MysticWind
Warlord
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2008
- Messages
- 149
Faction Set B
Similar to Alien Crossfire, the factions of the second set are meant to be splinter groups and offshoots from the main factions, often ideologically... particular, who broke off as the mission years went on. To be honest, since this whole project really just started with me coming up with various concepts and random names that sounded cool, I didn't even envision any in particular that could have split from the Second Ship!
One thing to consider too is that when looking at the Alien Crossfire human factions, a lot of them seem to be derived not from ideologies but rather gameplay mechanics or just aspects from the setting. Nautilus Pirates specialize in the aquatic play style. Data Angels focus on probe espionage. Free Drones are about drones, both in mechanics and lore. Planet Cult and Cyborg Consciousness are both just sort of more extreme versions of the Stepdaughters of Gaia and the University of Planet, I suppose- though in terms of concept they also extend the lore when it comes to man's relationship with Planet and, uh, Faustian applications of science that leads to transhumanism and alienation from our biological selves I guess. Some of my Set B factions do the same.
A few are also my responses to the whole NN custom faction ecosystem, my "wow what if all of these factions were on Planet can you even believe" concept.
Anti-Xenos Integral Society: Suffer not the xenos to live. But neither the cyborg, the psi-path, the machine disfiguring the human soul. This is the hardliner anti-Planet Cult faction who hates and fears that which is not human on Planet. Their faction leader I pretty much based on the otherwise-forgettable villain of the forgettable Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, voiced by James Woods, mostly because he had such a snappy taunt to the heroes right before he fires the Zeus orbital cannon near the end of the movie: "prepare to meet your Gaia." I based the bio on Hein's tragic backstory, and really wanted to give the faction a planetbuster as a starting unit until I was told that it was technically impossible.
Concept-wise I think it's fairly natural to imagine either a Believers but more puritanical, or a Santiago but crusader, type faction. If I had released AXIS today, it would get conflated with the Purity affinity from Civilization: Beyond Earth, or with Humanity First from Terra Invicta. They even have a similar dynamic with Planet Cult as HF does with the Servants. Looking at the NetworkNode.org archives, there's even a fic for a sadly lost faction named The Sinner with a very similar premise, right down to the base obliteration.
But they were also meant as commentary on the state of the custom faction mod scene. With so many disparate non-human sci-fi ideas, including weird Progenitor-human upload cyborg hybrids, other aliens, Replicants, and random sorceresses, I figured there might be a faction that would push back against all of that. Baseline supremacy.
Psions for Purity: Actually forget the Planet Cult, these would be the natural antagonists for the AXIS: a faction of Empaths, Thinkers (I guess they're technically MMI cyborgs so they might not count), Transcendi, "Psions" who have grown disgruntled at the rest of humanity, having been exposed to the depraved and degenerate thoughts that go through peoples' minds all of the time. So naturally, they seek to secede and form their own faction.
They would qualify as a SMAX-style gimmick faction that's based on an element of the setting and turned into its own faction. I like to imagine them as having a New Agey, crystals, meditative, hippie psychic culture, coupled with deep revulsion, contempt, and loathing for baselines who go around pondering in filth. I gave them Eudaimonic future society as their agenda, though Green might also fit as well, given how the setting really connects psi powers to Planetmind. To revise my draft, I think instead of Wealth as their aversion, Knowledge might work really well- ironically, these open-minded telepaths actually really hate having to know.
I had them split from the University, which is a weird choice in hindsight but that could be a solid way to establish their inability to choose Knowledge. Ironic then if Zakharov caused both Cyborgs and Empaths to split away from him.
Global Energy Exchange: A cabal of those who seek to preserve the energy-based economic system of Planet. Trying to beeline their way to the Economic Victory. I was probably most likely inspired by the Shadow Bank from Illuminati: the Conspiracy, a fan homebrew supplement for the World of Darkness tabletop RPG universe. (And it was heavily influenced by the eponymous Illuminati series from Steve Jackson Games- that society being based on the Gnomes of Zurich, which also neatly ties to Earth by David Brin. It's all connected.) If you're familiar with Mage: the Ascension, they're pretty much the Syndicate from the Technocracy.
As a kid, I had only vague ideas about how the economy works, but I did make the differentiation between the world of business that Morgan Industries dominates, and... investing? Hence I called it an exchange. Going back and retconning it to make a little sense, I'd imagine that rather than stocks, the exchange is more of a forex currency market kind of dealie- maybe each faction has its own unique local energy units, and these guys want to standardize them and serve as the central bankers to them all. Rather underwhelming as an endgame ideology, but consider it in loftier terms. Morgan wants to control all markets with his business activity. The GEE (or GEX) wants to own the very currency the markets run on themselves.
I think, to steer away from blatant conspiracism, the shadowy board (I originally didn't even given them a visible faction leader) has more in mind than self-enrichment. As per the quote, they want to make sure that the energy currency is stable, to create a world without financial turmoil, under their enlightened leadership. However, to distinguish them from the Human Hive, I sort of want to give them Thought Control as their agenda rather than Planned, which makes them look like villains. Wish there were more SE choices.
New Athenians: Play-style gimmick concept: what if there was a faction that just really focused on one base at a time? Everyone lives in a city, what if you had the best city? Nowadays I'd recognize that as wanting to make your faction really tall, which isn't really something that can be converted into a single ideology in the fluff. But that's what I envisioned with these guys anyway, trying to create a handful of glittering, gleaming cities on a hill, full of prosperity and culture and democracy (I'd probably make that optional) and fashion. Hence the leader being a foppish dandy who would give Nwabudike a run for his money in terms of taste.
Nanomachine Technologists: As seen on my initial draft, this was the very first faction I came up with. Most likely it was simply from their name, which I had to work backwards to come up with a faction. What I imagine them to be is a research-based faction devoted to realizing the dream of post-scarcity built with nanotech. So University but devoted to practical engineering applications, specifically for improving quality of life. And so they do science, but with more panache than Zakharov's dry lab rats. They do science!
At the time I also learned about technocracy, both as a general principle and as the weird 1930s fringe political movement, so I threw that in there too. (I got the technate concept from a bit of alternate history.) Even though it's pretty much certain that the University of Planet and any other Knowledge-agenda factions would also be meritocracies- technocracy as rule by experts- I have the Nanotechnicians, or Nanotechies for short, explicit espouse it as their ideology. Because hey Howard Scott's weirdoes were into using energy as a value metric a century ago. It's all (vaguely) connected.
Their focus on nanites might seem like a faction that gets ahead of itself in the tech tree, like the Cyborg Consciousness basically assuming MMI and the Cybernetic future society already exists, or I suppose the Psions and Empaths. But given the infinite power of nano-augmentation and nanomachines, son have been the much-hyped magical tech of the future for decades (maybe especially in '90s sci-fi), you might as well have a faction that focuses on them. It justifies the name, okay?
Library of Planet: As wry commentary on the proliferation of factions on NetworkNode.org and to a much lesser extent in the series itself, I imagined a faction that arose in response to it, led by a scholar of history and the political sciences who analyzed the trends and determined that Chiron society was heading for the same chaos that swept Earth. So what I got was a bookish version of Lal who is even more of a crybaby weenie, asking everyone to please stop fighting lest the Foundation-style technobarbarian Dark Ages arrive early.
Quite honestly, I think the actual origin of them is in the name: I took the familiar "of Planet" faction naming structure and added Librarians to it. SMAC's use of Librarians always fascinated me, they're a specialist citizen and a difficulty setting, yet in the game what they do is completely unexplained. You can easily assume they're some sort of IT systems admin type, since they come with Planetary Networks, but the use of an otherwise analog job title is sort of neat in a sci-fi setting. Come to think of it, Librarians are also a thing in Warhammer 40K. Sadly, for all of my fixation on naming things I missed out that it already exists in the game, as a University base name! Oops.
So I took the name and used it to retroactively justify their identity, and I think it works. "The University but for the soft sciences" is a faction concept that I've seen in the SMAC Fac Pack and in the work of @Axis Kast, it's a popular archetype. I suppose my Librarians differ from the Preservers and the Anti-Ozymandias Protocol or whomever in that they have an explicitly political project: to unify the factions to prevent the loss of knowledge due to warfare and social collapse. I think this reinforces the Foundation influence quite nicely, now that I think about it- the Encyclopedists ended up reuniting the Galaxy, after all. Despite this grand ambition, the Librarians are pacifist- but I gave them a strong probe buff, originally intended as a defensive perk (and in contrast to the University), but maybe that could lead them to do wily Terminus-type schemes to bring the warlords and barbarians into the fold. And I suppose if all else fails they could be like the Followers of the Apocalypse from Fallout. (As an aside, besides the Library and the Darwin Raiders' "Foundation but Mongol horde", part of the Psions' nature is imagined to be like those of the Second Foundation from the series. Telepathy that works in subtle ways, through the power of suggestion.)
Honua Divers: Like the Phoenix Nation, this is a concept I've come up with much later after my 10th grade binder-scribblings. Recently I've settled on making the fourteenth and last faction of this set be based on the Sea State from Earth, which is a huge climate refugee armada of rusting buckets and decrepit floating platforms that crosses the seas, stopping at ports of call and picking up the forsaken of drowned lands. On Chiron, this would be a faction led by former oceanic refugees of Earth, but also those in the present day driven from the land by vendetta and hostlie wildlife, to find refuge among the waves. And most pointedly- unlike the Pirates who seek plunder, they reuse, repurpose, and reclaim that which has been abandoned by those of the land, scrappily salvaging from the detritus of sunken ships- maybe submerged bases without pressure domes!
I've always considered having a nautical faction, yes it's a shtick that's been done, but the sea is a big place for adventures. I had considered the Children of Oceanus, but enough neopagan cults.
Similar to Alien Crossfire, the factions of the second set are meant to be splinter groups and offshoots from the main factions, often ideologically... particular, who broke off as the mission years went on. To be honest, since this whole project really just started with me coming up with various concepts and random names that sounded cool, I didn't even envision any in particular that could have split from the Second Ship!
One thing to consider too is that when looking at the Alien Crossfire human factions, a lot of them seem to be derived not from ideologies but rather gameplay mechanics or just aspects from the setting. Nautilus Pirates specialize in the aquatic play style. Data Angels focus on probe espionage. Free Drones are about drones, both in mechanics and lore. Planet Cult and Cyborg Consciousness are both just sort of more extreme versions of the Stepdaughters of Gaia and the University of Planet, I suppose- though in terms of concept they also extend the lore when it comes to man's relationship with Planet and, uh, Faustian applications of science that leads to transhumanism and alienation from our biological selves I guess. Some of my Set B factions do the same.
A few are also my responses to the whole NN custom faction ecosystem, my "wow what if all of these factions were on Planet can you even believe" concept.
Anti-Xenos Integral Society: Suffer not the xenos to live. But neither the cyborg, the psi-path, the machine disfiguring the human soul. This is the hardliner anti-Planet Cult faction who hates and fears that which is not human on Planet. Their faction leader I pretty much based on the otherwise-forgettable villain of the forgettable Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, voiced by James Woods, mostly because he had such a snappy taunt to the heroes right before he fires the Zeus orbital cannon near the end of the movie: "prepare to meet your Gaia." I based the bio on Hein's tragic backstory, and really wanted to give the faction a planetbuster as a starting unit until I was told that it was technically impossible.
Concept-wise I think it's fairly natural to imagine either a Believers but more puritanical, or a Santiago but crusader, type faction. If I had released AXIS today, it would get conflated with the Purity affinity from Civilization: Beyond Earth, or with Humanity First from Terra Invicta. They even have a similar dynamic with Planet Cult as HF does with the Servants. Looking at the NetworkNode.org archives, there's even a fic for a sadly lost faction named The Sinner with a very similar premise, right down to the base obliteration.
But they were also meant as commentary on the state of the custom faction mod scene. With so many disparate non-human sci-fi ideas, including weird Progenitor-human upload cyborg hybrids, other aliens, Replicants, and random sorceresses, I figured there might be a faction that would push back against all of that. Baseline supremacy.
Psions for Purity: Actually forget the Planet Cult, these would be the natural antagonists for the AXIS: a faction of Empaths, Thinkers (I guess they're technically MMI cyborgs so they might not count), Transcendi, "Psions" who have grown disgruntled at the rest of humanity, having been exposed to the depraved and degenerate thoughts that go through peoples' minds all of the time. So naturally, they seek to secede and form their own faction.
They would qualify as a SMAX-style gimmick faction that's based on an element of the setting and turned into its own faction. I like to imagine them as having a New Agey, crystals, meditative, hippie psychic culture, coupled with deep revulsion, contempt, and loathing for baselines who go around pondering in filth. I gave them Eudaimonic future society as their agenda, though Green might also fit as well, given how the setting really connects psi powers to Planetmind. To revise my draft, I think instead of Wealth as their aversion, Knowledge might work really well- ironically, these open-minded telepaths actually really hate having to know.
I had them split from the University, which is a weird choice in hindsight but that could be a solid way to establish their inability to choose Knowledge. Ironic then if Zakharov caused both Cyborgs and Empaths to split away from him.
Global Energy Exchange: A cabal of those who seek to preserve the energy-based economic system of Planet. Trying to beeline their way to the Economic Victory. I was probably most likely inspired by the Shadow Bank from Illuminati: the Conspiracy, a fan homebrew supplement for the World of Darkness tabletop RPG universe. (And it was heavily influenced by the eponymous Illuminati series from Steve Jackson Games- that society being based on the Gnomes of Zurich, which also neatly ties to Earth by David Brin. It's all connected.) If you're familiar with Mage: the Ascension, they're pretty much the Syndicate from the Technocracy.
As a kid, I had only vague ideas about how the economy works, but I did make the differentiation between the world of business that Morgan Industries dominates, and... investing? Hence I called it an exchange. Going back and retconning it to make a little sense, I'd imagine that rather than stocks, the exchange is more of a forex currency market kind of dealie- maybe each faction has its own unique local energy units, and these guys want to standardize them and serve as the central bankers to them all. Rather underwhelming as an endgame ideology, but consider it in loftier terms. Morgan wants to control all markets with his business activity. The GEE (or GEX) wants to own the very currency the markets run on themselves.
I think, to steer away from blatant conspiracism, the shadowy board (I originally didn't even given them a visible faction leader) has more in mind than self-enrichment. As per the quote, they want to make sure that the energy currency is stable, to create a world without financial turmoil, under their enlightened leadership. However, to distinguish them from the Human Hive, I sort of want to give them Thought Control as their agenda rather than Planned, which makes them look like villains. Wish there were more SE choices.
New Athenians: Play-style gimmick concept: what if there was a faction that just really focused on one base at a time? Everyone lives in a city, what if you had the best city? Nowadays I'd recognize that as wanting to make your faction really tall, which isn't really something that can be converted into a single ideology in the fluff. But that's what I envisioned with these guys anyway, trying to create a handful of glittering, gleaming cities on a hill, full of prosperity and culture and democracy (I'd probably make that optional) and fashion. Hence the leader being a foppish dandy who would give Nwabudike a run for his money in terms of taste.
Nanomachine Technologists: As seen on my initial draft, this was the very first faction I came up with. Most likely it was simply from their name, which I had to work backwards to come up with a faction. What I imagine them to be is a research-based faction devoted to realizing the dream of post-scarcity built with nanotech. So University but devoted to practical engineering applications, specifically for improving quality of life. And so they do science, but with more panache than Zakharov's dry lab rats. They do science!
At the time I also learned about technocracy, both as a general principle and as the weird 1930s fringe political movement, so I threw that in there too. (I got the technate concept from a bit of alternate history.) Even though it's pretty much certain that the University of Planet and any other Knowledge-agenda factions would also be meritocracies- technocracy as rule by experts- I have the Nanotechnicians, or Nanotechies for short, explicit espouse it as their ideology. Because hey Howard Scott's weirdoes were into using energy as a value metric a century ago. It's all (vaguely) connected.
Their focus on nanites might seem like a faction that gets ahead of itself in the tech tree, like the Cyborg Consciousness basically assuming MMI and the Cybernetic future society already exists, or I suppose the Psions and Empaths. But given the infinite power of nano-augmentation and nanomachines, son have been the much-hyped magical tech of the future for decades (maybe especially in '90s sci-fi), you might as well have a faction that focuses on them. It justifies the name, okay?
Library of Planet: As wry commentary on the proliferation of factions on NetworkNode.org and to a much lesser extent in the series itself, I imagined a faction that arose in response to it, led by a scholar of history and the political sciences who analyzed the trends and determined that Chiron society was heading for the same chaos that swept Earth. So what I got was a bookish version of Lal who is even more of a crybaby weenie, asking everyone to please stop fighting lest the Foundation-style technobarbarian Dark Ages arrive early.
Quite honestly, I think the actual origin of them is in the name: I took the familiar "of Planet" faction naming structure and added Librarians to it. SMAC's use of Librarians always fascinated me, they're a specialist citizen and a difficulty setting, yet in the game what they do is completely unexplained. You can easily assume they're some sort of IT systems admin type, since they come with Planetary Networks, but the use of an otherwise analog job title is sort of neat in a sci-fi setting. Come to think of it, Librarians are also a thing in Warhammer 40K. Sadly, for all of my fixation on naming things I missed out that it already exists in the game, as a University base name! Oops.
So I took the name and used it to retroactively justify their identity, and I think it works. "The University but for the soft sciences" is a faction concept that I've seen in the SMAC Fac Pack and in the work of @Axis Kast, it's a popular archetype. I suppose my Librarians differ from the Preservers and the Anti-Ozymandias Protocol or whomever in that they have an explicitly political project: to unify the factions to prevent the loss of knowledge due to warfare and social collapse. I think this reinforces the Foundation influence quite nicely, now that I think about it- the Encyclopedists ended up reuniting the Galaxy, after all. Despite this grand ambition, the Librarians are pacifist- but I gave them a strong probe buff, originally intended as a defensive perk (and in contrast to the University), but maybe that could lead them to do wily Terminus-type schemes to bring the warlords and barbarians into the fold. And I suppose if all else fails they could be like the Followers of the Apocalypse from Fallout. (As an aside, besides the Library and the Darwin Raiders' "Foundation but Mongol horde", part of the Psions' nature is imagined to be like those of the Second Foundation from the series. Telepathy that works in subtle ways, through the power of suggestion.)
Honua Divers: Like the Phoenix Nation, this is a concept I've come up with much later after my 10th grade binder-scribblings. Recently I've settled on making the fourteenth and last faction of this set be based on the Sea State from Earth, which is a huge climate refugee armada of rusting buckets and decrepit floating platforms that crosses the seas, stopping at ports of call and picking up the forsaken of drowned lands. On Chiron, this would be a faction led by former oceanic refugees of Earth, but also those in the present day driven from the land by vendetta and hostlie wildlife, to find refuge among the waves. And most pointedly- unlike the Pirates who seek plunder, they reuse, repurpose, and reclaim that which has been abandoned by those of the land, scrappily salvaging from the detritus of sunken ships- maybe submerged bases without pressure domes!
I've always considered having a nautical faction, yes it's a shtick that's been done, but the sea is a big place for adventures. I had considered the Children of Oceanus, but enough neopagan cults.
