Thinking too much about the Pandora: First Contact lore

[MysticWind]

What?

Pandora: First Contact was a budget indie 4X Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri clone made by like three guys at Proxy Studios (who would later make Warhammer 40K 4X game Gladius - Relics of War) that debuted a little under a decade ago. According to its head writer, much of its lore and in-game diplomatic dialogue was written within a couple of weeks.

Despite this, its instruction manual is almost completely made up of lore about the setting and factions, which makes it almost comically unhelpful but also charming in a retro game way- remember when games came with manuals? Not only is there a timeline of future history and the requisite SMAC-style faction leader profiles, there's also a short story for each of the six original factions. (The seventh human faction, the Peacekeeper clones, came in the DLC and unfortunately did not get a short story.)

So there's content to work with. Even though the game, especially the writing, falls completely short of the original, often called soulless, and sort of misses the point of SMAC's appeal. The Pandora factions are rather unserious, unpleasant caricatures of the original. Funnily enough, the writer, Dan Griliopoulos replies that he hadn't even played SMAC for longer than half an hour when he wrote them.

Why?

I'm a lore guy. SMAC's lore is much beloved. To me I'd say it's immersive, evocative, and elliptical. Epigrammatic. Gnomic. Economical. The game's references are out of control, everyone knows that. The majority of the writing are the quotes that refer to an unseen universe that hangs out off screen. So it lends itself really well to player creativity. Emergent storytelling. I've seen forum games that convincingly fill in the gaps in the world-building and characterization far better than the GURPS sourcebook we got, because SMAC's writing is just that open-ended. Someone could write an essay on great minimalist storytelling in games, and SMAC would be right next to Dark Souls.

The other reason why I think about SMAC so much is that it's archetypal. Its characters are so damn strong, not just because of memorable writing, but what each of them represent. Like the most timeless of science fiction, they are all distinctly philosophical and connect to universal human ideologies. Not made up conflicts or modern, easily dated, politics. So it's easy to come back to them again and again. Plus, each of the characters are iconic. Both in a deep way and a mundane way- they're as striking as the avatars from a "select your fighter" screen or from a board game. I was a big fan of Clue growing up, in a similar way. I read the mystery books from Scholastic a lot to learn about characters who were just differently colored pieces in the game.

So when another game tries to imitate SMAC, even poorly, it's worth a consideration to me.

Funnily enough, due to its budget constraints, Pandora sort of ends up both elliptical and archetypal. It has a lot of writing in some areas, but there are still enough gaps in the material (it is a strategy game, after all) for players to fill in and reinterpret. Also, because they are all knock-offs of the original SMAC seven, they do represent archetypes that make them easy enough to grasp and examine. As opposed to the Civilization: Beyond Earth sponsor leaders, who sort of represent archetypes but mostly in game mechanics and not in story.

Also, I'm writing a fanfic that crosses over the Unity gang and less goofy versions of the Pandora crowd, so I think about this game a lot.

Finally, Avatar 2 just came out. We should all be thinking Pandora. Side question: imagine what if in addition to mindworms, and the Progentiors, Planet also had Na'vi type primitive sentients? So just straightforward Civ barbarian mobs, who perhaps guard Monoliths. Is that even moddable?

How?

I think the Pandora characters symbolize the negative aspects of the seven's ideologies, but different enough to be considered as potential rival archetypes, or at least breakaway splinters like some of the SMAX factions. So I'm going to explore that.

Also this sort of serves as a Let's Read for the Pandora lore, for everyone who isn't going to bother to skim the manual.

Who?

Divine Ascension: the first faction and leader in the manual is also one of the most memorably cartoony. Cult leader Lady Vermillion is a gaudy over-sexed (post-)modern version of Miriam and the Believers. The manual hamfistedly, and perhaps datedly, says her faction "combines the worst parts of Facebook, Scientology and North Korea."

Her in-manual short story is an autobiography sent to one of her hapless cultists that she's blackmailing, pontificating supervillain style. She was once Lily Maroon, a ne'er-do-well con artist who happened to be a coder. Her buddy hires her to create SpaceNook (ugh), which becomes a massive social network that she becomes CEO of. Along the way, she starts up the Divine Ascension, "a simple application of economic principles to the religious market" that she "built using off-the-shelf AIs and SpaceNook's white-labelled back-end." So, as you'd expect, SpaceNook trawls user data that is readily weaponizable, blackmailing anyone in power.

She narrowly survives an assassination attempt. Really makes me wonder if the writer read Michael Ely's Planetfall novella, because hey, Miriam had a near-death experience, too! So now she does believe in God, so she consolidates Divine Ascension into this big MLM scheme and markets it to any type of believer, with her as head theocrat. And decides that she really wants to bring her cult to Pandora, the extraterrestrial promised land.

Divine Ascension is a modernized update to the Believers, and of course, represents the fanatical irrational (overplayed, imo) aspects of Miriam. The interesting parts to me are how, once you get past the cringe Facebook parody, is she represents how new religious movements gestate, perhaps the same can be said of all religions. Dangling bits of wisdom and personal fulfillment behind layers of hidden knowledge. But also flashy aesthetics (the lore says Noxium builds her a fabulous space cathedral decorated as a giant prayer wheel), a public persona that is no doubt more Lady Gaga than the Virgin of Guadalupe.

While Miriam represents the power of Tradition in venerable old religions- she is a cleric as her father was before her- Vermillion symbolizes how disruptive new faiths, whether pushed on by the sincere or by the cynical, can capture the minds of those who first voluntarily give themselves to it, and then get hooked into toxic social structures.

For my own crossover, I'm getting rid of the social media aspect- that's just a post-Y2K tech that's too fundamentally incompatible with SMAC's now-retrofuturistic '90s setting. I would focus on Vermillion as a celebrity figure, through and through. Scientology is outlandish not just because of its aliens and Douglas DC-8 airliner theology, but also because of how it's infiltrated Hollywood and gotten movie stars as its spokespersons. Indeed, that's how a lot of modern cults are- NXIVM, and whatever Jared Leto is up to with Echelon. You can have religions that don't even have cosmologies, or deities. Contrast her conniving nature with Miriam's humanistic aspects- fwiw, Godwinson always seemed like she wanted the heathens to convert for their own good, not for herself.

But I think there's also something to be said how modern society, both post- and pre-social media, could be very alienating. And so cults are a way for people to find themselves. Maybe it's comforting for everyone to be given a rank and a role in the Divine Ascension. And some people really find meaning and interest in losing themselves in imaginary worlds outside of their mundane existences. (Heck, you're reading one.) So as with the Hive, the positive aspect of this cult is the "losing yourself in favor of a greater whole." It's bare, but it's there.

Next?

I'm going to post each of these faction analyses in parts. If you've made it this far, thanks. Happy holidays.

[MysticWind]

Final thoughts on Divine Ascension

Here’s an excerpt from the timeline:

Via Salvatum, AKA Divine Ascension – grows out of a popular social media site. It combines traditional religious and monarchical values with modern marketing techniques, subliminal messaging and AI-driven blackmail, to become the world’s dominant creed, absorbing new and old religions alike.

Now, that’s obviously cursory and sort of nonsensical at first glance- wtf are monarchical values and how could a popular social network spur on a modern religion, even in a dystopia climate change-ravaged, corporate dominated, AI surveillance net rules future where old faiths have withered away.

And yet, since Pandora debuted in 2013-2014, all sorts of social media trends from Cambridge Analytica to QAnon, from MAGA to TradCaths, have appeared to sort of fit bits and pieces of the concepts mentioned in the excerpt. But again, using social media to dominate a majority of people in such a way definitely doesn’t feel like a late ‘90s sci-fi trope. Max Headroom and Sushi K may have been cyberpunk net personalities, but they never inspired cults in their settings. Tonally it’s not very SMAC.

So thesis, antithesis, what is my synthesis to reconcile the two? I would still lean on the idea of celebrity worship as the basis for modern cults, since that’s been around since like, ‘60s spiritual gurus and ashrams, at least. And Tom Cruise/John Travolta Hollywood Scientology was around in the ‘90s.

I would start with a novelty- an entertainment or cultural celebrity as one of the crew members who fled Earth aboard the Unity. It’s definitely sillier as a concept than the SMAC seven, but I think this would be a post-Planetfall splintering faction like say the SMAX guys. Someone who would come to prominence on the nascent datalinks, perhaps first pseudonymously Peter/Valentine Wiggin style, perhaps with the help of pre-sentient algorithms to boost their audience and create bot armies (too modern a concept?) to follow them.

Like Divine Ascension, the cult-like nature can be rooted in behavior- blind worship of the leader, MLM type divisions of the followers, an abusive social structure.

The theology’s specifics are negotiable- I find the idea cramming all preceding beliefs into Space Unitarianism to be an unconvincing spiritual aesthetic, which is why Kavitha is mad bland (and worse, reveals Firaxis’ ignorance of actual South Asian culture and history). Maybe to give it a ‘90s vibes they can be UFO cult-inspired and have nutty beliefs about the monoliths and alien artifacts, but then this just becomes a retread of the Cult of Planet.

Ultimately, the approach I’m going with is partly inspired by Pandora’s (perhaps unintentional) evoking of MMO’s in the short story:

I set it up like a game, so that as you progressed through the levels of the church’s knowledge you give up more of your secrets, property and freedom, in return for more of the church’s secrets

I’m thinking of Lady Vermillion as a celebrity game designer, perhaps a slight meta nod to the fact that this is a game-inspired fan setting, and a slight nod to Charlie Montague from Deathloop (I find the Visionaries from that game to be cut from the same cloth as the egotistical self-aggrandizing faction leaders of SMAC). So her celebrity cult would be also partially rooted in pop cultural fandom, how fun.

I figure by the time of Alien Crossfire, there are enough people on Planet and enough industrial development to support all sorts of weird breakaway Bioshock-style ideological theme parks (not that the original seven weren’t already such societies) in the Planetary marketplace, or rather battlefield, of ideas.

My "Lady Vermillion as a celebrity game designer" idea

So the concept is to have her faction represent new religious movements and modern day cults, specifically ones that center around a self-help guru type rather than someone connected to an ancient, established, tradition (like `Miriam` and the `Lord's Believers`). As well as a meta-nod to this being a video game setting, since modern online fandoms can start looking like religions themselves.

Let's say Lily Maroon, one-time cultural anthropology researcher, finds a career that brings her fortune and fame as a game creator, spinning elaborate vivid fantasy universes and narratives that many of the demoralized in 21st century Earth find escapist relief in. Over time, she is seen as a pop cultural visionary and establishes a modest franchise empire that extends to books, film, holos, etc. surrounding her modern-day mythos. As her alter ego, Lady Vermillion is both flashy and gaudy, but also mystical and enigmatic, feeding into a dedicated fandom.

By the time Unity rolls around, she becomes one of the lucky cultural and artistic creators randomly chosen to bring humanity's creativity to the stars, and with mission-relevant skills - as an anthropologist, in case the mission finds intelligent alien life or traces of it. Unlike many others of the privileged, she decides to brave the risky expedition. Her fandom goes gaga at the though of her leaving before her works are completed, but she leaves them with cryptic clues as to the fates of her characters. During Planetfall, she is even well-protected by crew members who were fans of her work, and finds that she has some command over them.

On Planet, she ends up in the Peacekeepers or maybe Believers and studies the mysterious monoliths. She continues writing. As Network Nodes and other computing advances get invented, she starts making games again. As Information Networks get invented, early datalinks fan communities start, dedicated to her HyperMythArc. This includes a SMAC-style social network. But as it turns out, Lily Maroon isn't just a simple raconteur. She's also a con artist who once used her deep understanding of culture and society to fine-tune her scams back when she was a starving grad student. And by the Alien Crossfire timeframe, she's ready to leverage her fanbase.

With more elaborate stories and mythical puzzles, dispersed over her AscensionNet, she draws in more devotees (colonists looking for an escape from the rough, mindworm-haunted, hardscrabble life of Planetary survival). She blurs the lines of entertainment fantasy and metaphysical knowledge. Eventually she establishes a following from enough factions to declare the intention to go wander in the wilds for lost alien relics.

The Believers have had enough of her attention-grabbing ways. Let's say in this version the faction isn't specifically about strict adherence to Christianity, but as their datalinks profile says, "life of religious worship." So it's not so much they find her to be a heretic, but a dangerous cult leader taking advantage of the piety of her fellow citizens. Miriam thus exiles her, and she is followed by her "Seekers" from many factions. The Morganites, smelling a story, finance a Colony Pod for them under the condition of allowing a Morgan Media documentary team to be embedded with the new splinter faction. The Seekers welcome their sponsorship, and Lady Vermillion secretly plots to take advantage of it. The first base she establishes it is basically an artist's colony with the population of a single central artist, and everyone else in attendance to her as she spins up new visions of Planet.

So there you have it, the Divine Ascension (I’d rename the faction though) with a slightly more realistic background. I deemphasize the social media aspect but I couple it with a modern form of mythology. Interactive games, like superhero media, can fit that purpose.

Mechanics-wise what we get is another agenda Fundamentalism fascist, but this time with an aversion to Democratic politics rather than Knowledge. (Even though in Pandora they're just a direct Believer clone with research penalties.) Getting free Hologram Theatres could be a perk.

Diplomacy dialogue in Pandora

I’m still uncertain who exactly wrote the diplo text for this game, but they’re set up excellently for convenient modding, as simple XML files. Their actual writing is pretty one-note, but distinctly so for each faction. It’s rather purple prose but in a fun pulpy way, giving each leader a distinct voice and shtick, which contrasts well when compared to say C:BE’s sponsors imo.

Divine Ascension’s Lady Lilith Vermillion sounds like an old-timey Puritan Pilgrim Goody Sanderson type, and is rather self-contradicting. Her intro quote is:

Pandora has been promised to our people as a spiritual refuge. As long as you believe in a god -- any god -- I believe we shall be friends.

Which funnily matches the Believers being about life of religious worship, which most depictions ignore in favor of her own all-American Evangelical Protestant faith. On the other hand, Lady V. also mentions “One True Religion”, so there’s the character inconsistency.

Some funny quotes:

As the prophet Wilde said, 'We are each our own devil and we make this world our hell.'

Saint Einstein said that science without religion is lame, yet religion without science is blind. Our friends help us see.

Some decent quotes:

We shall set the dove of peace free, to fly on Pandora.

Somebody needs a good smiting. (When demanding a declaration of war on a third party faction)

Their ultimate abode is hell, a hapless journey's end. (A Muslim sura from the Quran!)

Talking to god is crazy. Hearing god is schizophrenia. Acting on it is pure insanity. And warring in his name is pure evil. (Dialogue from other faction denouncing hers)

Her quotes also reference Vishnu, the Chinese god of mendicants, three Greek spirits of the poor, the Hindu god of beggars, Argus Panoptes and the Ophanim, Forseti and Tyr, Mercury, and Job. Also about selling "bibles, korans, talmuds." "The pantheon of all gods." Basically the Divine Ascension religion is just Space Unitarianism, mixing all religions into one bland stew. So the Kavithan Protectorate from C:BE except less Orientalist.

[MysticWind]

Imperium: I like the Imperium, a massive private military corporation once named Empire Management. They're the Spartan Federation clone, but I think there's some subtle differences worth exploring. Ultimately, they reveal some of the interesting nuances present in SMAC itself, which is the best thing you can ask from a clone/homage/tribute game, I suppose.

Backstory

The Imperium are the militarists, and their backstory contains some of the weirdest details in Pandora, a key example of the writing's occasional dry dark comedy:

At the end of the 20th century, war got expensive, fast. When a single-shot dumb missile costs more than a small town, you can't just fire them at anyone – but the Western powers did, fearful of losing even a single soldier. Most first-world soldiers never got within a mile of a living enemy, and their autonomous drones.

Meanwhile their developing-world opponents cobbled together countertech from video game consoles, how-to guides on 4chan and sheer bile. It was asymmetric warfare to the nth degree, one side using money, the other lives.

For the West it got to the point where a single soldier's death was a tragedy – so it was simpler to hire veterans, mercenaries and the insurgents themselves. The corporation that fronted all this – that provided a one-click military solution anywhere in the world, dropping bombs like ordering pizzas – was Empire Management, originally an internet logistics firm run by Chad Harrigan and Buck Smith, a pair of Muscle Marys from Venice Beach, California.

So, as Rob Zacny put it on the Three Moves Ahead episode for this game, the PMC that later runs most of the world's militaries were the guys from Pain & Gain. This funny bit of "vanity backstory", as Troy Goodfellow puts it, exists only in the manual and never appears in the game itself, and is canceled out when the backstory explains that Chad and Buck are later killed by Rods from God dropped by a disgruntled former employee, and the company comes under the command of a young veteran raised "in the Spartan training camps of Ceres." Self-styled admiral James Heid is your typical M. Bison quote-stealing Blood Knight, and he directs the uber-PMC (Uber for PMCs, if the manual had been written just a couple years later) to go to space:

His forces don't need Pandora – but the company's pride couldn't stand the concept of wars without Imperium, and he was sure war was going to come on Pandora.

Comparing with SMAC

Imperium contrasts well with the Spartans. As I like to remind people, Santiago curiously has an Erratic aggression, meaning she's not inevitably going to go to war with you. You can equally imagine the Spartans being Planetary conquerors true to their name, or paranoid isolationists holed up in barebones bunkers. That's to say while they embody fighting and warfare, their core value is survival, not war- they just believe fighting is the best way to survive. It's the one instrument in their toolbox that makes everything look like a nail. It would be just as possible to imagine a faction focused on survival on the basis of, say, peace- which I'll get to in a moment.

The Imperium, as depicted, is the PMC. Their existence revolves around war, but not simply hypothetical wars- they must continuously wage war to keep their society solvent. And Heid, based on his quotes, is a sociopath obsessed with fighting. So right there, we can see how a faction revolving around war would have more of a proactive, aggressive demeanor than Santiago. The Spartans are not interested necessarily in flattening every faction they come across, only those that either pose a threat to their survival, or must necessarily be culled and whose resources, harvested, for continued factional survival.

One underrated aspect of SMAC is that just as Santiago isn't necessarily about war, Lal isn't necessarily about peace. While they become archrivals in Michael Ely's first SMAC novel, Centauri Dawn, I think the central conflict was more of a vague Trojan War reenactment than really based on the concepts of war and peace. I think it is arguable that Lal is, in his own way, as obsessed with survival as Santiago is. But he simply believes that a liberal democracy based on humanitarian principles is more desirable than an authoritarian military stratocracy based on Social Darwinist survival of the fittest. So his methods matches those values- he would prefer survival achieved through diplomacy and cooperation, while she prefers survival achieved through fighting and domination. But Lal is just as ready to go to battle, if he has to- his faction is named the Peacekeeping Forces, the military branch of the U.N., after all.

Spartans war to survive, the Imperium survives to war. To Spartans war is a threat, or an observation ("Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die."). To the Imperium war is a promise, or guarantee.

But while the Imperium embodies war, I don't think they necessarily embody conquest. A Conquest victory would be a natural fit for their gameplay, but in reality I think they should stand for the primal concept of war. Total conquest is a goal which eliminates the need for war. In such a situation, Heid the Blood Knight might just inspire drone riots and the creation of splinter factions who he would then defeat, or the development of an Imperium space program to go find other alien races to fight, or perhaps building military A.I. to go rogue, so he could turn his arms against them. Or maybe pollute endlessly so he could make war against Planet itself.

While the Spartans are paranoid survivalists, the Imperium should represent the violent Id of humanity that seeks unending conflict for the sake of it. In a way, it's not too different from how Morgan Industries is the Id for unending capitalist exploitation of resources and competition for the sake of it. For the love of the game.

Fitting into SMAC

As mentioned above, I like the Imperium to represent the primal idea of war from an ideological perspective, rather than be a typical video game PMC. Those were all of the rage in the 2000s-2010s, probably inspired by Blackwater and co.'s increasing presence in the War on Terror. Artemis Global Security from Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., Atlas Corporation from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, everything that happens in Metal Gear Solid 4 and Metal Gear Solid Revengeance, there's no shortage of fictional PMCs foolish enough to take on national or even international armies.

I don't think the Imperium should be just some all-conquering evil empire. Not only does that set them up to be an obvious big bad that all of the factions would unite to take down (like how the Human Hive is occasionally depicted), it confuses perpetual war with Planetary conquest, as I said. I think in a SMAC setting, the Imperium should be jolly rogue sellswords, ready to go to war for the higher bidder. Denounced by the Peacekeepers only to be paid by them when Lal is in dire straits; rejected by Gaians only to offer a Faustian bargain when Santiago launches her Secret War against Deidre's green peaceniks.

So a little like a parasitic faction, one that embodies a concept but sort of depends on other factions' existences to function. Like the Data Angels do with hacking the data of other societies in their great infobop. Or the Nautilus Pirates do as modern day Viking raiders. (I would imagine that the Angels would develop their own high-tech R&D and the Pirates would use the endless resources of the seas to amass food and industry, but still they have a shtick.) Or the Free Drones grow thanks to the swelling ranks of oppressed underclasses of every faction. A SMAX faction, in other words.

If a SMAC sequel allowed for more granular diplomatic abilities, I'd imagine the Imperium taking part in many Vendettas not as a major belligerent, but an ally of convenience store who can be easily bribed to fight for the other. Merchants of Kill.

At the same time, I also imagine them so obsessed with war as an ideology to the point of venerating it as some sort of primitive ritual, or even a fundamental instinct. Heid and his lieutenants are so filled with bloodlust that they have a simplistic notion of it on the level of Gundam Wing or Metal Gear. They view war as universal, inevitable, and necessary. They are the ultimate War Junkies.

Mechanically speaking, they have a +25% unit upkeep as mercenaries ("High-paid"), but no such equivalent to an Industry loss like the Spartans do.

Diplomatic Quotes

As with the rest of the factions, the Imperium is very consistent in its one note and lack of seriousness, and Admiral James Heid chews up the scenery like a wannabe Patton. They're pretty unremarkable for the most part. Here's a couple okay ones.

You're as cute as a possum when you say nice things. (Praise to other faction)

How about a sweet trade pact? You'll really want some of these huggable doll-mines -- I heard they make excellent toys for children. (Offering trade pact)

Timeline

I didn't touch upon the backstory timeline, even though it's the first big chunk of the instruction book. Most of it is written in broad strokes about the state of future Earth, and most of it is dominated by info about the game's factions before they go to Pandora. I will say that as a game written in 2013, it has a very opportunistic view of private space development, which in the real world might be in slight trouble, what with Twitter being a distraction on multiple levels.

Pandora's future crapsack world is marked by environmental degradation and corporate power, just like SMAC. It does, however, make its factions overpowered on Earth. For instance, Noxium, the Morgan Industries clone, is the most powerful megacorp in the world, Divine Ascension is the dominant religion, etc. It's sort of a dumber version of Civilization: Beyond Earth where each sponsor represents a dominant political (or in ARC's case, corporate) bloc that was able to launch a separate interstellar mission.

In Pandora, most of humanity is cartoonishly dominated by these private organizations. But on the bright side, things do seem to be getting better, like in C:BE. In the 2070s, "primitive Civil Service Artificial Intelligences" start running a lot of day-to-day societal administration, and it's spun as a good thing that democratic populations asked for, to replace their short-sighted warmongering rulers. By 2080, Civil Service AIs are brokering a global warming treaty and geoengineering Earth's atmosphere towards global cooling. This is all just a background detail as the greedy factions head to Pandora in defiance of the toothless national governments' order to keep that planet as a natural preserve. So it goes.

But I think that has the gem of an idea here of non-ideological A.I. becoming a potential faction of their own, competing with the fanatical or greedy human factions. Shame they never explored it- would be room for an expansion at least. But then again, the game lacks Social Engineering so it would be a lot less interesting than in SMAC.

So funnily enough, P:FC has a setup that's coincidentally like C:BE. Things were bad, then they got better, so the powers that be went on a colonization spree on an alien planet. And it makes sense; to copy the Planetfall struggle and balkanized mission aspect of SMAC would be too derivative. Though, for some reason, Age of Wonders borrowed the name for its sci-fi game, even if that game is more like a WH40K "fantasy races in space" setting.

[MysticWind]

The Noxium Corporation is the Morgan Industries clone of Pandora. It's another case of a rather two-dimensional cardboard cutout baddie version of SMAC faction that imo, through overthinking and reading too much into it, can be fluffed into a somewhat distinct faction of its own. Or at least a different take on a SMAC Big Idea ideology.

You are Director Eric Preston, leader of the economic Noxium. Your people value riches above everything and have elevated trade and haggling to art forms. While they are highly skilled in all forms of commerce, their extravagant style and pretentious architecture result in a waste of living space noticeably felt by the less fortunate individuals of your society.

Backstory

In the timeline, Noxium is the megacorp that sets up the first asteroid mining operation in the 2010s. Along with the Empire Management mercenaries, they form the Ceres Cartel and monopolizes development of the Solar System, controlling space resource extraction and then construction while Empire Management protects them and secretly blows up any rival space companies. Later when Pandora is discovered, Noxium builds a colony ship but disinclines to invite Imperium, so Heid has his hissy fit and steals the colony ship. As per the short story for Noxium, it turns out they had built a second ship all along, and shorted their own company's stock after their first ship was hijacked, thus reaping in a ton of money in the stock's fall. Their leader, Director Eric Preston, is a magnificent shitweasel for the maneuver.

Again, none of this is actually present in the game or in the game mechanics, which really could have used some depth such as a Noxium-Imperium bad blood. The splintering of the "fifty-year long Ceres Cartel" is also mentioned to led to battle between the two in the asteroid belt, including Callisto, which is where Heid served. All inconsequential details.

Back-history

Noxium is a Latin word related to noxius, which means "hurt", "guilt", and all sorts of unpleasant things. So right off the bat they're fairly cardboard cutout baddies. Preston's intro quote is also incredibly weak and meaningless- why does liquidity even matter in an alien world? This game doesn't have SMAC's energy economy.

But there's this bit in their backstory that captured my imagination:

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that Earth was being controlled keenly and closely by intelligences more subtle than most men's. The Noxium Corporation didn't exist then, of course. But the handful of greedy men who valued their own happiness more highly than that of a thousand others had existed since the 17th century.
The slow cartelisation of most economic markets really took off in the 19th century, but advanced marvelously in the 20th century, and in the USA in particular. By the end of 2000, the poorest 80% of people in the USA owned just 15% of the country's wealth – and that fell to 10% in the next five years.

TVTropes' article for this game suggests this hints that the Noxium was founded by the Illuminati, a shadowy cabal. But I like to think this implies that this megacorporation is nothing more or less than the embodiment of Old Money. The mercantile elites, the robber barons, the bourgeois made flesh. The 1%. (The game was published a few years after the Occupy Movement, which might explain the insertion of the real-world wealth inequality factoid above, as subtle as an after school special.)

One doesn't have to be infuriated at landlords while playing Victoria III to understand that class solidarity exists among the upper classes just as it might occasionally crop up during particularly arduous times, among the workers. So it could be understood that Noxium was a megacorp founded by ancient wealthy families and interests who having reached monopolization on Earth, decided to go to Pandora to plunder new emerging markets. (Remember, P:FC, like Civ: Beyond Earth, is an every faction for themselves colonial scramble, not the desperate interstellar Noah's Ark of SMAC.)

There's also an element of the transition from aristocracy to plutocracy. Many of Japan's zaibatsu were founded by either merchant clans whose power rose as the samurai fell during the Meiji Restoration, after all, or canny samurai families who traded the art of the blade for the battlefield of business. While it's possible to read conspiracy theory lore into the idea of a "handful of greedy men" controlling vast resources, there have always been powerful, wealthy bloodlines beyond the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers. The Medici, the Fuggers, the Morgans, it's all on Wikipedia.

So beyond the simple idea of "evil space megacorp", we at least have something real, with real-world weight, we can start to hang our hat around, and read into.

Contrasting with SMAC

As the best comment highlighting Pandora's failures with SMAC's successes describes:

Morgan is an eloquent advocate for human selfishness and a sort of serial-numbers-removed objectivism. Not-Morgan is written as just another outrageously rich, cynical plutocrat a la Bain Capital 2012 all over again.

As I said in the last post, Pandora at best helps to highlight what makes SMAC's characterization uniquely interesting. Nwabudike Morgan is the most charming and maybe the most charismatic faction leader, thanks to his actual sense of humor, amiable wit, and likable extravagance. He is brazen and audacious and we love him for it. He is sort of a Randian hero, even if his ideology seems to deviate from Ayn Rand's ideology more than the above quote suggests: Morgan extols the benefits of enlightened selfishness, instead of harping on the evils of altruism as The Fountainhead-reading buzzkills might. He's Gordon Gekko without the '80s coke-filled hostility, or that "for the lack of a better word" wimpy modifier. Morgan is excited about economic exploitation, he loves the dynamism of enterprise and building, heck his whole economic philosophy is built around "energy."

Randian archetypes, as idealistic representations of titans of industry, are all about building. Railroads, Temples of the Human Spirit, physics-defying motors. They produce useful things, unlike parasitic "looters" and "moochers." Morgan is clearly in the former- after all, he is a hero capitalist who is bold enough to call for the creation of "an entire economic infrastructure, from top to bottom, out of whole cloth." So what does this make Noxium?
In the previous excerpt, they're described as "financiers" that "did nothing", save to push paper around in the casinos of the financial markets. Which contradicts the rest of their characterization, but let's roll with it for a second. They're the mass of centuries of generational wealth. Eric Preston, like many of the Pandora characters, doesn't even get a backstory, but he's perfectly believable as another scumsucker scion in a long line of scumsuckers perpetuating and protecting their privilege.

Thus, we see two opposing conceptions of capitalism: one of productive, heroic, industrialists vs. unproductive, craven, financialists. But that isn't the way.

While that might be a convenient distinction to paint Noxium as a starkly villainous, irredeemably selfish faction with no upsides, therein lies an oversimplification of how economics actually works. Capital might be owned by banks and funds, but it is still used by capitalists to fund their factories and build their railroads. And the line between the two is always blurred as former founders turned venture funders go into the investment business themselves. To lean too heavily on the false dichotomy between capital that creates and capital that simply breeds with interest is to dive into producerism and some real dangerous far right tropes that run from Lyndon LaRouche nuttery to outright fascist theories.

Besides, if we stick to the respective lore, Noxium developed the Solar System, hardly unproductive. And Morgan was the son of African royalty anyway, even if he might have only used some seed money to self-make his fortune. They're not so much two sides of the same coin, as they are two halves of the same ingot.

Vulture Funds and Mad Managers

To read too much into things, the invocation of Bain Capital in the critical quote above stuck to my craw. Of course, back in 2012, Mitt Romney was much villainized for his leading role in that private equity firm. A quick primer for the hate: private equity firms acquire financially distressed companies in leveraged buyouts, which entails the target acquiree must finance its own purchase by taking out loans. They then often slash the acquired companies' costs heavily, including mass layoffs. Short term profit is prized to the detriment of anything else. Quality of goods and service might plummet. And essentially, the company is beholden to this outside entity.

This sort of "vulture capitalism" isn't specific to private equity, and there are legitimate reasons for why businesses might seek their services - namely they might make you rich and escape taxes, and all the PE firm does in that case is collect management fees from you. Another different type of investment firm is hedge funds like Elliott Management, which freaking held up the debt-laden government of Argentina. So, as Archimedes said, a little leverage goes a long way.

Fun fact: much of the board game industry was owned by the private equity-owned Asmodee Group from around 1995-2010, which might explain why so many interchangeable games were churned out for the sake of IP.

The other side of Bain & Company, which is a management consulting firm, in the business of being mercenary manager advisors for hire. Think the Bobs from Office Space except for the Fortune 500, or even entire nations. Another sector that is the stuff of journalist ire, its poster child McKinsey being accused of everything from working with corrupt elites who flamed racial tensions in South Africa to advising the governments of China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Applying business school principles for authoritarians. The Chicago Boys are back in town!

Adapting into SMAC

So, basically, I'd recast Noxium (first, I'd rename them), to be either a private equity/hedge fund, or a management consulting firm. Better yet, they would be both arms of the same megacorp. Because here we see a side of modern business that Morgan's luxurious promises elides: the cutthroat cost-cutting and profit-chasing austerity imposed by those who presume to know better, because they make, and are worth, more than you. The will to power from those who manage. Again- the new aristocracy.

Also, a recognition that Morgan's simple worldview that to be rich is to be glorious is incomplete- modern business is incredibly complex and heavily abstracted. Not even in space can you escape financialization.

In my own fanfics, I'd say that Morgan Industries might have built the Unity - but it was Knox-Yan (from 琰, meaning "gem", "glittering", and containing both the radical for "king" and the "fire" radical repeated!) who was to advise the U.N. mission when it actually got to Planet. And who battered down the expense hatches by skimping on anti-micrometeorite protective armor.

A late game consideration

I said I didn't want to indulge reactionary theories, but this last bit from the Pandora instruction manual couldn't help but to make me think of accelerationism:

By the 21st century, these financiers had reached an almost perfect capitalist state. They did nothing. They produced nothing. They gambled huge amounts of money on stock markets like roulette wheels, but hid it carefully when the taxman came to call. When the countries of the world, driven to desperation by their collapsing incomes, eliminated tax havens, these financiers just bought up the nascent space industry and moved into orbit.

That ideology is- muddled, to say the least, and its online adherents are both appalling and tedious, with a tendency to stick letters in front of "/acc" which is very reddit behavior if you ask me. But the late great The Awl wrote a very informative essay about Nick Land and the like. The r/acc essence, from what I can tell, is the idea that capitalism is an A.I. - it is an unthinking, irrepressible gestalt intelligence that emerges and consumes all before it.

[T]he competitive dynamics of capitalism drive technical progress as an iron law. If one capitalist doesn't want to build smarter, better machines, he'll be out-competed by one who does. If Apple doesn't make you an [jerk, sphincter], Google will. If America doesn't breed genetically modified super-babies, China will. The market doesn't run on "greed," or any intentionality at all. Its beauty — or horror — is its impersonality. Either you adapt, or you die.
Accelerating technological growth, then, is written into capitalism's DNA. Smart machines make us smarter allowing us to make smarter machines, in a positive feedback loop that quickly begins to approach infinity, better known in this context as "singularity."

And I think that's actually applicable to both Noxium, and SMAC as well. The former because the evocation of a "perfect capitalist state" that exists completely in stasis has a ring of Land's eerily dystopian, alien conception of our future. It is the ideal of hyper-capitalism taken to its extreme end-goals. Not simply the amassing and securing of wealth for an individual and his kin. But the capture of all realities by capital. What then does the act of producing and consuming become but another blind idiot god optimizer, a paperclip maximizer?

I've imagined Morgan's Cybernetic future as a society that perfectly captures all monetary values rationally. All prices are automatically adjusted in realtime. None of this is imposed by the "state", insofar that his megacorp has one, but as in the real world with consensus metrics such as credit, but entire industries of reporting agencies, automated services, and other middlemen have a say- in this case it'd be the sentient AI driving the show. And with MMI, this integrated consciousness would be able to constantly conduct transactions, numerically untold, each picosecond. Until each
Morganite is clad, fed, and satiated at every moment, like electron clouds around atoms.

Perhaps a Noxium transhuman endgame would be the dystopian version. Where the plutocratic elites have optimized and automated out the entire economy to serve them perpetually but also to no longer require the working drones. And eventually to dispose of them, as well, as crude fossils of a bygone age where the means of production required any human presence, whether owner or not. By then Planet, humming with economic activity but utterly cold and devoid of humanity would be that perfect capitalist system, continuously expanding, exploiting, and exterminating, unbidden by the hand of man.

Or maybe, on the bright side, they'll finally create that universal corporation where each man gets his share.

OK, you say

This is all a bit wooly-headed for a rationale for what amounts to the RDA from Avatar. Yet, one of the everlasting aspects of SMAC is how it presents a relatable, even eerily identifiable snapshot of near-future dystopian humanity, then projects it into mission centuries beyond towards posthumanity. SMAC as an example of humanist, philosophical sci-fi about Big Ideas. Soft sci-fi kitchen sink center within a nougaty hard sci-fi setting shell. Like Star Trek, the game throws at you idea after crazy sci-fi idea, while rooting the characters' motivations towards the primal, lindy driving forces of human existence.

I recall on the Apolyton forums the Beyond Alpha Centauri collaborative fanfic project, which imagined the SMAC factions after they left Planet- bringing their ideologies further into the stars. Even latter-day Firaxis has recognized this; they did make Sid Meier's Starships after all, starring the C:BE leaders whom we remember so fondly in what amounts to an over-glorified iPad mobile game.

Mechanics

As Morgan clones, Noxium in Pandora gets starting credits, debuffs to habitat space ("Extravagant"), better prices as "Bargainers", and their Economic buff is more credits from taxes, which makes one wonder how an ostensibly hypercapitalist state ruled by a single monopoly would even handle taxes.

I'd say because they're an uber-capitalist state that's run by MBAs who hit Dunning-Kruger continuously, they get an Efficiency debuff. An ironic private sector counterpart to the Peacekeeper's trait. And the usual Planet and Drone related debuffs. Unlike Morgan, they should be able to have a Planned economy. As with Unicorp in the SMAC Fac Pack, a quest for planetary monopoly would not be necessarily Free Market, as Morgan naively- or perhaps hypocritically- believes so. Maybe Green should be their aversion.