carried six thousand Shredder pistols and five hundred Shredder rifles.
(https://i.stack.imgur.com/tyCMZ.jpg)
U.N. Security Forces drill to re-secure Damage Control during a hostage-barricade scenario. All of the team members carry shredder rifles.
Hand weapons are dumb-, direct-fire small arms and light, crew-served weapons. The term also covers the basic personal protective equipment. Both are from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A very large quantity of hand weapons were smuggled aboard Unity and brought down with the survivors. Most rifles were chambered to 5.56 x 45mm NATO, 7.62 x 51mm UN, or 7.62 x 39mm WARPAC standards. Popular and ubiquitous types of hand weapons included the M16, M4, AK47, G3, and R1 rifles, .50 BMG and DhsK heavy machine guns, Light Antitank Weapon, RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher, M47 grenade, and M79 40mm brake-action grenade launcher. Early nylon and fiberglass "flak" vests and steel helmets provided wearers with limited protection against shrapnel and mostly-spent rounds. Hand weapons remained standard-issue for Chiron militaries until well into the fifth generation. Today, they are still used to arm most auxiliary units, including faction militia.
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8KMvjmjCc4M/XXnWSuTZezI/AAAAAAABonw/_6Z5U2gCHHAA8jB1glABxPIMBDABlxmjwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/YKb2Ctd.jpg)
Tribal Minutemen evaluate modified hand weapons picked from Sabre Corporation prisoners.
Smart weapons reflected the advancements of the 1980s digital revolution, providing increased battlefield awareness that led, in turn, to superior battlefield performance. Personal weapons evolved to provide the individual soldier with more information, enhanced protection from rifle fire, and the ability to engage multiple different types of targets successfully at beyond visual range (BVR). Man-portable drones, guided missiles, squad radio networks, variable-range ammunition, and Kevlar body armor made their appearance during the "Smart Era" of warfare on Planet Earth. These weapons were more than a century old at Mission Launch, but few appeared on the Unity manifest and the fundamentals of this type of warfare had to be relearned by the survivors as they made appropriate simultaneous advances in long-range and satellite communications.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c4/41/eb/c441ebd6d856cece430cce40b6e479c1.jpg)
A сом heavy-haul 'copter out of Forward Support Base Danger delivers SolarEx ASPs and their mechanical mules to the blasted outworks of The Core. The hardened ASPs easily swept aside Johann Anhladt's Defender militia. In the hands of unseasoned troops, predictive algorithms were no match for veterancy.
Impact weaponry provides an individual soldier with exceptional firepower. The scope of impact of this revolution in military affairs is much smaller than that of the previous generation, focusing almost entirely on the portability and striking power of crew-served weapons. The Impact Squad usually incorporates the coilgun, or Gauß rifle, a type of electromagnetic accelerator firing a magnetic round at very high speed, ideal for anti-armor work, and the chaingun, a rotary cannon capable of firing as many as 4,000 rounds per minute. Impact weaponry is controversial: the very high power requirements associated with Impact-style firearms greatly reduced squad mobility.
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Spartan prisoners faced one of two unwelcome fates. Most were remanded to become helots, performing the basic labors required to keep the faction supplied. However, those with proven mettle were forced into the role of OPFOR, participating against their will in live-fire exercises against Spartan warriors. Victors were rewarded with their freedom. Here, a squad of Chiron Guard go on the offensive, breaching a Myrmidon bunker. The breacher hefts an Impact gun.
Powered Combat joined the innovations of the two prior eras of warfare. Exoskeletal frames provided the defensive protection, physical endurance, and rapid movement necessary for their human operators to reclaim the battlespace from remotely-operated vehicles. Soldiers in battlearmor replaced the tank as king of the battlefield.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/54/79/33/547933e3a6ee54261757183dee426372.jpg)
SafeHaven's Thunderchief Battle Armor used a detachable jet pack to provide up to 7 minutes of actual flight capability. The weapons load-out was variable, but a Gauß cannon in the right arm and a 40mm grenade launcher in the left were standard, providing both anti-armor and anti-personnel solutions. The grills at wrist and calves could expel flames: the operator could bath themselves in fire if swarmed by mindworms.
Sources:
The picture of U.N. Security Forces is actually a still from the show Bablyon 5.
The picture of actor Matt Damon is from the 2013 movie Elysium.
The Longinus Battle Armor is credited to ancient klaxosapien on Pinterest.
The breaching scene is from the movie Aliens.
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Pearson's Ladder was the site of Planet's first space elevator. Conceived by Zakharov's scientists, the structure was built to exacting Unicorp specifications.
At first, all the fuss was one-way. Men, materials, and food went up but did not come back down. Meanwhile, the ladder grew ever taller while combat raged below.
It happened that the terminus of the elevator was in fact the starship Unity. One day, in M.Y. 364, Planet's biggest supply dump became the lay-down yard for the largest salvage operation in human history.
The Ladder was heavily protected. Since nobody trusted University Security or the hard-fighting, oft-losing Dai Seung Security Force with such a high-profile target, it was a multi-faction affair. Defenders included Restoration Marines, U.N. blue helmets, Tribal Minutemen, and Miriam Godwinson's Nauvoo Legion.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/cf165920513b08d9a2982c896b8044a5/tumblr_ou0thrIlHG1uu3o5mo4_1280.jpg)
Cosmonauts of the fourth generation called their Extravehicular Operations Suits "Жирная свинья," for fat pig. The high-tech over-garments earned a deservedly strong reputation when carrying out high-heat mining operations on Mercury and were brought to Chiron in large numbers through the good offices of promyshlenik Andelko Saratov. Hundreds served during the breaching and inventory of the derelict Unity. They found their way later to the ice mines of Issus.
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So stand by the mainsail. The fierce storms we'll race. Aloft with ye, mates, or King Neptune we'll face. - The American Adventure
(https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.onecms.io%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F6%2F2022%2F04%2F14%2FDUNE_1.jpg)
Somewhere close to the front rank of exceptional sailors to survive the Unity Crisis was Ulrik Svensgaard.
Cursed to live in interesting times, Svensgaard, a reluctant reservist in the resurrected Massachusetts Naval Militia, spent five years protecting Boston Harbor from Holnist saboteurs. Poised for dismissal on disciplinary grounds, his career and freedom were spared by the need for seasoned hands to take up interdiction patrol on the Nova Scotia Shelf, keeping pace with Soviet "fishing trawlers" and helping to enforce the Canadian government's closure of its east coast ports. Successive commanders put the hot-tempered Glousterman on small craft where he brought a cynic's eye and a nihilist's fondness for violence to difficult boarding actions.
Four years deeper still into a profession he disliked, Svensgaard, now a respected Chief Petty Officer, was recommended for Officer Candidate School. Captains trusted him with the lives of their sailors. He intended to decline the opportunity, he said, "but plumb forgot the deadline to withdraw." Two years later, he was master of his own patrol skimmer.
Making a career of naval service put Svensgaard on the front lines during the Battles for the Arctic, and he did dangerous inshore work on the margins of the costly NATO victory over the Red Banner Fleet at Baffin Bay, even sinking a Soviet LCAC. Wounded by a vengeful destroyer, he refused rehabilitative surgery and lost an eye for his troubles. One Navy Cross later, Lieutenant Commander Svensgaard was transferred to Unity Project following discovery of Holnist literature on a government-issue tape reader in his posession. (The short-lived Wearington Administration used the U.N. as a penal colony for politically unreliable officers.)
Amazingly, the U.N. accepted Svensgaard despite knowing he was a neo-fascist sympathizer. Setting aside Soviet recommendations to first "rehabilitate" its fresh crop of "defectives," the U.N. instead heeded encouragement from the World Health Organization, first sealing their records and then attempted to provide them with purpose. Inspired by Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Pravin Lal described the intent as "peace with charity." Svensgaard performed well in training evolutions already familiar to him as a wartime sailor and looked forward to independent command of a coaster within the Aquatic Operations Division.
On Planetfall, Svensgaard was one of just five men with surface warfare experience available to the New State. When Contre-Amirale Raoul André St. Germaine vested him with command of a coveted Unity Gunboat, Svensgaard waited only to sail over the horizon before hoisting his own flag.
Svensgaard's U.N. Psych Profile indicates a pathological animus toward "elites," his preferred epithet for the formally-educated. Instructors complained that he disliked by both peers and superiors despite ample physical bravery and acknowledged competence as a Surface Warfare Officer. One Royal Navy evaluator expressed the common opinion: "Obsessed with the appearance and performance of 'strength.' Incapable of empathy. Avoidant behaviors easily mistaken for "salt-wisdom," or even concern for subordinates. Long exposure to crisis situations has greatly increased subject's tolerance for risk and pain.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/55/c6/72/55c6725bcbe469ac620da23cec50076c.jpg)
Svensgaard's General Taylor, a heavily-modified coastal patroller, outclassed anything afloat in the waters of northern Chiron until at least the arrival of Malaki Ro's Skagway in M.Y. 12. Two Mk280 4" rapid-fire cannons, four variable-mission canister launch systems, two close-in sonic projectors, and a dense countermeasures suite sent the Peacekeeper Heavy Foil Zweihänder to the bottom during the Battle of U.N. Relief Station, killing Captain Eugen Köhler. Svensgaard himself wasn't present at the fight, which also saw the loss of General Taylor to the concentrated fire from Sathieu Metrion's gargantuan combat hovercraft, the improbably-named Kungalooshi.
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(https://static.bangkokpost.com/media/content/dcx/2022/05/06/4298706.jpg)
Apsara Mongkut, Thailand's favorite son. A personal institution at the United Nations, where he served more than four decades, two of them as Secretary-General. Cambridge-educated. Moscow-aligned. Acerbic, self-assured, and sartorial. Well known (and oft-criticized) for his lavish lifestyle and skillful deployment of social media to influence national policies in line with U.N. objectives. Ardent anti-colonialist who filled his unused New York office with relics of empire, described by Time Magazine as an "ironic commentary." Credited himself with winning Québec independence by urging the Communist Bloc to call NATO's bluff. Revived the moribund Unity project through private subscription. Mediated resolution of the War on the Aegean after Greek withdrawal from NATO. Central figure in numerous scandals and conspiracy theories, including the disappearance of Abaddon Vesper while on medical holiday in Switzerland and pay-for-play schemes involving U.N. relief contracts worldwide. Killed in a car crash in British Hong Kong Colony. Known enemies included the Federal Republic of Carmel, NATO, Struan's Pacific Trading Company, the American Reclamation Corporation, Morgan Industries, the Southern Ocean Sovereignty of Es Ankhenadron, Comprehensive Transport, and the Kaestral Group. His New York Times obituary remembered him as "sometimes successful, more often thwarted, but always, and unavoidably, relevant."
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The unsolved assassination of U.N. Secretary-General Apsara Mongkut caused his successor to rethink executive protection and international policing. With the assistance of CTR, the U.N. Security Forces birthed DEEPEYES, a "hard military" force of non-patriated persons ("No-Pats"), directly answerable to the Secretary-General. DEEPEYES recruits received training from both the French and Soviets. In 2078, the project received a severe blow after a joint MI6 and Chinese National Security Bureau discovered two DEEPEYES agents working to foment a Communist counter-coup in Shanghai. A second embarassment surrounded the total kill of a DEEPEYES tactical team during a botched raid on the lunar compound of Barrow St. Ledger, chairman of the Solar Caravan Company. (A Senate inquiry ultimately revealed that the United States Government had assisted in the chairman's defense.) DEEPEYES was widely considered a failure and discontinued after just 10 years as the U.N. scraped to finance conventional protection of its space elevator sites.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/61/03/5e/61035e3d23a6ad6ff610f4d2be1e7053.jpg)
For every successful settlement on Chiron, three others were abandoned by their founders. Hostile action forced the small research team at the Saịtị Ụbọchị site to retire to Loaves and Fishes. It was a familiar story. Breakfast had not yet been served when a platoon of Morgan Crisis Crush commandos sent nineteen hungry zoologists back to Loaves and Fishes without so much as a survival suit between them. Most perished of nitrogen poisoning before the day was out. Yet for their trouble, the raiders found little worth taking. Miriam's quartermasters were stingy only because they could not issue what they did not have. The base's original inhabitants had been preparing to dine on irradiated rations originally sourced from Unity itself.
Sources:
The picture of the Thai politician used for Apsara Mongkut is actually that of Suthep Thaugsuban.
"No-Pats" are a stateless people in Battlefield 2042 who, according to the Battlefield Wiki, are "unable or unwilling to exercise their right of return, and instead unite under a global, non-national identity."
DEEPEYES is a hunter-killer special forces team from the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
The final picture was evidently produced by Bungie Entertainment and found on Google image search.
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And as their wealth increseth, so enclose / Infinite riches in a little room. - The Jew of Malta, Act I, Scene 8
(https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/64c16738376373.575fb518c0ebb.jpg)
A pair of AMCORE Juggernauts, armored cavalry assault vehicles, rolls down the unloading ramp of one of the mission's four Imre-Meinertzhagen Heavy Cargo Landers, a kind of high-capacity Landing Pod. The rolling fortresses proved nearly impervious to Morganite weaponry during the Ancalagon Trade Wars of the '40s and were still in action protecting Bourse interests a century later.
Critics had it that Apsara Mongkut was nine times a Judas. Under his watch, the U.N. parceled out the last precious space aboard its outgoing ark not on the basis of who was most worthy or most in need, as the founding principles of that organization might suggest, but instead for money. This was an under-appreciation. The man who succeeded Mongkut, Dr. Vasco Paredes Tottodoro, sold three more billets for an even greater total sum. And while the twelve charter colonies commanded obsessive attention from the public and their media watchdogs, just over a thousand individuals and lesser organizations also negotiated fee-access without receiving proprietor's privileges. About four thousand of the 450,000 personnel aboard Unity were fee-access passengers.
As a rule, passengers caused more problems for the Mission than selected colonists and crew. Marching to their own drum, the former had much greater incentives to circumvent the strict rules on personnel eligibility. With Mongkut's knowledge, hundreds of "fee-accessers" paid special subscriptions that entitled them to additional cargo space, sometimes a great deal of it. Like the "Big Twelve," fee-accessers also bribed the mission contractors to load off-manifest cargo behind false bulkheads or in spaces gutted due to redesign and never detached due to time constraints.
Clustered together in cryobays reserved for them alone, a small number of these fee-accessers banded together during the Unity Crisis, securing their own dedicated Landing Pods and filling them with equipment to which only they had access. Some number of these rallied after Planetfall to form the organization latterly known as The Bourse, an Outpost-class faction determined to carve out an exclusive commercial preserve on the continent of Ancalagon, come hell or Nwabudike Morgan.
Although monopolists themselves, the untender mercies of The Bourse merchants were still deemed preferable to those of Morgan himself by Ancalagon's chief occupants, the New Two Thousand and the Children of the Atom, which provided succor to Bourse operatives when Morgan launched his grand counterstroke. If Oscar van de Graaf or Johann Anhaldt lacked for faith in their choice of allies, the discovery that The Bourse was in possession of two eighth-generation Juggernauts must have been bracing indeed.
Amusing, both the Morganites and their arch enemy, the Pilgrims, were confounded by the revelation that two of the massive fighting vehicles had been ferried across the stars. What kind of profit-seeking venture would miss out on the opportunity to ship more productive machinery?
Source:
This picture is credited to Marcin Jakubowski on Behance.net.
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We have a Discord! Join us at https://discord.gg/tfD3tuNU
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Mercator’s Projectionists (pt. 4)
(https://i.imgur.com/J0idRjI.jpeg)
Humanity seems predestined to fail against the forces of distrust and discord. How many warring armies did Unity ship to Chiron? As history illustrates, further balkanization is imminent without intentional intervention. How many more factions will tomorrow bring? How much longer must we remain divided? - A House Crumbled: Geopolitics of Planet
Gennaro da Gama was Brazil’s most celebrated data librarian, until he gave it all away on account of conscience. Born of a father who was a WTO representative with a heart of gold, and a mother who was the best network security specialist in academia, he studied library sciences and the psychological analysis of history, becoming an early datalinks tech pioneer.
Instead of going into industry, da Gama entered public service and would become an unlikely symbol of Brazilian patriotism and strength during the Novo Brasil era. His work to use the datalinks to digitize and store the entire collections of the Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil was heralded as a sign of the nation’s immortal spirit and contribution to humanity. Da Gama would then go on to become the stewart of multiple grand projects preserving cultural heritage across all of Latin America and the Lusophone-speaking world.
But less than a decade later, da Gama had left his honor posts aboard the country’s ceremonial soft power spacecraft to teach poor indigenous youth, amidst accusations of treasonous whistleblowing. No one is entirely sure who had leaked the warehouses’ worth of data on the Brazilian Space Corps’ clandestine plans to break the Outer Space Treaty, but the careful curation of the information, easily organized for reporters and future historians alike, as well as his opportune role aboard the Tiradentes made him into the primary suspect in the court of public opinion. Thus he was scorned among scandal, as he went to aid the forgotten of Novo Brasil.
The act of kindness was punished as the Amazon became a danger zone when the eco-sovereigntist Smoke Jaguars waged war against the Brazilian government and its Portuguese patrons, attacking outsiders who were there to help. The ensuing hostage crisis, with its bloody resolution delivered by the vicious tactics of the Amazonian BOPE, shook da Gama to his core and drove him to retirement. Only years later, with the advent of Unity’s launch finally in reach, did he accept the United Nations’ request for him to join as a cultural archivist for the ship’s Data Sciences team.
Da Gama’s work on the new datacube storage format was his main impact during the leadup to the mission. Having cordial but curt relations with Lt. Cmdr. Tạ Dọc Thân, the archivist worked on preserving supplementary records. Thanks to his own government’s complaints and nudging, he was ostracized, restricted from interfacing with the Data Core itself. That much of Brazil’s actual contributions to the Core, intended to be part of humanity’s collective knowledge up to the mission, were derived from his past preservation projects, was an irony that was not lost to Da Gama.
This unkind act proved to be his saving grace during Planetfall, as he was not part of the team of data technicians and librarians lost when the Data Core was mysteriously jettisoned. Awakening towards the tail end of the crisis, the archivist gamely shuffled off on a refugee pod belonging to the Peacekeepers, and became the head of Lal’s attempt to rebuild the United Nations Digital Services Agency on Planet. Tasked with reassembling the supplementary data fragments that the faction possessed, Da Gama slipped back into the depressive moods that had consumed him during his service in the BSC. Expeditions to salvage the Data Core were thwarted by bandit SMACERs and hostile factions alike. UNDSA was chronically underfunded as resources were shuffled towards not just critical infrastructure, but to Terrance LaCroix’s weaponized Signals Intelligence probe operations. Each Mission Year brought news of broken Treaties of Friendship and hastily forged Pacts in response to new Vendetta.
(https://i.imgur.com/MDwRksh.jpeg)
After U.N. Digital Services was reassigned to Peacekeeping defense projects by Major King’s initiation of Operation: Plowshare, da Gama found himself again enmeshed in military activities against his will
Gennaro gradually realized that for all of Lal’s ideals, the Peacekeeping Forces did not have the wherewithal to ensure that humanity’s knowledge was properly preserved. Moreover, the safekeeping of wisdom would be pointless if the Unity diaspora was lost to humanity’s insisted self-destruction.
So then, who to join? While the librarian had the ideal background for the Tomorrow Institute, he decided Metrion’s activities were ultimately looking in the wrong direction: by focusing all of their energies on the past, the Institute sought inward, in what could not be changed, rather than shaping the future. Without a future to look to, records of the past would inevitably be as useless to mankind as the dusty ruins of Planet were to the long-gone Progenitors.
Other knowledge-based factions, da Gama believed, were consumed with their own respective narrow focuses. The Children of the Atom did have the potential to unite the Planet behind artificial intelligence, but inevitable pushback from anti-technologists and those skeptical of living under computer rule would only lead to fiercer ideological wars, according to Gennaro’s psychohistorical models. Zakharov’s University was not a universal one, but one that only operated within the narrow confines of the provost’s positivist worldview. The Ascendancy were eugenicists. The Dreamers were torturers. So many others were simply mercantilists, tyrants, or warlords.
As unlikely as it was, the Memory of Earth became the natural choice for defection. While the commander’s preoccupations were eccentric in their orbits, da Gama decided the professional personnel and pro-unification mission of the faction made it the best candidate to prevent the imminent destruction of all human civilization on Planet. So he left, sneaking aboard an Observer rover heading home from the embassy at Warm Welcome, taking with him zettabytes worth of datacubes, including libraries worth of records, footage, and analysis of UFO-related data.
(https://i.imgur.com/ArqthNe.jpeg)
Among the data da Gama delivered was high quality imagery of the Cidade Sorriso entity, one of his native country’s most famous UFO sightings
The Brazilian librarian became yet another one of the commander’s unlikely collaborators. Finding da Gama’s ideals sound, if rather overly pessimistic, and delighted by the ample stores of ufology evidence now made available, Mercator welcomed him into the ranks of the Observers. He was allowed to preach his testimony on the need for interfactional unity in the face of imminent obliteration upon MPI networks, paraded around by Wobegon’s media consultants and the Planetary Defense Force’s PR talking heads as evidence of the Memory’s righteous cause.
(Back at U.N. Headquarters, the loss of such an upstanding talent proved to be an embarrassment to the commissioner’s administration. Publicly, Lal made statements about the openness of the Peacekeeping Forces’ commitment to an “open society with free movement and association for all”, and regretted the “baffling sudden departure of a passionate, if flighty, specialist.” Privately, Lacroix and King were given carte blanche to repatriate da Gama in the future- or at least the data stores he hoarded.)
Despite his fervor in accordance with the Memory’s purpose, da Gama quickly wore out his welcome with his doomsaying. As attention-grabbing as the initial message was, the Observers were less enthused by his harping on the dire need for diplomacy, or the way he cited reams of past records to make his point. So he was shuffled off with a commission with the Ministry of Special Political Operations. Taking great pains to assure him that all of his work would be civilian in nature, in perpetuity, his new superiors have tasked da Gama to collate, organize, and archive immense amounts of statistical data, interpret vast amounts of historical behavior of faction leaders, and create new psychohistorical models. For what reason, he is not told, but this massive amount of macrodata refinement no less than the beginnings of a Secret Project: the Cassandra Almanac is the Observers’ attempt at creating a computerized social model of Planet. By crafting the most sophisticated simulation of human power relations this side of the Children of the Atom’s algorithms, the project’s initiators- whether Mercator or Han or someone else entirely- intend on forging the perfect path to unification.
(https://i.imgur.com/tNquoYS.jpeg)
Observer librarians, many ex-NATO Communications and Information Systems Services Agency staff, incorporate current events into the Almanac’s model under the direction of Minister of Special PoliOps da Gama
Me against my brother. My brother and I against my cousin. All of us against the stranger.
There are Unifiers in every faction. It is not simply a theory but a pathos, a vibe: to bring all of humanity together under one roof and one ideology. Some, such as the Peacekeepers, may not call for much ideological rigor to join the club. Some, such as the Dynamic Enterprise, view their system as one without alternative. The Memory of Earth believes in unification as not an end but a means: to ensure the victory of mankind over the monsters who lurk out in the inky ether.
Intrinsically linked to the Defenders’ vision of organized mutual military defense and world crisis planning, Unifier theorists are perhaps those of a different, less confrontational temperament. They believe that the Observers must lead the way into ensuring a species-wide understanding can be reached. Only then can a proper global defense initiative be created- anything prior to that is just forging more regional and ideological pacts, no different from the failed treaties of the Cold War. As one of the most staunch symbols of the theory, Gennaro da Gama has touted it not simply as a means- he has little interest in hypothetical alien civilizations, and finds the need to pander to the commander’s beliefs to be often maddening- but as an end on its own, a necessary prerequisite for man to reach his full potential. Whether that be building one true military, or creating records of its nature even longer-lasting than the relics and ruins of Planet, it does not matter to Unifiers like him- we must stand together, or kneel apart.
Vulgar Argot
Battlezoner: A believer in a popular Wanter narrative rooted in Commander Mercator's concept of the “other space race” alleging that Eisenhower established a covert space military program- the hypothetical "National Space Defence (sic) Force" and the Artemis program- parallel to NASA and the Apollo program- that established an armed American presence on the lunar surface in competition with the Soviet space program. Details of this techno-myth include supposed discovery of alien relics or exotic bio-metallurgical materials, field use of top secret experimental vehicles and weapons on the Moon. See also Black Dog, named after an officially nonexistent (but supposedly formed) NSDF military space unit that participated in this space race.
(https://i.imgur.com/qEINvDz.jpeg)
Artistic rendition of the short-lived NASA-Vorona partnership that built the Kletka space lab
Kletkaist: Adherent of the popular ufological techno-myth that the Kletka orbital space laboratory, constructed in 1960, was used to house and constrain an extraterrestrial species previously discovered by the Soviet cosmonauts operating under the Vorona design bureau. Conspiracy theorists claim that a secret joint agreement between Kennedy and Khrushchev allowed for the building of the installation, leading to the minor detente that was only ended by the former's assassination. One of the prevailing narratives used to support Commander Mercator's belief in the “united deception” great powers use to keep the truth hidden from the public. The nature of whatever supposed aliens discovered are unknown, but Wanters will of course allege a link between them and Chironian species.
Paradoxian: Diehard devotee of the Fermi Paradox. Grapples with the unanswered question: if there once was intelligent life on Planet, why aren’t they here now? From a Skeptic perspective, if the Progenitors are long-gone, along with any observable extrasolar species, why are they absent, and is it inevitable? From a Wanter perspective, where did they go, and can we find them again?
(https://i.imgur.com/tSH0TFu.jpeg)
In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?
- Address to the 42nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, 1987
President Ronald Reagan: “What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?”
Premier Mikhail Gorbachev: “No doubt about it.”
Reagan: “We too.”
- 1985 Geneva Summit
St. Reaganite: Slur by Skeptics against the Unifier position, in reference to the American president’s use of alien-tinged rhetoric as means for rapprochement with WARPAC. Denotes skepticism towards the feasibility of utilizing external fears to engender interfactional understanding. Can imply that the deference to “Saint Reagan” is based in Hoaxer cynicism, covering up militarism with feigned utopianism.
The Raygunner: Skeptic nickname for Commander Mercator. Pejorative.
Zookeepers: Nickname for advanced extrasolar intelligent lifeforms. Drawn from the Zoo Hypothesis, which argues for their no-longer visible status is due to intentional seclusion from humanity, possible retreat into the abyssal depths of Chiron's oceans, or even deep into the planet’s core itself (the “hollow Planet” theory). This general concept is scoffed at by Skeptics and Wanters alike- the former for its non-falsifiability, and the latter for its contrivedness. Also see Projectors, in reference to the Planetarium Hypothesis.
Notes:
Gennaro da Gama, like Trung Thi Hoang, Cuzco Sol, and Robin Huxley, is one of my custom faction leaders from the Second Ship (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21633.msg134323#msg134323).
Gennaro’s portrait is “The Fixer” by Josan Gonzalez.
The NSDF and the Black Dogs are from the 1998 Battlezone remake.
The Artemis program is from the comic Planetary.
(https://i.imgur.com/k7uhI78.jpeg)
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We keep talking about a project. But that very term implies a discipline we never really achieved. It was many minor miracles held together with string. Zakharov and his star drive. Mongkut’s unbelievable political gymnastics. The staggering corruption of Morgan Industries. Incredible failures of security by the United Nations. Over and over again. The U.N. demonstrated cowardice on such a scale as to completely invalidate their moral credibility. When she launched, Unity was cheered. Not because the people of Earth were excited to see her off, but because they were finally relieved of the burden of having to sacrifice for the sake of this expensive folly that did nothing to quench the fires burning all around them.
(https://wallpapercrafter.com/th800/133775-digital-women-sleeping-science-fiction-cyborg-futuristic-concept-art-Vladimir-Manyukhin-Cryonics-cold-sleep.jpg)
Vinka Dialyse, in cold sleep.
Reconstructing a complete, much less a true, record of what, exactly, happened aboard Unity after the meteor impact may be quite impossible. Post-graduate study at the University of Planet’s Garland School of Recent History begins and ends with symposiums on this, “the most vital question of our age.” Ostensibly, the purpose of this coursework is to reconcile the student to the only sour certainty: that all history is subjective. Much less healthfully, Institute datacrawlers hold out hope that they can use the same material to solve the mystery of who is to blame for the death of Mission Area Director Tạ Dọc Thân. Peacekeeper clerks mine decrypted records for what they believe with be the vindicating proof that Commissioner Lal is, in fact, the ultimate political authority on Chiron, an endeavor that requires they first reconstruct the details of what happened in Damage Control after the moment of Jonathan Garland’s death.
As University course materials explain, truth-seeking in this context presents numerous dilemmas. Survivor recollection is fallible. The ship’s Data Core, which contains a time-stamped history of every mechanical action and digital communication made since its activation, has been tampered with several times, both before being jettisoned to Chiron’s surface and afterward. Accessing the fullness of the records contained within requires the creation of a specialized communications infrastructure. Moreover, the actual layout of the ship is unknowable, and so many narratives are confusing and unverifiable. Even before mission launch, the U.N. Intelligence Cell estimated that as many as 25,000 of the ship’s half-million authorized cryobeds were occupied by somebody other than the person listed on U.N. manifests.
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Partial view of Unity during trials. About one-eighth of the ship is visible from this angle, including hydroponics bays, solar batteries, and fuel cells.
An endeavor as large as the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri required that construction take place according to a modular design, while supplies were laid in on a continuous basis over the course of whole generations. Many colonists therefore had to be trained to operate technology based on principles that had already been forgotten during the lifetimes of their great grandparents. Thus, for example, the ship’s computers were a mess of systems and applications characterized by both sub-optimal performance and sloppy coding. Unity’s hardware operated on more than three hundred distinct machine languages. Deconflicting the software of so many different eras was an exercise in agony. Reliance on older systems for core functionality also meant that much of the value of newer components was thereby denied to the expedition: they simply couldn’t be used for lack of processing power or compatibility. Even worse, threat actor intrusion was impossible to track or remediate on a large scale. There were too many people with hard access, too many systems to protect, and not enough experts available. Diotan Chun-kuo, head of Cybersecurity Initiatives for the U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism, was forced to remind the Security Council more than once that the very labor force he required to guarantee the mission’s protection was ten years on ice!
Occasionally, the case for a targeted redesign was overwhelming, and the U.N. therefore agreed to gut entire compartments of the starship (always at great cost) in favor of newer, “better” solutions. Considerations of time and money meant that these retrofits were accomplished at the expense of quality. The U.N. attempted to salvage what they could from the modules slated for replacement, but it was not always feasible, and 12% of Unity’s volume was “supernumerary” space when she entered trials. Some of this space was loaded with cargo that the logisticians had decided wasn’t worth the effort to move elsewhere, even to save mass; some still received power and life support to avoid the cost of rerouting those systems.
One of the most interesting cases of uncertain identity was that of the crewmember called Vinka Dialyse. She belonged to a set of survivors contained in a Hab Pod recovered just weeks after Planetfall by the Peacekeeping Forces. The rescuers tended to a wounded Caucasian female who appeared to be in her mid-to-late twenties. Per the responsible med tech’s recorded session notes, the subject’s Space Force uniform name tag read Dialyse. There were also the insignia of a lieutenant and a patch for the ship’s Corrections Division.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3c/9c/7e/3c9c7e6fe4c48b62b608eb4b0b763781.webp)
The individual called Vinka Dialyse, at Warm Welcome, M.Y. 0.
Evidently, the patient was startled by the decanting process. She became violent. Patient and nurse practitioner fought. Dialyse knocked the med tech unconscious with a blow to the temple and fled the field tent, at which point she soon succumbed to oxygen deprivation.
Records already available to the Peacekeeping Forces contained helpful information about Dialyse, first name Vinka. She was the fourth daughter of an Aylūl banker, Kammermun Dialyse, and her much younger husband, Rafael Alvarez, a popular diarist and semi-professional protester on behalf of anti-colonialist causes. The latter had made himself persona non grata throughout much of Europe and lived in a kind of exile on Aylūl where he regularly embarrassed the government.
Dialyse the Younger had attracted the attention of Aylūl’s Selection Board because of her exemplary record during national service. “Officer-like Qualities” included eloquent self-expression (perhaps a legacy of her father’s written verve), empathic predisposition, and an undaunted attitude toward failure. At the national university, she studied geology and summered with the Aylūl Geologic Survey, a quasi-military body operating in that country's Antarctic territory. Her later education was provided by the Universidad de Chile, where she declined plumb offers of employment from several mining companies, including Morgan Metals, Southern Mantle, and the Peruvian Amazon Company. She instead took work with the Gezah Valley Authority (GVA), a Carmelite instrumentality working to develop that country’s deep interior. The GVA was a post-war haven for those with former allegiance to Vesper Abaddon, not long since in retirement. In correspondence home and to schoolmates, copies of which were obtained during her CTR background investigation, Dialyse expressed considerable satisfaction over both the GVA’s impact on regional development and the relationships she was forging within the expatriate community in Far Shiloh. In 2066, one year before being approved for transfer to the Unity crew as part of the Aylūl contingent, Dialyse appeared before the Carmelite legislature representing the GVA when Carmelite prime minister, Harlan Versh, was entertaining its privatization. The GVA remained a federal agency and Morgan Industries was dealt a rare setback.
Tragically, Dialyse was killed while still in training, victim of a trans-orbital shuttle accident. She had not yet been formally granted the rank of Ensign, let alone commissioned a full lieutenant. An exchange of records with the Resident Commissioner of the Watchers of Chiron raised only more questions. The Mission Area Director had nothing to indicate that a Vinka Dialyse should have been among his staff—and his was, at least in theory, the final word on that matter. But the name Vinka Dialyse did appear elsewhere in Peacekeeper records: it had been spoken by U.N. Security Forces officer Fong Na Spínola. Dialyse, he said, had been with him and Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida in Damage Control, and she had survived long enough to participate in the running firefight that ensued as the Portuguese general had led the way to muster stations. Fong had lost sight of Dialyse as a smoke grenade obscured his vision. He had assumed that she and d'Almeida were shot dead by the pursuing Kellerite breaching party.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ea241a0d-e15c-4385-85f4-43c278003f1f/d7xusnh-5817070c-180a-4028-95e0-2138c1a814d9.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2VhMjQxYTBkLWUxNWMtNDM4NS04NWY0LTQzYzI3ODAwM2YxZlwvZDd4dXNuaC01ODE3MDcwYy0xODBhLTQwMjgtOTVlMC0yMTM4YzFhODE0ZDkuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.zXOmoWGurdYnrjpMD0sycElcEQ3RmruNe2JbgrC3Lck)
UNSF Major Fong Na Spínola, the last person to report seeing Vinka Dialyse alive prior to Planetfall.
(https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*ihnks9VtNIQhvcvrbdnq1Q.jpeg)
A secure medical bay at U.N. Relief Station where Base Operations maintained unknown personnel in indefinite suspension, a practice judged inhumane by the Planetary Council in M.Y. 32. The Vinka Dialyse case reinforced a predisposition on the part of Lal and his closest subordinates to titrate new colonists into the Peacekeeper population lest they prove faithless.
After medical release from the Peacekeeper infirmary, Vinka Dialyse departed Lal’s territory with a SMACER work crew headed north. She was tracked on Peacekeeper scopes until the crew rendezvoused with a Sabre Corporation security team—not an unusual event considering the faction’s dependence on externally-sourced labor. Her case returned to focus only years later after the Dreamers’ functional demise. During debriefing with the Planetary Council, Dr. Aleigha Cohen referenced Vinka Dialyse as an enduring mystery. At Dialyse's own requested, Dream analysis had indicated that she believed honestly in the truth value of her own statements, though cross-referencing her biological material with U.N. records had offered decisive confirmation that she was someone else entirely. Cohen felt Dialyse must be a partisan of Vesper Abaddon, or how else to explain the personal history? Unsurprisingly, Abaddon denied knowledge of Dialyse and pointed out that the remote location of the GSA had been attractive to ne’er-do-wells of all stripes, including those without any nexus with his regime. At the time of the original dream-reading, Roshann Cobb had ordered Cohen to obtain more intrusive scans, which Cohen had done, though without coming across anything she considered noteworthy. To avoid taking on another mouth to feed, disdaining trouble with the SMACERs, and believing that somebody would eventually come to "collect" Dialyse, the Dreamers allowed her to depart. The name appeared again, eleven decades later, on citizenship rolls submitted by The Bourse during the Planetary Census of M.Y. 144.
Sources:
Vinka Dialyse in cold sleep credited to Vladimir Manyukhin on wallpapercrafter.com. Wallpaper ID: 133775.
The second picture of Dialyse is labele d"Regular Female Sci-Fi" on Pinterest, which credits the original to Imgur.
The Unity picture belongs to Nichlas Benjamin per the source URL.
Fong Na Spínola's picture is "Character 5 Mech2," created by user MitchellMohrhauser on Deviant Art.
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They would not take me, they said, because I was a murderer. Moses murdered. Because I was a thief. Prometheus stole. Due to my implication in revolutionary activity. Since I recognized no boundaries. Did not know my place. Refused to stay silent. Lacked "proper understanding" of risk and reward. Who better to form the vanguard? - Anger in a Thousand Places
How to select for the ideal members of a future society? Must the U.N. accept only the "best" of humanity?
The earliest recruits set the bar quite high, reflecting the technocratic ideals of the mission's original architects. How did one demonstrate qualification? By elite pedigree. Graduates of the finest institutions of learning. Recognized leaders in their fields. Decorated soldiers and civil servants. They skewed white, wealthy, and, in the opinion of the Secretary-General, weak. Before dense rows of cameras in New York City in February 2041, Apsara Mongkut got ahead of critics by taking his own subordinates to task quite as if he'd had nothing to do with their previous decision-making. Rather than receive the cirriculum vitae of yet another materials scientist, Mongkut timed the man as he attempted to don an escape hood. Forty minutes later, Mongkut rose and left without comment. The poor witness was still sorting out his protective equipment.
"Second-run" selections followed new criteria that allowed lower scores on personality inventories, regarded certain career setbacks as plausible evidence of mental resilience, and looked increasingly to the predictive power of a new analytical input recommended to the U.N. by the American Reclamation Corporation: the Atherholt Trauma Function Test. New and testier personalities joined the colonial effort. U.N. Minister of Off-World Operations Kamaria Apio used words like "kinetic" and "questioning" to describe what detractors saw as scarcely-adulterated versions of the first selections.
Reduced American funding during the hottest years of the Second Civil War led to a severe slow-down in recruiting but also allowed the United Nations to experiment with a wider range of professions. Fewer agronomists to make way for more farmers. Welders and pipe-fitters before process engineers. Larger contingents from countries that could not pay their own way, all with less formal education but more practical exposure to lifetime hardship.
Soviet and Red Chinese standards, which set the pace for the 2050s, turned attention to questions of political suitability. Jonathan Garland was selected as captain. Skill mattered less than "temperment," a catchall for performance on psychiatric inventories that measured predisposition toward self-abnegation. French and Portuguese influence on the Alpha Centauri Mission also increased perceptibly, resulting in the adoption of cultural targets. Where were the lawyers to keep the contracts that would need to govern the relations between the mainline colony and its assumptive offshoots? Who would cure distempers if not cooks, authors, and chamber musicians? Heroes would be necessary in plenty, and so neither must sport be neglected.
In 2061, the first convicts came aboard as manual laborers. For what purpose, nobody was quite sure, and it appeared that Unity was at last being acknowledged for what it had become: a dumping ground. Some efforts were made to lure the space-going trades, but the urgency to escape a poisoned planet was less for those who could already envision thriving off-world colonies nearer at hand than the Alpha Centauri star system. With this fifth tranche of recruits came the "useful ne'er-do-wells," or persons whose experiences would have been desirable even at home, but for their poor fit with the prevailing national mood. Here came the alleged war criminals, misfits, and embarrassments--offers the United Nations was in no position to reject, much less vet reliably.
At last came the proprietors, and with them, the revenge of the elites. In his interviews with the Ken Burns Trust, Morgan Industries COO Wenceslas Sedláček explained his philosophy for colonist selection: "I told them, either you are wearing a pocket protector or carrying a pneumatic drill." The cultural flourishing of an earlier era was ended almost completely. Back came the scientists, service members, and skilled tradespeople plucked from supervisory roles. A few brought with them families whose inclusion created no obvious advantage for the mission as a whole.
But perhaps that was the point. Eloquent critics like Jean-Baptiste Keller and Golden Chinese Emperor Sao Gong, and less eloquent ones such as a Miami gang leader-turned-civil defense hero, Corazón Santiago, questioned both the fairness and desirability of a process weighted toward individuals with particular backgrounds and personality traits. Was the real measure of a person their ability to operate a sonic hammer? What was civilization without the "ordinary" people--those whose circumstances had not allowed for the possibility of greatness?
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The war-ravaged, fire-stricken American Southwest provided suitably hostile environments in which to ease green crew members through the rudiments of survival training. This contingent, equipped with self-contained breathing apparatus, prepares to set out from their training rig, a slab-sided museum piece older even than the decrepit equipment found in the Unity vehicle bays. In teams of four, clerks, custodians, and educators "yomped" between sensor pods, learned water conservation, and adjusted themselves to the discomfort of life in low-oxygen environments.
As it happened, non-standard professions played a crucial role in the life of every colony. Investigators protected faction assets. Jurists limned the parameters for vendetta. Musicians collaborated with psychiatrists and physicians to enhance the totality of the Dreaming experience. Television producers helped faction leaders reach into every home. Journalists brought the news of the world to readers eager for evidence that, despite their many miles from home, the Unity survivors were not alone.
Source:
Picture found on the This-Is-Cool Tumblr site under "Sci-Fi Fantasy Horror."
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By means of the sword, from him who has raised the hand, conveys to him against whom the hand has been raised. – The Blood Price
(https://gndn.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/shot0008.png)
Name: Ichillis Ontarion
Rank: Colonist II
Position: Etaireía-Merarchēs (Companion-Colonel), DeLeon Expedition
County of Origin: Voight Trench, Pacific Ocean Constellation
DOB: 12-2-2034
Height: 193cm
Weight: 99.8kg
Unity Contractor Background History:
Born 2034, Bitter Waters Colony, Voight Trench. Parents divorced. Remained with father, a receiving agent for the Outremer Caravan Company. Evacuated to Federal Republic of Carmel, 2047, during eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai. Orphaned when Morgan Resolutions blockaded evacuees to force payment of restitution for Korimar Strikes. Merit-adoptive of cattle baron and Gathi Rail Board chairman “King” Con Madigan.
Unconventional upbringing included work as a ranch hand, indicating probable participation in Issuri Valley Range War of 2052-3 and work as an assayer at the Asidaph Diamond Mines the following year, almost certainly arranged by Madigan family. Acquitted by corner’s inquest in the killing of a Morgan Gemstones courier on grounds of self-defense.
Completed Interlink correspondence courses to Advanced M2 level in civil defense with The Nine Schools of Selah. Martial artist (Tav Radan) and semi-finalist for the 2056 Carmelite Olympic Team. Received Special Gratitude of Federal Assembly for Master’s Thesis evaluating the performance of private security forces as both auxiliaries and replacements for under-performing national militaries. Argued in favor of the former.
Drafted into reformed Gathi Federal Guard in 2059 during the War of Carmelite Secession. Breveted senior lieutenant and assigned to a combined-arms brigade comprised mostly of Halberd Services mercenaries. Mentioned four times in despatches for personal heroism during Reaving of Tenelon, preemptive invasion of Gath’s western neighbor, which had mobilized on its border (later revealed as fulfillment of a secret treaty signed with Shiloh, pending imminent invasion). Spoils from the raid, including huge quantities of food, fuel, ammunitions, and stockpiled weapons, helped Gath to endure until completion of the Skirdon Mag-Lev line to allied County of Toltan, after which point the war shifted decisively in favor of the Carmelite Unionists, with total reabsorption of Shiloh in 2064. Promoted to major before mustering out.
Nominated by Carmelite National Selection Committee to the U.N. Mission for Alpha Centauri. Rejected over sustained allegations of Gathi war crimes committed during the Tenelon campaign. Subsequently contracted privately in 2066 to DeLeon Expedition as supervisor of commercial paramilitary forces. Automatically elevated to Colonel to ensure parity with peer positions in other Charter contingents.
Alec DeLeon, Chief Strategy Officer, Verne Steller Navigation Company, is among the six Founding Agents of The Bourse.
(https://www.wcnews.com/shots/movie/full/nms10.jpg)
Alec DeLeon during confined-space rescue drills prior to Mission Launch. DeLeon personnel trained for more than three years following an abbreviated curriculum endorsed by Mission Control and were some of the last authorized passengers to board Unity.
Psych Profile from Contractor Database: Relativist
Madigan Family of Gath known to be active in Cult of Sol Invictus. Subject's spiritual predilections remain private.
Strong national allegiance suggests individual may be unsuitable for multilateral colonial effort.
Known Monarchist associations: Con Madigan has spoken forcefully in favor of restoration of the Abaddon Dynasty in Carmel. Subject has no record of similar activism, however.
Psych evaluation indicates high tolerance for use of violence to resolve personal conflict, though individual does not display violent tendencies and has no criminal record.
Subject’s moral judgements are consistently determined by counterparty’s personal behavior toward them rather than with reference to specific objectives (e.g., Mission Charter) or universal principles such as the collective good. Specific relationship to atrocities in Tenelon unclear: Gathi forces executed captured Tenelon soldiers as a bloody-minded “efficiency” measure before the perilous crossing over the snowy Rodan Sawtooths back to the Gathi Plateau. Subject's Gathi ascription and proximity to accusations alone may be enough to provoke Retributionists.
Success in nepotistic and high-attrition environments makes it difficult to judge subject’s true aptitude in any field. Personal history likely to have been effectively scrubbed, either explicitly by family action or by sympathetic administrators in deference to the House of Madigan.
Subject requested, and received, hardship reassignment from Honua Station to Sabaeus Quadrangle for reasons unknown. American Reclamation Corporation trainers were highly complimentary. Subject scored .92 on Atherholt Trauma Function Test.
CAUTION: This colonist's profile was found to have been edited on two occasions by Gold-level access holder with a Morgan Crisis Crush net code, resulting in a substantially more negative appraisal. The profile presented here is a rollback version produced exclusively by the U.N. Intelligence Cell with input from U.N. Psych and mission contractor CTR.
(https://images8.alphacoders.com/635/thumb-1920-635229.jpg)
Artist’s impression of a Bourse Enforcer in a CMC-410 “Revenant” Powered Combat Suit, such as were found to be included in the Outpost’s TO&E. Restoration Thinkers uprated The Bourse an urgent threat after repeated sightings of late-generation Terran military equipment with their forces but the two factions never came to blows.
Sources:
Picture is from the SyFy/Amazon Prime show, The Expanse.
Gath, Shiloh, and Selah are Biblical references used to refer to a fictional countries in the short-lived NBC series, Kings.
Merit-adoptives are a concept presented in the new Thrawn: Ascendancy series by Timothy Zahn.
Con Madigan is a Texas cowboy in the 1980s Disney series Five Mile Creek.
Alec DeLeon was a character in the 1990s Exo Squad cartoon series.
The battle suit picture is titled “Sardaukar” and is credited to Paolo Tomasella on Pinterest.
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Before all of these ideas were fodder for experimental fan-fiction, they were the basis for a so-called "matrix" game. In other words, a grand strategic simulation on forums a lot like this one.
At times, I even got it in my head that we could run a kind of living version of the game the way folks used to play massively multiplayer, "off-line" versions of SMAC on Apolyton (a feat I recall but could never find again on the Internet), or Europa Universalis I on the Paradox forums, running their own calculations for population growth, research rates, and production. This meant that I had to focus to some extent on game mechanics. In fact, you've read my take on Affinities in a previous update. But what about research?
As everyone knows, SMAC organized all technologies into four categories (https://alphacentauri.fandom.com/wiki/Technology_tree): Conquer, Discover, Build, and Explore. Here was my vision for Alpha Centauri 2, which has heavily influenced our story so far.
Research Focus Areas: Tech and Doctrine
AC2 incorporates two different types of technological progress: research--practical advancements made mostly in the laboratory or the field, and doctrine--revolutions in thought that influence faction behavior, such as by opening new doors in social engineering or enhancing battlefield performance. Research enables a faction to craft new things. Doctrine enables a faction to execute specific tasks more effectively.
Factions trigger a bonus when they pursued the research and doctrinal path(s) most-aligned with their fundamental beliefs. This represents the intrinsic thought and effort already applied by faction members to that particular aspect of human endeavor. Put another way, there should be favorable interplay between politics, culture, and the academy.
Tech
As in the original game, all factions start the game with at least one unique Level 0 tech. Tech could be researched in faction bases and outposts, acquired through trade, and salvaged from the wreckage of both the Unity and Chiron Interstellar Probe. Factions would fight over possession of autonomous probes and data modules containing physical storage tapes that could grant benefits to research output, or even new advances, when connected to the Network Node in a friendly base.
Tech output would be driven by a combination of Base Facilities and tile improvements, as well as by the number of Talents and Librarians in a faction's population.
Doctrine
Doctrine comes later, once certain Base Facilities had been constructed. Doctrinal output would be driven by a combination of Base Facilities and the number of Thinkers in a faction's population.
Tech Tree
AC2 features a single, integrated research tree. Progress along the branches of the tree is “blind,” meaning that players influence their faction’s progress only indirectly by choosing to focus their efforts in one of eight different focus areas that yield results gradually. Some branches terminate quickly or lead “through” specific technologies, while others put the player on plateaus, at which point they must choose from a menu of possible breakthroughs before climbing higher. Many branches are intertwined, meaning that research focused along one path may yield discovery options in others and that interdisciplinary focus will be necessary to reach the top.
Focus Areas
The eight research focus areas are as follows:
The Build path relates to advances in materials science and engineering and is mostly useful for base-building and altering the physical world to meet the needs of colonization. Examples of techs on this track include Industrial Base, 3D Printing, Carbon-Breathing Batteries, and Volcanic Mining.
The Discover path covers the Newtonian physical and Terran life sciences, including descriptive neurology and psychology. On this track, the player would find Neuropsych, Biostatics, Polymorphic Software, and Biogenetics.
The Explore path deals with the physical and life sciences of Chiron, including native geology and chemistry. On this path are Centauri Biology, Centauri Chemistry, and Centauri Hydrology. This path helps the player to better harvest the resources of Chiron, as well as to eventually make environmentally sound choices.
The Conquer path focuses on technology with direct military applications. On this path are Advanced Ballistics, Ergogenics, Doctrine: Defense, Doctrine: Aggression, and C4I (command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence). Focus on Conquer to unlock weapons, armor, and base defenses.
The Expand path corresponds to advances that facilitate population growth and mobility, leading to the exploration of Planet. The Expand branch includes Austere Medicine, Pressure Hull, Industrial Excavation, Doctrine: Mobility, and Doctrine: Flexibility. This is the focus that leads to chassis progression.
The Command path is organized around thoughts and technology with implications for social control. Command research leads to Information Networks, Doctrine: Suppress, Nootropics, and Mneumonic Techniques.
The Choose path explores thought as technology associated with the ethical challenges of tomorrow. Ethical Calculus, Water Discipline, Luttwakian Ethics, and Industrial Economics are all on this path.
The Unity path is a limited branch of the overall research tree dealing with technologies carried to Planet by the colonists of both Unity and the Chiron Interstellar Probe. On this path, one finds the Unity Workshop, UNITY Computing, and UNITY Armory.
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The University of Planet
(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/537398945090037409/E26C647B9DF1AEEDFC92FBD84410115D4FCD1784/?imw=268&imh=268&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=true)
The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms, we find electrons, and behind electrons, quarks. Each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries. - For I Have Tasted the Fruit
Leader: Academician Prokhor Zakharov, The Technologist
Conceptual Inspiration: Anxiety about the role of technology and its impact on politics and culture in the new millennium
Starting Technology: Information Networks
Affinity: Supremacy
Faction Characteristics:
+2 Research (inquiry is our priority)
-2 Probe (academic networks vulnerable to infiltration)
-1 Police (those who ask questions are prone to question authority)
Extra Drone for every 6 pops (lack of ethics)
Free Network Node at every base (knowledge flourishes in dialogue)
One bonus tech at the beginning of the game (a legacy of achievement)
Priorities: Discover
Objectives:
- Pursue every line of research, wherever it takes you
- Don't allow superstition or folkways to restrain your inquiries
- Demonstrate your genius by restoring contact with Earth
Starting Pieces: 1 Talent, 1 Librarian, 3 Robots, 1 Colony Pod, 1 'Former, 1 Militia (University Enforcement), 1 Research Pod
Faction Overview:
Encompasses most of the expedition's engineering staff. Especially appealing to survivors with backgrounds in the descriptive sciences and individuals inclined toward a life of the mind.
Core followers assert that the universe is ultimately knowable through empirical observation. Human civilization on Earth failed because leaders were excessively deferential to prejudices and folkways that caused the anxious and ignorant to reject the tools at their disposal: vaccines, genetically-modified crops, and medical robotics especially. Only a program of unrestricted study and experimentation can ensure that humanity will survive into the far future. Chiron is a problem set to be overcome through rigorous study, leading ultimately to the design and application of new tools that can ensure colonial survival.
Colony is organized into a series of academic faculties managed by deans and governed by an academic senate with representation from each scholastic unit, over which Zakharov is the chancellor and chair. The social and political incentives swing sharply toward education. The "hard" scientists stand at the top of the pecking order, followed by administrators, and then social scientists. The much larger number of workers and drones needed to sustain base operations are treated as intellectual inferiors--boorish invalids lacking the aptitude to lead "normal" lives. (The separate problem of motivation is usually dealt with through pharmacology by parents eager for their children to meet the precise and relentless criteria for excellence.)
Zakharov mostly recruited during periods of Soviet and Chinese dominance of mission design, and while his loyalists are more affluent generally (which partly explains their predisposition toward higher education), they also have a marked tolerance, or even affection, for hierarchy. The forms a Peacekeeper fills out five times in duplicate have already been filed thrice by an academician, as the saying goes.
Played straight, the University stands among the most recognizable of societies on Planet: stable, sedate, and generally open, reflecting the inherently transgressive nature of fact-seeking. Subverted, the University can be made to suffer the common dysfunctions of any large, bureaucratic institution to the point of failure. Skillful politicians, not well-intending learners, might ascend the hierarchy. Zakharov himself, with abundant defects of character, is well-positioned to make a mockery of ethical review so that his natural skepticisms result in a sustained war on the "illogic" of human emotion. In the modern sense, society-as-university-faculty may strike us as an exercise in excessively timorous bureaucracy, with a much-abused “student body” striving in vain to absorb any morsel of education from a disengaged faculty. But there is the university in the medieval sense as well: the forcing house for a particular philosophy, home of rowdy young men freed from worldly cares and given to often-violent licentiousness. The university can also become a breeding ground for radicalism and rebellion, where the free interplay of ideas leads sometimes to enlightenment, but more often to forms of self-expression that border on self-destruction.
Good comparisons for Zakharov include Drs. Anthony Dresden (The Expanse) and Jumba Jookiba (Disney's Lilo & Stitch), two scientists who lacked the socio-emotional basis for empathy. Zakharov is an especially interesting character when one considers the environment in which he first made his mark: the Soviet system was predicated on placing the state ahead of the individual. As the Chernobyl Liquidators discovered, one resource the USSR had in abundance was people, and these were generally considered expendable in the pursuit of geopolitical power—or even mere avoidance of damage to Soviet prestige. Zakharov was both a product and a prisoner of this system, rising high thanks to his natural talents, and finding that it behooved him to perpetuate the structure that kept him there. Even better, his value to the regime gave him a healthy measure of personal immunity from political missteps.
Zakharov is a polarizing figure on Chiron. Many Unity survivors blame him rather than General Francisco d'Almeida for the destruction of Unity and its high-minded mission. Zakharov was first to disobey Garland, impeding urgent damage control efforts in favor of trying to fix the reactor. And for what? To avoid a slingshot maneuver that would have saved most of the ship and virtually all the crew at the cost of only a few, himself included, who would be unlikely to survive the re-interment in cold sleep. Zakharov is no hero. To make matters worse, dissolution of the mission charter was his idea--a reaction, according to some, that stemmed more from his inability to take orders than real forethought about the wisdom of tribalism.
Personally, Zakharov is rude, abrupt, and openly contemptuous of both "lesser" intellects and women in particular. Zakharov rarely seeks the opinions of others, nursing a command style of leadership. His low empathy plays well with those who mistake emotion for weakness, but it means he is quite willing to sacrifice others for unworthy causes.
Zakharov's people suffered badly during the Unity disaster. They were first to be exposed to excessive radiation, became priority targets for Spartan saboteurs, and were called to perform the highest-risk damage control operations because of their special familiarity with ship's systems. As a result, the survivors who would later from the University escaped with the greatest number of walking wounded, and a very high proportion of colonists with bad genetic material. University bases are highly automated as a result: machines perform the tasks their human masters no longer can. Mind-Machine Interface is a particularly important goal for the University.
After Planetfall, University researchers led the way in "rediscovering," or at least recapturing, the foundational knowledge of Old Earth and documenting the new world before them. University bases flowered with private projects ("experiments") to make the hard work of settlement that much easier. In time, those bases became irresistible for both traders and raiders. The former treated the University as the premier mart for life- and labor-saving technologies, while the latter sought to plunder from those who already knew the choicest secrets of the physical world.
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Gaia's Stepdaughters
(https://preview.redd.it/5ap1jyu7the71.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=77a22f6f9dd97875bdc3cd837ea34bbf76ca47a9)
In the great commons at Gaia’s Landing, we have a tall and particularly beautiful stand of white pine, planted at the time of the first colonies. It represents our promise to the people, and to Planet itself, never to repeat the tragedy of Earth. - Planet Dreams
Leader: Lady Deirdre Skye, The Ecologist
Conceptual Inspiration: Third Wave Feminism, conservationist, and ecological liberation movements of the mid- to late-twentieth century
Starting Technology: Centauri Ecology
Affinity: Harmony
Faction Characteristics:
2 Planet (living in symbiosis with Chiron)
1 Efficiency (experience with life systems)
-1 Morale (pacifist tendencies)
-1 Police (free spirits averse to hierarchy)
Gain 1 extra NUTRIENT each season (master agronomists)
Priorities: Explore, Choose
Objectives:
- Live with the land
- Prevent the despoiling of Planet
- Question the patriarchy. If it refuses to be held accountable, knock it down
Starting Pieces: 1 Talent, 2 Technicians, 1 Citizen, 1 Colony Pod, 1 'Former, 1 Militia (Chiron Rangers), 1 Supplies
Faction Overview:
Skye has a solid claim on the loyalties of most of the Unity’s practical biologists, arborists, agronomists, and conservationists. The Gaians divided the loyalties of the wildland professions with the Hunters, and of the natural scientists with the University. Most Gaians are women, and LGBTQ rights are likely affirmed and safeguarded better in Gaian society than almost anywhere else on Planet.
Skye is called the "Conservationist" in her original profile, but she is more properly the "Ecologist" among the faction leaders. The Gaians know that all living things are interdependent.
Skye’s partisans disdain the patriarchal traditions that led to the systematic plunder of Earth over many generations, touching off social upheaval and environmental disaster that ultimately defied containment. To survive on Chiron, they have concluded human civilization must be synchronized with the natural rhythms of its ecosystem—and accepting of the limitations this will impose on its material development. Moreover, women and men must share equitably in both work and governance, lest the synchronicity be disturbed. The heritage of Old Earth masculinity poses a vexing problem for the Gaians, who aspire to take each individual as they are, but also perceive a clear tie between physical aggression and normative male behavior, leading in turn to agonies such as xenophobia, war, colonialism, and excessive political hierarchy. Put simply, men have a need to control people and things. Women must be part of the equation of government to provide appropriate balance.
Gaians are mostly Westerners--people for whom intellectual iconoclasm and free expression, not just basic survival, was a possibility. They value the individual and the species, though not necessarily the group. Most Gaians are European social democrats or coastal progressives from the U.S. and Canada--places (for the most part) spared the worst physical ravages of Holnism. Many Gaians are followers of a Solar religion, which they found complimentary to their sense of non-sectarian spiritualism.
The Gaians practice a form of representative democracy. Many issues are put to a direct vote of all colonists, where the franchise is extended to anyone over the age of fourteen, though the opportunity for men to speak is less than that of women, and Skye exercises close procedural control over what passes for the legislative process.
Played straight, the Gaians are well-meaning radicals with perhaps too incautious an attitude toward their new home. The rhythms of life are sedate if not slow and also simple. These are people who take joy in their physical bodies and savor direct, tactile experiences of place. They are not Luddites, but technology does not fascinate them and they incorporate it less into their daily lives than the average mission survivor. Subverted, the Gaians are virtual nihilists who practice extreme asceticism, putting the perceived health of Planet well ahead of all other priorities, including their own survival and the well-being of other factions. In all formats, the Gaians are attentive stewards of the environment, leading to slower growth of the faction’s industrial base.
Guilt and bitterness are palpable themes with the Gaians. The former leads them to embrace the sheer novelty and change of life on Chiron, while for the Shapers it produces a backwards-looking effect. The latter, which reflects the time progressives were excluded from power structures on Old Earth, tempts Gaians toward conspiracism: the behavior of other factions is often diagnosed as intentional disregard for the land and its other inhabitants, rather a testament to their different priorities.
Deirdre and her followers were at the forefront of the fighting aboard Unity. Importantly, their sacrifices were more about the common good than mere individual or small group survival. The experience was traumatizing, and while the Gaians nurse a vendetta against the Spartans, once planetside, they retreated into isolation rather than pursue immediate retribution.
Skye had a close relationship with Jonathan Garland, whom she regarded as a gentle and well-meaning soul--the proper sort of caretaker for their expedition--but whose leadership she unconsciously disrespected, and therefore helped to undermine, while living out her truth during the Unity Crisis. She was a victim of misogynist bullying from the "grand old men" of the expedition, Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida and Chief Engineer Zakharov, both of whom she felt were not only dangerously overconfident, but actually effete. Without ever having met Oscar van de Graaf, Skye pegged him as the kind of problematic personality, narcissistic and self-aggrandizing, who should not be admitted to humanity's final ark. She found in J.T. Marsh a kindred spirit, though reluctantly because of his overt association with colonialist policy. Morgan, whose background she regarded with some sympathy, infuriated Skye with his thesis that the ecological "death" of Earth was simply a produce of the natural cycle of human consumption. In the blood-slick hydroponics bays of Unity, she made an ally of Dr. Pravin Lal, whose humanitarian impulses reflect what she hopes will lead to the Peacekeepers' taming the other factions.
The Gaians are obvious candidates for regression into eco-terrorism, an occupation Skye occasionally indulged in her youth. She is also afflicted by the same character flaws as Lal when it comes to pursuing what she believes is right: though she disdains to recognize it, there are genuine losers produced by sweeping change, whom her righteousness causes her to dismiss as undeserving of consideration, even though such a recognition might become the basis for negotiated settlement that spares those whom she seeks to benefit the necessity of war.
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The Dynamic Enterprise
(https://www.nationstates.net/images/flags/uploads/morgan-industries__367616.jpg)
Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant. Need, as well as greed, have followed us to the stars, and the rewards of wealth still await those wise enough to recognize this deep thrumming of our common pulse. - The Centauri Monopoly
Leader: CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Mogul
Conceptual Inspiration: Tech billionaires, corporate raiders, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Microsoft, Amazon, The Gilded Age, The Age of Excess
Starting Technology: Industrial Base
Affinity: Supremacy
Faction Characteristics:
+2 Economy (entrepreneurial spirit)
-1 Support (followers have expensive tastes)
-1 Morale (followers dislike sacrificing for their convictions)
Gain 1 extra ENERGY each season (the resource that replenishes itself)
Treaties, pacts, and loans yield +20% bonus credits (the bankers of Planet)
Begin with 100 extra credits (the perfect medium of exchange)
Need Hab Complexes to exceed base size 4 (lives of idle luxury)
Priorities: Build
Objectives:
- Achieve an energy monopoly
- Make Chiron safe for inter-faction commerce
- Crack the secrets of immortality
Starting Pieces: 1 Talent, 3 Citizens, 1 Colony Pod, 1 'Former, 1 Supply Crawler, 1 Mercenaries (SafeHaven), 2 Trade Goods
Faction Overview:
The purpose of life, wrote CEO Nwabudike Morgan, is enjoyment.
Seen through Morgan’s lens, the story of man is one of entrepreneurship. Earth’s decline and, yes, death was a natural, even predictable, consequence of the species’ evolution. Alpha Centauri will be similarly exploited until the next world is needed, leading to an undertaking not unlike the Unity Project. Is it morally and practically feasible to reject change? No!
Also called the Monopoly of Planet and more eponymous, "Morgan Industries," his is one of the factions most familiar to the survivors in terms of culture and outlook. Its appeal is simple: the survivors need change nothing about their ways of life. There is no doubt that Morgan believes in his own analysis. But he can tell, too, that the scared survivors who look to him for leadership would rather be told soothing lies than hard truths. Morgan has a plan, and they do not. He exudes a calm they do not feel. He has envisioned a future of which they cannot conceive. Happily, they will let him do the heavy lifting for them.
Morgan, as Chief Executive Officer, runs his base like a corporation. He chairs a hand-picked Board of Directors--all in hoc to himself, of course. All faction members, down to the most wretched drone, are generously referred to as "shareholders" to signify their supposed contributions to the colony, but in practice, a meager percentage have voting rights, and all power resides with the Board.
Reduced to its essentials, Morgan's plan is a simple one. He will achieve a competitive advantage in energy production, then become the dominant, and eventually the sole supplier of that essential resource to the people of Chiron. Wealth will buy him power, which he will use to accumulate more wealth, and the cycle will perpetuate with some careful tending. Along the way, Morgan will work to commoditize all aspects of daily life so that his energy monopoly becomes a powerful brake on everything from self-expression to health outcomes to delivery of government services.
Morganites come in two varieties. The first are those who think they can thrive in the shark tank. Most of these are Westerners born to the purple. Conspicuous consumption was their second language, and any natural talent, of which there is a considerable amount, was harnessed efficiently to elite education and the "right" kind of personal relationships. The second variety, by far the larger, are the thousands prepared to buy the outrageously thin gruel of Morgan's promises, usually because they aspire to walk in Morgan's shoes. These are prideful people, jealous of their opportunities to work hard. And they do. Individualism is an almost tangible force in the life of a Morganite. Sacrifices for the "greater good" are inherently problematic because they reflect an improper understanding of how people think and what makes them act. Only when everyone is doing precisely what is good for themselves can there emerge a stable ecosystem of incentives and performance.
Morgan's palpable delight in the earthy struggles of everyday life is infectious. His taste for vendettas and unabashed self-interest are disarming. The flaws humanize him. The self-aggrandizement makes his observers feel less alone in their conviction that, were they equally as wealthy, they would similarly settle every score, flatter every vice, shoot for every star. To those who do not know him, he is an archetype of what it means to be powerful beyond reproach.
Those who do know Morgan tell a different story. He famously requires a fraction of the sleep that others do. He is relentlessly curious about everyone around him. No stranger to force, he prefers to co-opt his opponents, whom he researches scrupulously. It is not so much a matter of setting them up to be exploited than determining what they want and promising it in return for giving Morgan what he wants.
Jonathan Garland was fascinated by Morgan, a person with no trace of guilt, let alone shame. Morgan rewarded the Captain's generosity by working hard to divert the loyalties of the Bridge crew. What use had the world's richest man for a U.N. Charter? What place could he hope for in an environment where the pecking order had already been settled back on Earth?
Morgan was a stowaway, and so were many of his followers, smuggled aboard by company contractors acting under secret orders. But he also accumulated new recruits--those whose faith in their original leaders had either disintegrated during the Unity Crisis, or over whom it had never taken hold in the first place.
Colonialism left its indelible mark. For Morgan, wealth is the only guarantee he knows against persecution for the color of his skin. As a victim of exploitation, he has internalized the lesson that inequality is inevitable. Success has made him hard: he lacks empathy for anyone who has not overcome equally long odds with little help, insisting that when others are not successful, they have failed to exercise the iron discipline or bear up under the great suffering through which he made his bones long ago.
There are many ways to subvert Nwabudike Morgan. Perhaps, like the Nucky Thompson of Boardwalk Empire Season One who sent drunks home with enough in their pockets to afford bread and milk for the babes, he becomes the Roman paterfamilias. If he is dishonest, then it is in an honest cause. He must exploit all opportunities so as not to lose the economic arms race through which he generates the largess to do any social good at all.
Or could he be, like The Wire's Marlo Stanfield, a kingpin for whom glory is better than gold? What good are riches if you cannot use them to thumb your nose at the world in retaliation for its relentless slings and arrows?
What if Morgan were to lose control, his empire fragmenting into the hands of fellow oligarchs whose offspring and retainers keep up a ruinous and unceasing war for fleeting dominance over the faction's factories and counting houses?
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The Dreamers of Chiron
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/047/083/927/large/alexander-tanasie-forgotten-logo-vectorizado1.jpg?1646727623)
(https://i.wpimg.pl/1200x/d.wpimg.pl/1924304740--727252965/rutger-hauer.jpg)(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/98/53/4c/98534c7eb4f5e6a3743c37f6a2d38e40.jpg)
Such a long way to travel, only to discover we could not get away from ourselves after all. - Rebuilding Man
Leader: Factor Roshann Cobb, The Dreamer/Dr. Aleigha Cohen, The Transgressor
Conceptual Inspiration: The War on Drugs, the Mental Health Revolution, Inception, Disney's Cranium Command
Starting Technology: Neuropsych
Affinity: Supremacy
Faction Characteristics:
+3 Probe (masters of neuro-digital battlefield)
-2 Efficiency (widespread addition wrecks havoc on base operations)
-2 Growth (disinterest in the physical world)
Reduce the highest die rolled during each combat round by 1 (addicts, slaves, and hierlings make poor soldiers)
Gain 1 extra TRADE GOODS each season (merchants of ambrosias and poisons)
Priorities: Choose, Conquer
Objectives:
- Test your theories on the Unity survivors
- Obtain compliant labor to sustain your colony
- Keep the Datalinks clear of potentially infectious elements
Starting Pieces: 1 Talent, 1 Overseer, 1 Robot, 1 Drone, 1 Colony Pod, 1 'Former, 1 Supply Crawler, 1 Mercenaries (Sabre Corp.), 1 Trade Goods
Faction Overview:
On his rare good days, Roshann Cobb is an obvious genius, courageous enough to speak the truth to himself as well as to others. It is never the home that is broken; only the people in it. The Unity survivors are doomed to repeat the Great Mistakes if they cannot perceive that. The last frontier is not really space, but the Naïve Mind.
Rather than share this essential insight, Cobb simply followed it, attempt to know himself mostly through risk-taking and pleasure-seeking. Until he was already a young man, there was no one to stop him doing so. Then, an older brother died and his natural father, the Tai-Pan of Struan's Pacific Trading Company, one of the world's largest companies, took a sudden interest in grooming his only remaining heir for the inevitable succession. Cobb had the natural talent to perform well in his studies, but only provided a strict hand on the tiller. That hand is now gone.
Aleigha Cohen was Earth's foremost expert on the psycho-pharmacological treatment of criminality and a Nobel-quality somnacist. What intrigues Cobb because of his convictions interests Cohen because of her boredom. From an early age, Cohen picked fights. There was always some great foe to be slain. Local street children, who disdained the daughter of a different religion. University administrators appalled by the ethical breeches she never considered. Prize committees aghast to find that her work informed so much of what had come to be considered the academic standard in her fields. Eventually, Cohen learned to unmask. The West would not have her, so she aligned herself with its adversaries. In time, Struan's found her and offered a way to achieve the notoriety as a commercial scientist what she had been denied in the academy.
Cobb's problem is that he is a happy addict. Cohen's problem is that she is cataclysmically self-centered. Both are narcissists. The colony they together created can be called that only because it is a collection of people who cannot leave. One visits a Dreamer base to obtain only two things: drugs or intelligence. The Dreamer economy produces enough of both to keep itself going, but barely.
To be a Dreamer on Chiron is to endure purgatory at best, damnation at worst. Cobb has most of his original Struan's retainers, a collection of personal bravos, his father's picked mentors, and studied enforcers. Some are genuine friends, of a stripe with Cobb and pleased to be along for an increasingly bumpy ride, but most await the uncomfortable day when Corporate arrives to sweep up after Junior's mess. Then there are the workers--contractors outside Cobb's leadership circle who failed to jump ship in time to avoid being tasked with keeping his teetering colony from oblivion. Others are prisoners, either marched out of Unity's detention blocks or taken during planetside slave raids. They receive the nerve staple and scutwork--if they are lucky enough to avoid the Dream Twister.
Anyone who lingers too long in the Dreamer grottos risks becoming an addict. Rumor has it that the taste of Somnacin lingers in the air even after the fiercest dust storms, but the truth is that Dreaming has strong appeal to hopeless people despite the near certainty of easy addiction.
Played straight, Cobb and Cohen are listless sociopaths--the monsters under the bed. But like those monsters, they are only dangerous to those who stray too far into the room. Cobb is dispassionately calculating when lucid, and indifferent to the consequences of crimes when in any other state. Most of his "waking" time is spent on machinations that usually succeed--high-profile assassinations, theft of critical information, and development of detailed psychological profiles that assist his clients to achieve world-altering results.
Struan's, too, casts a long shadow over the Unity survivors as perhaps the worst example of the flaws of Charterism: all the tools of power, none of its accountability. At least the Morganites are building their industrial empire here and now. Struan's is staking claims that won't be realized until long after Recontact. Cobb's great henchman, Dole Yudikon, reveres the Tai-Pan with the same mixture of awe and probably subconscious fear that Cobb does, but without any of the resentment, the perfect recipe for a happy warrior. But that's just it: Dole Yudikon--Carnaveron--is more relevant to most factions than is Cobb, his ostensible master.
Cohen, in this formulation, is an ethical disaster on the order of Zakharov, with none of the institutional constraints to force her to move slowly. Perhaps she truly believes, like Zakharov and Yang, that knowledge must always transcend ethics, but it is just as possible she feels compelled to perform her experiments for a simpler reason: somebody told her not to.
Subverted, Cobb and Cohen are center-stage in a tragedy. Cobb, the unloved number-two son, feels indebted to a father who obviously does not love him. He is a good spy and an excellent executive, but neither of these things brings fulfillment. Dreaming is his own invention--the ultimate tailored escape from a burdensome reality. Cobb has important stories to tell from beyond the pale but cannot quite get back, and having helped others to find their own way into the same quicksand, there is nobody left to retrieve him. Cohen's story starts much the same but ends on a happier note. Though still a sociopath, she eventually breaks free of Cobb and wanders Planet as a free-lance Thinker, offering unconventional and morally ambiguous, albeit useful, insights to other factions.
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(https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/419/6/443/abandoned-shipwreck-fantasy-art-battleship-wallpaper-preview.jpg)
Fresh and shallow, the waters of the Purelake willingly gave up their dead.
What they could not salvage with their few 'rigs, Gaia's Stepdaughters soon turned into reefs, forests, and even bases. Snatiago had been afraid the Gaians would convince their Kellerite allies to pick the ruins for to re-float a peerless navy. The only question, she thought, would be whether Landers was the type to insist on keeping the heaviest laser monitors for himself. Instead, consulting no one, the Witch's satyrs filled the ruined war machines with black soil and slathered growth accelerant over every vertical surface. Soon, the detritus of Telleran's War was hardly discernible at any distance.
Each of the huge wrecks was a community unto itself. The ships could be put to a thousand different uses. There became fish hatcheries, kelp farms, wavebrakes, and power stations. Several hulks towed into contact formed a small weir dam for restoring water flow patterns altered by upstream diversion to irrigation schemes. Aboard the doomed flagship Bloody Hand, some skin-divers distilled a fiery spirit they called "Life's Blood" from the fruit of vines growing up the davits.
Between their enforced isolation and mild aversion to everything mechanical, it seemed to others that the Gaians courted hardship eagerly. Datalinks users traded stories of Gaian parents who enforced extreme oxygen discipline on their children, the better to prepare them for a life "outside the tent." But even the hardy woods-runners were gobsmacked by the sheer brutality of life on a Spartan man-o-war.
We went down into the crew compartments first, to collect remains. We had expected the traditional accoutrements of the warrior in prime. Synthahol, pin-ups, dice, that sort of thing. But the place resembled a workshop. It was the thin mattress or the ammunition press. Not a trace of joy. - Personal Diary
Sources:
The image, found on wallpaperflare.com, is not credited.
The Purelake is an invention of Brandon Sanderson that appears in his great work Stormlight Archive.
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New Ideas for Citizen Types
Revised Citizen Types
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/175361c3-62f5-4727-8a23-aa57af282b0c/dbueqpc-e9ebb3ed-8346-4b6c-94a4-245ccf2bc883.png/v1/fill/w_800,h_1200,q_80,strp/dragon_dreams_ii_by_tjota_dbueqpc-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTIwMCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzE3NTM2MWMzLTYyZjUtNDcyNy04YTIzLWFhNTdhZjI4MmIwY1wvZGJ1ZXFwYy1lOWViYjNlZC04MzQ2LTRiNmMtOTRhNC0yNDVjY2YyYmM4ODMucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTgwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.nFTEOcoSIUvrHWfaUBQDGpmPdRbHPD_9ZCQ-k27y2pQ)
Thinker
Citizens who fulfill the role of adviser, critic, and latter-day oracle. Theirs is a life of contemplation and debate, usually aided by advanced mental techniques or psychotropic drugs. These individuals are comparable to the Mentats, or human computers, of Dune and receive intensive training to enhance memory, perception, and pattern recognition to eidetic levels. Thinkers often perform their analyses with the help of computers, but they scrupulously avoid Mind/Machine Interface. This is because the indispensable Thinker is one who ingests Native pharmaceutical cocktails to expand their brain activity to regions previously unused—an impossibility after Synthesis. Thinkers improve doctrinal research and provide a major increase to a faction’s pool of Action Points. A Thinker is not a scientist; rather, a philosopher or strategist who studies problems from interdisciplinary or non-traditional perspectives. Most Thinkers follow a common set of intellectual prompts formalized by Sheng-ji Yang, founder of Chiron’s first Symposium, the relational structure into which Thinkers usually organize themselves to perfect their dialectic. Being highly specialized, Thinkers are wasted in roles that do not exploit their unique abilities to the fullest. Factions that have researched the Ethical Calculus tech can train Thinkers once they have also built a Symposium base facility. Thinkers provide +2 Action Points, +2 DOCTRINE, and a 25% increase to Probe defense.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7e/89/77/7e89778e34b22614abcbba726e6cc275.jpg)
Synthesizer
Once an individual crosses the Mind-Machine Interface, there is no going back. Those who survive the transition without permanent debilitation begin a new life as Synthesizers. The human brain is the most powerful thinking machine in the known universe, but its potential is limited in two respects. First, most people have access to only the merest fraction of all human knowledge. Their arguments therefore suffer for being ill-informed. Second, the average brain cannot rapidly absorb, organize, and interpret large quantities of data. Computer-assisted thinking solves for the first problem and at least partially mitigates the second. Synthesis—the literal act of M/MI—brings a subject mind to the brink of destruction. The result is damaged goods. Synthesizers provide incredible benefits to the scientific output of the bases in which they are residents but are exceptionally vulnerable to Probe attack. Synthesizers can be made—but not unmade—after a faction discovers Mind-Machine Interface and has build a Network Node. The effects of a Synthesizer in a base’s population are increased if the base is linked to the Planetary Networks. Synthesizers provide a base of +3 LABS, but at a cost of -75% to Probe defense.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7f/06/8c/7f068c28af7a72bfa338ecd4e5ec0e58.png)
Medico
One who has received training and certification in one of the numerous fields of human care. Doctors, nurses, social workers, and other carers fall within this broad but exalted category. Their contributions are essential to the continued good health and social stability of every society on Planet. The Medico becomes available with Austere Medicine. Medicos provide +2 PSYCH.
(https://data.whicdn.com/images/278991461/original.jpg)
Officer
When a military or civil defense professional is present in the society, there are observable salutary benefits to collective morale, social order, and the quality of advice received by the government. Officers can be trained after discovery of Mind/Machine Interface, provided a base has a resident garrison (friendly military unit). Officers provide a modest bonus to a faction’s Action Point pool. Officers add +1 Action Point, +2 MORALE, and +1 POLICE.
(https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/images/1151/52524006-1565994824.png)
Liquidator
The Liquidator is a specialist in the field of Centauri Conservation, and is unlocked by that tech. Their primary job is to clean up pollution within the territory of the base to which they are assigned. Liquidation is not without cost: the society pays a direct efficiency penalty to choose methods of planetary settlement less disruptive to the natural ecosystem. Nevertheless, social stability improves as citizens’ behavior increasingly mirrors their physical surroundings. The presence of active Liquidators is a known limiter on the encroachment of Native lifeforms. A Liquidator's bonus structure is: -1 ECON, +1 PSYCH, and +2 PLANET. Liquidators remove 1 pollution square within a base radius every 5 turns.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5d/96/9d/5d969d9534407489fff4d4575bff4bff--portrait-cyberpunk-spaceship-interior.jpg)
Organizer
Organizers help optimize the use of labor through collaboration rather than coercion. While Overseers benefit factions by controlling dissent and deterring subversion, Organizers mobilize and train workers to achieve superior efficiencies while also enhancing morale. The price of working with Organizers is that base operators’ hands are tied: a certain number of issues sent to arbitration will be settled in favor of citizens, not faction elites. Organizers can be appointed after discovery of Industrial Organization. Organizers confer a +2 ECON, +1 MORALE benefit, balanced by a -1 POLICE malus.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/968/547/large/yury-krylou-char5-2.jpg?1437215870)
Administrator
A professional civil servant whose work is to mind base efficiency and stability. Administrators serve in Base Operations. They provide +1 Action Point, +1 ECON, and +1 POLICE.
Sources:
The portrait of the Thinker is "Dragon Dreams II" by Jackson Tjota. The portrait of the Synthesizer is Mr. Tjota's "Dragon Dreams III."
The portrait of the Medico was shared by the user Takasta 53 on Pinterest and is labeled "Pranav Antal."
The Liquidator is "Hazmat Suit Teaser," uploaded by EvTital to NexusMods for Fallout 4.
The portrait of the Officer was shared on weheartit.com by Himawari. It is titled Sci-fi Female Officer, with credit to a defunct link on the SpaceBattles forums.
The portrait of the Organizer is "Waiting to Land," by Alexander Chelyshev.
The portrait of the Administrator is by Yury Krylou.
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The Hunters of Chiron
(https://external-preview.redd.it/dfnovOm_X86W863HI4pIJjXJv0xih1NowX2x8Z9I3vQ.jpg?auto=webp&s=ffb8c9ed69597493769491f6761ee76295507f2e)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D96fIj_UcAIw4gL.jpg)
Architects tell us that form ought follow function, but the man in the bush knows that function can only ever follow form. When we lose our form, we stop being king. "There's a machine for that," says he. That's the essential problem of our species: we can simply invent our way out of being human. - Rebuilding Man
Leader: Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh, The Adventurer
Conceptual Inspiration: Gender essentialism, civilization vs. the wild, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, colonialism, The Call to Adventure, Louis L'Amour and the American Western, Mad Max franchise, Allan Quatermain
Starting Technology: Doctrine: Mobility
Affinity: Harmony
Faction Characteristics:
+1 Planet (We watch, tend, and respect the land.)
-2 Growth (Roving lifestyle inimical to large families.)
-1 Industry (Mobile workshops can't achieve economies of scale.)
-2 Police (Living wild and free)
+1 Support (Survival experts)
May reroll one combat die during each encounter with Chiron wildlife (early experience with a new and dangerous environment)
Gain 1 extra MINERAL each season (roughnecks)
Cannot use Cyborgs, Robots, or Specials (aversion to labor-saving technologies)
Priorities: Explore, Expand
Objectives:
- Test your mettle against the worst Chiron can throw at you be completing a Planetary Survey
- Exercise and enforce your usufruct rights, such as free passage on land and sea and common use of rangelands
- Be first to recover Unity's fusion core
Starting Pieces: 1 Talent, 2 Technicians, 1 Mobile HQ, 2 'Formers, 1 Scout Rover (Main Force Patrol), 1 War Stores, 1 Emergency Stockpiles
Faction Overview:
The Hunters are a meditation on the value, legacy, and future of traditional masculine archetypes. The faction explores the question, raised most eloquently by Louis L'Amour in his 1957 short story, Last Stand at Papago Wells, of whether a different morality was required of those who tamed the land by comparison with those who settled it thereafter.
The Hunters are among the most cohesive factions, drawing a majority of their adherents from the so-called Road Crews, officially called Forward Contact Teams. These units of pioneers, geologists, miners, and logisticians launched from Unity one standard Earth month before the micrometeorite collision that doomed her. Their purpose was to clear a site for the primary colony and build outlying infrastructure--perimeter fences, defensive checkpoints, access roads, sensor grids, solar collectors, and automated mines. Their leader, Warden J.T. Marsh, was also given a second, secret directive: determine the fate of the Chiron Interstellar Probe.
Marsh himself is a Great White Hunter archetype, a man out of time. Social convention made him an outcast. Conceived outside wedlock, he was taken from his mother and brought to East Africa as a child. An uncle's sisal plantation was Marsh's playground. Here, the tall, trouble-making youth received lessons in bushcraft from his black Kenyan playmates and the steady parade of white hunters whom his uncle packed out on safari.
Military education was a natural evolution for Marsh, both as a rite-of-passage for young men of his pedigree who wished not to have a purely academic experience, and as an arena in which his skills would prove eminently useful. On service with His Majesty's elite forces, Marsh received the highest wartime honors, a testament to his emerging leadership qualities and extraordinary daring. Yet Marsh did not find military life especially fulfilling. After a short marriage ending in tragedy, he did not try again for a conventional life, instead returning to Africa, balancing obligations as a part-time soldier with a moonlight career as "crisis concierge" for any number of forlorn causes.
It is unclear when and where Marsh discovered his affinity for lost and unpopular causes. Some biographers generously ascribe it to a private sympathy for African independence movement--penance for his time serving two separate apartheid regimes--but there is no record of such attitudes. What can be said for sure is that Marsh rubbed shoulders on the regular with a gunrunner named Nwabudike Morgan; policed the Shiloh interior alongside the likes of Ichillis Ontarion; and kept out of trouble only thanks to his connections in British Intelligence.
Financial success and reputation earned Marsh a place in the world of exotic sport hunting, where, for the first time, he found himself in front of the camera. Though a taciturn individual, Marsh intuited that media exposure could advance causes dear to him. Audiences responded eagerly to Marsh's fearlessness of expression. Something of a cult of personality developed, still evident today: Marsh fascinates those who have chosen other paths in life, for he seems to epitomize the ideals of valor and self-sufficiency to which most young men in the West are expected to subscribe. He has been everywhere, survived every trial, and avoided beguilement by some of the world's most powerful personalities.
Marsh believes that the hard physical work of survival will renew the collective spirit of the human survivors and thereby secure the future of the species. Like the Spartans, the Hunters believe that humans can thrive only in adversity. Yet where Santiago looks to war as our atavistic calling, Marsh believes that it is the fight against the land itself. For Spartans, survival means armed self-defense and a hypervigilance toward potential threat actors. For Hunters, survival means honing the body through physical adversity.
The Hunters are perhaps the greatest Luddites on Planet. They insist that, having solved their problems with machines, the people of Old Earth stopped doing that which was great and daring. (Here, I borrowed from the idea floated in the DC Comics Kingdom Come series, wherein the superheroes in their midst relieved normal humans from the need to solve their own problems, and thus retarded all social and technological progress.)
Hunters are a special breed. Classically masculine professions--miners, lumberjacks, long-haul drivers, firefighters, rangers--are over-represented. They are obsessively mobile, usually eschewing permanent settlements for the freedom of the "road." Like the cowboys, gauchos, and drovers of three centuries prior, they prefer the bedroll to the mattress. Their vehicles are forms of self-expression, both in terms of how they are used and how they are modified.
The stereotype of the Hunter is as a miscreant, physically powerful but lacking all sense of grace, place, and proportion. In Morganite dramas, the Hunter appears as the hero who refuses to be tamed by romantic love. University schoolchildren relate to Hunters through a stock character, охотник, whose deathly fear of robots causes him no end of grief. Deirdre Skye has described the Hunter identity as the final stage of human metamorphosis on the journey to ecological understanding.
Hunter camps are typified by certain cultural markers. Hunters do not help others of their kind unless asked, but once a request is made, it is never willingly refused, on pain of ostracism. A social disagreement can be settled by a fight, but never with weapons, and only to the point allowed by a judge. There is a marked hesitance to deal with anything fully automated, which Hunters find emasculating. For this reason, they use tools that are several generations out-of-date. Hunters carry weapons as a necessity, but scoff at the ideal of armed vigilance practiced by Spartan and Tribal as performative compensation.
Early arrival on Planet earned the Hunters access to many secrets. They were the first Unity crew to encounter mindworms, and then to defeat them with the help of incendiaries. An entire line of scientific inquiry, the Centauri branch of the Tech Tree, stemmed from insights first gathered by Hunters on patrol. They also developed an early and perhaps unhealthy obsession with retrieval of the Unity Fusion Core, which came down high in the sawtooth peaks of Planet's Monsoon Jungle, arguably one of the least-hospitable surface biomes known to the survivors.
Formidable warriors are made in this kind of crucible, and the Hunters are no exception, but their primary value to the "follow-on" colonists comes in the form of services rendered. The Hunters are symbiotes, providing expertise that other factions find difficult to supply for themselves. Usually, this means that Hunters help with base construction, conversion of the land for agriculture, water collection, and simple exploration. On the extreme end of that spectrum, Hunters show up as mercenary fighters (often in reconnaissance roles), overland escorts, and gatherers of intelligence. The large concentration of heavy equipment sent down with Marsh makes the Hunters an irresistible force multiplier for terraformation, but has also attracted unceasing attention from more acquisitive factions.
Notoriously "effite" factions such as the University of Planet, the Children of the Atom, and the Dynamic Enterprise seasonally hire hundreds of Hunters to service their solar mirrors, undertake replenishment missions to long-range outposts, and manage native vegetation. Most factions trust Hunter experts to instruct them in the finer arts of wildland firefighting, emergency response, and salvage, to say nothing of helping them fight the mindworm menace. Hunters also furnish Planet's equivalent of a long-range rescue service: when expeditions go missing or bases are overcome by natural calamity, Hunters are liable to be the closest help at hand.
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After a certain duration of use, neural proto-matter precipitates to the bottom of each container. The researchers are entirely baffled, but the implication is obvious: here is the brain, attempting to repair itself. - Assimilative Notation
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/30/30/62/303062390b14e58d97dd63f30e72ed6c.jpg)
At The People's Teeming, Hive Wakeners prepare to transport a nineteen-year experiment that has produced unanticipated results. The base will soon be overrun by Pilgrims.
Clean-room Design
Clean-room design historically referred to the reproduction of an existing product or process without violation of copyright. This practice first attracted significant academic and legal attention at the onset of the Electronic Age when various firms attempted to build nearly identical products using similar design concepts. The design process might also be fairly described as parallel development. Historically, clean-room design was controversial. Copyright holders often questioned how competitors achieved their results without resort to corporate espionage, and the end result of most clean-room design was a court battle.
On Planet, where copyright law is frequently unenforceable across faction borders and uneven access to the patent libraries of Old Earth provides prima facie justification for liberal violation of presumptive intellectual property rights, clean-room design has taken on a different, even more sinister meaning. What used to be a term reserved for parallel design in any field is now applied to the creation of “abridged artificial biology.”
What is abridged artificial biology? Some call it the "brain in a jar." Unlike human clones or androids, both of which are capable of independent function, abridged artificial biologics are dependent organisms designed explicitly to perform a certain limited set of computational or empathic functions that, in a human, are managed by the brain. The Hive calls this technology “thinking chemicals.” Most survivors refer to its commercial form as “brain bags"--the drip-feed pouches they feed to a mass spectrometer or, when the chemical is suspended in the appropriate medium, an functional magnetic resonance imaging device. (To avoid unpleasant associations, the products of Chironian clean-room design were marketed as “Fast-Paks” (for “fast-thinking”) starting with the MY262 annual of the Morgan Industries Catalogue.)
The basic benefit of thinking chemicals, apart from their comparatively very great speed and capacity, is that they can add a measure of discernment to the performance of their tasks that is technically impossible for purely electronic creations. Any given packet of thinking chemicals is capable of activities ranging from automatic regulation of electronic devices to emotional screening. Factions trust in thinking chemicals to orchestrate the early stages of base defense when human operators are not yet involved, cull defective samples from production lines, concoct unusual passwords and evasive patterns for vehicles, sense deception during interrogations, and, most important, to add ablative layers of emotional processing potential between the full human mind and machine interfaces.
University researchers initially hoped to expand the use of thinking chemicals to provide "injectable intelligence." Experiments looked at the potential to change both an individual's ways of thinking (literally, the strategies they employ to process data and make decisions), as well as the memories accessible to them by performing as an extension of their own brains. Unfortunately, thinking chemicals, like Mind-Machine Interface, trigger problematic health reactions similar to organ rejection. The University's standards of care prescribe a period of at least five Earth-standard years of connection and therapy before an individual has overcome the inherent system shock of routine interaction with disassociated brain material.
The open, and unanswered, question about thinking chemicals is whether they are capable of learning. Current scientific consensus is that thinking chemicals do learn, even when designers intentionally worked to inhibit the emergence of long-term memory storage. The fund of shared research shared on the Planetary Datalinks is mostly limited to University archives, but researchers agree that, if left in service and provided with adequate nutrients, certain late-generation thinking chemical formulas should be able to form brain matter with faculties comparable to those of an infant.
Game Designer’s Notes
Special credit to MysticWind and ari for this idea.
The artwork in this post belongs to Sergey Grechanyuk. It is titled "Lab Concept" and is available here (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XybdY).
Clean-room Design is a Build Tech that usually appears on a faction’s research tree just before they enter mid-game. Clean-room Design is preceded by Intellectual Integrity (Choose) and Doctrine: Subversion (Choose).
To understand clean-room design fundamentally, I used Wikipedia.
Star Trek: Voyager's bio-neural gel packs appear to be somewhat similar, and they clearly contain nerves suspended in medium. I read the Memory Alpha description of that technology while writing this treatment.
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The militiaman places his whole being at the disposal of the collective. Our advantage lies in recognition that we must sacrifice autonomy of the mind as enthusiastically as our forefathers sacrificed autonomy of the body.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a2/85/55/a285552205f54f5ec93f480d8f64c0bf--sci-fi-fantasy-sci-fi-art.jpg)
Conclave reconnaissance teams roll past a crash-landed Supply Pod. Light emanating from the pod's superstructure betrays the salvage work already underway.
Descriptions of the psychoactive properties of sastisménos leaf date to the earliest arrival of human explorers on Chiron under the auspices of the Chiron Interstellar Probe (CIP). Beginning the second day after landing, infirmary records contain multiple and consistent reports of aural and visual hallucinations on the part of colonists performing labor in exterior or unshielded environments. Colonists afflicted in this way usually quit their work in terror and were overtaken moderate to severe panic attack that prompted them to doff their breathing apparatus, often slipping into unconsciousness. This reaction lent the plant its name, which in Greek means bewilderment.
Attending med-techs credited these experiences to various causes, including routine hibernation sickness, general adaptation syndrome, and nitrogen narcosis. The number of cases led CIP physicians to devise a standard therapy involving supplemental oxygen, electrolyte replacement, and rest, sometimes modified by prescription of Somnacin as a sleep aid. Increased case loads and a broad worsening of symptoms became more difficult to assess as the first cases of Red Flu emerged. Overwhelmed medical staff had little time to perform differential diagnosis. Nearly all psychosis was ascribed to fever, which ran rampant through the population.
Mass sastisménos poisoning played out not much differently than genuine mindworm attack, which it always preceded but did not always portend. Factions took notice, and applied considerable effort to try to understand the phenomenon. It took the Planitzer Expedition of U.M.Y. 1, a months-long study of the floral bounty of Chiron's southern polar continent, to isolate and confirm the unique symptomatology of sastisménos exposure. Inhalation of the plant's airborne pollen created a temporary, variable-strength link to Planet's xenofungal nervous system, producing effects that human sufferers described as akin to prescience with respect to the location and lifecycle of mindworm boils. Sastisménos pollen is microscopic and capable of lingering in the vicinity of a bloom for up to one Earth-standard week. Blooms occur at dawn and dusk twice during the 500-day Chironian year as the temperature varies between seasons, or as an immediate defense mechanism when the plants are disturbed--a last-ditch effort at genetic propagation.
Use of sastisménos varies across societies. The Dreamers raised several different cultivars to assist with their eponymous experience, ultimately performing years of research before concluding that the pollen's inclusion in their drug cocktail produced a brainwave amplification effect that burdened the sleeper with more discord than clarity. Separately, Gaians ingested the grounds of the leaf as tea before ritual vision quests, which practice directly preceded the faction's successful domestication of mindworms. Because the plant itself was found everywhere on Chiron except the Monsoon Jungle and sand desert, all factions found it necessary to engineer filters that protected against pollen contamination. The Hive went further, compounding a pill it issued to faction militia that, when ingested, temporarily induced hyper-attunement with the local ecology--a kind of biological early warning system to be used in the presence of xenofungal activity.
Game Designer's Notes:
Colonial interaction with sastisménos-related phenomena is simulated by the Centauri Ecology and Centauri Prescience Techs (both Growth-based), which precedes Centauri Empathy on the path to Centauri Psi.
The Secret Project: Centauri Attunement (Expand) yields a +10% defensive bonus to base defenders against native attack.
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Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge. - The Art of War, Datalinks
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DX6UWqLU8AApWHV.jpg)
Security breach at the Longhouse in New Jerusalem, seat of the Conclave kritarky. Polar lights provide near-daytime conditions, but it is unlikely the Nauvoo Legion will find those responsible.
Believers were grossly tempting targets for espionage. Sister Miriam Godwinson's unshakeable commitment to inter-factional reconciliation at the near-total cost of retributive justice made her bases an appealing neutral ground for trade and negotiation. Vendetta partners could meet under cover of routine business to discuss terms of resolution. Prisoners exchanged seasonally through the good offices of the Human Relief Initiative. Factions whose materialistic impulses outran their Pact loyalty might find brokers who could access markets closed by war.
Believers were notorious for a pronounced, even rigid formality of personal presentation and usually took their rest cycles in family or community settings. In other words, they lacked the individualism and iconoclastic dispositions that typified obsessive datalinks users. A Conclavist's moral fiber might be iron, but their network security was porous and their guests the kind of soft, careless people upon whom Probe Teams preyed with gusto. The Nauvoo Legion, Chiron's least-blooded faction militia, was always many steps behind the track ball. Some cracked wise that Miriam preferred it this way, lest worship attendance suffer. Guilt tended to stimulate reflection: visitors disdained to offend their helpful hosts by refusing polite invitations to Sunday service.
The Longhouse was a gift of the Shapers in commemoration of their longstanding Non-Aggression Pact with Godwinson's people. Neo-Polynesian architecture was married to design principles borrowed from both Soviet-style Brutalism and New California Rusticism.
(https://live.staticflickr.com/4343/36553484156_d7658bbd40_b.jpg)
The Late Seating at Horizons, Morgan Megaplex.
Perhaps because his was the vision least at odds with Old Earth, Morgan's society readily held space for the so-called "forgotten" occupations, those having to do with the cultural expression of humanity. Despite cultivating a megalomaniac image, it pleased Morgan to shame his critics by pointing out that their only use for artists was to deny them their value. Attempts to turn chefs and sculptors into librarians and code-crawlers would always end in disappointment, he chided. Better to use them for their original purpose: to preserve the morale and sharpen the purpose of their fellow colonists.
Morgan's formula for success was reductive. Colonists wanted subtle, but not exact hints of the world they had left behind. Horizon's retro-futuristic theming invoked the optimism preceding the Great Mistake, an era everyone had learned about but which none of the Unity passengers had experienced firsthand. Synthleather clamshell couches, modern art installations, big band music--these were relatively inexpensive ways to separate the guest from their lived experience, if only for a few hours. There was also a strict ban on android service. Human restaurant staff added an emotional resonance to the dining experience, starting with the doorman, who handed off to coat check, maître d', somellier, and wait staff of four. The prominent digital screens tracked table assignments (what Morganite didn't want to know they were rubbing shoulders with the elite?), but all guest transactions in the restaurant up to the point of payment were handled manually. Waiters were trained to memorize complex orders and the tables were "dumb," without even basic datalinks interfaces.
Morgan argued unsuccessfully that the menu should retreat from the aspirations of the club's own name. What gambler worth his credits wanted fish mousse over True Steak and potato? Test seatings showed a clear preference for molecular gastronomy using a mostly Chironian menu--hybrids and native foodstuffs. Diners didn't wish to stray all that far from the familiar mess hall. Even the alcohol was synthetic but for a few priceless vintages. More proof for the principle that there was a fine line between happy nostalgia and acute homesickness.
Sources:
The top picture is Paul Alexander's "Nighttime City," posted by SciFi Art on Twitter.
The bottom picture is credited to futurist Syd Mead.
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(https://imgix.bustle.com/uploads/image/2020/9/25/cb373c34-9636-446a-884b-ddf2802ee627-mv5bymvjotnkntktyjdizi00njnmltljntgtngm3oduwzgnlnjnixkeyxkfqcgdeqxvynty4mdi2nta_v1_.jpg?w=1200&h=630&fit=crop&crop=faces&fm=jpg)
Legitimation ritual in the Solar style. Morgan Solarfex, M.Y. 117.
Access to machine augmentation; increasingly effective medical care; and regular, nutritious meals created a yawning gulf that set Talents and Specials far apart from the Drones they supervised. Not just in terms of moral attitudes, perspective, and ambition, but also size, strength, and access to information.
This gulf, while not unprecedented in all Old Earth societies, was deeply problematic for the heirs of a frontier society, and while perhaps it was possible for the very first superlatives to justify their status with reference to particular deeds on behalf of the faction as a whole, their many descendants indisputably reaped generous genetic and social rewards without personal sacrifice. The offspring of Morganite executives were on a first-name basis with some of the University's most-celebrated faculty. A Pilgrim stakeholder's voting rights and energy income were inherited from the original signatory in transactions that chancery judges held to be practically inviolate. Accounts transferred similarly on the Bourse. Even in the Human Labyrinth, where any child of unusual intelligence was allotted supplemental nutrients, the very poor quality of life for the laboring classes ensured that they produced many fewer prodigies than their enlightened masters.
Thus, Chironian elites, especially governing elites, felt extreme pressure to justify their exalted positions socially, which they often did through ceremony that provided either religious or politico-cultural explanations for inequality. Each faction had a radically different answer.
In the militarized bases of the New State, the Observers, and the Honored Dead, wealth and comfort were the explicit prerogatives of service to the commonwealth, usually under arms, but if not, then through performance of religious or civil administration. Those dissatisfied with their lot in life had, in theory, only to climb higher on the meritocratic ladder. Similar arrangements prevailed within the University of Planet.
Morganites participated in a frenetic culture of monetization. One could sell anything--labor, time, blood, body heat, even access to a job or benefit. Some companies experimented with the elimination of individual contributor positions: all basic tasks were posted to a public-facing jobs board. Executives adjusted the promised rate-of-return as the customer's needs dictated, paying more for higher quality and speed. All citizens were compelled to bank with their employers, in return for which they earned interest--a basic experiment with the social safety net found everywhere else. But the major brake on unrest was bread and circuses: no matter their wealth or poverty, Morganite citizens enjoyed the atavistic release of carnival days, during which laborers worked reduced hours and received trial access to entertainments and diversions normally locked behind paywalls. Corporate leaders coined their own civic religions, borrowing heavily from the terrestrial monarchies and supernatural pantheons of Old Earth, to complete with the real thing, combining the socially beneficial elements of a mutual aid and service organization with an aura of exclusivity.
Inequality was most problematic for communitarian factions, which included the Gaians, the Labyrinth, the Conclave, and the Tribe, who recognized chasms of wealth and opportunity as significant indicators of both economic inefficiency and reduced social cohesion. For this reason, citizens were rarely encouraged to pursue wealth as a social choice. In the Conclave and the Tribe, there was heavy pressure to tithe after meeting certain energy thresholds, while a Hive disciple faced harsh penalties for hoarding. Gaians and Tribals reacted to "capitalists" through shunning.
Sparta managed inequality by proscribing bloodline inheritance. A fighter might accumulate wealth by stealing it from his defeated enemies, but upon his death, it would become the shared property of his barracksmates, to dispose of as they saw fit. Holnists of course criticized this practice as a form of Communism.
The problem of social injustice was least acute with the Hunters, whose lifestyles were inimical to the accumulation of significant material wealth even by their own standards; among the Dreamers, since high rates of addiction and early death frequently created a glut of supplies; and within the Ascendancy, where it was regarded as a feature, not a bug, indicating who should lead.
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Necessity is the mother of invention. - Datalinks
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/69/77/416977f82fe464b2bf5f1a096922310b.jpg)
The Space Construction Vehicles (SCVs) and Multiple Use Labor Elements (M.U.L.E.s) that helped rebuild human civilization on Planet were heirs to a venerable tradition. Long before shipping out for the Far Colonies or braving the 800°F temperatures of near-side Mercury, they participated in Terran disaster recovery.
Shut in their Mumbai dorm rooms because of fallout, students at the Indian Institutes of Technology in Mumbai equipped their prototype M.U.L.E. for the most hostile environment they could imagine. Remembering the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima, locations the M.U.L.E. would eventually come to know well, they abandoned wheels and treads for a rear-mounted articulating turbofan, did away with the idea of a human operator, and added a high-powered signal repeater to cut through the intense background radiation of the nuclear blast zone. An internal hull tank contained 80 cubic feet of rapid-expansion foam to settle radioactive dust. The drone's two hydraulic waldoes could be rotated full circle, with lift capacity in excess of 20,000 lbs. Using variable geometry, either or both manipulators could be swapped mid-flight for lift forks or diamond-toothed excavator saws on extending booms. The latter were perfect for heavy demolition, a task that could also be accomplished through brute force collision. (The front face of the M.U.L.E. was armored for this very purpose.) Under-carriage clamps usually carried inflatable humanitarian shelters equipped with tie-downs so that the M.U.L.E. could air-lift ambulatory survivors to the nearest aid station.
M.U.L.E.s were some of the earliest agents of terraformation on Planet where their preferred payloads alternated between defoliating agent (used on fungus) and crop seed. Many were converted to fast-response vehicles, dropping acids and incendiaries on encroaching mindworm boils to buy time for a retreat.
Thinking they had produced a gift for all mankind, the IIT students neglected to patent their new invention. The first commercially-produced M.U.L.E.s were Tata Motors designs, but hundreds of corporations got in on the same action, from American Machines, to Soviet ZIL, to the French heavy equipment manufacturer Poclain.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/29/ce/e0/29cee083b36ccb8d00455196d0470266.jpg)
When tasks called for a human touch, the nine-foot-tall SCV protected its precious pilot from the dangers of vacuum, radiation, atmospheric pressure, and chemical or biological contamination.
SCVs were in demand wherever radio communication was unreliable or the bosses didn't want to pay for propellant mass. (M.U.L.E.s were too small to be fitted with efficient electric propulsion.) Because they offered a pressurized rear-mounted airlock into which casualties could be taken, SCVs were also required to support human EVA operations by United Nations Life-Saving Service regulation.
Planetside crews disliked the SCV. Though positively comfortable when compared with a Manned Maneuvering Unit in space or a survival suit on Chiron, the SCV was universally acknowledged as a walking coffin in the event of mindworm attack since escape required the suit to undergo several lengthy decompression and re-pressurization cycles. To make SCV service more palatable, Landing Pod workshops tried several innovations, including removing the windscreens to facilitate rapid egress and festooning the exo-frame with banks of grenade launchers loaded with incendiaries.
(https://www.this-is-cool.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/alex-ichim-1/the-scifi-art-of-alex-ichim-10.jpg)
February 2059: At an Odessa, TX salvage yard, American Reclamation Corporation contractors remove the armor plate from an SCV, a sure sign of prosperous times ahead.
(https://loschaos.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Sci-fi-concept-vehicle-David-Sunoo.jpg?x19322)
A Unity Rover in Hive service. Forestland camouflage, front-mounted crash bar, and spare tyre are hallmarks of a long-range raider, but the sure giveaway is the retention of synthetic leather crash couches, creature comforts that rarely survived contact with the People's Rally for Austerity.
Like much else on Planet, this weapons platform is a compromise. The weight of the turret-mounted anti-aircraft autocannons must have greatly reduced speed and range, already limited because of the use of an electric motor, meaning that this vehicle would not have operated independently. The obvious lack of protection for driver and gunner are more likely to have reflected the desire for rapid bug-out in case of wormthreat than hesitation about the added burden of ablative armor, but it is also possible this unit was dedicated to column air defense and not front-line infantry support. It is also possible this vehicle has been partially cannibalized; the conspicuous absence of hull-mounted countermeasures suites and recovery equipment are otherwise difficult to explain. Hive vehicles were known to wire a second arming trigger to their vehicle grenade launchers and reserve some of the single-use projectors for non-lethal blunt trauma rounds. The .32 caliber PVC balls, three charges to a grenade, were brutally effective in close quarters.
(https://www.this-is-cool.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/alex-ichim-1/the-scifi-art-of-alex-ichim-07.jpg)
With help from a Mobile Workshop, Tribal Minutemen perform field repairs on an out-of-service Heavy Rover configured as a drone command vehicle. They are in the ideal location for a breakdown. The Neyanza Valley Shapers were unlikely to pursue hardened soldiers over a mere border violation. As if to underscore the point, the Kellerites go about their business without apparent concern for the sensor towers seen just yards away.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3f/70/ea/3f70eafeb8c80393447c9cead2374480.jpg)
The incredibly well-engineered Roustabout was the Pilgrims' successful attempt at a high-speed harasser for use on the Uranium Flats.
With the help of a design team headhunted from the likes of Verset-Brantley Defense Machinery and his own ARC, Oscar van de Graaf's autowrights started with Grumman-Fairchild's economy design and gave themselves leave to use all the parts from Superstition Engine Works Heavy Rovers. They also conducted thousands of hours of interviews with both veteran Regulators and prisoners liberated from the Labyrinths. The new design featured heavy all-terrain shocks and an unprecedented level of protection for the crew of three. Since mindworms couldn't survive the high ambient radiation, the New Two Thousand were free to "button up" behind cope cages, anti-mine plates, and explosive-reactive armor (ERA).
The Hivemen, mostly equipped with archaic hand weapons, found that the attackers' buggies routinely survived direct hits by as many as three rocket-propelled grenades. Yang's troops often focus-fired their machine guns in an attempt to trigger sympathetic explosions of the ERA bricks, hoping to "soften" them for the grenadiers.
Sources:
First picture is from Blizzard's Starcraft 2 computer game.
Second picture credit to Bryan Lee, "Construction Machine," from ArtStation. Found on Pinterest.
Third and fifth pictures credited to Alex Ichim on this-is-cool.co.uk.
Fourth picture is by David Sunoo (2014).
Sixth picture is from Pinterest, credited to Sander Verhoeven.
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(https://i.imgur.com/PI6MLR3.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/8VxXCUA.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/mFwh6eA.jpg)
Chironian rules football is the premier post-Planetfall sport. Loosely based upon FIFA regulation soccer, it mutated into sharply divergent forms, mostly owing to the dangerously unstable nature of Planet's surface. Played on rough and uneven terrain, often overlapping with xenofungus fields, footballs of secondary, tertiary, quaternary, and so on importance were introduced to swiftly sub in lost primary balls. Tomorrow Institute historians would introduce the use of multiple types of goals for the multiple assortment of balls into the game, as a rough reconstruction of the ancient imperial Chinese game of cuju.
Because Chiron's mass is a full 30% greater than Earth's, players outfitted themselves in augmented bodysuits for greater speed and maneuverability, overcoming the "subrids bashing into each other" nature of earlier iterations of the game. After Pilgrim player Martin Klaus outfitted his footsuit with hidden personal vernier thrusters in M.Y. 38, the nascent FPFC narrowly ruled in favor of the practice, and thus the "turkey" player position was enshrined into the game.
The ever-present threat of mindworms and other dangerous fauna normalized the weapons carry by spectators, and even players alike. As Chironian football absorbed and blended in numerous sporting traditions from Earth into itself, χ-ballers have adopted melee sections into their matches, imitating the indirectly-sanctioned enforcer fights in ice hockey. Such combat may be undertaken unarmed, as favored by Spartan athletes and Ascendancy episkyros-players, or with light staves or clubs, as preferred by solar faith adherents such as the Sons of Centauri-Ra and Morganite SolarFexers. Because players were operating under high-stress environments with ambient psychosomatic effects, χ-ball began to resemble the mob football of medieval Europe.
Over time, the FPFC has ruled more stringently against such fights, and encouraged the separation of such activities into separate events, ranging from Tribal triathlons where Radnor hoverbike racing and shredder rifle shooting were the two activities that accompanied a Landers rules brawling match, to cosmo golf, where combat clubs were beaten into putting irons. This urge to separate out and disperse violent urges from one sport gave birth to many more, and thus did Chironian rules football lead to the founding of the Space Olympics.
Notes:
All images generated with Craiyon, formerly DALL·E mini
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Always there are fights. Over who to send, and who will be left behind. We agree only on this: the great enemy is time. There will come a day, very soon, when it is too late to go. - Private notes to Assistant Secretary Pravin Lal
(https://www.wearethemighty.com/uploads/2021/08/original.jpeg)
An M50 Ontos with French parachutists in the Red River Delta, c. 1961. The insurgent-hunting Groupes Mobiles prized the ugly fighting platforms for their value as oversized shotguns at close quarters.
Compromise bequeathed to Unity more than its fair share of troubles. The captain whom some called feckless. Political officers to supervise the thoughts and deeds of an ostensibly free people for whom national allegiance should have held no meaning. Gear so old and ill-used it could not withstand the gentlest touch.
With just two months to go before the ship was to leave its rack, Warden J.T. Marsh placed a call to his new masters in Geneva. Going through manifests with the Unity Project Team, an eagle-eyed quartermaster had made the troubling discovery that the expedition still lacked the promised pack guns and prime movers for its mountaineers.
By this time, freight schedules on all space elevators had limited slack for additional shipments. Whatever the solution, it could not exceed 50,000 lbs. Marsh was insistent that he should have recoilless rifles. Several, in fact. Along with the means to transport them.
Enter Oscar van de Graaf and his Hard Car Company of Huntington, NY. A pair of M50 Ontos air-mobile tank destroyers, last used a century prior during U.S. interventions in the Caribbean, was languishing in the township's Smithtown Military Park. In return for a new municipal swimming pool, the people bade farewell to their rusting relics, which soon were on low-loaders headed for the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Packed aboard the mighty U.S.S. George Rogers Clark (CVA-132), they arrived in French Guyana eight days later and, after a long trip skyward--at just 19,000 lb. a piece, there was still elevator capacity to spare--were in storage aboard Unity less than two weeks after Marsh's improbable complaint.
Marsh declared himself well-satisfied. While he might have preferred modern equipment, each Ontos mounted six of the essential gun tubes, four of which were paired with .50 spotting rifles. As was the intention behind all the mission's use of older equipment, the 1950s-vintage machines were easy to update and even easier to repair. Using a mobile workshop, the Forward Contact Team's alpinists upgraded the vehicles' power packs, replaced the treads, and swapped out the engines for replacements with much higher torque to improve climb.
Observers were impressed with the Ontos. The Human Ascendancy, which settled the snow-capped Hyas Mountain Range, found the design in the Datalinks and built its own derivative, a slightly larger machine intended for war as well as utility. Calling their creation Ocho, the geneticists mounted four rifles to each side of the turret in an "easy Z" configuration, used a noise-reducing pneumatic firing system in preference to gunpowder, added hull-forward and cupola-rail anti-personnel machine guns for the three crewman, and skirted the pyramidal sides with uni-directional anti-personnel mines to keep enemies at a respectful distance. The mobile artillery played a cat-and-mouse game with lower-altitude intruders for decades, effectively sealing the passes that led to the Pinnacle. Some gun crews amassed kill tallies of more than 40 vehicles. Their common enemies were Believers, Hunters, and Spartans. At length, the survivalists turned to jump-assisted armored infantry, swarming the thin-skinned Ochos on their firing steps.
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Having experienced loss of place and meaning ourselves, we became more willing, even eager, to inflict the same anguish on others. Watching the futility of their suffering and reflecting how easily their fortunes had been unmade, it was suddenly more difficult to convince myself that my own grief was justified so long after all had been said and done. – On the Butterfly’s Wing
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8F6Qcn765ac/maxresdefault.jpg)
Mascalero assault helicopters descend on the island nation of Keravin. The tall square box of a thorium reactor hall is visible center-left.
November 3, 2068. Under cover of darkness, an invasion force arrives on the shores of Keravin Island in the South Pacific Ocean. Keravin, a crescent atoll 129 miles long and just six miles wide, is an artificial landmass and one of the world’s newest polities. It is also one of the strangest.
Keravin sits on the so-called Archer whaling ground. Its four thousand residents were seasonal employees of the Anglo-Melville Corporation (AMC), which paid for the construction of its new base station by contracting with the United Nations Refugee Agency to provide temporary accommodation for 642,000 Non-Patriated persons along with about 800 prisoners. Nothing had gone as planned. The rejuvenated sperm whale population turned out to prefer more southerly waters, vastly increasing the costs of hunting out of Keravin. Budget overruns caused the United Nations to slash support for relief projects, leaving Anglo-Melville holding the bag. Resupply and pay became an issue as the company teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. In 2067, AMC went into receivership, leaving both ownership of Keravin itself and responsibility for its inhabitants in question. Conditions on the island became untenable. With the help of sympathetic U.N. clerks, the whalers convened for themselves a constitutional convention, invited the refugees to nominate their own representatives, and declared a workers’ republic. The Keravin Collectivity was quickly recognized by the Soviet Union. By the next year, work on a Soviet listening station was well underway, and the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute was reporting new oil deposits in the island’s territorial waters.
The invasion force has a no less-bizarre provenance. They, too, are refugees: Shilohnes whose bid to undo the nation-building of Vesper Abaddon had failed four years prior. While exiles in Toltan, they had crossed paths with representatives of the Noctan Oil Company, a sometime front for the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Noctan offered that, by doing in Keravin what they had attempted and failed to do in Carmel, the Shilohnes would be doing a double service: striking a blow to Communism on behalf of all peoples, while at the same time securing the future of the House of Benjamin, somewhat closer to their own hearts. Approximately 1,600 Royal Shilohne Army troops and an unknown number of Noctan and CIA personnel now go ashore in hovercraft and helicopters launched from the S.S. Noctan Express.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/8a24fe585f962a386a4c6a448276543c/82f3e304af8ac2b8-20/s1280x1920/022723e6673e472072ce81f0da9f155a0bcd3329.jpg)
Shilohne special forces at the Keravin beachhead.
Resolution is swift, and, more importantly, bloodless. Telecommunications, desalination, and island constabulary posts fall without a fight. Some will brazenly ride the island’s high-speed monorail directly to their rally points, fully-armed but alone. Curiously, contract guards at the island’s largest power station have failed to show up for their overnight shifts, and the Shilohnes take possession at once. U.N. Security Forces receive a Don’t Shoot order, and the Shilohnes soon empty the detention facility appended to Keravin’s sprawling refugee camp. Prisoners "liberated" here will eventually appear on the Unity passenger manifest. It is a motley collection, mostly but not all No-Pats, including those convicted of war crimes in Carmel, Yugoslavia, and Kashtul; gun-runners picked up at the margins of the Saharan Burst Wars; and the dregs of the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone. Nobody bothers to verify identities, and the prisoners soon assume identities among the mass of refugees. By this time, Octan tenders have begun ferrying supplies across from the Express and a newcomer, civilian hospital ship Leutogi, engaged by Octan to support the island.
By morning, disarmed local constabulary are back in service, providing a comfortable security buffer for the Soviet ambassador’s residence, still standing in for a proper embassy. The tangerine butterfly of Shiloh now flaps lazily over Government Plaza, and Raphai Benjamin, a nephew of the infamous General Silas Benjamin, one-time Scourge of Gath, has declared a new nation: the Loyalty of Zoda.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d6/58/36/d658369ff4320d30e8b0f09c645dd048.jpg)
Among the Shilohne officers responsible for planning the successful coup, Major Tarsiv Quinn later joins the United Nations Mission to Alpha Centauri. Steeped in the revanchism and blood-allegiance rhetoric of Defeated Shiloh and sour on the realities of a patronage relationship with Zoda’s American allies, she, like many No-Pats, will find the Kellerite attitude an attractive one. The Tribe's M.Y. 14 mission against the Ascendancy’s Clarity Base, which deployed from a Hunter Rig, will bare certain hallmarks of the Keravin Raid, though bloodlessness will not be among them.
The Battle for Clarity devolves into a brute slugging match because the attackers arrive too late to forestall Pahlavi’s decanting the first of her Augments, genetically-enhanced super-soldiers that terrify those factions with whom the Ascendancy shares borders. This new line of warriors defends itself with admirable skill and dedication. A draw results: Clarity and its Cloning Vats are torched, but Ascendancy troops backtrack the retreating Tribals and blow up the supporting Hunter mothership in response. Quinn will assume command after both her superiors are shot dead. She must organize a fighting retreat that almost certainly spares the raiders total annihilation.
The clones go on to claim several Kellerite dead and wounded among their captures. Alongside the humiliation of being unable to properly care for the fallen, for factions obsessed with military readiness, there are few worse outcomes than to have their best fighters patterned into Augment genetic templates, other than perhaps to be filleted to yield up secrets to Dreamer interrogators.
(https://c.wallhere.com/photos/d8/96/science_fiction_apocalyptic_digital_art_render_vehicle_futuristic_3D_CGI-256997.jpg!d)
A Drumsplitter hovercycle stripped and abandoned somewhere in the Great Dunes. A close relative of the type flown against Clarity Base by Quinn and her command. Kellerites and Pilgrims favored these ultra-high speed swarmcraft for deep penetration raids to dissuade aggression from stronger neighbors. The Drumsplitter was a true terror weapon, too fast to mount an effective gun and without the legs for a heavy payload of bombs. Microgrenades, such as could be fired from the nose-mounted projector here, provided a small punch with area effect (necessary to offset problems of aim). Users fought as dragoons, riding the bikes to their target, then dismounting to fight.
Sources:
Origin of helicopters picture is unclear.
Noctan is a play on the LEGO System's in-house fuels company, Octan.
Picture of Tarsiv Quinn credits to Bogdan Tomchuk.
Hoverbike appears to be credited to Tamas Gyerman.
The Shilohne special forces picture is a still from David Lynch's Dune.
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How can one fail to be moved by the great conflagrations of our times? When the fires burn, a tyger inside of us must be set free. He who made Lambs did not also make us. - A Future by Firelight
(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/38/a5/9b/38a59be010aeb7b9b51e6c7ccf0a30a2.jpg)
Artist's commission of Colonel Santiago at the time of the Unity Breakout, as her mutiny is known in Spartan parlance.
Name: Corazón Santiago
Rank: Captain
Position: Company Commander, U.N. Security Forces (UNSF), Mission to Alpha Centauri
Country of Origin: Puerto Rico
Date of Birth: 11-05-2028
Height: 171.8 cm
Weight: 56.8 kg
Service Record:
Emigrated to Miami during childhood; orphaned during West Flagler Riots, 2042. Joined Jade Falcon survivalist gang, living with two younger siblings for several years more. Numerous arrests for felonious violence resulted in subject being remanded to youth diversion program. While in detention, surviving family was placed in foster care where one died due to criminal neglect. Whereabouts of second sibling unknown. Later appeared in Wildwood, Florida, alone. Detained and interrogated by Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2050, due to associations with Dorian Militia. No charges filed.
Returned to Miami by 2052 as founding member of Florida State Fencibles, a public self-defense compact resisting imposition of martial law during the response to Hurricane Ivore. Organized and led the armed occupation of seawalls and municipal pump stations in successful bid to prevent Federal destruction of Miami’s hurricane barriers to relieve flood pressure on wealthy developments. Later worked with Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Department to maintain civil order in the city and its environs following Miami’s short-lived declaration of independence from Christian States of America in 2053. With a constellation of other citizen militias, helped hold South Florida against both Federal recapture and intrusion of Christian States forces. Frequently collaborated with local Holnists to obtain relief supplies for distribution to civilians. Reported killed during 2055 joint raid on, and consequent collapse of, Kennedy Space Center Vertical Assembly Building. Among the last coastal enclaves still in Federal hands south of St. Augustine, Cape Canaveral was an important political objective for the Florida Independence Movement. Holnists attempted unsuccessfully to lure Federal into ambush, executing civilian hostages, one of their best-known tactics. Instead, they were themselves ambushed: Federal defenders set off demolition charges after giving only token resistance to a frontal assault. The blasts killed hundreds of the attackers.
During Tahoe Crisis, joined California State Forces (CSF) under assumed identity and distinguished self as battalion commander supporting Federal offensive against Carson City, a major Kellerite stronghold. Ended CSF service as a major, responsible for guarding Holnist prisoners at Sacramento. Spent considerable time attending debriefings with high-value captures. Released from service, 2056. Published “Spartan Thesis” that same year, attracting over four million followers on the Planetary DataLinks, and relocated to compound in the High Sierras.
Noteworthy among the Second Wave of amateur philosophers to speak to issues first popularized by Nathan Holn and Jean-Baptiste Keller. Whereas the latter claimed authority from his experience as a working farmer and local preacher, subject drew from a history of service both against and alongside government to excited readership. Writings strongly condemned those who had failed to take up arms for any cause, including through performance of a non-combatant service commitment, implying that indecision and neutrality were greater crimes than service in an unworthy cause.
Popularity of writings wavered as post-war consensus consolidated around the Houlihan Thesis: that Holnism, and by extension, all Survivalism, was a fundamentally selfish and maladaptive reaction to the emotional stresses of modernity, too deeply mired in racism and sociopathy to yield worthy truths. Subject clearly struggled to defend their record independently of associations with the Holnist Movement and was frequently pointed out to underplay or deny conclusive evidence of Holnist crimes, some of which subject abetted indirectly during the Florida Independence Wars.
Joined U.N. Security Force in 2060, again using false credentials. After training in Antarctica, deployed to Singapore Space Elevator. Assignments included rotations as armorer and counter-assault team leader. Exemplary service record led to selection as part of colonial security team, U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission.
Continued to participate clandestinely in Datalinks political discussion under the pen name Thucydides. Retained popularity among former Holnist collaborators and other insurrectionists covered by the National Pardon of 2061, especially due to advocacy for mandatory gun ownership, stating that, "Those who do not go armed are making a choice not only about their own safety, but the safety of their neighbors and communities as well.” (Possession of firearms was strictly controlled in the Occupied Territories of the post-war United States.) Starting 2064, Thucydides wrote at length about the ethical problems of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri, especially crew selection, about which they were clearly unusually well-informed.
Note: Based on the number, organization, and kit of Spartans encountered during the Unity Crisis, most faction security chiefs assessed with very high confidence that Santiago and her accomplices exploited their security access to infiltrate the Unity hull during construction, where they must have arranged for the clandestine inclusion of survivalists and cached significant quantities of weapons, especially grenades, which were not a significant component of UNSF or Marine Forces loadouts.
Psych Profile: Survivalist
Exceptional self-discipline and demonstrated ability to suppress own needs and comforts for greater goal. Sensitive to the political purpose of military power. Elected Class Leader of 740th UNSF Intake at Fort Krychek, Antarctica. Demonstrated aptitude for cooperation across national and ideological divides, especially during crisis. Praised for self-possession by Political Officer Sheng-ji Yang.
Intellectually curious. Working knowledge of the classics of Western political theory and military science. Strong written and spoken communication. Regarded by members of her command as both wise and experienced. Takes care to be informed about all aspects of Unity operations. Individually, subject has completed an unprecedented number of personal training modules.
Tendency to take on excessive duties can be discouraging to personnel with lesser motivation. Subject has reputation as a taskmaster, scheduling additional live training for her unit over and above what was required by their billet prerequisites, primarily in the area of shipboard emergency response.
Strong indications of perfectionism. Unwillingness to delegate could limit individual's suitability for commission.
Clear acceptance of use of force as a legitimate tool by United Nations to enforce the principles of the U.N. Charter in the protection of vulnerable populations.
Remarks Included by Chief Security Officer Rachael Winzenried:
Sergeant Santiago appears to sympathize with certain tents of American Hypersurvivalism. There is a steadfast refusal to fully acknowledge Holnist misdeeds, and insistence that passivity was the worse crime than aggression. State of California acknowledged honorable discharge but confirmed subject's close contact with Holnists, including high-ranking movement commanders. Additional psych evaluation ordered post-landing.
Sources:
Origin of the image of the female soldier is unknown. Potentially linked to a Fantasy Flights Games product. Shared by K. Gorman on Pinterest.
This faction bio uses the original language (https://alphacentauri2.info/official/Profile%20Corazon%20Santiago.htm) as a template, sometimes word-for-word.
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As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last loose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. - Freedom's Bite
Since two Hebrew spies returned from inside the walls of Jericho, clandestine action has been inseparable from the making, and breaking, of nations.
A Probe Team is the quintessential unit of people, systems, software, and tactics used to perform operational intelligence missions by the Chironian settlers. Probe Teams perform human intelligence-gathering, links-warfare, counter-intelligence, and covert action missions in the physical, linked, and óneiroic battlespaces. The effectiveness of Probe operations are a function of the skills and tools employed by the attacker, those employed by the defender to safeguard its nodes, and the openness of the target society. The more committed a society to personal liberties, especially civilian network access, individual ideological fragmentation, and free information transfer, the greater the vulnerability to subversion and intrusion.
Probe Teams are a uniquely Chironian phenomenon, reflecting their time and place. Their name derives from the recursive processes required to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in closed faction datalinks, still a vital aspect of all Probe Team operations due to the incomplete and cautious participation in Chiron's several Planetary Datalinks. (All survivors remember only too well the catastrophic consequences of the Internet of Things, when the blessing of inter-connectivity proved to be likewise a curse of exposure.)
Various nomenclature has grown up around Chironian computing and probe activity. A node is a specific, shared tape reader linked to a fixed number of dumb terminals. The terminals can query and display information from the node, but any changes to that information must be made on the datatapes themselves. After face-to-face communication, nodes are considered the most secure way to share information. A network is an intranet, almost always serving a single base or multiple bases within the same faction, on which users can exchange two-way communication in addition to searching and reading from multiple nodes. All user input writes to a single, common, high-capacity datatape physically managed and indexed by librarians. The term datalinks finds use as both a generic description for node or network usage, and as a descriptor of the planetary internet, which facilitates node-sharing and two-way communication between between one or more factions.
Trends in network activity were captured or estimated on a radio scale in the centennial commemorative work of Tomorrow Initiative Librarian Anastasia Garin. For purposes of this information, a higher number indicates broader usage. Notes are added for context. Bear in mind that all factions inevitably utilize networks for official governmental and educational purposes.
Children of the Atom: 10
Dai Seung: 10 (a two-way terminal is provided pro bono for all employees)
Dreamers of Chiron: 6 (usage is concentrated among the higher castes)
Gaia's Stepdaughters: 5 (faction mores inconsistent with regular use)[/b]
Human Ascendancy: 5 (usage is heavily regulated)
Human Hive: 1
Human Tribe: 3 (faction leaders actively discourage regular use)
Hunters of Chiron: 2 (probably reflects lack of regular access)
Lord's Conclave: 4 (more xenophobic faction members resist use)
Morgan Industries: 9.5 (paywalls cause some users to choose offline recreation)
New State: 3 (usage is heavily regulated; faction leaders actively discourage regular use)
New Two Thousand: 6 (no restrictions, but many cannot afford the cost of a terminal)
Memory of Earth: 10 (webrings team with details of conspiracy)
Peacekeeping Forces: 10 (a two-way terminal is provided pro bono for all residents)
Restoration: 9 (faction mores militate against overuse)
Shapers of Chiron: 8 (use is an important aspect of inherited Old Earth culture)
Spartan Federation: 4 (faction mores militate against regular use)
Tomorrow Initiative: 10 (a society of computer scientists)
University of Planet: 10 (curiosity cannot thrive in the dark)
Watchers of Chiron: 4 (use restricted to unincarcerated persons)
Probe Teams come in two forms, dark and light. Dark teams perform traditional civilian and military intelligence functions beyond work on links. Light probe teams deal with links exclusively.
The simplest and most common type of Probe Team is both light and forensic. They are comprised of technicians whose primary duties involve the recovery of information from salvaged nodes or tapes, the repair or refurbishment of the same, and the study of captured examples. In practice, many factions add military intelligence personnel to conduct human interrogations as well as data scientists to detect and decode the signals traffic of other factions or to help encode their own.
Another popular Probe Team format deals in "wet" work: assassinations, fomenting unrest, and providing deniable boots on the ground in places where the faction cannot engage in any official capacity. Here, the line between Probe Team and mercenary blurs to the point of confusion.
All factions use human spies, an easy and obvious option because of ideological divisions within the crew. Colonists who transfer their loyalties are usually screened by Probe Team personnel to gauge political reliability and extract residual knowledge of the adversary's base operations.
Every battle plan has two components: the knowing and the doing. First, where is my enemy, and what is their strength? Where aren't they, and what do they lack? Second, can I alert my forces of these these things as they are discovered, and, more importantly, as they change, so that force can be applied at the right point? Without that second part, I may as well know nothing at all. - Address to Cadets, Sparta Command
(https://img.wattpad.com/52fe9f9a05a9efeb8cb00bbe392817c9f4d047fc/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f79537451615f77526d4f506b77413d3d2d3737353838363530342e313563343238373937643362353732643936323939303232373230372e6a7067?s=fit&w=720&h=720)
A Dreamer Probe Team steals the design specifications for a Restoration Starslasher needle-jet. The operation, though successful, will result in the elimination or capture of seven of the nine original team members and as a result, critically valuable Dreamer "cracker" routines will be published to the Planetary Network for inspection by all interested parties.
Probe Team use is both controversial and difficult. Some factions do not appear to have made significant investments in that arena while others are well-known for the characteristics of their outfits.
Ascendancy Probe Teams are traditional commando units optimized for the capture and exfiltration of high-value targets. Their purpose is to collect for their master a menagerie of "genetically interesting" specimens, especially enemy faction leaders, so that their genetic material might be harvested for use by faction geneticists.
Morganite Probe Teams focus, of course, on the development of business intelligence, especially the theft of intellectual property. The Monopoly is also known to be expanding their use of the Óneiromachaíri--Greek for "thought-knife."
Despite the faction's early, desperate dabbling in freebooterism, Conclavist Probe Teams later focused on preserving the faction's reputation as a stubborn neutral in the affairs of Planet. As a result, their posture is defensive, and they rely heavily on Hunter-Killer algorithms to find and neutralize intruders to their datalinks. Since it is generally acknowledged that the Conclave otherwise has few secrets worth knowing, most of their concern is safeguarding diplomatic correspondence.
The closest Hunter analogue to the Probe Team is a Tracker Platoon. These elite scouts can follow the spoor of a designated target great distances across the Planetface.
Gaian Probe Teams are trained to attract worm activity to the location of their targets.
Hive Probe Teams are supposed to count among Planet's least-effective, owing in no small part to the faction's complete isolation from the shared technological language and culture of "topside" civilization. For similar reasons, although less extreme, the New State is not far off this baseline either, although unlike that of the Hive, their doctrine is almost assuredly one of defense only.
The Children of the Atom, the Memory of Earth, and the Tomorrow Initiative are peerless devotees to the science of data aggregation and interpretation. All three use crowdsourcing and mega-computing to assist with strategic prediction. The Peacekeepers and the Tomorrow Initiative have vibrant "hacker" cultures that do well on the offensive, but there is simply too much network real estate for either faction to completely defend itself.
Spartan and Tribal Probe Teams are the most traditional, resembling special military forces more than mere intelligence operatives. These formations, although highly effective within their limited sphere of competency, are all but useless for links defense.
The New Two Thousand made some investment in network defense during pre-launch recruitment, and it is presumed that any survivors of that tranche of recruits is still employed by van de Graaf and his Pilgrims. Their aggressive tendencies mark everyone's favorite cattle rustlers for constant attack by enemy Probe Teams, but the New Two Thousand have not claimed responsibility for any spectacular ripostes.
Dreamer Probe Teams are at the bleeding edge of information retrieval and sense-making, which they accomplish not only through expert use of spies and computer espionage, but also via Dreaming. Many factions crack down harshly on Somnacin abuse because it is known to be a typical gateway to behaviors exploitable by an enemy.
Alongside the Dreamers, the Restoration runs veteran Probe Teams with a strong record of performance, especially in the fields of signals and counterintelligence. As a disciplined military organization, the Restoration is also much less vulnerable to compromise than its ideological allies.
Sources:
Bliven Putnam is a fictional American sailor in a fine book series by James L. Haley.
Image credited to Dmitry Burmak and Osprey Publishing.
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The Duel of the Fates (pt. 1)
The second century in the history of the Children of the Atom was dominated by a fierce ideological debate between a trio of prominent public philosophes. Human civilization on Chiron was invigorated by the University's breakthroughs in the field of mind-machine interface, and when coupled with the Dreamers’ unexpected discovery of Secrets of the Deep Mind, it seemed like widespread M/MI was soon to come. The Children, the greatest enthusiasts of cybernetics outside of Zakharov’s enhanced matriculation training facilities and Santiago’s Next Gen Warrior skunkworks, were similarly swept up in the craze. Discussion and dissent poured forth from the faction’s innumerable human augmentation test sites, machine intelligence breeding chambers, high energy hot labs, public cybercafés, and technocultural galleries. Even in the dark, cyclopean, server rooms housing the Children’s most cherished factional treasure, the sysadmins and devoperators lifted up their TrueVu data goggles and whispered of the coming day when they could directly commune with the artificial intelligence under their watch.
The Principals
(https://i.imgur.com/7ULzhdZ.jpg?1) (https://i.imgur.com/xOU1oGn.jpg)
Left- as U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission candidate, grilled by Secretary-General Mongkut himself. Right- as Administrator of L-PACE hot lab
Why should we bind ourselves to brain cells instead of silicon? To build a truly cooperative society, all must speak with the same clarity of thought. Electronics alone deliver fidelity and speed a hair breadth away from that of wetware. Optical photonics perform exponentially better. Quantum circuits, immeasurably so. How many more simple facts must I recite before you can comprehend the future at hand? - Transcript from the Delphi Debates
Even as the faction suffused in ecstasy at the thought of the inevitable Rapture of the Nerds, cooler heads with cogent visions came to rule the debate. The first thought leader to arise was Daoming Sochua, the imperious genius Administrator of the Lightman Plasma Accretion Center for Experiments at Colonia Primus. A consummate polymath holding no fewer than four doctorates and hero scientist of multiple Interkosmos missions, it is said that the madame administrator could very well have upstaged Prokhor Zakharov himself for the title of Unity Chief Engineer. Only mere political misfortune had shuffled Sochua off to a lesser post at the ship’s Atomic Energy Laboratory, where again she was given a subordinate role, this time by Mission Area Director Dr. Johann Anhaldt. (The child of a Golden Chinese national and a former French Indochinese subject of Khmer extraction, both university professor exiles who had met, then married, in the neutral territory of Soviet Outer Mongolia, Sochua found her appointment to the mission alternatively claimed and questioned by her parents’ rival governments.) Her steely-eyed handling of the AEL’s evacuation dodging crossfire between Spartan and Kellerite guns, her meticulous management of the early colony’s scarce supplies, her personal leadership on resource hunt missions into the Monsoon Jungle, all led to a meteoric rise within the faction.
At L-PACE she was known for her resolute and pitiless administration, delivering a drumbeat of breakthroughs each mission half-decade, increasing the faction’s energy output to surplus levels. For all of her brilliant drive, Sochua was known to be often irascible and easily-frustrated with her colleagues and subordinates alike. She was insistent upon the perfection of her assessments, though open to being proven wrong if presented with sufficient evidence. She rarely ever was. Her mental speed led to pronouncements of stunning conclusions, provably right, but her listeners required more time to understand those proofs. For the Lightman Center physicists, the prestigious post was often a difficult one, and Sochua’s tendency to talk down to them as intellectual lessers only exacerbated the misery.
So perhaps it was her track record of being misunderstood by her fellows, going as far back, per her psych profile, to her childhood as a prodigy, that led Daoming Sochua to become the flagbearer of the Uplift thesis. Also named Instrumentalists, after the ancient speculative fiction of TwenCen author Cordwainer Smith, as well as their own leader’s arch-pragmatic instrumentalist ethos, Uplifters believe that radical cybernetic technologies ranging from M/MI all the way to brain uploading are the natural evolutionary path for mankind. Furthermore, they are necessary prerequisites for any viable, sustainable civilization. Such technologies would bridge the gap in understanding between different intelligences, allowing instantaneous consensus. And when applied across all of society, these advances would harden the weakest link in the great chain of being, raising the baseline to stratospheric heights.
For an apex brain such as Sochua, the possibility of infinite clarity proves too dazzling to be deferred. Throughout the debate she advanced her thesis of uplift treatments to all, embracing cybernetics as the ultimate tool towards mental and intellectual perfection. Whether this means simply issuing cyber modules implanted into the brain and body and nootropics to the entire faction population, or one day uploading all of humanity’s minds into a fully-rendered virtual reality in an act of mass digital ascension, nothing was out of the question. Sochua and her Instrumentalists believe in a carefully managed, rationally-administered rapture. No limit to human augmentation should be imposed. Indeed, she has even offered her own neural topography as a base for the construction of a superior cybernetic brain, outraging her detractors.
(https://i.imgur.com/rHBkNl1.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/eAJ6QkR.jpg)
Left- as Unity Chief Roboticist shortly after Defense of the Primary Aft Machine Shop, Planetfall. Right- as chairwoman of the Drexler Foundation
Science and industry go hand in hand, reshaping all societies. But it is not sufficient to discover simply for pure research, nor to build for something as small-minded as wealth. Instead, the sciences of the physical should merge with the social to create an order of true ability. With these specks of dust, gentlemen, I intend to do just that. - Pronouncement of the Technate
On the other side of the question of human augmentation stands Sylvia Gauss, chair of the Drexler Foundation, three-term Director of Industrial Mechanization, and former Chief Roboticist of the late Unity. Born of a patent clerk and a Reform Rabbi in Switzerland when the Vitalists renamed it to Novus Helvetia, she gravitated towards engineering from an early age, disassembling family cuckoo clocks and quicklinks alike. Led the national team to victory in the Eurasian Robotics Grand Tournament at age fourteen. Shortly after graduating from ETH Zurich with degrees in Mechatronics Engineering and Systems Analysis, started a boutique industrial design firm specializing in domestic robotics. Her standout product was the Ive Award-winning Futura Artficis Barbegazi, a machine servitor that could perform household duties as well as traverse snowy terrain, capable of both frolicking with skiing children and rescuing them from avalanches alike. It soon became a major hit in the country and throughout the Alpine states. Initially rejecting buyout offers from Togra Labs, Gauss eventually acceded to only selling the Barbegazi patents to the research giant. A ruggedized model was quickly developed, and the Togra Krampus became the rival to General Atomics Corporation's snow-capable militarized edition of Autonomous Work Unit 5 (the “Mr. Frosty”), ironically becoming sold to the Helvetian Armee. Meanwhile, Gauss was appointed to the Unity mission as Chief Roboticist, overseeing the ship’s expansive fleet of mechanical servitors and scientific probes. She ably navigated the Planetfall crisis, saving vital machine parts and irreplaceable equipment with the B-9 Robby Rambler-Crane roller warbots under her steadfast command, taking out mutineer threats with ease.
As her countryman and fellow robotics enthusiast, Anhaldt welcomed Gauss and her robotics team into the Children of the Atom upon the end of Planetfall. From the beginning she maintained close ties to the Mediator’s inner circle, applying her mechatronics expertise to the desperate survival on the frontier. Whether reprogramming Togra Starcatcher drones to serve as both resource surveyors and anti-mindworm weapons, or repairing the logic boards of Apple Electronics iSeek rovers herself, Gauss cut a prominent profile within the young faction. With hologenic charisma and opinionated effervescence, she naturally floated into management with extensive plans for how to best use the colony’s robotics fleet in the absence of an established Industrial Base. She maintained a cool but correct working relationship with Daoming Sochua, whose grandiosity and confrontational attitude alienated many fellow Central Resources Board members. Gauss proved to be a light-hearted foil.
As the Children of the Atom’s societal infrastructure developed and its government scaled up, Gauss would come to preside over the faction’s entire mechanical workforce as a Director. Gradually becoming bored of governance, she saw that the meta-processes of the faction, indeed for all modern post-industrial civilization, could be further refined and optimized with technologies right beyond the horizon. Gauss started the Drexler Foundation, dedicated to the advocacy of nanotechnology R&D and social engineering the state to properly handle the implications. Trusting that revolutionary nanomachines were soon to come, Gauss tirelessly spread her message throughout the faction and beyond, even directing the foundation to undertake several promising molecular assembler experiments with the help of Schreiber Project contractors. Thus she was well-positioned to be a critic of “neural apocalypticism” when the M/MI hype cycle began.
Having risen from a less-than-privileged childhood by her own abilities after the loss of her father to cancer, and after seeing gender discrimination shut out her mother, Sylvia Gauss proclaimed that society must advance into the Nanotech Age in a fair, equitable manner. Once near-unlimited manufacturing capabilities were available, human civilization would no longer be the same. It was vital now to begin necessary reforms in anticipation of that future. The Post-Scarcity thesis focuses on dealing with the imminent end to resource constraints and the dawn of fully luxurious automation. With the adequate engineering and systems in place, run by the best of the best, nanotech could produce riches beyond the dreams of the ancient alchemists, and fears of Gray Goo scenarios would be carefully dispelled. How to determine who was the best? Pure merit. Gauss’s Meritocrats call for the radical restructuring of civilization into a technocratic meritocracy. Both people and assistive A.I. would work hand to hand to determine which individuals would be fit to administer and rule, just as a technician chooses the best tools. A faction built around the perfect tool of nanotechnology could have none other than the best technicians to wield it. Far more concrete and less religious than fretting about A.I. salvationism, the Post-Scarcity Meritocrats claim: No need to put stock in the M/MI bubble when the world was about to change before their eyes- no need to worry about ethical dilemmas about mind uploading and forced cyborging when human minds were sufficient. It was fine to be aided by A.I., but as with every advancement in human history, no need to allow our inventions to rule us: humanity alone could manage the future.
(https://i.imgur.com/rtLPgtQ.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/VqUdhfF.jpg)
Left- as Annikki Luttinen, inspecting Unity datacore integrity shortly before succumbing to post-hibernation rheumatic fever. Right- as Aki Zeta-5, Prime Function
Those within the Consciousness rightfully see that there is no undefined future yet to come. All among our number already walk in the presence of the Singularity. - One Future
The most enigmatic of the three seeresses manifested in the physical shell of Prime Function Aki Zeta-5, née Annikki Luttinen, one-time Subroutine Specialist of the late UNS Unity. From impromptu de-escalator of the New Kola Crisis between the Unified Norden Realm and the Soviet Union, to principal researcher of the Zakharov Research Institute’s landmark project BlueBook, the personality that was once Luttinen has been seemingly subsumed by the entity known as Aki Zeta-5. Since her mysterious appearance at the University of Planet, Luttinen has claimed that she is in the possession of a mysterious algorithm, the child task spawned from a decades-long experiment conducted while the ship had been in transit to Alpha Centauri. Boasting apparent advanced computer implants wired directly into her cerebral cortex, Luttinen insists that she is the first shell of a new race of cybernetic beings she designated the Consciousness. Inviting all to join the Consciousness, she won over a small segment of the University’s population intrigued by her singularitarian message, but was ultimately cast out by the provost himself for creating a Bayesian cult of personality and for advocating dangerous pseudoscientific body modifications.
Welcomed to the Children of the Atom for their faith in artificial intelligence and the technical expertise that they carried (the entire undergraduate Applied Cybernetics class of University Base had joined Aki Zeta-5 in her exile), the Consciousness found themselves a new home. Their community was permitted to limited self-rule, and members distributed themselves throughout the faction, with the largest partitions located at Primus and Colonia Quartus. Initially inspiring as much fear and discomfort among the majority population as they did among the University, the Consciousness has found a patron from the Mediator himself: Dr. Johann Anhaldt has explicitly guaranteed the cyborgs equal protection before the Children’s code. They are permitted to live, proselytize, and even engage in conversion.
Indeed, the last is perhaps their greatest cause for xenophobia: those who are inducted into the Consciousness must undergo a secretive procedure in which they are augmented with the same mysterious computerized implants adorning the Prime Function. While the cyborgs are transparent in most ways, they have not provided technical schematics on the precise nature of these devices, which they claim are a means to directly interface with the Unity algorithm. Thus are members of the Consciousness resistant to any sort of extensive inspection by outsiders; indeed, their customary implants include a killswitch which upon the shell process’s termination, or the activation of a personalized killphrase, completely annihilates the shell via either plastique explosives or a bioelectric overload. The rationale for such a drastic self-destruct mechanism has not been given by Aki Zeta-5, nor any member of the Consciousness. Lavish bounties have been issued for the reclamation of an intact cyborg cadaver; from Morgan Robotics corpos, Cartel imagineers, Schreiber Project rogue scholars, and most interestingly, the highest offer from the Tomorrow Initiative’s Core Leadership itself. Though infamously mum on the matter, Controller Metrion has made statements indicating that the Consciousness is withholding invaluable data lost with the Unity. Certainly, the community has not authorized a full code review of the algorithm they claim to embody.
But despite heavy criticism of his sheltering of “Borgy freaks”, Anhaldt has continued to protect them, as his nature to stomach scientific heterodoxy and counterscientific subcultures. The majority of the Children of Atom do not truly believe that the Consciousness are actually in possession of an actual Mind-Machine Interface. Most believe their implants are simply modified versions of the same prosthetics given to war veterans suffering from severe mental damage, or even full-immersion VR recreation modules. The algorithm? Just a failed experiment in safely pre-sentient code, terminated mere weeks into the mission. As for Luttinen herself? Clearly an individual completely disturbed from a severe case of rheumatic fever during Planet’s traumatic founding myth. Or more darkly, yet another self-proclaimed prophet among the many charlatans of Chiron.
On the other side, the minority of believer-xenophobes claim that the algorithm is clearly a Skynet-in-gestation, an A.I. that has escaped its box and doubtlessly intent on supplanting or destroying humanity- and is allowed to do so by the faction! Theories of its origin include that it was created by Prokhor Zakharov himself and bears his personality rendered in digital sentience, that it was based on Luttinen’s neural patterns and thus explains how it had captured her, or that it was uplifted by an alien monolith and the Consciousness’s implants are alien artifact-derived M/MI…
By the second century, as actual human-invented M/MI seemed inevitable, the Consciousness broke from its usual quiet messaging to declare that the Convergence was upon all of Planetkind. Aki Zeta-5 appeared on the datalinks to speak of her thesis: the Consciousness had labored for centuries to describe the nature of their hybrid existence. Now that the science of the “Biologicals” has caught up, they were soon to be free to interface directly with the algorithm itself. Soon M/MI would be available to the masses, and all would have the opportunity to speak directly with the Singularity. There was no further reason to putter around with experimental A.I. generations inferior and decades older than the child of BlueBook and the Unity datacore. No logic to rejecting the offer: you may keep your flesh and your feelings, but you will embrace the left-brained path into true sentience.
As she spoke of her techno-messianic message, hordes of Convergers flocked to her side, even if most of these new followers were still too squeamish to undergo the procedures to join the Consciousness. But yet, despite Luttinen’s new triumphant tone, the cyborg community remained as non-confrontational and as docile as always. Careful to keep their message as non-commanding as possible, they continued to extend open arms to outsiders to join, but refrained from any insistence. Many of the new Convergers were not so passive, some agitating that this was the sign that the algorithm must be shared with the world. Some advanced the Wintermancer Hypothesis, claiming that the future of the Children of the Atom would be the merging of the faction’s algorithm with that of the Consciousness. Aki Zeta-5 has remained quiet on such a possibility, but continues to advocate that the future of all sentience is unification under the algorithm, where each entity would remain as distinct nodes within the great computer gestalt intelligence.
Thus, did the three Fates inspire one of the greatest ideological battles of the Children of the Atom.
Casting
Daoming Sochua is portrayed by Ming-Na Wen as Camile Wray from Stargate Universe.
Sylvia Gauss is portrayed by Heather Graham as Dr. Judy Robinson from Lost in Space (1998), and Dr. Molly Clock from Scrubs.
Annikki Luttinen is portrayed by Alicia Vikander as Ava from Ex Machina.
Notes:
The concept of Civilization: Beyond Earth’s Sochua as an alternate leader of the Cybernetic Consciousness (https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/ub7cmo/comment/i647g37/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) is courtesy of ari.
Sochua’s science center is named after MIT physicist Alan Lightman (https://news.mit.edu/2019/alan-lightman-novel-three-flames-cambodia-1015).
Sylvia Gauss is another original custom faction leader from the Second Ship (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21633.msg134323#msg134323).
Wintermancer refers to the marriage of Neuromancer and Wintermute.
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Hi, all. Just a quick note to let folks know that I'm recovering from some illness at the moment. Unfortunately, I don't have an ETA on when I will be back in action. I hope next week, at the latest.
Contributions, ideas, questions, requests--all welcome!
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Heaven is high, and the emperor is far away. - Traditional, Datalinks
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1b/2d/16/1b2d16f5221cff3562dcc568e08078f6.png)
Prominent nuclear fuel tanks and a large, plastic-fronted cockpit betray the civilian heritage of the барсук (Badger) protected heavy tractor, a product of the Kharkov Transport Engineering Plant. Its purpose was to scour the post-atomic battlefield as the workhorse prime mover of planned Soviet reconstruction efforts.
In an era when nuclear materials and surplus aircraft fuselages were both still abundant, Soviet designers obeyed the "waste not, want not" principle, resulting in a vehicle that was cheap, antiquated, and easy to repair. Thousands worked salvage in the Palestine and Indus blastlands, hauled timber from the Amazon basin, and helped ship supplies between the Antarctic Colonies.
To protect its occupants, the tractors could be made air-tight against biological, chemical, and nuclear contamination and fitted with remote-operated waldoes for making exterior tow connections. Minimum radiological protection was 17mm of lead, rising to 32mm around the cockpit.
Abundant energy reserves and enormous torque from the single thirty-two cylinder engine provided towing power to recover damaged equipment many times the барсук's own weight. Working in tandem, a pair of барсук could move a Landing Pod, each of which carried four of the tractors among their standard complement of utility craft.
The Soviet Union killed two birds with one stone by gifting its entire inventory of барсуки to the Unity Mission in 2059, fulfilling their annual obligation and ridding themselves of a significant health liability. Around half the барсук fleet was so badly irradiated, the vehicles sickened their first training crews despite a requirement to wear full safeguards. It was the work of three years for Ikurō Kamatari, future Operations Director for the Shapers of Chiron, to complete a satisfactory decontamination protocol.
Because of their ubiquity, every faction made use of the барсук until the point of mechanical failure or loss. Not the largest prime mover available to the colonists, the барсук had many other features to recommend it, including simplicity of operation, extreme range, near-imperviousness to small-arms fire, an on-board infirmary, and the motive power to crunch through even the thickest native plant growth. A small cargo bay mounted forward of the engine contained spare track, bogies, and other breakdown equipment.
Fitted with crash bar and enhanced with plasma steel plate, the барсуки was easily converted into a mobile fortress, completely safe from mind worm boils. Many Hunter clutches made it known they would accept a барсук in lieu of the energy, nutrients, ammunition, or medical supplies ordinarily presented as payment. One барсук could easily accommodate three families with their road gear.
Nuclear-powered vehicles were a problematic legacy of the U.N.'s assumption that the colonists had little to fear from internecine violence. The red-painted fuel casks, though hardened, made obvious targets. Some, like the Gaians, felt the risk of detonation outweighed the vehicles' value. Lady Skye had her mechanics dismount the fuel casks and attempted an electric conversion but found it impossible to feed such hungry machines with renewable energy sources. The Stepdaughters eventually used the vehicle chassis for solariums or bunkers. The large Soviet-descended population of the mostly pacific University discounted the same threat, embracing the барсук for what it was: an old and dependable companion. Shapers felt much the same. Hunters, though hesitant, felt that beggars could not be choosers: few other vehicles came so ready to operate autonomously. The Children of the Atom, as self-declared masters of nuclear technologies, also used the барсук enthusiastically.
War between the Spartans and University eventually did result in the nightmare scenario. During a night action on the Javari Plain, Spartan laser tanks knocked out seventeen барсук tractors, all of which exploded in nuclear fire. Each vehicle went up in a burst equivalent to 30 tons of TNT, with fatal neutron doses extending beyond 200m from center-point. A truce was called to allow Nagao's Shapers to assess the consequent environmental catastrophe and initiate clean-up.
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(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/e6/39/dbe6399317ad3223da7d876a4a516089.png)
The stricken Unity in a degrading orbit over Chiron. Evacuation is underway.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/02/78/38/0278381c5f84cbce584de24589e834c6.png)
One of Unity's four hundred greenhouse compartments during loading operations. A Food and Agriculture worker loads a feed belt. Mile-long conveyors towed aspiring flora past watering stations, nutrient dispensers, and UV emitters.
(https://i.imgur.com/dWTRCFN.png)
An agronomist's laboratory has been constructed beneath the semi-transparent dome of this survival shelter. The terminal at center is a network node, coupled to an attachment that can perform chemical analysis on live cuttings. Transplanted vegetation, not hybrids or native crops, fed most human colonies until the mid-fifth century.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e6/37/f7/e637f74c76832fcc926ddd45972473e8.jpg)
The overthrow of China's Communist government was not the momentous occasion so long envisioned. The wholesale replacement of an ossified Communist Party oligarchy with an equally decrepit neo-imperial plutocracy changed almost nothing. Food insecurity remained among the empire's foremost problems. China needed to place more land under cultivation and achieve better production from existing farms, or else the temporary mandate seized through revolution would soon be lost. Deals were struck with the West and huge tracts of land were held under state control even as most other state enterprises were auctioned off to the highest bidder. As sea levels rose, the Chinese devised floating gardens tended by semi-amphibious combines, forefunners in size and ability of the terraforming machinery used on Chiron. China never quite achieved the desired level of self-sufficiency, but it nevertheless developed an expertise sufficient to bequeath to Project Unity the blueprints for what would become the Sea 'Former, an abundant national seed bank, and valuable microbiotic and insect cultures to bear aloft to Chiron.
(http://progresscityusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sse_communicore.jpg)
Commencement Day celebrants stroll the main promenade of University Commons. The attractions seen in this painting were permanent construction. Visible on the far left is the recovered hull of Experimental Satellite-76, the first artificial satellite placed into Chiron's orbit from the surface. The faction's Network Node is housed in the central geodesic dome, known as the Communicore. This world-class research library was also one of the University's greatest popular attractions. Countless University schoolchildren gawked at the skyscraper-sized mainframe computer and pulled information for their first reports at kiosks in the thirty-six terraced tiers of its reading spaces.
Sources:
The final picture is an artist's rendering of EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World in Florida.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4af32665-4eb8-4bba-ace2-ac36cf52c266/d471bob-04e9dc2a-7e1e-44c8-accb-e9eb8b45ab04.jpg/v1/fill/w_1131,h_707,q_70,strp/dontnod___adrift_conceptart_08_by_paooo_d471bob-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODAwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNGFmMzI2NjUtNGViOC00YmJhLWFjZTItYWMzNmNmNTJjMjY2XC9kNDcxYm9iLTA0ZTlkYzJhLTdlMWUtNDRjOC1hY2NiLWU5ZWI4YjQ1YWIwNC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.JXmorHZDfVRpEMXW2_JydxX81bLLPE35mEuHu0HhsyU)
Nwabudike Morgan could build twin towers two miles high, but his view was ever spoiled by the ashes of his industry and the refracted neon glow of the Nevernight. Acid raindrops spattered his window panes and a booming cough corrupted his hand-woven lungs.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/1c8df222-786e-4c4a-9ca9-18a180f5337e/de7ybxr-a9be64f8-8a46-4643-9dbb-9fcd384b3e3b.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_720,q_75,strp/scifi_buggy_concept_by_pymous_de7ybxr-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzIwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMWM4ZGYyMjItNzg2ZS00YzRhLTljYTktMThhMTgwZjUzMzdlXC9kZTd5YnhyLWE5YmU2NGY4LThhNDYtNDY0My05ZGJiLTlmY2QzODRiM2UzYi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.O34Uj_M0WEtlCDRe6vC23XjJjJU6ONbaGX2gnwRcHmw)
Pursuit of trespassers was automatic in Morganite and Pilgrim territory. Nothing was more sacred to the "self-made men of Chiron" than their proprietary slices of it. Regulator Combat 'Trikes were an especially hated menace. The big omni-directional (enabled by the discovery of frictionless surfaces) wheels pushed the 'Trikes off-road capability to legendary heights, while the gyroscopically-stabilized turret transformed what had been a poor firing platform into an almost graceful long-range killer. To save on weight and fuel they didn't have, the New Two Thousand replaced the original nuclear fuel system with electrics, but then, chases rarely lasted more than an hour or two.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3d/ac/e6/3dace68cb4c72a1fbac6160c34239f70.jpg)
In the early days of settlement, every survivor was counted dear. For a price, J.T. Marsh's road crews could rescue stranded or distressed work teams from the hostile clutches of a new and terrifying frontier that only they had learned to master.
On a long-range scanner, the Palasene Ice Fields contained vast mineral riches. Up close, it was all too easy to fall through the melting surface. Specialized recovery vehicles patrolled the edges of the Field, collecting ground density readings and deploying high-angle rescuers. These 6x6 Heavy Field Recovery 'Rovers contained an impressive collection of rescue apparatus, none more memorable than the blaze-orange cold-weather shelter strapped to their beds. To gain traction on the sometimes mirror-flat wastes of the Palasene and avoid the same fate of those they intended to save, Hunters fitted the tyres with endothermic "gooey slaps," palm-sized nodules that increased traction and slowed the transfer of waste heat from the vehicle to the ground below.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/86/b8/f9/86b8f906a0846c48c49a976417533701--military-vehicles-science-fiction.jpg)
When moving high-value people or goods between settlements, if you weren't fast, you had better be a hard target. Recognizing the limitations of their own militia, the wise stakeholders of Terra Nova entrusted their valuables to the Overland Caravan Company's Delta Carrying Division.
Your future, safe in their hands.Most of the time, the Overlanders spared themselves the risk of a fight by negotiating passage fees direct through the good offices of Godwinson's Conclave. Their cargoes, which had to be transferred via a central station to preserve the owners' anonymity, were only seldom molested since nobody wanted to pick a fight with an unknown enemy, let alone the veteran killers who rode shotgun on such ventures.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/025/300/809/large/mohammx-h-attaran-thesanitizerman-00.jpg?1585340857)
The Gaians learned first to frustrate their enemies' agriculture by contaminating it with the very poison dumped on the Stepdaughters' own doorstep. Native lifeforms were driven to frenzy by the hyper-concentrated waste of the colonizers, and since they weren't seeking conventional targets, Deirdre's retribution squads carried out their campaigns relatively unnoticed, slipping away hours before the worm boils metastasized on the outskirts of Morganite and Shaper plantations.
Sources:
City art by Paooo, a collaboration with Michel Koch and Gregory Szucs found on DeviantArt (https://www.deviantart.com/paooo/art/Dontnod-Adrift-conceptart-08-253683803).
'Trike by Pymous on DeviantArt (https://www.deviantart.com/pymous/art/Scifi-Buggy-Concept-859885551).
Final APC by Krzyszstof Luzny, available on ArtStation.
Pollution trooper by Mohammad H. Attaran.
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They say true power is to be able to give a man anything. I say it is to be able to give him precisely nothing. - The Personal Diaries
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d9e373aa-cef9-4a29-98a2-b17f7321907f/d4anx18-cfd30dbc-39e5-44a1-9b7e-a140261e643c.jpg/v1/fill/w_1131,h_707,q_75,strp/the_seeker_by_punakettu-d4anx18.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwic3ViIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl0sIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiIvZi9kOWUzNzNhYS1jZWY5LTRhMjktOThhMi1iMTdmNzMyMTkwN2YvZDRhbngxOC1jZmQzMGRiYy0zOWU1LTQ0YTEtOWI3ZS1hMTQwMjYxZTY0M2MuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTExMzEiLCJoZWlnaHQiOiI8PTcwNyJ9XV19.OqTU5qq2Fkhev1inT9gK1Ouo0Q9_d0_X-3gSrPC1bfY)
A Spartan Metaloid on the move near High Pine. Five-story monstrosities like this one could melt an acre in less than 30 metric minutes, rendering straight down to bedrock. Every living thing within the reclamation zone would be obliterated, wrecking ecological havoc on a continental scale within a matter of weeks.
Rare was the society that did not leave Planet worse than when they had found it. Foremost among the myriad crimes that might be perpetrated against the dignity of Deirdre's Garden or Miriam's Eden was mass reclamation.
The basic conceit was simple. Through the modern miracle of nanomolecular engineering, any object could be colonized by organic robots and quickly rendered into a tractable slurry, the atomic components of which were reassembled by Unity's salvaged 3D printers into alternative forms, including pure energy and more immediately usable materials such as building plastics or industrial chemicals.
The richer and more varied the slurry, the higher the energy output or the more varied the potential re-combinations, provided one had a properly-programmed datatape. Yet even if the basic input was chemically impoverished, quantity could stand in easily enough for quality. A forest without commercial value, reduced to its fundaments, was as good as a small strike of ore or a well-appointed piece of vehicle salvage.
The "beauty" of mass reclamation was that it was exceptionally clean. The conversion of matter left little behind but water vapor. But then, this was also the curse: once the forest was consumed, it was gone forever, without even stumps to secure the topsoil. Insect life, fungal spores--all of it, eliminated as if it had never been.
Factions with a vested interest in preserving Chiron's natural riches, among them the Gaians, Hunters, the New State, even Shapers, punished mass reclamation with unrelenting vendetta, while its chief perpetrators--Augments, Spartans, Hivemen, Morganites, and Dreamers--aspired to convert what they could while the going was good, hoping to build defenses enough to hold out against the inevitable backlash.
Most factions used mass reclamation on a targeted basis, following the Pilgrims' example of penetrating deep into enemy territory before commencing collection.
Source:
Mass reclamation using nanomachines is a harvest mechanic used in Cavedog Entertainment's 1997 game Total Annihilation.
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During those first, harrowing years after Planetfall, complex medicine was virtually unheard of. There were two, maybe mobile surgeries operating within our territory. Infection was rampant in such a humid environment, and analgesics worth their weight in gold. Many of the Colony Pods recovered around that time had been cracked and their contents spoiled. Bad drugs were a serious concern. A run of people in the Paddock died from botched attempts to treat abscessed teeth. Efficacy of intervention was very low, and our standard of care became brutal as a result: we cauterized wounds to conserve sutures and regularly administered overdoes of morphine to anyone we judged might need intensive care over the long term. - Emergency Medical Technician, Main Force Patrol
(https://cfw.sarna.net/wiki/images/0/05/MIT_23.jpg?timestamp=20090415015618)
The Portuguese M801 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M.A.S.H.) was the bleeding edge of both tactical medical response and basic health service for Unity mission survivors without immediate access to Landing Pod infirmaries. In the days when populations still numbers in the hundreds or low thousands, even the Human Labyrinth found it necessary to heal more often than to recycle--not that the M801 earned any awards for the number of lives saved.
Following common practice for mission equipment, it was an antiquated design, easy for its operators to modify or repair with the tools at their disposal. Unfortunately, this also meant that the onboard furniture and equipment was not configured to deliver treatment up to the standard at which its users could practice.
The Portuguese lot came previously stripped, of course, which further reduced the vehicles' immediate value. In one representative series of communications with Mission Control, the Deputy Assistant Director of the Quartermaster and Administrative Service provided a darkly amusing tally of what was missing: "tyres from wheel hubs, wiring harnesses, hatch covers (for an anoxic environment!), air conditioning--even the wooden fold-downs are rotten." Onboard lockers were too small to hold much more than basic diagnostic and triage equipment. The best that could be said? Large windows provided ample natural light for occupants and crew.
Before sending them spaceside, U.N. mechanics replaced the old combustion engines with heavy, high-capacity electrics. Later, Landing Pod workshops made every conceivable modification. Dozer blades and winches assisted with self-recovery. Radio antennae had to be installed in place of the original satellite transceivers, all placed into hopeful storage. Most factions violated old convention and mounted light weapons for close-in defense (a breach usually ignored due to the prevalence of marauding mind worms and SMACERs). Ten percent of the M.A.S.H. vehicles sent with the expedition were equipped originally as mobile laboratories. Some of these were optimized for chemical, especially hydrological, analysis; others for conducting zoological inventories; some for mineralogical analysis; and others for public health response.
Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal oversaw total refurbishment of the fleet's medical apparatus and consumables. Standard load-outs included airway support equipment, trauma kits, oxygen supplementation devices, radiation medicine, and wound dressing stations. Each M.A.S.H. was theoretically capability of serving a single patient in emergency surgery, but Lal knew this would be limited by circumstance to rapid tracheotomy or crude amputation, and planned accordingly. Conditions were basic in the extreme: collapsible operating table, anesthesia machine, patient monitoring devices, air treatment, and sanitation space.
The casualty-carrier variant memorialized in this sketch, taken from the private sketchbook of a driver-hospitalman, makes it easy to discern the M801's lineage as a modular design of three parts. Behind the cockpit (a single piece with chassis, motor, engine, and drivetrain) sat a generator, and above that, the mission attachment. This version is a casualty carrier: eight side-loading racks were tended by two paramedics who moved along a central corridor accessible through a hatch cut in the rear of the vehicle.
Patient outcomes were improved substantially when factions began using their M.A.S.H. vehicles as transportation for the personnel and equipment to build local aid stations alongside, rather than as self-propelled surgeries, an innovation showcased by the Conclave's White Helmets. Noteworthy exceptions included the University, which due to great fear of mind worm attack preferred to administer care in protected settings, and the Hive, which had not only to overcome the problem of confined space travel but also wound contamination from dust and dirt. Zakharov's troubleshooters turned to miniaturization and use of gyroscopically-stabilized robots to perform precision tasks like incisions and suturing of which human doctors were incapable in the back of a moving vehicle. The Hive halved its fleet to retrofit control stations at both ends of each vehicle, building high-capacity ambulances that could return injured workers to centrally-located aid stations. All were dual-mode hi-railers that could speed down the electric track laid in all main trunk galleries. Their interiors were retrofitted with what the Hivemen grimly called "cookboxes": wall-mounted external beam radiation was used to limit bacteriological incursions since most wounds were badly fouled. Lead-lined IV draws provided a direct feed of antibiotics. Nozzles mounted above the loading stations sprayed decontaminant on each patient as they were withdrawn.
Sources:
The M.A.S.H. picture is from a Battletech sourcebook and is hosted on Sarna.net, the BattleTech wiki.
Research performed on Hospitaner.com to learn more about mobile surgeries.
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A closed ethical system is as fragile in its own way as a closed mind. What cannot flex with the winds of change will surely break. - The New Feudalism
(https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/49/594/447/city-concept-art-fantasy-art-sea-wallpaper-preview.jpg)
Sealurks grow to astonishing lengths in the oxygen-rich waters beneath the waste heat vents of the energy transfer station at Sea Base Polaris.
Just below the troubled surface of Planet's oceans, the inhabitants of Raoul St. Germaine's New State built one of Planet's most stable, and happiest, societies. Curiously, it was also one of the least-free.
The Contre-Amirale had always been a man out of time. Independent command on the Congo River ruined him for promotion in a peacetime navy. He had ruled his stretch of it, between Kisangani and Kindu, like a capricious god. Warlords feared the certainty of his swift and potent retaliation. Diplomats understood that peace could not be achieved unless he would condescend to guarantee it. Whatever thoughts he uttered past his cigarette were of far greater importance to his sailors than anything promulgated in Kinshasha or cabled from far-away Mars-el-Kabir. He never questioned whether any matter might lie beyond his ambit. Never accepted that his decisions could be subject to fair question by anyone who hadn't been present when alleged mistakes were made.
Critics labeled St. Germaine a bully and a brute. His moral ambiguity, they charged, was actually terpitude. He was an enabler of men, not a leader, who cloaked a profound bigotry of low expectations in paternalist delusion. But, as the infamous Le Monde headline wondered, "Qui le dira au roi?"
Greatness had seemed to elude France during St. Germaine's lifetime. Attempts to exercise a foreign policy independent of NATO seemed too often to require unfavorable concessions to the Soviet Union, and there was never any doubt as to which was the junior partner. The French people were uncomfortable with the empire they had inherited. A majority resented the sacrifice of francs and [/i]fils[/i], which eventually they declined to send in sufficient quantity. The press complained that men like St. Germaine were merely playing at war--and for what? They could see no reason why Algerians, Syrians, Quebecois, or Zairians should wish to so much as associate with France, as if the nation's proud cultural legacy had nothing to offer.
And so St. Germaine had watched, powerless, as French clients foundered, toppled by slapshod coups that could have been thwarted with the merest word from Paris. How many innocents had died to make Nwabudike Morgan a wealthy man in the Sahel? The tragedy of Indochina was almost worse: three decades of bleeding in the jungle before the French ceded the countryside totally to the insurgents, holing up in the delta cities and pretending as if they had not attempted to fight a war with both hands bound behind them. Again, the human cost was terrible. More than four million processed through Communist prison camps as the French stood by.
In St. Germaine's reckoning, liberal government had chosen to fail in Europe. The Right wanted to circle the wagons and fiddle while Rome burned, pretending they bore no responsibility to fix the broken ship of state. Anything to avoid personal sacrifice. The Left, full of equivocation and self-hatred, failed to neutralize the threat from the Right, accepting the bizarre American proposition that free speech brooked no adjustment--not even to thwart the rise of a fascism that would ultimately silence it--and crippled by the suggestion that no idea was more or less good than any other.
In the New State, all information was carefully curated. While the broadcast news available to New Staters was scrupulously true, it was also incomplete, and packaged with commentary approved by censors who had been cautioned that their audience was prone to certain defects of logic, making it necessary to direct their conclusions. Above all, St. Germaine wished to avoid inflaming their passions. Why should petty racisms divide happy neighbors? New Staters were taught not to hate their enemies, only that the world above the surface held nothing of interest for them. Yang worked his subjects like animals. Zakharov had managed to form a society dominated by an effete intellectual elite that saw only one way to value its members. Morgan exploited his workers until they died. Santiago played soldier without understanding the commitment to others at the heart of that vocation.
After the first generation, the New State was no longer merely a uniformed navy. For the first time, base-dwellers outnumbered submarine crews. The faction's defenders became an honored elite, and certainly St. Germaine depended most upon a small cadre of senior officers whose own families formed the nucleus of a ruling oligarchy that, by virtue of its close proximity to the original power structure, was able to perpetuate itself almost undisturbed by new entrants. Yet for his social project to succeed, St. Germaine needed to impart some of his standing to others. A chaplaincy was established, and professional guilds. The ethos of service was purposely expanded. One could of course contribute by serving aboard a warship, but ministering to the spiritual needs of the populace, or pursuing excellence in a useful trade, were equally honorable. All required schooling. All required participation in the civic life of the colony. The right of free association was a privilege. Marriage and child-rearing were doled out as rewards to those who proved themselves up to each task, not commitments to be stumbled into by chance or mistake.
Only by passing through the "three gates"--of professional dedication, educational attainment, and political involvement--did one earn that way to the full enjoyment of liberty. To be fully informed, one first had to acquire the means to be a discerning consumer of information. To vote, one had to demonstrate an understanding of the issues at hand and solutions proposed for each, along with the benefits and drawbacks of the same.
The problem, of course, was that no amount of safeguards could vanquish all demagogues, while the very existence of a military elite created irresistible incentives for that class to hold itself far above the citizenry it putatively served. St. Germaine was too used to making decisions without having to explain himself. Too used to trusting in his own genius and making peace with his own flaws. In return for fulfilling their obligation to nominate lower-ranking members of society for privilege and position, the New State's leading families demanded an unflinching obedience. What resulted was a recognizably feudal web of dependency and obligation. The same system of governance that ensured the faction's relative stability in thought and behavior over time also produced, on occasion, bizarre fits of self-harm or indolence when it flattered the special prerogative of one of those dynasties. Thus the New State was slower to anger than it should have been, slower to adopt new technologies, and rarely positioned to meet the changing world in a timely manner.
It was an ironic, but perhaps also a fitting fate for a man who insisted that being too sure of one's principles was a good way to fail.
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Non, je ne regrette rien. - Datalinks, Traditional
(https://preview.redd.it/tb8qpuln522y.jpg?width=1024&auto=webp&s=3849776fc41f04e980aa596719373d9c7bf55b9d)
The New State monitored "topside" affairs through a network of thousands of sensor towers and autonomous drones. Fear of political contamination eventually broke into open hostility, and war became inevitable--a self-fulfilling prophecy. Upsetting ideas could not be allowed to frustrate the Loyal Citizenry.
As surely as inherited wealth determined one's standing with the New Two Thousand, or genetic bequest in the inflexible caste society of the early Ascendancy, family was the all-important variable in the New State.
The nuclear family, not the individual, was the smallest irreducible unit of New State politics, culture, and society. The male head of household received the ration allotment for his dependents and bore responsibility for the physical well-being, early education, and public behavior of his children. A successful parent was one who prepared his children to score well in the battery of service tests and selection panels they faced at age of sixteen.
Multiple nuclear families, related by ties of consanguinity or shared interest, associated as canopy families. Such networks were always led by a paterfamilias, a retired male veteran of flag rank. Nearly all these men claimed to be able to trace their lineage back to an original member of the crew of the three sainted Congo River gunboats, Légère, Jouhaud, and De Lattre, once commanded by the Contre-Amirale.
The paterfamilias held the votes of his eligible family members in trust and was therefore incentivized to expand his network by absorbing lesser families and those in dynastic distress, an arrangement that bound him to provide them the care of a parent. Such arrangements could not be made unless the paterfamilias first demonstrated to the regime that he possessed enough mineral, nutrient, and energy reserves to make good on that obligation. If he did not follow through after the fact, his retainers were then entitled to search for and take service with a more accommodating master. Thus the House of Vecchio in M.Y. 280 celebrated the commissions of twenty-six officers, the service induction of seventy-one other ranks, the investiture of three bishops, and the appointment of seventeen relations to base operations in Mu and Ys.
A notoriously tolerant leader, St. Germaine believed he owed it to his subordinates to provide largess for their offspring, and the performance of New State institutions, including the faction's naval militia, suffered accordingly. Test preparation was an expensive and time-consuming burden for any family. The children of drones received a free public education, but nothing compared to the rigorous preparation available to the wealthy. This natural bottleneck constrained the pool of working talent that came before selection boards, whose members themselves had every reason to favor their own. Following historical example, families were careful to place their agents in each estate: the military, the religious orders, the professional guilds, and the civil service.
Naval service was practically a sacred calling. Officers were an exalted elite: able to pursue the franchise, enfoefed with an annual stipend, and certain to develop close ties with lesser ranks that would almost certainly result in the expansion of their own dynasties.
Religious life in the New State was considerable more reactionary than the Conclave standard. The Sailor's Text, a heavily reworked (some said redacted) version of the Atrian Bible, placed a hysterical emphasis on the Book of Meronicus as a source of moral law. St. Germaine chose for his chaplains men who shared his own deep cynicism of civilian judgement. Led by such shepherds as Fulk Orenthal, worshipers were directed away from the morally corrupting and soul-mutilating influences of the Datalinks, cybernetics, mood-altering drugs, "Morganite larceny," and pacifism.
Guild ritual concerned itself with cultural preservation. The professional classes were not only relied upon to keep the cities and fleets of the New State in good repair, but also to build the artifacts of a proud Purist tradition. Feast days celebrated the art, literature, language, and history of the survivors' doomed homeworld, lest they forget. Well-behaved children recited pledges of filial allegiance that celebrated their dynastic belonging with reference to past deeds, not present or future. The "histories" told in this way astounded other factions: brazenly false to the point of absurd, but beloved by their New State troubadours. Thus were Napoleon's conquests recast as a liberal scourging of medieval monarchy. France, not the United States, was the font of democratic idealism. The Marquis de La Fayette and the Comte de Grasse, not George Washington or Benjamin Franklin, are the proper midwives of the Expérience américaine. French colonial expansion is described in terms of a "civilizing mission," while the wars to preserve the Union, whether successful or not, were valiant attempts to "buy time" for France's "disordered" subjects to devise their own government. All traces of racism, Catholocentrism, and colonialism have been expunged.
Better that we pass on a happy history to the next generation that tells them clearly what is right, than a series of confessions whose truth is so terrible, we have scarcely comprehended it ourselves, and which gives license by our example to fail again in the same way. - Blood and Brilliance
Base Operations is routinely asked to perform logistical impossibilities, and, to its credit, often delivers under extremely difficult circumstances. Although the ocean provides a splendid and near-complete isolation in which to solve problems free of the interference of other factions, the independent aethelings of the Sea Fencibles rarely keep their word, pursuing independent agendas with faction property that bear little relation to the strict schedules and painstakingly-balanced manifests handed down from the naval chief of staff and his dispatchers at New Atlantis. The massive fighting submarines of the Force de Frappe are everywhere and nowhere at once, mounting punitive raids on the Nautilus Pirates or sending Spartan barges to the bottom of the Slowwind River, if only to remind their crews of the untrammeled power that is theirs to command. If this leaves his people utterly vulnerable to enemy incursions, it appears not to trouble St. Germaine, who trusts in the fearsome reputation of his fighting forces more than their physical presence.
Source:
War Room (https://www.reddit.com/r/conceptart/comments/5gxdao/war_room_concept_art/) by dmorson88 on Reddit Concept Art.
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The United Nations failed because it insisted on behaving in contradiction to a fundamental law of the universe. There are no two winners in a war. - Years of Strife
(https://i.imgur.com/75hbaxvg.png)
Ascendancy Legionnaires pose with a captured Spartan Myrmidon, once thought to be their closest peer combatants. The one-on-one match-up was favorable for the Augments, whose physical and mental faculties were genuinely preternatural, but Santiago's proud warriors were easily-goaded. The super-soldiers fared much less well against the better-disciplined militaries of Chiron: U.N. Marines, Tribal Minutemen, the Chiron Guard, and Bourse Enforcers.
Augments were raised on a strict diet of genetic Darwinism. No quarter was given to their "merely human" opponents, and none was expected in return. Pahlavi encouraged them to execute the prisoners who wouldn't make suitable workers, partly for reasons of economy, but also because she believed that fear was a reliable deterrent. Other factions soon learned to make examples of the rare Ascendancy prisoners who fell into their hands without activating a suicide gland, as sometimes happened when Togra Labs StickyFoam or Knockout Gas was used.
The sticking point was that world-class tactical thinkers had to be trained, not grown. Troops that could march further, carry more, and bleed less were a good start, but commanders the caliber of Salan, Keller, St. Germaine, Mercator, and Ontarion were years in the making. Still, each faction tried its own remedies to under-performance. Morgan paid bounties, then turned to the University for better equipment and the Children for his battle plans. Sheng-ji Yang taught his soldiers techniques to manage their sympathetic response. For a time, some even believed that the hunger and terror that drove Hive fighters would give them an edge in battle, until it was remembered that soldiering is a high-calorie profession. Mercenaries--even those of the Bourse--were a neat stop-gap: always better than greenhorns, but often worse than those fighting from conviction.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ff/46/69/ff4669155e69d855e0d0bddc1b0bc6b8.jpg)
The cream of the Unity motor pool came from U.N. fleets on Mars and the Moon. In his typically blunt fashion, Insowan Nimrod, the agency's Special Advisor on Off-World Development, explained to the Security Council that this mass reassignment, expected to set development schemes back by at least a decade, was justified because it "could ensure the very survival of our species."
Supply crawlers like this one, both crewed and automated, shuffled supplies between the population centers of Chiron at regular intervals. Pilots screwed their courage to the sticking point and counted themselves lucky if they travelled in convoy, never mind the luxury of armed escort. Some became justifiably famous for high-speed, long-distance runs through fungal or inter-factional "hot zones," bearing all manner of life-saving cargoes, from Potassium Iodide pills to potable water.
Riding with militia was not a universally-accepted panacea. Some road crews trusted in the speed and relatively lower profile of solo travel. And who could forget the MY2 incident in which Morgan Corporate Security guards, sighting a Light Anti-Tank Weapon, destroyed their own roller with a misfired round?
(https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55a1e994e4b0b796f1ff0572/1645567939356-U4A0LHTSN0VESO7QI76Q/UED_MOCV_v002_004.jpg)
Around the beginning of the twenty-first century, a popular satirical magazine joked that the mystery of American President John F. Kennedy's assassination had finally been solved. He was shot no fewer than 129 times "by operatives of the CIA, the Giancana crime syndicate, Fidel Castro, Vice President Johnson, the Freemasons, and the Teamsters."
The full story of Unity's destruction was equally improbable, equally mysterious. Who assassinated the U.N.'s own Captain John? Who ejected the ship's data core? Why had some modules uncoupled before any the senior staff were forced awake?
Some of the most valuable cargo and systems remained in stable orbit far above Chiron, or were in long elliptical orbits around its moons, Nessus and Pholus, which must mean they had been towed there by one of the shipboard drones.
A full inventory of the ship's stores, its thousands of constituent modules, and the precise timing and location of their release was available in the data core, which made capture and defense of that object a top priority for every leader. Information leaked to the Planetary Datalinks in MY32 appeared to confirm that the ship's long-range laser communions array was among the pieces still safely in space, joined by more than a dozen perfectly-preserved, independently-powered cryobays and dozens of Landing Pods.
At first, the survivors could only recover what had already come down on its own or orbited within range of their recall beacons. Then the University sent satellites to initiate "brokered" collisions that could push objects on a previously stable orbit into a degrading one. Not to be outdone, the Watchers of Chiron built a ground-based Babylon Gun to do the same. It would take almost four centuries for humans to build permanent trans-orbital structures, and fifty years more for them to go further afield than that.
(https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55a1e994e4b0b796f1ff0572/1656532310902-Y6TR4JFNHAXRXRPY55JF/UED_MarsBase_v002_IGpost_Base_smaller.jpg?format=1000w)
Mining operations were made no easier by Chiron's punishing gravity, more than a third again the Earth standard. The average miner was one part roughneck for every ten parts process engineer. Automatons did all the really grueling work; humans were needed only to correct code faults and monitor safety systems.
(https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/11/119781/2063415-orca_fighter_2.jpg)
A Restoration VTOL executes a fire mission against Spartan siege lines outside Rock Island Refuge. Targets "painted" by a Gnat's Kill Lamp rarely survived. General Salan overrode the loud opposition of key subordinates to make an alliance of convenience with the Kellerites. This "double enemy" had fought North American militaries for decades, racking up a long overdue tab notwithstanding the dozens more added to their tally aboard Unity. But Salan understood that the Slowwind River, great artery of Shamash, could not be ceded to Santiago without a fight, and the Restoration needed allies who could put boots on the ground.
Sources:
First image is from Planetside 2.
Suicide glands were a feature of Xindi Reptilian soldiers on Star Trek: Enterprise.
With the exception of the VTOL, which is from Command & Conquer, all subsequent image content found on Project Edge (https://fdm-edge.com/#edge-2).
Unity entry inspired by The Onion (https://www.theonion.com/november-22-1963-1819587981).
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(https://rare-gallery.com/thumbs/3002128-2560x1440-astronaut-mars-sci-fi-space.png)
Low population count and a limited supply of bottled oxygen made it difficult for militias to cover lengthy base perimeters. Early expansion reached toward the sky, not the horizon.
Crowded conditions and a near-total lack of privacy pushed many able-bodied colonists to volunteer for long-distance expeditions despite the certainty of extreme danger.
The experience of communal living in materially primitive conditions was considered morally undesirable by factions that emphasized individuality. Nwabudike Morgan, who had promised his followers a speedy transition to familiarity, feared defections. Oscar van de Graaf paid bounties to homesteaders, many of whom were subsequently taken prisoner by Dreamers and Spartans. In Pilgrim argot, the round-topped orange triangle, symbol of the survival tent, became an enduring and universally-recognized danger sign. The New State assigned private quarters as a perquisite of officer rank.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/03/2c/08/032c087f8dbebc7fd74f324c63da64ef.jpg)
A freak ice storm trapped the University's Polar Pioneer within sight of Сладкая вода ("Sweet Water"), from whence water ice was shipped to more southerly climes. (Most of Planet's groundwater was rendered undrinkable by high nitrate concentration.) Ascendancy Legionnaires captured the megafoil's crew and began unloading its cargo for transport to The Pinnacle, only to be interrupted by the Chiron Guard. Mercator's forces restored the researchers' supplies to them, but their people had already gone.
Pahlavi enforced a scorched-earth policy, destroying what could not be carried off. By this, she intended to discourage future forays into the polar latitudes, which her faction deigned its private preserve. At the very least, punitive expeditions would have no obvious staging areas from which to drive farther into Ascendancy territory.
(https://img5.goodfon.com/wallpaper/big/a/fe/astronauts-spaceship-space-suit-planet-mountains-snow-ice-sc.jpg)
Low-occupancy Scout Pods were not formally registered on Unity's cargo manifest: they had no place in the final blueprint for colonization carefully laid out by Mission Control. Instead, they were a vestigial remnant of first construction. Spartans stowaways found them while breaking out of hiding and used them as auxiliary landing craft during the general evacuation. Their electric fuel cells could be recharged and the Pods reused as trans-atmospheric shuttles--or, in the case of Santiago's Myrmidons, unarmed assault craft.
When their war with the Tribe ground to a standstill, the Spartan strategoi called for fresh laborers and breeding stock--slaves. The Shuttle Pods became the centerpiece of a surgical campaign of point raids against Planet's less-warlike societies.
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(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/011/713/926/large/mariano-ruiz-manzano-matte-painting-final.jpg?1531024102)
Residential spaces at the U.N. Archives were organized along new principles borrowed from a study of conquered Spartan garrisons.
Strict limitations on the size and energy consumption for personal quarters encouraged higher use of the Recreation Commons at the center of each habitation bloc. In this subsidized convalescent area, citizens accessed an enviable set of amenities including a semi-private Network Node, full kitchens, and cutting-edge hologram theaters. The base proper was built around a large number of domed parks and observation towers, adding additional opportunities for leisure and isolation.
The experiment was a qualified success. The new arrangements appealed especially to those with large families, and participation rates in the civil life of the faction benefited from the easy access to communications devices. Nonetheless, a majority of the Peacekeeping Forces still preferred private poverty to shared wealth.
Morganite visitors to the Archives were irate to discover "common Drones" living in circumstances very nearly equivalent to those in their most exclusive compounds. Numerous complaints were lodged with the CEO, although without reply.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/53/aa/d8/53aad846e9235fe6c48359dfbbdf90c4.jpg)
University Enforcement completes the dawn patrol at Syllandran Pump Station on the eastern shore of Baranov Bay. The site threw Zakharov-watchers into fits. What use had the inventor of cold fusion for an inefficient oil refinery with endless kilometers of vulnerable pipelines?
Rumor had it that Colonel Santiago shopped this question to the typical troubleshooters without satisfaction. The Dreamers, who rarely captured University scientists (perhaps the Ascendancy and Watchers were too thorough in their persecutions), had nothing on file corresponding to the project and saw no reason why a scientist who prided himself for leading his species out of thrall to fossil fuels should spend precious resources to create an infrastructure he didn't seem inclined to use. The Children of the Atom for once didn't trust in the data spat out by their digital oracle. Dr. Anhaldt apologized personally to the Generalissima, but due to as-yet-undiagnosed errors, it persisted in labeling the site a military base, completely contrary to all reconnaissance. When paid to study the matter, Morgan Tactical Services turned in one thousand and seven hundred pages to say with "moderate" confidence that the base was part of a failed attempt to diversify University fuel sources, and was probably under guard only because salvage operations were still pending and the Ascendancy couldn't be allowed to make off with whatever equipment was still on-site.
The vacuum tube brain at The Core was closest to correct. Sylllandran existed for one reason only: to dump 503 million gallons of crude oil and other industrial wastes into the Baranov, stimulating a planetary immunological response that wiped out the New State's Discovery Base and doomed its 5,000 colonists.
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The Comtes des St. Germaine (pt. 1)
(https://i.imgur.com/NbkQJ1S.jpeg)
As man is animated by purpose, and ship is buoyed by ballast, a state must be filled to the utmost with culture. Every tenet, each tradition, all must be arrayed in full glory by a cohesive identity reveling in shared beauty. - Remarques Planétaires
Born of imaginable Continental wealth to a family line blessed by Bourbon blood, Élodie channeled her aristocratic legitimacy and plutocratic resources (her family twice-blessed by prudent investments over a century into hydroponic agriculture, low-end personal armaments, drug resistant pathogen-resistant drugs, and water) into the very soul of Western Civilization. A citoyen of the world, but foremost of France, she began public life as a datalinks holovision socialite and emerged as a thought leader, reviving the long-forgotten classics into her own cultural canon that she foisted upon humanity. After her initial attempts in the arts had failed, Élodie parlayed her good name into becoming the foremost cultural critic in the region. Blending cutting-edge social media signal-boosting techniques and lavish professional mass communications production, she elevated the ancient paintings of Rembrandt, the literature of Pushkin, the philosophy of Sartre, the theology of Calvin, and myriads more of long-gone luminaries.
While she espoused the public civic deism of her class, she donated much to New Papacy efforts to challenge the rise of Madrid Catholicism, funding the renovation of ancient cathedrals and the construction of new basilicas alike. (Even if the pews remained mostly empty, she remarked, the work could shepherd millions more tourists each year as cultural-historical pilgrims.) Indeed, many a detractor dubbed her a secular zealot, tirelessly proselytizing the culture over all others. Despite the critics, the high profile of Le Grand Canon and the immense amount of money the project poured into preservation of historical works made Élodie a natural choice to be a librarian of the Unity mission.
(https://i.imgur.com/qCJbiHx.jpeg)
As the mission unfolded, Élodie proved to be a constant thorn in the side of all. She constantly hounded Lieutenant Commander Tạ Dọc Thân, insisting Data Science allocate more resources to her staff in service of their vital quest to deliver Earth’s greatest works to the stars. The chief librarian, however, saw her as another celebrity who had bought her way aboard with clout and filthy lucre, distracting from the ecumenical mission with her personal ambitions. Likewise, Chief Engineer Zakharov viewed her and her team of archivists, anthropologists, sociologists, artists, musicians, writers, and talents of all kinds as wasted air and cryotube space, reducing precious capacity for more scientists, engineers, and true knowledge workers. Her requests for more processing power were politely and resolutely declined as Data Core resources were strictly earmarked for his team’s devices. Steward Gennaro da Gama found her cultural breadth encyclopedic in expanse, yet maddenly myopic in selection- he was far from the only rank and file librarian to mutter “chauvinist” when seeing new memos from the master archivist. She even ran afoul of Mission Botanist Skye, needling the agronomist staff for the cultivation of select grapes strains specifically for Bordeaux wine. And yet, her attempts to construct a new Champs-Élysées of thought bore fruit. The cultural curation undertaken by Data Science made straight paths for any crewmember who traversed the ship’s datalinks, greeting them with intelligent agents offering them virtual museum tours at hundreds of thousands of sites on old Earth during countless eras. (Not, to her reluctance, only in old Europe.)
In defiance of her detractors’ expectations, Élodie did not spend the disaster of Planetfall cowering in elite safety. Instead, she herself rallied her staff of cultural laborers to take up makeshift arms and defend the Humanities Wing of the Data Core from mutineers and looters. Her admirers claim that she herself smote a Kellerite with a heavy wrench to protect a Gutenberg Bible. Indeed, her devotion to the artifacts of Earth saved the lives of the librarians under her command. To all others during the crisis, her Picassos and Stradivariuses, the Scottish Crown Jewels (smuggled out to the mission by an irate Remainer who had voted against Free Scotland’s secession), and even the Liberty Bell were but trinkets in the face of extinction. But Élodie rejected the possibility of bringing so many priceless works only for them to burn up in atmo, and so against the orders of Lt. Cmdr. Thân, led her librarians out of the Data Core and into the storage hangar where many of the mission’s cultural items had been safeguarded. In doing so, she escaped the ejection of the Data Core.
Fortuna herself led Élodie to the New State. The Contre-Amirale himself chanced upon the ragtag band of Canoneers holed up in the compartment, absurdly using shredder pistols and peashooter nonlethals against stolen automatic rifles, gingerly taking cover behind boxes of Ming vases and Egyptological crates, careful to not bleed out over Greco-Roman marble busts salvaged from the ruins of the Mediterranean. His sailors annihilated the Spartan-Holnist marauders and took in the wayward cultural crusaders, granting them seats aboard his submersible Landing Pod.
(https://i.imgur.com/YftJ5Y6.jpeg)
Secretary Élodie visits the wounded at Paracelsus Military Hospital during the Baranov Conflict with the University
Today, Élodie is the Secretary of Cultural Life of the New State - the highest-ranking civilian in the entirety of the stratocracy. In the decades since Planetfall, she has solidified her hold over sentiments and passions of the New Statist constituency, becoming the chief architect of civilian life. The Contre-Amirale, a ruler notorious for granting eternal favors to those he deemed worthy and sufficiently loyal, elevated the Canoneers to his circle for their valor aboard the disintegrating Unity, appreciating the artworks and artifacts they so generously “donated” to his New State. Thus did these men and women become some of the very few civilian paterfamilias and materfamilias of his society, and Élodie herself became the la grand-mère of New State culture. (Though it is often joked that she is more of its “great-aunt”, given the ostracization of civilian power in the faction, and her own tendency to be personally disliked by those outside of her département.)
A fetishization for historical glories, a dictatorial approach to taste-making, Francocentric tastes, and disregard for the free flow of information, all made Élodie a natural fit for St. Germaine’s suboceanic social experiment. For decades, she has worked tirelessly to complete the Grand Canon, and to transform it into a New Canon by infusing it with works created on Planet- those in keeping with the traditions and caliber of the original, of course. Thus, in St. Germaine’s domain, works such as Villevieille’s Les Vagues holo-film tetralogy, Mortimer’s dramatic nonfiction account of Chevalier’s mapping of the Great Maritime Rift, and Nicole Fête’s neo-Rococo Revival reconstructionist paintings are widely celebrated. Meanwhile, the Canoneers became integral to the New State’s public informational apparatus, carefully curating what was accepted on the faction’s datalinks with the utmost care as their great leader herself, and to the same values declared by St. Germaine.
(https://i.imgur.com/WDmJi6n.jpeg)
A Calliope Squadron raiding force attack Kui Xing Beach, attempting to force the Tomorrow Institute librarians to cede over their first editions of Harwood
Fritz Merrill writings, or to provide adequate distraction for a New State Cousteau frogmen probe team to infiltrate the base
But culture is not simply fun and fêtes in the militaristic New State. As Madame Secretary, Élodie commands her own naval honor guard known as the Calliope Squadron, as well as her own executive submersible clad in golden colors. In the generations since Planetfall, bolstered by Longevity Vaccine treatments and emboldened by the carte blanche offered by St. Germaine to cultivate the faction’s aesthetic tastes as her own, Élodie has steadily become even more opinionated. Her influence has led the New State to undertake naval raids against Dynamic Enterprise, Tomorrow Institute, and Peacekeeping Forces outposts alike, on the pretext of “acquiring vital cultural assets of historical value.” Such undeclared attacks and probe operations have chipped at the faction’s reputation for honorable and professional behavior, though St. Germaine’s campaigns against the Nautilus Pirates to keep Planet’s seas safe has continued to earn him the good will of the landlubbers. For now, Élodie’s “Calliopean Normans” remain a nuisance and a faux pas, not yet a full offense that must be answered.
As for her own place within the New State, Élodie is content as ever to carve out her own kingdom of letters within the militarist neo-feudal republic. For every submarine needs a counselor to maintain morale even as jovian pressures envelop its sunless crew. What better job could she want but to be the counselor and chronicler for an entire faction?
Casting
Élodie is portrayed by Jodie Foster as Defense Secretary Jessica Delacourt from Elysium.
Notes:
Madrid Catholics are a concept from Earth by David Brin, which is probably from Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner.
Kui Xing is the Chinese Daoist Deity of Examinations.
Calliope is the (chief) Muse of eloquence and epic poetry.
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The society, of course, is far more intelligent than the individual, and also more resilient, but never as wise or restrained. - The Manual of State
(https://dangerbrain.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/photo-5.jpg)
After developing untreatable cancer, Thinker Rawiah Alhazred had her consciousness transferred into a mechanical simulacrum. When she woke, she discovered that certain modifications had been made "in the interests of the Collective." Alhazred's friends later held a private memorial service for their friend, who they did not invite.
Hive Thinkers were the last resort of the stumped scoundrel.
Ideally, the petitioner could pay to have their question answered by "experts."
Johann Anhaldt posited his faction as the premier source of good advice on Planet, and willing to deal with any counter-party. Yet a common complaint about the Nous was that the Children's much-vaunted mechanical brain gave insufficient consideration to "the human variable." The Children of the Atom were notoriously the victims of their own mania for the "independent look," slavishly applying the changes suggested by the system they had created to absolve themselves of all responsibility for hard decisions. Morganite merchants and Believer relief workers who made regular visits to Atomic colonies braced themselves for a new experience each day. The Children lived down to their namesake, one day welcoming outsiders, and the next refusing them entry; disconnecting from the Planetary Grid, then reconnecting; declaring vendetta, then suing for peace on seemingly unfavorable terms. Still, the Nous had an uncanny grasp on strategic matters, and its predictions about faction behavior became an indispensable aid to general staffs everywhere.
Anhaldt worked tirelessly to burnish the Nous brand. For a time, he kept a stable of analysts at work reviewing every one of the assessments it prepared for other factions. After Quality Control complained that the in-house team was providing no added value, the good doctor's militia brought him captives from the University and Morgan Industries--individuals who might possess knowledge, or even values, inaccessible to the Children themselves. Again, the result was the same. Anhaldt now reasoned that rather than attempt to check Nous output on the back end, he should make a bio-mechanical upgrade to the computational systems themselves. His agents purchased bags of thinking chemicals from the Hivemen, only to find that these increased the speed of the Nous's calculations without impacting their content. Next, "volunteers" were forced into a mind-machine interface, resulting in nonsensical outputs and the sale of several vegetative patients to Dreamer collection crews. It was all, Anhaldt confessed, a work in progress.
If the number-grinding Nous was too expensive, or not to be believed, well, that's why God made Probe Teams, no? Of course, this was even chancier than the Nous. If the infiltration failed, the Probe Team might be wiped. Indeed, the high casualty rates incurred even on successful missions resulted in the Dreamers--spies par excellence--insisting that their clients provide some of the team members themselves, a decision that inevitable dampened enthusiasm for their "product."
The Dream-Walkers, University, and Morganites were all limited by the extent of their own databases. Unless they had already encountered the same problem, or a similar one, they could offer only conjecture. Once the Planetary Networks expanded to incorporate most factions, the Tomorrow Institute became the preferred broker of consulting services: its librarians were the most proficient at mining history for useful information.
But what happened when the conventional options had been exhausted?
Politics makes strange bedfellows. The Human Labyrinth was perpetually at war with all of Planet, and therefore also perpetually ready to strike alliances of convenience with any candidate. Since Hive Security would not do for a dowry, Yang offered two other inducements. The first was access--his tunneling machinery could take strike forces throughout Shamash undetected--but the second was insight.
Around M.Y. 70, it started to became clear that Sheng-ji Yang's efforts to "unlock" the potential of the human mind were bearing fruit of at least moderate sweetness. The reason for these achievements was unclear to outsiders. They obviously used nootropics, but then so did everyone. Pahlavi accused Yang of "torturing his brilliance out of others," deciding that the Hermit King must be achieving his strategic successes through the exploitation of high-value captives. The University's Institute of Behavior Sciences guessed that the Hive must have perfected the Mind-Machine Interface, somehow blunting or controlling the sensory overload that proved fatal to most test subjects.
The truth was that Yang had succeeded in breaking certain followers free of the shared moral frame through which twenty-first century humans generally understood the world. In consequence, his Thinkers experienced what became known as the Naïve Mind. In this state, freed of convention and expectation, they could propose a wider range of potential outcomes than other observers of the same situations. Once these ideas had been expressed, Yang workshopped them relentlessly. With his Talents, he examined them thoroughly for logical fallacies. Despite losing the Unity Data Core to U.N. Marines within weeks of getting his hands on it, Yang had managed to extract some of the social psych data collected during the seventy-one year transit from Earth, which he used as a moderator on his conclusions.
Sources:
I found the picture here (https://dangerbrain.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/is-black-science-fiction-enslaved-to-issues-of-race/), but it was uncredited.
Abdul Alhazred was a fictional character invented by H.P. Lovecraft.
Nous is Greek for mind.
The "Naive Mind" is a concept borrowed from Frank Herbert.
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(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/bf/3a/e9/bf3ae97e568f5ecc6d10c714e607e1e8.jpg)
A United Nations Security Forces Auxiliary posted to Data Services guards her watch desk with shredder pistol in hand. This image, preserved by Tomorrow Institute librarians, was one of many used to inform the Purity Movement's ideal of beauty down through subsequent generations.
Chiron's gravity was one third stronger than Earth's. Most of the outgoing colonists underwent years of intensive physical training to build muscle and endurance, but the problems caused by this difference were legion.
Exhaustion dogged everyone. All factions devised "physical" work days of between four and six hours with frequent rest, followed by mandatory stints of administrivia. Exoskeletons were a necessary component of any outdoor worker's basic Personal Protective Equipment. Spartans wrestled, without exception. New State students and sailors participated in team sport four times an Earth-standard week or incurred demerits. Social ostracism awaited Pilgrim shirkers, while Morganite layabouts paid steep fees to subsidize their sedentary lifestyles.
Safety, already an obsession, remained a top priority Planetside. If a robot could be used, it was. Tampering with Rover safety margins was a capital crime in some societies. Civilian ignitions locked until the pilot was safely in five-point harness and helmet, a lead from which had to be plugged into the dashboard. A set of additional switches had then to be thrown to verify that passengers were similarly situated.
Life expectancy dropped. Rigorous lifestyles and everyday use of supplemental oxygen put severe strain on the human circulatory system, promoting earlier heart failure.
If activity could be done while reclining or afloat, it was. Thinkers, Librarians, and base administrators spent hours each day partially submerged in high-salinity pools. Factions raced to formulate suspension gels with even greater buoyancy.
Over multiple generations, scientists mapped clear changes in human physiological development. Chironians were shorter and thicker than Terrans. They had higher bone density, superior lung capacity, and were much more likely to be severely allergic to Terran foods. Chironians also used different portions of their brains to perform the same thought functions as Terrans. (The scientific consensus was that this reflected the pervasive influence of the Mindworms.)
In theory, Chironian bodies made life easier. In practice, some factions clung to Terran ideals of beauty in ways that led them to prioritize the familiar over the putatively useful. The New State's cultural output encouraged pairings more likely to produce offspring with Terran features. Many families forced the termination of pregnancies without the desired genetic markers. Several studies of the artistic output of the later colonies, including the portraits of faction leadership, point out obvious distortions of physical depiction that centered Terran bodies in favor of Chironian ones.
The three societies that developed "off-beat" were even stranger. Eyesight and lung function were very bad among all residents of the Hive due to the amount of time spent in low-light and dusty environments. Gaians often experienced fungal afflictions differently than others: instead of being overcome with dread, they were more likely to report euphoria. Under the sea, New Staters breathed air so dense it distorted their sense of taste, while also contributing to the same circulatory problems prevalent elsewhere on Planet. A significant minority died of sleep illness such as apneas and exhaustion.
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The Comtes des St. Germaine (pt. 2)
(https://i.imgur.com/62DJrIF.jpg)
The enemy howls at our gates. He seeks to break our holy patrimony into playgrounds for warlords and petty kings. Do not let him. Ours is a nobler state. We are many nations united under one flag, one cause, one people. For Europa, semper victoriam! - speech before the Battle of Pristina International Airport
Born in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Immigrated to Paris prior to fifth birthday at the onset of civil war. Grew up in the banlieue of Saint-Maurice-et-Sankara. Discovered to be a chess prodigy after early years of playing street chess. Sent to military academy by parents seeking a safer, more opportunity-filled life for him and his elder brothers. Graduated first in class, attended École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr on full scholarship, while siblings returned to Paris. Subsequently joined the French Navy, entering the ranks of the Fusiliers Marins. Served in various neocolonial “gunboat campaigns”, including the Kouang-Tchéou-Wan Emergency on behalf of the French Indochinese government. Saved the life of two fellow Naval Riflemen after patrol boat L’Épicée was sunk by Vietnamese-backed insurgents. Admitted into the Commandos Marine and took part in the thirteen-hour overthrow of Nikoomba in Libya.
de Bankolé’s staunch patriotism was tested when deployed in the French Union relief mission of the pied noir enclave of Oranais against the Algerian-led invasion. His fierce defense of the civilian transports against Maghrebi forces earned him an officership, and the everlasting enmity of Samatar Jama Barre. The pan-African freedom fighter, an observer to the conflict, would later meet him in open battle mere months later during the defense of Djibouti. While outnumbered, de Bankolé’s French naval marines fought off both Barre's professional Somali troops and his People’s African Union irregulars, forcing a stalemate and peace against all odds. Barre would label him “the ignoblest of imperialist lackeys.” He would return to Paris a hero.
Not yet thirty, de Bankolé would then revisit his original homeland with Operation Golf: the French intervention in Côte d'Ivoire. His war journals, acquired by U.N. psychologists, record immense internal conflict as he wrestled with his belief in the national virtues of liberty and fraternity, against the mission to neutralize the internationally-recognized president on behalf of French and Nestlé cocoa interests- and on his native soil, no less. Tasked with leading the Commando Degueldre into the city of his birth to kidnap the democratically elected head of state amidst a self-declared French Union peacekeeping operation, de Bankolé’s team unexpectedly ran into greater resistance than expected from loyalist troops, and his leadership was uncharacteristically flagging. Holed up in the megalopolis of his parents, watching distant fires break out from the fighting between his native countrymen and his adopted countrymen, he ordered the naval commandos to wait until dawn for a surprise raid. But in the morning, the French soldiers were the ones to be surprised.
(https://i.imgur.com/6fEel7r.jpeg)
EuroFed EmCom kommandos ready for departure from Félix-Houphouët-Boigny International Airport against the French expedition
The Ivorian intervention was one more straw on the road to Quebec. The European Union had had enough of its most prominent member behaving as a rogue hegemon. The European Federal Emergency Command took the French by surprise, arriving under the cover of night with full EW signal jammers and stealth capabilities at its hilt. This second peacekeeping force waved a covert U.N. agreement and declared that France was in violation of numerous treaties unbecoming of a permanent Security Council member. The E.F.E.C. enforcers dug in around the presidential palace and refused to allow the French or their rebel allies entry. Confronted by their cousins, many French soldiers themselves willingly laid down their arms.
The government would pull out of the country that week, tail between its legs and an incipient fury in its belly. Democracy would be preserved in Africa that day, but the road to the breakup of Europe had been laid. French withdrawal from EU commitments would later be barely-supplemented by the bloc of misfits stitched together from West Germany, the Third Spanish Republic, eurosocialist “rose” Italy, the Nordics of the Unified Realm, and even the anti-isolationist, pro-interactionist, nationalist Swiss under the Vitalist movement. It would be another dying gasp for NATO even prior to the Hypersurvivalist Wars. Yet during that showdown in Abidjan, a new hope had been found for the continent. Amédée de Bankolé would leave his home as a soldier of Europa.
The imperial overreach blew apart the constraints that had kept antiwar sentiment in check. This would later be swiftly undone in Canada and in the Levant, but for the moment ashen-faced Frenchmen would look at their deeds with guilt. As demonstrations swept Paris, even some veterans of Operation Golf would resign their commissions. A few, like de Bankolé, would go even further- arriving in Brussels, he would pledge his loyalty to the cause of the European Union, of civilization that does not build empires with force. He who was once praised as “a new Thomas-Alexandre Dumas” would no longer be a warrior for France, but instead a champion for the values it once claimed to embody. Within several years he would rise as a commander of the E.F.E.C., standing guard against Soviet communism to the east and French and Portuguese imperialism to the south, lending a hand against Anglo-American dissolution to the north and the west. While the European Union would prove to be a small-time player in all of those theaters, save the Balkans, its tactics and technology were some of the finest in the world. All too often he craved the opportunity to march south, like Scipio Africanus, and cast the imperialists out from their colonies and back to their metropoles. And then march west, like Julius Caesar, and bring them back into Europa’s fold…
Ultimately, it was that same appetite and capacity for bloodshed that brought de Bankolé aboard the Unity. By the time the mission was finally in sight, the bureaucrats of Brussels and Bremen, seeing twilight gather, sent their most promising commander into exile. Partly to carry a gladius for the glory of pan-Europe, partly so he would no longer be around to rally his fellow Gallic expatriates and agitate for the reconquest and submission of their former patrie. Partly because there was interest in rapprochement with Paris and Lisbon, partly because it was good to have such a powerful check against the likes of d'Almeida and St. Germaine. And finally, because for all of his bluster, de Bankolé did sing sweet and lofty praises of liberty, self-determination, and due process. It would not be so bad to have a fervent believer in European- and perhaps even Eurafrican- values on humanity’s great mission, as a check against both the neo-imperialists and radical pan-Africanists alike.
Like so many other soldiers of destiny, Amédée de Bankolé was thwarted by the chaos of Planetfall. He was not roused from hibernation, nor even picked up by any of the fleeing camps who could have used such a leader. Instead, his cryotube was lost in the forgotten bay of an automated pod that ejected from the collapsing mothership. And so he slept, alongside nearly four-score fellow passengers, as well as a modest store of rations and shredder rounds. Their hibernation chamber remained alone on a beach south of the Mouth of Hercules, until a New State land survey chanced upon the mighty prize.
(https://i.imgur.com/fB2KW49.jpg)
Marshal Amédée de Bankolé military portrait. Despite seniority, the marshal has a tendency to lead New State ver de mer units into battle himself, dressed in a replica of his original French Commando Marine uniform
The Contre-Amirale regarded the turncoat with amusement, remembering the man’s speeches made in exile claiming that France had abandoned him. And entertained sad counterfactuals- if only such a commander had remained loyal to a Paris that was equally worthy, a Paris that had remained true to its vassals after Golf. Perhaps here was an opportunity to recast history in the vision of what could have been. Planet was the die with which fortunes were made, and here was the mighty arm that could make the throw.
Amédée de Bankolé was roused into a strange and confusing world, and after an even stranger tour of the New State’s topsy-turvy world of submariner societies and great house-ruled bases, was impromptuly made Marshal of its Marine de Terre. St. Germaine’s surface army, it turned out, was quite diminutive. The New State’s shipboard marine corps far dwarfed the size of its amphibious counterpart, the ver de mer (“sea worms”), which was even larger than that army of “land sailors” which was now de Bankolé’s to command. St. Germaine granted him the opportunity to play at Scipio once more, to protect the New State’s interests outside the seas. Purpose, directed outwards. Power, made safely peripheral. Order, inescapable. Such was the way of the New State.
And so, for now, the newly-minted marshal is the most unlikely defender of the New State on land. His sense of duty compels him to protect this apparent bastion of French cultural tradition, and its various values expressed as tripartite mottos. While always pushing against aggressive expansion, the Marine de Terre has done quite well as a defensive force against landlubber vendettas that aim to throw the submariners back into the sea. Even Spartans find the Land Navy to be a surprisingly capable adversary, and Santiago grows intrigued at the prospect of facing off this marshal in battle, or at least at chess. St. Germaine smiles. Truly the New State can subsume all potential problematic elements into its carefully-engineered social system.
de Bankolé, of course, is a man who loves democracy, who loves La République. He views Europe of old as the torch of liberty, of free civilization. The reconciliation between the continent and its former colonies would have birthed a new world. And it would not, he resolves, look anything like the New State. Despite all of the celebrations from the agents of Cultural Life, throwing festivals in honor of this Feuillant or that moderate liberal, it is clear that such a faction is as much a perversion of the ideals of the French Revolution as the tottering neo-colonial French Union he had left back home. He is secretly appalled at the New State’s promulgation of ultrareactionary policies. These were the people who were supposed to destroy the tyrants, not join them. While the Contre-Amirale talks a good game of “hardening liberal values into diamonds in deepsea pressure”, the eyes of the Marshal slowly grow jaundiced, viewing such talk as excuses to infinitely delay crucial reforms, calcifying the New State into an authoritarian Francocentrist ren faire, instead of the true rebirth of Europa. In due time, he grimly surmises, there might come a somber requirement for yet another dutiful general to overthrow a despot and restore democracy. Down with the traitor, up with the fifteen stars. Down with the traitor, up with the stars!
Casting
Amédée de Bankolé is portrayed by General Amadou de Bankolé from Tom Clancy’s Endwar, and by Djimon Hounsou as Kovax from Forces spéciales.
Notes:
Nikoomba is the target of the first Brotherhood of Nod mission from Command and Conquer: Tiberium Dawn.
Roger Degueldre was the founder of the Commandos Delta of the OAS during the Algerian War.
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(https://themlcxchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/felucia-2.jpg)
All living systems are similar--on Chiron, as on Earth.
Bases, like mindworm boils, are easiest to destroy in their infancy. Both expand gingerly, wary of predators. It is the way of all factions to protect Colony Pods with a heavy militia escort, while fungal spores, from which mindworms seem to swarm, boast skins as hard as igneous rock.
Individual boils form cooperative nestings that negotiate use of the same space. Gaian xenobiologists speculate that this is the species' mechanism for moderating its own population growth. Like two neighbors, they will accept the mild constraint of sharing rather than fight, which could weaken both sides. Base administration is both art and science among the settlers. Within and between factions, each must balance the production of water, nutrients, mass, and energy, the exchange of population, and the frequency and intensity of war.
If agitated, mindworm boils attempt rapid expansion--a swarming behavior that, observed in purely mathematical terms, precisely resembles the maneuvering of large armies. Boils instinctively encircle the interloper.
Mindworms have multiple methods of making their displeasure known, such as by vomiting digestive enzymes that can eat through most armors, and by release of psychoactive biotoxins from skin glands. Boils have also been known to launch spores on high parabolic arcs, as if firing solid shot from a field mortar. This last behavior serves no reproductive purpose and indicates that the colony anticipates imminent death.
Native Chironians experience less, and milder, episodes of mental distress linked to mindworm activity. There is no medical evidence to indicate that any person in this category has ever detected the "song" that is usually credited to
the fungus that is the worms' herald.
Humans, we have seen, will similarly employ a wide variety of weapons in the aid of conquest, and are also fond of launching unarmed appeals that they hope will settle the contest without a shot being fired.
Amazingly, mindworms in captivity have thrived on diets designed to make use only of Terran foodstuffs. Along with humans, they also feed on a narrow range of leafy green Chironian vegetation that is comparatively rare.
Source:
Picture of Felucia, a planet from Star Wars. It apparently belongs to Lucasfilm.
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The State did not ordinarily excuse vice in defense of its virtues. I not only forgave, but demanded it. - Under My Wings, All Things Prosper
(https://i.pinimg.com/474x/ec/26/a7/ec26a7be973321dff113f87044ea0bb8--nova-tv-stephen-lang.jpg)
Oscar van de Graaf poses for a holo capture somewhere in the Monsoon Jungle, one of the few environments on Planet where ambient oxygenation levels were low enough for settlers of the First Generations to safely doff their oxygen hoods.
In MY10, the stadtholders and survivors of the New Two Thousand gathered under an oxygen tent to consider their options. The going since Planetfall had been exceptionally hard. Fewer than one in eight of Governor van de Graaf's Chosen Men--a term applied irrespective of gender--had joined their leader going down. The colony was under-populated, over-extended, and at perpetual war with every neighbor.
Pickings aboard Unity had been slim, leading directly to the present crisis. U.N. algorithms assigned van de Graaf a very low coefficient in the retrieval order, party a reflection of his advanced age--he was 65, partly due to lack of applicable skills--his emergency billet was in supply administration, but also because he was flagged a high mutiny risk. (On this, there was rare convergence of opinion between numerous national and corporate intelligence agencies and senior mission staff, though the assessment provided by Morgan Tactical Services was blatantly prejudicial.) When at last some generous soul came to pull him from stasis, most of his ARC confidants, security contingent, and painstakingly-recruited experts were already missing in action. Cases of old rifles and ammunition, thoughtfully stowed in a hidden compartment, were the only testament to a once-dazzling bazaar that had kept the Space Elevators at full capacity for months at a time.
If van de Graaf mourned this cruel trick of fate, he was probably alone in doing so. Even when free to give their allegiance in later years, few chose to honor the brutal terms of indenture that had first bought them a place, however lowly, under the mission umbrella as one of his two thousand-odd "free settlers." None of the other faction leaders was willing to honor the legal instruments van de Graaf had used to bind his counter-parties, a prospect that would have been exceedingly unlikely even had the agreements been scrupulously fair.
The Wesper-Quinn-Vagner Process placed heavy stress on a patient's cardiovascular system. Van de Graaf's fitness was exceptional for a man his age, but an assassination attempt from his days as ARC Chairman had left a bullet lodged too close to his heart for safe removal. A minor myocardial infarction, resolved by his stasis pod's Automated Medical Unit, had encouraged necrosis of the toes. His companions performed a field surgery, removing two on the left foot. Within the hour, stretcher-bearers strained to carry him through debris-choked passages to the cargo bays only to discover that those, too, were picked clean. Van de Graaf, rising from his cushions like some medieval potentate rousted from torpor, reportedly drew his personal pistol, a Liberator 990, and calmly announced that his companions were to do likewise.
No one man had done more to lay choice personnel and proper equipment for the benefit of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri than Oscar van de Graaf.
I had best claim. In the Old West, to steal a man's horse was to kill him slowly by starvation or exposure. Horse thieves, when caught, were summarily executed. Our situation was precisely identical. We knew it, and more importantly, they knew it, too. - Notes on Arrival
A passing paramedic stopped when he saw the man on the litter. Was there some service he could render? Van de Graaf's companions lowered their charge for inspection, then raised their shredder pistols and declared that the Good Samaritan had just become a stakeholder. This they repeated whenever they encountered somebody deemed "useful." Others falling into their hands, they beat to death--the better to save ammunition "without stinting," they said, "on justice." Many fired back, embroiling van de Graaf's party in extended skirmishes. The prisoners had then to be bound together, lest they try escape.
Reaching the embarkation deck, the Pilgrims secured four unattended Landing Pods immediately and, crowding in behind a gaggle of Morgan Emergency Services evacuees, commandeered a fifth by main force, sealing the hatches behind them before the SafeHaven guards were the wiser. One Pod was destroyed when it failed to clear the chute during launch; the rest made it safe away, bearing with them approximately eight hundred souls and the lasting enmity of many more.
In early speeches to his followers, van de Graaf was clear about what ailed them. Opportunists were already in possession of what the New Two Thousand chiefly needed. Let them work hard to turn the soil and raise the towers; the New Two Thousand would pluck the fruits of this false labor when it confiscated their stolen tools and liberate their brethren. A high percentage of the Charterists had come with family. The idea that their loved ones might had been made into unwilling drones inspired them to take extreme risks. The faction was also known to casually torture prisoners for information the poor unfortunates rarely had to give. In their zeal, the Pilgrims fancied themselves re-fighting the War of 1812. In the taverns of Terra Nova, it was well-known that any Special Project competed by another faction was evidence of forced Charterist labor.
Spartan. Free. Scientist. Brain. Peacekeeper. Weak. Tribal. Cult. Watcher. Crank. Believer. God. Pilgrim. Temper. - Child's Word Association Game, Children's Crèche, The Pinnacle
(https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mods/1/50/49572/thumb_620x2000/TW_Diuna_020.png)
The most-celebrated of the Regulators' exploits was the recovery of a sand-fouled 'Former from deep within the territory of the Human Labyrinth. It apparently seized during seeding operations in an underground chamber dug too close to the surface and could not be recovered by Yang's operators. A sandstorm revealed it to Pilgrim reconnaissance teams not long after. Trikes carried a team of mechanics to the wreck directly. They resurrected the massive vehicle under fire and backed it into the braces for the tunnel system from whence it had come, burying the Hivemen trying to prevent its capture.
Pilgrim Regulators, for all their bravado, could not prevent raids on the faction's territory by its more powerful neighbors. Terra Incognito, sacked by the Spartans eighteen months before, still counted more graves than people. The New Two Thousand were still processing the lucky find of a Hab Pod containing two hundred American Reclamation Corporation Armed Auxiliaries, but the prognosis was grim. A vanishingly small percentage of the original Pilgrim survivors had any prior military experience. Casualty rates among the Regulators were extreme: few lasted long enough to pass on whatever experience they accrued.
Oscar van de Graaf, for much of his adult life the most powerful man in North America, was not one to take hard blows sitting down.
(https://gamingtrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Twilight-2000-3-scaled.jpeg)
ARC Auxiliaries pause on the outskirts of Memphis during a rare snowfall. By statute, they were entitled to use the same kit, organization, and markings as the Regular Army. Having learned from experience the importance of supply, van de Graaf lavished it on his legions, first as a patron of privateers, then as a Cabinet official, and eventually as the so-called Iron Governor. On the battlefields of North America, ARC troopers threw grenades first and asked questions later. Some won their battles merely by cutting power to disloyal townships and waiting for the sub-zero temperatures to force a surrender. Against Myrmidons, Minutemen, and Augments, full bellies and topped-up ammo cans were a less spectacular advantage. Pete Landers motivated his fighters by reminding them that a Pilgrim enemy was always rich pickings.
Oscar knew the first rule of being a fish. If you realize you're swimming with the sharks, find a smaller pond. - Ken Burns's Planet: A History
Options were limited. To the North lay Xerxion, and beyond that, Fort Defiance and Keller City. Santiago's people were well-organized, and, because they had got an earlier start at looting, better-equipped. In ten years, they had done more set-piece fighting than raiding. In battles large and small, the Pilgrims had repeatedly earned a punishing second place. South, the ultra-high Frostcap Range promised hypothermia to all comers. The Dune Sea lapped at the western edge of the faction's territory, and while individual tendrils of the Hive could easily be lopped off (Hive Security was even more decrepit than the Regulator militia), the requirement for excavation and their own poverty made them more trouble than they were worth. The most immediate practical targets were merchants and SMACERS that came across the deserts or down from the Slowwind Delta without having to be invited. Citing the exigencies of their own survival, van de Graaf's people were the first to enforce tolls on this traffic. Over time, these increased from the inconvenient to the outrageous. If a caravan could not, or would not pay, the Regulators seized it in its entirety. The Hunters of Chiron, which had a habit of ignoring political boundaries, came in for the harshest treatment, although their own origins meant that they were least of all to blame for van de Graaf's situation.
Were such tricks played on Morganites or Dreamers, their merchants would merely have found friendlier marts. The SMACERS did exactly this. But the Hunters, finding themselves increasingly unwelcome in all the settled precincts of Planet, chose van de Graaf's policy as the one against which they must make their stand. Meeting in pitched battle during a howling tropical rain that carried off more than one precious vehicle, the bulk of the Main Force Patrol and six full companies of Pilgrim Regulator militia had it out until at last the salvage-strewn battlefield belonged indisputably to Oscar van de Graaf. He owed the day only partly to the fresh ARC veterans that leavened his ranks. The double envelopment strategy used to carry off his victory had been suggested to him by the representative of a new ally, the Maréchal Amédée de Bankolé.
Since weakness had already made him a perennial target for others, van de Graaf had opened his bases to become staging areas for New State land forces without fear of further negative consequences.
(https://www.wallpaperup.com/uploads/wallpapers/2015/01/04/574705/cffc7e1ee98d1f3ef1fcfca06264fdbf-700.jpg)
Most of the Battle at Sensorfield was conducted from Rovers like this one. Van de Graaf prepared his Order of Battle knowing that the Hunters would hesitate to dismount. He converted two squadrons of utilitycraft for anti-material work by affixing to each a laser marker and wire-guided missile launcher. To obtain enough vehicles for the fight, the Stadtholders called upon individual homesteading families to volunteer their own in return for the dubious promise of a generous bounty. Contracts were drawn up that stipulated they must be paid out double if the vehicles were destroyed, a condition Governor van de Graaf went on to honor.
(https://gamingtrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Twilight-2000-1-1391x900.jpeg)
Pilgrim Regulators used the same guns, flak jackets, and uniforms placed back into ARC supply depots by out-mustering soldiers in 2057.
(http://www.diggerhistory.info/images/tanks/ontos2.jpg)
Van de Graaf must have taken ironic pleasure in the recovery of one of the Hunter's two Ontos tanks after the fight at Sensorfield. After all, their presence on Planet had been made possible only through his good offices. That vehicle was kept in service with the New Two Thousand long enough to join the SAMMS round-ups of the following century.
(https://gamingtrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Twilight-2000-5-1486x1536.jpeg)
Pilgrim militiamen back from an objective raid. Their hand weapons are literal antiques. The spoils of war are this time unimpressive. Between them, the trio bear an energy canister (slung over the shoulder of the individual at left) and a few bottles of oxygen (carried by the middle soldier).
After Sensorfield, van de Graaf screened the Hunter survivors carefully for Charterists, finding four who were then absorbed into his faction-all ex-SMACERs, not original Forward Contact crew. The Stadtholders additionally voted a Hunter slave to each household. These were nerve-stapled to foreclose flight risk. The remainder were marched into the Dune Sea and sold for a profit to the Human Labyrinth. Marsh and approximately half the enemy force escaped, but their logistical train, captured in toto, yielded dozens of heavy-haulers, ambulances, and mobile workshops, some still etched with ARC markings.
For the Regulators, it was a happy moment of reinvention. With an arsenal much expanded by restored Hunter equipment and the benefits of drill with the Marins de Terre, they soon tried again their old raids on Tribal targets, timing each strike to coincide with Spartan offensives. As it turned out, the Kellerites had indeed been through the Charterist Hab Bays. In MY12, van de Graaf's militia reunited 120 Pilgrim families during the temporary occupation of Old Rusty, a Tribal colony built around the crash site of a doomed Supply Pod. Not all were pleased by the new development.
Liberation of the body is not always easy, but it is straightforward. Liberation of the mind, always difficult. Kellerite converts are the worst. Their concepts of privacy and personalty are missing completely. The work ethic is good, but they ask uncomfortable questions that take as their starting point the illegitimacy of our cherished principle: that the success or failure of the individual rests entirely in their own hands. We have learned by hard experience that the community we can count upon may dwindle in an instant to one. - Notes to the Medical Record of Patient A42, Supplemental
His alliance with a naval power provided van de Graaf with the outlet he needed, and at no cost to himself. Who would the New State upset that he did not already call Enemy? Unmolested by St. Germain's Foils, the Pilgrims roved out in search of other notoriously "soft" victims. Within weeks of Sensorfield, SAMMS crossed the narrows at Sullivan's Hook and staggered, steaming, from the ocean to put the Children of the Atom to flight. Governor Van de Graaf traded the Cray mainframes he found to the Tomorrow Institute in return for information about more of his "missing" colonists.
Sources:
Stephen Lang is Oscar van de Graaf. The still is from Terra Nova.
The artist of the picture of the Rover with missile launcher is unknown. It appears to be a Command & Conquer homage. The picture can be found on WallpaperUP.
The picture of the Ontos is a historical photograph probably taken in Vietnam. It can be accessed here (http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-armour/allied/ontos.htm).
The picture of Trike and Harvester are from a Command & Conquer 3 mod on moddb, Réinventer la Dune.
All other pictures are promotional artwork from the recent remake of the Twilight 2000 roleplaying game. They can be found here (https://gamingtrend.com/news/enter-the-darkest-timeline-twilight-2000-rpg-released-today/).
Objective raids are a concept borrowed from Battletech.
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The Comtes des St. Germaine (pt. 3)
(https://i.imgur.com/gzwuRnH.jpeg)
Even the mightiest of fortresses must be illumined by faith. - Regnum novarum
Born fifty-seven years before Unity launch to an unremarkable middle-class family in Naples, Italy. Obscure childhood only noted by desire to see the world and devotion to S.S.C. Napoli. Joined the priesthood out of vocational predilection. Parents mildly supportive, though decision was seen as unusual during the rising secularism of the eurosocialist “Rosa Italia” wave that had reached even the Mezzogiorno. Upon ordination, studied canon law and diplomacy at Pontifical Colleges in Rome. Suffered apparent nervous breakdown while writing dissertation on reconciling the 1917 Reform of Canon Law and relaxation of the Non Expedit with Pope Pius X’s Anti-Modernism and counter-secularism. Abruptly abandoned studies mid-way to profess vows for the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Arrived in the Congo weeks later as part of C.I.C.M. mission, mainly concerned in establishing parochial schools and medical facilities in Kilanga in the Republic of the Congo. Caught malaria shortly upon arrival, requiring care from fellow Scheut missionaries. While in an extended fever, slipped into a deep fugue state and was visited by Marian apparitions, as well as a golden figure upon a throne bearing the crossed keys of Simon Peter. Awoke days later, fever broken and apparently recovered. Antigen-based tests and blood film analysis revealed that all traces of disease had somehow disappeared from body. Observers reported mien had been transformed from anxious with anticipation to one at peace.
Ministered and taught for the next three years, unimpeded. Learned Kituba and Lingala and conducted Mass in the local vernacular of the Zaire Use rite. Developed close ties to and showed great care to the communities along the Kouilou-Niari River. Taught jungle children. In the fourth year, unprecedented amounts of heavy rain caused flash floods in Pool département. Participated in emergency relief efforts, nearly washed away in landslides at Mindouli. Rescued two dozen households with seven lifeboats, a third of the allotment expected for such an effort. Personally led reconstruction of the village church of St. Lea, where he became head pastor.
(https://i.imgur.com/i5tuU99.jpeg)
The Scheut missionaries of the C.I.C.M. undertook infrastructural improvements for the people of the Congo, in addition to spiritual development
Recalled to Europe three years later. Completed studies and entered the Holy See's diplomatic service in late thirties. Assigned to the Apostolic Nunciature to Spain. Witnessed the beginnings of Madrid Christianity, as the Catholic Church in Spain reacted against the reforms imposed by the Third Spanish Republic. Became acquainted with, some say an intimate of, the newly-ordained priest who would later become Pope Eglantine. Friendship described as fraught with ideological differences. Cerutti repeatedly affirmed the direction of the New Papacy, the need for Catholicism to “let each ear hear and every eye see” without resorting to hardline traditionalism. The young Right Catholic replied that it was clear that the temporal world, even as its kingdoms were falling apart, desired to snuff out the last guiding light of the church, gesturing to all that was happening in the country. Despite this, as a staffer to the papal nuncio, Cerutti adroitly navigated the government policies, trading the silence of the archbishops on the Third Republic's promotion of human augmentation and genetic research in exchange for guarantees on the church’s financial assets in-country.
Three years later, returned to Africa. At the Nunciature of Mali, Father Cerutti oversaw the repeated breakdown of negotiations during the Sahara Burst Wars, becoming acquainted with the deleterious effects of PMCs in Africa, in particular SafeHaven and the Morgan corporate family. Despite the doomed mission, gained an understanding of Islamic perspectives of the Catholic Church. Next worked in Biafra, applying said lessons to aid the local Christian-dominated government to strengthen its position through peaceful accommodation of its Muslim minority. Covertly tasked by the local papal nuncio to also reinforce the position of the Catholic Church in Biafra against the Protestant majority by emphasizing the Vatican’s prior support for its independence movement in contrast to British neutrality. Efforts divided the Anglicans against other Protestants, eventually causing the schism of the Biafran Episcopalian Church away from the Anglican Church of Biafra.
Finally, posted to the similarly newly-seceded state of Ambazonia, an Anglophone state separated from French-speaking Cameroon. There he wooed the Ambazonian politicians towards the good graces of the Catholic Church through cold hard cash, delivered through generous loans from the Vatican Bank, shutting out the British once more. Indeed, despite operating under different nuncios, he was able to engineer this. International journalists began speaking of West Africa as “a new papal fiefdom”, and Cerutti as “that Neapolitan pupante”, or “the crusader with a cell phone.”
(https://i.imgur.com/L3eenIN.jpeg)
Father Obua of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Mpala was a leader of the underground movement dedicated to smuggling refugees out of the Congolese conflict zone
The next diplomatic mission to Ghana, to arrange an ECOWAS security pact to combat jihadist and PAU terrorism, was abruptly interrupted by civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. All attention shifted to the immense suffering and bloodshed to the south. C.I.C.M. mandated all Scheut fathers to assist relief efforts. Cerutti reluctant to cut short the chance for the Vatican to broker a new continental holy alliance of sorts. Only repeated quicklink messages delivered hastily over the Starline Network, originating somewhere along the western shore of Lake Tanganyika from his former clerical compatriot, Father Obua of Kilanga, slowly shamed him back into the Congo.
Arrived in Stanleyville on his forty-seventh birthday. Directed church aid in conjunction with U.N. peacekeepers after rebel attacks on space elevator. Narrowly survived blast on hospital district. Left city months later in search of Father Obua. Attacks by People’s African Union-linked rebels and Rwandan army derailed train service part way, forcing travel on foot. Harassed by local Mai-Mai militias en route, at one point performing an impromptu “battle baptism” to be permitted to pass. Staved off malaria even as mission comrades succumbed. Arrived at Lake Tanganyika with fraction of aid supplies. At a massive Missionaries of Africa-run refugee camp, Father Obua presented Cerutti with a refugee column to be shepherded out of the country.
Riverboat return trip faced inclement weather and crocodile attacks along the Lukuga. Unnavigable rapids on the Lualaba River forced land travel. Discovered by Soviet military advisors on patrol near Portes d’Enfer. After mission’s U.N. captain refused demands to surrender, Soviets began indiscriminately firing at the refugees. When Cerutti shouted at them to stop, a field generator overloaded, producing a power surge that knocked out the assailants’ sensors and somehow caused their weapons to jam. Before the soldiers could recover, a wild hippotatomus emerged from the waters and charged their commander. Overpowering the Soviets while suffering no loss, the refugees continued north to Kindu, where a MONUSCO riverine force delivered them to Stanleyville and to relative safety.
Remained in the DRC for the remainder of time on Earth. Continued aid efforts well past the conclusion of the Great Congo War. Rebuffed offers to be made apostolic nuncio, instead becoming the new priest in Mpala after Father Obua could not be found. Reverted to quiet shepherding of rural flock, becoming caretaker of disabled war orphans. Later made Archbishop of Leboa-Sako. Returned only to Europe on three occasions: to receive a cardinalate from Pope Zachary II, to participate in the papal conclave that elected Eglantine, and to see Napoli defeat Crystal Palace F.C. and become victors of the 2066 UEFA Champions League.
(https://i.imgur.com/HCihQab.jpeg)
Cardinal Cerutti presented with the leadership over the papal mission to Alpha Centauri at the Gardens of Vatican City
After decade-long retreat into a backwater bishopric, was surprisingly designated the head of the Vatican contingent aboard the UNS Unity by the erratic new pope. Marginally passed the grueling training process on the lunar surface. Served as diplomatic liaison to the U.N. leadership and minister to the Catholic population of the mission. Respected but disliked by Captain Garland and ship staff, seen as a subversively regressive element from the traditionalist Pope Eglantine. During run-up to the mission, seen having long conversations along the ship’s promenade with Psych Chaplain Miriam Godwinson, contents unknown.
During Planetfall, Cardinal Julius Cerutti rallied the Catholic colonists and crew to solidarity in the time of existential crisis. Broke more than one deadlock by ordering emergency measures when appropriate Unity officers were unawakened or M.I.A. Prioritized the rescue of trapped personnel and medical supplies primarily. Ran afoul of other leading lights of the chaos. Public groused to followers that X.O. d’Almeida was an incompetent who had abandoned his flock to save fewer than one sheep. Ranted against Chief of Engineering Zakharov as “more preoccupied with playing with his toys” and for “treating this life-or-death-situation as one of his little puzzles.” Denounced the Spartans and Holnists as “pinprick satanic malefactors who drove us from home in the first place”, and Kellerites as “deluded followers of some incoherent radio preacher.” Garland was well-meaning, but ultimately, his failings in managing the disaster “c’é rutt’o o cazz!” After striving in vain to upright the disaster, finally directed the Vatican contingent, along with a sizeable of Roman Catholic passengers and other survivors alike, to escape.
Founded Roma Nova on Mount Eglantine along the Petraeus Ranges. Capital of the Holy See of Centauri, also known as the Prince-Bishopric of Chiron. The “base on a hill” endured its early years under the theocratic rule of Cardinal Cerutti, who immediately moved to enact sustainability measures similar to those he used to survive in the Congo. Cerutti declared the need to “not let a single stomach hungry nor a single form unclothed”, creating an austere but universally charitable society where the least fortunate would always be cared for. In time, this goal was made difficult by the relatively high reproductive rates promoted by the Magisterium’s support for large families, but the Holy See created a cohesive, largely content society, and even managed to expand to several new outposts despite a relatively low economic and technological capacities.
Unfortunately, the building of a new base in the Resurrection River Valley drew ire from the nearby Watch Tower sect that had already settled the area. Increasing territorial tensions and religious differences resulted in the Resurrection Vendetta, the conquest of Hierosolyma Nova by the Watch Tower and its Eighth-Day Adventist allies recruited from the Lord’s Conclave and the Human Tribe, and finally the fall of Roma Nova to a Watch Tower-Eigther-Kellerite force. Staunch resistance from the cardinal’s guards and the militant orders of the Holy See failed to prevail against the Anointed Army of 144,000.
Sister Godwinson herself intervened before the One Forty-Four Thousand could finish its attack- stepping in to broker peace, she offered the flock of the Holy See safe resettlement in the Rapture Hills and a life of religious worship as citizens of the Lord’s Conclave. But in the end, Cerutti was loath to subsume the Catholic Church into the Conclave as yet another holy symbol in Miriam’s quilt of faiths, answering to the American evangelical. He rejected Rapture. Instead, he chose something different. Something impractical. He chose to live under the sea.
(https://i.imgur.com/ROjiLYb.jpg)
Cardinal Cerutti flanked by Secretary Élodie and by a brother cardinal
Just as the first pope, Simon Peter, was a fisher of man, so did Cerutti seek out the sea. Opting for exodus rather than to live under the thumb of their separated brethren, he brought his most loyal admirers and retainers west to Byzantion Bay. In what the greatest devotees of His Eminence label as his fourth (or seventh, depending on who’s counting) miracle, they chanced upon a New State surface exploration mission led by none other than the captain of the Congolese riverboat who had rescued Cerutti and another band of exiles decades ago. Contre-Amirale St. Germaine, believing in Providence, at least that what could be provided by his own largesse, and remembering the valor of the jungle priest, granted them indefinite sanctuary, welcoming them into his New State.
Thus began the Babylonian Captivity of the Catholic Church on Centauri. Fortunately for the cardinal, first contact with the New State had occurred when the latter faction had advanced to base-building capabilities, so Cerutti was freed from the indignity of ministering to his flock from an unmoored submarine. Instead, the Holy See-in-Exile headquarters at Nouvelle Avignon, while underpopulated, is both roomy and well-furnished, decorated by some of the best artifacts from Old Europe rustled up by Secretary of Cultural Life Élodie. (Aside from the usual nostalgic neoclassical gloss and dross, there is even a Paleolithic Venus figurine representing either the birth of Europe, the female nature of the Church, the temptation of impure thoughts, or something.) From his crow’s nest perch, with the mainland just barely visible on the horizon, Cardinal Cerutti now administers to the faithful- and plots his return to solid ground.
The Contre-Amirale, of course, believes the church should be purely subordinate to the New State. Not by fiat, of course, but by simple natural movement: an educated, dutiful citizenry should embrace an orderly, well-administered spirituality, such a faith would be supported by and follow the structure of the state, as ivy clings to a rock wall. It was all very well for ship chaplains to mutter prayers before dawn, but all of the swaying in superstitions followed the movements of the boat, not by the independent will of the individual officiant. In the end, a sailor either follows the security and order of the ship, or is lost to the elements of a cruel and chaotic sea. Make your peace with your deity, but neither priest nor pope can save you in a storm.
Thus, despite ostensibly being the highest of hierarchs in the faction, Cardinal Cerutti discovers that he is scarcely more empowered than if he had simply accepted Miriam’s offer to be one shepherd among many in her flock. Despite both St. Germaine and Élodie’s lip service to past glories of the church and fetish for the Tridentine Mass, both seek to corral his reign from different angles. The Contre-Amirale, as host to the exiled Holy See, insists that each letter from the office of the cardinal must first be reviewed by him alone, and provides no end of cryptic directives in response to Cerutti’s missives. The datalinks broadcast channels of the Holy See are also under close scrutiny by naval intelligence officers of the Contre-Amirale, seemingly subject to strange service interruptions when the cardinal speaks too deeply about redistributing excess stock from the great houses to the families of drones who were left behind by the educational system, or the need to stray from extracanonical works and return to sacred tradition and the Gospel codified by the councils. Meanwhile, his priests often find themselves hassled by the Canoneers of the Cultural Life, always inserting their opinions on updating vestment fashions to “better represent the heritage of the New State”, and asking for readings from the Book of Meronicus during Mass.
So even as he is able to consecrate and give Communion to the Catholics of the New State, the Cardinal finds himself in an arrangement that is half an alliance of convenience, half actual captivity. The Contre-Amirale knows precisely what pulls at his heart-strings and that of many of his flock: the promise of a crusade from the bottom of the sea to retake Roma Nova (currently styled by the Watch Tower as High Kingdom Hall) and its other former holdings. Perhaps, even, to cow the Lord’s Conclave and bring the separated brethren to heel. Then when all Christians on Chiron were united could work be done to recontact the Holy Father on Earth and to reestablish relations with old Rome. And if the unthinkable was true: to elect a new pontiff for Planet.
The Cardinal considers the New State the home of Loyal Citizens who are also Faithful Sons of the church. Those whose hearts are still burning with the true flame, seduced neither by the strange reactionary Gallicanism of the Contre-Amirale‘s semi-Atrian heresy, nor by the avant-garde, au courant empty secularism of Élodie’s superficially traditionalist New Papacy. As unpleasant as it is to continue collaborating with the two, at present Cardinal Cerutti finds that is his only way forward back to Rome. To once again play distasteful political games to win souls for a Church Penitent in hopes of building a Church Triumphant.
Casting
Julius Cerutti is portrayed by Silvio Orlando as Cardinal Angelo Voiello from The Young Pope.
Father Obua is portrayed by Father Maliya from Far Cry 2.
Notes:
Cardinal Julius Cerutti is the leader of the Holy See of Centauri (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Holy_See) from the SMAC Fac Pack (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=8459.0) project. His official quotes can be found here (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/SMAC_Fac_Pack/blurbs.txt).
Kilanga is the village from The Poisonwood Bible.
Madrid Catholicism, Right Catholics, and the name Eglantine are from Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner.
A pupante is a traditional puppeteer in the Opera dei Pupi as practiced in Naples.
Ambazonia is a current real-world independence movement. They have a cool flag. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambazonia)
The concept of having Jehovah’s Witnesses (https://metrovideogame.fandom.com/wiki/The_Watchtower) be a surviving faction in a post-apocalyptic setting comes from the original Metro 2033 novel (http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?p=1985876#p1985876).
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Bending the ARC of history (pt. 1)
(https://i.imgur.com/hOmvXBE.png)
True leverage is knowing your competitor’s self-interests before they do. True equity is knowing how to ensure they act against it. - Preface to ARC Handbook on Modern Business Intelligence
Growing up in a little town on the Texas Gulf Coast, Suzanne Marjorie Fielding learned to love numbers. When the fireflies grew fewer and fewer, her mamá taught her how to count them with numbers. When the summer storms blew fiercer and fiercer, the Saffir-Simpson scale made the endless howling outside just a number. When the water rose higher and higher, drowning the little sandy beach at the edge of town where she and her sisters once collected shells and chased kingfishers, that was just a number. And when her once-smiling neighbors grew more and more envious of her family holding on even as the market kept dropping, the farmer’s sons started passing around Holnist pamphlets in her dad’s hardware stores while open carrying SecAm specials, and then finally the insurance company defaulted and couldn’t pay out accrued damages on the store that was busted up and the other that burned down- well, they were all just numbers, weren’t they?
Suzanne grew up and got out of town, but not before she had taken that love of numbers to help her dad get his business back on track. “Every pothole means dinner for the paver,” he’d said as they dusted off the ashes of Fielding’s Supplies #3. Taking that to heart, she had realized the hole in the expenses from the closed store meant a little more capital. She convinced her dad to hire a couple of the neighborhood knuckleheads they were pretty sure weren’t behind the looting to stand guard with their guns against the other guys. Other shops on Main started noticing. A couple of tax-deductible datalinks courses later, and a couple of success stories catching wannabe survies in the act, Fielding’s Security and Surveillance had become an inseparable, successful part of Fielding’s mini-business empire, and her family’s comeback story.
A couple of degrees in post-growth economics and neomathematics accounting later, courtesy of a full ride at LSU, Suzanne was ready to fix the country. And so she did by joining the hottest company of the day: the American Reclamation Corporation. Fielding’s first job was to crunch the numbers for ARC’s efforts to reclaim coastal lands lost to the rising Gulf sea level from Texas to Florida. (And then from Tamaulipas down to Campeche Bay after the Mexican government signed a similar contract.) She took to the balance sheets like a laser scalpel, excising waste and spotting potential windfalls. Not only was success at ARC the optimal path to prosperity, she believed, it was also the optimal method to raise her family’s fortunes along the hurricane-battered coast. (Even before the Hypersurvivalist Wars, ARC was eclipsing both FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as the country’s premiere natural disaster response, recovery, and prevention organization.) The noblest form of nepotism, carried out with the longest lever ever constructed by Americans. It was, she calculated, simply cost-effective.
(https://i.imgur.com/XQqIoD1.png)
MZ Operations Manager Fielding restocks ARC labor supplies at Belle Isle State Correctional Facility outside Orlando
Shrewd and audacious, with the trademark ethical flexibility of a late American corpo, she went from junior accountant, third grade to Manager of Environmental Salvage Operations, Midwestern Zone within a decade. After ARC CEO Oscar van de Graaf signed the Trans-Mississippi Recovery Initiative, he personally asked Fielding to oversee the governmental resource coordination. She obliged and found herself dealing with more than flash floods and decaying infrastructure. As America’s ecological environment plunged into chaos, so did its civic spirit counterpart. ARC terrain work gangs found themselves politely escorted away from vital locations by isolationist property owners toting more than shotguns. And then impolitely fired upon. As the government privatized crucial services- like the freedom of not getting pillaged by survivalist raiders- ARC stepped in to fill that market gap. Disaster capitalism proved most profitable.
Van de Graaf had provided his Operations Managers with the resources to purchase private security as they saw fit. But even while the global supply of mercenaries was sky high during those tumultuous times, it was a fierce bidding war and big buyers such as Morgan SafeHaven commanded near-monopsony status. So Suzanne took a page out of her past. She first began paying locals to put pressure on their most “ideologically disadvantageous” neighbors from impeding necessary land improvements. She then cultivated a network of informants to gather intelligence from within the militias themselves, identifying weak links who could be turned so ARC’s great work could continue. Finally, when war in the east had driven up the mercenary market to unprecedented levels, Fielding opened a new segment on the low end of the market: striking deals with local and state law enforcement, ARC oversaw “war-release programs” that armed the former incarcerated and put them at work guarding convoys of civil engineers and protecting environmental readjusters as they fought erosion and seeded clouds.
(https://i.imgur.com/gez2FDP.jpg)
Val Verde Veterans was an elite force of ex-WARPAC spetsnaz who had fought in Soviet conflicts in Afghanistan, the Congo, Bolivia, and Centroamerica. While their Ozarks contract was prematurely terminated, some members of the unit followed ARC as Charterists to Chiron
Fielding’s tenure in the MZ was not uncheckered. Her scheme to use the former WARPAC Val Verde Veterans as counter-survivalist specialists in the Ozarks backfired spectacularly at every level. Even during the mercenary shortage during the Second American Civil War, when American reservists and ex-cons alike were called to fight in the east, it was too politically controversial. But she just shrugged and drafted a higher contract to replace the V3 with Heid’s legendary Imperial Military Focus. Despite the exorbitant terms, the mercenary company’s efficiency in killing completed the reclamation of Arkansas in record time, also noteworthy as one of the IMF’s very few campaigns in the Americas. Indeed, when she was later assigned to the Southwest Zone, Heid and the IMF was the spearhead of her security force that fell militias all the way to Santa Barbara before returning to Africa.
Their pay was also offset by a new incentives program introduced by O.M. Fielding: local governments and residents were offered services free of charge if they were willing to sign over their deeds and titles under reasonable 49-year terms. Thus residents became generational tenants of ARC's new private holdings. Fielding appraised each parcel personally, calculated the max cost-benefit ratios, and determined which areas were most worthy of further ecological improvements. This practice was but one of the many ways that preceded ARC’s use of the Charterist system.
Fielding’s greatest feat in the Southwest was Operation Gold Rush, a joint ARC-IMF campaign under her strategic discretion. After a century of drastic suburban overdevelopment and increasingly dire drought conditions, violent chaos had entered into the sunniest corner of the United States. The water-hungry Greater Los Angeles area seethed and bled as gangs and militias fought on behalf of each particular county, city, town, or street. California National Guard units, backed by ever-fewer numbers of federal troops, were overwhelmed by militias armed with captured tanks and Soviet-smuggled MANPADs. Drought begot riots begot war begot famine begot endless suffering begot fewer customers, and ARC was determined to end it all.
Collecting and analyzing ecological data, military intel, and market movements, Fielding supervised the fight while deferring tactical command to Heid. With Heid's combat leadership and her scrutiny of the cutthroat Greater New Los Angeles underworld power structure, this operation destroyed the major hydro gangs in the area. This allowed ARC to install their proprietary desalination plants and to construct huge seawalls along the coast, to the acclaim of a long-suffering citizenry. As a token of their gratitude, the provisional mayor of New Los Angeles signed over the city's water rights in perpetuity. Fielding's retainer bonus for the Op, and the real estate options she received from the territorial acquisition (equivalent to multiple districts across New L.A.), made her a multimillionaire. Imperial Military Focus made out with a nice payday, and while they would neither deal with ARC nor Fielding until a century later, Heid departed on good terms for Africa.
(https://i.imgur.com/0XwaB6I.jpg)
CFO Fielding dining with Admiral Cato Forsythe, who signed off on ARC’s winning sea skimmer contract with the U.S. Coast Guard. Forsythe was later the center figure of the CSB’s Operation Riverboat financial dragnet
As morning again dawned over America with ARC victories under Fielding in the west, the founder’s own successes with the Nauvoo Legion in Utah, and untold defeats of the Holnists throughout the country. The emergency troika under the Central Security Bureau breathed a sigh and relaxed civic liberties throughout the land. Meanwhile at ARC Headquarters, “the day of the war chiefs” saw multiple elevations to the c-suite. Fielding herself became the Chief Financial Officer of the company.
Beating her sword into a pocketbook, Fielding embarked on diversifying the company’s verticals into the soft sectors of retail and financial services. Building a presence to the east, ARC Singapore hosted the company’s largest shopping complex. ARC Madison ads sold Morgan products, carefully selected to not overlap with their own lines. CFO Fielding also recommended increasing the company’s presence in health care, pharmaceuticals, and neurological research. Using the balance sheet and financial weight of ARC as a massive lever, she crafted shifts on Old Wall Street to position the company as a many-time market leader.
And as the founder made his forays into public service with his political career, Suzanne likewise found another arena for her talents. A notoriously active CFO, she became a fixture in Washington D.C., upholding the company’s fiduciary duty by maintaining its lucrative government contracts while carrying the good word of the CEO. Again, here she used her keen analytical skills towards analyzing the social networks of this high society so far removed from the ragtag militias and gangs she had studied in the war. A wheeler and dealer, she judiciously furthered her company and its founder’s interests with financial operations as brutal as a coup. Scandals and rumors of graft followed in her wake, but also very profitable transactions made under deniable pretexts. For her role in scaring up donors for his failed yet remarkable presidential run, Oscar van de Graaf named Fielding the Chief Human Intelligence Officer of his company.
(https://i.imgur.com/mDa1oO4.jpg)
All the invaluable hard work from our Terrahome Geoengineering teams notwithstanding, the reports are clear: this biosphere will be insolvent in less than a century. Time to stop crying over sunk costs and head for our exit. - Last Earnings Calls of Earth: an Anthology
Ultimately, the call of ARC took Suzanne to Planet as it did its imperious founder. While board members questioned the wisdom of sending so many of the c-suite on a one-way ticket to space, most were quickly quieted by being pledged stakeholder billets for themselves and/or their dependencies. And so, Fielding became the ship’s Comptroller, to monitor the mission’s finances- which was to initially run on a barter system with chits, perhaps, until the colony would transition to a currency system based on a resource like electrical access. This gave her free rein into libraries’ worth of mission financial statements, which she and her ARC accounting staff quickly began disassembling and mining for weaponizable intel.
During the dissolution of the Unity, some of that intelligence came to the forefront as Fielding assisted van de Graaf’s efforts to rally his Charterists and any others of appraisable value. Those who were reluctant had the incentive of debt jubilees dangled in front of them, or promises of corporate assistance towards their colonial aspirations. When the carrot failed, she told the private security heavies which loudmouths were to be taken out to cause the others to fold. This tactic was used on unruly indentured and hostile insurgents alike. The collapse of at least two Holnist gangs in the mid-decks can be attributed to ARC decapitation strikes acted upon Fielding’s intelligence.
Throughout the crisis, she and her accountants tallied up the assets made available to the Two Thousand, determining what vehicles to bring, which supplies to carry, who was worth the trip. Her pie charts and triangle graphs, spun on the fly with her personally-customized edition of Modern Office run from her quicklink, determined the fate of dozens. A cold, but perhaps more equitable ethical calculus less unempirical than the off-the-cuff method of the other Pilgrims. To her credit, the majority of those she came across were deemed worthy of passage, even if only as potential new indentured contractors. Each of them was added to her Togra Holodex, long-term investments worth tracking, as they now owed her their lives.
(https://i.imgur.com/4lscYPe.jpg)
Mission Comptroller Fielding audits neural scans lifted from the data cache of Chief of Neurosurgery Aleigha Cohen to select prospective salvageable personnel assets during Planetfall
In the years since Planetfall, stadtholder Fielding is among the most crucial of the New Two Thousand’s elite. Retaining the responsibilities she had on Earth, she is quartermaster extraordinaire among the Pilgrims, inspecting the coffers of the survival frontier society and doling the supplies out as per the KPIs set by Governor van de Graaf, ensuring economic stability. On matters of human intelligence, she is also the faction’s spymaster, as she was the corporation’s, tasked with the central mandate to return every single sprocket and each wayward Charterist to the hands of the Pilgrims, or else confirm them as losses. This role has expanded as van de Graaf’s determination and obsession to retrieve his stolen property has gotten fiercer over time. And in the vendettas that the Pilgrims have gotten themselves into, her experience in civilian commandership, in particular her military intelligence-gathering and analysis abilities, has been a core asset.
Like any top-tier executive on Planet, Fielding has had to deal with an innumerable amount of interview requests and job offers from recruiters both human and simulated. Indeed, considerable processing power on ARC network node Iktómi is dedicated to filtering out datalinks spam for her. Morganite PeopleOps squads have braved her Ghost Dancer sentries to beg for a personal audience, only to receive replies of autocannon fire. She has to smile at their temerity. Working for Morgan would be simply trading a humorless boss for a smug one. Neither does Weismuller’s company or any others in the Cartel interest her. And Dai Seung, with its consensus-seeking culture? No way.
And yet, while Fielding’s present in ARC is assured, her future is uncertain. With the advent of longevity treatments, the continued chairmanship of its founder seems all but guaranteed to be eternal. (Aside from the unfortunate consequences of vendetta or assassination, of course.) So would she be content to be the CFO-CHIO of the company in perpetuity? To be another right hand man among van de Graaf’s right hand men? Sometimes she thinks of striking out on her own, to give ARC a little good ol’ American competition. Sometimes she imagines rebuilding Fielding Supply Co. from scratch. Sometimes she dreams of the family she left back home, by the Gulf. But then she wakes up to missives on her quicklink ID’ing this target of opportunity or that asset of interest, and she’s all business again.
Casting
Suzanne Marjorie Fielding is portrayed by Viola Davis as Amanda Waller from Suicide Squad and as Major Gwen Anderson from Ender’s Game.
The Val Verde Veterans is portrayed by the cast of Predator as Dutch’s rescue team.
Notes:
Belle Isle State Correctional Facility is the high school-turned corporate-owned penitentiary from Killing Time by Caleb Carr.
Val Verde is the fictional country from Predator.
The L.A. “water wars” concept is also from Killing Time.
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...and to the Republic for which it stands, many nations, indivisible, with liberty, opportunity, and justice for all. - The Revised Pledge, Datalinks
(https://images.hindustantimes.com/img/2022/08/02/550x309/Laal_Singh_Chaddha_clip_1659443032182_1659443046345_1659443046345.PNG)
Subject at Inspection on Intake Day, Eastern Military Academy.
Name: A.J.R. Chandran
Rank: Colonist II
Position: Assistant Chief, Patrol Special Police, Van de Graaf Expedition
County of Origin: United States of America
DOB: 11-30-2032
Height: 185.42cm
Weight: 84.1kg
Unity Contractor Background History:
August 2037. Father, Aarav Chandran, a Port Authority Police Department lieutenant and his family's breadwinner, assassinated by Free Quebec radical at Grand Central Station.
September 2046. Accepted to Eastern Military Academy (EMA), Cold Spring Hills, New York, one of the hundreds of independent service academies newly founded or recently restored since the closure of West Point nine years prior over allegations that the school had become a "breeding ground" for Holnism and States' Rights secessionism. Recipient of Fallen Warrior scholarship. Suffered from numerous episodes of racism by nativist cadets.
June 2049. Graduated from EMA. Commissioned a Third Lieutenant, United States Army.
October 2050. Deployed to Cincinnati, Ohio, just outside Insurrection Zone. Responsible for sector defense of Federal Disaster Relief Service convoys in the Sixth Military District, covering most of the Ohio and Cumberland River Watersheds. Immediately relocated personal quarters to Camp McRaven, Covington, Kentucky. Began leading vigorous assaults against Holnist strong-points outside the city, reviving low morale. In one memorable incident reported in the national press, commandeered a Van de Graaf Steel corporate helicopter to deliver soda pop and toothpaste to troops in the field, then credited the company for the action. Personally negotiated safe passage through Kellerite strongholds in Louisville Bullet Belt. Frequently placed in command of American Reclamation Corporation (ARC) and United States Volunteer units. Multiple citations for battlefield valor.
April 2052. Victorious at Second Battle of Paducah, destroying the 4,000-strong "Field Army" of the Free State of Missouri. Captured foreign national fighters who, during preliminary interrogation, confessed to being Morgan SafeHaven mercenaries under contract with the "legitimate government of Missouri." (Separately, Governor Hastings Wellerman was captured, tried, and sentenced to a maximum of ten years under 18 U.S. Code. Missouri Adjutant-General Niemiah Kinsale was executed.)
June 2053. Gave lecture, "The Fielding Principles," to subordinates and selected guests of honor at Camp Tarwell, Tennessee, in support of generational tenancy. Using ARC war release programs, compelled ex-Holnists to stand in guard of Kellerite compounds, from which they received all food, medical care, and recreation opportunities, which tactic subject called "radical restitution."
Love for our fellow man begins when we risk ourselves on their behalf. Nobody willingly risks themselves for the unworthy. By definition, my fight for him elevates the dignity of my neighbor, if only in my own eyes. - The Wisdom of the Kellerites
September 2054. Now a Captain with supervisory authority over national reconstruction projects and political rehabilitation of occupied territories. Subpoenaed for testimony before House Subcommittee on Conduct of the War in connection with alleged misconduct of ARC contractors under U.S. Army control. Acknowledged by name in the Marion Administration's decision to absorb the ARC as an independent federal corporation in 2064.
December 2059. As liaison officer to the ARC, subject, promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, assisted in operational and contingency planning for the Chilean Intervention, which averted a United Nations-backed coup against the military government of General Iker Villegas. Two battalions of the U.S. Army's 88th Parachute Infantry Regiment captured Santiago's Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport, surprising and routing a combined garrison of Morgan Armored Security and Finnish troops in U.N. service.
November 2069. Returned to Long Island, New York for mother Sarika's funeral, personally attended by ARC Administrator Oscar van de Graaf. Believed to have accepted a formal stake in U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri on that occasion.
December 2069. Reassignment to ARC Contingent, U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. Excused from pre-mission training.
Chiron Service Record:
Awakened by Struan's technicians during Planetfall. Picked from the crew manifest. Placed on indefinite light labor while faction leadership debated how best to employ his skill sets. Subjected to at least three dream incursions by faction medical staff. Redeemed from a Dreamer work crew by Pilgrim merchants on the orders of Chief Financial Officer Suzanne Fielding. Debt soon cleared by vote of faction stakeholders.
Named senior military advisor to Governor van de Graaf despite risk of successful profiling by Dreamers of Chiron. Well-known critic of Column-General Grant Auriole, head of the faction militia.
Temporarily responsible for Northern Front operations in M.Y. 8, during which Pilgrim militia scored a rare victory in the Battle of Skeleton Ridge, opening tributary flood gates that swept away an attacking force of Spartan dragoons that had been pinned by defenders. Action spared vulnerable Pilgrim habitats and gem-mining operations. Formally reprimanded for high casualty counts and loss of salvage opportunities. Reassigned to desk rotation.
Wing Commander at Battle of Sensorfield. Led Pilgrim Rovers against the cream of Marsh's road crews.
(https://s01.riotpixels.net/data/95/58/9558ec36-7aae-4105-ad40-582354aa8ee4.jpg/artwork.homeworld-deserts-of-kharak.1920x970.2013-05-30.25.jpg)
Militiamen with the New Two Thousand make final checks to the jury-rigged armament and protection bolted to their precious logistical vehicles. Chandran provided the mechanics with strict specifications and personally inspected the forty craft of his command. The leftmost vehicle was mounted with the jewel of the faction's salvage operations: a close-in weapons system stripped from the hull of the Unity itself. The depleted-uranium rounds were removed in favor of incendiary squad-heads so that they wouldn't pass through Hunter vehicles without doing damage. Later, transferred back to the Northern Front, the same gun platform was reloaded with its original ammunition to ensure parity against Spartan laser tanks.
(https://cg3.cgsociety.org/uploads/images/original/pixelschumi-rubber-ducks-convoy-1-453208d2-px0r.png)
A Unity Combat Car captured from the Peacekeeping Forces provides the rear guard for homesteaders moving toward the Slowwind River Delta. By this time in the settlement of Shamash, fungal fields around the original human settlements had been reduced to fossilized husks by heavy use of Shaper poisons. Spartan sensor towers beam messages to vacant terminals in silent Xerxion, at last reduced to rubble by Tribal artillery. The rearmost vehicle of the column is a mobile laboratory, sent to scour the pockmarked brinescape for residual indications of exploitable resources.
Psych Profile: Loyalist
Unionist. Placed under Military Restriction during Thanksgiving season of 2025 after interrupting a ring of senior cadets replacing the national flag with a pro-independence banner. The resulting fistfight resulted in two hospitalizations.
Humanitarian. Widely acclaimed for merciful attitudes toward occupied populations. More forgiving of armed resistance against uniformed military forces than brutalization of non-combatants. Rarely engaged in the summary executions of captured Holnists popular among peers, though frequently authorized to administer such justice.
Instrumentalist. Frequently utilized JAG Corps and ARC Office of General Counsel to interpret orders in such way as to maximize possibility of independent action in ways subject thought ethically and militarily best. Demonstrated willingness to consider the other side's interest in negotiations, such as by declaiming credit.
Widely praised by subordinates as a brave, capable, and compassionate leader.
Sources:
Character named in honor of historian A.J.R. Russell-Wood, 1940-2010, a professor who I very much admired.
Movie still is a promotional capture from the upcoming film Laal Singh Chaddha.
Chandran's aphorisim about helping others is paraphrased from Benjamin Franklin's remarks on helping others.
The armored car silhouettes are from from the game Homeword: Deserts of Kharak.
The "homesteaders" picture is from Christian Schumann, titled "Rubber Ducks Convoy," on CGSociety.
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The Emporium (pt. 1)
(https://i.imgur.com/eALMWgY.jpg)
Name: James “Admiral” Heid
Rank: Civilian Vendor
Position: Vehicle Mechanic
County of Origin: Rhodesia
Age: 53
Service Record:
My superiors presumed that by plucking me from the crib and beating in the lessons of war they could bind me forever. They never considered it wouldn’t be their war. - I, Contractor
Born in the dying days of the wartorn Republic of Rhodesia to rural gentry, Victoria Province. Parents were local notables, infamous for suspected liberal pacifist and pro-British returner sympathies. At age seven, Watercrest Estate was burnt to the ground by a rabble of hardliner Rhodesian Front partisans. As sole survivor, sequestered to a government-run orphanage for boys and told the attack was the work of Marxist rebels. Sent to South Shropshire Military School shortly after thirteenth birthday following repeated incidents of fighting and defiant behavior. Involuntarily inducted into the Essexvale Cadet Corps, a national youth scouting organization and later focus of United Nations Human Rights Council investigation on child soldiers. Cadets served as civilian auxiliary, delivering messages, medical aid, and supplies to bush troops.
Upon graduation, automatically enlisted into Rhodesian Security Forces due to field experience as a cadet. Volunteered for the Special Air Service. Decade-long service during the Third Bush War marked by Fireforce operations deep behind enemy lines. Took part in the Siege of Sinoia, the Battle of Victoria Falls, and Operation Crusher. Promoted to captain at age twenty after raid on rebel stronghold in Portuguese East Africa. After capturing Camp Nhongo, the 27 (Gully) Troop, ‘G’ Squadron held off a counter-attack from FRELIMON irregulars bolstered by Soviet advisors for nearly three days before Portuguese relief forces arrived. During the battle, Heid exfiltrated the siege lines and destroyed the attackers’ supplies with two fellow troopers, detonating their ammunition stores and neutralizing several Spetsnaz GRU operators.
SAS service would see combat from the Republic of Namib to South Africa. The 27 Troop became one of the most highly-decorated units of the conflict, and was infamous in the country as the first Rhodesian SAS force to admit non-white troopers, many of whom were defeated rebels. The unit was known for its exceptional cohesion, though Special Branch cautioned command that the 27 was cultivating bonds “beyond country.” Despite repeated offers of promotion to squadron major, Heid insisted on remaining troop captain. Upon receiving the Grand Cross of Valour and the Bronze Cross of Rhodesia during tenth year of service at the terminal stage of the final Bush War, abruptly reassigned from field duty to operational intelligence. Contemporaries reported Heid grew overly critical of superiors' escalation of “overkill” tactics in his own native Victoria, e.g. the introduction of drone warbots and the deployment of biological and chemical agents by the Selous Scouts against strategic hamlets with alleged rebel ties.
(https://i.imgur.com/GDsDAbk.jpg)
Tetra Vaal FC-3 Vaas bipedal drones, augmented by Armadyne for military use, were used for intensive counterinsurgency by the Rhodesian government. Zimbabwean Rozvi were renowned for developing sensor camouflage and livehacking tactics against the Vaas
Disappeared from the archives of Flower Court for months before reemerging at the Zambian border. In public datalinks appearance, declared support for the Zimbabwean movement and renounced Rhodesian citizenship. In response, the government stripped all honors, including membership in the Order of Smith, declared Heid a traitor, and marked him for elimination. When the 27 was sent to apprehend, the entire troop defected to the Zimbabweans. When the rest of the squadron was ordered to hunt down the defectors, multiple troops mutinied or deserted, and the British South Africa Police force attached to the mission was destroyed by the in-fighting. For the remainder of the conflict, the RhSAS was a spent fighting force as Salisbury viewed the entire regiment with suspicion.
A nation dies the same way as its soldiers- of heartbreak, its mouth stuffed with ashes and its carcass ridden with exit wounds. - Memento Vici
The defection of the 27 Troop indirectly led to the turning tide of the war. Seeing their enemies in disarray, Umafukufuku Tongogara and Jotham Matopos reunited the independence movement into the Zimbabwe African People’s National Resistance Army and waged a renewed offensive with Heid as a field commander. Knowing the tactics and weaknesses of the RSF, he led the 27, now renamed the Rozvi Varungu despite being a racially-integrated unit, against his former countrymen. Heid pitted the Rhodesian counterinsurgency playbook against itself, using booby traps, decoy targets, sophisticated electronic warfare, psychological operations, and massed MANPADs to disrupt Fireforce tactics. When the Rhodesian Light Infantry attempted to use terrain as cover, Heid equipped his forces with Soviet LPO-160 flamethrowers to burn them out of the bush. With their SAS expertise and a small but growing supply of aircraft lend-leased from Cuba and foreign People’s African Union parties, they paradropped deep into Security Force strongholds, and soon began training their Zimbabwean allies how to parachute. These efforts not only tore out the heart of Rhodesian COIN capabilities, but broke the morale of the Rhodies, some of whom were unwilling to fight against their former elites. While defectors were welcomed, the Selous Scouts in particular received his fury- rank and file were handed over to the Zimbabweans, and the officers were executed by Heid himself. Throughout the country, the sigil of a shattered FN FAL became the notorious calling card of the Rozvi.
(https://i.imgur.com/RCwswNq.jpg)
Jotham Matopos, Zimbabwean freedom fighter, would later become the first president of Mthwakazi-Mutapa with the dawning of majority rule
These counter-counterinsurgency efforts shattered the tip of the enemy’s spear, leading to ZAPNRA sweeping across multiple fronts. As the Rozvi harassed their commando teams, Portuguese and South African support scaled back. Zimbabwean military and public relations efforts accelerated as cities fell both to conquest and to native revolt. Its imminent victory snatched away in scant months, the Rhodesian government went into shock and was forced to the negotiating table by British pressure. Armistice, then the Locarno Suite Accords, followed shortly. The entire nation was reborn.
The founding of the Republic of Mthwakazi-Mutapa, the election of the first majority rule government, and the restoration of British imperial influence to the land all passed by Heid’s notice as easily as the awards hurled at him and his unit by the grateful freedom fighters. As the new country entered its birth pangs, he found himself in the bush again, fighting on behalf of one faction or another, even at times for former elements of the previous regime against the new government of the RoMM. (This might have been a ploy to draw out former Rhodesian Front members to continue his vendetta.) Regardless, his Order of Great Zimbabwe merit was rescinded alongside other decorations bestowed by the Itsva Mutapa government, and the unit was proclaimed rogue. While the disgraced former Rozvi Varungu participated in some of the intrigues during the early troubled days of the new country, its soldiers eventually left to seek out fortunes abroad.
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Heid recruiting a fellow RhSAS veteran into the IMF
At the Eames Bar in Mombasa, Heid gathered the members of the 27 Troop, former ZAPNRA comrades, RSF turncoats, vanquished Portuguese Flecha and South African Recces, French Foreign Legionnaire deserters, disaffected People’s African Union fighters, East German Afrika Korps ex-volunteers, American adventurers, Umojan “black Kellerite” communalists, Gurkhas, askaris seeking promotions, U.N. peacekeepers gone AWOL, and mercenaries of all kinds. There, in the shadow of the space elevator, Heid unilaterally declared the creation of a new private military corporation to serve Africa and all its combatants: the Imperial Military Focus.
True to their name, they began operations supporting British COIN efforts against the Mau Mau, PAU volunteers, and WARPAC infiltrators in the region. Focus contractors reduced attacks on the Mombasa Spire for nearly eighteen months by combining delicate infiltration of terrorist networks with overwhelming attacks on suspected bases. Satisfied by the results, British viceroys in Nigeria next contracted the IMF to support local garrisons, establishing Heid’s foothold in West Africa.
For two decades, the IMF ran roughshod all over the continent. The Focus embroiled itself in Africa’s many wars for independence and internecine supremacy. Like future titan Morgan SafeHaven, they were one of many PMCs that grew in the Sahara Burst Wars. They fought for both deep-pocketed governments and blood diamond-harvesting rebel forces alike. The Bokassan Dynasty of Central Africa counted the IMF as one of their greatest allies against repeated French attempts to reassert Françafrique over the region.
But their services did not simply extend to COIN and counter-COIN, though those were their specialty. The IMF did undertake a number of covert resource acquisition missions, often led by “Admiral” Heid himself. (After seeing the number of grandiose self-imposed titles across the regimes he warred with, he once jokingly dubbed himself one, and the nickname caught on with his troops.) The SafeHaven Carthage Heist, where over $160 million in casino revenue was lifted from resort vaults in Libya, was almost certainly an IMF operation. Heid was also not above simple brigandry, assisting groups as varied as the Lord’s Refusal Army and UNITNAM in pillaging from better-provisioned authorities, then receiving a cut of the spoils.
(https://i.imgur.com/Chzwjby.jpg)
“Admiral” Heid seizes a U.N. relief convoy in Sierra Leone on behalf of the True Bloodz Krew
At their peak, the Imperial Military Focus’ most renowned- and lucrative- contracts were from waging conventional war. But in contrast to SafeHaven, Iron Key, Excessive Occurrences, MacGrudder Bastion, Powell UK, Twin Cedars Trust, and the like, the IMF did not pose as a one-stop shop for military needs. They did not provide everything from logistics to heavy artillery. What Heid guaranteed was that his operators were a ready force of elites- instant force multipliers. And when deployed upon the battlefield, they often proved to be. Equally conniving and brutal, they aimed to fight smarter and fiercer than the competition. Existing armies considered Focus to be their ultimate secret weapon- by reputation, at least.
Indeed, Heid boasted that the IMF had an undefeated record. That is technically true. Mercenary historians have determined the Focus to be one of the worst contract-breakers in the business. There are no less than thirteen major instances where Heid declared a contract unenforceable, thus requiring the IMF to terminate their agreement and withdraw operations. The fact those instances were paired with less than favorable strategic circumstances is likely to be more than mere coincidence. These include the failed suppression of Katanga by the DRC, and their sudden withdrawal during Operation Golf, the failed French intervention in Côte d'Ivoire.
It's said in this industry that a professional must remain resolutely aloof, emotionally detached from all clients. I agree. I just happen to go a little further. - I, Contractor
However, scholars find even more problematic is the IMF’s tendency to break its own oaths and act contrary to original terms. This was first observed when the IMF greatly escalated the Great Lakes War by attacking Uganda, in contradiction to their mandate to support U.N. peacekeepers. Or during the Biafran War, when the Nigerian government was nearly set to wipe out the rebels, the IMF abruptly nullified their contract and accepted a hastily-drafted one with the underdog Biafrans. In the Ethiopias, there were at least six counts of the Focus switching support between government forces, the Tigray, or the PAU, depending on which side was losing the most. While this behavior has been derided as an unprofessional attempt to artificially prolong conflicts for the sake of sustained income, some have also suggested that Heid’s propensity to favor the challenge of fighting for a lost cause stems from as early as his sudden support for the Zimbabweans. As to why some losing sides are chosen and not others- “Even legendary warriors must eat,” so claimed an anonymous adjunct when asked why the IMF had deigned to fulfill its support of the failed Sudanese revolt against Egypt.
Despite “Admiral” James Heid’s notoriously erratic behavior, his company continued to be sought after for their abilities. They mainly operated in Africa, with a few exceptions: the Fielding campaigns in North America, in Centroamerica, and ironically, two occasions against the British - in Malaya on behalf of the communist MRLA, and in Guyana at the head of the invasion by the right-wing Venezuelan junta. But with the advent of the Unity project, they sought to bring their war to the very stars above.
Casting
James Heid is portrayed by James Purefoy as SAS Captain Gulliver "Gully" Troy from Pennyworth.
Jotham Matopos is portrayed by Delroy Lindo as Captain Wanta from Congo.
Notes:
Rozvi comes from the Shona term Kurozva, to plunder. It is the namesake of the Rozvi Empire, a former warrior nation on the Zimbabwean Plateau. Varungu is the Shona variant for Mzungu, meaning “wanderer”, used to refer to white people in Africa.
Mthwakazi was the ancient Ndebele kingdom now located in Matebeleland Province in Zimbabwe.
Mutapa, meaning “land” in Shona, also refers to the precolonial Kingdom of Mutapa.
East Germany did support African independence and black liberation independence movements with its own Afrika Korps (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cSiocZY9RA) during the Cold War.
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A weapon from hell. For most of human history, thread was a guarantee of life. We used it to stitch torn flesh. The Greeks imagined fate as thread. To sever that thread was to end a life. But on Chiron, down is up. On Earth, the knife cut the thread. On Chiron, the thread is the knife. - Ken Burns's Planet: A History
As a practical matter, most of the weapons used by warring factions on Chiron were brought from Earth.
The shredder pistol, an old standby, was sourced from Unity's small armory. Stowaways preferred the "simple" assault rifle chambered in 5.56x45mm NATO or 7.62x39mm WARPAC standard, an invention of the previous century still unrivaled for its utility on the modern battlefield of 2071. Hundreds of assorted weapons systems made it aboard Unity or were produced from blueprints after Planetfall.
Chiron imposed severe limitations on the Terran warfighter. Soldiering in the higher gravity well called for exceptional stamina and a revolution in thinking about the capabilities of common weapons systems. Ranges for thrown and projectile weapons dropped precipitously. Trajectories flattened. Blast radii were relatively anemic. Shrapnel, and even smoke, were less effective. The stresses of recoil were worse for both weapon and shooter. Barrels burst with a frequency that daunted the unscientific. Wounds, too, were slower to heal: the low-oxygen environment discouraged blood vessel repair.
As effective combat ranges closed, some militias embraced melee weapons like the shock baton or the simple truncheon, which were issued alongside full-body, bullet-proof shields. Thus the solar-techs of the Sons of Ra were happy for the Spartans to "come and take it" when the two factions clashed.
Laser weapons were an obvious and attractive alternative to conventional firearms, but for more than a century, thermal blooming and the inefficiency of man-scale batteries placed a hard lower limit on weapon size. Like the bazooka or the machine gun, a laser gun was most effective when used as a squad support weapon, and remained infeasible for standard issue due to weight and complexity.
(https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HAgb9NN7rK8/XKG5NsjcXaI/AAAAAAAABGw/yHwDX7K347kHKmcVt4wc1p1aYEiMKFSLACKgBGAs/w0/sci-fi-soldier-skydiving-uhdpaper.com-4K-68.jpg)
A probe team of the Chiron Guard drops into a Category 2 typhoon during the Vecchio Crisis. Despite miracle advances in trans-orbital flight, personal combat management systems, safety devices, and even weather control, these operators still carried projectile weapons more than two centuries old. This operation was a scrub. No record exists of their having reached Morgan Aquanautics, much less having threatened the Dauphin. All hands were presumed lost in the storm.
Filament weapons were an application of Gauss mechanics. The projectile itself was a sticky, high-tensile wire. This super-material, gossamer and shining but only 30 microns thick, traveled at the same speed as a bullet--about twice the speed of sound. Coated in natural adhesive synthesized from native Kholis sap, it formed a molecular bond with its target and proceeded to accumulate much the same way scrubpaste cakes on the bristles of a toothbrush when squeezed from the foil. The operator had only to depress a button or squeeze a charging lever for the alloy wire to take an electric charge hot enough to melt silksteel. This superheated wire coil would then begin a pendular motion that would cause it to become rigid and, in so doing, slice its target to ribbons. A great quantity of miniscule filament could be coiled in one spool and the requisite batter packs were about the same weight as a grenade, so ammunition was rarely a problem.
(https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/images/1151/2959649-1642443931.png)
A Spartan Myrmidon with early-model filament projector in the ruins of Camp Winston, site of the Minutemens' greatest defeat.
Filament did have many drawbacks. It was a line-of-sight weapon only. Initial contact with the filament usually staggered targets but often failed to wound them, so an operator needed to confirm a hit and then trigger the charge, leaving them exposed to counter-fire longer than a conventional rifleman. The pendular force exerted down the wire became steadily worse until the projector threatened to tear itself from hand or mount. Fail-safes were therefore invented, but these severely restricted the length of time spent "on the spool" against any one target, and a slow-acting operator could "tag" the enemy many times without achieving a kill.
Sources:
Found the picture at UHD Wallpaper, but there was no attribution to the artist.
My inspiration for filament weapons was the webspinners used by the Eldar in the Warhammer 40K universe.
The power armor picture is from Fallout 4. This is a mod called Enclave PA, uploaded by user newermind43 to the Fallout 4 Nexus.
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(https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fbalEta_bDCQ4zTb1LfHDvMyt6w=/0x0:1024x480/1200x800/filters:focal(431x159:593x321)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65997798/bladerunner.0.0.0.0.jpg)
For what sells Morgan but nostalgia? The orphaned child knows no sweeter wine. - Our Secret War
To those who expected to make their graceful exit before the coming of the flames, why not fiddle while Rome burned?
Ask Morganites great and small, and they would say the same: the purpose of life was its own enjoyment. The tragedy of Ozymandias was not that he had suffered obscurity in the hereafter, but that, as king, he had wasted on monument what he ought to have spent on entertainments.
Morgan is chiefly remembered today for the empire he raised from nothing. But I don't believe he ever felt a pang of pride a day in his life. Oscar van de Graaf never lets us forget his turn at the political wheel. The Iron Governor took success at something he wasn't born to as validation of his worthiness for a dynastic inheritance. Morgan was different. His obsession was contentment. Pushing his way to the front of the line? Hoarding what he earned from everyone else? That was the apartheid system, not the real man. - Impressions
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/31/5c/01/315c01ed7c6ed020b10f23b87376787e.jpg)
Humans will adapt to the most outrageous circumstances. The notoriously dystopian society of the Dreamers illustrates this assertion perfectly. Shared dreaming is a violence. The vault of a person's secrets sit open, and when the subject awakens, it is impossible to tell what was been taken in the night. All who partake are perpetrators, but also victims. Their adoption of facial coverings and costumes outside the Dreaming Dens is really no mystery: it restores the privacy that is essential for successful interpersonal relations. - A Social History of Planet
Source:
Both pieces of art by late futurist Syd Mead.
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(https://i.pinimg.com/474x/9c/53/92/9c5392820335f96215caf93d3899d4b3--cyberpunk-art-d-art.jpg)
The control tower at Twin Eagles Aerodrome was returned to use only on the rare occasions that the New Two Thousand could not replenish the base by sea. To reduce the burden on his anemic budget, the governor sold flight operations as a private concession to one of the faction's stakeholders.
Heavy seismic activity caused by nearby Shaper terraforming led the new owner to favor temporary construction and exposed infrastructure that could be easily rebuilt after collapse. Critical assets like this pedestal were backstopped with structural isolation systems. These included foundations of free-moving rollers (essentially, shock absorber) and high-friction polymer ground mats to increase a structure's grip on harder ground.
Garrison militia favored drawing patrol duty in the exciting and dynamic environment of the tarmac even though it meant helping the skeleton ground crew to service incoming and outgoing traffic. Most aircraft operations were by New State VTOLs. It was not unusual for open-handed pilots to make gifts of rock chull and ice fish to their new allies. From M.Y. 79, for a period lasting more than two years, anti-grav dirigibles arrived weekly bearing the unfamiliar livery of a hooded lantern. Militia patrols doubled.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/66/51/b6/6651b66e38229ae3ec02a8b626be97d7.jpg)
A dirigible of the Hooded Lantern in flight. These defenseless "heralds" made first contact with all survivors of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri between M.Y. 65 and M.Y. 92. Joralamon Hardacre believed their occupants to be the remnant of the Chiron Probe's Special Analytics Lab.
By dressing a selfish decision in the language of information security, the concessionaire avoided encouragement to make a connection to the Twin Eagles network node. Every three days, flight controllers finished their shift by depositing a stack of data tapes with the base librarian. This slowed aircraft operations measurably since it limited the extent to which ground crews could anticipate the needs of unscheduled flights before they landed.
A shuttered signaling board was often dressed with fresh graffiti. Colonists of every faction were enthusiastic artists of the medium, determined that their survival should not go unmemorialized. The "BFR" tag was particular to the New Two Thousand. Her expectation of one day enjoying "Big F*cking Rights"--as expansive as freedom from indenture, as simple as having enough to eat--explained why a woman put in a hard day's work. It was a battle cry, too, to be thrown back at other factions that presumed to enjoy communal rights on Pilgrim land, such as access to water or minerals, or at the prisoners taken after successful campaigns of self-aggrandizement.
The Pilgrim loudly asserts his rights to everyone he meets. It is telling that these rights accrue solely to himself, never to anyone else. - A Social History of Planet
Sources:
Artist of the first picture unknown. Found in a collection curated by "Jeffrey" on Pinterest.
Dirigible found on Robert Jr. Geballa's Pinterest page (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/375346950167684320/). Apparently from the Golden Compass movie or series.
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The Emporium (pt. 2)
Brigadier James “Admiral” Heid retired as head of the Imperial Military Focus on his fiftieth birthday. The announcement, while a surprise, held no shock to those who knew him. Having fought for over three decades, if not more, it became perfectly understandable that the Despoiler of Africa (in the words of Samatar Jama Barre) and the Destroyer of Rhodesia (in the words of Nathan Holn) would want a breather. The IMF had found a comfortable prominence in the continent’s bustling private military sector, and it was said that the company was running out of wars to fight.
Critics in the war dogs circuit had lambasted his leadership in the Rare Earth Wars as remarkably lackluster. Having led a mixed force of Rehoboth Baster militiamen and an impi of Zulu warriors to secure Steenkampskraal mine, Heid had held off no fewer than three separate recapture attempts from South African troops and ARMSCOR heavies operating on behalf of Dai Seung Heavy Industries. After shrugging off everything from AKM rifle fire all the way to microwave and supersonic beam weaponry, the brigadier repelled the corporate mercenaries, going on to rally with the IMF main host and capture four mines more. And- that was it. Heid had then handed over the spoils to Nwabudike Morgan, taken their fee and bonus, and gone home. No epic betrayal of SafeHaven and subsequent clash of titans against the firm’s President’s Club S-rank units. No underdog defense of the scattered Dai Seung mining specialists, joining with former enemy mercenary remnants against Morganite elite formations. No enigmatic stratagem. No twist. Just, business.
Journalists in the African forever wars beat likewise reported that Heid was seen spending more and more time away from the battlefield. Despite having been marked for death, or at least indefinite detention, by multiple Mthwakazi-Mutapan governments over the years, he maintained a large estate near Lake Mutirikwi. He and his troops were free to come and go by permission of the current chancellor. There, the de jure outlaw hosted feasts and hunting parties, and even permitted the occasional watchvid interview. Visitors were astounded to see that beyond the expected indoor target ranges, trophy rooms of conquered Rhodesiana, and billiard halls, New Watercrest boasted a vast library, a ballroom, and even a full-sized garage of luxury sportscars that Heid professed to race and maintain himself. To outside observers it seemed a perfect retirement home for a perfect soldier, though a little anticlimactic.
(https://i.imgur.com/VvEozT2.png)
Why do you think after all these years the Hammershields or your Circus have never come after me? I’m a necessary evil. They want me here - they need me here. Because if I wasn’t, they might have to do their jobs. It will be thankless and worthless, and once the bodies hit the floor, they're blerried. A dead twenty-three-year-old from Isington gets more linktime than the death of fifty-thousand people he gave his life to protect. So even if they did give a kwacha, their own media prevents them from taking action. Their media is the oppressor, their Tetra drones are the oppressor. The IMF is the great equalizer. I empower these people.
- Morgan Albion Media livelink interview
Officially, James Heid perished in a roadside bombing along the A1 Highway on a quiet stretch just southeast of Mbare. Officially, his vintage Rolls-Royce Phantom V was completely consumed in the engulfing flames- whether from People’s African Union militants, Rhodesian diehards, or just rival contractors, the theories will endlessly proliferate- claiming the lives of Heid, subordinate Jack B. Sterling (formerly of the 27 Troop), and several other high-ranking lieutenants. Officially, the Imperial Military Focus, like so many of the regimes it had interceded for and intervened against, would itself dissolve in the ensuing internecine struggles, solidifying SafeHaven’s preeminence in the PMC sector as it scooped up former IMF elites.
Officially, one “Buck Harrigan” would be quietly admitted into the 'steerage' of the UNS Unity under the auspices of the Stellar Lifeboat Project, alongside the couple thousand tired, poor, huddled masses of displaced persons, political exiles, and climate refugees under the charge of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Embedded in that lottery-winning crowd was all manner of fanatical terrorists, criminals on the run, spies of every stripe, and other opportunistic malefactors who had slipped aboard the trip to the stars with the help of hacking- electronic or otherwise. (It was said that near the end of mission prep, hurry costs were so great, no corruption was required- light bureaucratic maneuvering, some real-world experience, and a clean bill of health was all it took to be considered a Unity candidate.) And so, Buck was joined by “Chad Smith”, “Bosworth Davids”, and scores more of resettled former British East African motorcar technicians, selected for their keen mechanical expertise, excellent self-defense scores, and perhaps by friends in high places. While the Stellar Lifeboat Project was intended to select for random individuals and families, some small businesses from conflict zones like this Eames Emporium were accepted in full.
(https://i.imgur.com/YBFTOra.png)
Heid and a mutineer knife fight on the Unity promenade during Planetfall
The IMF core had departed their homes with minimal possessions beyond ironclad loyalty to their commander. Thus when the Planetfall crisis erupted into shipwide warfare, they were far less equipped than their Spartan, Holnist, Kellerite, and other counterparts. However, they made do with the best of a bad tactical position and found their way to each other, defrosting as many of their comrades along the way. Shredder, psych-whip, sonic hammer, crowbar- all became as lethal as exo-frames and shagokhods in the hands of an experienced fighter. Heid himself had absconded the homeworld with his old SAS Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife smuggled in his cryotube itself. Upon awakening at the hands of a small band of Holnists- one of whom was a former Rhodesian Armoured Corps “Black Devil” who had recognized his lost country’s old bogeyman by chance- Heid feigned helplessness before the militants’ jeers as he fought off the effects of post-hibernation. When the Rhodie gunner moved to strike him, Heid tackled the Holnist and drew his subtle knife, effortlessly slaying his would-be captors while in half-blindness.
For the most part, the Emporium avoided the conflicts on the disintegrating vessel, preferring not to involve themselves just yet in the affairs of the nascent Unity diaspora. They managed to fight and stalk their way to a starboard colony pod with the majority of their members recovered, attracting some crew and passengers who found their daring to win- admirable. These initial dozens not only included former IMF operators but also farmers, industrial workers, medical personnel, scientists, and civilians. Before they fled, they looted indiscriminately all of the provisions, tools, and guns they could carry.
Notes:
Heid’s interview quote is inspired by tapes of the Jackal (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/FarCry2) from Far Cry 2, namely “Necessary Evil” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6FB1xwbQR0), and “Gluten-Free (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWIQjch5SEM).”
“The Circus” is slang for MI-6, as per Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
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Since time immemorial, movement over the water has been faster and cheaper than movement by land. It has also been more efficient than movement by air for bulk cargo. For a long time, rivers and coastal waters were also the choicest highways on Planet.
Ambush by humans and mindworms was so frequent, many colonies placed strict prohibitions on overland travel. Even for the courageous, it was nothing but difficult going. Chiron, geologically younger than Earth, is riven by tall mountain ranges. Thick accumulations of nitrate waste above the topsoil and the toughness of fungal tubers complicate road-building. Chiron's strong gravity and thick cloud cover also made early air travel more difficult.
Unity carried hundreds of barges to support waterside settlement and resource extraction. Following the modular designs of other transportation technology, they were capable of being fitted for a wide range of missions, including hauling, dredging, fishing, bridging, mining, patrol, and exploration.
(https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/1400/f3c09b16841565.562b2f5c10206.jpg)
At lower left, a floating laboratory has been converted to an extended-family dwelling, probably by settlers engaged in aquaculture. Pilgrims who could not afford other homesteads saw surplus barges as a good investment. Many followed S.A.M.M. expeditions in hopes of attaching themselves to a new base and going into trade. The larger of the two craft is a tanker and has been fitted with fighting platforms, a modification popular with both the Spartan Federation and the Human Tribe. The irregular hullform suggests that it has been salvaged from a river bottom.
Barges were easily converted for combat. Bourse artillerist Tael Kaestral commanded a flotilla of bombardment vessels at the final reduction of Xerxion, earning a generous bonus from his Kellerite paymasters. To obtain desirable trajectories against the mighty fortress, Pete Landers marshaled his followers to temporarily divert the Slow Wind River onto an oxbow course.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/010/991/408/large/jeff-zugale-062209-mil-hovercraft-marker.jpg?1527284855)
Parasite craft like this Tribal guncraft were easy to make from cargo shunters and tow vehicles. They were also deadly to crew. Combat attracted mindworms. No amount of speed could make up for the limited maneuvering space in even a wide river like the Slowwind. Designs without full crew protection and ample close-in defenses were rapidly abandoned.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8e/53/bc/8e53bc54129a03afb264cfdb78982ef3.jpg)
CRI hospital barges were a frequent sight on the contested Slowwind. They were often subject to search, but rarely to seizure. Contraband was dumped overboard unceremoniously.
(https://www.bairdmaritime.com/wp-content/uploads/5148-e1626426014154.jpg)
Floating helipads extended the range of Spartan VTOLs until they could strike deep into Pilgrim territory. Many outlying Pilgrim communities purchased surplus anti-aircraft cannon from their faction militia. To miss weekend drill was an forgivable breach of the social compact.
Sources:
Barge sketch is the work of Sergey Musin.
Little gunboat is Jeff Zugale's work.
Original artist of hospital ship drawing is unknown. Found on Richard Morganstern's "Star Wars Vehicles" Pinterest.
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The Emporium (pt. 3)
(https://i.imgur.com/oNAXY1B.jpg)
Emporium Mobile H.Q. Sumatran Whip surrounded by replica T-49 main battle tanks and Unity scout choppers upon crossing the Planetneck into the Great Dunes
The Emporium landed at the Cape Storm continental tip, near the wind-swept southern pole. This desolate starting location was mercifully mitigated by the discovery of several Supply Pods with crucial supplies and even cryotubes along the northern coast towards Planetneck, leading one Warmonger officer to dub the region “Hunter’s Bounty.” The initial base of Overlord was relegated to a secondary outpost after the priceless discovery of a Unity airship, modeled after the Soviet Kamneva-class dirigible, from a Supply Pod. The Sumatran Whip became a floating fortress, allowing the faction to cross great distances quickly, if under the threat from the dangerous Locusts of Chiron. While its use as a battlefield command center is vastly overestimated- Heid was never one to place his Warmongers' eggs into one puncturable flying basket- it was an effective means of bringing down psychological terror upon the Emporium’s enemies, at least in the early years before the development of higher-altitude missiles.
Socioeconomic profile
After the initial decades of exploration and expansion, the other peoples of the continent were alarmed by the appearance of this faction of jolly bloodthirsty savages for hire, offering their services to any who was willing to sell energy, mineral resources, or simply foodstuffs. Indeed, the Emporium’s first contracts signed on Planet was to wage war on the ecosystem itself, providing heavy fire cover against mindworms and locusts while Hunters and Tribesmen ‘former teams cleared xenofungus. Or guarding merchant convoys between friendly factions against smacer raids.
It was there that the “Admiral” resumed his old tactics. While Emporium guard squads worked effectively, they seemed to inspire greater hostile activity from smacer survivalists wherever they operated. Whether that was because of their often cruel and brutal tactics, or rumors of Emporium battle-probe teams gifting battlefield arms they reclaimed to the baseless for renewed attacks, business with Heid’s forces was seen as a glass cannon, whose powerful blast had the potential for shattering blowback.
(https://i.imgur.com/IMdHkm4.jpg?1)
Emporium Assegai needlejet strike craft above the carcass of a young Sealurk, Mnesimache Planetary pacification campaign (ARC contract)
But entreat the Emporium they did, because Heid found peacetime services to ingratiate his military to some of the others. While one vertical of the faction’s economy was, of course, producing armaments of all sorts and calibers, it was a far cry from the more-intensively developed industrial societies that emerged from corporate or scientific rule. For all that the Emporium Design Corps poured into research, the faction was a net arms importer, and most of the weapons it did sell were aforementioned battlefield salvage.
However, what it did have was decades of battlefield experience to export. This initially manifested as the workhorse Mentor training programmes, where veterans advised other faction’s armed forces, even bringing them to the School of the Centaurs military academy located at Ultra. Everything from rudimentary military organization to rigorous anti-wildlife survival tactics to special operations is covered. As comprehensive as the Mentor curricula were, many governments grew leery of exposing the intimate systems of state security to mercenaries. So instead, they opted to hire Aegis Advisors from Heid instead; these lower-ranking Emporium officers, sometimes simply sergeants, were hired on short-term contracts to provide their experience briefly for campaigns at a time, then politely asked to bugger off. Indeed, many soldiers resignedly looked to fighting their former Aegis Advisors in the next vendetta, or even in the current one should contracts be broken.
Dabblers study logistics. Conquerors build trade empires. - Memento Vici
But superior arms and training alone are not sufficient to sustain a fight. Shorn of their paymasters, the imperial neocolonial powers they played against each other back on Earth, Heid and his comrades had to seek new means to maintain a viable army, more than a simple mercenary band. No longer could they rely upon the patronage of nation-states to provision their troops and deliver them to war’s door. While the faction was dominated by former IMF soldiers, Heid and much of the command staff did have experience managing resources required to sustain their campaigns, and they leaned on the expertise of those from beyond as much as possible. During the early years of settlement, the main priority after survival from the elements was creating the supply chains and transport infrastructure necessary to keep the Emporium forces in fighting form. Every new base and installation was tied together by routes for armored cargo vehicles, ensuring that any conflict would be fueled, funded, and fed. This transportation fleet of supply rovers, the Emporium “Merchant Army”, became regionally renowned.
(https://i.imgur.com/MnUcAHY.jpg)
Emporium ILM Porter cargo trucks laden with raw minerals for manufacturing electronic components depart from Children of the Atom resource outpost Colonia Trismegistus before dawn
By the time of first contact with the other burgeoning societies of Planet, the Logistic Corps was developed enough for Heid to offer shipment services to his neighbors. Christened Imperial Logistics and Materiel and based in the interfactional trade base of Market Garden, the external-facing section of the Corps offered secure delivery for inter-factional commerce, further guarding trade routes under the watchful eye and steady aim of Warmongers. They positioned themselves as Wells Fargo stagecoaches where packages would be sent in armor and comfort, in contrast to the adventurous but threadbare Pony Express that was the couriers of the Hunters of Chiron. After decades, the ILM garnered enough customers for it to grow gradually in time to be a continental shipping firm able to compete with the likes of ARC, Cartel subsidiaries, and even Morgan Transport offerings. In time, business would dwindle as tales of the Emporium’s infamy spread, and many faction administrators realized the considerable conflicts of interests involved in peacetime dealings with the Warmongers. By the time of the invention of the Supply Crawlers, the ILM was no longer a pillar of the faction’s economy, but by then, its major industry was in full production: war.
Political structure
The Spartan polity is often described as a “state that exists solely for preparation of war.” For the Emporium, it would seem, war is the state. - A Social History of Planet
The Emporium’s war machine and its organs of state are indistinguishable. The entirety of its society is dedicated to perfecting the faction’s ability to wage war. Paradoxically, the percentage of actual soldiers in its population is lower than that of the Spartans, or other martial factions such as the New State or the Darwin Raiders. Even though each citizen of the Emporium is trained in the arts of war from creche to tank, not all actually serve in the squads, or even the Home Rozvi civil defense units. Just as any modern military is primarily composed of those supporting the actual fighters, the vast majority of the Warmonger population is employed in “consolidation” work of logistics, heavy industry, scientific development, and entertainment. (Far from being devoid of the arts, culture in the Emporium means what the troops like- and as Heid and the original Thulium Regiment are from a cornucopia of Earth cultures, works of art are created specifically to cater to their diverse tastes.)
Emporium military doctrine emphasizes elite units, a holdover from the IMF days, stressing quality over quantity. While many ambitious commanders and even young conscripts dream of one day building an army that could conquer all of Chiron, the “Admiral” has always insisted that the service they should provide is to act as force multipliers embedded in the larger masses of their client militaries. As to planetary military domination, he only laughs haughtily at the notion.
(https://i.imgur.com/tNmvls8.png?2)
5th Elite Drop Corps “Warhead Riders”, known for the Sack of Xerxion which contributed to the base’s decline
Internally, the Emporium combines the rigid discipline of military rule with the laissez-faire casualness of a mercenary band. There are the troops, and then there is everyone else. The troops must live and die as the campaign requires them to. Isolated acts of defiant heroism against incompetent commanders are encouraged- if they lead to victory. If not, it’s the stockade, the punishment sphere, or the gallows. Everyone else is expected to sustain the war effort. They are, as a rule, allocated fewer resources than those who fight. But those who contribute more to Emporium operations are rewarded as such, and even the lowliest drone is accorded the liberty of benign neglect. The Warmongers do not particularly care about the state of society beyond what is necessary to prolong the fight. If some social psych spending is required to keep the laborers happy, the quartermasters will deign to write it off; if bullets are cheaper, then force would be used instead. Greater service grants greater rewards, even the promise of loot. All are welcome to prove their mettle by joining the Rozvi or the squads.
The perpetual war economy promises the growth of a commercial venture. Contracts that are successful, of course, will provide windfalls for the faction from Heid to drone. At critical points of a campaign, operational psych chaplains of the faction spring into action, drumming up excitement for battle from soldier and civilian alike. Workers tear effigies of enemy commanders limb from limb while recruits relentlessly fire training rounds at empty xenofungus fields. Outside observers have noted the similarities between the sometimes ecstatic bloodlust displays of Emporium “war weeks” and Pentecost observances at the Lord’s Conclave, and crunchtime before quarter’s end at the Dynamic Enterprise.
(https://i.imgur.com/DzDnHfQ.jpg)
11th Battalion “Red Shadow” standard squaddies assault a contract target using replica Late Earth era firearms
Emporium statecraft is typified in the treatment of conquered bases. Depending on strategic needs, or simply Heid’s mood at the time, most surrendered populations are given the free rein to depart at will- while fighting is desirable, having to quash drone riots in new conquests are usually distractions from the main fight. Crucial technical and industrial workers are compelled to stay- though efforts to buy their loyalty, or rather unit cohesion, are initially attempted by adding them to the current contract as shareholder beneficiaries. Either way, conquest is only undertaken with grander objectives in mind. Often, lower value outposts might only be held temporarily before being traded away at campaign’s end, or gifted to allied factions, taking only strategic resources and those willing to join the Endless War.
External Affairs
(https://i.imgur.com/yms3j1M.png)
Ascendancy socialite Avril Walker at the grounds of the Helix Center
Foreign relations are perpetually strained. The Peacekeeping Forces and the Watchers of Chiron have both levied injunctions and prohibitions against the Emporium as an illegal PMC, guilty of harboring culprits of all sorts of war crimes. But despite the faction maintaining its dubious record of choosing the battles it wants to, even at times in contravention to earlier agreements, many still solicit Emporium support in their vendettas. Sometimes, to provide a ready-made staff of expert officers to lead hastily-assembled militias of civilians or paid smacers via Aegis Advisors. Usually, for the direct access to battle-tested, expensively-equipped, military units to augment their own forces via the squads. But sometimes to hire entire armies to wage vendetta on behalf of a conflict-adverse populace.
And rarely, the Emporium accepts contracts to engage in probe-work, just as the IMF once stole and robbed. While recruits of the Tactical Espionage Corps spend weeks of complex base infiltration, wilderness survival training, and social engineering in elaborated-constructed scenarios at Camp Lusty, they all-too-often find themselves challenged, even outclassed, by probe teams from factions either dedicated to counter-probe action (e.g. the Observers), or at battling rival extractors (e.g. the Dreamers). But the Warmongers do occasionally prosper at even inelegant smash and grab operations. Their most successful- and costliest- mission on Planet to date is the Heist of the Longevity Vaccine mk. I from the Ascendancy.
It had begun with Pahlavi prematurely terminating the ILM contract for armored intrafaction supply shipments. An anonymous tip-off later from a supposed high-ranking genetwister, perhaps even a member of the Gerousia, the Early Data Recon Corps had determined that the Ascendancy had been funneling massive amounts of scientific personnel to an otherwise unassuming manufacturing base, the Acme. One rip-roaring adventure later replete with multiple layers of deceptions, shootouts with Legionnaires, and rover chases followed by aerial extraction, the Emporium probe team had recovered the formula for a vastly improved life extension treatment. As supreme commander, Heid had insisted on taking the formula first. The “Admiral” found himself nearly choking to death, only to arise from the ground many tense minutes later, his skin cast in icy pale blue. One step closer to immortal- but at what price, his medics and battle-geneticists could not say. Since then, the prototype Longevity Vaccine has been refined and administered to Emporium high command with far improved results, but Heid remains confined to a personal exo-suit in all public appearances. Meanwhile at Ascendancy listening post the Zenith, a transmission is received from a deep cover Daena mole, and a thin smile materializes in the dark.
(https://i.imgur.com/iG9dqXq.png)
Brigadier Heid and the Thulium Regiment in a modern reenactment of the Fall of Salisbury during Beachhead Day festivities
The Brigadier’s early demise might have prompted a true succession war similar to the dissolution of the IMF on Earth, had it come to pass. The Emporium’s leadership staff is primarily composed of the elite Thulium Regiment, named for the valuable rare earth element they had once fought over. The initial members are the same mercenary ultra-loyalists who had infiltrated the Unity as employees of the original Eames Emporium, rubberstamped by the Stellar Lifeboat Project. These commanders and operators, having fought and killed for the faction for decades, are often squad commanders or corps chiefs. Like many other faction leaders, Heid has a tendency to play them off against one another, keeping none close enough for power- and seeing who can best the other in fights. These conflicts range from hand-to-hand duels, even commissary bar fights, all of the way to powerplays between Emporium armies on campaign. But the Brigadier finds a way to rein them in. The regiment has found its numbers renewed over time by servicemen who have distinguished themselves, both in combat and in peacetime. The division between these commissioned and the original whenwes has been an easy one for the “Admiral” to exploit. And those of the Thulium are often endowed with great privilege and power, serving as military governors of bases, given authority to oversee Secret Projects, and advising Heid himself on what wars to join. Most, given to the same temperament as their commander, would rather be in the field at the fight than playing liege lord of spartan utilitarian cities like Torch, Fortitude, and Barbarossa.
Unlike indefinite-contract loyalist PMCs like Sabre or subsidiaries like SafeHaven, the Emporium regards itself the true independent maker- and assassin- of kings. All others are scorned as mere sellswords, or little more than glorified corporate security. “Rent-a-cops with particle impactors,” as Heid sneers. To be committed to a single client makes them your master, and yourself a lackey. The Warmongers see themselves as servants to nothing, save for the love of fighting itself.
For so long as mankind wages war, the Emporium will be there.
Casting
Avril Walker is portrayed by Sigourney Weaver as Alexandria Reid from Marvel's The Defenders.
The Thulium Regiment is portrayed by the cast of Pennyworth.
Notes:
The picture of the Sumatran Whip is concept art of the Aeroscraft ML866 dynamic lift airship (https://www.dezeen.com/2007/12/11/aeroscraft-ml866/).
The screenshots of strike fighters and of the drop corps are from Pandora: First Contact.
The scene of cargo trucks leaving a base are from Outpost 2: Divided Destiny.
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The Emporium (pt. 4)
Name: Buck Harrigan
Rank: Civilian Vendor
Position: Vehicle Mechanic
County of Origin: British East Africa
Age: 53
(https://i.imgur.com/aATt9qN.jpg)
Psych Profile: Militarist
Subject marked by compulsion towards confrontation, bordering on conflict, with others. Prone to verbal sparring when questioned by those outside of company; often follows pattern of gradual escalation until opposing party is pushed to directly offend, whereupon subject then lets loose barrage of barbs, often reinforced by employees. Despite confrontational style, general personality is normally courteous, affable, even good-humored.
Observed to manifest confrontation primarily when either challenged by others or presented with opportunities. Career record shows clear trajectory towards market domination. Subject repeatedly leads his company towards direct competition, utilizing aggressive business tactics to prevail over rival firms. Rumored to cut deals only to renege them for tactical reasons.
Inspires strong loyalty from subordinates while exercising leadership style allowing for autonomy within competitive environment. Ability to command high workplace cohesion, positive morale, and profitable business fundamentals amidst deteriorating British East African security situation is impressive. While subject’s temper and potential aggression are problematic, his acumen and leadership abilities deem the Eames Emporium a viable candidate for Stellar Lifeboat Project.
Design Notes
The Emporium is an adaptation of the Imperium (https://pandora.fandom.com/wiki/Imperium), with the Imperial Military Focus as an adaptation of Empire Management, both from SMAC spiritual successor Pandora: First Contact. (Full Pandora lore here (https://pandora.proxy-studios.com/media/PandoraEnglishManual.pdf).) While the names are slightly tongue-in-cheek, the concept is not: it came from my original realization that Santiago and the Spartans, despite being militaristic, are actually Erratic in temperament, not Aggressive. They’re perpetually preparing for war, but what is that but the maintenance of some sort of perverse perpetual peace? There can be versions of the Spartans where they’re solely defensive and isolationist. So I imagined what such a “War Faction” made up of constantly militant aggressors might look like.
What I ended up with is the Emporium, based on the Imperium. They are a faction not only devoted to but dependent upon war, not least because they are mercenaries. Peace is only useful for rearming; it’s a time between jobs, paychecks. But also a time of societal stagnation- war is when they truly flourish. It’s what their entire societal structure and political economy is based on. Note that they are not a “Conquest Faction” - that’s a different horseman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse#White_Horse), after all, distinct from War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse#Red_Horse). Nearly any faction can have its ideology be used as justification for the domination of Planet. In some ways, total conquest is the worst case scenario for the Emporium, meaning the end to war.
The Emporium is dedicated to war both as a concept and as a culture- it is not merely enough to be militarily-prepared in order to survive, one must always be fighting in order to thrive. Santiago fights for many different purposes. Heid simply fights, because that is all he knows. The monetization of warfare is simply the self-actualization of that fighting instinct.
The Emporium is also dedicated to war because of its leader’s personality. Heid is the consummate Blood Knight, as the trope goes (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BloodKnight) - he relishes a good fight and a splendid war. To him, war is the purest form of the expression of life. Perhaps, in a way, it is the Spartan will to survive put in motion. Social Darwinism in action.
This version of Heid is influenced by his visual inspiration. Like Pennyworth’s Gulliver Troy, he is meant to be an urbane yet utterly brutal psycho killer. Unlike Santiago, his concepts of battlefield honor are completely opportunistic. The Spartans have a warrior's code, even if they permit ruthlessness. Heid is a brute who willingly exploits codes and breaks them at will. Sometimes for gain or for self-preservation, sometimes for a prolonged or a fresh fight. This mirrors how “Gully” can have all the pretensions of being a noble SAS captain, yet devolve into a jumped-up mugger, a robber preying upon wartorn England. Not to mention a domestic abuser. (Massive SPOILERS: a choice character moment. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxk4qSfCnxY)) So Heid is meant to be not only a relentless fighter, but also a stealer, an honorless rogue. There is no true chivalry to his warfighting.
Finally, the idea of having logistics be one of the Emporium’s major verticals/services was a response to this Templin Institute analysis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Coks-M0MNxY) about why the Banished from Halo: Infinite, and mercenary factions in general, do not make for viable villains.
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(https://www.theneweconomy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/2001-a-space-odyssey.jpg)
Their strong protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, academic achievement alone was insufficient to secure virtually any leadership post in the University of Planet, especially one in the close orbit of the Academician himself. Prokhor Zakharov, never mistaken by any of his contemporaries or biographers as a keen judge of character, nonetheless maintained an obsessive control over the selection, and subsequent intellectual shaping, of those he entrusted with the business of his faction. Successful aspirants shared their leader's rigid belief in the correctness of technocratic government while refraining from "excessive moralizing" over the social consequences of the University's eclectic research program. They were also, as a rule, diffident, and mostly without natural constituencies even within their own faculties--traits that observers traced back to Zakharov's own deep-seated insecurities. It was a losing battle. In all but a few bases, student and faculty committees conjured an irresistible influence on virtually all decisions, big and small, so that while base directors could and did rule by fiat, it was guns to the end so far as enforcement was concerned.
Roland Steiner Dahlgren, forty-five years Zakharov's junior, and an American to boot, was ideal putty for his master's arthritic fingers. This byproduct of post-war America, far enough removed from "the most recent unpleasantness" with the Holnists that, despite two much older siblings sacrificed on the altar of Union Forever, he joined the Commissioned Corps of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in lieu of a traditional combat branch, knew only the rule-bound symmetry and machine-assisted comfort of the Corporate Age. To Dahlgren and much of his North American age cohort, religion was a personal ritual with precisely as much value, and importance, as thumb-sucking. Along with disinterest in education and skepticism toward the motives and efficacy of government and "experts," spiritual conviction was a potential signifier of Holnist sympathies, and incompatible with the civic patriotism felt throughout much of the victorious Northeast and Pacific Coast.
By prior agreement with his father, the adolescent Roland departed NOAA just shy of his twentieth year. He was next at M.I.T., then at the Superior School of Atmospherics at the University of Algiers, where his work focused on weather modification through cloud seeding. As an amateur pilot, Dahlgren often flew testcraft himself. His analyses and experiments were recognized by the International Meteorological Organization as a decisive factor in the freshwater scheme for the Chott el Djerid. He was in close communication with the French Union regarding their project to create a so-called Sahara Sea, but opted instead to join the ARC's operations to restore the Ogallala Aquifer. In 2070, he joined the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri as an American Reclamation Corporation (ARC) contractor. In this capacity, he was attached to Terraforming Operations but also subject to the oversight of Administrator Oscar van de Graaf.
Dahlgren survived Unity's crack-up because one of Zakharov's engineers wisely anticipated the need for a shuttle pilot. This, after Dahlgren was skipped over for retrieval by geological engineering officer Ikurō Kamatari, who regarded the American youngster's association with the ARC as morally problematic and so marked him for death by abandonment. (Pilgrims are not believed to have penetrated so far forward within the hull, explaining why so many of their compatriots there fell in with other leaders.)
Most of the Unity engineering crew surrounding Zakharov were from explicitly Communist or post-Communist societies where personal freedoms were sharply restricted. This reflected in part the scope of Zakharov's pre-mission connections: as a fixture in the Soviet scientific firmament, his association with American scientists was usually incidental. Rather than focus on this experiential divide with his new compatriots, Dahlgren embraced the theories and practice of central planning. A U.N. Psych Profile suggests that a combination of Old American family tradition, comfort with corporate structures, and a taste for macro-scale problem solving predisposed Dahlgren to feel at ease in an environment where certain metaphysical debates were deemed closed and unimportant.
Zakharov seems to have taken a shine to Dahlgren. In his diaries, the Academician set the American apart from his other subordinates. Dahlgren, he wrote, lacked the instinct or the appetite for power politics, and was an ideal student: properly humble, and seeming to grasp intuitively the importance of placing "factual inquiry" over "silly explorations of personal feeling." Both men took a dim view of the growing ascetics' movement within University dorms in which students buoyed by special protection of the law frequently rioted against provocations real and imagined, from disagreement about the University's studied neutrality during the Spartan extermination of the Gaians at Blissman's Bog to anger over weapons sales to Morgan's Dynamic Enterprise. Zakharov was especially incensed by the movement's assertion that, from inquiry inevitably came empathy, which was as good as a call to action. University Security was constantly alert for student protests, and the violence frequently took deadly turns in both directions. Student bombers killed many of Zakharov's original lieutenants, and the faction probe teams "disappeared" dozens of undergraduates each semester in retaliation. On Yuri's Night, an all-faction holiday, the streets of University bases were simply given over to miscreants and militiamen.
Installed at Vostok Station, or ста́нция Восто́к, on the edge of the Great Dune Sea, Dahlgren oversaw the controversial scheme to flood emptied Hive warrens on behalf of land-hungry Pilgrims. The broad chain of resulting oases became a flashpoint of contention between a vengeful Yang, an increasingly muscular van de Graaf, and badly-battered remnant caravans under J.T. Marsh. Dahlgren's influence was unpopular with Pilgrim Stakeholders. Endowed with a large budget, he dispensed much of it as pay local Pilgrim settlers to defend University assets in the vicinity of their homesteads, a tendency that undermined their willingness to answer their own faction's calls to arms. The pay was conditional, too, on receiving certain medical procedures--a prospect that thrilled the hardy but sickly Pilgrim farmers but smacked to some of their more philosophically active merchant-leaders of a combination of bribery and eugenics.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/covers/images/001/156/675/large/carlos-osorio-mattepainting-01-sci-fi-desert.jpg?1441211357)
Vostok Base on the Gwolier Rim. Called "the Silver Horns" by local homesteaders and "the Clockwork Base" by its University inhabitants, whose lives were ruled by the strict schedules and harsh rationing of their famously fastidious young master. Most left for the University heartland after the mandatory three-month rotation, but some counted the predictability and transparency of Dahlgren's leadership a blessing by comparison with that of the more capricious committees that helped to govern larger bases.
(http://www.scifimoviepage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/dune-000-cro.jpg)
University Security used acid weapons against local megafauna. The Academician was adamant that these were never used for any other purpose. Yet student organizations circulated hundreds of vid-captures of wounds consistent with the use of such weapons in domestic police actions.
(https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/672/322/367/sci-fi-desert-combat-mech-sand-none-1200x833-nature-deserts-hd-art-wallpaper-preview.jpg)
A Tri-Baron mercenary searches for an optimum gun sighting after disembarking from a Skitterer High-Mobility Vehicle. University settlers on the Dune Sea border gained a new outlook toward mechanical design from their Pilgrim neighbors. Rather than send worn equipment to far-away University Base for refurbishment or reclamation, they built new, locally-informed models informed by the adaptive biology of local wildlife. Dahlgren made the pained decision to assume a modest Tri-Baron Company contract after resistance from van de Graaf badly reduced the number of Pilgrim auxiliaries available to help his small security force. The Tri-Barons, tough veterans of the interminable Southern African Front Line Wars with more than four decades in South African service, quickly reimposed a reasonably semblance of balance between the warring powers of the area.
Sources:
Dahlgren's image from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Vostok Base image by Carlos Cardona, "Sci-Fi Environment Study," hosted on Art Station.
Battle image from Dune 2000.
Sniper image provenance unknown. Found on Wallpaper Flare.
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(http://img2.chinadaily.com.cn/images/201908/15/5d54f2e8a310cf3e9797546a.jpeg)
In her magisterial work on the subject, Flaring Stars, Dr. Anwulika Tyjani contrasts the two greatest flourishings of the Kellerite faith tradition, the North American and the Chinese.
Jean-Baptiste, a proud Midwesterner, always addressed himself to an American audience. He spiced his spoken homilies with references to the "beauty of that John Deere music" and urging followers to replace the baptismal rite with frolic in the Mississippi River. The sacred Sunday, he said, was made to be spent at the ball park. Working men had as much need for Budweiser as for Bibles. Kellerism in its original vintage was mournful. Its adherents were singing out the old certainties of factory jobs and national amity, vanished long before they were born, and rededicating themselves to local relief. Keller called for a renewal and re-centering of family and civic life as the final balk set against the crumbling gate of poverty and addiction. Children born in small towns, he said, should worry less about expanding their horizons in the dehumanizing anonymity of the city's overcrowded cities than enjoying the many fruits of family and community well into adulthood. The cities would not miss those them. If they did choose to go away, they must do so only with the intention of returning when they had acquired the skills that had made their departure necessary. Most important of all, he wanted his listeners to join him in turning their backs on the World Wide Web, commending them to select physical experiences before mental ones.
Never, never make the mistake of equating the lazy and convenient camaraderie of distance and shared hobbies, however enjoyable, with the value of direct, personal relationships face-to-face. Your neighbor may dislike you, but he will still get you a cup or sugar or drive you to the hospital. - Sermon 402
To be sure, Keller was no doctrinaire libertarian. His summons was a reluctant one. Cutting against the prevailing political winds in his section of the country, he wholeheartedly embraced social safety nets and argued that the common man had nothing to fear from the expert--who was, after all, likely to be his own son or nephew returned to "put that fancy education to good use on all our behalves." This new thinking was for today, Keller insisted, not tomorrow. He looked forward to a time when the limitations of exigency could be lifted.
Wartime Kellerism, including the idea of the self-defense community, came later, after the founder had retreated from public life, so that the authenticity of the taped sermons that form of the bulk of the Prescriptive Teachings is still in doubt. The clenched-jaw, muscular Kellerism of the Annotated Broadcasts was in direct counterpoint to the rising succession crisis of the 2020s and 2030s. The author urged his small town listeners to take up arms for the protection of their own lives and property. Kellerites should not forsake government, but they would be fools to trust in its ability to shield them from the dangers now at hand. The rudiments of this new faith resembled Scouting tradition. Adherents should invest in practical skills such as sewing, canning, and carpentry. The able-bodied must learn to shoot. Towns were to disperse their libraries, while depositors should withdraw their cash. In Kellerite churches, prayer was almost completely replaced by instructional sessions in everything from first aid to car repair. As public order began to break down more completely, the final sermons released Kellerites indefinitely from the repayment of non-local debts. Departing from earlier warnings to keep family units small, the broadcasts now urged young people to marry so that the fortunes of their families might be intertwined, and bade them begin having children at once, "for each new mouth to feed shall have two strong hands and one strong back to recommend it."
Keller's bugle calls were naturally controversial. Politicians and industrialists blamed him for every strike, stoppage, and refusal to sell. Feminists pointed out that Keller's final position on families would disadvantage women and girls more than it would men. Liberals and technocrats felt that Kellerite communities, hermetic by design, could only ever become fertile ground for regressive thinking. The Evangelical Fire declared him a heretic over what they alleged was his casual and careless equivocation between what pleased God and what pleased Man. In 2045, at the Great Revival in Knoxville, TN, Keller was burned in effigy not once, but five times. John Bircher types, of which counted tens of millions of adherents in the mid twentieth century, scapegoated Keller as a Secret Socialist with designs to help eradicate liberty. In time, the United States Government, once indifferent to the Kellerite movement, began to treat it like any other secessionist movement. Exposed to the same propaganda as Holnists, many Federal troopers believed that Kellerites were cultists using the language of self-reliance as a cover for incest and polygamy.
Sometimes called National Kellerism, Chinese Kellerism was an offshoot of the original philosophy brought from Corpus Christi, TX by Jīnlóng Lin (林金龍), a petrochemical engineer who fled the Texas Secession. Lin's interests ran exclusively to Wartime Kellerism during a period of intensifying conflict between Taiwan and Communist China, no longer held at bay by the threat of American intervention. Lin's exegesis of the Annotated Broadcasts was carefully adjusted for its new audience. Keller's appeal for children to remain at home into adulthood was easily folded into familiar themes of filial obligation and ancestor veneration. The sacrificial aspects of the Kellerite lifestyle fit perfectly into a cultural context where the individual was subordinate to the group, especially the extended family and the nation. Lin did not translate any of Keller's commentary on alienation from modernity and dissatisfaction with certain movements in American Conservatism, although it is unclear whether this reflected a considered editorial perspective or simple ignorance of those materials. Lin was soon playing Keller's tapes for crowds of ten thousand or more most nights a week. Kellerites in Taoyuan initiated a scrapping drive in response to PLAN blockade. Throughout the country, those inspired by Lin's message mobilized disproportionately to help build beach defenses and campaign for hardline candidates who promised to preserve Taiwanese independence.
Like its American rootstock, Taiwanese Kellerism thrived on popular anxiety, but this time, the reaction of government officials was not hostility or confusion. Lieutenant General Zhxin "Johnny" Xie (契志欣) of the Republic of China Army believed this new religion, insular and service-minded, alternately alarmist and vigilant, was utterly congruent with the needs of civil defense. Xie used his position to advocate successfully for Taiwan's Kellerite communities to receive arms and training. He toured Kellerite communities throughout the island and hosted twice-weekly playbacks of Keller's wartime sermons for his officers, attendance at which was mandatory. In 2060, Kellerite officers overthrew the Taiwanese President and installed Xie in his place. Within months, the same troop would lead the vanguard that landed at Xinghua Bay on the Chinese mainland to stiffen the Golden Rebellion.
Shūfēn Liu (劉淑芬), born October 7, 2040, was the second daughter of a Taiwanese Air Force major on Xie's personal staff. At her father's direction, she gave up Taoist traditions in adolescence to adopt politically favored Kellerism, becoming a senior block warden while in secondary school. Liu followed a scholarship to Hong Kong College of Medicine where research opportunities placed her in connection with microbiologists on retainer to Struan's Pacific Trading Company. An outbreak of Red Flu derailed plans to return home in 2061, and she instead joined the Hong Kong Royal Ambulance Corps, assisting sheltered residents during the colony's strict quarantine. Three years later, Liu, a project lead at Struan's, was Assistant Director of Medical Services for a military internment camp at Shenzen. From 2064-67, she joined her father at the Golden Court, remaining until the elder Liu suffered a fatal stroke before studying infectious disease at the Universidade de São Paulo.
Chinese persuasion overcame American complaints regarding Liu's "questionable" Psych profile--a follower who had lived most of her life in the shadow of authority figures; a heretic to some; a Struan's affiliate who almost surely participated in unethical medical practices perpetrated against People's Liberation Army Prisoners of War, and possibly Hong Kong residents. Liu was posted to the Medical Division, expanded in 2040 with a tropical disease branch to compensate for the discovery that the Pathfinder Probe crew had carried Red Flu with them across the stars.
Pete Landers's stowaways, all sourced from the two Americas, tried and failed to locate known Kellerites among the broader Unity crew, few enough as there were, but Liu was an early prize for Aleigha Cohen. Liu assisted in the medical evaluation and triage of the ship's convict crew, and was well enough trusted that Cohen followed her recommendations on which of the prisoners to keep entombed. Since Cohen hadn't the mercenary protection of her once-and-future collaborator, it was all hands to the guns, and Liu instructed several of her crewmates on the finer points of shredder pistol marksmanship, learned from her father.
(https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/830/525/208/sci-fi-astronaut-rover-vehicle-hd-wallpaper-preview.jpg)
Once Planetside, Liu was spared the worst miseries of life in the Dreamer camp by Cohen's inspiration to found the faction's Mobile Ambulance Response Service, traveling surgery and apothecary. In this connection, she made frequent contact with Hivemen, sometimes as victim, sometimes as a tolerated merchant. On one such mission, Liu was detained with her team after it was found that Cobb had sold Yang irradiated rations. Rather than press for the return of his forfeited personnel and equipment, Cobb considered that they might be the price of penance.
Liu's professional attainments and character provided her the basic tools to climb high in the Human Hive. Medical staff were guaranteed the relatively favored status of Technicians, and though there was a long way to fall from grace, Liu received more consistent rations and services than when she had been amongst the disorder of her original faction. Yang quickly made the helpful Liu an Initiate, and she was one of the few invited to offer him regular counsel regarding the human management of his colonies. Liu's experiences with persons imprisoned by disease or war provided valuable insights for Yang as he walked the tightrope between visionary and villain to the starving hundreds he had led into the desert. Her knowledge of shared dreaming and long-standing inurrement to state-sanctioned experimentation led to Yang's entrusting her with the colony's nerve staples, which they used frequently to quell dissent.
Sources:
Lin is portrayed by Shu Qi in Shanghai Fortress.
Second imageis "Mars 21" by Maciej Rebisz.
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Far from the warmth of a familiar sun, we returned in our primitive fear to the safety of the dark. - Delving
(https://www.iamag.co/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/joakim-ericsson7-498x613.jpg)
Mining engineer Archelaus Laskaris on the 4 Vesta asteroid. The Extravehicular Mobility Unit uses a neural interface, made possilbe by a datajack enhancement, to leave the hands free. The bulky clothing is crush-resistant. A medical pocket on the right upper arm complies with the minimum safety regulations expected by Comprehensive Transport. It contains a medicated wound dressing. A Personal Defense Weapon has been issued in case of labor unrest.
Archelaus Laskaris. Born 2030, New Smyrna, Empire of Greece. Father a fisherman, mother a police officer. Amateur mountaineer.
Graduated ETH Zurich with high honors, receiving PhD in geology. Completed M.S. in sub-surface mining at Curtin University, Western Australia. Commissioned a captain with the 737th Army Construction Command in Macedonia. Tasked with devising improvements to the 150-year-old Metaxis Line after Greek accession to the Balkan Triad.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/008/766/794/large/sebastien-hue-asset.jpg?1515168277)
Most of the rebuilt Metaxis Line was excavated with old West German machinery financed by Greece's NATO allies in hopes of reducing Greek bellicosity. It failed. Once the generals had their bribe, they invaded Turkey anyway, hoping to redeem the nearly two million Greek refugees who had fled earlier inflationary crises at home. After brief success, the Greek invasion collapsed.
Terraforming was a labor-intensive occupation: even if the Germans had been willing to sell them, Greece could not afforded automation suites. Standard crew for a digger was a brigade's worth of engineers, ore-handlers, riggers, and drivers.
Because of supply shortages caused by wartime embargo, miners were allowed filter changes only when their respirators seized. Most safety gear was homemade, such as this combination of old-style head protection, pilot's rebreather, and low-light goggles. Miners wrote their own code for programmable devices like the positive pressure systems that assisted respiration in particulate-heavy environments.
Eldest sibling killed at Defense of Trebizond, 2059. Dismissed with disgrace and imprisoned after participation in failed 2061 coup attempt against Megas Duox Acis Pappagallo. Spent time in solitary confinement.
Sold to Morgan Industries sometime before 2065. Received involuntary datajack surgery. Per Morgan Mindfield analysis, imprisonment, and possibly surgery, coincided with, and probably triggered, a significant change in subject's personality. Gaolers observed total abandonment of political activity. Subject instead refocused on purely occupational interests. Elevated to Trustee status within one year and dispatched as project supervisor to asteroid 4 Vesta. Operations Section Chief during successful rescue of personnel and equipment during major collapse of Vesta's Proxide Drift, averting compliance crisis.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/002/157/550/large/joseph-kim-a-2.jpg?1458018410)
The M.S. Solar Commander, a utility tug and survey ship purpose-built for work in the Trojan fields. One of few such vessels capable of fine manipulation, making her indispensable during industrial calamities. She was also equipped to serve as a long-term lifeboat in the event that a space object was rendered uninhabitable, such as by gas venting.
Hand-picked by CEO Nwabudike Morgan to be smuggled aboard Unity as seed agent, possibly for an independent colony. Escaped custody of SafeHaven escort during Planetfall. Discovered, wounded, in Hangar Bay Hose Room by medics answering to Political Officer Sheng-ji Yang.
Set free by Yang, Laskaris pledged his loyalty and was first to recommend that the survivors dig beneath the sands rather than attempt a dangerous overland trek. This daring led to discovery of an extensive underground aquifer, the waters of which did not reach the surface for thousands of kilometers in all directions.
(https://media.sketchfab.com/models/7e80e944f081487486f4010336ac6227/thumbnails/64bded04b4094fa59cc9618582313889/da0a3e4c6a3c44a5b7f1bc55bf35d1bf.jpeg)
To resurrect the Metaxis Line, Greece contracted with the Superstition Engine Works of Apache Junction, AZ to build automated mining stations of Laskaris's own design. They were paid for with the plunder of Istanbul, briefly held by the Greeks during 2057-58 and ransacked when they were forced out by a Turkish counterstroke. Two of these stations were broken down into Supply Pods reprogrammed by Yang to follow his departing Landing Pods.
Sources:
Picture of Laskaris is "Trooper (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v1JO1O)" by Joakim Ericsson on ArtStation.
Picture of Miner is the work of Sebastien Hue (http://www.shue-digital.com/).
Solar Commander is "space miner (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rWOEE)," the work of Joseph Kim on ArtStation.
The automated mining station is "Mining factory," a 3D design found on Sketchfab and credited to 3DRT.com.
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(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/55/c9/99/55c9999fea4123eb98e62e93b5e49c2e.jpg)
A Blue Line tram hub at Paradise Swarming. Due to overcrowding, most workers avoided the hubs and walked the tunnels instead.
Hive engineers built with defense, not comfort, in mind. Laskaris conceived of the designs for Worker's Nest during lucid dreaming, resulting in a nonsensical layout resistant to the predictive mapping of enemy Probe Teams. Hive bases were cross-stitched with secondary communication tunnels and random switchbacks to help defenders mass quickly while confusing the attackers. "The Long Road Home," one of the first pop hits recorded on Chiron, made light of the punishing travel to and from daily workstations--up ladders, at times bent double, or even in chest-high water. The song had no accepted length or lyrics, just a repeating melody: the idea was that one sang until they arrived back at their quarters.
Segments of each base were only accessible single-file; an initial allotment of large or heavy equipment was sunk with the biggest chambers. For decades afterward, those chambers relied on the old technology and performed other tasks by hand. One could not travel more than four hundred paces without running across a weapons locker. Less before passing a camera or motion sensor. Some tunnels were so long, travelers were issued a water cube mid-way; others, so dark that they checked out portable torches at one end and returned them at the other.
Ten meters below the sand, all distance communication traveled by wire mounted in overhead bundles. Hivers actually used simple copper taps to join the "Chatter," each work detail developing its own argot. Their language was a wild combination of English, Chinese, Indonesian, Morse code, and Digislang. Hive Security could identify interlopers, whether errant drones or the infiltrators of other factions, by their lack of uniformity. They more often assisted the lost than detained the suspected.
Hivers expressed themselves with stickers, slapping them on helmets, knee pads, and public surfaces provided for the very purpose. Yang encouraged workers to proudly place their stamp somewhere in all the tunnels they visited, a testament, he said, to the fullness of their work. Also a convenient way to mark whether anyone was off-station. Hivers filed their stickers with Librarians to create a kind of signature that even the nerve-stapled could recognize and reproduce. Each worker of record was guaranteed exclusive use of that image. They received reels of stickers in regular installments to ensure that they used them often.
Source:
Image appears to be from the videgame Cyberpunk 2077. Found on Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/385691155587428577/).
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Librarian Ram Jaisi Presents Images of Early Chiron
[/size]
(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/59/87/fa/5987fa0196ea45ffa825edd8a2dd0666.jpg)
La Ringa Voto, an electrified rail-runner, was the first non-military transportation link between the territories of different factions. In M.Y. 12, it joined Morgan Industries with University Base. Excited students mobbed the Morganite pachinko halls and gorged themselves on unfamiliar rations. Chemist Kahar Tokhtakhunov traded kasha for curry, attempted his first cigar, and logged his first debt with a local bank after depleting all his courtesy credits. On the other end of the line, eager merchants sourced the latest in chemotherapies and purchased jumpsuits with wrist contacts that changed color according to the wearer's vitals.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/025/009/941/4k/jason-clarke-arboretum-walkway-f001.jpg?1584288943)
Beneath the starry sky, thoughts of the self are rendered petty. Even hard men think it impossible to train their eyes elsewhere than the heavens. - Life in a Circle
There were many ways to reduce dissent. In Sparta, helots were worked to exhaustion: tired workers were less able to flee. Both Hive and Ascendancy attempted to breed docility. Notoriously anti-social Prokhor Zakharov swung like a pendulum between knock-out gas and gifting unhappy colleges robot domestics, that they might receive that most precious gift of time. At the Panopticon and in Bentham's Blockhouse, they simply planted more trees.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Horizons_%28Epcot%29_2.jpg/220px-Horizons_%28Epcot%29_2.jpg)
To speed expansion, Hive tunnels were kept as narrow as possible. Side-loading trams were common. In case of emergency, quick-deploying polyurethane bladders in vectran sheaths inflated to form airtight seals against flood and loss of atmosphere. The exterior surface of the bladders were studded with tab releases so that workers could use to draw top-side air, which they were to mix with oxygen from bottles stored beneath the tram seats. In M.Y. 32, 141 persons were put to death in the Hive after 781 workers perished in a carbon dioxide incursion. A grand total of twelve bottles were recovered by forensic teams, none of them filled.
(https://cdn1.parksmedia.wdprapps.disney.com/media/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/hae440139LARGE.jpg)
Harvest time in the Neyanza Valley. At Pentofaro, Shaper Base Operations specialists oversee the arrival of a VTOL bulk carrier as the first thunderheads of a monsoon rain arrive. In the distance, lower-lying fields have already flooded, an important measure of defense against hungry raiders. Shaper bases were some of the earliest to plant Terran crops on a large scale, adding familiar fresh foods to the faction's diet. This went a long way toward improving not only morale, but health, although they suffered inordinately from psychic attacks. Other factions, usually eating hybrid crops, complained of digestive issues even after their biologists assured them the new rations were safe to consume.
(http://coolvibe.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/alien-miner-992x571.jpg)
With help from the Bourse, Togra Labs materials specialists, and the Chiron Foundries of King Priam Mining-Planetside, Pilgrim S.A.M.M.s reached colossal proportions.
(https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/285341255_2019010594950777_6691171750301366789_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=uCaHwKjFQEMAX-gy3Mb&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-1.xx&oh=00_AT_IzW-zL8kfWy6JppHlP0ADOVg4vhbhtVWVKOTw9qc-Bw&oe=6323C19B) (https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/300844005_2019010628284107_2591166073086827038_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=vzlY83yc7P4AX-Ik_-A&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-1.xx&oh=00_AT90KFGuoGZQ4z1WMFOyaGJQ3AEldeBk8OsH67I_bDpleg&oe=63232086)
As they laid waste to the area around, S.A.M.M. crews spent months-long tours of duty fully "buttoned up" inside their craft. Crew cabins were well-appointed, featuring all the comforts, and decoration, of terrestrial homes left behind--water plumbing, pop culture memorabilia, electric ranges, and refrigeration. It was a better existence, many agreed, than back at base, where few had hard shelter or direct access to most conveniences.
Sources:
Train picture (https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/602567625116881542/?mt=login) found in Pinterest. Original source unknown.
Cherryblossom arboretum picture by [rul=https://jasonclarke.xyz/projects/mqyakv]Jason Clarke[/url].
Tram and harvest stills are from the old Horizons attraction at EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World. On life-saving bladders, see this (https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/dhs-experimenting-huge-inflatable-plug-stop-future-flooding-transit-tunnels/) Popular Mechanics article.
S.A.M.M. picture is "Alien Miner (http://coolvibe.com/2011/alien-miner/)" by Carmen Chow.
S.A.M.M. interior pictures are captures of the work of modeler Chris Shaylor's toy ship, "Gutbucket."
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Thanks, everyone, for joining us on this adventure!
If you have questions, requests, or reactions, by all means share them here!
You can also message me directly to request a link to our dedicated Discord server.
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Secret Project: The Hellstack
Let the Witch commune with her trees. And I shall converse instead with the rocks. - A Geological Survey of Planet
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5193a047-f40a-44f4-9b2d-4e06264c71cc/da8rgns-347db954-a0a5-4934-9ae3-d7a4e0e8d416.jpg/v1/fill/w_1289,h_620,q_70,strp/mining_colony_by_pulpoglow_da8rgns-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzcwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNTE5M2EwNDctZjQwYS00NGY0LTliMmQtNGUwNjI2NGM3MWNjXC9kYThyZ25zLTM0N2RiOTU0LWEwYTUtNDkzNC05YWUzLWQ3YTRlMGU4ZDQxNi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.o9CoTZMJ3W9iWzr8PBAk7vh0fFKgAjBxXiU6Rx-Dpj8)
They called it the Hellstack. At Iblis Shoxlari (Uzbek for devil's horns) in M.Y. 319, the University of Planet built a single massive winding house from which to run a 14,000km spool of nano-filament wire straight down. The filament could be so excited with the electric output of local thorium-salt reactors, it would cut through nickle-iron almost as easily as through air.
At a final depth of 11,700km, Chiron's core temperature sat somewhere just shy of 8,000°C. Work at the Hellstack continued for a half-century. When the pendulum motion of the filament slowed, indicating contact with a new and potentially uncatalogued material, technicians fired nano-scale slugs of microscopic robots down the hollow wire at nine times the speed of sound. Some were probes that, over the course of years, would work their way back up the to the surface so that their contents could be subjected to spectral analysis. Others were mass converters programmed to atomize whatever stood in the way of progress.
University Librarians were characteristically coy about their findings. Zakharov shared only a fraction of his survey results with the Planetary Council, under-reporting the miners' progress by margins of up to 1,000km. They were releasing mostly water, he told the assembled faction leaders, lost as steam before it could be extracted for some loftier purpose.
A Tomorrow Institute probe team released a tranche of the project's controlled files to the Planetary Networks in M.Y. 340. The results triggered a panic. Zakharov's biologists were actually in possession of fossil records indicating that Chiron experienced mass extinctions as often as every two centuries, driven by rampant xenofungal blooms. They were also piping water, rare earths, and dozens of gases including helium, hydrogen, and nitrogen, from the borehole for agricultural, industrial, and military applications. Microbial life recovered from the deep mantle provided the basis for an organic sheath that so efficiently scattered adversaries' lasers, the impact point was cool to the touch even after prolonged contact.
Under great secrecy, Chief Scientist Esau Sutcliffe Zo'arc replaced the original spool of wire in M.Y. 402, ostensibly to address loss of conductivity caused by heat corrosion and simple abrasion. Actually, the new thread was a thermal conduction medium that raced the intense heat of the core to the surface of the planet. That same year, the small polar icecaps went into sudden and full retreat. Massive typhoons roared out of the oceans onto land, devastating overpopulated Shamash. Demonboils drowned under meters of water. The Nautilus Pirates floated their way within a fortnight's hike of the high Pinnacle. This was the University's opening salvo against what the senior faculty had come to believe was the imminent threat of Planetary Consciousness.
(https://external-preview.redd.it/LX48dLmS-Ygq2ib69-9nSI-pQBbS9keVYolqM6j4784.jpg?auto=webp&s=9a4434e0093d7038d286518583c0ad1ae2765cd0)
A native of the underwater city of Essex-9, Esau Zo'arc worked the submerged diamond fields off South West Africa, staying on after Namib independence. Recruited by J.T. Marsh, he declined a life on the move to retreat to Prokhor Zakharov's great ivory towers. An enthusiastic consumer of anti-aging treatments, he was still outwardly youthful in appearance four hundred years after Planetfall. Under protocols agreed by the Planetary Council, he has been careful to preserve the original markings on his vintage American high-heat encounter suit despite replacement of the headgear with a whole-horizon interface.
Sources:
Hellstack picture is "Mining Colony" by PulpoGlow on DeviantArt (https://www.deviantart.com/pulpoglow/art/Mining-Colony-619379992).
Credit to the Let's Talk Science webpage (https://letstalkscience.ca/educational-resources/stem-in-context/deepest-hole-in-world#:~:text=Not%20only%20has%20no%20one,crust%2C%20mantle%2C%20and%20core.) for giving me a cursory understanding of boreholes. ZME Science (https://www.zmescience.com/science/geology/drilling-to-the-mantle-6-unexpected-discoveries-from-the-worlds-deepest-well/) and the Smithsonian Magazine (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decades-long-quest-drill-earths-mantle-may-soon-hit-pay-dirt-180957908/) helped with the rest.
Picture of Zo'arc is the work of KindaGoodPainter (https://www.reddit.com/r/conceptart/comments/1yiizt/a_concept_i_painted_of_a_futuristic_scientist/) on Reddit.
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(https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/5/186185/9575917/11043132_10155364680510607_5982003014017207107_o_1000.jpg)
According to mission logs, every one of the 256 terrestrial and 26 solar sovereignties recognized by the United Nations in 2071 contributed authorized personnel to the Alpha Centauri mission. Contingents ranged in size from two (Sedna) to more than 170,000 (Golden China). First to come aboard were lottery winners—individuals chosen at random from an index of candidates curated by the U.N. Intelligence Cell. Aage Galeano was one of these.
Galeano, a twenty-four-year-old park ranger from Fuerte Olimpo, Paraguay, arrived at the Rio space elevator an unknowing orphan. Incensed by their own misfortune, Galeano’s neighbors lynched his aging parents and younger sister less than two days after he departed for Brazil. Galeano never learned of their deaths: he was already in hibernation when the news caught up.
Mission Control wanted Galeano as a pioneer. In his professional capacities, he had executed tasks as varied as those of veterinarian, rural doctor, bush pilot, wrangler, horsebreaker, outbreak warden, postal carrier, constable, smokejumper, and marshland rescuer. He cultivated an impressive web of relationships—with Guaycuru nomads ordinarily skeptical of government men, with Kellerite sects more inclined to shoot first and ask questions not at all, and even the Portuguese garrison in nearby Mato Grosso Province. Prove yourself first, Galeano told new rangers, and you will never be unwelcomed. In his hometown, Peruvian Amazon Company men marked Galeano first for subornment and then, when that failed, for harassment due to his organizing against the encroachment of cattle ranchers. His own father would not speak to him, blaming the son’s principles for condemning their family to destitution. The U.N. approvingly judged Galeano incorruptible.
On mission organization charts, Galeano was marked as an aide to Dr. Pravin Lal, a man he had never met. In New York, bureaucrats who’d had the pleasure wondered at the viability of the match. Would this backwoods paragon accept Lal’s tempered approach to moral complexities?
It was almost for naught. The Tribe came for Galeano after an indexed search at one of the Data Core mainframes turned up his name, only to be repulsed by U.N. Marines in a blocking position. Automated systems woke Galeano almost at once because of his emergency billet, but the hab bay was already compromised and all passages blocked. Damage Control ordered him to lead anyone he could find through a hull breach, after which they would walk across the Unity’s surface to access an airlock aft of their starting point. For over an hour, Galeano worked to find and ready forty-six other souls for the escape. They were at the very end the spacewalk when an interior explosion ruptured the hull plating beneath their boots, killing thirty-four of them. Eventually, the remainder did locate the Medical Director and his retinue.
For the Peacekeeping Forces on Planet, Galeano led many of the first scouts of the south polar island where the faction first settled. This included a mission that located Colony Pods bearing fifty Struan’s contract workers at what became U.N. Relief Station. There, Galeano helped extinguish fires and assisted none other than Dole Yudikon from his damaged cryotube.
Source:
Still from the short film Leviathan. Original concept, including art, by Ben Mauro (https://benmaurodesign.com/following/all/benmaurodesign.com/THE-LEVIATHAN).
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Expand Tech: ExpansionFoam®
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/29/d1/b0/29d1b02f4cecf5a0c8d3b9d8fc207d22.jpg)
A Tetra Vaal Hazard Warden with an ExpansionFoam® sprayer. The black hose feeds compressed air to allow for subsequent shaping of the foam pile.
First thing: secure yourselves behind a high wall. - The Essential Keller
Before StickyFoam®, there was ExpansionFoam®, an expanding high-tensile, non-toxic polymer designed for the emergency repair of airtight environments. When applied by spray bottle to the edges of a breach, the quick-setting product expanded at a rate of ten thousand percent with a pressure of 40,000 pounds per square inch, creating durable yet flexible airtight seals.
Unlike its tacky derivative, ExpansionFoam® was not pre-mixed with drying agent. Despite a very high surface tension that let it retain structure when shaped, it remained pliable and could be sliced cleanly with a knife or rigid straight edge. (This to allow for removal of excess foam in confined spaces aboard naval and spacecraft.)
Togra Labs first sold ExpansionFoam® to the U.S. Navy Submarine Forces, then to the European Space Agency. Other military, aerospace, and commercial customers followed, and the material was repeatedly put to the test during emergencies both underwater and in space. The foam was an unqualified success. If it could be deployed within the first minute of anything less than a total structural failure, survival probability sat above 85%.
By order of the United Nations Life-Saving Service in 2065, every registered spacecraft was required to have two 16oz cans of ExpansionFoam® on hand in case of containment loss. A squirt packet of the foam was issued in the right shoulder pocket of the jump suit of every emergency responder aboard U.N.S. Unity. As a last resort, it could even be pumped through the firefighting main.
On Chiron, the uses for ExpansionFoam® were practically unlimited. In warfare, it could be used to create ersatz bunkers and bomb-proofs. The high ambient gravity and atmospheric density of Chiron were enough that bullets fired at moderate range rarely had enough remaining energy to penetrate more than 6". Because of its heat-dispersing properties, the foam similarly frustrated most infantry-scale lasers. It was even made into an offensive weapon. Francisco d'Almeida broke overrides to suffocate entire compartments of Spartan fighters with sprinkler-deployed foam. After Planetfall, Pioneers built heat-retaining survival domes, slathered foam to shore up faltering mine struts, and, most ingeniously, created ramps or bridges to help them negotiate rough terrain.
Sources:
I ran with the ideas of MysticWind around StickyFoam® and Tetra Vaal.
Robot picture by Christian Pearce (https://christianpearce.artstation.com/). (The .net website referenced in the image above appears to be defunct.)
I learned more about foams from Conservation Mart (https://www.conservationmart.com/t-high-low-expansion-foam.aspx).
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(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Cormon%2C_Fernand_-_Cain_flying_before_Jehovah%27s_Curse.jpg/640px-Cormon%2C_Fernand_-_Cain_flying_before_Jehovah%27s_Curse.jpg)
Cain fleeing before Jehovah's Curse, Fernand-Anne Piestre Cormon.
Without the drone, the queen is helpless. And the opposite is just so. - Impressions
On the 9th day of the month of Eshai in M.Y. 32, Chairman Sheng-ji Yang arrived at the surface. His retainers were impressed. "That man of 111 put us young men to shame," remembered an attending militiaman. "The climb from the Main Gallery took two days. He led all the while."
It was perhaps a rare sweet moment in what had been a terrible year for the Hive. Proxl Rot had spoiled an already-anemic harvest at the Great Clustering. By the time containment protocols were imposed, it was also confirmed at Command Nexus and the People's Teeming. To avert starvation and rebalance the faction's energy reserves, Yang sold five hundred drones into slavery at Demontongue. His worst enemies were the only accessible buyers. Pilgrim moisture farmers sneered openly at this coup, forcing the ghost-pale, light-shocked unfortunates to bare their teeth and complete short logic puzzles. Most of them failed, too malnourished, or too inhibited, to even feign fitness of body or mind. Those who were exchanged showed equanimity: they were merely trading one poor master for another who could hardly be worse, if only the sun wouldn't beat down so.
Beyond the problem of food, there was war. The Hive, it seemed, saw no stranger that did not merit quick killing. Sparta was in full fury over a recent ambush. Though on the verge, as always, of losing Xerxion to Pete Landers, Colonel Corazón Santiago had peeled away a regimental combat team that even then was piping charges into the pockmarked basalt of Labor's Pillar. For their part, Monopolists were running rampant through the Nessus Canyon. Numerous Hive headhunting parties were missing, presumed taken captive by SafeHaven mercenaries for whom tracking and killing was a full-time profession.
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZrTk_QdEAPg/XrMQJmx__PI/AAAAAAAAbrQ/TnPaOVTQ5JAiUIbg4hQ6ZA0OwHN1HAbqwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/00%2BMercenary%2BGarage%2BCustom%2BMotorcycle%2BWorkshop%2BMehrdad%2BMalek%2BSci%2BFi%2BDesert%2BPlane%2BBiker%2BGirl.jpg)
Yang's column of just forty scout rovers, water tankers, and megabikes moved by night, sheltering in rock formations previously prepared as redoubts during rare years of plenty. Miraculously, they survived, losing just two vehicles along the treacherous route up into the Hyas peaks, where on September 43rd, they shook hands with Ascendancy Legionnaires.
Many times, I saw the Chairman decline his meal to sup instead on imagined delights. He 'passed his dish to the left,' historically the sinister side, and would insist, quite menacingly, that the recipient eat, which, being closely supervised by His Eminence, was an unavoidable fate. Sometimes, knowing he must fall out if he did not have something, the Chairman condescended to eat the peel of the tangerine, but still refused the fruit in favor of another. I would like to say that I was equally attentive to the needs of my comrade, though it would make a liar of me. - Personal Diary
Source:
"Desert Bike" is by Mehrdad Malek (https://www.mercenary.ie/2020/05/desert-bike.html).
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(https://media.mehrnews.com/d/2015/06/09/3/1732851.jpg?ts=1486462047399)
Dr. Tamineh Pahlavi photographed at a U.N. immunization conference at the University of St. Andrews in Free Scotland. Her presence, a calculated insult by the United States, predictably infuriated other attendees, many of whom walked out of lectures she attended. A notable exception to that trend: Soviet polymath Prokhor Zakharov.
Today, I think, was the best yet. Given a complete 24-hour ration. Had myself some kashi, fruit beverage (I think it was raspberry), a tin of mackerel fillets in mustard sauce, and some very good crisps. And that was just breakfast! Whoever coined the phrase that there can be no joy in nutrition deserves to be shot. - Two Visits
Although the entirety of his sad column was invited through the laser gates of Rosalind's Spire, the Chairman bade his companions tent outside the walls. They remained there, indifferent to the heavy autumnal snow, until Christmas. By then, many were missing teeth loosened by a combination of the privations they had already suffered and the peculiarity of a solid diet they would never again enjoy in their lifetimes. [1] One died of dysentery brought on by the radical change in diet. Two were killed by curiosity: wandering onto a firing step to watch Ascendancy gunners return scattered fire from Conclave guns, they were mortally wounded by a rare direct hit.
Inside the chrome and glass monument, Sheng-ji Yang, scarcely able to walk unassisted, requested the services of a physician. He diagnosed arrhythmia and, after reviewing an electrocardiogram, would have whisked the visitor away for emergency surgery had not the Director herself intervened. "You should have been an actor," she scolded in perfect Cantonese.
They began with an exchange of information, Yang seated at one end of a long metal table, Pahlavi and her profilers at the other. A diagnostic drone hovered just out of reach over the Hive leader's left shoulder, extending and retracting its probes for the better part of three hours. Pahlavi asked about the Spartans, who were giving her trouble in the passes. The Ascendancy was bottled up, she said, and would not break out before the thaw, if at all. Yang suggested that the "Little Colonel" must soon withdraw, so pressed on the coastal plain by Tribals and Restorationists that she must have every last rifle home. Yang wanted to be told about the fate of Struan's Pacific Trading Company and the Chiron Interstellar Probe. Begging ignorance on the latter count--Joralemon Hardacre was alive, but his colony remained incognita--she confirmed that Roshan Cobb had made it to ground and introduced a liaison, Picoloro da Silva. Producing a data tape, Yang pushed it toward his newfound friends. Recorded on the magnetic reels were matrices containing millions of hours of observational data on the subjects of his underground kingdom.
(https://t4.ftcdn.net/jpg/04/15/54/91/360_F_415549183_9mJwC3hRW2QoqxR9JW8NA1c9hYEc3Ol3.jpg)
Named for a local landmark, the Dreamer chargé d'affaires to the Ascendancy had delivered Chile's declaration of war to the Antarctic despotism of Zhuljin in a past life, a shock for which he was made prisoner until his countrymen routed their foes forty days later. As a reward for good service, he was soon reassigned to the diplomatic blitz under-girding Chile's bid to host a space elevator. It failed, but da Silva impressed the competing trade delegations and was recommended to his government by Struan's (part of the Peruvian pitch team) for a Psych Chaplain's posting with the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. He was awakened at the very height of the Unity disaster, minutes after Garland's murder. Realizing his two saviors were Holnists hunting useful slaves, da Silva led them into an emergency bay he knew would be occupied and there found a squad of Sabre Company mercenaries whom he promptly convinced to execute them.
I trust the paramecia races are proceeding to your satisfaction? - Yang in the Hyas, Cadet Librarian Dovin Grillov
My intent is to take the radical steps from which we were so foolishly dissuaded on Earth. Think how this could benefit your project to model the acme of leadership. - The Termite and the Bumble Bee
[1] Osteopenia, or bone loss, was a common side effect of Wespe-Quinn-Vagner hibernation, during which the subject leeched calcium.
Sources:
A lot of my material lately is inspired by having listened to the entirety of Ken Burns's Civil War. You can probably detect the cadence of the narration by David McCullough and some of Garrison Keillor's voice acting in my writing.
The woman in the picture is Iranian actress Mahtab Keramati.
Original source for the da Silva faceclaim is unknown.
The Ascendancy base is named after Rosalind Franklin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin), who discovered the double helix architecture of DNA.
The Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery are the armed forces of the Draconis Combine in the Battletech Universe. I've always liked how intentional that sounded. It puffs up the otherwise lackluster Hive Security.
Zul'jin is a character in the Warcraft franchise.
For the final quotes, I adapted language using the original faction treaty text from SMAC.
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Expand Tech: Hachimoji DNA
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/73/05/e8/7305e89ea9bac3abf48c92d86a2b030a.jpg)
Hive bases used artificial lights to simulate a day/night cycle for people and to cause photosynthesis in plants. The proper adjustment and distribution of these lights occupied an entire division within Hive Base Operations.
They had discovered two new nucleobases, actually. According to the Chairman, they used these new bases primarily to create more effective chemotherapies. Of course, that application was useless to us. But we saw they had increased length and complexity of instructions that could be chemically communicated to human cells. We were using semaphore; they had invented the telegraph. - Climbing the Spiral to Heaven
DNA can be thought of as a packet of instructions for the production of amino acids. The twenty acids essential to human life combine as proteins to assist in tasks such as digestion of food, tissue growth and repair, regulation of brain function, production of sugars, and immune system response. Beginning in the late 1980s, the global scientific community sought methods to increase the amount of information that could be stored and communicated by DNA. The earliest breakthroughs involved creation of unnatural base pairs (UBP), or artificial nucleobases. One resulting set was known as the Hachimoji DNA, meaning "eight letters DNA," which doubled the amount of possible base pairs. Scientists first proved that unmodified cells would reproduce the UPB, then sought to encode the new pairs to produce additional amino acids.
UBP was the basis for the body to itself produce chemicals and trigger cell behaviors that previously had been provided only through invasive procedures. When replacing traditional external medications, UBP organelles were superior by far since they could titrate release in ways that were less disruptive for the liver, kidneys, and stomach.
UBP played a crucial role in the viability of lab-grown organs, high-risk transplant acceptance, and chronic disease management. Most UBP was introduced in medical settings to counteract organ deficiencies or combat degenerative disease. In gestational and Type 2 diabetics, for example, UBP was used to stimulate insulin production. Sufferers of viral infection and cancer received UBP treatments to keep their white blood cell count up. But a growing minority of UBP fell into a more liminal realm. The wealthy wanted UBP to combat the effects of aging. Soldiers were given UBP to increase their production of adrenaline and endorphins.
When Unity left the Sol System, just over one in ten humans was thought by the United Nations to possess UBP in their genome. (Statistics were unreliable; most nations did not attempt genetic sequencing, and all were loathe to share detailed data.) Artificial DNA was highly controversial. Some Conclavists objected to use of UBP even for medically necessary interventions, holding that it constituted sacrilegious editing of Grand Design. Others urged that it be restricted only to instances where life was at stake. Among peoples estranged from the scientific community, use of UBP therapy fell under the broad scope of "genetic tampering," and there was an outsized fear that the species would destroy itself by unleashing man-made plagues. Recipients of UBP were often targeted even when the choice had not been their own. Motivated by both religious fundamentalism and the power-fantasies of conspiracism, Holnists published lists of UBP patients online, leading to numerous assassinations. Developing nations were especially skeptical of early U.N. proposals to recruit from among populations including UBP recipients, which they correctly reasoned would bias the passenger manifest against their people.
The U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri did not ban recruits with UBP, but it did decline numerous proposals from Tamineh Pahlavi, Oscar van de Graaf, Prokhor Zakharov, and others to use it to provide an additional oxygen factor or increase the amount of baseline antibodies for Red Plague. The argument over UBP began anew and then flamed even hotter after Planetfall when enterprise scientists took Chironian organisms and attempted to combine their genetic material with Terran organisms, an act that was grounds for exile among the Lord's Believers.
The University of Planet leaned heavily on UBP as a complement to chemotherapy regimes. The Ascendancy exploited the technology to encourage muscle growth and increase oxygen factors in the blood of the Vat-Born. A desperate Aleigha Cohen likewise experimented with UBP to help filter toxins from the blood as she battled Somnacin addiction. Both Yang and Pahlavi attempted to use UBP to equip certain genetic paragons with superior faculties they wanted passed on to subsequent generations.
During the Two Visits at Rosalind's Spire, the Hive Chairman revealed extensive knowledge of hybrid UBP. The Proxl Rot Plague of M.Y. 32, it turned out, had been a cruel experiment. The disease manifested in Terran crops as inedible spores--harmless to humans if ingested, but deadly to its leafy hosts. Research product shared by Chairman Yang with the Ascendancy's biologists revealed that Hive nutrient pools had been contaminated with the intention of determining whether any of the population had developed the ability to obtain nourishment from native flora.
Pahlavi, hardly squeamish when it came to ethically questionable behaviors, was aghast. Even if the experiment had been successful, it was statistically improbable that the hybrid foodstuffs would have been tolerated by more than a small fraction of the inhabitants of the target bases. Why had Yang settled on starving his own people? Had he no reliable source of prisoners? Yang calmly clarified that the experiments were carried out in locations where defense against invaders was already failing. The people could not have been saved, he said. Better that they should furnish the colony with information that would create tomorrow's advantage. Meanwhile, the incoming Pilgrims would find no ready source of labor, nor any food with which to continue prosecuting a war in the wastes.
Sources:
Picture, called "Farming Unit" and credited to "G G" in the United Kingdom is apparently from user "shards" on the CGSociety forums. I found it on Pinterest.
I learned more about amino acids from the Cleveland Clinic (https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22243-amino-acids#:~:text=Amino%20acids%20are%20the%20building%20blocks%20of%20proteins.,of%20the%20necessary%20amino%20acids.).
On the "genetic alphabet," see D. Malyshev, at al., "A Semo-Synthetic Organism with an Expanded Genetic Alphabet (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4058825/)."
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(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/92/80/8f/92808f787fa353aefbe9d5d3ce907d13.png)
The nearest Shaper base to Ascendancy territory was a mere 52 kilometers from Rosalind's Spire. Named Coldheart in an act of self-rebuke, it existed to capture, process, and control the flow of the Hyas's hyperactive ice volcanoes. During his stay as Pahlavi's guest, Yang joined her, in disguise, for a conference with the Shaper Custodian, Demis Moradi. It was at Coldheart that Yang learned that the Dune Sea was no natural marvel.
(https://identity-mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/unnamed.jpg)
Demis Moradi, one of the first children of independent Kurdistan, watched the promise of independence spoil. Drought led his proud father to liquor, and radiation caused young Demis to spend the better half of his childhood in clean wards where he took Interlink correspondence courses and won election as a member of his country's parliament--by then, a duty almost free for the taking. Haunted by the memories of acid rain and his own frailty, Moradi volunteered (while still a seated MP) as a "picker"--one of the hundreds of thousands of liquidators supported by the international community to conduct post-atomic clean-up after the Six Minute War. Thereafter, legislating seemed beyond him. When invited to speak in session, he recited poetry grieving the loss of the Kurdish patrimony. Unsure of how else to put him to good use, the Kurdish government declared him Poet Laureate and a Person Significant to Cultural Perpetuation. Shaper mountaineers found Moradi in a crashed Colony Pod. Coordinator Nagao assigned him to Coldheart as a Radiation Control Technician responsible for the settlement's fusion-powered ice crawlers. When most of the base administration died in an ice blow, the survivors voted Moradi their leader. After suffering repeated Ascendancy slave raids, Moradi signaled his willingness to negotiate: he would forbear from drowning Rosalind's Spire in nine feet of ice slurry if hostilities ceased. Trade soon developed instead.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/839/541/large/aran-quillinan-haloscene01.jpg?1434290800)
To offset the intense heat they generated, the Ascendancy exposed its incubation cylinders to the sub-zero temperatures of the high mountain passes. The dozen batches at Rosalind's were served by an electric tramway that doubled as convenient, albeit uncomfortable, transportation for those who wished to avoid more familiar paths.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ea4a0f7a-00b8-44b3-bd48-a807a6618793/d4i18hu-c69fdec6-0f7b-4b2c-9ca2-19e3554c3a3b.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2VhNGEwZjdhLTAwYjgtNDRiMy1iZDQ4LWE4MDdhNjYxODc5M1wvZDRpMThodS1jNjlmZGVjNi0wZjdiLTRiMmMtOWNhMi0xOWUzNTU0YzNhM2IuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.2Og_Otxu8KcBiNS-gsKAAAVlT9529CyHLIgS8u2lc7M)
At the end of the electric tramway, Hive Technical Sergeant Ikama Rufio gawked at what he first took for an automated mining complex. The bemused Pahlavi explained that he was actually looking at "the Mighty Mac," a city-sized supercomputer operated by the survivors of the mission's Nuclear Computing Laboratory. She was not the first to realize that the Hyas Range was an ideal heat sink. Alas, she had no communications frequency for Dr. Johann Anhalt. But she would part with another pallet of rations along with some grapnel guns and personal trolleys if the Hivemen would agree to make introductions on her behalf.
Sources:
Coldheart is Luc Fontenoy's "Mountain."
Demis Moradi is Egyptian actor Youssef El Sherif.
Third picture is Aran Quillinan's "Halo Environment."
Fourth picture is nikolayhranov's "Environmental - SciFi Mountains."
The personal trolley is a device (https://battlefield.fandom.com/wiki/Zipline#Battlefield_2042) used in Battlefield 2042 to ride ziplines and guy wires.
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If it's an oracle you wish, go consult the punch cards. - Admonishment to wayward parishoners
Yang was aghast at the society established under Dr. Johann Anhaldt and the beleaguered remainder of the Nuclear Computing Laboratory. He was not alone.
Nobody could gainsay the trauma of the Laboratory's experience. Misperformance of hibernation protocols claimed an abnormally high number of the computer scientists before ever Unity fired its engines. So many had strangled to death, orders were given to divert subsequent colonists to supernumerary spaces for sleep induction rather than expose them to the uncollected detritus of a half-hundred unsuccessful resuscitation efforts still strewn across the deck grates.
There, still struggling to make sense of the rows of darkened cryobeds, a thousand more had died--were executed, in fact. The killers were Kellerites, and they fired without bothering to ask the names of their victims. As if to inflict an ironic vengeance, the survivors did precisely what the cultists feared: they brought thinking machines down to the new world and then did precisely as they were instructed.
(https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2022/06/07/blasted-netflix-button-0000-1654636428733.jpg?width=300)
A Kellerite raises a sonic projector in anger. Though made to disperse targets rather than kill them, it would do just that at close quarters.
How can it be, Yang asked, that there is such obedience without compulsion?
In an uncharacteristically intimate letter to explorer Vinchenson Parke, perhaps judged a safe outlet for confession because he was far beyond the influence of the internecine skirmishing that so fascinated her synod, Sister Miriam Godwinson wrote that she had come to describe the emotion she'd felt in Anhaldt's presence as fear.
Firmly bent to one task at the top of the hour, they are equally as happy to be turned toward another pursuit at the bottom, never reflecting on which was the more valuable work. And they have yet to perfect the algorithms, so the work changes constantly. Their bases resemble the aftermath of a groundhog invasion: a thousand starts, but nothing completed.
(https://149357548.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/1548.jpg)
Children of the Atom perform manual switching operations for a base supercomputer. Anhaldt's people used powerful mneumonic techniques to enable switchers to remember and repeat up to the last hundred motions. This allowed them to implement minor "roll backs" whenever one of the senior data scientists detected potential faults in the supercomputer's logic. Of course, these were difficult to diagnose: what was the difference between an artificial mind that could think beyond the capacity of a human, and simple inanity?
Sources:
First picture from the Netflix movie "Blasted."
Second picture from the movie "Sleep Dealer."
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And Cain went out from the presence of The LORD, and dwelt in the Land of Nod, east of Eden, and though beloved by The LORD, he was an exile for all time, and all his people with him. - The Conclave Bible, Datalinks
(https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/the_mandalorian_still_werner_herzog.jpg)
Iqbald Tariv, called "Baba Igbald" by friend and foe alike, was a power unto himself in the Cashton Sprawl south of Adam's Agony.
He was one of the "Undetected," a child conceived so close to the time of final departure that neither his mother nor ship's medical staff were aware of her pregnancy. She survived the Catastrophe of Arrival, though as an unvested laborer among The New Two Thousand. On her second day Planetside, she was judged to have an unwanted skill set, assessed a debt of ¤5,000,000, and remanded to servitude.
Ssihash Tariv, an atmospheric chemist with Roscosmos who had spent a quarter of her life in high Venusian orbit, could do little of immediate value in a frontier economy with only rudimentary sensing technology and no immediate need for deep climatology. Acute calcium deficiency and compounding cardiovascular damage caused by years in zero- and micro-gravity left the twenty-six-year-old non-ambulatory on Chiron. For these reasons, despite her compounding obligation to the faction that continued to clothe and feed her, she could not be auctioned. On the orders of Governor Oscar van de Graaf, Base Operations accepted the young woman for service as a safety specialist while faction envoys added her name to a list of personnel judged "saleable" to other factions. She spent her days preparing meteorological reports from the observation dome of a Colony Pod.
The infant Igbald was taken at the moment of birth and placed in the household of Stakeholder Siran Agenid, a Greco-Hungarian power systems engineer. Before contracting with van de Graaf, Agenid, an escapee from behind the Iron Curtain, had worked for Franco-Belgian firm Telegisse-Barrette designing the battery back-ups for deep sea laboratories.
With no intention of settling into domestic life, the unmarried Siran left Igbald and other such unfortunates in the care of a tutor, Canában Rå, best known for having discovered five additional plays of William Shakespeare in the sub-basement of Oxford's Radcliffe Camera in 2012. Rå, a naturalized British citizen, had been the Royal Household's nomination to the Unity Project at its outset. Despite rigorous screening that suggested reasonable safety margins despite his age, complications of very long cold sleep induced a stroke, and Rå was paralyzed on his left side. (It is rumored that van de Graaf disciplined the pathfinders who discovered Rå among the passengers of a surfaced Hab Pod and chose to release him rather than disconnect his battery back-up.) Judged largely useless like Ssihash Tariv, his purpose among the New Two Thousand was merely to ensure that orphaned Drones did not die by misadventure before they reached profitable adulthood.
(https://scifiempire.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Frank-Herbert-Dune-Alec-Newman-as-Paul-Atreides.png)
Young Igbald Tariv responds with characteristic rectitude as he receives a rare admonishment from Canában Rå, probably over a missed assignment. An Agenid household Subduer stands by in case Tariv or another pupil becomes unruly during correction.
The House of Agenid held fast to the Czerkban School of child development. The correction baton, a low-grade psi-whip, was used to inflict positive punishment for even minor infractions such as scoffing or idleness. Siran urged that educators should use it intermittently, even on the well-behaved--a reminder of his own conviction that life was mostly the unmerited experience of pain stimuli. Yet whenever possible, Rå spared the rod, and so spoiled the child. Under his careful intervention, Iqbald grew into a tall, serious young man with a pronounced wild streak and a hawkish attitude toward preemptive self-defense. Resentment boiled his blood hot, and he struck dead another Drone over a pilfered bowl of porridge at age sixteen, landing a single, fatal blow to the temple. Siran fined Igbald to replace the value of the dead boy's future work, but was otherwise impressed.
I like a certain rambunctiousness in the Drones. If they aren't healthy enough to plot escape, they're probably not healthy enough to work very hard. - Rebuke to Stakeholders
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS04IzsZcBvaRXP5gY4Tn4IVmKrtAXYLOz8ifPdt30yQLE3PsUkHmP7GxwTWOog-1jA2gU&usqp=CAU)
Pilgrims of every social rank enjoyed hoverbike racing. These high-speed, no-rules fracas were open only to expendable Drones. Only leading citizens were permitted the vice of gambling, and they wagered huge sums on their stables. Drones of the House of Agenid received bounties of ¤10,000 for every equal or subordinate of a rival House they bested in the street, and ¤1,000,000 for every racetrack win. By custom, to kill the rider of another House was instant fulfillment of the Terms of Indenture.
By eighteen, Igbald regularly stole Agenid hoverbikes for long peregrinations in the Dune Sea. There, he saw his first Hive base, suffering potshots from their inexpert sentries. On another jaunt, he joined a rally as an outrider to champion House Sprinter Shadrach LeFevre, coming in fourteenth place overall but protecting his principal from being unseated for three circuits. Siran arranged a barbecue in his honor.
In M.Y. 26, Igbald slashed dead the two Subduers posted outside the workers' barracks and fled the Agenid homestead with his sweetheart, another Drone named Sokkanon, and many followers in his own age cohort.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/01/51/f5/0151f5cd53ee4d047f5748af124b28b6.jpg)
The renegades had previously consulted the faction Network to triangulate the position of a recently-fallen Supply Pod. Taking their masters' hoverbikes, they beat both the understaffed Pilgrim militia and Agenid family guards to the crash site, loaded onto crawlers everything found inside the hull, and set out cross country. Behind them, a paid Hunter scout team led pursuers astray.
Within weeks, Igbald Tariv was leader of a functioning outpost complete with defensive berm, water, shelter, and intermittent generator power. To round out a diet of unsatisfying E-Packs, they inflated greenhouse tents where they raised Terran crops and roasted Rodgier's Rats, a pest released onto Chiron from infested grain bins carried aboard Unity. Gormands among them added juvenile subrid to the menu.
It was, in many ways, a simple life, and by some standards, idyllic. Survival hoods were unnecessary in the oxygen-rich Sprawl. There were also few enough of Tariv's people that the contents of their single Supply Pod might as well have been a treasure hoard. The pod was an over-pack job. From it, the refugees rolled a fleet of construction vehicles and prime movers, pop-up wind traps, long-falling parachute flares, spherical flares that could be rolled ahead of the wary, air hatchets, crank antenna, and a racked arsenal.
Tariv automated as much as possible. His people mostly limited themselves to piloting and riding herd while their self-guided devices performed most inconvenient tasks. The 'Formers set up automated mines, dammed rivers to create reservoirs, and erected leaching tents to draw carbon dioxide from decomposing foliage, which they processed into liquid fuel. In less than a year, they turned the trees, which had an interconnected root system, into a natural aqueduct and water filtration system by screwing in a few positive-pressure taps. Tariv even released bees, heedless of the ecological risk. They thrived.
Their original settlement had a ramshackle and uneven personality. A crude wooden waterwheel provided cooling for an industrial grade 3D printer. Wooden parapets and ramps linked corrugated steel and formacrete structures. Live power cables doubled as clothes lines. Rather than use camp stoves or electric furnaces, Tarsiv and his people cooked over open flame.
A few of the runaways learned survival out of interest, fishing the streams for sylph-eel and stripping their scales to make a kind of leather for patching their garments, or crushing dendrel leaf for a powerful light-absorbing dye. In the evenings, Tariv organized stage performances. After many bowls of munga beer, brewed from fungal germ, he might signal for the hallucinating audience to interrogate the players, who would break the Fourth Wall to explain their motivations. The Hunters of Chiron, who valued Tariv's settlement as a permanent break on Pilgrim expansion, recognized his rights in the Cashton and purchased the hardwoods felled by his offspring.
Tariv's people called him father, Baba, and he treated them as he thought he ought to have been treated--as he imagined his mother would have treated him. They fed their hungry, nursed their sick, and, fatted on the riches of their original efforts, cared nothing for personal wealth.
Dignity is the best bandage, and a swinging fist solves more problems than it creates. - Your Prodigal Son
(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/b6/7d/29/b67d29cfa6791f49a11bf11709c8f43b.jpg)
Tariv's outpost traded with the Hunters of Chiron on liberal terms, providing larger quantities of fresh water than they could purify themselves and the protection of a firm stockade. Weapons were in constant demand, as was intelligence.
Tariv and Sokkanon had eighteen children who survived to adulthood. The other escapees were similarly prodigious. By the dawn of the third decade of the colony's independence, in M.Y. 55, Tariv was ready to seek out Ssihash at Adam's Agony. After a week of slipshod drill, the assault force set out.
The campaign of putative liberation ended in total disaster for Igbald and his tiny force. Thanks to watchful patrollers, the alarm was raised before they could cross the fields, and the parapets manned by militia. Well-aimed fire from the settlement blockhouse did for most of the attackers even before they dismounted to find cover and van de Graaf ordered his militia to fire strangle gas. Still at the head of fewer than one in six of his original force, Igbald plunged back into the forest.
(https://external-preview.redd.it/rdhcWT8s4_99xj0VydzPO821uwmlZ8_vId29KKjf34c.jpg?auto=webp&s=1b39d6e046eb4c568384d572bee897302d2d6db6)
After spooning the bitter soup of a hundred small defeats, the hard core of the Pilgrim Militia began to learn its business. Chasers like this one made contact with Tariv's raiders long before they left the familiar safety of the Sprawl.
In time, Baba Igbald accepted his place as an irritant on an elephant's flank. The colony at Cashton became a checkpoint for runaways, absorbing them into its own population or aiding them to continue further south. The Hunters stayed in regular contact. Eventually, Hivemen appeared, as did Gaians, the first to discuss their mutual enemy and the latter to learn from their fellow forest-dwellers.
Sources:
Adult Igbald Tariv is Werner Herzog as The Client in Disney's Star Wars sequel series The Mandalorian.
Teenage Igbald Tariv is Alec Newman from the Dune miniseries (2000).
Picture of the racer is "Hoverbike" by Mnoloconic. Available on the website Mercenary Garage.
Found the outpost picture on Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/705517097846572587/) from Aaron H. It appears to be credited to Fantasy Flight Games, but more specifics than they, I do not have.
Gun trading picture also found on Pinterest, here (https://www.pinterest.fr/studio032/inspiration-post-apocalyptique/).
Strangle-gas is a weapon from the steampunk fantasy setting Iron Kingdoms.
Chaser is "Tracker on Her Hoverbike" (https://www.reddit.com/r/ImaginaryTechnology/comments/6hsy2q/tracker_on_her_hover_bike_by_brian_matyas/) by Brian Matyas.
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Comparison is the source of all misery. A drone counts himself a king to dine on thin gruel so long as he feels certain that his companions have only water. - The Book of Twenty-Six Princes
Nearing the bicentennial of human settlement on Chiron, Librarian Sawenna Omruds thought to collect entertainment clippings from each of the factions major. The results of her survey, published in a series of widely-read updates on the Peacekeeping Forces' Datalinks, caused hysterical laughter in White Rabbit's Refuge, gnashing of teeth in New Jerusalem, and hours of work for tabulators in The Core. Prisoners at The Core rioted after learning what they were missing. Moranites demanded new entertainment packages for their money. Censors yanked the cables in Atlantis.
(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/e6/0a/4d/e60a4d1993afd4fa79dde42633beed80.jpg)
Damsels frequently questioned whether one-time merchant sailor Arvn Gym had rocks for brains, but poor test scores never seemed to stop him from saving the day.
Though they pretended to enjoy the educational program piped free into their kitchen terminals, University tastes in entertainment were strictly low-brow. Callow undergraduate and mad scientist alike preferred to unwind with a bit of slapstick. They would go as far as serialized adventure in the style of Commando Cody or Space Patrol--a romanticized rendering of what could be done with the wondrous tools they created by people far more worldy than they--but anything more serious struggled to gain an audience. Walt Disney animation also took hold in Zakharov's territories. This form of escapism showed on long loops in the faction's crowded anti-radiation clinics.
Gaia's Stepdaughters gravitated toward overwrought telenovelas, the heroes and heroines of which were sure to be hobbled by debt and perpetually unlucky in romance. CEO Nwabudike Morgan naturally used this information to taunt the Lady Skye as an unstable leader, though more incisive takes wondered at the cynical throughline: the futility of trying to hold on tight to that which one loved.
Hive Drones craved sport, the bloodier the better. Commentators for Chironian rules football found their way into public service audio. The same voice shouting, "Foul!" with unrestrained enthusiasm also reminded one to don their eye protection if venturing to the surface levels. Curiously, another popular programme followed the Kafkaesque journeys of Itilan Gann, a relentlessly cheerful Drone who repeatedly failed his merit exams for lack of study and arrived at his workstation each morning to find bizarre instructions dispatching him to distant service tunnels. Never would he finish his journey: at the bottom of the half-hour time slot, an urgent cable summons always saw him recalled, though not before he'd finished drawing the double ration for overtime work. The show consisted of hours of feed from Gann's point of view. Enthusiasts searched with relish for "his" stickers.
(https://i1.wp.com/multiversitystatic.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2022/06/Babylon-5-s5e4-Spoo.jpg?fit=1000%2C563)
Lavatory attendant Itilan Gann relishes a rest. Naturally, the Hive's huge workforce encompassed no such assignment.
Milk-fed Spartans attended their history lessons. Commissioner Pravin Lal remembered in his diary that the informational content and even-handedness of the material "struck me doubly." He wondered at the accuracy of the reputation surrounding the Spartans in light of "this refreshing honesty that would not have been the least objectionable coming from our own terminals."
Tribals did not watch; they listened. Radio was an obsession, hearkening back to the olden, "golden" days of yore when flu-addled, flood-stricken Midwesterners used the very last of their battery power to tune in for the latest diagnosis of the nation's plight from a man they imagined to be very like themselves. Each base had a different stable of disc jockeys, and only a minority bothered to rebroadcast sermons most listeners knew by heart. Better to blast the Rock n' Roll.
Dreamers tried "digital drugs," using binaural beats to cause the brain's sound processing center (the superior olivary complex) to alter the brainwaves to compensate. Adjustments in frequency could stimulate or inhibit different psychological conditions, some therapeutic, some potentially problematic. Many addicts claimed that the sensory input that could be got from their home terminal was an inextricable aspect of the high, as essential as the tube that delivered the Somnacin itself. When sober, Dreamers tended to search for a news feed, usually the trusted World Restored service run by the Peacekeeping Forces, through which they could learn information that their own faction was incapable of providing to them. By M.Y. 194, the Peacekeepers reserved whole blocks of daily programming for audiences in other societies. Some Hivers followed the radio signals to freedom. Dreamers soaked up storm tracks, wormsign reports, and news from active military fronts. Morganites (and interested SAMCERs) noted the comings and goings of caravans.
Sources:
Pulp sci-fi art by Bob Larkin.
Lunching still is from the fifth season episode of Babylon 5, "A View From the Gallery."
On binaurual beats, I consulted WebMD (https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-are-binaural-beats), which I'm not sure is scientifically valid.
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Unity Tech: Ceremonial Burial
The corpse we dismember, but the broken man we complete. - Essays of Mind and Matter
(https://rare-gallery.com/thumbs/1038610-fantasy-art-reflection-artwork-science-fiction-bridge-arch-espen-olsen-monument-landmark.jpg)
Pravin Lal built a monument to war he hadn't fought, and managed to lose thirty souls in the doing. The size of the edifice staggered newcomers seeing this frivolity for the first time, like the Gaian refugees in this impression.
Bare survival instinct and the weakness of personal bonds between survivors claimed many of the cultural signifiers of Terran humanity. University custodians sealed up their earliest dead, too heavily irradiated for burning or simple burial, in cliffside caverns. Caring for patients still clinging painfully to life banished all idea of mourning any whose grip had failed. In the frantic opening battles of the Slowwind campaign, both Spartan and Kellerite left killed or injured combatants for the evening tides to claim rather than risk sending out litter-carriers. All factions followed rigid burn discipline for Red Flu.
Hive surgeons learned to prepare the dead body for moisture reclamation in a sequence of as many as 12,749 precise cuts, harvesting every healthy organ system before entrusting the flensed remains to the dehydrators. Drones could be casually maimed by the Monitors, then rebuilt before the next shift. Starving Believers stripped the bodies of the dead, then dragged them outside their tents and left them in the deep snow, anticipating a season less hungry in which they could pray their souls properly to Paradise. Ascendancy cloning vats simply incinerated their "failures."
I will see you in the eyes of the next generation. - Datalinks, Traditional
Ceremonial burial signifies material as much as social abundance. Gravediggers plant nothing that will grow. Celebration of the passage of life implies the tribe's certainty that it shall endure when the individual has gone. Desperation made a virtue of being selfish. What would it yield a man's work-mates to bury him with objects for which they might yet have some use? Should the thirsty waste tears, or the downtrodden sing in remembrance?
Terran funerary practices persisted most completely in the New State, whose ship's captains read previously-marked passages from the Marian Bible as they consigned their dead sailors to the Deep.
As late as M.Y. 80, factions commemorated events more comfortably than they did people. Chiron's largest memorial, a four-legged arch set astride the Slowwind, remembered the battle, not its participants.
Sources:
Ceremonial Burial was a technology introduced way back in Sid Meier's Civilization I.
Monumental landscape by artist Espen Olsen Sætervik.
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Vehicle Chassis: Hopper
Only the old can beget the new. - Legacies
Distant descendants of the Lunar Lander and close cousins of the much larger single-use Landing Pods, "Hoppers" were short-range, jet-powered vehicles capable of repeated trans-atmospheric travel. In low-gravity environments, they could reach space; in higher gravity, they represented the nearest thing to proper flight before the needlejet and lift-fan, barring choppers too small to have more than situational value. Hoppers attained 7g of lift on liftoff, rising to altitudes as high as 120,000 feet. They traveled in parabolic arcs, "springing" upward on reinforced hydraulic struts.
(http://www.isoshado.org/4/4_attivita_files/mike_trim_risponde_2012/moonmobile_pre.jpg)
The horrified crew of Flight Ҡ42 at first protested being assigned Lander 4, a relic of twentieth century moon exploration easily as iconic as the Mayflower. To their joyous astonishment, it still flew. As the ultimate expression of its continued airworthiness, Academician Zakharov had himself filmed aboard during a cargo leap between University Base and Higher Function.
The Hopper filled a unique gap in Unity's load-out, and, later, the order of battle of many a human settlement on Chiron. There were many reasons for this. Hoppers were cheap and easily sourced. In return for tax brakes, companies like Tin Star and King Priam Mining pitched thousands of their older surveyors and transports in-system toward the Lunar Cradle from as far away as Venus, Mars, and the Main Belt--a bargain compared to travel up the space elevators. They could also be "packed"--that is, broken down into easily-reassembled components as a space-saving measure during transport. Many Hoppers were small, designed for crews of between one and five. Since awkward geometry was no issue for a vessel that didn't have to contemplate take-off from within atmosphere, Unity carried its Hoppers bolted to the exterior hull (in fact, dozens were lost to the micrometeorite and subsequent internal explosions), but their good man-scale portability made them a favorite tool of Probe Teams that would others have to "leg it" out of enemy territory. Hoppers were also notoriously rugged. They'd acquitted themselves handsomely in the hostile environments of the Saturnian moons, operating in ammonia seas, acid rains, and under intensely radioactive conditions. As Belt-rated transport, they had hermaphrodite reaction chambers capable of taking even the most rudimentary fissile injects if C-grade fuel pellets were scarce.
(https://media.wired.com/photos/59330d4b2a990b06268ad1a7/master/pass/aeronutronic5.jpg)
A Believer foray into the Dune Sea is cut short by activity on the horizon. From "cold" condition, Hoppers could take off in less than thirteen minutes under the ministrations of a competent crew.
Under the primitive conditions experienced on Chiron, Hoppers made fearsome weapons of war. At the apogee of its a leap, they could deploy parachutes and loiter for hours in the sky, performing long-range surveillance and conducting wide-scope electronic warfare missions. Unless slowed by the counter-thrust of a landing burn, a Hopper could also become a direct-strike weapon. Pilots trained to bring the craft down in a controlled free-fall that struck with force equivalent to 0.5 tons of TNT, about the same power as a 2,000lb. bomb, reliably gouging craters fifteen meters wide and eleven deep.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/022/816/394/large/laszlo-gero-szurke.jpg?1576782826)
Despite their generally sturdy construction, Landers could and did fail, particularly when attempting combat "stomps." During the Relief of Elektrichestvokupo, the University lost twelve of thirty-two vehicles to pilot error.
Typical weapons systems for Hoppers included banks of incendiary launchers and directed-energy weapons fed directly from the fuel pellet supply.
(https://live.staticflickr.com/895/42912153591_c2bc17b6ac_b.jpg)
The prominent cabin strongly suggests that this Hopper was used for intelligence-gathering or artillery spotting. Note also the many attitudinal thrusters used to correct spin and drift.
Sources:
This post inspired by the "Hopper" war machines found in the 1979 SPI hex-and-counter wargame Titan Strike!.
First Hopper is art by Mike Trim.
Second Hopper is art by the aptly-named Hopper. No joke (https://hopper_8338.artstation.com/).
Third Hopper is by a NASA artist. Here's the citation from Wikipedia: "Artist's conception of the Mars Excursion Module (MEM) proposed in a NASA Study in 1964. Dixon, Franklin P. (June 12, 1964). "Summary Presentation: Study of a Manned Mars Excursion Module". Proceeding of the Symposium on Manned Planetary Missions: 1963/1964 Status. Huntsville, Alabama: NASA George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. p. 470. NASA-TM-X-53049; 64N-26979."
For Hopper weapons systems, I continue to be inspired by Dennis Villaneuve's depiction of Harkonnen vehicles in Dune.
Fourth Hopper found on Flickr. James Vaughn's page (https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/42912153591/).
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New Ideas for Discussion
I've begun a new analysis of the factions. It's a combination of laying out the leader and society information in a spreadsheet format. This lets us look at their philosophies, as well as their game pieces, in juxtaposition to one another.
Some preliminary conclusions are emerging.
The more factions we add, the sharper and narrower each one gets. That's inevitable. But has it gone too far?
I love the Hunters. I think they'd be a popular faction from a gameplay standpoint. As a successor to the "-ization" series games, SMAC focused on base-building. But what if a faction didn't bother with a base? And what if the diplomacy was deeper so that you could have an intermediary faction that did deals with everyone?
It's in the lore that the Hunters become a bit more problematic. Not their ideology. If anything, the meditation on masculinity and the questions raised by Marsh's philosophy have become more relevant, not less, to our contemporary day-to-day. But in terms of faction design.
When the game released in 1999, the Spartan Federation was probably the faction I'd associate most closely with physical conditioning. Readiness of mind and body are paramount to war. When you start with just 7 factions, their collective philosophies have a lot of ground to cover. So you stretch them, like the membrane over a drum. The 5-color "pie" used in Magic: the Gathering illustrates this problem nicely. Red is not just the chaos color, but also the color of industry--of striving and ambition and risk. (One can almost see the tie to capitalism.) Black, which is all about death and exploitation, naturally encompasses necromancy, and it's just a short skip from there to the creation of lesser copies of things. But if you add a few more colors to the pie, it makes sense to combine industry and artifice into another color altogether, usually Brown or Grey. And once you make that addition, some of the original lore, or even the ways we might have once thought about the factions (or might still think about the factions) become warped.
In my fiction, the Spartans are warriors who want to practice war as a kind of self-improvement project. But the implications of their original "Keep and bear arms" philosophy, at least in the stereotypes sense of a freedom one "imposes" on others, got pushed to the Hunters, who are all about ignoring territorial boundaries and asserting their right of access to resources. Deep thinking about the link between health and survival gets offloaded to the Hunters, too. And the desperate grasp for "our fair share" of things that comes of making Santiago more a true stowaway than a mutineer proper is divided between the Spartans, Tribe, and Pilgrims (New Two Thousand).
The same happens with Morgan. The New Two Thousand crowd in on classic Morganite turf. They're all about free enterprise and the cross-over into banditry.
It makes me wonder if, the next time I tell this story, I should go with the idea that the new 7 are cadet branches of the original factions. This would meant that their leaders become prominent lieutenants, not necessarily founders of wholly independent societies. Thoughts?
What about my personal take on the factions?
Let's use Lal as an example. My Lal is much more an homage to the Kafkaesque caricatures of the U.N. popular circa 1998 than he is an ardent proponent of Net Neutrality. And while I don't think the original lore does that aspect of him any more justice than I do him injustice, that unexplored aspect of his design becomes very obvious when you take his quote and compare it to the other faction leader musings.
In my story, Lal is the guy who is guilty of staying his hand to avoid revealing an impotence that is already obvious to everyone but himself. It's like the old joke about the Soviet leaders stuck on the train. After trying to haul the engine with cables and shooting the mechanics, Gorbachev suggests the Politburo pull the window shades and simply pretend the train is moving. Combined with Lal's reflexive self-doubt, I think it makes for a good character. One tortured by his past and unable to confront bullies from the self-righteous high ground. In a narrative story I told elsewhere, Lal's subordinates loved him for his awareness that he had growing to do, and so they worked to imbue in him the steel of his own convictions. But we didn't talk about propaganda, or censorship, as bigger ideas.
Which of my versions of the leaders do you like best?
The discard pile.
I'm struggling with the Watchers of Chiron. Sardul Singh and his prisoners are interesting enough to sit at the top of the "bits box" I reach to for new inspiration, but I have so much more to say about everyone else. And the Labyrinth and Dreamers together can cover most of the stories about dystopian surveillance it's possible to tell.
I also wonder about the New State. Not because I would do away with them, but because the topic of aristocracy might be better addressed by a whole faction. But I appreciate that the New State, as described heretofar, has more going for it than just an "underwater" vibe. And I think they have crucial things to say about the tension between safety and liberty that is often at the heart of aristocratic societies. Of course, Yang's Hive already makes the case for despotism to counterbalance the tendency of the masses to panic and make unwise decisions about where to vest their trust. Just looking for feedback.
Where to see more
For those that want to see some of my notes and analysis, remember that my Google Drive AC2 file (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LWcodYnnBmKA68YJPNOjnrcY7HwvI3Pt/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=118092342676983150596&rtpof=true&sd=true) is open for comment.
Our Discord channel (https://discord.gg/euVfcfHY) welcomes you.
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More game design musings.
Mystic Wind recently turned me on to a project by an individual named space-commander on DeviantArt who came up with a new Social Engineering construct for SMAC. See here (https://www.deviantart.com/space-commander/art/OPaaT-Social-Engineering-4-0-607175058). I've taken this work, along with a look at that of _gravity_ on the Everything2 forums and come up with a slightly revised version. I also appreciated some critique shared by nweismuller.
Note that the tables are not intended to be read top-to-bottom as progressions. For example, it does not necessarily follow logically that an a Theocratic society would adopt Green economics or that representative politics is a stepping stone to planned economics, much less stability values. Rather, the table as a whole represents various directions for in-game factions to take humanity, and each concept is grouped under the heading most conducive to it.
| Frontier | Libertarian | Classical | Digital | Enlightened | Romantic | Technocratic |
| Politics | Democratic | Oligarchic | Autocratic | Representative | Theocratic | Anarchic | Meritocratic |
| Economics | Barter | Mercantalistic | Command | Planned | Green | Post-Scarcity | Free Market |
| Values | Survival | Wealth | Power | Stability | Truth | Welfare | Knowledge |
| Future Society | None | Eudaimonic | Thought Control | Computer-assisted | Transcendent | Retrospective | Caste |
I was inspired by some discoveries made by MysticWind, who turned me on to a table created by space-commander (DeviantArt). I also studied an analysis of the original SMAC Social Engineering concepts by _gravity_ on the Everything2 forums. I further appreciated some critique shared by nweismuller.
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Geography Is destiny. - Datalinks
Colonial Developments to M.Y. 5
University of Planet: Zakharov's people were a spent force at Planetfall. Radiation sickness acquired during the doomed effort to repair the damaged fusion drives or prevent reactor meltdown killed more than 60% of them. They landed in the foothills of the Daimones Peaks on Shamash, founding University HQ, the most northerly of the human colonies. There, they turned themselves at once to two tasks: the care of their wounded and the scientific interrogation of the strange and terrible paradise all about them. Zakharov at first organized his people according to their occupational purpose but soon amended this to discriminate by area of educational specialty instead. The change added slight occupational variation to the final combinations of colonists and crew--a boon, he said, to interdisciplinary thinking. The University escaped Unity with a huge cache of fissile materials, most of the mission's complex laboratory equipment, and all the data tapes, mainframes, and terminals they could find. Frantic salvage teams sank to tearing some computers from their sockets without bothering to first disconnect the wires.
The University experienced a quiet Planetfall. A thinker rather than a fighter, and well aware of his group's deficiency in that department, Zakharov pursued a studied neutrality when it came to the affairs of other factions, sharing or trading without regard for their politics. With the endorsement of a rubber stamp faculty senate, he also quickly excised those he felt would be a poor fit with his social agenda, exiling more than three hundred "excessives," by which he meant anyone from soldier to lunatic. The University was unique for its homogeneity: Zakharov had been careful to surround himself with protégés and other familiar faces from the moment of waking, and hadn't enjoyed the luxuries of time or opportunity to rifle through the Hab bays for a well-rounded "take," or to make prisoners of other stunned survivors.
(https://www.scififantasyhorror.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/kait-kybar/the-scifi-art-of-Kait-Kybar-7.jpg)
Naturalist T. Lange discovering the Chironian subrid while seeking shelter from an oncoming electrical storm. Attempts to woo the creature failed. The tracker beacon on his hoverbike led University Security to the nest two days hence.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/600/904/large/rob-watkins-artic-explorerlw.jpg)
An amphibious, ice-crawling Juggernaut deposits a Research Outpost on Eurydice Float. The fifteen-person station staff circled the Northern Pole over a three-year period, gaining important insights into the geology and climatology of Planet.
Gaia's Stepdaughters: The Gaians came down in swamps in the southwestern reaches of Shamash, far south of the Slowwind Delta. Most of Lieutenant Commander Deirdre Skye's subordinates fell in Hydroponics, killed by Santiago's Spartans. The Green Thumbs could rightly boast of having made a courageous defense, although many had been slaughtered before they could take cover and return fire. Victory was possible thanks only to the timely intervention of Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal and a scratch force of mission loyalists. Afterward, Skye and her followers gathered what foodstuffs they could from the wrecked greenhouse block, collected certain farming equipment from storage, emptied the ship's Seed Vault, and moved for the exits.
Coaxing life from hostile mediums was a specialty of the biologists and agriculturalists under Skye's command, and they set to their work with confidence. They build bubbletent growhouses to obtain fresh food and dried the noxious swamps with water-absorbing organics and deep-soil aerators. While their base of general knowledge about Planet did not grow as quickly as that of the University, they practiced an even more fanatical form of anti-contamination protocols that limited complications from the local ecosphere.
Once bitten, the Gaians became twice shy, concealing themselves from outsiders with the same furtiveness as the Hive. In theory, the faction's Chiron Rangers were armed and trained for force protection, but war-making was hardly in their mental vocabulary.
(https://www.scififantasyhorror.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/wadim-kashin/the-scifi-art-of-Wadim-Kashin-22.jpeg)
A Gaian Protector explores the faction's first landing site at Hylonome Bog, where trees could grow to heights exceeding 120 meters. The U.N. Marine Crops left Skye's mauled coterie with Spartoi Defenders, bipedal robots designed for the Unity mission by the trans-Saturnian Autumnal Foundry after the Chiron Probe sent back evidence of problematic megafauna on Chiron. Despite this scout's futuristic-looking weapon is a sonic projector, useful against most Chironian predators.
Human Labyrinth (a.k.a. Human Hive): Sheng-ji Yang's first commandment was to dig. Overseers recruited from the Golden Chinese contingent used force to compel their newly-captured "workforce" to dig. Yang had consulted the central mainframe computer to identify the choicest crew compartments for his press gangs to pick over, but didn't stint from capturing damage control teams wholesale wherever he found them.
Inspired by his many years in Xinjiang and armed with survey data collected by the Chiron Probe (thought corrupted by the U.N. Data Sciences Unit but intercepted and cleaned up by Chinese intelligence), Yang brought his convoy of Landing Pods to the shelter of the Planctae Upthrust, a massif in the deep desert called the Dune Sea. As noontime temperatures in the shade soared past 125°, work parties were subjected to harsh "light and water discipline," told where to walk, when to swallow salt pills, and how much to drink from survival pouches fed by moisture-thirsty body gloves. Yang ordered medicos to insert intravenous tubes in each laborer's forearm and had 11-litre bags of Ringer's lactate solution duct taped to their hips. Dead bodies were baked for their water content, then dumped into vats of nutrient-absorbing slurry to become organic root-paste, used in the production of rope, animal feed, and laboratory growth medium.
(https://posercontent.com/sites/default/files/products/20/0412/0344/0-sci-fi-excavator.jpg)
The Hive delved into the dust, dragging all evidence of their arrival down the hole behind them.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/53/18/b9/5318b9d62119a8d5e5fc5271c8ba6cdd.jpg)
Yang's followers launched coordinated assaults on shipboard caches of terraforming equipment to obtain the necessary ingredients for his master plan. Terraforming machines like this ARC-surplus H4 Harvester were high on the list.
Spartan Federation: The mutineers crashed down in the Slowwind Delta in central Shamash, a crowded neighborhood in M.Y. 0. Santiago immediately sent scout patrols in every direction. After founding Sparta H.Q. on high ground, she moved to secure the coast through occupation and expansion of natural erosion tunnels at a place she called Xerxion.
The Spartan battle plan had fallen apart about Unity. Santiago was unnerved by the enthusiastic and indiscriminate violence perpetrated by her Holnist allies, whom she had believed could be led by the nose. About a quarter of the self-styled Colonel's command were genuine adherents of the Spartan Creed. Most were North Americans and Australians who had fought Holnists out of a sense of patriotic obligation. They counted themselves survivalists and worried about becoming reliant on impersonal and disinterested government, but wanted no truck with anarchists. The rest were effectively pirates sourced from post-war prison camps or the large underground networks of demobilized "statesmen," the wishful term that American leaders gave to those who had risen in rebellion once it was time to prioritize healing over justice.
Santiago had condoned what she felt were an unavoidable number of assassinations among the crew to help effect her mutiny, but the Holnists had used the insights gained from crew manifests to expand that killing a hundredfold. They also engaged in wanton destruction, venting or obliterating critical supplies that the "mainline" Spartans had viewed as their rightful measure. Too late, the Spartan leaders realized that they had made a pact with nihilists. Paranoid in the extreme, the Spartans chose to continue the vendettas begun on Unity, spilling first blood on Planet, just as they had above it. The result would be a grueling war of attritional annihilation that eventually spread to three continents. Their first victims were Kellerites, the familiar enemy.
Early Spartans spent their first years in trenches and blockhouses, or afloat on brown-water patrolcraft. Every available tool was turned to war. Years after other factions had moved on to bubbletent agriculture, Spartans continued to dine on irradiated ration packs and drink reclaimed water. Their engineers extended the service lives of the faction's two Landing Pods far beyond Grumman's specifications, but they stayed on the ragged edge, half-starved and rarely able to spare a thought for anything but the most basic aspects of colonization. Most of their "progress" in medicine, manufacturing, and computing came from the capture and study of enemy bases. Standing orders prohibited troops from plunder--as much out of concern to prevent demoralizing discoveries about their own sad condition as to protect viable assets.
(https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tbt/FLX4EFWGCAI6TCHRIBWI6S7HAY.jpg)
A Spartan Controller repels a beseeching Holnist detainee in Fort Legion. Santiago was forced to parole and reabsorb even the most problematic of the Holnists as the Siege of Xerxion reached its obvious denouement.
Dynamic Enterprise (a.k.a. Morgan Industries): Nwabudike Morgan had promised comfort, and he meant to deliver. A CEO is paid to think in five-year increments. Morgan Industries secreted hundreds of company employees aboard, and tens of millions of tonnes of off-manifest equipment. Despite severe losses to secondary impacts from disintegrating sections of outer hull, much of Morgan's contingent survived to land with him, their numbers much enlarged with a clamoring throng of colonists and crew who were desperate to believe that they could fast-forward through the coming time of hardship.
Morgan landed alone and unmollested on Outremer, a small continent due west of Shamash across the New Sargasso Sea. Many hands made light work, and Morgan improved an already good hand by trading surplus goods for what his people didn't already have. Many of these expeditions, mounted across very long distances and focusing in particular on the more technologically advanced Chiron Probe survivors, paid handsome dividends despite a very high loss rate to worms, raiders, and misfortune.
To help ensure access to capital, Morgan imposed a curious practice unique to his colony: the energy accrued to each worker was paid in company stock. In other words, every worker granted Base Administration an involuntary low-interest loan without conditions. If the colony prospered, so did they. When it faltered, they received less than the worth of their labor. Morgan used the money held in this way to fund a flurry of base improvements and Secret Projects.
To boost morale, the colony's Board of Directors also encouraged his people to partake of amusements, turning a blind eye to heavy drinking, gambling, and other activity considered unacceptably "antisocial" in most other societies. On a darker note, this gave the Morganites a useful outlet for Probe activity. Internal regime opponents were frequently ruined or discredited by vice, while overindulgent visitors from other factions might have to finance their release from Holding by telling the Morganites what they wanted to know.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/56/8f/f1/568ff14dac6f4f7338917051415fe51c--sci-fy-sci-fi-art.jpg)
A Morganite hopper loaded with fish-bearing saltwater awaits rendezvous with their Spartan buyer.
(https://www.exploringlasvegas.com/attractions/images/startrek/startrek-vegas.jpg)
Morgan converted an upper garage of one of his Landing Pods into a casino. Workers could take extra shifts to earn hourly admission. Hours could be converted to credits for those who didn't have possessions to stake.
Sources:
Subrid encounter by Kait Kybar.
"Juggernaut" picture is by Rob Watkins.
Bog scout is art by Wadim Kashin.
Water discipline is a concept from Frank Herbert's Dune.
"Sci-Fi Excavator" credits to acharyapolina on PoserContent.
H4 Harvester, dubbed "Harvester," is the work of Orest Tsypiashchuk.
Holnist prisoner is a still from the TV show "Colony."
Morganite hopper is "Expedition" by Martin Parker.
Gambling hall is a picture of the old Las Vegas Star Trek Experience.
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Colonial Developments to M.Y. 5 (continued)
Peacekeeping Forces (a.k.a. Peacekeepers): They landed in the Southern Ocean on a mineral-rich continent about the size of Australia, dubbed "Garland." Low average temperatures kept fungal activity to a minimum. Sweetfishing was good along the coasts. They encircled their lone Landing Pod with a berm, called the resulting stockade "Warm Welcome," then set to pitching bubbletents. Not long after, they spread rain catchments for water, dug suspension pools to aid in physical recovery, and created open reading rooms. Citizens enjoyed a robust civic life: weekly gatherings, loosely proctored, settled most questions of priority and schedule.
Lal's people were an eclectic mix of his own surgical team; assorted mission loyalists, including constables and soldiers who had become detached from their U.N. Security Forces or Marine Corps commands; prisoners taken in battle, and lost or injured responders collected en route to the launch bays. Their number included artists who dashed base interiors with violent neons and prize-winning authors who turned themselves into ersatz data librarians. Lal was continuity to them--a tangible reminder of the Charter under which they had expected to live, and the hierarchy set to govern them with fairness and competence to spare.
There were shortages of everything. Unlike the stowaways, there had been no prior planning for the terrible emergency at the edge of the Alpha Centauri system. But the principles of compassion and democracy were well-known to his followers, and Lal, like Morgan, was spared, at least, the difficulty of articulating an essentially alien way of life to people already hungry, wounded, and scared.
Beyond base-building, the other difficulties encountered by the Commissioner were typical of his peers. At 66, he had a past, and his internal security apparatus was constantly at work trying to determine which of his constituents was out to settle old scores. Spartan he had chosen not to execute after the battle in the Unity hydroponics bay? Ibo victims of the Federal Army? Canadians who remembered how the U.N. had greased the skids for Soviet weapons to reach St. Pierre and Miquelon? Enemies of Apsara Mongkut? Shilohne? Danites? Sehlans? An American who remembered how the U.N. had given the Holnists top cover with dire warnings about the ethical evils of mandatory vaccination? Advisers worked in vain to keep the Commissioner moving too rapidly toward the induction of new colonists. Perhaps, they said, the search for other survivors should take lesser precedence? And what if they built an exclave for persons whose identities could not yet be verified?
Eventually, the Peacekeepers did set up a second encampment--at a place called U.N. Relief Station, once a triage center for the injured rescued from a crash-landed Colony Pod. As it happened, the Pod contained contractors affiliated with Struan's Pacific Trading Company. Under the leadership of their overseer, Dole Yudikon, they professed a prior allegiance to their employer, and begged to be recused from the obligations of citizenship. Lal acceded, though he also allowed the newcomers to integrate with his main settlement in anticipation of the day when it could be determined whether any Struan's representatives had survived to make Planetfall. Tensions flared when Yudikon questioned the basis for Lal's government. Yudikon and his lackies poked around the Spartan chain gang and prepared to launch a coup. They were added by one Colonel Kruse Martius, another post-Planetfall recoveree disillusioned by Lal's decision to parole Gathi war criminals discovered aboard Unity. Before the shooting started, an accord was reached: Yudikon was cast into exile. Along with fifty volunteers, he marched out the gates of the Peacekeeper base at Warm Welcome carrying a generous share of the colony's total wealth as his consolation.
The Peacekeepers and their Struan's neighbors now fell into a Cold War. Saber Company mercenaries employed by Struan's patrolled the outskirts of the exiles' little settlement on Garland's northeastern tip. The place, constructed mostly of repurposed cargo containers and plating torn from the skeleton of the half-submerged Pod, was as cold and miserable as an antarctic whaling station. The Peacekeepers put U.N. Marines on a nearby peak and dug in a heavy mortar. Lal also laid sensor fields between his territory and Yudikon's.
Meanwhile, Lal understood to retrieve the biggest remaining prize. The Peacekeepers had rescued a sky crane from the Unity's stores, and now they prepped it for an extraordinary long-range mission: to the Dune Sea, where their telemetry told them the Unity Data Core had landed. Armored marines recovered this storehouse of all human knowledge, killing suspected Hivemen in carload lots to do it. More enemies.
Notwithstanding the difficulties with internal subversives, the Peacekeeper position was much-envied. Lal had at his disposal the elite fighting force on Planet, and others dealt him injury at their own considerable risk, for every time, he gave better than he got.
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Warm Welcome in winter. The base obtained most of its energy from solar collection, allowing it to harvest Chamomile's limited supply of fissile pellets for hopper flights. The egg-shaped structures at left are hab units; the domed structures at center and right are master control stations for various base facilities. The squad, disc-shaped modules with the red-striped roofs are greenhouses with warming domes spread.
Lord's Conclave (a.k.a. Lord's Believers): The Faithful made Planetfall in southern Shamash, well south of the Gaians. Miriam had gathered to her the largest number of Unity survivors, and the least-organized. Many had failed to face their own demons in the darkness, unwilling to make the ultimate sacrifices demanded of them by the imperious Chief Engineer Zakharov or the tinny-voiced sphinx, Francisco d'Almeida. They wanted absolution for their sins, and the Sister was prepared to give it.
For the first three years, the Believers sowed and reaped in peace. Their enemies were the rain, wind, and fungus. They gloried in the abundant nitrates that made farming possible in the too-dry, alkaline soil, and cursed the cloud layer that meant they saw the sun not one day in ten. Some sought refuge in the Good Book, which the Sister taught was timeless, and all enjoyed the simple secular fellowship for which the Modern Vulgatians were both famous and notorious.
Later, starvation set in: despite willing labor, the Believer colony was short on experts in every field, complicating the creation of a system to treat the nitrate-poisoned groundwater and grow nutrients in the abundance required. Raiding north brought little relief. Though the Gaians rarely made difficult targets even for Miriam's unskilled militia (how she sometimes longed for the warriors once in her father's service!), they had little enough of their own to surrender. The Pilgrims were a tougher foe altogether, and successfully resisted. Miriam sank to the low of hiring her people out to do the supervised work of tilling other factions' fields in return for a fraction of what that labor was worth in potable water and packaged rations easily obtained by their better-skilled rivals.
Geography spared the Believers, at long last. Several bumper harvests in their fertile valley helped stabilize the colony from M.Y. 4-5, allowing construction of granaries and a trade in surplus food that returned necessary heavy equipment from factions across the waters. Miriam got on well with the Contre-amirale St. Germaine, who at least pretended obeisance to the Church in most of its forms and urged his followers to donate to the stricken in Miriam's care.
(https://i0.wp.com/earthlyuniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Titansurface-2-hi-1-NASA.jpg?resize=768%2C448&ssl=1)
A Believer Follow-on drops safely on the River Asterion.
Human Tribe: The "Pete" Landers crew had unity, and not the kind that crossed starpaths. The Kellerites, though very few in number--merely one-tenth the size of the Believer colony--shared a single vision for their future society. Their armed "retaliation" against the Unity, though it often descended into pogrom-style violence against enemies real and imagined, had got them much plunder--enough to make up, in a way Miriam could not, for the limitations in their training and education, both severely lacking from long decades of self-imposed exile from the world.
(https://www.scififantasyhorror.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/the-starwars-themed-art-of-Kevin-Jick-02.jpg)
Kellerite bases were barracks with children. To "take the view," families lounged on what were in effect the base parapets.
The Tribe found no relief when they splashed down on the beige sandy bottom of the Slowwind. They were at war with the Spartans before most had seen the red sky of their new homeworld. None had yet breathed its air unassisted, and like the Spartans turned themselves to it with relish and abandon so that their overall development of administration, industry, economics, and other facets of the colonization process was severely arrested.
Home lay just over the wall for a Tribesman. Dwellings backed up to the encircling stockade as if to protest the crush inside, and they ran to their roofs to find the gun ports at the shrill of a central alarm. When they required something they did not have, they asked a neighbor. If it could not be had, they visited a common terminal and searched out the manufacturing process on confiscated datatapes. To do one's neighbor a small favor was the acme of citizenship, and it was unheard of to take a meal alone. Equipment crates were unsecured. "We were in and out of eachother's spaces so much," one remembered, "I could not have hid anything had I tried." Such sharing was practically an indictment of the Morganite way of life, and their CEO ghoulishly resurrected the ancient charge that Kellerites were fellow travelers of the Maoist Movements.
As stowaways, the Tribe had laid in guns, ammunition, and their own families--three advantages on Chiron, where weapons were always in short supply and, most of the ship's company being complete strangers, the natural birth rate was at first very low.
Nobody could be trusted who was not also a Kellerite. Spartans were the Near Enemy, but the Kellerites knew they had received the sentence of pirates. By blooding their swords aboard the Ark, they had become enemies of all nations. Naturally, they ambushed and gutshot and dry-gluched without remorse. Tribals were exceptional fighters, their battlesense honed by lifetimes of persecution. The firearm was an extension of the body none would be caught without.
Sources:
Peacekeeper Base picture from Feng Zhu at FZD School of Design.
Planetfall for the Believers is from a NASA's artist's conception hosted on Earthly Universe (https://earthlyuniverse.com/10-reasons-colonize-titan/).
Tribal base is a Star Wars scene by Kevin Jick.
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Colonial Developments to M.Y. 5 (continued)
Human Ascendancy: Struan's Sabre Corporation mercenaries discovered Director Tamineh Pahlavi's people in the midst of making the ice in which to pack the mission's collection of genomic databanks, freshly disconnected from the Data Core (now ejected) and still scalding to the touch. Canisters of knockout gas lay expended on the decking, along with the corpses of a half-dozen A.R.C. private security men. Each had been dispatched with a bullet to the forehead. Realizing that they were unlikely to pull off a second tactical coup, the geneticists wisely genuflected. Pahlavi declared that she was relinquishing her claim to the dead men's equipment. While the Dreamers were still absorbing the idea of receiving as gift what they already implicitly possessed by virtue of force, the good doctor hastened to offer even headier wine: the last recorded neuroimages of all supervisory mission personnel, recently imprinted to datatape.
The Genetic Research Division (GRD) was an incidental addition to Prokhor Zakharov's contingent. In fact, they'd fought for the honor. Pahlavi herself had been woken automatically when Pete Landers's hackers tripped fail-safe the protocols for her hab bay. It took her scarcely two hours to retrieve all the surviving personnel of her small pre-flight command. They soon acquired weapons in a similarly serendipitous fashion: passing U.N. Security teams, recognizing unprotected crew, apologized at their inability to stay and handed out self-defense weapons to ease the sweet sorrow of parting.
The University's early decision to focus its intellectual work on "Chironian problems" frustrated Pahlavi. She was a passionate--and widely-resented--advocate for thorough analysis of the genomic information collected during Unity's voyage. Realizing that Zakharov could not be lured away from the temptations in every direction, the GRD requested self-exile.
Crossing the Daimones Valley, they reached the base of the mighty Hyas and immediately began to ascend, knowing they would find year-round water in the high passes along with total relief from the danger of fungus. They were few enough in number. World-class experts who had once dubbed their canteen the Ambrosia Club ate survival bars for much of M.Y. 3. Their big break came when a Hunter caravan rolled through a tunnel cut in the ice shelf. The scientists set off plastique that blocked either end, repeating their old trick with the gas. Pahlavi had a vendetta on her hands, but also the makings of a menial workforce.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/036/503/297/large/zongmeng-zhang-11.jpg?1617840048)
An early view of manufacturing bays at The Pinnacle. Huge semi-voltaic windows gathered sunlight by day and held off the frost at night. Here, two Laser Rovers complete a morning patrol route. The 6x6 "Kord" chassis was a Turkish contribution to the Unity Mission. The lasers' high amperage meant huge heat buildup. Inefficient cooling foiled early attempts to mount the weapons in protected ball turrets. The Ascendancy found a solution in outrigger pylons. This limited the big 600kW projectors to a frontal art of just 10° each, and their Skunk Works compensated with additional turreted weapons in the 250kW range. Standard anti-infantry support, crucial during the first century of warfare, was a chin-mounted autonomous weapons turret. Crews were fond of liquefying the battlefield from a distance.
These Kords appear sturdy but the rear shells and cockpit were made of heat-reflective Kevlar fabric.
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ1vU94kL7KSbeCFSzfMaKUl_-uCgpOzRaLk2jdS9dUjTC0uKQ1ikbGlC9tqY_aNq_z_vk&usqp=CAU)
The real work behind the one-two punch of a Laser Strafe was accomplished by jump pack-equipped infantry. These latter-day paratroopers were ubiquitous in rough terrain, where the added mobility let them advance unimpeded and utilize more of their environment as practical cover. The devices were easy to make but difficult to master. Armorers knew better than to give their troops the means to an early death by misadventure. The striker button had a choke that limited fuel uptake, preventing too-rapid consumption of the small tank and strictly reducing jump range to lengths and heights manageable for the human body on landing. Jumpers often used pistols or grenade guns as a first resort. Rifles took too long to ready.
Sources:
First picture is Zongmeng Zhang's "Frozen Planet Base."
Proevenance of the second picture is uncertain. Probably a NASA concept picture.
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Colonial Developments to M.Y. 5 (continued)
New State: Though their pickets rarely ventured past the delta barrages laid by both Tribal and Spartan in their first years on Planet, the New State made splashdown at a place on the same latitude as the river Slow Wind, approximately equidistant between Shamash and Outremer.
The Aquatic Operations Division escaped Unity fully intact, and the Contre-amiral had every intention of exploiting his monopoly on the expedition's precious few submersible hull forms.
(https://markosun.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/subs1.jpg)
The "Kasatka" was large indeed, but a builder, not the fighter implied by her name. Daesung counted itself fortunate to find a buyer in the U.N. after the destruction of the Bitter Waters Colony that had commissioned her. She was not yet a third paid off. Her sister ship, Hadúr, was built alongside Unity in the Lunar Cradle and eventually worked to build research habitats beneath the seas of Saturnian moon Enceladus. The two vessels were motherships. Their operators used them to tend fleets of much smaller, tactical submersibles like the Oculus Multi-Purpose Pods (MPP) seen in this artist's rendering.
The overwhelming majority of St. Germaine's people were submariners who adapted quickly and well to their predicament. And why not? Their fortunes were least-affected by Unity's loss, at least in the short term. They began patrols immediately, just as their training had led them to expect. They built tidal dynamos, nutrient sieves, and heat sinks as planned. High gravity was a problem in confined spaces, especially ones that demanded the fine care of a submarine, but muscle-controlled technologies and robotic servitors provided satisfactory answers.
St. Germaine's considerable civilian population was more difficult to please. They could be subjected to military discipline but were not reconciled to it. In so many words, they complained. Loudly and often. About the unappetizing food, the confinement, the sour notes in the recycled air, or the exhausting vigilance demanded of them with regard to leaks. St. Germaine was confounded by it. Had he not made them safe from their enemies? Did they want for anything that was not also in short supply on the surface? He bade the Psych Chaplains and Organizers among his contingent solve the problem, which they did with their customary summons to worship and service. New Staters were made thereby into an extraordinarily active people, notorious for a need to occupy their hands no matter the company or the occasion.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/176ed5aa-a0c2-45a3-8e6d-c6866e01f2b7/dc0umui-194987a3-aa6d-425e-a755-a6a55b2f29cd.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_635,q_75,strp/beneath_the_waves___underwater_forest_by_artlatkowski_dc0umui-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjM1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMTc2ZWQ1YWEtYTBjMi00NWEzLThlNmQtYzY4NjZlMDFmMmI3XC9kYzB1bXVpLTE5NDk4N2EzLWFhNmQtNDI1ZS1hNzU1LWE2YTU1YjJmMjljZC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.xsfWM4RS7OxwHJk3aVCzG7d_EDWDf0qumkTP6kx6928)
Sturdy fungal toadstools could be piled with centuries worth of nitrate accumulation. Beneath their canopies, oxygen-rich waters secreted ecosystems that thrived in complete darkness. New State scientists supervised clearing operations that exposed these habitats to sustained sunlight, stimulating gigantism in organisms that had developed hyper-efficient responses to UV radiation.
(https://c4.wallpaperflare.com/wallpaper/995/907/655/underwater-fantasy-art-artwork-wallpaper-preview.jpg)
A Spectator MPP observes the slyke eel menace lesser denizens of the lumicoral, itself included. As a last resort against aggressive sea creatures, the pods could shed electrified scratch-wire netting. They were built tough by Bolton-Defiant Industries, shrugging off hard contact with underwater rock formations made by unskilled skippers. St. Germaine urged civilians to take rotations in the pods, hoping they would stumble across something edifying. External cameras were always recording to double-length datatapes in series banks.
Sources:
First submarine picture is widely available on the Internet, but the provenance of it is unclear.
Second image found on WallpaperFlare. Original artist also unknown.
Third image is Art Latkowski's "Beneath the Waves - Underwater Forest."
"Lumi-" as a pre-fix for light-bearing objects inspired by Planetside 2.
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Mankind first set its heart on a one-way journey to Alpha Centauri at the dawn of the twenty-first century. A primitive electrostatic drive bore fifty thousand colonists across the interstellar medium with the collective blessings of both superpowers and a healthy dose of commercial largess.
They were refugees, mostly Indians and Pakistanis, Arabs and Jews, whose lives had been upended by the two nuclear tragedies of the new millennium. Though every mind and hand were missed in the Terrestrial reconstruction effort, habitable soil was at a premium and harvests were failing. Better to send the cream of the crop away than that they should spoil while awaiting the plate.
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For to lead them, there came a man from the bottom of the world: Joralamon Hardacre, a non-patriated Israeli climatologist who had administered Antarctica since 1999. Drink and the odor of financial scandal had seemed poised to chase him from the post, but the accidental death of his replacement during an ice climb and the unheralded arrival of a French helicopter carrier off McMurdo made room again for a man who hadn't sense enough to stand clear of trouble. Hardacre stalled the French by sheer force of will, bashing core samples with a golf club and threatening to torch the research station around his ears before he would surrender it. The French admiral blinked and wired Paris for instructions. This short delay provided just enough time for the Soviets to get a cruiser on-station.
Hardacre's paymasters on the board of the Arkan-Wellington Company entrusted him with a simple instruction: send back data. As compensation for risking his uniquely serviceable neck and those of every soul aboard, the expedition received generous subsidies. Stable funding and clarity of purpose did in five years what for Unity required decades of painstaking effort.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/009/294/607/medium/darius-kalinauskas-conceptart-environment-vechicle-military-desert-sunset-scifi.jpg?1518168721)
No element of the Chiron Pathfinder went to waste. Her 1,000m tall heat dissipation fins were refashioned into the six Pillar Cities of the Euphrosyne Plain where early terraformation efforts had gone as far as the sowing of Terran anchor grasses.
Trust was not prominent among Joralamon Hardacre's qualities. He recognized that the Unity survivors were hungry, which made them dangerous. Whatever J.T. Marsh expected from the previous expedition, it was not the parsimony on which Hardacre insisted as a matter of principle, hiding his inhospitality behind the strictures of infection control.
Learning the full story of Unity's troubles only strengthened the old Administrator's certitude in the wisdom of his position. Unity road crews marked the comings and goings of Pathfinder patrol convoys with trepidation. The sturdy, ambush-protected battlecars at Hardacre's disposal showed up Unity's equipment for the pathetic inheritance it was.
Sources:
Probe by FZD School of Design (https://fzdschool.com/blog_posts/learning-science-fiction).
Convoy by Darius Kalinauskas.
Titus Welliver, seen here in his role on The Last Ship, is Joralemon Hardacre.
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The power to hurt -- the sheer unacquisitive, unproductive power to destroy things that somebody treasures, to inflict pain and grief -- is a kind of bargaining power, not easy to use but used often. - Datalinks
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By the 2060s, the world's richest man had a problem. Only an army of K Street lobbyists, French citizenship, and round-the-clock security spared him the wrath of the United States, Canadian, and Mexican governments.
Though they also supplied all three federal armies, Morganite businesses nonetheless played a key role equipping, training, and advising those states and provinces in insurrection. Sabotage and knowledge loss from the withdrawal of federal garrisons or the refusal of loyalists to serve secessionist causes often meant that captured equipment was unusable. Morganite mechanics replaced missing or damaged components and trained new operators to use unfamiliar weapons systems. Often, the mercenaries fought alongside their students. Company-level formations of Morgan Armored Security served openly under the banner of the Missouri State Guard, unashamed to draw handsome pay from the state's near-empty coffers even when the local fighters went without. Hundreds were captured, and dozens executed, by the U.S. Army upon the fall of the secessionist stronghold at Jefferson. Morgan Resolutions troubleshooters literally stood behind Governor Herrick Guidry of Louisiana during each of his many media appearances, including when he announced his state's unilateral declaration of independence in conjunction with that of Texas, where SafeHaven helped plan the coordinated seizure of federal properties, to include Forts Bliss and Hood. At a Morgan Industries quarterly earnings call in 2051, the firm's Chief Financial Officer shared out a list of the seventy-two plots against rebellious politicians and generals by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and Dirección Federal de Seguridad supposedly foiled thanks to the handiwork of watchful company assets.
When the Holnists and their fellow travelers failed, Morgan found himself persona non grata in North America. Unionists blamed him for prolonging their country's nightmare. The disloyal complained that the price of his help had impoverished them. Morganite companies continued to receive federal contracts, but their market share shrank steadily as all three countries explored a newfound taste for fully domestic and parastatl production. At the start of the weeks-long hearings preceding the vote to nationalize the American Reclamation Corporation (ARC), Senator Jerkins Benvenuti quipped that, "Oscar van de Graaf is corrupt and a patriot. Nwabudike Morgan is just corrupt." His contemporaries agreed. Republican, Democrat, Conservative, and Unionist came together in a landslide to grant the ARC charter. Some admitted to biting the hand that had fed them. "More than anyone else, he got me here," Minority Whip Halos Harrison confessed to rolling cameras in the Capitol Rotunda, "but I guess this is where I get off the train." The following year, his constituents returned him to Congress by a ten-point margin despite being outspent by his challenger, who of course was funded by Morganite interests. Similar logic led to renewal of the monopoly on space governance previously granted to Comprehensive Transport by international treaty, which Morgan had also hotly disputed.
(https://kaliszweb.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/going-home.jpg)
An ex-Soviet airborne officer reads learns that his time with the Texas State Guard is drawing to a close. As the federal drives east from El Paso and north from Corpus Christi put Texas on the back foot, Morganite men "in-country" found themselves withdrawn to take contracts on more hopeful fronts. The Morgan men protecting Governor McReedy in Austin, Texas in the sweltering summer months of 2052 went up the pandhandle to seek their fortunes in Tulsa that Christmas.
By this time, the effect of Morganite involvement in global conflict had come to be associated with a particular branch of international relations theory known as Luttwakian Ethics. The premise was simple: weapons embargos favored the already-stronger of the parties to any conflict, but, by indiscriminately starving all combatants of the means to fight, tended to lengthen those hostilities. The best way to end a war was to fight it. Morgan seized on the idea, which he promoted through the endowment of university chairs and funding for institutes of war and peace. Day and night, his pamphleteers cried out for the relief of subject peoples and the righteous victory of right causes. Rebel armies infamous for atrocity could be taught a proper respect for humanitarian strictures, given the right instruction. And could not the United Nations, with the help of private enterprise, not care for the beleaguered while political matters were put to the test of arms? Did the world really benefit from a hundred frozen conflicts? Was the U.N. trying to keep itself afloat through the manufacture and sustainment of human misery?
Morgan fled defeat into the waiting arms of the United Nations, increasingly tying his company's fortunes to work on the Unity megaproject.
Sources:
African conflict zone picture by Darius Kalinauskas.
Individual soldier picture found at this website for what appears to be a personal Twilight 2000 RPG campaign (https://polandcampaign.com/2019/07/06/going-home-the-military-units-part-1-north-poland/).
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(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a6/61/6c/a6616ca0bbd8bb7dea89160eaf4d9b89.jpg)
Kellerism attracted adherents worldwide.
Tribalism, also called Kellerism after its founder, was an early twenty-first century reaction to the loss of hope in Middle America. From the 1980s, coinciding with the decline in heavy manufacturing in the Western world and the advent of the World Wide Web, personal and community identity became disconnected from shared physical space. Teenagers adopted avatars that reflected their imagined selves, while various political and social groups adopted explicitly global perspectives as they struggled to scope problems of economic dislocation and climate change. New problems were identified: opioid and Internet addiction, pervasive underemployment, increasing dependence on social services, and high rates of divorce.
Jean-Baptiste Keller was a failed farmer, lay preacher, and radio personality active during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries int he Midwestern United States. His favorite rhetorical targets were offshoring, agribusiness, partisanship, wealth inequality, and, of course, the Internet. Despite a relatively small live audience, tapes of his thrice-weekly Jeremiads were shared through the English-speaking world. His "congregation" saw reflections of themselves in his depictions of life as lonely struggle, rarely yielding spiritual fulfillment or dignity.
Some historians now trace the movement's formative inspirations back as far as the right-wing paramilitary ethno-nationalism of the mid-1990s and the parallel flowering of conservative talk radio, but though Jean Baptiste-Keller spoke to the same problems, he was neither a xenophobe nor a secessionist, much less a bitter-ender. The fundamental underpinnings of Holnism, to which Kellerism is customarily compared, were nihilism and individualism. Holnists denied the very legitimacy of positive law and attempted to recast natural law as the extension of the individual's own Id. Holnists did for themselves in the expectation that they would be rewarded with the opportunity to inflict themselves upon others after societal collapse.
The Holnist will set your town, including his own home, ablaze because he thinks he can snatch something of yours from the blaze. - Weekly Address of the President of the United States
Kellerites aimed to avert that collapse through a program of self-improvement on behalf of the wounded community. Its foundational concepts were hope and community. A Tribe was to supplement, and perhaps even to stand in for, the absence of central government, but should not reject its value in principle.
Keller's thesis was simple enough: the atomizing and amplifying effects of the Internet, by giving false hope to every radical, made it impossible for communities at any level--local, state, national--to engage in the collective problem-solving that is politics. Just ten years into the new millennium, "truth" was in the eye of the beholder on both sides of the Atlantic. Keller interpreted current events through this dark prism. The outbreak of Red Flu and climate-driven mega-disasters that preceded America's second great sundering were only so ruinous because their impacts was exacerbated by those who had something to gain from the suffering.
This analysis led Keller to three conclusions. First, that central government, though not to be feared, was unreliable because of the problems of distance, faction, and bureaucratic inertia. Second, that physical communities--especially blood communities--as defined by close geographic proximity and daily personal interaction were more important to the wellness and survival of the individual than virtual communities. To ride out the storm Keller insisted was coming, the wise would retreat from their device and narcotics addiction and live "in the moment," cultivating the practical skills and face-to-face relationships they would need to ensure basic survival.
With the end in mind, Keller called for Americans to take up Scouting, learn to swim, take advantage of the courses offered by local community colleges and technical schools, practice target shooting and reloading, and buy cars that didn't rely on computers. As a "prepper" of the second generation, he took a distinct communitarian perspective, instructing his listeners that guns, ammunition, food, and medical supplies should be stockpiled and held in trust for one's family and neighbors.
The one who prepares shall be shepherd, not king. - The Annotated Broadcasts
Keller's emergence as a potent political force coincided with the destruction of Davenport, IA by anti-government militias, during which his son Brian was killed while serving in the National Guard. Keller initially urged communities to open their doors to FEMA and the U.S. Army during the unfolding national emergency.
As the cogs of federal power ceased to turn, Keller hit upon an alternative: he propounded a Charter, or guiding principles for the organization of mutual aid within and between communities "for persons who do not wish to descend into barbarism.” Recognizing his audiences’ fear of strangers amidst the general collapse of law and order, Keller additionally urged his listeners to “fall back first on your relatives, friends, and neighbors – the people who know you best, can vouch for you, and upon whom you have always depended.” Keller was explicit that these communities must not be circumscribed by "false dichotomies" of race, political affiliation, national origin, cultural practice, or sexual or gender identity. "Family is family," he thundered, "and you will never be remade whole if you leave behind even the least of them."
Yet unsurprisingly, communities that conformed to the code of behaviors promoted by Keller’s Charter were often able to manage the suspension of public services better than those where residents were disunited. Prototypical Kellerite communities maintained food kitchens, aid stations, and workshops where resources could be pooled, needs evaluated, and priorities set and acted upon most efficiently. They also mounted “vigilance patrols” to keep the peace.
Inevitably, the success of the Kellerites meant that they were subject to attack by opportunists, some of whom depicted the Kellerites as disloyal and incestuous cultists to justify their crimes. After Davenport, Kellerites were natural targets in an environment thick with predators. Secessionist governments and their Holnist supporters targeted the Kellerites for their pro-vaccine stance and often-outspoken allegiance to the United States Government. Excuses were easy to find. As armed camps, Kellerite townships could not be countenanced at the rear of a secessionist army. For followers of the Evangelical Fire, Kellerism was simple heresy to be extirpated with the sword. Combatants of all stripes knew Kellerite communities would be well-stocked with all the essentials of war. Kellerites were also beset by both ordinary citizens (who usually resented having been left “outside the fold” of prosperous Charter communities) and corporate security forces tasked to “reclaim salvage” from the war zone.
(https://www.nma-fallout.com/data/photos/l/4/4332-1338620276-8b22d1c9fb03fe3f7768cbfbe694dfd7.jpg)
Kellerites enjoyed an advantage the Holnists never had for long: unity of purpose.
Kellerites' alienation from surrounding populations eventually brought them into direct conflict with the relieving federal forces. The group’s outlaw status was cemented during the Holnist breakout from the Federal blockade of Des Moines, when Kellerite militiamen operating in the same vicinity slaughtered hundreds of civilian refugees in retaliation for past lynchings of Kellerite foraging parties. The United States Government never forgave the Kellerites, whom it thereafter treated as enemy combatants.
(https://newsboilerv1storage.blob.core.windows.net/news/1767044_0.jpg)
Holnist fighters depart a ruined Tribal enclave. Even when victorious, the Holnists always departed many fewer in number than when they'd come.
Kellerism persisted for years after the war despite its adherents being forced into hiding, and pirate radio stations repeated Kellerite signals from holdfasts in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain chains, gradually attracting new adherents in the urban crimescapes of the Pacific coast.
Sources:
U.K. Kellerites picture found on Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/422775483761318597/) board of Broken Eden LARP.
Picture of farming is "Epilogue to Wall-E" by Brother None.
Third picture is apparently (https://n4g.com/news/1767044/run-your-own-post-apocalyptic-faction-in-fall-of-civilization) from a computer game, "Fall of Civilization."
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Vehicle Chassis: Highship
In Earth's last century, a clear blue sky was the unending nightmare for children living in forgotten lands. Locusts of empire mercilessly assaulted countless villages while hunting for men hidden far, far away. Aerial drones and air strikes murdered innocent families, communities, peoples in plain malice. Today we take back the skies in their name. - the christening of the Mẫu Liễu Hạnh
(https://i.imgur.com/ZP5Mkoq.png)
Great-grandchildren of the Hopper scout craft in the early eras of Planet, Highships became a major aerial weapons platform as the civilizations of the Unity diaspora achieved ever-better industrial capabilities. These flying fortresses were first prototyped during the “Post-Survival Age” by desperate factions retrofitting Landing Pods and even Supply Pods with chemical rockets as deluxe-sized Hoppers for use as aerial artillery strongpoints. As old as these relics of the initial expedition were, they were surprisingly well-defended against early ‘copter armaments. This was thanks to the mission planners’ insistence of fool-proofing the very celestial Conestoga wagons that were to deliver humanity and its supplies to the stars, and a widespread hunch that they would need to be protected even against violence, which was theoretically unforeseeable. (As a result, the disseminated Unity pods were incredibly hardy, able to withstand atmospheric entry and landing in every biome known to Chiron, some resting quietly in the wild for mission decades to even centuries.)
(https://i.imgur.com/6dzsHPf.png) (https://i.imgur.com/kBNj8Xe.png) (https://i.imgur.com/V0zQsBr.png)
The dubious reliability of retooling Supply Pods to serve as Satellite Pods was exemplified when hapless Tribal pod people inadvertently landed off-course in the Nessus Canyon during an attack on Xerxion, their ancient instrumentation mistaking the region's distinctive rock formations as base structures
While these proto-Highships - dubbed by some Planetary military historians as the “Satellite Pod” - had a mixed battlefield record at best, they cemented the evolution of Hoppers into bigger aircraft for use in larger-scale operations. Even as the Observer upper echelon groaned at the “Great Supply Closet Massacre in the Sky”, when scores of Chiron Guard Roswell weaponized Unity Pods were effortlessly destroyed by University ECM countermeasures during the assault on the Interstellar Communications Array, Deputy Minister Han Jae-Moon was already calculating the fuel requirements for building a newer, ruggedized, ziz of an airship that would eclipse all of these overglorified armored Hoppers. The Memory of Earth Planetary Defense Force’s aerospace designers immediately went to work drafting the Mother of All Pods - an exponentially scaled up Satellite Pod that would be as well-fortified as a base, as well-armed as SafeHaven battle armor, and as nimble as University hovercraft. Unfortunately for the aspirations of the St. Reaganites, later events kept the PDF schematics away from production until the next age. However, those plans for HIGHJUMP II were picked up by a Lai Tek dataprobe operative, who forwarded them with urgent priority to the Monitor-Protector herself.
The leader of the Phoenix Nation inspected the castle in the sky proposal with great interest. For mission years, her cause had been relegated to little more than an Outpost-class sub-faction. Not all Unity breakaways necessarily had the numbers nor the resources to construct elaborate societies, much less command vast armies in the field. To some degree, this suited Trung Thi Hoang just fine- it recalled her postwar reconstruction days in the Central Highlands, aiding and learning from the matrilineal and matrilocal tribal cultures in the demilitarized zone between the northern Vietnamese Soviet Republic and the southern French Indochinese Union. But on Planet, she and her people had greater ambitions to free the downtrodden of any faction, and that required tooling up. So far, the Phoenix were mainly renowned as air combat aces who, despite their status as fungal bush pilots, had turned many a battle for the vendettas of others as flying tigress “guest fighters.” They gladly accepted energy, minerals, or nutrients as rebels of many causes, but they had yet to make their mark as a power in their own right. Monitor-Protector Trung wanted more, and saw that this next-generation vessel would be the first great step towards human liberation.
(https://i.imgur.com/Mk1k9ha.jpg)
New State officers greet the Mẫu Liễu Hạnh at Jonathan Livingston Seabase during Phoenix Nation diplomatic tour
It took Schreiber Project engineering resources, Dai Seung manufacturing prowess, North Star Allegiant nautical experts, and a generous line of credit- contingent upon the Phoenix agreeing to assist in future “market solvency operations”- extended by the enigmatic board of the Global Energy Exchange, but at the end, Trung Thi Hoang had her mothership. The PNV Mẫu Liễu Hạnh was the largest aerial object seen on Planet since the Unity itself, and its brethren that followed would not be eclipsed until the advent of gravships.
This first of the simply-named Highships was powered by a Quasitron-brand nuclear particle accelerator-driven thorium reactor built by the Children of the Atom. The Liễu Hạnh required nearly a hundred thousand tons of liquid methane dispersed at kilograms per second as both supplementary propellant and working fluid for the turbines of its airbreather jet engine. Typical of the primitive atomic drives that preceded the realization of helical engines, Highship ramjets were based on the same concepts as those of the early-Cold War United States Air Force’s Supersonic Low Altitude Missile proposal.
(https://i.imgur.com/Zx6Zgms.jpg)
Thanks to Planet’s million-year untouched state, methane was in vast abundance. Natural gas remained in good supply after mission centuries of widespread extraction of terrestrial deposits due to New State advancements in deepwater Pressure Domes and aquatic Former mining. Planet’s industrial powers were able to claim even more seabed clathrate deposits, even at the risk of geographically-altering disasters resulting from rapid clathrate eruptions, such as this MorganSea incident
Despite the immense engineering resources involved, Highships operated along the same general flight principles as Hoppers. As VTOL aircraft, they flew in arcs at speeds dwarfed by actual supersonic fighters. Operating in low-altitudes capped by the lack of sufficient reaction mass in the higher atmosphere, they operated as battleships of the air. The Liễu Hạnh, in its vast 189 meter length, was intended to act as a flying cruiser, the core of the Phoenix Nation’s air force, capable of shepherding, shielding, and repairing Trung’s squadrons as well as devastating enemy ground forces and bases with equal efficacy. Its introduction in the South Squall Vendetta kicked off an aero arms race as factions breathlessly poured over datalink footage of the Phoenix flagship with its massive autocannons shredding apart Pilgrim Rover formations. Nicknamed “Thunderbird”, the conflict showcased the arrival of the Nation to the Planetary scene, as well as the dawning of a new chapter in aerial combat. The climactic duel between the Liễu Hạnh and the Sumatran Whip became the most downlinked watchvid for over a fortnight. Despite the battle’s ultimately draw, the Emporium began their own Highship crash program shortly after, likely based on the very same plans stolen from the Observers.
Highships possessed hulls strewn with gun batteries, missile launchers, point-defense systems, anti-heat seeker lasers, bombing bays, sensor arrays. Some, such as the Spartan Lelantos, bore an entire landing strip for carrying jet fighters. But these vessels were also glass cannons. The cost of indulging in the cheap abundance of methane resulted in more than intermittent mindworm boil swarms for the harvesters. Upon the penetration of their fuel tanks, Highships would become giant falling bombs, with enormous blast radiuses. As such, from the beginning, they were shielded by immense amounts of armor around their tanks. While this did not prevent later battles from resulting in massive fireballs and ecological destruction, causing Lady Deidre Skye of the Gaians to pronounce the vehicles “an atrocity against the Planet”, they did allow for higher rates of survivability for crews of destroyed Highships, as well as cargo. Thus, downed vessels were an attractive target for SMACER scavengers, slavers from enterprising factions, or ecosystem revenge squads from Green-minded organizations.
(https://i.imgur.com/bJqejjZ.jpg)
Footage of the Liễu Hạnh destroying an enemy craft as captured from the bridge of the PNV Rosa Luxemburg
Because of the inherent vast cost in building and maintaining giant flying vessels, Highships were never in great numbers. The Phoenix Nation had one of the more sizeable highfleets, following up their flagship with the much smaller attack frigate Rosa Luxemburg and the interceptor corvette Charlotte Corday. Both were a third of the size of the Mẫu Liễu Hạnh, with crews a fifth to even a tenth of the mothership’s six hundred and sixty strong complement. They were far less armored, but much more nimble, able to sustain close-range aerial combat with improved thrusters that made for maneuvering around enemy fire, dodging and weaving and even diving below larger adversaries as they pelted them with 100mm rapid-fire artillery guns. The New Two Thousand riposted against the Nation in subsequent clashes with its impressive Lindbergh, which downed the PNV Zohra Drif over the Monsoon Jungle. But in time, militaries viewed Highships not simply as symbols of prestige or psychological terror, but expensive resources that should be captured if necessary. Jump-pack marine detachments deployed from ‘copters, airships, and stealth transport planes were used for boarding actions in attempts to infiltrate and take control of Highships. The loss of the University’s Aerograd to a xenon-gas toting Dreamer jump-pack probe team struck a great blow against the Academician’s morale. The subsequent renaming of their sole Highship to the saucy Dream a Little Bigger was salt in the wound.
Ultimately, the age of the Highships elapsed as Synthetic Fossil Fuels and other advancements permitted true aerial combat independent of flammable methane or radioactive thorium. After nearly a mission century of being constrained to low altitudes, humanity flew ever-higher thanks to their descendents. The first sub-orbital Highship, the Memory of Earth’s X-2000 Dyna-saurus, was built after Planetary society achieved Rudimentary Spaceflight. These advances, the substitution of the massive metal methane vessels with conventional lighter-than-air airships, and the waning of the Phoenix Nation’s aerial supremacy, all drove the passing of this romantic and explosive period in Chiron’s atmosphere.
Notes:
This concept was inspired by this review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RUrBmXUGuU) of dieselpunk airship combat strategy game HighFleet: Deus in Nobis.
Yes, the name for the early pre-Highship ‘pods is indeed a bad music pun.
The art of the Satellite Pod is from Yukinobu Hoshino’s sci-fi classic 2001 Nights, specifically "Night 10: Medusa's Throne."
Speculation on the technical workings of HighFleet borrowed from this thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/Highfleet/comments/pdi4x3/could_the_liquid_methane_engines_ever_support/).
Helical engines (https://www.newscientist.com/article/2218685-nasa-engineers-helical-engine-may-violate-the-laws-of-physics/) are a proposal by NASA engineer David Burns for a particle accelerator-propelled interstellar vessel.
Underwater mining of methane clathrate deposits, and its consequences, comes from the Benthic depressurisation (https://fateoftheworld.fandom.com/wiki/Future_Technologies#Benthic_Depressurisation_(2070)) tech in climate change simulation game Fate of the World.
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Life in the First Decade
There was too much to defend, and from too many, with too little and too few. - Peregrenations of Planet
(https://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/fzd-production-uploads/uploads1557834869579-darius-kalinauskas-conceptart-vechicle-military-desert-buggy-scifi.jpg)
They built their fair share of prototype designs with a batch size of one, but Spartan doctrine called for the use of interchangeable parts to achieve better efficiencies in training, repair, and tactical command. It was much easier to model performance when a leader had fewer variables for which to account.
The koutí had many features to recommend it. Heavy-duty shocks conferred excellent off-road performance. By sealing and stowing the armored louvers, occupants in the cab could trade between visibility or cooling or force protection. An onboard fire suppression system and bolt-on super light appliqué might mean the difference between survival and annihilation. The vehicle used a nuclear power source; see the turbine and fuel cask centered between the rear wheels. In service, the vehicle could take a fighting top in at the cab and rooftop hatches.
Standardization is the surest sign of material progress. Survival is too disorganized to maintain any lasting relationship with efficiency. - A Political Economy of Planet
(https://gamernetwork.bbvms.com/mediaclip/4384569/pthumbnail/688/388.jpg)
Morganite pleasure palaces, found in every modern city, were a counterintelligence officer's worst nightmare. Private reports to Captain Garland from the Office of U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri Security Chief Rachael Winzenried warned that as many as one in ten crew members were taking pay from an unsanctioned patron. That number doubled for command staff.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/9039ecb5ae6850105f5cea58b4e27778/254dfd144c78e11a-9f/s500x750/bbdd0bce34399f64c9e1cf54ffc0d3012d97e935.jpg)
Faction leaders ignored the appetites of the human soul at their own peril. There hadn't been space aboard Unity for much physical art, but the colonists produced their own in abundance. Tribals and Hivemen made art as an expression of their individualism. Morganites made art for decorative purposes. Believers likened the artist's work to prayer. Dreamers made art in spite of themselves. Prisoners of the Watch were forced to make art as therapy, which Commissioner Pravin Lal felt rather missed the point. Adolescents in the Ascendancy were judged according to their artistic output as children: the more accomplished the artist, the greater the expectation of future accomplishment.
Sources:
Buggies by Darius Kalinauskas.
Casino city picture is an artist's conception of the pleasure city Neon for the video game "Starfield."
Second picture is from Syd Mead. Apparently (https://retroscifiart.tumblr.com/post/646125242031439872/concept-art-by-syd-mead-for-a-proposed-but-never) a piece of concept art for the a Jetson's movie.
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(https://videocdn-sbs.akamaized.net/u/video/SBS/managed/images/2020/10/12/1799189571930_10120510_image171055_full.jpg)
Promise-keepers, seen here assisting Pilgrim militia to clear a corridor as they invade the uppermost level of a Hive Habmaze, took a simple vow: to accept no charity and perform no honest work. Mercenaries were natives to the battlefield, and preferable in a set-piece battle, but they had a sense of self-preservation that placed an upper limit on their utility in dire moments. Also, few mercenaries would consent to take Somnacin. Promise-keepers generally made excellent dream-walkers.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/006/348/028/large/jeremy-cook-screenshot-lrg-06-secret-base.jpg?1497913045)
The easy test to tell Promise-keeper from SMACER was to offer them credits. If you were killed, you'd met a SMACER. Promise-keepers generally gathered in small huddles in the hundreds of abandoned bases that marked failed expansions or soured vendettas. Those prepared to risk their necks could negotiate a price for anything prohibited. They were cheap assassins, saboteurs, subversives, and Probe operators. So far as could be determined by curious outsiders, Promise-keepers were motivated, like the Data Angels, "by the jazz." A Promise-keeper's ability to serve the buyer and live was a direct reflection on their ability to adhere to the strict codes of the Vory.
"Don't kill, don't eat." - Saying among the Promise-keepers, Datalinks
(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/97/53/68/97536860d13eaea06a0126f90884990a.jpg)
This was not to say that a certain degree of absurdity could not result from the Promise-keepers' rigid interpretation of their own ethos. A popular distraction with Morganite teenagers was to pay Promise-keepers to denounce the Civil Ordinances in New State garrisons. Nwabudike Morgan once got the better of a Peacekeeper rival by hiring Vory to lure the man into a drunken spree that resulted in his dismissal from his faction's diplomatic corps. University students sometimes hired Vory to distract proctors during tests. More hired them as bodyguards to fend off the vicious bullying of prefects.
Sources:
First picture features Adriyan Rae as Elida in Vagrant Queen.
Second picture is "secret base" by Jeremy Cook.
Third picture origin unknown. Found on imgur.
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(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QEt-BIbBNMw/maxresdefault.jpg)
The pressure seals for each of Unity's six fusion engines were manufactured in Knoxville, TN by the venerable Fulton-Sylphon Corporation. Each engine cone was taller than the Statue of Liberty, and the seals were correspondingly large. Federal troops of the 4th Cavalry Brigade, trainees in tow, came down from Fort Knox, KY to escort this precious cargo south. They made it out of the city just days before Governor Tim Spearman brow-beat the state legislature into ratifying articles of secession. Tennessee Army National Guard forces dogged the caravan practically the full way to Atlanta before spoiling attacks from Virginia resulted in their urgent recall for home defense.
(https://rethink.earth/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/fish-inc-web-final-2000.png)
Chiron's oceans provided both nutrient abundance and deep insight into its cyclical ecosystem. At bases like Ballard's Reef, one of a very few coastal enclaves built by the University of Planet, researchers endured constant low-grade typhoon conditions for the benefit of their fellow survivors. Corso's False Sea Jellies provided protein and texture to enliven meals. Products derived from Sea Jelly genetics included luminescents, medical paralytics, and longevity treatments.
(https://t3.ftcdn.net/jpg/05/38/16/68/360_F_538166812_iDQ0EccrcUIWWAXqemdHDR8SAIxzhfI5.jpg)
A student of the University might study the full length of a Chiron day--just under 18 hours straight. The reigning pedagogy called for a combination of professorial lecture, guided discussion in mixed-attainment reading circles, and independent study. Unity had carried no books; instead, the total sum of human knowledge had been digitized. Librarians pulled segments of this material onto shareable data tapes using a detailed programming language and following the specific requests made by students themselves. A competent Librarian was the struggling student's salvation, paring away extraneous information before it ever reached the listener.
(https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,pg_1,q_80,w_800/3584106cede86f5fad7859306f2b25e8.jpg)
The U.N. acquired the Aries III space platform on 12 May 2017. The Grumman Corporation was announced as the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri's first prime contractor a day later. Unity did not launch until 12 April 2071. There were many reasons for the expedition's long gestation, none more serious than the damage to supporting national space programs caused by interstate war. In 2051, Soviet airborne forces famously wrecked the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou. When NATO failed to react--it was the very height of the Hypersurvivalist Crisis--the already-unpopular conservative government of French President Marcel d'Avrail collapsed, and France veered back into the third-way politics that undermined Western unity to Moscow's advantage.
(https://w0.peakpx.com/wallpaper/889/322/HD-wallpaper-military-sci-fi-tank-battle.jpg)
The tank was a complicated presence on battlefields of the twenty-first century. Advances in the portability, accuracy, and firepower of individual anti-armor weapons systems, combined with the effectiveness of drone reconnaissance, humbled more one great army--and those were cases in which the vehicles themselves were well-crewed and -maintained. Defenses, which incorporated signal suppression as well as active engagement of incoming warheads, were effective only one-quarter of the time.
On Chiron, the tank enjoyed a brief renaissance. The Spartans and the Tribe both experimented with tanks both wheeled and tracked. The anti-tank rockets packed by J.T. Marsh might as well have been firecrackers. Even when under-armed, tanks helped accompanying infantry to press their advance with confidence. Drones remained a theoretical problem, but there were fewer of them, and, because of the general lack of heavy weapons, spotting rarely resulted in a kill.
Sources:
Fulton-Sylphon image is from Sci-Fi base pack on the Unity Asset Store (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/sci-fi/sci-fi-base-173333) by Manufactura K4.
Ballard's Reef image is the work of Simon Stålenhag, found here (https://rethink.earth/can-science-fiction-reimagine-the-future-of-global-development/).
Third image by Nokhoog on Sci-Fi Factory.
Fourth image by Electronic Arts.
Artist responsible for tank picture is unknown.
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(https://assets.reedpopcdn.com/icarus-is-a-sci-fi-survival-game-from-the-creator-of-dayz-1592074205292.jpg/BROK/resize/1200x1200%3E/format/jpg/quality/70/icarus-is-a-sci-fi-survival-game-from-the-creator-of-dayz-1592074205292.jpg)
The seed packets and re-hydrated ration packs stored in Unity's Landing Pods were badly irradiated by the ship's venting reactors. Early crops failed at rates approaching 93%. Most colonists of the First Generation suffered from moderate to severe malnutrition. Birth rates were very low, and infant morality very high. Biologists scrambled to extract edible macronutrients from native organisms.
(https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bc903fd840b1671a11946ba/1549500827479-07N3FXH6KIV6FUQ9UTUO/Jack.JPG)
Once Planetside, all factions found yawning gaps in available competencies and equipment. To make matters worse, the expedition's original supplies were mostly archaic hand-me-downs sourced from more than 150 donor nations and tens of thousands of private organizations. As a matter of personal survival, every colonist needed to become individually expert in the care, maintenance, and improvement of their own gear. This Spartan has improvised oxygen support from a medical ventilator, a length of rubber hose, and an agricultural respirator.
(https://htxt002.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Reviiser-Cyberdeck-3D-Print-2.jpg)
Portable minicomputers such as the Reviiser were the suitcase atomics of their era. They could be set up to run tapes automatically once the terminal was plugged into a Datalinks. No computer literacy required. The New State banned them, while fee structures effectively restricted their ownership to the C level in Morganite enclaves.
Sources:
Top image is apparently from survival game Icarus.
Second image is from the film Prospect.
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(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/9b/db/34/9bdb34c97dea4f426c9e8d1b0bd4e23c.jpg)
Since replacements were hard to come by, everything was used until it broke. The face ports and filtration plant for this Gaian Ranger's rebreather have broken. Air hoses have been rerouted behind and she wears an independent filter over her breast. A lens in the face mask has cracked, and both are fogged, but the high-efficiency seal for which this Anklin Mark IV mask was known, obviously tempted its wearer to make due. Her laser carbine shows evidence of severe barrel corrosion and will soon seize, perhaps with catastrophic result.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/8e/a1/0d/8ea10d1963354af6c6ea0ce9855ea597.jpg)
A Shaper Liquidator fuels his flamethrower, the accepted way to deal with an errant fungal bloom. When they drew such unhappy work, drones were pumped with neurosuppressants that put them in a zomboid state not unlike the nerve staple--in fact, the pharmaceutical basis of the inoculation and the punishment were identical, differing primarily in the amount of drug administered. This was necessary, of course, to deaden the mind against Centauri retaliation.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a9/d4/88/a9d4889c2412fe86b8aa2ac1623352b5--halo--science-fiction.jpg)
Trade between isolated factions was sometimes the only way to stave off starvation, disease, or environmental disaster. When one or both were at war, civilian traffic, like this high-clearance hauler carrying nutrient slurry, would be equipped with flashing beacons to indicate their noncombatant status. Some factions heeded the markings; others zeroed in on a defenseless capture.
Sources:
Top image found on the Pinterest account of Marco Ferreira.
Flame trooper is the work of Daniel Comerci.
Vehicle is credited to CaptFlushGarden by the Pinterest account of Jerome Lebrun.
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(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/011/042/020/large/wend-taylor-slide29-2.jpg?1527566078)
When Chairman Sheng-ji Yang pronounced his readiness to take a share of the riches trapped beneath the Hyas Teeth, Archelaus Laskaris summoned steel monsters and pierced the mountains he could not climb. With omnidirectional drilling rigs, Hive miners siphoned ore the way a Gaian might funnel water.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/051/807/310/large/ed-lee-art-hybrid-artfare-1.jpg?1658227033)
The Silver Arch, a tungsten mine "operated" by the Dreamers of Chiron from M.Y. 2-14 at Pahlavi's sufferance. It collapsed in that final year due to avoidable structural failure, killing more than three hundred people, mostly members of chain gangs sourced from the Morganites. The remains of the diggings became a scrappers' paradise and were fought over for years by the University, the Ascendancy, and the Children of the Atom.
(https://www.zbrushcentral.com/uploads/default/original/4X/0/e/1/0e14d9659d8b06f2f9170fbaf2594369d9692f3b.jpeg)
The polyglot Unity expedition was to use English as its official mission language, but project difficulties led to uptake of at least 100,000 colonists and crew unable to speak it. Color became their common touchstone. Four of nine branches are shown here. White for environmental control--responders who were to restore breathable atmosphere in compromised and gassed compartments. Red for conventional firefighters. Green for radiological firefighters. Blue for those trained in confined space rescue. The expedient of color-coding mission assignments was kept up by every faction.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/29/ed/32/29ed32e321404e4094f4741fb563fb58.jpg)
Physical hardships linked to hibernation, post-hibernation recovery, and Chiron's higher gravity created barriers to the inclusion of those with physical challenges. The U.N. issued them provisional exclusions and promised uptake in the event that they received successful cybernetic prosthesis. This Trinity Corporation collapse responder searches for casualties in a compartment choked with tear gas during the final hours of the exodus from Unity.
Sources:
First picture is "Siberia 2035" by Wend Taylor.
Second picture is "Mine Facility (2022)" by Ed Lee Art.
Third picture is by Jeison Silva. It is hosted on ZBrushCentral (https://www.zbrushcentral.com/t/fireman-fururistic/396276).
Fourth picture is "Fire Gear" by Lucas Pradaud.
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Give a body room to breathe and freedom to act, and nine times out of ten they will curl up into a fetal ball. - Under My Wings, All Things Prosper: A History of the American Reclamation Corporation, Vol. 2
(https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-6376bcf3fdf78061b6d2694462803b43-lq)
Not every landing pod was a behemoth. So-called smallcraft like this purpose-built AVRO Lancer conveyed uniquely precious cargo--here, the ʼĒl, a "hard library" intended to be connected directly to a computer core. Rare and precious, hard libraries were physical databanks containing information too sensitive to be entrusted to data tapes. Dreamers captured this one and found that it contained an index of crew member service records. Cobb's Probe Teams used the insights derived from their study of that material to identify high-priority targets for influence operations. Mission success rates doubled.
(https://www.slashfilm.com/img/gallery/lightyear-trailer-breakdown-to-infinity-and-beyond-with-chris-evans/hes-a-man-not-a-toy-1635349809.jpg)
The self-contained systems of Unity landing pods were the source of key infrastructure for all early colonies: water, communications, signals, recycling, hospital services, and more. Rather than building anew, it was often thought preferable to add "barnacle" complexes onto the pods' hulls, piggybacking to systems already known to work. One of the most important advantages conferred by the pods was height. Base operations commonly relocated to the flying bridge at top ("forward," when the pod was in spaceborne service) for a better view of the surrounding area.
The Watcher base seen here is girdled by concentric defenses that excel at keeping drones in as much as they do at keeping Minutemen and Myrmidons out. In the foreground, a mobile piledriver has deployed to excavate the foundations for a defensive bunker.
(https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/tomorrowland-movie-production-design.jpg?w=681&h=383&crop=1)
Destructive terraforming was relatively easy. Terran vegetation thrived with the correct combination of oxygenated water and deep-injection organics. Chiron's natural defenses faltered here. Humans, perhaps because of their sentience, triggered intense fungal action, but environmental contamination attracted almost no detectable reactivity. In bases like Second Chance, Shapers enjoyed soft grass and the sweet taste of familiar fruit.
Sources:
First picture is from the Sci-Fi/Amazon Prime series The Expanse.
Second picture is the base from Disney's Lightyear.
Third picture is an artist's rendering for the Disney movie Tomorrowland.
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Doctrine: Centauri Survival
Mere survival compels us to provide each survivor with a completely novel form of remedial education. We must relearn mobility, nutrition, recreation, and problem-solving under material constraints never theorized by Mission Command. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
(https://zetizen.radarcirebon.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/icarus.jpg)
In bubbletents and other converted classrooms across the face of Planet, the First Generation began to learn the lessons that it would pass down as sacrosanct to its children. These were the bequest of the Growth doctrine Centauri Survival.
Before a colonist could be rated for work outside the airlocks, they memorized the new gravitational constant of 12.85 m/s², learned to diagnose the memory impairments and mood disorders caused by nitrogen narcosis, heard the artificially-reproduced hum of the mindworms, and demonstrated the Five Standard Techniques for oxygenating water, including the "high pour" and "area expansion" methods. The standard toolkit adopted by every faction for its personnel included two carbon-steel blades, one of 7" and another of just 3.2"; edible water--spherical pellets encased in a durable combination of calcium shloride and brown algae extract that formed a durable sheath; a windlass tourniquet; hemostatic gauze; a rapid injector with epinephrine, adrenaline, and anti-coagulant ampules; a canister of Togra Labs ExpansionFoam®; and four slugs of sealing putty to spread across suit punctures and tears.
Faction leaders differed in their judgements about how this critical information could best be communicated for retention. J.T. Marsh's Forward Contact Teams performed live survival demonstrations for timid audiences of University engineers. Peacekeepers spent hours running microfiche on which data librarians illustrated the trimming of beards and mustaches, the donning and doffing of masks, the rapid exchange of air filters. In Sparta Command, three-trooper "sticks" and five-trooper "chalks" shared the lowest scores earned by their members during each training evolution. Unsatisfactory courses could be repeated ad infinitum. Hive Security seered wisdom into drones with the psi-whip.
Sources:
A screenshot from the computer game Icarus.
On edible water, see Earth911's article (https://earth911.com/business-policy/edible-water-blobs/) on the Ooho.
Togra Labs and StickyFoam originally created by Strategos' Risk.
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As the Dreamers of Chiron continued to be beset by economic doldrums and a sociopolitical structure built on exploitative labor that simply refused to function, the Factor and the Transgressor sought external partnerships out of desperation. What followed was a series of advances that modestly staunched the faction’s bleeding financials, and gradually yielded blessings and curses alike for Planetary society.
Discover Tech: MindMazes
(https://i.imgur.com/im6GOBN.png)
Daedalus's grand edifice was a cage for Jung’s beastly little shadow- that primal id not fit for polite company, tucked away in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, suited only for testing egos bold and foolhardy. Now we conjure labyrinths up for Spartan sport games, Gaian holidays, University bacchanals. Minos is laughing up at us from hell. - A Dream I Dreamed
Morgan Industries was no stranger to the oneirology research teams of Struan’s Pacific Trading Company, having consulted with Cobb’s probes on all manner of unconscious intelligence and subconscious security. But after the calamitous Morgan Distribution drone revolts, a months-long affair that wrecked the newly-built Baxton Holorama Playhouse, the CEO sought a more comprehensive solution to the perennial problem of company morale. Recent Planetary Council resolutions, a rare diplomatic triumph from Lal, had reaffirmed the primacy of the U.N. Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, forestalling free market factions from frivolously infringing upon the fibrous axons of their citizens’ nervous systems. Carrots would have to be grown in lieu of spiked maces. Unwilling to become a pariah, Morgan approached a pair and paid for their secrets. Thus the two corporate powers began Project Encarta, a joint venture to transcend the boundaries of entertainment technology.
(https://i.imgur.com/V6LU8tu.png)
Late Earth corporations captured audiovisual sleep imagery simulations with mixed success. Struan was the leading provider, but RCA-Kodak, Sony, and Cheiron Tuner AB followed closely
Oneiric storage technology long predates the Alpha Centauri mission. Attempts to map the human brain’s unconscious activity persisted and failed for decades until Cobb took his father’s empire’s vast resources to the task. Efforts in deep mapping tried and succeeded, thanks to the ethically pragmatic free hand he dealt Dr. Aleigha Cohen and her invasive research teams. These questionable procedures were of course denounced by every free and scrupulous government, then their results were demanded to be sent to hawk-faced regulators of the same, then traded by deep-pocketed investors of other firms. But Struan maintained its preeminence in the field, pioneering the computer-assisted generation of potential images and sounds based on the active parts of the dreaming brain. While this yielded some perfunctory simulated footage of what the dreamer was experiencing, the field would not be fully developed until mankind arrived on Planet.
(https://i.imgur.com/iaGd1VI.jpg)
Early dream media created hazy, occasionally intricate, vistas that evoked deep post-wakening emotions but retained few details due to low info resolution
Early experimental hypnomedia were created, with sleepers subjected to hours of looped neuroelectrical stimulation corresponding to activity observed when conscious persons viewed a particular film or listened to a specific song. The goal was to insert recorded content into the dreamer’s unconscious- moving images, music, or even advertisements. Square-Ghibli went all of the way into a genre of “sleep games” that were to be played- upon waking, audiences reported hearing snatches of orchestral music but glimpsing nothing more than fields of menus of meaningless text and numbers. As with early oneiric storage, hypnomedia from this era amounted to little more than half-remembered stills and jumbled fragments of strange dreams. This art would not be revived until Encarta.
(https://i.imgur.com/u2lsiRG.jpg)
Morgan Neurological Cartographers were richly equipped with lavish insertion gear, claiming that suspending sleepers in weightless conditions allowed for deeper sleep and heightened experiences. Their Dreamer counterparts simply replied that stronger doses would achieve the same for half the price
Over the mission decades, the Dreamers of Chiron steadily increased their abilities, now able to more fully render the dreams in nearly all 23 senses of human perception. Breakthroughs towards understanding the Secrets of the Human Brain as well as Elemental Neurology allowed scientists deeper understanding of the very building blocks that made up human thought, not to mention later beat the path to Proto-Psionics. As the Dreamers were able to not only store and replay dreams, their abilities towards subconscious infiltration and exfiltration of dreamers made their faction a Probe powerhouse, despite their basketcase society. The partnership with the Morganites aimed to commercialize their discoveries and rehabilitate their public image.
The results for the latter were middling, but the former were spellbinding. Holographic cinema and virtual reality experiences still entailed costly, often bulky, electronic projectors and peripherals for experiencing the standard two-sense experiences. M/MI was still far from realized. So when Morgan DreamWorks beat dream-probes into slumber parties, entertainment would no longer be the same. For decades, the best of the Dreamers’ architects were busy concocting vivid mind palaces for the purposes of trapping subjects in elaborate scenarios where they could be made to divulge their secrets. Now, these unconscious labyrinths were turned into amusement parks that semi-lucid dreamers could explore at their leisure.
(https://i.imgur.com/8OApM1h.png)
Sample generated open world MindMaze dreamscapes for sleep excursions. Many colonists asked simply for the power to walk freely upon Planet’s surface
Sleepers could now vicariously experience all manners of impossible pursuits. Unlike clunky electronic devices, MindMazes provided adventures that were pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex. Those in dreams walked among dinosaurs, visited ancient palaces, fought wars in alien worlds, played cowboys and indians, whiterafted in lost rivers on Earth. They also attended parties with pharaohs and CEOs, saw performances by long-gone bards, fraternized with legendary beauties. Social experiences posed an exponentially further difficulty for designers to implement. In fact, most simply replicated stock flickers of animatronic personages in their MindMazes, assuming undiscerning sleepers would be unable to pierce the simulation.
(https://i.imgur.com/oExEBtK.png)
Dreamer sense-sculptor Lilith Vermillion became renowned for her avant-garde abstract MindMaze scenarios, including Autodoc Arrhythmia and Via Damnatio
Repurposing canny thought-extractors and devious deep unconscious indoctrinators as recreation creators was an audacious plan, but the project was a hit from the initial financial quarter. Factions who had been opposed to the very existence of the Dreamers of Chiron for mission decades were suddenly demanding access to their products via ever-obliging Morganite resellers.
Even as Peacekeeper humanitarian watchdogs lamented that MindMazes were simply the civilian-sanitized version of the very labyrinths used to interrogate, torture, and even brainwash captives, their people asked for sweet dreams far away from the travails of day to day grim survival. Dreamers, many former probe staff and the like, grinned mischievously and dug deep into their expertise among the somnolent, crafted dazzling alien landscapes that required no breathing equipment, hid no nightmare mindworms, and audiences ate it up. While the leadership of many factions suspected inserted mental backdoors, covert neurolinguistic programming, and post-hypnotic trigger words, their citizens bought and traded dreams with or without state sanction.
Morgan marketeers’ official tagline for the first MindMaze, a fantasy quest set in a vast medieval castle replete with dragons and damsels in distress, was “The world is your oyster, choose a path.” But eventually, the slogan for the entire medium became “For the Memory of a Lifetime.”
(https://i.imgur.com/LSu6me8.jpg)
While Struan’s architects insisted that their experiences were completely safe, Morgan Consumer Well-Being psych auditors discovered that select individuals were capable of slipping deep into MindMazes, being so immersed that their bodies would resist being awakened. Post-wakeup symptoms ranged from migraines to ego death. Known as “seeing the minotaur”, MindMaze Overstimulation Occurrences were deemed well within company psychosocial wellness standards by the board
But ultimately, each MindMaze required heavy amounts of engineering. Each dreamer would react uniquely to even the most popularly widespread labyrinth. The potential to trigger deeply personal and unpredictable reactions could prove detrimental to the psyches of the sleepers. Extensive testing and capturing potential edge cases added to the already considerable development time for the dream excursions. After the third generation of the recreational technology, it was becoming clear that MindMazes, while enthralling, were unable to scale well to mass audiences, becoming prohibitively expensive as designers had to account for all pitfalls, or risk catatonic consumers.
Sabre security leadership also grew increasingly irritated that assets were being pulled off of military matters to work on consumer products, though Cobb held the line for some time, insisting that improve the Dreamers’ economic offerings were of factional importance. Detractors suggested that he was merely looking to the Morganites to supply him with new varieties of violent delights to satiate his fixes, and trading away company secrets to do so.
(https://i.imgur.com/7zPon8g.png)
The original MindMaze fantasy knowledge adventure received no less than a dozen remakes, remasters, and reimaginings throughout the thirty-odd mission years of the hypnomedium
Meanwhile, as gyroscopic sensors in consumer electronics improved, along with better miniaturized screen displays capable of nearly 4,000 pixels of horizontal display resolution, VR headsets saw great advances. As high field of vision and low latency became possible, traditional waking virtual experiences gradually rose in popularity again. Coupled with cost overruns of some ambitious failed titles from Morgan DreamWorks, and revelations on the potential long-term neurological downsides of persistent use, the MindMaze recreational medium fell out of favor to all but the most ardent Dreamer addicts. In its wake it left one of the most memorable forms of hypnomedia, still fondly remembered on limitless datalinks chat groups to this day.
Casting
Lilith Vermillion is portrayed by Grimes from the "Delete Forever" music video.
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The Morganites fear what may not be purchased, for a trader cannot comprehend a thing that is priceless. - The Collected Sermons
In Alpha Centauri 2, it is possible to find or produce goods, which are bundles of equipment, usually tools and consumable supplies, useful for colonization, warfare, commerce, or research.
(https://d2638g8e0zhtfi.cloudfront.net/uploads/image/file/14736/2021_T1_Vehicles_Cutaways_18.jpg)
The Arctic Emergency Response Vehicle negotiated nitrate toadstools as faultlessly as it had snowbanks and was blessedly simple to repair. But crews that had sung their praises during lunar training soon had a firm change of heart. Neither the French Antarctic Survey nor United Nations mechanics bothered tearing out the heavy insulation, and their original operating parameters hadn't meant waste heat was a problem. Nobody realized the vehicles ran hot until they arrived on a world where the average planetary temperature ran 68°.
Emergency Supplies consist of shelf-stable rations, air tanks, rudimentary antibiotics, airtight shelters, and basic rescue gear. They are obtained by salvaging Unity wreckage or plundering enemy bases. Players can use them to make up nutrient shortfalls, convert outposts into friendly bases, and heal damaged infantry-class pieces. Emergency Supplies appear on the map as a loaded Scout Rover with stats of 1-1-3. Emergency Supplies are the most common spoils of early exploration and warfare. Factions prominent for their place on the bleeding edge of destruction--Gaia's Stepdaughters, the Human Tribe, and the Hunters of Chiron--all begin with Emergency Supplies.
(https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/the-expanse-season-3-episode-4-reload-syfy.jpg?fit=1200%2C720)
The basic medicines stocked aboard Unity Landing Pods served well for acute emergencies, but most societies soon turned their eyes toward preventative and long-term care suitable for those with chronic conditions. The "auto-doctors" aboard Landing Pods were notorious for correctly diagnosing maladies that available treatments couldn't resolve.
Medical Supplies consist of complex pharmaceuticals and specialized diagnostic and surgical tools normally found in well-appointed settings, including surgical robots. Medical Supplies are occasionally awarded for successful salvage missions but can also be produced a hospital facility following discovery of Biostatics. Medical Supplies appear on the map as a Mobile Surgery with stats 0-0-2. The Surgery can be moved to a neutral or allied base for trade or conversion to a Dreaming Den. When garrisoned in a friendly base, the same unit will provide a morale buff for as long as it is present. Combined with a Probe Team, a Mobile Surgery can be used to implement a Nerve Staple policy at any friendly base. Both the Peacekeeping Forces and the Dreamers of Chiron begin with 1 Medical Supplies each--an expression of their very different philosophies regarding drugs and their benefits.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DDUoYG3WAAABgI3.jpg)
The discriminating merchant willing to risk his neck in a Tribal settlement could come away rich indeed. Lack of interested buyers spurred the Kellerites to sell cheap and buy dear. Those who returned from such ventures often recounted that the so-called cultists were congenial, if paranoid, and showed none of the propensity for anti-social and deviant behavior for which the sect was infamous.
Trade Goods are manufactured objects or consumables with explicitly commercial or recreational purposes. Examples of trade goods include hand tools, construction materials, computer terminals, entertainment software, cooking spices, and reading material. Trade Goods are built after discovers of the UNITY Workshops tech and appear on the map as a Crawler with stats 0-0-2. The Crawler can be moved to a neutral or allied base for sale. At a friendly base, the Crawler can be converted to production. The Dynamic Enterprise (Morgan Industries) begin with 2 Trade Goods, reflecting Morgan's careful preparations.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/003/232/132/4k/gary-do-armorywalkway-07.jpg?1471393237)
Chief of Security Rachael Winzenried declined to take conventional high-explosive or fragmentation grenades into the ship's armory. Instead, she obtained large quantities of stun, aerosol, smoke, and gas grenades for internal security missions, few of which found their way into the hands of the ship's defenders before Planetfall. Marsh took a small supply of incendiaries for big game management. In the bitterest of ironies, it seemed everyone but the U.N. Security Forces loyalists used grenades during the mutiny. Santiago, Keller, Cobb, Morgan--even van de Graaf--made arranges to get them aboard.
War Stores are weapons and ammunition in various grades. Hand weapons are frequently salvageable from Unity wreckage. Otherwise, War Stores are produced from arsenal facilities and their higher-tech descendants. War Stores can be used to upgrade existing military units, add a 50% defensive bonus to non-military units on base defense, or for trade purposes. War Stores appear on the tap as a Crawler with stats 0-0-2. The warlike societies begin with War Stores--Spartans with 3, and the Tribe, Hunters, and New Two Thousand with 1.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/015/051/422/large/denis-osmanbegovic-intergalactic-research-pod-06.jpg?1546878347)
The interior of this inter-modal transport container has been converted into a materials laboratory. Cuttings of the polyp-like corcyra fruit, a parasitic growth that manifested on juvenile fungus, are being weighed prior to chemical analysis. As a food, corcyra triggered rapid and inevitably fatal proliferation of prions in humans, but objects smeared with the fruit's gritty residue were noticeably less interesting to Chironian wildlife. The Gaians named the fruit after a naiad that had once obsessed Poseidon and used it to move unmolested in the fungus.
Research Pods are self-contained datalinks libraries or modular science stations fully equipped to study the new world. Research Pods appear on the map as Network Nodes. Taken to a friendly base, they can be connected to a Network Node for a free Tech advance of the present tier. Taken to a neutral or allied base, they may be sold. The Human Ascendancy, Children of the Atom, and, of course, the University of Planet all begin with Research Pods representing their preferred "take" from Unity.
Sources:
First image, by Luca Pascal, is from the FZD School of Design gallery.
Second image is from The Expanse.
Third picture is from Bioware's Anthem.
Fourth picture is "Sci-fi Armory Workbench" by Gary Do on ArtStation.
Final image is "Intergalactic Research Pod" by Denis Osmanbegovich.
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"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!” - A Christmas Carol, Datalinks
(https://4kwallpapers.com/images/walls/thumbs_2t/2478.jpg)
After entering through an exterior panel, a Unity Cargo Corps responder searches an electrical closet for sheltering survivors soon after the start of the Crisis.
In the airless medium of space, the most minor error quickly compounded toward catastrophe. Spacers were a breed apart, Renaissance persons who combined the physical prowess of Olympians with encyclopedic knowledge honed through years of apprenticeship. Zero-gravity stevedore Lourenço Velisto was already fending off inquiries from United Nations mission selection chiefs when the offices of former American Reclamation Corporation CEO Oscar van de Graaf came calling with a better offer.
The standard professional journey of a spacer, be they pilot, navigator, miner, or stevedore, began in the water, where they learned to move and breathe by mechanical means. Mastery of neutral buoyancy physio-motive principles and emergency self-recovery techniques was only half the battle. Prohibitively high costs of entry limited space-going to true and quasi-governmental entities unwilling to chance their investments with sub-par recruits. Future astronauts had also to pass repeat psychological work-ups and complete physical engineering coursework at the post-graduate level. At the far end of the seven-year training pipeline, fewer than two in ten of the original intake were still in service. Three had died or become irreparable casualties.
Velisto and other members of Unity's Cargo Corps had a crucial part to play in the vision for colonization. Orbital platforms including weather and communications satellites, automated factories, and space telescopes, along with extra cargo desired by factors but marked "discretionary" by U.N. planners, was bolted to the generation ship's outer hull, where it would all be detached and prepped for re-entry by the Corps according to an orderly plan assembled by their loadmasters. To clear the miles-long stacks of cargo, even with the help of pod-mounted cargo booms, might take years depending on the success of planetside settlement. The Cargo Corps would have only a narrow window of a few days to send down the highest-priority containers before they, too, proceeded to the surface. The potential for a permanent human presence in Chiron's orbit rested on quickly restoring orbital launch capability. Van de Graaf made a close study of the Chiron Probe landing records, including sensitive portions accessed using ARC clearances he retained as a board member emeritus. Although Unity carried booster rockets that could turn Hoppers into trans-orbital shuttles, the future governor didn't like what he saw.
In addition to their primary role, the Cargo Corps members were Unity's high-risk rescue specialists. Along with other spacewalk-capable crew, they worked the disasters of collision and mutiny from the outside in, patching tears in the hull, securing cargo, cutting loose debris, and, most importantly, saving the lives of those who became trapped. It was not uncommon for crew to find themselves stranded by fire, debris, or enemy contact, at which point their training taught that they should wait for rescue, donning emergency breathing hoods if the ambient oxygen supplies dropped too low.
It was precisely their importance that made van de Graaf's interest in the Cargo Corps unusual. There was no incentive for his stakeholders to engage talent that the mainline mission would already provide to meet the collective needs of all colonists. By inserting his own picked hands into the Cargo Corps, van de Graaf could only be making ready to subvert the chain of command, a conclusion reached by the U.N. Intelligence Cell too late to matter. In return for billet and bounty that made her a full stakeholder in the American empressario's proprietary colony, Velisto pledged to move van de Graaf's cargoes out of order, giving preference to machinery and supplies, including unregistered weapons, that the Pilgrims wanted immediately.
Buying Velisto's complicity took some doing: she already had a guaranteed cryobed without the hassle of political obligation. Van de Graaf bought her loyalty with golden parachutes for those she left behind. Civil war had scoured Australia no less badly than Canada, Mexico, and the United States. She had been the breadwinner for disabled parents and a younger sister without bright educational prospects. (Young Lourenço had been afforded her own opportunities by a government program for gifted youth.) Half the considerable bonus paid by van de Graaf provided lifetime home care and school tuition to make her loved ones considerably more comfortable in her absence.
Lourenço Velisto's final fate was emblematic of those who fit only awkwardly into a brute survival scenario. Earlier heroics availed her nothing on the ground. She could not practice, let alone keep sharp, the skills that had earned her a place on Chiron. Van de Graaf honored her stake, and she kept a modest homestead converted from an empty cargo box, subsiding on the dividends paid out from the colony's revenue base and taking two husbands. Still, her contribution was limited. The Pilgrims needed neither an astronaut nor a deep ocean diver. What they did want were firefighters. Velisto became a senior officer in Terra Nova Emergency Operations, a position she found not to her liking. Stakeholders put enormous pressure on the service to give preference to their interests over those of drones, while Velisto's subordinates insisted upon the proudly egalitarian attitudes familiar to their new profession. Most calls were for torn bubbletents or "machine crushes," hardly the fast-moving crises by which she had been forged.
Sources:
Image by Vadim Sadovski on 4KWallpapers.com.
The Pilgrim headquarters of Terra Nova is named after the eponymous settlement in the eponymous Fox television show of just one season (2011).
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Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different? - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
War was a commonplace of the twenty-first century. Nations dueled with their neighbors over resources, with their ideological rivals over influence, and, more and more, with themselves over the future of political and social affairs. Targeting a younger age cohort, the U.N. reduced the number of years of service eligibility behind each applicant, but a war-torn world produced warriors more often than not. The United Nations tried, and failed, to deny this legacy in their recruitment scheme for the Mission to Alpha Centauri.
When it first set out to select colonists and crew for the great expedition, Mission Command seized on the principle that there should be fewer veterans than mere statistics would yield from a representative sample of the global population. This thinking was received favorably by the Security Council. All involved reasoned that strong feelings of national allegiance might fuel mutiny. Donor nations suspected of wanting to lard the passenger manifest with their own partisans knew others might be doing the same in response. Too, common sense dictated that the aggressive mindset inculcated through military training everywhere could be an unstable--if not a completely unnecessary--element to introduce to living environments that would put colonists in extremely close quarters under predictably high stress. Best to raise guardrails. Records of life in the lunar training camps didn't support continuing pessimism on this last count, but as in so many other settings, unjustified bias proved easy to enforce.
Implementing a policy of exclusion was morally questionable. Secondments from member states' armed forces already protected and trained mission staff. Rumor had it that the prize for this blood sacrifice would be guaranteed passage to the new paradise. Instead, Mission Command found reasons to systematically shunt veterans and uniformed personnel into roles that would allow them to contribute to the mission without leading inevitably to eligibility for inclusion among the crew. As instructors, controllers, and evaluators, "the martial set," as Chief of Security Rachael Winzenried described them, went "tall," not "long" on the knowledge, skills, and abilities demanded of "full stakes."
But, of course, soldier and explorer had historically been synonymous. Fighters were the ultimate survivors. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had been a joint civil-military venture led by the commissioned officers. Two centuries later, space programs were still more or less wholly-owned subsidiaries of uniformed services that drew their astronauts from Air Forces. As a practical matter, there were a large number of skill sets, such as pertained to deep-sea exploration, that could be accessed only through service in a military or paramilitary organization, national or corporate. Certain mitigations were therefore put into practice.
If there was no alternative a veteran, the U.N. wanted those least transformed by the martial experience. Psych screenings for current and former service members ran twice the standard length, increasing program washout rates by seven percent. The increased incidence of inter-state war had led to explosive growth in national military spending, but many countries had nonetheless relaxed their draft schemes to recognize civil contribution as a form of national service running parallel to shorter stints in their armed forces. The U.N. demonstrated a consistent preference for those who had not been to war, followed by those long out of uniform. Unity's captain and chief engineer fit the former description; its executive officer, the latter.
Certain complete exceptions did apply. U.N. Security Forces members had, on average, three years of service behind them, often in combat or domestic policing roles, a legacy that Morgan Emergency Services tried to suppress by retraining them according to a curriculum that stressed delayed confrontation. (In an act of massive cognitive dissonance, anyone who fought in the vicious battles for the Space Elevators--when the U.N. abandoned any pretense of reliance on less-lethal methods--was immediately deemed unfit for mission accession.)
Donors enthusiasm for the U.N.'s pacifism waxed and waned over time. When they able to drive bargains favorable to themselves, donor nations unenthusiastic about the Alpha Centauri project but seeking to bank favors with the U.N. foisted their military hardship cases on the mission. Thus the appointment of disgraced Contre-amiral Raoul André-St. Germaine. Some went further, practically emptying their punishment stockades. Assignment to Unity was sometimes the reward for a brilliant career; at others times, a sentence of exile.
There was disparity of access to military expertise among the survivors. The U.N. Marine Corps mostly rallied under its original commander, Canadian General Marcel Salan, and constituted an island unto itself. Any Marine survivors not serving Salan threw in either with Commissioner Pravin Lal, who claimed to have inherited the mantle of mission command from Garland via d'Almeida, or Commander Kleisel Mercator, who likewise established something resembling a military command from loyalist remnants. The New State, too, was practically a self-contained navy pledging personal allegiance to its French leader. Both the Human Tribe and Spartan Confederation were armed camps, and their members veterans almost to a one, though they had done their fighting by and large as auxiliaries and lacked even the whiff of a service-driven identity.
The wealth-driven factions had planned ahead. Morgan, Cobb, and van de Graaf had brought paid men. The former's, provided by one of his own companies, Morgan Safe-Haven, were well-regarded until Planetfall, then turned out to have little stomach for earning pay they couldn't spend. Struan's Sabre Company killers discovered similar misgivings. Van de Graaf's American Reclamation Corporation volunteers liked their arrangement better (they received land rather than pay), but the telling part of the calculation was probably that, unlike the Morganite or Struan's mercenaries, they hadn't expected to return to Earth soon after arrival.
(https://i.pinimg.com/236x/62/49/b2/6249b2fdd777160bf603f7349ef9a459.jpg)
Druze triggerman Kadal Jumblatt commanded the small detail of Morganite private military contractors responsible for the CEO. Power quality issues with his Soviet surplus cryobed led to an ischemic stroke during cryosleep, resulting in total loss of vision in his left eye and loss of fine motor skills in his (dominant) left arm and hand. Morgan had taken Syrian money to make something of allied militias, a plan that went to naught. Jumblatt's chief recommendation, he later said, was that "he survived the complete pig's breakfast we made of things, telling me there was something of the grit there I expected from all my subordinates." Thinking that Jumblatt would be a fine addition to his staff pour encourager les autres, Morgan placed him on a stipend and bundled him off to fight the Cartels in Mexico. Jumblatt convinced the company to buy him a platoon of four tanks and leveled the mansion of a local drug kingpin in Puerto Vallarta, setting the stage for repeat performances throughout Jalisco State. Jumblatt passed on the lucrative contracts for service in the United States, recognizing that Morganite clients couldn't hope to win. During the Unity Crisis, he showed the same sound judgement, hustling his boss forward and away from the Spartans, creating the circumstances that led to Morgan's installation on the bridge. Jumblatt stayed with his men, reuniting with Morgan planetside.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/c8de54dd981f90bae5c38c5d57866172/tumblr_inline_osyz2nsiq01swk1pk_500.jpg)
The Sabre Corporation had tested themselves against no less a formidable foe than the Soviet Union. The Pahlavi Dynasty owed its continued residence on the Peacock Throne to Struan's premier service. In 2052, top Struan's paramilitary officer Aluel Gatdet, a Darfuri veteran of the South Sudan People's Defense Forces, coordinated the Imperial Guard's crack defense of the Niavarav Complex against an assault by Soviet Alpha Group and Communist Party of Iran fighters hoping to repeat the successes of a century earlier in Afghanistan and a decade earlier in Iraq. Under Gatdet's personal leadership, the palace defenders held out long enough for Iranian Imperial Army units to arrive. Gatdet was present with Cobb aboard Unity and helped him wrest control of the Corrections Bay from its stunned constables but did not turn up amongst the survivors huddled at White Rabbit's Refuge. Her subordinates were glad to be rid of such a bloodthirsty fighter, though they were reduced by her absence to sporadic banditry rather than the set-piece fights for which they had once been renowned.
Sources:
I don't know the provenance of the first picture. I found it on Tumblr. It appears to be related to the video game Star Citizen.
Second picture is from the Fragments of a Hologram Dystopia page (https://fragments-of-a-hologram-dystopia.tumblr.com/about). Couldn't find the artist's name.
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Command Tech: Academic Hypnopædia
(https://i.imgur.com/Em9UAZg.jpg)
Quick to bed and slow to rise is what it takes to win the prize. your demise - MorganDreams SleepSage advertisement, vandalized
The concept of sleep learning dates to the early twentieth century. From the Psycho-Phone wax cylinder phonograph of Alois Benjamin Saliger to the Oprah’s Slumber Book Club data cassette series from Harpo Worldwide, merchants practiced amateur medicine by promising the benefits of unconscious learning. Late hour advids hawked the limitless advantages of putting the mind at rest to work- becoming polyglots literally overnight, burning belly fat while losing weight, unlocking mystic secrets of the third eye, quitting addictive vices and bad habits, transforming into a strong, confident woman. In their wake all that was left were groggy half-sleepers, overstimulated insomniacs, and emptied wallets.
On Planet, hypnopædia received renewed attention as Morganite product managers plumbed the depths of their partners’ research efforts for material that could be monetized and not sent before the atrocity tribunals at U.N. Court of Justice. As it happened, Cobb and Cohen had experimented with sleep training as a last-ditch effort to improve compliance among their enslaved toilers. In typical Dreamer fashion, this entailed subjecting defiant or idle workers to high doses of Somnacin followed by barrages of elaborate dreamscapes and terrifying nightmares. These surreal traumas were ultimately intended to convey what amounted to quite straightforward moral lessons about the virtues of hard work and Struan’s leadership. In practice, early sleep training were little more than overwrought passion plays that turned the slaves into mentally scarred husks haunted by demonic visions of their Factor and Doctor dancing in their heads, creating further production setbacks.
Braving potential public relation meltdowns and their own sanity as they poured over the archival footage, Dynamic Enterprise executives bade the Dreamers to dust off sleep-learning for far more salutary ends. Project Algernon built upon prior efforts by cycling a whole carousel of different sensory inputs and knowledge types, ranging from speeder maintenance vids to Planetary geography lectures to live lessons in Beanemetrical analysis of Chironian rules football. Sleeping subjects, largely recruited from the ranks of Dreamers, were also graced with physical movement dream routines teaching them yoga, dance, pilates, and in one batch administered by a promethean Morganite account manager, United Nations Special Operations Coalition hand-to-hand martial arts specifically for dispatching armed opponents. (While the young idealist was publicly sacked following the Xanadu slave riots, internally Morgan Industries fast-tracked her for business intelligence management among the probes.)
(https://i.imgur.com/iFV7bf9.png)
Martial arts for both sports competition and military applications were popular hypnopædiac curricula. Sleepers were unlikely to advance dan grades upon awakening, but studies did show improvements to form and retention of katas
The results were a mixed bag. Just as on Earth, sleep-teaching did not produce overnight geniuses with IQ levels overflowing. Hypnopædiac learners were unable to grasp new concepts wholly. But they did show marked speeds at acquiring knowledge during the day, almost as if the deep structures of the mind were primed by the sleep lessons. Hive Drones who had difficulty with arithmetic were able to understand Euclid’s Elements after first being exposed to nightly geometric sessions. Gaian Talents who had never lifted a finger in anger were able to near-instinctively snap to krav maga stances and counterstrike opponents when forced into the fighting ring. While actual information conveyed in the dreams was often lost in the limbo between dream and waking life, this capacity to rapidly train novices meant that Centauri hypnopædia was a winner.
The specifics as to how unconscious sleep-learning was still being sussed out during this stage. But two guiding principles were discovered: 1) along with quicker learning acquisition, the greatest boon that hypnopædia provided was in aiding memory retention, and 2) as with other forms of dreaming, the lessons that stimulated the strongest emotions made the greatest of impressions. At the time, it was discovered that physical sleep-education did not necessarily provide deep kinesthetic learning. Insteads, dreams of the sleeper floating in vivid dojos while fighting grizzled senseis as heroic electronic music blared left lasting emotive footprints that could be remembered for weeks after. So when asked to fight once more, the pupil who had dreamt were much more emotionally ready for combat, their body already unlocked and ready to learn the actual movements. This meant that for more physical learnings, the technology was of limited aid to brawny factions such as the Spartans or the Hunters, but it was helpful in more sedentary societies.
(https://i.imgur.com/gVR3Aqg.png)
Juvenile info bubbles were but one of many ways the Provost sought to maximize his population’s precocity. Hypnopædia went further, allowing University youths to learn without sensory distractions for at least fifteen hours a day
Few factions embraced hypnopædia as totally as did the University of Planet. And yet, it was an experience not simply borne out of top-down mandate. By initial tepid interest, next dismissal, then enthusiastic embracing, and finally strict regulation by the governing authorities. By fear, then ambivalence, and finally widespread adoption even to the point of punishment for flouting proscriptions by the faction masses.
This society-wide journey started, of course, in a Morganite boardroom. From the early stages of Project Algernon, need-seeking employees envisioned a pipe dream of turning the University into an economic vassal by selling them unlimited uninterrupted learning. While some militaristic factions wanted super-soldiers, Zakharov wanted super-scientists- the Dynamic Enterprise-Dreamers of Chiron partnership would sell them those tools, and accept compensation in research data whenever the eggheads could not pay. Taking notes on how Dreamers fostered dependence on their lotus eaters, Morganite executives saw future innovative business models, and that the University would be a good trial run.
But the Academician was no fool to patent brain medicine. The Dreamers had sold nootropics to the University before, and that experience had bore no remarkable results. Somnacin derivatives were too unreliable to act as learning drugs, and had the bad side effect of psychosis. Even beyond them, there was no shortage of snake salesmen who had promised IQ boosting abilities for generations with gizmos claiming to stimulate the brain’s electrical waves or cybernetic interfaces that would eliminate right-brained irrationality in favor of the objective left-brain. So he asked politely for the research data while looking bored and uninterested as he was accosted by sunny grinning Morganite sales reps and their sinisterly smiling Dreamer counterparts. The consortium responded by promising clinical trials at Schrodinger’s Dome itself. Zakharov agreed to donate the minds of several expendables- failing undergraduates, single-degree drone laborers, first year TA’s, for science, and they were strapped in to learn quantum engineering and hypermathematics as they slept. The results were, as mentioned prior, salutary but far from revolutionary. Test subjects were able to pick up on new concepts afterwards with some speed, but they had to be taught it all again a second time, upon waking.
It proved Huxley’s banality- You can’t learn a science unless you know what it’s all about. And it reinforced Zakharov’s skepticism in finding quick fixes for education. When Richard Feynman visited Brazil in the third-quarter twentieth century, he discovered that the academic sciences were saturated with rote memorization without real application of knowledge. Physics students knew the meaning of Brewster’s Angle, and had no idea of how it related to light reflecting off of water. The definition of triboluminescence was taught, but not how its effects could be witnessed by simply crushing household sugar in a dark room. In the academician’s view, hypnopædia acted the same way. It was a simple memory aid that could not provide the context that a fully conscious, thinking mind needed to understand the natural world. Sleep-learning could convey knowledge, perhaps, but the hard work, the real work, must be undertaken by the conscious student. No philosopher’s stone could grant that.
(https://i.imgur.com/qRA0ShF.jpg)
University Enforcement recruits received the equivalent of other factions’ officer-level training. They were expected to hold at least one postgraduate degree, commonly in astrophysics or aeronautical engineering
Despite this dismissal, Zakharov humored pro-hypnopædia regents when they proposed adopting the tech in pilot programs for auxiliary personnel. At-risk students and future drone laborers or military troops they were seemingly destined to become were admitted to hypnopædiac training programs. This time, curricula emphasized practicalities, namely those remedial students were flunking in, and vocational training for the latter. As a bonus, the consortium threw in a package of sleep-learning materials in the University core subjects- astronomy, chemistry, electronics, geology, biology, mathematics, and the emperor of sciences, physics. On a lark, some administrators gave those lessons to their sleepers.
For a time, everyone was marginally happy. University auditors noted that the new batch of drones created efficiency improvements in the life systems, thanks to their improved training. Scout patrols had slightly increased survivability rates owing to faster recall of environmental dangers within Planet’s erratic terrain. The Morganites and Dreamers received a modest payoff, even if it was far from the fever dreams of the project’s expectations. And then a simple janitor at Monitoring Station passed the five-day entrance exams and was admitted to the main college at University Base.
The case caused a stir that reverberated across the entire faction. The former test subject had been given a bevy of core subject dreams during the experiment, then dumped unceremoniously back in his former role after he failed to meet expectations with his main course- central heating engineering. But somehow the sleep book learning had taken. Accusations of cheating were raised, then debunked. Then claims appeared that the hypnopædia regimen had unfairly drawn from exam material- taught the test. New variations of the tests were devised, and the drone passed them too. Indeed, Project Algernon seemed to have seriously worked at accelerating knowledge acquisition. The tech was a success.
Hypnopædia enabled Chiron Cartel and Global Energy Exchange fintechs to digest and regurgitate volumes of trading information without glancing at their Morgan Bloombergs. Ascendancy genesculptors could remember reams of genetic data after dreaming of dancing sequences the night before, allowing their wetwork to continue quicker without the aid of genecomps. Not since the Children of the Atom's powerful Mneumonic Techniques had such powerful memory techniques been discovered. Now, the hyper-assisted learning abilities would soon sweep the University for a spell, leaving unexpected consequences in its wake. This would drive the creation of a new form of hypnopædia - one aimed at building the soul, rather than the mind.
Notes:
The concept of hypnopaedia was popularized in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
Hypnopaedia exists as a research technology for expediting Scientist training in Outpost 2: Divided Destiny. (Research tree (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_2:outpost_2_manual:research))
The anecdote (https://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education) about the Brazilian science education system is from Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
The “core subjects” of the University are the research categories from Alien Legacy (see manual pg 34 (https://archive.org/details/Alien_Legacy_-_Manual/page/n33/mode/2up))
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When facing the external unknown, the mind falls back on the internal known. We cling to the familiar. In this way, many battles are lost. - Rebuilding Man
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/043/118/202/large/alvaro-wagner-rodriguez-navas-4.jpg?1636379350)
Militia were the first line of colonial defense. Their care and feeding was a government's top priority. Hive Security was at first organized and led by one-time contractors of the UCB Corporation--United Constabularies of Britain--members of which are seen here returning to camp after morning calisthenics.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/054/606/185/4k/kevin-jick-sci-fi-city-megastructure-kevinjick.jpg?1664919874)
The public architecture of Morganite cities was a distinctive merging of the Paleologan Byzantine and Brutalist traditions, leaving no confusion about the precise places where power was wielded, nor to what purpose. The meeting spaces projecting from the Markan Building were improbable in their size. Morgan governed without reference to his showpiece board, which never sat more than fourteen directors, most of whom were drawn from the upper echelons of his own firms, and meetings were closed even to stockholders, obviating any need for audience accommodations. In disregard of these realities, he commissioned council chambers with seating for five thousand.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/003/137/837/large/tom-garden-tg-jul-30-2016.jpg?1470164951)
The face mask might be required, but that didn't mean it couldn't reflect the distinctive personality of its wearer. A minority preferred nose-and-mouth designs that left the eyes free to assist in clear communication.
This Pilgrim house pilot has undergone significant cybernetic enhancement. Her position is not an exalted one, suggesting that the expensive prosthetics were installed following grievous injury rather than on her own initiative. Still, she is making the most of the possibilities opened to her through mind-machine interface.
Pilots faced considerable pressure to receive the Jack. This expedient translated thought to machine language. Benefits included increased reaction time and an almost preternatural ability to rapidly diagnose malfunctions of both hardware and software, experiences as either muscle spasms, indicative of electrical faults, or confused thought, which suggested errors in code.
Sources:
First image is "Boarding spaceship" by Alvaro Wagner Rodríguez-Navas, who used purchased art.
Morganite city is "Sci Fi City Explorations" by Kevin Jick.
Jacks installed at the base of the skull were a distinctive feature of Exo-Frame pilots in Exosquad.
Third picture is "Pilot" by Tom Garden.
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...the search for truth strains the patience of most people, who would rather believe the first things that come to hand. - History of the Peloponnesian War, Datalinks
The exact fate of their captain preoccupied the expedition's survivors long after the ashes of vengeance were cold upon their grate.
(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/11/01/arts/01ENDERS/JPENDERS-jumbo.jpg)
Dr. Najewa Kumrandi's two-year course on analytic methods took Chiron's most infamous cold case as a framing device to demonstrate for young Memorialists the various logical fallacies. Commander Kleisel Mercator, energetic to a fault, slightly bug-eyed, his shock of white hair rarely combed, certainly gave the impression of a man let loose from the lunatic's asylum, but even he felt that a Spartan was the most likely culprit.
Here, students speak to Dr. Ruprecht Graff, a doctor of the Peacekeeping Forces available to them on Datalinks Exchange, regarding the autopsy he conducted within an hour of finding the Captain's body. Graff named the cause of death as a sucking chest wound caused by flechettes fired at extreme close range.
(https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/1dabd39/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6144x4096+0+0/resize/1200x800!/quality/80/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fd0%2F40%2Ffe9a99204fca8af3d11556f48bf1%2Favtr-047.jpg)
Governor Oscar van de Graaf believed that Morgan's people, not Santiago's, killed the captain he had once called "a leader about as inspiring as a tomato." In keeping with this theory, Morganite prisoners taken by the Pilgrims received summary courts martial and speed executions for their part in the mutiny. Van de Graaf's accusation, true or otherwise, at least answered the open question of how Morgan had made it down to Planet a free man, much less at the head of a large body of contractors and crew exclaiming his virtues.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/14/b3/1a/14b31ada56502fba3289ca6b8cb42d9f.jpg)
So-called "earnest dreams" arose from the meeting between knowledge and desire. The characters behaved essentially as the sleeper thought they would have in real life, and were therefore accurate first approximations for understanding personalities and value structures, but the scenarios were contrived. Dreamer librarians searched for consistency in portrayals across different sleepers to build psychological profiles for the benefit of their Probe Teams.
The problem with Garland was that, like all faction leaders, he featured in a very high number of dreams, including in the dreams of people he had never met. For those with a direct knowledge of the origin, "False Garland" was easy to spot.
The False Garland was the father we all wanted. He stopped what he was doing when you approached. If the dream involved his death, it was unintended: you were the assassin's real target, and he intervened without hesitation. Other people failed Garland, and he forgave them. On waking, the tragedy of his loss was for a moment unbearable because you felt an overwhelming sense of opportunity lost. The real Garland was actually none of these things. They held him apart during training to prevent charges of politicization, but it was just as well: he was distracted by the yawning gap between the magnitude of his task and the inadequacy of the resources provided. Hours of deep conversation with the U.N. Intelligence Cell robbed him of the ability to engage in the retail politics that would be essential in a crisis. On the bridge, he found it difficult to feign respect for certain subordinates--people he held in moral contempt, but who had ready-made constituencies among the crew and far more tangible agendas. Since he was accustomed to command in a context where all present shared the same purpose, Garland's first thought was almost never for diplomacy. The father-child relationship is between superior and subordinate. But Prokhor Zakharov and Nwabudike Morgan saw themselves as Garland's betters. - O Father, my Captain: A Biography of Jonathan Garland
(https://b5thoughts.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/vlcsnap-416857.png)
Five Shift bridge crew struggled to colate damage reports into something resembling a common operating picture. They were first to realize that resources were not flowing as they should: too many crew were still assembling in the reactor spaces. Garland attempted to confront Zakharov on the shipboard intercom, but the Soviet polymath, who left the bridge after only four hours to assemble his own makeshift incident command in a shielded supply closet, was beyond the lures of argument. To avoid giving full vent to the spat, Garland retreated to an en suite office where he met successively with his Chief Medical Officer, Pravin Lal; the enigmatic stowaway Nwabudike Morgan, theoretically in possession of knowledge regarding "off-program" additions to the ship's complement, design, and load-out; Lieutenant Commander Tạ Dọc Thân, a systems engineer spearheading efforts to save the all-important Data Core; and Colonel Flavio Jilani, to whom shipwide security duties had devolved in the absence of Rachael Winzenried. Five Shift personnel were the last to see Garland or Jilani alive as they rose from their stations to meet Spartan attackers who had overwhelmed the Marine guard posted at the main entrance to the bridge. A half hour passed, and several Spartans pushed past the defenders. When at last mission loyalists secured the room, Garland's office door was open, he and Jilani had been shot to death, and Morgan was missing entirely.
Sources:
First image is a still from Ender's Game (2013).
Second image is Stephen Lang in Avatar (2009).
Third image is Meta Lab of ZeiferZ, found on Pinterest.
Fourth image is David Corwin, a character from the series Babylon 5.
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You cannot be king from a throne; only from the saddle. - Peregrinations of Planet
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/df5bdf4b-f939-45fa-ac58-5a32adc15ef3/daos54l-f4ea2210-663a-4f8b-8cb9-e3ebd55ee161.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_509,q_75,strp/homeworld__deserts_of_kharak_by_aidanws_daos54l-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTA5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZGY1YmRmNGItZjkzOS00NWZhLWFjNTgtNWEzMmFkYzE1ZWYzXC9kYW9zNTRsLWY0ZWEyMjEwLTY2M2EtNGY4Yi04Y2I5LWUzZWJkNTVlZTE2MS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.5XIuVY1L4l56XEGMlc97RZEnRwrBIOtokW0uze6gMiE)
A Hunter finds her prize: remnants of an orbital cargo tender. Good for emergency supplies, fissile materials, and and rare earths if undisturbed.
Hunters of Chiron reckoned themselves to enjoy a fine living, and in a certain manner of speaking this was indeed true.
The industrial pioneers, dry land ecologists, and associated trades represented on the Forward Contact Teams (FCTs) were well-provisioned for a months-long mission of exploration and exploitation far "beyond the wire" of the main colony. At his disposal, the Warden had forest harvesters, combine seeders, tanker sprayers, rock drillers, armored low-loaders, and a host of other machinery that would later make his people targets of renown.
Launched weeks ahead of the main body as Unity first crossed into the Alpha Centauri star system, future Hunters grew wise to the themes and moods of Chiron whilst their comrades lay yet entombed in glass cylinders. By the time they got the hard news that all was lost in the sky above, they had less to fear in the dark. The mines, wells, and outposts dug for a landing that would never come became their coin in trade. Brother Camroe Horus of the Conclave siphoned the Brethren their first fresh water from an FCT pump jack. Though in later years she would imply the Stepdaughters had found it unassisted, Hunters led Deirdre Skye, her head still bandaged and ringing, to the Place of the White Pines where she first claimed to hear the Song of Planet.
Followers of the Warden's personal credo lived in fully or seasonally-nomadic caravans taking work where they found it. Cumbersome devices that seldom lasted out the day held little appeal by comparison with the animated (and often well-lubricated) delivery of a skilled raconteur who acted all parts and sang for his mates' entertainment. At fire camps across the southwestern slopes of the Shamash Divide, loggers boiled tea in billy tins over flameless heaters and remembered the mad dash of Rawcanth Hines to the sea, Spartan rockets falling all around. They were miners, too, and bush pilots, rescuers, and scalar engineers. Some were courageous firefighters, not too stingy with their skins to help dig the brakes that saved the Hive at Deepscour, Yang's scrub-garlanded toehold beyond the edge of the Uranium Flats, the closest he would ever get to green grass.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYzCFDiUMAIfVgK.png)
As civilization spread its indelible stain across the face of Chiron, Hunters were increasingly wont to explore the upsides of domestication. Here, a vintage Baserunner is restored in a Morganite repair bay.
Time turned them from their brothers' keepers to simple laborers, leading Institute Hunter-Killers in search of enemy Probe Teams, guiding the first caravans down what would become Peacekeeper magrails, pursuing the bounties paid out on the Morganite exchanges, or perhaps running high-value cargoes through fungal blooms for the likes of Colonel Santiago herself.
In all their forms, Hunters were risk-takers. Their preferred sport, full-contact racing, resulted in dramatic sacrifices of men and machines that sent other factions into apoplexy. Who would dare sacrifice so much to the gods of vanity? They defied the certainty of war with more territorial neighbors, refusing to speak terms with Governor Oscar van de Graaf despite the savage mauling administered by him at Terra Nova. For the Spartans, they were the last, best defense against Gaian treachery, summoned to do battle with the mindworm menace when even Myrmydons would no longer stand firm.
Sources:
Both images are from Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak.
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Clouds obscure the son. - Chaos Theories
(https://assets2.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2017/05/15/b21da99d-d655-4c5f-a270-ec7a4bbc6222/thumbnail/640x960/06fb386024f76411cc5ea524b81070ed/powers-boothe-nixon.jpg)
Struan's traditionalist General Artagan John "Joiner" Banes, formerly a National Security Council back-bencher, seethed over Roshann Cobb's leadership shortcomings. Unlike the cowed set of aides and minders that had been with him since the beginning aboard Unity and knew full well the depravities he so easily commissioned against enemies real and imagined, Banes spent another decade asleep in the belly of a submerged Hab Pod. Hunters fished him out along with four hundred others and traded the full lot to Oscar van de Graaf as the ransom for outriders taken in the Sensorfield Fight. Van de Graaf, who regarded most general officers as intellectual inferiors, made a gift of Banes and his various retainers to Roshann Cobb at the General's own suggestion.
Later, Banes recalled their "uncoiling horror at the awful stench that coiled like some visible serpent" a full two kilometers from the rust-streaked walls of White Rabbit's Refuge. Banes owed nothing to Ian Dunross's heir and refused to be impressed by the MI5 connection. Based on personal knowledge of the Old Man, Banes was prepared to believe that Cobb would receive the quick axe whenever the auditors arrived, and warned his peers that the skinflint would not thank them for their obsequious loyalty to a sociopathic failure.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbMe0TeX0AElssQ.jpg)
No fool, Banes kept his opinions to himself even while forming the makings of a splinter element. With so many new charter colonists in tow, Banes was immediately a power to be reckoned with. Cobb had little choice but to accept the General's suggestion that his fighters take on the vital long-range objective raids that Cobb's dwindling cohort of Sabre Corporation mercenaries could no longer handle.
Banes's men were Mara'Toan Martians, descendants of hydraulic bureaucrats who have gone down in the history of two solar systems as members of "post-modern cargo cult." On Earth and Mars, the Mara'Toans, who originated in the IOEZ, built a distinctive identity around the feast-and-famine cycle of supply barge deliveries, becoming experts in the field of recycling and metabolic self-regulation. They were quick studies in their first few years on Chiron, and studies of their behavior inspired doctrinal advances in water discipline later adopted by the majority of mission survivors. Mara'Toans in Bane's service wore distinctive red ranging gear to distinguish themselves from the yellow-orange color favored by the Saber Corporation.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/038/297/545/large/caleb-james-scarif-rebel-4k.jpg?1622705732)
At the height of the faction struggle within Dreamer society, the Saber Corporation struggled to protect its principal. They were short of everything, including warm bodies. Although 150 had embarked with Cobb, just 42 of the original contingent remained in service. To rebuild their strength, the unit had taken in volunteers from among the healthy prisoners, such as this one-time Spartan fugitive from the Fall of Xerxion.
Although he appears still to receive regular hemoglobin injections to counteract oxygen narcosis, the rest of his kit is reflective of the chronic supply problems and serious indiscipline that otherwise plagued his new employers. The helmet, a steel pot purchased by Struan's from French Indochina stocks, is painted in reflective coating suitable for laser combat, whereas most of his adversaries will use hand weapons. A pair of bomb switches clipped to the rubber hatband await counterpart explosives. Also carried on the helmet are a rangeviewer (left side) and a collapsible baton.
The dressing pouch worn over this soldier's heart is mildewed to the point that the contents could endanger a patient. His marksman's rifle is the unholy union of Belgian stock and British barrel, probably dangerous to discharge. Most alarming of all, an anti-stab vest (with the baton, indicative of this man's primary concerns) is worn in place of a flak vest.
Sources:
Late actor Powers Boothe is our Artagan John "Joiner" Banes.
Second picture is from Star Wars. I think it's a still from The Mandalorian.
Objective raids are a concept in Battletech.
Water discipline is a concept from Frank Herbert's Dune.
The final image is "Scarif Rebel" by Caleb James.
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Victory through knowledge. - Datalinks
(https://i.redd.it/zphla3eid6t41.jpg)
Treachery could take a faction far. After triggering a radiation alarm in a secondary armory held by Salan's Marines, Tribals gained access by donning radiation suits and organizing a frantic evacuation. The Marines could already taste ionizing radiation from the damaged main reactor and took the newcomers at their word. They left their rescuers, who were already well-armed, in possession of a second full arsenal.
The Tribals evacuated in those same suits and used them again on patrol around their encampments at Keller City and Rock Island Refuge. The thick quilting was proof against shredder flechettes and the hip-mounted portable air supply was more comfortable than most.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/23/1e/18/231e1872b9216668f12a599787240187.jpg)
Survivors obsessively recycled whatever they could. Colonists knew better than to abandon their oxygen bottles without good reason. This SMACER, seen on the battlefields below Xerxion during a per-arranged ceasefire known as a casualty pick, will earn a week's gruel for returning Spartan gas to Tribal depots.
He has learned to put safety first. His cloth smock, stained with the blood of the dead and wounded, is sewn from anti-spall liner. On his right wrist he wears the same dosimeter he took into cold sleep.
(https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/SJM-L-MOVIEPICKS-0929-01.jpg?w=1024)
A child of the Second Generation negotiates a bog somewhere in the Kordoshel Forest, a temperate analogue to the Monsoon Jungle where ambient oxygen levels were high enough to support breathing unassisted. She is accompanied by a personalized Omnibox Companion.
Omnibox cornered the market for household tutors during the rise of corporate arcologies when problems of law and order put most of the elite behind gates and guns. The learning software packaged with an Omnibox adapted to its owner's individual learning style and cultural preferences. Most faction data libraries were large enough that parents or officials could arrange for lessons in practically any knowledge domain or professional field. An Omnibox used organic tissue to store and retrieve information far more efficiently than on datatapes, and it was not uncommon for Omnibox owners to report unexpected bursts of activity when they exposed the machines to new circumstances.
The autonomous, self-contained Omnibox was always preferable to any devices that a traveler had to carry themselves, and a well-curated disk invariably included information on prevailing weather conditions; biome-specific plant, animal, and soil features; faction etiquette; and wound care. All Omniboxes could confound predators with directional noise and strobes. A few were loaded with liquid irritant as a last resort.
Sources:
First picture is Weyland-Yutani Commandos, action figures posed by DarthRick3rd. The image comes from the NECA Reddit threat.
Rock Island Refuge was my first LEGO set as a child. It spawned a life-long love affair with the building toy.
The second picture is apparently a production still from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I found it on Pinterest.
The third picture is from the film Vesper.
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In the year 5555 / Your arms are hanging limp at your sides / Your legs got nothing to do / Some machine's doing that for you. - Datalinks, Traditional
(https://motherboard-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/29716/1453160237898419.png?crop=0.6787204450625869xw:1xh;center,center&resize=900:*)
Medtechs prepare a Dreaming Chamber. Full enclosure of the recumbent sleeper in a sensory deprivation shroud reduced autonomic interference with lucidity. Technician-led dreaming was another innovation considered indispensable by veterans who wanted to explore specific questions held in their mind just prior to falling asleep. The technician applied electrical stimuli to reinforce the firing of specific neuron bundles and magnets to redirect unwanted activity.
Some factions hewed devotedly to the idea that the future society must be strictly segregated. In Sparta, the powerful would be served by the meek. In the Ascendancy, the pure by the impure. Among the Conclave after the martyrdom of Sister Godwinson, the elect and the non-elect. Roshann Cobb imagined a world divided between those who could escape the confines of their physical bodies and those who could not.
On Earth, lucid dreaming shared certain hallmarks with corrective surgery. For example, skilled professionals trained in the techniques of neurophysiological crisis management worked with the patient to manifest specific memories for excision. Dr. Claudius Diller's Theory of Chemical Memory likened each recollection to a fingerprint comprised of the 147 neurotransmitters used by the human brain. When the surgical team was satisfied that the fingerprint was known, they installed a small inhibitor, about the size of mite, to detect and suppress that combination by initiating a chemical counteraction. The point of this arrangement was to free the victim from unwelcome thoughts, allowing them to reengage fully in the routines of daily life outside the safe space of the home.
Even "safe-cracking" (Extraction) was supposed to yield information with real-world applications. Learning an enemy's secrets available you nothing if they could not be turned to advantage in subsequent negotiations or used as the justification for a full-spectrum investigation to locate proof of a crime previously concealed. This sword, John "Joiner" Banes would eventually wield against the actors he considered evil, on behalf of those he labeled good. His thinking was that reality could be edited by public servants equipped with the right tools.
Cobb's original intentions for Dreaming were not much different. He proposed to revolutionize the therapeutic applications of dreaming by redirecting the scalpel from memory to impulse. Why blot out the unpleasant when it might be possible to correct our very nature before mistakes were made or misdeeds committed? What if decision-makers could freed from susceptibility of logical shortcuts? What if bias could be cut away like a growth of cancer? Cobb wanted to edit the brain in the same way that Cinder Roze edited code, and for the same reasons.
But that was before his addiction became so utterly unmanageable he was past saving. In his final urgency, lucid dreaming became an end unto itself--the sublimest state of existence. Like a cyborg waiting to cross the mind-machine barrier, a dedicated dreamer anticipated something experiential. Dreamers would leave behind no monuments. No genuine relationship between two people, obeying laws beyond figuring, could approach the perfection of a story about those same two written by one, for one. A heart fed on sweet lies never beats stronger, and the man who is content never travels.
Thus Cobb's ultimate desire was the creation of an infrastructure to enable perpetual Dreaming. The problem, of course, was that the sleeper in this mode produced nothing of value to anyone but himself.
Source:
Still is from the move Intersteller.
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Tell me what you know about dreamin', dreamin'?
You don't really know about nothin', nothin'
Tell me what you know about the night terrors every night
5 AM, cold sweats, waking up to the sky
Tell me what you know about dreams, dreams?
Tell me what you know about night terrors? Nothing
You don't really care about the trials of tomorrow
Rather lay awake in the bed full of sorrow
- “Pursuit of Happiness”, Datalinks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z_Ys3BO_4M)
(https://i.imgur.com/AaHFB3U.png)
University students enter into a hypnopædiac study session administered by a subject matter expert system. Spinal lances in the learning chairs administer Somnacin to the dreaming pupils
The introduction of Academic Hypnopædia upended the University of Planet’s stratified meritocracy. Within mission years, the examinations were flooded by applicants from the faction’s drone population, eager for societal mobility. That in of itself did not displease the rectors and regents; curves could be shifted, tests made even more rigorous, and mundane tasks automated out. More bright minds were always welcome, as were raised bars. But then accelerated sleep-learning became a fixture among career academics. Desperate to stay competitive, they imported hundreds of thousands worth of hypnopædia lessons on datatape and toiled in their slumber. This led to an ever-expanding arms race as both low-performing students and those who had flunked out of academia vied against straight-S students via underground hypnopædiac courses. Even more worrying, many existing stellar students became hopelessly dependent upon hypnopædia sessions in order to quickly brush up on and absorb course material in order to outdo these upstarts.
The Morganite-Dreamer sleep-learning products, once heralded as the dawning of a new age of learning, became tools for endless competition, driving burnout to all-time highs. Record increases in psychiatric disorders plagued the University. Illicit nootropic and recreational drug use exploded among underclassmen. Unofficial sleep-learning datatapes appeared in the grey market from dubious sources, some of them malevolently spliced so as to teach incorrect information to potential rivals. Irrational memeplexes proliferated with desperate students, like their forebears in imperial China, turned to divination and patronage from scholarly spirits for study success and succor. And most worrying, defections increased as students fled to rival research factions. These were those who refused to use hypnopædia and were consigned to standings on the left side of the bell curve, doomed to dronedom or worse, eternal teaching assistant positions. Departures sharply dipped tuition and alumni donations, threatening the very economy of the University. Zakharov was called to action by his angry regents.
The introduction of learning accelerants had caught University society by surprise. The existence of only limited roles meant competition intensified. Attempts to staunch the flood of embiggened intellects by introducing new positions, new chairs, even new departments only led to organizational confusion and administrative in-fighting. Clearly, the system was running into the problem of involution, seen in late Golden China and past dynasties. As the population of graduates grew, so did the race to fill limited bureaucratic quotas. Stalling growth meant hyper-competition was increasingly fruitless, leading to mass unemployment, youths dropping out entirely from the pursuit of the Chinese dream instead of succumbing to relentless grind culture. A perpetual feedback loop of futility. It seemed here that a similar mass stagnation and hopelessness would be in store without drastic action undertaken.
You have already firmly absorbed the abstract and general parts in your minds, but can you also let the examiner know how you have applied this in practice? If not, you would be studying here not because you have your minds set on the path of morality, but only because of self-interest; this is not what I expect from you. - Datalinks
Zakharov was not greatly perturbed by the social turmoil. The brighter the flame of knowledge, the greater the host of seekers, the better his University would be, in his view. But this crisis caused by hypnopædia had pushed his administrators and faculty to the brink of revolt. Yet he was unwilling to ban a useful tool. Hypnopædiac materials continued to be purchased from MorganDreams. Even as students attacked each other mid-session in attempts to sabotage their competitors, the grand academician declined to rein in its use. He decided what was needed was a new form of hypnopædia to fix the byproducts of Academic Hypnopædia abuse.
The problem was not competition in the college, nor the instrument that fostered it. It was the lack of prosocial behavior. Meritocracy was being subverted through underhanded, malicious behavior. Students were missing the point of the entire examination system. The tests were to filter and sort the academic body into their proper designations, so that efficient research and learning can be accomplished. Malefactors were attempting to fly too close to the sun, when they should be content to glide at a safe distance. One should give a hundred percent and not conspire to break boundaries for the sake of selfish personal advancement. These were core lessons that had been forgotten. To preach these virtues, Zakharov turned back to hypnopædia itself.
(https://i.imgur.com/syLO4iq.jpg)
Under protest, University librarian Adam Gieseler was tasked by the Provost to create a new hypnopædiac curriculum
Professor Librarian Adam Gieseler, formerly of the United States Library of Congress, prior to that the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Education, was appointed to the Unity mission as a xenoarchaeologist. While the prospect of finding alien civilizations was unknown, his background as academic historian and sociologist deemed him suitable to be a potential latter-day Heinrich Schliemann; his philosophical integrity, not an Erich von Däniken. Drifting between Thân’s Data Services and Zakharov’s scientific corps thanks to his experience managing cross-disciplinary research teams, he had found himself embedded with the latter when the data core was forcibly ejected from the ship, thus sparing him the fate that killed so many of the former.
Gieseler, like those whose specialty was apart from the hard sciences, was a square peg in the University of Planet. Though soft-spoken and with a tendency to venture into otherworldly topics, the University’s neglect for other disciplines rankled him into public activism. He volunteered for student groups dedicated to lobbying for greater care for social science and humanities, leading half a dozen, and became a known critic of the Provost’s biases. Gieseler headlined the Humanitas Universalis campaign, calling for more investment in the cultural life of the faction, arguing that it would produce a salutary effect for the citizenry. While allocation within Psych spending was jealously guarded by program officers and administrators, each grant subject to veto by the jealous hand of Zakharov himself, the regents tossed the starving artists a bone with the formation of a Leisure Studies department. The student productions of Shakespeare, Wharfinger, and Mamet at the parks of Zarya-Sunrise was a nice start, but Gieseler asked for more, believing that the faction’s civic spirit was sorely lacking without direct support from the top.
For his irritating agitation, the xenoarcheologist was demoted from his professorship and assigned to a project to identity and catalog corrupted modules in the Unity Data Core. Other societies wooed him. Secretary of Cultural Life Élodie of the New State sought Gieseler for her Canoneers to assist in the continued study of artifacts her Calliope Squadron had cavalierly acquired from the rest of humanity’s remnants. She promised him a full research team for a great commission to prove her hypothesis linking the prehistoric Indo-European societies into one cohesive civilization. Commissioner Pravin Lal of the Peacekeeping Forces offered Gieseler a directorship at the U.N. Digital Services Agency, bolstering the United Nations on Planet’s abilities to conduct vast censuses and assemble precise statistics for the sake of the betterment of mankind. Controller Sathieu Metrion of the Tomorrow Institute gifted him a state-of-the-art encounter suit to join him in the hunt for the Data Core. And Minister Librarian Gennaro da Gama of the Memory of Earth begged Gieseler to come work on the Cassandra Almanac, explaining that the latter’s priority of remembering the past could only be realized by applying those lessons towards predicting the future to achieve reunification.
Despite these temptations, Gieseler stuck to the University, reluctant to abandon an institution so dedicated to knowledge. Even as he considered Zakharov a latter-day Bronze Age shaman seeking to create a priestly caste of scientific miracle workers to rule over everyone else, he did concede that they were unparalleled in education and matriculation. And his mistrust in Élodie’s - narrow focus, the Peacekeepers’ bureaucratic slowness, Metrion’s quixotic Grail Quest, and da Gama’s willingness to work with techno-superstitious conspiracy theorists, ruled them out. And lo, his tepid loyalty was unexpectedly rewarded by his Provost.
Casting
Adam Gieseler is portrayed by Jason Sudeikis as Andrew McCabe from Tumbledown.
Notes:
The concept of involution in contemporary China is covered in Sixth Tone article “How One Obscure Word Captures Urban China’s Unhappiness (https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1006391/how-one-obscure-word-captures-urban-chinas-unhappiness).”
A very informative and fascinating article about the imperial Chinese civil examination system and the ecosystem of test-taking by Prof. Hilde De Weerdt can be found at the Inference: International Review of Science (https://inference-review.com/article/the-chinese-civil-examinations).
In Outpost, research into Psychology and Humanities improves colonist morale. In Outpost 2, Leisure Studies (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_2:outpost_2_manual:research#leisure_studies) is the research that leads to the production of Recreation Facilities that improve colony morale.
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Vengeance is a season. - Iron Law the Mara'Toa, Traditional
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/056/809/493/large/akkarapon-veeravisan-final-brainstorm-kevin-exterior01.jpg?1670161817)
Morgan Industries CEO Nwabudike Morgan was identified for capture and rendition in Executive Order 920099, "Justice for the Victims of Extremism and Insurrection." This latter-day blood hunt took the American military around the world and across the inner solar system, leaving thousands dead or maimed in its wake. Accountability for those who had directly facilitated Hypersurvivalism was a potent, albeit controversial, strain in postwar North American politics. The 2056 Conservative Party platform headed by Oscar van de Graaf had justice--not reconconciliation--for its central plank, a distinction that helped fuel its impressive performance at the polls. Other voices, also on the political Right, insisted that avoidance was the best medicine, reasoning that the political cancer had been so widespread, an attempted incision of the offending mass must prove fatal. Social reformers made common cause, if only because they viewed E.O. 920099 as a bill of attainder incompatible with the Constitution, long suspended and much-missed.
United States Africa Command was particularly active in the search. Commanding officer General Vincent Robichaux had his pick of decorated veterans and surplus military equipment left over from decades of war against the Holnists and their ilk. The Central Intelligence Agency assessed with very high confidence that Morgan had secured refuge in Chad, which entrusted all public services to Yfantís Worldwide, a Morganite consultancy, and huddled under the French North African defensive umbrella. In November 2060, the United States Space Force inserted a Brigade Combat Team into the Lake Chad flooded savanna outside Massakory, where they clashed with elements of the Chadian Presidential Guard and three companies of French Colonial Artillery of the Force d'Intervention. During a nine-hour fight, the attackers advanced successfully on the Hotel Sarif, wrecking much of the city's new Garden District, only to capture a mere consolation prize: Morgan Industries Chief Public Experience Officer, Jayceon Kalloe, who was released after serving only two years of a life sentence. His freedom was the asking price for use of Morgan Industries' good offices in facilitating the successful release of certain American prisoners from the Soviet Gulag, an exchange many considered to be unequal.
Morgan's disappearance in early 2071 after boarding the Kuiper Shuttle was widely accepted as the work of the American national intelligence services.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/055/947/150/large/victor-anceaume-victor-anceaume-r3l-barqg-final.jpg?1668121569)
Joralemon Hardacre welcomed guests and supplicants in an enlarged vestibule of the nine-million-gallon Grand Tank that had been fitted into the hull of the Chrion Probe. Introduction (some called it invasion) of Terran marine organisms into Chiron's waters was an unqualified success, so long as one agreed that the new planet was merelyso much growth medium for relatively short-term commercial and industrial endeavors.
Sources:
Top picture is "Warzone" on ArtStation by Akkarapon Veeravisan.
Second picture is a still from "Give them back the light, short movie Part II" on ArtStation by Victor Anceaume.
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Good evening, everyone! I hope the holiday season is treating you all well.
Thanks for a terrific first year of Racing the Darkness. Looking forward to another.
I'll be heading out tomorrow morning to join my family on vacation. You can anticipate a resumption to this story just before the New Year.
I want to thank everyone who has contributed, especially Strategos' Risk; those who have been here from the beginning; and the new readers who have joined us along the way. We had a huge jump in views recently, and I'm very grateful for that engagement. It really motivates me to continue developing and sharing new content.
I have begun a parallel treatment of this same story over on another forum, which you can access here (https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/racing-the-darkness-a-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-photo-essay.534186/). Most of the content is the same, but I do try occasionally to put exclusive content in one or the other location.
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The flavor is here. - Digital Billboard on the Garland Road near Morgan A-Tron
(https://epsilon.aeon.co/images/8b4bce56-d400-4ad5-9773-1deb7d287ca0/3000x1700.jpg)
Though survivors were never issued the dreaded meal pills teased in the science fiction periodicals of the 1960s, alimentary options on Chiron were nobody's idea of good eating.
Pathfinder experience had confirmed that Chiron's atmosphere and soils were, on the whole, hospitable to Terran crops. Both the Probe and Unity expeditions carried seed banks and stock pens. But food production was problematic in the extreme.
First, the biological feed stock of both expeditions was poor from both the qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Most of the animals brought by the Probe had perished from lack of care at the height of the Red Flu epidemic, insects included. Unity's animals were killed by fire or loss of life support 'ere they made Planetfall. Unity's seed was severely irradiated. According to dosimetry gathered by the Tomorrow Initiative, about 78% of all seed lines had to be written off immediately as unsuitable for consumption. Second, Planet did not have the native insect population necessary to supplement human farming techniques, limiting the hardiness and spread of crops planted in native soil. If a single faction compromised a seed line, as the Believers did when Corn Variant L19 Bravo failed twice due to cold during the short M.Y. 2-3 growing season, it was probably a permanent loss. Third, Planet mounted a vigorous natural immunological reaction to Terran lifeforms. Xenofungal growth increased by rates up to 400% per day on the margins of human settlements and had to be fought back by vigilant work parties to protect the viability of the soils.
Early attempts to safeguard Terran crops often triggered the Crichton effect familiar to anyone who had witnessed the handiwork of the European colonial powers in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone. Game Warden J.T. Marsh long regretted an attempt to introduce phosphate solubilizing bacteria into the water table at Matilda's Waltz. The Hunters hoped to stimulate nutrient retention in their plants even as fungal roots competed for the same spoils, but their hardier stalks of golden wheat were soon buried by six feet of mucilaginous spores. The fallout accumulated so rapidly that all of the workers on-premises were trapped before they realized the threat. When the air recyclers seized up, the thirty-seven residents suffocated.
Planet did not always win the struggle between native and non-native life forms. Safari ants played havoc on the ecosystems of the Monsoon Jungle and Wet Coast, rapidly annihilating the subrid colonies that thrived in the moisture-laden lowlands. Their reign was so brutally complete that Peacekeeper and Pilgrim ranchers organized to make joint drives three or four times each year to repopulate the crustaceoid spawning beds from their own excess broods once the hungry ants had gone through.
(https://static.scientificamerican.com/blogs/cache/file/56B31779-364F-4EB6-92D731D011CDE79C.jpg)
To avoid ecological retaliation, colonies often practiced small-scale hermetic, or greenhouse agriculture, a practice that was labor, space, and energy-intensive. The Lord's Conclave stood firm against Hive spoiling attacks to operate a prominent example of such a station on the northern ridge of Balian's Depression. What Yang learned about Planet's water table through his national sponsors, Miriam deduced through observation. Reasoning that Yang could not have come with his own water, she arranged for a Hunter drilling rig to take soundings until they found the aquifer.
Some factions never grew their own food. Aside from captured meals, Spartans ate irradiated M and R-rations until their faction's final battlefield defeat. Santiago's holdouts were thereafter known to trade with SMACERs their non-perishables for fresh food, but there is no record even of garden farms among those who survived to carry on the legacy of armed self-reliance. Spartans preferred to seize or steal, not to sow.
(https://starcitizen.tools/images/thumb/6/61/ReclamationAndDisposalEntrance.jpg/1200px-ReclamationAndDisposalEntrance.jpg)
Those willing to forsake flavor could find their way to a new dispensation. The Hive literally ate their own, casting all organic refuse into great rendering vats from which their scientists extracted a "nutritionally optimal" paste distributed in silvered-foil squeeze packs remade from the weather-proof packaging of Unity survival rations.
Nowhere is the fruitless obsession with comfort better showcased than in the quest for more flavorful food. Why should food have flavor in this era when we already know it is safe to eat? Flavor has outlived its primary function. - Essays on Mind and Matter
Yang left behind hundreds of memos in which he refused to accept the broad unpopularity of his feeding methods. To hear his official position, Paste was necessary not just to overcome shortages, but as a physical rejection of biological determinism. To do only what was necessary and sufficient, but not pleasant, embodied the living that Yang propounded to every one of his hapless minions.
Nwabudike Morgan took great delight in other factions' obsession with efficiency. The Chairman mobilized armies of text-bots to ridicule the misery of life in other factions. Tragically, fugitives from other societies often ended up at the mercy of corporate recruiters who enrolled them into truck systems so unsparing that they received the same ration as Hivemen.
Some factions took turns at ranching the native wildlife or grafting hybrid crops. Led by Deirdre's old lab-mates, the Gaians spent decades bringing forth a melon known as the mercantelope, which wags claimed so resembled the head of Commander Kleisel. The canary yellow pulp oxidized almost as soon as the rind was cut and stank like refuse but was sweet to the taste and reasonably nutritious, with very high water and Vitamins C and D content.
Sources:
Top image is from the May 1960 edition of If magazine.
Second image is from Scientific American.
Third image is from the video game Star Citizen.
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A student asks: "Is it possible one can be too curious?" Let us remember that even Folgier has been canonized. - Records of the Symposia
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7c/8b/ec/7c8bec39c4f0184a270c405e8b0e823e.jpg)
Chiron's winters were short and its poles very small, but for a few weeks each year, the surf would freeze and Folger's Floes would pass between the Straights of Tokaj. These icebergs and the slow-growing crystalline spires that thrust up from the heart of them were both named for a doomed explorer of that region--the man whose battle-damaged, storm-tossed foil had been first to spot them both. To make the most of a sour journey, he went ashore with a geologist and a rock hammer. Together, the two men made their final discovery: the new matter was wildly unstable, exploding with the force of two tons of TNT.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/044/327/273/4k/robert-navarrete-moreno-5.jpg?1639678201)
In M.Y. 31, the Human Ascendancy announced a practical cure for blood cancers. Their solution: blood-scrubbing (haemodialysis) via a matrix of fungal antigens to promote a more aggressive immunological response. Similar technology was later employed to combat nitrogen narcosis and heat loss during abyssal dives. The rigidity of the diving bell was legendary, as one would expect for a cramped but effective escape pod. Many were recovered intact in the stomachs of surgan whales decades after being lost.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/105/653/large/scott-robertson-sr-portfolio-114.jpg?1402958785)
The ram prow had a long and glorious service life with the Spartan Federation. It served them best when fitted to hovercraft, which could reach sustained speeds of more than 209km/h. The Spartans used them to "crack" the stockades that were an inevitable feature of every enemy base. A squadron of ram-equipped Kites made possible the destruction of the settlement at U.N. Catalogues even after the defenders' mobile close-in weapons system (CIWS) countered the Spartans' tube artillery. The rotary cannon exhausted all its remaining ammunition on the first of the seven Kites present that day, creating favorable conditions for a traditional infantry assault.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/052/312/854/4k/dmitriy-gvozdev-v0-1.jpg?1659475871)
Variable-yield grenades, complete with biometric safeguards, cut deeply (and, one might presume, fatally) against the fundamentals of mindworm suppression as taught since the beginning of human colonization on Planet. Yet Spartan commanders agreed to a one that merely to be entrusted with a weapon demanding such deliberate and skillful use seemed to imbue event the lowliest sentry with a sense of self such as could face down the utterest nightmare. An M106 shock payload disrupted synaptic activity in the blast zone, rendering both the planetary hive mind and human targets inert. Spartans took glee in crushing juvenile worms so indisposed beneath their boot heels.
Sources:
First image is "Mountain climbing (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/mountain-climbing)," a 2015 work by Art Station user whinbek.
Second image is "Sci-fi armor (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/o2b26k)" by Robert Navarrete Moreno on Art Station.
Third image is "Snow Flyer (https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/105/653/large/scott-robertson-sr-portfolio-114.jpg?1402958785)" by Scott Robertson on Art Station.
Fourth image is "Sci-fi Grenade (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/X1vZ0y)" by Dmitriy Gvozdev on Art Station.
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The difference between compass and computer is no more than a few billion switches. - Building a Lighthouse
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/025/548/002/4k/patrick-sutton-render-table.jpg?1586155520)
Less-celebrated among the the Academician's private projects was the Portable Cognition Unit, an attempt at lab-grown "neuronal matter" designed in cooperation with legacy staff of Johann Anhaldt's Atomic Computing Lab. Awkward questions about the origins of the devices' innards discouraged widespread commercial adoption, foiling Morgan Industries' initial high hopes. (Surplus PCUs were all liquidated to the Children of the Atomic, who used them as benchmarks.) The brains, if very inferior in computational speed or accuracy to electronic processors, showed marked superiority to artificial intelligences in creative tasks and during Turing Tests. They also intrigued their creators by stubbornly repeating some errors despite accepting correction of others, leading to the consensus conclusion that they were exhibiting self-awareness.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/020/313/019/large/gregory-trusov-1v.jpg?1567283040)
The basic essentials for successful travel on Chiron: extended-range UHF antenna to stay in touch with faction security; heavy-duty suspension; at least two spare tyres in case of rupture; sturdy crash bar; enhanced light package; and plenty of armor plating to protect crew. Soft-shelled vehicles were close-to-homers, useful for conducting perimeter safety sweeps or running technicians out to stranded 'Formers. This example wouldn't have been sent into battle without modification, but somebody had the thought. Note the front passenger-side firing port and roof hatch.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/023/925/802/4k/christian-bravery-mv2.jpg?1580776783)
After Kalumetra, both the Nauvoo Legion and University Security limped back to their starting lines in disarray. Hive patrols were startled to discover water-fat corpses and vehicles in good working order but for fuel. The retrofitted turret of K-Car A16 was a fearsome menace to under-defended Pilgrim settlements on the Grit Frontier, holing as many as six Impact Rovers in a single afternoon with its 30mm smart cannon. A16's height afforded its gunner good visibility but the car was very prone to tipping despite an independent front suspension. No wonder mechanics disfigured its exterior hull with external winching anchors. Her thirst for gasoline was no problem on a carbon-rich planet.
A16 mounted a camera-operated reconnaissance drone, a boon for the loot-starved Hivemen. The guidance package is mounted at the base of the traversable commander's stack.
Sources:
First picture, "Portable Cognition Unit," and key terminology (PCU, neuronal matter) are the work of Patrick Sutton, lead artist at C77 Entertainment, on ArtStation.
Second picture, "Military buggy" is by 3D artist Gregory Trusov on ArtStation.
The third picture, from "Oversize Military ATV explorations," belongs to Christian Bravery on ArtStation.
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Here, shed the burden of who and what you once were. Be renewed and remade by God's Eden. - Letter to the Gaians
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/049/119/569/large/jean-pascal-mouton-quick-eyed-sky-dd4-0-8.jpg?1651738975)
Chiron quickly reclaimed that which Man did not maintain. Roriton Station, situated only eight hours from Gaian, Tribal, and Data Angel outposts, made an ideal roost for SMACERS selling "protection" and supplies.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/036/643/622/4k/maarten-hermans-avrotank-sheet-main.jpg?1618237757)
To save their concept for a slow-moving patrol hovercraft from early rejection, Cadillac-Gage added a cast-armored pilothouse, sensitive early-warning systems, and a triad of countermeasures both active and passive: an electro-static "skirt" to confuse heat-seeking warheads; three banks of smoke dischargers (officially, Light Vehicle Obscuration Smoke Systems), and a decoy system. All three failed during trials and the project was scrapped, but not before a quick-thinking executive offered their sixteen prototypes to the United Nations.
Marsh took four of the craft to the surface, leaving ten divided between Kleisel Mercator's Chiron Guard and Land Architect Nagao's Liquidator militia. Unhampered by the threat of anti-aircraft missiles, the hovercraft gave excellent service as mobile watch stations and usually accompanied 'Formers or Colony Pods as close escorts.
Mercator made special use of his half-squadron of AVRO-IMVs to police boglands and river deltas made placid but treacherous by unstable xenofungal lillypads. These environments were considered prime targets for water collection and the introduction of Terran wildlife. Few intruders stood their ground when an AVRO disgorged a squad of riflemen.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/024/850/648/large/toby-burnside-screenshot014.jpg?1583752467)
Uniform of a Pilgrim Regulator militiaman, c. M.Y. 10. It is a stark reminder of how badly off the early colonies were, either because they used century-old surplus or because their level of material culture was so primitive. Much of the kit seen here is at least fire-retardant and lightweight for tropical environments, though none was state-of-the-art. It certainly could have been sturdier, although leather strapping and metal bucklers were easier to reproduce under primitive conditions than nylon and plastic. Arm gaiters were essential to protect bare skin from xenofungal spines.
Attitudes toward service varied by faction and time period. Failure to participate in the colony project was unthinkable to the earliest Unity survivors, and all stood their posts "on the walls." Raids, especially for plunder and slaves, were another matter. Armed struggle was at the heart of what it meant to be Spartan or Kellerite, while paramilitary service was the privilege of both New Stater and Hiveman, but full-hearted pacifists and half-hearted shirkers abounded in (and bedeviled) the Believer, Gaian, University, Atomic, Morganite, Digital Preserver (Tomorrow Institute), and Dreamer factions, leading ultimately to heavy reliance on fanatics or mercenaries. The latter, though widely respected at first for their very high professionalism, were judged harshly in posterity as most found that contract warfare on Chiron was nowhere near as lucrative or sensible as on Earth.
Errata:
Reflagged Nagao's title to Land Architect.
Sources:
Roriton Station picture is Jean-Pascal Mouton's "Remnants of Sci-Fi Locomotives in a Jungle" on ArtStation.
"Avrotank design" is by Maarten Hermans on ArtStation.
Third picture is Toby Burnside's "NCR Trooper (F4NV)" from the Fallout 5 franchise, found on ArtStation.
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Brevity is the soul of wit and of warfare. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d7c90074-367f-45d3-9a96-61b41a9f190f/ddam4nc-b9de7670-7ebf-4959-abd4-02aeba3d4b42.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2Q3YzkwMDc0LTM2N2YtNDVkMy05YTk2LTYxYjQxYTlmMTkwZlwvZGRhbTRuYy1iOWRlNzY3MC03ZWJmLTQ5NTktYWJkNC0wMmFlYmEzZDRiNDIucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.aLAruajjZsJAitoomy7e44045pE4vT4F_qBkbwLLJfQ)
Deep losses in M.Y. 40 and 42 made it impossible for the Children of the Atom to fully garrison settlements on their frontier with the Ascendancy. The Atomics' top commanders, Colonel-General Brian Ronson and Fieldmonitor Babar de Torre, recommended the faction withdraw to a more defensible line, abandoning key positions astride the River Sarpidon. Programmers fed the same information into one of their mainframes. This was the origin of Planet's first Quick Reaction Force. Launching from deep within friendly territory, Hoppers carried fresh companies of Defenders to relieve beleaguered militia, then returned to central holding positions. Upon learning of the great Atomic victory at Piers's Canticle, CEO Nwabudike Morgan quipped to his board that "Johann Anhaldt could teach us a thing or two about economizing."
(http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/spacewarship/powerUtilizationCurve.jpg)[
Comparing the relative population size, resource yield, industrial and military potential, research output, or even youth of each faction was an obsession of all leaders and a permanent source of job security for faction Librarians and Thinkers. The Children of the Atom resolved to make the most of the "advantages of lateness" by basing future decisions on what they had already observed other factions attempt.
This graph compares colonial expansion in the first ten years after Planetfall, showing known ventures by the University of Planet, Human Ascendancy, Dynamic Enterprise, and Lord's Believers. What it does not show is the success rate of those expeditions. Most of Miriam's were costly failures, leading to the death or capture of more than a thousand of her flock. Many ended up Spartan prizes, driving pickaxes and chisels into the face of Mt. Xerxion before it fell.
(http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/images/spacesuits/spacePod22.jpg)
Unity's flight coordinator, Luftwaffe commander Kleisel Mercator, scrambled seventy Single-Occupancy Repair Craft to evaluate and help seal Unity's wounds, but repeated Spartan attacks forced mission loyalists to evacuate the Flight Deck. Returning "eggs" were then shot up by Holnists as they came in for refueling. None of their courageous pilots survived. Their efforts bought the starship's crew another ninety-six hours to complete evacuation, a sacrifice later acknowledged by an obelisk erected in Watchpoint's Staunton Park Domes.
Sources:
First picture is in "In-A.22 Nikto-ega - Very Fast Stripes" by Eluqqa on DeviantArt.
Second image is from Star Trek: Enterprise via the "Space Warship Design" page on Atomic Rockets (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/).
Third image is by Pierre Mion via the "Spacesuits" page on Atomic Rockets.
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Chassis: Crawler
Crossing an environment means changing it, but that doesn't mean you have to destroy it beyond healing. - Peregrinations of Planet
Call me old-fashioned, but there is still something about arriving on the battlefield in a tank! - Promotional watchvid, Morgan Military Machines
The U.N. wanted for vehicles, and it could hardly refuse charity, even the backhanded kind. To meet their obligations, donors gave what they could or would no longer use: post-war surplus, items in liquidation after radiological clean-up, and whatever else had been worn out or refused by their own forces. Thus, the greater proportion of Unity's motor pool was tracked.
The survivors' small inheritance of rotary aircraft, experimental hovercraft, and under-powered hoppers might point to a better tomorrow, but for more than two centuries, wheeled or tracked vehicles were the only scalable mobility options accessible to all colonies. Even the New State was forced to keep a significant portion of its operations "sandside" because it could not turn out enough pressure hulls.
Wheeled vehicles were faster, better over rocky ground, and easier to repair and maintain. Because of their greater surface area, however, tracked vehicles could take substantially heavier payloads despite also requiring much larger engines. Early vehicle-scale lasers in particular demanded power supplies to heavy for wheeled transport. Tracked vehicles could also (usually) keep lower profiles becaue tyres were oversized to provide the ground clearance that lent them their off-road advantage. Pilots of unarmed cargo Crawlers and tracked gun platforms crashed with practical impunity through all but the mightiest fungus and brush. They also had better luck on the many saturated and sandy surfaces of Chiron.
To get the most out of their investment of precious vehicle power plants, most factions put even tracked military vehicles to work as tractors when they were not needed in combat.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/014/365/669/large/lennard-claussen-2.jpg?1543672873)
A short-lived attempt to design a mobile EMP by the U.S.S.R.'s Design Group 12 was conveniently swept under the rug and aboard a Unity cargo bay. Zakharov, who leaked word of the project to the Western press, absorbed the project's staff into his rocket program. The next time he saw the tank was when mechanics coaxed it into the lower garage of a landing pod.
The угорь, or eel, lived two lives, first as an impervious mobile machine gun platform in defense of the Tsiolkovsky Institute, then, with the armatures fully restored, as an experimental electro-static weapon turned against Mindworm boils.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/005/857/239/4k/colie-wertz-tankback-artstation.jpg?1494270770)
Tank destroyers were a popular vehicle type on Chiron since the object of warfare was usually to cripple the enemy's forces while leaving their infrastructure intact. This Spartan Companion is powered by rear-mounted cylinders of nuclear fuel and displays hallmarks of Centauri adaptation: a laser warning detection system, rear-mounted countermeasures launchers, and bolt-on fire suppression bottles.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/000/958/635/large/mike-yakovlev-fin-post.jpg?1436998940)
After a decade or two of continuous service, tanks were works of art and artifice as much as they were complex killing machines. This example, serving with the Chironian Guard, is literally held together with bungee cord and duct tape. Exposed wiring shows where techs have added a radio modem and improved imaging as well as early-warning devices. Because the main threat is infantry, there are two turret-mounted weapons stations, both protected by gun-shields. Side-mounted mantlets have been added, and the barrel of at least one of those mounts has been ported.
As a reminder of its "day job," an amber hazard light and external cooler remain mounted during patrol.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/029/780/216/4k/alex-avduevsky-expedition-3.jpg?1598617174)
The Hunters of Chiron provided mobile power to projects and bases on-demand. Despite his problems with the Pilgrims--in which Marsh was hardly alone--the Warden had many more friends among the other faction leaders than he did enemies since Hunter caravans provided critical labor and emergency response for which other factions simply lacked the equipment and expertise.
Many factions build seasonal outposts that they could operate only with the assistance of Hunter personnel.
Unity Crawlers like this one could be freighted with any of 780 unique mission modules. Marsh paid top price for salvaged examples, knowing he would recoup his investment by only the fourth or fifth engagement. Godwinson, Lal, Anhaldt, Mercator, Zakharov, Cobb, Roze, Aki-Zeta-5, Morgan, St. Germaine, and even Landers were almost always willing to sell. Yang and Skye could not as a result of their isolation. Nagao and Van de Graaf were the consistent exceptions.
In Game Terms:
May cross light or medium xenofungus without penalty.
The Crawler chassis may carry up to 2 mission modules.
Sources:
Soviet tank is "Tesla's Tank" by Lennard Claussen on ArtStation.
Second tank is "tank_heavy" by Colie Wertz on ArtStation.
Third tank is "Post-Apocalyptic Tank" by Yakolev Art on ArtStation.
Fourth vehicle is "Arctic Communication Module / Tracked Vehicle Concept" from Alex Advuevsky on ArtStation.
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Views are still trending upwards, and I'm very grateful for that indeed. I hope folks are continuing to enjoy this unfolding saga.
If you're interested in contributing ideas of any kind, please consider joining our Discord community (https://discord.gg/4BqCjQDX) where we can continue the conversation informally. We hope to see you there!
Of course, questions and requests are always welcome here, as are contributions to the setting.
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The argument for kings and government dies at the first moment of their weakness. Do not give your loyalty to someone who thinks they can forsake you without forsaking themselves. - Against All Others
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/056/651/925/large/jon-white-final-final-4k.jpg?1669773595)
Extrusive crystalline formations called njaa, from the Swahili word for hunger, colonized any site contaminated by nuclear radiation. Anyone willing to sweat--and probably fight--for the privilege could help themselves to a mineral, energy, and salvage bonanza. The foolhardiness of the venture could usually be ascertained by the number and contents of the many abandoned campsites that rose beneath the njaa pinnacles like hopeful weeds from the soil.
At almost 2,000m above sea level in a cleft of the Pholus Ridge, Chandler's Lookout, opposite the wreck of an old Unity cargo pod, stood silent and tempting testament to a long-dead Kellerite's severe miscalculations.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/002/713/993/large/ben-harrison-sub-09.jpg?1489853040)
Danger on Chiron often correlated with desecration of habitat. Factions with no particular interest in Planetary Stewardship as a developmental choice turned to technologies and processes that provided temporary relief from harassment by native life. This Shaper Bastion, essentially a submersible strong room, accompanied divers searching for Planet pearls.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/006/170/031/large/ben-harrison-01-cockpit.jpg?1496533356)
Mission recruits receive instruction on basic Landing Pod operations from the United States space agency. In the real event, successful flight operations turned out to depend not only upon competent pilots, but also dumb luck and sharp-eyed spotters, positioned at the view ports and communicating by radio, to help avoid obstructions. (The original plan called for a SORC-assisted departure.)
Sources:
First picture is "Mission to Minerva" by Jon White on ArtStation.
Second picture is "Deep Sea Sub" by Ben Harrison on ArtStation.
Third picture is "SR-7132N Deep Space Tow Tug Cockpit" by Ben Harrison on ArtStation.
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We must first exclude to find the self. Then, we must include to perfect it. - Governor Oscar van de Graaf, Command Diary
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/044/995/008/large/scott-robertson-2022-sr-1.jpg?1641667640)
Chironian waters were usually violent. Average wave height in the calmest seas was 12.8m, where lightning flash rates exceeded 500 instances over the 17.53 hour day. Unity Foils were self-righting for this reason and usually traveled in trios.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/034/323/181/large/davit-10.jpg?1611994563)
This Nauvoo Legion mountaineer is typical of her MOS in any faction military force. The articulated backpack contains 120m spools each of dynamic and static dry-core, dry-sheath rope with self-securing grapnels and glove-directed winch. The canister on the right hip contains Expansion Foam with which to make new holds. Her Morgan Military Mechanics SmartCarbine uses TV-guided ammunition monitored on the screen at her chest.[/img]
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/042/714/239/large/davit-2.jpg?1635259266)
The motto of the British Special Air Service is "Who dares wins." Game Warden J.T. Marsh, a veteran of that unit, practiced the maxim, organizing a series of spectacular raids on Shaper bases in the Terryon Basin in M.Y. 23 and 24 that made use of diversionary attacks to facilitate hijacking of more than sixty precious 'Formers. It was a double victory in that most of the vehicles captured by the Hunter Probe Teams had once belonged to the American Reclamation Corporation.
Sources:
First image is "Sci-fi Boat" by Scott Robertson on ArtStation.
Second image is "Spacesuit" by Zongwei on ArtStation.
Third image if "Photobash Practice" by Zongwei on ArtStation.
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Pirate Bombers
Nirvana... it ain't free. But sometimes it's yours for the taking. - wisdom from the Riders of the Red Tide
The Lord Brethren High Muckety-Muck and all the little kelp-eaters 'boxing Marley in their suits will tell you of the sea. They'll tell you its might, its majesty. And they'll tell you how real it feels to flit over its waves whether by foil or by foam. Now you listen to me carefully. When you're out there, what is really real is how little you are. And the sea knows it. It can't stop telling you. - Forty Years Aweigh
(https://i.imgur.com/WIt6zXs.png)
Not all of the piratical kingdoms and clans of the Nautilus nation are content to commune with the ocean through cold metal boxes and eternaglass bubbles. Some dare to ride the waves themselves. This practice was invented by George Mana Kaimana of the Royal Hawaiian Rifles, a private security firm contracted by the New Two Thousand to explore the coast north of the Mouth of Hercules. A warm tropical locale, the expedition’s scouts had an enviable time charting its lush forests and pink marbled beaches before sneaking some R&R far away from dour watchful Pilgrim eyes. So it was on that idyllic coast that Kaimana, a distant baron of the reinstated monarchy who had learned to surf with the crown princess herself, carved out a board from a koa tree planted by Pathfinder agro-probe, and took to the swells. Still clad in armor, he caught a reef break, crested, and rode it successfully to shore. Thus was born Chironian surfing.
(https://i.imgur.com/dPqgwGU.png)
The Riflemen were later captured further north by the Sea of Pholus, and gladly sought a new contract with Captain Ulrik Svensgaard himself. But not before Kaimana’s foray into the waves had been captured by the expedition’s documentarian and beamed to the closest network node. While this stunt upon the alien sea would seized the imagination of the planetary networks, it was the Nautilus Pirates themselves who were most captivated by the practice themself, and the Hawaiian royal became a sought-after teach amongst the buccaneer brethren.
While not as dominant a pastime as the sailing sports or holographic liar’s dice, surfing became popular among the Nautilus. Already attuned to the beautiful dangers of the ocean, Pirate thrill-seekers began crafting their own surfboards out of repurposed landing pod interior foam and illegally logged planted forests. Their tendency to seek the largest, most dramatic "bomb" waves won them the appellation of bombers among the surfing population of Planet.
The chief difficulty since Kaimana’s first swim is simply moving in the water while wearing a protective suit. As both Planet’s atmosphere and its nitrate-steeped seas yield gasping death or methemoglobinemia, respectively, upon exposure, none but the most daft wear exopack breathing masks at the very minimum. While the most ardent bombers chase the waves with only said masks, most medical advisories, including the U.N. Health Authority, recommend regulation environmental suits as protection from crashing upon the hard “reefs” of sea fungus masses, or from sea life.
Planet's warm tropical seas notoriously breed hurricanes from high gravity and rapid rotation. Surfing can attract gnarly mindworm activity- more than one competition has been crashed by an isle of the deep. "Getting brainwiped" is a nightmare scenario for many a bomber. And there are more predators still- the razorshark, the sealurk. Even reef rash from sea fungus can yield fatal injuries. Bombers and share survivor solidarity from their deadly sport. Live to get radical, die to get radical.
(https://i.imgur.com/nMZeKrF.jpg)
A conventional Pirate bomber in a breathing mask flanked by Oceanids suffering from “baby blue syndrome”
Though there is at least one Nautilus surf gang, the Oceanids, who are known to surf for brief stretches at a time without any protective equipment. These former Hunters of Chiron cast-offs, augmented by stolen Human Ascendancy technology, are infamous for their foolhardiness and by their chronic methemoglobinemia, to which they owe their nickname “the baby blues.” While generally lax on all rules, the Captain himself has issued condemnation of the dangerous practice as extravagant, as treatment of the syndrome wastes valuable stores of oxygen and methylene blue.
While many find swimming and surfing in bodysuits difficult, the standard Pirate lifestyle requires it as a basic survival skill. Colonists from youth are trained to do so, even by being cast overboard from foils moving at moderate speeds. So, the faction tends to dominate by default the surfing competitions that have sprung up with the sport’s popularity, such as the annual Mouth of Hercules Bombad Challenge hosted at New Waikiki Beach, where it was first invented. Because members from few factions dare to partake with the exception of Spartans, Gaians, Hunters, and the New State, it often becomes an intra-Nautilus competition, with surfers of rival bomber gangs vying for honor and prizes.
(https://i.imgur.com/oYWRvYT.png)
Bombers of the Hazmax Divers experience a moment of quiet contemplation near Hell's Bells Beach
Planetary anthropologists regard bomber gangs, sometimes referred to as tribes, as one of the smallest social units within the Nautilus thalassocracy. While most Pirate bombers hold primary sub-factional local allegiance to a pirate kingdom, republic, clan, fleet, or similarly large organization, some devotees to the surfer lifestyle have formed surf gangs of their own. Descended from surf clubs of likeminded enthusiasts sharing information on the best locations with the best waves, movement techniques, and board-building, some bombers have sworn adopted familial ties to one another.
While all Nautilus Pirates are known to be influenced by the Captain's reverence for the waters of Chiron, a large minority go further still. Some speak of themselves as children of the sea, venerating it as a primordial force. Folk cults to Poseidon, Proteus, Oceanus, Calypso, Davy Jones, and Matsu exist within the Nautilus fold. A few have even advocated for the faction to adopt Green economics, independently of any visible influence from the Gaia's Stepdaughters. Others go as far as to launch unrestricted warfare against those who engage in seaborne pollution or overfishing, with full blessing from the Captain.
Pirate bombers are a rare pastime-based sub-polity, but given the above, some argue they constitute a pseudo-religious sect. Communing directly with Planet's oceans, chasing the ultimate rush, willing to pay the ultimate price. University sociologists argue that bombers are, like the flagellants of old, a modern ascetic cult that manifests their irrational memeplex by engaging in harmful physical actions. Those who read the datalinks scoff at the notion. It is not so austere to enjoy the sun and sand of the beach bummy way of life. Between tropical drinks and illicitly farmed drugs, bombers can host lavish social events that no University researcher has been invited to.
(https://i.imgur.com/NgEhnDg.jpg)
Members of the SecGens bomber gang plot a heist against landlubbers
Of course, Pirate society is as marked by their titular crimes as it is by their love for the sea. So bombers likewise engage in criminality and simple material pursuit like their brethren at large. Mirroring the Longos and the Bra Boys of ancient Earth, pirate bombers stake out choice surfing locations with the best waves and worm-free waters, engaging in extreme territoriality. Outsiders are made to pay booty or must seek physical punishment for their trespassing. Rival bomber gangs routinely battle for the best beaches, for loot, for weapons, for narcotics, for waves.
And they do not solely attack fellow Pirates. Bombers have at times engaged in low-level vendetta against outside factions. Though given their small scale and pastime-oriented subculture, their force projection is very limited, more akin to probe operations. Indeed, the most notorious bomber gang, the SecGens, are known for their armed robbery campaigns against wealthy soft targets. Infiltrating bases as common drones or scavengers, they surprisingly evade corporate security with ease, assaulting Morganite banks while hiding their faces behind 3D printed rubber masks of past United Nations secretary-generals and other old Earth figures. Most infamous is their leader, "Lal", who is still at large from the nascent PlanetPol. Peacekeeper and Watcher investigators have been unable to determine his true identity, a continued source of embarrassment from the interfactional law enforcement alliance. But Commissioner Pravin Lal vows to find this criminal, and to bring him to justice.
(https://i.imgur.com/AeyKilt.jpg)
SMACER surfers wearing basic breathers brave a break
Pirate bombers have influenced at least one non-factional population. Coastal SMACERS, watching Nautilus surfers, have begun experimenting with the practice. Buying broken secondhand boards or crafting them from hardened ExpansionFoam, they have taken to the waves. Remarkably, the bomber gangs often do not interfere with their presence, opting to tax them lightly or else engage in trade for artifacts and goods from the mainland. Some have suggested that Svensgaard is attempting to expand his sphere into the terra firma interior by way of these like-minded roguish itinerants. Others theorize he is seeking to replenish his ranks by coaxing them to join his faction, rather than shanghaiing them directly. But the Pirate bombers themselves see both cultures as modern savages, real searchers of the ultimate ride.
Notes:
The art piece is "Space Surfer" by GanjaNinja on DeviantArt
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And Cain did again what displeased the LORD, and in his House all other manner of iniquity was also practiced. Now the Sons of Nod laid waste the Kingdom of Lut, and when all was smoke and ash, they returned to their homesteads, which they fired, and then slaughtered the kine, treading out even their own vineyards, for blood was their sweetest wine. - Datalinks
Unity passed out of the Sol system carrying 591,894 colonists aboard and another 20,000 estimated stowaways. By the time word was passed to abandon ship, more than half that total had been lost.
Survivors faced all the nightmare scenarios cooked up by the Red Teams at Morgan Emergency Services and more. The initial micrometeorite was bad enough. Aside from the loss of lives and ship’s stores, multiple vital systems were crippled or destroyed in a series of cascading impacts.
The power system was failing. Spall shattered the main reactor housing aft and destroyed primary feed pumps on two of the four secondary reactors. This was a radiological catastrophe of the highest order. To approach the reactor halls aft was to recieve potentially lethal doses of radiation. Meanwhile, the loss of so much electrical firm load threw the ship onto battery power even as life support systems were ramping up to counter both the widespread loss of atmospheric containment and the sudden introduction of hundreds—then thousands—of crew. It was too much. Fuses blew. Breakers tripped. Unity went dark.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/020/255/020/large/guillaume-menuel-closeup01.jpg?1567024605)
Radiation doses to people and machines were so high, even datatape corroded. This grainy image was taken by a landing pod's exterior cameras at Planetfall.
In theory, this surge in demand could be offset even if the reactors were offline, for the ship trailed a solar sail—a potentially inexhaustible power source if fed by the Alpha Centauri system’s three stars. Yet this crucial back-up system had been ruined, holed in countless places by pieces of Unity herself, while the mechanism for deployment of its redundant auxiliary lay likewise smashed. There was now no hope of restoring electrical power except by recovering the fission plant.
Life support was in even worse shape. The errant space rock had severed Unity’s water mains--including the firemain and its three auxiliary lines. A complicated system of valves sprang shut to staunch the outpouring, but this only created small islands of reserve water useless for any practical purpose except local firefighting. (Six days into the crisis, Machinery Leading Chief Petty Officer LeFevre organized rust techs to pump the dregs down to the hangars using a daisy chain of fire hoses.) This residual supply was still on the order of several tens of millions of gallons, some of which continued to be lost from malfunctioning sprinkler heads or unattended hoses.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5b/fa/48/5bfa4831b2326c16445b57076417ef87.jpg)
Orly LeFeuvre, a Rabat native, traded a decade's service in the Alang Bang for her SPAR marks before finishing a late apprenticeship in the sprawling junkyards of Manila City. Along with the cybernetic upgrades, her experience pulling older technology convinced U.N. canvassers to request her by name. French President Varil Gaultier's short-lived Socialist government was glad to name her to Project Unity as one of that country's few meritorious representatives. She spent time among J.T. Marsh's people after choice words with Academician Zakharov, who took her down to Planet, but found that SPAR placed her firmly outside the Hunter mainstream. Oscar van de Graaf gave her a stake that she worked off in just five more years to become, at last, master of her own fate.
Atmospheric loss had the same results: emergency bulkheads deployed shipwide. Approximately 70% of compartments were opened to vacuum. In many cases, electrical shorts delayed activation of the seals until after damage control parties had begun operations, including Hab Bay evacuations, so that hundreds were killed repeatedly in mass strandings. So many compartments suffered explosive decompression during the first hour of damage control operations that Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida began routing responders to cargo bays rather than risk them to retrieve "worthless artisans" and "needless bankers."
Emergency lockers throughout the ship were inexplicably empty. Under such extreme conditions, most protective gear was donned improperly. In machinery spaces, crews repeatedly suffered line-of-fire injuries as equipment shook itself apart. Large sections of the ship became inaccessible due to internal structural collapse. Fires raged out of control wherever oxygen or chemicals would feed them. Whole cryobays became fatally entombed in fire suppression foam. Upon learning that the occupants were still alive and mostly unharmed, Damage Control Assistant Giat Keo famously broke out fire axes, ordering miners and foresters to take shifts chipping survivors out of the mess.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/053/018/495/large/amanieu-rebu-funky-astronaut-001.jpg?1661235407)
Rescuers below Deck 61 worked in ponchos to prevent their environmental suits becoming waterlogged. To enhance visibility (their only reliable light otherwise came from portable torches), stick leaders sprayed their teams in fluorescent marker wash.
Alas, the armed assailants calling themselves "Spartans" made it their business to gouge the expedition’s already-grievous wounds. The mutineers slaughtered every damage controlman they could find, apparently with the intent of dooming the ship to destruction. A small fraction may in fact have been Survivalists. Many were naught but sociopaths, human trash working overtime to conceal racism and misogyny behind pseudo-intellectual papier-mâché. To protest their exclusion from Project Unity, they did what came naturally: open fire.
Their killing was so indiscriminate it astonished even their erstwhile leader, ultimately revealed as the faithless Security Forces lieutenant Corazón Santiago. Between bouts of professing her manifesto the bridge crew—a popular hobby also taken up by another stowaway, the Morgan Industries CEO, and eventually, Prokhor Zakharov also--she was forced to execute more than a dozen “friendly” fighters for offenses ranging from unforgivable breaches of fire discipline to simple insubordination. Santiago was soon in crisis. She had not anticipated that so many of her own host were fully committed to self-destruction.
The essential problem of generalship is that soldiers expect you to make provisions for them to come back. - Institutes of Leadership
Given the loyal crew’s focus on systems restoration and the depth of Santiago’s treachery, few Security Forces survivors materialized to defend the former. For a time, d’Almeida attempted to make do with pressed mercenaries and veterans reassigned from other divisions, but with losses mounting and other key leaders diverting personnel for their own ends, those scratch efforts soon gave way to thoughts of self-preservation. The Spartans and Holnists were too fast and too many, the able and willing defenders too few and too disorganized.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/018/243/195/large/johnson-ting-demo-1-copy.jpg?1558696508)
Morganite contractors secreted a small armory with their CEO. Future Capitalists of Chiron made unhurried tours of critical storage areas while Morgan Armored Security provided flank security, posting heavy weapons teams. Fully prepared for extreme conditions, veterans like this auto-gunner taught too-bold Spartans the difference between amateurs and professionals.
When the lion hunts, the jackals shall feast. Another active threat, more fearsome but also more disciplined, stalked the ship in parallel with the Spartans, who they shot on sight. While they could and did sometimes negotiate temporary ceasefires with crew who held their fire, the Kellerites were not above cold-blooded murder. They had bones to pick with authority, circumstances be damned. At least these newcomers were intent on making it down to Chiron.
Whether Jean Baptiste-Keller himself ever made it aboard the object of his obsession is unknown. His followers got close enough to ask Garland for his autograph, storming as far as the damaged computer core (just minutes from the Bridge) before rallying Marines broke their momentum with help from sonic grenades and Cargo Corps flankers. Pete Landers, the Kellerite commander on the scene, had come of age on the Mississippi River not far from the riverboat casinos. He well knew: if the House starts to win, choose a different game. His people melted away, descending into the lower levels, relinquishing their chance at prime captive so that they might be free to plunder rations and fuel cells.
D'Almeida gave the official order to abandon ship, but the giving up on Unity's salvation had begun almost at once. The tone had been set by the Chief Engineer himself: in defying Garland and d’Almeida, even in service of the lofty goal of bringing the secondary reactors back online, Zakharov signaled the legitimacy of questioning orders. For every courageous soul who obeyed the muscle memory created by months of training and exercise to go and serve their fellows, three others scurried for the exits while the fifth availed themselves of an opportunity for target practice and the sixth fed psychotropic drugs to those just decanted.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/1189e039ca9414b0d22165f27fea6e36/tumblr_o5x1h4YQyG1uypqfbo1_1280.jpg)
Escape from the ruined ark was not an experience most would ever live down. On a world where cooperation was the best guarantee of survival, those who engaged in selfish acts might receive the ultimate sanction. The smart ones banded together and continued to do as they had done before, often taking a perverse pride in having been the cause of such momentous misery. This SMACER Rocket Raider comes close to looking well-appointed, though his hand weapons is missing a trigger mechanism. The shoulder patch lets folks know what he's about in case the sudden appearance of a cannon-wielding thief in their midst is too subtle.
The seasonal fever has come again. Mobs hunt Spoilers in the flex tunnels. A hopper pilot, his skill irreplaceable, is caught and dragged outside to be suffocated. Later, we will see that it was a case of mistaken identity, but the cathartic feeling won't be diminished. - A World Upside Down
Any run on the Landing Pods inevitably veered straight through the nearest cargo bays. No faction was to be denied a share of the starship's endless variety of cargo. From apple seeds to ammunition, anxious survivors and would-be monarchs claimed anything they could lay hands on, often by gunning down someone who had gotten there first. Mostly, the objects they secured had immediate value, such as food, medicine, and hand radios. Sometimes, they were a putative investment in the future, as when Tamineh Pahlavi's people emptied cold storage of more than fifty thousand genetic samples from family lines that had not got a descendant aboard Unity.
The spoils might even be living people. Elements of the ex-Canadian Vanadair Guard, taken on by Oscar van de Graaf, fought hard against poachers come to pick "his" cryobays clean of the colonists with the choicest service records. Sheng-ji Yang, Raoul André St. Germaine, and Sathieu Metrion consulted the ship’s databanks before so much as lifting a finger to help their fellows, intent on finding those who mattered to them.
Sources:
Grainy explorer image is "The Wreck," by Guillaume Menuel on ArtStation.
LeFeuvre is "Scfi cybergirl" by Bulygin on DeviantArt.
Neon astronaut is "Funky Astronaut" by Amanieu Rebu on ArtStation.
Auto-gunner is "Combat Engineer Demo" by Johnson Ting on ArtStation.
Rocket Raider is "Pleinpaper" from the tumblr page of ishouldsketchmore (https://ishouldsketchmore.tumblr.com/post/143098281311/amp).
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For centuries, kings have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Now we have built such a one of our own devising. We freely admit it is flawed. What king was not? But this, our king, we can make better. Who else could say that? - Salvation by Numbers
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/8e/80/66/8e8066e2e466bf69130594b88a3de4cc.jpg)
Name: Guadalupe Selinas Torada
Rank: Ensign (rising)
Position: Supervisory Scriptrunner
County of Origin: Imperio Mexicano
DOB: 01-2-2041
Service Record:
Born 2041, Mazatlán, Mexico. PhD in post-conflict econometrics from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Post-graduate fellowship with Toron-Garcia, a grant-bundler working Venezulean Reconstruction. Accepted for SPAR assessment by Morgan Pearl Standard after correctly predicting 2064 trends in oil market contraction.
Denied SPAR due to hazards arising from interaction with medications required for suppression of Bollon-Sprauge Radiation Syndrome. At own request, participated in development of AEGAEON software package used to design and organize construction of the Caribbean Plate Tri-cities.
Joined 2067 Mexican National Commitment to Project Unity. Total mission training reduced to seven months. Prior to hibernation, worked an additional three months as a compiler in the Data Services Division helping to transliterate the preliminary A-Code behind the Unity's stellar navigation system to the century-old Apep proprietary machine language used in the Unity Data Core.
Approached by Morgan SafeHaven operatives during the Planetfall Crisis with an invitation to join in the CEO's escape. Declined. A resulting standoff was broken only with armed intervention ordered by Data Services Lt. Commander Tạ Dọc Thân. After rescue, subject was organized into Dr. Johann Anhaldt's ground team.
(https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54fc8146e4b02a22841f4df7/1527258648161-WIWI6JUM5ASFT43X35SR/Travis+Charest+-+45.jpg)
Ensign Torada participates in perimeter patrols as a junior officer in the faction militia. With her fire team, she burns back advancing xenofungus.
Psych Profile: Skeptic
Expresses core attitudes common among her generation: skepticism toward market economics and corporate replacement of public services, aversion to personalist politics, and openness toward expanded presence of Artificial Intelligence in daily life.
A technocrat. Believes that machine-assisted government is more trustworthy than the "corruptible" rule of popularly-elected leaders and self-interested oligarchs.
(https://oldschoolmanblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/navarone__0011_layer-4.jpg)
Programmers of the Data Services Division under Dr. Johann Anhaldt's command were historians as much as they were computer scientists. To build the perfect Intelligence, they first had to determine the desired course of action for thousands of potential scenarios. Basic predictive algorithms then added millions more examples from which the machine mind could "learn." Human analysts pruned at the margins, but there was always too much code to debug thoroughly.
Sources:
Portrait sourced from Pinterest, which traces back to a website called wallpapermaiden. Artist unknown.
Second image is the work of Travis Charest on characterdesignreferences.com.
Third image is the artillery crew from Guns of Navaronne.
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(https://i.imgur.com/nUXM9lm.jpg)
The stars above are not promises to be savored, but challenges we must rise to! We may have climbed out of Konstantin's cradle, tread lightly upon the floor of the cosmos - but the entire mansion of infinity lies before us. Two worlds are not enough. - New Year's speech at Roméo Dallaire Academy
While the majority of the Restoration of Earth follow the Returner Oath, the somber pledge to reunite with the lost planet regardless of its state, alternative sub-factions exist. A rising movement has been the Sojourner Axiom popularized by Colonel Vadim Kozlov, hero of the Salyut-78 rescue mission, overseer of the construction of the Trepak prototype LEO habitat, and veteran of untold CCCP spaceflights. The Soviet Slav had been swiftly appointed to the Unity mission as pilot cosmonaut, though not without rumors of the "honor" being Politburo-directed off-world exile for workerism. During Planetfall, sided with U.N. Marine General Marcel Salan out of military duty, bringing along his unit of cosmonauts and zero-G repair specialists. Labored as faction 'former team foreman and ground surveyor until the Restoration secured Hoppers. Managed the construction of the Highroad of Heroes between Reunité and Fort Crerar, completing work ahead of schedule.
Upon promotion to head of the Infrastructure Directorate, began lobbying for the reestablishment of a faction space program. Repeatedly rejected rebuffs on the grounds of insufficient resources for such an advanced project. Directed his directorate towards foundational work- securing of vital mineral sites, investment into propulsion technologies, and building of cosmonaut training pools for a program that lays perhaps mission centuries into the future. While investigated by the Control Directorate on multiple occasions, managed to retain position thanks to personal popularity, defeating accusations of Bonapartism or "going native" as a Kurtz.
Formalized the Axiom- a statement that neither human colonization of Chiron, nor a return to unknown Earth, is enough. Advances the belief that humanity must launch missions to settle Planet's orbit and satellites, as well as investigate the other regions of the system. Subscribes to the Pythia Hypothesis which states that the Unity diaspora is simply repeating the same experiences of Terran humanity, except at greater speed. Sojourners thus believe returning to the homeworld will not guarantee the species' survival. True loyalty to the mission is not simply reestablishing contact with the ones who gave the mission, but its fulfillment. Not only at Alpha Centauri, but beyond. More footholds must be gained. Our stay on Planet is temporary. We must go to outer space, every one of us.
Casting
Vadim Kozlov is portrayed by Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
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A brother in the bush is worth three three tanks of flame.
(https://i.imgur.com/AoUpPp2.jpg)
Hunters of the Leafcutter Lodge prepare a promontory point for camp, Monsoon Jungle
The Hunters of Chiron are a desultory assemblage of project-based work crews, survey scout units, defense jaeger packs, and ad hoc teams of every type. But over time, specializations may form even in such hunter-gatherer societies, especially those empowered by post-information age high technology, and burdened by the needs of the same tech. Over time, these loose groupings have slowly solidified into heterogeneous fraternal orders known as Hunters' Lodges, whose prime identity comes from the roles the members of each share.
(https://i.imgur.com/IYCuqKI.jpg)
The Leafcutter Lodge are wilderness survivalists who have braved the forests of Chiron. For untold aeons, the biomass of Planet was primarily composed of small-scale green vegetation, no greater than Terran palm trees- savanna-like carpets of grass and moss, with the odd vine or bush. Aside from the immense Monsoon Jungle, few other regions possess actual woods or weald. That is, until the coming of man and his agro-probes and greater big 'formers. With the Evergreen Revolution, botanists and arborists planted Earth-born trees spliced with nitrogen fixation genes. These plants proceeded to take root across vast expanses of Planet, birthing entirely new ecosystems as native species struggled to adapt to their presence.
Leafcutters are the Hunters who first planted those same groves, then upon their explosive growth thanks to planet's fertile soil and abundant sun, became their rangers. Masters of the bush and experts of survival under the canopy, they are the faction's pathfinders through the wild forests that have sprouted across the land. A brother of this lodge is expected to know how to build a lean-to, upgrade to a treehouse, track a glow mite swarm, build a fire, fell and delimb a tree, fight SMACERs, hunt a fangweevil, fish for vittles, survive a boil incursion.
(https://i.imgur.com/P6MAmFU.jpg)
Leafcutter Grandmaster Achilles Kifaru rebukes a Gaian trespasser at the Actaeon Forest
Many in the Leafcutter ranks are special forces veterans, with founding members from the U.S. Green Berets and Army Rangers, the Indian COBRA, the Indonesian Kopassus, and various British Imperial SAS's like that the Warden himself served in. Unexpectedly, the current grandmaster is a civilian: Achilles Kifaru, former Nairobi-based big game hunter and tourist guide, posted to the Forward Landing Team as a wildlife tracker and sharpshooter. Known for his stolid professionalism, bluff honor, and his heirloom Nitro Express Double Barrel Rifle elephant gun, Kifaru has united the loyalties of his uniformed brothers, marking the Leafcutters as "the hunters within the Hunters."
If you insist on setting up a worksite upwind of a nitrosaur den the only energy you'll be saving is the cost of a formal burial, not your coveted joules for these Madagascar rosewoods. Nitrosaurs can sense atmospheric changes from the carbon dioxide exhale of a single man, never mind a log team, and yours is producing gallons of it. Get your moveable feast out of here, or prepare for dinner! - comments from the Equatorial Foloe Expedition
Known for their steely reserve, hiding a bravado more muted but no less grandiose than the other lodges, the Leafcutters pride themselves for mastery over difficult and complex terrain. Other lodges, however, call them "O₂ addicts." Because many of the dense Earth-grown forests produce enough oxygen to serve as their own local atmosphere, visitors may go without breathing masks for hours at a time. This is considered by other Hunters as a distinct luxury.
Brushing off such base calumny from exopack wormlings, the Leafcutters themselves have agitated for greater focus on forest operations, as they view these newborn ecologies as the natural future of humanity's presence on Planet. They have called for a pact with the Shapers of Chiron to expedite the terraforming process. Leafcutters have also treated with the Emporium, providing training to the Brigadier's own forest squads for pay in rations and ammunition, acting as mercenaries for the mercenaries.
Casting
Achilles Kifaru is portrayed by Pete Postlethwaite as Roland Tembo from The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Notes:
The name Hunters' Lodges comes from the titular secret societies (http://'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunters%27_Lodges') in the pre-1837 Rebellion Canadas.
Actaeon was a great hunter trained by Chiron, who upon incurring the wrath of Artemis, was turned into a stag and hunted by his own hounds.
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Tech: Industrial Economics
Our first challenge is to create an entire economic infrastructure, from top to bottom, out of whole cloth. No gradual evolution from previous economic systems is possible, becauise there is no previous economic system. Each interdependent piece must be materialized simultaneously and in perfect working order; otherwise the system will crash before it ever gets off the ground. - The Centauri Monopoly
(https://d302e0npexowb4.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/10201345/Dok-Ondars-Den-of-Antiquities-star-wars-galaxys-edge-blooloop.jpg)
For most colonies, "profit" was an afterthought; something to be considered long after everyone was sheltered, bandaged, and fed. In Morganite territory, within mere weeks, it was practically the only thought. Base services from air supply to medical care were furnished by contractors.
Service costs were deducted automatically from each workers' salary. Morganites became notorious for chasing deals by flitting between their own and other factions' bases, creating Planet's first reliable travel flows, and with them, consumer price signals.
Those who couldn't pay owed a periodic labor tax akin to the medieval corvée. Eventually, more than a quarter of the Morganite colony was reduced to this plight. Often, the CEO used them to advance projects that enhanced his personal wealth.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/40/5e/5c/405e5ced037a6336b284a97672441376.png)
Unencumbered by breathing apparatus, Morgan Security trainees perform Battle Drill #7 on the edge of the Monsoon Jungle oxygen sink.
It did not take long for the Chief Executive to suspect that the contract killers of Morgan SafeHaven were losing their sharp edge. His answer was to bring new gladiators into the stable. In short order, he chartered Morgan Security, then the obliquely-titled Morgan Industrial Defense Service (MIDS).
On paper, each unit was to perform a unique function. The once-proud praetorians of SafeHaven were retasked from personal protection of the Board and CEO to objective raids against other factions. Morgan Security assumed responsibility for base defense under a "bunkers, barriers, burn-out" model that was supposed to keep their focus outside the perimeter walls. MIDS stood watch in the opposite direction after receiving authorization under Board policy to police the Company's employees and secure its property against theft and misuse.
As it happened, Morgan encouraged inter-jurisdictional rivalries and rewarded poaching. The three units therefore became almost indistinguishable from one another but for their uniforms. SafeHaven continued to post gate watches alongside Morgan Security. The infamous Saharan mercenaries also retained control of the small brigs in both Morgan Industries and Morgan Metagenics, indifferent to formal reprimands. The Board also repeatedly overlooked the fact that both MIDS and SafeHaven made a habit of joining Morgan Security militia during base defensive actions despite refusing to train together, resulting in multiple friendly fire incidents. This was hardly mere comradeship: neither of the two "attending" units slouched in claiming the bounties offered for adversaries killed or captured.
Here was the point: military service in the Morganite world was a money-making venture. Under faction bylaws, the officers of Morgan Industries were compelled to purchase commissions in Morgan Security--a reflection, Morgan said, of the company's public service ethos. Yet corporate policy also forbade officers from taking that very service on grounds that "sideline ventures" deprived the employer of the employee's full value. Ergo, substitutions had to be obtained. (This substitution was usually a middle manager, but, as time went on, increasingly an ex-Spartan or a SMACER.) Handicraft victuallers paid for annual monopolies on sales to different units, then squeezed them for every cartridge and canteen. SafeHaven, which at times made an art form of doing the outrageous, demanded and won the right to charge training fees to the very Morgan Security personnel that replaced them. All three outfits abused their arrest powers to build up chain gangs whose labor could be sold for profit.
The natural conclusion of Morgan's policy was to cripple faction military potential. Loyalties and doctrine split three ways. The system was also grossly top-heavy by design, with three sets of leaders performing the same work. (Left behind in the evacuated trenches below Xerxion, anti-disassociationalist soldiers found hand-drawn playing cards featuring more than four dozen individual Morganite officers, many in the ironic pose of the Suicide Jack.) Taken on the whole, any benefits from competition were entirely wiped out.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/001/068/824/large/jan-wessbecher-smoking-lady-06.jpg?1439363247)
Unstructured time was sacrosanct among the Peacekeepers, who used it for lively debate and other forms of self-enrichment. Gaians hiked and meditated. Hunters raced. Spartans relished their bloodsport. Most factions firmly prohibited more than six hours of work for health and safety reasons. Morgan scoffed at this calculus. His governors collected a tax on leisure not spent at approved amusements (i.e., corporate gambling halls). Many "dodgers" figured they got ahead by engaging in individual entrepreneurial activity, including the sale of their own excess labor. Accident rates soared during these after-hours "gigs," when workers were already exhausted in both mind and body. Prosthetic limbs were disturbingly common in Morganite settlements. Companies would front injured workers the cost of limb replacement. The recipient rented their prosthetic under very disadvantageous terms. When their credit ran out, the limb seized up.
Sources:
First image is Disney concept art for Dok Ondar's Den of Antiquities.
Second image is from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Third image is "Celsius 13 - Worker revamp" by Jan Weßbecher on ArtStation.
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This technology represents a promise to our children, and to our children's children, that they can sleep safely under a blanket of peace. - Address to the Federation of Atomic Scientists, 1962
Project Orion was the American effort to perfect nuclear pulse propulsion as a method of interplanetary, and especially interstellar, space travel. Rooted in theories propounded by Polish mathematician and physicist Stanislaw Ulam and American physicist Frederick Feines in the late the 1940s, Project Orion culminated in the successful construction and deployment of the world's first nuclear-powered space superiority platform, the space battleship of the same name, and touched off a century-long military space race that ended in disaster for the Soviet Union. Feasibility calculations were completed at Los Alamos National Laboratory and by General Atomics. Ground-side construction took place at Newport News Shipbuilding, the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which Project Orion helped save from closure. Funding and direction came from the U.S. Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with additional input provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Northrup-Grumman, and the United States Marine Corps. The prime contractor was General Atomics.
Elementally, the vision for Orion involved using a sequence of one megaton thermonuclear shaped charges to create extremely high exhaust velocity and thrust, far exceeding the speed factors available from chemical rocket engines. Acting on a pusher plate mounted at the rear of the payload, the explosions could propel 400,000 tons to a terminal speed of 0.03c during an acceleration run of 10 days. As many as 300,000 of the compact, 6" diameter, disc-shaped charges would need to be released at a rate of one charge every 1.1 seconds to achieve this result. The Coca-Cola Company consulted on the design of the mechanism used for that purpose.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgNJe2rWYAEI-H-.jpg:large)
U.S.S. Orion bore 80 launch tubes for its magazine of 480 nuclear missiles, each tipped with an MIRV. Additional offensive punch came from three Mk42 5" naval guns on limited-traverse turrets in the central hull. For protection, the ship was girdled by eight retractable Close-In Weapons Systems, while the naval guns could be loaded with the Casaba shell, a form of radiation bomb used to melt incoming projectiles--or Soviet missiles headed for American and allied targets. The battleship, under the command of the Air Force's Deep Space Bombardment Force, embarked 80 Marines of the Lunar Expeditionary Unit and spent most of its life in Near-Earth space. She received a significant upgrade in 1992, including a single prow-mounted 100 kW X-Ray laser and installation of additional barracks space for another 40 of the indispensable Marines.
The technological, political, environmental, economic, and cultural consequences of Project Orion were felt worldwide.
Along with the Apollo Program, which placed a permanent habitat on the Moon in 1980, Project Orion ushered in an era of technological flourishing. The first locus was in the United States and Great Britain, while the second was in the Soviet Union. Research on the shape and yield of atomic explosions and the need to demonstrate political confidence in the technologies underlying the Orion concept breathed new life into the Atoms for Peace program. Defying credible and growing concern about atomic fallout, industrial-grade nuclear devices became widely used in mining and terraformation. Dozens of nuclear power stations were built throughout the United States where the abundance of cheap energy led to a collapse in fossil fuel markets, promoted a general trend toward electrification of consumer products including automobiles, and tempted Army experiments with laser weaponry. The amount of intellectual potential devoted to Orion by both superpowers created the so-called Atomic Generation. Between 1956 and 1984, one in three adults in either country spent ten or more years working in a STEM field. Echoing the downstream effects of atomic research on the civilian energy industry, lessons-learned from the Orion Program and its Russian Counterpart, Project Zharptitsa (жар-пти́ца, or "Firebird"), also caused a flowering of aeronautical and commercial space ventures. Indeed, the Orion herself was constructed in two parts, and the pusher plate, which had been severely ablated during blast-off from the Nevada desert, was reworked in high orbit using uranium mined from Near Earth Asteroids by a growing fleet of independently-owned-and-operated spacecraft.
Perhaps the most important outcome of Orion was to demonstrate the viability of the propulsion concept for what would become the Chiron Pathfinder Probe, a pusher-plate design of the mid-twenty-first-century that made the journey to Alpha Centauri in just 40 years by taking advantage of compact fusion pellets to gain more thrust at less weight than with the original bombs.
Orion kicked the Cold War into overdrive. Soviet Premier Marat Barrikad, who had spent two years in San Francisco with the Soviet consulate there, rejected the traditional dictates of Escalation Theory. Knowing that the Americans would beat the Soviets to a nuclear missile shield, he guessed that the resulting surfeit of confidence would tend to soothe rather than aggravate American bellicosity, creating conditions in which voters and politicians in the United States would tolerate an expansion of Soviet power outside the Western Hemisphere. Accordingly, Barrikad's Politburo reduced funding for Zharptitsa while dialing conventional aggression sharply upwards to compensate, including on and beneath the lunar surface, where Soviet and American troops clashed seven times in the 1970s with deadly results. Barrikad also repaired his country's rift with the Chinese Communists, wooed India firmly into the Soviet sphere, subjected the Dutch to a twenty-year insurgency in the Netherlands East Indies that led to partial Indonesian independence, and nursed client regimes in Burma, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, Italy, Nigeria, Libya, Somali, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
Radiological pollution created by the nuclear Space Race led to a sharp increase in cancers worldwide. Several nuclear disasters have been linked to Project Orion-inspired reactor construction, both directly and indirectly. In the end, Congress and the Air Force managed to protect their investment from cancellation only at the cost of a massive erosion of public trust that helped fuel violent eco-terrorism beginning from the 1990s and laid the groundwork for the pervasive anti-government sentiments of the following century.
(https://storiesbywilliams.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/freeside.jpg)
U.S.S. Orion was joined by U.S.S. Odysseus in 1994, then by the Soviet Admiral Gagarin in 1998. Gagarin, seen here docking a Buran orbiter, carried more than a dozen short-range rocket pods the purpose of which was to disperse smart debris in the path of oncoming Marine assault shuttles.
The complexity of pusher-plate shock absorption was very high. Pusher plates were highly prone to damage and misalignment, especially if, as in the case of the Soviets, nuclear, not conventional, explosives were used to break Earth's atmosphere during first take-off. Furthermore, the thermonuclear warheads used by the Gagarin were of unreliable design. Prokhor Zakharov warned his colleagues and superiors of these two risks in a position paper in 2023. Four years later, Gagarin's pusher plate malfunctioned with fatal results. During routine repositioning from geosynchronous orbit above the dark side of the Moon, a bomb pellet failed to pass through the port in the pusher plate and exploded prematurely, wrecking much of the mission module. The ship was stricken. While there was enough mass between the crew and the explosion's epicenter for crew to evacuate, the escape pod failed on Earth atmospheric reentry with the loss of all hands.
Disaster prompted the Politburo to take up again the shelved research on chemical rockets, leading Zakharov to the fusion stardrive he built for Unity in 2061.
Sources:
Space Battleship Orion picture by Andrei Stanavov. Found on ToughSF Twitter feed but originally from ArtStation.
X-Ray lasers appear as a warship-scale weapon in Babylon 5.
The science for this article was taken from the Wikipedia page for "Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)" and "Fusion rocket," as well as the YouTube video "The insane USAF space battleship that almost got built - Project Orion Battleship" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FBwXyPWG5o) by Found and Explained.
Space battleship Admiral Gagarin is an image of an O'Neill Cylinder from the webpage "Stories by Williams." (https://storiesbywilliams.com/2012/07/09/the-oneill-cylinder/) For her systems, I was also inspired by some pictures found on Deep Space Forces on rhysy.net (http://www.rhysy.net/deep-space-force.html) and commentary on space warfare (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewartactic.php#id--Combat_Theater--Deep_Space) on the Atomic Rockets website.
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Tonight is a good night for musings, I think.
As I have pointed out before, Venn diagrams for the original, expansion, and RtD factions overlap in interesting ways. Looking for your commentary here, intrepid readers.
Factions that think about by whom we should be governed.
The Gaians believe we should be governed by women. Precisely which women is harder to say. I assume most are rabid enthusiasts of direct democracy. Potential for pathological consensus-seeking?
Chairman Yang of the Human Labyrinth asserts that we should be governed by an enlightened ruler. Exactly what that means, only he can say, which might be the point.
The Peacekeeping Forces place their trust in representative democracy.
The New State believes that we should be governed by an elite who are bred to that purpose. So does the Human Ascendancy, come to think of it. Interesting problem to chew on: I'd never considered that the two were so similar.
The Children of the Atom say we should let computers govern on our behalf. They don't even seem to worry too much about equipping a "master programmer" to do too much of the work behind the scenes.
Morganites would say we should be governed by the people who have been most successful at accumulating wealth, the only true measure of merit.
The Restoration opts for a complete stratocracy. Officer on deck!
I assume the Pilgrims would say we should be governed by people who have property, which isn't the same as people who have moveable wealth. The idea being that occupation and improvement of land is somehow a more meaningful endeavor in this world than the accumulation of commodities. There is a kind of community benefit implied there, since most commodities are intended to be consumed by an individual.
Factions that think about what we should value.
The University says that we should value knowledge itself.
The Gaians say that we must value the health of Planet.
The Spartans say we should value the capacity to do violence, which basically means faction war-making potential.
The Morganites value wealth itself.
The Peacekeeping Forces value ethical behavior as an end unto itself.
The Lord's Conclave values the practice of faith traditions, leading to personal fulfillment.
The Human Tribe simply wants people to value their neighbors. Cracking open a can of beer is practically a civic duty.
The Dreamers of Chiron, or some percentage of them, value perception. To them, an intangible experience is every bit the equal of a tangible one.
The Tomorrow Institute wants us to value the past in the form of information. If Lal's faction articulates the government's "Responsibility to Protect," then Metrion's puts forth the "Right to Know."
The Data Angels value Jazz--the demonstration of skill in the new digital medium.
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You pave sixteen klicks, and what will you net?
A bad case of worms you can’t ever forget
Ole Garland won’t you help me ‘cause I don’t know
My brain’s been blown by a fungus’s spore
- "Sixteen Klicks, Or a Roadman’s Lament"
(https://i.imgur.com/maPciV0.jpg)
Roadrunner point men watch over Dai Seung Haetae road rollers on a new trail through the Uaelium Basin
The Roadrunners Lodge is known as the “father of all lodges,” both for its large membership, and the way in which many lesser lodges (and the careers of their initiates) descend through it. That is because it is the home for all who work in one of the most fundamental Hunters of Chiron activities: the art of road construction, and maintenance. From the beginning, the modus operandi of the Forward Landing Team has been to survey a region, determine its viability for utility, and then blaze a trail for future travelers to follow. Road scouts, fungal-fumigators, road builders, and the watchful flame-sentries who keep them alive, all may be members of the Roadrunners Lodge.
But despite the vital nature of the work, it is also a basic posting for most Hunters. Whether rookie inductees from other factions or youngsters born of the faction, most begin as Roadrunners on the vast 'former teams or the scout patrol units accompanying their duty. Like all necessary duties, it is difficult, often tedious work, without glory beyond the top-down official praise granted to it. Indeed, the Roadrunner grandmaster position is a revolving door, sparking the faction simile, "as dodgy as a roadrunner." To compensate, Warden Marsh has been recognized as the perpetual grandmaster of the lodge, and this is not simply de jure - because roadbuilding is essential work, more often than not the upper hierarchy of the faction unilaterally decides where these essential workers will go, and what they will build. Unlike other lodges, the Roadrunners do not find themselves having leeway in choosing what work to pursue. They are also the primary source for disaffected drones within Hunter society, though that is also because of the vast size of the lodge.
(https://i.imgur.com/9wkD24Y.jpg)
Roadrunner 180° "True South" squires during a typical day's toil
Hunters' lodges are neither labor unions nor social castes, but contain aspects of both. Thus, it is possible for a Hunter to become members of multiple lodges over a career, even if it is frowned upon and seen with suspicion by loyal brothers. One major exception are former Roadrunners. Many have aspirations beyond the road, and use their hard-earned experiences and the friendships they forge to gain admittance into other duties, and from thence on, into other lodges. Those who prefer the task of clearcutting xenofungus for its own sake might join the Goatmen who freely roam the land, exterminating crimson kudzu. Those with show strong mental constitutions and skill at fighting while on the road might join the Salamandra Lodge to become Grub-eaters, the faction's counter-mindworm specialists. Still others who enjoy building, but prefer more interesting constructs than simple concrete might join the Sunriders (founded by a Son of Centauri-Ra sun priest and seasoned solar energy engineer), or those who wish to dig deeper into the earth, Durin's Folk. Truly, while the lodge of the Roadrunners may be where many begin their journeys, few Hunters wish it to be the end of their road.
Contrary to what you may think, I do not hate the car. I hate the expressway and the overpass, the car park and congestion. Smog that soaks into a man's lungs until he is little better than his Cardiff ancestors who stole coal from the ground and died sleeping upright in bed, coughing. I detest what man has wrought in the name of transport. A car on its own is merely a tool. - Mistakes of Earth
(https://i.imgur.com/FIvge8u.jpg)
Unity Heavy Rover and Cagiva Rift Canyon driven by Saluki scouts take off for adventure through the Nieuwe Veldt
After the titular responsibility as harvesters of game meat, and more often as protectors against dangerous predators and invasive species, each Hunter of Chiron is called to be a wilderness scout, capable of guiding both his brothers and "tourists" of other factions safely through the wilds. While no labor formation- and thus no lodge- lacks a scouting element any more than they would lack riflemen or flame-bearers, the Saluki Lodge are truly the scouts among scouts. Among the most prestigious of brotherhoods, the Salukis excel at every form of personal recon that the faction offers. Whether on foot (Treadwell), mounted (Centaurs), or on motorized vehicles (Superchargers), these scouts serve to be the Hunters' advance guard, mapping out the uncertain and hazardous spaces of Planet, spotting its threats, neutralizing those dangers if need be. Each Saluki pledges to be as swift as a locust, as secretive as a sealurk, and as strong as a demon boil.
(https://i.imgur.com/cZYTIaX.png)
A lone Saluki Supercharger in a Red Bull Motors RB3000X pursuit vehicle prepares to do battle with an assemblage of SMACER technicals
While the Warden is loathe to expand the use of rovers, particularly those that have not yet been retooled to use batteries or fuel cells, growing dangers on the frontier has necessitated the use of such instruments of ecological destruction. Motorized attacks from both non-factional SMACERs and organized adversaries have tested the mettle of the Hunters of Chiron, and so the Salukis must ride forth into battle as knights of the road. While Spartans are an ever-present enemy, the Darwin Raiders led by Robin Huxley, a former ex-Hunter herself, have emerged as a threat after their capture of an oversized ARC cargo pod containing scout rovers and megabikes originally intended for the New Two Thousand. The Raiders' newly-formed "Road Furies" are a menace of the roads, striking at trade caravans and supply convoys alike for their "empire of the next age" hidden deep in the wilds. The Warden has had enough of these errant road warriors. He bids his greyhounds to hunt them down.
Casting
The Roadrunner squires are portrayed by John C. Reilly, Fred Armisen, and Tim Heidecker as the astronauts of Moonbase 8.
Notes:
Giant land vehicle art is from "Colour Sketches Compilation 9 (http://'https://www.artstation.com/artwork/q9O1BR')" by Kunrong Yap
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Every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind
It doesn't do to be overly proud when taming an animal. Firstly, what is domestication but the primal step towards mechanization? Long before our ancestors could fashion a pulley, they had already taught beasts of burden to till their fields. Separating nature itself from nature, never mind man. Conversely, do not presume to truly know who is domesticating whom in such a relationship. Nature has had an eternity's head start. - Mistakes of Earth
(https://i.imgur.com/DeP5R9M.jpg)
Saluki scouts including a 15° Centaur knight explore the Nessus Canyon
For many, many mission years after Planetfall, the zoologists, veterinarians, and animal husbandry experts brought aboard the UNS Unity had their skills relegated to "living archival" status. They were retrained in the sciences relevant to the healing and study of human biology, or to the farming of plants, as well as exobiological disciplines. But they devoted hours each week to recording their expertise, creating vast stretches of datatape documenting long-gone practices that the U.N. on Chiron or the Tomorrow Institute - as well as Oscar van de Graaf, in one of his more sentimental moments- could not bear to be forgotten into the mists of Earth.
That is not to say that the mission was a complete failure as an interstellar Noah's ark. The Unity carried a vast amount of frozen ovum and spermatozoa, tissue samples, and genetic information on the species of Earth. Of course, much of this priceless data was damaged, even lost during Planetfall, or at least buried in the inaccessible data stashes of still-unreclaimed Landing Pods. But a good amount of it was preserved, and elaborate efforts were made to attempt to retrieve further legacies: the Schreiber Project, that University of Planet/Togra Labs spin-off, conducted a massive buy-up of taxidermist items, fur coats, even animal skin rugs that were brought along by megacorporate executives. These items were carefully examined, genetic material extracted, and added to the burgeoning Earth BioGenome Project on the datalinks.
Quite some time later, after not only the completion of the EBP but the invention of Decanting Chambers, most of Planet celebrated the Thawing of the Frozen Zoo. Long-gone mammals could not be easily and accurately cloned without need of surrogates. And so, the brothers of the Wrangler Lodge gained new purpose.
(https://i.imgur.com/edzBzVj.png)
An Irwin-class heavily-modified Unity Heavy Rover carries Wrangler animal acquisition specialists on a Subrid Hunt
Until the mass availability of such clones, the animal handling experts of the Hunters of Chiron had mainly assisted the faction's ecologists, providing insight on the migration of Planet's species as well as live specimens for the Grey Parrots to study. As Hunters were not much for large-scale sedentary agriculture, former livestock farmers did not do much in the way of subrid ranching, other than when contracted to by other factions. Some found work as guides to Morganites on safari, toting their signature Lindstradt Air Gun tranquilizer rifles and pistols as rich medicos and administrators readily missed at Golden Scale Hawks and Lindley's Lesser Crawl Bugs.
So when scientifically resurrected old Earth species appeared, the clinically life-extended old stable hands, or their descendants, now had bigger fish to fry. They could now tend to the steeds of the faction: equines, camelids, and ratites, ridden by Saluki Centaurs of the Epona, Creosote bush, and Robinson rites. These were not simply directly cloned creatures, but entirely new gengineered varieties able to survive within the nitrogen atmosphere of Planet, with enhanced musculature and robust vascular systems to withstand the stronger gravity. As many misgivings as the Warden might have had against the creation of such synthetic fauna, even he could not resist the chance to once again ride a Selale stallion through the pink and purple plains of Planet, shooting at Razorbeaks from horseback. Polo was subsequently revived, becoming a hotly pay-per-viewed spectacle across the datalinks, and the Hunters of Chiron boasted some of the professional sport's premier teams.
Where does the frontier end? What is the true border between the unsettled and civilization? And must human endeavor inevitably diminish the wild? These questions are worth asking in terms of both space and time. - Peregrinations of Planet
(https://i.imgur.com/7m4Rdu5.jpg)
Wrangler pastoralists on a near-anaerobic clone cattle farm outside Strong Meadow
Ultimately, the arrival of revived Terran species marked a new era for the Hunters of Chiron. Nearly-anaerobic clone species modified to survive in hypoxic environments now allowed the faction to engage in livestock production previously constrained to agricultural dome interiors. It also represented a cultural shift away from the Warden's past doctrine on accommodation with nature, taking minimal concessions. The possibility of hunting big game lost to old Earth, of becoming cowpokes once more, of the prospect of free range steak were hard temptations to overcome. Once marginal, the Wrangler and the Grey Parrots gradually increased the scope of their work. With the coming of Centauri Empathy, these lodges would be the keepers of the Hunters' forays into mind worm brood training.
Notes:
Explorers of the magenta vista artwork is "A Strange Land (http://'https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8vnNw')" by Kunrong Yap
The Earth BioGenome Project, like the Human Genome Project, is a real project. Its due date is 2028.
Farm scene is from "Colour Sketches Compilation 8 (http://'https://www.artstation.com/artwork/28LabA')" by Kunrong Yap
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The first step to knowing God is knowing his greatest creation: the self. - A Prayer for Peace
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c638f399-2836-4c1b-b8ba-48bfe4b681a7/dcc7ilg-875de269-8ae5-4ba4-b072-21913ed48c00.png/v1/fill/w_1299,h_615,q_70,strp/expedition_v2_by_otomozok_dcc7ilg-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzU4IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYzYzOGYzOTktMjgzNi00YzFiLWI4YmEtNDhiZmU0YjY4MWE3XC9kY2M3aWxnLTg3NWRlMjY5LThhZTUtNGJhNC1iMDcyLTIxOTEzZWQ0OGMwMC5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.YKaJ4tr7hO54oslD9oMN_eYuJAS8pmPAmOIpPUWDR1w)
Journeymen of the Timekeeper's Lodge contemplate the Desecration of Faith.
Sixty years after Planetfall, at the place called Shurath, where once a wide river curled, the Lord's Conclave finished the man that was a mountain. He was, said Sister Miriam Godwinson, "our fitting penance," built to acknowledge the great hurt done to their fellow survivors during the hungry days when the Nauvoo Legion had swarmed undefended camps like the frogs and locusts of Exodus.
Godwinson's neighbors were unimpressed. "I cannot fill empty bellies with the self-righteousness of the blind!" Governor Oscar van de Graaf thundered to his stakeholders. At his behest, the propertied families among the New Two Thousand voted a special allowance for military operations that put two thousand militia in the field. Miriam's people defended their great monument to the last. The kasan stone from which Man was built dispersed directed-energy weapons fire with better than 99.2% efficiency. The Nauvoo Legion built fighting positions inside the feet and ankles of the statue, resisting the Pilgrim assault for decades with only a minimum of effort. Then, in Mission Year 94, a separate upcountry campaign severed supply lines to the Shurath Valley. No quarter was asked, and none was given. The Governor celebrated his victory by inviting the Shapers of Chiron to dump their spoils at the foot of "this bold-faced monstrosity." In ten years, the tallest structure on Planet was buried to its ears in tailings from Coordinator Nagao's borehole mines. The valley became a wasteland.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/64357d5caa11ac076ee450a658f6f426/tumblr_pmxlzkXG6K1t9x55so2_1280.jpg)
A Pilgrim Rocketeer is ambushed by Chiron Guards during training at the Cloudbase Academy. Note the soldier "crouched" in cloud cover, a defensive technique peculiar to his faction. (Maintaining position in the air required constant consumption of fuel and could fully deplete a typical soldier's fuel supply in less than a minute. The Guard favored additional thigh-mounted drop tanks for this reason.
Rocket-assisted infantry were considered useless on Old Earth because of the ubiquity of cheap, ground-based air defenses. On Chiron, where "legging it" was substantially less viable and armaments of all kinds were less common, this modality of combat enjoyed a total renaissance after its MY11 debut by the Honored Dead.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/1b0255ec384a304bbdaca934eede6259/47efec0d8d5f0e0c-43/s1280x1920/df00813a324d4e5eabc2e46a5a1f84b1e8d1fcd5.jpg)
Salvage, especially self-aware salvage, was valuable--or emotionally alluring--enough for enterprise souls to risk life and limb in the trackless places of Chiron. Here, a SMACER approaches the outskirts of Volokhovo Center, hoping no doubt to reawaken the intelligence that once animated the shell he drags behind. Ironically, his attached to a robot has not precluded forming close bonds with a more traditional companion.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/052/983/712/large/friendly-robot-p0-00000.jpg?1661161409)
This SMACER has undoubtedly stumbled across rich pickings, perhaps from a crashed Supply Pod, though his loot has not included firearms if the primitive spear is any indication. The blade is probably bathed in xenofungal oils to induce delirium in his opponents. A long-band radio helps him track the movements of potential quarry or communicate with whatever comrades he might have to hand. He wears a rust tech's hardhat in lieu of a combat helmet. The tunic is too short; he has found it expedient to add sleeves of another fabric.
Sources:
First picture is "Expedition V2" by otomozok on DeviantArt.
Second and third picture are from theamazingdigitalart (https://theamazingdigitalart.tumblr.com/post/182809144369/the-amazing-digital-art-of-faraz-shanyar) on Tumblr. The former is from Fara Shanyar, while the latter is credited to Friendly Robot, François Leroy. Both are on ArtStation.
"Volokhovo" is from Fantasy Name Generators (https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/russian-town-names.php).
Final picture is "Darkest Odyssey Portrait" by Friendly Robot, François Leroy, on ArtStation.
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But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee (pt. 1)
The guiding purpose of life is to stay alive. Watch any animal in its natural state - all it simply wants to do is to keep breathing. It doesn't care about beliefs or philosophy. Whenever a creature's behavior is severed from the realities of its existence, it risks extinction. These Progenitors missed that their worldview had become archaic. They went extinct. - Journal of the Jungle
(https://i.imgur.com/KSYMWSI.jpg)
Babel fish bwana Montclair Carlo and expeditionary team at the entrance of the Alien Sanctum
After all the time they spent away from the population centers of civilization and on the unexplored frontier, it is perhaps natural that the Hunters of Chiron were behind one of the greatest xenoarcheological discoveries in Planet's prehuman history. But with regards to the Babel fish affair, they were simply navigators for interests with far greater ambitions than their own.
It all began during one of the many Corporate Vendettas that afflicted Planetary society from time to time. The Sixth one, to be exact. This one's arrival was written in the suns- as Hercules (Alpha Centauri B) drifted closer towards Chiron on an imminent perihelion event, the powers of Planet were wracked with anxious activity at the prospect of the disruption it would take. The previous event had been particularly devastating with no fewer than eighteen demon boil-led hordes attacking major bases, leading to the unofficial suspension of multiple vendettas by frontline commanders who turned their arms against the very wildlife of Planet. The Great Planetary War saw unlikely alliances between Believer and University, Hive and Peacekeeper, Pilgrim and Tribal, Gaian and Spartan, Dreamer and Phoenix. Retreating Dynamic Enterprise forces set the entire Asbolus MorganOxy complex ablaze as a giant thermobaric bomb to stem the blood-red tide that swarmed towards the nearby settlement of Morgan Chemistry. The CEO would later personally decorate the rank and file responsible for the evacuation, while the officer behind the desperate gambit was decapitated, a grim warning against considering such a financially costly tactic for future engagements.
In the course of commerce it is inevitable for conflict to arise. When faced with aggression it is important to remain rational and never stray from your core business values. But let those corporate raiders who seek to interfere with legitimate business be warned: the market will not tolerate your attacks on prosperity. - call for peace during the Sixth Corporate Vendetta
(https://i.imgur.com/g2ZojuK.jpg)
Nathan Weismuller, director of the Chiron Cartel, gave his blessing to the Babel fish endeavor
So as this new perihelion approached, established interests conspired to escape its consequences. Just as the last event ended with the factions of man laying down their weapons and uniting, this one was heralded by humanity squabbling among itself. The Sixth Corporate Vendetta was kicked off when a vacuum balloon satellite owned by HarriSat Inc. of the Chiron Cartel detected anomalous energy signatures deep in the dense southeast corner of the Monsoon Jungle. This was followed by the disappearance of a mature boil, nicknamed "King Kong", that the company had been tracking in the exact same region. While some personnel were distraught at the apparent loss of the local field team, corporate leadership was amazed by a possible phenomenon that could be used against mind worms.
Morgan Industries industrial probe teams, having infiltrated the free enterprise zone for mission decades, quickly notified the head office about this spectacular prospect to forestall the incoming perihelion disaster. The recently re-founded NoxCo, who had bought word of the discovery from a disgruntled Morganite probe, agreed heartily. Struan's of Planet extractors, after recovering this news from one of Eric Preston's lackeys in a post-celebratory state of inebriated unconsciousness, informed middle managers who next called up the company's deniable assets to investigate this potential lifeline while Cobb was distracted by the latest MindMaze. Meanwhile, the Global Energy Exchange watched the fluctuations in usage that arose as these corporate factions mobilized.
What ensued was a series of further espionage, industrial sabotage, executive assassinations, double-crosses, and widespread litigation as half the free market of Planet attempted to prevent the other half from mounting an effective expedition into the Monsoon Jungle to exploit the discovery. No one wanted to be deprived of a secret weapon against the coming swarm; therefore, everyone else must be prevented from getting it first.
While HarrisSat was the first victim of the data theft, and the pacifistic Cartel was ill-equipped to deal with the mercenaries and sōkaiya saboteurs harassing their companies' shareholders, they did benefit from the faction's decentralized structure and lack of rigid brand loyalty. Spurring the distraction of the fray, CEO H.R. Harris tasked Dr. Laura Sattler, an ex-probe team operative, to launch an expedition into the Monsoon Jungle while the Director ran interference for the company. By threatening to disrupt Preston's precious supply chains, NoxCo's attention was momentarily dispersed while Sattler assembled a team using non-HarrisSat resources. Thus entered the Hunters of Chiron.
(https://i.imgur.com/dWwCnMM.jpg)
Casting
Montclair Carlo is portrayed by Ernie Hudson as Captain Monroe Kelly from Congo.
Nathan Weismuller is portrayed by Lee Pace as Brother Day from Foundation.
Laura Sattler is portrayed by Laura Linney as Dr. Karen Ross from Congo.
Notes:
The opening quote by Montclair Carlo is a paraphrasing of the dialogue of Charles Munro from Congo by Michael Crichton, pg. 175.
Vacuum airships or vacuum balloons are a real concept that date to the 17th century.
Sōkaiya are Japanese corporate extortionists and they are an incredibly wild, cyberpunk concept.
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There are only two watchwords of progress: "Stay out!" - Manifesting Destinies
(https://i.redd.it/p7s2ns9s5ad31.jpg)
Most property on Chiron belonged to the commons until the third century after Planetfall. The need to construct, preserve, and maintain life-giving public infrastructure influenced Chironian laws, traditions, and attitudes toward both labor and leisure.
The cost for vandalism, sabotage, and repeat carelessness could be expulsion from even the most compassionate of colonies, a fate statistically indistinguishable from a sentence of death by hunger, asphyxiation, or exposure.
With few other joys available and medical resources thin, colonists readily turned to drink. Fungal wines were easy to source, and the scarcity of workers strengthened their hand against the bosses when it came to temperance enforcement.
Though terrestrial religiosity was frequently confused with abstentions behavior, Conclavists sipped as frequently as Hunters and Drones. Unfiltered drippings from rust-eaten moisture snares could be a potent base for hallucinatory brews.
(https://artlords-artwork.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image/9875/display_comp_workbw.jpg)
Rwanda National Police Constable Egon Hazikimana mended fences among the early Peacekeepers with so much deft that a grateful populace knew him as "Carpenter." He refused to carry a shredder pistol, the standard sidearm of his era, and instead wielded a retooled Federal Riot Gun. The canister shells it took were fused for near-instant detonation and cast a net that immobilized targets.
Hazikimana was lost while on a scout before the end of the first mission year. U.N. Marines tracked the wreck of his stripped-down Rover to the remains of a dry camp pitched by men who had stolen from the main colony. Despite considerable evidence of a battle and dozens of booted footprints left in the loam, no bodies were ever recovered save that of the ringleader, dispatched by a single bullet to the center of his forehead.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/009/630/684/large/pablo-olivera-sons-art-afueras-vista-muro-v18.jpg?1520030286)
Fort Kasinahwan lacked for aesthetics, not firepower. When Oscar van de Graaf sealed the Kern Pass to the Shapers of Chiron, a sudden volte-face that, after more than a decade of cooperation, the Coordinator seemed not to have expected, the Pilgrims were obliged to garrison ten such redoubts on the Southern Ripheus Rim alone.
(https://www.this-is-cool.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/the-scifi-art-of-pierre-deschamps-03.jpeg)
The Chairman hid his people's wealth in plain sight. The "Castles of Iqthbalan" were misidentified for decades as thermal features by surveyors as experienced as Vinchenson Parke and Vadim Kozlov. Then, in MY48, a Pilgrim scavenger witnessed one of the stacks drain spontaneously into an unmistakably artificial grate while on a skijat flyover. The stone basins were being used as vessels for the Hive's most noxious industrial chemicals.
Sources:
First picture is "Water Farm" by Rob Cross on r/ImaginaryTechnology.
Second picture is "See You Space Cowboy" by Barry Brown on Digital ArtLords.
Third picture is "The Wall," concept art for a project called "Sons of Light," by Pablo Olivera on ArtStation.
Fourth picture is by French artist Pierre Deschamps, as found on this-is-cool.co.uk.
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The best doors knock back. - The Good Neighbor's Bible
(https://news.clearancejobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/1150x732-2022-08-23T211928.843.jpg)
Tribal leaders were keen to enhance the protection of their very few armored fighting vehicles, precious assets that could not easily be replaced.
Reactive armors exploit chemical or physical actions to limit the damage inflicted by incoming projectile weapons fire on contact, especially to protected vehicles. The standard technique called for applying reactive elements atop exposed armored surfaces as appliqué. Unlike ablatives, which merely supplemented the absorptive potential of the underlying armor plate against all hazards, reactive armors could deflect or destroy incoming projectiles. Standard techniques involved using metal "bricks" of high-brisance explosive to counteract an incoming round with shrapnel, or layering armor with inert substances to dissipate or divert the energy of a kinetic attack. More advanced reactive armor formed an ersatz capacitor that, when turned into a closed circuit by a metal penetrator, would vaporize it.
The Tribals smuggled a handful of armored vehicles aboard Unity at the sufferance of water services mogul Sumter Voidallion's Hydroxilide Corporation, an obscure supplier of Seramon Steel, one of the mission's twelve prime contractors. Voidallion had been a civic militiaman for Las Vegas and one of several prominent citizens to question the federal government's hard line on Kellerism after the peace. In 2051, during the final phase of the civil war, Las Vegas Mayor Rafael Ramos was briefly deposed by agents of the American Reclamation Corporation after brokering a defensive alliance with local Kellerites. Hydroxilide pipefitters and hydrotechs disguised eight Stryker armored fighting vehicles as water carriers and converted a disused tertiary reactor hall to conceal them during transport. Atomic energy safeguards had required that the reactor hall be capable of emergency separation from the hull. Working alongside Landers's mechanics, Voidallion engineers restored the compartment's original functionality. The Kellerites added a rudimentary guidance system with about the same computing power as a scientific calculator and small containers of reaction mass to fire the compartment's thrusters a second and third time for repositioning after being jettisoned. The compartment fell within a days' walk of Tall Trees and was quickly recovered by the Minutemen.
The Strykers, picked as the best of their lot from a Kingman, Arizona salvage yard, were equipped with early electron lasers and overhauled in secret by the stowaways before launch. For most of Mission Year One, four sat hull-down on a high bluff over the Slowwind from which they could set fire to Spartan barges.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2d/b3/d2/2db3d21929cbc27ff45d03287c41d6ba.jpg)
Pete Landers greeting Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal in EVA Sign, the physical language of gesture used by astronauts working in space. The meeting left a deep impression. Days later, Lal found time amidst the construction of survival shelters and heat wells to remember the encounter in his diary. He recognized Landers as a gifted leader. Pressure from the Canadian and American governments had forced the U.N. to automatically reject Kellerite applicants for the Unity Mission. But Lal remembered Landers's people performing work in a manner that betokened basic familiarity with spacework fundamentals, implying that the Kellerites had operated a shadow program of selection and/or training in order to determine who would make up their stowaway contingent.
(https://www.this-is-cool.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/the-scifi-art-of-gavin-manners-scaled.jpeg)
Six in ten Indians were displaced by the impacts of the Six Minute War. Many went north into the Himalayan range to find work in factories, mines, and atmospheric reprocessing facilities financed by the Chinese.
(https://wallpapercrafter.com/th800/164178-illustration-S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-fan-art-soldier-science-fiction-video-games-shooting-weapon-helicopter-apocalyptic.jpg)
Four hundred Tribesmen volunteered for recovery work in the Indo-Pakistani Nuclear Exclusion Zone. They posed as heavy equipment recovery specialists employed by the True Government of India (as opposed to the Government of the Republic, also recognized by the U.N.). A portion of their "finds" were diverted under U.N. safeguard to the port of Karachi for "sale" on behalf of their insolvent employers. Actually, they were carried under false pretense by a Morgan Maritime tanker to the space elevator at Batavia, claimed by Hydroxilide shipping clerks, given a cursory scrubbing by Carillon Recovery radtechs, and sent "up the ladder" to be loaded aboard Unity.
Sources:
Picture of Landers is from concept art for Alien by an artist called Moebius. This image, found on Pinterest user Rhys Hayward's page, was reportedly scanned from Fantastic Films (Blake Publishing Corp., 1979).
EVA Sign is a rebranding of Belter Cant from The Expanse.
The mountain landscape is by Gavin Manners from this-is-cool.uk.
Final image is fanart for the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Artist unknown.
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The beasts of the soil built our forefathers great empires. They had oxen to haul their wagons, horses to carry them at speed, small critters to make their fields and forests grow. They found these things living with the land and converted them to their purpose. Now, we find none of these helpmates. So we must build them ourselves. With hammer and tongs, we shall forge mechanical pollinators and self-guided plows. - Plowman's Paradise
(https://www.this-is-cool.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/the-scifi-art-of-pascal-blanche-21.jpeg)
Pahlavi's Scalplists set aside the burden of chasing perfection when they "intervened" with the Igoar, more rooster than lizard, and thrice as self-important. What appears to be a partially alien creature is actually human artifice. Vast experience with strict clones and, to a lesser extent, basic editing of gene expression with protein regulators, mostly to control hereditary disease, were not enough. Supercomputers plundered from the Children of the Atom extrapolated suitable base pair sequences like an artist joining the lines between talons and tusks.
All Igour were sterile. Some were completely blind. The geneticists urged troopers to kill their own mounts through over-exertion, hoping to see which series were the hardiest. Relations between beast and rider were often fraught: Igour were inveterate biters.
The Nauvoo Legion recovered something like two dozen Igour cut loose by their original owners and used them for patrol in the Harrowlands, a portion of Shamash studded with rocky outcroppings and poisoned by methane soaks.
The rider in this image wields a primitive coilgun.
(https://www.this-is-cool.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/sergei-borisenko/the-scifi-art-of-Sergei-Borisenko-03.jpeg)
Experimentation with artificial brain matter, both grey and white, began when medtechs transported samples from Unity's specimen lockers down to Planet. Later, prisoners, sick cases, and a few generous volunteers "contributed" viable base tissue for continued research.
Although the relationship between absolute brain size and intelligence was not straightforward, there was evidence to suggest that neural conduction speed and slow cerebral metabolism were both desirable. Larger brains were not the goal per se; they were simply easier to work with.
Here, University undergraduates fumble their way around an over-juiced "starter" brain much the same way as a toddler learns play with oversized blocks.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/032e57d7-8cc3-421c-b687-9a19d264ad34/de56bnh-af3a8d56-7584-4a04-a56b-81e9a7961bc3.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_721,q_75,strp/artwork_rover_by_grafik_de56bnh-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzIxIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMDMyZTU3ZDctOGNjMy00MjFjLWI2ODctOWExOWQyNjRhZDM0XC9kZTU2Ym5oLWFmM2E4ZDU2LTc1ODQtNGEwNC1hNTZiLTgxZTlhNzk2MWJjMy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.RQ2XK8Rr2kWF9ej4pf8sXQ0diyc5CdwbcXXcmhbqnng)
Historians now agree that the Corporate Age, referring to the period of early manned exploration of the Inner Planets, roughly 1970 to 2030, was characterized by significant knowledge loss. Sabotage accounted for at least twice as many setbacks as honest error and, like Project Unity itself, many ambitious projects were set aside after meeting early resistance.
The failure of MarsCorp's attempted survey of the Mariner Valley in 1992 delayed discover of significant water ice deposits until 2060.
The cycle was repeated on Chiron. The Hive, the Tribe, the Pilgrims, the Morganites, and the Ascendancy all slaughtered competitors' colonies without mercy to preserve opportunities for their own future expansion.
Sources:
First picture is the work of Pascal Blanche from this-is-cool.co.uk.
The Igour's origins owe a good deal to the cloning methods offered by Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park. I did a bit of poking about on the Jurassic Wiki. I also tried to get something out of this (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-scientists-turn-ge/) article in Scientific American.
Second picture is the art of Sergei Borisenko, also discovered on this-is-cool.co.uk.
I learned a bit more about the brain from Wikipedia and this article (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9246731/) on PubMed.
Third picture is "Artwork Rover" by Grafik on DeviantArt.
-
The great sweetness of science is to be first to success, but the truth is that we rarely start from scratch. - Chaos Theories
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d1b51f5e-5c08-4dee-ba8f-3e5b0930796f/da6m58d-c2522009-d53b-44d0-b6bb-bce1a3a523b9.jpg/v1/fill/w_1600,h_2372,q_75,strp/saenger_spaceplane_and_horus_orbiter_by_grahamtg_da6m58d-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MjM3MiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2QxYjUxZjVlLTVjMDgtNGRlZS1iYThmLTNlNWIwOTMwNzk2ZlwvZGE2bTU4ZC1jMjUyMjAwOS1kNTNiLTQ0ZDAtYjZiYi1iY2UxYTNhNTIzYjkuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE2MDAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.M5gdfGJhTh_FoRLTRR6TRCV9_rPFFjwZoi33OrDCVc8)
Abandoning the delta-wing configurations then in vogue after the successful test flight of the Atlas Voël by South Africa's National Space Agency in 2030, Zakharov opted for anhedral pointed-tip wings that gave a better stability profile on both take-off and re-entry.
The Soviets converted Zakharov's design into a commercially successful product that supplanted rocket-launch systems worldwide, infuriating the West Germans, who pointed out the obvious similarities with their Sänger spaceplane.
Theft of intellectual property was so central an aspect of Soviet methods generally, and Zakharov's in particular, that datalurks in other factions were on constant alert for Soviet markers of network infiltration. Taking full advantage of this blinkered expectation, Morganite and Dreamer Probe Teams laid many a data heist at the Academician's doorstep.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/e95224e1-4ed8-452c-bca1-fc855c539751/d6ub2zl-4d559572-3c3c-4118-8e90-a9d815370b7a.jpg/v1/fill/w_900,h_596,q_75,strp/vaccine_by_noro8_d6ub2zl-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTk2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZTk1MjI0ZTEtNGVkOC00NTJjLWJjYTEtZmM4NTVjNTM5NzUxXC9kNnViMnpsLTRkNTU5NTcyLTNjM2MtNDExOC04ZTkwLWE5ZDgxNTM3MGI3YS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9OTAwIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.Q7zAYZZ0H-i8WmoIM6DheK74Ba-BM1Pw-6_DJBgdQbA)
The University of Planet's Institute for Immunological Research was a front for projects prohibited by the Planetary Charter. Most of the samples stored therein were too volatile to be opened given the rudimentary condition of scientific equipment and processes available during the First Generation.
A good teacher will explain the things you don't know in terms of what you do. Take vaccines. Until recently, vaccines used either dead or weakened versions of the germs against which they wanted to protect. Like frog-marching a thief through town so that everyone is put on their guard, or releasing ex-outlaws to hunt their old boss. The second of those strategies can be very effective, but you have to take care the parolees don't back-shoot you when you're leading from the front. That's why the new mRNA vaccines are so interesting. They're the equivalent of calling out the town guard before the raiders arrive. - The Personal Diaries
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/daf81294-b79e-4927-9933-4c5abb453289/dcksal8-f9a1c741-ce4a-47cf-a1a3-41333ea79d64.jpg/v1/fill/w_1295,h_617,q_70,strp/martians___tutorial_by_amirzand_dcksal8-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTE1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZGFmODEyOTQtYjc5ZS00OTI3LTk5MzMtNGM1YWJiNDUzMjg5XC9kY2tzYWw4LWY5YTFjNzQxLWNlNGEtNDdjZi1hMWEzLTQxMzMzZWE3OWQ2NC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.Yfh-F9hrbna9Z8LoXb-YlfL8_diCH5Uu1iMMmOzc2-A)
The Uranium Flats were created by the detonation of Unity's secondary nuclear reactor vessels and subsequent spillage of nuclear fuels. It was not long before they became a common dumping ground for "hot" equipment as well as the corpses of those struck down by radiation.
Salvage was a thriving business on Chiron--factions often traded in spite of ongoing hostilities--and survivors made a point of never discarding objects that had not been exhausted of all value, but opinions about where to set the threshold of that value differed--as did the ability to exploit what remained--and so the Flats attracted scavengers who hoped to find treasure in other colonies' trash.
As the boundaries of the Flats expanded unpredictably, vehicles (and people) with inadequate shielding might be caught by surprise. Here, a Hot Crew of the Chiron Guard, amply-equipped and well-trained for NBC warfare, recovers a wheeled [/i]Unity Crawler once operated by the Peacekeeping Forces.[/center]
It has been said that failure is the education of a free polity. Failure is a killer, too. Democracy is a complicated machine. It is not too much to insist on proper safeguards for handling. - The Organization of Fear
Sources:
"Sänger Spaceplane and Horus Orbiter" are by GrahamTG on DeviantArt. Model by N. Stevens.
Biohazard picture is "Vaccine" by noro8 on DeviantArt.
Final picture is "Martians / Tutorial" by amirzand on DeviantArt.
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Passion paves the road to poverty; moderation, the road to wealth. To be successful, love nothing too much. - Fylan Rei, Stakeholder
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4daf803b-dd37-4651-8b51-8cd5330a859b/ddfujfj-440502ae-fcb4-4c38-8982-bb533ccb9873.jpg/v1/fill/w_1254,h_637,q_70,strp/depot2_by_cyberkite_ddfujfj-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTc2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNGRhZjgwM2ItZGQzNy00NjUxLThiNTEtOGNkNTMzMGE4NTliXC9kZGZ1amZqLTQ0MDUwMmFlLWZjYjQtNGMzOC04OTgyLWJiNTMzY2NiOTg3My5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.J7RtRJbBh8iRZUPu-Olo6f2jWyZzPNVjnDbW4vhBD4E)
Mineral deposits inhibited fungal growth. Bases like Sarkan's Coffin economized on defense by declining to harvest the resources nearest to hand.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/73029a128976edbe040ed3570791eaa9/tumblr_on37d9m7jd1u0vd4co3_1280.jpg)
Long after the evidence of their humble beginnings had been otherwise cleared away, survivors continued to prize their original Landing Pods. Sentimentality aside, technology brought from Earth far exceeded what the colonists could make for themselves for centuries after Planetfall. In MY430, the Lord's Conclave was still using one of their pods as reserve generation for the New Jerusalem grid.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/18b9a044a4c7d3f62fa449cf21a60992/tumblr_ossqg0ykiG1u0vd4co4_1280.jpg)
Unity bore a number of small-capacity Landing Pods that served as their own cryobays. These were scheduled to land only once the main colony was well along. Passengers included supernumerary workers to be held back in case of early catastrophe, colonists whose skills lay solely in the humanities, and hostile environment teams equipped to study planetary features of particular interest to mission planners--e.g., the continent-sized Fungal Blanket.
Sources:
Sarkan's Coffin is "Depot2" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.
"Shuttle 204" is by MacRebisz on DeviantArt.
Third picture is "Cargo capsule retrieval team" by MacRebisz on his website, Space That Never Was (https://spacethatneverwas.tumblr.com/).
-
(https://i.imgur.com/B7PYlHA.jpg)
Name: Asa Wright
Rank: Datatech
Position: Unity Network Administrator
County of Origin: West Indies Co-Prosperity Sphere
DOB: 07-01-2037
Service Record:
Asa Wright born 2037, Trinidad, West Indies Co-Prosperity Sphere, to two professors at the fledgling University of Trinidad. Enjoyed an unexceptional and stable childhood during the various Pax Decay conflicts (the Second American Civil War, the Hypersurvivalist Wars) which provided a measure of relief and greater autonomy to the states of the Caribbean, as well as financial investment from Euro, French, British, Soviet, and Golden Chinese attempts to woo their new federation. Avoided childhood struggle and trauma in one of the most prosperous regions of the Sphere, whose government reinvested foreign aid into Operation Shine Together, a "modern Maginot Line" of coastal defenses that blunted the toll of mega-cyclones like Tropical Storm Fenty. Rejected idyllic island life of peers by escaping into the datalinks, joining the net-hooligan group Pon de Replay, notorious for making illicit crank long-distance calls to prank targets and for signal-jacking local radio stations to play retro genres like wave and jazz.
(https://i.imgur.com/70MW574.jpg)
Members of the North American branch of Pon de Replay in the act of phone phreaking
Wright's capacity for rabble-rousing mischief and natural hacking skills propelled her rise in the cybercriminal underworld. Shrouding her identity through multiple layers of secrecy and conducting her business in fluent leetspeak, she eluded both law enforcement attention and the scrutiny of her own fellow phreaks. M.O. was "entertain, escalate, and exhilarate": daring the group to undertake higher and higher risk ops from infiltrating tax service systems to momentarily seizing control of industrial supercomputers to run games, she accelerated the infamy of the collective- and elevated her own renown. Adopting the hacking alias "Sinder Roze", Wright attained a level of seniority within the group despite being barely in her teens.
Specialized in aggressive intrusion tactics during these early years. Nicknamed the "slasher of Disturbia" by local American press after cracking I.R.S. Kansas City d-base to prevent filings in 2049. Calling card: use of Sledgehammer ICE-breaker program customized by herself. Led Pon de Replay to victory in the Great American Hack 'n' Slash of 2053 against the rival Rude Boys, high-stakes challenge to break into fifty Defense Department computers across a dozen multinational corporations within seventy-two hours. Achievement won Sinder Roze the top rank of Interpol's "Ten Most Wanted" hacker list.
(https://i.imgur.com/UrfYwCo.png)
Netgunner's Mate Second Class Asa Wright aboard the WITTS Maraj-Petty
Unexpectedly called to serve in the West Indies Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard during the Umbrella Campaign, the Sphere's defensive mobilization against neo-piracy by USN deserters and hypersurvivalist sea militia. Despite being the daughter of academics, did not have service deferred, possibly due to nonconformance in attending university. Served for eight months aboard the John Paul Jones-class battleship WITTS Maraj-Petty as a netgunner's mate, responsible for the Trinidadian flagship's digital ordinance.
Combat experience mainly consisted of long-range skirmishes against hostiles with sensor shielding, no line of sight, and underwater capabilities. Assimilated enemy cyberwarfare tactics swiftly and redeployed their methods against them, including slashing neutral American NOAA hurricane warning buoys to ping neo-pirate stealth craft. Mimicking raider behavior, broadcasted false SOS calls to lure hostiles into ambushes. Learned the way of the subtle knife, silent intrusion hacking to augment existing repertoire of slashing skills.
(https://i.imgur.com/UhTww75.png)
Sinder Roze with unknown woman in Central Park, Manhattan, months before her CSB apprehension
Wright returned to civilian life with new tips and tricks but few moral lessons. Roze’s exploits with the collective continued apace with greater and more heinous heists, leaks, and datadumps. But the Markethack Crash of '59 upturned the world's laxity towards cybercrimes. The Central Security Bureau, the emergency troika of the CIA, NSA, and FBI, bayed for the blood of the perpetrators behind the attacks at world financial institutions, wounding the very heart of the authoritarian interim government's attempts to "renew America." Special agents of the national intelligence services undertook the Purification Project, a dirty war to snatch up dissidents, hackers, tech-pirates, 'reality deviants', and criminals of every kind.
Backed by the full force of the security state, the American CSB's jurisdiction spread across the Western Hemisphere, then worldwide. Despite only tangentially involved in the hacks, Roze was identified, arrested, and hauled before the Cyber Crimes Tribunal at The Hague. But here her past talents and brief veteran service saved her; an ambitious scientist at Texas Instruments, seeking to make his name by restoring American preeminence within world technological efforts, lobbied for the court to offer Wright clemency if she renounced 'unethical' uses of computers and if she agreed to lend her talents to the Unity project. Despite deemed unrepentantly Unapologetic by the presiding justices, this request was acceded to thanks to the company's intervention. Wright's past criminal records were sealed, and she was shanghaied into the mission under U.S. and TI sponsorship.
(https://i.imgur.com/UGdI6Xh.png)
The Unity Information Services Helpdesk - Datatech Wright's station is at bottom left
Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Wright was assigned a menial role as part of the ship's IT staff. This was not only due to international court order, but by the mandate of Captain Garland himself, who viewed her as a menace and one of the most dangerous individuals aboard. American corporate influence had overruled the captain's attempts to exclude her, but not his effort to marginalize her power by consigning her role to the answerer of support tickets and debugger of software drivers.
But as information wants to be freed, the music can't be stopped. As the time to launch counted down and the massive mission struggled to get off the ground, crew leaders were forced to ask for Wright's systems architecture expertise into designing the digital systems aboard the ship and in the future colonies to be. Garland assigned Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida himself to handle the monitoring of her work, who promptly embedded his own computer security experts accompanied by librarian staff of Data Sciences head Lt. Commander Tạ Dọc Thân to review her work pull request by request, line by line.
The system architecture was scrupulously designed, with no backdoors or loopholes detectable by either division's studious auditor savants. In fact, the clarity of purpose and cleanliness of Wright's code was much praised by the reviewers, bolstering her reputation and making herself indispensable to the mission. But d’Almeida had grievously overlooked that a primary tool for any good hacker is social engineering: and both uplinked and out, Asa Wright had plenty of wiles to spare. Quite a few of these reviewers would later join Sinder Roze’s side on Planet.
Codename: Jellico
(https://i.imgur.com/djRCRDv.jpg)
Sinder Roze's public debut on the Planetary datalinks following the Angel Insurgency
Accounts vary as to why initial faction alignment was with the Dynamic Enterprise. While most believe Wright's placement on CEO Nwabudike Morgan's pod was happenstance, some suggest he sought her out for her talents. Still others go as far to allege that it was a rare, for Morgan, decision borne out of pure ideology - the Morgan Industries mogul wished to wield such a polarizing figure as a weapon against his hated Anti-ideological nemesis, the similarly dangerous Sheng-Ji Yang, the prophet of Planned economics. Or perhaps Roze, with her past record of high-profile illegal asset transfer ‘burns’, simply had money on her mind.
Official title MorganNet QA Manager, quality testing the implementation of her preliminary designs for Information Networks that would one day be realized as Planetary Networks. However, her true role was one of the earliest probe team operatives on Chiron, retrieving proprietary data with business applications for Morgan Industries under the umbrella of the mysterious Graylink project and the handle of Jellico. As on Earth, her leadership skills were activated during opportunities for bad behavior, and she extolled her fellow datatechs to disregard official company line of work work work in favor of the pure ecstatic flight of data. While the product managers were aware of these tendencies, her hacking talents were difficult to deny, and as a consequence she was on the Morgan 500 list of high-priority Longevity Vaccine recipients.
But stronger divisions also emerged from corporate's treatment of the operatives. While operatives against soft, informationally free-flowing targets such as the University of Planet, the Children of the Atom, and the Schreiber Project were a pleasurable chase, over time neurological risks multiplied as factions upgraded their dataclouds to use quasi-M/MI interfaces. Severe brain damage was the cost of fighting against Black ICE and logic mines. As the probe losses mounted, Datatech Jellico appealed to the operatives to break away. Communicating in the covert channels of the Underground intralinks, she spoke of the disrespect that Morgan had shown towards them, the datatools he disregarded so callously. The demoralizing, alienating megacorporate bureaucracies they were subjected to daily.
During the height of the Babel fish affair, Jellico revived her Sinder Roze alias once again and conducted a vote in the Underground. She denounced Morgan's assignment to capture information about the Alien Temple- not because it was a suicide mission, but one undertaken for all of the wrong causes. It was time to publicly reveal their dissatisfaction against the company. To declare their desire to build a new order based on embracing the freedom of the dataclouds they flew through, a society dedicated to the free flow of information as both an ideal and an experience. No longer would they skulk in the shadows as thankless hatchet men wrapped in corporate red tape as funeral dressings. They would walk under all of the lights under a new banner and live in the data as free beings.
The Angel Insurgency, also known as the War in Data Heaven, tore apart the MorganNet as a third of the Morganite probes under her dissenting Second, the hacker known as Ghost, resisted the move in favor of continued anonymity. But after these dissenters were beat back, the corporate servers shredded, and a night of burning TPS reports, her faction-within-a-faction had won: they would build a new faction.
Faction Record:
(https://i.imgur.com/kVdqsZp.jpg)
Datadame Snow Hart and fellow Angel Anarchists congregate at Hell Hall club in Ergonomia
The Data Angels, variously known as the Data Angels Collective, Data Angels Network, or the Angelic Order of Datameisters, descends directly from the original cabal of probes who departed the Dynamic Enterprise alongside Sinder Roze in a hijacked Colony Pod departing the ruins of Morgan Data Systems. They were then joined by probe operatives from throughout the Planet, all of those addicted to the thrill of hacking, immersed in the dangerous love affair of slashing. Freethinkers, dropouts, castoffs, misfits, exiles, and even former SMACERs have joined Roze.
As for Roze herself, she is the unanimously-nominated benevolent dictator for life, beloved by the new faction, but always subject to their virtual democratic veto. While she prefers to govern in a freely, slightly less-than-anarchic manner, she understands the need for someone to ultimately run this town tonight. And so like the open-source software development projects of Old Earth, she maintains the mantle to preserve overall direction of the Data Angels as a subtly guided democracy.
Since this heavy burden would invite one to take a bow, Roze has taken the title of Datajack, as the jack of cards is also known as the bower. Below her are the Dataknaves of the Datacourt: leaders of sub-factional collectives like Datadame Snow Hart of the Society of Free Thought and Dataeight Arshia Kishk of Al Falah. The ranks are of course arbitrary, though there is no Dataking- the Datajack often states that data itself is king, naturally. And the responsibilities of this ruling cabal of the Data Angels are also arbitrary: while they are advisory in name, Roze's freewheeling nature causes their word to become more than as mere advice.
Each Data Angel is called to hack, but not all have hacker as their vocation. Rather, each citizen of the faction aspires to approach every opportunity with a hacker's ethos: to find the most advantageous, clever, elegant, and hidden approach at accomplishing one's goals. Whether a diplomat exercising social manipulation, a soldier specializing in stealth kills, or a former-farmer cajoling Planet to work for man's benefit, the hacker way is seen to extend beyond the datalinks.
(https://i.imgur.com/877NhjN.jpg)
In terms of chiropolitics, the Data Angels have occupied a rather ambiguous role as a faction of spies and potential mercenaries. While each Angel is self-selecting for loyalty to Datajack and base, few are above netrunning for pay or jazz. But their tendency to probe out any and all information in their Promethean goal to set all of it free has earned them the reputation of parasitic rogues, subject to many a PlanetPol injunction (in vain). Surprisingly, Morgan has not acted against the faction beyond the usual occasional vendettas and shadow conflicts. It is said that the CEO appreciates rogue employees as autonomous R&D centers, and potential re-acquisition targets.
As for the Angels themselves, they scoff at the notion of disrepute. They believe that all information deserves to be out in the open, or at least worth attempting to retrieve for those who wish to test their mettle against the virtual elements. Some call for sousveillance, the ability to counter-surveil the authorities to foster reciprocal accountability. Others for infosocialism, the abolishing of all intellectual property rights- indeed, the faction have few IP guarantees and only the most liberal (as with beer, at a keg party) of licenses enforced. And even others who seek to bring about data-driven revolution to smash all of the governments of the Planet- including their own.
More still hold that the Angels' commitment to direct digital democracy is what it makes it a true diamond in the sky, inspiring all factions. There are those who would tweak that system, such as abolishing the Datacourt or the Datajack- something that Roze herself is amenable to. Others propose introducing a realtime, AI-assisted social karma system to weigh the Ethical Calculus of all human interactions universally. Others just want sortition, electing the 'jack and 'knaves by random number generator. Simultaneously capable of great whimsy, passion, and chaos, the ascent of the Data Angels have provided Planet with a new source of wonder, shining bright like a diamond.
Psych Profile: Chaos Agent
Subject makes little effort to hide her fondness for wreaking havoc on established infrastructures, whether informational or social. Although not a true anarchist, she gains a great deal of satisfaction from causing chaos and observing the aftermath. Demeanor embodies a Trickster archetype, treating the misfortune of unfortunate conventional thinkers waylaid by her schemes as humorous and deserved. Her followers consist of a motley collection of undesirables, whose creativity and talents are welcomed and utilized by subject while shunned by others. Holds few ideological scruples, accepting virtually anyone willing to put up with her rebellious behavior. Should she incur an enmity, however, she possesses the capability and the loyalties to efficiently and ruthlessly smash the foundations of an information economy.
Casting
Asa Wright, Datatech Jellico, and Sinder Roze are portrayed by Rihanna, including in her roles in Battleship and Ocean's 8.
Pon de Replay are portrayed by the hackers from Hackers.
Unknown woman is portrayed by Cate Blanchett in Ocean's 8.
Snow Hart is portrayed by Emma Stone.
Notes:
I’m not sure who first pointed out Rihanna’s resemblance to Sinder Roze, but it’s definitely a stunning likeness, right down to the Caribbean background. The fact that she even played a hacker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qcW81eke6U) is just too delicious. Can you spot all of the references?
The militantly anticommunist “CIA/NSA/FBI troika” is the interim American government in one of the unfortunate alternate timelines from Replay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_(Grimwood_novel)) by Ken Grimwood.
Project Purification (https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Terran_history#Project_Purification) is from the Starcraft manual.
The image of the Unity help desk is part of the Sevastapol Station Mainframe Systems (https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Mainframe_Systems) from Alien: Isolation.
The origins of the Data Angels is remixed from “Centauri Arrival (https://alphacentauri2.info/official/Sid%20Meier%27s%20Alpha%20Centauri%20The%20Story_cfm.htm)” by Michael Ely. I wrote a synopsis and review (https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/no7ant/thoughts_on_centauri_arrival_by_michael_ely/) of it. Now that I reread my own summary, I see that the story says Cha Dawn was born of a Gaian woman named Reanna, LMFAO
The ‘DataKnave’ title comes from the so-good-it-should-be-canon classic SMAC novella of a fanfic, “Joe (https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/alpha-centauri/ac-stories/14156-joe)” by Alinestra Covelia. As is my willingness to treat the Data Angels seriously (https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/p6k7y8/thoughts_on_the_alien_crossfire_human_factions/) as a faction and prospective society, which the fic does successfully.
The Society of Free Thought (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Society_of_Free_Thought) is a faction from the SMAC Fac Pack (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Category:SMAC_Fac_Pack) mod project (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=8459.0).
Dame is another name for the queen in a pack of playing cards.
Arshia means “throne” in Farsi. In Islamic tradition, there are group of eight angels who are the Bearers of the Throne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearers_of_the_Throne) in heaven.
Sousveillance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance) is a concept popularized by David Brin in his book The Transparent Society, as well as his novel Earth.
Infosocialism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosocialism) is from GURPS Transhuman Earth.
Image of Data Angels is from Samjoko Publishing's Hack the Planet (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/samjokopublishing/hack-the-planet) RPG.
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Capturing some updated notes on Affinities. Mostly related to how Purists and Harmonists perceive robotics.
Affinities
An invention of diarist and U.N. Peacekeeping Forces leader Pravin Lal and appearing in his Planet: A Social History, affinities are an analytical shorthand for understanding the way in which a faction's ideology both oriented and constrained its cultural and scientific development.
Purity
Humanity will forever be defined by our experience in the cradle of "Old" Earth. If Chiron is to be the last refuge of our species, then we should fill it with things that are familiar, both the physical and metaphysical. Planet should be remade in Earth's image. Purists look forward to eliminating the "pestilential" xenofungus and replacing the local ecology. Shapers call this process "rebuilding." At larger scales, Purist factions hope to stimulate the planetary greenhouse effect through a massive infusion of atmospheric hydrocarbons. Purist societies suffer less from the social dislocation of pollution and terraformation, which is an accepted cost of their grand project.
Likewise, humans can reach their maximum potential only if they preserve the traditions, artifacts, and, yes, the biological distinctiveness, inherited from their ancestors. As such, purists are leery of robotics. In their view, computers aren't an adequate replacement for people.
In the cultural domain, Purists prefer doctrine and ideology that presume a fixed and corruptible human nature, in need of close and constant tending.
Purist factions include the Lord's Conclave (Godwinson), the Human Tribe (Landers), the Shapers of Chiron (Nagao), and the Human Ascendancy (Pahlavi).
Supremacy
Both Man and Planet alike bear changing in the honorable search for objective perfection. The simple goal of our species is to perpetuate itself—by any means necessary. Stronger is better. Faster is better. In this race against a pitiless universe, and indeed a hostile planet, we would hamstring ourselves to overlook any advantage. Supremacists embrace the possibility of social and ecological experimentation, which will serve as the forcing function to produce new insights about how now we must live.
Supremacists seek out the practical and efficacious. They are neither above the introduction of invasive species nor below giving way to Planet when adaptation would be less work than resistance. Humanity, too, is what Supremacists make of it. Machines are tools. Their use and sophistication can do nothing to invert the relationship between master and servant.
Change is appealing to Supremacists. Since growth is the chief yardstick of success, the familiar is contemptible to them. "Humanity" is a concept that can be redefined at whim.
Supremacist factions include the Human Labyrinth (Yang), the Centauri Monopoly (Morgan), the University of Planet (Zakharov), the Spartan Federation (Santiago), the Dreamers of Chiron (Cobb/Cohen), the Tomorrow Initiative (Metrion), the Children of the Atom (Anhaldt), and the New Two Thousand (Van de Graaf).
Harmony
Humanity, the intruder, must alert its rhythms to suit those of Chiron, or else perish in its obstinacy. The wisest understand that one does not merely make a home so much as one is made by it. The trappings of Old Earth are useful only inasmuch as they can be relied upon to temporarily bridge the gap between mere survival and full-fledged integration into both the new Chironian biosphere and indeed the new rhythms of the life and society the colonists are building for themselves.
Harmony, which takes its cues from living things which are classically vulnerable to tampering and thrive within carefully-controlled parameters of diet and temperature, says little about the utility of artificial intelligence, but persons inclined to Harmony usually wish to experience Planet directly and prize the role of intuition and emotion in guiding human affairs. Like Purists, Harmonists think machines make poor replacements for biologics.
Factions that promote Harmony usually practice lifestyles that require them to avoid inflicting traumas on the natural environment. They are also, on the whole, fairly sympathetic to the nonconformist. (Even the New State merely declines to reward non-conformity among their non-military populace rather than punish it.) For a Harmonist, the defining feature of a system is that it is meaningful to the user rather than that it is predictable, or even successful. Folkways are inherently legitimate as an expression of self, which can be as important as allegiance to an illusory "public-interest" objectivity.
Harmonious factions include Gaia's Stepdaughters (Skye), the Peacekeeping Forces (Lal), the New State (St. Germaine), and the Hunters of Chiron (Marsh).
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With their axes, Noah and his sons felled the cypress trees of Syria and Lebanon to build his ark. For to make Unity, mankind first felled cities with bombs.- The Blessed Struggle
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/25239c11-cd84-4fb9-90fe-5613581ad633/df81sz0-5f3ed666-4c59-4ed8-8210-39d456bb0772.png/v1/fill/w_1235,h_647,q_70,strp/mountaincity_by_k41lab_df81sz0-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.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.joGstxjYuL3zMKAJOfYdIVZPOyfHN_5Ve99K8x-jWRs)
Every last pane of tempered glass in the windows of Ecclesion was colored to shimmer in the sunlight, reflecting God's glory on the peaks and scrapes below.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/a3612a13-3a4b-4c9e-adb1-5a0f60091611/dailot7-783ca509-3a90-49ab-8dd3-f4c16add0881.png/v1/fill/w_1265,h_632,q_70,strp/space_engineers_decompression_by_ivanlaliashvili_dailot7-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTQ5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYTM2MTJhMTMtM2E0Yi00YzllLWFkYjEtNWEwZjYwMDkxNjExXC9kYWlsb3Q3LTc4M2NhNTA5LTNhOTAtNDlhYi04ZGQzLWY0YzE2YWRkMDg4MS5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.HXdApk2OYOZ-lMa53OYzpk5AL5cRtNk-FQRn4_jZIsQ)
Unity faction leaders spent heavily to seize the two dozen ground-to-orbit communications arrays built by Caretaker Joralemon Hardacre's people some fifty years before their arrival. It didn't seem to matter that there was nowhere to send the messages.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/a3612a13-3a4b-4c9e-adb1-5a0f60091611/dafsxyo-3e0abb38-3eb6-4651-bd3d-459fd7210528.png/v1/fill/w_1259,h_635,q_70,strp/space_engineers_road_by_ivanlaliashvili_dafsxyo-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTU5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYTM2MTJhMTMtM2E0Yi00YzllLWFkYjEtNWEwZjYwMDkxNjExXC9kYWZzeHlvLTNlMGFiYjM4LTNlYjYtNDY1MS1iZDNkLTQ1OWZkNzIxMDUyOC5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkwMSJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.IopikXzyZMteTDZCAZjC-0vv7C850vtwq5BOcbY1yx4)
Costly trial and error taught that super-inflated tyres were the best means of traversing the gluey quicksoils of the Kheimon Floes in high summer. Here, a pair of Tribal Colony Pods travel in close company, demonstrating the proper countermeasures. What look like satellite dishes are actually sonic projectors, a defensive weapon in common use from the second through fifth decades after Planetfall.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/318ac438-c605-4f5e-bf88-635e535d4c55/daz4xz0-9965bc3f-1e89-48c3-b0ac-513d23e69b83.jpg/v1/fill/w_1331,h_600,q_70,strp/orbital_waste_land_vistas_by_2buiart_daz4xz0-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzIyIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzE4YWM0MzgtYzYwNS00ZjVlLWJmODgtNjM1ZTUzNWQ0YzU1XC9kYXo0eHowLTk5NjViYzNmLTFlODktNDhjMy1iMGFjLTUxM2QyM2U2OWI4My5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.oYJUkyPiYvoU7Kh02yHvChf76Qtm9D_kMmcXNFCRyWg)
Breaking companies like Eos Planetary Renewal and Revileer Scrapworks were sometimes said to have built Unity up from the very wreckage of the world. From Pakistan east to India, thence south to Shiloh, and as far afield as the Mississippi Basin, the human race clawed up evidence of its failure, as if embarrassed by such a lapse.
Sources:
First image is "MountainCity" by K41Lab on DeviantArt.
Second image is "Space Engineers_Decompression" by IvanLaliashvili on DeviantArt. Third image is "Space Engineers_Road" by the same artist on the same site.
Fourth image is "Orbital Waste Land vistas" by 2buiArt on DeviantArt.
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What other purpose hath a living thing than to seek to reduce all its labors? We simulate death before ever it meets us. We are too lazy to run towards it. - Peregrinations of Planet
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/0aff38ea-0a46-4f8f-9747-880c26a79c1f/d8aph2g-14aef4db-62a8-40e7-9dec-12477d6e0748.jpg/v1/fill/w_1131,h_707,q_70,strp/the_exploration_by_derektye05_d8aph2g-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAwMCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzBhZmYzOGVhLTBhNDYtNGY4Zi05NzQ3LTg4MGMyNmE3OWMxZlwvZDhhcGgyZy0xNGFlZjRkYi02MmE4LTQwZTctOWRlYy0xMjQ3N2Q2ZTA3NDguanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE2MDAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.xhVtog0sWdamO8Dp7K_E31rXHERAb6mwwIhcATg2oIE)
Use of automated inflatable cervical collar to inhibit motion following possible neck injury after which survivor must self-recover.
After the discovery of fabrics that could heal themselves, scientists set their sights on those that could heal their wearers. The answers lay in the combination of advanced piezoelectrics and bio-sensing textiles. Kinetic energy produced by natural motion at first powered sensors calibrated to sound caution alarms in case of pending fever, heat stress, hypothermia, or hypoxia. Second-generation suits constricted to control bleeds, slackened to assist fatigued muscles (in the presence of heightened levels of lactic acid), and deployed sticks of glucose, adrenaline, and pain medication.
And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department. - Andrew Carnegie
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/26c0d129-1f1b-4458-90d8-37a7b47a8d1d/de0wv1x-d6719ac8-ff3a-4164-a693-fa7648c1eeda.jpg/v1/fill/w_1192,h_670,q_70,strp/empty_office_by_dominique_van_velsen_de0wv1x-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTA4MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzI2YzBkMTI5LTFmMWItNDQ1OC05MGQ4LTM3YTdiNDdhOGQxZFwvZGUwd3YxeC1kNjcxOWFjOC1mZjNhLTQxNjQtYTY5My1mYTc2NDhjMWVlZGEuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE5MjAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.nvU0Xb1akUTb_l03XiCHS9nEhJiLSKetJtqHkGhCCoE)
The first Morgan got rich by breaking the law of his land, the rest by making it. - Datalinks, Popular Jest
Repeated battlefield setbacks swept four long-serving Morganite proxies from the conglomerate's ten-member board in MY76, leaving the family with a narrow majority of just one. Replacements included ousted Unicorp risk chief Velson Choi, who called for a "head-to-toe audit" of all subsidiaries, and Chiron Probe grandee Tollace Markinson. The latter had penned an explosive mission statement promising negotiated peace with the État Nouvel that was supposed to result in a fee structure for maritime transit. All four new board members were killed in the only recorded Mag-Lev deceleration failure in planetary history, an accident that involved the cascading failure of fifty-six independent safeguards.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/312cc031-32af-4dfb-bf65-780ba0dc89b5/da8ri33-58d60da6-be51-4fa1-a33e-6de047fe26bb.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzMxMmNjMDMxLTMyYWYtNGRmYi1iZjY1LTc4MGJhMGRjODliNVwvZGE4cmkzMy01OGQ2MGRhNi1iZTUxLTRmYTEtYTMzZS02ZGUwNDdmZTI2YmIuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.CmCgUZxzdKcQouF5KQR4QKs8KUQXhnotp7jdZNO7Sh0)
As the Chairman's ambitions soared, so his Hive clawed its way up from the dust. Here, Hive mounds begin downtake from the Orbital Energy Transmitter placed aloft by Commander Kleisel Mercator's aeronauts, courtesy of a Data Angels Probe team. Apparently, there was jazz in turning the magnifying glass to the ants' benefit for once.
Sources:
First picture is "The Exploration" by derektye05 on DeviantArt.
Second picture is "Empty Office" by Dominique-van-Velsen on DeviantArt.
Third picture is "W20160703 - AG Drive Desert Planet Concept" by StMan on DeviantArt.
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So, on Rihanna as Roze - was she born yet in 1997? I've always been pretty sure they were doing Tyra Banks - but Rihanna most assuredly works, cast in the part, mind you; just quibbling/pointing out.
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So, on Rihanna as Roze - was she born yet in 1997? I've always been pretty sure they were doing Tyra Banks - but Rihanna most assuredly works, cast in the part, mind you; just quibbling/pointing out.
I think it was just a case of cosmic coincidence. The only SMAC leader who has a plausible intentional real-world resemblance might be Pravin Lal as a South Asian version of Kofi Annan. Also she’s from Barbados, not Trinidad like Roze- though I did toss in an Easter egg for another pop icon from the latter.
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You've never had a good look at my Custom Factions Page, have you?
Lots of hovertext jokes hidden, one being that most of the Official leaderheads have my opinion of celebrity inspirations. George Takei as Yang, Jon Cryer as Zak, Jamie Gertz a little weakly as Deirdre, A Jehovah's Witness girl about my age I knew as a kid on the bus probably looks like Miriam now, maayybe a little Denzel in Morgan, I think best guess for Lal was Morgan Freeman, though I give away my approx. age calling him Easy Reader. -Good call w/ Kofi - that's a lock - and the timing fits, too. Cary Elwes as Sven. That and Ms. Banks as Roze is all I remember. -But that's almost all the humans and Cha.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: My Custom Factions (alphacentauri2.info) (https://alphacentauri2.info/My%20Custom%20Factions/Custom%20Factions.htm)
Oh right - a mélange of Michelle Pfifer, Cate Blanchette, and young Helen Mirren as Aki - actually more likely, some Scandinavian actress I've never seen.
-Enjoy the page.
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Proper care and education for our children remains a cornerstone of our entire colonization effort. Children not only shape our future; they determine in many ways our present. Men and women work harder knowing their children are safe and close at hand. And never forget that, with children present, parents will defend their home to the death. - Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
(https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58e67a879de4bbb333c8c197/1578266052069-IQ1OS9TO479BLRUD2NUN/131231_Syd_Mead_Senteniel_Philips_Three-dimensional_image_screen.jpg?format=1000w)
A proper University education began in the home. Interactive elements in windows and appliances stimulated curiosity through reward. Polymorphic software tailored the pace, focus, and depth of information exchange to the particular characteristics of the user, accommodating physical, visual, and neurological distinctiveness.
Parents could call upon the considerable insights of specialists and well-stocked libraries of practical material when confronted with the routine problems of adolescence.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/6e35f331-5740-402f-9b43-498ba75f09a5/dcqmwp8-41e14078-7c40-48bc-b547-2f409bef4d18.png/v1/fill/w_1024,h_1336,q_80,strp/listening_by_xhuuya_dcqmwp8-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTMzNiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzZlMzVmMzMxLTU3NDAtNDAyZi05YjQzLTQ5OGJhNzVmMDlhNVwvZGNxbXdwOC00MWUxNDA3OC03YzQwLTQ4YmMtYjU0Ny0yZjQwOWJlZjRkMTgucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.dqAHWEUeG67OOp0m3222D_McJg2CaE7NcBTUymbnJO8)
Nearly all meaningful Gaian education took place outdoors, often alone. Gaian parents thought nothing of entrusting their offspring to Chiron, which rarely resisted the Stepdaughters' presence.
Gaian children attended faction moots from a tender age. The youngest read poetry to help them become accustomed to public speech.
One noteworthy aspect of a Gaian upbringing was the performance of the Adaptations, aerobic and exposure exercises to reduce oxygen consumption and heighten allergen resistance.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/426a82a2-e7ab-45a0-9382-1b5b5065a1d5/df5ino6-3b561741-8284-4f50-bc1f-fbb2da3b0f0e.jpg/v1/fill/w_1151,h_694,q_70,strp/spatial_zen__cyborg_buddhas_by_dreadjim_df5ino6-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzcyIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNDI2YTgyYTItZTdhYi00NWEwLTkzODItMWI1YjUwNjVhMWQ1XC9kZjVpbm82LTNiNTYxNzQxLTgyODQtNGY1MC1iYzFmLWZiYjJkYTNiMGYwZS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.i5QNliDqcmt__qAiLsckASmfz9kQIOgOxSeoRai6tZ0)
Like his counterparts in the similarly unsentimental Ascendancy, the Chairman learned quickly that long-term separation of parents from their children was a serious disincentive to both compliance and mindfulness. Ill-conceived breeding and sterilization programs gave him similar results.
Aptitude tests, administered many times on the road to physical and mental maturity, suggested a drone's potential, while "morality drills," which often involved crude attempts to lure individuals into "anti-social" misdeeds, determined exactly how far they would rise.
Hive propaganda celebrated menial labor to the point that Acolytes usually questioned the social utility of classroom study when first selected.
The Chairman was especially discerning in his appointment of teaching staff and at first performed nearly all formal instruction himself.
(https://www.imfdb.org/images/thumb/1/1c/Usps9.jpg/600px-Usps9.jpg)
Spartans were taught the fundamentals of "self-help," the first and most important of these being marksmanship. Their teachers were almost always disabled veterans.
Spartan children were little more than helpmates for their parents once released from the crèche. Between group lessons in target practice and fieldcraft, they performed basic household tasks: cooking, cleaning, and running ammunition. Childhood regularized after the fall of Xerxion.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/f1043e4b-cb0f-4619-86aa-05bf37a4db98/d35xfg1-ace746f1-138c-486f-823d-038890570ff3.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2YxMDQzZTRiLWNiMGYtNDYxOS04NmFhLTA1YmYzN2E0ZGI5OFwvZDM1eGZnMS1hY2U3NDZmMS0xMzhjLTQ4NmYtODIzZC0wMzg4OTA1NzBmZjMuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.lLLDB_Wgr9dMjBpCGIkROrxpd4xGejYDjYiTXbCf_fo)
I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. - President Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Albert G. Hodges, 1864
Morganite youth were easy prey for any of a million distractions, the deadliest of which was surely Dreaming.
These dissolutes were sure to run down their Social Credit, resulting in debt bondage.
Sources:
For the first image, which is by futurist Syd Mead, see kimsarc.com (https://www.kimsarc.com/blog/2020/1/5/syd-mead-in-memoriam).
Second image is "Listening" by Xhuuya on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Spartial Zen, Cyborg Buddhas" by DreadJim on DeviantArt.
Fourth image is a still from The Postman (1997).
Fifth image is "Electropium Den" by Zirngibl on DeviantArt.
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History consists not of facts remembered, but feelings inherited. - The Organization of Fear
(https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/1d30df17932213.562c0ff58390c.jpg)
Peacekeepers pursued the well-rounded ideal. Enrichment in the libraries, exercise on the pitch, instruction in the classroom, relaxation in the pools. The council chambers were closed to adolescents.
(https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2019/10/07/USAT/dcd33f16-f6ab-4b73-a5f6-54204cb6d881-LIS_201_Unit_00340CR.jpg)
Childhood in the Conclave was idyllic. Miriam's essential commandment: love thy neighbor. A community approach to child-rearing in such a polyglot society promised rich cultural experiences for anyone willing to take part.
(http://conceptartworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/John_Carter_Concept_Art_by_Ryan_Church_22a.jpg)
Many young Conclavists of the second generation found that faith was a natural concomitant of their hardscrabble life. Without the weight of painful memories to discourage them, they embraced Scripture with fewer questions than their parents. Faction chaplains tended to see the massive Conclave Bible as a total replacement for academic histories.
Once described as the most-entitled people on Chiron, Conclavists approached physical interaction with New Eden with scarcely less enthusiasm than the Gaians.
(https://www.looper.com/img/gallery/the-ending-of-the-expanse-season-4-explained/an-end-to-the-trouble-on-ilus-1606177016.jpg)
Tribals embraced the institution of Scouting, a somewhat tamer, if more formal variation of the past times enjoyed in Sparta.
While recreational use of the Datalinks was not forbidden in Tribal society--government was too disinterested to move so false--young people most enjoyed the practical crafts handed down from their elders, especially rover repair.
(https://fandomania.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/military02.jpg)
The striplings of L'État nouvel joined naval cruises as cadets whose job was to be seen and not heard. Each shift ended with group problem-solving sessions that culminated in a combined escape from a flooding compartment just prior to graduation. For one in twelve cadets, the experience turned fatal.
Sources:
First image is a still from Ender's Game (2013).
Second image is a still from Lost in Space (2019).
Third image is "John Carter Concept Art" by Ryan Church from ConceptArtWorld.
Fourth picture is still from The Expanse, depicting a colony on the planet Ilus.
Fifth image is from Aliens (1986).
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Command Tech: Moral Hypnopædia
(https://i.imgur.com/DI86sVU.jpg)
Don't like the rules that you like
I'm not a winner in your ring
Out loud a voice in the night
I do it like I'm Charlemagne (https://genius.com/13725531/Albert-hammond-jr-muted-beatings/Im-not-a-voice-in-the-night-i-do-it-like-im-charlemagne)
- “Muted Beatings”, Datalinks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2W3OSOwYDI)
Long have rulers desired a quick solution to the problem of moral instruction. From subliminal messaging to invasive brainwashing, conformance was an end that saw myriads of means. Attempts to harness the somnolent third of human existence for acquiring good manners was attempted as early as the late 1950s in the Woodland Road Camp, penal institution of Tulare County, California. Volunteers among the prisoners allowed the guards to place miniature loudspeakers beneath their pillows, whispering recorded messages from the warden each night. Principles of moral living soothed these men to slumber, appealing to each’s Better Self, filled with love and compassion for all. By daylight, these values were often lost to the limbo of unconsciousness, though the prison keepers swore that their charges had become lawful citizens reformed through sleep-learning.
Attempts by Soviets to breed good socialist values in the nighttime were also attempted, sometimes on subjects far less willing. Moral-political indoctrination was foisted on gulag dissidents, attempting to overwrite counterrevolutionary notions by endlessly drilling good Marxist messaging deep into the dead of night. When the inmates remained steadfast, the volume of the messages increased sharply, until they could do nothing but lay awake chained and listen to the unending barrage issuing from the speakers that could not be reached. In the morning, they gamely repeated what was taught, faking compliance in the hopes of being finally granted a good night’s sleep.
While on Earth, hypnopædia gained little scientific backing, research into the ostracized field of hypnosis yielded some insight. As established by psychologist Theodore X. Barber, there appeared to be a significant difference between light sleep and deep sleep, the latter where no alpha waves could be detected via electroencephalograph. Light sleep resembled both waking and hypnotic states, where suggestions could be imposed on the sleeper. Deep sleep blocked suggestion. But light sleep permitted verbal suggestions to be passed through the somnolent cortex to the midbrain, the brainstem and the autonomic nervous system. Repetition aided the strength of the suggestions. On Planet, the University dusted off this ancient, half-discredited work, plugged it into the research publicized by Project Algernon, and initiated their own: the Neopythagorean Septemvium.
Moral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational. - Brave New World, Datalinks
(https://i.imgur.com/rOIglrU.jpg)
Morganites dogfooded the same hypnopædiac technology they developed. Upper-class families purchased expensively specialized ethical dream-instruction to cultivate cunning and value discernment in their children. Here, a governess projection attempts to correct a particularly troublesome case
To the surprise of all, the Academician had appointed classics champion Professor Librarian Adam Gieseler to the head of hypnopædiac instruction of moral virtue. In a rare showing of his humane side, Zakharov had named the program after the summation of the ancient Greek Trivium and Quadrivium. The idea being to revive the classical liberal arts in a new, modernized set of seven disciplines. Unlike Pythagoras’ original paths, this set was not to be determined by superstition about the music of the spheres, but by the rational culture of the University and determined via Ethical Calculus.
At least, those were the parameters imposed upon Gieseler by his Provost. In reality, this loose ethos meant Gieseler was given carte blanche to operate as he desired, so long as the result meant less undergrad rioting, fewer graduate researchers succumbing to nootropic addiction. Whatever curricula Gieseler and his new Preservation of Terran Learning Research Unit created would be foisted upon all citizens of the University of Planet. Anyone who wanted to receive dream-learning, whether for the love of learning, or for cramming for a credential, would be required to experience true topical breadth so that they may use hypnopædia wisely.
(https://i.imgur.com/mTZdgDg.jpg)
Dean Gieseler attempts to inspire PTLRU members during a work session in the Williams Main Library at Planetary Archives
The new Dean of the abbreviated Preservationists of Terra immediately saw that the job was a white elephant. The regents of the University had wanted action on the misuse and abuse of hypnopædia, and by forming this committee, Zakharov had simply waved at a flame and called it firefighting. Now Gieseler was left holding the hose. The notion of subconscious influence, even potential indoctrination, horrified him. Yet naturally he was tempted by this opportunity to finally inject the humanist wisdom his faction so desperately needed into its culture. And so the Preservationists grudgingly took on the project.
As someone who spent his entire career digging among the bones of the ancients, Gieseler decided that the spine for these new classics would be based around history. The Dean lived and breathed by Santayana’s aphorism, believing that the legacy of Earth was all-important not for reveling in as Élodie of the New State held, nor for recreating without critique as Metrion of the Tomorrow Institute believed, but mourned.
From the Stone Age to Alpha Centauri, humanity had behaved heedlessly without learning the right lessons from its accumulated knowledge and education. Oftentimes it was insufficient mass knowledge of that past. And so, he had the Preservationists design mass elaborate simulations of past events from the run-up to the July Crisis in the summer of 1914, the assassination of Julius Caesar (including a rendition in a dream-recreation of the original Globe Theatre in its Elizabethan finery), first contact in Guanahaní, and the subcontinental annihilation of the Six Minute War.
(https://i.imgur.com/J0keR3p.jpg)
Alberich, a hypnopædiac moral lesson about the brutality of the Western Front, was rebranded into a wartime adventure film by Morgan Feelies, popular among Spartan dreamers
Even as the contracted Morganite visual designers and Dreamer architects realized Gieseler’s vision, the difficulties of this endeavor became clear. Some content failed to engage, even for a captive audience suspended in slumberland, causing dreamers to slip deeper into sleep as their subconscious resisted dry lessons in the breakdown of diplomacy or the empowerment of tyrants. Others provoked too much response, inflicting nightmares on those squeamish towards the horrors of war. And yet still there were those who the wrong responses, delighting in the violence of the past. Some of the fruits of the Septemvium project were later repackaged as MindMazes for thrill-seekers and bloodlusters.
If prodding dream-learners along with lessons of past history was insufficient, then the Preservationists of Terra would attempt actual indoctrination. At least, as far as they could stomach. Here they introduced a new liberal art: ethics. In doing so, they tread the line between keeping with the University’s hard-nosed deprioritization of such petty concerns, while attempting to teach as many grand, sweeping moral theories as possible from throughout history. From Socrates to Zera Yacob, Descartes to Zhuangzi, Nezahualcoyotl to Gandhi, the Preservationists labored to speak into dreams the wisdom of Earth’s lost ages. But for all of their endeavors, it resulted in sounder slumbers.
(https://i.imgur.com/QFc6avq.jpg)
Ethics was to be the crown jewel of the Septemvium, but University sleepers simply used the opportunity to berate professor projections of their dreams
As their test subjects at the Planetary Archives proved, ethical dream programming was singularly unpopular, unsticky. Honed from birth to continuously question the world through free inquiry, University citizens would actively debate their hypnopædiac lecturers until some dreams were broken entirely, causing spontaneous awakenings. Other times, these dream-interlocutors would attempt to reassert control of their dreams, cycling through arrays of vivid philosophical thought experiments simulated through sleep. These would either result in nightmarish trolley problems or, if the dreamer was sufficiently strong-willed or canny, the hijacking of these subconscious simulations to hoist their hosts onto their own petards.
Thus was the crux of the problem of moral instruction. Without resorting to brute force psychological tactics or targeting young minds, indoctrination had to be composed for individual tastes, bespoke. As the warden of the Woodland Road Camp or the Soviet commissars could attest, simply whispering under every pillow did not make for a truly good subject. The heart grasped its own logic, and words without reason could not compel feeling, much less belief. Hypnomedia could stir feelings at the lowest common denominator with all the sound and fury of a Morganwood cinematic production, but that alone could not teach an ethical code.
Some have argued that the Preservationists’ failures in creating a new liberal arts through hypnopædia was due to creation by committee. The PTLRU was constantly beset by inconsistent funding. Even though the Provost gave the new Dean freedom to operate, all manner of university officers and content curators meddled in their work, and the committee itself was continuously fighting internecine holy wars. The module on visual arts was beset by traditionalists versus holofuturists, dooming yet another art of the seven. The module on music saw its dream compositions replaced by the works of Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis, suggesting probe interference from the Data Angels.
(https://i.imgur.com/5GP0WfS.png)
Later observers who attempted to advance the field of moral hypnopædia would claim that Gieseler himself wanted the project to fail. A man as versed in the classics would have known that instead of dumping large, boring lectures of moral philosophy on a faction as impatient as the University of Planet, the correct way was to architect dreams built around small-scale personal parables that could subtly tug at their untuned heart strings, as well as engage them with logic puzzles. Instead, the Dean sought to undermine it himself, rather than to have a hand in anything resembling brainwashing.
Others suggest that Zakharov considered the Secret Project to be a hopeless boondoggle to begin with, a flashy unorthodox distraction to appease the regents and those criticizing his handling of the upheaval caused by hypnopædia. By using fire to fight fire (particularly by burning a type of gas that he has previously dismissed in the past), the Provost had socially engineered a bold move that would satisfy everyone, without solving anything.
The Human Ascendancy's announcement of Gene-Targeted Nootropics several months after the conclusion of the new liberal arts program would take the Planetary intelligentsia by storm. The UoP Academic Judiciary's investigation into supposed covert support for the project from the Office of the Provost was quickly brushed aside as the tech was gifted by Pahlavi, despite the University officially being less than friends with the Ascendancy. The new wave of biologically customized smart drugs overtook hypnopædia as the learning aid of choice, with its own basket of troubles.
(https://i.imgur.com/AdIphWs.jpg)
Gennaro da Gama grasps at the Preservationists' dreams during off-the-book research, BLACK IRON PRISON watchvid harvest
The Neopythagorean Septemvium had unexpected implications in factions beyond. Some of the dream modules were imported by the United Nations on Planet, who had approved of its prosocial content. Much to the bureaucrats' surprise, they inspired a rowdy new movement at U.N. Social Progress. Dubbed the Keepers of Wisdom, these agitators dreamt of the preservation of the humanist ideals of the Peacekeeping Forces as viewed through the lens of past records of human history, philosophy, science, literature, and music. What this actually entailed was spontaneous celebrations of human history and ethics, as well as dozens of reading circles and salons, as well as some noises towards shifting faction policy away from military interventionist policies. The Commissioner, of course, would direct Signals Intelligence under Terrance LaCroix to subtly influence the Wise lotus-eaters to focus on the former, rather than the latter.
More individually, but perhaps more significantly, the Septemvium module on philosophy, centering on Aletheia, the Ancient Greek concept of "truth," found its way to the ufologists' den of the Memory of Earth. Specifically in the hands of Minister of Special Political Operations Gennaro da Gama, the ex-Peacekeeper Librarian, now the chief social analyst of the Observers. For whatever reason, these dream teachings so stirred his sleep that he defected from the Observers shortly after, making his way to the University, bringing along as many notes on the Cassandra Almanac as he could sneak by microfiche and datatape. He has been sequestered at the Library of Planet ever since, with a special team earmarked by the Provost himself.
And as for the Preservationists of Terran Learning, their attempts to transform the University may had failed, but their Research Unit was not dissolved, instead becoming the boast of Planetary Archives. For generations on that base would be known as the heart of liberal arts of the University of Planet, and perhaps all of Chiron as well. Dean Gieseler remains in residence there, devoted to the preservation of past knowledge and open access of information, balanced by the desires of the human heart and soul.
Casting
Adam Gieseler is portrayed by Jason Sudeikis as John Keating in the stage adaptation of Dead Poets Society.
Gennaro da Gama is portrayed by Keanu Reeves as Bob Arctor / "Fred" in A Scanner Darkly.
Notes:
Here I intentionally subvert the concept in Brave New World that it is any easier to introduce moral instruction via unconscious learning than it is to sleep-teach intellectual education.
Aldous Huxley’s account of a real-world hypnopaedia experiment at Woodland Road Camp and the discussion on light and deep sleep are from chapter X of Brave New World Revisited (https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/).
The image of child moral dream instruction is from The Cell.
The Preservationists of Terran Learning Research Unit are an adaptation of the Preservers of Terra from the custom mod faction set SMAC Fac Pack (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Category:SMAC_Fac_Pack) by Nathan Weismuller and Adam Gieseler.
The idea of a “red herring” Secret Project is from Alien Legacy, where some research techs are duds that don’t yield useful effects.
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This fits unusually well with the Official continuity, and is fascinating and plausible.
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This fits unusually well with the Official continuity, and is fascinating and plausible.
Thanks! Any segments did you like particularly?
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Well, just that the whole thing fits just fine w/ the vague 'psych allocation" in the game. That had to take actual concrete forms in actual practice. Also, stuff like, maybe, vidwall corridor decoration for factions who could afford it -just paint for the rest- lots of stuff, but I do like sleep learning as a very major one.
You know, lots of this stuff in the thread is great - but Marsh, though fine, is hard to believe in, that he's around and doesn't come up ever in the game narrative. And Yang was first officer of the Unity, I think that's canon. The fit's imperfect for much RTD flavor; but this slides right in there, likewise a lot of the stuff about where the gear came from.
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It is the things we do not abandon that define who we are. - Datalinks
(https://tv-fanatic-res.cloudinary.com/iu/s--t4glMLyX--/t_full/cs_srgb,f_auto,fl_strip_profile.lossy,q_auto:420/v1371088426/the-gath-premiere-and-general.png)
For every three happy hearts set to work on the so-called Ark of Humanity, there was one turned bitterly against. Ôrad of Utár Wawesh was one of these.
Utár Wawesh was a constituent commandery of the County of Toltan, one of the three thousand "sandbox" nations dredged up by the likes of Eos Planetary Renewal in the Southern and Pacific Oceans in the 1990s to relieve South American overcrowding and provide a landing place for refugees of nuclear accidents becoming steadily more common as the technology cleared the hurdle of broad commercial adoption.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/027/532/069/large/artur-rosa-craters-of-lyra-9-1920.jpg?1591802939)
Engineering protocol called for reclaimed nations to be ringed in barrier peaks to protect against the ravages of typhoon waters. Corazón Santiago's refugees would follow this well-worn principle on hurricane-prone Chiron when they became first to found a maritime base at Anchorage on the Nessus Sea.
Descended from original settler stock (the same who bequeathed Chironians a term they later used for themselves, "newlander"), Ôrad set aside his childhood interest in music to become a soldier so that his family would not lose valuable rights to land, pearl beds, and shares in whaling fleets under Toltan's merit-based inheritance laws.
(https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58022ca06b8f5bc8f4786ce2/1490130661677-EY7N71WIQ7VSLHOXBFH1/Rime_Simonstalenhag_sunset?format=1000w)
The waters of the southern Pacific were garbage-choked to the point of ecological disaster but schools of toxin-resistant fish thrived in the artificial reefs formed around the skeletons of dormant tidal generators stopped up by the floatsam. This trawler uses digital fiber to catch crosswinds for easy maneuvers. The sails, which were embedded with conductive monofilament, could be furled near-instantaneously when the weather turned foul and deployed just as quickly when it passed.
The Cold War was heating up in the Southern Hemisphere in the first decade of the new millennium when Ôrad found himself a fresh-faced cadet at West Point Military Academy, one of sixty International Cadets. Domestic woes had begun to sap America's ability to play its traditional role of global policeman. Soviet agents stepped eagerly into the void. Their promises stoked the emergence of an increasingly violent liberation consciousness among the destitute, dispossessed, and colonially subject. Ôrad returned home by Concorde supersonic jet to spend school holidays in the uniform of a special policeman brawling with fishermen and algae tenders that ate just two meals a day on the U.N. dole.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/f9b0e121-692c-49b0-96d8-5ba04af7829e/d5v09cp-da392481-7e58-4bcd-8404-2ed80493e31d.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_517,q_75,strp/fishing_village_by_jjpeabody_d5v09cp-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTE3IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZjliMGUxMjEtNjkyYy00OWIwLTk2ZDgtNWJhMDRhZjc4MjllXC9kNXYwOWNwLWRhMzkyNDgxLTdlNTgtNGJjZC04NDA0LTJlZDgwNDkzZTMxZC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.8wjG3Chduo087f6seFGJKlxqxgWy6jNXOdgYzx5knxw)
"U.N. Standard Care" provided between 2,000 and 4,000 calories of food per person per day based on assessed nutritional need, most non-habit-forming medications, seasonally appropriate natural clothing, all-weather survival tents, and one datalinks terminal per family unit that could be used for education, entertainment, and professional activities. Most factions followed the same model in the Era of Planetfall, adding hostile environment survival equipment and air supplies. Similar arrangements continued to be made available to struggling citizens in some factions for decades longer, among them the Believers, the New State, and the University. Humanitarian services were more comprehensive among both the Peacekeepers and the Tribe.
From the first, Ôrad sought opportunities to reach the acme of his profession, earning jump wings at Camp Hero, New York before spending six months with the 27th Armored Division during a deployment to wide swing through Atlanta to bring the Christian States to heel. In 2045, Ôrad received instruction as part of the Central Intelligence Agency's short-lived Great Neck Project, designed to groom the officers of allied governments in the fundamentals of national security and derided as "coup school" by its detractors. Ôrad put what he learned to good use, participating in the bloodless overthrow of his country's democratically-elected government two years later for failing to ratify accession to the SEPTO.
In return for his services to the new ruling junta, Ôrad was made Viceroy of Shant, a strategically significant atoll that, at the time of his appointment, had become a haven for pirates under an ex-American naval officer, Cyril Banes, who punctuated his depredations with ostentatious gifts to the burgeoning IOEZ and Pacifica drone population and claimed the mantle of "environmental activist." Using his newfound authority, Ôrad commandeered a tramp freighter impounded by the Toltan Water Watch and, with a scratch crew of reservists, sank the pirate mothership at anchor in a daring night raid.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ca8002d7-a987-491a-b8bf-1471a8d96e2c/dfhbu1h-e3215c56-66b0-4a32-9085-19b07f2cf540.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2NhODAwMmQ3LWE5ODctNDkxYS1iOGJmLTE0NzFhOGQ5NmUyY1wvZGZoYnUxaC1lMzIxNWM1Ni02NmIwLTRhMzItOTA4NS0xOWIwN2YyY2Y1NDAuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.3AuqRSp_PlSrtWZeuXKWasVU_hHnH-dXcUKqIT8RXlU)
The S.S. Arkannen's masts were removed to make room for the turret of an M60E7 Patton tank bought from a Brazilian intermediary.
Ôrad's career drew to a close just as Toltan began an aggressive courtship of the U.N., then casting about for almost any assistance to replace inconstant sponsors in the Global West. Ôrad counted himself a skeptic. Good people owed their lives to the U.N.'s relief programs, but they had not, in the end, provided a viable blueprint for regional development--only a crude existence that corroded the human spirit and stoked friction between social classes that, sharing the same space, ought to have worked together. Local critics accused Ôrad of reading Jean-Baptiste Keller. Ôrad had them jailed and returned to brokering fishing quotas with the Philippine government.
Retired for more than a decade by 2059, Ôrad buried his wife, their daughter, and two sons in that year, the saddest, he said, of his entire life. They were victims of crop blight, too weak to fight off the Red Flu season. Toltan, like many third-world nations, purchased rights-controlled rice seed. The varietal was engineered by Zerant Technologies (ZtN) to manifest biological defects, including botulism, after a set period of time if the purchaser did not obtain genetically-modified insects capable of restoring its viability. Toltan could afford neither the high asking price of the designer insects nor the price asked by Struan's for its life-saving defoliant. Flu inoculation at clinics in Chile proved useless: the headwinds against the preventative had been too strong, producing conditions in which the virus easily mutated to resist the latest drugs.
For weeks, Ôrad contemplated suicide. Then, word came that Carmel had fallen into a second bout of civil war. Toltan stood by its traditional ally. Ôrad returned to uniform and led the Pacifica Battalion, an all-volunteer force that joined the desperate fighting along the Küv-Dan Line. Ôrad's forces took hundreds of prisoners for which the Gathis were unprepared.
Ôrad's solution was to offer the Shilohne captives to the U.N. as replacements for the colonists they were no longer enrolling through their original talent lottery. Nearly all the prisoners accepted this offer, reasoning that they were otherwise facing certain starvation. The U.N., strained otherwise to the breaking point, ignored the protests of the disgraced Benjamin government in Gilboa. After once drinking such sweet wine, the U.N. developed a taste for it. Soon, it became accepted practice for governments to give convicts, no-pats, and others the choice of exile.
As for himself, Ôrad refused to be lured away from the false archipelago for which he had done so much. Instead, he used his newfound fame as a platform from which to question the ethical and practical basis for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri.
We, who can make nations from the sea and pitch ourselves forty-four light years through nothingness, despair of the simple project of saving ourselves. It is not apocalypse we are outrunning, but the shame of failure. - Datalinks
Ôrad released an autobiography shortly before Mission Launch. The datatape was an obscure one, but it made it as far as the personal effects of Roshann Cobb, recovered from White Rabbit's Refuge, and the voluminous libraries of Liquidator Shoichiro Nagao, who returned often to the islander's accusations, which he told subordinates were true, however upsetting.
Sources:
First picture is a still from the NBC series Kings (2009).
Second picture is "Craters of Lyra 9" by Artur Rosa on ArtStation.
Third picture is by Simon Stålenhag, found on Radical Ocean Futures.
Fourth picture is "Fishing Village" by jpeabody on DeviantArt.
"U.N. Standard Care" inspired by "Basic Assistance" in The Expanse.
S.S. Arkannen is "Tramp Freighter" by LordSopping1885 on DeviantArt.
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We have already discovered immortality in the form of generational wealth. Long after my name is forgotten, the decisions I make in this life will have shaped a comfortable future for my children's children's children. - Datalinks
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d540990d-96b6-4452-8566-4604c0047019/dfpxl7k-4acbb3b6-b738-4e8e-b04c-b8dbaafcb4d6.png/v1/fill/w_1920,h_849,q_80,strp/stargate_research_base_by_nevena_jevtic_dfpxl7k-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODQ5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZDU0MDk5MGQtOTZiNi00NDUyLTg1NjYtNDYwNGMwMDQ3MDE5XC9kZnB4bDdrLTRhY2JiM2I2LWI3MzgtNGU4ZS1iMDRjLWI4ZGJhYWZjYjRkNi5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.dlTYK3ukq0BEjVa0OdEBS5O8r6wqC90nV0nREiET5Pk)
The view from Base Operations. Massive mainframe computers housed in the bowels of Unity's Landing Pods monitored the air pressure of every compartment, performed radiolocation for every vehicle, tracked ambient temperature and humidity in every hydroponics dome.
Automation was the accepted solution for very low population counts and very high rates of death from accumulated injuries or post-landing accidents, or simple misadventure. Given the correct stack of diskettes and fail-safes, a single duty tech could easily oversee a base of 15,000 residents.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d540990d-96b6-4452-8566-4604c0047019/ddx6cfq-d1813963-0425-44ed-bb27-0eda3f8d8156.png/v1/fill/w_1272,h_628,q_70,strp/watercity_after_storm_by_nevena_jevtic_ddx6cfq-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTQ5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZDU0MDk5MGQtOTZiNi00NDUyLTg1NjYtNDYwNGMwMDQ3MDE5XC9kZHg2Y2ZxLWQxODEzOTYzLTA0MjUtNDRlZC1iYjI3LTBlZGEzZjhkODE1Ni5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19._sbJxLQ_YqdZRBu8gJLwPn0XC2opd0ADlvGiBudbCMU)
Baptismo Wells, a corruption on the original Greek for "ceremonial washing," was an early example of the preservationist instinct in Believer architecture, which later trended toward monumental Egyptian Middle Kingdom and Polynesian Hale styles.
The Wells originated as a shrine to martyr Jarvis Findlay, shot dead and mutilated by Holnists during a period of self-imposed isolation in MY2. Within a year, the draw of his example, along with the area's splendid beauty and abundant waters, gave rise to permanent settlement.
The structures appeared to rise up from the roaring River Tethys but were actually built on massive stone peers. On the orders of the Kritarchy, huge flood gates were installed to dam up the river--a method of ensuring the Conclave would retain strong advantage if ever it were forced to cede its interest in the valley below.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d540990d-96b6-4452-8566-4604c0047019/dei9ioz-2334a24f-81e4-4400-8589-119bea8c615c.png/v1/fill/w_1250,h_639,strp/alien_world_2_by_nevena_jevtic_dei9ioz-pre.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTgyIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZDU0MDk5MGQtOTZiNi00NDUyLTg1NjYtNDYwNGMwMDQ3MDE5XC9kZWk5aW96LTIzMzRhMjRmLTgxZTQtNDQwMC04NTg5LTExOWJlYThjNjE1Yy5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.6tjMs2QFwBXbiu7xJM5pZs7LVllEY3vzm_DOlaZ9uv4)
Imagine the entire contents of the planetary datalinks, the sum total of human knowledge, blasted into the Planetmind’s fragile neural network with the full power of every reactor on the planet. Thousands of years of civilization compressed into a single searing burst of revelation. That is our last-ditch attempt to win humanity a reprieve from extinction at the hands of an awakening alien god. - Planet Speaks
Centauri Computing built on understandings of the xenofungus as analogous to a nervous system at planetary scale. The same mind-machine interface between humans and computers, still dangerously imperfect, was attempted with Planet itself.
Alexandria's Elegy, built and operated by the Tomorrow Initiative, thought the exchange was a one-way street: its librarians drew energy from the fibral network of xenofungus to speed indexing and retrieval from the Unity Data Core surrendered by the Restoration under orders from the Planetary Council. Without the speed enhancements of optical computing, this was a brute-force action, and the residual heat required that the base by placed directly at the sub-zero headwaters of the Tartarus Frost Range. Circuits burned so quickly that Morganite liquidators were in permanent residence. Planet attempted to crush the pyramidal stacks from without: they were built from plasma steel to warp with the attempt.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5e6a5e48-0bbc-42db-811b-4499379592ec/dfgffu3-bfe7a7f3-c557-4b0e-a01a-ffcb6d0bc63a.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1646,q_80,strp/xiang_lavigne_by_codexborderlining_dfgffu3-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTY0NiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzVlNmE1ZTQ4LTBiYmMtNDJkYi04MTFiLTQ0OTkzNzk1OTJlY1wvZGZnZmZ1My1iZmU3YTdmMy1jNTU3LTRiMGUtYTAxYS1mZmNiNmQwYmM2M2EucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.eJQo5Elmj_8suArcc6p5UHVsFS7gvdQbMtPKM9LFJaE)
Captain Shizen Ito of the New State submarine Burr enjoys the suns. She has developed a personal style distinguished by the use of leather, outlawed everywhere on Earth after 2021. Her jacket might be a rare heirloom, but given the flawless condition is almost assuredly a harmless reproduction. The sentiment behind her appearance--the idea that giving and receiving offense is a critical aspect of healthy society--reflects the fundamental hypocrisy at the heart of L'État nouvel, where the often hidebound population demanded the Admiralty protect them from the emotional consequences of their own prejudice.
Sources:
First quote is paraphrasing the character of Donald Whitfield, played by Timothy Hutton, in 1923, produced by Taylor Sheridan.
First picture is "Stargate Research Base" by Nevena-Jevtic on DeviantArt.
Second picture is "Watercity After Storm" by the same author on DeviantArt.
Third picture is "Alien World 2" by the same author on DeviantArt.
Fourth picture is "Xiang Lavigne" by CodexBorderlining on DeviantArt.
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I note that RTD people below faction leader level are always an easier fit into canon...
P.S. ;b; as always.
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Thank you kindly.
Referring to canon, some aspects of the canon, like the "Brother Lal" appellation, or the alleged "mis-assignment" of quotations to certain leaders whose ideologies should not correlate with topics like technological innovation or environmental conservation, have struck me as intentional layering of complexity. People are naturally hypocritical because life is complicated and nothing human is absolute.
But Lal never made sense to me as XO. It seems too obvious that, to the well-educated, he was recognizable as a problematic quantity, even if it might not have been clear to them that he was a full-blown sociopath. I don't see why the U.N. would have put someone like Lal in such a position.
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As far as nuance? Sister Miriam. She's a hateful -misogynist expletive- in diplomacy, most always, and a thoughtful techno-critic (see also Jeremy Rifkin whether you like him or not) in the movie narrations. Obvious different writers w/ different POVs about her - but the two don't actually conflict, but rather nuance and flesh her out that much.
Easy to imagine a million different things that made for aggressive Lal after the hundredth turn without invoking insanity. We just don't know what...
Edit: there's a VERY good idea for you to tackle here...
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The Sister Miriam presented here is not that, although her reputation precedes her because of raiding carried out by her Nauvoo Legion immediately after Planetfall. Van de Graaf won't let that go.
The old "religious fanatic" trope never sat well with me. Too cliché.
Lal, I think, has the same problem I gave him in the Quest I ran on Sufficient Velocity in 2020. To people who don't want to put themselves back under the U.N. Charter, he's no more or less "correct" than anyone else, and no longer has any fair claim on survivor loyalties. That's a hard piece of jerky for him to chew, much less swallow.
As the quintessential "good man" archetype, Lal is perpetually navel-gazing, which can lead to periods of despondency as he questions the true motivations behind his own actions, a tendency that is immediately obvious to, and enthusiastically exploited by, born manipulators like Morgan, Cobb, Carnaveron, and Yang.
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This whole thread is very high quality work, and commenting feels like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. That's certainly held me back before more than once.
You might get way more feedback with an RTD comments thread clearly labeled and crosslinked in the OPs. In fact, if there was a single author posting, I'd point out that you, Trenacker, can lock the thread yourself and still post. -As-is-though?
Pick any post on the first page of the thread that you don't mind duping onto this page, do so, rewrite the original as the OP of a comment thread, and I'll be happy to trawl through and do some thread surgery for you. Re-doing an early post into that OP makes it practical to move this post, for example, and leave you first spot.
Best of both worlds, I think, can't hurt and may well increase feedback a good deal.
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But Lal never made sense to me as XO. It seems too obvious that, to the well-educated, he was recognizable as a problematic quantity, even if it might not have been clear to them that he was a full-blown sociopath. I don't see why the U.N. would have put someone like Lal in such a position.
OH - you meant YANG and your fingers forgot. Now it all makes sense. I don't disgree at all. Perhaps his hive tendencies didn't show until he got his shot to practice them on Planet? He's very capable otherwise, I do think, what with his attitude towards self discipline and self improvement.
Back on Miriam? I've been on the record as long as I've been in the community -see my Sister Miriam De-uglified thread redone on this forum- that, coming at it as a faction modder artist who's made a lot of leaderheads, Miriam is also a visual hatchet job. She's Dana Carvey's Church Lady character with red hair and an army, not coincidentally played by the least attractive-looking human being of the original seven.
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This whole thread is very high quality work, and commenting feels like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa. That's certainly held me back before more than once.
You might get way more feedback with an RTD comments thread clearly labeled and crosslinked in the OPs. In fact, if there was a single author posting, I'd point out that you, Trenacker, can lock the thread yourself and still post. -As-is-though?
Pick any post on the first page of the thread that you don't mind duping onto this page, do so, rewrite the original as the OP of a comment thread, and I'll be happy to trawl through and do some thread surgery for you. Re-doing an early post into that OP makes it practical to move this post, for example, and leave you first spot.
Best of both worlds, I think, can't hurt and may well increase feedback a good deal.
Thank you for the very kind words! I'm glad you've been enjoying the work. Feedback is my fuel.
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But Lal never made sense to me as XO. It seems too obvious that, to the well-educated, he was recognizable as a problematic quantity, even if it might not have been clear to them that he was a full-blown sociopath. I don't see why the U.N. would have put someone like Lal in such a position.
OH - you meant YANG and your fingers forgot. Now it all makes sense. I don't disgree at all. Perhaps his hive tendencies didn't show until he got his shot to practice them on Planet? He's very capable otherwise, I do think, what with his attitude towards self discipline and self improvement.
Back on Miriam? I've been on the record as long as I've been in the community -see my Sister Miriam De-uglified thread redone on this forum- that, coming at it as a faction modder artist who's made a lot of leaderheads, Miriam is also a visual hatchet job. She's Dana Carvey's Church Lady character with red hair and an army, not coincidentally played by the least attractive-looking human being of the original seven.
Yes, Yang. Apologies for the error. Based on the fictional biography prepared by Michael Ely for the SMAC website, the psych screeners already perceived that there was something "off" about Yang. They just calculated that he was worth the risk. Still, it seems odd that they would freight Garland with a guy they knew would make an ideal mutineer.
Yes, that is fair to say about Miriam, who is every bit as much a stereotype as the beautiful Hippie or the collectivist Asian.
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It was easy to love the Earth. Standing barefoot in the sunshine, we swallowed cold lungfuls of juniper-tinged air and plucked apples from the trees. What use to us is this other place that we cannot even taste? - I Reject
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/bde55f60-52e3-4339-bb18-605623cd67b5/dflnbkw-a3d076dc-301e-4c02-93a1-734bf2b6443c.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JkZTU1ZjYwLTUyZTMtNDMzOS1iYjE4LTYwNTYyM2NkNjdiNVwvZGZsbmJrdy1hM2QwNzZkYy0zMDFlLTRjMDItOTNhMS03MzRiZjJiNjQ0M2MuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.0kzoAZqkmZ4CGRMv3RifOGqf7tbV7f7_ojEV11cM8FM)
At Folger's Tear, the waters of the broad River Lethe completed an important milestone on their their long journey to the sea. Flat, fertile plains beckoned irresistibly to human settlers. Pilgrims made the place their home in MY4 using materials found at nearby crash sites. Hungry for familiar foods, they exterminated the local fungus and began Terraculture. Within a decade, aggressive cancers had claimed fully half the recent arrivals, defeating the rudimentary chemotherapies still at hand. Hunter hydrologists soon discovered why. A chemical tank had impacted just twelve kilometers away and forty-four million gallons of ethylene glycol had soaked into the water table.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/6a3b168b-5c40-4944-ac58-a5fbe97900af/d5qbl2v-857e8e73-5313-45be-b699-030c5f603234.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzZhM2IxNjhiLTVjNDAtNDk0NC1hYzU4LWE1ZmJlOTc5MDBhZlwvZDVxYmwydi04NTdlOGU3My01MzEzLTQ1YmUtYjY5OS0wMzBjNWY2MDMyMzQuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.02Sp6v8ACH1WZiU0Tp-QfQ2vP1Qis1TL_A13jjRrErI)
Morganite cities embraced the Second Empire style. In the eyes of the Families, giving form to one's megalomania was evidence of their fitness to rule.
Drones were rarely inclined to surrender the energy credit required for entry into any such domicile of the elite. Instead they sought the "Liberté, égalité, [et] fraternité" of the open market stall and the salvaged cargo container.
Morgan outlawed the dangerous phrase. Corporate "Specials," deputized by the powers-that-be, made regular runs through the Commons, ostensibly looking to enforce the vice laws that forced the less-fortunate to take whatever solace they could in the gambling halls.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5e6a5e48-0bbc-42db-811b-4499379592ec/dfgpc3b-b6e07ecd-cb02-4050-ba45-6ce6fcbdc7a6.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1646,q_80,strp/zaide_sayadova_by_codexborderlining_dfgpc3b-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTY0NiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzVlNmE1ZTQ4LTBiYmMtNDJkYi04MTFiLTQ0OTkzNzk1OTJlY1wvZGZncGMzYi1iNmUwN2VjZC1jYjAyLTQwNTAtYmE0NS02Y2U2ZmNiZGM3YTYucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.wdscGydlDOol0fNzeMcs8QvaxUN4hwJiNgvahAfSQB4)
Telbi Acharya first spoke on behalf of the Conclave in MY51 during Sister Miriam Godwinson's Second Convalescence. Her appearance, and the strident warning she offered to her Ascendancy interlocutors, were a radical departure from the scrupulous humility and extreme agreeableness of the Believer diplomatic corps.
Records indicate that Acharya was a resocialized victim of Post-Nuclear Madness, a disease she contracted during childhood in Kashmir. Before withdrawing from the region, a Chinese "relief mission" attempted to "cure" her by implanting a Memory Cassette loaded with the eighty books of the Conclave Bible, which Acharya could thereafter quote at will.
Acharya perceived herself the perfect accompaniment to Miriam's honeyed leadership style, for she was willing to do what the Blessed Sister was not. Like Pravin Lal, Godwinson gambled on a team of rivals to balance her natural inclinations.
Serious misgivings about Acharya's judgement did not prevent Godwinson from ceding authority over the Nauvoo Legion, which she felt unable to use to best advantage during a time when enemy encroachments were reaching intolerable levels.
Sources:
First picture is "Crater" by NeotericEvolution on DeviantArt.
Second picture is "Bridges" by AndreeeWallin on DeviantArt.
Third picture is "Zaide Sayadova" by CodexBorderlining on DeviantArt.
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Like the teeth of some ravening monster, the hard angles and false promise of mechanical ingenuity have come again to reduce us all to drones. - We Must Dissent
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/8ffd5d7b-3ba9-4f74-a085-b72a74d04709/damelr2-fbc2e207-2fe8-4c0c-b445-4ed235bb1fca.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_419,q_75,strp/sci_fi_character_practice__by_tylerthullcreations_damelr2-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NDE5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvOGZmZDVkN2ItM2JhOS00Zjc0LWEwODUtYjcyYTc0ZDA0NzA5XC9kYW1lbHIyLWZiYzJlMjA3LTJmZTgtNGMwYy1iNDQ1LTRlZDIzNWJiMWZjYS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.PpNFjajzQycWWXJ3WDBy2fXbDKzs272J-zQZTTyv2oo)
"The Stacks" are an area of volcanic badlands in far northwestern Agammen bounded by the Odyssean Sea to the north, the Iapetian Piers to the south and west, and lava flows to the east. The nearest permanent settlement is Watch Station LR-4, maintained by the Memory of Earth.
Ambient winter temperatures bottomed out at 114°F. The boiling water that churned from its geysers had a pH of zero. Caustic burns were a constant concern: local conditions visibly corroded most materials after just one standard hour.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/384f0dca-8210-4b23-a348-3a50bd8df88f/d68ayh0-94276075-89b6-4d09-9f38-0e676763f852.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_571,q_75,strp/sunshower_by_jonasdero_d68ayh0-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTcxIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzg0ZjBkY2EtODIxMC00YjIzLWEzNDgtM2E1MGJkOGRmODhmXC9kNjhheWgwLTk0Mjc2MDc1LTg5YjYtNGQwOS05ZjM4LTBlNjc2NzYzZjg1Mi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.9jbt8l1uDfdH-pAjG31NVGzruAbqtlvKhIpvRV4sBGA)
On a world where the land fought back with ferocity and skill, a base's first significant expansion was apt to be skyward.
As time went on, the humans of Chiron, already fractured by ideology, divided again along the fault lines of their affinities toward technology and ecology. In cities like Electroville, people who had never seen Planet Earth cocooned themselves in glass and steel to gain a better understanding of their ancestors.
(https://taskandpurpose.com/uploads/2022/03/04/Screenshot_20210925-131712_VRV-1024x550.jpg?auto=webp)
F-26M Polecat Interceptors of the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force prepare to meet a Soviet Tu-210 Bashplate over the Sea of Okhotsk during the Confusion in Heilongjiang.
The tenterhooks of nationalism had loose claim on most mission survivors, and no leader with any significant following proposed forming colonies around national or ethnic ascription. In the chaos of the escape from Unity, there had been no time for such a sorting. Yet the political bequests of our divided homeworld were obvious.
As a shining success from a brutal system, Academician Zakharov retreated from students' calls to act decisively against such things as hazing and provide greater insight into faction governance. In public, he denigrated the ability of the "lesser-educated" to "apply the necessary discernment" around what to study or where to allocate scarce resources. Privately, he lamented the presumptuousness of the student body and rarely expanded his circle of close confidants, always men, frequently fellow products of similar authoritarian regimes.
Many factions tolerated the continuing use of national symbols like the Red Star or the Union Jack as a means of either fostering collective memory or rejecting the continuing authority of the United Nations, which had instructed they be painted over.
One-time U.S. presidential hopeful and ex-Cabinet member Oscar van de Graaf went furthest in exploiting the memetic qualities of national identity--Pilgrims waved the American flag--but his vision of the future was essentially a fantasist's riff on concepts of self-reliance and fair dealing popularized more by the likes of Walt Disney than the Founding Fathers. Van de Graaf saw no requirement for equitable courts, much less an independent legislature jealous of its own prerogatives. Besides that, his colony had a distinctly international mien since he'd hired without much consideration of national allegiance. To whom would his workforce write home?
Other key leaders spent much of their lives abroad from the countries of their birth: Deirdre Skye, J.T. Marsh, Roshann Cobb, and Aleigha Cohen were as much victims of British imperialism as loyal citizens of Empire or Commonwealth. Nwabudike Morgan was a political renegade that had tried more often to unmake governments than to serve them. Tamineh Pahlavi was an expatriate by circumstances outside her control. A short stint in the service of the American Reclamation Corporation had hardly inclined her toward national consciousness. Johann Anhaldt was of more use to the French government than the Swiss, but left his homeworld embittered. St. Germaine and d'Almeida both cultivated national cadres, and the Executive Officer was reckoned a hero by his country's elite, but the Contre-amirale was too much a believer in the correctness of his own wisdom to have loved France better, while d'Almeida was too much a realist to attempt the resurrection of a thing bound to another time and place.
Sources:
First picture is "Sci-Fi_character practice." by TylerThullCreations on DeviantArt.
Second picture is "Sunshower" by JonasDeRo on DeviantArt.
Third picture is a screen capture from Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993).
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The moods of history, like the laws of energy, suggest that, for every advantage gained by some, there must be a disadvantage inflicted on another. Let it not be you. - Armed, Forewarned
(https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/atlantropa-dam-under-construction.jpg)
Writing in the 1920s, German architect Herman Sörgel proposed that his country's expansionist ambitions could be fulfilled by draining the Mediterranean Sea.
For as long as humans have lived with the Earth, we have attempted to change it, usually for commercial reasons. The dam and the ditch have been our preferred tools. Egyptian pharaohs ordered canals to be dug between the Nile River and the Red Sea. Governors used them to make New York City into a hub of industry and turn the Great Lakes of North America into vast highways of maritime trade. Soviet leaders attempted to drain the Aral Sea for irrigation water. Huge dams harnessed old waters to bring electricity--modernity--to burgeoning cities in the American West, Central China, and the Amazon Basin. The European Economic Community dammed up Homer's Wine-dark Sea beginning in 1982, with sub-projects extending south, deep into Central Africa. This work resulted in one barrier across the Dardanelles, a second across the Strait of Sicily, a third at the Bosporus, a fourth on the River Congo. Lake Chad swelled to reach Faya-Largeau.
From the 1950s, the great powers did much of their digging with what they dubbed "Atoms for Peace." Nuclear charges blew the tops off mountains and scoured deep trenches in the Earth's crust. This practice was especially appealing to developing nations and imperial powers in possession of large, sparsely-populated or politically-subjugated territories. Leading the way were the Americans, Soviets, French, Indians, Portuguese, and South Africans. Las Vegas became the City the Bomb Built. Atomic engineering was used again on the Moon and Mars to excavate sub-surface habitation, and as a motive force to move small asteroids into accessible orbits for scientific investigation and subsequent strip-mining.
Rising sea levels spurred strong interest in the creation of artificial reefs and island chains. Three distinct habitation zones emerged: a storm barrage along the North American Atlantic Littoral, including in the Gulf of Mexico; in the Indian Ocean in the Bay of Bengal but later extending to the waters due west of Perth, for purposes of refugee resettlement; and in the Southern Pacific Ocean, largely tied to resource extraction.
Use of atomics for purposes other than killing had become so frequent on Earth that the United Nations thought little of supplying Chiron Interstellar Probe and Unity Mission colonists with a full range of warhead sizes. Early settlers used them immediately for terraforming as well as flattening mountain ranges to alter the paths of rivers or patterns of precipitation and water retention.
Performance against fungus was notably unsatisfactory. Different from the lesser wounds inflicted by fire and conventional explosives, the radiological output of nuclear weapons appeared to stimulate planetary aggression and the re-population of fungal mass. Secondary ignition of nitrate beds was problem: wildfires rarely burned hot or long because of Chiron's low oxygen levels--just 41% that of Earth--but fine dust kicked up through atomic activity choked atmospheric filters and produced deadly and destructive arc flashes.
The question of just whose interests were served through these radical reconstructive surgeries of the living Earth was never explored in full, and each megaproject inspired passionate, sometimes violent, resistance. Agribusiness, cultural chauvinists, the non-patriated, and inland city-dwellers were at the forefront of pushing schemes like the creation of "Atlantropa." Politicians sweetened the offer by promising cheap land and lifelong work for those who had neither. The perspectives of coastal populations, logistics firms, and transhumant people were cooler even after assurances were given of priority relocation and huge tax breaks for impacted businesses. Environmental liberationists struck hard and often. As the impacts were disproportionately inflicted on populations and interest groups with the least political voice, critics reckoned sea level change a form of cultural genocide.
(https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNjc3NTU4Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3MDQ4NjA0MH0.UbvQ9isHzbn1C1sCoO9pMFBa9lP4BeAFM0_NKGZaC8k/image.jpg)
Magnets played a feature role in combating the very high rates of cancer experienced by the First Generation. Unity survivors received an extra lifetime radiation dose of between 15 and 1700 rem, asbestos exposure far exceeding the maximum tolerable safe level of .1 fibers per cubic centimeter every 30 minutes, and post-hibernation disorders of the memory and nervous system collectively referred to as Cold Disease.
Led by the University of Planet's Xisho Center for Cancer Eradication, researchers used magnets to create steerable drug payloads and trigger amalgamation of defective and cancerous cells for easy obliteration.
What was used to heal could also be exploited to do harm. At Hive infirmaries, workers received generic "inoculation" with magnetic nanoparticles that allowed Overseers to trigger fatal clotting at the push of a button.
(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-hQyV6Bo05PIXFr2ZiPNDa2eP4VuBLkSbSGwDx6oHoUYSrAPDvjSdnzlzjqgf6hzVaiA3-lZsaNT0imBVeyvvRYmnyK_qojsmuAec9SMbUVGQFkqpPw0Kwn2QLsBARteRntfcgOIYP7ru3C4DZcHQ5wLV0ZBFwc9o_rWDbvHPMHvW5uBktOdKSc2Wkg/s2048/US%20astronaut%20&%20Soviet%20cosmonout%20on%20Mars%20in%20season%203%20of%20For%20All%20Mankind%20TV%20series_humanMars.net.jpg)
Sale of subscription billets through the charter colony scheme led to a 40% increase in Unity passenger capacity. Project managers turned to museums and private collectors to obtain serviceable equipment. Soviet space suits were favored for their ruggedness, while American styles incorporated better safety features in case of a breach.
Sources:
For more about Atlantropa, see this article (https://allthatsinteresting.com/atlantropa) on allthatsinteresting.com.
"Fantastic Voyage" diagram is from Sylvain Martel, "Magnetic Microbots to Fight Cancer," IEEE Spectrum, Robotics, 25 September 2012, https://spectrum.ieee.org/magnetic-microbots-to-fight-cancer (accessed: 5 March 2023).
Clumping magnets are described here (https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/5-ways-magnets-will-change-the-way-we-live.htm) on howstuffworks.com.
Rem exposure chart (https://inl.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Radiation_Dose_Comparisons.pdf) from Idaho National Labs.
Third picture is from the Apple+ show For All Mankind.
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If you've ever wondered what true despair looks like, ask a prize-winning author to help you dig a latrine. - Life, Barely
Specialization of labor is both the first sign of a wealthy society and the very means by which it can become that much wealthier. Tests of faction leadership on Chiron were often about creating opportunities for some of Earth's best-educated people to do what they were good at.
Mission planners had tried to mitigate that very problem through painstaking selection. At first, consideration for inclusion in the mission was limited to candidates who fell within narrow parameters of age and physical fitness. The rule was clear: prefer the well-rounded 'jack over the narrowly-focused master. Once accepted, prospective colonists began two or three years of intense practical training in any of two Colony Occupational Specialties. Mathematicians became journeyman welders and elite rescue swimmers. Surgeons tried their hands at welding. Then came the time in classrooms. Theologians fluent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were taught machine language. Poets studied criminal justice and project management fundamentals.
Standards relaxed, then vanished. About a third of Unity passengers graduated the full program. Another quarter completed some training through the U.N., usually the physical component, with a focus on life-safety. Approximately the same number of colonists and crew undertook "equivalencies" with their national governments or qualifying corporations, some in addition to their U.N. commitment, some in lieu of it. Jonathan Garland believed such replacement education was suspect, amounting to political indoctrination, and he turned over document verification to Rachael Winzenried's Security Forces for three months before higher-ups in New York overruled him. Anyone not participating in U.N. or national training was awarded between two years and one month of credits to participate in InterLink correspondence courses--just enough, remembered Aayla Cantwell, to begin to confront all the things one didn't know. Crew members called it being "scared straight."
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/046/493/504/4k/jay-li-0217.jpg?1645242530)
U.N. Security Forces recruits participate in room-clearing drills on the orders of Unity Security Chief Rachael Winzenried.
Once on the ground, natural hierarchies arose. They followed a familiar pattern. Leaders and their coteries gained and retained status by assigning posts and dispensing favors. Absent coercion, techs of any kind were next-closest to the top of the heap since anyone who could keep a body or machine going in adverse conditions was nearly guaranteed to receive supervisory duties and the perquisites that went with them. (Subordinates were to learn through proximity and observation.) The next layer belonged to professional soldiers and safety responders, first in the way of harm. Weapons were useful and scarce, therefore valuable. Morgan, Santiago, Cobb, and van de Graaf incentivized their combatants with the promise of plunder. On the third rung were those who filled out the common labor pool, digging and hauling. Below these was anyone who could do no more than watch a gauge or check the seals of a spacesuit.
Within each layer, more granular divisions emerged. Medical professionals were early celebrities. Among paramilitary types, national service usually trumped.
(https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/690c1480921871.5cef1e105a894.png)
Pilots learned that they were mechanics first, drivers second.
In time, adjustments were made. Morgan and Van de Graaf linked political power with property rights so that one's occupation mattered less. The University made distinction between those who only worked at a job and those who could instruct others in its performance or otherwise contribute to their "economy of ideas." Factions that employed overseers--the Morganites, Spartans, Dreamers, Hive, and Ascendancy--initially ranked them alongside or just below soldiers, but all learned quickly to carefully circumscribe their authority and limit their access to weapons lest they become an internal fifth column.
Practice economy by match reward with need. Recognize the veteran and the drone with food and rest. Tomorrow, they will fight and work all the harder. Send the doctor to the datalinks and he will educate himself in a finer technique. Give the parent a primer and she will use her time to better her child. - Institutes of Leadership
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/056/182/935/4k/josef-sury-levelist4-22-09-25-v3-5-logos.jpg?1668633356)
Happiness is a menu with many options. - The Centauri Monopoly
Sources:
Joseph Plumb Martin was a Continental soldier and diarist who, after the war, left behind an autobiography titled, A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier: Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of Joseph Plumb Martin.
First picture is from "Mech Constructor" by Slava Zhuravlev on Bēhance.
Second picture is "training-0217" by Jay Li on Art Station.
Third picture is "Netspectre - Cyberpunk Hacking Roguelike - Hummus bistro" by Joseph Surý on Art Station.
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(https://i.imgur.com/VYcJ960.png)
Among the good intentions that paved the road to Chiron, the Stellar Lifeboat Project ranked as one with the most blowback. An ambitious attempt by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees to gift a chance of humanity’s lifetime, the initiative aimed to relocate the forsaken of Earth onto the UNS Unity. Reviewed by Chief of Staff to the Secretary-General Pravin Lal himself, then rubber-stamped by Mongkut in turn, the plan proposed to admit lottery-winning families of vetted stateless No-Pats, political asylum seekers, international refugees, and the internally displaced onto the great ship as ready-made colonists beholden to the magnanimity of the U.N.
The architects of this cockamamie proposal offered a host of rationales: the humanitarian- these poor souls who had lost so much on Earth should be granted a chance to prosper beyond; the coldly pragmatic- by selecting from persecuted populations, their former home governments would be glad for them to be gone anyway, and perhaps even reduce the number of anti-Unity terrorist attacks by otherwise jealous neighbors; and even the anthropological- by including dwindling minorities, this could greatly increase the cultural mass brought to the new planet, preserving customs and creeds otherwise forever lost.
Of course, reality was far starker. Lt. Commander Tạ Dọc Thân was skeptical of swapping valuable high-fidelity datatapes for fragile, mortal people; archivist librarian Élodie looked askance at the supposed cultural value these huddled masses would bring compared to the Grand Canon. Some governments were glad to banish their undesirables into space- saves the dirty business worthy of World Court tribunals, after all- yet crabs in a bucket mentality pushed others to denounce it as a scheme to undermine national or ethnic pride by elevating their enemies all the way to humanity's new frontier. Mob violence and pogroms were not much abated by the dubious "honor" bestowed upon the peoples considered for the lottery. And finally, like with every other aspect of the mission, the project was exploited by opportunists such as James Heid of the IMF front company Eames Emporium to stow away under assumed names, as well as spies, saboteurs, and sleeper agents of dozens of countries, corporations, and causes.
Yet regardless of the grim realities, the Stellar Lifeboat Project resettled a myriad of the once-forgotten, from those left behind by the conflagration of the Six Minute War to the victims of tribal conflict in the American heartland. Uyghur and Tutsi, Quechua and Copt, Roma and Inuit, they indeed brought with them multitudes of tongues and traditions in living color.
(https://i.imgur.com/Y89jB5z.jpg)
Planetfall gave pause to the ember of hope as the true unfortunates of the Lifeboat found themselves press-ganged, conscripted, bonded, indentured, and swindled by warlords and petty kings. Many were caught up in the confusion as the Unity began to break up in orbit. Morgan Industries, ARC, Struan's Pacific Trading Company, and more fought over this readily-thawed source of labor. Yet their utility as a pliant workforce likely saved many of their lives, and kept families- even nascent communities- intact. Placed into one bracket by U.N. bureaucracy, forced into service by the rulers of Planet, the former terrestrial refugees of the Stellar Lifeboat would later come to create societies of their own both within and without the factions.
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(https://i.imgur.com/MfEX5rW.png)
Official flag of MECO
The Stellar Lifeboat Project proved to be a boon for authoritarian states to offload citizens deemed troublesome. While FEMA Spring Cleaning, the clandestine American system to deport HERITAGE Act-ineligible nonviolent dissidents, was excoriated by the international community thanks to the heroic efforts of anonymous leakers, other governments cloaked their own schemes. The Damascus Axis, also known as the Middle East Coalition, momentarily got over its member states' mutual mistrust and attempted the Al Falah Plan ("our success"), an intelligence-sharing nexus to identify potentially destabilizing persons of interest before dropping them on the Stellar Lifeboat's doorstep. These largely secularist-nationalist, Arab socialist, Arsanjanist, Green Booker, and renaissance republican regimes and personalist monarchies saw dangers at every turn. Whether Soviet, Israeli, or French provocateurs from Dār al-‘Ahd or jihadist movements like the Al-Samad network and national liberators like the People's African Union within Dār al-Islām, there seemed to be no shortage of bogeymen.
Among those snatched up from their beds by Al Falah was a particular Iranian activist from Khuzestan. Despite being a peaceful advocate for Arabistan independence, the Pahlavi monarchy brooked no patience for such sentiment. Upon the d'Avrail administration's reprisal bombings of Syria ("the Damascectomy"), which both caused the bloc to be renamed to the Aleppo Axis and shifted the fulcrum to Tehran, the increasingly junior partners of MECO were perfectly willing to sell out their brethren living under imperial Persian rule.
(https://i.imgur.com/fXVokQJ.png)
For his role in distributing literature about Ahwaz liberation, Ali Numrūd Kašk was confronted by SAVAK hatchet men and given a choice of indefinite detention in Evin Prison, or off-world exile. Having already lost his wife to the regime, he signed the voluntary confessions and, along with his sole surviving child Firyal, was sent across the Iraqi border to the Middle East Coalition's joint launch site at Al Anbar. For mysterious reasons, the two were separated. Inattentive UNHCR inspectors waved the daughter through, sending her into orbit. She would never see her father again. Carrying nearly three hundred captive passengers, the bulk transport Golden Shah arrived at the Stellar Lifeboat's later-stage training facilities on the Moon before departing for the lunar cradle, where it was retrofitted into a large landing pod for the UNS Unity itself.
(https://i.imgur.com/QLaeMnO.png)
An Al Falah men's billet trains at rapid assembly of solar arrays for colonial manufacturing, William Diego Base
The mission's lunar assets were a shadow of their former glory. Once the shiny toy of the great powers, the bases were now equal-access playpens under U.N. governance. Through the Al Falah Plan's shell corporations, MECO funneled sumptuous contributions to the mission to ship its people there on one-way flights. Firyal and the others had bypassed basic training and survival school the mainline colonists received, only to be tossed into the dangerously grueling screen of low-g. For months, they were subjected to intense training for a mission that was not their own.
Presided over by apathetic backwater United Nations Space Authority officials and impassive Morgan Emergency Services instructors, Firyal learned first aid, life support mechanics, welding, conflict deescalation, emergency delivery, and disaster rescue while walking on the Moon itself. Perhaps it was a prisoners' camaraderie among the Al Falah exiles that aided their survival rates compared to other Charter billets. Indeed, some observers joked that if the Stellar Lifeboat Project had been considered a regular Charter, it was perhaps among the most cohesive- but neither its factors nor these Charterists themselves really wanted to be there.
And even in the face of the worst adversity, love could bloom on the battlefield of hardship. During surface spacesuit training, Firyal Kašk would meet a young Pakistani migrant worker who had been drafted into Al Falah by Connex-Killen for organizing fellow laborers in the oil fields at Dhahran, of the Triplet Cities Emirate. Bonding over the family and lands they had left behind, raging against the oppressive forces that had brought them into this space hell, the two struck up a relationship that would take them all the way to Planet.
Notes:
The Middle East Coalition is inspired by the Middle Eastern Coalition (https://battlefield.fandom.com/wiki/Middle_Eastern_Coalition) from Battlefield 2.
Arsanjanism here refers to Hasan Arsanjani, the populist Iranian minister of agriculture whose radical land reform concept presaged the Shah's institution of the White Revolution. In our world, he was forced to resign.
Al-Samad (https://alphaprotocol.fandom.com/wiki/Al-Samad) is from Alpha Protocol.
The "Damascectomy" (the taking out of Damascus) is from Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams.
Lunar base image is taken from the Alien Legacy opening cinematic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc4E88tA3r0).
Connex-Killen is from Syriana.
Dhahran being an independent oil state (or part of one) is a very tiny reference (https://web.archive.org/web/20061004114645fw_/http://www.ahtg.net/TpA/iran2001.html) to the massive Tripartite Alliance Earth (https://web.archive.org/web/20061004115053fw_/http://www.ahtg.net/TpA/directory.html) alternate history by Randy McDonald.
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I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man. - Ecclesiastes 3:12-13
(https://www.yumsome.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/roci-crew-at-the-table-1360x907.jpg)
A Hive labor unit distributes the standard ration. Civic Dieticians worked day and night to enhance the gruel's nutritional value but the Chairman insisted that it be rendered flavorless. Longing for joy in food was an "anchor sign," he said.
In Talents, deviation from the Chairman's Tenets could be punished with demotion or added work, but in drones it was overlooked with tolerance bordering on affection. Favorite meal accompaniments were simple: rock salt, green onion, and mushrooms grown in the patches where pipes leaked.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/155886b6-e81a-4575-b472-6e79e75c09cf/de78scl-cfa896be-8ac1-4b3e-bedc-bdd264706533.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzE1NTg4NmI2LWU4MWEtNDU3NS1iNDcyLTZlNzllNzVjMDljZlwvZGU3OHNjbC1jZmE4OTZiZS04YWMxLTRiM2UtYmVkYy1iZGQyNjQ3MDY1MzMuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.2SUuKPagW9HeEa_-1jIFmcJertz3_sRFcG0ELWAfFb8)
Fourteen percent of Unity's cargo by volume was shelf-stable food and potable water. It was stored in radiation-shielded, climate-controlled vaults together with the mission's seed stock, blood banks, and temperature-sensitive medicines.
Bulk medicines were sourced from the International Red Cross and broken down for distribution with individual meals. The U.S. Federal Disaster Agency contributed water purification chemicals drawn from post-war storage. Morganite loadmasters blunted the desired public relations effect of the donation by repainting the livery.
Shipboard radiation levels remained so high for so long that the original storage measures failed to prevent widespread radiation poisoning. Knowing full well the dangers of introducing alien crops to a new biome, all factions preferred to recover Supply Pods deployed ahead of the disaster, but they also raced to grow fresh food in Planet's willing soil.
At first, spoiled rations couldn't be entirely avoided. Democratic societies arranged schemes to keep dose rates equitable, factoring age, weight, and other health factors. Crawlers like this one shuttled supplies between bases where Base Operations oversaw distribution. Some leaders had other ideas. Spartans fought duels over the small number of clean meals. In the Ascendancy, Pahlavi ensured that the older and sicker residents received the worst rations. As intended, they died in droves, relieving her of the duty for their care.
(https://subjectanomaly.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/01.jpg)
Submarine crews of L'État nouvel received special allowances to supplement their rations with food purchased at the faction's Exchanges. They prized selections particular to the land, especially wheat-based and milk products.
(https://expresselevatortohell.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/2013-jan-table-firefly-dinner-table.jpg)
Tribal meals were near-celebratory occasions. Neighbors pooled resources to organize meals cooked with a wider range of ingredients than were available to any single household. Tribals, like most Purists, insisted on real meat and beer. They brewed the latter from corn.
(https://content.instructables.com/FFS/QPCK/H9G17N8R/FFSQPCKH9G17N8R.jpg?auto=webp&frame=1&width=1024&height=1024&fit=bounds&md=01ea35692e2d09a72d099aec0b165caf)
Subrids were bread for their flesh, which most colonists found appetizing. Colonists usually combined their fresh food with accompaniments drawn from their survival meals. Hot sauces retained the same cult following they'd enjoyed back on Earth.
Fire-starters, seen here in the bottom right quadrant of the open tin, often failed to ignite but were valuable precisely because of how difficult it was to make fire without them.
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GLhXebP1cek/maxresdefault.jpg)
Resurrection of extinct megafauna fueled a popular resurgence in sport hunting among a certain type of wealthy traveler on Earth. For a time, Warden J.T. Marsh had made his living leading safaris of this type. Hunter Lodges took pride in organizing "hungry" expeditions that left their bases without survival packs and undertook to eat only what they snared or shot while on-scout.
Sources:
First image is from The Expanse.
Second image is "Where you want 'em?" by Marrekie on DeviantArt.
Third image is from the film Alien.
Fourth image is from the TV show Firefly.
Fifth image is "Pocket-Sized Star Wars Emergency Ration Kit (https://www.instructables.com/Pocket-Sized-Star-Wars-Emergency-Ration-Kit/)" by Chrononaut on Autodesk Instructable.
Sixth image is from The Lost World.
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Whether they knew it or not, Holnists were confronting a timeless problem. It is impossible to tell an audience what has happened without also influencing how they feel about it. – Media and Modern War
Notwithstanding the near-catastrophe of 1973, Israel and Iran more or less ran the Middle East table from the late twentieth century forward, acting in concert themselves, or with the United States, to blunt the ambitions of neighboring states.
In early 1979, the Shah was dying of aggressive cancer, and Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein thought he saw an opportunity to meddle in the succession. But Iraq’s Intelligence Service was inferior to SAVAK in every way, and attempts to stir up pro-Communist sentiment failed, triggering an Iranian ground invasion that quickly gained the northern third of Iraq as a Kurdish homeland.
The U.N. spoke airily of experiments in national reconciliation, but retaliatory pogroms gripped the new Kurdistan Republic and two hundred thousand Iraqi Arabs fled its new capital of Mosul hot on the heels of the retreating Republican Guard. Among them was the extraordinary Essa family.
Awad Essa had been a conservator of manuscripts with the University of Mosul, but a vehicle wreck during the escape to Baghdad left him unable to work. Second son, Boualem, joined the army where he earned assignment to an air defense unit and trained under Soviet advisers sent to rebuild the Iraqi armed forces. Radar operators trained for three months in the Soviet Union, where Boualem saw his first computer, an Agat-7 micro-terminal.
Through black market trades, Boualem acquired an RCA Cosmo personal computer and a word processing program in the form of a ROM cartridge. Boualem’s son, Gulzar, built and rebuilt the machine for the year it took to buy writable memory, at which point the real work began: digitizing the text of centuries-old documents their family patriarch had taken with him into exile.
Patriotic feeling had run dry among Gulzar’s generation, and an uneventful conscription did not tempt him to make soldiering his career, but as a typist he made it onto a colonel’s staff. That colonel ran interference with the United Nations on behalf of his political masters, and from those diplomats of the Mongkut School, Gulzar learned of the opportunities available to the descendants of war refugees like himself.
(https://preview.redd.it/sgquiekom5i21.jpg?auto=webp&s=1e3ff9698b9215e2d2fc9760464ff5fd6555a776)
Gulzar Essa at training in France. Data Services personnel abandoned the standard togs of other mission branches in favor of uniform blouses and berets.
To grasp hold of the future, Gulzar first had to cut ties with the past. Enormous bribes and genuine transit papers provided by one of Boualem’s former commanders took Gulzar northwest across the border into Mandatory Syria, then on a passenger flight to Marseilles, home of the United Nations Interlink.
Data services were the fiefdom of a Tạ Dọc Thân, a notorious martinet who used paramilitary language and stylings whenever his superiors were looking the other way. To Gulzar’s surprise, he was taught less about the fundamentals of database management or electronics repair than the politics of popular memory. Thân, he noticed, had a taste for length. No documentary was too long, no memo too detailed. He delighted in knowing things that other people did not and once explained to a packed classroom that Data Services existed not to determine what should be stored in Unity’s computer systems, but to know where to find what was.
(https://i.insider.com/5746e5e4dd089515598b4649?width=1000&format=jpeg&auto=webp)
A Data Services technician completes production of one of the 973 million hard disks that will deliver instructions to the Stasis and Fidelity Emergency Control System, the “brain” for all shipboard hibernation functions. With these instructions, colonists experiencing medical emergencies would receive a lengthy menu of automatic interventions based on declining vital signs.
Thân’s leadership aboard Unity was decisive. He knew his purpose: defense of the Data Core, and abdicated other duties in its favor. For terrified subordinates like Essa, it was the obvious choice: a leader committing to remain with his people when he was most needed. They would not attempt to respond to what was happening ship-wide, Thân explained, and would instead fall back to tending the only machine that really mattered. Whoever was left, they would surely perish without the fund of knowledge held fast in the Data Core.
Gulzar Essa killed his first man for Tạ Dọc Thân in the sixth hour of the Disaster. A Holnist broke into one of two electrical closets abutting Memory Hall ψ. From concealment, Essa shot the man in the side of the head and recovered his rifle. In the finest traditions of the Data Services Division, he organized the defense of his position under heavy duress until the enemy’s resolve flagged.
Brevet promotion followed, and once Planetside, Essa looked to reunite with the mentor he had come to idolize. Only then did he learn the terrible truth: the great man was dead and the Data Core lost—fallen, perhaps, into unfriendly hands. In Thân’s place was a lieutenant, Sathieu Metrion, with a problematical interest in second-guessing his dead master’s decisions.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d068d907-8bf9-4375-ab0d-1d843814396c/ddxi9jm-c88c35cb-fb15-4344-8163-e3068ade09d7.jpg/v1/fill/w_1293,h_618,q_70,strp/research_by_darnok9_ddxi9jm-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzY1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZDA2OGQ5MDctOGJmOS00Mzc1LWFiMGQtMWQ4NDM4MTQzOTZjXC9kZHhpOWptLWM4OGMzNWNiLWZiMTUtNDM0NC04MTYzLWUzMDY4YWRlMDlkNy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.1Qk_gUsJyweRFed0HRrodkKNQel6I16cO6jt7yRrJag)
The Tomorrow Institute divided its energies between two objectives: accumulation of the inputs necessary to operate the largest computer system on Planet and recovery of the information to be stored within. “Forklifts and bullets” was Sathieu Metrion’s clear and unhesitating answer to that infamous first question broadcast to the Planetary Network by Nwabudike Morgan: “What do you want today?”
A librarian is a field guide, not a creator, and certainly not a curator. There is no decision about what to take, only the most precise attention to where it will go. – Ancient Architecture
Sources:
Gulzar Essa is represented by Seth, a character from the first entry in the long-running Command & Conquer series from Westwood Studios.
Computer image is from IBM, included in this (https://www.businessinsider.com/floppy-disks-control-us-nuclear-weapons-2016-5) Business Insider article from 2016.
Forklifts picture is “research” by Darnok9 on DeviantArt.
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Our job is to do for thinking what Henry Ford did for the production of the automobile. - Fragments from the Joining
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/012/524/916/4k/zaki-aby-untitled-7.jpg?1535222516)
Information Socialists posited that, once disclosed through shared or recorded, an idea was the shared property of all people. Hackers, like Holnists, made a window-dressing of this philosophy, though most data piracy in the Hopkirk Era was for personal entertainment or partisan political purposes well divorced from clear altruism.
(https://www.goldderby.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/santiago-cabrera-star-trek-picard.jpg)
University of Adelaide Wellmand Chair of Computer Science Kyle Porters became an enduring New York Times bestseller and a talk-media staple for his argument that information fit the classic criteria of a monopoly good. Only government intervention, he wrote in 2023's Creative Alcatraz, could ensure the full exploitation of this classically undervalued resource.
Soviet and Chinese Communist propagandists amplified Porters's message whenever they stood accused of industrial espionage, which was often.
The Blue Devil Holnist Cell abducted Porters from Victoria Square-Tarntanyangga and shot him dead three days later. They produced a watch-vid of the assassination, which they put behind a paywall. It became one of the most-accessed vids of all time, earning 17.9 billion views in twelve months.
(https://preview.redd.it/bvk3cp7k62ba1.jpg?width=768&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=3b132561ca8a1662053435de86a766e72708ce94)
Building on Porters's ideas, zap theorist Starling Dade suggested that the real benefit of public ownership of intellectual property was to press comparative advantage, as the Datalinks Revolution had already begun to demonstrate. What if an idea in Hokkaido was just waiting for an architect in Zaragosa? And how better to achieve frictionless exchange than via a hive mind?
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/008/833/489/large/miguel-iglesias-ru-in-3-pic-1-logos.jpg?1515591695)
Ex-Soviet Airborne General Vyacheslav Kolchaiev (left) gradually warmed to the conclusion that a hive mind was the only viable solution to the Developmental Leap, a theorized planetological singularity that humanity needed to cross to overcome an extinction-level event on Planet.
To find himself one of the Unity colonists was a disgrace for Kolchaiev, a decorated combat commander whose only "crime" was believing deeply in the correctness of Communist political doctrine at a time of political rapprochement with the West. To keep Kolchaiev from making common cause with more militant hardliners, the KGB allowed his emigration to Sudan.
Mercenarism being the highest form of fascist corporatism in his estimation, Kolchaiev kept himself fed by taking contract work with United Nations anthropologists attempting to preserve the cultures of crisis-afflicted populations. In 2068, Kolchaiev was recalled to the U.S.S.R. on the occasion of his son's death and handed his fate.
Kolchaiev's name is known to have appeared on several manifests used by faction leaders as divergent as Chief Engineer Prokhor Zakharov and Chief Medical Officer Pravin Lal to sort out the choicest conscripts for their causes. In fact, he was made a Forward Controller by Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida and oversaw the defense of Unity's reserve reaction mass. (The Holnist rampage was so beyond reason that one body of Santiago's people tried to dump the compartment and thereby throw the ship off-course, thereby to consign all its passengers to starvation or strangulation--whichever came first.)
Hard on the heels of the Survivalists, Roshann Cobb's people came looking for Kolchaiev. Proximity to an exploding grenade cost Kolchaiev one ear, one thumb, and, temporarily, his wits. When he woke, Kolchaiev found that the attending physician was none other than Dr. Aleigha Cohen.
Years passed. Too valuable to be wasted on a work gang, too dangerous to be traded carelessly away, Kolchaiev studied his captors and the technologies that enthralled them. Never partaking himself of lucid dreaming, Kolchaiev nevertheless joined the culture it spawned.
Members of the Joining communicated with one another by accessing a sequestered terminal in a storm-damaged agricultural research bay. "Aspirants," as they called themselves, agreed that perceptions and emotions as well as ideas and data should be shared as part of an intellectual commons. The purpose of Dreaming should not be the individual enlightenment supposedly sought by Cobb, much less personal amusement. The truest form of public service was participation in a mental collective that, once large enough, must outpace the University's innovation, predict market shifts more accurately than Morganite polysoftware, and even regulate the baser emotions of its own participants.
Sources:
Information Socialism, also called Nanosocialism, along with its fictional originator Kyle Porters, were introduced in Jan F. Zeigler's Transhuman Space: Fifth Wave, a sourcebook for the GURPS role-playing game system.
First image is "Hardcoding: Redshift Study" by Zaki on ArtStation.
Santiago Cabrera as Cristóbal Rios is our Kyle Porters.
Starling Dad is "Cyberpung girl portrait" shared by paisacrypto on reddit (r/midjourney).
Kolchaiev's picture is "World in Conflict-Soviet Assault, Cutscenes" by Miguel Iglesias on ArtStation, produced for UbiSoft.
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(https://i.imgur.com/NAJmn9T.jpg?1)
A corporate overseer awakes a demolitions expert during Planetfall
The Stellar Lifeboat struck against its moorings and splintered into a thousand pieces during the Planetfall crisis. Scores of incognito stowaways threw off their disguises and dissolved into the night, infiltrating factions as useful operators in one vital specialization or another, rather than the former victims of Earth's misfortunes. Scores more were hunted down as human assets to be bartered with and exploited. Unity Comptroller Suzanne Marjorie Fielding laid down her duty to the flailing mission and resumed her due diligence to the American Reclamation Corporation, using her masterlink access to create harvest lists of choice Lifeboaters for collection. Rushing to beat their corporate rivals to the punch, her Overseers employed lawyer programs to mass-draft contracts of indenture, customized for each individual's polity of origin- usually U.N. compacts governing treatment of No-Pats- and went to the cryochambers, becoming the first sight for many a bewildered refugee after sixty years of sleep.
(https://i.imgur.com/gpxWPBS.png)
An American Machines R-79 Robodigger "Rusty" deploys from the Golden Shah in search of potables
Al Falah, one of the larger providers to the Stellar Lifeboat Project, made up of just over eleven percent of the ten thousand. Nearly all of the billets belonging to the MECO black project were scooped up by ARC, secured by newly-awakened corporate security forces and PMCs that included the Val Verde Veterans. In a stroke of cosmic irony, these conscript Charterists were crammed into the landing pod built around the imperial Iranian-constructed Golden Shah and sent to the surface. A double dose of coincidence led them to land just east of the central stretch of the Great Dunes, hundreds of kilometers away from any coast or large body of water. Without motorized vehicles, the motley crew were forced to set up base amidst the inhospitable wastes. Mercifully, they had brought along robotic servitors who were able to locate a nearby well. From humble, mutually suspicious beginnings, Fort Quileute was established.
(https://i.imgur.com/mi4EK7o.jpg)
The medina of Fort Quileute during the high years of the Director's Council
Even after they reunited with the New Two Thousand, the base was a lonely outpost only tangentially related to van de Graaf's ambitions. Isolated from ARC leadership, the would-be overseers were at a loss of what to focus on, and survival was a necessary priority anyway. Perhaps out of paranoia of their own security forces' loyalty, and out of an Orientalist understanding of the very own Charterists they had assembled, the governors of Quileute granted the Al Falah host the privilege of self-management. Deferring to the refugees' cultures of origins- in reality, the vast majority were urbanites whose contact with the desert amounted to the occasional vacation tour- ARC permitted Al Falah to build their new civilization on their own terms, with minimal interference. This allowed a rather hands-off synergy as the corporate heads retreated into their inner sanctums to hem and haw about what the big chief would want, their guards and mercenaries made splendid war against the peculiar armored local mindworms Tomorrow Institute xenoentomologists at Bembridge called "scarab-snakes," and the interstellar refugees were free to run their own affairs.
(https://i.imgur.com/AvLFuvY.png)
An ARC-Al Falah exploratory group chances upon the fossilized pincer of a great desert subrid
Firyal Kašk volunteered for the hastily-formed Sand Scouts, putting the high marks she had received on the Sea of Serenity survival courses to real use in the field. Rising quickly, she took ARC expeditions further and further into the wastes, finding new water sources from Chiron succulents and food from the canny species that lurked among the dunes. Firyal's comrades grew to respect her daredevil spirit, and love how she saved them from sandstorms and scarab swarms. Yet her impetuousness hid a deep melancholy from leaving behind her father and all she had known back in Khuzestan. Pouring her grief for her lost land and life, Firyal spurred on the scouts into the ancient alien complexes that littered the Great Dunes, discovering relics unique to that region of Planet.
(https://i.imgur.com/Jsih2QV.jpg)
Augmented with last-gen prosthetics, a Sand Scout veteran turned cyborg Qawwāl sings devotions at the door to the al-Farghānī Mosque at Garlandabad district
Meanwhile, her lover rallied the people of the new base, endowing the workers of Quileute with a sense of ownership and unity that had been denied back on Earth. A local labor leader who once brawled against Triplet Special Police and rooted out Connex-Killen oilmen infiltrators alike, he moved to form a united front among the Al Falah, drawing from their shared trauma and cultural similarities between the variegated peoples of the Stellar Lifeboat. To the ARC administrators he smiled and promised unparalleled productivity from worker cohesion; in dark hallways of the hab he whispered the need for all to set aside their difference to avoid megacorp domination. He forged this union in the converted supply closets that became musalla prayer rooms and the improvised washrooms used for wudu. Posing faith and tradition as an affectation of a superstitious, backwards people, the Al Falah veiled their growing unity. In their sacred spaces they formed their own secret social structure free from ARC's prying eyes.
Notes:
Lawyer programs (http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=864) are a concept from Earth by David Brin.
Robodigger is from Sierra On-Line’s Outpost.
The Quileute are a Native American nation who Frank Herbert learned greatly from prior to writing Dune (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/23/opinion/culture/dune-frank-herbert-native-americans.html).
The medina image is “The Center (https://twitter.com/seven_teenth/status/963097818926895104)” by Ismail Inceoglu.
The giant crab art is from Yukinobu Hoshino’s sci-fi classic 2001 Nights, specifically "Night 10: Medusa's Throne."
The multi-limbed sitar player painting is by Omar Gilani (http://www.omargilani.com/pakistan).
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(https://i.imgur.com/n1neIqR.png)
Antiquity Abubakari-9429, or the Projection Stone
After a robosurveyor detected a subterranean network during a water search, veteran Expedition Leader Firyal Kašk launched a dig just east of the Charbagh of Bones. Spelunking through caverns measureless to man, the Quileute Sand Scouts discovered a vast Progenitor complex containing several alien artifacts. Among them was a mysterious rock etching that seemed to depict the Centauri system with strange satellite trajectories projecting forth from Planet. Aeons old according to radiocarbon dating, this was the most coherent xenogenous symbolic representation discovered yet. The fort's meager computational resources spent a fortnight attempting to decrypt its inscrutable writings. Appraisals made later by the New Two Thousand's ARC art valuation division suggested that when taking into account its immense historical and scientific value, the rock was worth hundreds of millions of ¤.
(https://i.imgur.com/hQXIOBZ.png)
ARC Chief Human Intelligence Officer Suzanne Marjorie Fielding speaks to the wayward colony for the very first time
Fort Quileute's pseudonode had had no luck in unravelling the mystery of the etchings, but in one of the miracles of Alpha Centauri science, the scanning process stumbled upon an anomalous harmonic resonance beneath the surface of the Projection Stone. This “Wow!” signal was backwards-engineered by the lone ARC acoustics engineer attached to the fort, who along with a Cairo University mathematics professor (and Muslim Brotherhood member) banished by the United Arab Republic, devised a transmitter that boosted the base's communications array tenfold. Nearly a continent away, an assistant to the executive assistant of ARC CFO-CHIO Suzanne Marjorie Fielding picked up the phone and was bewildered to find himself dealing with a first contact situation. Escalations were raised and c-suite notified. After mission decades of isolation away from the New Two Thousand body politic, the desert outpost reestablished contact with mother base.
While Terra Nova was far from the Great Dunes, overland trade expeditions were attempted to bridge the two. Governor Oscar van de Graaf was eager to restore another one of his stakes back to his righteous patrimony. CFO Fielding was keen to introduce proper Pilgrim operating standards upon the colony. And the long-lost Director's Council of Fort Quileute was desperate to prove to the Pilgrim elite "back home" that they were proper stakeholders, not provincial sand-eaters.
(https://i.imgur.com/oDRn1RM.png)
The Three Domes of Fort Quileute. Right to left: The Green Crescent Primary Agridome, producing over seventy percent of the colony's food supply. The Jamshid Manufacturing Plant, a multi-industry factory. And the Bayt al-Hunayn, the House of Yearning, a shared reliquary and library bearing the population's memories of Earth
To their credit, salutary neglect had benefited the city. The labor leadership formed by Firyal's lover had kept the interstellar felaheen satisfied with autonomy, hummingly productive, and in the captain's seat. United against even the threat of subordination, the Stellar Lifeboat families overcame their cultural, sectarian, and linguistic differences to create a new ummah. Never would they tolerate being played by ARC as their home nations were once subject to the interventions by the Americans and other farang powers. Dispersed by their own governments, brought together by fate, the peoples of Fort Quileute created a cosmopolitan refugee society.
Each district administered its own district rules, often organized along the spiritual life of the respective community, through cramped meeting rooms that doubled for prayer and ritual. Headmen and elders were appointed to a "Senate" of sheiks that governed the overall population. Differences and disputes between the communities were mediated by the Al Falah Trade Union, the name of their embittered exile reappropriated for their new success.
This arrangement kept peace between Arab and Jew, Turk and Kurd, Persian and Mandaean. And the drone population exceptionally low- though the ever-pervasive threat of "second exile" into the desert wastes, or conscription into the Sand Scouts to fight scarab-snakes and SMACER bandits under cruel hazing by V3 mercenary officers, already deterred shirk. The worker cohesion of the Al Falah diaspora, assisted by the mystical benefits of the alien artifacts retrieved from sandblasted monolith ruins, created a modestly successful standard of living. When the first Pilgrim caravan arrived from Eaton's Shore, they were amazed to find a rough-cut but shining jewel in the desert, its agridomes filled with well-tilled fields of emmer wheat and barley, its sole factory outputting small batches of fuel cells, robotic parts, and textiles.
Notes:
Space base art is "Exoplanet Space Station (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/dOwQe)" by Alfie Rodriguez
Agridomes (agricultural domes) are from Outpost (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_1:structuresdetails#agricultural_dome) and Outpost 2 (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_2:outpost_2_manual:food). Here's a short story (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_2:storyline:tales_from_new_terra#agridome) from the latter.
Eaton's Shore refers to U.S. Army officer William Eaton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Eaton_(soldier)), who fought in the First Barbary War.
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I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night - Datalinks
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/fd9906f9298acc6938879bda075378b0/tumblr_nycat2iRzd1qztcdbo1_1280.jpg)
"Raid by two-stage Hopper" appears as the final entry for 391 individual colony sites in the Great Register of Planet, a crowdsourced history that began at Mission Launch and remained active in the Planetary Datalinks until the First Destruction.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ccced6f4-a710-4932-adcf-5d29f99712e3/dbmqqhf-df12a9b3-41b1-4496-9801-164499e7ab21.jpg/v1/fill/w_1600,h_1000,q_75,strp/mining_colony_apartment_by_jamescombridge_dbmqqhf-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAwMCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2NjY2VkNmY0LWE3MTAtNDkzMi1hZGNmLTVkMjlmOTk3MTJlM1wvZGJtcXFoZi1kZjEyYTliMy00MWIxLTQ0OTYtOTgwMS0xNjQ0OTllN2FiMjEuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE2MDAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.47a0Fdw3TH8adRHg2Xc4DihD2oaqFXxRv-LfmYjODAc)
Survival suits were never completely stowed, vigilance never completely relaxed. At the close of each cycle in the Hive, Chairman Yang's voice crackled through wall-mounted consoles from which citizens practiced unspooling individual breathing hoses. The warning was always the same: "Move to air. Move to air. Move to air."
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/fd2cacc3-e662-4b93-912f-4456ff95be26/d96abvb-92d43e4e-2ff3-4203-89c0-3cc22557d310.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_641,q_75,strp/the_outer_territories__shipyard_by_peteashford_d96abvb-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjQxIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZmQyY2FjYzMtZTY2Mi00YjkzLTkxMmYtNDQ1NmZmOTViZTI2XC9kOTZhYnZiLTkyZDQzZTRlLTJmZjMtNDIwMy04OWMwLTNjYzIyNTU3ZDMxMC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.P87h_-HO-JIcKtAr0iEfvJm4E1gAVn3Mr6ILVSX29Lc)
No more worshipful hands ever did touch Unity than those of Joralemon Hardacre's drones, who removed every gainful thing. Founded as Rundun's Yard, the towering salvage facility was renamed to Brent's Barrage. Full companies of Impact troops were garrisoned permanently in the sprawling mine fields and defensive emplacements that kept jealous neighbors at arm's length.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/00dd343a-b4b4-4c95-82c5-9e10e0cdff13/d834h4o-54229a35-8bb8-4159-89c5-e1a67eb48e42.jpg/v1/fill/w_1600,h_670,q_75,strp/north_by_polosatkin_d834h4o-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjcwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMDBkZDM0M2EtYjRiNC00Yzk1LTgyYzUtOWUxMGUwY2RmZjEzXC9kODM0aDRvLTU0MjI5YTM1LThiYjgtNDE1OS04OWM1LWUxYTY3ZWI0OGU0Mi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.2Xeb45uoI4VzCCia6jsNEll9IzUKNkRLVHFSo10-BJk)
Watchkeeper Militia race around the perimeter of Super Station Σπύρος, a steam plant devised by University scientists in service to the Shapers of Chiron. Its purpose was to boil away the permafrost and melt the glacial ice that shrouded Chiron's fourth continent, Aaru.
Sources:
First picture is "Lomonosov Venus Lander" by Mark Maxwell (1986) from David Hardy's Visions of Space (1989) on the Tumblr 70s Sci-Fi Art.
Second picture is "Mining colony apartment" by JamesCombridge on DeviantArt.
Third picture is "The Outer terrorities-Shipyard" by PeteAshford on DeviantArt.
Fourth picture is "north" by polosatkin on DeviantArt.
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As our ambitions elevate above petty survival, we ask ourselves: what sacred thing remains to spoil? How long before the water cannot be drunk, nor the earth tilled? - A Social History of Planet
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4daf803b-dd37-4651-8b51-8cd5330a859b/d96yek9-dd05e318-f91a-4c38-9a2c-40d8cc2f75e1.jpg/v1/fill/w_1190,h_671,q_70,strp/space_by_cyberkite_d96yek9-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTAzIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNGRhZjgwM2ItZGQzNy00NjUxLThiNTEtOGNkNTMzMGE4NTliXC9kOTZ5ZWs5LWRkMDVlMzE4LWY5MWEtNGMzOC05YTJjLTQwZDhjYzJmNzVlMS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.NLluX_C3kry4EfZL78LrKvoF0BOKN5tOpGpl-XSRhuI)
By volume, more than one half of all Unity's cargo and equipment was affixed to the exterior of the hull for independent deployment by retrograde rocket. This made it impossible to access from the ship's interior.
Here, a Multi-Directional Salvage Unit of the Conclave Flight Pillar makes contact with the High-Altitude Sensing Module (HASMO) on Unity's "east" mission arm in preparation for removal.
Four perspectives emerged on the essential purpose of returning to space: salvage, war, study, and commerce.
Despite backing from as unlikely an ally as the Human Labyrinth, the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs was unable to secure support for its proposal that the orbiting remnants of Unity be made neutral ground, subject to recovery by a multi-faction arbitrator empowered to award salvage rights based on proven need. Projecting bravado he didn't have the guns to enforce, Academician Prokhor Zakharov challenged that such an arrangement "reflects only the best interests of the pigs who have not prepared their homes. They would have everyone live in straw and call it fairness."
All factions wanted something from within the stricken hull. Meeting at High Atomica, Dr. Johann Anhaldt and Conservator Sathieu Metrion agreed that retrieval of computer systems should take priority. Cobb, Van de Graaf, and Lal each left numerous diary entries pointing to remembered friends and colleagues who might still be aboard in suspended animation.
Spartans and Memorialists raced to put weapons platforms aloft before scientific or commercial payloads. Santiago experimented with Chiron-facing ortillery (a portmanteau for "orbital artillery") in the form of kinetic re-entry vehicles. Mercator put a pair of solar-powered chemical lasers in geosynchronous orbit above the poles awaiting an external threat.
University astronomers and materials scientists hoped to intercept and redirect a transient comet in MY412.
To please its hard-charging board, Morgan Aerospace took on significant debt during the race to survey the Nessus moon. Successive failures of the company's proprietary Theseus launch packs forced executives to admit that they couldn't meet financial obligations, a condition for which the faction had no established response. Bourse proxies launched a successful takeover on the Planetary Energy Exchange. Other Morganite power-brokers, led by T.M. Morgan-Reilly, would not back the CEO's proposal to close the markets.
Some factions disdained rocketry. Neither the Gaians nor the Dreamers turned their attentions skyward. Factor Roshann Cobb scoffed at his peers' failure to perceive the importance of delving "the true frontier" of the human psyche.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4daf803b-dd37-4651-8b51-8cd5330a859b/ddpss72-bd42286b-7111-4542-9af9-b3e6fdb82598.jpg/v1/fill/w_1254,h_637,q_70,strp/turbine_by_cyberkite_ddpss72-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTc2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNGRhZjgwM2ItZGQzNy00NjUxLThiNTEtOGNkNTMzMGE4NTliXC9kZHBzczcyLWJkNDIyODZiLTcxMTEtNDU0Mi05YWY5LWIzZTZmZGI4MjU5OC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.mi2hnswIFTyY8Zx9cHeTK0em3CGJ1SLGuLBbFQREi2c)
Though he did not advertise it, even Nwabudike Morgan strained harmful pollutants from his faction's water supplies.
As crowding on the Atrean landmass reached a crisis point around the third mission century, factions necessarily began diverting resources from extraction to recovery activities.
Environmental liquidators whose skills had been formerly weaponized to eradicate xenofungus were asked to reapply their original craft by tending the mess that had resulted. At the Planetary Council's behest, the Hunters of Chiron began a decade-long ecological inventory of Planet.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/36b9a048-0833-460c-a2f0-3a4d1c029340/dcvn5zn-04f3c083-0d53-485c-9931-d198622659db.jpg/v1/fill/w_1294,h_618,q_70,strp/into_the_woods_by_rajanandepu_dcvn5zn-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzY0IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzZiOWEwNDgtMDgzMy00NjBjLWEyZjAtM2E0ZDFjMDI5MzQwXC9kY3ZuNXpuLTA0ZjNjMDgzLTBkNTMtNDg1Yy05OTMxLWQxOTg2MjI2NTlkYi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.fc3KrrOXyaAuUp4NLvNKRFWj04eJnLSOkbNfwvQB4GI)
Gaians pursue loggers felling timber and veg within their sovereign borders.
Walkers were an indispensable workhorse of Gaian security organization. The chassis had several features ideal to local conditions: a high stance that kept it well above high water levels, zero turn radius for negotiating dense terrain, and, in the deft hands of a careful pilot, the option to push toadstools aside in deference to destroying them.
Weight management was more a problem than with tanks, but thickly-forested conditions mitigated the obvious liabilities of a walker's hulking profile and limited the kinds of weapons adversaries could use in opposition. The ball turret design used organic superlubricant to speed adjustments when targeting the vehicle's four-barreled laser cannon mount. Note the subtle evidence of biovoltaic paneling on the roof. The vehicle drew energy from the waste heat of the toadstools themselves.
Sources:
First picture is "Space" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.
Second picture is "Turbine" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.
Third picture is "Into the woods" by Rajanandepu on DeviantArt.
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Children and adolescents are a paradox for our mission. They offer the great danger of distraction while providing that which is indispensable: a promise of continuity. - Speech to the 76th World Congress of the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/57/1f/ca/571fca3734ce12181ab8b31287032f1b.jpg)
Ten years passed before the population replacement rate turned positive. Most losses were delayed fatalities caused by injuries sustained during the Unity Crisis.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ad80879c-fb2b-498c-ba01-90055f5373c0/dc81pgr-980b0f63-1c94-4fa0-9853-9f44d913b9d1.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_1627,q_75,strp/carefree_by_seven_teenth-dc81pgr.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwic3ViIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl0sIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiIvZi9hZDgwODc5Yy1mYjJiLTQ5OGMtYmEwMS05MDA1NWY1MzczYzAvZGM4MXBnci05ODBiMGY2My0xYzk0LTRmYTAtOTg1My05ZjQ0ZDkxM2I5ZDEuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQiLCJoZWlnaHQiOiI8PTE2MjcifV1dfQ.7EKYisKfDuQTmTsVK529gdh04XwZ5t8VWqG5WR7ED9s)
Population replacement was an urgent problem for the Unity survivors, and would have been even had the settlement process unfolded as planned. Passengers under the age of twenty, including Kellerite stowaways and Charterist dependents, represented less than half of one percent of the original ship's complement.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ad80879c-fb2b-498c-ba01-90055f5373c0/df9a4os-dfda32e0-5f51-4e68-bbff-c534704dff2d.jpg/v1/fill/w_1182,h_676,q_70,strp/sandy_road_by_seven_teenth_df9a4os-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTA5OCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2FkODA4NzljLWZiMmItNDk4Yy1iYTAxLTkwMDU1ZjUzNzNjMFwvZGY5YTRvcy1kZmRhMzJlMC01ZjUxLTRlNjgtYmJmZi1jNTM0NzA0ZGZmMmQuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE5MjAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.ykuW83Jx2E2LCrmLUqecRixhNon95dRSSkmGr1CMjuQ)
Young, healthy, and fearless is a sometimes-fatal combination, but one to be savored. - The Lost World
Some missions required the finesse of a trained Probe Team. For the rest of the dirty work, there was always another ReSoc retread.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ad80879c-fb2b-498c-ba01-90055f5373c0/dcl7w2a-1e7ad8ab-ab3a-4e7b-ad6e-ba57750dab7b.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_588,q_75,strp/they_told_me_i_was_gone_by_seven_teenth_dcl7w2a-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTg4IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYWQ4MDg3OWMtZmIyYi00OThjLWJhMDEtOTAwNTVmNTM3M2MwXC9kY2w3dzJhLTFlN2FkOGFiLWFiM2EtNGU3Yi1hZDZlLWJhNTc3NTBkYWI3Yi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.HIiLjFS5bvfznH1BSxVpu8bXZcaPy6w5tVPBMzMqo9g)
Rites of passage in Sparta culminated with the construction of a rover using parts stolen from the faction motorbay. Prospective warriors then went looking for a fight. They usually got it. Most of these tear-offs ended honorably in death by combat.
If you ever think, 'I'm not tough enough for this,' just remember: you're still here. You've been tough enough every day until today. Why shouldn't you be tough enough tomorrow? - Manifesting Destinies
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ec3ded39-a268-41f7-98e3-d85add60826f/d1jpt3s-8fa82f0f-e1a3-4514-99c9-7fe93dc75a5a.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2VjM2RlZDM5LWEyNjgtNDFmNy05OGUzLWQ4NWFkZDYwODI2ZlwvZDFqcHQzcy04ZmE4MmYwZi1lMWEzLTQ1MTQtOTljOS03ZmU5M2RjNzVhNWEuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8zwdni-LKVvMUzwV6_uJ5VsZj5PnQCb2-cnGfiOxxuw)
Gaians knew better than to resurrect the institution of marriage, which Skye called "a question of property, not of commitment." Lovers loved until they loved no more. Their children were raised in common, sometimes none the wiser as to who their parents were until they became old enough to access the Datalinks. When a member of the faction died, their property was reclaimed and any organic remains composted.
(https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WRocGpHItis/WjRn_PB4API/AAAAAAAASxo/fba-KQCq8uwBiQy-4JOVd-Y0YWgvnGmHwCLcBGAs/s1600/petty-postman.jpg)
Leaders already comfortable impoverishing others from afar were quick to argue for the re-institution of slavery by another name. Why convert a prisoner when you could work him instead? A Spartan lieutenant (middle) has an apparently healthy Tribesman for sale (right).
Spartan couples married in the Old Way, speaking vows before a Psych Chaplain and witnesses from their barracks block.
(https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/lost-in-space-season-2-1.jpg?w=1024)
Most factions encouraged procreation with preferential treatment for those with children. In L'État nouvel, membership in a child-rearing family unit became a prerequisite for achieving both full citizenship and flag rank.
(https://www.godisageek.com/wp-content/uploads/Ashfall-reveals-a-chunk-of-its-MMORPG-shooter-gameplay-790x444.jpg)
Tribals married in public ceremonies marked by weeks of celebration. The betrothed were given away by relatives and neighbors who gave long testimony to their "marriagable" qualities.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjVOsqwUYAAusrO.jpg:large)
Stadtholder approval was required for new marriages among the New Two Thousand. Both pledges required certifications of land ownership and evidence of readiness to occupy and hold ground at the edge of faction territory, for which they accumulated retainers who lived under less formal arrangements.
Sources:
First image is "Cyber Frankenstein" by Vladimir Manyukhin, discovcered on Instagram under the "Evil Design" account.
Second image is "Carefree," by Seven-teenth on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Sandy Road" by Seven-teenth on DeviantArt.
Fourth image is "They told me I was gone" by Seven-teenth on DeviantArt.
Fifth image is "Big Big Tree" by MCfrog on DeviantArt.
Sixth image is a still from Kevin Costner's The Postman (1997).
Seventh image is a still from Lost in Space (Netflix version).
Eighth image is a still from the MMORPG Ashfall found here (https://www.godisageek.com/2022/09/ashfall-reveals-a-chunk-of-its-mmorpg-shooter-gameplay/).
Ninth image is "Details for wild west sci-fi colony 03" from a Tweet by Francis Goeltner.
Resocialization ("ReSoc") was the process by which Marines were made in StarCraft.
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God is on the side of the big cannons. - Napoleon Bonaparte, Apocryphal
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/022/464/378/4k/anton-tenitsky-apc-spots.jpg?1575523884)
Given the tools and knowledge predominant among the survivors, direct-fire energy weapons were easier to produce than conventional artillery tubes.
Unity crawlers were excellent gun tractors: rated for extremely heavy loads, designed around redundant systems, fitted to operate in NBC environments, and heavily armored to defeat hostile environments.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/bf13a400-4d2b-4e4e-8f94-7b9dfcea9b39/d8g1jwx-0d3beae4-f2c0-4dac-b77d-dc370cfc9668.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JmMTNhNDAwLTRkMmItNGU0ZS04Zjk0LTdiOWRmY2VhOWIzOVwvZDhnMWp3eC0wZDNiZWFlNC1mMmMwLTRkYWMtYjc3ZC1kYzM3MGNmYzk2NjguanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.bt4XsJ1YPdvhs4LvbvMBySGUiHOtkYEo9ipDnpdbimM)
Mining vehicles like the Mjolnir stood in for "proper" cannons. Accuracy was wanting: the cannon's original nuclear payloads demanded little precision of its designers. To mitigate this impediment, the vehicle's primary operators--Hunters and Shapers--experimented with gas and splintering munitions.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/48bb77e5-c7b1-4f73-b92e-9891278c651a/d53vtoc-7a75d6ae-f673-471c-922b-e27cbbf50b6c.jpg/v1/fill/w_900,h_637,q_75,strp/troika_by_jflaxman_d53vtoc-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjM3IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNDhiYjc3ZTUtYzdiMS00ZjczLWI5MmUtOTg5MTI3OGM2NTFhXC9kNTN2dG9jLTdhNzVkNmFlLWY2NzMtNDcxYy05MjJiLWUyN2NiYmY1MGI2Yy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9OTAwIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.6dNUHF9GiR9lA_zCdK5TyXeHmsp3-YYTp_VE6X9ZpJU)
Cheap to build, easy to repair, lightweight motor trikes operating on biofuels furnished the Human Labyrinth with the larger part of its mobile strike arm. Other third-rate or merely resource-poor militias took the lesson eagerly in hand. Both the Nauvoo Legion and Kellerite Minutemen operated garages turning out similar platforms.
Sources:
First image is "X-Ray Tank" by Anton Tenitsky on ArtStation.
Second image is "Mjolnir" by KaranaK on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Troika" by jflaxman on DeviantArt. Biofuel idea is theirs.
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(https://i.imgur.com/Oe82Jq0.jpg)
"The Rainbow Wedding", by Rana al-Mami, watercolors. The bridal couple is flanked by shamdan candelabras, symbolizing clarity and vitality
After mission years of service on behalf of their found families and the city they were made to build, the Pathfinder of the Sea of Thirst and the Muezzin of the Exiled Asabiyyah were finally wedded in the greatest celebration known to Fort Quileute. Incorporating a mosaic of cultural traditions from lost Earth, the ceremony was the boast of the base as all denizens gathered to witness the marriage of these two heroic citizens. Decorated in South Asian henna patterns from the mehndi night before, clad in a dress spun from revived Egyptian cotton strains, Firyal Kašk was escorted to the sofreh aghd wedding table by an honor guard of her fellow Sand Scouts and given away by Colonel Kassad himself. Her groom wore a simple sherwani of pure white as he presented to her the mahr dowry: an ornate jeweled compass crafted from desert glass in Jamshid's foundries, and a key to a larger suite in the base's newly-remodeled hab complex. Their zaffe grand entrance to the reception was accompanied by the beating of dholak and dohol drums, the twinkling of the daf, and the piping of dozens of mizmars.
(https://i.imgur.com/jtYSxm8.jpg)
Pilgrim Joe, a resurrected Titanotylopus camelid, was originally intended to be a gift to the Wrangler Lodge prior to yet another vendetta with the Hunters of Chiron
Normally a place of somber remembrance, the House of Yearning had never seemed so full of life. From the rising Al Falah workingmen to the nervous, yet boastful ARC directors and their raucous Val Verde Veteran soldiers of fortune, all reveled in the union of this power couple who had done so much for the colony. And it was a celebration that went beyond the walls of the scorching dunes: it was the six-month anniversary of recontact with Terra Nova. The very first caravan from the New Two Thousand had arrived but a fortnight ago, bearing gifts- one of the Governor's famed stunjack cannons for disciplining unruly slaves, an Agenid Hermes hoverbike hardened for desert travel, and even a resurrected Titanotylopus extinct North American giant camel.
The eleven-foot tall prehistoric megafauna, revived by Schreiber Project mad science and gengineered for docility, had been eagerly welcomed by Tuareg and Rajasthani refugees. Camel trainers from the respective Stellar Lifeboat populations had taught the great beast to follow the sound of singing women and the rhythm of the Nigerien Tendé drum. And so it now danced to the great merriment of the Quileute crowds. The wedding couple laughed politely from their table at the center of the library dome, underneath the new Projection Stone exhibit. Satisfied at the reception of their gift, the leader of the Pilgrim caravan, a Regulator officer, sat in attendance with his men as guests, carefully surveying this alien society that they would now bring back to Oscar van de Graaf's fold. His gaze could not help but be drawn to the mysterious rock, its ancient etchings infused with unknown purpose, its polished surface shining with eldritch colors out of space and time.
Notes:
The artist’s depiction of the wedding of Firyal Kašk and her unnamed lover is “Ancient Eastern Wedding (https://www.behance.net/gallery/3817011/ancient-eastern-wedding)” by Hanaa Al-Mansour
Kassad, of course, is a reference to the legendary FORCE soldier and Final Shrike Pilgrim of Hyperion.
Stunjack cannons (& training for police) is the Flavor.txt (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Flavor.txt) description for Non-Lethal Methods.
“Space Camel (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/B6Y04)” is by Anastasia Johnson.
Camel dancing is indeed practiced by both Rajasthani people in India (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr42gxlv9eQ) and the Tuareg of Niger (https://sahelien.com/en/niger-the-tende-a-unifying-instrument-of-nomadic-peoples/).
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Unless we learn to lift our sights, we already know our sinking fate. There is something inescapably true about Morgan's logic: nothing is ever big enough for sharing. - On Guard for Tomorrow
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2694c716-a971-4cb8-95ec-0e61289e2b02/ddru72f-043683a0-82c0-4b7e-9238-686b2351db88.jpg/v1/fill/w_1107,h_722,q_70,strp/artillery_barrage_by_5ofnovember_ddru72f-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTA0NCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzI2OTRjNzE2LWE5NzEtNGNiOC05NWVjLTBlNjEyODllMmIwMlwvZGRydTcyZi0wNDM2ODNhMC04MmMwLTRiN2UtOTIzOC02ODZiMjM1MWRiODguanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE2MDAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.vuS82Xli2oW6XlEo3z9UxoqtbSHlKXzZNcT0tlSFJXc)
The Worldshaper Battery fires atomic salvos in the direction of the Blue Line.
A palpable sense of desperation now set in amongst the Human Pact. Reports from Lab Three, Shcherbinaville, Lobachevsky Park, and Razvitia-Progress Base indicated the allies were down to just four months worth of fissile material. Enormous graveyards of abandoned machinery--rank after rank of Unity Rovers--formed just behind the front lines. They were victims of what the techs called "fuel rod lobotomies."
After every breakthrough, Lady Skye's solar techs sent hundreds of vehicles eastward as spoils.
Addressing the Planetary Council in November MY320 from an undisclosed location that many believed was in fact a Hive warren, Liquidator Nagao labeled Skye a genocidaire and suddenly promised to resurrect Planet after cleansing it with fire.
(https://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2014/08/936full-the-fourth-protocol-screenshot.jpg)
Counted as a political unreliable by the junta in which he had come up, Argentine major Ricardo del Moreno Aguirre was made a military attache to Rio de Janiero. He took a subsequent sentence of exile to the Unity as a new lease on life. During the Crisis, Moreno Aguirre collected and led urgently-required reinforcements to Hab Bay 7, organizing a successful flank attack on a superior force of Vigilance mercenaries working for Nwabudike Morgan. Among the prisoners liberated in the attack were Life Support Systems Chief Michael Hefferan and Atherholt Group psychiatrist Steven Zale.
By order of Kleisel Mercator, Aguirre was made colonel and ordered to locate the remnants of the Chiron Interstellar Probe. To assist the search, Aguirre turned to a character whose "services" he had previously used once before: Avtoritet Ryang.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4daf803b-dd37-4651-8b51-8cd5330a859b/dbwg2bc-b7214953-2bae-4232-8ef8-8f2edcdd9d77.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_1280,q_75,strp/relic_by_cyberkite_dbwg2bc-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTI4MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzRkYWY4MDNiLWRkMzctNDY1MS04YjUxLThjZDUzMzBhODU5YlwvZGJ3ZzJiYy1iNzIxNDk1My0yYmFlLTQyMzItOGVmOC04ZjJlZGNkZDlkNzcuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.qOnS6FBG17Mrm8MLPDvf69u1IEv553sqMoQcQh4I0AQ)
The M-91 Cockroach Self-Propelled Bunker was a modestly successful product of the Chrysler Corporation's Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant. The concept was simple: a rolled homogeneous armor box, hardened against most of the weapons available to insurrectionists, with enough firepower in its triple 40mm guns and three .30 caliber machine guns to enable platoon-level commands to take on numerically superior forces and win consistently.
The memory of the M-91 inspired Chironian copy-cats built around decommissioned earthmovers like this Memorialist wreck on the doorstep of Tribal Corrosiontown.
Sources:
First image is "artillery barrage" by 5ofnovember on DeviantArt.
Second image is actor Pierce Brosnan in "The Fourth Protocol."
Third image is "Relic" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.
Michael Hefferan, Steven Zale, and the Atherholt Group are creations developed in the Chronicles of Pre-Unity, a speculative fan fiction effort hosted on the defunct Alpha Centauri forums (https://alphacentauri2.info/Alpha.owo/7/000006.html) back in 1998. Hefferan is a creation of the user MikeH, while Zale and the Atherholt Group belonged to the user Octopus.
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Exigency is the best argument of kings and cowards. - Defensa de la Justicia
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMmZhZjUyZWItZmRkYS00N2JiLWE5MjYtMjZiY2Q2YmE1OWM3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjQwMDg0Ng@@._V1_.jpg)
Captain Victoria Reyes resigned her commission in the United States Army in 2039 to serve the secessionist Republic of Texas. Her open letter of intent, published contemporaneously by the Houston Chronicle, was addressed the next morning by the White House Press Secretary and is archetypal of the public apologia produced by members of her profession to justify their realignment of loyalties. Reyes framed her decision as a difficult and deliberate reaction to federal mismanagement of state tax revenues, negotiation of unfavorable trade agreements, and failure to resolve border control issues. This style of public rhetoric leaned heavily on hypersurvivalist tropes. Critics were quick to point out Reyes's reliance upon a combination of inaccurate or incomplete facts sourced from the Global Datalinks. During the Second American Civil War, Reyes served in the Texas Army's Legion of Cavalry as a quartermaster. She oversaw inventory and returns to service of equipment seized by Texas forces at military installations around San Antonio.
(https://www.blackgate.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/img_1400.jpg)
Texas soldiers shelter from a partisan sniper in Tulsa, OK during the Second American Civil War.
Texas governor Frederick Anthem--he retained the old title even after signing a unilateral declaration of independence--launched simultaneous invasions of Oklahoma and Louisiana. From the first neighbor, he wanted more oil. From the second, control of the Mississippi River delta. Both, he thought, could later be traded for a promise of perpetual peace with the rump United States, but a proposal along those lines was rejected out-of-hand by President Katherine Detweiller.
The Texas Occupation of large sections of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisiana lasted more than three years. Finding he could not sell the assets back to their original owner, Anthem negotiated instead with a multinational corporation, Morgan Industries.
Reyes, made a captain in Texas service but demoted by the U.S. Army to private after the war, was briefly imprisoned at the Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar, receiving a pardon after two years as a beneficiary of general amnesty. She returned to Texas but found herself blacklisted by the American Reclamation Corporation and was therefore unable to obtain war recovery work. She became a Datalinks journalist, living hand-to-mouth before learning through an outlawed veteran's association about work in the Caribbean.
A Morgan Industries subsidiary, the Rook Corporation, hired Reyes as an Outbound Cargo Manager for the Quito Worldport. Rook furnished Reyes with forged credentials that saw her past U.N. Security Council safeguards on employment for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. She kept her superiors closely informed about the particulars of the fitting-out process and the manifests submitted to her care.
During the Unity Crisis, Reyes and fellow green-shirts made up part of the [/i]ersatz deck gang that prepared the Landing Pods used by Morgan and his followers. Although Reyes herself was taken aboard, she was given the unenviable task of denying access to additional survivors so that space would be available for additional pallets of undifferentiated cargo.[/center]
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSWwM0UX0D-9KlajQQ7zVT9pf_MlE-joxZxbuKX0XrcJfTyTkMRRIqy0LKNLUlCCAcK66UTi6vMMLE&usqp=CAU&ec=48600113)
Prominent among Chironian Servantists was Colonel Moreno Aguirre, who found the Memorialist's focus on imagined, non-human enemies to be a relief from the suppressive instincts of the junta.
Servantism, also translated as "Service Attitude" in non-English-speaking contexts, was an intellectual movement influential among the armed forces of the world in the mid-twenty-first century. The movement's origins lie in the statements made by Reyes and other commissioned officers regarding their loyalties.
Servantism broke with the older, American articulation of civil-military relations rooted in the post-Revolutionary period and the emerging United Nations doctrines of public service, both of which tied themselves to formal written documents--the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, respectively. Indeed, American Servantists, many of whom were secessionists, argued that they had been punished for attempting to exercise the Duty to Disobey contemplated in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, reflecting the inadequacy of the old system and the reality of its "subservience to special interests."
The new philosophy refused to take its cues from either the popular will of democratic majorities or common codes of principle and law. Majorities were fickle and the mob could be cruel. Centuries-old constitutions could not contemplate the problems of modernity. Courts were bought, or ideologically suspect. The fix, according to Servantist thought leaders like Corazón Santiago, was for officers to "be their own conscience." Servantists circulated recommended reading lists for officer enrichment containing works as diverse as Magna Carta Liberatum, History of the Peloponnesian War, the Conclave Bible, The Four Books and Five Classics, Das Kapital, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung.
Many armies forbane the profession of Servantism on grounds that it ran contrary to their creeds. In the Soviet Union, Servantists were often sent to the GULAG. Post-war loyalty oaths in the United States, Australia, Mexico, and Canada required adherents to explicitly renounce Servantism. Servantism survived in the liminal spaces on the map and, later, enjoyed a rebirth on Chiron, when large numbers of cashiered officers began working for sub- and trans-national organizations or ideologically-motivated factions without strong public service traditions parallel to those that had animated the national armies of which they had once been a part.
Disagreement about the legitimacy of Pravin Lal's claim to be the ranking mission leader fueled the deployment of Servantist rhetoric both as a genuine expression of belief and a cynical rationalization for resistance. The Struan's agent Carnaveron quoted Servantist logic on the Peacekeeping Forces faction datalinks in response to rebukes during public forums during his time as a guest-cum-prisoner at Warm Welcome. After the Fall of Xerxion, Servantists among the Spartan Federation, led by Santiago herself, eventually forswore the Holnists as morally unfit to practice their creed.
Sources:
Captain Victoria Reyes is Julia Reyes (played by Adira Arjona) from the film Pacific Rim: Uprising.
Second image is from the RPG Twilight 2000, sourced from the Black Gate (https://www.blackgate.com/2021/06/20/going-home-isnt-all-that-its-cracked-up-to-be-twilight-2000s-american-campaign/).
Third image is another still of Pierce Brosnan in The Fourth Protocol.
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Two moments when the system is most vulnerable: at the loading and unloading of tension. - Essays on Mind and Matter
(http://progresscityusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sse_communicore.jpg)
Commencement Day celebrants stroll the main promenade of University Commons in the company of friends and family come to tout their success.
The attractions seen in this painting were permanent in nature. On the far left can be seen the recovered hull of Experimental Satellite-76, the first artificial satellite placed into Chiron's orbit from the surface. Work stations convenient to the main pedestrian path provided public Datalinks access for visitors to peruse students' work or participate in colloquies on subjects interesting to them.
Graduates hooted and hollered their way through a speech from the Academician himself, trading ribald barbs with that famously acid wit, who would inevitably demonstrate encyclopedic knowledge of the hecklers' thesis materials. The experience was the first conquered summit of their academic journey, eighteen years in the making. (Meanwhile, the University Masters squirmed over Zakharov's unseemly humor, another reminder of how far he stood beyond their influence.)
In the center of the Commons is a geodesic dome planetarium used for commemoration of Yuri's Night.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/31072d6998deaf7fab9dd1e748355aea/tumblr_inline_ot4lx8I9XP1ueftr3_1280.jpg)
The Witch's Hats were exhibits in Rockefeller Plaza, Morgan Trade Center, constructed by the Berrio-Salva Corporation in honor of CEO Nwabudike Morgan's one hundredth and fiftieth birthday extravaganza.
After a week-long blitz of entertainments during which all base operations slowed to a crawl and only banks remained open, the ostensibly temporary structures were left standing on his orders and converted to restaurants where the CEO's birthday was celebrated continuously and the faction's Talents engaged nightly in craven performances of loyalty to their human god.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/e2e475ef-615e-4f8b-a488-697c7bab6d01/dfsu4gp-3e81815f-42d1-443f-85d3-67856d30e6b8.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2UyZTQ3NWVmLTYxNWUtNGY4Yi1hNDg4LTY5N2M3YmFiNmQwMVwvZGZzdTRncC0zZTgxODE1Zi00MmQxLTQ0M2YtODVkMy02Nzg1NmQzMGU2YjgucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.m5LslXn-VtUSKurwYIqkTd83HOmm0j4S-S6oINeU4H0)
There were no days worthy of special recognition in the Human Hive. All moments were ripe for work or instruction.
Sources:
First image is an artist's depiction of Communicore at EPCOT Center.
Second image is Coruscant concept art by Ralph McQuarrie, discovered on the tumblr "Consumed by Star Wars Feelings."
Third image is "The Tunnel" by wonderlandartworks on DeviantArt.
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Last month at their Headquarters, the U.N. marked survival. A solemn spectacle, if ever I did see one. This world does not require more solemnity. Here, we celebrate achievement. - Founder's Day Speech, M.Y. 2
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/060/463/364/large/leo-avero-pb-001.jpg?1678637800)
Responders restore network connectivity at Epsilon Center shortly after a bombing raid by Ascendancy Needlejets.
An official policy of pacifism brought no relief for the Cybernetic Consciousness. The Prime Function struggled to understand why this should so. Her units had violated nobody's borders. Convergence was a purely voluntary decision.
Tamineh Pahlavi levied a new sort of casus belli: fear that the Consciousness would displace what they called "Biologicals" until the small remnant of human civilization embodied in the fewer than two million survivors and their offspring would be unable to sustain the species through normal reproduction.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/053/924/867/4k/michal-kus-image-67165697.jpg?1663336494)
Redoubtable "Madam Mim," an M62 Super Casey built by Pacific Car and Motor Works, performed four years more of leal service once reassembled by Furman & Sellars engineers to partake in the Founder's Day parade. As Grand Marshal, Oscar van de Graaf stood in the turret with a wide grin and a lit cigar. The licensing to take her aboard with functioning armament had been handled personally by Tạ Dọc Thân after a referral from Rachael Winzenried.
Thân's permission was granted in part because Mim was supposedly a casualty, holed in three places by shot from newer M551 Sheridan light tanks.
Mim was emblematic of the intent behind the Founder's Day observance: to remind stakeholders that Oscar van de Graaf, not the easily-hoodwinked bureaucrats of the United Nations, had the vision (and yes, pluck) to ensure their survival.
The day after the parade, wounds still unplugged, Mim was tagging Hunter scout rovers with beehive rounds from a firing step on the berm at Camp Challenger West.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/033/421/789/large/tom-_n-8472cde62c67c0f28b04453a5d987e8f.jpg?1609548562)
Soviet strategic rocket forces used the Szilinger scout car, better known as the Автомобиль обнаружения опасности or AOO-1, for battlefield reconnaissance. The AOO-1 was a single-occupancy 4x4 with a collapsible wheelbase. In "tight" configuration, it could be carried in the back of an Mil M-26 Halo heavy transport helicopter. Following U.N. specifications, the Buffalo Imperial Tank Plant produced an ultra-heavy lander to cart the three examples that the Kremlin volunteered for J.T. Marsh's Forward Contact Team.
One AOO-1 was lost immediately in a peat bog but the other two survived, sipping the air of the planned landing site for indications of nuclear, chemical, or biological danger. Later, they performed roving patrols for hire, spending much of their service lives on or near the Blue Line.
Sources:
First image is "Cinematic Concept Art Mentorship Batch 02: Week 03 Demo" by Leo Avero on ArtStation.
Second image is "Steroid Pershing Tank" by Michael Kus on ArtStation. Madam Mim is the villan from 1963's The Sword in the Stone.
Third image is from the collection "Atomic vehicle" by artist Tomasz Nowak on ArtStation. Nowak credits an unnamed pinterest.com concept as his inspiration.
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Chiron’s soil yields simple nitrates, natural gas, and thorium- but also, the relics of whatever intelligent race that once lived here alongside the planetworms. This legacy alone is worth a thousand fields of hydrocarbon. If we are to outcompete the lumbering dinosaurs that have no business model other than simple extraction and expansion, we must establish a foothold in the xenoantiquities market. This is as true for every signatory to the Charter as it is for Weismuller Industries itself.
- Memo to Board of Directors, “On Pursuing Research Partnerships Beyond the Chiron Cartel”
(https://i.imgur.com/6rB8J91.jpg)
An ex-Soviet spetsnaz Val Verde Veteran mercenary contractor holds an INTROSPECT artifact
The humans of the doomed Unity mission discovered early on that the eerie ruins that dotted the landscape were an unexpected blessing from Planet. Aside from the resource-rich territories adjacent to towering monoliths, the alien artifacts found in these sites were invaluable to struggling factions and bases attempting to science their way out of survival predicaments. For unfathomable reasons still studied by researchers, after artifacts retrieved from fungal-encrusted tombs are interfaced with digital systems, they accelerate computational power almost preternaturally and provide scientific knowledge as if by pure inspiration.
For factions with low knowledge bases such as the cautious Lord’s Conclave, or simply bereft of initial technical capabilities like the neo-primitive Confederation of the Land, these were a godsend that enabled them to overcome stunted technological levels. And this was far from the only salutary characteristic that could be found. From fast travel through the thickets of xenofungus fields to strange temporary psi effects to outright acting like miniature nuclear reactors, some treasures plundered from ancient ruins are worth vastly more than for mere xenohistorical value.
Over time, the acquisition and dealing of alien artifacts became a lucrative trade between the factions of Planet. Sought out by military scouts or by smacer scavengers, sold to research-oriented factions like the University of Planet and xeno-obsessives like the Memory of Earth, counterfeited by Morgan Industries and the Data Angels alike, purged by the AXIS with guns of flame and aerogel-suspended clouds of acid, these unknowable products of a long-forgotten intelligence are now a pillar of Planetary commerce.
The specimens purchased from Schreiber Project searchprobes yield little insight. Certainly the ex-Togra tinkers are keeping the best discoveries to themselves, but there is little doubt they are as perplexed as we are. No hint of a Rosetta Stone has arisen even after six semesters of intense studies- the psychology, no, the status of sentience of the extinct indigenous species laymen dub “Progenitors” eludes us still. We see their wondrous effects dancing in our Network Nodes, but not even a silhouette of the creators behind them, let alone their motivations. Some “how”- but no “why.”
And yet, is this the inevitable fate of all civilizations lost to time? Will extraterrestrial visitors comprehend the signboards on Earth? Shall they find our broken devices too cryptic to decipher? Can they grasp the monuments we built, shattered by atomics and shredder fire? Or must they likewise conclude that we, too, are unknowable beings?
- Damnatio Memoriae, Memento Mori
Notes:
The idea of industrial byproduct acid clouds (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_2:outpost_2_manual:weapons) as a weapon comes from Outpost 2: Divided Destiny
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The fundamental problem of our species is that we are better-equipped to handle routine than choice. - Follow the White Rabbit
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/be39bdb5-a0de-4038-9598-eeb9ea57c5df/dedlmnp-62bafc74-d5d3-42c7-b60b-9845741ac1c1.jpg/v1/fill/w_1163,h_687,q_70,strp/copernicus_city_by_adrianmarkgillespie_dedlmnp-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTQ2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYmUzOWJkYjUtYTBkZS00MDM4LTk1OTgtZWViOWVhNTdjNWRmXC9kZWRsbW5wLTYyYmFmYzc0LWQ1ZDMtNDJjNy1iNjBiLTk4NDU3NDFhYzFjMS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.dwAsQ6JhLLVT0nkySdolTW2Jxwtqll61XwwICSoC0_g)
Popular mythology blames administrative incompetence and corporate malfeasance for most cases of colony death, but the historical record is replete with examples of self-immolation over social conflicts.
Unity's destruction at the hands of nihilistic sociopaths seeking only the emotional high of retribution itself was the retelling of an old story, preceded in history by both the Second American Civil War and the Copernicus City Riots.
In 2060, more than seven hundred people suffocated to death during a failed attempt to extort changes in healthcare policy by the Parilon Corporation, which managed the Copernicus ice-production operation on the Moon. Hoping that improved health outcomes would boost production by increasing morale, Parilon had rolled out a new policy in which biological organ replacement would be replaced by cybernetic implants. Notwithstanding scientific consensus that machine components were more reliable, less likely to be rejected by the patient's own immune system, and substantially more functional, workers reacted with a combination of terror and anger. A stunned board reversed the policy and called for mediation, but the original protest had too quickly merged into much broader, global disputes over the role of machines in daily life.
Work stoppages escalated into a hunger strike, then extortion. Human Front agitators arrived from Aldrin Circle with media, entered the Hab Complex, and fomented a campaign of sabotage, venting oxygen from storage. According to survivor interrogations, the saboteurs expected to force the notoriously risk-averse Parilon board into becoming their mouthpiece and hoped that the prolonged unrest at Copernicus would yield a bumper crop of new recruits to their cause. Instead, an unrelated shuttle accident delayed delivery of emergency supplemental oxygen and supplies could not be restored in time to prevent disaster.
These past traumas haunted Chiron faction leaders as they weighed the benefits and danger of ideological drift.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2f119467-5075-440b-ac99-39f3e8fc9cb0/d9zlwf8-ded069ec-4025-49c1-a8de-14e6b7aa1ac5.jpg/v1/fill/w_1362,h_587,q_70,strp/crash_probe_by_fetscher_d9zlwf8-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODI4IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMmYxMTk0NjctNTA3NS00NDBiLWFjOTktMzlmM2U4ZmM5Y2IwXC9kOXpsd2Y4LWRlZDA2OWVjLTQwMjUtNDljMS1hOGRlLTE0ZTZiN2FhMWFjNS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.T0XwxS7aApVNfKJsEcQ1gJTARjFVSHd04fAFiWnntyw)
A crash-landed Supply Pod.
Before factions connected to the Planetary Datalinks, "awakened" colonists were often manipulated into believing there was nowhere to run.
Commissioner Pravin Lal famously agonized over how much information to disclose about the status of other societies. Charterists were a special problem. Those who had exacted generous terms from the likes of Struan's or the van de Graaf Expedition were naturally hopeful of improving their fortunes through escape or emigration, while the considerably larger population of indentured workers inclined toward the argument that preexisting contracts should not be enforced.
It was not unusual for faction leaders to collect and titrate [/i]Unity colonists, timing their reanimation for political propitious moments under cover of the claim that resource constraints discouraged adding new mouths to feed at present.[/center]
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/6641bdaf-b7eb-4875-af30-713095883bff/ddzk1jb-93155274-5ae2-494b-9455-e40c766407f2.jpg/v1/fill/w_1381,h_578,q_70,strp/beyond_the_horizon_by_sulvijan_ddzk1jb-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTcxNiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzY2NDFiZGFmLWI3ZWItNDg3NS1hZjMwLTcxMzA5NTg4M2JmZlwvZGR6azFqYi05MzE1NTI3NC01YWUyLTQ5NGItOTQ1NS1lNDBjNzY2NDA3ZjIuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTQwOTYifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.Q2AmK5hgRyMVPjh_g1BA5lskVIGF7csZo6uLUcJf2sI)
Xenofungal colonization of non-native elements began within four standard minutes of proximate contact.
Choice of affiliation was a luxury available to only a small minority of Unity survivors.
Those with a tolerant attitude toward emigration included Academician Prokhor Zakharov, Sister Miriam Godwinson, and Game Warden J.T. Marsh. The University's situation was partly determined by the very high demands of patient care arising from widespread radiation sickness, which made it difficult to police desertion, and Zakharov's personal disinterest in the perceived challenge of assimilating "unsuitable perspectives" into his society. Santiago's mutiny and the failed shipboard security response fueled violent antagonism between the Engineering Division and Security Forces. Officers who should have led the faction militia instead were sequestered for their own safety, or sent out on long roving patrols from which they sometimes did not return. After a period of mere weeks, the Office of the Registrar proactively exiled a list of billets handed down from the Provost, including virtually all military and paramilitary functions. While he denied them more than token food and refused to give up any medical supplies--to the point of stripping crash kits from their vehicles--Zakharov otherwise let these unfortunates have the run of his warehouses so that they would make appealing new additions to other settlements.
For two days after Planetfall, Miriam Godwinson remained in a coma. Sympathetic followers had brought her along in their Landing Pod with the intention of offering a planetside burial. Immediately after Planetfall, dozens of survivors dispersed into the bush, most never to be seen again. Once recovered, Miriam's agenda contemplated no priority beyond mere survival, forestalling discussion of politics. Poor planning and failed harvests led to starvation conditions. When they showed up at the gates of rival settlements, Believers were more likely to complain of empty bellies than misinterpretations of Doctrine. Political malcontents showed themselves only later, as Miriam's intent to use faction resources to subsidize faith practice became more obvious.
Marsh appears to have decided on principle to give the Forward Contact Teams freedom of conscience, though the practical problems involved with enforcing his writ over such a mobile, self-sufficient, and self-directed workforce were much on his mind.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4c861968-a461-43fe-87ab-c51b6171e933/dft5kv4-5faceb1f-6d4b-43fb-a6b6-655cc348293b.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzRjODYxOTY4LWE0NjEtNDNmZS04N2FiLWM1MWI2MTcxZTkzM1wvZGZ0NWt2NC01ZmFjZWIxZi02ZDRiLTQzZmItYTZiNi02NTVjYzM0ODI5M2IuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.MvGn4Y5YikA9migPOJ_uu7iX0jdBklN_0z28KjYWL2E)
Factions were eager to found new colonies on the site of Unity wreckage, which meant both shelter and rich salvage--in terms of people as well as familiar, viable systems with components from a technology base potentially more-current, or at least more complete, than the survival gear they used day-to-day.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/48bb77e5-c7b1-4f73-b92e-9891278c651a/d7afkgv-68644960-1105-4695-9c4a-142892b86f2a.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_725,q_75,strp/pitbull_by_jflaxman_d7afkgv-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzI1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNDhiYjc3ZTUtYzdiMS00ZjczLWI5MmUtOTg5MTI3OGM2NTFhXC9kN2Fma2d2LTY4NjQ0OTYwLTExMDUtNDY5NS05YzRhLTE0Mjg5MmI4NmYyYS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.tIkypXbhXp5Mc5Bfc5T2kyiZOGuAzE63gyHWwRdGnKk)
An Hourglass Battalion ambush-protected vehicle, abandoned in Atacama, Chile.
In the brutal and dubious tradition of the European Freikorps, the Hourglass Battalion, later reflagged with a corporate identity, Hourglass Services, was an association of Hypersurvivalist veterans of the Second American Civil War. Canadians, Americans, and Venezuelans predominated, with companies of Argentines, Australians, and Britons serving at various times in its history.
The unit's colorful history runs from its founding in Florida as the majority of that state's Independentist militia during the period of CSA courtship and incursions to the Central Intelligence Agency's cynical attempts at "rehabilitating" its members by involving them in the overthrow of the Cuban Communist government in 2061.
The hourglass badge was in the same vein as the old death's head symbol--a meaningful boast about the unit's ultra-reactionary ideological proclivities and, less-accurately, its battlefield élan.
Hourglass Survivalism was corporate in its sentiments, with less of self-aggrandizement behind so-called mainline Holnisms. "Hourglassers" wanted fascism--performative populist authoritarianism short on ideological consistency--in which they could have modest employment as hired guns by the repressive state. One FBI dossier accurately concluded that Hourglass Survivalism was a lifestyle more than a roadmap for law, although a super-majority of believers were highly skeptical of established power structures--academia, "science," corporations, and government.
Hourglass Battalion performance was markedly superior to that of Holnist volunteers in general. As a semi-professional military unit, it demonstrated unity of command and discipline levels usually lacking among irregular forces. Regular forces were never available in the desired quantity even after the Florida National Guard was back-filled with stay-behinds from dissolved federal units headquartered in the state, and Hourglass was often called to plug in the gap.
Hourglass prisoners were not eligible for the general postwar amnesty in the United States. Foreign-born members in Federal custody were deported, sometimes to face execution in "homelands" they could not remember, sometimes to be welcomed with open arms by U.S.-allied regimes that embodied their preferred ethos. About two thousand Hourglass participants in the successful Cuban venture were given a plane ticket to the non-U.S. destination of choice. Morgan Military Products employed several hundred in Peru. Canvassers for Corazón Santiago, still a big name in Florida survivalist circles, found and reconciled the old fighters to her cause.
A Chironian faction's destruction provided opportunities to map the ideologies prevailing among its members. Scattered after the Fall of Xerxion, the Hourglass Battalion held Santiago to blame for the faction's defeat and offered their services instead to Director Tamineh Pahlavi of the Human Ascendancy, who accepted.
At face value, the Hourglass Battalion's attitudes most closely tracked with those of L'État nouvel, though the Contre-amirale, famous for his formal denunciations of "robotic deviancy," drew a firm line at persecution that most Hourglassers were wont to cross, and the faction's strict speech codes, combined with St. Germaine's own ambivalence toward showmanship, would have cut against the mercenaries' taste for the politically dramatic.
Sources:
"Follow the White Rabbit" is a taunt from The Matrix (1999).
First image is is "Copernicus City" by AdrianMarkGillespie on DeviantArt, from whence I get the eponymous lunar city.
Second image is "Crash probe" by Fetscher on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Beyond The Horizon" by sulvijan on DeviantArt.
Fourth image is "Old spaceship," a piece of AI art by Leoncio22 on DeviantArt.
Fifth image is "Pitbull" by jflaxman on DeviantArt.
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To militia, we say: Think first. Then shoot. - For I Have Tasted The Fruit
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/48bb77e5-c7b1-4f73-b92e-9891278c651a/d74tzme-17bcb26f-e68b-4bef-9bf6-5b60fa0e2279.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_725,q_75,strp/razorback_by_jflaxman_d74tzme-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzI1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNDhiYjc3ZTUtYzdiMS00ZjczLWI5MmUtOTg5MTI3OGM2NTFhXC9kNzR0em1lLTE3YmNiMjZmLWU2OGItNGJlZi05YmY2LTViNjBmYTBlMjI3OS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.24FpzUEOSq-snDHItIyjmBzS-thg7mz_WcM8mnDSREQ)
Landing Pod workshops could be turned to war-making but were suitable only to a point. Like the designers of Unity itself, they settled for the proven, if less capable, designs of another era.
The mercenary was the freest person on Planet. Armed to travel, he roamed wherever the whistle of bullets beckoned and so became wise in cultures and experiences strange by comparison to his own. Fatted with pay awarded in preference to more reliable faction militia, he found welcome at nearly every trading house and drinking establishment without question as to his ideological convictions. His captains were courted assiduously by leaders of mythological stature, including several of the more severely reclusive variety, and on returning shared with him with political intelligence more comprehensive in it ways than was available to any probe team.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/48bb77e5-c7b1-4f73-b92e-9891278c651a/d89b2kr-1393dd09-d999-47c3-9fc9-8b3f1b44b40f.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_725,q_75,strp/stranded_by_jflaxman_d89b2kr-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzI1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNDhiYjc3ZTUtYzdiMS00ZjczLWI5MmUtOTg5MTI3OGM2NTFhXC9kODliMmtyLTEzOTNkZDA5LWQ5OTktNDdjMy05ZmM5LThiM2YxYjQ0YjQwZi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.l-KRwayaJHE61UtlnVi6YMEB4xjeLi1MYbq-cinBFi8)
University Security await rescue after their turbofan sled seizes in the cold. As they have allowed the warmth to escape from the open cockpit, they are most likely certain of the arrival of pending help.
Strangers fighting for pay were trusted in preference to familiar Jeremiahs. Faction militia stood on guard for four types of hazard: that arising from nature, that brought by contact with other human factions, that caused by disputes within their own walls, and simple desertion. Once a body knows there is grass beyond the fence, he will seek it out on the mere assumption it is green.
Many factions paid trackers a percentage of supplies recovered from defectors. Reactions toward these so-called "quittists" ran everywhere towards violence. Faction charters frequently prohibited unilateral separation on grounds that it set too dangerous an example and was almost always accompanied by acrimonious disputes over scarce resources leading to general unrest and potential lynching.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/1fb896dd-cba1-4c09-89c7-c7178a830305/dfp2raf-fc10b98a-5e22-47c4-86f9-93fd04136506.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzFmYjg5NmRkLWNiYTEtNGMwOS04OWM3LWM3MTc4YTgzMDMwNVwvZGZwMnJhZi1mYzEwYjk4YS01ZTIyLTQ3YzQtODZmOS05M2ZkMDQxMzY1MDYucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.xT908YKMZpkSWhGrghtudwUW2_PExoEjIcjxbM8v0QA)
Lancer Shellowa Strong, a decorated senior non-commissioned officer of the Spartan Federation and ringleader of the Tallow Conspiracy.
Conceived in a test tube, raised in a common creché and cast away early by her creators, Strong was an uncelebrated drone belonging to the Human Ascendancy before escaping a faction timber camp in MY14. A compass sewn into her togs provided direction to reach Cruesot Pass where she accepted water and food from the Children of the Atom.
She became wise to a Spartan patrol near Fort Montag, following for two days before announcing her intention to join them on the strength of having liberated herself.
Sources:
First image is "Razorback" by jflaxman on DeviantArt.
Second image is "Stranded" by jflaxman on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Lt. Hanover" by ObsidianPlanet on DeviantArt.
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The Boss said he would give me mealies, not information. That, my friends, is real power. - Golden Dreams, the Authorized Biography of Nwabudike Morgan
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/e160f32b-cbc0-40bd-8b1e-ce3a0b29b47f/d6flubg-abd7b4a1-8d8f-406d-b7f4-4afd230672e3.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2UxNjBmMzJiLWNiYzAtNDBiZC04YjFlLWNlM2EwYjI5YjQ3ZlwvZDZmbHViZy1hYmQ3YjRhMS04ZDhmLTQwNmQtYjdmNC00YWZkMjMwNjcyZTMuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.9C15312OQcSk0UayPv3hzZ_iWewBFOTkwxFcPO5e-YA)
SMACER guntokka seen with early-model data wheel. Note the mechanical prosthesis replacing the left arm.
The data wheel was a mono-directional information-retrieval device used for mind-machine interface during the late twentieth century. Distinguishing components included a high-capacity tape reel and an electrode-covered stent ("stentrode") threaded through the circulatory system directly into the wearer's cerebral cortex.
Data wheels provided what their West German designer, neurosurgeon Konrad Diest, called rapid memory expansion ("RAME"). In layman's terms, the wearer could recall information stored on the tape reel as if it had been committed to their natural memory. Recall was near-instantaneous and consistently perfect.
Diest specialized in the care of patients with Alzheimer's disease. His intention was to make palliative care more effective by helping patients to access certain critical information such as their home address or the names and images of family members, but the applications for his data wheel far exceeded even those laudable ambitions. Industrial workers used data wheels to help them perform difficult work more safely. Militaries used data wheels to provide their elite soldiers with mission-specific information to increase survivability. By 2070, the data wheel was an ubiquitous presence in most knowledge-centered and high-risk occupations.
Although there is some evidence that use of data wheels resulted in the creation of durable trace memories in the wearer, both corporations and governments appreciated that knowledge transmitted by data wheel was perishable.
Given the number of skills and diversity of information necessary for an intersolar expedition, the United Nations Mission to Alpha Centauri stocked hundreds of thousands of data wheels and millions of tape reels.
Attitudes toward data wheels differed according to a society's relative comfort with cybernetics. Peacekeepers, Hivemen, Morganites, Children, and Tomorrowans embraced the data wheel as a valuable tool for work and learning. In University culture, the wheel was disdained as a crutch for lesser intellects, but many instructors used it to lecture rather than devote time to classroom preparation.
For some societies, tape control was an obsession. University Security, Corporate Security, and Dreamer militia regularly tossed citizens' habs for tapes--the University and Morganites to protect their ideas, and the Dreamers to limit access to exploitable dream records.
In the Ascendancy, use of data wheels was grounds to be sentenced to the Nerve Staple. Authorities in L'Nouvel Etat were skeptical of the data wheel, which diminished its public profile and therefore its private adoption.
(https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/91854361_3168621673162593_3002898123837145088_n.jpg?_nc_cat=109&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=0vVwYBrtfT0AX8LtSUa&_nc_ht=scontent-atl3-1.xx&oh=00_AfDLshJ4yCnzdYD_u3Vt2dmRMP-bcLc7_3u1sW10vSLJog&oe=64585582)
A portable terminal, the HX-54, colloquially dubbed "Hikes."
"Hikes" were handheld personal microcomputers used to read and write to low-capacity data tapes. Hikes replaced data wheels in the hands of factions uncomfortable with mind-machine interface, the number of which grew over time as cybernetics took on nakedly political overtones.
Hikes was useful in ways that the data wheel was not, but the speed of learning and the fidelity of information transmission were exponentially less.
Sources:
First image is "Survivor 2" by fightpunch on DeviantArt.
On mind-machine interface and the stentrode, see this story (https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-way-to-plug-a-human-brain-into-a-computer-via-veins/) in Wired magazine.
Second image is "Handheld C64," a 3D rendering by Cem Tezcan as seen on the indieretronews tumblr (https://indieretronews.tumblr.com/post/188862700925/handheld-c64-commodore-hx-64-a-3d-rendering-by).
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Only assessments of strong confidence (70% certainty) or greater are included in this product. - Yearbook of Chiron, M.Y. 21
Starting with the example set by J.T. Marsh, whose road crews provided support for other factions largely without discrimination during the moment of Planetfall, Chironian societies attempted to create markets for goods, services, and too often, people, for which they had no immediate purpose.
The Memory of Earth was one of many factions selling tailored intelligence products, though unlike the Dreamers and Morganites, they limited this offering to allies in good standing. This service was usually provided via The Dark Glass, a commercial venture named after a passage in the Second Testament of the Conclave Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:12.
Precisely where the Glass obtained its notoriously accurate information has never been answered. Leading theories include secret uplink to still-active Unity spotting devices, a primitive space launch capability that allowed the faction to sent aloft its own spying machines, intercepts of signals intelligence, and a large network of human assets. An investigation prepared by the Children of the Atom using their ZHANG LIANG Calculator concluded that the Projectionists must be working directly with other faction defense forces to produce the highly specific material handed on by The Dark Glass.
Annual reports, compiled under the signature of company president Alessandra Marković, formerly of the Yugoslav State Security Service, or UDBA, were mandatory reading for audiences as diverse as the Spartan High Command, board members of Morgan Industries, the Governor's aides in Terra Nova, the Tribal Command Council, and cadets of L'État nouvel.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/027/707/394/large/karl-beiler-nigntvision.jpg?1592319252)
K Squadron of the Spartan Federation's ε Speeder Regiment, spotted at night by Tribal pickets, represented an urgent threat to proximate factions, mitigated only by the difficulty of making sorties from the surrounded Xerxion massif. Santiago's edge in this regard reflected the care she had taken to select co-conspirators with skill sets that lent themselves to the creation of a small regular army. Unlike the joyriders and teamsters of other factions, her tankers were the genuine article, trained on the battlefields of Kansas, Afghanistan, the Punjab, the Ronne Shelf, and the Mongolian plains.
Note the mineral growth on the cliff ledge. The Spartans mined their own fortress to fuel wartime production.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/035/428/704/4k/imx-awan-spaceraiders.jpg?1614925895)
Notwithstanding the competence of the original Saber Company and SafeHaven mercenary units positioned with Roshann Cobb and Nwabudike Morgan, the fighting forces of the Dreamers, Morganites, and Conclave in particular were mostly light infantry punching at, or just above, their own weight with some assistance from technicals and overhauled military equipment several generations old. A high operational tempo ground down both Dreamer and Morganite resources within only a few years of landfall, while the Nauvoo Legion, once seasoned, withered into a demoralized camp force, better-skilled at thwarting mindworm assaults and desertions than standing off a determined attack by human adversaries.
These Nauvoo Legion scouts are armed with hand weapons that represented the cutting edge of the early twenty-first century. More interesting than their weapons are the gear that accompanies it: full-spectrum gas masks and backpack radios that suggest both access to a valuable cache of defense equipment and competent direction.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5f6aaf81-3726-44fe-8d48-2991a9a2a154/d7txo4o-40941616-0968-431b-af2e-6a6df1cac4da.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_647,q_75,strp/jgsdf_lav_25_by_beignetbison_d7txo4o-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjQ3IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNWY2YWFmODEtMzcyNi00NGZlLThkNDgtMjk5MWE5YTJhMTU0XC9kN3R4bzRvLTQwOTQxNjE2LTA5NjgtNDMxYi1hZjJlLTZhNmRmMWNhYzRkYS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.iaJbrxprL3I6HztzQ9B7YY_9FczVPAm--TB3IYjW4ws)
Devoting too many of one's able-bodied adults to combat could render a colony unviable. Most confrontations were between just dozens of fighters, many trained only as reluctant constables. The main "punch" was provided by smuggled armor--often no more than a company's worth. As benefit crown jewels, they were almost always used cautiously and in contexts where they could be recovered if knocked out.
Here, Oscar van de Graaf's "Spitting Dragons" trade fire with an unseen foe.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2dc2209d-8679-473f-8a50-298050704fcf/d8tuppi-a9ec7b22-8142-4e65-ae9b-2b334aeca58c.jpg/v1/fill/w_1227,h_651,q_70,strp/swamp_fort_by_juavt_d8tuppi-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAwMSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzJkYzIyMDlkLTg2NzktNDczZi04YTUwLTI5ODA1MDcwNGZjZlwvZDh0dXBwaS1hOWVjN2IyMi04MTQyLTRlNjUtYWU5Yi0yYjMzNGFlY2E1OGMuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE4ODQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.0ivRG9Ip6rh-Sp02HAln4CtoXmxvhQEaeiKtYbYZRAI)
The Dark Glass cautioned that settlements like Fort Meriwether Lewis were tougher than they might at first appear. Using sectioned defenses, the Tribe was able to quickly perform repairs on damaged sections of curtain wall. Landers brought a number of crew-served weapons dragged off by Tribals after victory over their Holnist foes, who used old museum pieces and the dregs of National Guard armories handed down from allied state secessionist forces who sometimes employed the hypersurvivalists as auxiliaries. Both towers are equipped with old antiaircraft emplacements.
The Soviet armored personnel carrier attempting to negotiate the wooden causeway was probably demilitarized for service as a civilian tractor, but it was easy enough to fit a machine gun back into the turret mount.
(https://www.imfdb.org/images/thumb/1/11/Postman_7.jpg/600px-Postman_7.jpg)
Holnist fighters use a 20mm Oerlikon gun to shell a Willamette Valley federal building. Judging by the gardens that have sprouted up in the background, this image was captured well into the war, after towns like this one were cut off from Federal help.
Santiago, Morgan, and van de Graaf were intentional about incorporating crew-served weapons into their cargo complements.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5afb82cb-1d9a-4436-a6bc-c7ef3b6cfd77/d2z5hth-c57c6868-7fd0-4441-8050-1c15ee2afd9c.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzVhZmI4MmNiLTFkOWEtNDQzNi1hNmJjLWM3ZWYzYjZjZmQ3N1wvZDJ6NWh0aC1jNTdjNjg2OC03ZmQwLTQ0NDEtODA1MC0xYzE1ZWUyYWZkOWMuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.wA9GqPMhz_f7Fv9ehu_Y-rW7TVAALkUCAdWaAGzZhUA)
By far the deadliest infantry on Planet were Ascendancy Myrmidons, seen here using baffles to descend into the bowels of a missile silo at Chernitskygorsk. Zakharov's under-trained Security Forces usually retreated in the face of anything more threatening than a thrown bottle. Still, Pahlavi's raiders have come in force, accompanied by a manned weapons platform that gave infantry the same firepower once only provided by much larger vehicles.
The only forces equivalent to the Myrmidons were fielded by the Neo-Spartans, Projecitonists, and the semi-mercenary Bourse.
(https://www.etonline.com/sites/default/files/styles/970xh/public/images/2021-07/Screen%20Shot%202021-07-14%20at%208.47.43%20AM.png?itok=sV5I-pzE)
Marković was a qualified field operative and suffered severe radiation burns and the blinding of her right eye during an otherwise successful mission to destroy the Great Beltan Power Station. Because its operators, the Tomorrow Institute, ran their closed grid at tight margins, they were unable to prevent cascading power loss and severe power quality oscillations. Damage reports submitted to the Planetary Council claimed "significant, permanent losses to historical, scientific, and patent libraries with incalculable cultural and future economic value."
[img width=400 hight=300]https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/051/633/863/large/hi-cheal-asset.jpg?1657785226[/img]
The Great Beltan Power Station a decade after its destruction. Master Archivist Sathieu Metrion engaged the Shapers of Chiron to attempt site recovery and twice reoccupied the area with his Sweeper militia but could not supply the resources necessary for meaningful reconstruction.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/9220d93a-7888-4c12-85bc-93d1274bd888/d5c32lh-9a49aa67-bc12-4bcc-9736-2c66bfe3b5bb.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzkyMjBkOTNhLTc4ODgtNGMxMi04NWJjLTkzZDEyNzRiZDg4OFwvZDVjMzJsaC05YTQ5YWE2Ny1iYzEyLTRiY2MtOTczNi0yYzY2YmZlM2I1YmIuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.4URFpwBlnG86qkx9Sr3t33F7r6YanBOOSvk0lIPGogE)
The Dark Glass pointed out that armored trains cleared "no-go" zones considerably greater than was commonly believed. Marković's observation led to more serious efforts at destruction of these strategic assets.
Here, a University Needlejet responds to protect the Very Long Line between Admiralty Base and Morgan Vintages from a despoiling attack by Tomorrowan Hopper.
Sources:
K Squadron is "Red Zone Rumble" by Karl Beiler on ArtStation, a piece of art based on the Command & Conquer franchise.
Second image is "Space Raiders" by Imad Awan on ArtStation.
Third image is "JGSDF LAV-25" by BeignetBison on DeviantArt.
Fourth image is "Swamp fort" by JuavT on DeviantArt.
Fifth image is a still from The Postman (1997).
Pahlavi's raiders are "Descent" by sekido54.
Train attack is "Contact - Aliens on a Train" by Shimmering-Sword.
Our Marković is Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster in Black Widow (2021).
The Great Beltan Power Station is "nuclear power plant" by Biubiubiu on ArtStation.
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Facility: Entertainment Center
(https://s3.amazonaws.com/prod-media.gameinformer.com/styles/body_default/s3/legacy-images/imagefeed/A%20New%20Sci-Fi%20Sports%20Game%20From%20The%20Creators%20Of%20OlliOlli/LL610.jpg)
A Laser League gridiron during play.
Perhaps the high gravity best explained Unity survivors' great enthusiasm for Laser League, a fast-paced sport combining elements of individual target shooting, team orienteering, and the child's game of laser tag. Exhausted to the point of immobility by the day's labors, oppressed by an alien gravity one-third greater than Earth's, workers saw their own aspirations for freedom of movement play out in the vibrant, coruscating ballet on their terminals.
The rules were simple. Competing teams of five, seven, or eight athletes used rocket packs and weak laster marking guns to play a game of elimination. One shot, one "kill." Five teams played the game simultaneously: blue, yellow, green, white, and orange. Gunners started singly in random locations on the gridiron behind hardlight barriers of their own color.
For each team on the field, there was a controller sequestered in a radio booth with full overhead view of the gridiorn. A controller's job was to supply route guidance, early warning, and tactical recommendations for their gunners, while also putting down shot-obstructing "hardlight" barriers between rounds. All team members sat the controller's chair twice in a season.
Hardlight was impassable for both gunners and their beams, but the gridiron's outer boundaries reflected light and could be used to bank shots. Barriers were reconfigured every three minutes, and again after each kill. The number of barriers available to controllers increased over time until the game's final rounds were fought in heavy cover. Barriers were laid in sequence. The controller of the last team to score a kill laid down the first segment, followed by the next team laying down the second, and so on. Teams tied in score were given a random order of precedence.
Games of Laser League took place at Entertainment Centers, glitzy, windowed successors to the drab gymnasiums and closely-supervised reading rooms of the First Generation. Drones were the main clientele, wont to lose themselves in drink and dance before ending the night on arcade games like Ski Free and High Noon. For a few credits more, they could also log into the Planetary Datalinks. Faction networks continued to be used for knowledge-sharing and commentary as before, but Chiron's World Wide Web soon came to resemble that of Earth: dominated by the production and reproduction of conspiracy. Leaders soon learned to distract their more restive elements by organizing team sports, played by semi-professionals, that could unite fans in the ecstasy and agony they would otherwise seek out on their own.
Laser League's appeal was broad and enduring. There was something for every taste. The game was played continuously in the Planetary Olympics from MY 96. Every faction supplied a team. Hive teams were big on sacrifice plays, rushing two flankers forward to distract and divide their opponents. Spartan and Morganite controllers devoted themselves to just one star player while the remaining gunners operated as "free agents" unencumbered by a common plan. Conclavists moved in cautious formations of two or three so that most contacts generated a prolonged firefight. The New Two Thousand played aggressively, thrusting hard in the early game when the burdens on the controller were still small. New Statists and Memorialists played defensively for time until surviving players could operate as a single fire team, clearing corners systematically.
(https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/tron.jpg?w=681&h=383&crop=1&resize=681%2C383)
A Hive gunner has harsh words for a referee.
More traditional pastimes certainly kept their luster. Chess continued to fascinate as a social game. University children were assigned chess problems beginning in the third form to stimulate spatial reasoning. Morganites gambled heavily on mahjong. Hunters organized races eagerly attended by their employers. These were actually overland expeditions intended to perform commercial tasks, but with the addition of a catchvid team, they became spectacle for viewers who were themselves too timid to stray "outside the wire."
Sources:
Inspired by the game Laser League by Roll7.
First image is from Disney's Tron (1982).
Second image is from Laser League.
Hardlight barriers are from Planetside 2.
Ski Free is an old computer game for Windows 3.0 released in 1990.
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(https://www.mccallstudios.com/includes/uploads/2015/10/002-black-hole-robert-mccall-concept-art.jpg)
For every job that posed an unacceptable high risk of injury or death to a human, and many more that did not, the Unity mission designers arranged for a mechanical stand-in. Whether the settlers would deign to use them was another matter.
Robots like this British-built Carrington Mobile Systems Critical Response And Suppression Helpmate (C.R.A.S.H.) showed themselves valuable almost at once, performing duties as varied as firefighting, electrical fault detection, medical diagnostic testing, and cargo bay inventory monitoring.
C.R.A.S.H. unit characteristics were typical of Second Generation androids: vaguely humanoid configuration, multiple articulated appendages including lamp arm, articulated gripper, foam monitor, and hydraulic jacks. Just one minute after the micrometeorite impact, Unity's central computer dispatched fourteen hundred C.R.A.S.H. units ship-wide to conduct preliminary damage assessment.
This "Carrington C.R.A.S.H." clears a path to the bridge from the main cargo bays. Bridge sections are indicated by the vertical band of blue from floor to ceiling. The C.R.A.S.H. follows a path from the ship's main holds, indicated by the yellow reflective tape on the deck plating. The so-called ark was really a labyrinth. At the time the crew entered cold sleep, Unity remained unfinished. Responders trained on physical mock-ups of the ship's interior. They had never walked her decks.
For crew, to stray from the surety of the tape was to risk becoming lost without hope of reorientation. The ship was so large, call boxes had to be installed to supplement the colored deck traces. The idea was that lost workers would "call in" to Bridge, where, if the circuits had not been cut, they could receive assistance with navigation. But there could be no certainty about the path from "here" to "there." Following C.R.A.S.H. units was out of the question. The data tapes that spelled out their instructions were inaccessible from outside the cranial command module and they were unable to receive external commands. Instead, they worked to their own tune, following prearranged routes, solving only the problems imagined by their programmers--usually bit-rate workers whose many inevitable errors compounded with tragic results.
Debates over the role of robotic help played out across two distinct cleavages. The first cleavage concerned whether to use robots in any capacity. Hunters took the most reactionary line, followed by the Ascendancy, the New State, and the Gaians. All four factions practiced a philosophy eventually to become known as Conservationism around M.Y. 100, under which they sought to avoid incorporating certain "enervating" and "integrity-compromising" devices into their societies. The precise list of prohibitions varied, but the intent was always the same: to reduce opportunities to surrender routine tasks to machines, whether occupationally or intellectually. Speaking practically, Conservationism's hallmark was the absence of machine cybernetics or any technology made to compensate for human frailties. A Hunter would gladly use a radio, motor, or electronic navigation--technology judged not to impinge upon human prerogatives--while refusing an artificial limb replacement or to use a robotic assistant for camp tasks.
The second cleavage arose over the extent to which robots should be allowed to learn, such as through the iterative process enabled by polymorphic algorithms. Artificial intelligence and robotic companions designed to replace the human worker attracted considerable interest by some of the factions most certain of the individual: among the University, the Morganites, the Tribe, Dreamers, and Peacekeepers. Robots were tools, and better tools meant a better life.
Those with a darker outlook on human nature were more leery of trusting machines. Pilgrims, Spartans, Memorialists, Hivemen, and Conclavists speculated that their creations might one day betray them. Tomorrowans and the Children of the Atom were less concerned that they would one day lose control of their machines than that unfettered programmers could outrun their own expertise, inadvertently damaging their interests. Sathieu Metrion reminded his companions that the total number of known errors in the Data Core's machine code exceeded four hundred trillion lines. The accepted solution for "roboskepticism" was strict "disk obedience," limiting users' ability to reprogram their machines.
Sources:
Image is concept art from the Disney movie Black Hole by Robert McCall (https://www.mccallstudios.com/) (d. 2010).
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(https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/gallery/stmagazine/khaaan.jpg)
As his body began increasingly to fail him, so Academician Prokhor Zakharov's hunger for new knowledge grew. Already infamous as the Man Who Doomed Unity, Zakharov gained further notoriety for impatience. Scholarly ethics committees were told to concern themselves with unethical proposals "only to the extent that they might not work." Recklessness was his new watchword.
There were indulgences in Somnacin from which he had to be awakened by external defibrillation. One long walk through a fungal forest, made at the cost of three militiamen, ended when Zakharov cried out, "I can hear no song!" Seizing a flamethrower, he burned his way out. Another attempt to stimulate resonance activity involved detonation of three small mining warheads at ground level and a fourth in the sea. (This last was answered with bombardment of Hydrothermal Institute by New State pressure hulls.) Agritechs released a quarter-million bees from the tent apiaries of University Base, though without apparent effect. Over several months, a known polymorphic virus replicated on the faction network unchecked while Institute of Electrotechnology computer science students measured for sentience across forty-four indices. Progress on research ground almost to a halt faction-wide as findings were copied laboriously to data-tape and exchanged hand-to-hand. In M.Y. 30, rumor had it that two Ascendancy prisoners were vivisected while the Academician made dispassionate suggestions from the observation deck over the surgery.
The old man despaired of the inadequacy of his prosthetics: an oculus for the left eye, overcome by cataracts; a hoversled because doctors refused hip replacement under what they said were "unfavorable" conditions in which to perform such a complicated procedure; transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for vertebrae crushed during the hard landing. Attempts to grow new eyeballs in a wet lab with the help of stem cells were dashed by transcription errors in the retina. To keep his mind sharp while the rest ailed, the Academician carried on as many as forty games of chess at any one time, overriding the stern warnings of his own faction security to engage such adversaries as Morgan Industries CEO Nwabudike Morgan and Factor Roshann Cobb of the Dreamers of Chiron. Determination to preserve the best part of himself lured Zakharov toward the mind-machine nexus, though not before he inflicted permanent brain damage on a slave purchased from the Dreamers for the purpose of a "neural incursion," in which learning algorithms and stem cell therapy were deployed in tandem to attempt to colonize the victim's brain.
Sources:
Image is from Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan.
On the possible future of cures for blindness or eye damage, see this article (https://www.news-medical.net/health/Growing-an-eye-for-transplantation-potentials-and-pitfalls.aspx).
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Hi, all. Quite sick this week so the posting has fallen off. Will return as soon as I'm back to fighting shape!
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(https://i.redd.it/6erxerd3v2e51.jpg)
The twentieth century bore witness to the state at its zenith, expressed in the war-, wealth-, and sense-making potential of the Great Powers and their Three Ideologies: fascism, communism, and democracy. In the Atomic Peace that followed World War Two, bureaucrats and their computers changed everything. The war had been a testament to the importance of political and industrial organization, lessons that continued to be applied with gusto. There were New Deals, Five Year Plans, Great Leaps, and Great Societies. Soviet and ex-Nazi science propelled Yuri Gagarin into space. American science carried Raia Muñoz to the floor of the Challenger Deep. The promise of Tomorrow was close within reach.
But the promises soured with time, as promises always do. The Bomb was dirty. And it was tempting. The soil began to fail. Cancers and birth defects reached epidemic levels. New wars, fought in minutes, wrecked such havoc as had never been known. The men in this equation were fallible, but now, easily replaced. Why pay a man of uncertain character or skill a steady wage when you could buy a robot tailor-made to do that same job instead? Computers were more than calculators, they were prophets, and anyone who rejected their dispassionate conclusions was a Communist or a Capitalist or a Splittist, or whatever people became when they refused to recognize the truth of something and chose to remain a slave to their own emotions.
Trust eroded. In Europe, the huddled masses longed for simplicity. In North America, dignity. In the Soviet Union, freedom. Early in the twenty-first century, the Hypersurvivalists revolted under the argument that a state provided nothing but trouble. Their effort was for naught. Decades of warfare simply made space for a new master, the corporation. Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss. Corporations rewarded those who served them, true, but they were less willing than states to share their spoils, and, unlike the state-sponsored ideologies of yesteryear, corporate business plans did nothing to soothe the alienation of their beneficiaries.
This history, Tamineh Pahlavi and her followers knew intimately. Their point of divergence lay in the Eisenhower years, when machines were trusted only with tabulation, government was in the hands of responsible adults, and the worst ravages of the atom were as-yet unsuspected.
High up in their snow-bound mountain redoubts, management was reserved for the aged--those made wary by the honing blade of their own past mistakes. Pahlavi would let no callow youth lead her people on some doomed crusade. Robots were not made in the likeness of the human form, nor used for tasks that were easily performed by a human. Machines, she said, were incapable of resolving "the emotional component" of a decision. Then there were the breeding programs--efforts to restore the "natural progress" of the species using a population that had been mostly chosen for its superlative qualities and certified free of the defects that some thought would make natural population replacement impossible on Earth as soon as 2100.
Prototypical Ascendancy citizens came from the politicized sciences--rocket bureaus, technical ministries, and federal laboratories--or the allied professions of the Administrative State. The purpose of science was not to know, but to control. Likewise, the purpose of governance was not to advance the general commonwealth but to execute a particular agenda of empowerment for those best-fitted to rule--not because of a cultural bequest, as in L'École nouvele, but according to their intellect and education.
Pahlavi played a hard game. The Ascendancy was notoriously paranoid and aggressive. She wanted captives to fuel her eugenics work and relieve the burdens on her scientists, and the safety that is possible only when one's neighbors have been wiped out.
Sources:
Our Pahlavi is actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, Secretary Avasarala from The Expanse.
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In a word, brutality. - Datalinks, excerpt from a discussion with Staunton Communications on the life of Nwabudike Morgan
Nwabudike Morgan c. 2040, before physioenhancement.
(https://preview.redd.it/dpis44bx0iua1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=6ff69d436e509eb643a452582082701cc6e863b3)
Shortly before his death during a botched surgery in July 2066, conflict journalist Mortens Andersen gave an exclusive interview in which he discussed the major themes of his latest book, a biography of the world's richest man, Nwabudike Morgan.
He was not a celebrated inventor either of products or business models. Gun-running had been a venerable profession for centuries by the time he first came along. As managerial geniuses went, there were many ahead of him in line. The strategic missteps that saw his companies take up the part of blatantly weak and broadly unpopular secessionist movements have occupied many volumes in the discipline of failure studies. Nobody in his own time was particularly interested in what Nwabudike Morgan had to say about the performance of specific funds or the future of particular commodities. What most set Morgan apart--what Andersen said made it possible for him to reach the pinnacle of material success--were his willingness to do unto others what others had previously done unto him, and his lack of any firm obligation to a government that could have moderated his behaviors.
Andersen explained the reason for Morgan's success bluntly: he was a sociopath incapable of empathy. Was that not the root cause of enduring public fascination with his infamous response to appeals for the plight of refugees or environmental conservation? "Why?"
At first, Westerners saw what they wanted to see. American Central Intelligence mistook Morgan's interest in the displaced Igbo population of Nigeria as a "weakness for the underdog." The vehemence of Soviet denunciations of Morgan's early ventures convinced Morgan's boosters that the Young Buccaneer had a well-deserved place in the firmament of ideological allies of market capitalism alongside Pinochet, Park, Tshombe, Protokev, and Diem. When Morgan turned on his Chadian paymasters, they dismissed the coup as fair play in a faraway land where the rules were supposedly different. Comfortable in their unexamined racism, they changed the channel.
In independent Biafra today, public buildings are named in Morgan's honor. School children are taught that his ingenuity helped to make possible their present safety and security. The government insists that Morgan came out of a kindred sense of duty to another oppressed people. Speaking to an authorized outlet years after his first visit to wartime Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Morgan remembered the experience very differently. The Nigerians already had suppliers in the form of the British and Soviets. They weren't interested in the third-hand relics Morgan had to hand--stockpiles of old hand weapons captured from rebels by Portuguese Flechas. He sold to the Biafrans because they were willing to take his low-quality product. And he later hired Biafran veterans "because they were in Port Harcourt, and so was I," when the next opportunity came from Chad.
Morgan earned his fortune by making deals that others would not. Both the CIA and the KGB relied on him to conduct assassinations and prisoner rendition. The Sahara became ground zero for new Cold War intrigue. Spies rubbed shoulders with buyers acting on behalf of warlords, narco-terrorists, and the "temporarily displaced" ruling elites of nations suffering through "periods of unfortunate revolutionary transition." There were three places one could go to see the rich and famous: Hollywood Boulevard, Walt Disney World, and L'avenue du 10 Octobre in N'Djamena, where it was popular knowledge that Morgan housed a parliament's worth of down-and-out leaders hoping to fall into the means to finance their political resurrections. In the mid-2040s, two successive American presidents resigned in disgrace after special counsels discovered that both had paid the New Adventures Corporation, a Morganite holding company, to send mercenaries to fight in the war between Egypt and Sudan, violating a Congressional amendment.
"What's lacking throughout," Andersen insisted, "is any trace of concern about the consequences for others." More than once, Morgan claimed to have implicated others in his own thefts from the Namibian diamond pits he worked as a youth. His company's take-over of Chad, sometimes interpreted as a form of comeuppance by hagiographers, involved assumption of ownership for national resources, but not acknowledgement of any obligation to govern. Morgan's mercenaries and allies defended the towns in which they were interested but stood by as the remainder of the country fell into chaos. Eventually, Libya and Sudan shouldered their way into territory that Morgan was then happy to sign away--as if it had been his responsibility after all. Pride in his reputation for supplying clients with only the most effective operatives didn't keep Morgan from signing untrained criminals and refugees to fill billets in Texas, Missouri, and the Christian States--a situation brought about by the unwillingness of properly-informed people to take up the secessionists' flagging cause, he said. Leaked board room audio reveals that Morgan Industries executives laughed upon being told their deception was convincing. These were conflicts Morgan didn't especially care about winning. Morganite unit commanders were forbidden from coordinating across state lines because the clients hadn't thought they should have to pay for the privilege.
Morganite operations in Spanish Peru reveal the full nihilism of Morgan's take on the Human Predicament. Within just five years, virtually the entirety of the Peruvian Amazon was clear-cut to open range for cattle. A few dozen conservation and pleasure domes were built to advance pharmaceutical research and ecotourism.
Conservationism is of no concern; after all, you have just told us Earth is dying. - Morgan responds to his critics on "Roundtable," a production of Track Eight News
Morgan is happy to spin his attitude as a sublime philosophy. His favorite tactic is to question his interlocutors. Why should Morgan be asked to do the work of caring about humanity when there is nobody to help him do it? Even if he were to try, he would fail for want of help. It is just a tactic to distract him while others put themselves first--which is their right, of course. Appearing twice in absentia before Congress, Morgan fulminated against being denied the right to do business in the Restored United States over his role in their civil war, arguing that the country's historical commitment to free enterprise made it necessary to conscience his return. "Regulation is simply another word for fear of freedom," he said. It should not be up to governments or their cronies to decide what was best for people--they could do that themselves through observation. (This extreme take, echoing the anarchic strains of Holnism, was no longer as well-beloved by Americans after their prolonged bloodletting.) When called to account for his part in the arms trade, Morgan wrapped himself in Luttwakian Ethics. Some things were worth fighting for--and, if so, deserved to be brought to a swift conclusion, if only so that the warring parties could reassess their willingness to keep it up.
On Planet, Morgan used the lure of Hedonism to build and sustain his empire. To do this, he held himself out as a dissenter from the campaign of self-sacrifice "waged over the last six generations." What had the market socialisms, "compassionate" conservatisms, and Communist dictatorships really done for Earth but ushered it unhappy to its demise? Perhaps, as inevitable victims, they ought to have instead eaten a fine last meal, savored a last cigarette? It was an easy leap for those too shell-shocked to give any more of themselves on behalf of the mission. Work hard, Morgan said, and you will be allowed--even encouraged--to play hard. Corporate guardianship had been common enough on Old Earth. Governments could be fickle, but businesses, at least, had a reputation for single-mindedness. At least there would be comfort and consistency.
Morgan used the stick and carrot for motivation and imposed few expectations beyond the generation of value in terms of energy credits. Safety margins were worse than those in the Human Labyrinth, which at least recognized that a human life was worth precisely the output of its thought and labor. The politics was very bad. Since failure meant seizure of one's assets by creditors--up to and including one's future labor--the competition was exceptionally intense. Theft, sabotage, and intimidation were acceptable business practices. Without regulation, many inadvertently drank, gambled, or otherwise signed their freedom away without ever intending to do so. To buoy spirits, the availability of drink, drugs, and distractions was pushed to its limits. Six hours of labor for seventeen of pleasant numbness. Morgan himself was surprised by the number of people for whom these arrangements were seemingly acceptable, a placebo for the superior fulfillment they doubted they could get in service to other causes.
Capitalism was just a buzzword to Morgan. A free market was indeed supposed to reward good ideas naturally as customers adjusted their behavior to pursue more of what they liked. But, contrary to Morgan's assertions that an economy was most free when governments exercised restraint--the freedom to exploit, Andersen called it--no healthy market could endure without active monopoly-busting. The vision Morgan sold his adherents was a lie. Morgan had no qualms about engaging in market-distorting behavior if it was to his own advantage.
Sources:
Picture of Morgan is a Midjourney AI creation made and shared on the AlphaCentauri sub-Reddit by user Gold-Ad-8211.
Morgan's second quote, along with his take on the rainforest is from an alternate history work by RvBOMally, "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri," on DeviantArt.
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Facility: Commercial Plaza
(https://i.imgur.com/i0fB6vk.jpg)
Everybody come and play
Throw every last care away
Let's go to the mall, today
- “Let's Go to the Mall”, Datalinks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mJAsgIIfNM)
From the beginning, there were bargains. Despite the widespread tales of mass looting and extortion, some desperate survivors engaged in semi-civilized trade during the heady hours of Planetfall. Medtechs sold painkillers and analgesics at bulk discounts for duffel bags' worth of high-powered rifles and handfuls of shredder flechettes. Librarians auctioned off crates of unmarked data wheels for power cells, making no promises whether they were clear for new recordings, or contained the memories of those long abandoned on Earth. It is said that Nwabudike Morgan approvingly strode through impromptu flesh bazaars as Charterist drudges, low-level jobtechs, Stellar Lifeboat Project refugees, and the otherwise indentured were bought and sold for bushels of grain. All around him was the incessant, inexorable march of commerce.
Colonial retailing was far less unsavory, if little more developed. At the beginning, economics of the frontier relied on essentially faction-run state economies where goods vital for survival were guaranteed to each citizen, if rarely equally distributed. The treasure troves of Earthmade goods, from raw materials, to broken parts, to baubles and trinkets, were sometimes confiscated by the state, other times left as the domain of the holder for the sake of preserving citizen morale. This ownership powered the emergent personal-scale barter systems between individual citizens, then small-time businesses that specialized in the collection and re-exchange of goods. Workers paid in energy chits traded for the meager luxuries available in base life, and privileges ranging from more rations to more hours at Rec Commons. This nascent activity laid the base for shops built along the principles of General Retail, serving frontier folk. With the formalization of rudimentary commercial doctrines into Retail Economics, and the construction of light industry factories for Consumer Production, new venues were required to serve interfactional shoppers.
(https://i.imgur.com/yPEVST0.png)
Caidu (財都) - “wealth capital”, outskirts of Plex Anthill. While free market-friendly factions centered commercial plazas in base life, such urban design was inimical to Hive ideology
The natural evolution of the dusty General Mart of frontier development, the Commercial Plaza allowed factions to showcase even more products and services for colonists to consume, stimulating economic behavior and population morale. In time, they served as third places between home and work, the setting for social development. From basic staples to luxury wares for citizens to enjoy during leisure hours, these facilities housed personal care articles refined from fungal by-products, toys fresh from factory-fabs, replicas of famous crown jewels based on 3-D lithography and composed of fool's gold and synthetic diamond, clothing and cuisines of all kinds. The luxury elite of Planet purchased racing vehicles, resurrected or mechanical animals, and household safe alien artifacts from high-end commercial plazas. Group dynamics researchers and social engineers assured administrators that the very act of shopping for products was almost as beneficial as buying and owning them.
(https://i.imgur.com/ceI9R1N.png)
Wicker furniture made from reed and bamboo were a common and affordable household product, thanks to the plants' hydroponic hardiness and water absorption qualities.
Experiments in consumer behavior resulted in small, short-lived, low-complexity items intentionally created in short production runs. Profiteering from the retro waves of nostalgia for pre-Centauri existence, faction governments and Planetary corporations alike built 8-track tapes, beach balls, chia figurines, fuzzy dice, Neuromancer games, wax lips, and whoopee cushions and sold them in limited-edition drops at ridiculous markup, creating markets for Veblen goods that were inexpensive to make but exorbitant through artificially constraints. Though this supply was often supplemented by smuggling and counterfeiting from the black marketeers of Red Light Districts.
(https://i.imgur.com/HDevn1k.jpg)
Local cultures that celebrate the miracle of life might make use of commercial public spaces. Joyous Tribals at the Jaxton Communal Store line up to see the newest arrival of Arlen Hill base
Commercial Plazas were consciously modeled after the shopping malls of old Earth. By the time of the Unity mission, massive "giga-malls" dotted the megalopolitan conurbations of the planet. Equipped with the latest environmental scrubbers and filters, sporting geodesic domes reflecting the harshest of UV rays cast through depleted ozone, protected by layers of machine gun nests and evacuation fallback tunnels against survivalist or terrorist activity, these were the last refuge for prince and pauper alike. Even amidst global decline, a visit to the mall promised a chance to try on the latest fast fashions, window shop the Jones' latest gizmos, sample some cinnamon-infused pastries, play a game of electronic skee-ball, ski on synthesized snow-topped manhills, and drink a delicious ice-cold can of Jamesmont Soda. And beyond- malls acted as gathering locations for elections, civic demonstrations, religious ceremonies, revolutions.
The design of these edifices, the last great monument of terminal capitalism, were easily adapted by xenourban planners on Planet. As malls were often already hermetically-sealed miniature city-states of their own, it was an easy step for their Chironian cousins to protect patrons from nitrogen atmosphere and mindworms, instead of Earthbound threats. And as on the old homeward, they would offer residential space to those either too poor or too rich to live in a Hab Complex.
(https://i.imgur.com/gjzYIKf.png)
Morgan PayStation at sunset. The fourth largest shopping complex of the Dynamic Enterprise, the facility was a hybrid Commercial Plaza and Entertainment Center that hosted games for multiple Laser League teams, including the Morgantown Slicers, the Morgan Collections Buyers, and the Jeneba Complex Worm-Wranglers
Each faction has its unique flavor in every facility. Morganite malls were man-made monoliths, towering and brimming with sugary nutrients, polished minerals, gamified energy. They functioned as miniature company towns within bases, boasting their own corporate regulatory jurisdictions and defense militias to protect their indoor greyhound racing tracks and basement polo fields. Some Morgan Capital Police units, such as the guardsmen of the gargantuan Factional Mall, are considered among the Dynamic Enterprise’s finest warriors, far from mere mall cops.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are factions that eschew the extravagance and symbolism of these cathedrals of commerce. The Human Tribe builds modest plazas modeled after the homespun malls of Anyburb, USA- certainly a concept to send Keller vomiting in his grave, but also a reflection of the lived experiences of Tribals from the strip mall-blighted American southwest. These nostalgic recreations of tackiest Americana hide their community vitality beneath garish architecture. Nestled between the post office, community energy bank, indoor pickleball court, soda fountains, and children’s escape room, shops in Tribal malls are basically mom and pop street fair stands housed in proper spaces instead of tattered tents. The Tribal way is to subsidize small-time creators under a common roof. Also, given Kellerite traumatic memories of the Second American Civil War, such as the massacre that followed the Siege of San Cristóbal Galleria in New Los Angeles, there is a tendency to reject the mini-fortress giga-mall designs out of respect to fallen Tribals from past generations.
(https://i.imgur.com/llkrRpU.png) (https://i.imgur.com/wH42PLZ.png)
Two views of the Merchantmorph Trade Tower at Bishop Telecomm base, Chiron Cartel. Left - lower level floors undergoing remodeling between rival stores, courtesy of ward keeper Superior Defense Systems. Right - mid to upper floors under joint visionary management of Shidou Arms and Kanzaki Optics
In between these extremes include Chiron Cartel shopping centers, which in contrast to Morganite monoculture, sport hundreds of corporate brand outlets and dozens of firms’ department stores. In the characteristic unregulated style of the free enterprise zone, most Cartel shopping centers are an anarchic assemblage of retail spaces of radically differing sizes and haphazard placement. Like the faction’s government- or lack thereof, these facilities have a bare central governance that handles security, while details are hashed out by denizens. The more successful plazas more resemble collections of neighborhoods of stores that have signed strategic working contracts with one another, rather than pure anarchy.
(https://i.imgur.com/pcAqf5W.jpg)
Halloween, considered one of the most important holidays among the Data Angels, is celebrated for an entire decurn. One annual event is the Cyber Shock, wherein the entire Segfault Mall is converted into an interactive haunted house for hardlight paintball between costumed players and animatronic horrors
Some factions dispense with indoor exclusivity altogether. The New Two Thousand cares not for the soft-handed, clean-nailed excess of other corporate factions, and thus holds mobile, pop up farmer’s market-type affairs where stakeholders of prominent families and companies gather to trade crops, flocks, and slaves. These might take place within domed or otherwise enclosed open spaces in bases- or outside, by the xenofungus fields themselves. The Zenith Zócalo at the U.N. Temple of Sol, built by Dai Seung Heavy Industries according to the Sons of Centauri-Ra’s exact specifications (mostly a fanciful recreation of the titular main square in Tenochtitlán), is perhaps the largest open air Commercial Plaza in the world, serving adherents of the solar cult, Unicorp chaebol businesspeople on leave, and curious intrafactional tourists from other Peacekeeper bases alike. Finally, travelers among the lone and level sands of the Great Dunes still whisper among themselves of the Grand Medina of long-lost Fort Quileute, perhaps the first Commercial Plaza of its kind. Once the cosmopolitan marketplace under painted clear skies, then a bustling entrepôt for the entire region’s alien artifact trade, nothing beside remains of that colossal wreck.
Notes
This entire post was inspired by the appearance of a shopping mall on the second episode of new animated series Fired on Mars. It reminded me that malls are a recurring feature in space colonies, orbital stations, even interstellar vessels (https://shodan.fandom.com/wiki/Mall). It’s interesting how shopping complexes, which themselves might be arcology-like interior worlds, can be nested into even larger self-sustaining structures. (Also see depictions in Total Recall, Mass Effect, The Expanse, etc.)
The concept of a Commercial facility was partly inspired by the titular structure (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_1:structuresdetails#commercial) from Outpost. Its successor, the Consumer Goods Factory (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_2:outpost_2_manual:detailed_unit_descriptions#factory_consumer_goods) from Outpost 2: Divided Destiny, includes a neat description for how a frontier consumer economy might form. Here’s a short tale (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_2:storyline:tales_from_new_terra#factory_consumer_goods) about one.
The list of retro product offerings comes directly from the in-game manufacturing options for the Light Industry (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_1:structuresdetails#light_industry) factories from the first Outpost.
Red Light Districts (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_1:structuresdetails#red_light_district) are also a structure from the original Outpost.
The benefits of wicker furniture in space colonization comes from blog article “Mars will have a lot of wicker furniture” (https://havewelanded.com/mars-wicker-furniture) by Tyler Maran.
Jamesmont Soda, a fully-owned subsidiary of Jimmy James Incorporated, is from Newsradio.
The Zócalo is also the name of Babylon 5’s central marketplace (https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo).
Image credits
Header image is from a mallsoft or vaporwave themed VRChat hub/world Starlight Plaza (https://www.reddit.com/r/VRchat/comments/i1c0e1/vaporwave_mall_worlds/) by theycallhimcake
People lining up to see a colony baby at the mall comes from Fired on Mars, episode 2
Morgan PayStation is album art for exotics (https://businesscasual87.bandcamp.com/album/exotics) by vcr-classique
Mall on fire is the Solomons Galleria (https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Solomons_Galleria) of Sevastopol Station from Alien: Isolation, image courtesy of this amazing thread (https://twitter.com/TheSpaceshipper/status/1100901254128111616/)
Less-dilapidated space mall with Isaac Clarke is the Concourse (https://deadspace.fandom.com/wiki/The_Concourse) of Titan Station/the Sprawl from Dead Space 2
Cyberpunk vs. techno-zombie picture is System Shock 2 concept art (https://www.garethhinds.com/conceptart/index.php) by Gareth Hinds
Further reading
“The Teens Who Listen to ‘Mallwave’ Are Nostalgic for an Experience They’ve Never Had”, MEL Magazine (https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-teens-who-listen-to-mallwave-are-nostalgic-for-an-experience-theyve-never-had)
“Let’s Go to the Mall”, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Go_to_the_Mall)
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/9bdaffc6-05f7-4f47-bb9a-0a18b7e16bb5/dcxzitp-16ab204a-a069-467b-ab4f-e1b8bee6d379.png/v1/fill/w_1024,h_1449/somebody_go_tell_andy_he_is_smoking_again_by_lidiash_dcxzitp-fullview.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTQ0OSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzliZGFmZmM2LTA1ZjctNGY0Ny1iYjlhLTBhMThiN2UxNmJiNVwvZGN4eml0cC0xNmFiMjA0YS1hMDY5LTQ2N2ItYWI0Zi1lMWI4YmVlNmQzNzkucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.8R3KNZ3uSRmfggBX865ekI2P2r2tD5b-x2ZXn035Kkw)
Roshann Cobb, age nineteen, in an ad for Targe Cigarettes.
Calling his musings Seed Theory, Roshann Cobb began at age fifteen to propound the idea that he was a prisoner of coping mechanisms he scarcely understood. "Less than the sum of my traumas," he wrote in a Business Organizer purloined from his father's office.
He smoked opium cigarettes and drank wine without knowing why they appealed to him. Started fights for no better reason than the mood struck him. Found himself placing bets on chess games he already knew he would throw. Confounded by the complexity of his own case, the adolescent Cobb chose an easier study: his father, Tai-Pan Ian Dunross Struan.
There were similar cracks in the allegedly brilliant facade. He was the notoriously jealous master of a multinational conglomerate without ever being able to exert order in his own household. Made and broke eight marriages despite a decades-long and very public infatuation with the same mistress, placing his financial holdings in jeopardy each time. Alienated each of his four legitimate and twelve illegitimate children to the point that several were institutionalized and one attempted to stab him. That last, he shot dead in self-defense.
(https://www.dailyactor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/pierce-brosnan.jpg)
Ian Dunross Struan, Chairman of Struan's Pacific Trading Company, date unknown.
With this new perspective in hand, Cobb fit his hypothesis to other contexts: industrial accidents brought on by failures of organizational culture, such as the failure of Ice Binder One at the mouth of the Isidis Basin on Mars; public health crises exacerbated by the performative medical obscurantism of well-educated politicians; even the selection process for United Nations Mission to Alpha Centauri prime contractors. The results overwhelming supported the existence of the Collective Unconscious, a mental schema of preferences, phobias, and logical defects common to every member of the human race.
Cobb's great desire was to create a taxonomy of the mind--a master reference to filter the personal from the impersonal. Here is what it means to dream of falling, to obsess over danger, to profess faith in something intangible. Without this work, Cobb predicted that the Unity survivors would merely repeat the mistakes of previous generations.
For how can I know you if our common ancestors keep getting in the way? - White Rabbit's Refuge
The role of genetic inheritance and the large size of the data sets necessary to make his proofs caused Cobb to take special interest in the Human Ascendancy and the Children of Chiron. Collaboration with Pahlavi came naturally: both societies were comfortable with slavery and, lacking for alternatives, it was convenient that the two should make common cause. Anhaldt, on the other hand, extended the services of his data-techs only as a victim of extortion.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5aed4757-61f9-4e38-a24d-c04d366f6ac2/d1cu7ja-3337bc79-66e0-4265-9285-3f316cde6de7.jpg/v1/fill/w_800,h_430,q_75,strp/retro_robot_prints_by_jubbenrobot_d1cu7ja-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NDMwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNWFlZDQ3NTctNjFmOS00ZTM4LWEyNGQtYzA0ZDM2NmY2YWMyXC9kMWN1N2phLTMzMzdiYzc5LTY2ZTAtNDI2NS05Mjg1LTNmMzE2Y2RlNmRlNy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9ODAwIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.ahFsHzdWv96WFL2sOUQ75JiF57EhBmLFpoondzbsGGU)
Earth's population reached a high of 4.9 billion in 1986 only to collapse to 2.2 billion in 2070, slightly less than a century later. "Replacement labor" to sustain the global economy was provided by androids. This Radio-Dispatched Unit (RDU) was sold by the Park Chaebol in various configurations as a general laborer and night watchman. The Unity Robotics Conservancy (RC), so-called because it maintained existing designs rather than inventing new ones, embraced the RDU as an especially servicable companion for Chironian settlers because of its very low complexity and compatibility with atomic batteries. The large eyes were projections on the plasticized housing that protected the unit's superprocessor.
Cobb devoted about half his shipboard time to cargo selection and the RDUs were early finds. Because the RC couldn't know precisely what kind of mission package would be necessary, it organized the parts in vast lots. Cobb's scrap heaps contained potentially hundreds of unbuilt copies, along with about twenty first put together by D'Almeida's security forces to provide distractions while fighting the Spartans. Each forearm assembly housed a shredder barrel.
Most of Cobb's research was self-contained within base intranets. The faction never developed a Datalinks. Although the Tomorrow Institute is known to have made several failed attempts to obtain Cobb's research notes via Probe Team insertion, it is not even certain the material survived the Factor's capture by Pahlavi after the two leaders fell out.
Better-attested is the passion with which Cobb revisited his earlier thinking after Pahlavi removed him from the Punishment Sphere, a "cure" she claimed had broken the prisoner of his addictions. Cobb was disturbed to find significant differences between the brain activity of first- and latter-generation colonists, a trend broken only among captive Hivemen.
Sources:
Young Roshann Cobb is "Somebody go tell Andy he is smoking again" by Lidiash on DeviantArt.
Actor Pierce Brosnan is our Ian Dunross Struan, a character from James Clavell's Asian Saga.
RDUs are "Retro Robot Prints" by JubbenRobot on DeviantArt, inspired by Forbidden Planet.
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(https://nationalinterest.org/sites/default/files/main_images/640px-Brits_slagschip_Vanguard_bezoekt_Rotterdam%2C_Bestanddeelnr_905-1895.jpg)
HMS Vanguard, last of a breed, photographed at Port David, Israel (formerly Egypt's Port Faud), in 1977. Laid down at the start of the Second World War in October 1941, she commissioned only in May 1946, but served the Royal Navy for sixty years thereafter.
Lone battleship in the Fleet from 1958 to 2002, Vanguard inspired powerful emotion in contemporary observers. To Tory MPs, the sleek white hull was an enduring symbol of empire--proof the lion still had claws. During the First Kenya Emergency, when she cruised off Mombasa to the toasts of the settler elite, Izvestzia named her a "terror weapon." Speaking to the press during the Falklands War, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher described the huge warship as "a final word to the Argentinian junta on Our Islands." Nearer the end of her service life, Commodore Fleet Air Arm Bernard Molesley called the warship "shameful--a hulk, really, that has been kept on far too long."
Many a study proposed that Vanguard be struck from the Navy list and broken up for low-background steel but the Colonial Office found it convenient to "send a gunboat" wherever appreciation of British prerogatives or the safety of British nationals was in doubt. And so Vanguard was present for the Partition of India (1947), much of the Malayan Emergency (1948-1954, 1959-1960), the First Kenyan Emergency (1954-1955), the Suez Crisis (1956), the First Biafran Crisis (1967-70), and the 1982 Falklands War. Though nobody knew it then, Vanguard actually fired her main armament for the last time in February 1960 in Malaya.
Time savaged her more surely than any enemy. By 1975, fouling had reduced the "fast" battleship's top speed to just 24 knots while her big guns were inoperable for want of proper maintenance and unspoiled propellant. Fresh shells were ordered from the U.S. Navy, but the two batches received were defective and HM Government declined to accept a third.
Over the course of her very long service life, Vanguard lost three of her four 15" turrets, half her 5.25" turrets, and nearly all her remaining Bofors guns to make provision for Seacat point-defense missiles and Royal Marine Commandos. Post-refit Vanguard incorporated technologies the U.N. would later select for the Mission to Alpha Centauri, including CCTV guidance packages (for the Seacat launchers) and laser dazzle systems (for use against the pilots of low-flying aircraft). Damage control drills conducted aboard Vanguard, French battleships Suffren and D'Estaing, and the American Iowa and New Jersey-class battleships helped to inform the procedures later adopted for Unity.
Not all of the changes were highly regarded by the Navy that ordered them. When called up for Operation Corporate, lack of faith in Seacat caused Vanguard to delay sailing while a make-shift gun armament, Bofors and Oerlikons, was hastily cut from museum ships to bulk up her antiaircraft capability.
On paper, the match-up in the South Atlantic was a close one. The Argentines were operating two carrier battle groups, centered around Colossus-class carriers, ARA Independencia and ARA Veinticinco de Mayo, respectively. Together, they could put aloft eighteen A-4Q Skyhawk light attack aircraft.Independencia sailed in the company of two elderly cruisers, the General Belgrano (herself a Seacat operator) and the all-gun Nueve de Julio. The British mustered three carriers of their own: Hermes, Invincible, and Eagle, followed much later by Vanguard and two Tiger-class light cruisers reactivated from Standby Squadron Chatham. The battleship provided accommodation for much of Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward's planning staff.
Once on-station in the South Atlantic, Vanguard assumed the role of armored decoy. She was struck twice during the war, aft and amidships, by Exocet missiles, courtesy of Argentine Super Étendards. Both hit above the water line and one was totally defeated by her armor. The ship suffered additional damage when hit by the burning wreckage of a Skyhawk brought down too near by one of her escorts, HMS Blake.
In 2040, HM Government admitted Vanguard had sometimes sailed with five-kiloton nuclear artillery shells, although it was categorically denied that any were issued for Corporate.
Boiler trouble discovered in March 2001 finally put paid to Vanguard. She was decommissioned in February 2002 and sold for scrap. The breakers took her under tow to India but she foundered coming into the yards and partially sank in rough waters not three miles off the coast. There she remained, a popular target of photographers and gulls, until 2048, when a recovery fleet sent by Morgan Marine re-floated the hulk and shuttled it back across the Arabian Sea to Üroan, an unrecognized secessionist state on an artificial island huddled in the shadow of Puntland. Huge sheds hid the hull from view for more than thirty-eight months. (In Washington, HM's ambassador was obliged to make repeated assurances there was nothing of special interest left aboard, though it was implicitly understood that the hull was being stripped for armor to use on another warship.)
An American ballistic missile submarine, Rhode Island, bombarded Üroan with eight submarine-launched cruise missiles. Pentagon brass were horrified when at least two were shot down by land-based point defenses. Close reconnaissance proved impossible, but satellite photography suggested a kill: at least five of the missiles hit their target. But Vanguard wasn't there.
The life-extension package didn't come near to restoring the ex-battlewagon, now rechristened Surger, to its former glory, but as a poor man's cruiser, it had huge capacity for parasite craft and, because of its tonnage and power plant, was an overmatch for anything short of a capital ship. Morgan Industries used it as a mothership for "anti-piracy" and customs enforcement operations.
Senior Morgan Emergency Services rescue-techs on Honua Station remembered their time aboard Surger well enough to regale Unity trainees with stories about hours spent trying to staunch leaks in Surger's hull. (Apparently, she was never fully watertight again after her long soak off India.) Many of the principles these techs used to make Vanguard serviceable again were applied aboard Unity, including installation of triple water mains and quadrupally-redundant generators.
Source:
A friend, whom we shall acknowledge as Ven, thoughtfully provided several of the recommendations used to update this article on 5/1/2023.
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(https://i.imgur.com/0NOOqyO.png)
Troopers! Word from on high have reached mine ears. The general declares this vendetta canceled, and we can all go home. The traitor will get his bricks of blood- the blood of our brothers-in-arms. But, we can all go home. Law, order, and loyalty, all sold to the highest bidder. But we can all go home. I shall not. Let all with the will and the resolution to fight the forces of anarchy join me. Make us a sword of the State, may the light of unity strike down those who reject its precepts. Only then will we have a home to return to! - Inciting address of the Insubordination at Inachus River
The leader of perhaps the most radical of the sub-factions of the Restoration of Earth hails from a distinctly placid pedigree. Chef d'escadron Marie du Lac was born and raised in Évian-les-Bains, a resort spa town on the shores of Lake Geneva. The child of a local hotelier and a socialite, both with greater ambitions for their middle class family, she found herself eminently bored with her bucolic idyll as her parents gently prodded her to seek an arena greater than her native tourist industry.
The defining event was when her father’s Hôtel Savoie-faire played host to the Évian Peace Talks, the accord that finalized Algeria’s devolution from France. For weeks, the sixteen-year-old saw national politicians, veteran warriors, terrorists or freedom fighters, U.N. bureaucrats, and the hodgepodge of schmoozers- including her cousins from southwest of the lake- pile into her family’s home. This terrific gathering of the aggrieved had its excitement even further elevated after a small bomb detonated during the proceedings, harming none but wrecking the Pontecorvo Room. After all of the shouting and speeches, blood and thunder, Algeria had gained its independence in name only, remaining an associate member of the French Union in perpetuity and humiliatingly losing the pied noir enclave of Oranais. But she had found her calling.
(https://i.imgur.com/Yj5MhQP.jpg)
This was the era of French efforts to flex its muscles abroad. But surprising her parents, du Lac aspired to an even higher arena, that of the world itself. Enrolling into the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld University for Peacekeeping at Stockholm, she sought to become a Hammershield, one of the elites of the U.N. Security Force. Her eagerness led to a career among the wartorn conflict zones from Ambazonia to Florida, attempting to keep the peace between militant factions, but also often attempting to make a little peace herself. Du Lac’s ability to tread the line on rules of engagement as nimbly as a lawyer program enabled her units to operate with greater lassitude. Preemptive strikes, enhanced interrogations, extraordinary renditions, somehow she always found ways to justify each under the letter of the law, even when it might have grossly violated its spirit. After all, she would proclaim, was not peace the ultimate law, and was she not fulfilling its spirit by facilitating its arrival?
Was in Montréal when the bombs went off. Posed as an FLQ member in scheme that ultimately disarmed a terrorist cell located in the Plateau, claimed the illegal impersonation was only recourse in a life-or-death solution. Later launched a decapitation strike on Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the local NATO command unit, to prevent an imminent battle with militants in the Underground City. While actions would have been Hague-worthy under any other leadership, Secretary General Mongkut himself promoted du Lac to glory. Not to be a Hammershield, but a Knight Killer- an antiterrorist operative of the United Nations Special Operations Coalition.
(https://i.imgur.com/dy6FKaA.png)
Stint at UNSOC cut short by excessive disagreement with leadership. The coalition’s restrained, nonlethal combat doctrine, emphasized after Mongkut’s assassination and replacement by a less cavalier Sec Gen, proved the start of culture clash. Resigned after denied use of force against amassed NATO Norden forces spotted in the Lapland during op to quell Soviet-backed socialist Sámi insurgency.
Returned home to a hero’s welcome briefly to witness father appointed cultural attaché at Helvetian embassy, mother elected to the Senate. Received degree in international law from Paris-Panthéon-Assas University, thesis “The Necessity of Hegemony”, arguing on the basis of Hobbes’ view of war of all against all and Mearsheimer's offensive realism, not to mention her own combat experience, the burden the U.N. must take on to become an actual authority to establish true peace.
(https://i.imgur.com/078vOOw.jpg)
Because the d'Avrail government considered Wallonia to be patrimony of Metropolitan France, national law enforcement, rather than outright military troops, were used in the occupation
Subsequently joined the National Gendarmerie. Foiled multiple anarchist, antiwar, decolonial plots during turbulent post-Operation Golf years. Monitored both pro-NATO and pro-EU elements alike, uncovering a safe house of retourneur stay-behinds in Marseilles. Received Médaille de la Gendarmerie nationale for heroism in the consolidation of the département of French Wallonia following the War of Belgian Dissolution. Known by locals as “Mademoiselle Guillotine.” Drummed out of service for insistence that French policy reengage with United Nations commitments, “shepherd internationalism like Jupiter from on high.” Suspected of harboring too many ties with former U.N. comrades.
When Unity opportunity presented itself, the French government eagerly pawned off the overeager internationalist as an Earthside security risk who could nonetheless assert Gallic prestige in space. Mission leaders decided to make du Lac the head of clandestine Blue Operations division. Akin to DEEPEYES was to the office of the Secretary-General, Blue Ops was to serve at the sole discretion of the captain only. Barring his incapacitation, this division would activate, operating fully autonomously to ensure the continuity of the mission. Empowered by the extraordinary abilities granted by U.N. Space Authority Resolution 0451, the tactical sleeper agents of Blue Ops were allowed to violate the very Charter itself, including the Declaration of Human Rights. The inclusion of the Blue Operations agents was perhaps another case of bureaucratic overrun and redundancy, especially as it was unbeknownst to the planners that Sec Gen Simmelmann had already embedded a DEEPEYES cell.
Due to a cryotube programming oversight, the sleeper agents were awoken late towards the final act of Planetfall. Furious at the murder of the captain and apoplectic at the chaos Garland and his staff had allowed to fester, Blue Ops took their silenced ceramic Glock 7 pistols, poison-tipped crossbows, and sentry guns from out of hidden caches and cut a swath of destruction across the ship. The Blue Terror lasted eighteen hours, eliminating scores of mutineers. Private military contractors were targeted as illegal fighters. Ship’s security force officers caught in the crossfire were not spared. Du Lac directed her team of furies to “deprioritize retention of incompetent elements.” Any personnel- combatant or not- were summarily subject to loyalty checks. In the most notorious instance, Blue Ops detained a mixed group of Spartans, Kellerites, Holnists, and colonists suspected of mutiny within a cargo hold. A mysterious power failure disabled airlock controls, launching the entire group into space. From a repair spacewalk, cosmonaut Colonel Vadim Kozlov reported seeing the grisly sight- “the doors burst, and as a black parade, dozens upon dozens marched out to touch the void.”
(https://i.imgur.com/EtfteUp.png)
Blue Operators surround a trio of hapless peacekeepers in Hangar Bay ∫ during Planetfall
Blue Ops finally halted their rampage when a formation of U.N. Marines forced compliance with heavy firepower. Acceding to Marcel Salan’s authority under the rationale that big guns gave him the position to reassert control of the mission, du Lac designated him provisional mission leader. The relationship was fraught from the start- the Blue Operators dismissed the jarheads as sloppy buffoons who had failed to prevent the degeneration of the mission, and they were the ones left to clean after their mess. The Canadian Marine for his part correctly viewed the French agent and her team as a death squad in U.N. colors, bound to a mandate whose resignation was no less than Garland’s body. Yet the team of combatants fought their way through the dying ship, and broke for the surface.
Chef d'escadron du Lac became a founding member of the Restoration of Earth’s ragtag assemblage of mission loyalists. From the start Salan sought to isolate her latent authoritarianism and her Blue Operators’ bloodthirst. Despite misgivings of the potential to alienate allyable factions, Salan designated Blue Ops as an elite unit within the Defense Directorate rather than with the Interior Directorate, preferring to set them loose as soldiers against enemies of the Restoration, instead of jackbooted police against its own citizens. From Slowwind to Asbolus, her campaigns reinforced the already fearsome military abilities of the faction. Clad in a simple uniform, slinging bolos of orange air gun darts tipped with Conantokin-P, the neurotoxin of the South Sea cone shell, du Lac has become a face of Restorationist power.
As the mission years crept by, the notoriously efficient Chef has issued her own pronouncement within the faction’s datalinks. The Ultramarine Doctrine is a simple document illustrating her cause: the mission of the Restoration of Earth is the Unity mission itself, which cannot be abrogated by cowardly deserters such as Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida. Until no humans exist on Planet, the mission remains in effect, and it is up to dutiful and upright loyalists to assert its existence. Thus, the Restoration cannot simply pack up and return to Earth. Any such venture would be no more than a jaunt, a side-quest to fetch reinforcements and resupply, to continue the original mission. The United Nations’ sovereignty over Chiron is inviolate, and those who seek to usurp its authority- whether rogue charter corporations, terroristic militants, or rebel warlords that call themselves factions- must submit or fall to its righteous authority.
Understandably, the strident militarism of the Ultramarine cause has alarmed even the stratocrats of the Restoration. Adherents to du Lac’s doctrine are known as Reclaimers- called derisively as Revanchists, Rerunners, Reruns, and even more offensive pejoratives. Yet there is a subversive popularity to the sub-faction among the younger officers of the faction. The Reclaimers, after all, represent a cause that is readily available and foreseeable to the faction, and does not require humanity to reinvent the interstellar fusion drive spaceship to spend untold decades to return to a planet of unknown provenance. And there is a certain satisfaction to imagining the Restoration asserting its will to subjugate the fractious factions of Planet, rather than turning tail.
(https://i.imgur.com/PIvHiRK.jpg)
Restorationist troopers display their pro-Ultramarine sentiments while occupying Tribal base Putnam's Redeeming
As for du Lac, her Doctrine makes some suggestions as to how the reunification of the Unity diaspora might commence. As the rightful continuation government of the U.N. mission, the Restoration must first seek to explore every avenue short of war to return its wayward brothers into its fold. Diplomatic, economic, even legal methods must be used so that friendly- or weak- factions may see the leading light of the Restoration. Then, the threat of vendetta against those weak but unfriendly. Next, probe action, following the political engineering methods of the U.N. Intelligence Cell, may be used against those resistant to military force, but internally divisible. Finally, vendetta against all rogue nations unwilling to submit to U.N. power.
As to the identity of these, it is a common parlor game among recruits at Roméo Dallaire Academy to determine where each known faction falls under. But it is known that the Chef has her own idiosyncratic opinions. The Spartan Federation, for instance, is considered not an imminent military threat, but a potential source of expansion- respecting the Colonel’s ironclad discipline, du Lac believes the Spartans would be a great boon to a new U.N. Security Force under Restoration authority she dubs “MilSec”- if only Santiago could be convinced to join them. The archnemeses, on the other hand, include the meek and mild Peacekeeping Forces. Worse than an adversary, she believes, is the traitor, the illegitimate claimant, the poisoner of loyalties. Du Lac and her camp has repeatedly spoiled Restorationist attempts to open diplomatic ties with the Peacekeepers, viewing them as the ultimate enemy. Though the Chef holds no less vitriol for the New State. Ostensibly declaring them as the Restoration’s most dangerous naval enemy (the Nautilus Pirates, in comparison, being powerful without but easily divisible within). But it is also whispered that Marie du Lac still harbors a smidgen of nationalist nostalgia and pride, and cannot stomach a rival pretender to the mantle of Marianne.
Casting
Marie du Lac is portrayed by Marianne Thieme of the Party for the Animals
Image Credits
MPs surrounded by blue uniformed gunmen is from Akira
Gendarmerie Nationale in a city is "Police of France (https://www.dreamstime.com/police-france-paris-may-view-french-national-gendarmerie-intervention-protests-yellow-jackets-streets-image188612654)" by Jose Hernandez
Notes:
Marie du Lac is the leader of the Mission Loyalists (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Mission_Loyalists), a faction from the SMAC Fac Pack (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Category:SMAC_Fac_Pack) mod project (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=8459.0). Details on her ideology's basis on international realism and Leviathan is based on correspondence with mod co-creator nweismuller.
Marianne Thieme is the former party leader of the Party for the Animals, a Dutch animal rights party, known for her elaborate costumes (https://twitter.com/populismupdates/status/1131757308768165888). While no longer in charge, the PvdD has recently hit a polling record (https://twitter.com/populismupdates/status/1651679638740140032). Multiparty democracy, at least in Europe (https://twitter.com/friendlynetman/status/1642696973403684865), is fun.
I first learned of Thieme from intrepid Twitter fringe and other politics correspondent @PopulismUpdates (https://twitter.com/PopulismUpdates), who uses her visage as his avatar. Populism Updates Substack here (https://substack.com/profile/22022095-populism-updates).
The opening quote is a loose adaptation of Colonel William Guile's speech from Street Fighter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cicIIeUvSFE).
“Hammershield” is the English translation of Hammarskjöld, and the Hammershields would make a cool name for a peacekeeping force, and this name does appear in The Fountainhead Filibuster: Tales from Objectivist Katanga (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheFountainheadFilibusterTalesFromObjectivistKatanga).
Joseph Manderley’s password is “knight_killer.”
The conception of Blue Operations is thematically similar to the Black Ops (https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Ops) of Half-Life at least when it comes to their relationship with the U.N. Marines (analogous to the Black Ops' attitudes towards the HECU Marines), but they are probably dressed differently. Another source of inspiration is Tom Clancy's The Division (https://thedivision.fandom.com/wiki/Strategic_Homeland_Division).
Using Conantokin-P (https://jurassicpark.fandom.com/wiki/Purple_Cone) as a poison weapon comes from The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
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National Profile: French Union
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/Flag_of_France.svg/800px-Flag_of_France.svg.png)
France is an idea. France is progress. France is stubborn. As Unity left the Sol System, France was still synonymous with political erraticism, fashion, haute cuisine, automation, civilian use of nuclear energy, and, less salubriously, colonial repression.
France spent the twenty-first century attempting to unwind the long diminution of its political, cultural, and economic relevance during the nineteenth and twentieth. This meant bloody attempts to retain the crown jewels of its old colonial empire and refusal on principal to integrate with political and economic initiatives not of its own making.
Results varied. French ambitions exceeded French resources. Until the mid-1960s, France was essentially a pensioner of the United States and a junior partner to Great Britain in ham-fisted attempts to reassert European prerogatives in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Despite some success, this humiliation was too much to bear, and, starting as early as 1958 under the leadership of war hero Charles de Gaulle, France began to chart the independent and often-hypocritical course in world affairs that his many less-talented successors would follow for another hundred and fifty years.
(https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2009/10/battle-of-dien-bien-phu-gettyimages-548191747.jpg?width=3840&height=1920&crop=3840:1920,smart&quality=75)
Paratroopers of the 1er Régiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine watch their comrades drop in Laos, 1971.
Politically, France succeeded in retaining Algeria, much of Lebanon (divided with Israel), and most of Indochina. A combination of American bombers and gifts of tactical nuclear weapons salvaged major blunders at Điện Biên Phủ, but the wayward colonies remained bleeding ulcers, atrociously expensive to pacify and severely divisive at home. Student riots and labor strikes became a semi-permanent feature of life in continental France, so common they reshaped the work week and dictated train schedules. Workers received automatic time off because employers could not prevent their attendance at demonstrations. White settler populations grew explosively from the mid-twenty-first century as rising sea levels in Europe made emigration to war-torn colonies more attractive, and together with ex-servicemen and local garrisons, formed a power bloc that French presidents crossed only at their mortal peril.
This great inversion of power tempted politicians to use all three subjugated nations in ways they would not have used their own. Southern Algeria and French Polynesia became testing grounds for the French nuclear weapons program. In 2030, the DGSE sabotaged Friendship Station Nam Đinh in North Vietnam, which melted down unexpectedly at the cost of eight hundred thousand lives. Ecological advocate Deirdre Skye explained this cruel dynamic to tens of millions of readers for the first time in 2059:
The more they were victimized by the decades of atomic fallout caused by tests and by war, by the countless industrial accidents encouraged through weak regulation, by environmental travesties inflicted through the utter carelessness of their colonial masters, the greater was their dependency on the administrative and logistical powers those same masters refused to let them build for themselves. This was the essence of colonialism. We would beat them until they cried out for us. – The Eden Thesis
After a period of post-war adjustment in the mid-twentieth century, the gross domestic product of France consistently ranked fifth or sixth globally. Led by strong energy, agricultural, recycling, and heavy manufacturing sectors, the French economy was diverse and its workforce highly skilled. Behind the two superpowers, France was third in the sale of defense products. Behind the United States and Japan, French firms vied with those of India for third place in the sale of consumer electronics equipment. French automakers Renault, Peugot, Panhard, and Citroën had a stranglehold on the African and South American markets.
(https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/54ad/fa0c/e58e/ce23/a900/0044/large_jpg/Paris_2050_(No_Title).jpg?1420687878)
Paris, France, c. 2040
Influenced by both national chauvinism and socialist deputies, French economic policies were blatantly protectionist. Foreigners paid dearly for access to French markets, and mercantilist policies turned Algeria, Indochina, Lebanon, and later, Quebec, into captive markets for goods and services made in France. In the late 1970s, France developed its own telephonic, videotex intranet service, the Minitel, never fully embracing the World Wide Web.
(https://i0.wp.com/craphound.com/images/6_12_2012_0032cVZEFh1gkc3NniKvo.gif?w=970)
A Minitel terminal.
The Minitel preceded the Web and, until 2005, offered considerably more functionality to its users for lower cost, including directory services, transportation scheduling, mail-order shopping, library services, games, and chat. To encourage wider adoption of the Minitel, the French government distributed terminals at its own expense in campaigns that reached every corner of the Union. Similar gifts were made to French allies. The scheme was remarkably profitable after factoring in savings from reductions in print services, physical mail delivery, and the use of live operators. The government was deliberate in courting potential opponents of the Minitel, especially newspapers, which received preferential treatment on the service.
Eventually, the Minitel’s capabilities were surpassed by the World Wide Web both in terms of data speeds (served by dedicated lines rather than coterminously with voice traffic) and application variety. Nevertheless, the French government resisted encroachment of “foreign” services and successfully leveraged the monopoly status of the Minitel to charge “extortionate” fees to foreign entities seeking an entree into France’s territoire électronique via the Web, which they required to be done via the Minitel. One legacy of the Minitel is that France was essentially behind a firewall. Thus, the country suffered considerably less than other developed countries during the decade of Global Information Purges beginning in 2017.
Culturally, France was safe in the hands of Élodie, Minister of Culture for three presidents, who organized for France on the Minitel an exhaustive database of language, genealogy, art, literature, music, cuisine, and national mythology that provided the pattern for the subsequent U.N. effort to index the cultural heritage of the Earth. Élodie called her achievement La Note.
France naturally resisted the creation of the European Common Market, both from fear of competition and to discourage the success of another forum in which Britain or West Germany might press their respective national interests. To get a run in on its neighbors, France was a leader in detente, the systematic reduction of tensions with the Soviet Union, and became the major pipeline for passing western technology through the Iron Curtain. In return, the Soviets cancelled, withheld, or reduced their traditional support for insurgencies and client regimes active in French colonies.
In international politics, France quit NATO. Paris refused to contemplate nuclear test bans. France also put itself forth as the patron-of-last-resort for reactionary regimes from Pretoria to Taipei and intervened aggressively in Saharan Africa under the pretext of responsibility for its former colonies. During the Burst Wars of the 2040s, Foreign Legionnaires parachuted down to preserve French-aligned governments in Mali and the Central African Republic in the face of pressure from Morgan SafeHaven. A proposal to reconstitute French Equatorial Africa (ostensibly as a bulwark against corporatism) went nowhere, however.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/3020ccbc-3a8a-47df-876e-ffe929e83cc7/dfvmucf-e3f56f91-acb7-402c-a01f-f3baa6d3b624.png/v1/fill/w_1194,h_669,q_70,strp/starscraper__1_by_miggysmallzxd_dfvmucf-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTA3NyIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzMwMjBjY2JjLTNhOGEtNDdkZi04NzZlLWZmZTkyOWU4M2NjN1wvZGZ2bXVjZi1lM2Y1NmY5MS1hY2I3LTQwMmMtYTAxZi1mM2JhYTZkM2I2MjQucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE5MjAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.ceRuu9mrYk9yxIHmVbhuvTifYAfj6VQj9UOj4CA7Kjo)
The Morgan "starscraper" obscures the moon on an otherwise clear night in central N'Djamena.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/6f5fb4c5-ce02-491f-85b2-3dcddf2bdcb7/dfvlkk7-2fd153cf-8a73-4a72-8c92-7a213bbd3504.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzZmNWZiNGM1LWNlMDItNDkxZi04NWIyLTNkY2RkZjJiZGNiN1wvZGZ2bGtrNy0yZmQxNTNjZi04YTczLTRhNzItOGM5Mi03YTIxM2JiZDM1MDQucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.NgHzvPA9ICPV5WZJwrl6FaI4QFn8OdY6bhHHA19JNPk)
To complicate attempts at restoration of the status quo, arms dealer Nwabudike Morgan invited Millennarian separatists to settle the Burst Zone. Promises of sweet water were mostly untrue, but his contractors had enough helicopters to give most rebels and ex-government loyalists trouble.
(https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/02/17/world/17mali-france01sub/merlin_169627923_beca865b-0d0f-4304-945a-7e3304c6959a-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp)
French intervention force deploying to fighting positions in eastern Mali ahead of an expected raid by Morgan-backed militia.
Without success, France attempted repeatedly to assume leadership of the Non-Alignment Movement, which it hoped to bulk up into a counterweight against the United Nations. This courtship was ill-fated: as an inveterate imperial power, France lacked the credibility to speak for nations that themselves were only recently liberated and wanted no part of the kind of neo-colonialism in which France unreflectively trafficked.
French domestic politics was famous for its oscillation between Socialists and Conservatives (Republicans). Socialists predictably opposed automation and favored detente with the Soviets while conservatives took opposing views. The French remained notoriously sensitive about their country’s relevance in global affairs, and proud of the manner in which they have navigated between the Scylla and Charybdis of Cold War alliances while at the same time adapting to the inundation of more than ten percent of European France’s total landmass. (Rising sea levels also claimed large swaths of populous northern Algeria and southern Indochina.) Frenchmen also credit themselves for the continued survival of pariah regimes in South Africa, Israel, Rhodesia, Biafra, and Taiwan.
Traditional Survivalism didn’t get much traction in France even among the colons, who frequently shared the Holnist’s taste for machismo, violence, and the politics racial grievance but preferred to suborn rather than fight the government and its all-important ministries—the best guarantees, they knew, of their precarious livelihoods. Nevertheless, revanchism gripped the French, manifesting in land-grabs on behalf of “oppressed” French-speaking minorities in Wallonia, Switzerland, and Riviera Italy during the chaos of the Floods.
Unsurprisingly, France played a major role in the Second Crisis of Québec Secession, running diplomatic and media interference for the separatists and their excesses. French companies and French intelligence helped get weapons to FLQ fighters. After Quebec gained its negotiated independence, France organized the referendum that resulted in its accession to the shambolic Union as an “independent” member. Quebec Francophones were happy to participate in this arrangement, and France soon nationalized Canadian and international firms resident in the ex-province, which became a cockpit of railroad and aerospace manufacturing. A majority of those who left France as refugees from flooding resettled in Quebec.
The French military was well-respected. The French soldier was tough, innovative, and above all, daring. The French were acknowledged experts in counter-insurgency warfare. France made its military equipment available on liberal terms to virtually any buyer. It did a brisk business with the Portuguese, Israelis, Argentines, and South Africans.
The Force de Frappe, France’s nuclear strike assets, consisted of land-based tracked and rail launchers and submarine-carried nuclear missiles. (France’s three aircraft carriers could arm their strike fighters with nuclear missiles, but were not officially considered part of the Force, which remained a dyad.)
French intelligence had a hair-raising reputation the world over. The DGSE took on the role of extortionist, applying the necessary “incentives” for smaller countries to play within the boundaries set out by the politicians in Paris. French spies were killers, it was said, and could be hired to carry out the dirty work of shahs, board executives, and even the Soviet Politburo.
France’s very active space program was based at Korou in French Guyana and in the Algerian desert, with lesser operations in French Polynesia and leased facilities in the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville). In 2002, construction commenced on a space elevator in French Guyana that contributed to the construction and fitting out of U.N.S. Unity. Though a founding participant in lunar settlement (a domed French Quarter is among the very few charms of Verne City), France focused mostly on “downward-looking” space applications via satellite operations, including deep ocean mapping.
(https://bgr.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/bgrpic-copy-4.jpg?quality=82&strip=all)
Verne City, Luna, c. 2051
French support for the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri peaked in the 2040s, waxing as American focus was diverted to war at home, but many French politicians still viewed the project as a constant and painful reminder that there were other more potent actors than they on the world stage. France charged the U.N. heavily for access to its space launch infrastructure.
Two French mega-corporations, the Groupe Aéronautique Degére (GADE) and manufacturer of prime movers, Former Ciel, were major sub-contractors on the Unity Project, together employing a workforce of almost 90,000 in Earth and space.
The major French “bequests” to the Mission were a large stock of surplus hand weapons (mostly ex-American) left over from its colonial wars and tens of thousands of older Minitel terminals for connection to Network Nodes.
Sources:
French paratroopers picture is from a History Channel website article (https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/battle-of-dien-bien-phu) on the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
Picture of future Paris is by French company Vincent Callebaut Architectures, shown on archdaily (https://www.archdaily.com/585254/vincent-callebaut-s-2050-parisian-vision-of-a-smart-city) in an article by Holly Giermann.
"Starscraper" name and picture are from "Starcraper #1" by miggysmallzXD on DeviantArt.
Desert cathedral is "Arizona Arcology - Earth That War" by nixoninevile on DeviantArt.
Picture of French troops in Mali is by Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/world/africa/mali-france-withdrawal.html).
Verne City picture is from this article (https://bgr.com/science/heres-where-we-might-really-be-able-to-set-up-a-colony-on-the-moon/) by Joshua Hawkins on BGR.
The character of Élodie was created by Strategos' Risk/MysticWind.
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Unity Tech: Stims
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/6fb1417a-ff9c-4414-867d-f5a3f4c86cfa/dc6jqiv-8f115a0d-a04f-4694-a238-0ab2e0f4a97d.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_1191,q_75,strp/stim_pack_by_karlavaggio_dc6jqiv-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTE5MSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzZmYjE0MTdhLWZmOWMtNDQxNC04NjdkLWY1YTNmNGM4NmNmYVwvZGM2anFpdi04ZjExNWEwZC1hMDRmLTQ2OTQtYTIzOC0wYWIyZTBmNGE5N2QuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.f8EbAUG09WVLcaQUXVRtuv_TfAnW-fHPsm8KiC8MBlM)
Stims were mildly narcotic stimulants used as performance-enhancers. They were chemically simple. Primary ingredients included caffeine, Ibuprofen, and epinephrine. Stims were popular among military and space professions.
A stim was injected sub-subcutaneously using a single-use pneumatic auto-injector about the size of an adult thumb. The injection was suitable for delivery through capillaries and could therefore be applied to almost any portion of the body.
The expected primary users of stims among mission staff were emergency and security personnel. Stims were Class 2 equipment, issued personally to all crew for their lock boxes and included in all medical, emergency response, and survival kits.
Stims were habit-forming. Stim addiction was a disqualifying trait for mission personnel recruited by the United Nations. According to the World Health Organization, nearly all users of higher-grade narcotics also abused stims.
Private manufacture of stims was very common, especially by teenagers and spacers. Modification of stims was treated as a serious crime by most judicial systems.
Hallmarks of stim addiction included eye mydriasis, episodic hypertension, insomnia, constipation, and heart arrhythmia. After extended use, side effects included visual, auditory, and tactile exclusion, creating a sharp cliff of diminishing returns.
Because of disparities in the supplies accessible to different factions before Planetfall, med-techs rarely had the medicines necessary to treat the many traumatic injuries afflicting their patients, nor any way to manufacture them. Stims were a popular, albeit minimally effective, treatment for chronic pain.
Factor Roshann Cobb of the Dreamers of Chiron suffered from addiction to stims.
Stims were a part of the culture of many factions. Stims could be obtained from vending boxes at most University bases, though their public use was limited to academics (drones were considered less-responsible). Stims were paid out as an accompaniment to wages by the Dreamer faction, which produced them in bulk. Morganite overseers were trained to dispense stims to any worker that met their daily quotas. They were available on a complimentary basis on the gaming floors of company casinos. Mercenary outfits expected stims before fighting.
Leaders in the Ascendancy, New State, Gaians, Hunters, and Conclave inveighed loudly against stims, which they saw as antisocial, though they were popular with Hunter road crews and New State mariners. Colonel Corazón Santiago seized stims when she could and openly punished those who used them. The Human Hive outlawed them altogether.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/3436a6f8-5a66-409e-af35-d4db22a5aaa7/d8vqicl-e28f0d1e-9923-4bd7-95a6-986b335e1a52.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_556,q_80,strp/future_nightlife_district_by_claudiopilia_d8vqicl-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTU2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzQzNmE2ZjgtNWE2Ni00MDllLWFmMzUtZDRkYjIyYTVhYWE3XC9kOHZxaWNsLWUyOGYwZDFlLTk5MjMtNGJkNy05NWE2LTk4NmIzMzVlMWE1Mi5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.ExtYXMef6nZp7dxHGsliEz6Rk9MQWaltt6L6_2AdIMA)
Security Bots check for stim effects before drones are released from the Entertainment District of Morgan Bank back into GenPop.
Sources:
First image is "Stim Pack" by karlavaggio on DeviantArt.
Second image is "Future Nightlife District" by ClaudioPilia on DeviantArt.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5d69d0da-04c9-4aed-a444-be1d11a96d69/ddgpy7z-646bb199-5db0-4140-9fed-be214504248b.jpg/v1/fill/w_1231,h_649,q_70,strp/gone_astray__to_the_stars__by_aerroscape_ddgpy7z-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzEzIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNWQ2OWQwZGEtMDRjOS00YWVkLWE0NDQtYmUxZDExYTk2ZDY5XC9kZGdweTd6LTY0NmJiMTk5LTVkYjAtNDE0MC05ZmVkLWJlMjE0NTA0MjQ4Yi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTM1MiJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.yeUWiImjwgofAOAQrv1wrUJRcy4BEWwP7EtADw7N1GE)
As Unity's launch date neared, the cost of pretense mounted. Governments and mega-corporations that had been dithering with the United Nations over the terms of their participation now sang a different tune. Between January 1, 2068 and November 1, 2071, a total of 7,800 launches were carried out between the American, European, Soviet, French, South African, Chinese, Scandinavian, Argentine, Japanese, Indian, Iranian, and Israeli space agencies, never less than four a day. High-value personnel and equipment were recalled from as far as Hippocamp, a moon of Neptune.
If the expedition were really leaving, it must be because the United Nations had information that others did not. Was Earth truly beyond salvaging? Best not to be left behind. If unable to join in, what did it hurt to be generous with a final bequest? History dubbed it the Anti-Ozymandias Protocol, a name that would reemerge two hundred years later on Chiron. But that is a story for another day.
Like the stunned womanizer who promises change only after his much-abused lover has at last begun to collect her things, they realized the fullness of their mistake. - What We Left Behind Us
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/8c7ede85-2091-44c9-99cc-7ed0bfae79cc/d67k8op-219980de-db7f-4cb9-949e-8920edfad6bf.jpg/v1/fill/w_1196,h_668,q_70,strp/fuse_soviet_space_station_by_meckanicalmind_d67k8op-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODk0IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvOGM3ZWRlODUtMjA5MS00NGM5LTk5Y2MtN2VkMGJmYWU3OWNjXC9kNjdrOG9wLTIxOTk4MGRlLWRiN2YtNGNiOS05NDllLTg5MjBlZGZhZDZiZi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.u0r_RIQXJdmxoZvfYNsR1Pw04EAYCY4jP52kGNYmarM)
Soviet space habitat Друг рабочего (Worker's Friend) where the first vitamin-replenishment therapies were developed to help combat the debilitating effects of extended weightlessness.
The Unity Generation was notoriously sickly. Radiation sickness, sterility, severe osteoporosis, combat and crash injuries complicated the creation and sustainment of viable colonies.
(https://i.imgur.com/niQpVb9.jpeg)
Unity's bridge was an afterthought. Nobody expected it would ever be used in extremis, for if it were, then per force the ship would have to be so compromised that no input from captain or helmsman would be enough to avert disaster. Either damage control would succeed, or it would fail--quite independently of input from the brass hats. Led astray by the probabilities, Mission Control did not contemplate that a disaster might occur within spitting distance of the expedition's destination. Therefore, the crew did not prepare for one. When Jonathan Garland assembled his command for the first time, he that his scopes furnished little in the way of meaningful information about the status of ship's systems. Two precious hours passed as the groggy, frightened leaders groped their way through a user interface that had changed drastically while they were asleep.
Sources:
First image is "Gone Astray (to the stars) by aerroscape on DeviantArt.
The Anti-Ozymandias Protocol was a faction designed by Cetashwayo for the forum-based mega-game "An Unraveled Tapestry" on SufficientVelocity.
Second image is "FUE Soviet Space Station" by MeckanicalMind on DeviantArt.
Third image is bridge art for the Nostromo from Alien, artist unknown.
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What's different about the Racing the Darkness universe?
We did not require to be told the obvious--that once the apple is plucked, it can never be restored to the tree. - On the Nature of Progress
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/NB-36H_with_B-50%2C_1955_-_DF-SC-83-09332.jpeg)
An XB-36H Crusader demonstrates the potential of the Nuclear Aircraft Program during a test flight in February 1957, shortly before its acceptance for general service. Under Operate Chrome Dome, a fraction of the American nuclear arsenal was permanently aloft from from 1960 to 2044, resuming in 2054.
The atom bomb was used again in anger after the Second World War. Taking advantage of its strategic bomber force, the United States used atomic weapons against the North Koreans and Chinese four times in 1950 and 1951. Central Intelligence Agency pilots of the American Civil Air Transport program dropped a small atom bomb on Viet Minh forces in early spring 1954, inadvertently dooming much of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps to radiation sickness but lifting the siege on the French base at Dien Bien Phu. The Iraqi Republican Guard detonated an atomic device in Khorramshahr in 1980 during Saddam Hussein's unsuccessful invasion of Iran, with ruinous consequences for the Shatt-al-Arab. (The Imperial Iran military easily shouldered aside Saddam's troops, temporarily occupying Baghdad and prizing away Kurdistan for their trouble.) Pakistan and India traded nuclear salvos during the 1991 Kargil Conflict, an exchange that by some estimates eventually cost the lives of a half-billion people and rendered Gujarat, western Rajasthan, and Sindh essentially uninhabitable. What is believed to be a domestic terrorist partially detonated an atomic device in Seattle in 2051 during the Second American Civil War.
Proliferation, though worrisome to the Great Powers, was widespread. In some cases, patrons assisted their clients to a bomb. The British helped its Commonwealth allies Canada and Australia to find their way to the Bomb. The French underwrote much of the Israeli program, and the Israelis, in turn, assisted the South Africans and the Taiwanese. Spurred by Soviet adventurism in other theaters, the United States quietly helped Communist Yugoslavia grope their way into a deterrent much later. Independent regional powers like India, Pakistan, Argentina, and Iran developed atomics as the bluntest sort of insurance against their traditional adversaries.
There was no convention against the militarization of space, a problem unmoderated except by cost. (As of 2071, only the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are known to have troubled themselves.)
The atomic powers and their dates of accession to the "Club":
- United States of America (1945), now the Restored United States of America
- Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1949)
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (1952)
- French Fourth Republic (1960)
- Canada (NLT 1963)
- Commonwealth of Australia (NLT 1963)
- People's Republic of China (1964), now Empire of Golden China
- State of Israel (NLT 1973)
- Republic of India (1974)
- Federal Republic of German (1975)
- Republic of China (Taiwan) (1979)
- Iraqi Republic (1980) [believed to have been provided by the U.S.S.R.]
- Portuguese Republic (NLT 1986)
- Islamic Republic of Pakistan (1987)
- Republic of Argentina (NLT 1988)
- Republic of South Africa (NLT 1989)
- Imperial State of Iran (NLT 1992)
- Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (2002)
Fission is the primary method by which electrical power is produced worldwide. Most military equipment is powered by nuclear reactors or fission batteries. Most space propulsion is by the nuclear pulse method.
Government trade agencies regularly detonate "commercial-scale" bombs in support of mega-projects around the world, especially in the western United States, Africa, and South America.
Major commercial nuclear and radiation accidents, defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as events involving damage to reactor cores and significant radiation release, occurred at an average rate of three per year in the United States and Canada, starting with an explosion at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho Falls in 1961 running through 1970. Domestic extremism in the United States prompted a reassessment of power system security around the turn of the millennium and in 2023, the Francisco Act significantly increased the stringency of regulations governing emergency operations and physical security at nuclear stations throughout the United States.
Military accidents are also a global commonplace, although for obvious reasons the details are usually suppressed. A rare New York Times expose of May 1992 reported that U.S. Strategic Air Command was unable to account for at least seven bombs in the American arsenal.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/6ff2ccfb-d302-4348-87bc-8b9568748e63/d882swc-24fa53dc-a8fa-4bec-a2ae-c73d4b06947e.jpg/v1/fill/w_1131,h_707,q_70,strp/neo_hong_kong_sunset_by_jjcanvas_d882swc-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODAwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNmZmMmNjZmItZDMwMi00MzQ4LTg3YmMtOGI5NTY4NzQ4ZTYzXC9kODgyc3djLTI0ZmE1M2RjLWE4ZmEtNGJlYy1hMmFlLWM3M2Q0YjA2OTQ3ZS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.GKZXKwylHSdJqdY5YPJd20HdiZBj5EMpQMfvqaZiqLY)
At midnight on 30 June 1997, the New Territories reverted to Chinese control, but Hong Kong and Kowloon remained possessions of the British crown. Her Majesty's government used a combination of skyscrapers and shoreline reclamation to make conditions in the Crown colony more tenable. British administration of the New Territories was resumed under a new 99-year lease arranged with Golden China.
Powers that pretended to economic and military greatness valued colonies as easy sources of raw and human material, captive markets for noncompetitive goods and services, quiescent proving grounds, and valuable bases from which to project power into distant regions or, if in equatorial latitudes, to put payloads more cheaply into orbit.
Imperial ambition and atomic terror went hand-in-hand with large standing militaries and the budgets to match.
On the ground, colonial populations often policed themselves. British readers were eminently familiar with the exploits of the King's African Rifles (KAR), the Brigade of Gurkhas, the Singapore Rifles, the Burma Rifles, and the Royal Ulster Rifles. The Far East Expeditionary Corps was composed primarily of fighting men from Algeria, Lebanon, and Indochina.
Mercenaries and expatriates were a common element in many militaries. The French and Spanish operated large foreign legions swelled by the exiles of climate change and fallout. The British enrolled South Sudanese in the KAR. The Portuguese inducted Zairian exiles into the colonial armies of Angola and Mozambique. Rhodesia aggressively courted veterans of French colonial and American internal wars. The richer sovereignties in the IOEZ let contracts for service with firms like Rockhalter and R.J. Earlingborne & Sons that sifted the professional cream off the tops of elite Western units.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/cf745d47-7406-43ec-a52b-382fbddbd1b6/d8gwj4m-a05d1b82-ff0b-4d40-aa54-c1590c49a2f4.jpg/v1/fill/w_1309,h_611,q_70,strp/advanced_gun_cruiser_beautyshot__by_kaasjager_d8gwj4m-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTI2NiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2NmNzQ1ZDQ3LTc0MDYtNDNlYy1hNTJiLTM4MmZiZGRiZDFiNlwvZDhnd2o0bS1hMDVkMWI4Mi1mZjBiLTRkNDAtYWE1NC1jMTU5MGM0OWEyZjQuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTI3MTIifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.0Rc-FpQFZ0iZkYD01qDRKMbnM0in9rVV-WG9V8Vx93Y)
At sea, cruisers, especially "through-deck" cruisers with the deck space to support helicopter and vertical take-off/landing aircraft, endured as elements of a well-rounded fleet.
Operating from 1992 to 2050, the Kings Mountain class of American cruisers favored automatic 5" and chemical laser mounts over the temperamental missile armament of other late-century warships and shipped up to six Sea King helicopters in cavernous internal hangars. While highly effective for fleet air defense, the lasers could do almost nothing else, and both the Royal and U.S. Navies found the quick-firing cannon to be even less satisfactory than the TV-guided missiles they were meant to replace.
U.N. Chief of Staff to the General Secretary Pravin Lal described cruisers as "the last bastions of scoundrels," for they possessed enough crew and firepower to conduct essentially independent foreign policy. The theory behind twentieth and twenty-first-century cruiser warfare could be heard echoing on Chiron where military units were at times ungovernable and needed to be given extreme latitude because of basic communications difficulties.
Have just been told I am at war with Sparta and Ascendancy. Leaders, unknown. Their crimes, very bad. Locations, unclear. Reasons for hostilities, unclear. Friendly casualties, very high. -Personal Diary
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Minitel1.jpg)
France insisted on the AZERTY keyboard, complicating the lives of datatechs for more than a century afterward.
Global telecommunications were hamstrung by long-standing international animosities, extreme weather, and regime obsession with domestic stability even in the traditional democracies. Electronic data storage limits were low, retrieval speed even lower, and the power draw of supercomputers capable of industrially relevant calculation was extreme. Rudimentary national intranets created a phenomenon called the Splinternet, meaning that information exchange had a variable rate of speed, proceeding speedily within the same language bloc but slowly between blocs. Scientific and cultural experience became fragmented. A Soviet scientist knew of theories and techniques his American counterparts did not, and vice versa.
Sources:
NB-36H picture is a 1955 image from the U.S. Department of Defense (U.S. Air Force) labeled DF-SC-83-09332.
For more on nuclear escalation during the Korean War, see this (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/how-korean-war-almost-went-nuclear-180955324/) article in Smithsonian Magazine.
"Neo Hong-Kong Sunset" by is by JJcanvas on DeviantArt.
Cruiser CA-847 is "Advanced Gun Cruiser beautyshot" by kaasjager.
"Splinternet" concept introduced to me by MisterP on alternatehistory.com.
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Tell me more about what's different about the Racing the Darkness universe.
What's up in Africa?
- Western tolerance for independent settler states was almost limitless, reflecting anti-Communist hysteria (worse since the Americans themselves had used the Bomb), the political impossibility of critiquing colonialist practices in which Europe was still heavily involved, and the need to "outsource" leadership on the continent during the apogee of Hypersurvivalism in the North Atlantic world.
- The successes of the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga in the 1960s and Morgan Industries in the 2020s convinced other companies that nation-building could be a profitable endeavor.
What's up in South America?
- Early points of divergence for the alternate history. In Brazil, the colonizers held on tight. In Peru, they returned shortly after independence. (Spain reconquered Peru in stages beginning with the Chincha Islands War.)
- In return for stabilizing its faltering economy, Spain gifted the Peruvian Amazon to Nwabudike Morgan as virtually a private fiefdom.
- A Bolivian junta stood for self-determination on the continent but was in fact dependent upon American defense assistance to pursue simultaneous wars of territorial aggrandizement against three of its five neighbors.
(https://elcomercio.pe/resizer/3Qpj24bURxe2tbhaDd8thxlnLcU=/1200x675/smart/filters:format(jpeg):quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elcomercio/3JC24YVHCVENDAQFF74ZQPVWFU.png)
Gas diffusion towers have their roots in the subterranean mining complex below the silver mountain that is Bolivian Potosí.
Is the level of technological advancement any different?
Yes. Computer guidance systems were still rudimentary in 2071. For this reason, the precision of missile weapons was quite low. Missiles could only be used successfully when very large (read: atomic) payloads compensated for this drawback, but in tactical applications, wire and CCTV guidance was still the norm.
Lasers were viable in combat because of the prevalence of fission batteries, but bulky. Most designs were vehicle-mounted.
Robotics evolved with a heavy emphasis on human control. The performance of a robotic companion had to be closely monitored for acceptability and their behavior adjusted through frequent input by an experienced programmer.
Technologies required to tame and explore the world's oceans, and the wider solar system, were considerably further along than in OTL. However, this work was extremely labor-intensive.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/fd2cacc3-e662-4b93-912f-4456ff95be26/dercx2z-e251d57d-2d25-441e-b465-b600c3073031.jpg/v1/fill/w_1182,h_676,q_70,strp/colony_mining_facility_by_peteashford_dercx2z-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTE1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZmQyY2FjYzMtZTY2Mi00YjkzLTkxMmYtNDQ1NmZmOTViZTI2XC9kZXJjeDJ6LWUyNTFkNTdkLTJkMjUtNDQxZS1iNDY1LWI2MDBjMzA3MzAzMS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.5c0E1rb77O-7mooBkabLOrJXRdLscwqlIu5N2o6eqCM)
The sending rig for Sea Base Alpha above the Mata Nui Ocean Habitat. Shown here at center, the hydrolator descends more than three miles, a journey of six hours for humans or other "pressure-sensitive" cargo.
Sending rigs were small cities in their own right--home to thousands of tradespeople responsible for maintaining the complicated machinery necessary for the denizens of Base Alpha to communicate, trade with, and return to the wider world.
In what ways is culture different?
Supersonic passenger flight was a commonplace. Most wealthy people could afford terminals that connected them to the World Wide Web and its hundreds of unmoderated newsgroups. By 2071, their emerging technocratic uni-culture placed strong emphasis on STEM education in preference to the "crass" and "political" humanities (tainted by the perception that they were easily deployed to excuse political violence); government service over corporate or independent employment (the former was "padded slavery," the latter a road to sure penury; guilt-free use of consumer robotics; acceptance of designer medicine, especially to confer disease-resistance and manage the effects of aging; and class consciousness.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/8f1fa18c-a123-475d-a36c-12096121c9bb/d8chp1z-560f5848-f3bf-4001-833f-52f782127314.jpg/v1/fill/w_1191,h_671,q_70,strp/starcraft_2_scv_by_artofragnar_d8chp1z-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTAyIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvOGYxZmExOGMtYTEyMy00NzVkLWEzNmMtMTIwOTYxMjFjOWJiXC9kOGNocDF6LTU2MGY1ODQ4LWYzYmYtNDAwMS04MzNmLTUyZjc4MjEyNzMxNC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.c5IbuHQMUncIAZAKQf8Swvr_0YpY1lUTjCPSCWk8X_c)
The idea of the "drone" emerged--one who traded non-supervisory craft labor to a corporation for subsistence living according to a contact and was therefore without the traditional political protections derived from Natural Law and previously supplied by a government irrespective of one's employment status.
"Drone" was derogatory, emphasizing the perceived loss of human value inflicted upon the subject, who was usually assumed to have entered into the arrangement foolishly and with both eyes open, implying guilt. The work assigned to drones was stereotypically dirty and dangerous--to be avoided if it could be helped. Drones were acutely vulnerable because there were so many of them. Failure to satisfy the overseers meant loss of access to food, shelter, and physical security as well as the meager creature comforts that low-paying work could accumulate.
Sources:
Picture of future Potosi appears to be an AI (Midjourney)-generated image. Found in El Comercio (https://elcomercio.pe/tecnologia/actualidad/como-sera-el-peru-en-100-anos-una-inteligencia-artificial-nos-responde-esta-pregunta-y-nos-da-su-vision-futurista-noticia/?ref=ecr).
Sending Rig is "Colony Mining facility" by PeteAshford on DeviantArt. Sea Base Alpha and Hydrolator names are homages to the Living Seas attraction at Disney's EPCOT. Mata Nui is an island in the story behind the LEGO Bionicle toy line.
Final picture is "Starcraft 2 SCV" by ArtofRagnar on DeviantArt.
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Global Warming heralded the return of two great preoccupations of the human species: religious millenarianism and seaborne piracy.
The 2060 decennial review of The International Journal of Maritime Crime and Security explained this renaissance of free-booting as a simple maths equation. Vulnerable populations were up, state capacity was down. Sailors, divers, shallow- and deep-water engineers: from necessity, coastal nations were minting new entrants to these professions at breakneck pace. Once released into the wild, it was inevitable that some would be diverted to illegitimate ventures.
Jurisdictional clarity hit a four hundred-year low. Not since the Thirty Years' War ruined Germany had it been so difficult to "know one's prince." Islands came and went with each new storm. Even on those rare occasions that governments were certain of what was theirs' and had the wherewithal to enforce such convictions, they might find good reasons to do otherwise. Kickbacks farmed from pirate gangs underwrote municipal government for the Baratarian Commonwealth, successor to the State of Louisiana, and the same was true in Santiago de Cuba, Dakar, Constanţa, and Maracaibo. Speaking as a cabinet member, Oscar van de Graaf admitted that ARC police were sometimes stood down from interdiction runs in New York Harbor as a political pressure tactic in the federal government's bitter war with private capital. And anyway, one man's pirate was another man's freedom fighter. Vermont pirates made a patriotic virtue of raiding Quebecois river traffic, returning home to receive the approbation of local authorities.
Citizenship is a compact. If a commercial enterprise isn't going to keep their end of the bargain, why should we keep ours? Taxpayers expect more wisdom of us than that. - Testimony to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, U.S. Senate
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/047/712/470/4k/jamison-cunningham-zhukov-studio-1.jpg?1648239986)
Large battlewagons were the accepted answer to both piracy and the intransigence of the "new islanders." It hardly required to be said that they were fully capable of obliterating the very platforms and populations they protected. Pirates of course had no hope against them.
(https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ccb050e809d8e130ff3433f/1602532997601-K7G2O0ERJ7OQSF7PXKRD/raised-by-wolves-3.jpg)
Tyral Collins ashore in the Florida Keys in the disguise of a Christian States Crusader.
One of the most successful of the American pirates, Tyral Collins, claimed to have raised the Black Flag after the drowning of his native Boston. As a member of the United States Coast Guard, Collins bore personal witness to the city's failed evacuation, a disaster that cost him a mother and four younger brothers.
At the urging of his own crewmates, Collins led a successful mutiny against the officers of his own ship, the cutter Merrimack. Their strategy was simple: avoid the feeding grounds of more successful predators. Respect for the United States Navy and the New York Naval Militia sent them scudding due south. The Caribbean was a violent sea, but like-sized challengers were fewer and farther between.
Collins came ashore in the Northern Floridas and, despite moonlighting with the Prohibition Patrols, learned to disdain the Christian States cause, which he felt dealt with esoteric problems not relevant to its own population. But if Bible study appealed little, he nonetheless consumed enough Genesis to think deeply on the situation of the Patriarch, Adam. He also explored the literary output of the New Environmentalists. Collins drew strong parallels between the two sources.
Adam couldn't keep the Lord's Garden, and was expelled. We had better keep His Pond. - Racing the Rain
Collins reported to Unity as a nominee of the Cuban government, which first issued Merrimack a Letter of Marque in 2051. With Tonkin Vraal, Collins was the chief theorist behind the emerging Harmonist creed of the Nautilus Pirates--lipstick on the more atavistic violence perpetrated by faction leader Ulrik Svensgaard.
Sources:
Battleship is "Marshal Zhukov Class Modern Battleship - Studio Renders" by Jamison Cunningham on ArtStation.
Tyral Collins is Travis Fimmel in Raised by Wolves.
-
(https://i.imgur.com/60VmUF8.jpg)
The Governor’s Gate was the ARC-built western entrance to Fort Quileute, inaugurating the third anniversary of Recontact. Its subsurface arboretum featured gengineered water-efficient trees that each consumed forty liters a day
Recontact with the New Two Thousand transformed Fort Quileute. As Pilgrim trade caravans made the long trek across the sands to the jewel of the Great Dunes, the mission decades of alien artifact searching and harvesting finally yielded economic dividends. The base became a major hub in the xenoartifact trade, bringing visitors from across the known world. The ARC Moon Over Parma, the Pilgrims’ experimental cargo airship, paid a visit to the desert rose, docking at the minaret of the Golden Shah Mosque to bring forth stores of seedstock, solar panels, and seafood. It took back crates upon crates of artifacts discovered buried beneath the sands. Many were still functional, never connected to the Fort’s pseudonode. At Terra Nova, civilization, their secrets would be properly exploited to unlock technical knowledge, or sold for very profitable sums on the antiquities market.
Reunited with its faction, the Director's Council solicited investment to build paved highways and trade depots, garages full of rovers and rudimentary ‘chopper pads. As development funds poured in, the base next constructed lodgings for traders; a hologram theater, a MindMaze dreamhouse, and an entertainment center to amuse weary travelers; and a huge shopping complex that cast a shadow over the Grand Medina between the hours of 10:00 and 12:00 in the mid-afternoon. Fort Quileute had found an industry, its place in the Planetary economy, and it would milk it as long as the Great Dunes had treasures for sale.
I could fill Volumes with Descriptions of Temples and Palaces, Paintings, Sculptures, Tapestry, Porcelaine, &c. &c. &c. -- if I could have time. But I could not do this without neglecting my duty. - The Science of Government it is my Duty to study, more than all other Sciences: the Art of Legislation and Administration and Negotiation, ought to take Place, indeed to exclude in a manner all other Arts. I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. - Letter to Abigail Adams (12 May 1780), Datalinks (https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17800512jasecond)
(https://i.imgur.com/ARRYIkS.jpg)
A recreational psychonaut visits old Jerusalem and the Holy Land at the Seven Sleepers Dreamplex, built during the Recontact years
Firyal Kašk and her husband gradually retired from public service to focus on their growing family. Their eldest, Nasum, received an upbringing quite unlike their own- far from the traumas of repression, exile, and frontier toil, the boy grew up in the rapidly increasing quality of life that came with the Governor’s patronage of the base. Luxuries unimaginable only several mission years ago were suddenly within a caravan’s reach. Children’s clothing were no longer made of re-stitched Unity uniforms or of the clothing of the deceased, spun from Egyptian cotton only for the wealthiest scions of the colony. Aerogel fashions from Terra Nova’s consumer-facing factories upended the native textiles industry of the base.
The local food diversity quadrupled overnight as Pilgrim caravans and ARC supply runs brought forth fruits, vegetables, and grains lost to the colony’s agriculturalists, a cornucopia compared to the enriched but bland nutrient resources tapped from the monoliths of the desert. Young Nasum and his siblings grew up running through new orchards of Jaffa oranges and McIntosh apples in the fresh fruit parks that adorned the base’s green belt, destination of tourists and local poets alike. The reintroduction of the coffee plant fueled a cultural renaissance within a renaissance as cafés sprang forth like toadstools after rain. Caffeinated hookah with a coffee fruit extract base added jolt to relaxation, quickly becoming the default vice for elderly retirees and idlers. In his youth, Nasum himself became a frequenter of the hookah lounges, listening to the tales of the bad old days from the grizzled ex-scouts and laborers who had surveyed the burning seas and built the society from under the noses of the ARC Directors.
Sueraya Shaheen: You explore the shopping mall as a destination.
Al-Maria: That’s certainly an environment. It’s the future. It’s time travel that you went through, and it’s the end of the world. It’s even after the end of the world, when there’s a few ghosts of people left, people that you are not able to identify with blurred faces. The work shows the shopping mall as the haunted house. It’s frightening but it also has that deliciously scary feeling to it.
- Vogue Arabia interview, Datalinks (https://en.vogue.me/culture/sophia-al-maria-the-third-line-uae)
(https://i.imgur.com/gFon5Wo.jpg)
Skipping Jumu’ah prayer, a lazing shopper stretches in the main entrance of the Forty Thieves Commercial Plaza
Even as Recontact satiated the basic material needs of the frontier base, it also sought to enrich the cultural, even spiritual lives of its inhabitants. Nasum was the first generation of Fort Quileute to grow up with new toys instead of those recycled from the earliest days of the Stellar Lifeboat Project, carved from desert stone or scarab-snake shell. Gone were the days of simple dolls and figurines adorned in traditional garb stitched together from rags. Now were miniature robots that could sing, dance, answer homework questions, and beam holographic images onto every surface. They were joined by their elder sibling servitors, household robotics of every type that the Pilgrims had secured from the Unity or bought from the Morganites and the Children, making sweeping the Hab Complex and harvest season in the Agridome a thing of the distant past.
But most of all, the colony received widespread consumer tech, from optical datalinks to ClipCom devices, each a far cry from the quicklinks sleeve computers left over from vintage Unity uniforms. Each plugged the user directly into the datalinks, a world hitherto unknown to the Al Falah host. Suddenly, the desert seemed a lot smaller as news of faraway biomes and vendettas between unfamiliar peoples, entire factions’ worth of cultural creations, athletics and recreational games invented post-Planetfall, all became within grasp, making the endless sands a little more finite. Places to yearn to visit, if not to one day relocate to, entirely.
The clans that once safeguarded the former exiles of the Stellar Lifeboat Project no longer seemed as relevant. The rich oral histories that once thrived in the absence of mass media seemed quaint. The youth of the base, bored to tears by the conservative thrift of their survivor ancestors, drifted out into the Commercial Plaza and other ARC-oriented amenities to stare mindlessly at soap operas and sports programs displayed in electronics departments, sneaking into alcohol-vending cantinas.
You see that nice, juicy number on the bottom? That's your golden parachute. Drape it behind your pleasure foil, make the top-tals at the cabana club jealous. Fly a hot air balloon over the Uranium Flats, jump out, wave 'hi' to Chairman Groundhog, whatever you like. But know this is the payout you forgo if you reject acquisition. You walk, and I guarantee you so many Pilgrim gentry fungs will come crawling with their field hands, you'll think you built this little trade post on Plymouth Rock. - transcript from the Annexation of Echo Factory, formerly Morgan Rarities
(https://i.imgur.com/w6FBgCX.jpg)
Burgemeester Sammy Abdullahi was the Governor's eyes and ears in Fort Quileute, the face of ARC during Recontact
In contrast to the carte blanche that the overwhelmed Council had once granted the citizenry of the base, reintegration with mother faction meant more than minimal oversight. But while van de Graaf's natural move would have been to send one of his tough-talking mountain man-turned-stakeholder country squires to crack the whip and ensure the cattle trains ran on time, his CFO-CHIO pursued a different tactic. Fielding chose one of her fixer-operators from one of the New Two Thousand's few urbanized centers to serve as the unlikely magistrate of this furthest frontier. Fresh from corporate vendettas and financial destabilization campaigns against the faction's business rivals, Stadtholder Sammy Abdullahi was sent packing from his private energy fund in the New Guilderland financial district, ferried by prototype airship to Fort Quileute.
A third generation Manhattanite whose Farsi was largely acquired via data-wheel, Abdullahi had taken one of ARC's financial services spin-offs and commandeered it into a brokerage of ecological futures, sovereignty swaps, and other complex derivatives that all boiled down to betting against the sunrise. Taken to Centauri to recreate an economic system with all of the last planet's trapdoors, backdoors, dirty tricks built in from the start, he had advanced the firm's interests against the likes of Morgan and Preston, and oversaw the development of shell companies for proxy battles in the capitalist jungle of the Chiron Cartel. Through overwrought profane skullduggery, the acerbic investor had secured a not-inconsiderable interest in the Ministry of Public Information of the Memory of Earth, successfully prevailing in the courts that his shares of RoyStar Weiguo from Earth were still legally binding in this new biosphere. (The fact a government institution is subject to the opinions of an outside shareholder, never mind an agent of an occasionally-hostile faction, infuriates Commander Mercator to no end, presenting plenty of nightmarish situations for the hapless Chairman of News Programming Jerry Wobegon and his assistant Donald “Dharma” Vetter.)
The economic probe was to be a judge of the change over the transformation of the base into a legitimate Pilgrim city. As Burgomaster, he was in theory the new governor of the base, a viceroy with full and sweeping powers left completely to his discretion.
Shortly after arriving upon the dusty streets of the fort, Abdullahi skipped out on the elaborate welcoming ceremony hosted by the Director’s Council to sip Arabic coffee, posing as one of the many independent artifact traders who had flocked to the base. After several chats with natives and fellow visitors alike, sampling the local fried luqma- a notorious gourmand, the Burgomaster was as equally renowned for his sumptuous lavender-draped wine and cheese soirees at Morgan Riviera as he was for stealing one-erg cronuts from Queequeg's Coffee franchises back at NG - he disappeared into the crowds of the medina. Emerging hours later, a case of sweets in one hand, an exquisite midwakh carved from mindworm husks in the other, he congratulated his bewildered hosts for the marvelous little society they had built. Then, gesturing at the hazy air casting mirages down the hall, opening the box to reveal half of the Turkish delights melted, proceeded to demand the Directors upgrade its environmental control systems immediately. Dazed but dazzled by praise, the former masters of the base immediately ordered improvements to their Closed Habitat Atmospheric Production facility. Thus did air conditioning, built from mission decades' worth of advancements from the rest of Planet, kickstart the viceroy's tenure.
(https://i.imgur.com/J1VeMgW.jpg)
The Alfitr Towers were built for storing surplus resources reclaimed from Recycling Tanks. The design, an exact replica of the Swedish-built mushroom water towers of Kuwait City, was mandated by the Burgemeester to attract visitors
The arrival of Burgomaster Abdullahi marked a new stage in the hyper-development of Fort Quileute. The expansion of the mall into a bonafide Commercial Plaza modeled after the Prince Nasir Al-Subaai Supermall in Dammam, the Triplet Cities Emirate, took place under his watch; as did the construction of a massive vehicle bay for housing crawlers bound for the desert. The secondary guest Hab Complex was converted into a two-star luxury hotel in imitation of a Morgan Hilton, which was still far more extravagant than the region had ever seen. A Schreiber Project adventurer-anthropologist at the time described the looks of "mad anticipation" that greeted a troop of Sand Scouts returning from one of their artifact sweeps, beholding the gleaming edifice of the Quileute Continental for the first time. Weatherworn smacers, contracted by the viceroy to assist in the search and disarming of hazardous alien ruins, threw drunken revelries in the ultra-thread count upholstered suites of the hotel, becoming yet another sign of the incongruous progress that characterized the Recontact era. As were the increasingly expanding mega-projects replacing entire sections of the old base.
(https://i.imgur.com/ogBHH2W.jpg)
Burj Al Falah penthouse, high Recontact era
The rejoining of Fort Quileute with the New Two Thousand irrevocably changed the soul of the base as it did its exterior. While posterity would condemn the time as a “generation of weakness,” little surprise that those who were farming moisture from the desert air and gathering crumbs from deep desert monoliths would readily grasp the horn of plenty, when proffered. As the base slowly joined Planetary society, it too would take on familiar problems of drone discontent, datalinks addiction, and ecological destruction.
There were those who disagreed with change. The labor organizer who could not be bought by thirty thousand ¤ a year, the over-pious imam or priest. Movements deemed too recalcitrant or dangerous were identified with pinpoint accuracy and handled by the newly-formed Desert Regulators, largely imported by veterans fresh from vendettas back home. But for the most part, the population of the base was glad to receive the fruits of modernity, regardless of cost.
The Burgomeister had rubbed the right shoulders, paid the occasional visit to mosque, doled out gift boxes of neocoke (he was a casual user- the elites he introduced it to, less so) through the office of the viceroy itself. Over time, the senate of sheiks gradually sold to the advancing ARC authority the same properties they had so fiercely, and perhaps quixotically, protected against the previously-ruling Council. Some who had signed away entire districts under their care could expect to be compensated with sports speeders imported from the capital, racing them through the sands and on the gleaming new highways around the base perimeter. The populace was largely satisfied by Public Antiquities Fund payments even as Terra Nova exported its own set of expert artifact hunters, ruin scavengers, and transporters, leaving the natives with more time for consumption. And the Al Falah Trade Union was happy as it received contract after contract to build yet another hotel, yet another discoveries showroom, yet another monument to factional grandiosity. Firyal Kašk and her husband retired contentedly to care for their brood, confident that the future of the colony was in the right hands. Their son Nasum aspired to be an academic of history, perhaps at the burgeoning university under construction.
Whatever one’s opinion of Recontact is, all agree that it was a Golden Age for the base that sprouted as abruptly as its tragic termination. Remembered not only as a mourned lost age, but recited as a promised glorious future to come.
Casting
Sammy Abdullahi is portrayed by Arian Moayed as Stewy Hosseini in Succession
Notes
This post was inspired by Gulf Futurism, a term coined by American-Qatari author and artist Sophia Al-Maria and Kuwaiti composer and artist Fatima Al Qadiri to denote an aesthetic marked by the drastic changes brought about by oil wealth to the Persian Gulf states: the rise in consumerism and materialist excess in traditionalist cultures, the drastic increases in wealth inequality, and the authoritarianism involved.
A quick primer on Gulf Futurism (https://www.wired.com/2012/11/gulf-futurism/) from WIRED columnist and cyberpunk founder Bruce Sterling, linking to “The desert of the unreal” (https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/15040/1/the-desert-of-the-unreal), the original 2012 article where the phrase was first defined.
The ClipCom is a device mentioned in Outpost 2's Tales of New Terra (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_2:storyline:tales_from_new_terra)
Quicklinks are computers built into a uniform sleeve, linked to other citizens, as described in the “Journey to Centauri” novella by Michael Ely
The fate of the Al Falah youth in the face of the datalinks is taken from the description of the Gaian-esque rustic Forest Arcology (https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Arcology#Forest_Arcology) of Sim City 2000
Introductory scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga8KD5rEmT0) of Succession’s Stewy Hosseini, the basis of Sammy Abdullahi
Queequeg's Coffee (https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Queequeg%27s) is from Deus Ex: Invisible War
CHAP facilities (https://wiki.outpost2.net/doku.php?id=outpost_1:structuresdetails#chap_facility) are from Outpost 1
Prince Nasir, of the Al-Subaai family, is from Syriana
Image Credits
The opening photo is concept art of Saudi Arabia’s Neom project, dubbed the Line (https://me.mashable.com/tech/18353/the-line-saudi-arabia-shows-its-plan-for-a-100-mile-long-mirrored-vertical-city).
Elevator into the Dome of the Rock is from the short film Nation Estate (2012) by Larissa Sansour, which imagines what if Palestine's statehood is confined in a high-rise skyscraper, with each city in a floor of its own. (“Ancient Aliens, Gulf Futurism, and Social Justice: The Liberating Visions of Arab Science Fiction (https://scenearabia.com/Culture/Ancient-Aliens-Gulf-Futurism-and-Social-Justice-The-Liberating-Visions-of-Arab-Science-Fiction)”)
Figure laying on the marble floor is still from Sophia Al-Maria’s Black Friday exhibit, Whitney Museum (https://whitney.org/essays/sophia-al-maria)
Kuwait Water Towers photo is by Al Manlangit (https://www.flickr.com/photos/alperez/2613514782/)
The opulent penthouse is album art of Fatima Al Qadiri’s Genre-Specific Xperience (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre-Specific_Xperience)
Further reading
Al Qadiri & Al-Maria on Gulf Futurism (https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/15037/1/al-qadiri-al-maria-on-gulf-futurism) - architectural and media examples of the aesthetic, Dazed Digital
'Gulf Futurism' Is Killing People (https://www.vice.com/en/article/7b74wq/the-human-cost-of-building-the-worlds-tallest-skyscraper) - real-world repercussions, VICE Magazine
Ethnic Futurism In The Gulf (https://web.archive.org/web/20221231033350/http://thesigers.com/analysis/2013/7/31/ethnic-futurism-in-the-gulf.html) - a critique of Gulf Futurism, Thesigers
Gulf Futurism: The Future Is Not A Desert Mirage (https://sailemagazine.com/2021/12/gulf-futurism-the-future-is-not-a-desert-mirage), Sail Magazine
The Luxury Mall as Consumer Prison (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/arts/design/black-friday-shares-sophia-al-marias-vision-of-gulf-futurism.html), review of Sophia Al-Maria’s “Black Friday”, New York Times
Gulf Futurism: How Post-Carbon Imaginaries Are Reproducing the Systemic Crisis (https://blogs.mediapart.fr/berliner-gazette/blog/170522/gulf-futurism-how-post-carbon-imaginaries-are-reproducing-systemic-crisis), Berliner Gazette
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Let the earth bring forth grass (pt. 1)
Thanks to their commitment to democratic rule and reverence for grassroots action, the Gaia's Stepdaughters host a diverse and many-voiced society that is perhaps the most multifaceted of the sedentary "civilized" factions. Among the many strains of thought and opinion that have emerged include those defined by the following leading lights-
(https://i.imgur.com/NHG2s8W.jpg)
A student came by from the College of Reeds, asking, “What is the purpose of your office if man’s relation to Chiron is so new? There are no climate refugees. There is no crisis of choosing.” I reminded that young optimist that we who have arrived from Earth are all climate refugees. It was science made intentional to save that borne us through the heavens. The choice to innovate on behalf of Planet rather than for profits is always present. So long as human beings exist in an ecosystem, our work can never finish. - Voices of the Stepchildren
Born West Berlin, West Germany, father a German science attaché, mother a Polish art teacher. Cosmopolitan childhood on both sides of the Iron Curtain, attaining conversational grasp of eight languages. Studied at Heidelberg University Faculty of Law, receiving Master of Laws with a focus on Ecological Justice. Research project at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law during the Second American Civil War, examining the applicability of environmental standards on displaced peoples, improving the sustainability of refugee camps. Conducted humanitarian work across Europe on behalf of No-Pats; authored white papers that later became basis for the Stellar Lifeboat Project.
Entered politics as member of Alliance 90/The Greens. Elected to Landtag seat amidst party surge to majority in Rhine-Westphalia. Chaired rotating committees on Refugee Resettlement and Science Funding. Fell out over de-growth party line. Formed INTEGR - Initiative für Nachhaltige Technologien, Einfallsreichtum, Gerechtigkeit und Reformen - "Initiative for sustainable technologies, ingenuity, justice, and reform" along with other anti-Green Austerity critics. Argued for the embracing of transmodern solutions to problems of ecological damage, population displacement, and declining standards of living. Became spokeswoman of the movement, traveling across the Continent and forming local parties at the expense of traditional Greens. Third largest INTEGR following West and East German chapters was in the Polish People's Republic. Praised French efforts in the "solar revolution" while condemning their treatment of subject peoples relegated to "environmental imperialism."
Headed pro-nuclear power faction of INTEGR which ultimately lost to common vote. Subsequently selected by U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission Committee as human rights activist and environment law expert for Unity. (Possibly facilitated by lobbying from Kretschmann government.) Cryoslept through Planetfall- retroactively claims her mediation could have brought peace between the warring proto-factions- reclaimed by University of Planet search team from a supply pod. Worked in University HR at Climactic Research for several mission years before suspension for too many lenient rulings on behalf of local student judiciary. Emigrated to the Stepdaughters of Gaia after charged by the Provost's office for "popularization of pop science."
Welcomed for her Earthside activism, becoming a high justice of the Rose and Thorns Court. As the democratic Gaian society permits public activity despite judgeship, now currently heads the INTEGR strain, founding the first party of its kind on Planet. Coalition of science-focused Biorationalists, left-liberal Green Marketeers, and Democratic Ecosocialists. (Political parties in the Stepdaughters of Gaia range anywhere from thousands of members- base population-sized- to a single representative.) INTEGR franchises now present in most known democratic factions, though actively suppressed in the University of Planet.
INTEGR platform is heavy in jargon but boils down to several principles captured by name. First, the promotion of technological solutions to environmental problems, chafing against the basic Harmonism of the Gaian establishment with a soft-Supremacy ethos, even if the aims are ultimately the same as Harmony's. Under Ebner's influence, Gaian INTEGR has advocated everything from research into super-smart grids for more efficient use of renewable energy- even employing taboo AI to do so- to the development of thorium fission reactors. On the subject of nuclear power, this strain advocates for closer diplomatic ties with the Children of Atom, even as most of the faction regards the Children as asocial, alien worshippers of coldly calculating technologies. Ebner herself has met with Dr. Johann Anhaldt a number of times, the former's flamboyant and human-centered worldview received cooly by the latter.
Second, INTEGR is focused on addressing human welfare within an environmental context. In practice this can involve everything from public energy spending on programs that improve colonist psych, to development of Planet-friendly accommodations and social improvements within bases, to opposing "colonialism" abroad. This, too, presents certain differences with the traditional Gaian consensus. Rooted in Earth-era notions of universal human rights more along the lines of the Peacekeeping Forces' paradigm, its priority of human concerns often rubs against the deep ecology views subscribed to by many Gaians. The spiritual, even mystic, dimensions to Gaian belief, not officially endorsed by the Lady but promoted by her just the same, consider such views not transmodern but hoary, maybe even chauvinistically anthropocentric and speciesist. Additionally, the INTEGR strain's openness towards potentially waging vendettas against high-polluter factions that engage in human oppression is quite shocking to the pacifist faction, though Ebner has not yet put this theoretical scenario to the test.
Too technocratic for the Gaian mainstream, too concerned with the affairs of the heart and human spirit by the scientific factions, INTEGR has proven to be a passionate niche strain, but niche nonetheless.
(https://i.imgur.com/Rm9F5Tt.jpg)
Casting
Lena Ebner is portrayed by Jamie Lee Curtis as Linda Drysdale (neé Thrombey) in Knives Out
Notes
Lena Ebner (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Lena_Ebner_(CivBE)) is the leader of the sponsor INTEGR (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/INTEGR_(CivBE)) from Civilization: Beyond Earth: Rising Tide. Here some of the words behind the acronym have been altered, as well as their support for "Green Austerity." I challenge anyone to explain what exactly the teaser lore (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Lena_Ebner_(CivBE)#Official_teaser) is actually trying to say.
Super-Smart Grids (https://fateoftheworld.fandom.com/wiki/Future_Technologies#Super-Smart_Grids_(2110)) are a future technology from Fate of the World
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Rest is for the Lord, not His creations. - Chronicles
(https://tvline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/robert-patrick-last-resort.jpg)
Name: John Moraine
Rank: Warrant Officer
Position: Xenohydrologist
Assignment: Aquatic Operations Divison
Country of Origin: Mobile Experimental Deep Foraging Object 4 (MEDFOR)
DOB: 02-17-2028
Height: 181.9 cm
Weight: 80.4 kg
Service Record:
Vault-born. (Released, age two.) Child of American parents, both seismologists affiliated with Dr. Emyr Flinting Oceanographic Laboratory. Raised aboard a roving research platform operating on the ocean floor. Early education by Interlink Correspondence.
Raised as a First Conversant. Taught that mankind has a positive obligation, documented in the Book of Genesis, to find and study all God's creations, animal, vegetable, and mineral, and the cosmic rules (physical laws) that govern them. Followers of this sect chose professions that fitted them to participate in oceanic and space exploration, leading to over-representation among crew of U.N.S. Unity.
Graduated U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD. Posted to research submarine U.S.S. Lantern Fish as diving superintendent. Accumulated significant experience with very-deep sea dive rescue and ship's husbandry. Participated in Ballingwrath Expedition to study mud volcano located in Puerto Rico Trench. Recommended against construction of the Sea Base Echo habitat near same location. Testified before Congress when habitat dome cracked from structural overloading. Afterward, regarded as protégé of Congressman Jabez O'Comry.
Organized collection of ice cores from above Arctic Circle while Lantern Fish provided ship-to-shore power for City of Anchorage from 2060-62. Reassigned to U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri by American National Selection Commission in 2065 on O'Comry's recommendation. Assisted in final review and approval of mission emergency management protocols.
Taken from cold sleep during Unity Crisis on the orders of Psych Chaplain Miriam Godwinson. Assisted her entourage to make safe progress from hab bays to landing pods. Tactical leader during skirmishing with charter colonists from CNR Corporation, a subsidiary of Struan's Pacific Training Company. Persuaded Godwinson to include watercraft among the faction's take of expedition supplies. Singled out for special recognition by Godwinson at Great Convocation to acknowledge his "coolness under pressure," but forced into exile the following year by faction elders who accused subject of poor judgement (the boats were taken in lieu of additional seed, fertilizer, or foodstuffs).
At subject's own request, dispatched on long-range overland reconnaissance. (Elders had lobbied for subject to be placed in command of raids on neighboring settlements, which were expected to suffer very high casualty rates.)
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/f95309c5-3ec5-42ba-8334-5d8c364d1b78/d9mu9m1-3bf4b21c-4fe9-4186-b225-0034f14dd77c.jpg/v1/fill/w_1287,h_621,q_70,strp/the_black_pearl_by_atarts_d9mu9m1-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9Njc2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZjk1MzA5YzUtM2VjNS00MmJhLTgzMzQtNWQ4YzM2NGQxYjc4XC9kOW11OW0xLTNiZjRiMjFjLTRmZTktNDE4Ni1iMjI1LTAwMzRmMTRkZDc3Yy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTQwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.b8rTG6hD5kxiiNjC0J83EBraOBveSRcxLIraQairYJg)
In a hollow chamber below Chip Rock Pass, John Moraine observes a planet pearl governed by physical forces unknown to human science.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/f95309c5-3ec5-42ba-8334-5d8c364d1b78/deusw0k-418bde77-6475-4dc9-a212-d3fee0890df7.jpg/v1/fill/w_1264,h_632,q_70,strp/wind_turbine_bridge_colony_by_atarts_deusw0k-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTYwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZjk1MzA5YzUtM2VjNS00MmJhLTgzMzQtNWQ4YzM2NGQxYjc4XC9kZXVzdzBrLTQxOGJkZTc3LTY0NzUtNGRjOS1hMjEyLWQzZmVlMDg5MGRmNy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.PUu-1Sd4586WnFBwGBJlOCkDmBUR4oEAW8BwrDEujfE)
First Conversants were often compared to Hunters of Chiron. The former's "spinner" colonies were made up of those who wished to conduct geological and archaeological inquiry at Sunny Mesa. It was a violent existence: Hivemen were constantly tunnel through the interiors the rock formations to destabilize the Believers' habitats and pursuing anyone who came down to ground level.
The bridge structures were mosaics of innovation, from turbines placed to harness the canyons' wind tunnel effects to the sloped roofs that prevented accumulation of standing rainwater and siphons that diverted it to cliffside gardens.
First Conversants had much in common with the University of Planet. Moraine shared Academician Zakharov's belief that knowledge was the toolbox in which the solution to every one of Mankind's problems could be found. Yet if Zakharov wanted to engage in what Miriam called "petty creation" of his own, Moraine stopped short of that. Adam was not to add robots to the litany of fish and birds, cattle and wild animals. And as the University cloistered itself away from the physical world of contaminants and turned over ever more of its problems to machine intelligence, First Conversants learned by moving through Creation physically and experiencing its wonders firsthand.
Psych Profile: Adventurer
Classified as "soft" believer by Federal Bureau of Investigation--one whose convictions do not have immediate political implications for duly-constituted government or authority. U.S. Navy personnel record contains no contraindications.
Parents selected for participation in Vault Program by U.S. Army as part of Project: Aftermath, an attempt to cache millions of carefully-vetted soldiers and civilians who could reemerge from hibernation to rebuild the United States following a nuclear winter. Vault was re-opened early due to mechanical problems.
Very high physical fitness and mental resilience; .91 score on Atherholt Trauma Function Test. Long exposure to vault and submarine environments makes it highly likely that subject will thrive in high-density living conditions.
Veteran of numerous actual emergencies aboard MEDFOUR. Close attention to detail and safety matters.
Apparent aversion to violence except in clear cases of self-defense.
Sources:
Moraine is Robert Patrick from Last Resort.
The concept behind First Conversants is from David Brin's Earth (https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2010/12/is-theology-compatible-with-science.html). Credit to MysticWind for bringing it to my attention.
Vault Program is from Fallout universe lore.
Picture of the planet pearl is "The Black Pearl" by ATArts on DeviantArt.
"Spinner" colony picture is "Wind Turbine Bridge Colony" by ATArts on DeviantArt.
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The architect has much to teach the overseer, for what is more ruthless than a human colony? - Centauri Reflections
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2ccada29-0832-48ed-badf-b07eb014168f/dfwznfd-f0383d96-c08c-4271-ad8c-c989b9d65de0.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1707,q_80,strp/hidden_desert_cities_on_alien_world_by_lestrium_dfwznfd-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTcwNyIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzJjY2FkYTI5LTA4MzItNDhlZC1iYWRmLWIwN2ViMDE0MTY4ZlwvZGZ3em5mZC1mMDM4M2Q5Ni1jMDhjLTQyNzEtYWQ4Yy1jOTg5YjlkNjVkZTAucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.yOWp8PiQqo6uDCZxFwb6eF7JgWAi_C-XFa5rhIbEuJY)
The Castle Spires were impervious to the best tricks of the Shapers of Chiron. Bitter losses had taught the Believers to site all new settlements well above maximum flood levels. That these two factions--Conclave and Shapers--should become such bitter enemies was not an obvious consequence of their respective politics. Psych Chaplain and Terraformer were just three years apart in age, both ascetic, both prone to fits of melancholy. In Planet they shared a mutual adversary, wanting nothing but that it should cease to be an encumbrance. Guilt was second-nature to them--the kind that only a survivor can experience. What caused them to quarrel was more elemental than any idea. It was water, cool and clear.
Barnacle cities were studies in economy. Miriam's used ground source heat pumps to moderate temperatures in a land of extremes. Vanes in the base superstructure harvested the abundant static electricity.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4561b98a-3c16-4877-a5fd-5ed369ff9524/dfx0jch-f6f8312b-bfbd-4e9a-9ab8-0a5bfa700574.jpg/v1/fill/w_1192,h_670,q_70,strp/arcology_walker_by_theno7er_dfx0jch-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTA4MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQ1NjFiOThhLTNjMTYtNDg3Ny1hNWZkLTVlZDM2OWZmOTUyNFwvZGZ4MGpjaC1mNmY4MzEyYi1iZmJkLTRlOWEtOWFiOC0wYTViZmE3MDA1NzQuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE5MjAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.ZmIgSH2QK84kiIEsiyNwvkbruGWGKPMls3a61feqx9g)
Desperate lieutenants suggested that the Lady Skye should take instruction from the subrid, which carried its home on its back. Cracks and fissures within the creatures' shells, which on a large specimen might be five meters across, were known to host miniature ecosystems similar to bottle gardens when plugged with organic matter.
Skye called them blasphemers and refused to build an industrial base capable of construction on the scales required to flatter such notions.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/01b84681-d289-42f9-b7c9-1ed49e565703/dfx3vcz-0137d680-7815-45d2-928b-6baacc2f4c6f.jpg/v1/fill/w_1101,h_726,q_70,strp/the_farm_by_abiogenisis_dfx3vcz-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODQ0IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMDFiODQ2ODEtZDI4OS00MmY5LWI3YzktMWVkNDllNTY1NzAzXC9kZngzdmN6LTAxMzdkNjgwLTc4MTUtNDVkMi05MjhiLTZiYWFjYzJmNGM2Zi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.YcgJeofN2E91Nn65_zxWlyJxyuSvNklW3_kVn9ENk-8)
A simple tower--height--could mean the difference between life and death for an isolated settlement. This Pilgrim roundhouse is twice blessed.
The tall tree standing beside the water tower is a carniverous Bildant. Hollows within the trunk lure nest-seeking prey, which in turn are overcome by digestive chemicals secreted from the phloem. Also harmful to humans, the trees were tolerated and even cultivated because their greedy root systems created conditions hostile to the spread of xenofungus.
Sources:
First image is "Hidden Desert Cities on Alien World" by lestrium on DeviantArt.
The phrase on encumbrances is inspired by the entry on aborigines in Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary.
Second image is "Arcology Walker" by theNo7er on DeviantArt.
Third image is "The Farm" by Abiogenisis on DeviantArt.
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Living systems cannot be fully described in mathematical terms. Successful examples have a value greater than the sum of their individual parts. - A Comparative Biology of Planet
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/019/444/360/4k/matthew-burke-terraform-shot-001.jpg?1563505456)
Morley Towers, like this example in the Memorialist base of Neu Union, were early engines for mass conversion. They were named not for their inventor, a forever-anonymous Shaper engineer, but for a brand of British cigarette.
The noise was deafening. The waste output, highly carcinogenic. Ominous thunderheads formed above any productive stack, from which violent electrical storms always followed. Mindworms were never far behind. Yet for factions that lacked access to resources of a higher grade, Morleys were a favorite addiction.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ba2906f4-274e-48af-8913-a27c1aca41e6/dfwzhrw-d2dcdd3e-268e-493b-917d-60cd3219d71e.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JhMjkwNmY0LTI3NGUtNDhhZi04OTEzLWEyN2MxYWNhNDFlNlwvZGZ3emhydy1kMmRjZGQzZS0yNjhlLTQ5M2ItOTE3ZC02MGNkMzIxOWQ3MWUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.527ZPmSpazrHPAK_Q3TQFgkzzEpQoBil3CIkTyDPpk8)
University engineers cannibalized and refashioned larger terraforming machinery into multiple smaller vehicles, sacrificing speed and efficiency at a single task to be able to colonize with greater scope and depth.
University programmers developed the computer code for Autonomous Herd Intelligence through trial and error with groups like the one formed by these surveyor rigs.
On the frontiers of science, we should wish for audacity more than for brilliance. - A World Upside Down
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ba2906f4-274e-48af-8913-a27c1aca41e6/dfxayad-6b7d1ca2-155b-4da4-ae0f-fb4736d91d60.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JhMjkwNmY0LTI3NGUtNDhhZi04OTEzLWEyN2MxYWNhNDFlNlwvZGZ4YXlhZC02YjdkMWNhMi0xNTViLTRkYTQtYWUwZi1mYjQ3MzZkOTFkNjAucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.ZiPd1lY-3mN0xIR8RwVTBT3cjJu8Yv4DZ7iW4ZPH0iI)
Destruction being a coarser art, the code behind the Vulcan Vivonics Brawny Man sentry was a study in eloquence--just 77,000,000 lines on a spool approximately half the size of a Frigidaire.
Sources:
First image is "Terraforming Station" by Matthew Burke on ArtStation.
Morley cigarettes are a prop brand used in movies and television. They were the preferred choice of the Cigarette Smoking Man on X-Files.
Second image is "Snow scape robotic machines" by AIFLOWART on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Concept art AI generated" by AIFLOWART on DeviantArt.
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The herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind (pt. 2)
(https://i.imgur.com/yBCGNbe.jpg)
This world is mystical and intelligent. If you truly think that, why aren’t you terrified? - Who’s Out There
Among the more curious of afflictions that have affected the Unity diaspora since the Planetfall disaster is sudden memory loss. Hundreds if not thousands of cases have been reported in the early years of Planetary colonization. Personnel forgetting everything from where they are and what they are doing to the fundamental question of who they are. Spontaneous Atmospheric Shock Amnesia - SASA, whimsically nicknamed by Sinophone colonists as 傻傻 - occurs unpredictably, both among those who have personally witnessed great trauma during the violent dissolution of the mission, to those who have remained in cryosleep for years until retrieved from a supply pod.
This seemingly random phenomenon has been attributed to PTSD, cranial damage from pressure fluctuations during reentry, radiation poisoning, difficulty adjusting to latent high nitrogen levels, xenofungal spore allergies, chemical weapons attacks, microwave weapons attacks, and even preternatural mind control, whether alien or Kavithan. However, a folk explanation is most widely-accepted: faced with an overwhelming and hostile environment, some minds have simply chosen blissful ignorance. Perhaps SASA is a disguised blessing, one of the explanations for why rates of suicide and psychosis have been lower than expected.
Some stricken by amnesia have nonetheless gone on to make significant achievements, even if they may never remember their past lives again. The founder of the Ecological Malcontents strain of Gaia’s Stepdaughters is such a rare example. Several mission years after Planetfall, after the human settlements had grown, carving a new world out of the chaos of Planet’s surface, a Chiron Ranger walker crew found a solitary woman stumbling through a tangled fungal patch several klicks south of the new Gaian outpost Harmony Valley. Having been time-released from a supply pod laden with supplies but bearing only a solitary cryotube, she was confused, if still possessing sufficient wits to have donned protection before stepping out. She had no memory of who she was or what planet she was even on.
(https://i.imgur.com/C9o2l4C.png)
Disheveled and lost, Jean Fox was found wearing nondescript office clothing under her spacesuit, instead of a uniform
By chance, the base’s resident Librarian matched her face to an old file photo in truncated datalinks fragments. It gave her a name, and a rank and position- Jean Fox, macrodatatech, infosystems expert at the Unity main pharmacy. When tested, she did possess a familiarity with bioinformatics and intuitive handling of the macro, which corroborated the profile. The rest of the personal details had been corrupted by various data purges, both digital and physical, during Planetfall. Not as exotic an origin story as a certain famous fellow computing specialist who experienced a dramatic shift in consciousness during Planetfall, but no less mysterious.
All Jean could remember were faint glimpses of walking through a dense forest back on Earth. Oak trees, maple- the unknown wood looked like any in North America, perhaps even- Delaware? Her Gaian hosts called this vision auspicious, but the involuntary placement with their faction was uneasy from the start. She was baffled by what her past self had signed up for. The mission seemed like an ill-organized misadventure, the ship sounded like a death trap, and she found it difficult to understand what exactly had happened during Planetfall. And most of all, she could not comprehend why the survivors were now living in factions separated by ideological pique.
Jean questioned the very convictions of the people who had rescued her from the fungal fields. Their Luddite embrace of primitive living, their masochistic devotion to the landscape that wished to devour them, their unquestioning acceptance of the goodness of Planet, even when their own Lady deigned to weigh in on such petty human concerns as morality when it came to the force of nature, - all caused the lone survivor to agitate against her found society.
The metrics were… unsettling. A razor to your throat, a blade over your fingers. You had to be there. You had to sense it for yourself. - session notes of Harmony Valley Psych Chaplain Saylor Greenbriar
(https://i.imgur.com/dk50s18.jpg)
Each new assignment gave Macrodatatech Jean Fox more details of her pre-SASA memory, until work on the Kiel Object completed it
The Gaians being a free society, accommodated Jean’s outbursts on fungal vegetarian diets at the commissary and irate posts about the governor’s “gentle reminders” to attend daily Green Minutes on the base intralinks. Provided with abundant counseling, the iconoclast was encouraged to search for her lost past, rather than meddle with the lives of people in the present. Drawing from the semantic memories she did possess of her former position on the Unity, she returned to that forgotten career, and buried herself in it. Avoiding the dirt worshippers, she gravitated towards the rationalists among Harmony Valley’s scientific staff, who enlisted her in the refining of all sorts of statistics, from molecular levels in the chemical samples of Planet’s atmosphere and air to natality and mortality rates in the new colony. Aided by friendly new coworkers, she dove into the material, learning a little more about this new world one macrodata set at a time.
As the days went on, Jean began to experience vivid episodes during work. She would be deep into the numbers accompanying a report on razorbeak migration patterns when her sole memory would come flickering back in greater detail. She could now see the foliage clearly, the stone-bordered trail she followed. While nosing through RNA sequences of mindworm boils, she would suddenly see herself sprinting along the trail, stopping by flower patches and outcroppings looking over water. In time, she would come to know all the paths that ran through these nameless woods.
She could not withhold these happemimgs for long. Jean told colleague in her department, some who betrayed her confidence and resulted in psych intervention. Yet she was not taken off the roster. Every decurn she would regularly speak to a psych chaplain who nodded and smiled and wrote down her visions in copious detail. Later, she would discover that this was intentional.
Then one day, while tabulating the full-spectrum analysis of an artifact discovered east of the river by the base’s scouts, Jean finally arrived at memory’s end. In the vision, night had fallen, and the forest was dark. Unease had settled. No creature made a sound. She had left the trail and was pushing past trees and vines. Finally, she emerged into a clearing bathed in ethereal light. There was a massive Chironian monolith bearing the indecipherable etchings of some unknown race. A stone platform at the base bore a bizarre shape of non-Euclidean swirls and swoops. It glowed.
Only days later, after confiding with a xenoarcheologist on her experience, she was granted access to the complete report and saw that the object was identical to the very artifact that the scouts had retrieved from the field. And, nonexistent forest aside, it was found near a monolith bearing identical carvings to the one in her vision.
Base managers called Jean hysterical, but her immediate supervisor and her team vouched for her. She was permitted to accompany a follow-up mission to the discovery site. Mission days of fording a speedy river and dodging smacer raids through hostile terrain after, she reached the location: a vast xenofungus field leagues across, the monolith off its center, at the southeastern focal point. The team arrived just in time to see the fungus rapidly expand, great blood-red tendrils rising up to blanket the ancient ruin like vines over Sleeping Beauty’s castle, the roots on the other end grasping at the ground so fiercely as to pull chunks of soil up like an earthquake. In a matter of minutes, the entire monolith had been consumed, leaving nothing behind but bits of alien rubble. After repeated pleas from her team to flee from danger, Jean finally departed, but not before sighting the stone altar that had held the artifact. As they boarded the surviving rover, she caught a glimpse of a single mindworm crawling out of the fungus, staring at her.
If Planet can give us memories and then eat the real thing, what's to stop Skye from figuring out how to do that? Who's to stop us? If we can figure out how to control this power, we can commandeer it. Humans don’t have to be the victim. We don't have to bow and scrape. - Who’s Out There
(https://i.imgur.com/bON6e2D.jpg)
The founding cell of the Ecological Malcontents prepare their escape from Harmony Valley
The expedition was the last straw for the Gaian authorities and for Jean Fox alike. They had nearly lost an entire scientific scout unit, indeed several scientists and rangers did perish on that fateful trip, and had to endure only more feverish ravings from a known troublemaker. The amnesiac, for her part, had had enough of the inflexible faith of her hosts, the apologetics they gave to that hidden presence that haunted her dreams and ate her friends. Even as the base administrators removed her access and conspired to arrest her, debating the faction’s previously unshakeable proscription against nerve-stapling, Fox and her coworkers made plans to leave.
They did so less than eighteen hours later- an ally at the base's CHAP life support structure flooded the Biology Lab with nitrous oxide, tranquillizing security sent to apprehend her. Before they departed, Fox sent a faction-wide transmission over the Communications Tower, detailing the events of what had happened, and what they had discovered- Protocol Cobel, the base’s Secret Project to retrieve her memories through repeated exposure to memetic hazards, and the revelation that she was not the only SASA patient who had received the same treatment.
Fox's News reverberated all the way back to Gaia's Landing, and to the new capital. For past mission decades, there had been growing discontent with the establishment Planetary idolatry. There were those uncomfortable with blind faith placed in a savage Mother Nature. Those who had lost friends and family to her wrath. Pseudoculturalists who wanted to be like the Shapers and introduce more Earthborn species in intentional terraforming. Pro-marketeers who wanted to empower more commerce and development instead of being so deferential to the mindworms that swarmed their formers and supply convoys. All of those who were scared and appalled by this alien wasteland they were forced to call home, and could not openly express such views.
For a cycle, a fierce debate raged among the Gaians over those who sympathized with these rebels’ Planet-skeptic views, and those who dismissed them as lunatics. The Lady herself issued assurances urging peace and calm. Several rousing debates and ceremonial votes were held, resulting in the Ecological Malcontents concluded as suffering from the stress of living on the frontier, who should receive more psych treatment should they come back into the fold. Then came concerning reports of potential vendetta waged by aggressive neighbors, and all was forgotten. The issue blew over, but the strain remained.
(https://i.imgur.com/nUJqHsX.png)
Fox sympathizers covertly exchange information at Greenhouse Gate
The Ecological Malcontents has a silent minority of those who oppose the party line. Ultimately, they are all characterized by a rejection of Skye’s ironclad faith in the Planet’s ecosystem as one to be trusted in and appeased. Rather, the strain believes humanity’s relationship with Chiron must be worked out with fear and trembling. There is more, much more that the world lets on, abilities that tear asunder not just the bodies but the very minds and souls of human beings. Careful study of this alien biosphere must be done with intent and urgency. Walk with Planet as you might with the mindworm boil you see in the distance. Warily, respectfully, but with your finger on the flamers.
Fox and her compatriots remain separate from the Gaian main body, even as Skye has officially ordered her Environmental Police to grant them amnesty. (Though the governor of Harmony Valley continues to plot to take them back.) Some say they filter from base to base, receiving aid from sympathizers. Others whisper that they had taken an entire colony pod and fled for another frontier, blasting Defiant Jazz over their rebel frequency. But for Fox, there is no true escape, neither outside nor in. Other factions are of no help, as all upon Planet are subject to its whims. And inwardly, she cannot flee from knowing her past, from understanding exactly what was done to her by the world itself.
From her perch atop the mammoth rocks of Gaia's High Garden, Lady Deirdre Skye herself sighs at the disharmony as reports arrive of the Malcontent strain persisting in her bases. She could emphasize with their anger, and their anguish. Every life snuffed out in service of her faction, or simply lost to random locust swarm or freak fungal bloom, chipped away at her soul. Yet man is but one species among countless, and an uninvited one at that. The lives of her own sat pitifully small against the full array of an entire world. And so when her security advisor Goldman recommends more stringent scrutiny of the rabble-rousers, she permits him with no reservations.
Then again, for all of her focus on collaborative power within ecologies, she was well aware of competition as a powerful force of natural selection. Its ability in the long run to increase species diversity, broadening an ecosystem's ability to shoulder many niches, promoting specialization and divergence. In the same way, so does ideological diversity- for all of their zeal, the Gaians remained an open society allowing free thought. Even permitting dissident strains.
So she stays Goldman's hand from outright persecuting the Ecological Malcontents, at least for now. Only Planet knew if they might be the ones to unlock its secrets. And she keeps an eye open towards her economic advisor Simper's financial reports, the snidely coded statements speaking approvingly of the Gaian dissidents' position on pulling back on worshipfulness for the sake of industrial competitiveness. On keeping an open mind towards free market policies, because maybe man exists to test Planet just as Planet constantly tests man. On becoming just a little bit more like the likes of Morgan. And Skye reasons that if this strain is toxic enough to be worth extinguishing, for now it can at least draw out similarly sickly cultures.
Meanwhile, in a faraway xenofungus field, a woman gasps as she gives birth during a battle...
(https://i.imgur.com/odEaF4o.png)
Casting
Jean Fox is portrayed by Britt Lower as Helly R. in Severance
Notes
Jean Fox is a Gaian background character, a named extra, who appears in a single scene in Dragon Sun by Michael Ely (available on the Open Library (https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3666228M/Dragon_Sun))
The Ecological Malcontents are a splinter group that appear in a particular faction profile (https://alphacentauri2.info/official/Profile%20Cha%20Dawn.htm).
(Fun fact, the GURPS sourcebook calls them the Environmental Malcontents, yet another way that supplement contradicts preexisting SMAC material.)
Introductory scene (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKT2dXnYRNw) of Severance’s Helly Riggs, the basis of Jean Fox.
Helly at the computer picture is by @mikeybbruh (https://www.instagram.com/p/CdB0EocPP-P/)
Goldman is Deirdre’s serious and protective top advisor from Dragon Sun. Simper Pol is Deirdre’s foppish and trade-minded top advisor elected by a “vocal minority of citizens” with more materialist concerns.
Design Notes
This strain leader was originally meant to only have the Severance character's likeness. I had thought there was a general conception of the Stepdaughters of Gaia as a bunch of redheads, or at least there was a mistaken Mandela Effect-esque belief from some people that Deirdre is one. (She isn’t, though her initial character design by Michael Haire (https://imgur.com/gallery/SyHmTaX) actually was.) Either way, no harm in imagining the Gaians as a coven of witchy gingers.
But I then realized that the character’s scrappy resistance makes her personality a good fit for this named-but-never-explained SMAX splinter proto-faction. And as I developed this bio, I actually realized some of the story beats from the show are applicable, too:
The original Ecological Malcontents are clearly meant to be Green extremists who split from a faction (most likely Gaians, though it’s not actually specified) and stumbled upon their prophet in the fungus. Zealots who happen to find their messiah. A natural fit.
In this reimagining, they have a more complex narrative: they are skeptics, heretics, and opportunists who leave because they reject the Gaian consensus. But despite fear and revulsion, they still seek to understand the terrible swift world they are trapped in, leading them to engage with the wild. This quest for understanding will inevitably lead to most of them becoming thralls of the Voice of Planet. Which, I think, gives that ensuing faction more of a tragic Lovecraftian feel. The truth-seekers will be devoured by their own journey, unknowingly gazing upon the face of an alien god. Planet psi is pretty crazy stuff.
In this context, Jean Fox is not only a charismatic splitter faction founder, but one motivated by intense personal convictions and whose arrival catalyzes preexisting social tensions, surfacing them and causing rupture. Sort of like what Martin Luther did to the Holy Roman Empire and Catholicism.
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The most virulent disease is failure. - Homo Sapien Superior
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/i/5fb3bcf9-10d4-48e3-a784-3323a3d809f4/dfxexyr-437e3b90-dd3d-4b1f-a6d6-ba91a8fd4c97.jpg/v1/fill/w_1070,h_653,q_75,strp/rtd_map__water__by_axis_kast_dfxexyr-fullview.jpg)
I offer a draft map of the world in November 2071 as U.N.S. Unity set out for the Alpha Centauri star system.
Flooding affected every continent, so we shall focus our discussion on the other eccentricities.
The new island clusters are artificial. The largest of these, Shamash, can be found in the Southern Indian Ocean, roughly equidistant between Australia and Madagascar. That name, Hebrew for "servant," was used again on Chiron.
In North America, Quebec gained independence in the mid-twenty-first century. A determined Francophone separatist movement timed their terror campaign to coincide with hypersurvivalist revolts in both the United States and Canada and catastrophic flooding in the U.K. Both the Soviets and the French provided material assistance, to include combat advisers, while the United Nations ran diplomatic interference. NATO dared not deplete local forces in Europe. Canada was reduced to accepting military assistance from the likes of the Southern African Treaty Organization. Hawaii is independent, probably a fluke of presidential politics.
In South America, traditional regional hegemons--Colombia, Portuguese Brazil, Argentina--were laid low by flooding. Bolivia used the opportunity to expand at the expense of traditional enemies Paraguay and (Spanish) Peru. Madrid underwrote its colonial war effort by outsourcing defense of the Viceroyalty to Morgan Industries. Their asking price: practical control over a tract of resource-rich territory larger than Uruguay. Note the Republic of Rio Grande Del Sol, a remnant of the Triple Alliance War and Paraguayan hegemony during the late nineteenth century. Argentina continued to seek continental greatness after its defeat in the Falklands in 1983, falling in with the French while the Americans chose Bolivia and the Chileans leaned into a British alliance.
Europe's borders were more changed by water than by man. Sweden and Finland came together in self-defense during the protracted violence of the Russian Revolution. Acting from similar motivations, Norway joined them in 1951. Greece managed to achieve much of the Megáli Idéa in the 1920s, opening a bitter feud with Turkey that spiraled into violence several times thereafter. France held onto Algeria and Lebanon as colonial dependencies. Along with Israel and Turkey, these enjoyed an honorary status as members of the European community.
The Soviets occupied a remnant of North Korea in 1951 and Afghanistan from the 1970s, propping up an unpopular regime opposed by neighbors Iran and Pakistan. In 2017, Soviet tanks rumbled forth into Xinjiang.
African independence remained an elusive dream as of 2071. White settlers still ruled in Algiers, Nairobi, Luanda, Lourenço Marques, Salisbury, and Pretoria. A decade after their shared centennial, Katanga and South Kivu were kept afloat by Belgian mining interests. The Soviets made inroads in humiliated Nigeria and embattled Ethiopia. Sudan hewed to the Americans, South Sudan and Biafra to the Israelis. Morgan Industries toppled Chad and made a muddle of the Sahara during the Burst Wars of the mid-twenty-second century. Rwanda fed happily off the carcass of Congo, too big to succeed. U.N. interventions there and in Darfur and Somalia achieved semi-permanence around 2050.
In the Middle East, Israel won a series of wars beginning with the conquest of Sinai in 1956, later going on to smash the Hashemites and the Syrians in Lebanon. Iran runs the table to the east.
India and Pakistan committed mutual suicide. Their populations moved north into Kashmir and the Himalayan foothills or south into the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone.
The British held on in Burma and Singapore, and the French in Indochina but for North Vietnam. The Dutch held West New Guinea, dividing the island with the Australians.
China reunited under the Golden Emperor, but the British used the moment to renegotiate their lease on Hong Kong.
On Shamash, Shiloh is presented in tangerine, Gath in periwinkle. By 2071, they were united in federation. Nod, always independent, is seen in honeydew.
Sources:
Map is based on a template I found on The Frontier, a website that went defunct in 2017. Original artist unknown. Global warming impacts are sketched from "Q-BAM Base Map Sea Level Rise 100m" by Metallist-99 on DeviantArt.
This version of Quebec separatism is based on that found in Cold War Hot, Peter G. Tsouras, ed.
For more on Greece and the Megáli Idéa, see this article (http://www.avalanchepress.com/MonkeyBite.php) on the Avalanche Press website.
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Planet is a machine, like a tractor or a human body. More complicated, yes, than the examples with which we are generally familiar, but equally as predictable once disassembled. - Essays on Mind and Matter
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/ba2906f4-274e-48af-8913-a27c1aca41e6/dfx16bt-e8e80e04-505f-44cc-a5ed-b4273c90b8cd.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JhMjkwNmY0LTI3NGUtNDhhZi04OTEzLWEyN2MxYWNhNDFlNlwvZGZ4MTZidC1lOGU4MGUwNC01MDVmLTQ0Y2MtYTVlZC1iNDI3M2M5MGI4Y2QucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.Js31CtoZTEJE6XZkIfvImIZ7pmSWtJnoxbPmiYd23Z8)
Hive engineers supervise the work of a radio-controlled parasite excavator as they break ground on a new Hab Warren. Once the new stem tunnel is braced, the excavator will be sent back "up-dig" to its parent rig and subsequent work will continue by hand.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/0cbb1a63-31a1-42ab-a0cd-c77065038155/ddz4ia-bd37e834-c445-4a2b-a326-44715cea8514.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzBjYmIxYTYzLTMxYTEtNDJhYi1hMGNkLWM3NzA2NTAzODE1NVwvZGR6NGlhLWJkMzdlODM0LWM0NDUtNGEyYi1hMzI2LTQ0NzE1Y2VhODUxNC5qcGcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6ZmlsZS5kb3dubG9hZCJdfQ.ZWccdTaqYP3zBjUkicNi1F-sPZJGmOI-1E4HI1KPVus)
Mid-century budget pressures compelled the U.N. to radically rethink its plans for the Unity mission. Transit fees from the Earth to the Unity hull came to account for 80% of cost-per-unit of cargo delivered, squeezing out considerations of quality control, performance, and interoperability in the acquisition process. U.N. logistics operations competed for payload with millions of emigrants fleeing steep declines in the quality of life on Earth, military satellite launches, and cargoes destined for lucrative commercial operations elsewhere in the solar system (all made possible by simultaneous technical improvements in the nuclear-pulse propulsion method). National governments fortunate enough to possess space elevators knew the U.N.'s desperation to bring the Unity Mission to fruition and charged accordingly.
This product of the Minsk Wheeled Tractor Plant started life as a ballistic missile transporter. In 2061, the Minoboron (Soviet Ministry of Defense) sold a lot of 1,200 vehicles to Frost-Wellerman Combat Products, which added mission packages at the Naval Weapons Industrial Reserve Site, Atlantic City, New Jersey. Morgan Efficiencies auditors certified the final products good, but representatives of Oscar van de Graaf were considerably more skeptical, documenting a range of issues that included excessive engine wear, leaky hydraulics, inoperable stabilizers (an issue affecting an estimated 52% of the fleet), removal of the armored shutters, and insufficient noise baffling for the tillerman/operator's cabin. As a condition of the mogul's charter, a Van de Graaf front company, Mount Ascutney Enterprises, financed many improvements recommended by van de Graaf's consultants.
This example, plundered by the Spartans and captured the Human Tribe at Xerxion, carried an ultra-high wattage laser, and was doubtless partly responsible for the construction of that mighty fortress.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/0cbb1a63-31a1-42ab-a0cd-c77065038155/dbvslp5-83942853-65c5-4a81-89fc-ebb5dffd75ef.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_576,q_75,strp/the_last_holdouts_by_mikedoscher_dbvslp5-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTc2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMGNiYjFhNjMtMzFhMS00MmFiLWEwY2QtYzc3MDY1MDM4MTU1XC9kYnZzbHA1LTgzOTQyODUzLTY1YzUtNGE4MS04OWZjLWViYjVkZmZkNzVlZi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.UcFA1LeFu70HR2gN9btzXUo_SuYiO5NUtQeeYDZ44V4)
An American M1A5 Mattis Main Battle Tank of the re-actived 40th Armored Division (California Army National Guard) shepherds a mobile gantry vehicle during evacuation of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in the San Francisco Bay Area. The towers and booms carried by these vehicles assisted with routine yard work.
At first a rarity on Planet, mobile gantries enjoyed temporary popularity whenever factions disassembled Unity wreckage. In M.Y. 30, Hive Security used one such rig to exfiltrate from a tunnel dug beneath the University desert botanical testing station at Ferghana Wells, capturing the base and its prized greenhouses just ahead of the fall harvest.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/0cbb1a63-31a1-42ab-a0cd-c77065038155/ddrjlhi-c20d4a86-642f-4051-b875-c685c601a74d.jpg/v1/fill/w_1264,h_632,q_70,strp/salvage_operation_by_mikedoscher_ddrjlhi-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjQwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMGNiYjFhNjMtMzFhMS00MmFiLWEwY2QtYzc3MDY1MDM4MTU1XC9kZHJqbGhpLWMyMGQ0YTg2LTY0MmYtNDA1MS1iODc1LWM2ODVjNjAxYTc0ZC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.WY3qPa1_WfqcPiVe1IXd4p8PImZp7PJZOgAmyUszHTM)
"Pickers" were another unpopular "consolation prize" of late access to Unity equipment stocks. In an act of creative accounting, the U.N. transferred hundreds to Unity from the Indus Valley Radiological Exclusion Zone (IVREZ) where they had worked salvage recovery missions, as seen here. Note the much smaller parasite hauler at bottom left. A member of the ground crew is preparing charging umbilicals from the mothership. According to U.N. sources, it was expected that the Pickers would be disassembled for parts, which is the probable fate of most of the examples recovered from Unity or its Supply Pods.
The distinctive features of a U.N.-supplied Picker included very high ground clearance; very high engine torque; thick environmental shielding, including total nuclear, biological, and radiological protection; and armor plate capable of defeating mines, projectiles of less than 20mm, and rocket-propelled grenades--a necessity to overcome trouble from raiders active in the IVREZ.
To the extent that they were retained in their original configuration by the Unity settlers rather than being stripped for their armor and other components, "pickers" performed as effective minesweepers, equipment recovery vehicles, and rescue platforms, both for classical emergencies and during mindworm encounters. At Terra Nova, the Pilgrims converted one of their pickers to respond to emergencies at outlying settlements. Ironically, that vehicle did double-duty as both fire (water) pumper and flamethrower tractor. The Spartans, who fielded a relatively large number of combat rovers, used three as mobile workshops assigned to a reserve column.
As lesser-valued vehicles, Pickers were sometimes converted to combat roles when there were no better options. Thus the Human Tribe exploited a Picker to smash through the cargo-box perimeter wall of Cibola 7, a Pilgrim mining base, for which it deployed its articulated grasping arm. The responsible commander, a Captain Harcourt Cahill, gave a favorable report to faction stakeholders; the Picker had demonstrated "total imperviousness" to the defenders' arsenal, which had included various anti-material weapons.
Sources:
First image is "Moon mining AI concept art version 2 of 3" by AIFLOWART on DeviantArt.
Second image is "Superheavy Transport Concept" by MikeDoscher on DeviantArt.
Third image is "The Last Holdouts" by MikeDoscher on DeviantArt.
Desert botanical testing stations were a feature of the Imperial occupation of the desert planet Arrakis in Frank Herbert's Dune.
Fourth image is "Salvage Operation" by MikeDoscher on DeviantArt.
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(https://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e201538e7d4aea970b-pi)
Popular artist Frank Tinsley painted this archetypal nuclear-powered airship in 1955 as the United States government explored civilian and commercial applications for its premier wartime technology.
The strongest argument for civilian nuclear energy was its abundance. Range would become a function of maintenance, not fuel capacity. Power-to-weigh ratios would become quickly meaningless. The RAND Corporation drew up concept papers calling for mobile fortresses with guns and armor enough to secure the republic on land, at sea, and in the air, but still amazingly fast.
Nuclear power was also synonymous with cleanliness and efficiency. Nuclear reactors did not belch forth smoke or fly ash. Spent fuel could simply be recycled.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/08aa4d77-0718-40f2-bb4a-c61352d22946/dd9y5hw-87bae65b-391d-444e-81e1-42e0a52a4186.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzA4YWE0ZDc3LTA3MTgtNDBmMi1iYjRhLWM2MTM1MmQyMjk0NlwvZGQ5eTVody04N2JhZTY1Yi0zOTFkLTQ0NGUtODFlMS00MmUwYTUyYTQxODYucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.GbkwKMomO5u6bWwVgti9LswQKXuVLnXRUa42wNL7Oxs)
Battleship U.S.S. Missouri hosted the formal surrender of the Japanese Empire in Tokyo Bay. Converted to a commando carrier in 1982 based on the British experience in the Falklands, Missouri was attached to the Fifth Fleet, covering the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone.
Though not herself nuclear-powered--she carried only small-scale atomic batteries for point-defense laser emitters--Missouri suffered from the misapprehensions of a generation of American naval leadership taught to believe in the near-invincibility of large fighting platforms.
Fearsome pedigree and vestigial 16" turrets aside, post-conversion Missouri was no longer intended to fill the role of combatant. Instead, its complement of helicopters and landing ships would ferry U.S. Marines ashore to stiffen the spines of allied militaries facing down Soviet-backed insurgencies.
The proud ship, an icon of the United States Navy, ended life as a burning hulk after being recalled to home waters during the last hard fighting of the Second American Civil War, a mission kill for land-based missiles fired by the Tennessee State Guard units defending Memphis. (A post-war inquiry by the Navy suggested that state forces lacked the sophistication to fuse their missile warheads for the very short ranges of riverine combat, leading to speculation that Morgan Tactical Services hatched and enabled the battle plan.)
Escorts avenged themselves promptly upon the city but left the wreck of Missouri behind when they steamed upriver toward St. Louis.
(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_hVOW2U7K4-M/TcCZeUkGrcI/AAAAAAABeH4/RIaEMFCHBQU/s800/4345416688_d8a682fdce_b.jpg)
[Political scientists coined the term "consequence stratification" to describe the strong bifurcation of civilian attitudes regarding nuclear power. The United States government actively suppressed information about the effects of radiological contamination until 1962 while a string of Supreme Court cases provided broad indemnities to companies operating in partnership with the Atoms for Peace Program. French and Soviet leaders went as far as assassination to protect their preferred power source.
Proponents of the "Nuclear Future" included the large atomic bureaucracies; academia (which derived huge prestige and funding from playing its indispensable part in the safe implementation of the new power source); corporations active in the nuclear energy marketplace, especially defense manufacturers, power utilities, and mining companies; the wealthy consumers of nuclear-powered products; and, of course, militaries. Later, these were joined by the computer industry, which proposed their machines as the ultimate guarantees of nuclear safety.
Use of nuclear power for rapid air and space travel complicated attempts to back off the technology once safety issues took hold in the public consciousness, even after the sharp spike in accidents worldwide beginning in the 1980s.
Macabre results of this new Nuclear Age included government-run vaults where tens of thousands of persons with degenerative nuclear sickness were placed in indefinite cryogenic hibernation pending the discovery of effective medicines to reverse or halt their disease.
Sources:
"Atoms for Peace" airship image can be accessed from Google Arts & Culture (https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/atoms-for-peace-in-the-cold-war-frank-tinsley-s-airship-with-nuclear-reactor-frank-tinsley/gwFQCdrqFbGJ7w?hl=en).
Missourri conversion is "Iowa Commando Ship Conversion" by Tzoli on DeviantArt.
For nuclear-powered plane, see Dark Roasted Blend (https://www.darkroastedblend.com/2011/05/nuclear-everything.html).
Vault programs are a central concept in the Fallout universe of computer games conceived and published by a string of companies including Interplay Entertainment, Black Isle Studios, Bethesda Game Studios, and Obsidian Entertainment.
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Whose seed is in itself, upon the earth (pt. 3)
(https://i.imgur.com/DdLYAPw.png)
Elora Gardinier, born Manaus, Brazil. Came of age during Novo Brasil era when the colony's particularist pride and demands for autonomy were not seen since the viceregal rule of Vargas- “Lisboa é a nossa colónia!” was popular refrain. Also grew up amidst the largest systematic destruction of the rainforest from mass industrial farming and hyperdevelopment. Participated, then led, student demonstrations against the colonial government’s policies, becoming an icon of the Salvadores da Terra (Portuguese: “Earth Saviors”), Brazilian branch of the international environmentalist movement Teraj Savantoj (Esperanto: “Earth Saviors”).
As head of the Amazonas chapter, doubled membership, bringing its full force in the Dia do Deixo protests during the Portuguese prime minister's visit. Pressure campaigns resulted in temporary moratorium on major construction in the state, multiple death threats, assassination attempt by rogue JBS S.A. employee. Left home to organize wave of climate strikes throughout colony. Became datalinks famous for activism, appeared in Forbes 20 Under 20. Garnered sympathy from developing SecondWorld and devastated ThirdWorld nations, with some liberal sympathizers in FirstWorld.
Returned a year later to find local Salvadores organization gutted by repeated state repression and harassment from patriotic citizens’ councils. Multiple friends imprisoned or exiled. Rebuilt membership by adopting nonviolent civil disobedience as major tactic. Planned and pulled off multiple public relations stunts calling for sea change in environmental policy, including sit-ins, flash mobs, antipol street fights, mass arrests. SdT activists ran wild through the National Museum of Fine Arts, throwing green paint symbolizing the jungle and red paint symbolizing fire over galleries containing works by Cavalcanti, Portinari, Malhoa.
(https://i.imgur.com/khCsf6j.jpg)
Salvadores da Terra advocates surveil the EDP-Brasil Horizon pipeline for direct action
Fully radicalized after second assassination attempt by off-duty state civil policeman. Militarized SdT, receiving training from more violent ecological pressure groups and forming alliances with various anarchist, communist, and nationalist groups. Founded Cavaleiros das Árvores (Knights of the Trees) street fighting wing. Kicked off radical wave by blowing up a pipeline. String of bloodless acts of ecoterrorism followed, from drone harassment of logging sites to data slashing of corporate sites. Authorities responded to campaign by intensifying crackdown. CdÁ advocates openly brawled against riot police, pro-government Estado Eterno militias. Ultimately resulted in SdT joining the Smoke Jaguar insurgency. Upon BOPE victory in conflict and dissolution of the Amazonas Salvadores (followed shortly by complete ban of the organization throughout Portuguese Brazil), disappeared until apprehended in attempt to bomb Rio space elevator.
Mais um grupo de infiltração? Merda. - said multiple times during Planetfall crisis
Jurisdictional battles between state, colonial, and imperial courts resulted in detention limbo for months. Finally resolved when Portuguese authorities sold Elora to the Unity mission for neural re-socialization, age twenty-three. Shipped off to Centauri to prevent green martyrdom and as poetic justice for attempt to disrupt the Lusosphere space program. During Planetfall, rescued by small contingent of Teraj Savantoj eco-militants disguised as Stellar Lifeboat Project refugees. By coincidence or providence, made their way into landing pod of Chief Botanist Lt. Commander Deirdre Skye. Subsequently became founding colonists of the Stepdaughters of Gaia.
(https://i.imgur.com/4TcjVfE.png)
The House of Leaves, cloaked as an abandoned boathouse on the bucolic eastern exurbs of Gaia's High Garden
While the advocates' fanaticism led many to volunteer as soldiers and scouts for the Gaians' meager defense force, Skye and her advisors decided that their past record as saboteurs playing cat-and-mouse against oppressive overwhelming force made them ideal as spies for the faction's meager intelligence services. Additionally, while they recognized the ugly necessity of hosting those capable of violence in their society, they decided it was best to contain such a presence to an organization chiefly working from the shadows. Over time, the Teraj Savantoj became nucleus of the Gaian espionage system known as the House of Leaves. Elora herself came to head the probe network, conducting multiple datalinks incursions and threat assessment monitoring of nearby factions, rooting out infiltrators, negotiating with smacers, and undertaking sabotage missions to deteriorate enemy capabilities. For her service, admitted to the Meliae, those approved for longevity treatments alongside the Lady. Lived additional ninety-five years before succumbing to complications from radiation exposure aboard the Unity.
(https://i.imgur.com/v03herK.png)
I’m a dreamer. I wish this world could be cleaner. Healthier. Unspoiled. Free of the sins of Old Earth. And I wish we could do this without blood or tears. But I’m not delusional. - Battlefield Chiron
Born Gaia’s Landing, third generation after Planetfall. Only child of Elora Gardinier.
Raised to one day command the entire probe apparatus of the faction. Full holotutelage since utero in the environmental sciences and Gaian ideology. Immersion courses in reconstructed Earth natural environments. Spent childhood summers in Biosphere 7 tilling the soil, cultivating, harvesting by hand. Winters alternatively trained by Hunters of Chiron scouts of the Saluki Lodge or by paid smacer guides. Regularly accompanied mother (whose public position was emissary of the Autumn Court) on diplomatic visits to foreign factions. Taught to closely observe the mannerisms and subtly mimic the ways of non-Gaians.
These lessons in tradecraft frequently eventually became novitiate missions. “Ran away” from delegation to Morgan Trade Center for thirty-six hours at age eleven to walk the floors of the Morgan-Reilly Gallery Commercial Plaza down to the Underbase, befriending local retail jobtech children. Passive observations later utilized by Gaian analysts to successfully incite drone riots that led to Morganite withdrawal from the Northwest Hippotion Vendetta four years later. By then, Vivian herself was throwing Molotov cocktails from the siege barricades surrounding the Acme Merchant Exchange, disguised as a local marketing student.
Received particular attention from mother in final years. Frequently sighted speaking together at the white pine of Gaia’s Landing. Received priceless specimens of Earth flora and fauna, including songbirds hatched from eggs frozen for centuries, retrieved from a supply pod sunk in Ultima Aequor. Elora Gardinier was known to have lavishly produced digital simulacra of her experiences in Brazil, the climate catastrophes of the blackjack century, and the recorded campaigns of the SdT; all were incorporated into Gaian probe VR training. As her condition worsened, she sent her daughter away for increasingly long-running operations. Passed when Vivian was undercover with the Shapers of Chiron as a junior geomancer. Though ordered by advisor Goldman himself not to disclose the news, her handler could not help but tell her. A decurn later the Liquidation Vats at Hand of Creation were mysteriously emptied, spilling immense amounts of xenofungal defoilants and blocking base operations for three cycles.
The Holocene extinction was a god-level cataclysm. Engineered by those seeking to be God but without any pretense of benevolence or mercy. Saddest of all, it was caused not by their design, but as side effect. Collateral damage. By-products. Runoff. Those with such hubris deserve just reward for their carelessness. - Awake, Nemesis
Returned to the House of Leaves to find great mourning for lost Elora. Unexpectedly promoted not for the leadership track to be Lady of the Rake, but appointed to new honorary position, the Grand Gardinier. Quickly realized that non-operative role was clerical, and the entire Gaian probe program was being retooled away from active duty. Pressure from the top to gut the network, long time agents replaced with those “keeping with the values of pacifist resistance.” After nearly a century under Elora, the powers that be saw fit to clean House. In response, staged a mass resignation alongside many veteran probes. In public debut, came in from the cold as head of the Teraj Savantoj strain.
Now operating in daylight, Teraj Savantoj seeks to transform and subvert not other factions, but the Stepdaughters of Gaia itself. Returning to its Earthborn roots, the strain aims to once again become an advocacy pressure group and mass movement. It agrees with Gaian principles of harmonist accommodation of Planet’s ecosystem, the deep respect, even veneration, of all life, and the commitment to a free and democratic system based on human rights. But it also argues that the faction must keep a stronger defense of the ecology against the human invaders that upset its balance. The wars for natural resources that bled the Earth white must not happen to this new living world. As such, that central plank of Gaian identity- pacifism- must be reevaluated in the face of a dangerous world. Recognizing the deficiencies in the Gaian military, the Teraj Savantoj must be restored to its rightful place as probes for Planet. As the vanguard of Gaia, it must be given the resources to inspire populist Green agitation and eliminate enemies of the environment, everywhere.
And if they are not granted the capacity to do so by the government… then the saviors of Chiron must continue to carry on its necessary fight from the shadows, engaging in extrajudicial vigilantism until every wormeaten pollutant is scrubbed clean of the ecosphere.
Just as in the dying days of Earth, this strain has resonated with younger generations. While for a long time those of the Stepdaughters have been seen as weak-willed and coddled, spineless and jellylike, the righteous militant and dashing adventures of the Teraj Savantoj have captured the imagination of the young across the datalinks. For those who have never seen an Earth flower outside of a clone or a holographic recreation, the chance to raise hell against those who deprived them of the chance had created fertile fervency for action. Critics of the movement dub it a Children's Crusade, babes in the wood being led by a bloody Pied Piper.
Spontaneous demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience in support of the strain are common across the larger bases, and have even taken place in other factions. The Shapers were the first to denounce them as a malignant public nuisance subject to “social liquidation”, just shy of labeling them as a terrorist group. Within the Gaians, the Evergreen Youth Party has submitted to a reverse merger with the Teraj Savantoj, thus granting the strain actual representation within the faction government. Further alliances with hard-green parties such as Justice Today! and the Yantar Ecologists further bolstered its political force.
Planet trembles with your crimes. But we will not let you make it into a new Earth. Let your final gasps be the air of a world you so blindly disregarded. Nico, frack ‘em all.
- excerpt of audio from the Gryneus Wood, last known location of Shapers of Chiron colony pod Raigō Jōdo (来迎淨土), recorded by House of Leaves probe Vortigern
The Gaian establishment is at a loss as to how to handle this strain. Its very factional values of open, grassroots democracy and tolerance of beliefs- at least when compatible with environmental well-being- cannot stomach the repression of a popular movement. While the Environmental Police has no shortage of suspected acts committed by the Teraj Savantoj or supporters in its name, the Lady herself seems hesitant to prosecute them. After all, repression of any kind is anathema to her sensibilities, and she is loath to prune her own branches. But her advisors’ patience wear thin. Violence perpetrated for Planet’s sake is not the way of the faction, even when done to uphold the Planetary Ecology Code. When corporate convoys are bombed by roadside IEDs, when Vivian Gardinier’s men are seen wearing blood-red masks in the wild, when the strain blurs the line between activism and outright ecoterrorism, the faction must take pains to correct the path. Still, the dilemma is clear. Can corrective force to prevent vigilante force against anti-Planetary force be acceptable? When does anti-pacifism for the sake of upholding pacifism pollute the very nature of the virtue?
(https://i.imgur.com/NGiRxXm.jpg)
Casting
Vivian Gardinier is portrayed by Erin Kellyman as Karli Morgenthau the Flag Smasher in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier
Notes
Vivian Gardinier is the leader of the Terra Salvum (https://pandora.fandom.com/wiki/Terra_Salvum) from Pandora: First Contact (Manual with lore (https://pandora.proxy-studios.com/media/PandoraEnglishManual.pdf))
Historically in Brazil, January 9 is Dia do Fico (https://www.gov.br/en/government-of-brazil/latest-news/2022/in-2022-brazil-celebrates-the-200th-year-of-her-independence) (I’ll Stay Day), commemorating when crown prince Pedro refused to return to Portugal. Deixar means to leave.
House of Leaves (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/02/house-of-leaves-changed-my-life-the-cult-novel-at-20) is the internet’s favorite experimental horror novel, which I have not actually read but I’ll take their word for it.
In Greek myth, the Meliae (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meliae) are ash tree-nymphs born of Gaia, said to have been the progenitors of the generation of men belonging to Hesiod's Bronze Age.
Raigō (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raigō) means "welcoming approach" and Jōdo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhavati) means "Pure Land." Both are Japanese terms from Pure Land Buddhism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Land_Buddhism).
Design Notes
The factions of Pandora: First Contact are all indie budget clones of the original seven from SMAC (much like the game itself), but they have little intricacies that I find amusing to adapt when crossing over with SMAC. In the lore manual above, Terra Salvum (Latin: “Save the Earth”) are essentially Fisher-Price Gaia’s Stepdaughters, both in terms of their introductory story and their leader portrait. The interesting thing about them is they alone came in a generation ship while all of the other factions used the Alcubierre drive to get to Pandora, so their understanding of Earth has been distorted over the ages. But I’ve deigned to use it here because all of the humans in this setting so far either come from the Unity or the Pathfinder Probe which arrived even earlier.
The tidbit I did end up using was actually highlighted in the game’s TV Tropes article (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/PandoraFirstContact): Terra Salvum is described as the product of a decade-long ecoterrorist campaign. That actually might be misreading the somewhat confusingly-written manual, but I like the idea of them being extremist warriors in a faction full of pacifists, plus I figure Deirdre had some tricks up her sleeve to keep hostile factions at bay even before she could tame mindworms and wage Secret Wars. I was also inspired by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, which adds to the Children’s Crusade nature of it all.
Finally, I changed their name because it sounds like bad Latin (plus Pandora already had a religion called Via Salvatum, c’mon) and I like sci-fi that tries to shoehorn in Esperanto, because it's the future.
Image Credits
Holographic climate activist addresses a crowd is from Extrapolations. (Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QP-xrG0kZk))
Eco-militants case a fuel refinery is from How to Blow Up a Pipeline. (Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSb585bGYmQ))
Forest claiming a lakeside building is an excerpt of "Return to Prime Even (https://denko.artstation.com/projects/0n3vy)" by Marek Denko
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A short note about what's next for this space.
I plan to continue updating this space with new content into the foreseeable future. It's a source of great satisfaction and accomplishment for me. I especially enjoy hearing from readers.
This project could benefit from a concordance that corrects the record on inconsistencies both large and small, but I judge that it is yet of lesser importance compared to new storytelling.
Sharing the rough map of Earth circa 2071 was a significant project milestone. I hope it brought to everyone a better understanding of the nature of civilization on Earth at the time of Unity's departure.
Many readers understandably wish to see a map of Chiron with settlements and territories described. Some version of that is possible using the same tools that I applied to make the map of Earth, but it is hard to emphasize just how much time map-making takes with my very basic skills.
This project could benefit from both somebody who is more scientifically literate than myself and from an illustrator who wants to tackle map- and icon-making.
Complementary side projects now at varying stages of completion include: faction leader profiles designed in the original style of the Firaxis website, a library of icons in the style of the original game for technologies, facilities, and doctrines; and a treatment for a forum-based megagame (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megagame) in this setting. The first two activities are geared toward making the fan fiction more immersive. A few people have asked for faction and leader profiles since the start of this thread.
I welcome everyone to take a gander at the quotations, technologies, and other information captured on the GoogleDoc for this project. You should see the (very preliminary) concordance as well as a tab called "Faction Analysis" that will let you get some insight into the way I envision that the factions of this continuity would translate into a follow-on iteration of the computer game.
I am scheduled to attend GenCon 2023. I hope to find a good deal of inspiration there as I take in the creative output of others and play in some live megagames for the first time.
Thanks for being involved!
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(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/030/860/384/4k/pierre-e-fieschi-200929-harvester-b-rsig.jpg?1601895595)
Old Number Seven tilled fields in the Horai Valley for eight long years, more than twice the standard lifetime for a 'Former on Chiron. Overwork and spoiling attacks by other factions led to constant breakdowns.
Between modification and repair, the individual 'Former was a gradually remade into a temperamental work of art uniquely suited for its particular service territory.
The Brethren responsible for "Old Number Seven" added supernumerary tyres to better distribute weight and mitigate the risk of roll-over. An armored skirt sealed lower levels against infiltrators. (Authorized crew boarded from a gantry.) Provided ground conditions were favorable, spine-mounted blowers would wreath Number Seven in dust whenever enemy spotting rounds fell too near. Once shrouded, work would continue using the spotting lamps rigged to the castle.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e9/71/0c/e9710c987f443ffe9bcb837bd5d3c6ef.jpg)
SPAR Security Devices Defensive Pistol, engineered to United Nations Security Forces specifications. The most common firearm aboard Unity. This low-velocity handgun was issued to supervisors as part of their personal kit, to be retained in the lock-boxes at the foot of their cryobeds and worn holstered at the hip.
Various noteworthy design features are apparent in this image, including: (A) molded comfort grip; (B) low-profile, pressure-sensitive trigger plate (highly prone to malfunction), (C) charging plunger (to be depressed whenever a new cap was loaded into the rear port), and (D) muzzle break.
To Psych Chaplain Miriam Godwinson, the shredder pistol was a "terror device borne straight from somebody's nightmare--an insult to us all." Chief of Security Rachael Winzenried defended them as a "last resort" in case of mutiny. Furious higher-ups demanded to know why she had not accepted SPAR's suggestions of stun, gas, or sonic loads only to be told (correctly) that flechette rounds were more reliable.
Winzenried felt the deterrent power of such a munition would be her officers' best guarantee for the safety of themselves and others since they could not rely on numbers. Privately, U.N. higher-ups agreed. In the end, they compromised: Winzenried was allowed to take the pistols aboard with just one reload apiece, but mission security personnel received no training on the weapon. Winzenried's signature invalidated the draft Standard Operating Procedure that described how they would be used.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/439bc1ab-a5ef-4da5-91e0-f778c43ae3e8/d4upbu3-569c7464-26d2-4643-878c-eb1776366e41.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQzOWJjMWFiLWE1ZWYtNGRhNS05MWUwLWY3NzhjNDNhZTNlOFwvZDR1cGJ1My01NjljNzQ2NC0yNmQyLTQ2NDMtODc4Yy1lYjE3NzYzNjZlNDEuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.VkJNk7JvO_Vbf3WFYDJAkRpTcUDqwDyD0z9myafHCPU)
"Safety over water," one of the better-known axioms of Planet. Storms were preferable to mind worms and Spartans. The Nautilus Pirates were glad to protect sea bases from New State retaliation provided accounts were not in arrears.
The number of inhabitants of such places always exceeded the number of available jobs in maritime industries, and anyone not so gainfully employed could earn credits processing code on the Planetary Datalinks.
Bad code--millions of lines worth--was introduced to the Unity Datacore during Planetfall, either by hostile actors connecting through slaved terminals or the many competing "defenders" of system integrity mobilized by Data Services Section Chief Sathieu Metrion. The Tomorrow Institute democratized the repair work in one of the first Special Projects shared between factions.
Sources:
"Old Number Seven" is "Harvester" by Pieere-E. FIESCHI on ArtStation.
Shredder pistols are Phased Plasma Guns ("PPGs") from Babylon 5. The image I used was found on a Pinterest post by Mark Martinez (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/ray-guns--5277724536825901/).
Third picture is "Cliguari's Drop" by sleepcircle on DeviantArt.
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Let's talk about our impressions of some of the standout personalities behind the distinctive ideologues of the Alpha Centauri setting. We'll begin with three of my favorites.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/bded83c2-9666-4913-afaf-29ae29e5c24e/ddnuz1p-15bb1b54-659e-42bd-8e79-490749891585.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1811,q_75,strp/journey_to_centauri___comd__dr__zakharov_by_feivelyn_ddnuz1p-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTgxMSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JkZWQ4M2MyLTk2NjYtNDkxMy1hZmFmLTI5YWUyOWU1YzI0ZVwvZGRudXoxcC0xNWJiMWI1NC02NTllLTQyYmQtOGU3OS00OTA3NDk4OTE1ODUuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.p3RC6RMtPCOyue19fpeU4HkQ82HEH2DsIsynSmmqBYo)
Zakharov is always first in my mind when I get to thinking about this game. His great flaw is certitude. Outsized self-confidence has led him into authoritarianism. And it's been a comfortable ride. He needs (and heeds) no counsel. Rules are for lesser intellects. I can easily imagine that all the bureaucracy built into the University's academic life is really just intended to make it next to impossible to disturb the great leader himself.
Does Zakharov's intensely logical mind eventually drive him to discard all emotional consideration so that he becomes as dispassionate as Chairman Yang? Would Zakharov ever order the execution of the medical hard cases in his care? If he did, would he feel any remorse? We know he has a history of sacrificing others on the altar of Soviet material progress--or, more cynically, career advancement. Zakharov's opportunities for human interaction are already severely limited--and not only because he is anti-social. Most of Zakharov's colony is convalescent. Androids abound. It is easy to think that Zakharov would begin to draw comparisons between the two populations--perhaps with an unfavorable slant toward the sick and dying.
Despite believing that anti-science attitudes doomed the Earth, I can't imagine those misgivings being very meaningful within the University camp. Vaccination, genetically-modified crops, and public education are probably the only options--but very satisfying ones. I don't see the foundations for any kind of supremacist crusade. (We'll leave that to Pahlavi.)
If Zakharov fears anything, it's his own mortality. His mind and body are slowing with age. He placed the entire expedition in jeopardy, committing mutiny, just for the opportunity to extend his own life. (Garland at first wanted only to perform damage control, whereas Zakharov insisted on repairs so that the ship wouldn't have to perform a decades-long slingshot maneuver. Garland's initial proposal would have sacrificed those already awake--a few thousand for the sake of a half-million. More than Zakharov could bear.)
Were this a Paradox game, the University player would be hindered by maluses during any interaction with a leader that could plausibly threaten Zakharov's self-image, particularly Tamineh Pahlavi, Deirdre Skye, Johann Anhaldt, and Aleigha Cohen. (One iteration of the Ascendancy had it that they were exiles from the University due to their obsessive focus on human cloning.) Zakharov is more comfortable in the presence of other powerful men whose achievements are in fields he sees as frivolous--money men, military men, and "hobbyists" like J.T. Marsh.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/bded83c2-9666-4913-afaf-29ae29e5c24e/ddnspij-aa18637b-1a35-4440-9467-439cb2dae6cf.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1811,q_75,strp/journey_to_centauri___lt_cmdr__dr__deirdre_skye_by_feivelyn_ddnspij-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTgxMSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2JkZWQ4M2MyLTk2NjYtNDkxMy1hZmFmLTI5YWUyOWU1YzI0ZVwvZGRuc3Bpai1hYTE4NjM3Yi0xYTM1LTQ0NDAtOTQ2Ny00MzljYjJkYWU2Y2YuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.HfoH47ZeSK13P_cnhHtd-iuYPgYaBTnQY6Eto1l4KlE)
"My" Deirdre Skye is sometimes a hero, sometimes a poignant case study in what happens when somebody gets too close to the event horizon of human contradiction.
As a minor aristocrat, Skye harbors vestiges of noblesse oblige, a feeling that something is owed by her, and by people like her, to anyone who did not receive the same preferments in life. Perhaps she has recognized the contradictions inherent to such an attitude; perhaps not. (How can Skye claim to "owe" someone the benefits of leadership without first deigning them subordinate to herself?)
As an iconoclast, she has done more than her fair share of barrier-breaking--in her profession, in the environmental resistance movement, in Pakistan, and in the Unity Hydroponics Bay, where her leadership was the decisive factor in buying time to evacuate the seeds that later fed a whole world.
She's a bomb that ticks. For a time, she obeys Garland from a place of seemingly deep trust. She endures Zakharov's paternalism out of misplaced respect for his accomplishments. But when Garland sends her to Hydroponics, she exceeds her own authority to commandeer some of D'Almeida's security officers and joins in the firefight herself.
Skye respects Chief Medical Officer (later Commissioner) Pravin Lal, whose values she admires (and to whom she and her people owe their salvation). (Unlike, say, van de Graaf or Mercator, Skye's personal interests were never affected by some of the U.N.'s less admirable maneuvers, so she has no reason to doubt Lal's judgement.)
But Skye, an optimist at heart, has suffered badly from the banality of evil. She has never forgiven herself for the murders of the local support staff she recruited in the North-West Frontier Province. To her, the patriarchy is baffling. Women aren't a threat to men. Oppression is destructive to the oppressor as well as to the oppressed. But the very authorities that should have protected the vulnerable instead demonstrated astonishing cynicism. What is the purpose of all that power, if not to protect? Who does it serve to rationalize those attacks? Were the police opposed to equality in principle, or merely ashamed that a terrible crime had occurred on their watch? Either way, their exasperation and uselessness have haunted Skye ever since. Why was she so offensive to them?
To this day, Skye spends long hours wandering the perimeter of Gaia's High Garden, reliving her worst memories.
The story so far implies that the Gaians are a hunted people, forced into fungal swamps where other factions cannot follow. They remain there for decades in a posture of arrested development thanks to a general blockade maintained by hostile neighbors and a philosophy that prevents development of a modern industrial base.
(https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c4d7e227e3c3a6ec70a5ac7/1558295179439-73NUELJM66SIIE5MATA9/Brent+Spinner.jpg)
Commander Kleisel Mercator is actually closest in outlook to a sober Factor Roshann Cobb: he has become convinced that the human species will destroy itself. But if Cobb wants to lobotomize the patient, Mercator wants to distract him instead.
Mercator's first problem is that he is trying to form a society made up of people who have been (and probably must continue to be) socialized in ways that are antithetical to it. His military officers are playing house, which is a civilian's game. "You can't handle the truth!" might as well be a faction catchphrase, but it works in more than just the one way. Kleisel's people are professional killers. That's how they interact with the world.
Mercator's second problem is that he is terrified of Planet. Zakharov and Metrion ultimately resolve to kill what they do not understand, but the Memory of Earth are cowed by it, demonstrating a respect on par with the Hunters--not as self-negating as the Gaians, but still heavy enough that they are never quite at ease. Mercator is at the forefront of leaders clamoring to leave Chiron.
The faction's starting pieces, which include veteran militia and a Hopper, will tempt the player into an aggressive posture, so let us assume that Mercator is as egotistical in his own way as a Zakharov or a Morgan. Not sneering, but impatient. If you don't share his concern that inter-factional warfare will doom us all, he's happy to lock you in the brig and impose martial law on your bases until you come to your senses and accept vassalage.
Sources:
Drawings of Zakharov and Skye are by Feivelyn on DeviantArt.
Portait of Brent Spiner by Rory Lewis.
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(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ezXfXwVkn3k/TUd8JcnrvqI/AAAAAAAAAIw/XtqbO9pF0_s/s1600/ih_marine05.jpg)
What better can be said of Corazón Santiago than that she is hopelessly naive? Was it not inevitable that the Holnists would defy her control, those miscreants infamous for fragging their own leaders? The Holnist was a parasite unable to resist killing his host. Canny Statist commanders operating in tandem with Holnist irregulars soon learned to post guards whenever they occupied any territory they intended on keeping, lest the militias perpetrate casual atrocities on the people recently liberated. But Santiago was not the first to pay them court in hopes they would excel themselves given a worthy cause. Still smarting over the fate of her sisters, she could not conceive that a person could love only themselves.
Santiago is also, of course, a remarkable figure. Out of consideration for her childhood traumas, we might forgive the alienation from authority that made her a fertile convert to the Survivalist cause. It is surely to her credit that she should have acquired an education in spite of her poverty and rootlessness. Her leadership qualities, including a knack for compromise, are well enough attested by enemies, let alone by her friends. And who else is a more legitimate voice for the miserable Left-Behinds? Unity had a long way to fall--from humanity's greatest expression of itself to a grotesque indictment of liberal internationalism. Is this what the visionaries of the 2010s had in mind? That the ship's berths should be filled with billionaires and their future servants?
Yet something critical is missing from the Spartan equation on Chiron. Santiago's Earthside exploits were performed in the alleged interest of marginalized peoples who could not or would not fight for themselves, and there is no reason to presume her intentions false. But on Chiron, there are no peaceful or indisputably victimized civilians whose part the Spartans can take. And so the Colonel is a fish out of water, and her true believers, an army without a nation, play-acting as soldiers. She yearns for something more noble.
(https://images04.military.com/sites/default/files/styles/full/public/2019-08/AHF_butler2.jpg?itok=AQ9w2CHT)
The Tribe has always been one of my favorite factions. The beauty of Kellerites is that they're such effective Boogeymen. Oscar van de Graaf has to assume they're gunning for him. Santiago, too. Nobody is very sure what goes on behind those high walls. To Zakharov, the Kellerites are death cultists that have turned their backs in ignorance on the science that could save them. Pravin Lal can't overlook the fact that the Kellerites contributed to the destruction of Unity. Miriam will have a hard time convincing her followers that the Kellerites are not Satanists.
The Kellerites are explicitly insular. Their leader, Pete Landers, has no particular interest in the other factions except as objects for the taking of vengeance. Nobody weened on exaggerations of Kellerite deviance would be likely to give his emissaries the time of day, even were he inclined to send some. And Landers speaks through the barrel of a gun, not the mouth of a diplomat.
Landers's conversion to the Kellerite cause was an honest one. For an impressionable youth, the kindness of the Tribals was a profound lure, a debt he attempts to repay with the only coin he has to give: the tactical genius that made him a fast sergeant in the U.S. Army. The Kellerites' running feud with the other factions is fueled by a sour combination of offensive realism and simmering resentment.
The Tribals are the smallest faction by population size--just a few hundred people. They took almost no captives and attracted almost no hangers-on during their sweep toward the exits. Befitting their homogeneity, they have exceptional cohesion--after all, each one was hand-picked by Keller and his lieutenants because they could offer something as a stowaway.
Kellerites are fierce fighters, especially on the defensive, but they're constitutionally wedded to inefficiency as ardent individualists whose horizons extend only as far as the stockade walls. On top of that, they are Purists, and quite possibly human cultists (to borrow from Saw Guerrera). The Ascendancy rejects androids because biological organisms are supposedly superior where it counts. The Hunters avoid them so as not to become addicted to easy living. But the Tribals don't like robots because they are unfamiliar objects usually created by corporations, the same relentless entities that hunted them nearly to extinction.
I think Landers must be too self-conscious for his own good. Keller had the vision and the following. Landers was at first dependent upon his tolerance, and his leadership role is derived in no small part from Keller's personal favor. A string of military defeats would invalidate the case for his leadership role with the faction.
(https://www.scotsman.com/webimg/b25lY21zOmNmNTM3Y2MyLThlNDctNDQ2Mi04ZGZlLTY0NWZhNTE4NTc3ZjpkYmFiMTY1Ny0xOTk2LTQwMDEtOWI1OS1mMmU2YjA0ZTYxZWQ=.jpg?width=2048&enable=upscale)
Miriam probably found it difficult to return to ground after her experience being cast as a messianic figure. Did she believe it herself?
Can we call her an angel of mercy? The good Sister is one of the few sympathetic figures in the retelling of the Unity Crisis. Though she soon regretted the oversight, there was little thought spared for contesting whatever the other factions were claiming as their own.
Miriam and most of her followers stop short of body modification, which they believe approaches the boundary of sacrilege. The Book of Maronicus admonishes, "Thou shalt not disfigure the soul," which members of the Conclave take to mean crossing the mind-machine barrier.
Miriam begins our story with a great deal of forbearance toward those not similarly-sentimented. Over time, the perversity of the factions toward one another and the constant stressors of survival push a minority of survivors toward a hard interpretation of Scripture that promises punishment for the Believers' enemies. It is even possible that the Believers might come to regard even fundamental violations of the U.N. Charter as a function of God's anger.
To compensate for their military weakness, the Conclave adheres to a firm neutrality. It will attempt to clothe and feed everyone it can. Conclave med-techs honor their Hippocratic oath to a fault. Conclave bases are the "Rick's Cafés Américains" of Planet, welcoming traders and spies who must escape harsher controls.
Miriam is less spymaster than trapeze artist, clumsily using whatever her counter-intelligence bureau can glean to help navigate a "middle way" through the vendettas being pursued all around her. In time, the act is too much, and she must cede more ground to a more bloody-minded set to help her rule.
Sources:
Santiago is Halo: Reach concept art: Female UNSC Army Soldier from isaachannaford.com.
Gerard Butler in Angel Has Fallen is our Pete Landers.
Tilda Swanson takes a turn here at Miriam Godwinson.
"Thou shalt not disfigure the soul" is a quote from Dune by Frank Herbert.
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(https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/james-cromwell-H-2023.jpg)
Johann Anhaldt is interesting to me in that he represents, I feel, a perspective that was not embodied by any single faction leader in the original game. The dangers of a society managed by Artificial Intelligence are instead addressed in the flavor quotes that accompany tech progression. Any society can fall prey to it.
Were somebody to write a literary critique of this fan fiction, they might position Johann Anhaldt's earliest origins in the 2014 forum-based megagame that preceded this work. A large number of the player-designed factions in that game were looking to absorb humans into a mechanized hive mind. But I think Anhaldt doesn't really take full form except in light of David Brin's The Postman. My first thought for him was as the harried administrator of a fragment of the Unity computer core that his faction used to make all its decisions. These were going to be people so doubtful of their own capacity that they wanted to be told what to do. Except that people weren't to be trusted, so they were turning over every important decision to the great calculator. To make matters worse, only Anhaldt knew that the computer was inoperable, like Cyclops of Corvallis.
Gradually, I hung some new concepts on this same peg. I came up with a neat-sounding name, the Children of the Atom, and decided that they would have an unusual affinity for nuclear power, although it didn't fit with any other aspect of their identity. This was OK. I thought the Nautilus Pirates of the Crossfire expansion committed a worse sin, having a neat gimmick without a coherent ideology to go along with it, however good or bad a fit.
Digging down to a deeper layer of detail, it's possible that Anhaldt thinks nuclear power is a game-changer on par with AI. Could he believe we are outrunning both an energy and a problem-solving choke point in our world-historical development, necessitating that we embrace both advances immediately?
Anhaldt is a deliberate mirror to Zakharov, insisting that traditional social values should be placed ahead of technocratic ones. In Zakharov's view, society should "follow the science" to a self-evidently better tomorrow, while in Anhaldt's, science should be led by the needs and preferences of its human masters. Zakharov is in the vanguard; Anhaldt is a servant.
To be sure, both men worked hard to "sell" their science to a skeptical populace. Anhaldt was much better at it, mostly because he finds it less necessary to belittle others.
In his first appearance in this essay, Anhaldt is given the appellation Mediator, whereas I later experimented with Programmer. His title is currently Plotter, indicating that he is a mere functionary of whatever machine is generating output in his capital, Colonia Secundus, today.
The Children sell their services as a latter-day oracle, harnessing the unprecedented computing power at their disposal to solve complex problems on behalf of other factions. We can assume these problems relate to the mapping of the prediction of the weather, mindworm activity, and diplomatic or combat results.
Anhaldt has ties to the American Reclamation Corporation as well as Comprehensive Transport, an American mega-corporation that holds the franchise on supply runs to the Outer Planets. In his faction leader profile, I detail a history of serving as an advocate for atomic energy that gives him perhaps too much the same flavor as Zakharov.
I've never fully fleshed out Anhaldt's value system, so let's try to do that right here.
What is the fundamental truth of the universe? Humanity finally produced an intellect superior to itself. It would be an act of mass suicide were we to try to organize our affairs without it.
Why did civilization on Earth fail? Our civilization generated problems that humans themselves could no longer solve.
What is needed for the survival of our species on Chiron? To harness the full potential of artificial intelligence.
These answers are accurate, but it becomes difficult to part Anhaldt from Zakharov. That could be inevitable as one makes more factions.
Maybe Anhaldt feels that scientists like Zakharov misled humanity. Whereas Zakharov lays the blame for Earth's misery on popular resistance to science, Anhaldt might throw that back in his face: experts tried too hard to deny "regular people" the right to make their own choices. This is rich, of course, coming from someone who earned the reputation of paid shill for the Axis Atomical Corporation, but it's true to the kind of person we known Zakharov is. With the slight change of Anhaldt's answer to question #2, "People were asked to follow science rather than to guide it," his answer to #3 takes on a new light. Would Anhaldt say he is still the master of his own fate because he chooses to trust in machines, whereas Zakharov is the blind follower?
Source:
James Cromwell is Dr. Johann Anhaldt. The still is from Succession.
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National Profile: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a9/Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg/1200px-Flag_of_the_Soviet_Union.svg.png)
The Soviet legacy was a complicated one for Mission Survivors. To Americans, Anglophone Canadians, a majority of Britons and Eastern Europeans, the Portuguese, African whites, the Iranian elite, Bolivians, Yugoslavs, Afghans, Greeks, Filipinos, Australians, and about half of Scandinavians, Soviet Communism was best described by President Ronald Reagan: "Life as it could be, not as it should be, Mr. Ustinov."
There was truth, of course, to these concerns. Soviet citizens were the property of the state. There were no freedom of the press, no freedom of movement, and only a sad simulacrum of free enterprise beginning in the 1980s. Particulars prohibitions might change at the margins, allowing for self-expression or retroactive critique of past leadership, but the labor camps were once again full in 1980 and remained that way until the 2020s. There were a dozen Soviet satellite states, and little effort wasted on pretending that orders were not passed down daily from Moscow. East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Mongolia, Qwin, and Koryo were only rarely out-of-step with the Soviet march. The special plight of the Afghan peoples, driven from their homes, their children maimed by landmines, was rarely out of the American press.
Yet the Soviet Union was indisputably a superpower. Russian standards of living rose sharply during the later half of the twentieth century, especially in the largest cities. By 1980, the average lifespan of a Soviet citizen was seventy years--up from forty in 1917. Soviet education produced world-class physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians, engineers, geologists, and computer scientists. The Soviets led the way into space and achieved numerous firsts: first orbital launch vehicle (1957), first satellite in orbit (1957), first person in space (1961), and first person on the Moon (1969). Other Soviet inventions included the programmable computer (1950), the nuclear power plant (at Obninsk in 1954), the hologram (1962), and the personal computer (1965). Soviet medicine was known to be well advanced in the areas of aerosol vaccination, organ transplant, and the humane treatment of psychiatric conditions. The Soviet navy actively participated in arctic and antarctic research. Aeroflot operated the world's largest fleet of commercial supersonic passenger aircraft and, from 1982, carried all space traffic sunward and back by special agreement with the United Nations, over the strenuous objection of Comprehensive Transport and the United States of America. In 1994, the U.N. adopted Soviet principles of construction for mid-ocean rigs as a global standard. Soviet automobiles and farm machinery were ubiquitous features of modernity in Second and Third World countries. Soviet assistance was indispensable to infrastructure megaprojects like Egypt's Aswan Dam, Cuba's Juragua Nuclear Power Plant, the Sunda Strait Bridge, Ethiopia's Renaissance Dam, reconstruction of the former Dutch space elevator at Jakarta, and the Lake Baikal Diversion that watered most of northern Mongolia.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d6/7c/f3/d67cf3fa696ad1432d716dd07003123b.jpg)
The Soviet moon landing of June 26, 1969.
Among Arabs, Frenchmen, almost half of West Germans, for an overwhelming number of Africans, and in India, "the Russians" were treated with hopeful caution. Anyone not warm in the American embrace or held fast beneath a European thumb could rest assured that the Soviets would take an interest. They would listen. Advocate in the world's great multilateral forums. Remonstrate, perhaps, with the Americans or the Europeans. And when the time came, the Soviets would live up to their words--with generous subsidies of arms and men. The French, the Indians, and to a lesser extent the free Baltic states, learned to play the Soviets at their own game. "The French Proxy" entered Western lexicon as any vote or initiative in the U.N. out of character for the caster but advantageous to Russia. It was an open secret that French and Indian firms resold Western technology to the Soviet Union, especially electronics. Embarrassed by the politics of the decades-long Afghan debacle, the Soviets touted instead their popularity in Xinjiang, where they were greeted as liberators by the oppressed Uyghur majority in 2017. Strong Soviet allies included Cuba (before 2050), Ethiopia, Nigeria, North Vietnam, India, and Indonesia.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/06678869-dcd2-4360-96a5-5e4ca658d88f/dfy7swu-f8f2ebe0-0482-4621-8ae8-0ad46e5c8b89.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzA2Njc4ODY5LWRjZDItNDM2MC05NmE1LTVlNGNhNjU4ZDg4ZlwvZGZ5N3N3dS1mOGYyZWJlMC0wNDgyLTQ2MjEtOGFlOC0wYWQ0NmU1YzhiODkuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.uYAuLp-n77wuFrikM8c9Kuw4TnYBPjuUdGbD30F9dL4)
Snow falls early in East Berlin in September 2062. Traffic along the Old Wall is light.
The Soviets were active humanitarians, making the largest per-capita commitment to recovery operations in the Indus Valley Exclusion Zone among all contributing nations. Soviet hydrologists played a major role in earthquake and tsunami response in Turkey, Syria, India, Japan, Israel, Lebanon, and the IOEZ.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/39cfe1b0-35b6-487b-9350-53ed5aa39713/d6mzmyq-5e598d59-9828-4935-9c72-560d303f7623.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzM5Y2ZlMWIwLTM1YjYtNDg3Yi05MzUwLTUzZWQ1YWEzOTcxM1wvZDZtem15cS01ZTU5OGQ1OS05ODI4LTQ5MzUtOWM3Mi01NjBkMzAzZjc2MjMuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.hjlSZ8Z7kmK70zYMo14S14_dSr6BkjqrffPBFitU_vE)
Soviet tractor used to string cable car line in the foothills of the Himalayas to assist with the relocation of industry from the IVEZ. Later resold to Gath for work on the Sapphire Railway, a rack-and-pinion railway used to climb the Saggrinid Mountain Range. The inheritors named their craft "Tyrannus" in a pun on popular criticisms of their king.
Western scholarship has coalesced around the idea that there have been two phases of Soviet foreign policy: a Timid Phase shaped by American boldness during the short window of its nuclear supremacy in the 1940s and early 1950s, and a Muscular Phase beginning with the Sino-Soviet Clash of 1969 that reached its maximum expression with the Christmas invasion of Afghanistan ten years later.
Soviet war planners were caught off-guard by the American escalation to atomic warfare in Korea, and it caused them to throttle back on actions that might have been considered provocative to Washington. Although the primary human costs were felt by the Chinese and North Koreans, the Soviets contented themselves with seizing a small buffer zone to protect Vladivostok before pressing Beijing to negotiate. A final accord was reached in February 1952, leaving the South Koreans in control of a mostly unified but utterly wrecked peninsula. The American public hailed the war as a great victory and wondered what else the Bomb could do for them, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Korean recovery cost them more in blood and treasure over the next twenty years than Korean defense had in less than three. Just two years later, the Americans let the French use four small atomic bombs in Indochina, underlining the mortal danger to any power that could not reply in kind.
Soviet leadership was spooked. Huge new investments were made hardening the U.S.S.R.'s strategic rocket forces and increasing both rail-based launch systems and ultra-long-range bombers. Despite local superiority of conventional and nuclear forces in Europe by 1960, the Soviets remained concerned about American unpredictability. When the Americans agreed to remove PGM-19 Jupiter missiles from Turkey in return for removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba in October 1962, the Politburo felt the two powers had come to something of an informal understanding--a tit-for-tat relationship in which saber-rattling had no place. They tried diplomacy instead, toning down their bellicosity almost to the point of obsequiousness, even ceasing material support for independence movements working against the French, hoping to widen the growing rift between the United States and its European allies over the Suez Crisis. The strategy paid some dividends in 1966 when the French withdrew entirely from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, although critics charged that the Soviets had missed huge opportunities to influence the direction of post-liberation politics in Africa. The wooing of France became a blueprint for future Soviet adjustments of the international order. (Similar overtures to Portugal were less successful, and the Soviets persisted in supporting both the MPLA and FRELIMO into the new century.) Threats of military force were more useful against those too weak to resist: a mid-decade build-up of forces on the Finnish border dissuaded the new Scandinavian Union from affiliating with NATO altogether, and wrong-footed the Dutch in Indonesia, eventually dooming their attempts to preserve a colony there.
Then came disaster. For most of 1969, the Soviet Union and China were at war in northern Manchuria. From that point forward, Soviet attentions shifted decisively eastward. The Fulda Gap remained a convenient political pressure point, and Moscow continued to recognize the United States as its primary competitor for global influence, but Soviet forces expected, and prepared, to fight against a numerically superior enemy on a front spanning more than 5,000km. China was the more urgent threat. By 1974, growing desperate, the Soviets added a new tool to their arsenal: the All-Union Science Production Association Biopreparat, which would give rise to the world's largest and most dangerous bio-warfare program.
Soviet space efforts, code-named "Firebird," meanwhile lost ground during the 1970s as the geopolitical storm clouds gathered. To compensate, the Soviets tried sabotage. There were several clashes between American and Soviet moon men. Each side accused the other of provocation, but the Soviets got the better of most of the fights, which later records confirmed were pursued at Moscow's instigation. It did little good. The U.S. Marines were authorized to add 2,000 "space commandos" to their ranks. In 1980, the Americans built the first permanent colony on the Moon, taking back the initiative in the Space Race. The U.S.S. Orion, a space-borne warship, went up that same banner year and finished trials in '85. The new American president, Ronald Reagan, terrified the Politburo, and they readily believed his assurances to the world media that Orion could shoot down ICBMs in-flight.
Enter new Soviet Premier Marat Barrikad, who had spent time in the United States and thought himself a keener judge of the American psyche than most of his contemporaries. Barrikad believed that as American military superiority increased relative to the Soviet war machine, a countervailing soothing effect would result. They would come to see themselves as invulnerable, and the Soviets as an unworthy opponent who no longer demanded a forceful response. Democratic Party opponents were already criticizing Reagan as a cowboy, and even fellow Republicans worried over the runaway costs of his defense build-up. This gave the Soviets options. Barrikad dialed up support for liberation movements in Southern Africa, where white minority governments and colonial regimes were fighting a rear-guard action against Western public opinion. Soviet infusions of money, advisers, and equipment were carried out through Cuban, Yugoslav, and East German clients, and timed for peaks in the cycles of mutual alienation between Portugal and the State Department.
With nuclear power flowing freely in the United States, Barrikad also saw his moment in the Middle East. The Soviets rebuilt the armies of the Syrian-Arab Republic and egged them on against the Israelis (an over-calculation that cost Jordan a fifth of its national territory, culminated in the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat, and, paradoxically, reinforced the growing American conviction that the Soviets were second-rate competitors). After learning that the Shah was sick with cancer in 1978, Barrikad accelerated support for Iraq. Reasoning that China was more afraid of the Soviets than the Soviets of China, Barrikad reopened diplomacy with Beijing, securing a long period of deescalation. He welcomed Indonesian independence as a Communist state, ignoring the ill-fated rump in Dutch New Guinea, and, in 1991, hacked Italy from NATO through support for a successful Socialist majority in that country's parliament.
The Soviet's worst blunder came in the late 1980s, when Barrikad tested American resolve by passing a low-yield nuclear warhead to the Iraqis for use against Iran. The backlash was swift and overwhelming: the Iranian military swept across Iraq's northern tier to effect the secession of Kurdistan while the Americans quickly and correctly traced the offending isotope back to its source.
While Barrikad drew down funding for subsequent Soviet moon landings and imposed delays on the country's answer to Orion (less an expression of doubt than to avoid economic overheating), he pushed for greater action in the Inner Solar System, and is usually acknowledged as the major influence responsible for the Soviet grip on activity above Mercury and Venus. These latter footholds proved to be a saving grace for the Soviet economy. When Barrikad died in 1992, he was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev, whose name is now synonymous with political and economic liberalization. To achieve his vision, Gorbachev forged close relations with fellow leaders in France, Italy, Turkey, and India, often cooperating on industrial and research projects to spread costs.
The twenty-first century for the U.S.S.R. was dominated by five themes: discovery and interaction with the Mercury vulcanoids, renewed conflict with China and the United States, environmental catastrophe, interference in the IOEZ, and post-liberalization criminal activity.
In 1982, Soviet probes discovered the hypothesized vulcanoid objects inside Mercury's gravity well, some of which contained new elements, including Barrikadium-109. The hard currency earned from strip-mining these asteroids in the early 2000s helped keep the Soviets afloat through the disruptive "shock therapy" of exposure to the free market under Gorbachev and the "snap back" that followed when the hardliners returned to power six years later. The Soviets did make important contributions to the settlement of Mars and the exploration of Titan but otherwise kept their focus sunwards. The Soviet space program was always bedeviled by the lack of access to a friendly space elevator, and benefited considerably after the Indonesian Revolution from the restoration of the elevator built by the Dutch at Batavia, renamed Jakarta.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/821376fc-4b6d-45cc-a484-03bd21ab1fc1/dao5cfj-6d0e47df-504c-48bf-acaa-751a25b676fa.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzgyMTM3NmZjLTRiNmQtNDVjYy1hNDg0LTAzYmQyMWFiMWZjMVwvZGFvNWNmai02ZDBlNDdkZi01MDRjLTQ4YmYtYWNhYS03NTFhMjViNjc2ZmEuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.l52RABlaUudroxDR_s40Nzp-v-B7U94sPAfK_Pbil50)
Denezhnaya Kul'tura (Денежная культура) gave Soviet bureaucracy an overlay of glamor designed to impress foreign audiences more at home in New York and Tokyo.
By 2017, the Russians had reached the point of defensive alliance with India. Pakistan hastened into a similar arrangement with China, which increasingly worried about the breakdown of civil order in the nuclear blast zones created during the 1991 Six Minute War. In March 2017, the Pakistani government was facing crisis. Popular unrest in Dacca was overwhelming civil authorities. India was threatening intervention on humanitarian grounds. At the invitation of the Pakistanis, China invaded Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese calculus was three-fold. First, the Chinese Politburo hoped to signal to India that it would not tolerate intervention in favor of Mukti Bahini guerillas in East Pakistan. Second, Chinese leaders believed the gains they would make could be traded away during subsequent negotiations for favorable concessions in northwest India. Third, Chinese leaders wanted better intelligence on the quality of the Indian Armed Forces since the nuclear holocaust. The war was a disaster for both Pakistan and China, resulting in Bangladeshi independence and the destruction of most of China's nascent blue-water navy after the sinking of two of its aircraft carriers at the hands of Indo-Soviet task forces. (Quite the feat, since both the Indian and Soviet navies suffered from very poor maintenance practices and Soviet aircraft cruiser Kremlin experienced a deadly shipboard fire just hours before the engagement that sank the Shandong.) The war ended in 2019 with a Chinese return to prewar borders and powerful Pakistani misgivings about the value of Chinese friendship that pushed them toward the waiting Americans. This was not the optimum result for Moscow, but it did at least review the instructive lesson of 1969 that Soviet arms were not to be trifled with.
The Soviet Union's greatest coup against the United States since the 1970s occurred in Quebec, where the Soviets worked closely with the French and the United Nations to gain the province's independence during the Second American Civil War. Soviet involvement was extensive: Soviet submarines delivered weapons to Felquiste terror cells and Soviet special forces helped inflict serious casualties on the NATO (mostly American and Commonwealth) forces that could be spared to help Canada's small army hunt the terrorists. The Soviets used frequent false-flag attacks to turn public opinion against Ottawa, massacring Francophone civilians and blaming Anglophone "Black Watch" militias. There is scattered evidence to indicate that Soviet troops also entered the United States to leaven state separatists and Holnist forces despite the avowed anti-Communism of those movements; many of the sub-contractors provided by Morgan Industries affiliates were Russian speakers who claimed to come from the Russian Diaspora.
The Soviet Union was an Alpha-class nation--more than ten percent of the country's landmass was claimed by rising sea levels. Only Western Europe and certain Polynesian islands suffered greater calamity. Most nations coped with the change by taking to water. The Soviets in particular preferred land or space, drawing their displaced peoples inward and building large habitats at the L1 and L2 LaGrange Points. Soviet industry was highly active in what became the badly-polluted intermingling of the Black, Aral, and Caspain Seas. The problem was made considerably worse by the prevalence of industrial disasters, especially nuclear disasters, within the country's borders, which exposed tens of millions to life-altering illness and inflicted severe losses on Soviet agriculture so that the country was often a net importer of food.
Following the example of Barrikad, later Soviet leaders maintained a large civil and military presence in the IOEZ, where training and cooperation with the Indian Navy helped create the groundwork for successful joint maneuvers during the 2017-19 war. Soviet missions were no different than those carried out by other Great Power interlopers: delivering humanitarian supplies, ferrying evacuees from the path of typhoons, suppressing pirates, and conducting diplomatic visits in support of commercial appeals. The Soviet Navy constructed various artificial islands for its own purposes, including as listening posts.
Criminal activity in the Soviet Union was known to be extensive, providing a living to an estimated eight or nine percent of Soviet citizens. Corruption was widespread due to political disaffection, especially over cronyism. Many officers sold military equipment to supplement their salaries, an acute problem among those deployed to foreign war zones. The Soviet government often used Russian organize crime as a front for intelligence operations.
Sources:
The date and idea for the Russian moon landing are from the television show For All Mankind. Source for the moon landing art is unknown.
Quora user Alexander Ginnegan offers a fascinating list (https://www.quora.com/What-technology-inventions-have-the-Soviets-contributed-to-the-world-that-isn-t-well-known) of Soviet scientific-technological achievements.
Picture of "East Berlin" is "777Jihad" by isleeyin on DeviantArt.
Picture of tractor is "Steam Crawler" by kceg on DeviantArt.
Picture of futuristic Moscow is "USSR 2.0" by ianllanas on DeviantArt.
The Quebec Independence War concept of false-flag attacks by a "Black Watch" unit is from Cold War Hot, ed. Peter G. Tsouras.
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No one dared to ask his business / No one dared to make a slip / The stranger there among them / Had a big iron on his hip - Datalinks, Traditional
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/e36b69a2-a218-4f43-97c0-dd316a21c699/dfwvqya-ca6d9169-9df3-458b-b086-01baf99437ce.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1280,q_75,strp/futuristic_city_moscow_by_pickgameru_dfwvqya-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTI4MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2UzNmI2OWEyLWEyMTgtNGY0My05N2MwLWRkMzE2YTIxYzY5OVwvZGZ3dnF5YS1jYTZkOTE2OS05ZGYzLTQ1OGItYjA4Ni0wMWJhZjk5NDM3Y2UuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.ePcnWRYNiWw-S6PXoxe1YaZwJZhImINIUd-vlsbIRDc)
The Abbasov Institute of Automatic Information Processing in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR, where the system architecture of the Unity computer core was first conceived.
Unity's computer systems followed the principles of mainframe computing, slaving many terminals to two high-reliability computational engines, a primary and a back-up. This also simplified standards selection for the hardware and software that could be contributed by mission donors. Mainframe Computing is a UNITY tech.
By special agreement with France, the mainframe ran three operating systems simultaneously, the shipwide standard (using Bharat Operating System Solutions, BOSS), a partitioned Minitel instance for user-to-user plain text communication, and a partitioned Soviet-sourced Kronos instance dedicated to the ship's fission plants.
Cold War tensions prevented emergence of a shared programming language, and the field of practical computer science was fragmented along national lines, with well-established English, French, Russian, Japanese, Indian, Esperanto, and Chinese branches.
The official mission language was English, and proficiency with that language was a requirement for crew selection prior to 2050, but non-English-speakers together formed a plurality of the crew. Non-intuitive keyboards hampered timely, accurate input for systems administrators and made text communication practically impossible for traditional life-safety responders.
Even within Data Services, only a small percentage of technicians could work proficiently with the French- and Soviet-made sub-systems. The Minitel system survived through efforts by the New State to establish a closed network, but Zakharov declined to use Kronos for his nodes on grounds that science required collaboration. Use of a Chironian Standard was a major plank of Council business for the Morganites and Data Angels.
The Children of the Atom experimented with trinary and quatrinary (quantum) machines not long after Planetfall but chose to use BOSS for most of their applications because of the difficulty of manufacturing new hardware in the colonial setting.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfPK3LRXkAI5_XI.jpg)
Unity's computing center prior to launch. Technicians are verifying correct operation of components.
The ship's secondary core was manually disconnected from the primary by a Data Services panic button moments after the mainframe control room was breached by mutineers.
The secondary core was physically absent from its housing twenty-five hours after the micrometeorite impact when Data Services teams organized by Sathieu Metrion reached the ship's data center to perform damage assessment. Two U.N. Security Forces officers lay dead of flechette wounds at the man trap.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/77c86eb4-ef86-4ae3-9dce-9e1093a163b4/d894wy1-268f9b53-9483-4a17-9ca0-c68e5a9ebca0.jpg/v1/fill/w_600,h_800,q_75,strp/fate_of_the_vanguard_back_cover_by_jonhrubesch_d894wy1-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODAwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNzdjODZlYjQtZWY4Ni00YWUzLTlkY2UtOWUxMDkzYTE2M2I0XC9kODk0d3kxLTI2OGY5YjUzLTk0ODMtNGExNy05Y2EwLWM2OGU1YTllYmNhMC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9NjAwIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.--fyXWIDYLtBO5Gu-19csvyJTRwT7wcd9Xm0MUjgyDA)
Data Services personnel drain kinetic gel from cryotubes before bringing compatriots out of cold sleep during the evacuation of Hab Bay 4.
Computer scientists were prized targets for recovery, recruitment, capture, or elimination, depending upon one's ethical predisposition.
Colonist Morgan and Governor Van de Graaf organized retrievals based on lists of colonists with whom they had previously contracted for computing services. Directors Anhaldt, Pahlavi, and Cohen, and Assistant Director Metrion, moved to retrieve their respective staffs. After the mission's dissolution, Cohen and Pahlavi returned to claim as prisoners various others that has escaped their initial sweeps.
Data Services was not monolithic. Many of its personnel spent their careers seconded to other departments, rarely interacting with the leadership of their own. As a consequence, these forward-deployed Data Services members usually absorbed the cultural and political outlooks of their new environments wholesale. Seconded crew were therefore treated identically to the core members of any department they served for purposes of evacuation and faction alignment.
Sources:
Abbasov Institute bears the name of former Azerbaijani Minister of Communications and Information Technologies Ali Mammad oglu Abbasov.
First image is "Futuristic city Moscow" by Pickgameru on DeviantArt.
Second image is the Astuter Computer Revue at Commicore at EPCOT in Walt Disney World during the 1980s.
Third image is Fate of the Vanguard BACK COVER by JonHrubesch on DeviantArt.
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Had a request to know what project ideas got left on the cutting room floor. Glad to oblige.
The answer to that question properly begins with a short story. If you don't know about Nick Stipanovich's blog Paean to SMAC, you ought to go read it. A tour de force of literary critique by somebody who very clearly loves the game. One of the visitors was none other than Brian Reynolds himself. I took the opportunity of our chance encounter in the comments section to pose a question: were there any faction ideas for the original game that didn't make it over the finish line? To my amazement, Reynolds said there were not.
We'll take it by faction.
University of Planet - Not much pruned away here. At one point, Pahlavi and Anhaldt were actual or potential subordinates. Zakharov's fears for his own mortality are a relatively new addition. I can't recall where I encountered that concept. Perhaps in the GURPS material.
Gaia's Stepdaughters - What you see is essentially what you get. The particulars about her parents' divorce apparently come from the GURPS sourcebook. At one point, I debated giving her the title of "Speaker." In some earlier versions of the story, she was a native of Northern Ireland, not a Free Scotland. I pondered making the Hunters of Chiron a cadet faction of the Gaians at one point because of their shared attitudes toward conservation.
Human Hive - No big changes.
Morgan Industries - At certain points in the past I've been less well-disposed toward the name "Morgan Industries," which I viewed as too egotistical, until I decided that was the point. Their alternate name was "Dynamic Enterprise," which I sometimes still use. At times, van de Graaf was a partner that went rogue. Morgan Industries has become more villainous over time.
Spartan Federation - Their current militia is the Myrmidons, but in my early notes they are called the Phalanx. I've used the Hunters as a cadet for the Spartans, too, based on Marsh's attitude toward physical fitness. Old notes put Santiago's origins in Peru.
Peacekeeping Forces - Lal's personal history is case study in the dangers of pathological consensus-seeking, but the story of his governance is much more flattering because of how much space he makes for humility. I don't usually have much to say about the death of his wife. In versions of the story I have told elsewhere, Lal works hard to convert ex-Spartans to his cause. His chief antagonists are neither Spartans or Hivemen, but Charterists, because of the parallels to slavery.
Lord's Conclave - Elsewhere, I've called them Believers. Sometimes her appellation is "Prophet." She has at times originated in both the Christian States and the United States. In a very early version of the story, she was a straightforward Dominionist who simply wanted to destroy anyone that would not accept absorption into her religious community.
The New State - St. Germaine has been a nobleman from southern France, a Quebecois, and a Maronite Christian from Lebanon. His faction is a consolidation of two older versions, one with the same name, and the other called "The Beneath." The latter was a wholesale replacement for the Nautilus Pirates, with a much heavier lean toward environmental conservation that traced back to a belief that civilian on Earth had failed because they poisoned the oceans. In very early notes, their leader was the ship's Executive Officer, Francisco d'Almeida. Today, St. Germaine would probably qualify as an "illiberal democrat"--the kind of person who wants certain media suppressed, or certain people arrested, on grounds that they are damaging to the common good. The First Cut New State straightforwardly an implementation of feudal kingship. D'Almeida's original appellation was "Lord of the Manner." They used to start with a Foil, not a Pressure Hull (submarine).
New Two Thousand - Oscar van de Graaf has at times between a Native American, but in all other respects his story has been consistent. He was once "Conquistador," not "Empreassario." He had a Future Work called The Settlement Charter. For some inscrutable reason, I have a notation that they once started with a Unity Chopper.
The Tribe - Not much change. Sometimes, the notes seem to make out that Landers and his faction are villains--persecuted to the point that they live only for a bloody vengeance.
The Human Ascendancy - Pahlavi was sometimes raised in Switzerland, sometimes in Iran, with stronger or weaker association to the eponymous ruling dynasty. Pahlavi, like Cohen, has a history that links her to the ARC and the American Vault Program. This was part of an effort to give each of the leaders some prior history with one another. The Human Ascendancy has a sub-theme of gerontocracy and attempts to reverse the aging process.
Tomorrow Institute/Initiative - No major changes. They're incomplete themselves.
Children of the Atom - I've only recently begun building them out. A recent post dealt with their origins.
Hunters of Chiron - No major changes. At one point, Marsh was functionally a dinosaur hunter because there was a bigger link to Jurassic Park. He also did some work for Morgan Industries in one treatment, but that no longer fits his personality.
Dreamers of Chiron - The only major change is that the two faction leaders were once in a romantic relationship, but I discarded that, or at least didn't address it any further, as time went on because I didn't want to distract from the characters as individuals.
There were a number of other factions created over time. Tomorrow Rising was a "balancing" faction led by an Indonesian woman whose raison d'etre was to preserve a balance of power on Chiron. They eventually became the Memory of Earth.
I have some incomplete notes for a faction called the Archimedes Group led by an Indian prison commissioner, Sardul Singh. The concept was that they were trying to create a superior society through stage-managing every aspect of its physical surroundings, but the faction was too similar to the Human Hive.
At one point, the Holnists were "Tremaynists." Eventually, I just decided to have an overt homage to David Brin.
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And it was so (pt. 4.1)
Perhaps the strangest of strains among the Gaia's Stepdaughters is one that has only recently joined the faction. The Confederation of the Land, previously considered an Autochthon-class proto-faction, has made the obligatory prayers at Resurrection Grove and sworn to uphold the Planetary Ecology Code, bringing its varied clans into the Lady's garden. These newest Gaians is also one of the oldest cultures of Planet, and their very presence has shaken previous norms and preconceptions throughout the faction.
(https://i.imgur.com/zsSjJrC.jpg)
You call us blind, yet you see only through quartz. You call us fools, yet you think only with lightning. You call us base, yet you want only to plunder. Reach into your bones, let your heart beat. Do you not feel the world-spirit? The land gives blessings unimaginable, you need only but listen. - Greeting Lost Brothers
Born Whitehorse, Canada. Member of Gilpin climate pioneer family of Edmonton, sent to resettle newly-arable territories beneath melted permafrost. Grew up in boomtown suburbs of farmers, miners, and service staff pouring into the Yukon, dispatched and subsidized by an Ottawa frantically trying to stabilize population and wealth as it lost eastern territories. At age six, once disappeared from family picnic at Tombstone Territorial Park for full day before discovered kilometers away from trail, in a grove of subalpine firs, shivering but unscathed.
Likely pursued outdoor lifestyle as escape from cramped frontier settlements, frequent violence among immigrant youth. Devoted Young Klondiker, advancing to Voyageur scout by adulthood, exemplary badges in tracking, plant science, and birdwatching. Hiked the length of the Chilkoot Trail sufficient times to act as local youth guide. Junior regional ice fishing champion, third place. Avid kayaker. Interned as aide to veterinarian team of Yukon Quest race annually during secondary school, traveling from checkpoint to checkpoint by snowmobile, inspecting sled dogs.
Studied at Yukon University, majoring in Zoology and minoring in Forest Management. First role out of school was resource monitor for Viridis Thule project in the Greenlandic Isles, overseeing mass planting of trees on fertile soil exposed by melting ice sheet. Joint enterprise between the American Reclamation Corporation and the Zakharov Research Institute. Found himself involved in duties including the monitoring the progress of new-growth forests, inspecting their burgeoning ecosystems were stable from the inside, taking core samples of the dwindling glacier, and building relationships with the Kalaallit and other Inuit peoples of the archipelago.
Three events of note happened during assignment: First, shortly upon arrival, Pope Zachary II visited Nuuk, as part of the Seeing the Multitude campaign initiated by the New Papacy. Though not a Catholic, was present in the welcoming crowds, witnessing the Greenlanders gifting the pontiff a great halibut, which was then blessed. Second, while mountaineering through the Alángup Qáqai range on Disko Island, Gilpin's team discovered a frozen unicellular microbial colony of cryobacter katlensis. Originally presumed to be fossilized- and extinct- the colony turned out to be very much alive even after untold millions of years, immediately drawing extreme interest from Zakharov researchers. The seemingly laws of biology-defying sample was airlifted back to the mainland, eventually coming into United Nations possession.
(https://i.imgur.com/3EpaWji.jpg)
Joseph Gilpin in Gander following evacuation and indefinite hiatus of Viridis Thule
Last, not long after the disastrous Battle of Baffin Bay in the west, naval forces of the Unified Norden Realm swarmed the isles, seeking to protect Danish- thus Nordic- patrimony from pirates and United States Navy deserters fleeing the scene. Unexpectedly, a third group reared its head- the Red Banner Northern Fleet arrived with Soviet flagship Pyotr Velikiy at its head, seeking to avenge recent Norden insults from the Komi ASSR to the IOEZ colony of New Kola. The resulting standoff involved weeks of brinkmanship, more NATO fleets, and the appearance of a rogue American submarine, nearly triggering DEFCON escalation. ARC-Zak team airlifted by VTOL to Newfoundland.
Soon after, Gilpin found his name advanced to the U.N. Selection Committee for the Unity mission, an opportunity he had no prior ambitions for, but was glad to accept as a follow-up gig. Admitted to Unity Biology corps. Retrained as xenobiologist, mission statement to find and study extraterrestrial lifeforms. Tested with analyzing hundreds of speculative species, including bioengineered microbial cultures. Passed but did not excel. Given additional auxiliary role as terrabiologist to maintain stock of mission supply of Earth flora and fauna, particularly trees. Fairly unexceptional member of staff. Slight anomalies detected in routine Ganzfeld exams.
Get to the <indistinct> we can avoid the galley. Camo hosers still fighting blue hats there and I don't think our boys are winning. God help 'em. Any stragglers stumble our way, we got enough pitchforks to fight them off and sleep sprays to drive them off. Everyone keep close and hold on to your buddy. I'm not losing a single one of this troop. Let's get out of this gong show. - excerpt of audio captured in aft Biology Lab Sparrow, Planetfall
Latent leadership potential came to forefront upon awakening towards the latter hours of the Planetfall crisis. Found himself tossed in with the crumbs of the crew, those who had not yet banded with a side or faction possessing weapons, supplies, and/or a way off the ship. Remembering how Yukon mushers mustered sled dogs, asserted command over shocked and still-waking remainders. Grabbing improvised weapons, the last remnant of unaffiliated survivors fought their way to an escape pod. At this point most of the factions and contractors had left the scene, the ship becoming the desperate final battleground between the most crazed Holnists, most vicious Blue Operatives, and hapless security team members caught between.
The pod narrowly avoided crashing to land in the Riven Valley. At the center of a continental rift separating the Latreus Mountains, this site proved to be arable thanks to a thin stream running through its center, the water's moisture trapped within the rift walls. Unfortunately, like mold, xenofungus has sprouted extensively throughout the length of the valley, clustering into towering heights as "forests," expanding into fields beyond both exits of the valley. To make matters worse, the pod was stocked with the absolute dregs of leftover materiel, hastily gathered by the fleeing mishmash of colonist and junior crew. The first camp was an exercise in conservation and tech cannibalism. They dwelled not in a proper base but pressure tents huddled around the remnants of the landing pod. Limited amount of equipment meant technology base was low.
(https://i.imgur.com/OMczhn7.jpg)
A lone scout approaches a xenofungus "ganglion" in the Riven Valley
Once again, Camp Leader Gilpin put his skills to the test. The xenobiologist had the survivors live off the land. Every tendril of the fungus, each critter that dwelled between its razor vines, any fishlike creature that slithered through the stream, all were tested for edibility and potability. Wearing new pressure masks cobbled together from spare pod engine parts, the explorers of the fragile colony nervously ventured into the valley, finding themselves in a misty place covered by strange xenofungal forests. Useful nutrients among the spores and trace minerals in the stalks lurked there, but so did sprawling antediluvian sporelines stretching from wall to wall of the rift, clustering in what resembled ganglia resplendent in shifting colors alien and indecipherable.
The landscape was perplexing, not a gentle rolling glen but pockmarked with boulders in strange gibbous agglomerations, enclosing clouds of intoxicating and often noxious gases that bade endless hours of lucubration from the xenochemists of First Camp. Miraculously, there seemed to be no mindworms in the valley, but the resonant, always-present hum of the fungus was enough to drive some among that number mad. Many swore they saw shapes in the fog, shade and shadows of some humanoid creature, flittering and drifting and always just beyond the corner of one's eye. Most unsettling of all, actual electronic signals did indeed detect unexplained readings, sensor ghosts, proving that these were more than mirages concocted by half-starved minds.
Despite the haunting enigma of the Riven Valley, Gilpin was resolute in that they could not simply stay in one location. As their tents were spare and equipment diffuse, he modeled expansion after the First Nations settlements of his homeland, building scattered low-intensity villages rather than putting all of their population’s eggs in a single basket. Some were built even when the fungus song hummed louder, under the eaves of the forests themselves, within sight of the ganglia.
(https://i.imgur.com/vdKqqpj.png)
A post-hunt chronicling ritual of the first decade, outside Burial Mound
As the mission years passed, more and more psychiatric incidents occurred among the struggling colonists of the Riven Valley. SASA attacks were common, sending perfectly productive, vital, personnel into fugue states, forgetting where and who they were. Psych chaplains were stretched thin and burned out. To soothe his frightened flock, the Camp Leader personally led them on vigorous physical drills. Devoting spare time to training sessions deep among the vines, his colonists practiced with low-powered hand weapons against foes both past and future: incursions from those bandits and thugs they saw aboard the Unity, invasion by the alien powers glimpsed in the shadows. As time wore on and the shredder rounds and NATO ammunition grew scarce from hunting trips, the survivors began to experiment with handcrafted preindustrial weapons, bows and arrows, slings, machetes, javelins, lances, axes. To ward off the larger, more dangerous fauna, they began to fashion helms and masks as protective armor.
But militarism for its own sake was not enough to shake the whispering wood. Having steeled the campers for Melpomene, Gilpin now turned their gaze towards Thalia. From tragedy, to comedy- and the arts. As their meager supply of electronics deteriorated and became e-waste for want of batteries and replacement solar panels, the colonists attempted to keep up their spirits through story-telling. A means to preserve their memories of Earth, they held daily recitations at mealtime. Eventually, the subject matter incorporated news from the current day, becoming more elaborate. Fearsome epics of battles against the monsters of the weald to keep up the strength of their fighters. Explanatory legends of demystification to rationalize the pervasive haunting fungal song. Aspirational yarns of what alien beings were out there to perhaps console those who were terrified of enemy unknown. These plays became ritualized, incorporating makeshift masks and costumes. Some dared even to perform before audiences outside, at boulder-dotted concaving ditches in the valley that served as natural amphitheaters.
(https://i.imgur.com/iz0jrio.jpg)
Effigy of the Green King, one of the chief aspects of the world-spirit
The practices that Camp Leader Gilpin instituted evolved into rituals. In the fungus-choked valley, fraught with dangerous flora and fauna and the very terrain itself, colonists sought solace wherever they could. The story of a successful prior mission might be recounted during the preparation of a new one, then key sequences, then quotes- chapter and verse- from specific scenes. Good luck habits such as rubbing a plastic figurine of Santa Claus, salvaged from some luggage pack deep within the pod, became customs.
And most of all, the morbid fascination with the constant music from the forests consumed the campers. Tomorrow Institute data archeologists would later discover that the final electronic recordings made in the tech-regressed camps were attempted reproductions of the fungus song. Created with a mixture of physical instruments, the croaking synthesizers of the group’s dying computers, and a cappella human voices, this atonal chorus strove to mimic the soundless, permeating call of the wild.
(https://i.imgur.com/ukWmW0b.png)
Swarming boil of Locusts of Chiron assume the swirling formation interpreted as a portent of the Yellow Knight
Fifty mission months after the founding of the First Camp came the Night of Whispers. During the annual Planetfall Day celebration, now commemorating the beginning of the sixth mission year, all those who gathered in every single camp was struck dumb at once. A moment after, strange and wondrous changes occurred. Across the valley, men and women began speaking in tongues they had never known, yet understanding each other completely. Some fell to the ground and saw visions. Others simply conjured them out from their hands, lights dancing from their fingers. Music of indescribable beauty filled the air. Cloudy vortices formed in the air above each celebratory scene. Those who had amnesia could now remember, but still more suddenly forgot and misremembered, believing themselves to be safe on Earth or to be figures straight from mythology.
Gilpin himself began speaking in Norman French, a language he had never heard of, let alone heard. And so he spoke, and found himself seeing incandescent footprints leading out from the camp into the thicketed vines of the fungal woods. Tracks that led to more nutrient resources, metals ripe for construction. He saw a future in which his people abounded in multitudes, fruitful upon the Planet, harmonious with every manner of beast that dwelled upon it. For some reason, whether standing by his side or on the other side of the valley at Thunder Peak, all could hear him.
The ecstatic indwelling was gone by the end of the night, yet all could remember its impact. From those hours of revelation, the denizens of the Riven Valley ceased to be disparate, desperate survivors. Now they were the true natives of Chiron's natural landscape. Thus was born the Confederation of the Land.
(https://i.imgur.com/chjrjmx.jpg)
Revelers of the Bauer Clan crown their Midsummer Spirit-Maiden, symbolic daughter of the world-spirit
The revelation of the Night of Whispers changed all within the valley. Finally, the unseen powers of the land had deigned to speak to its wayward inhabitants, and chosen its shaman of shamans. The now High Chief Joseph rejoiced before his citizens, proclaiming that the Wilderness had made itself known to them at last. After the last years of cowering in fear, they now knew the shapes in the mist were servants of the wild. Out of all those who had ridden the doomed, accursed Unity to Chiron, they were the elect who had found blessing from the will of the Planet itself. This world that was more than a world, one imbued with a thinking, blessing spirit. One that infused each of its creations, plant, animal, fungus, and other with spirits of each own, all which could intervene to aid humanity.
By the end of the first mission decade, the proto-faction had manifested. The last of their salvaged high-technology had fallen away into the deepest recesses of abandoned, rusting Unity buggies and other broken vehicles. The original landing pod itself was abandoned, denounced as a forbidden site of tragedy and taboo energies. In its wake did the survivors of the valley gather in small clusters of pressure tents, named not after number or symbol, but after the patriarchs and matriarchs of the clans, chiefs uplifted by their paramount or by their people. Vrettos, Rackham, Nduwayo, Adhikari, Li- these were but some of the chieftains who scouted the land, slew the game, erected new encampments, and channeled the spirits of this mystic place. Above them, the High Chief listened wisely to their counsel and adjudicated their disputes.
And below, the new religion of the Land, known by some later scholars as Terokredo (Esperanto: “Land Faith”), but known by adherents as the “will of the world-spirit,” permeated the camps. What was once creatures of folklore, Earth mythology and datalinks fiction, even jokes passed from nervous scouts to spooked colonist, became enshrined as actual spirits. All were considered figments of the entity that had spoken to them and through Joseph on that fateful Night. In each family tent of every clan village, idols, effigies, fetishes, and other bundles of sticks or bits of clay and cloth were fashioned for devotion to each household’s guardian spirit.
As the mission decade drew to a close, the Landsmen had successfully populated the length of the once-forbidding Riven Valley, even expanding into the xenofungus fields- the world-spirit's flower gardens- that bookended the region. This was merely their first step towards reintegration with the other survivors of the Unity.
(https://i.imgur.com/jMTtupM.jpg)
Casting
Joseph Gilpin is portrayed by Barry Keoghan in order of appearance as Druig in Eternals, Dominic Kearney in The Banshees of Inisherin, and “Scavenger” in The Green Knight
Notes
Joseph Gilpin is the leader of the Confederation of Tribes (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Confederation_of_Tribes), a faction from the SMAC Fac Pack (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Category:SMAC_Fac_Pack) mod project. Character details are from correspondence with mod co-creator nweismuller.
Barry Keoghan showreel: Druig (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy8AbGKaQE0), Dominic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUz-1V3ym5s), and Scavenger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFNRDRbcZqo). Nice range.
Vatican-Greenland relations is a nod to the latter's prime minister (do they even have one?) visiting Pius XIII (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_vhwZZjgac) in The Young Pope. Zachary II is a much more polite pope, though.
Cryobacter katlensis is the tiniest cryptid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UOyYk0K6kk&t=1560s) in the world of Disco Elysium. Whether it was instrumental to Zakharov’s breakthroughs in the Wespe-Quinn-Vagner hibernation process and/or anti-aging longevity cures, and if the inclusion of such a dubious component may have led to mass insanity aboard the Unity, is an exercise left to the reader.
“The Fascinating Story of the Comedy and Tragedy Masks (https://theaterlove.com/comedy-tragedy-masks/)” is where I learned the names of the tragedy and comedy masks of theater, and that the first Greek plays evolved from rituals worshiping Dionysus, which seems very apt.
Design Notes
This rendering of Joseph “High Chief” Gilpin is a fairly straightforward adaptation of the original character concept, with additional details from creator nweismuller. Strain name changed from original faction name to prevent confusion with this setting’s Tribals. “Base” names taken from faction txt file (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Confederation_of_Tribes/TRIBALS.txt).
Unlike the last two Gaian strain leaders, this one isn’t meant to be much influenced by the film characters he bears his likeness from, other than a general sense of otherworldly unease. I will say it’s rather wonderful that this is an actor who has played multiple roles dressed in primeval verdant. I rather like this creepy line from The Green Knight: “Though you know, nature will do its trick. She’ll suck ’em in and tuck ’em tight.” Keoghan also co-starred in American Animals, which just feels like it thematically keeps in with themes of societal outcasts, the thin line between civilization and savagery, naturalists, etc. (trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmJYELj-jNE))
Speaking of which, in terms of visual imagery I’ve tried to capture the neopagan otherworldliness of the Tribals- sorry, the Landsmen- perhaps the freemen of the land? - by cribbing from popular eerie depictions of nature cults. I was just this close from using images The Blair Witch Project itself, or even Nicolas Cage’s The Wicker Man.
This goes back to the Ecological Malcontents (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21792.msg137135#msg137135) profile- Planetmind, even in its most benevolent conception, is something that sends worms to drive you insane and eat your eyes. There is something Lovecraftian, pagan as the Salem Puritans understood it, about any group that willingly entrusts its destiny to such a being, at least up until you research The Voice of Planet and can actually have a civilized conversation worth a damn with it.
I’d say Jean Fox and her agitators are like the doomed investigators of a Lovecraft story, traipsing on the edge of the abyss because they cannot help but to understand. Joseph Gilpin and his clans are the actual cultists of Cthulhu. In contrast, mainline Gaians include everyone from environmentally-motivated scientific secularists to INTEGR green technocrats to neopagans who carry on traditions from Earth without actually hearing Chiron, to those like Deirdre Skye who are presumably wise enough to take what Planet says with a grain of salt. And again, Skye’s utter pacifism and love for all life precludes her from being as ruthless on behalf of Planet as some of these strains, or the inevitable Cult that is to come.
I think the concept of tribals is solid- just look at the titular ones (https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Tribals) from Fallout- but I shied away from leaning on the typical conception of neoprimitives in this imagining. Partly because the vibe is a little too The Nature Company-shopping, world music-listening, Burning Man-attending for me. Partly because they’d be far too low-tech for a space colony society. No loincloths or bone necklaces here.
Image Credits
The explorer standing before a giant fungal cluster is "Alien Planet 01 (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8EzoQ)" by Vaggelis Manousakas. Check out the second image in the set, now that's some great psychic fungus concept art.
Neopagan nature imagery comes from, in order, Yellowjackets, The Green Knight, True Detective (season one), Midsommar.
In a remarkable coincidence, the Bauer Clan, one of the Tribal base names, shares its namesake with the work of Swedish painter John Bauer (https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/midsommar-is-harga-real), an influence on the last.
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Bit of a slow-down on my end as I go on holiday. Back next week!
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/8e73e36d-a092-4967-9330-14674a17fe49/dcsbthc-4af0caed-ba73-4222-9faa-c719f1417752.jpg/v1/fill/w_1600,h_901,q_75,strp/scavenging_by_kawassass00_dcsbthc-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTAxIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvOGU3M2UzNmQtYTA5Mi00OTY3LTkzMzAtMTQ2NzRhMTdmZTQ5XC9kY3NidGhjLTRhZjBjYWVkLWJhNzMtNDIyMi05ZmFhLWM3MTlmMTQxNzc1Mi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.Zo3jYhHUNVHc5Yy5oiuidYVXYHDjafvdiPoBeaFWyfs)
A University Scout Patrol investigates Unity wreckage not far from Academy Park. A sonic disruption emitter, visible in the foreground, provides a small measure of safety from mindworm attacks but is redundant at such high latitude. A shortage of hand weapons caused quartermasters to issue electroprods, devices intended for animal handling.
On the advice of his physicians, Chief Engineer Zakharov chose not to relocate from the unfavorable location where his landing pods first came down. There were too many sick to contemplate relocation.
The ice fields surrounding University Base were metal-rich, at least, and gave up their secrets without complaint. Core samples recovered by teams of University geologists yielded important insights about Planet's enigmatic grand seasons.
His scientists built their new civilization largely unmolested, spreading reading solars and xenomaterials labs among the snowbound foothills of the Orithyian Range. Crossing those mountains, they later came across the Upland Wastes to within sight of Sunny Mesa on the far horizon.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/562dbe41-9bee-46d7-90b8-17c02f79dfdc/d4kl2ct-1d6b80d5-f83d-4ad0-ad09-fedf3621d41a.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzU2MmRiZTQxLTliZWUtNDZkNy05MGI4LTE3YzAyZjc5ZGZkY1wvZDRrbDJjdC0xZDZiODBkNS1mODNkLTRhZDAtYWQwOS1mZWRmMzYyMWQ0MWEuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.MmpHF-7PbbTKdlh_1au-iLtFmt11keJmkapoJ89-U5k)
A Volvo powersled ferries relief crews to Agricultural Shelters 9 and 10 on the North Polar Shelf. Clocking speeds of over 300km/h, powersleds were frequently appropriated for joyrides.
Faction warders punished infractors aggressively to deter such behavior, which placed critical equipment--to say nothing of lives--at very great risk of injury. Repeated crop failures obliged Zakharov to keep a close watch on all growing operations, and rapid transport was at a premium.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/0fadacc6-c1a5-4b3b-8e85-d0dba31330e0/dfz72xd-33e0ad23-6dc1-4342-85ce-14d8b993ae77.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_854,q_80,strp/athra_by_commonbymaru_dfz72xd-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODU0IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMGZhZGFjYzYtYzFhNS00YjNiLThlODUtZDBkYmEzMTMzMGUwXC9kZno3MnhkLTMzZTBhZDIzLTZkYzEtNDM0Mi04NWNlLTE0ZDhiOTkzYWU3Ny5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.VUzJ6Jb0xhmpKfLl-rLCu2Y7HST4sCKvcIyU1BaXRuQ)
Splendid cathedral cities rose along the Alexandros River in southwestern Shamash, a Hebrew word meaning servant. It was a recycled name, remembering the largest of the artificial landmasses in the IOEZ. Miriam avoided the city, which became a stronghold of zealots driven to frenzied fear by the close proximity of Pilgrim prospectors.
Sources:
First image is "Scavenging" by Kawassass00 on DeviantArt.
Second image is "Ice Planet" by doms3 on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Athra" by Commonbymaru on DeviantArt.
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Convenience is what you want? Any closer and we'd be family. - Promotional material for MorganBazaar
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/61cf405c-44c8-4487-99f1-f5885c6f1b50/d8bj9s-e600ade7-b991-4d13-b6a7-8c674382fc3b.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzYxY2Y0MDVjLTQ0YzgtNDQ4Ny05OWYxLWY1ODg1YzZmMWI1MFwvZDhiajlzLWU2MDBhZGU3LWI5OTEtNGQxMy1iNmE3LThjNjc0MzgyZmMzYi5qcGcifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6ZmlsZS5kb3dubG9hZCJdfQ.iQWo1KYpgci46d3SkpGLfVA0VocIFsQU0A5a8u-e7uQ)
If you could not go to the Morganites, they would come to you. Starting out from Golgu, their traders soon crossed the ocean to Shamash to present themselves--fearlessly--at every settlement they could find. When refused entry, they founded their own bases nearby and waited patiently for another audience.
This merchant, sketched on the Upper Slowwind, has a visor for the suns, a homemade re-breather for the nitrogen-heavy air, and makeshift body armor in case of attack by shredder pistol. A cudgel is his only weapon, suggesting business has not been good. In his last extremity, he may choose to sell his protective devices for their scrap value.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/07ec6c25-30ab-453d-a87a-096ac400923f/dfzc2aw-f3aeed9d-ce46-4401-ab89-5fccc3692200.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_720,q_75,strp/erth621_by_elvisuall_dfzc2aw-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzIwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMDdlYzZjMjUtMzBhYi00NTNkLWE4N2EtMDk2YWM0MDA5MjNmXC9kZnpjMmF3LWYzYWVlZDlkLWNlNDYtNDQwMS1hYjg5LTVmY2NjMzY5MjIwMC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.oKx53j_NxsolkJph_9aMsmlLsFourE3-GO0kupFwNLQ)
Hunters of the Pleiades Lodge returned to High Hide and Terra Nova with stories of root systems that branched for kilometers along valley floors, soaring to heights as much as fifteen meters. Their impressions, passed on to Deirdre Skye through Pilgrim prisoners taken in vendetta, informed the Lady's Theory of the Living Planet.
This Hunter survey team charts a course through the gloaming. For protection, the rearguard carries a rocket-propelled grenade launcher loaded with a high-explosive squash head munition--enough to crack the bark should the roots go into motion.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/75ece086-e8ab-4aaf-ad27-19ddde5f0539/dfzeb2z-8fd8ba4f-0090-46d1-a985-1ec1b243328d.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzc1ZWNlMDg2LWU4YWItNGFhZi1hZDI3LTE5ZGRkZTVmMDUzOVwvZGZ6ZWIyei04ZmQ4YmE0Zi0wMDkwLTQ2ZDEtYTk4NS0xZWMxYjI0MzMyOGQuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.xDKd-uKGnldFmS9iIvdWHkXjkeC7olpPMC6C_XvTJqM)
The Memory of Earth used Hoppers like this Kero Systems Wind Zipper utility craft to ferry settlers over intervening territories, straddling the Vertian Valley, where lay hidden the Four Cores, southernmost of the Children of the Atom's long string of bases, which ran the extent of the continent into the Orithyan and Sawtooth Mountains. Johann Anhaldt's people soon learned to fear Meractor's crack troops.
Wind Zippers, an Indian product, had extremely limited passenger capacity but their hull-mounted waldoes were acceptable replacements for earthmoving machinery that could not be risked on overland routes. Brought from Earth to capture and mine rogue objects moving through the Alpha Centauri system, they instead became trapped in Planet's gravity well and served the remainder of their lives as sub-orbital transports.
Sources:
First image is "Slaver" by Keithwormwood on DeviantArt.
Second image is "Erth621" by Elvisuall.
Third image is "Abduction" by GameLikeFire.
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And it was so (pt. 4.2)
(https://i.imgur.com/ajjl1uc.jpg)
Explorers of the Armstrong Clan see a sign from the world-spirit on their first step out of the Riven Valley
The first mission decade had transformed the Confederation of the Land from last resort ragtag fragments to a people loosely confederated along familial ties, each clan ruled by worthy heroes of that wild valley. The former xenobiologist Joseph Gilpin, now a shaman visionary, sat first among equals at the newly-renamed headquarters of Council Lodge, but neither claimed overlordship among the clans, nor sole prophecy among the shamans. He did not have to. Those heady years were marked by equanimity and unanimity among the Landsmen, for all agreed that the world-spirit was real, the world-spirit was good, and the world-spirit wanted these sole survivors, kissed by the very Land itself, to recognise and live in harmony with the spirits of this world.
Soon after the Night of Whispers, the new Confederation began efforts for their emergence from the blighted holy valley. Their foray into low-tech weapons had provided plenty of slings and arrows for combating predators that disregarded the spirits. But for more dangerous game, they could not revert to absolute atavism.
(https://i.imgur.com/zlzAKhW.jpg)
A Hosa shock troop of the Rackham Clan carrying an AK-NV with axe bayonet attachment and wearing a ceremonial Bloodied Snow pressure mask
Fortunately among their number was Khalil Sultan Niyazov, a Soviet industrial engineer who once served as foreman at the Izhevsk Machine-Building Plant. Even while he now saw new violet-tinted versions of the suun sacred deer and the wolves of traditional Turkmen folklore running among the fungus, and venerated the spirit of the wild as a twin to Earth’s Kayra Han, he remembered how to build guns. Thus, he directed several families to slowly stamp out AK-47, AKM, AK-74, and AK-21C pattern rifles using the rock-basic semi-industrial base that the Confederation retained. When they were ready to venture forth, the first walkers were outfitted with basic slug-throwers capable of combat with any threat. Niyazov was honored as the Weaponsmith of the Land, becoming a clan leader.
The Confederation of the Land was far from the common caricature of a horde of neoprimitive barbarians. Dressed in ninthhand clothes stitched together from salvaged uniforms under comfortable coats and breeches of roughspun fabric, wearing sturdy mallowbeast boots tanned and stitched by the Msuya Clan, bearing pressure masks customized according to each individual’s view of the will of the world-spirit, toting newly-constructed rifles and powderless arms- these brave pioneers were a formidable sight. Each citizen of the clans was ruggedized for extensive outdoor operations. Thus the Landsmen moved swiftly into the new territories. Within a few mission years, new camp bases sprung up, small circles and grids of pressure tents in the style of traditional indigenous yurts, tipis, and goahti.
(https://i.imgur.com/NWgzdVF.jpg)(https://i.imgur.com/EQCu4lQ.jpg)
Two defining faces of the Emergence- a seeress-shaman of the Mokhelhe Clan, and a sharpshooter-scout of the Archer Clan
If you meet a stranger, do not be aggrieved by his ignorance. Those who have not experienced the birthing lack spirit-wisdom. He who has not shared in our dreaming knows no law beyond civilization. You cannot fault them for being grazers of the field. You can only guide them gently to the spirits, as you lead crawcrabs to a pen. But remember, folly is no excuse for evil. He who wishes harm upon your clan is a beast to be returned to the world-spirit.
- On the Birthing-Time
They had never wanted bloodshed. But it was inevitable just the same. The regions surrounding the Riven Valley was the distant frontier for established factions, so they were bereft of any appreciable presence. At most, there were isolated encampments of smacer renegades hiding among deserted Supply Pods and the carcasses of ruined Scout Rovers from doomed expeditions. These asocial outlaws were even more shabby and ramshackle than the tribal Landsmen, and so they generally avoided the columns of Gilpinist settlers treading through the valleys on foot and on subrid-drawn wagons.
The few encounters with the smacers were as ambiguous as the loyalties of the factionless mavericks themselves. Some greeted the explorers and offered them small alien artifacts- either common baubles, or outright fakes- in exchange for maps of the unknown lands that they had emerged from. Others begged for clemency and aid, offering sob stories of persecution from whichever factions they had fled from. For their part, the Landsmen offered to help however they could, believing the world-spirit desired them to extend all life wherever possible. That some of the smacers sought to scam them, rustling their wagons or laying traps for other brigands, only saddened them.
And these people from beyond the valley proved impassive to the call of the spirits. While some of the clan shaman had earnestly preached the will of the world-spirit, of its signs and manifestations, none of the antiestablishment smacers, a class defined by their rejection of cause and creeds, deigned to listen. Some, particularly those who had fled factions based on blind faith, such as the Lord’s Conclave or the Memory of Planet, mocked and spat at the nature-humpers in tribal gear. But that was not the worst offense.
Bold smacer tollsmen demanded payment from these interlopers for passing through “their” jurisdictions. Most backed down when the clan chiefs took off their pressure masks to express their displeasure. The ones who pressed the challenge, as well as ambushers who said nothing but simply attacked the settlers, quickly realized the hidden strengths these half-savages possessed. While the Landsmen carried at best only Kalashnikovs and Niyazovs, their discipline and numbers easily overwhelmed even marauders with stolen impact weapons.
The Ballad of New Amnesty
(https://i.imgur.com/6BRyud1.jpg)
The experimental multi-factional armistice zone on the Silenus Plateau shortly before the arrival of the Landsmen clans
Finding these other tribes of man to be less than friendly, coupled with the intense trauma experienced by those who had awoken during Planetfall, the Landsmen ventured carefully onwards. Once they had gotten through the extended smacer-haunted wastes, they arrived at the frontier of other civilizations. Namely, they discovered the Silenus Plateau, one of the farthest settled territories at the time. Though a mere quarter of the size of the Sunny Mesa, this elevated flatland had become the once-uneasy, now-quiescent, site for several factions. A temperate highland with nutrient-rich xenolichen growing among its industry-refinable rocks encircling small pools of freshwater, the plateau also served as a protective refuge from dangerous wildlife. Its vantage point gave both early warning and tactical advantage against the ground.
Out of both cosmic coincidence, no fewer than six different factions had scouts that had discovered the plateau within a cycle. Perhaps out of the complexity of the situation, the permutations of potential alliances of convenience being too many to contemplate, the factions agreed to nonviolent mutual exploitation of Silenus. Its potential as a launchpad for further exploration was excellent. So like the Antarctic continent was on Old Earth, at least for a time, the plateau was settled by multiple factions with small frontier bases. This unique neutral territory, dubbed New Amnesty, grew to become a polite neighborhood of metaphorical picket fences managed via military preparedness. The factions engaged in light trade and sharing of explorational intelligence on the region, and social ties grew. This mixed salad of peace and prosperity, complete with outdoor parks growing revived Earth conifers alongside gengineered Planet hardwoods, now welcomed the newcomers.
(https://i.imgur.com/gIVZEvm.jpg)
Hutama, the Sumatran-born U.N. Under-Secretary of Economic and Peacecrafting Efforts, directed diplomatic efforts with the Landsmen
From the start, skepticism and suspicion ruled between the two assemblages. The sentries of New Amnesty first assumed the mass of post-apocalyptic-looking scavengers to be some sort of smacer army. Since the early mission decades, the fear of a charismatic bandit king uniting the smacers was a boogeyman for the baseborn. Others presumed they were perhaps a group of Darwin Raiders, seeking to capture the plateau in the name of the Khagan Robin Huxley. Closer inspection of the distinctive wilderness-oriented attire of the Landsmen, and their peculiar subrid steeds, allayed those fears. Yet the clans themselves, who had heard unreliable narratives of oppression from smacers, did not immediately trust these insiders. Regardless, all met at the foot of the plateau under the flag of truce.
Allsaints Abacha, chief of the Abacha Clan, whose Biafran family and followers had been among the first to accept that the world-spirit was an incarnation of their ancestors’ god (in their case, Chukwu) and its spirits simply Chironian variations of the same (for them, the Arusi), represented the Confederation in Gilpin’s stead. Having been disappointed by dishonest capriciousness of the wasteland dwellers, he sought to share the will of the world-spirit to these town-builders, who he trusted to at least be literate.
If you really want peace, prepare to trade. - Everyday Aphorisms for Personal Success
The local Peacekeeping Forces governor Hutama, former Indonesian delegate to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, spoke for the denizens of New Amnesty. Having been sent to the backwater posting for making incessant trade pact proposals back at headquarters, the diplomat who once wrangled megacorp contractors as the U.N. Liaison to the Unity Mission Industry Standards Board had made the most of his little pond. With the mindset that all of Earth’s problems should have been resolved through unfettered, mutually beneficial (yet still self-opportunistically asymmetrical) commerce, he had launched a charm offensive against the neighboring factions with a flurry of resource exchange deals and a Byzantine web of cross-factional agreements. As the prime diplomatic instigator, Hutama subtly set up the United Nations on Planet as the leading force of the plateau. In fact, he had even named the local Peacekeeper base U.N. Amnesty Town, attempting to create a synecdoche to conflate the region with his own faction’s settlement. So when this new rabble of scavenger-survivalists turned up at his door, he was ready to sell arrowheads to these aboriginal reenactors.
What resulted was a confused but vaguely agreeable meeting. The people of the plateau were unable to get a straight answer as to who exactly the savage band was and where it came from, other than claims about “people of the wild” from “the Heart of the World.” The local psych chaplains diagnosed mass delusion, perhaps owing to Spontaneous Atmospheric Shock Amnesia, and definitely exacerbated by technology deficiency. The people of the valley were unable to make the base dwellers understand the significance of the spirits, who lived all among them and were the source of their bounty. The shamans supposed civilization had little improved since the fire in the sky. But they did agree to peaceful relations. After Hutama and his delegation discovered that this settler column had apparently crossed the expanse of wastes, and knew of the geography beyond, he wasted no time in offering them nutrient resources, medical supplies, and all sorts of aid- even rounds for their primitive gas-powered assault rifles he surmised to be of little threat to a particle impactor-level society. In exchange he requested only geographical and anthropological information, which he believed to be intensely useful for expansion operations. And mutual defense against smacers, an easy ask as these newcomers had lamented at length the injurious ingratitude of the wastelanders.
Chief Abacha was once again let down by the resolute incredulity of outsiders, but he remembered the High Chief’s words and resolved to remain patient. He agreed to the deal, asking only to be free to preach the good news of the world-spirit upon the plateau. This ultimately resulted in more or less a Pact of Brotherhood, albeit loosely unofficial, as befitting an agreement between two frontier forces. The Landsmen settlers politely declined a plot of land (delighting Hutama, as it meant more land for the current residents), instead building the new tent base of Lone Pine in the foothills east of Amnesty. They also established a mission to the Silenus Plateau at the Peacekeeper base, where their shamans were to minister to their wayward cousins.
The settler train of the Confederation of the Land would build their largest camp at the doorstep of civilization. For now their wandering was at an end, as here were multiple cities of the plain who were ready to receive the will of the world-spirit. The leader of the plateau seemed overeager to learn what wisdom they held, while doling out lavish amounts of supplies the Landsmen would have gladly killed for.
Of course, this was all too good to be true.
Casting
Hutama is portrayed by Joe Taslim
Design Notes
The Landsmen (Tribals) use of AK-47s, importance of pressure masks and boots, and so on are details provided by faction creator nweismuller. Names of clans all taken from faction base names.
Notes:
Hutama (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Hutama_(CivBE)) is the leader of the sponsor Polystralia (https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Polystralia_(CivBE)), also known as the Commonwealth of the Pacific, from Civilization: Beyond Earth. Teaser lore here (https://civilization.com/civilization-beyond-earth/news/entries/a-candid-interview-with-polystralia-s-hutama/).
Image Credits
Header is a Destiny 2 preview (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/destiny-2-the-final-shape-reveals-cool-big-triangle-also-resurrection-of-nathan-fillion) for its upcoming final campaign The Final Shape
Warrior is an Eclipse (https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Eclipse) soldier from Horizon Zero Dawn tribes concept art (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ylZQn) by Luc de Haan of Guerrilla Games
Seeress is a Priestex character class of the SMAC-influenced Worldfall supplement (https://ufopress.co.uk/2018/06/09/worldfall-in-depth/) for the Legacy: Life Among the Ruins (https://ufopress.co.uk/legacy-life-among-the-ruins/) tabletop RPG.
Sharpshooter is a Hanza (https://metrovideogame.fandom.com/wiki/Hanza) sniper from Metro 2033.
Multicolored space colony base is from Quriocity.
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Section 4.2.3a(12) - Emergency Communication. For all emergency transmissions, use radio channel 433.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/a688dd1a-229f-4139-b25e-09a277d50164/db9vx1i-b15e02e0-b44a-4a8c-9cd2-64411a903062.png/v1/fill/w_1024,h_576,q_80,strp/fallout_4___retextured_terminals___4k_by_ephla442_db9vx1i-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTc2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYTY4OGRkMWEtMjI5Zi00MTM5LWIyNWUtMDlhMjc3ZDUwMTY0XC9kYjl2eDFpLWIxNWUwMmUwLWI0NGEtNGE4Yy05Y2QyLTY0NDExYTkwMzA2Mi5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.o-S9EWfWLZxoVUV77h_yuGjj6BHWNdv0nUDB6fbObYg)
Every part of Unity was made to be repurposed once the expedition arrived on Chiron, including the computer terminals installed in virtually all ship's compartments.
These were simple French- or Soviet-made boxes reliant on cathode ray tube technology, capable only of displaying text and making crude noises to announce system errors. Users that wanted to do more than talk to a hardwired mainframe needed a memory cart containing their program of choice, which they inserted in a central slot.
French models like the one shown here were ready for radio modem communication once on the ground. Signal-finding required manipulating the dials found on the right-hand side of the case.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/061/793/885/4k/maxim-buyanov-222.jpg?1681659623)
One of the more useful pieces of diagnostic medical equipment available to early colonists was the 3KCAP X-ray gun. Fully-charged batteries guaranteed at least eighteen images.
Bad breaks were a constant threat in Chiron's high gravity well. The gun thus earned something of an unwarranted reputation as the harbinger of amputation (the first and last resort in Chiron operating theaters), and many colonists refused the dubious good fortune of its services.
The platform proved versatile enough to be converted to both non-medical civilian and military uses as a ground-effect scanner and a primitive, short-ranged weapon, respectively. At extreme settings, a single burst from an overloaded 3KCAP at 4 meters could inflict instant disorientation, followed within a day by bleeding gums, vomiting, headache, and fatigue.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/044/116/668/4k/rogelio-delgado-shot-1-jpg.jpg?1639130433)
High-powered point-to-point radio kept road crews, scientists, soldiers, and sailors in touch with Base Operations at their points of origin. No item other than the personal oxygenation system was more essential to life "outside the wire."
Unity carried a quarter-million two-way transceivers turned out by Turkish defense manufacturer ASELSAN and marked in English.
Sadly, the practical range of this equipment far exceeded the effective response time of most first responders, and the tinny cries for help on Frequency 433 were usually the bookend of a failed mission rather than the starting point for a successful rescue.
Sources:
First image is "Fallout 4 - Retextured Terminals - 4K" by Ephla442 on DeviantArt.
Second image is "ЛП - 183" by Maxim Buyanov on ArtStation.
Third image is "Sci-Fi Device" by Rogelio Delgado on ArtStation, inspired by the work of Tony Zenitium.
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(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/063/107/819/large/daniel-romanovsky-form-language-jasper-concept-01.jpg?1684752173)
Restorationist fighting vehicles approach a Tribal arcology, intent on its destruction.
Forgiveness was a discipline Mission Loyalists declined to practice.
There is no physical record to tell us what Pete Landers thought of the charges levied against him in the Planetary Council, nor any reason to believe he ever created one. Kellerites could hardly deny the great blow they had struck to the emergency response effort--a fatal one, perhaps, considering the severity of the Hypersurvivalist mutiny already underway.
Landers's cohorts were proud of their bloody work. At Cartersburg the device on their banner read "Nihil doleo," I sorrow over nothing. Unity was evidence of sin to the devoted Kellerite. What worse crime than to relinquish one's ties to family and community in favor of an enterprise that celebrated the anonymity of its members?
Tribal stockades and roundhouses hove close to one another at the mouth of the Slowwind. Expansion was slow, even grudging: there were few enough live births among Landers's people, and before the expulsion of the Spartans at Xerxion, no new colony could be conceived except in immediate peril.
Building skyward was expensive, but the heavy cannon installed in the uppermost levels had commanding range. The column seen here was routed after only a few hours' trouble despite the fighting skill of its members. The Minutemen took many prisoners for future exchange and recovered a platoon's worth of armored vehicles. Landers might have liked to match them against the notoriously mobile Spartans but for economic reasons they were stripped down and used as civilian tractors.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/063/107/851/large/daniel-romanovsky-form-language-jasper-concept-06.jpg?1684752226)
Unit operators at Morgan Monofill consider how to mitigate a burst cask of Shcherbinium 5, a Chironian chemical element and the most radioactive substance known to man.
Shcherbinium 5 was harmonically active at 45,000 Hz and repellent to xenofauna. Morgan Metals cultured the crystals to impregnate vehicle armors and building materials.
Morganite copywriters hailed Shcherbinium as the key to mastery of Chiron.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/002/616/588/large/patrik-rosander-elevator-portfolio.jpg?1463684313)
New State cadets perform routine inspections at Frontenac's Jaws, a military outpost in the Slowwind Delta. Unmanned submersible vehicles could have done the same work more safely and at lower cost, but the experience in pressure suits helped make canny marines of "St. Germaine's Boys."
Almost no problem underwater was a minor one. Sealurks were constantly fouling heat vents and cold water intakes. Shifting sediment blocked escape hatches. Sea creatures, including predators, thrived around pockets of waste heat and compost. Because oxygen scarcity encouraged deep-sea gigantism, pest control was warfare by another name.
Sources:
First and second images are from the collection "Battlefield" by Daniel Romanovsky on ArtStation.
Third image is from the collection "Ballast powered descent vehicles" by Patrik Rosander on ArtStation.
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Food is the soul's ammunition. - Peregrinations of Planet
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/740392b2-2933-4e98-9425-6802706ecc1d/ddroyzt-8223c363-7149-4bce-8de4-71c0582f3c5c.png/v1/fill/w_1280,h_479,q_80,strp/space_farm_by_macarious_ddroyzt-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NDc5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNzQwMzkyYjItMjkzMy00ZTk4LTk0MjUtNjgwMjcwNmVjYzFkXC9kZHJveXp0LTgyMjNjMzYzLTcxNDktNGJjZS04ZGU0LTcxYzA1ODJmM2M1Yy5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.YHS44QpWOrOAYAy3KNUdsSex7JutQhLzgroVt8wEE5Y)
Colonists were pleased to take shifts in community gardens where they received a percentage of all produce brought to harvest. Everywhere, the practice was the same.
Walking wounded like this New State tetra-commander of 17 Inshore Squadron performed light duty in greenhouses as part of their convalescent routines. Scientific illiterates searched for rot-sign and replace insect media.
Deciding what to grow in these shared spaces was a cherished prerogative of all base inhabitants--one of the few decisions granted scrupulous respect by faction leaders worldwide.
Herbs were most in demand, then fruit in the form of coffee cherries and citrus. Kellerites, Spartans, Pilgrims, and Morganites were scoffed at for growing tobacco, which they issued in lieu of coffee.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/877fc050-5da0-4e03-89e7-587b1f6cfe2b/dcbk5zp-1f203755-2e3d-4c40-a5ea-3db6299258df.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_569,q_75,strp/inside_the_market_by_metaphor9_dcbk5zp-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTY5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvODc3ZmMwNTAtNWRhMC00ZTAzLTg5ZTctNTg3YjFmNmNmZTJiXC9kY2JrNXpwLTFmMjAzNzU1LTJlM2QtNGM0MC1hNWVhLTNkYjYyOTkyNThkZi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.3XCIiuN033xBEfgtRwnUiipMaV5DjihH8Zv5g1GSjEQ)
Commercial bio-engineering restored the endangered blue whale and vulnerable sperm whale populations on Earth to the levels of least-concern, and with them, revived the appeal of whaling.
Terrestrial species took to the waters of Chiron more readily than they did to other environments, and their meat was a reliable source of essential vitamins and proteins for flesh-starved settlers.
(https://images.nightcafe.studio/jobs/LAqDK2IOvRZw0bApXQHs/LAqDK2IOvRZw0bApXQHs.jpg?tr=w-1600,c-at_max)
"Subpars" were small commercial establishments that traded in additives used to supplement standard rations. Depending upon the faction, customers might pay in cash (credits), goods, labor, network time, or council votes. They could also swap unwanted items in their meal kit for something more personally palatable.
Salt was popular but expensive. Most diners came for spices, especially pepper and garlic.
Subparts sidelined in sales of alcohol (most often grain alcohol, derived from surplus rationpak noodles). In the University, subpars installed Geiger counters so that patrons could account for safety considerations before any purchase.
Sources:
First image is "space farm" by macarious on DeviantArt.
Second image is "Inside the Market" by METAPHOR9 on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Cyberpunk Tavern" by panprince on NightCafe. It was made with AI.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/954f2b90-24ec-408c-945d-2f157ae82461/daz5k9h-f00d5369-a2d3-46f6-918c-b61f9374f7ee.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_436,q_75,strp/repair_team_color_by_macksztaba_daz5k9h-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NDM2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvOTU0ZjJiOTAtMjRlYy00MDhjLTk0NWQtMmYxNTdhZTgyNDYxXC9kYXo1azloLWYwMGQ1MzY5LWEyZDMtNDZmNi05MThjLWI2MWY5Mzc0ZjdlZS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.OsS6j0CtKHlhhfMNXNe1pZEBWrcGt6mckoWXTzEFYr8)
Technicians have mobilized from Lovelace Dome to staunch a coolant leak on a borehole mining rig. The angle of this image is fortuitous. A near piece of the Unity wreck passes low over the horizon beyond.
Alone on the eastern edge of the Uranium Flats, sensors at Lovelace Dome provided early warning for the faction's more established Vertian settlements nearer Shamash's western coast. Forward-deployed computers calculated probable vectors of attack and cabled them promptly to the Headquarters.
(https://storage.prompt-hunt.workers.dev/clfu1qa7z000sk108ekh8w6yu_1)
Pete Landers could not bite every hand outstretched in the spirit of cautious cooperation. By special agreement with Johann Anhaldt, two companies of Tribal militia were available to relieve pressure on the Four Cores.
The grenadier in this catch-vid is kitted out, for once, in a manner that makes it seem possible he may return alive. His accoutrements include a re-breather, laser-reflective helmet, ballistic vest, and grenades sourced from at least three separate militaries: spherical American, hive-shaped Yugoslav, and long-handled Gathi.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/634a1527-0f14-4d34-83c6-98e8144fc738/d904dby-78b3b442-f852-4502-b3a1-eaacdf5f69e7.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_732,q_75,strp/soldier_5_by_proxygreen_d904dby-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzMyIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNjM0YTE1MjctMGYxNC00ZDM0LTgzYzYtOThlODE0NGZjNzM4XC9kOTA0ZGJ5LTc4YjNiNDQyLWY4NTItNDUwMi1iM2ExLWVhYWNkZjVmNjllNy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.mfJ4-OiAX0hhtwC9-3jBRTsW2POfvKIaKQR8Y5DVqhw)
Once local armories had been stripped bare, museums were the next logical source of war-fighting equipment for the would-be militia. Kellerites were not to be excluded. This militiaman's tin hat and utility webbing predate him by at least 150 years, but there is less to complain about in his 96-model Stoner long-barrel light machine gun. A digital rangefinder will improve the weapon's already-murderous accuracy.
Barring the limitations of their undersized faction economy, Kellerites supplied their soldiers as well as they were able. This soldier is bundled against the upland cold and his pouches are full to overflowing with spare equipment and ammunition.
Sources:
First image is "Repair-Team Color" by MackSztaba on DeviantArt.
Second image is "An hazmat soldier wearing full body armour and Black-Glass Gas Mask" by weepy-hyena73 on Prompt Hunt.
Third image is "Soldier 5" by ProxyGreen on DeviantArt.
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This living world takes us for its own example. As we do unto Planet, so Planet will do unto us. - Planet Dreams
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f7/6b/fa/f76bfa86f76bf1868c227a5c16fd430e.jpg)
At seven, Dierdre Skye escaped her tutors to become lost in the moors. Home for school holidays, she fetched blankets and books to the battered women sheltering in the servant's quarters of Wainwright Downs. Some were scarcely a decade older than the impressionable seven-year-old herself.
Shailene Skye encouraged her daughter to learn the stories of others without disclosing her own. People needed symbols, she said, more than they did friends. The Lady Skye was more away in Edinburgh and Brussels than she was at home, tending the business of charity.
As an adult, Dierdre found she could take the part of others with little in the way of deeper knowledge about their circumstances. She held herself a leader--first to recognize oppression, first to contemplate action, first over the barricade. Her Earth liberation handlers knew her as credulous. This new recruit would throw a bomb or divulge trade secrets on the flimsiest suggestion that a righteous cause would be gratified. To her supervisors, Dierdre was a gifted botanist with regrettable fixations--an albatross they tolerated so as not to offend the influential mother, at least until the point she was jailed, providing adequate pretext for summary dismissal.
Dierdre's work straddled two worlds: she was trained to study a people-less past in furtherance of the future, but she spent her career trying to rewire a natural order upended by Man. The tension was exquisite. Dierdre felt the academy could not keep pace with the horrors of modernity--of war and industry, to be precise, and the scars they inflicted on the land.
Never lacking in physical courage, but blind to the privilege that spared her the full consequences of failure, Dierdre picked fights she had no hope of winning. Anyone in her proximity was potentially at risk of becoming a casualty. The U.N. overlooked that unfortunate business in America in favor of Dierdre's credentials. Her combination of skill and spirit seemed vaguely appropriate for a war zone. Recruiters hoped she might "prove resourceful" when matters inevitably deteriorated.
In Peshawar, with the radical mullahs against her and police leadership paralyzed by fear, Dierdre set aside the pleas of her own staff for conciliation with their oppressors. The female clerks stayed. The clinics and granaries remained open. Dierdre importuned the Northwest Frontier Force for more men and stronger guarantees. Jihadists murdered eight of Dierdre's people, maiming six more. Security forces were slow to investigate. Instead, they accused Dierdre of provoking the bombing. She had been warned many times what would happen if she insisted on defying prevailing customs.
Officially, the U.N. suspended Dierdre's operation for reasons of safety. Unofficially, she was blackballed for a second time--written off as a loose cannon without the reserves of patience necessary for her post. She retired to Wainwright and began to resume the acquaintances of a past life. Her "rehabilitation," culminating with accession to the Unity crew, was merely the happy accident of becoming a Nobel laureate.
Any believer in a prejudice will tell you plainly: it is a failing that is best when shared.
Dierdre's aggressive spirit showed itself immediately. Gaian raiders wasted no time falling on other factions in southern Shamash. They had their reasons. From Spartans and Kellerites, they wanted blood. Morganites were collectively to blame for the death of Captain Garland. Pilgrims and Dreamers were common thieves not entitled to the excuse of exigency. Anhaldt was the very face of the irresponsible science that had made it necessary to flee Earth. Pahlavi's geneticists were crypto-racists, Zakharov was a fool, and Miriam a geo-imperialist.
Skye's taste for the performative aspects of rulership led her to endorse physiolatry. Gaians leapt, danced, sang, and drugged themselves with untreated water. They celebrated the things they could see, touch, smell, and taste. They approached Chiron from a place of curiosity rather than opportunism, and in so doing learned more about its ecology than if they had rushed to kill and dissect.
The first great civilizations were sun worshipers. God first made light. We, a people of the sun, raised full generations underground, or wrapped in metal cocoons. But you're not really human if you've never felt the heat of sunlight on your upturned face. - The Lost World
Sources:
Dierdre Skye is Morena Baccarin as seen on the StarGate franchise.
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A king is just a banker who spends men in place of money, and usually with less distress. - The Puzzle Box
(https://static.tvmaze.com/uploads/images/medium_portrait/6/17237.jpg)
Alfred Siegfried was a successful trader in seal fur prior to winning election as Shiloh's first monarch in 2029. He took the regnal name Silas and adopted the surname Benjamin, claiming descent from the ancient Israelites.
The new king was driven to insolvency by his wooing for the crown and began pulling the levers of state patronage to reward the backers who had made him. Disaster followed promptly. Third-party auditors reported that the central reserve bank was keeping bad reports. The national university at Antioch, previously recognized for excellence in oceanography and the study of tropical disease, gained new proctors who promptly sold most of its $14 billion collections. After deep cost-cutting by the national airline, a passenger flight crashed into the sea just short of Durban, South Africa. All 220 souls aboard were lost.
Foreign investors panicked. Then a sargassum bloom appeared along Shiloh's west coast. Disputes in the crowded fisheries off the Selah Bight escalated to violence. After the abduction and brutal murder of two ethnic Chinese fishermen, Beijing sent a pair of destroyers that opened fire on a pair of factory ships owned by the Shilohne government as they departed the small harbor at Küv. The bombardment overshot and struck a fuel depot ashore. Both irreplaceable factory ships sank and some 582,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled into the sea caught fire.
(https://www.miningreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Walvis-Bay.jpg)
Küv, Shiloh, c. 2029.
Attempts at economic stabilization came to nought. Shiloh had little arable land and almost no natural resources were accessible from the surface. Silas first contemplated seizing U.N. trust lands from the country's Sikh minority, but backtracked when police admitted they would be unable to enforce the measure if contested. Six expeditions to the lava fields of the Slaar Cone came together after the dynasty mortgaged its crown jewels and adopted World Christianity as the state religion (badly alienating its own multi-confessional subjects) but these, too, ended in disaster. The colonies were abandoned after disagreements with their benefactors, leaving behind $4 billion worth of scientific equipment that Benjamin's government lacked the means even to salvage. Dutch objections scotched negotiations with Geneva over a new space elevator. A visit from the American supercarrier USS Bob Dole (CVA-121) next convinced Silas to send the Soviet ambassador packing with polite rejection of his country's offer to rebuild Küv.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/018/843/760/large/pablo-munoz-gomez-ground-work-ready-comp.jpg?1560945596)
Penitence cults accepted environmentalists' warnings that mankind was actively dismantling Spaceship Earth, but were more concerned with the recovery of a working civil society. Some, like the one at Slaar, attempted the Radical Reconciliation proposed by theologian Miriam Godwinson, forming colonies of mixed allegiance: ex-Holnists joined Vaulters, Unionists, Evangelites, and even ex-Kellerites in "free living," away from what they considered the insidious influence of corporations and the vengeance-minded popular consensus of post-war America.
In Shiloh, the cultists were welcomed only by the crown. Local wellermen resented what they saw as a government preference for outsiders and refused contracts to supply the Slaar venture. Confessional colonization by penitents was already problematic because of their association with an international steering committee under the influence of an exegetical synod that, contrary to Godwinson's stated intentions, insisted upon specific readings of the Marian expansions to the Bible. This stifled the organic revelation that tended to emerge in the isolation of colonial settings and led to many colonies breaking with the committee, thus ending the critical financial relationships that made them possible.
Facing food riots and calls for his abdication, Benjamin accepted the advice of his senior general, Linus Abner, and authorized the invasion of Shiloh's northern neighbor, Gath, a country more than twice Shiloh's size, but with just one-sixth its population. On October 7, 2032, Shiloh advanced two small corps north, led by the crack 3 Motorcycle Battalion.
Gath was caught by surprise. Port Prosperity, the continent's largest metropolis (population 420,000), was isolated from the rest of Gath by an 808-meter massif. The border was undefended. Leading elements of the invasion force road cable cars in from the suburbs unmolested. The local commander, an ex-Canadian Allophone expelled from Free Québec and resettled in Gath by the U.N., was killed in a car wreck speeding to the barracks. His successor, a Major F.R. Bilev, was helicoptered into the city from a pleasure yacht where he'd spent the previous night. Arriving to general chaos, he attempted to enact his predecessor's battle plan, hinging a defense plan on the city's waterworks, only to find that radio and satellite communications were being jammed. With reports of catastrophic casualties, Bilev surrendered the remaining defenders--4,600 of them--in less than two days.
(https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vpYDKeDTLAk96M3AW5MSjT.jpg)
Port Prosperity was recaptured by Gathi forces in the war of 2038. The ruined tower left of center, an observatory built by the Soviets at U.N. invitation, was converted to a prison by Vesper Abaddon in 2039. Its upper tier was destroyed by the Truth and Reconciliation Government after Abaddon left office.
Victory in war provided Shiloh with only dubious benefits. Port Prosperity was quiescent, casualties had been blessedly light despite two years of figthing, and much of the Gathi arsenal, including a modern frigate, fell into the hands of Abner's Royal Army, limiting the possibility for effective partisan activity in Occupied Gath and strengthening the Shilohne military's hand in national politics. A car carrier was intercepted fleeing the fighting, and Abner was able to gift his king with 1,700 Dacia automobiles, soon redistributed among courtiers in Gilboa. On the other hand, most of Port Prosperity's resident industries were unavailable for expropriation or resale. These included large railway workshops owned by Imre-Meinertzhagen, modern port infrastructure belonging to a Danish consortium, a navy yard managed by Grumman Engineering, and steel mills run by a subsidiary of Indian giant Vedanta. Silas left them unmolested, expecting they would remit future taxes to him, but instead they paid no one. Both combatant nations were also heavily indebted to arms traders. Abner had brokered a number of deals with Morgan SafeHaven to keep his soldiers in ammunition and clothing. (Various African warlords and ex-rulers consequently ended up at Silas's court over the next few years, some as guests of the House of Benjamin awaiting Morgan's fulfilment of promises to return them to power, others as beneficiaries of his mercy after being deposed.)
(https://www.imfdb.org/images/0/0b/CAPDAKS.jpg)
Somewhere along the coast, Morganite Resolutions fighters celebrate a victory over Gathi National Guardsmen during the first year of Silas's conquest. The company did Shiloh no favors by providing the impressively heterogeneous arsenal seen here.
Less than five years after the victory that made him a household name worldwide, Silas Benjamin disappeared. Whether he was killed during the Gathi bombardment of Gilboa in 2040, or became a prisoner of his great enemy Vesper Abaddon, it is unlikely he survived to see Unity on her way. Yet his problematic legacy went with the colonists to Chiron. Even as nationalism fell increasingly out of favor, Silas and Vesper dueled in abstentia through a series of ghost-written essays that appeared on the Planetary Networks beginning in MY4. Many were later traced back to faction leaders themselves.
Foremost among Abaddon's defenders was Miriam Godwinson, who understood Abaddon's self-abnegation as a Pauline allegory with important ramifications about the capacity for lasting reconciliation in the absence of retribution. Colonel Corazón Santiago celebrated Abaddon and Benjamin as the ideals of the reluctant warrior--prepared to fight in the last extremity, but always as monarchs in the pursuit of better circumstances for their respective kingdoms. Morgan was thought to have spoken through intermediaries on behalf of clemency to avoid setting the precedent that leaders might be accountable for crimes to a court other than one of their own making.
Oscar van de Graaf admitted that he'd have liked to hang Silas Benjamin as both a murderer and a charlatan, but held out Abaddon as properly ruthless in his pursuit of peace through total victory. Foreman Domai and Dr. Johann Anhaldt wanted both leaders condemned for squandering what meager national resources they'd had at their disposal. J.T. Marsh struggled to find evidence of good on either side but allowed, like van de Graaf, that Abaddon's was the better claim to clemency as the party "first wronged." Factor Roshann Cobb confined himself to wry remarks on the fact that the human species seemed only to have two solutions for any problem, and both of them war.
Sources:
Silas Benjamin was a main character in the 2009 NBC television show Kings. His part was played by Ian McShane. His general was Linus Abner.
"...and 20,000 tons of crude oil spilled into the sea caught fire," is a quote from a Clarke & Dawe skit, "The Front Fell Off." I've always loved that turn of phrase.
Walvis Bay, Namibia, stands in for Küv.
Slaar colony is "Ground work -Edge Colony" by Pablo Munoz Gomez on ArtStation.
Port Prosperity is Corto Maltese as seen in the Suicide Squad.
Our Morgan Resolutions mercenaries are cartel fighters in the 1994 film Clear and Present Danger.
Special thanks to the Internal Movie Firearms Database for the trove of relevant images.
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And it was so (pt. 4.3)
Men’s words reveal their hearts, but the spirits show us their thoughts. - The Spirits Speak
The Ballad of New Amnesty (cont.)
(https://i.imgur.com/l2VLKyu.jpg)
A fully-grown Norton’s subrid, large enough to support both a carapace overcarriage and the standard drawn wagon for this Landsman pioneer family
Of the two factions that should have been most receptive to the Confederation of the Land, both had their relations end in ignominy.
The Hunters of Chiron who camped at Vista La Salle had decent initial relations with their fellow wilderness survivalists. After all, they were glad to meet any who embodied the machismo of living in nature. Even their queer worship of the wilderness was not too far from the superstition many in the Hunters’ number held for the woods and the fungal fields. The specific Hunters who were Centaur knights of the Saluki Lodge were particularly keen to learn how these exotic savages had managed to tame subrids to serve as steeds and draught animals. There were several splendid hunts between the Hunters of New Amnesty and the Archer Clan in the fields around Lone Pine.
But ultimately, relations deteriorated, as they often do between alphas. The Hunters believed that all of Planet was their domain for their mighty work, and did not hesitate to trespass on lands of their Pact brothers. Even groves and fields considered sacred by the clans were not exempt from roadmen of the Roadrunner Lodge or the fungicidal Goatmen Lodge. In response, the Landsmen huffily expelled the Hunters from their territory, denying their secrets of Centauri Domestication.
~
The Human Tribe who lived at New Denver were mistrustful of this rival community of tribals from the very start. Perhaps it was the wild shamanic appearance of the Landsmen which invoked bitter memories of some of the far right esotericists among the Holnist mobs. Strange reactionary beliefs from ancient civilizational palingenesis to national anarcho-primitivist ecofascism abounded among those who had once preyed upon the American Kellerites, and many of the Holnists wore flamboyant anachronistic costumes not unlike Gilpinist clan attire. Rumors spread among the Tribals that these bloodline-tracking nature lovers were none other than some lost militia of Holnists who had now returned to finish the job against the followers of Keller.
Local militia lieutenant Anto Kankaras made use of his citizens’ fear and mistrust of the Landsmen, lobbying against their inclusion into the New Amnesty framework. A security consultant who had sold confidential Unity intelligence to the preacher himself, the Yugoslav Serb had thrown in his lot with the Human Tribe for a ticket away from the dying Earth and a chance to crack heads at the head of a host of the fanatical communalists. Grimly accepting his faction’s dearth of professional military experience, Landers had begrudgingly elevated the turncoat to commander. At the plateau he sought to protect the riches reaped by the joint signatories of New Amnesty, agitating for a strongly-armed defense against potential treachery from these new arrivals.
For their part, the neo-primitives did not think much of the Tribals except their intransigent reverence for Jean-Baptiste Keller, a mere man, made little sense when compared to the majestic raw power of the world-spirit. Thus the tribesmen of the Land sought to avoid the Tribals as a lost cause. Ironically, these two sets of tribalists had much more in common than either thought, both having been marginalized by victimization and their convictions.
(https://i.imgur.com/SiqHVoM.png)
Landsmen trance-dancers convene with the world-spirit under his eye as they commemorate Spirit Whispers Night
Two of the factions that would have most prized the knowledge and wisdom of the Landsmen ended up repelled, either way.
The Peacekeeping Forces administration at U.N. Amnesty Town sent UNESCO cultural attachés to Lone Pine, and a SOCHUM rapporteur to the Confederation mission on the plateau. Hamstrung by Hutama’s trade-minded agenda, the attachés awkwardly wandered about the threadbare pressure tent circles of the new base camp, offering modern environmental suits and next-generation ClipCom, portable datalinks nodes and synthsucrose-infused ration packets. None of which the clans, so fixated were they on preserving a pure and unfettered connection to Planet, desired, but they did agree to purchase pressure masks, boots, old-style Soviet ammo, and camping gear.
In exchange they were only asked to give testimony as to their experiences as an incipient faction, which the Landsmen did at great length, ensnaring the Peacekeeper visitors in long-winded meandering tales that seemed to be bastardized renditions of various creation myths from Earth. When pressed for geographical information about the lands they had crossed and had come from, they were forthcoming, but subsequent expeditions discovered many of the noteworthy landmarks were not monolith sites or particularly fruitful nutrient reserves, but simply fungal groves that had been marked by the clan pioneers passing through, possibly for purely ceremonial purposes. Over time, the hosts of the new camp came to tire of the interviews that came without reciprocation (it has been said that the average Peacekeeper must file in triplicate to even consider a new worldview), and the patronizing way that these nervously-grinning bureaucrats offered to upgrade every aspect of their modest abodes with “modern goods.” Annoyed, they gradually shut out the inspecting interlopers. Regardless, this did mark the very first ethnographic study of the Landsmen.
~
The University of Planet research base at Biotic Survey, on the other hand, made only cursory inspection of the seemingly basic hovels of these anarcho-primitivists. While some of the scientists were at first amazed by how they had made it so far across the hostile wastes of Planet, their admiration was cut short once they realized that it was simply by careful conservation of Unity-salvaged resources and ingenious but simple recycling of the same. All of the land-worship, the University believed, was vanity. Needless irrationality, most irritating.
Worst of all, this rabble presumed to substitute actual scientific knowledge with their own regressive superstition. Landsmen medicine men and women spoke of the world-spirit’s four “key threads”, sometimes conflating the Anemoi, the Sì Xiàng, or the four sons of Horus when referring to the basic building blocks of life. The self-proclaimed shamans would brew elixirs and tinctures using the jury-rigged remnants of the ship’s gene therapy labs, despite seemingly having forgotten the fundamental realities of genetics! Seeing witch doctors mumble Planet prayers while titrating and injecting their credulous flock repulsed the scientists’ every sensibility. Thus, the disciples of Zakharov cut active ties with the Landsmen almost immediately, disgusted by seeming mockery of the most sacred sciences.
(https://i.imgur.com/T2rR1q5.jpg)
A Morgan Corporate Security recruit examines damage done to a Motherloder Supply Crawler by Landsmen vandals
The two factions most deeply-involved with altering the landscape of Planet received the sharpest responses from the Landsmen.
The Shapers of Chiron who toiled at Vines of Ararat regarded the Confederation warily. The disagreements between Nagao and Skye prior to and during Planetfall was part of the founding mythos of the faction, prejudicing them against those who maintained an overly-respectful, let alone worshipful, attitude towards the Chiron environment. But the terraformers became some of the most eager to exploit the Landsmen’s knowledge of the land for their own ends. While actual geographical information was lacking, the liquidators who visited Lone Pine and spoke to the green-talkers came away with a newfound understanding of Planet’s soil composition and intricacies of the fungal development cycle, known only to those who had lived in the Riven Valley. Even if it was cloaked in spiritualist woo, the geomancers were able to pierce through it easily enough, as theirs was a culture well-acquainted with melancholic evocations of the lost paradises of Earth’s old mythology, and the guardian deities that had ones ruled them.
In contrast, the Landsmen were profoundly disturbed by the aims of the Shapers, as they came to understand them more and more. When a party of Bauer Clan observers had witnessed a Shaper former party liquidating a xenofungal field, they were nearly moved to strike at the destroyers with giant stone mallets. But then they saw the Diggers mass-plant the reclaimed land with Terran trees and plants, and became fundamentally shaken. This was no simple act of blasphemy. This was syncretizing of a sort beyond their experiences in the valley. The co-mingling of Planet’s spirits within, with those of Earth’s species: what could this mean? Did this weaken the world-spirit, infecting her with the mute plants of the old biosphere, an alien contagion? Did it introduce foreign spirits that might compete with, even overwhelm, those who sang the songs of the fungus? Or did it strengthen it through hybrid vigor, creating a new pantheon? Chief Abacha had no answers, neither did the shamans of the pioneer party. They resolved to bring the matter before the council and the High Chief at the next available possibility.
~
The Dynamic Enterprise regional franchise at Morgan High Spirits was founded by a rogue office of entrepreneurs with little regard for stodgy corporate regulations. Imbued with startup energy and ruthless pragmatism, they went along with the New Amnesty program eagerly, reaping in the profits of joint exploitation of the Silenus Plateau and its environs, while externalizing any expenses and difficulties onto their faction partners. And so when this new batch of plant-lovers had appeared from beyond the great frontier, they were ready to pump them for cartographic data of potential thorium mines or fungal patches secreting biochemicals for pharmaceuticals. Ironically, the mercantile-minded Hutama had beaten them to the punch via the materialist appeal, sending his attachés to sell standard UNHCR refugee tents.
The growth hackers at Morgan H.S. simply pursued the spiritual path. Leaning on the massive conglomerate’s marketing division’s decades of wisdom, they quickly dispatched Morganite salespeople trained in the memetic arts to entreat with the Landsmen. Clad in blue robes, wearing bead necklaces, wired into the SciOps team via codec inner ear stimulation, trade-probes descended upon Lone Pine, posing as spiritual acolytes. As Morgan librarians poured over reams of anthropological lore to whisper New Age messaging into their ears, they claimed communion with this spirit or that, falling into trances in elaborate performances. They sought to gain the trust of the Confederation clans, asking probing questions about their sacred groves, fields of worship, and alien ruins seen beyond the wastes.
While these avatars of spiritual enlightenment did dazzle the Landsmen for some time, allowing the Morganites to gain some useful data to rival that of the Peacekeepers and the Shapers, it did not take long for the new neighbors to reveal themselves to be more than ingenues. Landsmen scouts quickly determined that the Morganites were the ones sending the most heavy vehicles away from the plateau, intent on reshaping the landscape for all sorts of extractive or disruptive industrial activities. Seeing the routine ecological devastation wreaked by Morgan activities, the natives of Lone Pine were quick to push back. The result was the culmination of all tensions that had built up between New Amnesty and the Confederation of the Land. As in so many circumstances, the Morganites drove the final nail.
Notes
Anto Kankaras is from Far Cry 2 (https://farcry.fandom.com/wiki/Anto_Kankaras).
The Landsmen’s peculiar understanding of DNA comes from the SMAC Fac Pack’s tech quote (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/SMAC_Fac_Pack/blurbs.txt) for Biogenetics.
Image Credits
Subrid wagon is “Chull slave wagon (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZGwwmw)” by Akhil Nasar
Landsmen night ceremony is a depiction of the Keepers of the Flame cabal from Worldfall (https://ufopress.co.uk/2018/06/09/worldfall-in-depth/)
Giant truck tire shot with arrows is from the beginning (https://movie-screencaps.com/avatar-2009-4k/page/9) of Avatar
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And it was so (pt. 4.4)
Like you, we are sprung from our Mother's holy waters, and from Her very seasons. We call upon you now, before it is too late, to return to Her as you once did in summer evenings long gone by. It was our hand that smote the proud edifice of your tyrant kings. But it is our planet's spirit that has acted through us. Now it must act through you. - Sermon at the mission gates (0)
The Battle for New Amnesty
(https://i.imgur.com/mHK2hSG.jpg)
Aerial view of Lone Pine at its greatest extent shortly before outbreak of hostilities
The Confederation of the Land settlement at the Silenus Plateau existed seventeen decurns [1] - seventeen Chironian weeks - prior to involuntary dissolution. In that time, the Landsmen traded with, proselytized to, and learned from the basemen of New Amnesty, discovering both the bountiful crops of modern post-Planetfall civilization and the bitter fruits of its undiminished greed and avarice. Even as the baseborn members of the pact on the plateau learned more about this new society that had spawned in a faraway valley choked by fungal patches and that hideous strength of the sinister singing planet, the more divisions they discovered.
This came to a head around mid-mission year, not long after Earth Day [1]. While the colonists of the plateau had somberly memorialized their lost planet with U.N.-hosted ceremonies and lamentations at Amnesty Square at the junction of the six bases, the villagers below had feasted and reveled at the great circle of Lone Pine. Unlike the rest of Chiron society, they knew no connotations of mourning for the mid-year festival. Indeed some particularly amnesiac Landsmen observers politely inquired the basers what exactly was this other star they were weeping about. Was it a lesser spirit that had departed?
(https://i.imgur.com/zGbwvCA.jpg)
Landsyouth minibike gangers returning from a night of carousing at Morgan High Spirits
As part of the festivities, the clans’ youngsters, so often the most belligerent of a faction, took it upon themselves to act as avengers of the world-spirit. The Wild Things, a small gang of Unity electric minibike riders, bored of the sparse activities among the rocks of their encampment, took it upon themselves to harass Shaper and Morganite work convoys. While their activities had normally been limited to graffiti and firing harmless long-arrows at the massive ‘formers and cargo trucks, they had decided to celebrate the mid-year with a fiery christening. As “drinks that entice the body and mind” were cautioned against by High Chief Joseph outside of proper rituals, gift cases of tuak hydroponically-raised palm wine from Hutama and Glenailbhean Morgan Scotch went un-imbibed in the camp, and were readily repurposed by the young hooligans as Molotov cocktails. Since the low-oxygen atmosphere of Chiron quickly snuffed out most fires, most “terror toasts” gave the basers a scare at most, nuisances that led to complaints at the plateau mission but no actual harm beyond some swerving and cursing.
This afternoon, however, the Morganite convoy departing for a southeast worksite includes a Mansa fuel truck carrying over ten thousand gallons of liquid methane. Surely such volatile cargo deserved eminent protection, which is why a full escort of Morgan Corporate Security rides shotgun, firing next-gen combat shredder rounds at the marauding minibike kids, first as warning, then at their solar motors. But then Brave Kanata of the Wild Things gets the drop on the corpos, skillfully threading in and out between the smaller trucks and the slow-moving auxiliary ‘former platforms. He swoops in towards the rear right of the great vehicle, smashing mirrors and lights of smaller trucks he passes with a lacrosse stick carved from stiff fungal finger-roots. Dodging shredder fire, the Landsyoung tosses a lit-rag bottle of ‘23 Trekker Table Mountain Chenin Blanc at the fuel truck. Panicking, the nearest corporate guard leaps at the burning wine bottle, swatting it away but losing his balance. As he falls and twists in mid-air, he accidentally fires his service rifle, embedding several rounds into the cargo tank. The flechettes ricochets, denting the huge store of LNG but failing to penetrate the vehicle. Meanwhile, on a nearby rock ridge, a Wild Things sharpshooter bullseyes one of the dents with a SVN Dragunov Niyazov variant.
The resulting fireball is visible from the top of the plateau.
(https://i.imgur.com/Gpr1qpB.png)
Human Tribe militia commander Anto Kankaras at bunker Reno Ridge before Operation Roll Out
To the credit of the Morganites’ professionalism, most of the surviving members of the convoy manages to avoid the flaming wreck without continuing the chain reaction too extensively. Even more impressively, the Azawakh monobike security personnel who belatedly emerges from the main truck successfully corrals and disables the Wild Things gangers without resorting to excessive force. (That they were contractors without shares, let alone options in Morgan HS, dampens any fury they might have felt towards the destruction.) A Unity scout ‘chopper scrambled from the base also captures a secondary group of Wild Things upon the barren knoll, including the amateur sniper himself: Abel Archer, the crown prince of the Archer Clan. Also in tow is his sister, seeress-in-training, and spotter Rayan [2]; the somehow surviving Kanata; and several other riders including one Tetsukabuto, the runt of the gang.
Events quickly spiraled out of control. The Morganites naturally demanded financial redress from the Landsmen, not only for the vehicles and lives lost, but also for the opportunity cost in operational interruption. Company leadership drew up plans to subjugate Lone Pine to ransom the Confederation, knowing that the pioneer outpost had little in the way of useful assets. They had little faith in the neo-prims’ further usefulness as a pact brother in the wake of such injurious insult, let alone their subsistence level of economic development.
This vengefulness was echoed by the unlikely partner of New Denver. The Human Tribe townfolk galvanized in response to the blast. Previously only those who had fought in the Second American Civil War who were most suspicious of the fur-wearers, but now nearly all of the Tribals were united as a community. This was helped in no small part by militia leader Anto Kankaras, who waved photos of the wreckage and directed his officers to disseminate portraits of the Morganites slain by the terrorist attack. While the actual Selectman who administered the base had cautioned against aggression, she was sidelined by Kankaras, who had tapped into the populist anger of the citizenry. “New Amnesty Strong” was the battle cry of the day.
At U.N. Amnesty Village, Economic and Peacecrafting Efforts Under-Secretary Hutama was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. His Peacekeepers were seen as the unofficial voice of the factions on the plateau, but now that spirits were running hot, it was functionally less direct leadership and more of a spokesperson role. The Morganites wanted blood for blood, and the paranoid Tribals backed them to the hilt. This had implications for the plateau’s economic order: Morgan High Spirits had often acted as a tech incubator for initiatives to develop the region, investing energy into other factions’ enterprises in infrastructure building and resource gathering. And while the Human Tribe was a small faction, it had a relatively sizable population on the Silenus Plateau. Gratified by frontier tolerance, the Tribals had become an eager workforce across the factions, from spear carriers for the Hunters of Chiron to latrine-diggers for the Shapers. Thus both capital and labor were represented in anti-Landsmen sentiment.
The University were happy to echo any condemnations of the irrational fungus-eaters. The Shapers had no love for these animistic newcomers who had stared at their terraforming operations for a little too long. The Hunters’ mood towards them had also soured and were ready to scrap mano a mano. As much as Hutama pleaded for calm and reminded the others of the cornucopia of frontier information that the Landsmen had gifted them for ergs [3] on the kilojoule, the rest of New Amnesty were done with peace.
The minibiker hooligans had been taken onto the plateau and were detained indefinitely, ironically at the Landsmen mission at the Mount Mar Elias Center. The large facility, a former hab complex, was hastily-deconsecrated and Confederation diplomatic staff were told to get out and go back to Lone Pine. Their protests and sit-ins were overshadowed by a rash of riots across the Silenus Plateau. Visiting Landsmen and local converts to the Terokredo religion counter-demonstrated against vendetta rallies headlined by Tribal citizens and Morganite-astroturfed drone paid protesters, devolving into street brawls in multiple bases across New Amnesty. Outside of Peacekeeper territory, local security forces universally backed the pro-vendetta side. Capitalizing on the growing unrest, Kankaras bypassed his Selectman’s leadership to directly call for mass detention of all Landsmen and sympathizers, and most of the plateau agreed. Dozens of unfortunates were rounded up and housed at Mount Mar Elias. Meanwhile, a joint Morganite-Tribal force was levied and a punitive expedition codenamed Roll Out was initiated.
(https://i.imgur.com/eseLg1J.jpg)
A Landsman warrior evades a Tribal killsweep in the ruined outskirts of Lone Pine
The operation involved half a dozen attack rovers, over seventy infantrymen, and several recon ‘choppers. Anto Kankaras informed the Morganite corporate forces that overwhelming force was the most cost-effective method to neutralize and pacify the neo-primitives. They left the eastern approach of the Silenus Plateau at dawn, securing the passes and roads to the encampment. They arrived at the outer ring of pressure tents to find a small welcoming party of Landsmen bearing peace offerings of fungal-carved craft, spore “honey,” and rare wild fruit. University cybersecurity specialists had cut datalinks with the base days ago, at the height of the riots. Having been barely informed of what had transpired over the past decurn, the residents of Lone Pine were willing to make amends in exchange for the lost boys who had been taken from the convoy strike, so they could be properly disciplined for their intemperance… and ineptitude. They did not yet know why contact with the mission at Mount Mar Elias had been lost, assuming technical difficulties.
The Morganite commander refused, citing company regulations and U.N. extradition protocols alike to justify why the Wild Things were to be prosecuted by the faction that had been wronged by them. Instead they handed a notice declaring that they were no longer pact brothers with New Amnesty, and demanded that Lone Pine surrender itself. An involuntary leasing of the base and its inhabitants was to be in effect until contact with its so-called High Chief was established, to gain full remuneration for expenses incurred from the attack.
Confused shots broke out, perpetrators unknown. Within opening minutes several of the welcoming party had been slaughtered by the New Amnesty force, though witnesses admit that the Morganites had lept for cover behind their vehicles before shooting (back?). The remainder of the Landsmen let their gifts fall as they lifted up AK-NV rifles from their cloaks, firing precise shots that aimed at the front tires of the rovers. A lucky grenade round landed under the troop carrier, rendering it useless for transport during the remainder of the operation. Above the battlefield at rocky promontory points, Zulinski Clan icemen emerged from the mud they had lain shrouded in. Having used biofeedback techniques to lower their body temperatures to match their surroundings, the ‘choppers above had only seconds to register the sudden appearance of tens of heat signatures, followed by the telltale blasts of Unity surplus MANPADS. Within moments, half of the ‘choppers were falling from the sky. The rest of the icemen rained fire from their vantage points at the invading forces below, prioritizing officers- the ones from Morgan High Spirits were distinctly identifiable in flashy colored armor and unique helmets.
The initial incursion had been blunted at the start, but superior numbers and superior weaponry ruled the day. Despite losing several of their commanders, the New Amnesty force found its footing and unleashed its own mortars upon the heights above. Morgan corporate security countered the century-old Kalashnikov variants with particle impact weapons. Tribal militiamen, seeking to avenge the fallen of Des Moines, San Francisco, San Cristóbal, and the Unity itself, charged through Niyazov fire to tear their now blood-marked Landsmen enemies from limb to limb. Hand-to-hand skirmishing occurred between bowie knives against ritual machetes. Few defenders survived on the ground, where all were taken captive. On the rocks above, the icemen slipped away, but not before detonating several tons of nitrate explosives hidden in the pressure tents.
I don’t give a fung about what arms you’ve got! UN standard, NATO stock, pneumatic rifles, di-lasers, whoo-boy particle smashers, bring them all out. Precise targeting not required. Our guns will know who to shoot. - communique during ROLL OUT
The first battle of Roll Out set the tone for the remainder of the special police operation. New Amnesty would arrive with overwhelming force, meet unconventional defenses, suffer unnecessary losses, and win pyrrhically. Reinforcements were quickly dispatched from the home bases, as the war willingness among the civilian population remained high. Within days Lone Pine was in flames, though much of that was self-inflicted by defenders: pressure tents housing fuel and incendiaries were set ablaze to trap New Amnesty troops. Citizens of the plateau cheered at the scenes of barbaric nature-idols burning the same way the Morganite convoy had.
And yet, the progress was hollow. Chief Allsaints Abacha had evacuated his people within minutes of news of the initial attack. They had fled east with everything they could carry, leaving only token ambush squads to hassle the plateau forces. By the time the last pressure tent was in the invaders’ hands, the New Amnesty forces had realized the ploy and drew up plans for a subsequent campaign to capture the Landsmen. This final battle would take place in the fields beyond, on the Plains of Isaac.
Notes
(0) From the Autumn Rain Manifesto of The Mirrored Heavens, Book I (http://autumnrain2110.com/index.php?action=autumn) of The Autumn Rain trilogy by David J. Williams
[1] Preliminary Report on the Alpha Centauri System (http://www.datapacrat.com/Art/FIRAXIS/SITE/STORY/SYSTEMRE.HTM), probably written by Derek “Del” Cotter
[2] The occasionally feminine name Rayan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayan) works just as well as an acronym as RYaN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83#Operation_RYAN) does, don’t you think?
[3] Erg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erg) could be one subunit for how energy is measured as a currency
Image Credits
Lone Pine aerial view is Red Rock Canyon (https://fallout-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Rock_Canyon) from Fallout: New Vegas
Bike gang is from Akira
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Feeling is information: a reflection of lived experience, and ritual a means of accessing it. - Human Calculus
(https://i.imgur.com/pXm7kjr.jpeg)
Kellerites transit the water obstacles at Defianceburg on Rumrunner's Cascade. This far north of the Slowwind Delta, Spartans are a rare sight, but defenders are on high alert for Ascendancy Legionnaires.
The Tribe and the Hunters began with the smallest populations on Planet. Just 254 Kellerite stowaways boarded Unity. Three perished in passage, victims of faulty wiring jobs to cryobeds of second-hand provenance, and another forty-two during the struggle for supplies and escape. Rather than chance their wounded with either the U.N. or Security Forces mutineers, Kellerites shot friendlies who could no longer give battle. Faction fighters took another twenty-seven prisoners along the way, keeping only the able-bodied--thirteen--as slaves.
Marsh gathered 750 of the Forward Contact Team at a promontory called the Scalpel to declaim his manifesto but retained just shy of 400 when the rovers broke up. Nagao's defection, requested in private, led to a row of four hours. It was all a severe blow for a man who fancied himself a gifted leader, especially by comparison with the more "professorial set" like "Zachy" and Garland. A bottle of mushroom liquor got the better of him for the next three days and the matter was thereafter closed to discussion.
The largest faction at landing was the Lord's Conclave, bloated with the injured and the dying, but food ran out quickly and many starved. Believers nonetheless took seriously the Lord's commandment to multiply, and by Mission Year 5 were against the most numerous people on Planet.
Nwabudike Morgan's appeal proved as broad as it was familiar, and for a time during Mission Year 1 and 2, as others foundered, his well-supplied, completely isolated faction was the largest by a wide margin.
Birth rates were very high among the Pilgrims and Believers whenever food was plentiful and the same was suspected of the Gaians and the Hive. Both the Hive and the early Spartans practiced forced breeding, though their populations were much reduced by constant warfare.
Birth rates were abnormally low within the University, the New State, the Ascendancy, the Dreaming, and the Children of the Atom. The scientists were sick, sterile, or disinterested in traditional family life. Beneath the waves, St. Ledger's people needed little prompting to procreate but established a lottery system out of prudence to avoid overtaxing available life support. For the genetic supremacists high in the mountains, new life was created only in the test tube, which meant slowly. Cobb's people were too traumatized to reproduce, some because they were drugged, others because they were unfree. Anhaldt's developed a collective anxiety with similar consequences.
(https://i.redd.it/w0uxebs8wn061.jpg)
Gaians tend hybrid crops in a weather-controlled stretch of the Nýksan where the atmosphere is tolerable for human lungs.
Fungal bells have been adapted as vessels for Terran soil. The bells provide considerable protection from the natural hazards that ruin harvests on Chiron, including curious subrids.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/055/008/981/4k/cgcortex-martian-landscape.jpg?1665915246)
The Children of the Atom earned the derisive nickname "actuaries" for their obsession with analytical modeling of activities performed haphazardly by their peers.
The human settlement is a self-regulating system that eventually achieves through popular demand the self-same cleanliness, splendor, and calm that it is impossible to impose at the founding. - Notes on Value
Sources:
First image discovered on Pinterest account of Tkachenko Zp, linking back to this (https://bigfatcat19.livejournal.com/354038.html) Russian-language webpage.
Second image is "The Lonely Chull" by InvictaHistory on reddit (r/Cosmere).
Third image is "Mars" by CGCortex on ArtStation.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/f0b78e35-49a2-451d-b302-ac4674a1b874/dg2nx8r-09456ab0-e15a-4c59-a6ab-b942c2cf47cd.jpg/v1/fill/w_894,h_894,q_70,strp/zaiya_ikowuro__volume_iii___wild_outpost__evale__by_gratefulreflex_dg2nx8r-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAyNCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2YwYjc4ZTM1LTQ5YTItNDUxZC1iMzAyLWFjNDY3NGExYjg3NFwvZGcybng4ci0wOTQ1NmFiMC1lMTVhLTRjNTktYTZhYi1iOTQyYzJjZjQ3Y2QuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.4wP_w9bszECm3c-R84BNL3rbh3U6SCOene05caItmDc)
Superior biological testing station. University of Planet. Monsoon Jungle. Shamash.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/f0b78e35-49a2-451d-b302-ac4674a1b874/dg1w0fd-be2d7386-3595-4a8e-a43a-77ff6018a940.jpg/v1/fill/w_894,h_894,q_70,strp/rc_24_design_system__vehicle_builder_by_gratefulreflex_dg1w0fd-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAyNCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2YwYjc4ZTM1LTQ5YTItNDUxZC1iMzAyLWFjNDY3NGExYjg3NFwvZGcxdzBmZC1iZTJkNzM4Ni0zNTk1LTRhOGUtYTQzYS03N2ZmNjAxOGE5NDAuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.4bgK5Dxtf_eAMEhn-4KAVS-y7hwUopJhtrXGifh6kV0)
Neo-Spartan Battle Master deploys a parasite hovertank during a collection of planet pearls. Red Wastes. Golgu.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/3d26a519-f4a9-4786-aee3-512857c0481b/dfxsbyg-bf1d6466-84fe-429b-bd4d-822be0e98430.jpg/v1/fill/w_894,h_894,q_70,strp/quarantine_patrol_by_saralgam1980_dfxsbyg-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTI4MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzNkMjZhNTE5LWY0YTktNDc4Ni1hZWUzLTUxMjg1N2MwNDgxYlwvZGZ4c2J5Zy1iZjFkNjQ2Ni04NGZlLTQyOWItYmQ0ZC04MjJiZTBlOTg0MzAuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.g-Ib8DzF6vGlGS6F90SRhx4RPFvkgswrinD7Db6mCJc)
Morgan Security Services casecar awaits a shift change in a worker's block of The Crack, better known as Warrentown 55-6.
Overhead, pirate wires connect rogue 'jacks to the faction datalinks. Hunter-seeker algorithms will eventually find their way "downstring" to present the offender with a recurring fine for unauthorized service.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/82405b19-8efd-490a-888b-26f2ac240a2e/d1v49wa-e2c5759c-319b-4252-ac97-ac6de3cf89c1.jpg/v1/fill/w_1192,h_670,q_70,strp/tears_of_a_distant_sun_by_ukitakumuki_d1v49wa-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzIwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvODI0MDViMTktOGVmZC00OTBhLTg4OGItMjZmMmFjMjQwYTJlXC9kMXY0OXdhLWUyYzU3NTljLTMxOWItNDI1Mi1hYzk3LWFjNmRlM2NmODljMS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.Sn7ZyX54fgc2Fg83vpYHyst_hx_loNbdzdze-I70e30)
Armored Myrmidons of Sparta take advantage of a whiteout to withdraw following a successful raid on the Helix, plundered network node in hand.
The second trooper wields a graviton splitter, courtesy of the University of Planet, with which the spoils of victory will soon be shared.
Behind them, a disabled Ascendancy shagokhod pays silent testimony to the martial prowess of these mechanized supersoldiers--a match, for once, against Pahlavi's test tube tyrants.
Sources:
First image is "Zaiya Ikowuro: Volume III - Wild Outpost (Evale)" by GratefulReflex on DeviantArt.
Second image is "RC-24 Design System: Vehicle Builder" by GratefulReflux on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Quarantine Patrol" by saralgam1980 at DeviantArt.
Fourth image is "Tears of distant sun" by ukitakumuki on DeviantArt.
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Man without history is a loaded pistol pointed at the wrong target. - Timelines
(https://image.lexica.art/full_jpg/5c844696-580f-4288-940e-d7249c711d38)
Name: Sathieu Metrion
Rank: Ensign
Position: Senior Archivist
Country of Origin: Thailand
Date of Birth: 06-06-2031
Height: 170.18 cm
Weight: 72.6 kg
Service Record:
Born in Chiang Tung, United Former Thai Territories, Thai-occupied Shan State. Mother, a librarian supporting "cultural conservation" of the area's Thai legacy. Educated at boarding schools in Bangkok after security situation in home province deteriorated. Contact with parents thereafter limited to written correspondence until their deaths.
Exemplary A-NET scores led to secondary screenings by Buenos Aires-based Tomorrow Institute under the Global Human Resource Project, a collaboration with various governments to identify future candidates for national leadership roles. Graduated Royal Thai Naval Academy. Posted to inshore patrol, primarily combating traffic in plundered antiquities. Initially disliked by subordinates for imposing additional training and education requirements at the expense of their recreation. Subject eventually won their loyalty, and popular acclaim, commanding several victories against trans-national criminal, corporate, and French Union incursions through Thai waters.
Studied data science at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok. Temporarily assigned to Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency for SEATO's Fourth Earth-Io Mission aboard the Hayyānu, an orbital surveyor operated by the Trans-Neptunian Development Corporation. Crew claim to have discovered previously-unsuspected deposits of water ice, but the ship's data payload was corrupted and life support compromised by an infiltrator traced through Interpol to servers at the University of Trinidad. Subject later inducted into the Honorable Order of Rama for rapid restoration of central computer functionality despite severe injuries from cold, saving the lives of everyone aboard. Amputation of subject's left hand was mitigated by cybernetic replacement, leading to a long period of rehabilitation that included medically-supervised Dreaming.
Meritorious appointment to the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri with Thai national contingent, 2066. Entered Data Services under Lt. Cmdr. Tạ Dọc Thân. During mission training, subject participated in the so-called Frankenstein Debates, a series of networked meta-conversations about the likelihood that humans would inadvertently create a hostile artificial intelligence. With Thân, subject posited that the risk of such an outcome existed in proportion to the number of modifications to original software code. This was the beginning of the "disk obedience" movement in software engineering.
In 2070, subject led interplanetary evaluation team tasked with identifying the most-important areas of human knowledge for preservation in the Unity Data Core. The final report urged U.N. planners to devote more disk space to cultural products, arguing that these were less independently reproducable than practical information such as manuals on small unit tactics and remote imaging of Chiron's moons.
Awakened during Unity Crisis. Delivered most Atomic Energy Lab staff, including their director, Dr. Johann Anhaldt, from cold sleep before joining the larger body of Data Services responders in the Data Core. Participated in initial system impact assessments and remote damage control operations.
As conditions deteriorated, Thân countermanded the orders of Captain Garland and Executive Officer D'Almeida in order to prioritize support for Chief Engineer Zakharov's reactor repairs, leading to a brief confrontation between the two men. Subject was ordered out of the Data Core 36 minutes before its ejection, during which Thân was killed.
Subject gathered Data Services survivors, declaring his intention to follow Thân's plan of preserving "this fund of human knowledge--our sacred trust." En route to hangar bays, Data Services personnel recruited disorganized survivors of other divisions, including U.N. Security Forces wounded, structural engineers previously dispatched forward by Zakharov, damage control parties isolated by failsafes, and contractors of Comprehensive Transport, the quasi-governmental body responsible for regulation of space travel throughout the Sol System. They ultimately commandeered two Landing Pods.
Colonists under Metrion's supervision were first to interact with survivors of the preceding Chiron Interstellar Probe, from whom they contracted Red Flu, triggering draconian quarantine protocols to stem serious losses.
Psych Profile: Sentimentalist
Mission Psych Battery confirms observations by past superiors of surliness and persistent failure to build trusting relationships. Subject also suffers from moderate depression. Strong interest in mementos and memory recovery reflects longing for an idealized past.
Peer interviews demonstrate subject was widely understood to disapprove of Thân's leadership style. Private remembrances, accessed through random audit, indicate subject found Thân "preening."
Thân meanwhile characterized subject as "bookish" and "emotionally immature" and repeatedly withheld promotion in filings endorsed by Political Officer Sheng-ji Yang.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/06678869-dcd2-4360-96a5-5e4ca658d88f/dg0nwdm-8f8de1e4-2bf0-4884-9210-fe89e80145e2.jpg/v1/fill/w_1095,h_730,q_70,strp/777jihad_by_isleeyin_dg0nwdm-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTc5MiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzA2Njc4ODY5LWRjZDItNDM2MC05NmE1LTVlNGNhNjU4ZDg4ZlwvZGcwbndkbS04ZjhkZTFlNC0yYmYwLTQ4ODQtOTIxMC1mZTg5ZTgwMTQ1ZTIuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTI2ODgifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.Y0USXq-8OyUT64GvpDkQlQYXHuEoOZv26ahos8ChP_E)
The partially-organized contents of just a single secondary drive of the Unity Data Core had the same footprint as a city of more than 120km². In this secvid view of Dewey's Divide, a commuter tram awaits visiting researchers, planetary archivists, and the odd data custodian.
Sources:
First image is "Cyberpunk portrait of man as cyborg, sci fi concept art, dramatic, artstation trending, highly detailed," created on Lexica by an unknown author.
Second image is part of the portfolio "777Jihad" by isleeyin on DeviantArt.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4daf803b-dd37-4651-8b51-8cd5330a859b/dayiruf-4acbf1c6-4392-445e-b012-a5eb0e028832.jpg/v1/fill/w_1361,h_587,q_70,strp/harvester_by_cyberkite_dayiruf-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjU2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNGRhZjgwM2ItZGQzNy00NjUxLThiNTEtOGNkNTMzMGE4NTliXC9kYXlpcnVmLTRhY2JmMWM2LTQzOTItNDQ1ZS1iMDEyLWE1ZWIwZTAyODgzMi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTUyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.zLbrGMv1D02X4n1yVqRUvPbIEJ7QmW3DRTCsZX_qOug)
Hive kiterunner confirms the destruction of a Restoration crawler after catastrophic loss of payload containment. Yang's salvage teams will mobilize at once.
This scout's personal transport is the Volvo trollslända, one of the most popular commercial sport vehicles on Earth in 2071.
Made famous a decade earlier by professional racer Su Jin-Che on the Cape Town-Khartoum-El Aaiún Run, the hoverbike was purpose-designed for that grueling, deadly event, combining blistering speed with mechanical simplicity.
A trollslända was nothing but carbon-fiber frame, solar power plant, heads-up display, and underslung, rear-loaded tool chest. Su and other trollslända operators trained as much to endure the extreme discomfort of long operation as to become adept at bike-handling and used painkillers to stay mounted.
Like Su, Chironian trollslända riders reckoned that the bike's best safety feature was its sheer ease of repair.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4daf803b-dd37-4651-8b51-8cd5330a859b/ddfujg1-e7557986-8443-4de7-a6b7-5f600cf16953.jpg/v1/fill/w_1266,h_631,q_70,strp/terraformer2_by_cyberkite_ddfujg1-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTU3IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNGRhZjgwM2ItZGQzNy00NjUxLThiNTEtOGNkNTMzMGE4NTliXC9kZGZ1amcxLWU3NTU3OTg2LTg0NDMtNGRlNy1hNmI3LTVmNjAwY2YxNjk1My5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkyMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.sxemSt2IR6nNct34zxd5MRZkJoblT-C-A3SM6hHgz30)
Perimeter minefields were just one of the many "hard work incentives" provided by Morgan Industries to all team members.
Morgan Security conducted visual inspections of the minefield whenever executives were inbound (as on the highship in the background), plugging the many craters that were formed each cycle.
The bipedal Multiple Use Labor Elements seen here take advantage of Chiron's nitrate yield as a cheap source of motive power.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4daf803b-dd37-4651-8b51-8cd5330a859b/db9ga86-eaf01268-0780-4f21-8515-f34027848bea.jpg/v1/fill/w_1251,h_639,q_70,strp/assembly_by_cyberkite_db9ga86-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODE3IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNGRhZjgwM2ItZGQzNy00NjUxLThiNTEtOGNkNTMzMGE4NTliXC9kYjlnYTg2LWVhZjAxMjY4LTA3ODAtNGYyMS04NTE1LWYzNDAyNzg0OGJlYS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.e8K715M6wj4c7y3nST6m4m4iszrNQpzPy5rLJAhUe1o)
On Factory Floor W-H-1 at Morgan Manufactures. This crawler chassis is in the middle stages of assembly.
Still garbed in their old uniform colors, former Data Services personnel are making final adjustments to firmware.
Sources:
First image is "Harvester" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.
Second image is "Terraformer 2" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Assembly" by cyberkite on DeviantArt.
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And it was so (pt. 4.5)
My latest sun is sinking fast
My race has nearly run
My strongest trials now are past
My triumph is begun
O come, angel band, come and around me stand
O bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home
O bear me away on your snow white wings to my immortal home
- “Angel Band”, Datalinks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_M65lcDk6o)
The Battle of the Plains of Isaac
(https://i.imgur.com/DbdfoDK.jpg)
Emporium 64th Expeditionary Detachment “Plainswalkers” deploying to hunt the Landsmen
The special police operation had driven the Confederation of the Land pioneers far from the vicinity of the Silenus Plateau, but those who lived above were not satiated by the burning of Lone Pine. The guntrepreneurs of Morgan High Spirits found their runway extremely curtailed by climbing costs, necessitating greater monetization of the situation. Meanwhile, the Human Tribesmen at New Denver were clearly experiencing somewhat of a societal group therapy- having misidentified the Landsmen as the closest thing to modern-day Holnists, they sought to purge the regressives from their homeland, as the hypersurvivalists once did to their own forefathers in lost America.
Hutama of the Peacekeeping Forces was livid at what they had wrought. The obliteration of a base, especially one of a newly-minted pact sibling, was worth a war crimes tribunal before the Planetary Council. Yet this neighborhood interfactional pact he had entangled the U.N. into could not help but to bay for blood. Even Peacekeeper citizens began demonstrating in support of the expedition. Many accused the Confederation of striking first, and the insult of “a kingdom of smacers” would forever tar the faction. Seeing the way the wind blew, Hutama sought to direct the storm. He asserted Peacekeeper diplomatic preeminence on the plateau, formalizing the post-Roll Out operations into an actual alliance structure. Formal vendetta was declared on behalf of his newly-minted “Ever United Front,” the wartime face of New Amnesty. By putting the Peacekeepers at the forefront of the conflict, he sought to limit the violence waged by the people of the plateau, enforcing proper rules of vendetta and facilitating humanitarian aid to civilians caught in crossfire.
The Peacekeeping Forces’ first actions was the proper conversion of the former Landsmen mission into a properly-supplied and staffed prisoner of war camp. The previously-held hostages were upgraded to “displaced person” status and permitted free movement; but given that Lone Pine was long gone, and the entire plateau was suffused with anti-Landsmen sentiment, the majority remained at Mount Mar Elias. The few who didn’t were Prince Abel Archer and the Wild Things. Though officially prisoners of Morgan Industries vis-a-vis High Spirits, they broke out during bureaucratic reshuffling and rode away into the night on minibikes, searching for their exiled people. His sister Rayan refused, choosing to stay with the captives of the former mission.
(https://i.imgur.com/YlMDmfY.jpg)
Monobikes such as the Morgan Azawakh were a popular vehicle for traversing harsh terrain
The Ever United Front (0) was intended to forge New Amnesty solidarity. As a coalition military, it did represent every resident faction. The Peacekeepers took over strategic leadership, drawing upon the Terran U.N.’s peacekeeping misadventures during the Blackjack century and TwenCen. Hutama himself rode to the front to play referee, calling out atrocities. He sought to show firm leadership, unlike the company leadership of Morgan H.S. or Human Tribe militia leader Anto Kankaras, who huddled back respectively in open offices and command bunkers, issuing orders over the remote. Even so, the Morganites contributed a majority of the war materiel and logistical support, while the vengeful Tribesmen numbered a plurality of the fighting manpower.
As at Mount Mar Elias, the University of Planet provided electronic warfare support, aiming to disrupt Landsmen communications and perform reconnaissance. Since their unmanned drones had spotted the Landsmen refugees fleeing towards vast xenofungus fields not unlike the dark valley they claimed to come from, the Shapers of Chiron joined up several of their finest liquidator squads to commit mass herbicide against hazardous foliage. Hunters of Chiron sent bands of wilderness experts and trackers to the tip of New Amnesty’s spearhead, enjoying a friendly, sporting race with the University’s techno-toys.
Finally, they were joined by a contract of Emporium operators hired by Morgan High Spirits to ensure that the ex-Lone Pine Landsmen would be captured with no escapees. The mercenaries, some who had served under the Imperial Military Focus in African conflicts, maintained an uneasy rivalry with their Morganite counterparts. Respected as some of the most fearsome warfighters of the Planet, the Emporium contract rounded out the Ever United Front. Touted by Hutama and Kankaras alike as the most diverse multifactional coalition ever seen on Chiron, the seven faction army strode forth to crush the barbarians of the wild.
(https://i.imgur.com/9FdShw5.png)
Morgan High Spirits’ Dynamo fighters pour into the Plains of Isaac
Ultimately, neither University Bartini UAVs, nor Hunters of the Saluki Lodge, nor even Emporium Manpoachers found the fleeing Landsmen. Instead, Shaper xenorinthologist Isaac L’Écobuage, after observing some strange spiraling flights of razorbeaks, tracked the Chironian avians past vast desolate stretches of sandy soil and a bog to find the refugee column in a field enclosed by rock walls and a xenofungus patch. The subrid mounts were tied to posts and resting, the pressure yurts were erect and blowing out smoke from indoor campfires. The Shaper scurried back to the Ever United Front and soon the entire seven faction army was speeding towards the plain.
The leader of the local Morganite franchise had originally proposed an elaborate conspiracy to pose as smacers in the first wave, cutting down the most powerful warriors and vehicles, then riding to the rescue. Hutama, aghast at the notion of such a flagrant war crime, not to mention dishonor against a former trading partner, insisted there was no need for trickery when numbers and equipment sufficed. Thus he led one arm of the tridentine charge in a Command Rover, bouncing along while scrutinizing the central spike Morganites for any evidence of foul play. Opting for flexibility mixed with power, the High Spirits had eschewed heavy vehicles on the field in favor of corporate elite Dynamo shock troops backed by cannon-equipped monobikes. While doubtless the neo-primitives were low on rockets, they decided light units would lessen vulnerability to explosive attacks, unlike heavy vehicles.
The other arm of the attack was a mixed force of Human Tribesmen backed by the Emporium operators. Vendetta hysteria was at its apex, and the Kellerites were led by survivor veterans of the Hypersurvivalist Wars back on Earth, some who had fought alongside Pete Landers to escape the hell of Planetfall. Landers’ men eagerly awaited to draw the blood of the Landsmen. The Emporium expeditionaries, squad “Plainswalkers,” were bedecked in the finest battlesuits and late Earth replica rifles from the foundries of Nový Škoda. On one extreme end of the field, Hunters rode in a tight formation along the rockwall, preparing to flank the camp from an approach perpendicular to the trident. On the opposite rockwall, the Shapers did the same, ready to clear the terrain with their miniature battle-formers. The University hung back, content to watch the battle from afar in a field command module.
Upon entry, the entire camp sprang to life as external tents exploded with proximity mines, an offensive barrier that wiped out several of the attacking rovers. But this time the New Amnesty lot had prepared sweepers, and so some were unmanned, remotely controlled by University technicians. As the arms and spike approached the second ring of the encampment, some men and vehicles suddenly vanished. They had fallen into sinkholes covered by brush or uncharacteristic litter from the camp, concealed by canny Landsmen [1]. At this second ring, the defenders shot back, peppering the chargers with Niyazov gunfire, arrows, and spears. The attackers kept coming, even as they drove into a third defensive ring of marshy land once again cloaked by leaves- it turned out the Plains of Isaac also contained a large bog. Some vehicles were stuck in the clay and mud, becoming sitting ducks for the shooting gallery of the pioneers’ last remaining MANPAD missiles.
But still the Ever United Front rode on. Emporium Plainswalkers, having used the Tribals as cannon fodder, sped past lightly-armored Tribesmen without stopping to help the fallen. They were the first to engage the Landsmen at close range, shrugging off bullet fire. The Morganic Dynamos followed closely after and in greater numbers, blasting defending warriors into smithereens with impact weaponry. Half a klick towards the center of the camp, both the Hunters and the Shapers arrived from each respective side, flanking the nature-babblers. Between the trident, the flankers, and the xenofungus field, the Landsmen were encircled. Some of the women and children broke from the protection of the pressure tents to run into the field without disregard for its jagged thorns.
(https://i.imgur.com/vL7pu1r.png)
The rise of Tetsukabuto
Zulinski Clan icemen clinging to the sides of the rock walls leapt from their hiding spots, only to be torn apart by precise Hunter rifles and Shaper chemical blasts. Archer Clan sharpshooters faltered at the armored helms of the attackers. Rackham Clan berserkers counter-charged at the attackers’ charge, only to be vaporized in milliseconds by particle beams. Chief Abacha and a group of battle-shamans clad in green armor gradually advanced. A screen of assault riflemen provided them cover, dying so the armored warriors could swing enormous axes tipped with monomolecular blades at advancing Dynamos and Plainswalkers. For every contractor or operator they beheaded, three sprang from its side.
At this fateful minute when all seemed lost, jet streams blew forth from the xenofungus itself. Somehow avoiding the hampered movement, the minibikers of the Wild Things returned to their people. Abel Archer shot the engine of a nearby enemy rover and let out a war whoop. The damaged rover, its reactor going critical, exploded- he and his gang had brought a store of impact weapons, a gift of elemental fire to the clans against these enemies.
It was not enough.
There were simply too many. The battle waged on for nearly another hour. Ring after ring of pressure tents had gone up in flames. Subrids, naturally docile, were made to run towards the enemy. Their riders were picked off one by one by University aerial drones. The majority of the civilians were now cowering among the painful xenofungus. Kanata and his comrades, the very hotheads who had set off the chain of events, were surrounded and fell from their minibikes in surrender.
High above the Plains of Isaac, a swirl of fliers appeared in the skies.
As armored Morganites approached the Landsyouth, one of the gangers stood defiantly against them. The long-overlooked Tetsukabuto, who had been intransigently unhelpful during the prison break, now dared them approach. When they did, he removed his mask, exposing himself to the poisonous nitrogen atmosphere. He began to sing.
The entire plains glowed with an unearthly hue. It seemed as if the magenta waves of the xenofungus flowed from the patch, and onto the battlefield. From rock wall to wall, soldiers paused their fight, battle bikes hit their brakes, ‘choppers fell out of the sky. One by one, the Landsmen knelt in praise of the spirits. Above them, their thunderstruck enemies held their heads and screamed.
Landsmen veterans of the battle would report they saw the same fluttering humanoid shapes once glimpsed back in the Riven Valley. They seemed to walk out from the fungus, some emerging directly from the earth itself. They walked towards their enemies as one, and the persecutors of the Landsmen fired their weapons in vain. Shredder rounds and bullets simply passed through them. Explosives blew some back, but they seemed to miraculously regenerate their angelic forms, continuing their inexorable flight. And as they approached the Even United Front, the enemy melted away. As they fired their rounds in vain, many of the seven faction army began acting bizarrely. Some threw their weapons down in surrender. Others began attacking their comrades. Still others turned their guns onto their own selves. As the mysterious guardians of the Landsmen approached, the invaders seemed to fall down, lost among the unearthly glow.
The el-tee was the first to snap. She just up and started raving about little people crawling out of the ground shooting lightning at her head. Typical wormspeak. Flanagan tried to flip her de-ack switch but it was too late, she turned and started firing at us with her shiny gauss gun. That was all it took. Half the squad cut and run, squealing about how this wasn’t in their agreements. Mulakla even ripped the Morgan tripoint off his suit as he ran for Shaper lines. But those vineyard dogs- they know their fung and don’t cater kindly to the wormmad. The ‘312s crisped them but good. Waste of fuel if you ask me. Should’ve saved some for the boil. It was FUBAR. - recollections on the Slaughter upon the Plains
Even as the Landsmen tribals fell to the ground in religious ecstasy, their saviors poured forth, sending waking nightmares and tearing through helmet faceplates and skull, consuming. Never before had such a large human army met such a sudden mass of mindworms, and been so unprepared to fight them. Tetsukabuto waved his arms like a conductor, and tendrils, then entire tentacles, of worms swarmed the seven faction army at his prompting. The boil attacked intelligently. Officers were targeted first, then field psych chaplains, then ammo supply vehicles. Heavy gunners, their eyes rolling over, fired upon their own. The Ever United Front splintered in a matter of minutes, each faction’s force quickly turning against the other, either in fight or flight.
Even amidst this, Head of Peace Operations Hutama attempted to stem the tide of chaos. Climbing out of the rover, he barked orders at his Peacekeepers, urging them to assume leadership over the factions, becoming the uniters they were meant to be. To their credit, Peacekeeping forces did lead several throngs of mixed-factional troops away in a somewhat orderly retreat, saving lives. But the dream of New Amnesty was dying in front of them. Furious Tribals, not allowing a pest infestation to deter them from righteous vengeance, ignored the blue berets, standing their ground even as the sea of worms carried them away. Hunters of the Salamandra Lodge, not wanting the Shaper Liquidators to get their fill of glory, cracked their knuckles and dove into the fray, flames dancing until the endless tide snuffed out their fire. Emporium Plainswalkers, unused to fighting an inhuman foe, gibbered and grunted as they writhed upon the ground, the worms gnawing into their suits. Even the University’s marvels were not spared. Teleoperated drones crashed as their electrical systems failed, indicating the presence of a powerful gestalt within the boil. The researchers who observed the battle would experience nightmares for years afterwards.
Swarmed not by worms but by fellow fighters, driven insane by psionic attack, Hutama scrambled to himself retreat. He was set upon by a mixed group of Tribal, Morgan, Shaper, and fellow Peacekeeper deranged, a grim parody of the Front he sought to build. Only through the “luck” of intermittent opponent suit failures caused by the gestalt’s EM interference, and his own pencak silat abilities [2], was the Indonesian trade booster able to escape the fracas. As he fled the field, he turned back, unable to resist temptation. To Hutama's horror, a massive fungal bloom had erupted upon the plain, xenofungus rapidly swarming from rock wall to rock wall, swallowing men and machines. But the Landsmen were not eaten. They danced in circles, joyously, effortlessly upon the razorsharp stalks and shoots. The young man at the center kept singing until all trace of the Ever United Front’s attack was buried below the fungal mat. Then he too fell to his feet, and died.
Notes
(0) Charles George Gordon, eat your heart out.
[1] SMAC Fac Pack quote for Perimeter Defense from modified blurbs.txt (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/SMAC_Fac_Pack/blurbs.txt).
[2] Well, there has to be some reason to cast Joe Taslim.
Image Credits
Powersuit commandos is the EU's 3rd Infantry Division in Mathieu Chevalier’s Battlefield 2142 Fan Art (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/G8OwN1)
Monobike is from The Venus Wars
Morganite “Dynamo” troops are from Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mind Worms graphic novel
The vision of Tetsukabuto is from Legacy: Life Among the Ruins tabletop RPG
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(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/015/746/063/4k/jordi-van-hees-canyon-village-rendering-calm-007-small.jpg?1549475415)
A settlement of "Dry Gaians" at Asopus's Bend in the Tséyi Bowl. Manufactured components of the original colony pods have been fashioned into durable shelters, but working infrastructure--the windmill at bottom left and the scuttles and docks at center--is of locally-sourced Chironian flutewood, highly resistant to the planet's acidic hydrology.
Scale-punchers have arrived on the opposite bank pushing slakes of desperately-needed remounts. Synoe's Four-Toed Monitors were adept swimmers and even better climbers, taking their Gaian riders up vertical rock faces where no Unity ground vehicle could hope to follow.
Gaia's Stepdaughters stubbornly maintained a handicraft economy--partly out of concern for Planet's natural ecology, and partly because heavy equipment was largely diverted to the militia after First Contact with other factions.
Because of their advanced techniques, nutrients, water, and (considering their low draw) energy were often plentiful, but minerals were harder to come by. Production and technological progress were painstakingly slow. Mechanical and electronic devices were kept in good order, but significant repairs or replacement were possible only with the help of sympathetic Hunter Lodges or visiting New State shipping--both rarities. A half-dozen supercomputers scavenged from recovered Supply Pods were remanded to Gaia's Landing for weather forecasting and gene sequencing. Heavy equipment not converted for war-making was pooled and apportioned under the supervision of a council answerable to the Lady herself, but almost always found it way to agricultural use.[/center]
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/11796e05-78d8-4be5-9f24-11e0c671744c/dg3ckk7-81d655b2-385a-4b31-9de8-d8ca005d23ec.jpg/v1/fit/w_768,h_512,q_70,strp/the_rot_begins_by_dustbyte_fantasies_dg3ckk7-414w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTEyIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMTE3OTZlMDUtNzhkOC00YmU1LTlmMjQtMTFlMGM2NzE3NDRjXC9kZzNja2s3LTgxZDY1NWIyLTM4NWEtNGIzMS05ZGU4LWQ4Y2EwMDVkMjNlYy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9NzY4In1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.cvL3lsdRCVRbFn5VfY2I9KjzeShRYTDSy2ccl0S9_q0)
For resupply, Gaian fighters depended on battlefield salvage. Standard practice was to let mindworms incapacitate enemy patrols before stripping them of their equipment. The prisoners, treated with scrupulous care, could then be traded back as the price of a temporary truce.
This powered combat suit, a Norinco-made Jiànkè (剑客) originally supplied to the expedition by Golden China and once used by Spartans for base security, was more than 110 years old when it stood in defense of The Autumn Clade.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/05c8c7ee-bfd9-41d3-af1a-680fc525fa38/dewgjz6-d6e21edb-232a-4f60-ae0f-890964e2ffbf.png/v1/fill/w_1104,h_724,q_70,strp/harvest_by_eteriv_dewgjz6-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTA1MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzA1YzhjN2VlLWJmZDktNDFkMy1hZjFhLTY4MGZjNTI1ZmEzOFwvZGV3Z2p6Ni1kNmUyMWVkYi0yMzJhLTRmNjAtYWUwZi04OTA5NjRlMmZmYmYucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE2MDAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.9nrywPMIC4XfxitQYaEcn0WPEL9j6uVgXtOZQhnykEY)
Cranberries, which favored acidic soils, were a popular early transplant.
Here, Gaian drones harvest the fruits from a bog with the help of jury-rigged safety equipment. The shells are clearly spacesuits, while the hoods are bladders sewn from hab-tent scraps and the re-breathers have been converted from water filtration devices. Although similar, the suits are not identical, pointing to the all-important role of improvisation in frontier living.
Sources:
First image is from the beauty render in the portfolio "Canyon Civilization Rural Village" by jordi van hees on ArtStation.
Second image is "The Rot begins" by DustBye-Fantasies on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Harvest" by Eteriv on DeviantArt.
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(https://www.imfdb.org/images/d/d3/JerichoM4-7.jpg)
Holnist paramilitaries block a Michigan road with the help of an old M939 5-ton.
When Jean Baptiste-Keller, then a failing soybean farmer with access to an old 1150 kHz radio tower, described Holnism as "a refusal of this modernity," he was somewhere in the vanguard of countless subsequent thinkers trying to answer the question, "Why now?" Why were so many mid-century Americans clamoring for "home rule" and forsaking national unity?
Colonel Corazón Santiago never publicly grieved her decision to using the movement's veterans to claim her spot in what she called "the New Order," a not-so-subtle dig at the original vision for a single, unitary colony governed under U.N. auspices. Nevertheless, in bringing Holnists from Earth to Chiron, she forced her contemporaries to speak to the same problem that confronted Jean Baptiste.
The standard history of Holnism, Strong Men, by Christophe Mitre, spends 200-odd pages distinguishing Nathan Holn the man--"misshapen in appearance and disposition," dead long before the conflicts that would take his name--and the disparate bodies of thought later ascribed to him. Holnists engaged in what Interior Secretary Oscar van de Graaf memorably called "radical contradictions," holding their neighbors as slaves while denying the jurisdiction of federal and state law on grounds of "Nullification by Conscience." According to their actions, most Holnist leaders were actually proponents of political anarchy, preferring conditions that afforded them maximum autonomy, even at the expense of the political projects (such as state secession) to which they sometimes became attached. To the extent that they recognized any form of government as desirable, it was petty despotism, with themselves in the starring role.
Mitre ventured that Holnists and "supporters of Holnism" were actually two distinct groups. The former were more akin to the right-wing militias of the 1990s: armed to the teeth, already sequestered from the world at large, preparing themselves for a fatal (and inevitable) clash with authority. Many were engaged in illegal activities. The latter were typical political malcontents who had seized on provincialism as a way to manage change, and mistook militants for muscular allies who could defeat the dark forces of their partisan fantasies. They were also early adopters of the World Wide Web, building national and international connections, becoming "people out of place." A decade earlier, said Mitre, and they would have been shunned into hermitage, but in the late 2030s, they felt vindicated by the support of people they had never met.
Environmental activist Deirdre Skye diagnosed Holnism as "a civic fungus"--the predictable condition of any people who would forsake environmental stewardship, "for a disordered home breeds every malady in the search for relief, and an unhealthy organ poisons or starves the rest." Mitre called it the "Broken Windows Theory of conservationism."
Raoul Andre St. Germainé told colleagues in the Marine nationale that Holnism arose at the intersection of the dangerous relationship between constitutional democracy and the World Wide Web. Forms of government invented during periods of pensée lente and grosse pensée--literally, "slow thought" and "fat thought," meaning elite control over mass print communication--should be modified or abandoned in the presence of pensée rapide. Without censorship to protect the boring and complicated government by the competent, people would elevate an incompetent alternative--the first one prepared to flatter their many prejudices and misconceptions.
J.T. Marsh wrote that Holnism was an attempt by humans to reassert themselves in the presence of something they recognized attavistically as a mortal threat: the machine. The movement's notorious violence was being deployed, he said, to recapture a sense of personal efficacy. Santiago's own take was not very far off from that of the Game Warden. Planet: A Survivalist's Guide contains clear traces of the Holnists' paranoia: for the Colonel, the only way to avoid political irrelevance--the calamity of being subject to the whims of another--was to accumulate so much latent military power that no decision could be made without without her.
The good bureaucrat, Dr. Lal, ascribed Holnism to failures of the American educational system, curiously overlooking its strong appeal among Canadians. As Lal would have it, Holnism was the misbegotten child of refusal to reckon with uncomfortable aspects of national history. "The Americans made for themselves a false ideal, and were surprised when it stepped off the pages of textbooks and into their parlors, guns in hand." Sathieu Metrion and Johann Anhaldt agreed. In dialogue at a symposium on youth education at University Park, they warned that "a falsified historical experience" would produce an intemperate people without the common fund of historical memory--data--required to develop correct solutions to their shared problems.
In her final years, Santiago wrote extensively to try to separate Holnism and Survivalism, but try as she might, the two could not be easily distinguished. Central to both philosophies was a presumptive entitlement: followers became convinced that something good was being denied them, hidden away in the halls of government, the shipyards of the Moon, or the root cellars of neighboring homes, and that it could, and should, be taken by force.
It was left to Pete Landers to describe a Survivialism without predatory features in the shape of Kellerism, with its monomaniacal focus on the immediacy of human relationships and a call to become genuinely useful to one's fellows. Keller was himself an Evangelical Protestant, but he asserted that God was in "the Fellowship of This World," rather than awaiting His Children in the next world. Church was the grill or the firepit, the post office or the general store or the bowling alley--wherever a brother or cousin or neighbor was waiting with a kind word and a cold beer. Holnists replaced the nation and its myriad obligations of citizenship with kingdoms of cruelty and excess they carved for themselves, but Kellerites put family and community front-and-center, gathering together the makings of functional clan groups long before trapped residents of cities like Miami and Los Angeles fell back on criminal gangs as a replacement for foundering governments, absent utilities, and disbanded police departments. There was some astonishment within the Federal Bureau of Investigation after agents described The Complete Jean-Baptiste Keller as "an encyclopedic primer on everything from Robert's Rules of Order to the proper filling of sandbags." The U.S. Army estimated that one in three of its non-commissioned officers carried contraband editions of Keller's tapes as "indispensable leadership aids," a behavior that persisted among many Unity recruits to the great chagrin of U.N. Security Forces.
(https://www.imfdb.org/images/4/4f/JerichoM2-1.jpg)
Somewhere in Kansas, a U.S. National Guard M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank levels its cannon at a municipal building where Holnists have gathered in surrender.
Sources:
Both images are stills from the television show Jericho depicting Ravenwood mercenaries, courtesy of the Internet Movie Firearms Database.
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Disk Obedience is capitalism for a new age. The programmer assumes the rule of the industrialist, and we are assured that only his talents are adequate to the avoidance of doom. - For I Have Tasted The Fruit
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/054/426/945/large/alexander-mandradjiev-human-traffic.jpg?1664504459)
"The Meeting in Moscow." Vidcap presented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the trial of American spy Rayman Slathers. Found guilty of treason in 1999, he was executed by firing squad the following year. Soviet Premier Garayev celebrated the deceased as Father of Soviet Robotics.
Not every Probe job demanded violence. University researchers frustrated by their leader's long distractions with personal projects or undercut by faculty and student politics were forever bringing their ideas to market with the help of the Morganites or the Bourse. Nor was it unheard of for entire project teams to make the trek high into the Sawtooths in search of that "true scientist," Tamineh Pahlavi, and never mind the nervous rumors of what happened to those who displeased her.
A full division of Morgan Strategic Services did nothing with its generous budget and plentiful human resources but harvest the good ideas from Zakharov's leaking sieve and the notoriously security-deficient Dreamer clinics.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/3832d236-91c0-4b78-9cbc-342133f9451d/dg3uu0b-6c17e2a3-74f9-4627-81ca-dcf8858970b5.jpg/v1/fill/w_983,h_813,q_70,strp/wisdom_vs__tech_by_iamrudja_dg3uu0b-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTkyIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzgzMmQyMzYtOTFjMC00Yjc4LTljYmMtMzQyMTMzZjk0NTFkXC9kZzN1dTBiLTZjMTdlMmEzLTc0ZjktNDYyNy04MWNhLWRjZjg4NTg5NzBiNS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTIwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.GdrLmNbYA5FGM7XuKHtVUmspTwtd28584ok8Vdx51Wo)
The central assumptions of Disk Obedience were two. First, that the probability of inadvertent emergence of malignant A.I. increased with every post-production change in a thinking machine's code. Second, that the most-impactful change was likely to occur when more than one individual contributed to a single code legacy. The best legacies were short and simple. Idosyncracies in style and the mistakes inevitable in larger legacies created the "liminal spaces" where sentience could supposedly form--the spaces that haunted Sathieu Metrion's sleep. In the most Obedient societies, robots that exceeded the lives of their creators were destroyed.
Where Obedience was weaker, upgrades would be conducted primarily through "practical machine learning," which meant teaching robots in the same manner as humans: by use of reason. A robot could therefore learn in the manner intended by its creator, but (so it was said) no other way. Here, a New State Thinker instructs medical androids to assemble new medications.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/3832d236-91c0-4b78-9cbc-342133f9451d/dfvgsp3-ba31553a-1f1d-4d7a-be6c-fdc82a125337.jpg/v1/fill/w_1030,h_776,q_70,strp/crash_landing_by_iamrudja_dfvgsp3-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTY1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzgzMmQyMzYtOTFjMC00Yjc4LTljYmMtMzQyMTMzZjk0NTFkXC9kZnZnc3AzLWJhMzE1NTNhLTFmMWQtNGQ3YS1iZTZjLWZkYzgyYTEyNTMzNy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.BNDdTsiZ9l3q8VcLnN_S5ohIunCnBrDt4tG-OHD1Ers)
The pilot of a crash-landed Hopper awaits rescue in a fungal patch. He is lucky to have survived this long. Such craft were small enough that loss of containment was a common problem after hard landings.
Our subject is conspicuously without a robot guardian. The School of Disk Obedience believed that thinking machines, like humans, would grow most through adversity, and limited their use to a narrow set of roles.
Sources:
First image is "Negotiations" by Alexander Mandradjiev on ArtStation.
Second image is "Wisdom vs. Tech" by iamrudja on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Crash Landing" by iamrudja on DeviantArt.
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And it was so (pt. 4.6)
Our wonderful Lord,
Gives a home as reward,
’Cause there will come a payday someday.
His work cleanly shows,
He’ll never foreclose,
He promised a payday that day.
When the door opens wide,
There is beauty inside,
Oh what a grand payday that day.
With a handshake and then,
Brother come right on in,
Hallelujah, what a payday that day.
There will come a payday,
Hallelujah, what a payday,
There will come a payday someday, someday.
- “There'll Come A Payday”, performed by Baby Billy Freeman, Datalinks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6W9qoIN-QU)
The Fall of New Amnesty
(https://i.imgur.com/A59Jl21.png)
Hector Voorhees, chief of the MacGrudder Bastion security consultants at U.N. Amnesty Town, made his move after seeing the dilapidated state of the Peacekeeper survivors
The destruction of the seven-faction army on the Plains of Isaac brought grim irony. Hutama and the survivors of the battle limped back towards home, his Peacekeepers finally attaining the command he so craved, in the worst way possible. They found themselves no warm welcome but a stony reception of shock and dismay. The front’s partners were perplexed at how a dissolute rabble could have so utterly defeated all of their forces. The other factional representatives accused Hutama of rank incompetence and of self-sabotage. Attempts to clear his name through recordings of the battle were shut down by the continued vendetta hysteria on the plateau, dismissing the fragmentary nature of the footage that had been broken up by the gestalts’ electro-psionic interference. And so, he was consigned to quarters by the very own home garrison of U.N. Amnesty Town. Mercenary captain Hector Voorhees, a Rhodesian native of Afrikaaner extraction, and veteran adventurer of one of the various Portuguese West African conflicts, seized control of the base, citing the local factional leadership’s inability to maintain security. He swiftly linked up with Anto Kankaras and the Morgan High Spirits c-suite, seeking to claim the bones of the Peacekeeping Forces’ presence upon Silenus.
The Ever United Front may have failed as a conquering army abroad, but it worked as an ad hoc security pact at home. Enraged by defeat, the six bases of New Amnesty readied themselves for a secondary expedition. This was abruptly cut short as proximity alerts from sensor towers sounded mere days later. A large mass, larger in number than the observed Confederation of the Land exiled pioneers who had fled Lone Pine, was detected approaching the plateau. An initial response squad was dispatched to scout out the threat, and immediately flattened by artillery fire of unknown nature. A subsequent University UAV revealed that the scout team’s last known location was a crater filled with organic fungal matter. It then sighted the enemy host: the Landsmen had returned in force, but not them alone: accompanying them were swarms of mindworms, and strange, tall tube-like organisms that the pioneers had mounted upon subrid-pulled wagons, like the tachanka of the Russian Civil War. Indeed, the last sight the drone caught was the telltale flash from one such group of tubes, as it flittered too closely. A second later, it too was destroyed, crushed by a dense biohazardous projectile flying at supersonic speeds. This was the Unity colonists’ very first encounter with a spore launcher.
(https://i.imgur.com/lvJiaru.png)
Onlookers witness burst from fully matured Warwolf-class spore launcher. Lightning caused by triboelectrification from constant motion within propellant xenospore plume
The plateau’s defenses were readied and yet one more mixed force was raised to destroy the Landsmen once and for all. Shaper liquidators moved to the frontlines, and University techs imposed a strict media blackout to prevent the morale-shattering revelation that the neobarbarian devils were somehow summoning the very monsters of Planet. But rumors ran rife. As the army approached, a great wave of waking nightmares swept over the plateau. The telltale sign of worms was here, and the populace panicked. At first, authorities found this salubrious to their cause, allowing them to recruit more to man the battlements and crew the monobike packs. But the inexperienced citizens who joined the assaults were soon a liability.
The Landsmen had come to confront their oppressors, but now they did not do the bulk of the fighting, save for Prince Abel and his Archer Clan sharpshooters. Any approach from the plateau was quickly battered by spore launchers, then met by the mindworm boil that shielded the pioneers. Veteran Shaper Liquidators blasted chemical annelicides and spat flame out of their suits. But their numbers proved wanting and their attacks were distracted by panicking, berserking green troops crazed by worm-psychosis, quickly cut down.
The mixed Terran-Chironian army had finally arrived at the foot of Silenus. Instead of attacking, they laid siege to the plateau. Spore launchers and rockets lifted from the fallen forces fired regularly, destroying base improvements. At night, an endless cacophony of eerie alien sounds blared outside New Amnesty’s gates. And inside its airwaves, too- having commandeered the University mobile listening post that had watched the last battle, the Landsmen tech-shaman now piped in recordings of the Confederation’s attempts to reproduce fungal song with human instruments and voices. This psych warfare proved increasingly harrowing for the base citizens, cracking their morale further. Early attempts to evacuate with the remaining ‘copters were felled by swarms of Locusts of Chiron. As desperation set in, alternative tactics were pursued.
Footage of failed armistice negotiations at the Mount Mar Elias Center
As interim leader of the largest settlement on the plateau, Hector Voorhees had no particular inclination towards playing warlord. He had simply found the Peacekeeping Forces’ methods insubstantial, likely dooming to defeat. Allowing the rump secretariat of the base to continue its administration, he authorized an attempt at peace talks via the last Landsmen presence on New Amnesty: the former mission at Mount Mar Elias, then made a prisoner of war internment center, now finally a refugee hab for dissidents and the discarded. Flanked by a group of veteran UNSOC operatives, a special representative was dispatched to entreat with Rayan Archer, now the leader of the local Terokredo faithful.
The shaman-to-be had taken the cold metal walls of the hab and made it a haven for all of those who opposed the vendetta, both Confederation and the civilized alike. Voorhees’ instructions to the Knight Killers were clear- use the princess of Clan Archer as a go-between with the Landsmen army to broker a truce, or otherwise seize all who lived in the center as hostages. He had even ordered gallows be built upon the cliffs of the plateau in anticipation of “enhanced negotiation” tactics to force the Landsmen to consider the safety of their brethren. Additionally, any New Amnesty citizens, whether peace-lover or spirit-simp, were to be dragged out of the center and to the front.
Survivors of the peace talks would report that Rayan Archer had smiled sweetly at their presence, seemingly receptive towards the talk of peace. Yet they all felt a chill that crept through their armor, an almost unholy energy resonating through the halls. She seemed to divine their very intentions. Within moments, mindworms materialized within the hab, crawling through the walls, choking, crushing, crazing, and consuming the delegation. The few who lived only did so by blacking out from fear, perhaps momentarily escaping the notice of the worms. Having obliterated her captors, the Haliurunas uttered a prayer of thanks to the world-spirit and led her flock back to her people.
(https://i.imgur.com/ToUBoRd.jpg)
Hunter miners of the Durin's Folk Lodge and Shaper diggers attempt to bore their way to freedom
The masters of New Amnesty were in too deep. Any further attempts at negotiation were rejected. Hector Voorhees sent any Peacekeeper dissident who questioned the vendetta to the front itself. Meanwhile, every man, woman, and fight-worthy child was given shredder pistols, taught the Mozambique Drill, and told that the only alternative was death at the hands of those who fraternized with the very beasts of Planet. Anto Kankaras’ Tribal fighters were brought in to help enforce order, giving their reserves some respite.
The Human Tribe was, at heart, a simple people. All they wanted was to live in peace with kith and kin. They had supported the special police operation to ensure the safety of their loved ones, against an age-old foe who had followed them from Earth. Revenge was a blood-red blindfold pulled over their eyes. But there were some who remembered the words of Keller, reminding them of Christ’s greatest commandment, and the need to “turn the other cheek, seventy-seven times, even at the hour of death.” While their fellows who bore blood grudges continued to volunteer to crew the artillery counter-barrages or to put their boot upon Peacekeeper reluctants, others crept away to private meetings hidden as sewing circles and Bible study, whispering messages of comfort, and dissension.
Morgan High Spirits, having spent untold blood and treasure upon the Plains of Isaac, now turned inwards, towards technological solutions to dig them out of the mess. Their product divisions struck up an impromptu research pact with the local University scientists of Biotic Survey, attempting to devise more potent weapons against the terrors who lurked beneath the rock. Their corporate security and mercenary forces had been decimated in the last battle (the entire Plainswalker detachment was wiped out, and M.H.S. declined to wire the Emporium the remainder of their fee), so they sought to devise manpower-saving methods to fight the foe. Meanwhile, a joint Morganite-University commtech team attempted to phone home to their respective faction headquarters, begging for reinforcements.
As the skies had been blanketed from non-stop swarms of Locusts, sending nightmares both psi-induced and from simply rational phobias to any citizen who looked up, the Hunters of Chiron had finally seen the elephant. Though normally ready to tame nature’s critters, they took the loss of their brothers particularly poorly. Deep under another old crumbling hab complex, the rustic Peachtrees apartment block of Vista La Salle, Hunter excavation experts and Shaper advisors worked around the clock to dig an escape route. All manner of citizens, even the youth, were drafted to this great work. If they could not leave by air, they would dig to the other side of Planet if need be.
(https://i.imgur.com/6dr3nB9.jpg)
Tetra Vaal FC-3 Vaas bipedal drones suppress anti-emergency regime rioters at Vines of Ararat
As the siege dragged on for decurns, spore launchers striking solar arrays and wind farms, recycling tanks and robotics factories, tempers finally came to a head. The populace had finally had enough of the authoritarian military emergency regime of the Kankaras-M.H.S.-Voorhees coalition. Shortly at the strike of midnight, Hercsday of the seventh decurn after Earth Day, the conscientious objectors finally struck with a massive wave of protests. Civilians tired of eating ration goo and being brutalized by mercenaries and Tribals marched before faction headquarters, shaming their overseers into letting them through, calling for the release of last battle survivors and restoration of civilian government.
While Anto Kankaras suggested responding with live fire, Hector Voorhees leaned on the Rhodesian government’s pre-ZAPNRA old standby of divide and conquer. MacGrudder Bastion plainclothes probes infiltrated the mobs of rioting citizens, spreading rumors of peace. Some said that the Committee for a Free Amnesty Town hoarded stores of impact guns that they were keeping from the rest of the resistance; others claimed the Prometheus Lodge had been infected by world-spiritualism and were suspect. Any Morganite protester was derided as a luxury slacktivist, and it was no difficulty to turn all against the drones. And so, like crabs fighting inside a burning bucket, the resistance fell apart within days. Tetra Vaal bipedal autonomous weapons platforms, otherwise weak against the EM-disrupting psi enemy, neatly mopped up the mobs. In the end, the only credible resistance remained with Keller’s Own, whose Human Tribe sense of deep community and fraternity withstood PMC psyops. Hector Voorhees had indeed revealed himself to be a peacemaker, even if the crushing silence he imposed was very different from the peace his former Peacekeeper hirers’ had envisioned.
Footage from Hutama’s investigation into the Peachtrees
Even as Keller’s Own disappeared into the parks and sewers of New Amnesty, the lone holdout appeared to be Peachtrees, where the massive drills operated. The facade of the building had been struck by repeated spore bombardment, but it sheltered- and hid- New Amnesty’s attempted escape route beneath a dozen levels of deep sub-basements. During the (officially-claimed) drone riots, all word had gone from the Hunter-Shaper teams. Not wishing to spare any of his own troops, Hector Voorhees sought to kill two razorbeaks with a single stone. Approaching the indefinitely-detained Hutama, the mercenary captain offered him and his handful of survivors a chance to do good under the military occupation. They would be sent to determine what had gone wrong, flush out any drone rioters, and ensure that the drilling could continue. It was a chance to do right, to save the lives of all on New Amnesty.
Hutama needed no additional prompting. Wracked with guilt over what had become of his project for inter-factional peace, he gladly led his investigators into the bowels of the hab complex-mine. Armed only with assault rifles, they wandered the subterranean passages, whose power was mysteriously cut. Upon the sixth sublevel, they encountered the first sign of life: a band of gunmen ambushed his team in the central stairway shaft. Fighting valiantly, Hutama led them to retreat into the seemingly-unoccupied apartments of the complex, only to find more assailants. In the glow of the undersun lighting system, they appeared not to be drone vendetta resisters, but a wild lot that were not of New Amnesty at all! As the Peacekeepers slew the waves upon waves of attackers, many of whom wielded machetes and dove at the investigators at close range, Hutama realized these were Landsmen. Indeed, they were members of the Ruhian Clan, another war band who they had faced not long ago.
The investigators were trapped in Peachtrees for hours, but gradually made their way through. Under Hutama’s cautious leadership, they dispatched the Ruhian ruffians and
discovered what awaited them at the bottom: the ruins of the mining operation. It had succeeded far too well: their way out from the plateau led them directly to the Landsmen army, who had sent these warriors to invade the Silenus. Fighting with guns, tactical axes, and their fists, Hutama and the investigators were able to hold the invaders at bay and discharge several tons of explosives, destroying the bottom levels of the complex and hopefully sealing off the enemy’s path. As they slowly climbed back to the surface, they grimly reflected that this might have also sealed the only way out for the people of New Amnesty.
(https://i.imgur.com/YDTogUH.png) (https://i.imgur.com/gp0zUrk.png)
Left - Peacekeeping Forces UN-35 Dove transports at Patrick Quinlan Airbase take off for Operation: Jadot. Right - taking heavy fire over New Amnesty
In the end, all it took was a little humility and the promise of a lot of energy. While the Landsmen were preoccupied by their failed invasion that ran into Hutama’s investigation, the Morgan-University commtechs were able to break the communications blockade imposed by the mindworm gestalts. Dialed into corporate headquarters, the board of High Spirits pleaded for help. They were met with a curt request for a detailed quarterly report about what exactly had happened. A tense hour later, the report was dispatched and corporate responded in minutes that while the spending was extravagant, the promise latent in the discovery of a new faction of unknown provenance, and a revolutionary breakthrough in human-Chironian interactions, would be worth a rescue.
But with typical corporate cost-cutting, the Morgan conglomerate was not about to launch a massive mission to save six bases’ worth of citizens. Instead, they brought their case before the Planetary Council, presenting a redacted narrative about smacer attacks and mindworm swarms. For once, the besieged denizens of the Silenus Plateau finally caught a break. The others were all quite interested in what had happened to their lost outposts, and agreed to a relief mission. This multinational rescue, as it was done through the Council, was to lean heavily on the Peacekeeping Forces to offset the expense. Commissioner Pravin Lal was ill-disposed towards this presumption, even as it unintentionally once against fulfilled his subordinate Hutama’s dream of peace through business.
Thus, a veritable aerial armada of UN-35 Dove VTOL troop transports was sent to the frontier, escorted by early era prototype needlejets and University Langemak missile UAVs. What they discovered once they reached the plateau was absolute carnage. Spore launchers and clan rockets shot at the transports, downing many, but the proto-needlejets blew them out of the sky. That is, until the Locusts of Chiron, praised by the Landsmen as the very Steeds of the Yellow Knight, descended upon the planes. Sorties between the ‘jets and the Locusts were a bloody mess. While the aerial impact blasts were mighty, the psi-disruptive force tore the very minds of many a pilot apart, causing them to fire upon their own, or crash into one another, even the plateau itself.
The ensuing evacuation contained scenes straight out of the Fall of Salisbury. Dozens upon dozens of citizens boarded the Doves while the Landsmen, finally emboldened to break the siege, scaled the rock walls to attack, supported by mindworms. Liquidators and Tribal militiamen, seeking to avenge their fallen one last time, launched themselves into the fray. Having captured the outlying base facilities, including the defensive turrets that had been set up by the emergency regime, Kanata turned them upon the subsonic ‘jets themselves, downing dozens of University UAVs with micro-rockets. The slaughter went both ways, and the battle ran for nine days, nearly a decurn. But in the end, the airlift saved much of the pre-vendetta population of New Amnesty. As the final transports fled, the refugees saw both humans and worms crawling onto the plateau, and a great conflagration breaking out across the bases that they once called home.
(https://i.imgur.com/dWA3WPE.jpg)
A huddle of Human Tribe refugees receive ration distributions en route to the safety of Arlen Hill
The end to the Silenus settlements shook Chironian society. The Planet, which had been enjoying a period of unusual peace and prosperity at the time, reeled like a man getting mugged in a meadow. The factions all understood each other thoroughly, but had found the clans to be an Outside Context Problem. Their seeming mastery over the creatures of the land was the subject of holovids and datalinks screeds. Most of all, New Amnesty, a cross-factional community formed in placid prosperity, was now gone.
But as the dust settled and the testimonies were published, the Planetary Council deigned to commence yet another punitive campaign against the Landsmen pioneers. For one thing, the losses already suffered by the Ever United Front and the emergency regime were enough to convince the home regions not to bother with some foolhardy avenging mission against an uncertain threat. Not to mention, as accounts from the embattled plateau citizens emerged, scandal upon scandal befell the former administrators and commanders of the lost bases. Criticism particularly surrounded Morgan High Spirits, whose brazen startup attitudes, excesses in abusing a business partner, and departures from internal corporate regulations was criticized. The c-suite was stripped of their roles, their stock options, and some even had their wages garnished. Several members of the executive team fled to the Chiron Cartel to begin their careers anew, far from the eyes of Morgan.
Not all deals are certain. Some fall through, whether from the fault of either party, or simply nature of the business. When it happens, it’s best not to overly blame your partners. But there’s no harm in carrying a keris under your belt to the closing talks. Maybe the other guy will be the first to strike. - Necessary Negotiations
On the other end of the spectrum, former Peacekeeping Forces community leader Hutama received a Roméo Dallaire Medal for courage under fire throughout the Ever United Front’s vendetta with the Landsmen pioneers, not to mention commendations for attempting to strike peace between the factions. Underlings of Annunciator Sathieu Metrion even suggested he be nominated for a Nya Nobel Peace Prize for his attempts to prevent atrocities from the other factions’ forces during the conflict, though they quickly and quietly withdrew such a notion when it was pointed out that his attempts had utterly failed, despite good intentions. Despite this, Hutama was promoted to Secretary of Economic and Peacecrafting Efforts, reassigned to the safety of U.N. Commerce Committee, where the most damage he could inflict was slightly disfavorable trade agreement terns with friendly factions and pact siblings. Ultimately, he was seen as another victim of not only the strange invaders, but of mercenary putschists run amok.
Hector Voorhees and the remnants of MacGrudder Bastion, already dwindled from their exodus to Alpha Centauri, swiftly signed up with the first set of high-paying clients they could find. Thus, the PMC became a subsidiary of Sabre Corporation serving the Dreamers of Chiron, under the diplomatic protection of Colonel Artagan John "Joiner" Banes himself. He and his contractors became a probe unit within the Irregular Warfare and Psychological Operations department of Sabre. While Voorhees’ role in inciting a garrison coup and number of accused human rights violations were certainly manifold, he managed to beat the rap by claiming the necessity of his actions from a strategic perspective, as well as his relatively limited role towards the end of the conflict. The fact that many of the victims were killed in the chaos of the conflict or driven insane by worm madness, made prosecution of either malevolence or incompetence tricky, certainly for a faction as procedural-obsessed as the Peacekeepers.
Anto Kankaras, on the other hand, could not escape his faction’s infamy as a rabble-rouser tyrant. Denounced as the one who lit the flames of blind, suicidal hatred, he was tried in abstentia and cursed by every Tribal from Keller City to Slowwind. Though for a long time, it was unclear whether he had perished in the fighting during the fall of New Denver- the Tribals had suffered the worst casualties of all the factions of the plateau. He would later reemerge at Fort Enterprise, having reverted to freelancing and taken his talents of duplicity and brutality to Governor Oscar van de Graaf. When asked about his experiences, he simply laughed at “that stupid herd of ljakse” and refused to elaborate further.
As to the actual faction pushed into Kankaras’ crusade, the few survivors of the Human Tribe were a sad microcosm of the fate of all New Amnesty exiles. Sympathized at first by their brethren, forgotten in a mission year: While the communal compassion of the Tribals consoled the vendetta victims to a greater degree, it was inevitable that those in the home territories felt estrangement towards the losers of the frontier. Like former imperial settlers forced back to the metropolitan after decolonization, there was a certain reluctance from core dwellers towards continued subsidization of a people whose actions on the periphery seemed vaguely suspicious and distasteful. The uncharacteristic brutality of the New Amnesty Tribals was particularly scandalizing to their home kin.
Even when receiving aid at home, the exiles could not quite shake the psychological scars of extended wormsong exposure. Sudden amnesia to outright psychosis was common. As with exiles from other factions, many Tribals who found it difficult to reintegrate sought out extra-factional identities. The AXIS, with its purgative attitudes towards the alien and the traitor, was particularly popular. On the other hand, the cause of Keller’s Own survived Silenus, even if no one was certain if the actual people behind the resistance movement did. Rumors ranged that they now dwelled among the home Tribals as a covert sub-faction, preaching a message of pure hearts and defiant tolerance, even in the face of annihilation; to that the original Keller’s Own had joined the Landsmen of the Confederation, becoming a Keller Clan. Certainly, there were those who, unable to return to civilization, dispensed with it altogether to return to the wild, discarding all factional identities to become smacers.
(https://i.imgur.com/u0d6puo.jpg)
A scout explores the Lost Amnesty Jungle
The exile University, Shapers, and Hunters, having taken a backseat to the machinations of the other factions, suffered similarly but with less drama towards their leadership. At most, Academician Prokhor Zakharov thundered at the plateau administrators for letting their distaste towards superstition get the better of them, leading them to commit emotional errors rather than seeking the truth behind the Landsmen. (This, of course, elided his own fierce hatred of all faiths, even as it led to mistakes and needless misunderstandings during Planetfall.) But after a mission year’s time, they had licked their respective wounds, their psych chaplains having tried their best to heal the brains of those broken by the vendetta. They were ready to return to the Silenus Plateau.
The Planetary Council had deigned to seek further hostilities, claiming that “insufficient contact” had been made with the Confederation of the Land. Perhaps because those at home were not expecting to be living next to the Landsmen anytime soon, they lacked the same level of fear or revulsion that the New Amnesty colonists had. Instead, factional leaders made future plans to greet the subrid riders and worm-tamers with the best of smiles, seeking their secrets. And so, the expedition carried not only guns but butter, bread, and Gaian-revived roses, seeking to trade with the Landsmen properly this time. As they flew, the scouts, scientists, survival experts, and terrain specialists- few who had actually been to the outposts, let alone lived during its existential failure- excitedly chattered at the prospect of meeting an actual Landsman, those savages of Morgan holos.
What they discovered as they approached was a massive fungal forest atop the rock that once was New Amnesty. Vast mats of xenofungus and Chironian plants enveloped Silenus like a technicolor coat. As they bravely ventured into the thicket, they saw alien species of every kind, crawling and creeping and flying through the forest as if the ecosystem had existed for centuries. There was no sign of the Landsmen. Only the barest foundations of the old base buildings could be detected easily within the thicket. While there were some dangerous fauna present, neither mindworm nor spore launcher could be seen.
Further scouting revealed the remnants of the army’s camps, gone in the wind. Some tracks, hidden after a mission year’s worth of erosion and weather, led away towards the wastes. Perhaps back to the Riven Valley. Back to home.
The explorers named the new jungle Lost Amnesty. The Shapers’ natural terraforming inclinations were stymied by the discovery of cross-Terran-Chironian plant life miraculously growing below the sporeline. Upon return, all three factions persuaded the Planetary Council to declare the entire region a Centauri Preserve. Re-contact with the clans would not occur for mission years hence. But even after, Lost Amnesty would become a neutral ground, a trucial territory where none could make vendetta against one another. Those snug at home would praise it as the Landsmen’s first gift to the peoples of Planet.
Design Notes
Thus ends the saga of New Amnesty. The entire idea of the Confederation of the Land emerging suddenly to devastate the rest of Chironian humanity comes from the “getting mugged in a meadow” line from Life, the Universe, and Everything. Over time, I did see some similarities between the story of the Krikkit (https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Krikkit) from that Douglas Adams novel, and the Landsmen/SMAC Fac Pack Tribals. Even the concept of the Hactar dust cloud influencing the Krikkit is analogous to the subtle unseen influences governing the Tribes according to nweismuller, which I will cover in one more final segment on the Landsmen. From this seed came this epic vendetta of creeping fanaticism from all sides. I've invoked the Waco siege but in reverse, and a nod to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It's a story of how mutual distrust on the frontier and ideological, tribal blindness can lead to the most unnecessary of conflicts.
Notes
More notes about Walton Goggins’ performance of “They’ll Come a Payday” on The Righteous Gemstones found here (https://ew.com/tv/the-righteous-gemstones-walton-goggins-uncle-baby-billy-song/) and here (https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/the-righteous-gemstones-season-3-baby-billy-payday-scene-1234878609/).
Hector Voorhees is from Far Cry 2 (https://farcry.fandom.com/wiki/Hector_Voorhees).
The Ruhian Clan is not from the Confederation of Tribes’ base list, but rather the namesake of Yayan Ruhian, who plays “Mad Dog” in The Raid: Redemption.
Image Notes
The spore launcher is a carbonic acid gas laser cannon from Yukinobu Hoshino’s sci-fi classic 2001 Nights, specifically “Night 18: Odyssey in Green”
Worms attack from the execrable Paramount Halo TV series, which I have not watched but did learn about from a comprehensive review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPKtpYYZEsc) of season one by Elvis the Alien
Peachtrees escape mine is “Miners” (https://www.deviantart.com/5ofnovember/art/Miners-522271353) by 5ofnovember, made for Broken Contract (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/401223236/broken-contract-miniature-starter-set) miniatures board game
Tetra Vaal robot sentinels are from Chappie
Stairway ambush in darkness is from The Raid: Redemption
VTOL craft are “Hind” Vertibirds from Fallout: New Vegas mod The Frontier (https://www.falloutthefrontier.com), as coined and captured by Warlockracy in his informative video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3Th1-fn8PI)
Tribal refugees is from The Expanse episode “Pyre”
Lost Amnesty forest is the Toxic Jungle from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d3beb5ff-aeab-4f01-98b8-b82c7a0f4825/dg44iq2-c062795b-b9a9-43cd-874e-21ddb88d94a9.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_768,q_75,strp/imperial_guard_battle_uniform_by_filobeche_dg44iq2-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzY4IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZDNiZWI1ZmYtYWVhYi00ZjAxLTk4YjgtYjgyYzdhMGY0ODI1XC9kZzQ0aXEyLWMwNjI3OTViLWI5YTktNDNjZC04NzRlLTIxZGRiODhkOTRhOS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.Iuzg4XZbSHunX4K40ohIJwO530u_09aihbtnIEhjah0)
A Chosen Companion of the Spartan Federation. They are armed with a late-model hand weapon, the Heckler & Koch G97 automatic rifle. Santiago paid premiums to traders for the long-barrel variant, the better to advertise the saw-toothed bayonets issued to all non-commissioned ranks. Along with nineteenth-century military theorists, Santiago believed they encouraged élan, communicating that Spartan warriors were fully prepared for the grueling trial of close-quarters battle even in high gravity.
This mimetic fabrics of this soldier's fatigues have taken on the red shade of the fires at her back. The bulky helmet contains a point-to-point radio set while the torso is protected by bulletproof ceramic plate.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d3beb5ff-aeab-4f01-98b8-b82c7a0f4825/dg4eqq3-c12199a7-a1f1-405d-97a4-910de2eb681d.jpg/v1/fill/w_894,h_894,q_70,strp/palladian_regular_infantry___by_filobeche_dg4eqq3-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAyNCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2QzYmViNWZmLWFlYWItNGYwMS05OGI4LWI4MmM3YTBmNDgyNVwvZGc0ZXFxMy1jMTIxOTlhNy1hMWYxLTQwNWQtOTdhNC05MTBkZTJlYjY4MWQuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.dNl-0_FXpiN9Mi7VDvtEdtGVjlHRjCUntf_YV0-AP-0)
Gaian Patroller in civic duty uniform. The white shoulder boards and sun helmet indicate assignment to Gaia's Landing. Other noteworthy features of his kit include the tall gaiters--Gaians disdained to cut more brush than was strictly necessary for walkways--and collapsible Sarsilmaz machine pistol, typical of the faction's mostly unimpressive armory. Rebreathing equipment is stowed in the pouch at the small of the back: Gaian soldiers practiced endurance drills to accustom themselves to the nitrogen-rich environment. This trooper will go thirty minutes before donning a mask.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d3beb5ff-aeab-4f01-98b8-b82c7a0f4825/dg44i3y-384c7feb-71a2-4882-b268-fb7c7ed03386.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_768,q_75,strp/imperial_guard_of_galileo___ai_version_by_filobeche_dg44i3y-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzY4IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZDNiZWI1ZmYtYWVhYi00ZjAxLTk4YjgtYjgyYzdhMGY0ODI1XC9kZzQ0aTN5LTM4NGM3ZmViLTcxYTItNDg4Mi1iMjY4LWZiN2M3ZWQwMzM4Ni5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.hclfYex-btUQgYEYzD-k91MZzCA7pNPRdY05qsCKbyM)
Ensign of the Temple Guard, dress uniform. What little wealth the Conclave amassed was spent in two ways: on grand architecture and even grander missions of exploration. Believers guarded their houses of worship in a manner no less fastidious than Miriam guarded their souls. Security was posted at all exterior access points and again outside the mausoleums of the movement's saints, to which only the faithful could gain admittance. Successful colonists were obliged to first make offerings, while all others were accepted on the basis of tithes. Because no "implements of war" were permitted within the Sanctuary, Temple Guard were skilled hand-to-hand combatants.
Sources:
First image is Imperial Guard battle uniform by FiloBeche on DeviantArt.
Second image is Palladian Regular Infantry by FiloBeche on DeviantArt.
Third image is Imperial Guard of Galileo - AI version by FiloBeche on DeviantArt.
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And it was so (pt. 4.7)
Return to Riven Valley
(https://i.imgur.com/IMz2v0U.png)
High Chief Joseph commemorates the fallen of Lone Pine at a Dusting
The peculiar preternatural occurrences on the Silenus Plateau resulted in a great spontaneous xenofungal blooming, and the sudden creation of an entire hospitable ecosystem upon the elevated rock. The Confederation of the Land pioneers viewed it as a sign of the world-spirit. Shamans preached that it was the very spirits themselves springing forth new life to counteract all the death that had been inflicted in the vendetta with the basers of New Amnesty. While Chief Allsaints Abacha suggested building a new settlement there, the spirit-speakers among the clans, especially the the shamans of Clan Mokhelhe and the newly vine-spoken Rayan Archer decried the idea of trespassing against this freshly consecrated ground. And so, the Lone Pine pioneers inscribed a runestone with a plasma torch in memory of the fallen, and their great feats against the demons of so-called civilization, and turned for home.
At Council Lodge the returnees relayed the travails and marvels they had experienced to the elders of the Confederation. Joseph Gilpin listened wordlessly as the clan chiefs bickered over what to do to the depraved basers who so persecuted their kin. After several impassioned speeches by ancestral voices prophesying war, the High Chief finally raised a hand for quiet. The audience listened in rapt attention as he decided that as terrible as the the plateau people must have been, for the Landsmen to wage war against all of mankind was not in the will of the world-spirit. This conflict, stemming from mutual misunderstanding, was a caution against further bloodshed, not an invitation for it. While they would guard their camps against further aggression, and gird their loins for future struggle, the magnificent victory, gifted by the world-spirit herself, was clearly sufficient for now.
(https://i.imgur.com/cNVU9N6.png)
Psi-recording of a Landsman shaman’s subjective perceptions of a pair of canopic horn-enclosed mindworm larval masses during Close Encounter ceremony
The abundance of spirits is no mistake. Just as we proceeded from the dead earth-spirit, so does the world-spirit birth innumerable lesser spirits, breathing, twitching, grasping, living. What our explorers saw on the fields and above the mound proves that the world-song reverberates across spirits from every kind of womb. And all are in harmony when defending her, the mother who dwells among the stars and in the wind between the stars. - Awaken, All!
Of more immediate concern was the direct intervention of the spirits upon the Plains of Isaac, and their accompanying the pioneers to the Great Siege of Silenus. Later historians would identify that the New Amnesty Vendetta was the very first recorded occurrence of the Landsmen actually encountering mindworms. Despite the Riven Valley’s dense ecosystems and wealth of Planetary species, no mindworms had been directly sighted by its inhabitants for the first mission decade of their settlement. But the descriptions of their heavenly deliverers - winged beings of pure light and comfort - seem to corroborate earlier half-sightings by early colonists in the valley. Dubbed “the Angels of the Mound,” (0) these living spirits became a new creature to worship by the Landsmen, who viewed them as luminous shapes instead of the hellish hideous monsters that all others plainly saw. Even untamed mindworms, appeared to the Landsmen as clouds of living smoke.
For now, the High Chief gave his citizens a grand commission: to seek out and find these Angels, to see if they may once again accompany the clans, as they did at the gates of Silenus. Neither the Confederation nor the other factions realized at the time, but these survivors, so callously derided as barbaric primitives, had unknowingly discovered Centauri Meditation, unconsciously mastering the deadly art of mindworm taming.
The Cross
So often you hear of the faithful Christian, who chancing upon his fallen neighbor, exclaims, ‘I’ve left my coin purse at home!’ and journeys on. God save our seminaries if the priests we produce are unable to move their flocks to go and do likewise. And God bless the virtuous pagans who do. - Stellae Cognitae
(https://i.imgur.com/skpq1du.png)
The Cardinalate Palace, also known as Julian Hall, residence of Cardinal Cerutti, containing libraries, museums, and chapels hosting artifacts rescued from Earth
For several mission years, the Confederation of the Land and the northern factions they had encountered remained separated by distance and studious disengagement. The wounds of betrayal and vendetta remained too fresh, even if most of the vendetta refugees had been dismissed and shuffled off into obscurity by their home factions. But over time, more and more of the High Chief’s pioneer parties drifted from the valley, seeking new campsites, worshiping alien spirits, and preaching what outsiders termed the Terokredo faith. And slowly they encountered new examples of civilization.
A pioneer party headed east of Riven discovered the theocracy of the Holy See of Centauri. Founded by the Neapolitan Cardinal Julius Cerutti, the Holy See was a Roman Catholic attempt to deliver the faithful and the lost aboard the sinking Unity. Roma Nova was a far cry from its long-gone predecessor back on Earth, but it remained a shining beacon of that ancient legacy- its halls contained vast troves of papal treasures and data tape copies duplicating every jot or tittle contained in the Vatican Apostolic Library and, it was claimed, the Vatican Secret Archive as well. Guarded by legions of the Knights of St. Michael, the base hosted not only valuables within the Cardinalate Palace, but large tracts of tent settlements staffed by clergy and laymen of all kinds ministering to the forsaken of Planet. Since Planetfall, the Cardinal had sought to reach those left behind by the stampeding crowds, to better bring them the Bread of Life after bread to live. In those refugee camps dwelled scores of the faction banished, second-thought smacers, former outlaws, survivors of pods and bases lost to aliens and the elements. While their presence were closely watched by the knights, they received rations and fresh water, hydroponic produce and medical care, recreation through sport and song (1), and counsel- via the Church’s psych chaplains, of course.
The Centauri Catholics welcomed the party, mistaking the pioneers’ threadbare clothes and re-recycled gear as a mark of refugees. The Landsmen had interpreted it as an invitation to a great feast, the clustered pressure tents being the dwellings of fellow unknown tribes. They pitched their custom yurts, brought forth bespoke imitation fungal song musical instruments, and began cooking razorbeak meat and brewing sporeline stew. The travelers then shared a hearty laugh with the slightly nervous Catholic Charities refugee services workers who came to entreat with them, all realizing the nature of their misunderstanding. Emissaries were exchanged, information traded. It was here that the Confederation of the Land established an embassy with the Holy See.
(https://i.imgur.com/1y4p1n7.png)
A friar of St. Columba evangelizes to druidic warriors of the Collins Clan at the Picturesque Glen, an oxygen-rich “Edenic” region
Rather unexpectedly, a fruitful relationship developed between the two spiritual societies of incredibly different creeds. Unlike the factions at New Amnesty, the Holy See cared most importantly about winning souls, and rebuilding the moral authority of the Catholic Church. Having only had limited contact with other factions, Cardinal Cerutti decided the future of the Holy See was to very much act like its Vatican City predecessor in the 21st century, a neutral arbiter above the fray of inter-factional conflicts, providing spiritual guidance. As important as it would be to expand and gather fishes to populate its growing bases, he rejected the accumulation of converts through force of arms and military expansion. (Despite the Cardinal’s preeminence, he has so far deigned to convene a papal conclave, even if such a move might solidify his own position as head of the church not only on Chiron, but perhaps all of remaining humanity. When interviewed by gadfly Argyle Media about the possibility of being elected, Cerutti drolly replied that he would not select for his pontifical name Julius IV, wishing to distance his rule from namesake Julius II, the Renaissance era “Warrior Pope.”)
And so, even while the fervently animist-pantheist beliefs of the Landsmen were completely in contrast to the traditionalist monotheism of the Catholics of Centauri, holy vendetta did not ensue between the two. The Cardinal oversaw exacting theocratic rule within the walls of the Holy See, more in line with the Madrid Catholicism of the last known pope, Eglantine, than the New Papacy of his reformist predecessor Zachary II. Outside the perimeter defense, his missionaries carried out the Word in the most universalist of ways possible, speaking of the need to rebuild brotherhood upon a hostile alien planet, and ensure each human being is well-cared for. The particulars of theology remained stolidly conservative, in contrast to the pluralistic “path of conciliation” popularized by Bishop Pierre Mputu Kasala (2). But the soft, gentle tones of the Cardinal’s missionaries won them respect from the Landsmen, who called the curious robed figures “followers of the three-spirit.”
(https://i.imgur.com/7qiK6Kj.png)
Cardinal Julius Cerutti samples the spring waters at Starfall Village prior to baptism of new Landsmen converts
Initial interaction between the two inchoate factions was in the form of exchange of basic foodstuffs and living technologies- salvaged medications, discovered herbs, mineral ores. As the Landsmen settled in tent villages not far from the borders of the Holy See, however, deeper cultural exchange took place. After their past experiences, the tribal ritualists were heartened to find outsiders who seemed to take a genuine interest in the will of the spirits. It was refreshing for the shamans to speak for hours about how they channeled the world-spirit’s minions, on the precise esoteric interactions between the various wind-spirits and the winged-spirits. How the great spore cannons were driven by different humors and qi to target and attack foes of the world-spirit. The Catholic evangelists, for their part, listened politely and silently logged all information to their quicklinks and ClipComs, to be digested by Holy See scholars. Jesuit librarian priests trained in memetic engineering, tapping into millennia’s worth of anthropological reference, assembled apologetics and theological arguments crafted from the neopagans’ own frames of reference, to be used by the evangelists to bring them towards the light of the Gospel.
While most of the Landsmen remained solid worshippers of the will of the world-spirit, a few did gradually gravitate towards the new three-spirit belief. Some of them were, after all, colonists of Catholic cultures or even convictions who had reverted to the faith they held before their time in the Riven Valley. It was certainly observed by both shamans and clerics alike that those who had spent extended periods away from the Valley were more willing to consider different beliefs. But the relative low number of conversions, and the generally agreeable relations between the two, did not upset most of the Confederation of the Land. In fact, most shamans, especially those of the Mokhelhe Clan, actively encouraged their fellows to incorporate aspects of Catholic teaching into their practice, venerating the three-spirit alongside their tree spirits.
The amity between the factions’ citizens matched that of its leaders. The two began a correspondence, recorded via 8-track tape and delivered by courier. While Cardinal Cerutti was disappointed that so many of the Landsmen remained heathen, he found their chief of chiefs to be a curiously intelligent figure. How such a young man of such humble origins had managed to unite all of the disparate clans, leading his faction to flourish despite their backwards development, was impressive indeed. From the other side, High Chief Joseph considered the Cardinal to be a wise and judicious great shaman of his own people. To have spent so much time teaching three-spirit wisdom to so many different peoples, remaining steadfast in his knowledge despite learning of alternate paths, was a most clever balancing act. And to eschew war-preaching in favor of charity to all- that was a feat of faith most rare upon the world, as seen in the tragedy of New Amnesty. Surely this goodwill would result in a bless-full future for the Holy See.
(https://i.imgur.com/gTqTYV6.jpg)
A probe operative of the Eleventh Hour Tollmen, a Spring Catholic secret society, prepares to commit eco-terror for God and Gaia
Interactions with the Landsmen would leave a lasting positive effect on the Centauri Catholics. Even as the Cardinal disappeared beneath the waves for Babylonian Captivity, many of the sheep who did not abscond with him, nor submit themselves to be another denomination among the Lord’s Conclave, instead became the unlikeliest minority within the Confederation of the Land. While they resisted the label of “Cerutti Clan,” the three-spirit followers were a legacy that had started when the earliest missionaries from the Holy See had visited the villages of the Riven Valley.
While proto-Gaian neopagan ideologies ran rife on late great planet Earth, spawning offshoots of established religions such as the pseudo-Christian First Conversants, the reign of Pope Eglantine and the influence of Madrid Catholicism had managed to keep such “idolatry” out of most of the Church, save for among the Franciscans and some Jesuits. But the interactions with the clans of the Landsmen would shake the very foundations of many a committed Catholic, lay and clergy alike. The way these seemingly primitive people had taken to Planet, thriving among the thorny xenofungus and the crawling creatures of the earth, was a thrilling sight indeed. And for some reason, the great resounding spaces of the Riven Valley seemed to echo their haunting testaments to the millions of invisible spirits that dwelt within the thickets, behind the rocks, up in the air, beneath the rivers. More than one believer had their true faith shaken when visiting that place, sitting at Landsmen campfires, listening to their mimicry of the fungal song.
Those who resettled among the Landsmen were a vengeful lot, even when warned that was the province of the almighty. Many channeled their righteous fury not only against those who had burned Roma Nova, but those who would do harm to their Planet itself. These “Catholics of Spring” would become crusaders not only for the cross, but for Planet itself. Initially this was attributed to the reverence the Landsmen held for the world-spirit managing to rub off on the shell-shocked Spring Catholics. Then it was theorized to be a mechanism of mourning for home, projecting an attachment for the lost Holy See onto Chiron as a whole, taking up the cross of the Confederation in the stead of the captive Church. Later findings would clarify all.
But in the meantime, Spring Catholics formed church militant societies such as the Good Stewards and the Avenging Sisters of St. Hildegard. They fought alongside Landsmen warriors in campaigns against those who despoiled the environment, who inflicted the sins of gluttony and avarice upon the innocent species living on this virgin world. Upon the accession of the Confederation of the Land into the Stepdaughters of Gaia, these Vatican assassins and warlocks would bring their zeal to guarding Creation to their new mother faction. They would soon join Gaian Patrollers in protecting old-growth fungal fields and newly-planted forests. Avenging Sisters fought alongside Gaian Environmental Police and Landsmen warrior clans alike against polluters and looters. And the most fanatical of Spring clerics became probes of the House of Leaves, operating deep in hostile enemy territory as simple psych chaplains and preachers, ready to wreak eco-warfare at a moment’s notice on behalf of Lady Deirdre.
Casting
High Chief Joseph is portrayed by Barry Keoghan as Druig in Eternals
Cardinal Julius Cerutti is portrayed by Silvio Orlando as Cardinal Angelo Voiello from The Young Pope
Eleventh Hour Tollman is portrayed by Ethan Hawke as Reverend Ernst Toller from First Reformed
Image Credits
Two angelic beings are Vorlon true forms outside of their Encounter Suits in Babylon 5
Futuristic Catholic building is from “Vatican Vibes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKosaf5tmpI)” by Fatima Al Qadiri, video by Tabor Robak. Artist’s explanation (https://creativetimereports.org/2014/01/21/fatima-al-qadiri-vatican-vibes/)
Evangelist scene is “The Mission of St Columba to the Picts A.D. 563 (https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/93424/mission-st-columba-picts-ad-563),” depicting the Irish missionary in Scotland
Notes
The idea of the Confederation and the Catholics having good relations, despite both being more or less Fundamentalist about their differing respective religions, is from correspondence with nweismuller, and the canonical interpretation of the SMAC Fac Pack’s tech quotes (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/SMAC_Fac_Pack/blurbs.txt).
I first introduced Cardinal Cerutti and the Holy See to this project exactly a year ago (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21792.msg134724;topicseen#msg134724), which is fun timing.
(0) Dumb pun for Angels of Mons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_of_Mons)
(1) Was tempted to use footage of the Portuguese DJ priest (https://twitter.com/holasoyneto/status/1688499123090014210) at World Youth Day 2023.
(2) My Roman Catholic prelate character from my own Second Ship project (https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21633.msg130382#msg130382).
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The below content is written according to the template of the 1999 SMAC game manual. It follows the same style and reproduces, then builds on the language and formats thereof. Those familiar with the game should see many hints of new game mechanics that are nevertheless in keeping with the original themes.
Getting Started
Introduction
Welcome to Racing the Darkness, a portfolio of multimedia projects set in the universe of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, a 1999 computer game developed by FIRAXIS Games™.
These creative, not-for-profit works, like the game by which they were inspired and on which they remain predicated, offer perspectives on a question that has preoccupied members of our species since time immemorial: how now shall we live?
Ideology is the driving force of politics, economics, and conflict in this setting, and we strive to tell stories that will speak to where we have been, where we are, and where we may be going as a global, human community.
The Story
Soon after the new millennium begins, humankind’s oldest enemies—war, famine, and disease—are winning the battle on planet Earth. The United Nations decides to attempt the mission that has been the dream of countless science fiction writer sand fans for generations: the colonization of a new world, before it is too late. The establishment of a new outpost for mankind as an alternative to the decaying situation on our mother planet seems to be the last and best hope for the continued existence of our species.
Codenamed “Unity,” the plan is simple: send an expedition to the nearest Earth-like planet, Chiron, in the Alpha Centauri system. Furnish the people, equipment, and supplies necessary to build a new and prosperous society. Ensure that the mission stays on-track by carefully monitoring its progress from Earth. Then, when the time is right, and if the need still exists, begin shuttling others to this New World.
But space travel is a difficult undertaking. It is hard to reach our own moon. Nuclear pulse propulsion can achieve only a fraction of the speed of light, meaning the journey to Chiron will be decades long. During that time, the colonists will be placed in suspended animation—cold sleep—to arrest the natural aging process and reduce the logistical complexities of travel. (It is not yet feasible to supply enough food, water, and other necessities to produce a viable generation ship.)
As Unity reaches the Alpha Centauri system, it is beset by multiple crises: a micrometeorite collision leading to the catastrophic, cascading failure of multiple ship's systems, compounded by a general mutiny that culminates in the assassination of the expedition's leader, Captain Jonathan Garland, and its ultimate dissolution.
Factions
The human factions of Planet are not divided by race, language, or place of ancestral origin. Rather, the survivors organize themselves according to ideological preferences. Each faction is guided by the vision of its leader. These visions, in turn, give each faction a unique set of advantages and disadvantages. By comparing the strengths of your faction to the parameters of a customized planet, you can either give yourself an edge against the other factions or set yourself a unique challenge to overcome.
You are likely to find the game more enjoyable if you pick a faction you can empathize with (even if you don’t necessarily agree with everything they profess).
University of Planet (led by Academician Prokhor Zakharov)
The University is completely dedicated to research and the creation of technologies to solve the problems of mankind. They are rumored to sometimes put the pursuit of knowledge ahead of ethics. They start the game with the Unity Computing technology and one bonus technology of their choice (a nod to data tapes they have salvaged) and must pursue the Discover research path. As befits their interest in tools, the University’s affinity is for Supremacy. Each University base receives a free Network Node at founding. The University’s research progresses quickly, but their open-access philosophy makes them susceptible to attacks by covert “Probe Teams,” and their natural curiosity causes them to question the authorities that provide security and defense, undermining internal stability and power projection. The University cannot make Romantic or Enlightened social choices. The University builds a new Robot for every 6 citizens. Three of the University’s five starting populations are Robots, placing an early cap on their economy. A Librarian helps add to their already-impressive edge in technological research.
Gaian Stepdaughters (led by Lady Deirdre Skye)
The Gaians are determined not to repeat the environmental mistakes of Old Earth. They seek to limit the impact of human settlement on Planet. They start out with the Centauri Ecology technology and advanced abilities to interact with native life, including the ability to move freely through xenofungus squares and gather extra nutrients from the fungus. Their empathy with Planet gives them the ability to place ravaging mindworms directly under their control. Their experience with life systems makes their bases more efficient and confers significant bonuses to food production but their pacifist leanings undermine the abilities of their military units and they resent police control in times of crisis. Because of negative environmental consequences, Gaians cannot choose the Free Market economic modality. Gaians may prioritize either the Explore or Choose research paths. The Gaian affinity is for Harmony, following from their desire to live “in dialogue” (symbiosis) with Planet. The Gaians begin the game with Emergency Supplies representing Unity’s seed bank. Their starting population includes both a Technician and an Artist, allowing them to get head starts on culture and production.
Human Labyrinth (led by Chairman Sheng-ji Yang)
This faction is ruled under harsh collectivist/authoritarian principles. The good of the individual is totally subordinate to the interests of the state as defined by its ruler. The Labyrinth seeks to radically redefine what it means to be human, trampling preconceived notions about right and wrong. These so-called “Hivemen” are isolationist and militaristic. The Labyrinth begins with the Doctrine: Loyalty technology and may choose two bonus doctrines at game start. Their bases are built underground for security, and befitting their hermitically closed society, each base receives a free Resocialization Chamber facility to convert citizens to drones. The Labyrinth’s population growth, social engineering multipliers, and production output are all above average, but their economy is weakened by isolation and they suffer from inefficiency caused by repression. There is a 50% chance that new populations will be Drones. The Labyrinth cannot make Democratic social choices. The Hive’s starting population is divided between simple laborers and the ruling castes, consisting of one Overseer, one Talent, and a Thinker. The faction’s Colony Pod and ‘Former both use the drill rig chassis and can burrow beneath Planet’s surface. The Labyrinth’s Affinity is for Supremacy and it may pursue either Expand or Command research priorities, in line with the Chairman’s philosophy. The Labyrinth cannot make social choices except on the Frontier and Classical spectrums.
Morgan Industries (led by CEO Nwabudike Morgan)
The Morganites are organized along corporate lines and dedicated (at least in theory) to laissez-faire capitalist economic principles. Everyone and everything are presumed to be in competition for material wealth and comfort. The Morganites start the game with 100 energy credits and the Industrial Base technology. This faction prioritizes the Build research lane. Reflecting their entrepreneurial endeavors, Morganites receive a percentage of bonus income based on the total amount of commerce between factions and generate additional energy and trade goods. Because citizens have expensive tastes, it is difficult for them to support units in the field and they must build Hab Complex facilities before the population of any of their bases can exceed four citizens. The Morganites have limited options on the Economics spectrum. Despite starting the game with a unit of mercenary soldiers that is generally superior to basic militia, Morganite citizens lack the interest to sacrifice for their convictions, reducing the quality of their armies. The Morganites begin with the game with a mixed bag of two Citizens, one Drone, and one Overseer to join their Talent. Morganites are Supremacists who see no reason not to modify self or Planet. Morganites may not choose the Equity value. The second of the Morganites’ unique starting units is a crawler, which can be used for trade or resource-ferrying missions.
Spartan Federation (led by Colonel Corazón Santiago)
Spartans are paramilitary survivalists. They believe that people have both a right and a duty to bear arms—and to use them when tyranny threatens. The Spartans begin the game locked in a Vendetta with all other factions for 40 turns. It is in a permanent Vendetta with the Tribe. The Spartans start the game with the Doctrine: Initiative technology and a powerful Impact Squad. As befits their focus on preparations for war, they do not pay the added cost for developing new unit prototypes. Spartan research follows the Conquer tree. The morale of Spartan units is exceptionally high and their seasoned officer cadre imparts a substantial combat bonus, but their extravagant military spending weighs down economic operations. The availability of three War Stores can help the Spartans turn out a large army in the early game. Because of the presence of certain malcontents in Spartan society—those who take the call for armed vigilance to a bullying extreme--overall faction cohesion is poor. The Spartans may not make the “Wealth” social choice. The Spartan population is small, but an Officer adds to their punch. Spartans are Purists who romanticize the past.
The Lord’s Conclave (led by Sister Miriam Godwinson)
The believers of the Conclave devote themselves to pursuit of higher truth and seek to persuade other societies of the correctness of their beliefs. They start the game with the Social Psych technology and follow the Choose research path. Believers are resistant to probe brainwashing but their suspicion of the mind-machine interface and reduced attention to secular affairs retards their research efforts, while their belief that Planet is their Promised Land sometimes interferes with their ecological sensibilities. The Believers cannot adopt Eudaimonia as a social choice. Believers are Purists when it comes to affinity. Also, this faction will not make Cyborgs or Specials. The Labyrinth grows at a fearsome rate and is already the largest faction by population size at game start. An Artist and a Thinker provide opportunities to focus on cultural expansion or doctrinal advances. Believers pursue research on the Choose tree. The Believers also begin the game with a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital once used to treat the sick and dying aboard Unity, later repurposed as a ranging vehicle to survey their new inheritance.
The Peacekeeping Forces (led by Commissioner Pravin Lal)
The Peacekeepers continue to advance the humanitarian principles embodied in the Unity Mission Charter and are officially committed to the reunification of the factions under their own democratic leadership. They start the game with the Information Networks technology, reflecting their commitment to the free and vigorous exchange of ideas. The idealism of this faction attracts an intellectual elite, but their society tends toward bureaucratic inefficiency. Peacekeepers have an aversion to the Classical social choices. They follow the Build and Choose research trees and hold the affinity of Purity. Peacekeeper bases can exceed normal population limits by 2. Due to their experience with parliamentary maneuvering, Peacekeeper votes count as double when the Planetary Council convenes for an election. Peacekeeper societies have little slack: they begin with the game with an Administrator, Artist, Librarian, and Talent, allowing the player to make early headway on Secret Projects. The Peacekeepers begin the game with a squad of Power Armor, reflecting their association with what remains of the elite United Nations Marine Corps.
The Human Tribe (led by Selectman Pete Landers)
The Human Tribe is a network of communities (some would say, a cult) founded in the United States during the last civil war. Members believe that the ideal society resembles a neighborhood: small, intimate, and determinedly parochial. Tribal forces stowed away aboard Unity and helped contribute to the ship’s destruction. They begin with the game with Doctrine: Defense. The Tribe’s veteran soldiers are highly effective, especially when on defense, and its suspicious society is hard to infiltrate or subvert. Each base also receives a free Bunker facility. However, the faction suffers significant penalties to production and research because of its emphasis on informal relationships and suspicion of centralized government. Tribals are Purists, hearkening back to an imagined ideal of social amity and civic engagement. This faction must make social choices from the Frontier or Romantic spectrums. Tribals may explore the Build and Conquer research trees. The Tribe is the smallest faction at game start. Reflecting their status as violent stowaways that participated in the fighting that led to Unity’s destruction, the Tribe begins the game locked in Vendetta with all other factions for 20 turns. It is in a permanent Vendetta with the Spartans.
The New Two Thousand (led by Governor Oscar van de Graaf)
The New Two Thousand are investors in a joint-stock company that helped to finance the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri. They agreed to be compensated with land after a brief period of service to the “main” mission. Faction members hope to carve out their own slices of paradise with as little interference from others as can be managed. Their affinity of Supremacy matches a belief that Chiron should be the oyster of anyone with enough courage to place it under the plow or the lash. The New Two Thousand begin the game with the Doctrine: Expansion and may pursue the Build and Expand research pathways. The faction’s values lend themselves to higher efficiency and industrial output but reduced morale and cohesion due to the enforcement of contracts that are not always favorable for their signatories. The faction starts with one War Stores and two ‘Formers that represent assets of the American Reclamation Corporation, a federal corporation once run by the governor himself. The New Two Thousand begin the game with two Talents and two Technicians, a reflection of the Governor’s success at recruiting “the best of the best.” This faction is Supremacist; it may not make the Planned or Post-Scarcity social choices.
Sources:
Chris McCubbin, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (Redwood City, CA: Electronic Arts, 1999), pp. 11-13.
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The Resurrection Vendetta
Never forget that the terrible swift sword is all too often brandished to distract from evil fruit. - The Collected Sermons
(https://i.imgur.com/nNrK15I.png)
The true origins of the Watch Tower are obscure. Unlike the Lord’s Conclave, the Holy See of Centauri, the Kavithans, or many of the other theocracies that emerged post-Planetfall, the Jonadab Watch Tower Bible Studies Society (0) did not have any preexisting prominent religious leaders as passengers aboard the Unity. Instead, scattered adherents of disparate national-cultural origins commandeered a colony pod, forming the first congregation and narrowly escaping the exploding ship. Narrowly avoiding destruction, they managed to found the base of Victory of Truth in a region they named the Resurrection River Valley. There, the Jonadabs promulgated the worship of Jehovah God as their founding creed and source of strength in the wilderness. Prone to constant mindworm attacks, the once-pacifist sect, previously persecuted in Earth wars for refusing military service, slowly became hardened by constant combat against a hostile planet.
After the initial starting mission years, the Jonadabs had encountered other early settlements. As was their ministry, they sent their publishers to knock on their neighbors’ doors, but soon found the reception hardly friendlier than the fungus. The Human Tribe, while welcoming to all those lost and in need of community, politely refused offers to listen to any preacher save Jean-Baptiste Keller. The Lord’s Conclave at first attempted to welcome their form of worship into the greater faction body as part of a brotherhood of all believers, but the Jonadabs refused. As on Earth, they recognized no government save the Kingdom of God; indeed, this rejection of all politics caused interfactional studies scholars to eventually label them an Ecclesiastical proto-faction. Not to mention, they found Conclave theology to be another fallen false doctrine, worldly and not in the Truth. After constant attempts to convert the Conclavists to their own doctrine, even Godwinson had to turn them away from her door. However, the Watch Tower did manage to gain some crucial contacts within both flocks.
(https://i.imgur.com/8pFFxGc.jpg)
“The Anointed Return at Armageddon,” mural at Rutherford’s Mystery
Ultimately, the dangers of the Resurrection River region radicalized the Watch Tower. Post-deprogramming accounts indicate that in a mission decade’s time, much of the Governing Body of the Jonadabs had perished, either from psychological trauma from mindworm attacks, injury from the sect’s rejection of blood transfusions, or simply malnutrition. As time went on, the survivors increasingly embraced more extreme doctrines, interpreting and reinterpreting all of the traumas afflicting them since leaving Earth. Dates for the end times were calculated and recalculated, eventually landing upon the decision of mission year 2114 as the start of the road to the Great Tribulation. When that time had come and gone, with no eschatological significance, civil disorder struck the Watch Tower. Brother and sister marked, gave reproof, and inflicted disfellowship on one another. Elders were accused of worldliness by their own ministerial servants. The shunned were ejected from the colony to perish in the wild.
After the dust had settled, the new Governing Body declared their non-faction was no longer part of the “great crowd” who would merely survive Armageddon. They were not simply assistants to the chosen 144,000 who would reign alongside Christ in heaven, they were the anointed. No longer identifying as part of the Jonadab class of assistants, they declared themselves as the final chosen. Chiron was not another part of the Satan-ruled world as Earth was. It was Jehovah’s kingdom- whether it was the new heavens or the new earth written of in Revelation, the theogeographers were unclear- either way, during the long journey to Centauri, the Tribulation times must have already been happening on fallen Earth. The world they arrived on was paradise for the Anointed.
(https://i.imgur.com/xvjm4Xz.jpg)
“Traitor Kings Bowing to the Red Dragon”
Of course, the problem of evil becomes even more pronounced in heaven. If this truly was the blessed time after Armageddon, the day of judgment, and the defeat of Satan, why was this kingdom so far from perfection? Deadly beasts, scoffing disbelievers, bandits of every type: why was the Anointed still beset on all sides by peril?
Two movements rose in response. The Perpetualists, the more pugnacious, believed that just as the Devil and his demons were once perfect angels who arose in rebellion against Jehovah, the hostile creatures and peoples on Chiron were no less than demonic spirits defying the current heavenly order. Therefore they were witnessing a new time when a latter-day Lucifer was stirring up trouble, threatening the heaven they had come to. Thus all so-called humans encountered outside of the Watch Tower were suspect- they were possibly demons, or those in league with demons, and would need to be cast out and annihilated. If not by Jehovah, then by the Anointed. The hoary old injunctions against military service or allegiance to government were now by over: the Watch Tower was the visible manifestation of the kingdom of heaven, and the Anointed were its soldiers, engaged in perpetual struggle against the enemies of God.
(https://i.imgur.com/X8rnW15.jpg)
“Eternal Springtime in the Kingdom of God,” painting at New Gilead School (1)
The Perpetualists’ militancy would normalize the use of violence and vendetta by the Anointed. But before they converted the Watch Tower into a crusading not-faction, something unexpected happened. A true miracle would temper their belligerence.
After countless attacks and endless souls claimed, the swarming pests that dwelt in the toxic fields suddenly ceased their aggression. Instead, when a party of Anointed publishers rode forth from Victory of Truth to witness in vain to a smacer encampment that had sprung up in the vicinity, they found that the swarm approached them slowly, cautiously, “as in deference to the laws of Jehovah.” The publishers, clutching the tracts, discovered they experienced no telltale signs of creeping insanity, nor demonic visions. In fact, some felt a touch of divine ecstasy, of connection to a higher power, assuredness in their blessedness.
The smacers, a band of renegade New State Land Legion mutineers who had gone AWOL the moment they had stepped foot on dry land, did not care for more religiosity in their life. After first welcoming the Watch Tower party with the prospect of trade and maps, they immediately grew hostile when the publishers began offering their literature and speaking of the Truth. As they drew their water-cooled particle rifles to order the publishers out of their newly-claimed territory, the worms that had followed the Anointed to the camp suddenly came forth, interceding on behalf of the publishers and intercepting the energy blasts. The mutineers shrieked and grasped their heads as blood poured forth from their ears, turning their guns upon each other before themselves. Shaken, the publishers returned to Anointed headquarters, but not before salvaging the advanced weaponry of the unconverted.
This would not be the first intervention from the worms. They would appear again when the publishers went on witnessing trips. They even approached Watch Tower bases in peace. This stunning change in behavior was seen as no less than a sign that they were truly in paradise. For so long, they had believed that the lion would lay with the lamb, that the wild monstrous animals would become sedate and submissive after the end had come. And here it was. This second movement, the New Worlders, declared that the Anointed were truly in the promised land. But this land was not like the old, fallen world. It held many mysteries to be continuously studied and reexamined in light of Scripture. The Anointed may at times have to fight for the Truth against new rebellions by demons and apostates. But in time, all hearts could be won over, even the ferocious beasts of this land.
We are all custodes of this new garden. Let us be fruitful.
(https://i.imgur.com/G9jvtZS.jpg)
Just as with the original Crusades, it all came down to prime geography, not differences in theology. Not at first, anyway. The fertile soil of the Resurrection River Valley was worthy of covetousness, but factions adjacent to the Watch Tower wisely avoided the area, not wishing to deal with the Anointed nor their newfound mindworm companions. Those new to the scene, however, were ignorant of such cautions. The iridescent brilliant coloring of the land hearkened eager settlers.
The Centauri Catholics of the Holy See arrived in a colony pod not too long after the Jonadabs became Anointed. Seeking to bring the light of Roma Nova, they saw the temperate nature and the fecundity of its plant life and immediately began work on a new base. The settlement was named San Isidro Labrador, after the farmer saint whose patronage over agricultural abundance evoked the namesake of their settlement program. They built on one far end of the river valley; in fact, it took over a mission fortnight for Harvest scouts to discover Plan of the Ages, the closest Watch Tower base, an outpost little larger than San Isidro. From the word go, relations were fraught. The Anointed, for all of their outward geniality, were less than enthused by others infringing upon their holy valley. They sent publishers to spread their version of Truth to the Centauri Catholics, who quickly rebuffed them. Soon after, defenses in the form of automated turrets and even makeshift bunkers appeared along the perimeter of the territory around the base.
When a second pod containing more colonists appeared in the valley and built the hilltop base of Hierosolyma Nova, the Watch Tower had had enough of the interlopers. Not suffering from SASA, the witnesses remembered the old dogma and rhetoric from Earth that excoriated the Catholic Church as not just any ordinary member of false Christendom, but as Babylon itself. With great fury and despising, they prepared to drive out the apostates and demons once and for all.
(https://i.imgur.com/loPv0JE.jpg)
An Anointed captain in Proclaimer armor flanked by two Eighthers in Advent suits
Though with virtually no martial tradition, the Anointed assembled what they called the Army of 144,000. The number, in reference to their own status as the saved, was more aspirational than actual as their real population was far lower, never mind their military size (2). For their self-confident bluster, the Watch Tower knew they needed allies with which to chase out the false teachers of Christendom. Ironically, they did so by reaching out to apostates that happened to align closer to their beliefs.
From their time witnessing to the Lord’s Conclave, they had discovered congregations with minority fringe theologies. The Eighth-Day Adventists, with their obsession with the Second Coming, were more similar to the Watch Tower than to their own Sister Miriam, who generally frowned upon millenarianism as a harmful distraction from present-day worries. Publishers visited The Holy Fire and, promising not to overly preach, secretly made contact with the Eighthers, inviting them to see “living miracles” back home. Upon visiting the Watch Tower base of Printers of Zion, they were amazed to see the Anointed touching live swarms of mindworms, picking them up and commanding them to move with no ill effect towards anyone. All around them buzzed an unearthly choir resounding through their very minds. While Adventists were not much for charismatic gifts of serpent handling nor speaking in tongues, this was a clear miracle never before seen since the prophecies of Ellen G. White herself. So the Eighthers joined their distant cousins at the Watch Tower.
Their numbers were not great, and Adventism traditionally supported noncombatancy, so they sought a force multiplier in addition to the tame worms. They did so through the unlikely use of technology: the Eighthers, being Conclavists, were skilled in the probe arts. (3) A reconnaissance operation to Hierosolyma Nova uncovered that it was a research base under the scholastics of the Order of Saint Thomas. From its physics labs the Eighther probes stole designs for an experimental field battery which, when applied to the New State gear that the Anointed had taken from the mutineers, created new particle rifles and even rudimentary power armor. (4) Swords sharpened and armor shielded, the One Forty-Four Thousand were closer to battle.
(https://i.imgur.com/LnxyTke.png)
Stone Statues, having undergone the soul-scabbing procedure, rally before deploying from Printers of Zion base
The last leg of the tripod that was the Anointed Army of 144,000 was in the normally isolationist Human Tribe. The Tribals had no interest in the holy wars of other denominations. But when told that the Holy See of Centauri had a friend in the Confederation of the Land, the normally sedate and jovial Kellerites were enraged. At least, a segment of the faction was- those who had survived the events of the Silenus Plateau or had kinfolk who had lived there. While the faction officially entered into an anti-Centauri Catholic pact, the Human Tribe took great pains to limit its involvement in the conflict, seeking only to push back Landsmen-lovers away from its territory. Furthermore, it only contributed a single, albeit considerable, militia: the Stone Statues.
Formed around a core of veterans who had fought under the liar war criminal Kankaras, these were militiamen who had faced the worst horrors of the first human-directed mindworm campaign. In those early years of adaptation, they responded both to their traumas and the possibility of future revenge conflicts with self-mutilation. Leveraging not-yet closed loopholes in Planetary Council interfactional law, they inflicted a modified form of nerve stapling upon themselves, dulling the pathways that reacted to fear responses and deadening the telltale hallucinatory abilities induced by mindworms. This practice would be banned not too long after, considered an atrocity that was prosecutable on a personal rather than a factional level. But for now, the Stone Statues used this practice of “soul-scabbing” to develop a partial resistance of sorts towards psi, at the cost of their own humanity and morality. So when the Watch Tower asked for their help, they enlisted the ranks of the One Forty-Four Thousand with glee, undeterred by the “lamb worms” of the Anointed and itching to fight the Landsmen.
(https://i.imgur.com/zka9MJW.jpg)
Sister Aurelia of Nueva Barcelona prays during the Battle of St. Jude, shortly before martyrdom
The ensuing campaign was swift and crushing. The Watch Tower-Eigther-Kellerite force narrowly outnumbered the Centauri Catholics. While superior training and planning on the part of the Holy See’s troops were able to keep the Anointed Army at bay for the first dozen decurns of battle, their fanatical, often self-abnegating tactics thwarted the careful strategies concocted by the Cardinal’s Guards. Certainly, they were no less ferocious in battle. The Knights of St. Michael rode gallantly to attack the Watch Tower heretics, some of whom claimed the same mantle of Michael the Archangel under questionable Christology (5). But having little historical experience in chivalry or military honor, the power armored Anointed fired Door Knocker rockets and sicced the very abominations of Planet against the cardinalate host. Used to fighting a less desperate and savage foe, the Centauri Catholics were stymied.
For a tripod, the Anointed Army was a surprisingly stable coalition. The Watch Tower might have considered the others apostates, but they were decent enough soldiers. Aside from refusing to fight or do any sort of work on Motarday (6), the Eighthers learned to fight quite readily, and ably. Their Conclavist zeal carried them through battle, just as the Stone Statues' close-knit cohesion, lust for revenge, and near-sociopathic inability to fear did the same for themselves. The Proclaimer suits, while experimental and few in number, provided a boost to nearby troops in any battle. And finally, when the lamb worms appeared, not even the fiercest militant orders of the Holy See could stand up to them for long.
(https://i.imgur.com/fDgkhsx.png)
The Anointed did not stop after expelling the Centauri Catholics from their valley. They marched on Holy See base after base, conquering and annihilating. Despite protests from Godwinson and Landers alike, neither of their constituent forces agreed to turn back. The Eighthers had already defected to the Watch Tower, despite holding ultimately incompatible beliefs. The Stone Statues just didn't care. They had no further plan beyond battle, even if it resulted in self-destruction. Ignoring threats of expulsion, they fought on even when the Human Tribe officially declared mission accomplished. (7)
High Chief Joseph, seeing his friend in danger, sent Landsmen warrior clans to stem the tide of the One Hundred Forty-Four Thousand. What resulted was the first mindworm conflict between warring humanity. The Confederation soon found that pitting their winged-spirit allies against smoke-spirits serving another group of people was a far cry from the slaughter of New Amnesty. The Anointed ordered their lamb worms to battle the Landsmen's demonic winged-spirits, and the resulting psi waves and psych blasts caused a horrendous resonance cascade that produced nightmares as far as the Riven Valley. The Anointed might have been newer at taming mindworms, but they made up for it with the righteous fury of self-proclaimed protectors of heaven. And with the Stone Statues. While soul-scabbing was a crude and barbaric practice, sometimes resulting in militiamen who were half-lobotomized yet still susceptible to psionic interference, their massed attacks in support of the Watch Tower ran roughshod over the Landsmen expeditionary force.
(https://i.imgur.com/JnFNV9n.jpg)
An Albertian monk approaches the Abbey of Saint Gerard to rescue holy relics and Earth-era documents as Roma Nova burns in the distance
The vendetta began near the start of the year. By the cold season, the Anointed Army had leapfrogged over multiple bases and fought off several Landsmen formations to besiege Roma Nova itself. It was a snowy season, and the Watch Tower was impatient as its forces shivered outside the walls of the capital base. Inside the gates, Centauri Catholics attempted to make the most of the holiday, visiting each other, exchanging gifts, feasting on seven species of cloned seafood, and engaging in every type of Christmas tradition half-remembered from Earth and reconstructed. But most of all, they prayed. Prayed for deliverance from the cultists' pet mindworms, prayed for the agri-domes to grow enough to fill their bellies, prayed for peace.
Outside, the Stone Statues gathered in rover circles and observed Tribal traditions of simple passion plays based upon Kellerite parables. They strummed their guitars around campfires and recalled tales from a lost land called the Midwest. The Eighthers treated the holiday as an extra Sabbath and rested in spiritual contemplation.
The Watch Tower recognized no holiday save one. They were unmoved by their allies and their enemies' repose. Instead, a group of Anointed undertook a daring raid to infiltrate the great base. Slipping past distracted sentinels, they uploaded an Awakening Tract infobomb onto the local datalinks, subverting door controls. The probes threw open the gates and in marched the Anointed, slaying everyone they could see. The Midnight Mass Massacre was the subject of multiple Planetary Council human rights inquiries. The bones of combatant defenders and fleeing civilians were intermingled with planetpearls of exterminated mindworms. The Anointed, disbelieving in hell, preached annihilation of Jehovah's enemies. By the time the tertiary internal defenses had gone up, two-thirds of the base had been overrun.
News of what had happened to Roma Nova was terrible enough for Miriam Godwinson to finally step in. As her faction dwarfed these others combined, her intervention was enough to give pause even for the most Christendom-hating member of the Watch Tower. Brokering a peace through the strength of her legions, it nonetheless recognized that the Holy See had been utterly defeated. Its defensive capabilities had gone out; with the Magisterium's inability to protect its own faithful, it must cede its authority. Its bases were now in the hands of the Anointed and allies. Its people were given free passage to go wherever they like. Many chose resettlement in the Rapture Hills and a life of religious worship as citizens of the Lord’s Conclave; a third could not leave and were forced to become unbaptized publishers of the Watch Tower. A fifth entered into the Confederation of the Land to live among virtuous pagans. A sliver remnant remained true to Cardinal Cerutti despite his military failure. They would accompany their spiritual leader twenty thousand leagues below to Nouvelle Avignon, the rump Holy See-in-Exile controlled by the New State, yet another band of heretics.
The former capital had been renamed to High Kingdom Hall, and was vying with Victory of Truth to be the most well-populated and advanced base of the not-faction. The Holy See apostates themselves had departed from their land. Their former allies found themselves at the mercy of Anointed rule. The vendetta had affirmed their chosen nature. It had even allowed the Perpetualists and the New Worlders to combine between both philosophies about paradise.
Even so, the excesses of conquest had marked the Watch Tower as a threat to all others in the region. The Confederation of the Land still smarted from the defeats its new mindworm tamers had received from the smoke spirit sorcerers. They would redouble their efforts in channeling the winged-spirits, training newer boils of different species and strains. Analysts would term this a "mindworm gap," inspiring the very first alien arms race on Planet. And as the former bases of the Centauri Catholics seethed and groaned from its zealous new owners, resistance movements spark up, yearning to rejoin the mother church.
Casting
Power armored Anointed and Eighther soldiers are portrayed by ADVENT troopers from XCOM 2
Kellerite Stone Statues portrayed by the Brothers of Tomorrow’s Fires from The Righteous Gemstones
Image Credits
Lush alien valley is “Angel’s Valley (https://www.deviantart.com/angela-harburn/art/Angel-s-Valley-705122025)” by Angela Harburn
Battle nun is “Warbirds, Bird of Pray (https://www.deviantart.com/simonarpalmer/art/Warbirds-Bird-of-Pray-610082762)” by Simon Palmér
Mindworms swarming soldier is from Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mind Worms graphic novel
Priest approaching abbey while city burns in distance is cover art for A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, painted by Peter Andrew Jones in Solar Wind collection
Design Notes
I first learned that there is a minor Jehovah’s Witnesses train station in the Metro universe by Dmitry Glukhovsky from this old forum post which predates the games (http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?p=1985876&sid=6e3fa13063ddc8584c904233a4e6828c#p1985876). The idea of a historical (and heretical) Christian sect surviving in the post-apocalypse but aren’t the inevitable Mormons (https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Mormons) is entertaining to me, which is why I had the JWs and a radical Seventh Day Adventist offshoot I made up (It’s Millerite Time!) attack the Holy See in RTD.
Watchtower emblem taken from Metro 2033 wiki article (https://metrovideogame.fandom.com/wiki/The_Watchtower). An ex-JW’s take on the Metro 2033 novel’s portrayal of the sect found here (https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/k9n266/an_interesting_take_on_jws_from_a_work_of/). Watchtower section in book begins here (https://archive.org/details/metro-2033-dmitry-glukhovsky/page/n149/mode/2up?q=jumble) (pg. 150-160).
Notes
(0) The Jonadabs, or the Jehonadabs, are a JW phrase for the great crowd of assistants to the anointed, which I picked up from the Jehovah's Witnesses vs Christianity doctrine comparison video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gZe6BCuCa4) (#101) by Ready to Harvest. Basically, a class of the saved but not the class. The economy class remnant.
(1) Not a The Handmaid’s Tale reference. There actually is a Watchtower Bible School of Gilead (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchtower_Bible_School_of_Gilead) in New York.
(2) Though hardly the first time a group has named themselves after inflated numbers in fictional history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMI1uQBHUpA).
(3) I wonder if research penalties can be offset by more capable research-stealing probes.
(4) Since both JWs and Seventh-Day Adventists have been historically pacifistic sects, there’s really no battle imagery for them outside of Hacksaw Ridge. Hence I had to go with the lame ADVENT pun.
(5) Probably my favorite weird bit of JW theological belief is that they consider Jesus and Michael to be the same (https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/archangel-michael/).
(6) Day of the decurn (ten-day Chironian week) named for Motaro (https://mortalkombat.fandom.com/wiki/Motaro), the Centaurian from Mortal Kombat.
(7) And that’s why you shouldn’t transfer your elite units to a pact brother.
Information about Sturgill Simpson’s cover of “All the Gold in California” on The Righteous Gemstones here (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sturgill-simpson-the-righteous-gemstones-all-the-gold-in-california-1234794169/) in Rolling Stone.
Further Reading
Jehovah’s Witnesses: A Case Study in Viral Marketing (https://priceonomics.com/jehovahs-witnesses-a-case-study-in-viral-marketing/), Pricenomics
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c79a1141-b0f6-4c75-9644-4bcf8940d4d0/ddlkm3r-cc607a75-df8e-43ff-87ad-36ba131acd44.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_576,q_75,strp/scout_the_danger_zone_3___hill_by_lhlclllx97_ddlkm3r-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTc2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYzc5YTExNDEtYjBmNi00Yzc1LTk2NDQtNGJjZjg5NDBkNGQwXC9kZGxrbTNyLWNjNjA3YTc1LWRmOGUtNDNmZi04N2FkLTM2YmExMzFhY2Q0NC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.TLDzxP4ZUWp7q8biZDVZbmsLG7yiX_g9uGCTzwtfGAw)
Believers carve new tracks in the Troilus Hills as twin suns burn through the gloaming overhead.
Territorial disputes were a leading cause of vendetta. Hopes of putting an end to serial violations of its "sovereign range" by Hunter overlanders and Conclavist expeditions finally tempted even the proud Two Thousand to participate in Pravin Lal's planetary government.
Godwinson refused to abandon the Naming Project, notwithstanding the very limited resources available to her faction for warfare, especially by unsupported flying columns.
Curiously, the first Believer expeditions reported almost no untoward encounters with xenofauna, a finding that confounded their less-fortunate opponents. Lady Deirdre Skye later hypothesized that the "almost respectful quality of the surveys" must have been apparent to the Living Planet.
The Believers, of course, were later notorious for their proprietary attitude towards the new world and its resources, using the knowledge gained through early roaming to support the Shaping wrought by Chief Liquidator Nagao.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/9824254d-06c6-47b8-a77b-9f8dcc4604e7/d83mf6s-d3739506-0282-42f7-83fe-1dff38a2783b.jpg/v1/fill/w_1032,h_774,q_70,strp/mil_mi_8_ink_drawing__iv__by_rooivalk1_d83mf6s-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTYwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvOTgyNDI1NGQtMDZjNi00N2I4LWE3N2ItOWY4ZGNjNDYwNGU3XC9kODNtZjZzLWQzNzM5NTA2LTAyODItNDJmNy04M2ZlLTFkZmYzOGEyNzgzYi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.Z5IXrbzV6iuhcrPDVSBDFgwFuEs3HwMSBDXDF826pI4)
Unity Scout Choppers combined all the most desirable features sought by Mission Control: collapsible, portable, easy to fly, and simple to maintain, with exceptionally long range and an impressive payload considering their weight. Even better, they were cheap: U.N. logisticians sourced them from the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant, which supplied 164 units that had been previously rejected for service in Afghanistan. (Slow and lightly-armored, they were tempting and easy targets for mujahedin fighters, but neither limitation was judged relevant to flying conditions on Chiron.) Refurbished, fitted with larger power plants and broader rotor blades to handle the much stronger gravity, Scout Choppers took pride of place in J.T. Marsh's blueprint for early reconnaissance.
After accounting for the full squadron of twelve on loan to the Forward Contact Teams, Kleisel Mercator's Air Operations Directorate survivors are believed to have hoarded most of the remaining air-frames. Others were loaded aboard Supply Pods since observed operators by M.Y. 15 included Gaia's Stepdaughters and the Human Ascendancy, and at least six were in the hands of the Lord's Conclave from very early on.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/1e47301e-d274-447b-8bff-44fc926a4fa5/dbil6ib-4f1518a1-1fae-4e7d-8879-9acce66841ba.jpg/v1/fill/w_891,h_897,q_70,strp/af_44__autonomous_fuel_transport__by_moth3r_dbil6ib-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTI4OCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzFlNDczMDFlLWQyNzQtNDQ3Yi04YmZmLTQ0ZmM5MjZhNGZhNVwvZGJpbDZpYi00ZjE1MThhMS0xZmFlLTRlN2QtODg3OS05YWNjZTY2ODQxYmEuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.MMEx3ZwoqacBlM4hA2_RTxIaJKFLkO8fE5qIowGFIHA)
Automatics were as varied as the beasts of the Earth. Many survivors grew to fear cyborgs and robots--"things" that appeared to be facsimiles or caricatures of themselves--without giving a second thought of the use of self-driving vehicles that, equipped with polymorphic software, were often better at avoiding or outrunning danger than organic pilots.
The Forward Contact Teams put thousands of radio-dispatched Unity Crawlers to work. They spread quickly and silently across the face of Shamash and beyond with configurations for every biome: self-righting capsules for the wine-dark seas; wheeled platforms for broken grounds; tracked haulers for fungal toadstools and nitrate heaps; and ski-mounted variants the permanent ice.
(https://www.hyperscale.com/images/smw48007reviewrk_3.jpg)
Each Landing Pod carried a fleet of micro-vehicles. Provision included at least one emergency tug to perform incipient medical transport and firefighting duties either aboard the Pod itself or in the tight confines of early settlements.
The dearth of atmospheric oxygen meant that most fires would be fueled by whatever the colonists brought with them--industrial gases, and radiological or conventional fuels. Most tugs used expansion foams in lieu of water.
Experience taught that the most common base emergency was loss of life support, and many crews dismantled the firefighting apparatus altogether in favor of conserving onboard storage space for self-contained breathing apparatus and quick-assembling oxygen shelters.
Sources:
First image is "Scout the Danger Zone 3 - Hill" by lhlclllx97 on DeviantArt.
Inspiration for Believer expedition's is Strategos' Risk's recommendation of Earth by David Brin, in which it is suggested that God's first positive commandment to Man was to name the beasts of the Earth.
Helicopter is Mil Mi-8 Ink Drawing [IV] by Rooivalk1 on DeviantArt.
Third image is AF-44 'Autonomous Fuel Transport' by moth3R on DeviantArt.
Fourth image is an MD-33 Navy Tractor firefighting apparatus by Mick Evans.
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How Now Shall We Live?
Late twenty-first century scholars of international relations need not have searched far or long for indictments of the modern nation-state. Scarcely four hundred years after Peace of Westphalia, and less than one hundred-and-fifty years after the founding of the United Nations, the gross failures of “commonwealth government”—“political community founded for the common good”—prompted broad and decisive reassessment of how the societies of Planet Earth should live henceforth.
Of the many inquests performed on the carcass of commonwealth government, those carried out by French military officer Raoul André St. Germaine and World Health Organization Director-General Pravin Lal were most influential outside academia. St. Germaine's popular history, written for the lay reader, traced the decline of what he called “the American project,” or multi-ethnic, participatory democracy, to its roots in the pre-modern era. Using data supplied by the Tomorrow Institute’s World Wide Web Watch, St. Germaine showed that, starting from the year 1990, the dispositive content of digital speech was overwhelmingly lies. Without a shared truth to anchor debate, the political amity necessary to hold together heterogeneous societies simply disintegrated. Confronted with a dizzying array of ideas, citizens declined even to seek information that was not pleasing to them, much less to accept it. Political battle lines hardened progressively until the disputants became convinced of the fundamental moral illegitimacy of their opponents, leading predictably to increased tolerance for anti-democratic behavior. Democratic societies therefore experienced a rash of coups d’etats and regional secessionist crises in the search for conditions under which single-party rule could be asserted.
Lal’s assessment was incompatible with St. Germaine’s, but his conclusions were essentially the same. St. Germaine represented central governments as flat-footed and naively idealistic. Lal wrote that they had become infected with the same manias as their constituents, promulgating mass political fantasies that were such a poor fit for objective reality, public administration became impossible. In essence, governments opportunistically sold their voters lies to the point that they were forced to govern as if those lies were true. Under conditions of state-sanctioned censorship, attempts to define national identity in ways that served the state became corrupted by chauvanism. Eventually, civic fires burned out of control as bad-faith actors tired of compromise and despaired of the sacrifices they were being asked to make on behalf of government in spite of its clear incompetence.
Commonwealth government endured as of 2071, but in a much-diminished capacity. Fewer nations attempted it, and fewer people demanded it compared to the previous century. In the words of Survivalist provocateur Corazon Santiago, “Democracy was for the poor and the downtrodden--those who still lack a voice.” Those whose fundamental needs were met usually tried to choose something else.
One of the earliest replacements for commonwealth government was oligarchy—government delivered with many of the same stylings as before, but which did not even pretend to serve the interests of disfavored groups. Instead, these were explicitly persecuted under the pretext that they represented a threat to political order. The distinction between a troubled commonwealth government and a “full” oligarchy was always in dispute, but the non-profit Freedom House identified just fifteen free governments worldwide in 2060, down from a high of forty-three in 2023, whereas the number of partly free and not-free governments rose sharply over the same time period. [1] Microgovernments presiding over populations of less than 20,000 were excluded from this count. On Chiron, participatory democracy was preserved in numerous societies, while multi-party democracy was most associated with the Peacekeepers, the Shapers, and the Hunters of Chiron.
Some wished to dispense with democracy altogether. Monarchists demanded simplification of politics by selection of an enlightened despot who would provide the wise discernment of which a democratic body politic was incapable, and the perpetuation of their dynasty according to hereditary principles. Interest in this form of government was greatest among those steeped in paternalistic, meritocratic, and deterministic institutions that taught obedience and suggested the possibility of closely grooming monarchs-in-waiting to perform their role well. Thus monarchy was most appealing to military officers, technocrats, and geneticists. Monarchy, distinct from simple despotism, was regarded with widespread suspicion and practiced only in a few places in 2071: in Golden China, imperial Iran, and most notably, on the artificial continent of Shamash during periods of national emergency. On Chiron, monarchy in stratocratic (military) trappings became the dominant government type of the New State.
Another transformative answer to perceived failures of commonwealth government was corporate rule, sometimes called corporatocracy. Its chief exponent, entrepreneur Nwabudike Morgan, called it “the antidote for stability.” The purpose of a corporation was to generate profit for its shareholders. Whereas commonwealth government aspired to deliver aspirational goods such as culture and purpose, corporatocratic governments confined their promises to (in Morgan’s words) “measurable, material benefits: food, lodging, entertainments, and physical security.” From 2050 to 2070, roughly ten percent of the Earth’s surface and fourteen percent of its population was managed by for-profit corporations under charter or contract to national governments. The success of corporatocracy as a full replacement for commonwealth government is hotly debated. Biafran PhD candidate Osa Bamidele, who stratified survey respondents according to title and income levels from 2064 to 2066, reported strong satisfaction with corporatocracy as a replacement for commonwealth government among elites, but felt that his results for drone workers must reflect tampering. Corporatocratic governments on Chiron emerged among the Morganites and was also practiced by the Bourse and Unicorp.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/50ab2386-0310-4c7c-b297-2a935a79768d/d6bc6qa-ad17c3db-d2dc-444a-bfd6-fc7b851f02cb.jpg/v1/fill/w_1286,h_622,q_70,strp/the_pyramid_by_bogdan_mrk_d6bc6qa-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTE5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNTBhYjIzODYtMDMxMC00YzdjLWIyOTctMmE5MzVhNzk3NjhkXC9kNmJjNnFhLWFkMTdjM2RiLWQyZGMtNDQ0YS1iZmQ2LWZjN2I4NTFmMDJjYi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTkwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.jtwv0vTj_d6of2FCNKoE30l4zDQgzb5xhnDJBEU2pks)
St. Louis, MO. The Lucinda P. Shaw Government Building, more commonly known as the ARC Pyramid, is left of center. In the background, the Malcolm Baldrige Suspension Bridge spans the Mississippi River, made four miles wide by the 2039 New Madrid Megaquake.
Shaw was the third African-American to serve as U.S. Attorney General, a position she occupied for fourteen years across five administrations. She survived two assassination attempts unscathed and, upon her retirement, was honored with appointment to the Unity Mission as an adviser to Captain Garland. Her fate is unknown.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/dae79cf6-1f1f-412a-ad69-229ef4cbec0e/db1i0av-b5e805f4-a362-4257-b493-700753901d8d.jpg/v1/fill/w_1191,h_671,q_70,strp/colony_ship_launched_by_fondrin_db1i0av-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTAxIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZGFlNzljZjYtMWYxZi00MTJhLWFkNjktMjI5ZWY0Y2JlYzBlXC9kYjFpMGF2LWI1ZTgwNWY0LWEzNjItNDI1Ny1iNDkzLTcwMDc1MzkwMWQ4ZC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19._9ygb_MUiyOF85My77fBX8q5gGBM_pBKAm2sluzZx7c)
Popular impressions of the corporation-as-government were favorably influenced by the American space program. Every American president from Eisenhower to Shanden claimed that private entrepreneurship was the best guarantee of keeping pace with, or maintaining America’s lead over, the Soviets in Space Race. The credibility of these claims seemed manifest in the success of Project Orion, as well as the more than fifty human recovery missions launched under the auspices of Comprehensive Transport, Liberty Bell Astro, and Kryad Synergies in support of the U.S. Air Force beginning in 1970.
It was widely accepted that the cost of space development outside Earth’s orbit required that profit motive, not civilian science, drive decision-making. Corporations had their own reasons for investing heavily in the skills and welfare of space workers, who almost always reported strong satisfaction with their favorable circumstances.
A fourth answer to dissatisfaction with commonwealth government was self-separation, distinct from secession in that self-separation was always only a temporary measure reflecting objective state failure, not alienation from the very premise of commonwealth government itself. “Classic” secessionism as practiced by the Christian States of America or the governors of Free Missouri, Alberta, Lone Star Texas, North Florida, and Chiapas, wanted permanent estrangement because of irreconcilable differences over the laws and political structures of the states from which they attempted to divorce. Advocates of self-separation, including but not limited to Kellerites, Proto-Survivalists (a blanket term for those who explicitly disavowed the tents of Holnism), and some Vaulters, claimed to have been first abandoned by their national governments, and thereby thrown on what Jean-Baptiste Keller called “the mercy of our own means.” The most generous estimates of the number of self-separated communities approached two percent of global population in 2050 but dropped below a half-percent two decades later. Most were Americans later reabsorbed into Unionist society. [2] Self-separatist communities usually lacked the diversity to achieve democratic pluralism, but did make decisions under a one-person, one-vote principle. On Chiron, this form of government defined the Tribe and the Neo-Spartans.
Corporatocracy and self-separation withstood tampering over time. Joint-stock entrepreneurialism was a form of corporatocracy distinctive for the small number of participants, which meant flatter organizational structures and more opportunity for direct experience of risks and rewards. Echoes of self-separation were evident in the almost hostile attitude that joint-stock entrepreneurs directed toward government. Unlike more traditional corporatocrats, whose wealth was synonymous with power in whatever government system persisted, joint-stock entrepreneurs saw themselves carving out wholly new spaces, merging the lust for wealth with a desire for total self-actualization. Members of the New Two Thousand carried this tradition to Chiron, where they looked to alienate land and practice a radical individualism that some felt was indistinguishable from Holnism.
Some believed that the best salve for loss of commonwealth government was organized religion. The Great Reawakening coincided with the Crisis of the Twenty-First Century. Archaeological recovery of ancient texts brought more than 120 apocryphal texts into consideration for inclusion into the Judeo-Christian biblical canons. Radiological incidents were almost always attended by eschatological claims. Debate around the legitimacy of this new information attracted keen attention from a global readership grappling with the traditional maladies of war, famine, scarcity, and disease.
As civil authorities became less able to meet the physical and spiritual requirements of their subjects, faith-based actors answered the unmet calls, mobilizing charity on an unprecedented scale. Faith movements sometimes allied themselves to secular political causes, as in the case of Miriam Godwinson, whose initial analysis of Scripture led her to the conclusion that civil and religious leadership should be held carefully distinct, or they could become estranged from them. Hundreds of “petty” religions were made and unmade in the liminal spaces of the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone. Revivalism was especially hot in space habitats: disconnection from the familiar and the very high rate of fatal accidents focused cultural development on the question of life after death.
So Marian Christianity, Catholic Christianity, New Judaism, Sunni Islam, and Confucian thought experienced booming growth. Marian Christians, who comprised most of Miriam Godwinson's followers, incorporated eighty new texts into their canon and were heavily influenced by the belief that works, not faith alone, would come to define their eligibility for salvation. These included charity as well as a new concept, called stewardship, which defined their relationship to Earth, and, for Unity mission survivors, Chiron, which they sometimes called New Earth. Although influenced by the Green movements of the 1990s, the Stewardship movement rejected conservationist values in favor of practical human interests. This put the Believers more in tune with the Morganites than the Gaians with respect to the disposal of planetary resources, but it also suggested the possibility that faction members could have a spiritual relationship with the Planet that was not so much a meeting of equal minds as the acknowledgement between master and subject. Unlike the relatively new innovation of Marian Christianity, other revivalisms tended to be concerned with the engagement of long-standing tradition and thought with the ethical quandries posed by modern technology.
A last noteworthy solution to problems of good government was automation. Some called for humans to submit their common problems to computers that would supposedly strip away any agenda when calculating viable options and balancing competing interests. While Johann Anhaldt would not go so far as to eliminate the human element in governance, he and Prokhor Zakharov undeniably attempted to divest certain aspects of base and social administration in ways they called "scientific."
[1] Colonial governments and minority-rule states usually practiced a form of limited (“closed”) democracy in which only certain privileged classes were permitted to participate officially in national decision-making. Freedom House’s policy was to classify colonial governments as partly free or not free. This included Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Greece, Israel, South Africa, Rhodesia, Katanga, Australia, and Thailand.
[2] Per Xolo-Boaz, enduring estrangement between self-separated populations and commonwealth governments should not be regarded as evidence of abandonment of commonwealth principles by the former. Indeed, it is best understood as reaction to the belief that self-separated persons were treated, unfairly, as traitors.
Sources:
For the definition of a commonwealth, I used Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth).
First image is “The Pyramid” by Bogdan-MRK on DeviantArt.
Second image is “Colony Ship Launched” by Fondrin on DeviantArt.
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And it was so (pt. 4.8 )
Many hurt men wondered, many struck men bled
Magic never faltered, magic always led
Many stones were rolled but God would not lie down
Many wild men lied, many fat men listened
Though they offered stones, magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers, God was always served
- “God is Alive, Magic is Afoot”, words by Leonard Cohen, Datalinks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-GonR4S1to)
(https://i.imgur.com/hH4rfX1.jpg)
A chewa of the Zenawi Clan binds cyber-zār killing spirits into her polearm. Through incantations and gestures, she unlocks the voice-motion controls of her pendant, a Unity nanobrace, activating microconstructors that reinforce and sharpen the blade (0)
Gradual contact with the so-called civilized world brought greater focus upon the peculiarities of the Confederation of the Land. Scouts cautiously visited the base camps, nodding along to spirit-sermons while observing the curious artifacts devised by the locals. Kiln-fired, silica-glazed, Super-Dense Micro-Ceramic pottery. Intricate idols and fetishes molded by the Self-Malleable Die-Casting process- but where Planetary civilization used molten metals from industrial foundries, these were heated in the very fires of Mount Cloudtop. Natural pesticides in the form of selective breeding of whisperwasps to produce Antigen Inhibitors, reducing entire prey species of root vermin. And the great University mathematician Yohanan Malakoff swore that he once saw inscribed on a wall at Great Encampment a vividly complex multidimensional pattern that illustrated the carver’s understanding of McGuffey’s Theorem. (1) All signified that despite their seeming cultural regression into superstition and loss of the scientific method, the clans of the Confederation had managed to progress technologically. Somehow they walked boldly through the darkness without a candle, yet emerged with the basic necessities for surviving a hostile alien biosphere.
(https://i.imgur.com/C6B8hGj.png)
Techno Shaman Enlil, master techsmith of Council Lodge, grasps a nodecrystal crafted from an open-air forge
Between slow but steady research advancement made under a demon-haunted worldview, and the spontaneous discovery of mindworm taming, the Landsmen had become of increased interest from outside factions.
The New State’s Madame Secretary of Cultural Life Élodie was infamously a connoisseur of the creative products of humanity’s multitudes, but uninterested in actually meeting those she deemed beneath her notice. So she contented herself by collecting Landsmen “wildman” art and musical recordings of mock fungal song, bought via amphibious hydrofoil merchants from smacer traders and Schreiber Project searchprobes. All the while, she ignored the pleas from Cardinal Julius Cerutti to dispatch her Calliope Squadron to secure a pact with the Confederation. Contre-Amirale St. Germaine was as dismissive of landbound indigènes as his cultural secretary was, declaring “neoprimitive ideas the exact opposite of what the New State stands for.” Both ignored the priest’s ambitions to restore the Holy See of Centauri with their arms.
The Human Ascendancy was enthralled with the idea that the Landsmen carried the mythical “psi gene” that allowed them to talk to the worms, and the implications of unlocking such inborn power. But they were too far from the Confederation to investigate the hypothesis.
The Scope and the Saucer
(https://i.imgur.com/6hsDkUC.jpg)
University-Preservationist Prof. Mikaela Ellton in the Gloomy Grove on the outskirts of the Riven Valley, en route to the Confederation
The University of Planet was a glaring exception in the field of Landsmen studies. The memory of lost Biotic Survey and the drubbing in the New Amnesty Vendetta lingered too bitterly, not to mention continued prejudice against the rampant faith the Landsmen bred like a petri dish. But Dean Adam Gieseler of the Preservationists of Terra research unit at Planetary Archives managed to finagle funding for a Centauri Anthropology department, arguing the need to keep abreast with the emerging cultures of Chiron, especially when they were built upon long-lost traditions of Earth. While he would not meet Joseph Gilpin for some time, Gieseler’s anthropologists established a small research post in defiance of Zakharov’s theophobic sensibilities. A veritable college town in the wild, Monrovia was chaired by Professor Mikaela Ellton, whose countless visits to the Landsmen made her the foremost surface expert on their ways.
The Memory of Earth was positively abuzz with theories and pseudohistory connecting the Landsmen to the hypothesized Progenitor race who had lived on Chiron, built its monoliths, and left its ruins. Extraterrestrial contact became the leading hypothesis among the Observers, as was de rigeur among the faction culture. Observers who subscribed to the Wanter theory believed that the neo-primitive clans had been visited by the still-surviving Progenitors, operating either from Gamma One, a dense iron-core asteroid orbiting Eurytion (3) and alleged to be the source of mysterious transmissions, or the hollow Planet. The Wanters claimed that as with the Dogon of West Africa and Sirius B, the Landsmen had been granted eldritch wisdom about the stars that they had no possible way of acquiring with their limited technological base, having foreknowledge that somehow stumped the University themselves. (Hence, the supposed conspiracy between the devilish Zakharov and Human Tribe dupes to deny the Landsmen’s basic humanity).
Wanter aficionados yearned to make pilgrimage to the site they believed the Progenitors had visited the clans. After great expense, a group of xenophiles made the long trek to Monrovia, swarming the little base on their way to the alien-touched land of Riven. Over a hundred cheering Observers appeared at the gates, bedecked in environmental suits modded with multispectral sensors and outlandish alien-themed accouterments such as synth-rubber tentacles and oversized optical lenses. While Ellton at first attempted to welcome them the best her staff could- the Wanters in turn proclaimed their admiration for Gieseler’s Preservationists as “the only honest scholars of the entire University”- the unexpected guests overwhelmed the outpost’s facilities, interfered with Ellton’s studies by asking to accompany her, and dumped metric tonnes of electronic refuse and ration wrappers outside their base, attracting the attention of mindworms.
They were finally evicted when the local University Security captain notified the anthropologists that not all of the Wanters were mere Fortean fans of the unknown, but probes with hidden agendas. Though disguised by Grey-chic temporary face tattoos and handmade xenoform masks, over two dozen of the little green men were ID’d by University Leibniz machines as officers of the Memory of Earth Chiron Guard, the internal ministry, the Ministry of External Intelligence, and even Deputy Minister Han Jae-Moon’s Project Cheongsu. To avoid an interfactional incident, Ellton politely asked the Observers- both Wanters and the disguised spies- to leave, as was the diplomatic custom granted to probes. (4) When they attempted to continue to the Landsmen homeland, they were turned back by a guard band of Rackham Clan mounted warriors on armored subrids.
Image Credits
Warrior shaman/sorceress with nano-magic is “Techno Shaman (https://www.skillshare.com/en/projects/Techno-Shaman/19139)” by Jayna Pavlin
Techno Shaman Enlil is Enki Technoshaman (https://www.youtube.com/@enkitechnoshaman758) of Burning Man (https://www.reddit.com/user/Progenitortech/)
Astronaut in forest is “astronaut” (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LkkD5) by Roman Avseyenko
Notes
(0) Chewa regiments (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewa_regiments) were the feudal noble warrior class of Ethiopia, perhaps comparable to knights or samurai. Zār (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C4%81r) are evil spirits or demons of the Horn of Africa, subject to cults that practice exorcism rituals.
(1) Technologies named here are from Sierra On-Line sci-fi strategy game Alien Legacy.
(2) Professor Mikaela Ellton of Monrovia is the Preserver anthropologist who studies the Confederation of Tribes in the SMAC Fac Pack tech quotes (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/SMAC_Fac_Pack/blurbs.txt).
(3) Eurytion is the Mercury-type planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A (Preliminary Report on the Alpha Centauri System (http://www.datapacrat.com/Art/FIRAXIS/SITE/STORY/SYSTEMRE.HTM)). Gamma One is a location from Alien Legacy, though based in the Beta Caeli system.
(4) The Memory of Earth, demonym the Observers, are basically the X-COM military-intelligence complex ruling a citizenry of X-Files watchers. Their whole shtick is believing in the existence of advanced alien life and working to unite humanity to combat it, or leveraging alien threats to end petty squabbles and unite humanity. A chicken or egg situation. Wanters (“I want to believe”) is the sub-factional theory most keen on alien theories, and so they would be invested in ancient astronauts type theories such as The Sirius Mystery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirius_Mystery) about the Dogon people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_people#Astronomical_beliefs). Given how physical gatherings are a big thing in ufology culture, you could imagine Observer-Wanters trying to Storm Riven (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Area_51), and military officers taking advantage of the enthusiasm to embed spies.
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(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/037/344/846/large/constantin-simion-constantin-simion-harvester-dune.jpg?1620144694)
Hive sand dredges begin construction of Visionary's Bolthole as a rare storm brews. Moisture will aid the digging process, but, more importantly, the violent winds and rain will suppress Neo-Spartan air patrols.
With few Talents to spare for viceregal duties, Chairman Yang preferred to build outposts in lieu of additional bases after MY35. The Bolthole would serve as just that--a relatively small and inelegant strong-point capable of providing convenient shelter to Hive raiding parties caught out on the far dunes.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/008/404/563/large/sergey-shinkevich-screenshot000.jpg?1512547220)
Half the tank for half the cost. The Ghazal was a prototype light tank built by the Neo-Spartan Column sometime before MY39.
Its configuration was deceptive: the gyro-stabilized turret contained a highly sensitive television camera used to guide the flight of micro-missiles carried in launch tubes on the hull. For close-in defense, there were pairs of coaxial weapons in recessed mounts to either side of the camera pod: two 7.62mm machine guns firing NATO-standard rounds, each one set below a grenade launcher fed with hard-kill countermeasures. This active defense was guided by the tank's large monodirectional radio crests.
Because there were few better options, Santiago found herself emulating the Hermet King with which she shared a sandy exile, poaching off those foolhardy enough to risk a desert crossing.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/582c2bfe-192c-40d6-a60e-de7eec5e8e82/dg5xvcd-8c9bd1bb-5ea8-4247-8773-144a177cf3eb.png/v1/fill/w_1013,h_789,q_70,strp/abdotupe_0004_by_cosmicsudz_dg5xvcd-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9Nzk3IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNTgyYzJiZmUtMTkyYy00MGQ2LWE2MGUtZGU3ZWVjNWU4ZTgyXC9kZzV4dmNkLThjOWJkMWJiLTVlYTgtNDI0Ny04NzczLTE0NGExNzdjZjNlYi5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.E4PDw4YFsIDpKwDAP4vIoY1-zeJSuCQgjrkSbVXH15k)
Believing that kings must conduct affairs in the open, Contre-Amirale St. Germaine spent jubilee years on land in La Tropicana, a pleasure palace abutting the Promenade Ligne Haute, a resort city reserved for his faction's elite--those trusted not to abuse the privilege.
The "CO" often solved political problems either by entrapping unwary members of "problem" families to undermine their standing in his court or rewarding them with extended furlough at the government's expense.
Though considered a moral obscenity by Miriam Godwinson and a blatant threat to the competing interests of Nwabudike Morgan, La Tropicana famously lured Lady Deirdre Skye into compact with St. Germaine after she discovered he had ordered his gardeners to preserve examples of Chironian flora pushed to extinction elsewhere on Shamash.
Sources:
First image is "Harvesters of Dune" by Constantin Simion on ArtStation.
Second image is "Sci-fi tank" by Sergey Shinkevich on ArtStation.
Third image is "Abdotupe 0004" by DeviantArt.
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(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d1/d0/bf/d1d0bf9ff51fb863897893563f55ba25--wip-scifi.jpg)
The cell blocks of Unity's correctional facilities were accessible only by a trunk-line tramway that traversed the open space between the end of one of the vessel's heat dissipation fins and the forward-most Hab Bay. That gulf was the location of a battery farm, residual light from which is visible through the tramway aperture at the top right of this picture.
Occupying the lowest rung of any Chironian society was the prisoner.
This position was potentially accessible in three ways. Some portion of this population consisted of people made prisoner before 2071. These were convicts placed aboard Unity as unfree laborers by various donor nations. Most were inmates of the Soviet or Chinese penal systems, all were selected on the basis of good health and fitness for hard labor, and the U.N. suspected that a majority were guilty only of political crimes. A very high proportion of these individuals survived hibernation to fall into the hands of Aleigha Cohen. The second population of prisoners were captives, usually taken during vendetta, but also during informal skirmishing or in raids. A third set of prisoners was created through the normal operation of criminal justice when individuals violated the laws of their respective factions or committed trespass while on the territory of another faction.
(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOTc5ODkzODE4OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzQ0NzgyMzE@._V1_.jpg)
An image from the Unity Crisis. Two members of a heavy rescue team drag an injured convict to a temporary holding area on the orders of Commandant Sardul Singh, the officer responsible for the mission's correctional functions.
Prisoners presented serious ethical problems for early colonies especially. They demanded food, water, shelter, medical care, and warding. If they did not receive these minimum interventions, there would be trouble: either the prisoners would sicken and die, or they would become violent. For this reason, the Conclave immediately attempted to ransom any prisoners that fell into their hands. Others took a harder line. Spartans, Pilgrims, Gaians, and Tribals shot most surrendering enemies so as to avoid the imposition of care, keeping only a few higher-ranking individuals alive for interrogation. Hunters stripped their victims, consigning them to narcosis. The New State similarly set the occasional prisoner adrift in inflatable rafts. Taking prisoners appealed only to factions eager for labor: the Hive, the University, the Dreamers, the Ascendancy, and the Morganites.
Unruly prisoners could be nerve-stapled into dumb docility, but only at the cost of much of their intellectual and even physical utility, and this strategy was embraced only by the Labyrinth. Some were also made into soldiers, but prior to the advent of reliable neural re-patterning, the reliability of these forces was too low to make the prospect at all tempting. Conversation was possible, but expensive--and controversial, for one's own citizens were sure to object when their enemies were welcomed at table. To create incentives that redounded to the benefit of the faction that possessed them, prisoners were often indentured for lengthy terms of servitude. The Morganites and Pilgrims both practiced this form of coerced labor in lieu of slavery.
Rumors abounded that prisoners of the University could expect prolonged suffering as victims of gruesome experimentation, a fate actually more likely to be befall them in the hands of the Morganites or the Dreamers. With so few able-bodied citizens, Zakharov was more interested in laboratory assistants and medical orderlies than test subjects, at least for the first thirty years of settlement. In a warped reflection of the cruelties visited upon them by their neighbors, the Gaian Sisterhood drove their prisoners into the fungus, a strategy defended by the Lady Skye as her people's best deterrent against future abuse. Spartans were equally infamous for their brutalities to the servile class.
Terms were best from the Children of the Atom, who lacking martial inclination, were usually pleased to release prisoners on their own recognizance; the Peacekeeping Forces; the Memory of Earth; and the Lord's Conclave. Both Lal and Mercator promulgated codes of law that accorded prisoners specific protections from exploitation and guaranteed them the a basic living, albeit in semi-permanent captivity. Conclave theologians produced the Captive's Book, a collection of extracts from the voluminous Books of Meronicus, with an even larger component of theological and sociological analysis. This text, provided as a sequence of data tapes, purported to speak to the spiritual aspects of the prisoner's plight. It was mandatory reading for those convicted of civil offenses.
(https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/2021/05/nup_193870_0008.jpg)
University Security escorts a proud scientist to his lecture hall at Budushii Dvor. The Academician did not deign to become involved in the affairs of his proctors and rarely considered a colleague's disciplinary status when assigning projects.
Captives were treated far worse than civil offenders, especially those of higher rank or caste--individuals that had already consumed a significant proportion of their factions' resources and so were judged worthy of fast rehabilitation, usually on easy terms. Morganites could buy their way out of trouble, even to the point of arranging their own contracts of indenture before the authorities could do so on their behalf. Spartans were pardoned on the condition that they volunteer for temporary assignment to penal battalions where they would serve as shock troops. Tribals remanded civil offenders to the care of their families. Repeat offenders were simply exiled.
Sources:
Source of the first image is unknown. I found it on Ben Austin's Pinterest site where it is labeled "Sci Fi Prison." A TinEye reverse image search suggested several possibilities for original provenance, including an artist with the handle of Azure_Dragon and Fantasy Flight Games.
Second image is from the 2012 film Lockout.
Third image is from the Peacock series Intergalactic.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/dc419b37-cf79-4e56-8e1c-0834981d213b/dg6fhxd-0d70ea67-0dad-4c12-86ec-c71034239f33.png/v1/fill/w_1199,h_667,q_70,strp/comfyui_01513__by_dralles_dg6fhxd-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODkwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZGM0MTliMzctY2Y3OS00ZTU2LThlMWMtMDgzNDk4MWQyMTNiXC9kZzZmaHhkLTBkNzBlYTY3LTBkYWQtNGMxMi04NmVjLWM3MTAzNDIzOWYzMy5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTYwMCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.Q13LkdB-WOM0vt_P2PfSooV5WhhX2ylXtoqxe24jpEI)
Gaian artisans excavated the conservatory at Titania's Rest from the stem and cap of a mushroom more than 900 meters in length. The still-living myconid's husk proved fertile growth medium for fragrant ferns and bioluminescent bulbs.
In the words of concert pianist Cristopham Westover, who played Titania twice, the performer experienced "a transcendental peace." Sathieu Metrion agreed. Supposing that recollections like Westover's indicated Deirdre had successfully tapped into the planetary overmind, Metrion organized the capture of Titania's Rest in MY40. The Gaian defenders gave their lives dearly, refusing their lady's repeated orders to withdraw.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d26fb01e-3f17-4e5f-a417-afe07300b8c3/dftmvok-54851537-9e8f-4b1e-81e9-da5ccb634962.jpg/v1/fill/w_1192,h_670,q_70,strp/eva_passage_way_by_helot_dftmvok-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTA4MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2QyNmZiMDFlLTNmMTctNGU1Zi1hNDE3LWFmZTA3MzAwYjhjM1wvZGZ0bXZvay01NDg1MTUzNy05ZThmLTRiMWUtODFlOS1kYTVjY2I2MzQ5NjIuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE5MjAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.U_BTvcbyD3WtGOPf54rf6G9g9ZNKzY4kViGbFCyXebQ)
Members of the Unity crew assemble in the ship's hangar bays to await final departure. Anguish is evident on the face of the nearest survivor.
These evacuees have been directed to don rescue hard-shells with the intent of mitigating injuries during descent.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/1931674c-b4c7-4333-b2b7-7b4c4399ec48/dg2ts12-321cf952-490f-4659-870d-f8fdbd02f117.jpg/v1/fill/w_894,h_894,q_70,strp/warzone_art_by_ventulart_dg2ts12-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.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.t9JyxI3OLKvH2xqfkOfu4qXUxoUwxM7uowRv1AGLKnQ)
Tribal Minutemen plant the stakes for a sensor field somewhere in Gaian territory. When it came to the mindworm menace, time--forewarning--was an even better defense than fire.
Sources:
First image is "ComfyUI 01513" by Dralles on DeviantArt.
Second image is "EVA passage way" by helot on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Warzone art" by VentulArt on DeviantArt.
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The baton strikes haphazardly. Among the more fortunate, this may impart an unwanted sense of immunity. You will find that gas punishes more equitably. - Instructions to the Acolytes
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c6e22f28-7d2c-46a2-809b-b61950a55967/dg6qkuj-7b8ddf7f-66f0-4edd-a53e-4685f8e169ab.jpg/v1/fill/w_906,h_882,q_70,strp/110_by_candemirbag_dg6qkuj-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTI0NSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2M2ZTIyZjI4LTdkMmMtNDZhMi04MDliLWI2MTk1MGE1NTk2N1wvZGc2cWt1ai03YjhkZGY3Zi02NmYwLTRlZGQtYTUzZS00Njg1ZjhlMTY5YWIuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.u3QvTmbvp5zhmJi2ZuHGBfuOX8KDgjR2f4Zts-AWm0A)
The Chiron Guard reach Objective Crimson during a rapid-reactor drill in the ruins of Post 87, a Morganite trading post abandoned the year before.
Because of their obvious practical utility, but also the exceptional ease with which they could be manufactured and employed, tactical smokes were used in nearly every recorded engagement fought between the human factions of Chiron, usually by all combatants.
As an obscurant, smoke grenades were the blessed relief of every soldier crossing open ground, and often the only counter to TV-guided, laser, and other direct-fire weapons for factions that had fallen behind in the planetary arms race. For those with stronger research programs, metallic and other "additive" smoke offered protection against an even wider range of sensing platforms and smart weapons. Many a commander earned infamy (and some, a subsequent fragging) for "popping smoke" when in the presence of mindworms, reasoning--incorrectly--that some monsters were easier to fight when unseen.
Knock-out and irritant gasses were equally effective against rioting drones, barricaded Probe Teams, and coup plotters of all stripes. Faction leaders extolled the virtues of "push-button" police actions--far more humane, they said, than bullets or batons. Besides: direct action placed security forces at risk. Chairman Sheng-ji Yang celebrated smoke for its "democratizing qualities."
The Stokes Report, commissioned by the Planetary Council in MY14 to provide all survivors with an authoritative history of the Unity Crisis, named Australian engineering firm Del-Ray negligent over failures of the ship-wide dispersal system for Agent 15.
Many Purist and Supremacist factions issued defoliants to virtually all personnel going "outside the wire," with the admonishment that they should be used liberally to suppress "problem vegetation."
Marking smoke was essential for calling down artillery fire and guiding hoppers to a safe landing: most base defenders carried at least three canisters as part of their standard kit, following the guidelines recorded by Colonel Santiago in her Spartan Battle Manual.
Source:
Image is "110" by CanDemirbag on DeviantArt.
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(https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/160708121555-lagos-shanty-megastructures-5.jpg?q=w_2930,h_1953,x_0,y_0,c_fill)
The cable car system of Lagos, Nigeria, a local innovation for a global problem of weak government.
Gondola lifts, first used for passenger service in 1908 on Old Earth, were a relatively uncomplicated solution for shuttling people and cargoes over extreme changes in altitude. Many urban neighborhoods around the world fell back on hand-crafted, cable-operated lifts to link high-rise arcologies when municipal services collapsed, drawing on the successful Nigerian example.
Despite questionable mechanical safety records, these ersatz solutions were robustly popular. They were the obvious solution to inundation or seasonal flooding in coastal cities, when urban geography changed with the wind and tides. Provided that care was taken in the siting and defense of their infrastructure, they were also considerably safer for their occupants than boats. Gondola lift systems could be built and maintained with local skills and scrap materials. The engineering concepts behind such systems was relatively simple, and they did not require as much supporting infrastructure as bus systems or railways. Additional gondolas could be cut and welded from junked vehicles in a matter of days. High-grade steel and cable for a pulley system were readily salvaged in urban settings where skyscrapers and bridges were abandoned to decay. Intervening buildings along a route could be converted to way-stations or load-bearing elements.
The atomization of systems, impossible to contemplate when cities were well-governed, became a draw. Smaller networks limited the potential impacts of structural failure and preserved the insularity of neighborhoods already sensitive over their abandonment by "the powers that be," including the corporations that had previously supplied modern conveniences such as transit service. Then, of course, there was the naked truth: without the lifts, most urban high-rise architecture would have been rendered inaccessible to populations already afflicted by severe overcrowding. Ambitious urban renewal campaigns in the 2020s such as China's Sunshine Plan and the Atoms for Peace Program's "Big America" Project created residential tower complexes that soared to 1,800 or 2,000 meters in height.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/64ceca5e-14ff-41da-a880-1036ee17f850/dg6ws3r-2c6aa3a8-e484-42fb-9d3f-f04e978e29d5.jpg/v1/fill/w_894,h_894,q_70,strp/ai_arts_by_dyonix_by_dyonix01_dg6ws3r-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAyNCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzY0Y2VjYTVlLTE0ZmYtNDFkYS1hODgwLTEwMzZlZTE3Zjg1MFwvZGc2d3Mzci0yYzZhYTNhOC1lNDg0LTQyZmItOWQzZi1mMDRlOTc4ZTI5ZDUuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.U_iM5N5gVbPmyD_hax1lq1tubjAJOtzoYI7RgMIjTVY)
New York City, view south from The Old Battery. The Atomic Development Administration building, a Koch-era catch for the city, looms in the foreground while the Neo-gothic John V. Landsay Building looks out on the "The Fill," huge hulls of garbage that have been barged into the Upper Bay to extend the city south and create flood barriers. The Lindsay, which housed more than 40,000 people, has been colonized by unauthorized tramways.
Adoption of aerial lifts on Chiron was rapid and widespread, particularly by bases in mountainous or unfavorable terrain. Spartans built a series of gondola lifts to raise foraged supplies up to their redoubt of Xerxion. The Ascendancy likewise used cable cars to link their outposts along the Sawtooth rangetops, while the Hunters built similar infrastructure to access the permanent depot at High Hide and the Conclave used cable cars to shuttle between mesas in the Planetgorge.
(https://www.themeparktourist.com/files/u10837/Lost_Hotels/persian-hotel.jpg)
Artist's rendering of Pardis. The imperial palace was situated on an artificial lake in the center of Tehran in 2022. It was a public relations disaster. Foreign journalists reported unfavorably on the Shah's diversion of water from an already-thirsty city. Architects and historians called the design a clumsy mockery of traditional architectural styles. Journalists quoted all the usual regime dissidents. They believed the project was a game of subservient theater for the throne's Anglo-American puppeteers--yet another indication that the Shah was engaging in shameful fantasism at his country's cultural expense.
Future leader of the Human Ascendancy, Tamineh Pahlavi, orbited the Peacock Throne until, at the age of 15, she lost both parents to a flu pandemic and left Iran for Switzerland, never to return. Her father, an aerospace engineer, was a cousin of Mohammad Reza Shah, while an older brother, Kamran, rose to prominence as commander of a squadron of tanks in the Imperial Guard. For years, she shared a tutor with the Crown Prince, Reza.
Young Taimneh was raised to regard the 1921 collapse of the Qajar Dynasty and the mid-century White Revolution as turning points in her country's history. She interpreted Iran's regional hegemony as evidence of the superlative quality of her family's leadership by comparison with the more tumultuous and theocratic politics of neighboring Pakistan and the Communist influences in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. One person, honed by the finest education, aided by the best associates, possessed of a worthy vision, and with all the levers of state at their disposal, could break the power of hidebound institutions. As a student of biology in California, Pahlavi went on to draw sympathetic parallels between the Shah's beleaguered position and that of Vesper Abaddon, haranguing her skeptical peers accordingly.
In the United States, Pahlavi often spent school holidays with a former courtier in Tehran, ex-Chilean president and exile Sebastian Valdes Riquelme, and his wife, Rayen. The two were enthusiastic participants in the growing Spiritual Perfection Movement, emphasizing the growth of personal efficacy through philosophical education and aerobic exercise, and flirted with solar worship. Like millions of other devotees who were encouraged to find a suitable historical archetype to emulate, the Riquelmes chose Alexander the Great following the 2031 discover of a partial copy of Adrianus's Alexandriad, previously known only by mention in the Suda, a Byzantine encyclopedia written in the 10th century. In the epic poem, Alexander is Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. Enthusiasts recast Alexander as a precursor of modern multicultural values, ignoring the cultural destructiveness of Hellenization. The belief that certain great persons drove most historical events by reaching behavioral acmes was familiar to Pahlavi, reflecting the instruction that the first Pahlavi shah had passed down to his son.
Other decisive influences on Pahlavi's thinking included Kyrie Tallowan, a member of the board of biogenetics firm Imre-Meinertzhagen. The politically progressive Tallowan was an unlikely ally for Pahlavi, but they shared a belief in the power and moral correctness of top-down change. Tallowan put forward the critique that many of society's problems were drawing reactive solutions from politicians when they should be inspiring preventive measures, which were often cheaper. As a health insurance executive, Tallowan drove steep cost reduction by creating incentive structures for subscribers to make health choices. In the Unity Mission, she saw an opportunity to leverage stronger criteria for crew selection to avoid passing on "the seeds of genetic calamity."
Tallowan's many critics called her a Communist and a Darwinist. At the peak of her unpopularity, Imre-Meinertzhagen expelled her. But Pahlavi, still haunted by the ghosts of her parents and spouse, became a passionate believer in Tallowan's ideas, repeatedly petitioning the United Nations to insist that they apply genetic standards for recruitment, just as they did in the realms of physical fitness, mental stability, and professional aptitude. Though she often invoked ethics as justification for her position, arguing that passing on infirmity was a deliberate generational choice, her attempts to capture and communicate the compounding economic impacts of hereditary illness garnered considerably more attention, leading to a media narrative that consistently presented Pahlavi as a sociopath without feeling.
During her time as an executive with the American Reclamation Corporation, Pahlavi explored transmission of genetic memory in humans and animals, as well as Lamarckianism, the transmission of acquired physical traits, such as from use or disuse, from parent to child. She was aided in her work by access to the voluminous genetic databases created to assist the Vault Project, and often consulted on development of the brutal social experiments foisted on the residents of government vaults. Pahlavi was especially interested in developing experiments that could record the psychological impacts of hibernation and hermetic living, and physiological responses to the presence of androids in human societies, which she reviewed on a regular basis with ARC CEO Oscar van de Graaf.
Sources:
Speculative art depicting a future Lagos, Nigeria by Olalekan Jeyigous in his "Shanty Megastructures" series, as reported by CNN (https://www.cnn.com/style/article/lagos-shanty-megastructures/index.html).
The "High Hide" was an aerial platform used in Michael Crichton's novel The Lost World.
The second image is "AI arts by Dyonics" by dyonix01 on DeviantArt.
The third image is concept art from the Walt Disney Company for Disney's planned Persian Resort, an idea that did not outlive the Iranian Revolution. I found this particular image at themeparktourist.com (https://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20160506/31922/lost-hotels-walt-disney-world).
The Spiritual Perfection Movement hearkens back to MysticWind's post introducing Cuzco Sol. The idea for an Alexandrine religion is taken from the Lux Invicta mod for Crusader Kings II by Shaytana.
Research for this post came from the Wikipedia articles on the Shah and his father.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2e115f5a-1efe-43a9-b42d-f7b89be65f13/dg77xle-dad1fc17-0368-441a-be33-c37ac7aaa983.png/v1/fill/w_1409,h_567,q_70,strp/san_francisco_2077_by_kxmode_dg77xle-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODE2IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMmUxMTVmNWEtMWVmZS00M2E5LWI0MmQtZjdiODliZTY1ZjEzXC9kZzc3eGxlLWRhZDFmYzE3LTAzNjgtNDQxYS1iZTMzLWMzN2FjN2FhYTk4My5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MjAyNiJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.G7q775_hD7wRe4pNE8b9WMHEi-dieTHUg9tSXLvQBMU)
San Francisco, CA at twilight, September 2070. Golden Gate Park and much of the surface area of the city's eponymous bay have vanished beneath urban sprawl.
Chiron, too, faced a population boom a hundred years after the first human colonists arrived. The first generation clung timidly to their Landing Pods. Many survivors refused to quarter in pressure tents for fear of catastrophe. Raids were many, and most militias pitifully small and unreliable. To reduce strain on life support systems, the first free-standing structures were cramped. Colonists competed for space with failsafe devices, such as zipper-locked partitions, and the bio-hazard bags used to store their equipment.
In time, perceptions of the planet's habitability changed. Led by ex-spacers among the early colonists and unburdened by memories of easier lifestyles on the near-fictional paradise world of Old Earth, young people carved out private spaces wherever it was possible to do so: in vehicle cockpits, storage containers, and in the old survival shelters rejected by their elders. This boom resembled what had been seen before during every time of plenty and peace from time immemorial. Settlers came up against walls and ignored them, discounting threats that had once made them prisoners behind their own defenses. If Base Operations would not serve them, they ran drop lines to power, network, and oxygen conduits--placing their claims on "the common resources" that Planetary Governor Pravin Lal assured them they could not be rightly denied.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/a73ffc7f-4e91-480f-b4f6-66d9ece19230/dg764sc-de3f658c-e6af-43bf-a709-8a9e74e22eb4.jpg/v1/fit/w_512,h_600,q_70,strp/chariss_pikeman_by_gingerbreadman84_dg764sc-375w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjAwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYTczZmZjN2YtNGU5MS00ODBmLWI0ZjYtNjZkOWVjZTE5MjMwXC9kZzc2NHNjLWRlM2Y2NThjLWU2YWYtNDNiZi1hNzA5LThhOWU3NGUyMmViNC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9NTEyIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.OWsB7OwLZ-Ag7KDCbFJ8bX8zHQydyp483-NA19LcvFk)
Commander Zorion Lekubarri, a native Basque, in his Spanish naval uniform, an impressively-complicated piece of smart clothing typical of materials issued to Unity bridge officers.
The topmost element worn on the right breast is a datalinks adapter for personal storage with a capacity of one high-density 25MB tape. The element just below is a dosimeter.
At the left breast, from top, are digital nameplate (color-coded to ship's emergency operations status), personal security credentials, and push-to-talk shipboard radio transceiver.
The large patch on the right arm controlled various medical features of the garment and was designed to be removable. Silver medication ampules, ready for remote injection, are visible at the right upper arm and along the placket.
Sources:
First image is "San Francisco 2077" by Kxmode on DeviantArt.
Second image is "Chariss Pikeman" by gingerbreadman84 on DeviantArt.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/4e9f7d57-28d5-435c-a857-deee70334b24/dg77ygq-2b394547-c482-45b3-a886-aab1df62e5a8.jpg/v1/fill/w_894,h_894,q_70,strp/landing_on_a_distant_moon__ai__by_dolphinriders_dg77ygq-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MzA3MiIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzRlOWY3ZDU3LTI4ZDUtNDM1Yy1hODU3LWRlZWU3MDMzNGIyNFwvZGc3N3lncS0yYjM5NDU0Ny1jNDgyLTQ1YjMtYTg4Ni1hYWIxZGY2MmU1YTguanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTMwNzIifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.gGIAdvo-fax8A2k_FaBqWnO9AOGoUHTopxvYsZ85C0g)
A University hopper wildcats in the Garland Crater, hunting radiologicals. Faction leadership conducted such missions without the review or approval of the Academician, who referred all such matters to his mercenary commanders. Why else, after all, did he pay them? In this instance, a colonel of the Red Leaf Lancers correctly anticipated that any Data Angels threat response would be slowed due to competition within the faction's notoriously fractured officer corps.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c424bbb0-a0e6-4a95-b422-56f707c6e172/dfyxn1j-741ab1f9-1dd8-42a2-8163-6f9dbf67902b.jpg/v1/fill/w_900,h_600,q_75,strp/space_station_on_uranus_by_gabimedia_dfyxn1j-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjAwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvYzQyNGJiYjAtYTBlNi00YTk1LWI0MjItNTZmNzA3YzZlMTcyXC9kZnl4bjFqLTc0MWFiMWY5LTFkZDgtNDJhMi04MTYzLTZmOWRiZjY3OTAyYi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9OTAwIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.Z3zpkZiUf7ZZilp_jWLuXuvoQstKSwJT2bHytElO5RM)
Orbiting Uranus, Station Cole, named for the popular two-term American president who retired from public life in 2004, hosted the farthest permanent human presence in the Sol System until 2062. Experiments performed here furnished patterns for many of Unity's key systems, including: laser communications arrays, synthetic aperture radars, radar altimeters, solar greenhouses, water reclamation filters, and spin-gravity medical bays.
The station experienced a minor crisis in 2030 when, after taking aboard the surviving crew of a damaged Indian resupply tug, some of the Cole's supposedly demilitarized crew were discovered to be members of the U.S. Marine Corps.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/039/690/332/large/chien-jarvis-larvae-incubator-beautyshot-chien-jarvis.jpg?1626657397)
The clutchrunner evolved to secret its larvae in the muck of Planet's nitrate beds. Scrambling on four legs, adult specimens were approximately as large as a regulation rugby ball. Prominent features included chitinous spinal plating and a four-bulbed heat-sensing organ facing the direction of travel. Clutchrunner metabolism was based entirely on heat absorption. Human settlement swiftly obliterated all known populations, as they gave up breeding to cluster at energy cables and cooling vents where they were swiftly dispatched as pests.
Sources:
First image is "Landing on a Distant Moon (AI)" by Dolphin Riders on DeviantArt (https://www.deviantart.com/dolphinriders/art/Landing-on-a-Distant-Moon-AI-979587386).
Second image is "Space station Uranius" by GabiMedia on DeviantArt (https://www.deviantart.com/gabimedia/art/Space-station-on-Uranus-965669095).
Monroe "Eagle" Cole, a character in the film "Welcome to Mooseport" (2004) was the last role played by actor Gene Hackman before his retirement.
Third image is "Grand Space Opera: Light Age Artstation Props Challenge" by Chien Jarvis on ArtStation (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zOZ6E4).
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(https://mickeyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Way-of-Water-1024x431.png)
The whale preceded the cow, sheep, pig, and chicken to the mess halls and cafeterias of Planet, joining more familiar grain and vegetable staples such as corn, squash, rice, barley, and beans.
Straightforward procedures carried out in the relatively primitive laboratory spaces aboard Unity landing pods sufficed to edit the genetic material of bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) embryos so that the animal might take to Chiron's deep waters.
Within a few short years, fleets of seafoils were harvesting more than 120,000 adult specimens each megacycle. This Hunter mothership departs through the ice gate at Admiralty Bay after a successful sale to University provisioners.
(https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/060/999/697/4k/gabriel-jimenez-scifilobby04v2-copia2.jpg?1679788014)
Sanctioned alcohols were served at the New Jerusalem Longhouse, but only to out-factioners.
Fungal beer's distressing odor and notoriously off-putting mouthfeel convinced many colonists to pursue only "the traditional can."
Mombassas, Tsingtaos, American Kings, Ice Choppers, Yompers' Best Bitter, and Titans were hoarded and savored. Beers were a staple of community life in Tribal strongholds, Hunter clutches, and on Pilgrim spreads. Morganite bosses guaranteed a quota of pints for every drone. Drinking alcohols were restricted to upper castes in [/i]L'etat nouvelle, but every ship's captain was expected to provide a supply of spirits for their crew.
Gaians strained "the Strong" over ground xenofungus, yielding the most-potent of Planet's signature beverages. Colonists in every faction pooled expertise, equipment, and time to brew weak mushroom beers that vied for popularity with re-hydrated coffees and teas.
This thirst for the familiar had its darker side. Pilgrim homesteads, considered inviolate even to the Governor, were firmly under "knout and lout." This formulation, popularized in by a nameless Gaian poet, so much reflected the truth that Oscar van de Graaf eventually humbled himself even before Sister Godwinson, pleading that she send spiritual balms to tame the wildness in his people.
Inside the University, heavy drinking was the accepted prelude to any meaningful push for students' rights. Some Data Angels insisted that they did their best coding while inebriated. In the Spartan camp, Holnists threatened mutiny after attempts to regulate their consumption of liquors.
(https://storage.googleapis.com/pai-images/8308ea4505574468858d084f26757507.jpeg)
A citizen of the Cybernetic Consciousness has entered the peculiar trance that accompanies a transmission of energy without intelligible information, or... lunch.
The currents of certain hungers could be calmed only by consumption of a new kind of input: electrical energy, drawn from sockets to replenish biomechanical systems. Flavor and texture were irrelevant. Discriminating consumers sought guarantees of heat, voltage, amperage, and load reliability.
Source:
First image is from Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).
The first time I heard coffee referred to as "the Strong" was in the Scratch and Burn ditty "Sips from the Strong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkubisEf2tc)," a pardoy of Cypress Hill's "Hits from the Bong."
Second image is "Shahbod Hotel-Bar Design" by Gabriel Jiménez on ArtStation.
Third image is AI art, titled "Anime," created by Dmitriy Vilkov on playgroundai.com.
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(https://image.lexica.art/full_jpg/34724105-74d3-4252-8e2b-33421e7bf6e5)
Zeboin [Zay-bo-inn] (born Aariz Mohiuddin, 2053-MY14) was a mercenary, adventurer, explorer, bodyguard, and courtier retained in the service of Sister Miriam Godwinson. A frequent collaborator of Conclavist expedition leader Major Vinchenson Parke, Zeboin joined Parke on all of his major undertakings and led the successful recovery of Parke's body after the latter's death from a fall while ascending Mount Iapetus in MY12.
The son of IOEZ cargo cultists, Zeboin traveled with his parents to the Shamashi mainland during infancy for a consideration of fishing equipment granted by the Commissioners of Seneref in Khasar. Rather than return with the gift to their clan, Parke's parents instead swore their allegiance to the Commission, signing away communal fishing rights to which they did not have exclusive claim. [1] (An uncle would later stab Zeboin's father to death in retaliation for the betrayal.)
Zeboin received the public education guaranteed to all Khasari residents. According to local custom, he was given a mononym at age 7. He chose the name of an obscure king of Judah in a nod to his mother's people, who were St. Thomas Christians. [2] His background made him a favorite target of bullies, and there were frequent fights. In later life, he covered the scar from a knife wound inflicted by a classmate with a prominent facial tattoo.
Disinclined toward formal education, Zeboin worked briefly as a commercial fisherman with the Seneref winter fleet, then as a local pilot guiding anti-piracy patrols. Here, he showed much élan as a member of boarding parties. The Dutch next hired him in West New Guinea for their infamous Veldpolitie, in which capacity he fought Indonesian patrols and, sometimes, the native tribes of the jungle interior. His willingness to "shoot it out" with the Indonesian Navy contrasted with an outspoken distaste for colonial policing. With the consent of his superiors, Zeboin attempted to uphold the self-imposed isolation of the indigenous tribes and did not retaliate automatically in their "internal affairs," which included, at times, traditional headhunting. Zeboin was known to be a generous giver of gifts and comfortable enough to eat the foods offered to him by the natives, including spiders and grasshoppers. [3]
He was regarded a natural leader among his fellow mercenaries, respected for his self-possession, and rapidly earned promotion to sergeant. Later, he came down to Port Moresby to accept Australian dollars for the same work. In a series of reports filed by colonial officers (usually disinclined to be generous toward IOEZ men), all found Zeboin to be indispensable. One commanding officer recorded that he was, "Superlative in courage and skill." Another rated Zeboin as, "Fit in all senses. Firm. Possessing excellent judgement." Zeboin frequently overcame serious calamities on patrol, from bouts of tropical sickness that put all members in mortal jeopardy, to incoming tsunamis.
On the recommendation of his superiors, Zeboin worked two years with the Australian Antarctic Patrol, but found that even skirmishing among the barren ice floes favored professional soldiers with extensive technical training and equipment well beyond the mercenary standard. There was other work for the hired guns: as stretcher-bearers, mountaineers, and pathfinders scouting WARPAC positions and picking out tracks for armored vehicles to follow. After a difficult acculturation to the cold and arid climate, Zeboin took these lessons to heart but declined to renew his contract.
Rumors of fresh opportunity lured Zeboin to Bolivia in 2061. Crossing the Andes the following year, he was among 1,400 mercenaries retained by the Bolivian government to supplement their National Guard during a campaign to prevent foraging raids by Morganite mercenaries from bases in the former Acre state. Zeboin earned legendary status among his comrades when he braved enemy fire to reach a Portuguese fire base so that they and the Bolivians could coordinate a counterattack.
After the Callao Accords, Zeboin found work with American Christians doing mission work in the Amazon Sea, assisting them with boat operations and medical rescue. Though not himself religiously inclined, Zeboin came to admire his customers, many of whom died miserable and far from home in the service of others. By 2068, Zeboin had built an international reputation, and it was then that J.T. Marsh named the IOEZ mercenary to his reserve list.
Incapacitated by smoke inhalation, Zeboin was evacuated from Unity by Conclavists soon after waking. Upon recovery, he was appointed to the Kritarch's personal life guard. Unlike others in her circle, he was outspokenly critical of Miriam's early aggressions even while giving the raiders their basic instruction, a point that seems to have worked in his favor.
While Zeboin accepted that Miriam's faith was what impelled her to do good on behalf of others, he did not feel that such belief would benefit those who were otherwise possessed of a stable philosophy. Throughout his life, Zeboin remained a nonbeliever, though a quiet one. He was careful to describe Godwinson's resurrection (at which he had not been present) as "a medical miracle"--one that, although beyond his explanatory powers, was not necessarily empirically unexplainable. Miriam consulted with Zeboin often as a proxy for the large number of "religiously fallow" persons among her flock.
Zeboin was a close friend and collaborator with famed Antarctic Vinchenson Parke, whom he had never met before landing on Chiron. Zeboin planned for the physical security of Parke's Naming Expeditions and was often an appointed leader when Parke passed through disputed territories. Zeboin lost two toes to frostbite during the same climb that killed Parke. The two were well-known among the Hunters of Chiron, from whom they often successfully solicited friendly assistance in the form of rations, advice, and even transport. (Unbeknownst to both men, Miriam's disregard for political boundaries in ministry and exploration was consistent with Marsh's personal objective of preventing the development of effective barriers to his ranging operations.) Parke's expeditions were so consistent, it was an accepted convention among the Hunters that participants in the Peregrenation were entitled to call upon the Conclavist camps if low on fuel or supplies during their final run back to the High Hide.
Zeboin was mortally wounded during an explosion caused by an Ascendancy Probe Team at the Orchard in MY14. The Kritach's protective detail, trained by him, did evacuate her to safety. Subsequent analysis of the incident by computer systems of the Digital Oracle indicated that she was not the target, however. The Probe Team responsible for Zeboin's death was recorded taking tissue samples from his arm before shooting him in the head.
[1] Such legal fictions were a commonplace in the IOEZ. Unscrupulous actors exploited the lack of strong anthropological knowledge in U.N. and neo-colonial Admiralty Courts to press claims on resources belonging to displaced peoples. This was made easier by the prevalence of "big man" politics within the non-governmental, non-corporate resident population, which often drafted wealthy or otherwise powerful individuals to make binding agreements for the whole community in the expectation that material and other benefits would then be broadly distributed.
[2] Zeboin was the successor to King Amaziah, a leper, ruling for a period of less than one year.
[3] On the Korowai tribe of New Guinea, which practices headhunting to this day, see: Paul Raffaele, "Sleeping with Cannibals," Smithsonian Magazine [online], September 2006, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/sleeping-with-cannibals-128958913/.
Sources:
Image is "Silvaquirrrino like a soldier soldier cat warrior in world war 1, close-up, realistic face, sharp facial features, facial features, black and white, amazing digital art, hyperdetailed, art station, in the style of tony sart" in Lexica Aperture v2 on lexica.art (https://lexica.art/prompt/cb8804b0-2b89-4e69-aef4-f02fb8c6d1a1).
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Last weekend, inspired by the YouTube channel Useful Charts (https://www.youtube.com/@UsefulCharts), I began tracing the relationships between the different RtD characters, with a focus on the major faction leaders. My hope was that the exercise would generate something meaningful to say about each one. While the chart itself is in no condition yet for sharing, some useful insights begin to emerge.
Plotting the relationships between faction leaders is a goal that extends back as far as 2014 when players in a forum-based megagame set in the RtD universe began asking for backstory to help them decide how their respective factions would likely interact after Planetfall.
I put Captain Jonathan Garland (https://content.internetvideoarchive.com/content/photos/9179/624920_002.jpg), now deceased, at the top of the chart. Later, I realized that some of the political and philosophical leaders like Apsara Mongkut (https://static.bangkokpost.com/media/content/dcx/2022/05/06/4298706.jpg) and Jean-Baptiste Keller (https://cdn.flickeringmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/peter-weller-screamers.jpg) could be moved into a kind of plot firmament, above even the sainted Garland.
Garland's Executive Officer was Portuguese General Francisco d'Almeida (https://www.tvguide.com/a/img/resize/a169f69c9b53dea0570317ff05edbedb2b927e06/catalog/provider/1/6/1-172349535.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=300&width=200), also lost during the Unity Crisis. All the senior officers reported up to Garland through d'Almeida, who was no fan of his new master.
Unity's Third Officer was future academician Prokhor Zakharov (https://zdalaodpolityki.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/380x250-11.jpg?w=640), then a Senior Commander and Chief Science Officer. Zakharov's command encompassed several subordinate divisions. These included: the Atomic Energy Laboratory overseen by Mission Area Director Johann Anhaldt (https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/robert-downey-as-tony-stark.jpg), a Swiss mathematician that had sometimes operated as Zakharov's foil in academic discussions about the role of science in public policy during the 2060s; the Data Services Division, overseen by Lieutenant Commander Tạ Dọc Thân. Once Planetside, Zakharov's governance would quickly alienate two other notable characters: Australian-trained Kä naval commander Master Malakai Ro (https://www.mintinbox.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Fennec-The-Mandalorian.jpg), who had cut her teeth hunting pirates in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone, and Genetic Sciences Division director Tamineh Pahlavi (https://assets.vogue.com/photos/5c86928158e0522d1666c779/master/w_320,c_limit/02-vogue-beyond-borders-cover-april-2019.jpg), an Iranian biomedical researcher previously employed by the American Reclamation Corporation. Zakharov's only other noteworthy relationship was with Lieutenant Commander Deirdre Skye, Scottish Director of the mission's Life Sciences Division, whose appointment he had opposed on grounds that her work was "amateurish" and "emotional." Zakharov preferred Pahlavi, whom he had never met, but with whose policy advocacy he sympathized, being himself an outspoken technological instrumentalist.
Zakharov was an inconsistent manager, leaving the flashy Than to conduct his own affairs while intervening often in Anhaldt's optimizing of the ship's reactors, a topic on which he was eminently qualified to make himself a royal nuisance.
Other direct reports to d'Almeida included French Contre-amiral Raoul André St. Germaine (https://i.insider.com/58c1c7fe0beac528008b4768?width=750&format=jpeg&auto=webp), Chief of the Aquatic Operations Section; [French-]Canadian loyalist General Marcel Salan (https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/1b/6e/03/1b6e03af9af7978186dfd77a658500c2.jpg) of the United Nations Marine Corps; and Chief of the Air Operations Section, the West German commander, Kleisel Mercator (https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0b/78/3b/0b783b4039afed8284f8cdbcd0dbb49e.jpg).
D'Almeida's other "directs" included Chief Medical Officer Commander Pravin Lal (https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://preview.redd.it/f0zwsjb4jic31.png?width=164&format=png&auto=webp&s=03dde49424093a1db03d64b12832470f4450430d) and the expedition's Master-at-Arms and head of security, Commander Rachael Winzenreid (https://imagesvc.meredithcorp.io/v3/mm/image?url=https://static.onecms.io/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2022/08/24/Andor_082422_5.jpg), another product of Switzerland. Winzenreid pleased no one. Her background in civilian law enforcement (she was a former Commandant of the Swiss Federal Office of Police) elicited no confidence from military man d'Almeida, while a pronounced pessimism alienated her from Garland, well-known for his diplomatic approach to conflict resolution.
Winzenreid had supervisory authority over a number of important operations, including those of Indian Brigadier Sardul Singh's (https://images.hindustantimes.com/img/2022/04/19/1600x900/d1c4b836-bff4-11ec-b66b-ddda15d88888_1650382036323.jpg) Corrections Services unit and Head Game Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh's (https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/jurassicpark/images/5/57/Static-assets-upload7610208779091513503.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20180612212507) Forward Contact Team. Winzenreid was also the responsible officer for political affairs: Sub-commander Sheng-ji Yang (https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https://external-preview.redd.it/zBcrX2SlrI1OrvTlU0QxM_5vkOOugdCuOQzyYpdcAX8.jpg?auto=webp&s=171733d538b2058a7852e9f167dc05fa91d032ab) and other political officers foisted on the mission by authoritarian regimes answered to Brigadier Singh. Somewhere deep down in Winzenreid's organization chart lurked a Sergeant, Corazón Santiago (https://discoverygc.com/wiki/images/thumb/8/8b/Santiagosh.jpg/264px-Santiagosh.jpg), respected for her calm professionalism.
Lal had his own supervisory pyramid. Pahlavi, Skye, the mission's Director of Psych Services Sister Miriam Godwinson (https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/KupdBOUFkVJERTbHOyRF26D4Of4=/1200x630/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/D6PAY4Q2OZB63LXDQK4DIK2Q7E), and Dr. Aleigha Cohen (https://64.media.tumblr.com/1587a2be6cfd3b99b6554e298e6d9cbb/tumblr_inline_p664bcgOwh1rkurfy_500.jpg), Anglo-Burmese Chief of Neurosurgery. Both were warrant officers. Lal had a positive working relationship with all four, dealing primarily with Godwinson, Pahlavi, and Cohen as related to the problems of patient management during cold sleep. His interaction with Skye was more limited due to her involvement in matters outside his field of expertise.
Santiago knew none of the other leaders, but she did have first-hand experience fighting both against and alongside the private military contractors of the American Reclamation Corporation, once led by Proprieter Oscar van de Graaf (https://64.media.tumblr.com/85b029110591cdacce3acf914f25ef50/0db77e1f745102ee-18/s1280x1920/90ea63f67cb632da60cf308732c5da9b9c86e7c6.jpg). Van de Graaf incidentally blamed the world's richest man, CEO Nwabudike Morgan (http://data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wCEAAoHCBUWFRgWFhYZGRgYGBgaGhgaGhgYGBgaGhgZGhgYGBgcIS4lHB4rIRgYJjgmKy8xNTU1GiQ7QDs0Py40NTEBDAwMEA8QHxISHjEkJCs0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0MTQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NDQ0NP/AABEIAMIBAwMBIgACEQEDEQH/xAAbAAACAwEBAQAAAAAAAAAAAAADBAACBQEGB//EADgQAAEDAwIDBgUCBQQDAAAAAAEAAhEDBCESMQVBUSJhcYGRoRMyscHRQvAGUmJy8RQVguGSorL/xAAYAQADAQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQIDBP/EACMRAAICAgMAAgMBAQAAAAAAAAABAhEhMQMSQVFhEyIyFPD/2gAMAwEAAhEDEQA/APnD3RhUcOqpXeWnKG6vOFgtDoG6pmE5SPVZ43TTKmENCCur6UF96481yJKo gSeyil6IrUquPNFtrl7QQ0xO65Vty0ZVNcCAn5gbJUcZkrjWyu6guvEIsKI1gJXK78wFamOaXcJOE1srRtfw/QpveQ89IEx5ofFqDGPIYZHr7pJlPC7pU 2SBIVmlQtC4AqAYY/EKle25gojLdxExHeUdtmYkPHvCFF 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Morgan had also had working knowledge of Marsh's past: both had run guns for the Biafran cause around the same time.
Van de Graaf had also previously employed Pahlavi and, on occasion, provided armed escort for Godwinson's embassies to secessionist leadership. Van de Graaf was mortally opposed to another stowaway, Pete Landers (https://i.pinimg.com/736x/67/9c/c5/679cc5f84a9968b4f9cc5af779f19d3d--gerard-butler-beautiful-people.jpg).
More to come. I started with my own creations, mostly, because of familiarity, but I'll eventually map the full range of characters associated with RtD.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/3832d236-91c0-4b78-9cbc-342133f9451d/dg8smae-c1460f05-db73-4fcc-9dc1-404b8ce82f0e.jpg/v1/fill/w_1194,h_669,q_70,strp/space_work_by_iamrudja_dg8smae-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzE4IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzgzMmQyMzYtOTFjMC00Yjc4LTljYmMtMzQyMTMzZjk0NTFkXC9kZzhzbWFlLWMxNDYwZjA1LWRiNzMtNGZjYy05ZGMxLTQwNGI4Y2U4MmYwZS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.pkCtNVVQ_atVuEs1nUDMscTHUWKI988EiP30Pdh-qWA)
Pholus looms at perigee, providing the light by which this Pilgrim get will sink a mine shaft in search of radiologicals. It was customary for the faction’s larger property owners to contribute machinery like this drilling rig and its service tug to such endeavors, even when performed by the smallest freeholders—both for a share of the output, and to promote general expansion and good feeling. Never were neighbors more in need than among the settlers of Chiron.
Scenes such as this one belie the limitations imposed by the faction’s overriding values. Pilgrims resented central planning, and the benefits of large-scale organization therefore often eluded them.
Social Engineering
An additional option for factions with the Industrial Automation and Chironian Landshaping techs and Mercantalistic, Planned, Command, or Post-Scarcity economics.
(https://pm1.aminoapps.com/6700/8c3f304d63d8f03fd9f48f7de36dfd64aa5fec0a_hq.jpg)
Controller
A specialist in the strategic deployment and effective use of heavy assets--Formers, Crawlers, and Rigs—for terraformation and resource collection. This profession, housed within Base Operations, combines the skills of agricultural and industrial engineer, forester, mining geologist, hydrologist, climatologist, foreman, fleet coordinator, and project planner. Sometimes called “industrial choreographers,” Controllers are the next step beyond the Road Crews of the Forward Contact Teams that served the First Generations: they decide where, how, and under what circumstances land will be worked, and with what resources. For the cost of +2 POLLUTION within a base’s radius, 2 Energy, and 1 Water per season, a Controller will increase the movement allowance of all supported ‘Formers, Crawlers, and Rigs by 1 and improve the yield of each square by 150%, rounding up.
A History of Fleet Control
Though unfamiliar with local conditions, the original mission survivors were well-positioned to eek out more than a mean existence. On average, crew members possessed nine years of advanced education and mission training. Cooperation-era mainline colonists (those recruited prior to the global Holnist Crisis) had seven. For Charterists, that number jumped to sixteen. Members of operations divisions had worked together in simulators for tens of thousands of hours each. Even the least-fortunate among the largest factions possessed dozens of city block-sized earthmovers and the benefit of support from J.T. Marsh’s 750-strong battalion of pioneers.
This expertise was difficult to reproduce on Chiron. Although native-borns found it far easier than Old Earthers to adhere to the routine inconveniences and basic physiological demands of life on an oxygen-deficient, high-gravity world, they had to be taught skills without the benefit of an educational and technological infrastructure equal to the task. A premium of clean spaces, precision tools, reagent, and large laboratories slowed the preparation of scientists and technicians who could provide meaningful insights about the physical world at their fingertips. Work in the field or in support of land use had to be balanced against work on base fundamentals: water sampling, sewage analysis, and air monitoring had higher priorities than mineral assays. The intensive survival training required for Road Crew replacements was also prized by faction militias; promising candidates were frequently hazarded on both assignments.
Then too, fleets were small. The ambitions of Chironian terraforming were Herculean, but some First Generation supervisors had experience in post-atomic environments directing the movements of millions of workers with tens or even hundreds of thousands of individual vehicles. Few factions recovered simulators, and most burned out quickly from hard use. The new generation could not train as their forefathers had. Nor were they often allowed. Fearful of losing their much smaller quantities of equipment to training accidents and lacking the industrial base to immediately replace out-of-service units, many factions kept the proven pilots from their original field crews at work past the age of eighty, reposing more faith in longevity treatments than apprenticeships. Factions flush with population responded to the shortage of trained crews by sending drones to dig alongside power shovels.
Interlink education had been well-respected on Old Earth, but few factions struck a good balance of investment between performing the work of today and preparing for the work of tomorrow. A student in the classroom or observing from a copilot’s couch contributed nothing immediately valuable to her society—less than did the drone unfouling treads five stories below.
Controllers were an innovation of the Chironian Renaissance, part of the flowering of the second mission century made possible by inter-factional exchanges of ideas, technology, and resources as well as the guarantee of safety delivered by increasingly competent militaries and achieved through clarity of borders. A Controller represented a huge investment of time, energy, and trust in interdisciplinary education and the promise of central planning.
Controllers also differed from Road Crews in a crucial way: they moved decision-making from the cockpit to the control tower. The Controller was a mathematical type. Road Crews—usually long-dead by the Controller’s time—would have reviled him as a Poindexter whose education had made him arrogant without making him wise. But the Road Crews were not of the same system: their billet was crafted with the idea of supporting a tailor-made economy in a complete wilderness setting. They were one part roughneck, two parts ranger, working to a five-year plan. Road Crews adapted after the Unity Crisis, of course, but filled a niche that was profoundly tactical. They could see a task, or a particular work group, through trouble. Controllers were vested with much greater responsibility and from the onset of their role faced an expectation to demonstrate strategic vision beyond what was set by the U.N. mission planners. By the Controller’s day, danger arose more from misuse than misadventure.
Sources:
First image is “Space Work (https://www.deviantart.com/iamrudja/art/Space-Work-982230998)” by iamrudja, created using AI tools, found on DeviantArt.
Second image is General Carlist Rieekan from The Empire Strikes Back.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/f8fe98e2-3ff0-4035-8a34-2b753bd3702f/dg8pojs-3444acf3-19ef-4b7a-860f-a02236eb51ae.jpg/v1/fill/w_1095,h_730,q_70,strp/other_world__49__by_elnereel_dg8pojs-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzY4IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZjhmZTk4ZTItM2ZmMC00MDM1LThhMzQtMmI3NTNiZDM3MDJmXC9kZzhwb2pzLTM0NDRhY2YzLTE5ZWYtNGI3YS04NjBmLWEwMjIzNmViNTFhZS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTE1MiJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.Q-99zBv48R767tuV9D-YPJ7jc7sZhEF_SpVtYLZBuYI)
The ironically-named Data Flows, a Peacekeeper base built over the Pools of Polyxo.
Ex-ruler of Gath, Vesper Abaddon, spent the final years of his life convalescing in this location while organizing the faction's archives. This unusual intranet, Lal called "my curative to the carelessness of Sathieu Metrion," whose approach to the telling the story of Old Earth's diplomatic history was simply to "dump" the files without any attempt at providing context.
It was too much for the Commissioner, who feared that release of the previously-classified revelations "untempered by robust liberal arts education" would ignite old national enmities and thwart, thereby, the project of mission reunification. Not for the first time, the Annunciator branded Lal a hypocrite, but heeded a MY51 directive from the Planetary Council to reserve the tranche of documents pending further deliberations.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/3832d236-91c0-4b78-9cbc-342133f9451d/dfwobxn-5b5ecd97-8893-4987-8b7a-5bb3c83851e0.jpg/v1/fill/w_1194,h_669,q_70,strp/the_last_breathing_creature_on_the_planet_by_iamrudja_dfwobxn-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzE4IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzgzMmQyMzYtOTFjMC00Yjc4LTljYmMtMzQyMTMzZjk0NTFkXC9kZndvYnhuLTViNWVjZDk3LTg4OTMtNDk4Ny04YjdhLTViYjNjODM4NTFlMC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.rUxGjWis0bC1KsofLP-OSv_WehX0ynfEeRFXWrNZb-o)
A Believer hot jumper, the leads of his parachute still attached, prepares with his laser pistol to defend a salvage claim.
Both the collection, and therefore also the defense, of wreckage were important--sometimes critical--activities for the First Generations. Failed settlements and battlefield detritus were valuable sources of nutrients, water, equipment, medicines, minerals, and information or even slaves.
Many factions embodied special forces to carry out this most dangerous work. Standard tactical thinking called for rapid insertion of light infantry to hold valuable ground until relief could arrive. Ideally, this was to be accomplished by drop pod or jetpack if possible, but most factions made do with hoppers reworked as gunships and retrorocket-equipped parachutes. Casualty rates were atrocious.
Conclavists and Spartans prided themselves in that their salvage teams were all-volunteer, but the reasons seemed obvious to Santiago, who remarked on this in her Battle Manual: courage comes easier on an empty stomach.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/7489d37f-dd10-4f82-b984-bb2f851caa54/d6o9asa-323c2a3c-4000-439a-a1d7-63d91d63de77.jpg/v1/fill/w_1151,h_694,q_70,strp/5_a_by_ivankhomenko_d6o9asa-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODc1IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNzQ4OWQzN2YtZGQxMC00ZjgyLWI5ODQtYmIyZjg1MWNhYTU0XC9kNm85YXNhLTMyM2MyYTNjLTQwMDAtNDM5YS1hMWQ3LTYzZDkxZDYzZGU3Ny5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTQ1MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.vsTz4zC_virrKWfTnzCWLm2-XjTLUgNMW2wbFlwnkLc)
The best target is one that inspires no sympathy. On an ill-fated raid, Dreamer infantry, armed only with hand weapons, are pinned by counter-attacking squads of Hive Security. Worse, the defenders have the high ground.
Poor results hardly deterred the Factor. Hives were unusually appealing to the Dreamers: Yang's people were many but had no reputation as fighters; there was very low risk of defection by the attackers themselves since the nerve staple would greet any surrender; and the unsentimental Chairman was always quick to overlook past abuse in the interest of future cooperation.
Sources:
First image is "Other world (49) (https://www.deviantart.com/elnereel/art/Other-world-49-982093960)" by ElneReel, created using AI tools, found on DeviantArt.
Second image is "The Last Breathing Create on the Planet (https://www.deviantart.com/iamrudja/art/The-Last-Breathing-Creature-On-The-Planet-961875563)" by iamrudja, found on DeviantArt.
Third image is "5-A (https://www.deviantart.com/ivankhomenko/art/5-A-403541722)" by IvanKhomenko on DeviantArt. This piece is marked as "Concept for Outrise project."
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/3832d236-91c0-4b78-9cbc-342133f9451d/dg4oawt-04d0dd2b-b180-4b76-a2ea-99f1e0867127.jpg/v1/fill/w_1128,h_708,q_70,strp/the_neon_jungle_by_iamrudja_dg4oawt-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9ODA0IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzgzMmQyMzYtOTFjMC00Yjc4LTljYmMtMzQyMTMzZjk0NTFkXC9kZzRvYXd0LTA0ZDBkZDJiLWIxODAtNGI3Ni1hMmVhLTk5ZjFlMDg2NzEyNy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.Rpb-_4AaJ-4ZndiyhovZNRuGZDF--Z8N49J0RU2J12s)
Persephone, the City Borrowed, where Morganite ambitions clashed with ecoimmunilogical fern growth. When analysis at the University confirmed evidence of Terran gene lines in "those incorrigible weeds," the CEO immediately renewed vendetta against the old Gaian enemy.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/d3375af1-2d7d-4503-8509-988d4adb0013/dea6kka-3b999c72-cdaa-41ed-a7c4-edcdd092454f.png/v1/fill/w_1251,h_639,q_70,strp/outpost_by_chains_of_villany_dea6kka-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTk2MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2QzMzc1YWYxLTJkN2QtNDUwMy04NTA5LTk4OGQ0YWRiMDAxM1wvZGVhNmtrYS0zYjk5OWM3Mi1jZGFhLTQxZWQtYTdjNC1lZGNkZDA5MjQ1NGYucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTM4NDAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.tSjh7Wfpa1HyGmSBUSOk_Lbp5feDzmGHp4S7qDkBdd4)
A Hunter Cargo Foil of the Scalawag Lodge risks all to attempt trade contact with vigilant Tribal reefers. Anthropomorphic climate change ignited a revolution in sustainable settlement that echoed loud on Planet: rig construction, storm resilience, and micro-economies were all robustly familiar to the children of Earth--to the point that even the Kellerites got their hands on technicians skilled in those fields.
What began as an attempt at self-isolation gradually became a justification for renewed interest in the world beyond. Suddenly, the Kellerites found they had a significant stake in problems such as dumping, over-fishing, and planetary warming.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/7fdbbcb6-1a43-4d1d-9b7b-2a0c46c31efa/dfkfizo-9ec86227-2848-4c48-b56b-112f9a5a6f3c.png/v1/fill/w_894,h_894,q_70,strp/camping_on_the_moon_by_stulti_dfkfizo-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTAyNCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzdmZGJiY2I2LTFhNDMtNGQxZC05YjdiLTJhMGM0NmMzMWVmYVwvZGZrZml6by05ZWM4NjIyNy0yODQ4LTRjNDgtYjU2Yi0xMTJmOWE1YTZmM2MucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwMjQifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.KddVvAxpSzuoMAo3c5x-d4af1B_XSZcsGEyFlSuFvC4)
Humans continued to build fires even without any identifiable physical requirement for doing so. The Uranium Flats were well known to be free of Mindworm activity, but the psychological allure of the flames has tempted these Believers to gather around the light of vestigial flames.
Sources:
First image is "The Neon Jungle" by iamrudha on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.
Second image is "Outpost" by Chains-of-Villany on DeviantArt.
Third image is "Camping On the Moon" by Stulti on DeviantArt.
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A Hive without pollen is no place for bees. - Saying of the Free Drones
All factions were prone to what Chinese Communist teaching had called "splittism"--countervailing modes of thought that resulted in defections, resistance, and general malcontent. The threat was most pronounced among Drones, the least-skilled, and least-valued valued, members of each society. Loyalty was preferable, subordination essential.
One obvious mechanism to achieve the latter was main force. The real purpose of Safe Haven and the Sabre Corporation were plain. Fear of physical retaliation flavored every discussion of serious political opposition even among the Peacekeeping Forces. Purist leaders were certain that Dr. Lal's decision to convert rather than punish the faction's Spartan prisoners--guilty of "plain murder" against their fellow crew--was taken only after they had pledged to act against his enemies.
Another option was discrimination. As late as 2040, the household of King Silas Benjamin of Shiloh included twenty-six servants who accepted chemical sterilization as the price of physical access to the person of the ruler and his immediate family. Silas believed the practice added to the majesty of his court as a lurid expression of his raw power over fate. He was also known to be deeply suspicious of competition from other political dynasties of comparable standing. Sterile servants were considered less likely to form independent familial attachments and lacked the cultural prerequisites to govern themselves.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/014/762/596/large/floriane-tiam-chara-fondation-beauty-29.jpg?1545343430)
Shakalo, an usher of the Surn Palace and a chemical eunuch, property belonging to the House of Benjamin.
Fear of competition from superior specimens wasn't confined to archaic monarchies. On seven separate occasions throguhout the twenty-first century, the United States Supreme Court repeatedly upheld executive orders barring cybernetic augments from filling sensitive positions in government on grounds that they were open to exploitation through phreaking (the hijacking of the phone lines delivering Internet service). Unity colonists carried popular prejudice against cyborgs to Chiron. Hivemen executed captured cyborgs as potential security risks rather than hold them as slaves. The Ascendancy carefully screened potential donors of genetic material for evidence of mechanical modification. Attitudes were warmer among factions most interested in the use of computers or the study of the mind. Cyborgs were a commonplace in the University, among the Dreamers, and with the Oracle and the Tomorrow Initiative.
Cyborgs lived under constant threat of tampering. Many factions introduced compulsory changes to code as a consequence for "misperformances" ranging from technical failures in the performance of assigned tasks to the expression of disfavored opinions. Commissioner Pravin Lal devoted much of his second term as Planetary Governor to outlawing a practice he recognized as "pure thought control," attracting strident support from a rehabilitated Corazón Santiago and Sister Miriam Godwinson, a position for which she paid dearly among her own people.
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f9/e2/3b/f9e23b4e984e5b8166a3488052b7c235---desks.jpg)
A University Overseer prepares corrective tape to modify the behavior of a cyborg that is thought to be "misordered."
Roshann Cobb promoted Somnacin and Stim abuse among his followers and exploited resulting addictions to preserve his vulnerable leadership. Sheng-ji Yang taught disciples to manipulate the nutrient value of rations as a corrective to brewing trouble: a weakened resistance would soon collapse. Morganite and Pilgrim proprietors dispensed heavy rations of fungal beer to dull the political instincts of their largely servile workforces.
(https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/060/156/728/large/keith-christensen-spiceminer-002-kc-12-13-18.jpg?1677944705)
Obedience was the default option on a world where survival often meant access to opportunities and resources held in a common trust and doled out according to the whims of a capricious ruling class chosen on the basis of political conformity. Assignment of defective equipment or high-risk jobs was as good as a death sentence.
Sources:
First image is "One Security Committee Member (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/RYKEve)" by Floriane Tiam on ArtStation.
Second image is from Space: 1999.
Third image is "SPICE MINER (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Jv93a0)" by Keith Christensen on ArtStation.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/2e248cdb-300b-4246-a37f-d262ea36a737/dgahh4b-778187f4-22a6-4a0c-9874-a41abccf94c7.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_620,q_75,strp/space_lazareth_04_by_illbein_dgahh4b-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NjIwIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMmUyNDhjZGItMzAwYi00MjQ2LWEzN2YtZDI2MmVhMzZhNzM3XC9kZ2FoaDRiLTc3ODE4N2Y0LTIyYTYtNGEwYy05ODc0LWE0MWFiY2NmOTRjNy5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.7DGJ3VcqiggA68UaUbUd6GWACTYYrfXy8_JBZKf9yRU)
Lazarus Beds like this one in Tamineh Pahlavi's private residence at the Tower of Tithonus were required to administer the second half of the treatment colloquially known as Longevity Vaccine: comprehensive blood purification to correct for abnormalities caused by unpredictable gene activation. The necessity to receive monthly treatments from one of two unreliable sources--Pahlavi or Cohen--dramatically altered the strategic landscape of Chiron, allowing both factions to antagonize their neighbors far beyond the limits that might otherwise be tolerated.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/9d85e158-d634-460d-8eaa-357222ef0b3e/dfu0uml-3cc9636f-b643-4449-8a3c-fa09d7946ff2.png/v1/fit/w_512,h_768,q_70,strp/naval_officer_by_abbylikestopaint_dfu0uml-375w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzY4IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvOWQ4NWUxNTgtZDYzNC00NjBkLThlYWEtMzU3MjIyZWYwYjNlXC9kZnUwdW1sLTNjYzk2MzZmLWI2NDMtNDQ0OS04YTNjLWZhMDlkNzk0NmZmMi5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9NTEyIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.gaBlvvLudIWXqkTy9vahmH20O0nzhZjW6viBwCRH8k4)
Talis Sørensen, seen here in the uniform of a Gathi Federal Air Force ensign, became aide-de-camp to Kleisel Mercator. In her diary, Sørensen described her superior as one for whom lying had become the acceptable price of leadership. "Each time," she wrote, "appears to be easier than the last." There is no evidence Sørensen assessed her own part in Mercator's exploitation of his followers' anxieties. As a Major in MY21, her service code was tied to the deletion of hundreds of faction datalinks BBS posts describing encounters with unidentified flying objects.
Political leadership on Chiron was concentrated in the hands of elders. This dynamic could be explained partly by survivors' respect for the original chain of command, but it also reflected the enduring effects of celebrity. Soviet citizens of the later twenty-first century had been taught to venerate Dr. Prokhor Zakharov as the national hero who had preserved their international relevance. Westerners knew him as the arch-villain of the Space Race. Nwabudike Morgan was rich and self-important enough to have involved himself in the wars of two hemispheres, trying and failing to unmake a superpower. Newspapers presented him as the man pulling the strings of governors and potentates themselves responsible for profound historic tragedy--including detonation of nuclear weapons on their own soil. In a ten-year retrospective on the Second American Civil War, The New York Times could not help observing that "The price for accepting Morgan's backing had been a stark choice between suicide and lethal injection. When his gamble failed, he recalled those Praetorians he did not abandon, and left his many clients to their fates." Another iconoclast, Aleigha Cohen, was at the center of classroom debates on scientific ethics and criminal justice. The theories of government put forth by futurist mathematician Johann Anhaldt were so controversial that mobs in Paris, Lyon, and Marseille had killed to reject them. Before awarding him a medal, Japanese Prime Minister Watanaka Obi praised Shoichiro Nagao as the man most-suited to preserving Terrestrial life elsewhere in the universe--an assessment that galled the ardent partisans of Lady Deirdre Skye, whose remit aboard Unity was just that.
(https://storage.googleapis.com/pai-images/dd614dc15f2b468c95b8828d82286f93.jpeg)
Commander Dilyéhé Etsiddy, was chief of industrial safety. Etisddy had been a longtime resident of the sovereign lunar territory granted to the Navajo Nation by the United States Government in 2050 in recognition of the tribe's support against the Arizona and New Mexico secessionist movements and was recommended to the United Nations by the Chief Executive Officer of Comprehensive Transport himself.
Industrial Safety personnel were issued Soviet-manufactured space suits constructed from hardier materials than mission-standard since it was believed that their normal course of duty might occasion short space walks and encounters with fire or corrosives. The machinery seen on Etsiddy's torso includes a camera (right top lens), Geiger counter (left top lens), and chemistry analyzer (bottom port).
Etsiddy oversaw loading operations at the Lunar Cradle and had first-hand knowledge of Unity's structural weaknesses. From this perspective, she provided some of the most impactful information used by Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida to make immediate decisions about where to dispatch damage control teams.
She was sought after unsuccessfully by ARC "intervention teams," who shot several of her subordinates in their pursuit before losing her in the vast cargo bays amidships, where she hid in one of the redundant spaces she had identified prior to launch. Etsiddy eventually cast her lot with Shoichiro Nagao, becoming a leader of his road crews.
Sources:
First image is "space Lazareth#04 (https://www.deviantart.com/illbein/art/space-Lazareth-04-985070315)" by illbein on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools. The name of the device is also inspired by the title of the work.
Second image is "Naval officer (https://www.deviantart.com/abbylikestopaint/art/Naval-officer-957420813)" by Abbylikestopaint on DeviantArt.
Third image is "a beautiful female astronaut inside an cyclopean horrifying alien spacecraft in the style of Vermeer (https://storage.googleapis.com/pai-images/dd614dc15f2b468c95b8828d82286f93.jpeg)," by Ian Clarke on Playgroundai.com.
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(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYauyvLmkwkumCLXf0_9WOPiieNc_Gi2YbJ5BXvs9VFvXmBcer5KDpqZ5kzHBPdU4q08X7Ou9HA2w9SHAfw8nTv4yTq7ywTY_UPLxDmA0VMnnL-VWg6iZopS0VqGuPELGZUo6oahiYpfkf/s1600/Closed_Cycle_gas_Core.jpg)
ARA Almarante Brown, Argentine dispatch frigate, in High Earth Orbit, c. 2060. Typical of spaceframes commanded by a Flank Captain.
Flank Captain was the junior-most flag rank in some Old Earth water and space navies in the middle and late twentieth century. It was first introduced in 2032 by the Omaran Circle Protection Force in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone to recognize conventional navy officers commanding escort vessels tasked as missile decoys, a particularly hazardous duty thought to demand exceptional courage and judgement. By the 2050s, this substantive rank or courtesy title was used by more than two dozen mostly smaller military forces, again to distinguish leaders of high-hazard commands.
The rank was given considerable cultural mystique in the 2040s by the blockbuster Nollywood science fiction duology, "Highest Hour," which described the tragedy of a Nigerian officer killed by Red Chinese forces during a fruitless search for Planet Nine. The films fixed the two significant traits with which the rank would be associated in the popular mind: bourgeoise striving and heedlessness in the face of mortal danger. In short, hubris.
Notable adoptees of the flank captain rank included the French Armée de l'air et de l'espace and the Comprehensive House space navy, but the rank was most common among the navies of small polities and non-governmental organizations, where it was offered to attract veterans of great power water and space navies frustrated by a lack of promotion in their native services.
Three Flank Captains were assigned to the Unity Mission. Izdubar Drosselmeyer, a Namibian, served for thirty-one years with Comprehensive Transport's neutrality patrols before accepting appointment as an armorer with responsibility for the ship's meteorite point-defense systems. Drosselmeyer entered cold sleep before the necessity of his position was reconsidered, which resulted in his reclassification to the bland title of "supernumerary officer, no portfolio." His service history made him a sought-after prize of the early Unity Crisis, when he was taken captive by Spartans. On Planet, Drosselmeyer was briefly made leader of a helot work party after refusing to swear the Spartan Oath. With other prisoners, he organized a successful escape during an early skirmish between Spartan pickets and Kellerite foragers, only to be shot dead by the latter.
Sources:
Image found on ToughSF (https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2016/07/space-warship-design-process.html) on article "Space Warship Design: A Process," dated Sunday, 31 July 2016. Artist is William Black. See also: Point of Divergence (https://www.deviantart.com/william-black/art/Point-of-Divergence-390985872) on DeviantArt by William-Black.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/26a0fcee-15a9-4c35-90ec-c7cc0875e0b4/djyaeir-546c4d5a-3180-41fb-ad69-484aa460e9d0.png/v1/fill/w_1024,h_574,q_80,strp/primeval_reign_48_by_x_lluesma_djyaeir-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NTc0IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMjZhMGZjZWUtMTVhOS00YzM1LTkwZWMtYzdjYzA4NzVlMGI0XC9kanlhZWlyLTU0NmM0ZDVhLTMxODAtNDFmYi1hZDY5LTQ4NGFhNDYwZTlkMC5wbmciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.S6oWHUxIY_rWsJ2FYD10LrqxduEEbVgDi5estrzbPQQ)
The Fall of the Five Cherubim, when Ascendancy legionnaires put the torch to Miriam Godwinson's Cities of Pearl.
Their nomadic way of life made it practically impossible to do otherwise, but Hunter foraging parties, like the dismounting pair seen here, earned themselves a black reputation on Planet for being the first to most disasters, where they usually made off with the choicest goods before friendly relief could arrive. Most Lodge Oaths compelled the scavengers to do what they could for the wounded, but bullets offered in mercy could rarely be distinguished from those offered in hostility.
The Five Cherubim were all hard cases. Chironian warfare prioritized the taking of prisoners and loot--especially nutrients and data--but the Ascendancy Kill Teams took nothing, apparently confirming the Digital Oracle's suspicions that Pahlavi's brutal attack was purely a reaction to the Conclavist's demands for planetwide restrictions on human genetic engineering.
As wealthy pilgrimage sites, they stored an inordinate share of the Conclave's moveable wealth--contributions to which the original donors still felt entitled--along with large galleries of Old Earth artifacts ranging from the faith devices of a thousand belief systems to deactivated robots and watch-vid series banned by Conclave judges. A huge quantity of this combined treasure later found its way into the hands of Morganite dealers, Shaper memory vaults, and the special collections of the Tomorrow Initiative--a river of wealth that could have flowed only with the assistance of Hunter "intermediaries."
Sources:
First image is "Primeval Reign 48 (https://www.deviantart.com/x-lluesma/art/Primeval-Reign-48-1206449667)," by x-lluesma on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.
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(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/0c8f094a-acd8-4bd1-a3fd-c5a1ec910a94/djyguc5-2919d000-f21a-46c6-b62b-bd99493b8164.jpg/v1/fill/w_1182,h_676,q_70,strp/after_the_thawing__4_by_fleetofgypsies_djyguc5-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9NzMyIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMGM4ZjA5NGEtYWNkOC00YmQxLWEzZmQtYzVhMWVjOTEwYTk0XC9kanlndWM1LTI5MTlkMDAwLWYyMWEtNDZjNi1iNjJiLWJkOTk0OTNiODE2NC5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.-C9zhCs-kKAT325RscMEitZINfMN4ExcITQnZuQkjQc)
Neo-Spartan engineers prepare to de-ice hab-dome panels and exterior machinery following overnight snowfall at Zud 12. Zud is Mongolian for "deadly winter," but its own garrison softened the base's reputation by embracing another name more indicative of their purpose: Santiago's Little Workshop.
Because of its location in far northeastern Shamash, Zud 12 was an objective assigned to Gaian forces during the MY50-MY54 War of Retribution--a controversial decision because of University Security's far greater experience with cold-weather warfare. The Gaian Rangers stood no reasonable chance of pushing so far above the equator, and indeed lost a quarter of their own territory just in fending off the nearer Pilgrim threat, but Skye did attempt to get at Zud 12 using unconventional means. In MY53, working through a Conclavist intermediary, the Gaians paid the governor of Lebombo Stick, a Tomorrow Initiative science station, to send a pair of armed hovercraft against the Spartans.
The results were less than spectacular. After two hours of "lackadaisical" bombardment, most of it very inaccurate, the attackers were discouraged from approaching any closer by small arms fire from a seaward pillbox. Four cycles later, a Spartan section of just sixteen warriors "yomped" their way east-northeast to Lebombo Stick where they used incendiaries to destroy most of the outbuildings. When a few Netrunner militia began to muster, the Spartans were prepared: five defenders fell in a hot cross-fire, while seventeen more were taken prisoner, none of whom survived the forced march back to Zud.
(https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/6a746538-6ce7-4801-95c4-34c07558326b/djyhc3o-6aec5faf-67dc-419e-9f87-03278af5fdea.jpg/v1/fit/w_667,h_373,q_70,strp/su_47_berkut__3__by_sironslaught77_djyhc3o-375w-2x.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MzczIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvNmE3NDY1MzgtNmNlNy00ODAxLTk1YzQtMzRjMDc1NTgzMjZiXC9kanloYzNvLTZhZWM1ZmFmLTY3ZGMtNDE5ZS05Zjg3LTAzMjc4YWY1ZmRlYS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9NjY3In1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.RUR1BLZxug-G6Yba8OQQIbcfUK7Cm03UZI8XE5Jg3FA)
A vanity photo of a Soviet Su-49 Kretchet above the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, c. 2062.
The Soviet Su-49 Kretchet fighter aircraft, with its distinctive swept-wing design, entered general production in 1999 based on the success of the Su-47 Berkut test bed and earned an enviable reputation in early twenty-first century conflicts.
The Kretchet was a favorite aircraft for export, especially to less-stable clients, and the phrase "Scramble the Kretchets" entered the American lexicon as a reference to Soviet gamesmanship no less popular than "Crazy Ivan."
Kretchets scored noteworthy aerial victories against the F-16 in Pakistani hands over Kashmir in 2032 and 2033, and for the Bolivians against Spanish Eurofighter Typhoons in 2045. In both cases, the U.S. Congress responded by canceling planned expansions to the NASA budget for support to UN orbital initiatives. In the 2060s, as the United States emerged from a long period of civil war, Soviet premier Rytov used gifts of older Su-49 airframes to the Ethiopians and Zairians, routed through Morganite fronts, to sour the American public on international aid.
Sources:
First image is "After the Thawing 4 (https://www.deviantart.com/fleetofgypsies/art/After-the-Thawing-4-1206750101)" by fleetofgypsies on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.
Second image is "SU-47 Berkut #3 (https://www.deviantart.com/sironslaught77/art/SU-47-Berkut-3-1206773124)" by SirOnslaught77 on DeviantArt.