Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

[Trenacker]

The most virulent disease is failure. - Homo Sapien Superior

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 on the Avalanche Press website.

[Trenacker]

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

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.

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.

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.

"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.

[Trenacker]

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.

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.

[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.

Missourri conversion is "Iowa Commando Ship Conversion" by Tzoli on DeviantArt.

For nuclear-powered plane, see Dark Roasted Blend.

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.

[MysticWind]

Whose seed is in itself, upon the earth (pt. 3)

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 from Pandora: First Contact (Manual with lore)

Historically in Brazil, January 9 is Dia do Fico (I’ll Stay Day), commemorating when crown prince Pedro refused to return to Portugal. Deixar means to leave.

House of Leaves 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 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 means "welcoming approach" and Jōdo means "Pure Land." Both are Japanese terms from 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: 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)

Eco-militants case a fuel refinery is from How to Blow Up a Pipeline. (Trailer)

Forest claiming a lakeside building is an excerpt of "Return to Prime Even" by Marek Denko

[Trenacker]

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 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!

[Trenacker]

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.

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.

"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.

Third picture is "Cliguari's Drop" by sleepcircle on DeviantArt.

[Trenacker]

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.

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.

"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.

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.

[Trenacker]

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.

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.

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.

[Trenacker]

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.

[Trenacker]

National Profile: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

[Trenacker]

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

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.

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.

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.

[Trenacker]

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.

[MysticWind]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, a faction from the SMAC Fac Pack mod project. Character details are from correspondence with mod co-creator nweismuller.

Barry Keoghan showreel: Druig, Dominic, and Scavenger. Nice range.

Vatican-Greenland relations is a nod to the latter's prime minister (do they even have one?) visiting Pius XIII in The Young Pope. Zachary II is a much more polite pope, though.

Cryobacter katlensis is the tiniest cryptid 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” 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.

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)

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 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 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" 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, an influence on the last.

[Trenacker]

Bit of a slow-down on my end as I go on holiday. Back next week!

[Trenacker]

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.

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.

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.