Racing the Darkness: A Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Fan Fiction Photoessay

[MysticWind]

Vehicle Chassis: Hod

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The standard frontline shagokhod is three to fifteen meters of space-age alloys wrapped around priceless parts atop two servo-encrusted pillars called legs. It is ungainly, prone to mechanical fault, and the largest, slowest target on a battlefield. But to a native, it is a demon that crushes your village, erasing the physical memory of all you have ever loved. And to a pilot, there is no greater thrill than in driving one, to tower over tanks, to swat down rockets, to make every step a weapon. It is the apotheosis of war. How like man to craft a god of death in his own image. - Letters from Kon Tum

The earliest shagokhod (Шагоход, Russian for “walker”) prototypes were built by Soviet pioneers as early as the 1960s, but the required technologies in power and propulsion did not arrive until the first quarter of the 21st century. Ranging anywhere from double a man’s height to fifty feet tall, these bipedal machines were touted for their ability to provide elevated mutual support without flight; increased sensory range due to clearer wireless reception and heightened line of sight; enhanced maneuverability including the ability to dodge, duck, and swivel; traversal over difficult terrain from muddy swamps to rubble-choked streets; and most of all, the sheer morale shock of facing a titan.

Golden Chinese Huàshān Brigade pilots posing in front of their ZSD-1 Metal Heaven shagokhods before the Southern Pacification Campaign of the Fourth Indochina War​

Wondrous promises belied severe shortcomings. Prodigious size, slug-like speed, explosive reactor breaches, they were as much a hazard to their pilots’ comrades as they were to their pilots. But everyone from rear echelon brass to flag-waving civilians were enthralled by their imposing gaits, the romantic return of elite infantry in the form of giants. So they were kept on despite significant cost and liability. In time, mature militaries adapted to shagokhods with new combined arms doctrines utilizing them as one-man close support vehicles for ground forces. Canny commanders devised prudent counter-stratagems against artillery and to raid armor and attack helicopters. They soon saw action on all eight continents.

What’s in a name?

Schematics for the Soviet-built T-42 Babayka, a mainstay of many Blackjack Century conflicts​

The name for the vehicle varied. British Imperial troops cheekily called them “Shaggies” - though over time, this became the label for the pilots, while the machines themselves were known to the Empire as “Shaggers.” In Japan, word corruption reduced it to “Shogo” among pilots, who themselves were then called “Shoguns.” This reflected a cross-cultural bravado: pilots, or ‘jockeys,’ were “Cossack” in the Soviet Union, “Chasseur” in the French Union, “Yantakāra” in India, “Tufohen” in Ghana, “Gaucho” in the Southern Cone countries (Argentina, Uruguay, Rio Grande do Sul), “Huaso” in Chile, and dozens more invocations of olden glories across the Earthsphere.

“Elevated Armored Ambulatory Vehicle” was shortened to Walker, then bitterly twisted to “Wrecker” by long-suffering Midwesterners who found their communities trodden underfoot by W-17 Rushmore sweeper squads in and after the Second American Civil War. Loyalist servicemen liked the sound and appropriated it for their beloved war machines. In the same vein, “Amb-Bam” was used by United States Up-Armored Cavalry occupation jockeys strolling through the gardens of Reconstruction. On the opposite side of the Pacific Rim, in 2054 Sony tried vainly to convince the JSSDF to rebrand its shagokhod pilots as “Walkmen” for the 75th anniversary of its iconic audio device, re-released as a modern datatape multi-player.

Commonly favored for its pithiness, “hod” was adopted by NATO as a standard abbreviation, and it stuck. “Mech,” from “mechanical,” is a TwenCen archaism, dropped after its conflation with mechanized infantry.

Hods benefited both sides of imperialism. Left - Iraqi Political Police search for dissidents in Basra, assisted by Soviet advisors in Brezhnev shagokhods. Right - Mgabata ng Disyerto fighters assemble in the Rub' al Khali, preparing to fight the petrol-emirs of the Triplet Cities​

As the tactical implications of the shagokhod became better studied, the powers-that-be began increasingly adopting them for use cases other than actual cross-state warfare. Imperial establishments sent them on police actions and stabilization operations. Their looming figures and blinkless stares made up the silent face of a thousand occupying forces in colonial territories. Even law enforcement sent cop hods wielding waterjet cannons and tear gas launchers on psychological operations during times of large-scale civil disorder. In the lead-up to the launch of the Unity, the U.N. Security Forces themselves resorted to their own contingents of baby blue-painted shagokhods purchased from Soviet, American, or Japanese surplus to protect their fragile Space Elevator zones.

As technical schematics and surplus parts flooded the black market, non-state actors and the occupied began fielding hods of their own. Requiring far fewer personnel than a tank team, able to step over security blockades and minefields with ease, the hod was as stirring an icon for revolutionaries as it was for the regimes they fought. Though they required armies of technicians to maintain, hods were invaluable for hit and run raids, off-road flanking maneuvers, and capturing the imagination of entire peoples.

Planetfall, and after

Scarcely larger than Chevrolet-Monarch Powered Combat Suits, the Unity walker blurred the line between shagokhod and exo-frame​

Despite lobbying from American defense contractors and Japanese industrial combines, few shagokhods were brought on the Unity mission. As weapons of war, their exclusion seemed as self-explanatory as the lack of tanks or fighter planes- not only were they resource-intensive, they signified a continuation of the same sad sins that drove humanity from the homeworld. Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida dissented but was shot down by mission planners, his calls for heavier firepower against alien threats unknown ignored. However, Chief Security Officer Rachael Winzenried did secure a miniscule cache of VB-451 Bronson armored sentinels, rebranded as the Unity walker.

Armed with a primary Tau Ceti V photonic cannon and anti-personnel nonlethal rounds, Unity walkers were supposedly able to go toe-to-toe with a rover, even a chopper. In practice, they were mostly unavailable or subverted during Planetfall. Traitor saboteurs disabled the walkers they could not access, and the ones they could pilot were used against the high-sensitivity areas they were intended to protect. Even then, they met opposition. U.N. Marines deployed CMC suits and Rambler-Crane B-9 Robby roller robots to blunt their might. During the Skirmish at the Lightmast, solartechs led by Powertech Lucero Eztli Salvador vanquished a Holnist-siezed walker by reflecting its laser back into itself with a replacement solar sail panel, then swarming it with pipes, crowbars, and wrenches. (This event would codify the “rediscovered” melee tradition of the Sons of Centauri-Ra.) Locked Unity walkers, preserved from the fray, were sent along with other mission vehicles in supply pods dispersed across Chiron, later found by factions and reigniting entire technological disciplines.

A New State NS-13 Murat shagokhod and a Tirailleur assault an enemy polar base. Note the use of Particle Impactor weaponry​

While amateur public domain, open-sourced, or otherwise leaked blueprints were brought to Chiron in the Unity's massive data archives, no prototypes for extraterrestrial shagokhods were built until colonial society had progressed considerably, towards the "Pre-Sentience Age". Not until the advent of Portable Fission Reactors and Advanced Industrial Base were such war machines feasible for Planetary warfare. But when they were, they were a sight to behold.

Unidentified mercenary Drago attack hod of unknown contract lays waste to the Tribal settlement of Novo Santos​

Chironian shagokhods were a familiar beast of battle, with only slight modifications owing to the different planetary environment. Like everything else, they were rebalanced for greater gravity, leading to even larger unit weight and materials consumed. Most ran on reactors fueled by abundant thorium deposits, though biogas generators using methane were rigged up for deathtraps on the cheap.

In terms of official doctrine, these hods did not diverge far from their ancestors, intended to supplement infantry, speeders, bikes, copters, and heavier vehicles in a combined arms strategy. Though with the relatively underdeveloped state of factional militaries, they were frequently able to launch their own raids, even soloing entire bases by themselves. While overall slower than wheeled vehicles, hods could pass through rough terrain, even xenofungus fields, with minimal trouble. Their elevated height gave them further optical range and greatly reduced the benefits of their targets’ defensive cover, though it also grievously exposed them to artillery fire. Speeder-mounted artillery proved especially deadly against many an overconfident jockey who forgot that height made for easier aiming from swift OpFor as well.

In an oxygenated bunker, Restoration hod jockeys prep for anti-mindworm mission as psych chaplains minister​

The first hods indigenous to Planet aided base garrisons against dangerous wildlife. Unity walkers salvaged from Supply Pods were rigged with flame guns and sent to drive off mindworm boils. Rumors that the extra armor and battlefield separation via instrumentation proxy would guard against xenosanity proved horrifically false. But the flamer hod did store greater amounts of fuel to burn out invasive aliens, as well as precious minutes of shielding against crawling death.

In the field, hods provided valuable reconnaissance and fire support to scout infantry. Their ability to traverse dense foliage, including xenofungus patches, sped up expeditions despite their slower-than-rover speeds. Liquidators used hods in defoliant work, clearing away hostile flora with greater protection than formers afforded. In a pinch, an unsalvageable hod could be overloaded and detonated, burning away acres of fungus. Because of this practice, and the general destructive nature of microcompact reactors going critical, Lady Deirdre Skye added hods to the list of Gaian proscribed technologies. Until the discovery of Green Locomotion, all hods except low-powered models remained banned among the Stepdaughters of Gaia for over a mission century.

Factional perspectives

Many claimed to be the first to reintroduce shagokhods, mirroring the invention of the telephone. As with proverbial victory, the hod had a thousand fathers. But there were many fences, and dogs, along the way. None of the mercantile factions and corporations were first to market. The Dynamic Enterprise, going through one of its manias of intracompany competition after the CEO gave a particularly stirring holiday party address on “internal entrepreneurship,” lost control of its shagokhod project after Morgan Robotics, Morgan Transport, and Morgan Microwave Oven Programming devolved into a probe war after divisional relations broke down.

No fewer than half a dozen companies of the Chiron Cartel had prototype hods in the works, but were stymied by litigation based on claimed prior art from NoxCo, Morgan Industries, and New Unity Industries. (The last from scrapped designs dating back to the Dai Seung Heavy Industries days.) This was further overcomplicated by over-earnest Marketeers promoting the Free Market Zone as a less regulation-heavy (yet somehow more property-protecting) framework for companies to file patents under, drawing injunctions from an irate Cartel government.

Governor Oscar van de Graaf was content to use the ancient Mitsubishi mobility platforms that he had brought for the original mission, jealously guarded and maintained by the Pilgrims since before Planetfall. These antiques were still piloted by the thrill-seeking ARC president now and then, and he tolerated no attempts to steal or copy them. During the race to reinvent the hod, the New Two Thousand enforced this intellectual property not with patent trolls, but with Regulator strike teams.

Spartan hods included Japanese humanoid designs and conventional variants- a Darkwing rear-facing knee joint heavy weapons hod on the left, and a Kong tetrapodal tools-capable support hod on the right​

Colonel Corazon Santiago broke the Spartan Federation’s traditional Purism with a research pact with the University of Planet, offering researchers access to her expansive weapons development labs to resurrect the shagokhod. As much a political move to prevent internal mutiny as to prevent an external hod gap, she sweetened the pot by throwing in a crawler’s worth of Holnist unreliables for the provost’s human experiments. As Zakharov was seeking better relations with the Planetary Council, he decided to assign the captives as test subjects for social science research, to be overseen by the avatar of soft studies, Dean Adam Gieseler at Planetary Archives. (Gieseler, already uncomfortable with the faction’s grasp of ethics, did not take well to the assignment.) This yielded some promising prototypes, which both factions went on to develop separately. Unfortunately for Santiago, the price she paid with exiles only inflamed discontent from other Holnists and seditionaries, ultimately leading to the civil vendetta known as Garcia’s Revolt. But at least the Spartan loyalists had hods to fight with.

Oracle scouts in replica Unity-era suits follow a DEC-8 Talos into the wild. Each explorer receives full-spectrum data from the hod courtesy of Total Battlelinks​

My critics claim my love for this program is proof that I may yet harbor a shred of species narcissism. They misunderstand- the beauty in building a machine modeled after man is so we may make use of all our vast knowledge of biomechanics, anthrophysics, and physiology to iterate upon known systems. Just as with intelligence, no need to invent out of whole cloth what evolution has already bootstrapped for us. - MorganLink 3DVision documentary show Hod Shots

No faction was more enthusiastic about the rebuild of shagokhods than the Digital Oracle. Already committed to robotic technologies and cybernetics, Mediator Johann Anhaldt committed his scientists on a program to create a true child of the atom. Built under the direction of the greatest minds of the Oracle, it would boast gifts from its three magi: Energy Director Daoming Sochua devised its cutting-edge reactor and power systems, with a clean output beyond any preexisting vehicle known to date. Director of Industrial Mechanization Sylvia Gauss, the former Chief Roboticist of the Unity, designed the machine from its circuitry to its servos to the polish of its outer paneling. And finally, even the elusive Prime Function Aki Zeta-5, leader of the community known as the Cybernetic Consciousness which had settled within the Oracle, had contributed by implementing a never-before-seen network protocol that could transmit and process immense amounts of data from hod-to-hod.

The DEC-8 Talos could traverse Planet’s landscape at a maximum speed of eighty kilometers per hour. It was equipped with a 20mm caliber railgun and a wide array of anti-shagokhod weaponry, including an EMP module that it was shielded against. The mysterious algorithm from the Algorithm, dubbed the Total Battlelinks, made communications seamless, allowing pilots to exchange live information with infantry, speeders, even aircraft and home base.

The only thing it was missing was pilots. As the faction was not renowned for vehicular derring-do, let alone military expertise, Anhaldt attempted to find staff elsewhere. A contract with the Emporium via the Imperial Military Focus legacy brand fell through, as Brigadier James Heid suddenly decreed that the Warmongers would not be using hods for combat purposes, even under pay. Thus, Anhaldt turned to the Prime Function once more. Aki Zeta-5 provided him AI assistance software that aimed to turn every novice into a true hod jockey. Adaptive programming installed in each Talos unit parsed the data, learned from it, and could invent new strategies to advise its pilot. It could even do the same from the data received by other telemetry points, that is anyone in communication with it. Each hod became a powerful mobile data processor.

When unveiled to wider colonial society, Anhaldt’s creation gave shagokhods a new alias: “shoggoth.” Named for the monstrous creature of ancient stories, the slang captured the hysterias that the Talos manifested within the Planetary population. Fears of Aki’s Cyborgs were already widespread; that they were now empowering giant warbots of unknown capabilities gripped the datalinks. Their ability to assimilate and propagate information terrified data-doomers. Were these simply hods or pods that turned their drivers into unthinking automatons? The threat of imminent cyber-takeover panicked the factions, and even demands for a full audit of its software were made before the Planetary Council. Urban legends further alleged that the machines were coated with a mysterious nanopaste that could cause them to self-repair and even self-replicate, which Sylvia Gauss meticulously debunked with a wistful sigh. Adam Gieseler would later write that the Talos Panic had all of the hallmarks of a modern techno-myth. Yet after all of the hub-bub had died down, military leaders clamored to buy- or steal- the new hod. And even if later actual battles would prove otherwise, for a time, the bookish actuaries of the Digital Oracle had made the ultimate deterrent.

Notes

Intro quote inspired by the Acquisitions Entry for Mechs from Brigador.

Shagokhod is both a variant name of the vehicle from Metal Gear Solid 3, and appears to be a generic term for walking machine in Russian. Use of its abbreviated term follows SMAC’s convention for (terra)former, (hydro)foil, (heli)copter, etc.

ход, or “hod,” simply means “to walk” in Russian. A war weapon named for a nondescript diminutive perhaps mirrors the etymology of tank and some of its non-English equivalents. Coincidentally, a hod is also a large container (for construction materials, even sometimes for water), and means “splendour, majesty, vigour” in Hebrew.

Mount Hua, one of the five sacred mountains of China, was regarded as the dominion of Xiyue Dadi, named “King of the Metal Heavens” by Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang.

“Mgabata ng Disyerto” is Tagalog for “Children of the Desert.”

The idea of thorium fission being a major power source on Planet comes from nweismuller’s Let's Settle a New World in... Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Let’s Play.

Drago is a reference to Ivan Drago, the “Siberian Bull.”

Image Credits

Opening image is the Touro as depicted in retro tribute Brigador ATARI Icon by papirnehezek

Soldiers in formation in hangar from MissionForce: CyberStorm, the specific Herc is the Remora

Blueprint from Battlefield 2142

Occupation forces assisted by Leo mobile suits, Maganac Corps desert group photo from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

The Unity Hod is the System Shock 2 Security Robot

Combat walker and soldier in snow from Battlefield 2142

Trench troops readying powered suits from The Animatrix - The Second Renaissance Part II

Two mechs are the Duck and the Ape variants of Marauders from Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles

Large walker with soldiers in background is the Powered Suit from GODZILLA: Planet of the Monsters

Further Reading

Mecha and the Male Fantasy, The Bellman

Why an Octopus-like Creature Has Come to Symbolize the State of A.I., New York Times

 

[MysticWind]

Japan: from Pattani to Gaiden San

Standard of the Japanese Self-Sufficiency Defense Force, flown instead of the national flag during self-defense operations abroad​

Every great fall begins with dreams of ascent. - Floating World, Fool’s Gold

No country was more invested in hods than Japan. By the end of TwenCen, Japanese society was fascinated with the concept, pouring its vast expertise in robotics and techno-industrial infrastructure into Shogo prototypes. The first live-fire test resulted in tragedy. Proudly unveiled Heikegani ‘wriggler’ hexapedal tanks (which would go on to originate a distinct chassis of hod) and Shakushain Shogos sent on the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Southern Thailand blasted apart under guerrillas Tunguska-M1 anti-air missiles. The first generation of Shoguns, denied permission to fight back under self-contradictory rules of engagement, burned alive in their cockpits. Pleas to avenge the fallen were denied by multinational command. To add insult to injury, once-close friends in Bangkok blamed the failure on the overeager Japanese, denouncing their unreliable machines. This traumatic experience shook the society to its core, prompting a decades-long shift that ended on the other side of the Moon.

Combat footage of “Shakushain Offline,” the disastrous United Nations mission to Southeast Asia​

The failure of the prototypes only sparked increased investment into the growing technology of shagokhods. In the decades that followed, Japan became renowned for fielding the most humanoid of ‘hods. Imagined as physical extensions of the pilot, these machines contained artificial muscles mimicking the actual movements of organic beings. By doing so, their designers claimed to offer the perfect mix of speed, power, and sleekness. Japan embraced Shogos every level of society, from flagship military formations to civilian construction crews. Even metropolitan police staffed rapid response squads with lightweight “labor” hods. R&D came hand in hand with social developments that shook up the entire region.

Outfitted with synthetic musculature and boasting a streamlined design, the Raijin became the JSSDF’s frontline Shogo​

Furious at the defeat, populace and politicians alike clamored against United Nations stonewalling and internal weakness. The entire nation rallied for a new program of Modern Self-Defense, greatly reducing Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan, so long the bulwark against re-militarization. The formation of the Self-Sufficiency Defense Force heralded Japanese militancy, alarming Beijing, Seoul, Moscow, and Washington alike.

The new order was canny enough to channel its zanshin- not to mention couch its policy- towards what was half-way acceptable to the international community. In a surprise move, Tokyo announced it had learned from defeat and would pursue a course of kaizen of continuous improvement, reaffirming its commitments to the United Nations rather than withdrawing in ignominy. Furthermore, Japan sought to join SEATO as a full member, accepting the mantle of Modern Self-Defense with great responsibility and as a good neighbor. What followed was decades of peacekeeping and peacemaking operations on a scale unbelievable in decades before, with the Shogo as the centerpiece of its strategic policy. Between the hods on the ground and next-generation VTOLs in the sky, the rising sun of Japanese hard power engulfed communist rebels, sunnahist jihadis, and other menaces from the IOEZ to Easter Island for decades.

JSSDF JGR-3D “Testament” VTOL Heavy Gunships take off from the USN CVN-98 Thaddeus Stevens during U.N. peacekeeping Operation Yellow Brick Road​

Much of this went scarcely better than the initial adventure in southern Thailand, but each setback was met with greater vengeful resolve, an eagerness to prove. After an ill-fated entrance into the Fourth Indochina War on the side of the French, whereupon relations with the Golden Chinese were immensely strained and an entire regiment of aerial Fūjin Shogos were destroyed by the VPAF at the Battle of the Spratly Islands, a U.S. State Department observer quipped that the Japanese were “reenacting our history for us.” By now, most of the international community largely welcomed this self-stumbling posturing. Japan’s stabilization operations were deemed reasonably self-containing, likened to the similarly re-engaging Swiss who had left the Alpine fastnesses of Novus Helvetia to march on the world, except on a transoceanic scale. Most of all, more action meant more Shogos built, snapped up by hungry foreign militaries and eagerly sold off by a Ministry of Self-Defense seeking to recoup on the country’s misadventures.

A JSSDF Ronin fires at decolonialist positions as a French Army 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment operator looks on during the Kouang-Tchéou-Wan Emergency​

But the struggle for national vigor came at greater cost. Adventurism led to internal struggle between those who wanted peace against the dogs of war. Pacifist movements fought against the increasing re-militarism of society, sometimes taking on arms, themselves. The revived Japanese Red Army fought in the streets against far right groups and self-defense veterans associations. Reformed and revitalized zaibatsu gigacorps entrenched their monolithic influence by lobbying for more self-defense operations, even pushing for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council to ensure the nation’s participation on the world stage. In the night, the Neo-Yakuza weaved plots and intrigue, grasping at the vast amounts of money that had fallen even down to the underworld. Disaffected, stim-addicted veterans soon became hatchetmen and enforcers for mob bosses, sometimes even piloting unregistered rogue hods in their mafia wars. The JSSDF itself was lousy with officer’s cliques and Shogo secret societies. Jingoism, xenophobia, monarchism, neo-bushido, full rearmament and revanchism- dark ideas spread among the fighting men and those who led them. Any attempt to dial back the war drive was rewarded with political assassination, and the more visceral kind. Having loosed a monster it could not control, the political establishment chose to funnel its remaining energies towards the frontier.

Cognizant of the need to branch out beyond weapons of war, the Japanese government underwent a grand space program towards the middle of the 21st century. While the JAX was lent to the growing Unity project, the JSSDF was granted an extraterrestrial mandate for the ostensible civilian effort of space colonization. The nation’s leaders tried to counter invocations of prior imperialist behavior by assuring the world that Japan’s expansionist desires were limited to outer space, and to slake national bloodthirst by channeling those desires towards a non-military project. Self-defense servicemen and highly-motivated patriots were encouraged to settle space, free of potential conflicts at home. And so, missiles beaten into rockets, Shoguns into spacemen, the country attempted a partial pivot towards peace.

What resulted was a set of colonies built at the Lagrange Point 2, on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun and beyond the Moon’s orbit. These enclosed space habitats were intended to be self-sufficient, a means to boost the population while studying how mankind can live off-planet. In reality, they were heavily dependent upon exports from the Home Islands, launching crash programs in mass hydroponics and asteroid mining. The ambitious endeavor aimed to create a national version of the Unity project, an inspiration, perhaps teacher, to that muddled multilateral mission. Engineers, artisans, gardeners, poets, and former warriors of all kinds signed up to enter this new Pure Land. Eventually, the hundred thousand daring “Orbitnoids” of Gaiden San achieved a level of development where they could even maintain a small fleet of space-capable disarmed industrial Shogos on a shoestring. Rumors abounded of supposed secret weapons research labs, hidden from U.N. Space Authority inspectors.

An Orbitnoid wokou Coriolancer, a ‘Spacy’ Shogo adapted from civilian mining use, convenes with the rest of its gang in Jovian orbit​

Like all colonies, Gaiden San soon found difficulties maintaining support from the metropole. After conflicts ran long, weary JSSDF commanders allocated fewer orbital supply launch missions, causing supply shocks throughout L2. The carefully-manicured miniature recreations of Takachiho Gorge, Yakushima Island, and Mount Fuji withered from lack of water and Earthside minerals. Starving settlers turned to privateering. After stealing and reselling mining payloads like simple rock pirates, an unexpected windfall appeared. The military prowess of the battle-tested Orbitnoid wokou in their improvised-weaponized Shogos impressed respectable businesses like Comprehensive Transport and its Transportation Authority Police, who deputized them to protect shipping convoys in exchange for surplus rations. Others from the desperate colony accepted work from shadier recruiters like the even more desperate firms advised by the Nox Conglomerate’s Lyonesse Strategies. But Orbitnoids were too proud to be bought out by Lyonesse residents, Heid’s Imperial Military Focus operators too jealous of rival contractors, and so they soon found themselves enemies of the Ceres Syndicate.

As wokou piracy ceased being a matter of survival and semi-legitimate business, and Gaiden San entered a period of undeclared commercial warfare against the Ceres Syndicate, the Japanese government grew increasingly embarrassed by its lost colonists. Zaibatsu and keiretsu alike were represented in the victims- and soon after, the combatants- of the interplanetary shipping wars from the Kessler Ring to Jupiter’s rings. This militarization of space, rather ironically, was opposite of the JSSDF’s original reason for colonizing space. So it decided to staunch violence with violence.

Crest of the Shogunate of Aeon, modeled after the Tokugawa Clan helmet​

The Japanese Spacy battleship Yamashiro went into orbit to bring the fighting to heel. IMF mercenaries expertly scattered in its wake, leaving the wokou caught by their countrymen. But this did not result in an easy peace as expected. Orbitnoids, furious at their abandonment, refused to lay down arms even with the promise of resupply missions. The government, shocked by the rebuffs, pressed on to L2 while drafting plans to evacuate the existing colonists and replace them with a more compliant and loyal population, or even shutter the habitats entirely. These plans were leaked on the JUNET by colonial sympathizers, perhaps within the self-defense ministry itself. In response, Gaiden San shut off all comms.

Days later, as the Yamashiro approached the Lagrange point, communications resumed. The Orbitnoids now called themselves the Shogunate of Aeon, declaring themselves independent of the cowardly, criminal, unfaithful so-called democratic government of Japan. At the same time, they reaffirmed themselves faithful subjects of the Empress regnant. Gaiden San did not reject the Chrysanthemum Throne- instead, the rebels claimed, they would reassert its rule. For too long it had been waylaid by faithless weaklings who posed as advisors. The soldiers of Aeon would bring back the long-gone bakufu that had served the emperors, built on honor and might. A renaissance of traditional culture would thrive here, on this hand-crafted replication of the best of their nation. Far from the corruption that had set in on Earth, Josei Tennō would truly be sovereign over outer heaven. Samurai of the future would rule for an aeon.

Much like the Republic of Ezo that marked the victory of the Meiji Restoration, this would-be shogunate was swept away in a matter of months. The Yamashiro, one of the first bonafide space warships of the late Earth era, handily shot down Aeon approach attempts with its experimental railguns. Against such a foe, the typical close-range tactics of Shogos were useless. The rebels attempted clever tricks with decoys, electronic warfare, and kamikaze shuttles, but that only delayed the inevitable. Their supply lines cut, the Shogunate was starved out within a year. They were evacuated Earthside, where lenient trials awaited the majority. But that was simply the birth pangs of the Aeonic cause.

A neo-traditionalist Ground Self-Defense Force commando readies for Jinrai Sakusen​

The audacity of the self-proclaimed Shogunate, mocked by some as a “Mishima mass suicide,” shook Japan thoroughly. In the decade that followed, the dream of Aeon lived on through Earthside sympathizers and pardoned Orbitnoids. Even the government found the cause too popular to prosecute thoroughly. After all, the actual offensive force used by the Gaiden San population was mainly towards Ceres Syndicate and piracy targets. Defendant attorneys claimed the Yamashiro had unreasonably escalated the situation, and the siege it laid was a crime against humanity.

Moderate heads slowly took the reins of power, attempting to undo decades of radicalization. Internal purges of the JSSDF were made with full approval of the Empress, who while publicly silent, was not appreciative of Aeon’s admiration. The Constitutional Safety Force, founded by the National Security Council, performed intense investigations into suspected subversive elements. Facing scrutiny from this stolidly civilian agency infuriated JSSDF hardliners, only inflaming tensions further. Exactly nine years later, 108 months after the fall of Gaiden San, the Aeons struck back.

Kidō-tai counter-terrorists and riot labors battle neo-traditionalist putschists in the G-Cans beneath Tokyo during the One Week War​

Jinrai Sakusen (神雷作戦), or Operation Thunderclap, was the culmination of this shadow war. Neo-traditionalists, sporting the iconography and rhetoric of the Shogunate of Aeon, emerged from the shadows. Following a massive cyberattack on all three root nodes of the JUNET, ultraconservative elements descended upon the capital, laying siege to the National Diet Building, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Imperial Palace. Seizing control of media, they declared the Constitution and the old system abolished, the Josei Tennō under their protection, and the kokutai - the essence of the state- upheld by blood and blades. At daybreak, from Ichigaya to the Indian Ocean, JSSDF units began firing upon each other. Shogos paused mid-mission to attack their comrades.

Through their own infiltrated sleeper agents, quick-thinking ingenuity, optical camouflage, and sheer luck, the CSF was able to evacuate vital personnel, including the Imperial Family, to a government-in-exile in Matsumoto City, Nagano. Meanwhile, constitutionalists battled the neo-traditionalists throughout the nation’s major cities. Ultimately, sheer numbers and a rallying speech from the Empress herself quashed the coup. As with the fall of Gaiden San, this ultranationalist rebellion had underestimated just how many citizens- Shoguns included- had no interest in living in a shogunate.

Ruins of Tokai City shoreline, lost to rising sea levels years before the attempted Aeon coup​

The One Week War was messy, but out of its ashes Japan threw off nearly half a decade of re-militarism. The discrediting of the rebel cause was incomplete- neo-Aeon remnants would arise again and again even by the time of Unity’s launch. But with civilian pro-Constitution forces in control, the nation ended Modern Self-Defense. In the end, war simply proved to be too expensive. Not only was the policy of perpetual peacekeeping too much to pay for, the costs of fighting the sea through climate change-combating flood defenses, and the lingering effects from the earlier implosion of the virtual asset bubble, had finally pushed the economy to the brink. Now stuck in the doldrums, the nation cut back on military spending immensely. Even the mighty Yamashiro was mothballed, much of it bought by the Unity project’s Industry Standards Board on the prompting of the king of corporate raiders, Morgan Industries. The reign of the Shogo waned, as both machines and jockeys were sent abroad, not as symbols of patriotic strength, but as assets to be sold at a loss.

As the country retreated into itself, once again forced on a path of peace, it quietly dedicated its remaining excess energy towards the Alpha Centauri mission. Some said it was out of of penance, or that it had truly learned its lesson on the price of war. Others said that there was nothing left for it to live for in the Earthsphere. When the UNS Unity planning committee came around to ask which officer nominee best represented its national values, Japan chose an environmental engineer.

Notes

Japan is missing from SMAC’s backstory, which is understandable because most countries are. But I thought it was curious that Civilization: Beyond Earth didn’t mention it much either beyond a reference to it being isolationist and suffering unrecoverable infrastructure damage from a tsunami, which feels underwritten- the Japanese economy has been in the top three of the world for many years, after all. Here I try to explain its decline in greater detail and action.

The JSDF reinvented as JSSDF comes from Neon Genesis Evangelion, though Gasaraki also has one, possibly as a response to the other show.

Kouang-Tchéou-Wan was the French Indochina-administered leased territory at modern-day Zhanjiang, relinquished to China after World War II in our history.

Coriolancer is derived from Coriolanus similarly to the origin of Macross.

The wokou, “Japanese pirates,” were 13th-16h century raiders along the Chinese and Korean coasts.

Located between Tokyo and Kasukabe, the G-Cans Project, or the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, is the world’s largest underground flood water diversion facility.

The Republic of Ezo was a short-lived separatist state on Hokkaido of exile Tokugawa retainers defeated during the Boshin War.

The neo-traditionalist vs. constitutionalist conflict is based on the storyline of NEOTOKYO°, but is also a common theme in anime and Japanese history.

Image Credits

JSSDF flag is “Battlefield 2142 PAC Flag” by HawkeAssault, based on the official Pan-Asian Coalition emblem from Battlefield 2142

Technicians surrounding walker is the Raiden Tactical Armor from Gasaraki

VTOL aircraft on carrier is “Evangelion YAGR-3B VTOL” by Martin Miguel, rendering of the UN Heavy Fighter Jet from Neon Genesis Evangelion

Combat Walker firing between French buildings is from Battlefield 2142

Space robot on the rings of Jupiter is the cover art for Palladium’s The Robotech Role-Playing Game

Samurai helmet logo is from NEOTOKYO°

Commando with samurai emblem is a Jinrai assault soldier from NEOTOKYO°

Flooded Japanese cityscape from Neon Genesis Evangelion

 

[Axis Kast]

For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been.'" - Datalinks

Who killed Captain Jonathan Garland? No other mystery has so haunted the Unity survivors.

The most popular suspect is perhaps the obvious one: a Spartan stowaway. The motive is assumed to have been simple: to claim a seat at the table by creating a vacancy--one that explicitly undermined the old dispensation. There is compelling circumstantial evidence to support this theory. After the Fall of Xerxion, Tribal probe teams working overhaul discovered private records under Colonel Santiago's own imprint in which she speculated, based on conversations with fellow Spartans, that Garland had been shot by a Holnist "acting beyond my orders." Scholarly consensus is that the voice diary is real: its integrity was twice independently verified--by the Peacekeeping Forces, who acted within weeks of its discovery, and by the Data Angels a decade hence.

Yet even if the words belong to Santiago, are they true? The essence of Santiago's plan was to scuttle Unity--the very outcome Garland was trying to prevent. Dozens of Spartan prisoners claimed that their only direction was to attack indiscriminately. They took Santiago's claim on a share of the ship's supplies, set forth in her first shipwide communication, as an improvisation--the first time that their mission was presented as something other than a suicide pact.

The Royal Shakespeare Company's Sir Poul Stavrin Rossoppos delivered what many considered the finest turn of a century-long career as Dr. John Cellender, second chair for the prosecution, in Gone Is My Father, a staple of Morganite holotheater.​

Some have mooted Nwabudike Morgan as the captain's killer. The two spent considerable time in Garland's private conference room attended by only a single guard whom Morgan suborned prior to Garland's death. Conspiracy theorists insist that as a prime contractor, Morgan Industries would have had access to design drawings and command overrides to aid the plot. As a prisoner with no official position, Morgan could not have expected to sustain his access to mission leadership after Planetfall. How could this have been acceptable to a man who had once dictated terms to presidents and parliaments? Beyond this, there were armed men searching for the captive Morgan, which meant any crew in his company were liable to be shot during recovery.

The same speculation has sometimes surrounded Oscar van de Graaf, and for virtually the same reasons, although unlike Morgan, van de Graaf allegedly had the weaker legal position given how many of his people were temporarily subordinate to the U.N.--and therefore an even greater temptation to kill the man most likely to try to enforce those terms. But this ignores the fact that Garland's successors would have felt equally compelled to hold Charterist resources close after the Crisis, and there is nothing to demonstrate that van de Graaf or his followers were proximate to the bridge at any point during their escape.

A small cohort has pinned Garland's murder on Chief Engineer Zakharov, arguing that his motives were at least as strong as Santiago's. Zakharov's, after all, was the first and loudest voice for dissolution of the Mission Charter, and many of the engineers were known to have armed themselves against the captain's orders. Both the Chief Medical Officer, Pravin Lal, and the Executive Officer, Francisco d'Almeida, had come to regard Zakharov as a mutineer even before Garland was dead. At Zakharov's final conference with Garland, the latter had ordered the ship saved so that the crew could be returned to stasis--a procedure that Zakharov knew he would be unlikely to survive. Zakharov also had access to Garland by simple virtue of the number of engineers deployed throughout the ship, complements of which were active on the bridge for the entire duration of the Unity Crisis.

RadTech prepared for reactor vessel inspection.​

Struan's Pacific Trading Company executive Dole Yudikon offered one of the least-popular theories of Garland's assassination when he fixed blame on Pravin Lal, claiming that the United Nations had selected Garland as an incompetent placeholder--one the self-important Lal felt almost immediately compelled to remove. As evidence, Dreamers have suggested that Marcel Salan's Marines did more in Lal's service than in Garland's, although most serious scholarship discounts these allegations since more than a dozen Marines were killed defending the bridge from a Kellerite assault and there is no reason for Garland to have sought personal command of an armed force during the emergency.

Other plausible candidates exist for the murder. Certainly Kellerites infiltrated past the bridge. Kellerites had previously targeted U.N. personnel, including Garland, for assassination, and it is plausible that a chance encounter between the captain and the Tribals would have ended in gunfire. Meanwhile, the exact fate of Executive Officer D'Almedia remains unknown. Although he was presumed lost with Unity, his departure from Damage Control in the hour prior to Garland's death means he could conceivably have traveled as far as the bridge, although the availability of a negotiable route is as uncertain as a compelling motive. (The relationship between the two men was frosty to the point of discourtesy, but that is hardly the basis for murder.)

Sources:
First image is "Admiral Vance" by Shade-of-Stars on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Cosmonaut" by iCephei on DeviantArt.

 

[MysticWind]

Alternative Assassins

The murder of Captain Jonathan Garland is Planetary humanity’s original sin, the ultimate dissolution of the old order symbolized by the Unity mission and colony ship. As such, over the mission centuries there is no shortage of additional names advanced as potential culprits. Most of these are easily ruled out by orthodox historians, suggested only as incendiary charges levied for ideological reasons. However, some counter-narratives have become conspiracy theory fodder among feverish students of parapolitics.

Frame from “Skye shot first,” widely-circulated datalinks montage during M.Y. 201. Most imagery in watchvid determined by Special Researcher Gennaro da Gama at the Library of Planet (University of Planet) to be doctored or fabricated entirely​

In the spring at the beginning of the second century, Chiron's planetary networks were enraptured by the phrase “Deirdre killed Unity.” Dark and sinister graphics and videdits of the Gaian leader during Planetfall proliferated, juxtaposed with ominous music. Timers in blood red numbers appeared, counting down to winter. In the absence of detail, discourse blossomed, dredging up Mission Botanist Deirdre Skye’s dirty laundry, from her youthful acts of ecoterrorism to her decision to go her own way during Planetfall.

Skye’s defenders protest that having been abandoned by her superior, and gone through the trauma of Spartan assault which killed so many of her fellow xenobiologists (not to mention damaging her precious plants), her response was perfectly natural, as sympathetic as any other's during that crisis. Her accusers point at how her cold actions killed unit cohesion among executive crew, and her decision to hoard the ship’s seed stock effectively turned her incipient faction into a breadbasket while dooming others to starvation. They also suggest that Skye’s hypocritical life-loving minions murdered the captain as revenge for failing to protect them. During that controversy, additional rumors emerged of neopagan (Skye had been a straightforward scientific Lovelockian, but Earth worship allegations swirled around her) stick figures and unexplainable rose petals found by Garland’s body, supposed ties between her Environmental Defense Movement with the more violently extremist Teraj Savantoj, and a mythical suppressed postmortem proving that the captain had been poisoned by a toxin from exotic herbs.

Ultimately, the timer ended and the datalinks were inundated with reams of polemics attacking Lady Skye’s character and her Planetfall record, adding little to the datalinks discussion that had already taken place throughout the mission year. Citizen cyber-sleuths, aided by Data Angels volunteers, determined that the entire memetic campaign had been a joint probe effort between the Shapers of Planet and Morgan Industries. Nagao’s Shapers, bitter rivals of the Gaians on the Forming Question, had sought to preemptively wreck her reputation prior to Planetary Governor elections. Contemporaneously, the Dynamic Enterprise via its MorganSea division was seeking to exploit methane clathrate deposits near the Greenwell, and its drilling vessels could find nothing but Gaian mines and boobytraps. Efforts to build a pipeline from the coast were further thwarted by eco-sabotage courtesy of the House of Leaves, the Gaian probe agency. Thus it was simply a devil’s relationship to sully Skye’s good name.

The year's discourse was replaced by backlash against this blatant act of astroturfing, but the critiques lingered. The Gaian Lady’s defenders continue to argue that her actions were justified based on the utter lack of support she received- the mission abandoned her, so they claim. Critics continue to talk of episodes of Skye going into trance-like fugues, staring blankly before making strange utterances. In any case, social warfare such as the datalinks campaign of M.Y. 201 would seem to remind the Unity diaspora that even though the Gaians are renowned for their love for all life, their faction began with the death of the mission, and of Garland.

Portrait used in “Godwinson for Us” crusade for Unity mission nomination. Seemingly spontaneously made by local churches, leaks uncovered that lobbying efforts had been architected by Second Reconstruction authorities. It was unnecessary; the cable network host was already extremely popular among American loyalists and insurrectionists​

The precise whereabouts of Mission Psych Chaplain Miriam Godwinson during Planetfall can be almost completely accounted for, in contrast to most other faction heads. During the crisis she engaged in humanitarian work, ministering to the wounded of heart and sick of spirit, even as vital tasks went unstaffed. Untimely compassion, say the detractors. Inconvenient for the very survivor of the species. Sentiment that indulges in vapid moralism even as the ship burns. And to fiercer critics, classic love bombing to seduce followers among the hungry and foolish.

Artifacted bursts of security footage show bands of unidentified assailants running around the vessel, causing mischief from looting to attacks on the crew, dressed in dark clothing and masks. These notorious “grey men” are the subject of all sorts of theories. While there were untold numbers of different gangs emerging or revealing themselves during Planetfall, some snatches of dialogue were captured from this distinct group. Datalinks amateur analysts claim that the phantoms appear to say “holy,” “sacred,” “Christian” or perhaps “Krishna.” So likely Godwinson’s co-religionists, inflamed by her crisis-time missionary work, who would eventually join her side at the Lord’s Conclave. Or, given the latter interpretation, maybe Kavithans. Or Tribals. Or Vedic nationalists. Or Catholic zealots of Cardinal Julius Cerutti. Or Vermillies. Or they weren’t even motivated by religion, and the phrasing is misidentified.

In truth, accusations that followers- or future followers- of Godwinson were responsible for murdering Garland rests on highly circumstantial evidence. The grey men were active near the bridge, but so were all sorts of groups. Theories of her culpability live on solely thanks to their promotion by Academician Prokhor Zakharov, archnemesis of the Sister. Having denounced Godwinson’s surprisingly positive Planetfall record as “offering a ruble’s worth of bread for eternal servitude to a kopeck’s worth of superstition,” he accuses her of stirring up the weak-minded to do her bidding. Next, he claims, she “pushed them at Garland, striking down his guards and wrapping her claws around his neck,” a description claimed by some as an outrageous accusation that Godwinson personally murdered the captain, and passed off as allegory by others.

Per the Epistle to the Romans, Godwinson had urged peace and obedience towards the United Nations as another divinely-established authority no different from any other temporal government. As such, she was one of the very few officers who maintained allegiance to Garland during Planetfall, even as she purposefully overlooked orders to send men to certain danger and appropriated supplies for her impromptu mission. Save for those who trust Zakharov in all ways, most consider the possibility of Godwinson being responsible to be remote at best.

File photo of newly-minted Aral sub-prefectural commander Yang, pre-Golden Revolutionary era. Retrieved from U.N. Intelligence Cell archives​

Among the “stripeless” non-crew passengers, perhaps none experienced as meteoric a rise as Sheng-ji Yang, the stowaway CEO of Morgan Industries excepted. Even the Spartan Colonel, after all, was once a legitimate member of the Security team. Awkwardly given a supervisory role over a national constituency for a mission that supposedly represented all of humanity, the political officer embodied all of the virtues of his state. During Planetfall, he would use his particular skill sets to assume control beyond those parameters. After taking command of many of his countrymen, mostly fellow stripeless colonists, he then began enticing crew of Golden Chinese extraction to join him, abandoning their posts. Curiously, survivors reported that Yang was able to recruit across borders, attracting followers of all backgrounds.

This behavior did not go unnoticed from the executive crew, who immediately ordered this subversion shut down. Several security teams turned coat to Yang, who by now had discarded any pretensions of patriotism to any cause beyond his own. By now, Captain Garland issued a bulletin of most dangerous threats to mission integrity over the ship’s networks, identifying the political officer in the top ten. This is generally considered the source of animosity between Garland and Yang. The latter’s enigmatic charisma is described by Hive defectors as almost preternatural. Yang had swiftly carved out a faction during a crisis of survival, flashing a vision of utopia he had seemingly harbored throughout his national service on Earth.

And it was in the service of this vision that theorists accuse him of killing Garland, whose legitimacy prevented him from control of all humanity. A world-ranking martial artist, Yang could have easily dispatched the captain without arms, let alone with any number of weapons seized by his ex-PLA lieutenants. The only obstacle to Yang as culprit is that his recorded movements were almost exclusively absent from the command deck or from other ship areas that the captain was present in.

(There are, however, ample rumors that Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida had been neutralized by Yang shortly after the former’s final order to dissolve the mission. Conflicting reports suggest that in a Morganic act of exercising authority over an organization he did not belong to, political officer Yang had declared martial law with stolen security codes DNA-tagged to d'Almeida towards the end of the crisis, at that point not so much to usurp control of the mission so as to secure resources and personnel for building his utopia.)

Most Yang accusers point at the totalitarian control he is capable of exerting. They claim that he brainwashed a patsy to assassinate Garland. By ensuring the irreparable destruction of the mission, his followers could then assume control over its shattered remains. (Once when told this theory, Khagan Robin Huxley of the Darwin Raiders lamented that she had not been part of the main mission, and had the opportunity to attempt such a gambit.) Or perhaps this act was to shore up his followers’ resolve, burning their boats as Cortez’s men were ordered to. By killing the embodiment of the old world, they would have no choice but to commit to Yang’s utopia. In which case slaying Garland would have constituted the ultimate initiation ceremony, dousing his society in innocent blood and their own collective guilt.

As compelling as this narrative is, and fits the preconceived biases of both enemies of the Labyrinth and diehard Hive comrades, serious historians discount any connection between Yang and the captain’s fate. That said, most concede that in theory Yang is capable of commanding immense loyalty, and agree that there is seemingly no shortage of “lone gunmen” in the last days of the Unity.

Snapshot of Joaquin Carbonell as a soldier of fortune, location believed to be Central African Empire​

The Carbonell incident has been lost to time, remembered only by Planetfallologists and committed alternative historians. Among the atrocities that occurred as the Unity fell to Planet, it was fairly uneventful, if mysterious. Forty-eight hours prior to the last sighting of the captain alive, he was shot while performing a cursory cargo bay inspection of U.N. Marines bay prior to their deployment against a nest of Kellerites. As Garland approached the last man for review, a Spanish mercenary, Joaquin Carbonell, stepped forth from the mass of private auxiliaries behind the parade line and fired him three times with a Beretta 70. Two of the shots struck the captain in the abdomen. The third shot went wild and went into the left bicep of Provisional Chief of Security Wael Salibi.

Marines immediately swarmed the assassin while the contractors roared for execution. Garland raised his arms, shouting, “I’m safe! Leave him be!” Carbonell fell to the ground, buried under the mob. The captain stepped over, pushing soldiers away until he could see his face. “Why do this?” he asked the gunman, who remained silent with an expression onlookers described as ‘haunted’ and ‘far away, like in flashback.’ He was taken away by security team officers as medics attended to Salibi’s arm. Garland, apparently unharmed, finished his inspection and hurriedly went about his duties.

This assassination attempt, seemingly nonfatal, is one of the enduring little mysteries of Planetfall. Its relevance to Garland’s demise is perhaps strangest. The captain brushed off requests for medical inspection, insisting that one round had failed to penetrate the dense military-grade nanoweave body armor beneath his uniform, and that the other had lodged itself in the tacslate PDA he carried in his breast pocket. Within days, Garland disappeared.

Many who fixate on this incident believe that the bullets did in fact pass through his armor, causing fatal injuries that were covered up by the executive crew to prevent panic. Some go further in claiming that the captain, knowing he was grievously wounded, and that such a revelation would deal a deathblow to the crew’s morale, quietly went away to die alone. Such narratives feed into popular conceptions of a saintly Garland, favored by folk groups like the “captain’s cult.” Not only was Garland able to successfully hide the incredible pains of being gutshot, he sacrificed his own life for symbolism. Those less charitable to the man suggest instead that having plunged into deep depression during Planetfall, he chose suicide-by-assassin rather than seek medical attention.

While most who study the incident do not seriously believe that Captain Garland was killed by Carbonell, they are baffled by the inconsistencies and coincidences swirling around the shooting. For one, the bullet-ridden PDA that the captain had given to the ballistics team did not appear to be his standard personal tacslate. Data recovery attempts showed that it was a newly initialized model, containing files that belonged not to Garland but some unidentified passenger. Furthermore, the bullet’s fragments did not even seem to match the handgun that Carbonell was carrying. At the same time, two of the final wounds found on the captain’s body on the Unity bridge did seem to correspond to where the gunman had shot his armor.

As to the assassin himself, he was a cipher. Joaquin Carbonell was born in Vejer de la Frontera, Third Spanish Republic, to a family of suspected Carlist sympathies. As a teenaged member of an archconservative Madrid Catholic youth order, he frequently fought with socialist and liberal counterparts until finally arrested for severely beating a local legislator. Conscripted into the People’s Republican Army, he was stationed in the garrison at Fernando Pó until desertion, making his way to the mainland and joining the Legião John Forbes. Carbonell served in this Portuguese colonial foreign legion for several years with zeal but without distinction, before deserting once again, becoming a freelancer in Central and Southern Africa.

There, Carbonell’s trail grows erratic. Initially he took contracts for groups as diverse as the Rozvi Varungu and even Janub al-Samad. But then appearing to have a change of heart from his anti-communist past, he was seen fighting for the pre-disarmament MPLAN, the East German Afrika Korps, and the People’s African Union. (Upon capture after the assassination attempt, security investigators noticed he was emblazoned with sacrilegious tattoos.) Participated in several failed decolonialist coups, sighted in Oranais, Namur, Cayenne. Contemporaneous Interpol records tag him as a drug runner for a Corsican heroin trafficking syndicate.

Despite this checkered past, Carbonell was still somehow accepted as a private military consultant for Unity security services. Because of his nationality- never mind he hadn’t legally set foot in Spain since his youth- he was made a coordinator of Hispanophone and Lusophone contractors, particularly Argentinians, Sao Tomeans, Angolans, and Moroccans- even though he was organizationally a non-entity unaffiliated with any unit.

The overwhelming majority of mercenaries attached to the Unity mission were on contract with charter companies, except for a few highly-experienced specialist freelancers​

None of Carbonell’s past explains what motive he might have had in shooting the captain. He never broke during the curtailed interrogation attempts in the terminal phase of Planetfall. The only thing of note was he kept his far-off gaze during conversation, held by theorists as evidence of involuntary conditioning. As to who could have brainwashed Carbonell, we dive into the realm of pure speculation. Aside from the usual suspects Santiago or Morgan, post-hypnotic suggestion by the charismatic Yang or Godwinson have also been advanced, but any connection therein seems even more unlikely. Roshann Cobb or one of his lieutenants like Colonel Artagan Banes has been considered, but the idea of Personality Sculpting via dream tech is still a fantasy - never mind the lack of motivation from Struan’s. James Heid of the Emporium, upon questioned if Carbonell was one of his, snorted, “the IMF does not hire shooters who miss.”

Carbonell fired thrice in a room full of fellow gunmen, his survival is simply miraculous. Or, as some say, a manufactured one by Marcel Salan and his Marines, or d'Almeida and the Unity security team, either of whom might have decided that replacing the ineffectual captain was necessary to stop the chaos. The would-be assassin himself would survive captivity under both parties, making his way to the surface after Planetfall. Assumed lost by all, he appeared in the New Amnesty conflict during the rise of the emergency military regime, freelancing once more. As a Morgan High Spirits commander, Carbonell coordinated with Kankaras’ Tribals and Voorhees’ Peacekeepers. During those dangerous decurns, no one had the chance to ask why he shot at the captain. After the victory of the Landsmen, he finally found his way to the sea as a privateer of the Nautilus Pirates, fighting for a wild bunch who truly don’t mind mutiny.

Notes

Same casting as pre-established in project.

Joaquin Carbonell is from Far Cry 2.

Image of two mercenaries is from District 9.

Characterizations of the faction leaders highly informed by the Journey to Centauri official novella, which has some interesting and unexpected portrayals distinct from how they act after they land on Planet. Episode 30, when the leaders except Santiago vote on dissolving the mission, is key to my understanding of them.

Deirdre siding with the despotic, the ruthless, and the opportunistic to end the mission (against a liberal democrat!) is quite dramatic. On one hand, can you blame her? This happens after the ordeal in the greenhouse and the brutality she witnessed, so you can see that she has lost faith in both the mission, and perhaps in humanity itself. Not to mention, she starts to receive messages from planetmind during the novella, so she might already be compromised. On the other, this naive, or perhaps obsession with the pristine, only empowered her worst enemies.

Miriam is surprisingly moderate and reasonable in the story, which is a surprising contrast with both stereotypes of her and her actual in-game diplomatic dialogue. Instead, Zakharov is narrow-mindedly ideological, confrontational, and rude to boot. She is positively humanitarian and diplomatic, and in that context it’s little surprise that she upholds the legitimacy of the mission even after Garland has gone missing. Though given the intense spiritual experience she has at the end of the story, it seems plausible that her personality might have undergone some- harsh- shifts by the time of the game.

Yang being the Executive Officer in canon is sort of funny given that he only interacts with his captain in one scene (Episode 23) where they don’t exactly work together well, and he relates with the other officers even worse. (To be fair, he was also in a Spartan POW camp for part of the story.) So Yang not being part of the actual crew, and rather in a sort of indirect role, works in RTD. That said, I rather like the scene of him with ensigns in Episode 28, and how they later carry out his martial law order in his name, which reinforces his charismatic leadership and discipline. So I imported that into this project. (As a weird aside, the characters repeatedly call him “Dr. Yang” in the story, while Saratov/Zakharov is called doctor only once.)

Carbonell is a reflection of the sort of oddball kooks who appear in JFK assassination lore, like Guy Bannister or David Ferrie. But also the type of shady disreputable operator who was always floating around from coup attempt to coup attempt during the Cold War, such as Rolando Masferrer.

 

[Axis Kast]

​

The selection of Rachael Winzenried, a Helvetian law enforcement executive, for the role of mission security chief, displeased other members of senior staff.

Winzenried was unusual in the Helvetian political firmament: a German-speaking Francophile more afraid of the Soviets and revolutionaries than of a chauvinist France. She held her silence on restoration of the Lost Cantons—portions of Western Switzerland occupied by France in the mid-twenty-first century, declining to engage in the performative patriotism popular with her contemporaries. Defending her readiness to cooperate with French authorities on matters of shared interest, Winzenried invoked shared cultural sensibilities and the lack of meaningful alternatives to association with the Gaullist Bloc. The Soviets sought to overthrow the Swiss way of life, while the Americans and British had become too weak to be of much help. While other Helvetians now saw themselves as kindred to resistance fighters the world over, Winzenried warned that Switzerland must not become a freeport for the “des déchets malheureux,” the Unhappy Rubbish of the world. A November 2055 riot of Purists in the Basel Marketplatz was a warning, she said. When the Federal Office of Police traced a series of violent bank robberies and home invasions in the winter of 2060 to independence causes, many Swiss conceded that she was correct in her discernment.

U.N. planners were bullish on Winzenried’s record of practical success and reputation for high political acumen. There was a miraculous hostage rescue in Bern—all ninety-one saved, sixteen terrorists killed, and Winzenried the mastermind behind a textbook operation. French authorities might have pointed out that the tactical victory belonged to a GIGN squad on loan from their Gendarmerie Nationale but they saw little reason to wound Winzenried, whom they valued as a stabilizing influence on the Helvetian Federal Assembly.

It was no small thing to say that Winzenried had two successful peacekeeping missions to her credit by the late 2060s: a complicated disengagement-of-forces at Campbellton, New Brunswick, following the Ottawa Accords and a turn in the “Big E-Z” attending the birth and amalgamation of some three dozen micronations burgeoning with a total one million refugees. Despite standing for implementation of a hated national divorce, she had enforced its terms as strictly on the Quebecois as on the Anglophones, and she departed Canada with the thanks of its parliament. Her tour in the Indian Ocean was a coup for both her nation and herself, building credit with those who had previously labeled her a fifth columnist. Helvetians thrilled to watch their fleet in motion while Winzenried’s confidence and self-possession fit the demand for a viceregal figure. Setting aside complicated questions about neo-colonialism, Winzenried was broadly popular with a Western press eager to exculpate their readers for the so-called Catastrophe Complex that had emerged around the Indian Subcontinent. Thus she became “Mère Noël,” dispensing largess and wisdom in equal and abundant measure. Despite the humiliation of having to acknowledge Winzenried's success where they had previously faltered, U.N. leaders were pleased to take Helvetian contributions to international peacemaking and looked upon the Swiss as a less-offensive presence than other national expeditions even after Novus Helvetia set its own independent course of foreign policy.

Huldrych Zwingli, an armored war airship (seen here docking in New York City en route to Ottawa), gave the Swiss a power projection capability suitable for low-intensity operations. Rachael Winzenried raised her flag aboard this titan as commander of Novus Helvetia’s 2053-4 mission to the IOEZ. Built in an Italian yard to an updated Soviet design, the Zwingli suffered the many problems typical of a prototype. Promotional films touted her as a “flying aircraft carrier,” but a weak powerplant (translating to inadequate lift and speed), limited point-defense coverage, and unsuitable aircraft handling facilities put paid to pretensions of serious military utility. On the other hand, the ship was otherwise fitted out in a manner suitable to its primary roles: command-and-control and air-landing, and the Helvetian tendency to avoid trying to solve problems through violence pleased the United Nations.​

Winzenried’s resume was of little comfort to her direct superior, Executive Officer Admiral Francisco d’Almeida. In his diary, d’Almeida consistently recorded negative impressions. He interpreted Winzenried’s attitude toward the French as lack of patriotic scruples—a fatal flaw in her character—and an indication that she was a DGSE plant. D’Almeida, too, a beneficiary of French foreign policy, but as his first loyalty was to the Novo Estado, he found Winzenried’s equanimity toward the French personally offensive. The admiral also questioned Winzenried’s competence. Although he accepted the accuracy of her increasingly negative assessments of Unity’s security situation, he questioned how the situation could have become so dire since Winzenried had been four years ahead of him in posting. (Captain Jonathan Garland's hesitance to dismiss Winzenried, whom he also disliked, caused D'Almeida to seriously doubt the mission leader's judgement.)

D’Almeida was notoriously cold toward Winzenried’s contributions in-council. Speaking to documentary filmmakers fifteen years after Planetfall, Contre-amiral Raoul André St. Germaine, who reported directly to Winzenreid, recalled that d’Almeida shared his low opinion of the Helvetian even to her own subordinates, with whom the Portuguese admiral often took meals from which she was excluded. St. Germaine alleged that d’Almeida’s aversion to Winzenried grew to the point that he arranged a parallel security structure, spending resources intended on damage control and emergency response to compete for the same security talent as Winzenried's division and giving them secret orders. St. Germaine claimed that he "did not necessarily share" d'Almeida's negative appraisal of Winzenried's performance, but felt that, in retrospect, matters had reached the point that Winzenried probably should have resigned in principle to protest what must have been the United Nations's hamstringing of her ability to bring security problems to heel.

St. Germaine, whose facial scars and service record as a French colonial soldier evoked comparisons to Otto Skorzeny, needed little prompting from d’Almeida to hold Winzenried in contempt for another reason. One of the emotional flashpoints of the Ken Burns documentary Planet: A History surrounds the dissatisfaction of key expedition leaders with their own public reputations. Winzenried, and especially Garland, were unusual in that they had acquired “sainted” status even before the Unity Mission. Winzenried was "the modern cop," implying use of public relations techniques over force, and in liberal circles often received favorable comparison to those responsible for policing trouble megalopoli like New York City, Constantinople, and Tokyo. Even Chief Medical Officer and ex-U.N. executive Pravin Lal considered the idea unwarranted, pointing out that New York and Tokyo were both "orders of magnitude larger than Bern," while Constantinople was under military occupation. St. Germaine insisted that governmental controls on the Minitel and French television broadcasting had helped to conceal Winzenried's true readiness to bring brutal violence against crowds--made manifest in her progressive militarization of Unity's security teams. Much of her popularity, he said, was owed to skillful mythmaking by her own government.

St. Germaine’s bitter remarks reflect views also shared with the filmmakers by Nwabudike Morgan, J.T. Marsh, and Oscar van de Graaf: that Winzenried’s leadership of the Federal Intelligence Service, which included consigning thousands of would-be asylees to the dubious comforts of French detention camps and torturing others for information to thwart attacks in Switerland proper, had more than earned her the Flemish sobriquet Le Sanglant (“The Bloody One”), while Jonathan Garland was a top-class physical coward who had abandoned his own country in time of war.

Van de Graaf was especially dissatisfied with Winzenried, to whom he assigned blame for the extent of losses suffered by “his” people at the hands of Spartan turncoats during the Unity Crisis. “Wasn’t it her job,” he asked, “to weed them out?” Van de Graaf points to Winzenried’s strategy of concentrating weapons as a mistake, and recalled having to “fight tooth and nail” to be allowed to “appoint good ARC boys” to protect Charterist crew and property while the officers “already had their Marines.”

One of the few positive impressions of Winzenried comes from Political Officer Sheng-ji Yang. Records sliced out of Hive hard drives by Data Angels Probe Teams show that Yang was discouraged to find her among the early dead. Hive Initiates were made to study Winzenried as an exemplar of public service and Yang later named a base in her honor. Speaking to documentary filmmakers as a member of the Planetary Council in MY102, Yang insisted that, as one well-informed about “the many heterogenous forces” affecting mission cohesion, Winzenried would have acknowledged the essential wisdom of his vision for survival.

Some of the evidence for Winzenried's success can be adduced only from the complaints of those she hemmed in. If one looks upon van de Graaf as a competitor to the mission's unitary leadership structure, his complaints over being disarmed read as proof that Winzenried judged him correctly and was at least partially successful in limiting his ability to make trouble. Corazón Santiago found the U.N. Security Forces to be pitiful--even pitiable--adversaries, but Winzenried must also be given her measure of credit for stepping aside to allow the U.N. Marine Corps to assume aspects of the security mission. In his handful of appearances discussing the Unity Crisis, Pete Landers remembers the fighting differently than Santiago: the loyal security, he said, often died in place when the Kellerites expected them to surrender or withdraw--a testament to Winzenried's judgement and preparations.

Sources:
Genevieve O’Reilly, as seen in Andor, is Commander Rachael Winzenried.

The Huldrych Zwingli is “M-Tec Kambahr Debhin Rhantogg-Class Sky Carrier” by NikitaTarsov on DeviantArt.

For more on airships in this setting, see Strategos’ Risk’s Post #3 on this thread.

 

[Axis Kast]

He's more machine now, than man. Twisted and evil. - Obi Wan Kenobi, Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, Traditional

A technician of the Digital Oracle splices temporary connections on the faction datalinks. It was not uncommon for more-developed thinkers to act as intermediate processors when non-sentient computers were unavailable.

Followers of Aki Zeta-5, identifying collectively as the Cybernetic Consciousness, progressively replaced their own organs with mechanical systems in the quest for personal excellence.​

What at first must have appeared to be an ingenious, if unorthodox, solution to the lack of traditional therapies was, in fact, an organized transformation. These patients were not seeking to recover so much as they were seeking to become. - Acmes

Already estranged from other colonists because of their disinterest in casual social activity, members of the Consciousness became easy victims for exploitation. Notorious for their egotistical impulses--a most ironic flaw for those who claimed to be relinquishing their "superfluous" emotional selves--the would-be superlatives were tapped for the most dangerous and exacting work. The most-complete cyborgs attended Mediator Johann Anhaldt personally as bodyguards and advisers when he traveled outside his own territory.

Cyborgs consumed energy in lieu of nutrients. The Digital Oracle's grid could not supply the needs of all its citizens, reducing the faction to dependency of Morgan Industries.

Strategos Ginko Arata, senior military adviser to Captain Jonathan Garland, on Unity's bridge.​

Arata was selected for the Unity Mission years before Marcel Salan made her position redundant. Mission planners overruled the British government's request for her repatriation, citing "unspecified logistical challenges and the value of preserving countervailing points of view."

Prototypical of a generation of Singaporean military officers, Arata was recruited from an older, post-graduate set found in university classrooms and corporate boardrooms. Trained in the Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute with only minimal input from British colonial authorities, these patriotic scholar-soldiers were primed to apply analysis before attempting the annihilation of their targets. If the Israelis were notorious for their improvisation, the Argentines for their élan, the Soviets for their workmanlike indifference to danger, and the French for their quiet brutality, Singaporean soldiers were blatantly professorial in their approach to warfare, looking for the solutions to battlefield problems in game theory and interdisciplinary analysis. Arata's background was in historometric computer simulation, which she used to accurately predict the movements of the Soviet Scarlet Sun Fleet, an intelligence breakthrough that made possible the deep cuts to the Royal Navy's Far East Fleet establishment sought by the Gethin Exchequer's Defense Paper of 2063. [1] Promoted to major, Arata made her second mark on history two years later when she represented His Majesty's Government in the dispute between India, Thailand, and the underwater Ammiel Republic over New Kola Island, averting further hostilities following the Indian Naval Air Arm's unprovoked sinking of the heavy destroyer ARS Othniel by rapidly crafting a leasing and joint basing arrangement that all parties found acceptable.

Practically Garland's shadow, Arata's access, poise, and computational bent inspired jealousy among less-patient crewmates, especially Zakharov and Skye. Following Garland's death, she made an independent escape attempt that eventually brought her into contact with Dr. Johann Anhaldt, organizing the evacuation of his Atomic Energy Laboratory personnel. The two were kindred spirits, and Arata transferred her loyalty to Anhaldt at Planetfall. At his behest, she was elevated to leadership of the Digital Oracle's largest and best-known think tank in MY4.

Sources:
First image is "OIG2.eQGQkbR" by Ertugrul196714 on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

Second image is "Ensign Carla Macdoodle of the Star league..." by starfredy on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools with the prompt: "Female Asian starfleet officer flees a monster."

[1] With less uncertainty about Soviet naval deployments, the politicos judged that the Royal Navy and its auxiliaries had less ocean real estate to cover--and hence less need for ships.

 

[Axis Kast]

On Chiron as on Old Earth, drones dared--and fought--where humans could not. The University quickly sent its small fleet to retrieve the first of many treasures from the Uranium Flats.


Seen near the end of her life after successfully raiding a Pilgrim fish hatchery, Red Sickle, a converted utility foil, was for many years the loudest echo of Sparta's defiance after Xerxion.​

Red Sickle's captain, seventy-seven-year-old Sebastian Aguirre, owed his commission to six years with Argentina's Buzos Tácticos special forces unit, but had spent most of his life on the magistrate's bench in Corrientes province. He therefore did double duty, mediating local disputes among the riverside Gaians when low water temporarily stranded his crew above Tribal territory.

Red Sickle's distinctive aerials, easily mistaken for evidence of a comprehensive ECM suite, were a legacy of her past life as a survey platform. Aguirre used the array to collect intelligence that allowed him to best employ his primary weapon: frogmen.

At least seven hulls of the Spartan flotilla escaped Santiago's great defeat, Red Sickle included. An eighth, Long Tusk, sunk in shallow water by Tribal artillery during a failed attempt to run, was quickly brought back to service by Spartan renegades in the marshes below Xerxion's eastern face. Bottled up in the Slowwind, they raided to and past Defianceburg, running up to shelter at Crick's Cross, where Tamineh Pahlavi's people replenished their food and ammunition in return for captives.

The Orix Industrial Dam, a collaboration between the Shapers of Chiron and Dai Seung Heavy Industries.​

In his attitude toward Planet, Coordinator Nagao applies that most-essential lesson taught to us by Mr. Morgan: That the best enemy is the one that cannot fight back. - Lamentations

Sources:
First image is "0 0 (65)" by dc98 on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Red Patrol Contact" by ShamanX on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

Third image is "Industrial water works" by John Park on ArtStation.

 

[MysticWind]

​

Do not be fooled by shifting battlescapes or professional liars. Warfare must hold purpose beyond spilling blood and guts. It is only ever a means to greater ends. Sacrifice not your brothers on the altar of glory. Victory is paramount, and the most glorious victory wastes the least blood. - Principles of Modern War

Among the rising powers capable of transcontinental projection in the 21st century, Portuguese Brazil was one of the rare cases of a colony outshining the homeland. Even as the metropole struggled with discord from Luanda to Macau, its crown jewel in the western hemisphere soldiered on, turning vast jungles into cropland to feed its overflowing cities. Economic, scientific, technological, and cultural vigor marched arm-in-arm, culminating in the bold era of Novo Brasil when the entire Lusosphere’s heritage was captured in full technicolor vibrancy then played back in Live-D, brought to the people by datalinks pioneers like humble Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil librarian Gennaro Da Gama. Meanwhile, vessels of the Brazilian Space Corps kissed the stars, its civilian flagship Museu da Vida preserving humanities’ artistic glories while dodging Kessler Belt debris.

But before that came peace. The road to rising powerdom was built on bullets and bread. Its armed forces spent years fighting constant internal insurgencies against decolonizers, deep ecologists, integralistas, and criminal gangs of every size. They even taught the hapless Portuguese expeditionary forces a thing or two. By 2019, as the Cold War fell to an even more degenerated state of frozen decolonial warfare and multipolar regional spats, Portuguese Brazil was yet another polity that answered the call to peacekeep. And Rejinaldo Leonardo Pedro Bolivar de Alencar-Araripe was the paragon soldier who led its efforts.

Just as the Helvetians and Japanese reached out with tendrils over their respective regions, Brazilians made the Americas its sphere of stabilization operations. As a Marine of the Corpo de Fuzileiros Navais, Bolivar rose through the ranks fighting Holnists, first in-colony, then in Argentina and Chile on behest of beleaguered neighbors. He served in dangerous border patrols along the Guianas, halting smugglers and dealers from the Suriname narco-state. And he even put down an inmate uprising at Challapalca Prison in Spanish Peru on behalf of a half-abandoned viceroyalty too embarrassed to seek further help from Morgan Iron Lock.

Vicious Water Cycle: Miami in the Hypersurvivalist Wars experienced severe flooding which incited banditry and piracy, preventing vital hydrological repairs, worsening flood conditions​

Ambitious, independent-minded Brasilia craved to reclaim Rio Grande do Sul and to march down to Bolivia and give the U.S.-backed junta a thrashing, but were hemmed in by the delicate niceties of the international rules-based order. So when the Norteamericanos’ own heartlands burst into flame, Brazil championed humanitarian interventions in the Security Council. Bolivar was in the first landing parties at Miami, St. Louis, Montréal, and St. John’s. Taking his anti-Holnist experience to a new level, he fought with valor and keen tactics. In the Battle of Blue Route, he kept his cool during a hyper-survivalist ambush, using explosives to counterattack as he dragged wounded to safety. In a burnt out service plaza, Bolivar made a Morgan’s his impromptu fortress. From behind upturned diner tables and shelves of tchotchkes, he and the remaining peacekeepers held attackers at bay for the better part of an hour before reinforcements arrived.

After helping yanqui ingrates put their divided house back together, Bolivar and his men were unceremoniously told to leave, citations of the Monroe Doctrine ringing in their ears. Undeterred and full of victory disease, his government next shipped them overseas to join Shogo jockeys in Southeast Asia in Portuguese Brazil’s first United Nations mission on a foreign continent. The “Exército de Caridade” guarded refugee camps while distributing crates of Brazilian soybeans and beef to benighted occupants by day, embarking on extrajudicial search and destroy operations at night away from the eyes of U.N. special representatives. It was here that Bolivar gained his fondness for the underdog displaced and his distaste for mercenaries. He was much impressed by the indomitable spirits of the no-pats, claiming that “give me a handful and we could rebuild every country,” in contrast to the murderer-adventurers and wandering war criminals of the Legião John Forbes, the Portuguese foreign legion.

Y10 Onça-Pintada, Portuguese Brazil’s signature main battle tank, and the symbol of Brazilian protection in refugee zones around the world until the end of Novo Brasil​

The adventurism that once led Bolivar to embellish his age at sixteen and join the Marines had given way to the worldly weariness of a seasoned campaigner. Having led and saved men alike, and even found the time to pen treatises on military theory, his impressed superiors granted him a command post in the cauldron of the world. After the nuclear devastation of the Six Minute War, the Brazilians were assigned an occupation zone in what was once Pakistan. There, Force Commander Bolivar watched over refugee camps, free clinics, and U.N.-staffed schools, even as the locals cursed how the world failed them. It was not an unblemished record- the mission was unable to adequately protect UNDRF seed banks run by a maverick from the wrath of the locals.

But all failings were excused after Bolivar executed Operation Durandal, a preemptive strike against a nearby Kavithan-backed warlord who had declared himself the Sahib Qiran and now threatened the entire protection zone. With his most trusted soldiers, Bolivar snuck into the heart of the Swat Valley and launched a meticulous covert campaign to destroy communication lines, ammo stores, and livestock of the self-proclaimed Lord of Conjunction. Losing no men, the raid significantly degraded the warlord’s ability to fight, causing him to renounce his messianic titles and sue for peace with the occupational authority. For this, Bolivar returned to São Paulo as “the Lion of Peshawar” with a uniform festooned with decorations.

Battle standard of Portuguese Brazil, used in peacekeeping operations abroad​

Despite encouragement to enter politics and run for office, perhaps one day even making viceroy, Bolivar remained in the field, working on his eventually three-volume Principles of Modern Warfare in his spare time. Likewise, he declined offers to join international forces, whether becoming an elite Hammershield in the U.N. Security Force's upper echelons, or even a counter-terrorist Knight Killer of the United Nations Special Operations Coalition. Even as he moved up the command ranks, he was content to remain a “fishloafer” - a distributor of loaves and fishes - a refugee guardian, a nation stabilizer. A peacekeeper. And it suited his colony just fine. Brazil scored recognition after recognition for its globetrotting interventions under the aegis of global humanitarianism, even while frustrated administrators in Lourenço Marques and Goa begged for more colonial troops for its colony wars.

As in Japan, U.N.-approved adventurism would eventually be replaced by enormous constructions for fighting unending storms and seas. The dream of Novo Brasil would end, and the colony would become another shell of an attempted empire, laid low by a sea-flooded Amazon basin and cities washed away. The pretense of the tail of Brasilia wagging the dog of Lisbon faded away. Even worse, its good name flipped as desperate governments sought to halt ecological collapse, making threats to send peacekeepers into Brazil itself to shut down continued clearcutting of the lungs of the world. Portugal, exhausted, could only wish its headstrong child the best. But by that point the Lion of Peshawar was already aboard the Unity, alongside a cadre of veterans from his campaigns.

Portuguese Brazilian peacekeepers combat Koreans for United Freedom terrorist uprising in Sŏngjin​

Transforming hero soldiers into exiled spacemen was actually in everyone’s interest. The Portuguese, wishing to accelerate the curbing of the colony’s enthusiasm (and autonomy), made pointed suggestions that perhaps they would like to send some of their vaunted peacekeepers to Alpha Centauri. The Brazilians, less inclined to chase glory now that the butcher’s bill had arrived, vigorously nodded with national exuberance while inwardly grateful for a opportunity to cut costs while saving face. And the U.N., finally tallying up the body count amassed in its celebrated operations, applauded the chance to sweep under the cosmic rug atrocities the rising powers had committed in its name.

As for Commander Bolivar himself, he dutifully committed himself to this mission, like all of the ones before. His entire career was built on advancing Brazilian interests by pursuing opportunistic internationalism, and this was no different. What was good for the U.N. was good for his colony. All he asked for was his comrades-in-arms be included. And so 600 veteran peacekeepers, including those holding non-Portuguese citizenship, followed his command to Unity. These included Japanese Shogo Shoguns (some of whom, so impressed by the commander, decided to become Brazilians even as the expedition rendered nationalism irrelevant), no-pat refugee militia whom Bolivar had trained off the books himself, Latin Americans and Lusophones from around the world. The majority were non-combat staff, but all followed the commander.

“Bolivar’s billet” was distinct from Brazil’s actual contribution of colonists, passengers, and native corporate Charterists. (Not to mention displaced Amazonian refugees for the Stellar Lifeboat Project.) The commander was held in great esteem by his colonymen, but had no actual authority beyond his peacekeepers- though in times of crisis, admiration would sometimes turn into allegiance. As to the actual chain of command, they were subsumed into the security structure as a unique unit outfitted with native kit (upon Brasilia’s lobbying) but otherwise subordinate to mission Chief Security Officer Rachael Winzenried. Its firepower was more militarized than the average security red-uniform, but less so than the U.N. Marines, and much less than DEEPEYES or Blue Operations. Its modest rank was perceived by the Executive Officer as a plot to humble the Estado Novo, but in reality the mission planners simply wanted to reduce the increasingly-widespread perception that Unity was a Franco-Luso-dominated boondoggle.

The worst of faithless attendants are those who confuse appearance with obedience, arrogance with honor, self-enrichment with service. - Sons of the Empire

Executive Officer Admiral Francisco d’Almeida was immediately suspicious of the jumped-up colonials. In his eyes they were filthy particularists, the delusion of Novo Brasil as a shameful repudiation of Pluricontinentalism. Any prestige they bore or won was to be given to mother Lusitania. Indeed, his attitudes mirrored common feelings in the metropole. Portuguese aristocrats considered the Brazilians “more noisy than the Oranais are to the French, more useless than the Peruvians are to the Spaniards, more disloyal than the Americans are to the British.” PIDE/DGS secret policemen drafted hairbrained schemes to do to their own colony what was done to Canada by the French and Soviets. d’Almeida did not fear his indirect underling like his countrymen had feared Brazil, but he vowed to put the peacekeeper commander in his place, repeatedly talking over him during meetings of the extended council. He also vied to place the billet under his direct control, sending directives that contradicted the Chief Security Officer’s. Winzenried, on the other hand, suspected the inclusion of the special billet was a Portuguese plot to undermine her own authority. She saw them as a white elephant secretly gifted by d’Almeida himself. After hearing of intentionally contradictory orders from the Executive Officer, she posted the peacekeepers on the far reaches of the ship, where they would be both too far to serve in his elaborate machinations, or to spy and sabotage her work.

Commander Bolivar, for his part, faithfully followed the orders, too used to being in the mud to sling metaphorical equivalents in peacetime power games. Thus, for the voyage his billet was likewise sequestered in cryobays far removed from the bridge. And then, once they awoke to the rude surprise of Planetfall, the Brazilian peacekeepers were battlefields away from where they could provide protection to the officers. Fighting through corridors of Kellerites and Kavithans, at midships they were finally able to contact Colonel Flavio Jilani, who had assumed command of security after the seeming demise of Rachael Winzenried and the wounding of Wael Salibi. Jilani ordered all available loyal personnel to the bridge, and Bolivar complied on the double, gathering surviving crew and colonists along the way. But it was too late. The peacekeepers arrived just in time to witness the aftermath of a final Spartan assault against Marcel Salan’s Marines, finding both Garland and Jilani’s bodies in the captain’s office.

The shock of their failure had barely set in when a chime sounded from the late captain’s wrist. The quicklink on his sleeve revealed the visage of a red-uniformed security officer with an imperious demeanor. Onlookers would claim Corazon Santiago was momentarily surprised but quickly regained composure. Others would swear that she looked like all was happening as expected. A conversation hotly debated by Planetfallologists, the brief call would set up another animosity that would continue to the surface. She casually inquired what took the running dogs of the U.N. Department of Peace Operations so long to cling to their master’s side. Santiago then taunted their misplaced trust in an incompetent coward, and extolled them to join her cause as true soldiers. Bolivar, who had never met the Colonel, gathered she was a mutineer and rebuked her, retorting that a soldier who usurps just command was no better than a mercenary of the heart. To this, the leader of the Spartan Federation laughed and signed off with the statement that it is better to fight for one’s conscience than die a slave to weaklings.

Bolivar threw down the jeweled scabbard of the ceremonial Sorocaban knife gifted to him for Peshawar. Raising the blade to the ceiling, he proclaimed that no more innocents would fall to villainous wolves. Then, the veterans cut a swath through the ship, joining in the fray of the terminal phase of Planetfall.

Post-Planetfall, Bolivar and his peacekeepers make first contact in the Forest of Paizō​

Bolivar’s billet somehow arrived mostly intact on Chiron, landing far off course from other pods. The crew of survivors had defensive strength against mindworm and megafauna, but supplies wore thin even though they had seasoned aid workers and food security experts in their number. After a harrowing several decurns in the wild, attempting to thread a path between xenofungus fields, they were able to stumble upon a wood. One of the lesser cousins to the Monsoon Jungle, the region had arable water and non-toxic - if disgusting - edible plants, even enough oxygen to make rebreathers optional. The Bolivarians (a phrase denounced by the commander himself) made their way through the forest, finally finding human life in a clearing. Soldiers in clean uniforms and sturdy battlecars stared back at the commander’s ragtag force, gawping at their sudden appearance, both awed by and suspicious at the single Unity walker that a Shogun had wrestled away from Holnists who had no clue how to pilot it. A tense standoff was defused when Bolivar lowered his shredder rifle to the ground and saluted. The leader of the unit of SolarEx Company Armed Security Police stared, and saluted back.

The irascible Governor Joralamon Hardacre almost turned them out as yet another column of beggar thieves, but some from a party of recent arrivals to Pathfinder Base recognized Commander Bolivar. This was sweetened by several of the Bolivarian no-pats discovering, with emotion, that they knew members of the same party. Family and friends reunited in the most unexpected way, mended hearts in the shadow of Planetfall. Grudgingly, the grandee shrugged and said they could stay.

Now the Force Commander of the non-SolarEx forces of the Chiron Interstellar Probe, Rejinaldo Bolivar de Alencar-Araripe continues his mission into the stars. Recognizing Hardacre as the sole living Earth-appointed expeditionary leader, he accepts the Governor’s leadership so long as it does not conflict with the mandate given to him so long ago by Brasilia. To uphold his colony’s honor, to fight for those who cannot, to protect mankind’s flourishing. Within the faction, he is surprisingly conciliatory for a military figure, owing to decades of peacekeeper experience. He has repeatedly suggested an alliance with Pravin Lal’s Peacekeeping Forces and Marcel Salan’s Restoration of Earth, to no avail. Bolivar is disappointed by Hardacre’s intransigence, though accepts that until the question of Unity succession is resolved, it is unavoidable. In the field, he shows the seasoned ASPs that powered combat suits are not necessary to win a battle, nor even their beloved battlecars - though having a ‘hod to rain death from above is always a nice equalizer. Through such battle prowess, and for his tireless commitment to guarding civilians from conflict, Bolivar maintains his renowned image, gaining favor even from Phoenix Nation matriarch Monitor-Protector Trung Thi Hoang. Unexpectedly, the Phoenix may be a future friend, even ally, to the Chiron Probe.

Casting

Rejinaldo Bolivar de Alencar-Araripe is portrayed by Pablo Scola as Brazilian border guard commander on Narco-Saints

Design Notes

Rejinaldo de Alencar is the leader of the sponsor Brasilia, also known as the Organization of South American States, from Civilization: Beyond Earth. Extra bio details here. Teaser lore here.

Force Commander is the title for a senior officer of the primary mission contributor in a U.N. peacekeeping operation.

Having adapted Bolivar into SMAC before in my own fanfics, I apply the same treatment here- this is both a slight satire on Beyond Earth’s overly naive (perhaps noblebright) supposition that Tropa de Elite psychos (trailer) becoming a hegemonic interventionist power would work out well, and a biography of a good soldier who’s essentially the anti-Santiago. Bolivar is the epitome of military professionalism- his loyalty is to the mission his country gave him, and fortunately for everyone involved, his last mission just happens to be to uphold U.N. authority. He has no interest in becoming a caudillo, and if he had to run a political government he would competently delegate it to civilian administrators and the legitimately elected while focusing on military matters. I usually imagine that if the Unity happened to have peacekeeper blue helmets onboard in addition to the security team, Bolivar would be their ideal commander. Later on he would predictably join Lal’s Peacekeeping Forces, bringing any loyal troops with him.

In this setting I thought it would be too easy to have him join the Peacekeepers, not to mention in Iterations we already learn of Lal’s helpers. Him joining the Restoration of Earth is similarly redundant- he would simply be one of Salan’s good generals, plus I already contributed a couple of (sub-faction) leaders to them already. (As a side note, I’m not sure why the Peacekeepers and Restoration aren’t already pacted, if not outright one faction. Their ideologies are close enough. Guess it’s a good thing that I retroactively wrote that Marie Du Lac’s Ultramarine sub-faction is influential enough to thwart positive relations between the two.) So I had Bolivar join the Chiron Interstellar Probe, following the DEEPEYES segment mentioning that Hardacre is technically the highest ranking U.N. officer.

Notes

The Blue Route referred to in the Firaxis lore is almost certainly located in Myanmar, but the one in Pennsylvania is a fabulous fit for the RTD timeline.

John Forbes was a Scottish soldier of fortune who became a Portuguese officer in the Seven Years’ War, rising to adjutant-general and a military governor for Portugal.

Koreans for United Freedom are the villains of Olympus Has Fallen.

Image Credits

Flooded Miami is from Extrapolations

Flag is that of the Earth Federation from Mobile Suit Gundam

The tank is the Federation X08 Selva Tigre from Call of Duty: Ghosts, drawn by Simon Ko

Peacekeepers fighting in city while North Korean flag in background is AN Troops during a street clean-up in Kaesong, NK by HauptmannHK (as inspired by Mercenaries : Playground of Destruction)

 

[MysticWind]

​

The stars above are not promises to be savored, but challenges we must rise to! We may have climbed out of Konstantin's cradle, tread lightly upon the floor of the cosmos - but the entire mansion of infinity lies before us. Two worlds are not enough. - New Year's speech at Roméo Dallaire Academy

While the majority of the Restoration of Earth follow the Returner Oath, the somber pledge to reunite with the lost planet regardless of its state, alternative sub-factions exist. A rising movement has been the Sojourner Axiom popularized by Colonel Vadim Petrovich Kozlov, explorer of the Kuiper Belt, hero of the Salyut-78 rescue mission, overseer of the construction of the Trepak prototype LEO habitat, and veteran of untold CCCP spaceflights. The Soviet Slav had been swiftly appointed to the Unity mission as pilot cosmonaut, though not without rumors of the “honor” being Politburo-directed off-world exile for workerism. During Planetfall, sided with U.N. Marine General Marcel Salan out of military duty, bringing along his team of cosmonauts and zero-G repair specialists. Labored as faction ‘former team foreman and ground surveyor until the Restoration secured Hoppers. Managed the construction of the Highroad of Heroes between Reunité and Fort Crerar, completing work ahead of schedule.

Upon promotion to head of the Infrastructure Directorate, began lobbying for the reestablishment of a faction space program. Repeatedly rejected rebuffs on the grounds of insufficient resources for such an advanced project. Directed his directorate towards foundational work- securing of vital mineral sites, investment into propulsion technologies, and building of cosmonaut training pools for a program that could not be realized for perhaps mission centuries into the future. While investigated by the Control Directorate on multiple occasions, managed to retain position thanks to personal popularity, defeating accusations of Bonapartism or “going native” as a Kurtz.

Formalized the Sojourner Axiom- neither human colonization of the hostile surface of Chiron, nor a return to unknown Earth, is enough. Advances the belief that humanity must launch missions to settle its orbit and satellites, and then investigate the other regions of the Centauri system. Subscribes to the Pythia Hypothesis which states that the Unity diaspora is simply repeating the same experiences of Terran humanity, except at greater speed. Sojourners thus believe returning to the homeworld will not guarantee the species' survival. True loyalty to the mission is not simply reestablishing contact with the ones who gave the mission, but its fulfillment. Not only at Alpha Centauri, but beyond. More footholds must be gained. Our stay on Planet is temporary. We must go to outer space, every one of us.

Casting

Vadim Petrovich Kozlov is portrayed by Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Notes

Vadim Kozlov is the leader of the sponsor Slavic Federation from Civilization: Beyond Earth. Extra bio details here. Teaser lore here.

 

[Axis Kast]

​

Ballentyne Martelo Sejoy, PhD (CE2028-MY30), was a Lunar cosmochemist, spacer, adventurer, and accused criminal who is generally considered the father of tactical chemistry.

Sejoy’s parents, refuees of the Spanish Alfonsoist regime, resided on Lunar Legrange Capsule 4 as displaced persons at the time of his birth. His mother, a Basque separatist fighter, had been invalided by torture during nine years of imprisonment for a bank bombing. His father, suffering from partial flash blindness and aggressive skin cancer, had set aside a wavering Catholic faith to preach the Solar creed, and the family subsisted on charity from his few followers. Sejoy the Elder was an alcoholic, even naming his son after the brand of canned ale available in the commissary of the displaced persons camp that was to be the family's final home. The father died still awaiting a decision on their application. Little Ballentyne Sejoy was just eight years old. Soon after, he was taken into protective custody by the U.N. Commission for Women and Children on grounds of undernourishment. In his memoirs, Ballentyne Sejoy recollected that his father had known two great loves in his last days: the warmth of a sun lamp on his face and the opportunity to tyrannize his family. Sejoy rejected believership for the remainder of his life. There is no record of his attempting contact with his mother.

Comprehensive education was mandatory for permanent residents of Luna. A series of U.N. scholarships propelled Sejoy through cosmochemistry programs at the new but increasingly prestigious Lunar Academies. He was impressed by guest lecturers that included the world-famous polymath Prokhor Zakharov, irrigation engineer Ikurō Kamatari, astronaut A.J. Vuuren, and macro-engineer Dhargey Samten, an accomplished shipwright. Under the tutelage of interested professors who saw the makings of an intelligent and socially-conscious young man, Ballentyne earned a bachelor's degree in just three Earth-standard years. He often visited Mars, touring the city-sized greenhouses that would go on to lend the dead planet its first traces of an atmosphere. Just prior to receiving his bacehlor's degree, Sejoy boarded an incomplete hull segment of the Unity to inspect the ship's spectrographical suite.

From 2049 to 2051, Sejoy completed a highly-competitive apprenticeship at the Euphrosyne Switching Field in the Main Belt, a transshipment point for most of the solar system’s non-water ice. In 2055, Sejoy submitted a doctoral thesis on new theoretical phases of ice with implications for industrial applications. The work became a standard text in the pedagogy of his field. Immediately afterward, Sejoy taught a year's worth of Interlinks courses in partnerships with Stanford University, Nanyang Technological University, and the Colorado School of Mines. Units of this instruction were packaged by Morgan Adaptive Learning Associations into their proprietary coursework for Unity crew from 2059-2068.

Unaddressed childhood trauma, the influence of his professors, and “plain boredom” drew Sejoy to radical causes. With friends, he frequented shebeens with Lunar Separatist causes despite the professional difficulties this sometimes presented. Sejoy was fined seventeen times in one year by American Lunar authorities for brawling—usually with loyalists—and participated in the unsuccessful defense of Bryson Colony [1] in Mare Serenitatis against the United States Air Force during the Second American Civil War, trying and failing to set off an ammonia bomb. Brief captivity aboard the space battleship [i[U.S.S. Serpens[/i] ended in a partial amnesty: there were too many separatists to count. The harsh terms promised freedom of movement beyond the Main Belt but meant that Sejoy was unable to resume his teaching at competitive universities or take most traditional work. He entered private practice as an assayer on the Trans-Neptunian mining circuit, eventually contracting with hundreds of corporations on small assignments over a period of five years. His reputation was mixed. Employers found Sejoy’s work product excellent and appreciated his talent for expanding the technical proficiency of his subordinates but nursed shared complaints about his personal judgement--especially his fiery politics and tendency to associate with “questionable elements,” including labor organizers, black marketeers, and separatists under surveillance by company agents. Sejoy's academic reputation attracted many eager employees and partners, especially Lunar and Martian exiles with a common plight, but they found without exception that Sejoy's tolerant character and brilliance were inadequate to compensate for the official suspicion he brought down upon them and none endured.

In 2060, Sejoy was recruited by sympathetic ex-colleagues in the Lunar Academies as that institution's sole representative on the first expedition to 90377 Sedna. Traces of two new elements were identified, including one, the metalloid Sejoynium, by Sejoy himself. Upon returning to Neptunian orbit in 2067, Sejoy expected that his personal and professional horizons would clear. Instead, he was met with an accusation of claim-jumping filed by Pacto de Industrias San Gloria during his absence. Comprehensive Transport refused to take enforcement action, but as a practical matter, Sejoy was unable to travel inside Jupiter without courting severe peril. With reluctance, he took a permanent appointment as the chief assayer at the Io-Five Facility, lasting just two weeks before an accusation of high-grading led to his incarceration by bounty hunters. Arraigned before a pseudo-magistrate of the Facility’s operator, King Priam Mining, he was sold to the Company of Two Thousand of Cincinnati, OH in September 2070 for a fifteen-year period of indentured servitude as part of the Unity Mission to Alpha Centauri. (The supposedly stolen ore samples were never recovered or presented at trial.) Sejoy was dutifully registered as falsely-imprisoned by the International Commission on Missing Persons at the time of mission departure but the alert arrived too late for the U.N. Security Forces to arrange his release from the ship.

Sejoynium under low magnification.​

Through no lack of trying, the retainers of Administrator Oscar van de Graaf did not arrive in time to claim Sejoy during the Unity Crisis. He instead made Planetfall in a Colony Pod that was ejected automatically as the wreck began its final descent. The pod landed in Chiron’s northern polar cone. Sejoy and other survivors spent eleven months under the snow, oblivious, before being found and awakened by a long-range salvage party from White Rabbit’s Refuge. The Dreamers earmarked the mostly-uninjured Sejoy for a return to the New 2000, hoping to earn the customary finder’s fee of ¤200, but a raid by the Data Angels intervened.

Sejoy appreciated his liberators’ light-handed approach to government and adapted easily to the informal rhythms of life in Gargoyle Garden where skepticism toward authority was considered a virtue. Sejoy was said to possess considerable "jazz"--both as a person of action and an accomplished contributor to his field of study. He was ultimately given responsibilities with the faction’s Former crews, helping supervise the analysis of samples from borehole mines put down in the Sergaks. Sejoy found the physicality and unpredictability of field work salutary. While not considered a “digital native,” his former celebrity also drew him onto the Planetary Datalinks where he produced extensive and well-respected commentaries on the mineralogical and geological findings of the Parke and Planitzer Expeditions organized by the Lord’s Conclave and the Peacekeeping Forces respectively. With his crew, Sejoy was confirmed killed during a mindworm attack in late MY10.

Sources:
First image is "Pedro Pascal as a Spectre" by BraydonJaselle on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

Second image is "PNW CRYSTALINE SNOW 1/13/23 INTEL SNOW" by BryadonJaselle on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

[1] Bryson colony is named for the late amateur astronomer, veteran Army Ranger, and oil industry worker William "Bill" Bryson (1947-2023), not to be confused with author Bill Bryson.

 

[Axis Kast]

Design principles for armored war airships recalled those of their ocean-going forebears. The optimum design depended upon expected mission profile, which was different for each faction according to circumstance.​

This artist's watercolor of the University of Planet airship Mae C. Jemison captures features that typified Prokhor Zakharov's fleet in the sixth decade after Planetfall, when the University of Planet's airships were used for scientific scouts and long-range transportation. (The University learned to its detriment that while they might deliver cargoes safe, Morganite carriers could not be counted upon to respect the sanctity of patent or biolock.)

Many might take issue with Zakharov himself, but the University, unobtrusive and forever useful, made few lasting enemies, and its colonies flourished largely unmolested even in geographic isolation, threatened only by the occasional incursion of Spartan and Tribal raiders. Thus, if the nucleus of the University's holdings was in the Sawtooth Peaks, Zakharov was also putative master of stations in the Dune Sea, more than 500km eastward, and of sea bases nearer the coast of Golgu than of Shamash.

Both exploration and the carrying trade demanded endurance, leading to a choice of nuclear populsion (the reactor containment vessel can be espied in the cutaway of the ship's aft cone). The treacherous flying conditions in the Sawtooths explained the outsized control surfaces: twin tailfins, each with independent rudder. To this, shipwrights added the orthagonally-firing maneuvering thrusters found across the skin of the gas bag itself. Mae C. Jemison carried two cars, a primary control house where ship's functions were performed and all passengers berthed, and a secondary, offset car with laboratory spaces. Barely visible at the prow of the gas bag are sympathetic observation drones, drawing their motive energies through its skin, ever ready to be deployed to investigate phenomena of interest.

For self-defense, the Mae C. Jemison and her thirteen sister ships relied primarily upon their faction's good offices, though, in a pinch, a single, four-cell, air-to-air missile launcher might foil a half-hearted opponent. (Captains disliked the installation, perhaps because they were rarely, if ever, assigned crew with the experience or knowledge to tend the mechanically tempermental devices, let alone operate them under duress.)

Heavy laser rover of the Spartan Federation. Battle of Durok, MY8. A deadly anti-materiel platform. This prototype vehicle uses systems stripped from Unity's long-range navigation arrays.


On maneuvers with the Gaian Rangers.​

The antiquity of their hand weapons and body armor is undercut by an impressive uniformity of appearance, purpose, and discipline. Gaian society became progressively more warlike over time in response to persecution, a transformation shared by the scholarship addressing Lady Skye, whose own story was retold more and more through the analytical lens of social activism, not scientific accomplishment. "Crazy Gaian witch" indeed.

Sources:
First image is "Airship 2" by Asymoney on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

Second image is "Rover 2" by Asymoney on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

Third image is "2024 97" by angoma on DeviantArt. Created with AI.

 

[Axis Kast]

It's been a while, so I'd like to offer a refreshed Racing the Darkness faction showcase. We begin with the University of Planet. Tomorrow we'll try the Human Ascendancy.

I use the original language contained in the game's manual as a foundation and build from there, adding commentary as if we were talking about a playable faction in an Alpha Centauri 2. I'm very interested in reader perspectives on the faction, both as it is presented here in concept form and as it has been presented in the story so far.

The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms, we find electrons, and behind electrons, quarks. Each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries. - For I Have Tasted the Fruit

Academician Prokhor Zakharov, c. 2060​

The University is completely dedicated to research and the use of tools--technology--to solve the problems of mankind. They are rumored to sometimes put the pursuit of knowledge even ahead of ethics.

Members of the University believe that any problem can be understood and overcome through observation and analysis. They blame religion and folkways for preventing or undermining policies and advances--apolitical public education, academic subsidy, genetically-modified crops, mandatory vaccination, & etc.--which might have helped prevent the famine and disease that ran rampant on Old Earth. As a result, the University calls for a program of scientific inquiry unrestrained by conventional morality.

The University begins the game with the Atomic Computing technology and one additional bonus technology of their choice from the Unity technology tier. Each University base receives a free Network Node when it is founded (learning flourishes in dialogue). The University's research progresses quickly, but their open-access philosophy leaves them susceptible to attacks by covert "Probe Teams," while their callous elitism provokes unrest among the workers.

The University prefers Knowledge Values, is averse to Theocratic Politics and Truth Values, and cannot make most Enlightened or Romantic social engineering choices--those that seek philosophical and emotional rather than material advancement, and those that are obsessed with the past, respectively. (Green and Simple Economics are notable exceptions.) They are supportive of restoring contact with Earth. Their research priority is Discovery. The University enthusiastically embraces the ideals of the Supremacy Affinity: no Shibboleth is safe from their appetite for the change made possible through scientific progress, and so it can freely engage in both genetic engineering and the pursuit of cyborg interfaces without fear of backlash from within.

The University enjoys a +2 research bonus that should allow it to outpace other factions in the race for advancement (its brilliant scientists receive abundant funding), a -2 Probe malus that will make it difficult to keep those technologies to itself (academic networks are vulnerable to infiltration), a -1 Police malus that will make it prudent to take measures that secure the happiness of its workforce (since the naturally curious are prone to question authority), and a -1 Support malus that will make it harder to raise a large army (non-academic activities are disfavored).

The University has a comparative large starting population of 5, but 3 of these are robots. Narratively, the engineering teams that account for the bulk of the faction's population suffered badly from radiation sickness, leaving them dependent upon mechanical servitors once Planetside. A rare Librarian will help the University pull to an early lead in research output. What to do with the robots is less obvious. They produce fewer nutrients or minerals than human workers, but more energy, which will leave a surplus even after the robots take their cut. One choice the University player will make is whether to stockpile food for a baby boom or minerals and energy to build more robots. There is then another choice to make. Should the University try to give the Morganites a run for their money by challenging that faction's energy monopoly, or are the robots better devoted to enhancing the research output of the University's Network Node? The University also creates an extra Drone for every 4 populations--a reflection of its ossification into castes defined by their relationship to classic academic achievement.

Only two factions start with Research Pods, and the University is one of them. The Pod can be redeemed immediately for a third starting technology--useful if the player has a particular research objective in mind among the Tier 0 techs. Then again, the Pod can be attached to the Network Node for compounding future research gains. A third alternative would be to establish a research station to exploit a Scientific Resource. The University's other starting pieces are unremarkable: the standard combination of Colony Pod, 'Former, and Militia Squad.

The faction is led by the Soviet polymath Prokhor Zakharov, the engineer who built Unity's star drive. Zakharov's archetype is that of the Technologist. His future works include: For I Have Tasted the Fruit, Address to the United Nations, Address to the Faculty, Planet Speaks, Now We Are Alone, The Feedback Principle, Nonlinear Genetics, See How They Run, Assimilative Notation, Records of Symposia, The Fallacies of Self-Awareness, and contributions to A Geological Survey of Planet.

In the cultural milieu of the 1990s, the Scientist often confused his mastery of facts and figures with the ability to control for "the human element" in any situation. Thus, in the techno-thriller Jurassic Park, the gadfly Ian Malcolm, accuses the mogul John Hammond's geneticists of placing pride before discernment. Like them, Zakharov is compelled to demonstrate the excellence of his ideology through accomplishment, and he has therefore determined to restore contact with Old Earth.

In the RtD setting, the University is organized into faculties defined by academic subject area, presided over by deans, and stratified by levels of academic achievement. Like the Morganites, they have a tendency to rely on others to do their fighting: University Enforcement is notoriously unimpressive as a fighting force in virtually any match-up. The University has also developed a reputation for wheeling and dealing that, combined with their general lack of expansionistic ambitions, means it is usually considered inoffensive by its neighbors--a huge advantage given how quickly most leaders resort to vendetta.

The character of Zakharov is egotistical, mysogynist, autocratic, and not a little paranoid. He is also obsessed with his own morality. On the other hand, he can at times articulate a vision of science-as-service in keeping with the best traditions of his field--even if his subscription to such ideals is inconsistent at best.

Sources:
Sid Meier, et al. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Firaxis Games. 1999.

Our Zakharov is Rutger Hauer.

 

[Axis Kast]

The conventional model of geneology is a tree bearing fruit at the terminus of each branch. Such a model implies that all branches are created equal, but this is not the case. Some are weak, others diseased. Orchardists solve this problem by pruning unhealthy branches, conserving nutrients for the choicest blossoms. Without this care, the tree produces nothing remarkable, and certainly nothing they would care to use as root stock to perpetuate the breed. - Homo Sapien Superior

Director Tamineh Pahlavi, c. 2050.​

The Human Ascendancy is a collection of eugenicists who intend to create Homo sapien superior, an artificially-engineered human uniquely suited to life on the planet Chiron. In general, followers believe that nurture can never overcome natural "deficiencies" of mind and body.

Tamineh Pahlavi, the faction leader, is an Iranian supremacist related to that country's eponymous ruling dynasty. In Pahlavi's retelling of Old Earth's history, liberal-democratic governments were too sentimental to make the hard social choices demanded of good leaders. By sacrificing the weak, they could have ensured that the strong, at least, would survive. Instead, their reward for helping the sick and the less-fortunate was uncontrolled social welfare spending, leading ultimately to societal collapse and the explosion of ills that they had once hoped to curb through their "enlightened" compassion. This Darwinist ethos combines with the idea that humans cannot reach their full potential on Chiron so long as they cannot breathe its air unassisted or stand tall in its gravity.

To accomplish its goal, the Ascendancy will push genetic medicine to its uttermost limits, and indeed their starting tech is Biogenetics. The faction's research priorities are Discover and Conquer. Its Affinity is Purity. The Ascendancy is ruled and overseen by a genetic elite. Colonists who do not reflect faction ideals precisely are subject to repression and exploitation.

The Ascendancy is unremittingly warlike, and its watchwords are quality over quantity. It is one of the smallest factions, with just 3 starting population: 1 Talent, 1 Overseer, and 1 Drone. A -3 Growth malus reflects their intolerance for "inferior" specimens. The player must assign Worker or Specialist roles to each new Pop, which cannot be changed later--a reflection of how each individual's possibilities are circumscribed at birth. As a genetic dystopia that practices slavery, the faction accordingly suffers a -1 malus to Culture and a -2 malus to Police. Still, the Ascendancy enjoys bonuses to administration at +1 (effective leaders can potentially serve for more than a century thanks to effective longevity treatments) and efficiency at +2 (as the populace is bred to its tasks), as well as a +1 Support modifier since its warriors are bred to consume fewer resources. Perhaps most important, the Ascendancy's augmented super soldiers, called legionnaires, receive a +2 modifier to all die rolls on offense and defense.

The Ascendancy begins with pieces that include 1 Colony Pod, 1 'Former, 1 Research Pod, and 1 Special Forces Squad. The latter is the strongest military unit among the survivors at Planetfall. An ambitious player will see the potential to remedy their labor scarcity problem by raiding unprepared neighbors. Faction Probe Teams can slice the genome as easily as a computer mainframe, and the Ascendancy may redeem genetic samples captured in this way to complete a unique Special Project that grants early access to Specials.

In Social Engineering terms, the Ascendancy is inflexible on certain matters. It may not use Cyborgs or Robots--methods of bootstrapping or replacing the human body that it fears will produce inferior results--or make the computer-assisted future society choice. The Ascendancy's preferred future society is caste-based.

The Ascendancy is opposed to a restoration of contact with Old Earth since it believes that accepting interplanetary refugees would simply waste resources that could better be used to haste the next step in human evolution. Why prolong mediocrity?

Narratively, the Ascendancy is a monomaniacal offshoot of the University of Planet. Members of the Ascendancy fit a number of different profiles: (1) geneticists recruited by Pahlavi prior to Mission Launch; (2) renegades from Old Earth societies in which genetic medicine was outlawed or disfavored, a trend that reached its apogee in the mid-twenty-first century; (3) operatives belonging to the numerous and ideologically diverse organizations of Old Earth whose purpose was to design and "grow" the perfect human, either as ruler or subject; (4) prisoners, including those taken in combat, bought from slave traders, or remanded to servitude for genetic "deficiency."

It feels to me like this faction should have some nexus with cloning, and at one point I had a mind to grant them double population growth after meeting a certain trigger, such as the discovery of a particular tech or the construction of a certain number of specific base facilities, but I just can't see the Ascendancy as a "Zerg" faction. I feel as if they ought to struggle to do anything but play tall.

Pahlavi was the mission's chief geneticist. Her future works include Homo Sapien Superior, I Made Him From Clay, and Eternity in the Garden.

Sources:
Iranian actress Mahtab Keramati is our Tamineh Pahlavi.

 

[Axis Kast]

The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the Datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil. - The Blessed Struggle

Miriam Godwinson at Yale University while pursuing her degree in psychology.​

The Lord's Conclave, sometimes called the Human Conclave or the Lord's Believers, is a community of people who aspire to live a faith-centered life on Chiron. They believe that the Unity passengers and crew are a new Elect, called by God to live according to His Commandments in the paradise that He has set aside for them, Chiron. The very survival of the Unity colonists, whose odds were calculated by Mission Control itself as being less than two percent, is evidence to them of divine intervention. The Conclave's essential holy text is the Vulgatian Bible, also called the Conclave Bible or the Vulgate, an enormous compendium of revelation, commentary, and pseudo-history developed during the intense revival of religious feeling observed worldwide between 2020 and 2071. The Conclave is led by American theologian and diplomat Miriam Godwinson.

Conclavists believe that the proliferation of vice in the twenty-first century tempted men to stray from holy teaching, and that the end result was predictably ruinous strife. Their solution is close study of the manual for right living, the Vulgate, under the close supervision of divinely-inspired judges.

The Conclave's affinity is Purity. Man comes before Planet, and in order for his spirit to remain whole, its vessel, the body, must also remain sacrosanct. The Conclave prefers Truth Values and is averse to the Eudaimonic Future Society Social Engineering choice. The Conclave will not create Cyborgs, Synthesizers, or Specials. Although the Conclave can use robot labor, it is inherently suspicious of machine intelligence and faces high social penalties for doing so. (A Drone is created for each Robot.) The Conclave's starting tech is Social Psych, implying they stole the results of experiments organized by Chief of Neurosurgery Aleigha Cohen.

Conclavists oppose attempts at restoring contact with Old Earth, which they believe has either perished in cataclysm or sunken into an irredeemable condition that could only poison the hearts of the mission survivors. The faction's priority is Choose--meaning that they will be incentivized to pursue the doctrinal, not the tech, track when conducting research.

This faction is poised for explosive expansion and suits an aggressive player with conquest in mind. Even if they do not go to war, the Believers will expand quickly thanks to bonuses of +1 Culture (as preserves of a storied past) and +2 Growth (having received the commandment to be fruitful and multiply). With a +2 Probe bonus, they are resistant to subversion, while a +1 Support bonus (followers are eager to defend the faith) should make it possible for them to put more troops in the field than most competitors. The Believers suffer in the areas of research and the environment: a hard -2 Research malus represents their disinterest in observation-based systems of learning, while their paternalistic attitude toward Chiron translates to a -1 Planet malus.

Godwinson was the most popular of the faction leaders to escape Unity, and she did so at the head of the largest number of followers. The Conclave's starting population includes 1 Artist, 3 Citizens, 1 Talent, and 1 Thinker. The Conclave is just one of two factions with a Thinker (the other is the Hive), meaning they have near-exclusive access to Doctrines, which can confer powerful multipliers on research, production, and even combat. An Artist helps pump the faction's cultural output to impressive levels.

The Conclave receives the standard load-out (1 Colony Pod, 1 'Former, 1 Militia Squad) at game start, along with a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) unit capable of healing any friendly or neutral biological unit.

As I write this, I become increasingly curious about a conversation between Godwinson and Yang. While the later surely has no use for Conclavists, I think the two would find common ground in their belief that poor impulse control best explains Earth's woes.

The Conclave is hard for me to write for. I approach the Bible primarily as a work of historico-cultural significance, and when I try to describe faith values and faith communities, it feels deeply political and highly judgmental. I have tried to present Godwinson as a mostly sympathetic figure. Rather than an intolerant firebrand, she is an admirable humanitarian with abundant tolerance for non-believers. There is some allusion to a history of violence against neighbors during a time of starvation for Godwinson's many followers immediately after Planetfall, a legacy Godwinson seeks to outrun with a subsequent open-handedness that also works to position the Lord's Conclave as a Switzerland among the factions. Godwinson's capital is presented as a playground for spies and Probe Teams--with her connivance. That said, sometimes bad guys are fun, and some later posts that deal with the Conclave have described how Godwinson is being challenged for leadership by those more willing to apply the rod to unbelievers.

Sources:
Our Miriam Godwinson is depicted by Stockard Channing.

 

[Axis Kast]

Man without history is a loaded pistol pointed at the wrong target. - Timelines

​

The Legacy Initiative, once called the Tomorrow Initiative, calls for the free exchange of information on Chiron. This, in itself, is not a remarkable position. The Data Angels call for something very similar, on the face of it. The Peacekeeping Forces have likewise declared that (optimally) free speech is the essential foundation of a representative society. The University of Planet campaigns vigorously for open networks. Yet if the Data Angels believe that information is merely the medium for their art, and other factions insist that information must be yoked in the service of particular endeavors, the Legacy Initiative proposes only that it must be captured, retained, and shared--without moral judgement and without reservation.

Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? / That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun - Wernher von Braun (1965)

The Ascendancy interprets the value of the human species through its capacity to thrive under a given set of external conditions--temperatures, pressures, and food chains. The Legacy Initiative posits that humanity is the sum total of our intellectual output, and that the loss or poor care of that legacy, embodied in the millions of data tapes strewn among Unity wreckage, will diminish us.

Some of the Initiative's followers believe that this intellectual bequest is like a map: if too many pieces go missing, we will never find our way among the stars. Others more straightforwardly contend, like the Peacekeepers, that bottlenecks of information prevent the flourishing of creativity and the achievement of true wisdom. But as a rule, the Initiative cares more for the process and forms of information-sharing than for its results. The Legacy Initiative bears resemblance to the fireman Guy Montag at the start of Fahrenheit 451, destroying "subversive" books to ensure that society will remain unspoiled--without asking whose purposes are served in doing so, and believing naively that books are the only form of messaging capable of leading people astray. The Legacy Initiative is led by Sathieu Metrion, a Thai ensign in the Data Services Division responsible for the care of Unity's data core and its massive libraries of human knowledge. Metrion is the sentimentalist archetype.

The Legacy's chosen affinity is Supremacy and its Social Engineering preference is the Cybernetic Future Society. They start with the tech Informatics and prioritizes the Unity research branch. They are supportive of recontact with Earth. Special projects unique to this faction include the recovery of the Unity's crash-landed Data Core. In general, the Legacy seeks to spread knowledge and culture among the mission survivors, an ambition that will naturally frustrate leaders intent on preserving closed societies.

The Legacy's characteristics are +2 Administration (every thing in its place), +1 Culture (preserving the artistic legacy of mankind), +2 Probe (protected databases), and +1 Research (access to Unity's databanks). The Legacy is unique in that its lack of maluses means the player is free to pursue most strategies. The Legacy starts the game with a large population size of five: 1 Administrator, 1 Artist, 2 Librarians, and 1 Talent. All of this faction's research advances are shared automatically with other factions that are in contact with the Initiative. In addition to the typical pieces--Colony Pod, 'Former, and Militia Squad--the Legacy starts with 1 Trade Good (cultural artifacts).

Narratively, surviving members of the Data Services Division remain traumatized by the severe losses incurred during their struggle to keep the Data Core from the hands of the Spartan mutineers--a battle that ended in the physical ejection of the Data Core, along with dozens of Data Services personnel (including the faction's first leader, Tạ Dọc Thân)--by parties unknown to the Legacy. Eventually, Metrion gets the grand idea to harvest Planet's bio-energies to sustain its increasingly powerful computers, a problem that leads to environmental catastrophe.

Sources:
Sathieu Metrion's picture is that of Rebel Y-wing pilot Gureni Teisij, (probably) played by Eiji Kusuhara in Star Wars, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1982).

 

[Axis Kast]

Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained, well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate. - Spartan Battle Manual

Corazón Santiago with the Florida State Fencibles during Hurricane Ivoire.​

Spartans are paramilitary survivalists who stowed away aboard Unity or else infiltrated the crew and launched a mutiny almost immediately after the starship collided with an uncharted micrometeorite. What other choice did they have? The United Nations was otherwise content to leave them behind.

On Planet, the Spartans will organize themselves into a so-called Federation of family units dedicated to the proposition that people have both a right and a compelling duty to keep and bear arms. Faction members belong to one of two camps. The smaller of the two camps consists of "mere" survivalists focused on personal autonomy. The second camp is made up of their fair-weather allies, called Holnists. Holnism is a fascist movement with a simple, self-aggrandizing message: might makes right.

Colonel (formerly Lieutenant) Corazón Santiago, a hardened combat veteran who grew up a gangland orphan in Puerto Rico and Los Angeles, is the faction's leader. For Santiago, existence is a Hobbesian war of all against all. The diagnosis of Old Earth's problems is straightforward: social collapse was inevitable once people lost their will to fight for what they believed in. To avoid the same fate, Santiago calls for her followers to constantly better themselves through preparation for war. Santiago's archetype is the Survivalist. Her future works include: Ethics of Survival, The Economics of Victory, Leadership and the Sea, A Future By Firelight, The Council of War, Planet: A Survivalist's Guide. A Tactical History of Sparta, and The Spartan Battle Manual.

Santiago will lead her forces to seize their fair share of the Unity wreckage. (Their taxes paid for the mission, after all--whether they were chosen or not.) They will find and meet worthy opponents on the battlefield, and they can demonstrate their mettle by being the first faction to use a Special Weapon.

The Spartan affinity is Purity; members are fascinated with the warriors and revolutionaries of ages past. Spartans may choose only Survival or Power values. Their aversion is to Popular Social Engineering choices (Representative Politics, Planned Economics, Equity Values, and a United Future Society). Knowing that it would only invite punishment, Spartans are vehemently opposed to the idea of restoring contact with Earth. The Spartan's research priority is the Conquer tree. Due to the havoc they wrecked aboard the dying Unity, the Spartan Federation is locked in vendetta with other factions for eighty turns after Planetfall.

Spartan characteristics are -2 Cohesion (Holnist malcontents), +2 Morale (superior training), +1 Support (armed self-defense is a way of life), and -2 Efficiency (martial considerations dominate everything else). Conquest should come easy for the Spartans. This faction begins the game with the Doctrine: Initiative technology and a powerful military unit, the Impact Squad, in place of the standard Militia. As benefits their focus on military readiness, Spartans do not pay the cost of new combat unit prototypes. Three starting War Stores can be traded away to kick-start the faction economy or used to upgrade other units to join the battle line. Reflecting their excellent leadership, Spartans also enjoy a +1 to offensive die rolls during any encounter.

As ex-stowaways, the Spartans have a small starting population of just 3: one Citizen, one Drone (captives), and one Officer. Aside from the Impact Squad, their starting pieces including the standard Colony Pod and 'Former.

In the story so far, the Spartans have tangled with just about everyone. They rampaged among the University's engineering teams, scotching the Chief Engineer's hopes of restoring containment in the ship's damaged reactor spaces. They cut down dozens of U.N. Security Forces members and, with not a little help from the Kellerites of the Human Tribe, made a mess of Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida's attempts at damage control aft and amidships. In Hydroponics, the Spartans murdered most of Lady Deirdre Skye's horticulturalists and inflicted significant casualties on their rescuers, the nucleus of what later became Pravin Lal's Peacekeeping Forces. Wise money says that Santiago or someone close to her even killed the ship's captain, Jonathan Garland.

Upon landing in the Slowwind River Delta on the continent of Shamash, the Spartans picked an immediate fight with their neighbors, the Tribe, and the two soon deadlocked in a brutal contest. The Spartans secured a fastness for themselves within a rock formation known as Xerxion and for years held out against the Tribe and others, raiding even among the New 2000. Internal divisions eventually came home to roost and the Spartans were defeated by a coalition of their enemies. A small number escaped, led by Santiago, to found Neo-Sparta somewhere in the Sawtooth Mountains, and the paramilitaries thereafter began to clash with both the Ascendancy and the University so that even the Academician was forced to take an interest in the fighting.

Sources:
Image is "A wolf among electric sheep" by MaximLardinois on DeviantArt. The original image was created for the Evoke 2015 Demoparty Freestyle Graphics compo, and it earned the artist 4th place.

 

[Axis Kast]

The cornerstone of the American dream was each man’s inalienable right to property. A man’s land was often his patrimony, and always his future. From it, he made his livelihood. To obtain it, he will fight and die. In 1776, farmers with fowling pieces pledged their mutual fortunes in war against the greatest empire on the Earth at that time. - No Step Backward: A History of the American Reclamation Corporation

American Reclamation Corporation CEO Oscar van de Graaf does a round of PT with his corporate security forces during the final year of the Second American Civil War.​

The New 2000 is inspired by the tropes of the American frontier West, especially the concept of Manifest Destiny. I studied the life of Texas leader Stephen F. Austin when developing the faction's leader, Oscar van de Graaf, an American industrialist-turned-politician who waged private war against the Holnist movement to which Santiago's Spartans later allied themselves.

Van de Graaf's people believe that the psychology required to tame a new space is fundamentally different from what is required to "civilize" it. Van de Graaf himself blames the United States Government for the tens of billions of dollars in business losses he suffered before and during the Second American Civil War, believing that Washington lacked the stomach to take appropriately harsh action against "retrograde elements" like the hyper-survivalists. Once-isolated instances of domestic terrorism metastasized into full-scale secession and general anarchy, according to this logic. A frontier morality would have served the country better--and is the only thing, in the New 2000's estimation, that will safeguard the future of humanity on Chiron. Importantly, unlike the Spartans, there is no pretense to nobility. Spartans are about struggle, while Pilgrims are about punishment.

The New 2000, also known as the Pilgrims, are Charterists. Their leaders donated to the Unity Mission when government sponsors were in short supply. In return, they were granted the privilege of self-government after an agreed period of subordination to the mainline mission. Most of the faction's population actually consists of contractors to a corporation of stockholders over which van de Graaf presides as president that paid for their tickets. Van de Graaf actually ended up competing with the U.N. for talent, a game he often won because of his ability to pay. Each citizen is granted a certain quantity of lifetime stock in the enterprise that is the colony. As it increases in riches, so too do they.

Van de Graaf's acid criticisms of his government didn't diminish his loyalty or his interest in wielding political influence and he eventually became a cabinet secretary as CEO of the American Reclamation Corporation, a federal corporation established to manage national reunification. Many ex-veterans and retired civil servants agreed to sign on for the Unity expedition, including a large contingent of private military contractors.

Both the Pilgrims and the Morganites are motivated by the lure of great riches, but the Morganites don't like getting their hands dirty. If the Morganites aspire to a life of idleness, Pilgrims are all cattle barons-in-waiting. Their affinity is Supremacy and their preferred government type is a Meritocratic Future Society. They are opposed to restoring contact with Old Earth. (Who needs the competition?)

The Pilgrims begin with Doctrine: Expansion and their priorities are Build and Expand. Their characteristics are +1 Efficiency (those with a stake in the outcome work harder), -1 Morale (contracts must be enforced), +1 Industry (spirit of enterprise), and -1 Cohesion (indentured servitude). Starting pieces include 1 War Store (ARC assets), 1 Colony Pod, 2 'Formers, and 1 Militia Squad (veteran). The faction is unique in generating +1 water per season (the fruits of homesteading). Despite shaking social foundations, the New 2000 is poised to for high production: their population is two Talents and two Technicians.

The Pilgrims are able to pursue a special project to salvage or capture equipment and people that previously belonged to van de Graaf's expedition-within-an-expedition.

Narratively, the New 2000 are obsessed with owning and alienating land, bringing them into sharp conflict with the Hunters of Chiron. They also antagonize most other factions because of their belief that everybody has essentially stolen from them, especially any faction that claims authority from the U.N. Charter (looking at you, Peacekeepers).

The New 2000 is a good choice for players who want a balanced game of conflict and expansion.

Sources:
Oscar van de Graaf is represented by the actor Stephen Lang, as seen here in Avatar 2: The Way of Water (2022).

 

[Axis Kast]

​

Youth proved no obstacle for Alred Markham, one of the last, and youngest, Unity crew member selections. With vaunting pride in his accomplishments as a forensic data recovery specialist, Yucatec authorities aggressively pushed his candidacy despite a lengthy criminal record. At seventeen, Markham had helped to found Washout, a pseudo-survivalist collective of citizen phreakers who fished snippets of sensitive conversations from homemade wiretaps of government institutions and reconstructed their contents for subsequent public release.

U.N. psych screening brought out Markham's strong disdain for the anarchistic wing of his chosen profession. Why, he asked, had Sinder Roze declined to publish the results of her infamous trespasses into U.S. Government computer systems? To Markham, this was evidence of disqualifying unseriousness.

Had happier circumstances prevailed, Markham might have found his calling alongside the Peacekeeping Forces, whose ethic of service echoed his teenage aspirations. Instead, he fell into the hands of the Digital Oracle. By them, Markham's genius was turned to perpetrating his signature scam against the Data Angels, stealing recombinant routines that fueled the learning engines behind the seventh and eighth generations of the Oracle's governing AI, called FENCER and WILD GARDNER, respectively.

The Oracle FENCER AI's major shortcomings owed more to the analysts responsible for setting its parameters than to programmers like Markham. Anhaldt signed off on the assumption that faction leaders would assign less value to sick, wounded, and captive members. The Mediator's clients were repeatedly surprised by the attempts of the Gaians, Peacekeepers, and Tribals to liberate their brethren.


Morganites came hopefully to the Sawtooths in MY25, thinking to break the near-monopoly positions of the University and the Oracle, Pahlavi's primary trading partners.
​

Morgan came to rue his decision. The venture was a money sink. Massive outlays weren't enough to prop up Corporate Security, forcing Morgan to commit SafeHaven troops that performed only marginally better. Far too often, Ascendancy Legionnaires carried off the entire contents of fully-stocked depots. The Oracle presented different problems. Anhaldt's command economy had no obvious point-of-entry for Morganite luxury goods, and even if it had, the huge mass of his drones was held in egregious poverty. Zakharov's bases were open to an exchange but the faction's long-distance air service put them in contact with enough competitors to generate strong price competition. After two dismal years of loss to raiders, probe teams, and the tyranny of spoilage over long distance, the Morganites left for home.

Sources:
First image is "The AI War series" by Johnnyred777 on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

Second image is "Desert warband 3" by Asymoney on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

Third image is "watch tower" by albatheos on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

 

[Axis Kast]

Seasonal variations in the tides reduced sea levels in some parts of the southern Golgu coast by as much as 60m for up to five weeks a year. A Conclavist surveyor uses a drone to scout for mineral deposits.​

It is a historical curiosity that many significant natural discoveries on Planet were made by the Lord's Conclave, but if the Gaians placed themselves at risk mostly to understand, and the Hunters mostly to admire, Believer leadership saw this accumulation of knowledge as a kind of taking-possession, while the faction's rank-and-file were often only interested in the practical wealth their teams discovered.

The quantity of Believer expeditions was a reflection of their desperation, while the extreme range they covered spoke to the success of Miriam's studied, and celebrated, neutrality.

One intriguing result of the Believers' experience in Golgu's tidal basins was the confirmation that water mitigated fungal spore activity. (The same conclusion may have been reached even earlier by the New State but was not widely disclosed.) Submerged xenofungus was harmless to humans unless touched by bare skin. Xenofungal coral samples provided the first opportunity for human scientists to study the plant's chemical and psycho-reactive properties and were a crucial step in the development of more complete countermeasures against psychic assault. [1]

The Lord's Font, Planet's largest oil refinery, elicited loud objections in Planetary Council and was the target of much foul play from both Morganites and Gaians. Lady Skye warned grimly that destruction of the Monsoon Jungle would have catastrophic consequences for planetary habitability. The argument found few takers in either scientific or political corners, but security-minded leaders were much worried about the displacement of the numerous SMACER colonies that took advantage of the Jungle's comparatively easy living.


Exiles like these Neo-Spartans found that salvage was usually more profitable than traditional forms of economic activity in the useless territories where they hid out to lick their wounds unmolested. Unity's half-buried cooling fins were at first mistaken for alien technology--though, in truth, much of the starship's technology base ran far ahead of what factions could provide for themselves even a century after Planetfall.

The intricate moisture-mesh water generation systems of Heraclia, a wonder to compare with the utter destitution in which the Neo-Spartans otherwise languished, were patterned on heat-exchangers found in this debris field.​

Sources:
First image is "Cosmic Fungi Exploration" by Vaik Nay on ArtStation.

[1] Prior insights, such as the fungicidal utility of fire, had been gleaned purely from the testimony of afflicted road crews and base security officers.

Second image is "Relic Refinery" by Rahul Chandwaney on ArtStation.

 

[Axis Kast]

The Racks at Matsar, a minor settlement of the Legacy Initiative established in MY17.
​

The pagoda-like towers evoked wild speculation. The Gaians jeered Annunciator Metrion’s bad taste in pseudo-naturalistic architecture. Colonel Santiago had her chief of staff draw up operational plans to neutralize what she felt certain must be the site of a rail gun: why else the two dozen cooling towers? Actually, the Racks were just that: turntables for Unity’s largest-diameter data reels, and the colony itself a library.

A Data Service technician fights the mainframe to restore emergency power in Unity’s forward compartments.​

The peculiar dress of Data Services was an affront to other factions—a clear violation of the ancient principle that the eyes were windows onto the soul.

There were many reasons for the encounter suits. The simplest was poverty. It was in no one’s interest to set aside valuable resources for the sake of mere comfort. Another motivation was anonymity vis-à-vis other factions—one they believed was an advantage in searching for Than’s killers. A third reason had to do with the suits’ effectiveness. The onboard scrubbers processed pollens in addition to the bad atmosphere—so effectively, in fact, that the Legacy avoided even a single case of Xenofungal madness, and there emerged a movement within that society which called for pacts to be affirmed with the Shapers so that the Legacy might never have to doff its masks ‘ere Planet’s natural biome was fully eradicated.

A modular hydraulic pump station belonging to the Bourse. Caranomus Sand Caps, Southern Golgu.​

The Bourse called for a semi-regulated marketplace, overseen by the Planetary Council, as an alternative to the “open” trade environment demanded by the Morganites. In their filings, Bourse appellants accused Nwabudike Morgan of monopolistic practices and inhumane treatment of his drones, charges that were entirely true. The CEO called the Bourse sore losers and Johnny-come-Latelies who expected consular enforcement to press their substandard products directly into consumers’ hands, making up for frankly inferior distribution networks.

The Bourse proposal gained much favor with those who feared Morgan’s power, and in time, there was even a loud call to leave the Ohm standard. Critics said using energy as money was a corrupting choice, for a living thing would then be tempted to sell itself for short-term gain. Planet’s exchanges were rife with examples of drones taking credits in return for declining rations, storing data in unused portions of their own brains, and even their own body heat. How long, Morgan’s detractors asked, before people contracted to be recycled at some agreed future time?

Sources:
First image is “Sci-Fi Factories” by aaronsimscompany on DeviantArt.

Second image is Sci Fi Airport -8” by Najeeb-Alnajjar on DeviantArt.

Third image is An Outerspace Drilling Platform On An Alien Planet” by Mixasko on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.