FORECAST/ UNION IN 5016U GALSIM UEB: UNION BCA: BUREAU OF UBO/NTM: UNION UIB: UNION ECONOMIC COLONIAL BUREAU OF INTELLIGENCE BUREAU ADMINISTRATION ORBITAL AND NON- BUREAU TERRESTRIAL MANAGEMENT UOB: UNION OIT: OFFICE OF OCUP: OFFICE OF OMNINETWORK INTERSTELLAR CARTOGRAPHY TRANSPORTATION AND UNIVERSAL BUREAU POSITIONING them as command imperatives to administrators, who recognition of an administrator’s role would jeop‐ then work with local rulers and governments to find a ardize their life or mission. Of course, these cases are best-fit integration based on local conditions. rare – attacking an administrator is a sure way to draw Union's punitive attention. The administrators are vast in number, but a rare sight in most of the Diaspora, as they usually deal directly with Administrators are pulled from all over the galaxy rulers or ruling councils. To the average Diasporan or according to esoteric, exacting criteria. They are Cosmopolitan, administrators are enigmatic, dangerous, typically chosen as children and trained from an early and appealing figures. They travel with NHP companions age alongside a unique NHP – one built specifically to (typically embodied in a retinue of attendant subaltern pair with them. This training takes place at satellite forms), help steer the course of civilizations, and are campuses scattered across the galaxy, but over the Union; for most people, they are the manifest presence of decades of their apprenticeship, all administrators a ruler that is profoundly distant, if not entirely mythic. The spend some time on Cradle – an experience meant to word of administrators seemingly supersedes the will of be an acute reminder of humanity’s origins. kings, presidents, popes, and all the rest. Upon graduation and notification of posting, adminis‐ Unlike most representatives of Union’s hegemony, trators choose names local to the cultures in which they administrators do not integrate with the societies in will be embedded. Since they must engage in interstellar which they are embedded. They are meant to be travel, their old identities are declared dead, formally visible – to be easily identifiable markers of Union’s retired as part of the graduation ceremony. authority. However they express their gender, all administrators wear the same uniform: a clean suit in Together with their subaltern NHPs, newly minted dark Union Gray, their rank as administrator denoted administrators head out into the galaxy to give by a silver pip on the collar. Their NHP-piloted subal‐ counsel, file reports back to the UAD, and ensure their terns adopt a similar matte gray livery. This visibility is host state develops according to the missives they profitable for Union, save for those cases in which receive from Cradle. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [351]
UNION NAVAL DEPARTMENT UNION DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE UN AND HUMAN RIGHTS The Union Naval Department (colloquially shortened to UN, for Union Navy) is the largest and most DOJ/HR, OR THE NEW DIVISION powerful fighting force in the populated galaxy – at The Union Department of Justice and Human Rights least on paper. It is subordinate to CentComm, is a department new to Union as of the founding of although it takes strategic and logistic direction from ThirdComm, cobbling together a mix of responsibil‐ GALSIM as well. ities, jurisdictions, and obligations under a single, broad mission: identify areas of the galaxy where the Union’s navy is a sprawling, carefully administered Utopian Pillars are under threat of being violated, and organization that projects Cradle's power to all intervene on a case-by-case basis. Among its corners of the populated galaxy and beyond. It does personnel, the DoJ/HR is referred to as the New this with a (relatively) small corps of Union-flagged Division – a dual reference to the general youth of its capital and supercapital ships, supported by vast personnel and its (relatively) short history as a depart‐ fleets of standardized, integrated auxiliary ships ment. drawn from the navies of Union’s subject states. The New Division’s mission leads to an understand‐ Beyond the comparatively few ships it directly ably broad portfolio that encompasses everything commands, the UN is an administrative and diplo‐ from first contact with isolated cultures to critical matic body that shares a healthy institutional rivalry humanitarian response, direct action intervention, with the Union Administrative Department: while the truth and justice hearings, and universe reconstruc‐ UAD relies on administrators to accomplish its diplo‐ tion. This work demands a type of person common in matic goals, the UN relies on a corps of naval liaisons the Galactic Core but not often found in other depart‐ to accomplish its logistical objectives. Naval liaisons ments: young people eager for rapid action – policy, are officers of equivalent rank to administrators, with legal, or literal. Within Union’s other departments, few special imperative authority in times of crisis. Unless it match the fervor with which the staff of the DoJ/HR is demanded by their local culture, administrators approach their work; conversely, few – if any – of don’t carry weapons; naval liaisons, on the other Union’s other departments can match the DoJ/HR’s hand, carry sidearms and wear uniforms of Naval burnout rate. Black, clearly marking them as part of Union’s military. Burnout is a fact of the job at the DoJ/HR. The New Liaisons are only sent to states that are capable of Division is the terminus for the galaxy’s sins: every human building or adapting ships to UN specifications and rights violation, every distress call, every cry for help finds classifications. They guide these states in production, its way, eventually, to the DoJ/HR. To counteract this training, and the theory of naval combat, with the goal of burnout, frontline personnel and caseworkers are often establishing a well-trained auxiliary naval corps. Once surprised with “delivery days”, unexpected deliveries this is complete, the UN further integrates that corps from their commanding officers that contain collected into its command structure, offering interstellar reports from successfully resolved cases and personal contracts to crews and corps seeking to progress messages from people their efforts have directly or indir‐ further in rank. Those who remain are assigned to anti- ectly helped. piracy, peacekeeping, and police actions in their local system. The DoJ/HR’s mission is put into practice through a rich symbiotic relationship with Union’s administrative Administrators tend to view liaisons as impositions on and naval departments. Using access to the broad their diplomatic mission – bureaucrats who come in base of intelligence and human assets provided by after the hard work is done and demand a military the UAD and the UN – as well as its own caseworkers tithe from the administrator’s host state. Liaisons tend – the New Division identifies two types of missions: to view administrators as overly precious, possessive critical assistance and universe-building. bureaucrats with an inflated sense of worth. Critical assistance missions (CAMs) take place when impending or ongoing violation events necessitate rapid, direct action to intervene and prevent further human cost. These warrant the intervention of one of the DoJ/HR’s liberator teams (LTs), institutionalized successors to ThirdComm’s early Interstellar Solid‐ arity Brigades. For most New Division personnel, CAMs are “where the action is at” – that is, they are violent confrontations with slavers3, despots, tyrants, [352] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
and so on. LTs are commonly composed of Metropol‐ UNION SCIENCE BUREAU UNION IN 5016U itan volunteers working in tandem with local sympathetic factions. Their missions call for rapid USB movement, adogmatic warfare, and long-term The Union Science Bureau is the central adminis‐ deployment; not only do they intervene, but they trative body for universities, colleges, scientific remain following the conclusion of hostilities, helping institutions, and think tanks throughout Union space. to transition liberated communities into stable political Ostensibly an apolitical entity, the USB works outside entities appropriate for the local culture. and parallel to CentComm’s chain of command, though it is subject to some oversight from The DoJ/HR’s LTs are tight-knit, professional strike- CentComm and GALSIM. and-support units. They employ a liberation-focused approach: once targets are identified, force is valued The most common site of interaction between the public over diplomacy, and their prime objective is to eman‐ and the USB is its exhausting list of colleges, universities, cipate and enfranchise enslaved peoples at the and public schools – however, it is most commonly expense of their masters. Their tactical doctrines represented in media in the form of the far-field team emphasize either infiltration and agitation or direct (FFT) – popularly called “rangers”. Flying their iconic confrontation, depending on the situation. Ranger-class nearlight ships, FFTs are small parties of scientists and support staff responsible for venturing to Universe-building missions (UBMs) require a less never-before-seen worlds, exploring uncanny or anom‐ immediate response. A common joke among LTs is alous interstellar phenomena, and all manner of other that anything that doesn’t involve a mass grave quali‐ fieldwork involved in scouting new worlds. fies as a UBM. They’re not wrong, though such an assessment isn’t always accurate. UBMs typically FFTs are made up of romantics, wanderers, and take place in response to Pillar violations that are loners, alongside passionate scientists, technicians, “soft”, though no less criminal: exploitation, denial of philosophers, and engineers of all disciplines. Their basic services, totalitarian or fascistic drift, and so on. missions are dangerous, often requiring long-term UBMs involve slow intervention on the part of DoJ/HR stasis and relativistic travel into unexplored systems caseworkers, local experts, and so on. not connected to the blink network – the data returned is invaluable, more than worth the risk. Because the DoJ/HR’s portfolio straddles the purviews of both the UN and the UAD, many New Although the popularity of rangers in romanticized Division operations involve resources from both of the omninet dramas drives USB recruitment, they make other departments. In such cases, the New Division up a minority of USB personnel. The vast majority of has the power to deputize naval and administrative USB staff are employed in terrestrial and orbital personnel, vessels, and materiel. education centers, laboratories, and fabrication sites as researchers, engineers, designers, and techni‐ 3 Although slavery is now strictly prohibited cians. The accessibility and secrecy of these under ThirdComm, it was once endorsed institutions vary: most operate in the public eye, with with special exception by SecComm, which doors wide open; by contrast, the campuses where viewed flash and facsimile clones as property the most secret and sensitive work takes place are rather than people. In addition to a number of hidden or otherwise inaccessible to those without other grievances that triggered ThirdComm’s clearance. revolution, the abolishment of SecComm’s endorsement of chattel and economic bondage was one of the revolutionaries’ primary demands. The DoJ/HR oversees all active and ongoing emancipation missions. Before its founding, the DoJ/HR’s predecessors, the Interstellar Solidarity Brigades, developed a holistic liberation-to-inte‐ gration program meant not only to liberate enslaved peoples, but to settle them, enfranchise them, address wealth redistribution, and support them throughout the recovery process. Now formally codified, legally supported, and bolstered by ongoing review by ThirdComm, the DoJ/HR’s liberator teams boast a near perfect success rate in emancipatory actions. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [353]
UNION ECONOMIC BUREAU and the BCA. Accordingly, the size of the bureau has increased while its mission scope has narrowed to UEB managing new colonial charters, private and public. The Union Economic Bureau tracks and adjusts the With the increasing largesse granted to the UEB and the value of manna, evaluates consumer goods, and has corpro-states it oversees, the BCA has become the some jurisdiction over omninet and blink network primary body for granting colonial charters and self-de‐ affairs. It also plays a significant role in dealing with termination rights to corpro-flagged colonial missions. and legitimizing galactic-standard manufacturers and corpro-states For example, several advisory positions In contrast to the UAD, the BCA maintains a portfolio on the board of GMS are held ex-officio by UEB of worlds that have no native or indigenous sapient representatives, giving the bureau a say in its stra‐ populations; in cases of recontact, BCA flags the tegic direction and, as a direct consequence, a say in world for review by the UAD and DoJ/HR, then issues determining the galactic standards and codes. a blanket moratorium on colonial charters, assuming the indigenous human population has first, total, and More broadly, too, the UEB is responsible for regu‐ perpetual rights to their world. lating and contracting with corpro-states. Lesser known is its secondary, clandestine mission to gather UNION BUREAU OF ORBITAL AND intelligence on the galaxy’s largest corpro-states, suppliers, and fabricators. NON-TERRESTRIAL MANAGEMENT Starting as a minor department under FirstComm, the UBO/NTM UEB grew exponentially under SecComm – eventually The Union Bureau of Orbital and Non-Terrestrial spearheading the implementation of manna and char‐ Management specializes in the management of non- tering the first official corpro-states, recognizing their terrestrial habitats and all relevant legislation. As part of sovereignty over land and product. The UEB’s this mission, it manages security and aide services on increasing consolidation of power is a point of friction for all non-terrestrial stations, including blink gates. The CentComm; as ThirdComm’s rule has grown more UBO/NTM is also the primary court for disputes assured over the centuries, and the first and second concerning non-terrestrial natural or artificial habitats waves of post-revolution representatives have been and stations in interstellar or non-local space. replaced by new members, newer members have pushed to liberalize some of Union’s components. The The UBO/NTM has two subordinate bodies: the vehicle for this liberalization is the UEB, despite the Office of Interstellar Transportation (OIT) and the growing number of high-level UEB personnel who Office of Cartography and Universal Positioning espouse policies sympathetic to, and in some cases (OCUP). aligned entirely with Anthrochauvinist revival ideologies. OIT is responsible for managing, planning, and main‐ UNION OMNINETWORK BUREAU taining the entirety of the blink network, installation of blink gates, and structuring safe passage codes for blink UOB travel. It also sets and certifies safety standards for ships The Union Omninetwork Bureau oversees construc‐ seeking interstellar licenses, and is the primary court for tion, logistics, maintenance, and policy concerning any cases involving temporal complexities – such as the omninet, omni-connected devices, and media those concerning subjective/real age and death – and carried on the omninet. It works with a mandate to interstellar shipping disputes. ensure that the omninet is spread across the galaxy – free, convenient, and accessible. OCUP is responsible for surveying and mapping visible space, maintaining specific records on stellar influence UNION BUREAU OF COLONIAL zones, updating and revising local-space sovereignty codes, mapping stellar phenomena, and myriad other ADMINISTRATION tasks related to the making of maps and charts. BCA The Bureau of Colonial Administration is responsible for granting and maintaining colonial licenses as well as overseeing a range of other territorial matters. It sets colonial priority zones, manages private charter licensing, and is the first court for colonial disputes. The BCA was once a subordinate office of the Union Colonial Mission (UCM), before ThirdComm broke the UCM into three different entities: the DoJ/HR, the UAD, [354] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
OFF-BOOK ENTITIES UNION INTELLIGENCE BUREAU UNION IN 5016U The two organizations listed here, while official appa‐ UIB ratuses of Union, are considered top secret bureaus. The Union Intelligence Bureau (UIB) is Union’s They are included here to provide rich narrative terri‐ deniable asset and dark operations group: a broad- tory, but the likelihood that your players would portfolio, clandestine intelligence division that keeps encounter them or have knowledge of them is tabs on entities, states, phenomena, organizations, exceedingly low. These bureaus are secrets of the and movements that GALSIM determines to highest order –– public discovery of their existence represent major existential threats to humanity. would be a crisis on an unprecedented scale. CentComm only has an advisory-oversight role to the UIB; ultimate decision-making falls first to FORECAST/GALSIM GALSIM, then to the UIB itself. GALSIM Officially, the UIB does not exist; even CentComm is Forecast/GALSIM (typically abbreviated to GALSIM) is not privileged to know how it staffs itself, nor the full one of Union’s off-book bureaus, responsible for over‐ extent of its missions. seeing the Oracle Chorus installation on Mars’s Mare Boreum. The entire bureau is contained to this facility, which is staffed by a city’s worth of personnel. At the heart of the Oracle Chorus installation is a deliberative body that guides Union’s grand strategy and growth in pursuit of its mission to ensure humanity’s long-term survival: the Five Voices. The Voices are five sovereign- class bicameral minds, unique NHPs held in a metafold blinkspace pocket beneath the surface of Mars: Command, Muse, Impetus, Burden, and Watcher. Together, the Five Voices act in concert – as a congress, in teams, and as individuals – to run iter‐ ative, near-perfect forecasts of the galaxy at intervals with the intention of advising Union in the manage‐ ment of galactic affairs. In many ways, GALSIM is more akin to a monastic order than a branch of government. Its esoteric mission necessitates a certain dogmatic approach. Owing to the absolute necessity of keeping GALSIM a deeply buried secret, the staff and personnel of the Oracle Chorus facility generally serve for life; upon retiring their service, they live at a nearby satellite campus. Even retired personnel often assist with interpretation when requested, instruct new staff, and work on divergent or anomalous iteratives. Advancement through the ranks at GALSIM – and recruitment of new staff – is based on favor and affinity with the Five Voices; empathic connection with one or more of the Voices dictates assignment, trans‐ lation priority, and iterative liberty. The existence of GALSIM, along with that of its various subordinate bodies, is top secret: classified to all except for approved members of CentComm and the directors of the USB, UAD, UN, and Union Intelli‐ gence Bureau (UIB), and their immediate staff. As a result of the need for secrecy, GALSIM’s facilities are kept decidedly low-tech to prevent external hacking and network invasion attempts – not that its existence is known by potentially hostile or interested parties. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [355]
VIOLENCE IN LANCER WHY WE (STILL) FIGHT In the present day, Diasporan states exhibit a wide range of governing bodies and organizational ideolo‐ As you read about Union and its history, you likely gies. At the most progressive end of the spectrum, noticed some hedging in the language we’ve used to the process of integrating into ThirdComm’s Union is explain core concepts, conceits, and realities: “usually”, a copacetic one defined by translation, diplomacy, “most”, “often”, “almost”, and so on. This hedging and shared understanding. For these states, Union’s marks the gaps in the young golden age, the places arrival is greeted with celebration, and integration into where the galaxy doesn’t conform to Union’s Utopian the whole of humanity is a welcome event – a broad‐ Pillars – either through ignorance or outright rejection. ening of horizons beyond what had once been thought to be the limits of human potential. In 5016u, humanity is still plagued by war and oppres‐ sion at the fringes of Core space. No matter how hard In some cases, integration is unwelcome. This is Union and its proxies work, ThirdComm’s mission is a when – as a last resort – conflict occurs. When titanic undertaking. To lift all of humanity into a post- resistant or outright hostile states respond to Union’s capital, post-scarcity golden age is a project that is representatives with direct violence (or respond viol‐ always practiced, never complete – even the wildest ently to internal indigenous states or factions that are of gardens must be maintained if it is to be a garden. receptive to Union), only then does Union initiate an The consequences of the wars that founded Union, to escalating, proportional program of direct action. say nothing of the revolution that founded the Third Committee, continue to ripple out from Cradle; time To the moderates and left-of-center interventionists in and distance both make the project one perpetually in CentComm, direct military intervention against the process of implementation. Diasporan states is considered off the table until all other options have been exhausted. Broad military This does not mean Union’s project is without end, campaigns – actions in which the navy and auxiliaries that iterative, non-linear progress is not worthwhile or are called into action, as opposed to emancipatory that contradictory actions on the part of Union and its actions taken by liberation teams – are seldom proxies undo all such progress; it simply means that welcomed with celebration; rather, activation of these there is always work to be done. For Union, utopia is forces indicates multiple dramatic diplomatic failures, not a static state. It is a status that is held, main‐ usually with consequences for the bureaucrats tained, and improved upon – always. Owing in large involved in the breakdown. part to the vacuum left in the expansion, retreat, and eventual toppling of SecComm, the diaspora of EXTRA-UNION CONFLICTS humanity has developed divergent from Union's influ‐ ence for nearly five hundred years – an expected More common than Union interventions are planetary consequence of ThirdComm’s revolution. or system-local conflicts between Diasporan states and, increasingly, conflicts involving corpro-states – The seeds of this divergence were planted during the latter of which either sees corpro-states pitted SecComm’s millennia-long campaign of cultural against each other, or corpro-states and their private assimilation, territorial expansion, and attempts to armies facing off against nation-states. organize humanity under a single banner. The Diaspora inherited its dominant ideological touch‐ Conflicts between rival Diasporan states are often stones from this project, along with the aggressive well underway by the time Union (or an organization motivations of capital, colonization, and conquest. acting on its behalf) makes first contact. These can While some of the last states created by this expan‐ range from civil conflicts to multi-state wars isolated sion period organized under ThirdComm’s early drafts to single worlds, to interplanetary conflicts – rare, but of the Utopian Pillars, most Diasporan states could not unheard of. Whatever their scale, these conflicts not shake the compelling power afforded by their local are generally motivated by ideology, but can involve forms of Second Committee ideology. Anthrochau‐ resource or territory disputes as well. vinism, it turned out, was broadly popular if people were not presented with, educated according to, and For conflicts involving corpro-states and Diasporan lifted up by less reactionary ideologies: the Second states, the animating events almost always involve Committee had no interest in such education, as its resources or land. The rise of corpro-states and other primary concern was building a united humanity in destabilizing actors has intensified competition over their image, not simply a united humanity. the rare elements needed to fabricate the fantastic technologies upon which humanity now relies. Some [356] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
corpro-states hire mercenaries to accompany their Raids in interstellar shipping lanes are risky, as the VIOLENCE IN LANCER claims teams on these ventures, while others rely on location and time of potential attacks are known to all their own standing armies. parties. Far from the protection afforded by orbital debris, asteroid fields, satellites, and high-orbit traffic, Conflicts pitting corpro-states against each other these pirates rely on a more advanced suite of tend to be skirmishes – small, clandestine engage‐ systems, sensors, technical packages, and tactics. ments over important persons, locations, and facilities that take place between small teams of Interdiction of a nearlight ship bound to or from a highly trained agents and expensive mercenaries; blink gate means meeting it at like speed – thus, larger engagements are usually the result of labor pirates engaging in interstellar raids typically organizing and local revolutions against (typically) off- command vessels far more advanced than those world corpro-states. used by orbital pirates. These high-speed actions require significant investment in navigation suites and Corpro-states occasionally move beyond industrial personnel, as well as the ability to spoof, misdirect, or espionage to engage in armed conflicts with each otherwise confound the nearlight/sublight proximity other. These clashes normally begin when an attempt and active sensors of potential targets. In addition to to acquire a world spills out of control and they power output and navigational systems sufficient to usually end with outright warfare across and above match their targets, pirates attempting interdictions the disputed world as the various parties attempt to typically mount weapons that emphasize accuracy secure their holdings. and precision – their payout is only worthwhile if the goods, vessels, or people they’re attempting to steal Any of the conflicts discussed here may demand the are intact and functional, or could be made so with use of mechs. These are the places lancers are likely minimal repairs. to find themselves when their commanders issue deployment orders. Engagements happen fast and with little warning. The mil-spec technologies used to spoof signals, PIRACY misdirect sensors, and conceal ships easily over‐ whelm the sensors of civilian and merchant ships. Piracy remains outlawed by ThirdComm, as it has been Often, the first warning a ship receives of an since Union’s creation. The act of piracy is defined as a impending attack is when its impact sensor – a predatory assault on individuals or groups, with the simple, dedicated system – issues a proximity or intention of sowing terror, abducting people, and/or likely-trajectory alert. stealing goods. This generally occurs outside of Core space, and as one of two primary types of piracy: This alert usually signifies incoming fire, targeting privateering, which is unlicensed or otherwise sensitive locations: drives, life-support subsystems, grayspace mercenary work sponsored by state or non- crew quarters, and weapon magazines or batteries. state entities that targets flagged opposition or civilian This first volley almost always uses precision ships, stations, and/or populations; and wolfpack weapons designed to pierce bulkheads and fragment piracy – assault, robbery, and abduction performed by on contact with O2 – soft-target killers, reliant on groups of stateless or counter-state actors. shrapnel and combustion – or massive systemic attacks meant to cripple ships or take priority admin‐ Following ThirdComm’s restructuring of the Union istrative control. Navy, Union has depended on constituent states for active and immediate defense of targeted ships and Once a target has been disabled or its speed matched stations. Union’s main concern isn’t the act of piracy – preventing the need for dangerous maneuvers while itself, but addressing the foundational concerns that approaching light speed – then the attackers assume draw people to it: underlying economic conditions in direct control, physically or electronically. the Diaspora that force resource scarcity, and the ideological and political factors that would push Interstellar piracy is the domain of dangerous, dedic‐ groups towards piracy in the first place. ated professionals, often Cosmopolitans with naval backgrounds and access to a wealth of experience Acts of piracy usually occur in two places: interstellar and technology gathered over long years of piracy. shipping lanes, where pirates know nearlight ships, Interstellar pirates are rare, given the experience and freighters, and yachts will pass by on their way to or tech required for interstellar travel and piracy. On from local blink gates; and in low-to-medium orbit account of their constant exposure to the effects of around distal worlds, where shuttles and corvettes relativistic and gravitational time dilation, they often can be caught as they transport goods and people attain a legendary status among their hunters, from the surface to waiting ships or stations. victims, and fans. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [357]
Orbital and local-system piracy is decidedly more Including pirates in your campaign can be a fruitful regional – generally the domain of local pirates, resist‐ way to introduce regional politics or a compelling ance groups looking to disrupt their targets’ supply villain (or anti-hero). Moreover, they make for straight‐ lines, or well-funded criminal organizations seeking to forward random encounters, persistent threats, or diversify their portfolios and gain notoriety. foils for the players and their group. See the PIRATE template on page 330 for some special systems and While interstellar piracy is elegant, expensive, storied, abilities pirate NPCs might use. and rare, orbital piracy is messy, low-tech, and far more common. Orbital pirates rarely utilize subline or SPACE COMBAT capital ships in their engagements, preferring the maneuverability, atmospheric capabilities, anonymity, Space combats involving whole fleets are incredibly and disposability of shuttles, corvettes, and light rare, as the sheer scale of industry and organization freighters. The name of the game for orbital and local- needed to field proper fleets is only found among a system pirates is to strike fast, grab what is valuable, handful of states and entities. When it does happen, it and escape, either to a planetside safehouse or to a is elegant at a distance and brutal up close. nearby moon or station where they can hide. Against the stark black of deep space, long silhou‐ Orbital piracy often begins as a ground-to-orbit ettes drift in tightening gyres, maneuvering to dodge engagement: powerful mobile antennae blast a torpedoes and kinetic kill-clouds tens of thousands of target with bombard code and whiteout attacks. kilometers distant. Energy beams streak across the These attacks overwhelm sensors, comms, and void, invisible to the naked eye and shimmering only navigation suites with overwhelming, single-use where they impact their targets. system spikes – systemic weapons developed by black-hat coders, designed for simple, limited use – To an observer, this combat between fleets-of-the-line to cover the pirates’ advance. is silent, sterile. Long capital ships appear to spin thousands of kilometers apart, closing slowly as their Formerly mothballed fighters, converted freighters, orbits align. Clouds of glittering metal, chaff, and slag armed and armored shuttles, and myriad other ships bloom into the darkness, catching the light of distant follow the whiteout attack, firing in kill-cloud, mass-helix, stars. The blue torches of torpedoes trace silent, or other common ballistic patterns. These attack wings fading lines in the night, escorted by teardrop fighters feature a ramshackle mix of reusable fighters and short- and targeted debris. range transports – crash taxis, tin cans, party busses, trojans, and so on – jury-rigged to deliver squads of But for those engaged, there is no elegance, no subalterns, mechs, or organic marines. These single- grace. There is just the long, persistent terror of use transports are often little more than debris shields space combat. mounted on frontal racks – armature structures that secure their passengers with magnetic clamps, straps, Days before crews can even see their opponents on or handholds. Fired from larger ships or self-propelled, raw optics, the first torpedoes, kill-clouds, spoofers, these vessels crash into targets and engage their solid- shrouds, and subaltern kinetics have already been state boosters, throwing their victims off course and launched. The moment sensors pick up a distant foe, preventing disengagement. Durability over multiple pilots, officers, and crew members are roused from engagements is not a priority: if successful, the pirates stasis and ordered to begin preparations. Massive, will use their haul to buy new scrapper ships, or convert single-use kinetic and energy weapons begin their captured vessels for use in the next raid – after they’ve acceleration cycles, spooling up for their perfect shots. been stripped for parts, of course. At that point, the flagship’s NHP executive officer Current examples of infamous pirates include dedi‐ comes online, paired with the commanding officer but cated revolutionary groups like the Ungratefuls, the given free rein to partition and duplicate themselves Own Hands –– liberated Diasporans who haunt into subsentient subjectivities to better advise and Constellar space and act as a thorn in the side of SSC coordinate all of their ship’s systems. Tactical –– and the Golden Plague, a notorious pirate fleet led command for the fleet is given to the flagship NHP, by the Mei Ling, a former scientist-turned-pirate lord. while strategic and kill command remain the purview of individual commanding officers. Union’s code of stellar conduct demands any ship must respond upon receiving an SOS hail or face legal penal‐ The NHPs for each ship in the fleet, carrier group, ties for shirking the legal duty to attempt to rescue battlegroup, or patrol construct a virtual war room – a survivors. After initial responses, follow-up typically falls fleet legion – networking into a hybrid one/many-mind to proximal, spaceflight-capable states or Union entities. to ensure total integration over the battlespace. All [358] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
VIOLENCE IN LANCER SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [359]
commanding officers are party to the information and Landers, crowded with marines and mechs, have a recommendations that issue from the fleet legion, and dangerous mission: crash into enemy ships, disem‐ tactical feeds are distributed to subordinates on a bark, and capture or disable them from the inside. need-to-know basis in accordance with their rank and Most soldiers involved in boarding actions will see tactical/strategic role. direct combat; many of them won’t come back, assuming their unit comes back at all. The first commands issued after the initial volley concern maneuvers and ship systems: avoid By now, the fleets are engaged and combat continues in incoming fire, communicate with allied ships, begin a shrinking window. The unpredictability gap – the time closing the unpredictability gap. Finally, all hands are during which NHPs and pilots can still outmaneuver ordered to prepare for combat. Crewmembers hustle their opponents – shrinks faster and faster. to don null-atmosphere equipment, lock into their battle stations, push combat stims, cycle all loaders, Ship-to-ship combat increases in intensity as the and link to the fleet’s legion. ships of the line circle toward each other. Close Mid- and close-range “dumb” kinetic cloud weapons open Along flight decks and inside carrier blisters, alarms up, hurling thousands of projectiles in the direction of howl as pilots and technicians hurry to finish pre-flight predicted enemy headings. Some short-cycle checks and procedures. The techs load ordinance batteries open fire at this point. Their beams carve and payloads onto fighters and bombers while pilots terrible lines of invisible energy through the black, and crews prep systems, uploading the latest tele‐ scattering off the projected shielding and ablative metry data, battle reports, flight plans, and obstacle armor of larger ships, and detonating smaller ships reports. If there are mech chassis and marines without sufficient defenses. aboard, they hurry to their landers. Meanwhile, systemic weapons pound away at fleet Then, commanders and their NHPs scramble fighters, legions and the systems of individual ships in bombers, and landers. Corvettes and gunboats, attempts to gain a tactical advantage. Spoof probes destroyers and cruisers – subline ships – begin attack and shrouds, launched early in the engagement, runs. Frigates, battleships, tender ships, and carriers activate, at last, pinging enemy sensors and comms hold their lines and continue both systemic and arrays with hostile code and creating false signals to kinetic countermeasures, protecting the larger ships distract weapons and pilots, trick nervous from any projectile or vessel that gets close. commanders into early nearlight ejections, and draw enemy fire toward empty space. Subaltern kinetics At this point, the kill zone between the two fleets has inform their master systems of final trajectories and been established: the shortest distance between plunge toward their targets, triggering their payloads them, which is also the area of highest projectile and on impact or in proximity. lance density. The smaller batteries on the kilometers- long capital ships begin to fire. Meanwhile, their spinal Legions face each other down; NHPs engaging in guns charge. electronic warfare with weapons esoteric and incom‐ prehensible to human observers, hurling ontological Fighters fly as escorts tasked with defending landers, and anti-solipsistic paradox weapons back and forth corvettes, bombers, and gunboats from other fighter on a plane of battle removed from human experience. wings, torpedo flights, and subline ships. They chart flight paths through the kill-clouds and anti-ship Finally, at a range too close for evasive maneuvers, weapons, crossing the shrinking no-man’s-land to long-cycle batteries open up, hurling tremendous, harass enemy capital ships and force them to deal demi-solar particle lances or many-gigaton kinetics at with threats at all ranges. When the first fighters their targets. To survive a hit from a long-cycle battery, launch, it will take them roughly a day to cross no- the commanders of capital ships must begin carefully man’s-land. balancing their power budget, shifting between angled shielding and weapon power. Some Bombers and subline ships aim to engage capital commanders forego heavy shielding at this point, as a ships at a close enough range that their targets can’t square hit from any long-cycle weapon is likely to maneuver to avoid their payloads. These ships are ignore it anyway. relatively small and agile targets, deceptively dangerous units that present a very real threat to any capital ships that let them get too close. [360] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
This is the battle’s climax – the moment when the The remains of the battle are left to the victors. Any VIOLENCE IN LANCER unpredictability gap closes. Due to the tremendous survivors are rounded up and prisoners dealt with. power needed to fire a capital ship’s spinal cannons, Ships that have been scuttled or captured are each ship of the line is likely to have one chance only boarded by skeleton crews and pointed toward to hit their target. Cooling and recharging a ship’s friendly shipyards, where they can be repurposed; main guns – kinetic or energy – simply takes too much capital ships are simply too large to be printed. time. The commanders of these ships know this, and Reports are relayed back to central command. NHPs hold on to their single shot as long as they can: they drop out of legionspace, unlinking and winding down must hit and must score a clean impact, or they’ll be to their non-combat parameters. Objectives are exposed to an enemy that has all the time in the world assessed and adjusted, and fleets either continue to take the killing blow. their campaigns, retire, or steam for friendly shipyards in search of repairs and replacements. At the same time, fighters and subline ships continue to buzz in angry swarms, locked in bitter wing- Thus, space combat has two forms: from a distance, combat with their enemy counterparts. Marines and silence; up close, the combat of titans and the indi‐ mechs fight wage grinding CQB and melee battles, viduals caught in the middle. Fleet engagements cost compartment-to-compartment, deck-to-deck, as thousands of lives. When fought near inhabited they struggle to take control of the ships on which worlds, moons, or stations, the cost can rise expo‐ they’ve landed on. Kill-cloud kinetics and point-de‐ nentially. Civilian casualties number in the millions; fense weapons pepper the flanks of great capital should Core worlds be engaged, the human cost can ships, tearing away superficial armors, blisters, and surpass billions. Less conventional tactics – such as distal chambers. Here and there along the line, accelerating asteroids and comets into planets – can batteries score direct hits, and the battlespace is prove more costly still. flooded with the brilliant micronovae of a capital ship’s cataclysmic death. In legionspace, NHPs tear Large-scale fleet combat of any type is (relatively) rare at their opponents’ fundamental senses of being – a and terrible. It represents the breakdown of a whole battle somehow more terrible than that occurring in sector, as systemic powers bring their considerable subjective space. productive and logistical capacity to bear against each other in quarrels over worlds and ideologies. Eventually, the battle ends when one side retreats or The result is never cheap. is eliminated. Smaller-scale fleet combat tends to involve warring Most ships of the line have a nearlight ejection drive states that share one world, or a world and its moon, capable of at least 0.9 c. At the start of the battle, and usually takes place in low orbit. Fleets ferrying conservative, nervous, or cautious captains might ground troops from one continent to another or begin to spool this system up so that it’s hot and ready escorting intercontinental and interstellar missiles to fire in an emergency. When triggered – at the order along their flight paths are perfect opportunities to of an NHP, or automatically within certain parameters – strike. The fleets involved in these battles are gener‐ the ejection drive suddenly shunts its ship .9 c, hurling ally made up of subline ships, corvettes, mounted it along a planned (or randomized) escape route. This mechs, and wings of fighters and bombers. It’s rare expeditious retreat is dangerous, taxing both systems for capital ships to engage in fleet-to-fleet combat in and personnel, but it’s better than death. low orbit unless they are supporting an invasion and striking ground targets. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [361]
ARMED FORCES For 3000 years, Union expanded and colonized space without the benefits of the blink network or the Across the Diaspora and in the interstitial voids where omninet, neither of which were created until after the the Cosmopolita transit the stars – in the shadow of Deimos Event. Drones and uncrewed interstellar the Utopian Pillars – war rears its bloody head. vehicles scouted on hundred-year increments – fired Violence between expansive, all-consuming corpro- toward distant targets, followed 100 years after arrival states, between despots and revolutionaries, by nearlight ships that were yet to be built, far-field between states, fills earthen graves and casts bodies teams yet to be born. into the cold black tomb of space. During the First Expansion Period, the First Commit‐ MECHANIZED CHASSIS tee’s expansionist imperative demanded that humanity spread out among the stars. Old colonies The cultural and battlefield dominance of mechanized and installations were waiting, ready to be reactiv‐ chassis can be attributed to two factors: rapid human ated. Union marked the growth of the Diaspora as expansion into space, and the conflicts that stemmed both a point of civilizational pride and a necessary from that expansion. step for the survival of the species. [362] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
Of course, humans aren’t built to survive hostile The conflict that took place on Hercynia prompted VIOLENCE IN LANCER worlds and hard vacuums. Ships and stations did a intense research and development into combat-cap‐ fine job of protecting people from vacuum, radiation, able and effective mechanized chassis. They became and the terrors of both deep space and dangerous a viable, all-round option for combat in all theaters atmospheres, but it was not enough to simply fly over and environments: on hard terrain, in zero-g, and in planets – they needed to be claimed. any other transitional spaces, a piloted mechanized chassis – a mech – could outperform and outman‐ Recognizing this problem, Union’s astrocartographers euver any other land-based attack option. and far-field directors issued a call for a standardized suit able to support medium-term livability that could Integrated into existing force-multiplication doctrines, be used for tactical, scientific, and civilian purposes in mechanized chassis adopted a cavalry role – space and on alien worlds. Universally compatible, scouting, dismounted combat, and hammer-to-anvil powered, hardened against the elements, and shock warfare. Their flexibility was valued by comfortable to wear, this hardsuit soon became an commanders frustrated at tracked vehicles’ vulnerab‐ indispensable piece of hardware for anyone leaving ility to terrain. Despite the simplicity and lower profile the bounds of Cradle. of tracked armor, mechanized chassis became a priority order for ground forces deploying across The first hardsuits were adaptable, featuring flourishes Diasporan worlds. and specializations unique to their manufacturers and users. Early far-field teams wore larger suits with more Not only did mechanized chassis represent a tactical robust equipment, some equipped with weapons to breakthrough, but their quasi-humanoid shape was fight off hostile native flora and fauna; colonists first an undeniable psychological asset. This led to the adopted hardsuits as emergency equipment in case of development of weaponry that was tactically imprac‐ damage to their sealed habitats, then for traveling and tical (to begin with), but a boon to morale: swords, exploring beyond those same habitats; meanwhile, axes, lances, and so on. spacers wore slimmer suits with more robust seals, sometimes living in them for days on end while they Union doctrine quickly offered countless variations on piloted their great ships on long voyages between how best to employ mechanized chassis in combat. worlds. After centuries of revision, the Auxiliary Handbook on Chassis Combat now describes a narrower selection The hardsuit found military applications, too. Some of roles – the most viable, almost all of which take companies and Union foundries began to add plated advantage of chassis’ multi-role versatility and armor to their suits, weave ballistic knits into them, comparative alacrity, and emphasize the force-mul‐ and integrate technologies that enabled soldiers to tiplying opportunities offered by pairing pilots with manipulate smart weaponry. integrated NHPs. On worlds where tracked or wheeled vehicles proved Some cultural critics point out that the reason for the inappropriate, larger hardsuits were built, capable of popularity of mechanized chassis is likely far less hauling cargo that would have otherwise required trans‐ technical: we made them the most powerful fighting port trucks. In these suits, pilots occupied a cockpit, not machines that could stride across the earth, and we just the suit itself, and extensive training was required to made them look like us. ensure they could operate it professionally. These heavy suits operated in tandem with other heavy suits and OTHER GROUND AND were often accompanied by drone flights. SUBORBITAL FORCES The first mechanized chassis was born from this combination of exploratory drive and the need for Infantry, tanks, groundcars, light vehicles, trucks, and protection. It took a catalytic moment of interstellar other military units all still exist and are far more politics and ideological conflict to catapult the mech‐ common than mechs. Mechs are used much in the anized chassis from a useful (if plodding) civilian same way that cavalry was used in ancient combat: platform to a deadly military instrument; that flash‐ rapid, armored shock troops, expensive to recruit, point presented itself on Hercynia, a jungle world in train, and maintain. distal space, around 4500u. It was on Hercynia that Union exploratory forces first employed the mechan‐ Infantry makes up the bulk of any army and, ulti‐ ized chassis – a model designed and built on Ras mately, is the only way that territory can be claimed Shamra, the planet that soon became the homeworld and held; not everyone can become a pilot, but all of Harrison Armory – in organized, mass combat that’s needed to fight is a cause. Infantry is also far against hostile local forces. less expensive and more expendable than mechs and their pilots. Further, although printers are relatively SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [363]
ubiquitous, not every organization has the licenses, ORBITAL, STELLAR, AND resources, or time to maintain a printer large enough for fabricating mechanized chassis. INTERSTELLAR FORCES Most soldiers from developed worlds are professional States and other entities capable of fielding orbital, fighters serving a term of service, either volunteers or stellar, and interstellar forces tend to be the largest or those observing compulsory state requirements (e.g., best-funded states and entities in the galaxy: Union, a mandatory or lottery-based service period, etc). vast corpro-states, nations or federations that These soldiers undergo lengthy basic physical and command worlds, and so on. The standard stellar mental training meant to condition them as temporary combat platform is the subline ship, a broad classifica‐ members of the military class, followed by a shorter tion encompassing any ship built to operate in period of specialized training, before being posted to micro/null-gravity and hard vacuums. The smallest a base, unit, or patrol. piloted subline ships can be operated by a single person; the largest can be crewed by a dozen people. On the battlefield, these typical soldiers will be outfitted The gradations and classifications inside the category with a primary weapon, possibly a sidearm, spare are manifold. Capital ships, meanwhile, generally run ammunition (if they use conventional ballistic weapons), large, with crews and gross weight ranging from the size gear appropriate to their specialization, a uniform, and of a large subliner to vessels that are kilometers long, basic personal armor. They will have been assigned to a with crews of thousands and missions that stretch for unit of similarly outfitted soldiers, given a rank, and given years. a directive – punishable in some way – to obey their superiors and all other superiors. Some soldiers might There are two stellar combat doctrines: orbital carry more specialized equipment commensurate with support and interstellar force projection. their specialist training – shaped charges, long-range omnihooks, heavier weapons, drone swarms and their On orbital support missions, ships take on support, control units, CQB or area-denial weapons, and so on. blockade, and logistics roles, augmenting ground forces by providing transport, aide, intelligence, and Variations on this galactic-standard professional force multiplication. Ship-to-ship combat in orbital soldier exist. Some worlds are more developed, and scenarios is quick and usually limited in scale – a others are less; similarly, some invest in their milit‐ flight of subline fighters arcing up from a planet’s aries, and others spend their resources elsewhere. surface to strike at a carrier parked just beyond the atmosphere, a wing of corvettes appearing from Highly militarized societies might simply have more behind the moon to attack a flotilla of troop landers as soldiers and better equipment; alternatively, they might they angle for entry. These engagements are long and enforce conscription, have a caste system, or somehow attritional, often necessitating supply lines leading order their society around martial orders. Note that back to other planets or stations; this requirement “more militarized” does not necessarily equate to a prompts the second stellar combat doctrine: inter‐ higher level of technological advancement: it would be stellar force projection. perfectly possible to encounter a society utterly devoted to a military hierarchy, the soldiers of which proudly Interstellar engagements are mobile and primarily polish steel pikes and have never encountered black involve ship-to-ship combat with the intention of powder, much less a mechanized chassis. disrupting enemy supply lines, shutting down trans‐ port corridors, or otherwise countering opposing Also, note that – like any kind of technology – military forces away from population centers. This is the technology is not necessarily uniform across a society. domain of naval commanders and their NHP fleet Some states may have a limited number of legacy legions, where capital ships play protracted, first- mechs, won hundreds of years before in a trade with a blood-wins games of hide and seek across hundreds passing Cosmopolitan ship, despite having a local of thousands of kilometers of open space. Combat in industry capable of supporting nothing more than black the void between worlds typically produces binary powder muskets. Others might have left ranged results: as even minor damage can lead to hard weapons by the wayside in favor of shimmering blades vacuum, the losing side loses hard. and mirrored shields, sending riders into battle on hovering skiffs above massed formations of pikemen. The weapons used in interstellar combat are some of the largest conventional arms in Lancer. They are In short, although mechs are the focus of Lancer, infantry rarely turned against a planet’s surface unless the still forms the backbone of almost every organized army in wielder is more interested in causing widespread, the galaxy. Expect to encounter them. wanton destruction than in securing a tactical victory. [364] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
A NOTE ON CONFLICT IN What roils galaxy now is the shattering of a singular VIOLENCE IN LANCER colonial project. No longer is mass violence perpetuated LANCER’S NARRATIVE PRESENT by a unified imperial power as it was five hundred years ago – the wars of 5016u are fought by its liberated THE GOOD WAR subjects, scrapping for sovereignty. The brushfire wars The Third Committee straddles the line between a of the Diaspora are no longer the natural outcomes of an violent, imperial past and a violent, unwritten future. expansionist, dominating imperial project; the single While its capital worlds are secure, the edges of Core front has been shattered into a thousand, each conflict a space are frayed and stained with blood. Union has war for self-determination against a local empire rather had five hundred years to rectify the crimes of the than a distant one. Meanwhile, the SecComm’s new previous committee – and it has made incredible children – the corpro-states, with Harrison Armory in the progress – but to the Sanjak in the Baronies, the vanguard – move to consume more and more, motiv‐ Madrassan in the Dawnline Shore, or any other ated by the power manna grants them. They have begun peoples whose worlds ring with cannon fire, Third‐ to challenge even Union at the fringes, even as they rely Comm’s utopian promise seems all the more distant on the hegemon for legitimacy – and they appear to be for having been realized. winning. As the members of the CentComm look to their maps Taken together, the shifting patterns of violence and and charts, they see a galaxy boiling with crises. The the rising stakes have coalesced into a permeating projections hanging above their chambers reveal the background hum, a whisper through the halls of shadow looming behind the Utopian Pillars: a war on power on Cradle, on Karrakis, on Ras Shamra, in the many fronts against what remains of SecComm, Constellar Congress, and every other throne: a threats from beyond Union space, hostile paracausal whisper that something is coming. Some epochal entities, and belligerent corpro-states. change or accumulation of changes: the Good War, a conflict to dictate the end of this age and the begin‐ Mass state and political violence was a constant ning of the next. ThirdComm's task, agreed in phenomenon under SecComm – often at the direction of principle though not necessarily in specifics, is to SecComm itself, an imperial power in practice if not in avoid this future, but failing that, to navigate the name. But in SecComm’s collapse and replacement by a bloodshed, to end it, and to ensure no one lives in the new generation, the fighting has taken on the kind of shadow of utopia. fervor that makes CentComm moderates start muttering about control and order. Undeniably, the appearance of Your character exists at this moment, the instant just violence and collateral danger has increased significantly, before the moment. They will not bring it about or but in reality, the actual number of violent conflicts – and prevent it on their own, but however history goes, the absolute, flattening drive that motivates them – has they will be present for it. decreased. However, the seeming increase in the stakes of wars in the Diaspora is precisely what it seems to be: although there have been fewer wars under ThirdComm, their stakes are higher. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [365]
ECONOMY AND SOCIETY In 5016u, the galaxy is, for the most part, post- one of the Utopian Pillars: “No walls shall stand scarcity – that is, resources are not only plentiful but between worlds”.While the whole planet does accessible at little-to-no cost for most people in the not need to be blanketed with metroswathes or Galactic Core. Out among the Diasporan worlds, otherwise occupied and fruitful, the capacity to scarcity exists, but it is not evenly distributed. Some achieve this indicates that a world might be Diasporan worlds are nearly equivalent to Core worlds suitable for integration into the Galactic Core. in terms of development and their adoption of the Utopian Pillars, while others still cling to markets, IDEOLOGICAL COMPATIBILITY economies, and artificial scarcity. Does the world whose culture(s) and state(s) seeks Core status have a demonstrated history METROPOLITAN AND DIASPORAN of compatibility with the Utopian Pillars and a body capable of ensuring their implementation, WORLDS whether its a central government, unipolar administrative body, decentralized consensus, The Metropolitan worlds of the Galactic Core are fant‐ or other consensus-finding entity? astically wealthy (in the pre-utopian sense), rich with technology and cultural capital, and enjoy easy A Diasporan world, meanwhile, is any settled world, access to blink gates and Union resources. Their moons, or satellite that lacks Core status. In these citizens, generally speaking, want for nothing: they’re places, life can be more difficult, and populations may afforded a base level of housing, education, health‐ want for food, medicine, and other necessities. The care, and food, all localized to their state, with ready designation of “Diasporan” encompasses everything access to the galaxy’s wealth of data, goods, media, from initial, small-team colonies through to built-up literature, etc. worlds with populations in the millions. The concepts of wealth and capital are abstract on Core POST-SCARCITY worlds, as currency and its generation tend to be replaced by a generalized requisition capacity. Unless In practice, “post-scarcity” means that PCs on Core one needs to venture off a Core world, any given Metro‐ worlds will have access to most (unrestricted) politan would likely have no concept of currency consumer goods and not want for raw and necessary exchange for goods and services. Labor is largely auto‐ materials. Specialized items might require certain mated on Core worlds unless it is undertaken as licenses that can be obtained through trade, clear‐ ideological pursuit or by holistic motivation, curious ance, or qualifications (i.e., as rewards from the GM), exploration, or myriad other motivating reasons. Metro‐ but even these are readily available once approval has politans of the Core worlds aren’t idle; they simply don’t been granted or secured. Any unrestricted items so need to worry about wages, capital, and the vagaries of ordered can be reliably obtained at the time they are the market, as Union ensures all needs are met. requisitioned, or within a day or two at most. Core worlds are varied in appearance and level of On Diasporan worlds, the degree of scarcity depends urbanization. What matters is not the scale of devel‐ on levels of development and access to resources, opment on the world, but the degree to which the and can be subject to shortages, resource-hoarding, world can adhere to Union’s Utopian Pillars. In and so on. PCs can access necessary goods (unless practice, this requirement tends to necessitate some there is a shortage, rationing, etc.) and raw materials level of significant global urban development – most are widely available. Specialized items might be diffi‐ Core worlds have at least one significant global cult to obtain for any number of reasons: they’re capital metro area – but it’s not a blanket truth. The limited in number, kept under lock and key by the worlds of the Galactic Core achieve their status on colonial governor; they’re in the hold of a downed the basis of two broad criteria, evaluated and ship on the other side of the world; there are only so approved by stakeholding Union bureaus: many remaining until the last supply ship arrives; and so on. The people of Diasporan worlds tend to expect FREE MOVEMENT some sort of currency in exchange for goods, Are there limitations on movement and the services, and labor. distribution of populations? Put another way, can the people of the world petitioning for Core status actually travel freely across it? Are there reliable and ready methods for getting people to and from orbit? Free movement is the basis of [366] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
MANNA COLONIES ECONOMY AND SOCIETY Union is not motivated by the desire or institutional Union does not run a state-backed colonization momentum to accrue currency and capital, and program, but does provide resources for Metropoli‐ neither are the Metropolitan peoples of the Core tans to embark upon legal, well-provisioned missions worlds. The society Union has built is structured and partnerships. In the Diaspora, the specifics of around galvanizing missions, personal pursuits, and a colonization differ from world to world, but in general deep cultural belief in solidarity, democratic progress, terms, most ventures follow a similar pattern. and mutual aid – its closest analog is a kind of partici‐ patory planning forecast. For these reasons, the First, a group forms a colonial venture: a temporary function of economies on Core worlds are not predi‐ association that pools manna and licenses to petition cated upon the ups and downs of a market economy the owner of the destination system for a colony model. In fact, the word “economy” is only under‐ charter. In most cases, this is Union, as few other stood as a historical, antiquated concept, only to be states have the resources to survey and flag habitable used when interacting with Diasporan worlds. worlds. Not all of those involved in the colonial venture will themselves become colonists. The average Metropolitan views individual capital ownership and the exchange of currency for goods as Once the colonial venture has secured a charter, its relics of an unsustainable past – relics that plunged members lobby local (or intergalactic, depending humanity into thousands of years of self-inflicted on proximity) colony-construction firms for the darkness, violence, and misery. Such that property is supplies, infrastructure, and materiel that they can’t a concept, there is of course personal property; but supply themselves. Colony-construction firms offer private property – that is, ownership that generates tiered packages in exchange for a cut of the poten‐ profit – is alien to your average Metropolitan. tial colony’s raw resource output. These packages typically feature an administrative NHP, a genetic Regardless, Union recognizes that not all of its client variance library, a license for a basic printer, and a states have yet become post-capital societies. In the colony ship packed with prefabricated habitation interest of fostering fair galactic trade and building pods, heavy drones, medical benches, pan-biome shared consciousness – rather than violently seed libraries, and other necessary colonial infra‐ suppressing monetization – Union recognized early structure. the need for a standardized galactic currency: manna. Once all resources are secured, the colony ship To create manna, Union uses complex treaties and launches. These ships can be anywhere from client-facing economic structures to extract an hundreds of meters to a kilometer in length, with the abstracted unit of value from its subject states. Data, vast majority of that space devoted to prefabricated raw materials, human potential – tens of thousands of supplies. Its crew will be the first settlers of the new factors go into the creation of a single omni-digital colony world: a small team of engineers, scientists, unit of manna. Specific oversight of the creation, flow, and specialists numbering in the dozens. amount, value of mana and many other considera‐ tions falls to the UEB – the Union Economic Bureau. With assistance from the colony’s NHP administrator and its attendant drones and subalterns, the colonists In simple terms, the exchange rate of manna is make planetfall and begin the long work of estab‐ relative to the currency for which it is being lishing a colony footprint. In the meantime, the exchanged. Wealthy, advanced worlds are rich in colony’s first native-born generation is incubated, manna as a result of their massive output, the raw birthed, tended, and raised by the NHP and assigned human potential of their populations, and many other natal and educational carers. factors. Small colonies also benefit from manna’s formulas: their projected development, access to raw Fifteen to twenty years after landfall, the first genera‐ materials, and so on all contribute to beneficial tion reaches population-viable levels (usually in the exchange value. thousands, though occasionally larger) and select members of the original landfall team take formal Cosmopolitans trade in manna, as do states and any control of the colony’s development from the NHP other entities that engage in trade between solar administrator. The new generation begins working to systems. Since most people are still bound to their improve the colony and explore their world, homeworlds (or stations, moons, etc.), the vast bulk expanding the colony footprint and beginning work of humanity still uses local currencies, only encoun‐ on new sites. tering manna if they do business off-world (or with parties located off-world). SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [367]
[368] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
Concurrently, an additional first generation (“generation While these first waves of generation ships were ECONOMY AND SOCIETY 1.5”) is grown from separate reserve genetic material. burning for distant stars, research and development This population comes of age a year or two at most into “nearlight” drives progressed, and much faster from the first, providing some genetic variance and colony ships were developed. Often, the first ships further establishing a stable, viable population. that set out were not the first to arrive. Assuming all variables remain nominal, the colonial Fully automated nearlight ships, lacking organic settlement is considered at this point to be securely crews and carrying surrogate machine minds to established. Further development occurs organically. manage neonatal and postnatal development upon arrival, could travel without the burden imposed by RECONTACT sustaining crew and passenger life for the duration of the journey4. With the addition of faster drives and One consequence of Union’s multiple periods of more advanced navigation technologies, seed ships expansion and dramatic contraction is that thousands rapidly outstripped their predecessors, bolting to of settled-then-abandoned Diasporan worlds now identified worlds and establishing colonies before the have self-sustaining indigenous populations, the earlier ships could reach their destinations. oldest of which have cultural histories that go back millennia. It is only with the rise of the Third When the generation ships finally arrived, their passen‐ Committee that Union has reconsidered its approach gers often encountered established colonial states, to these worlds and how it responds when legally hundreds of years old, with systems in place to greet recognized title-holders seek redress for claims and and naturalize the newcomers. Of course, this was conflicts from thousands of realtime years in the past. generally not within the cultural narratives that had grown in transit, leading to many instances of conflict Prior to the discovery of blinkspace, all interstellar and bitter political friction. The second-sent nearlight travel was made under the causal constraints and ships had landed and produced generations of native- limitations of relativity, gravity, time, and distance. born colonists without the cultural history of voyage; in Under Union’s First Committee, the charters for habit‐ the minds of the newcomers, Union’s impatience was able worlds were sold once their viability had been tantamount to the theft of their promised land. determined by probe and telescope surveys. Next, a colonial venture would launch a generation or While no novel instances of this phenomenon have nearlight ship to physically claim the designated been encountered under the Third Committee, Union world. At the time of launch, the populations sent to now faces a host of legitimate grievances filed by claim these worlds were not legally recognized as an indigenous cultures ignored by the Second indigenous population of that world: only those that Committee, and just as many petitions for redress actually set foot on a planet and established a viable from the holders of colonial charters. colony would be recognized as such. To address this, DoJ/HR and BCA run a joint court. Eventually, advances in machine-mind technology This court handles all complaints and petitions by pre-Deimos led to the replacement of generation landfall (and post-landfall) generations and colonial ships with automated, surrogate-enabled seed ships. charter holders alike, and is empowered to endow the Given the temporal complications of relativistic travel, rights of first peoples upon populations following the the significant differences between the older genera‐ conclusion of cases. tion ships and newer seed ships often led to conflict. This was a common phenomenon during the ascend‐ The body of precedent and standards for determining ancy of the Second Committee. who holds the claim of indigenous sovereignty over a given world is relatively new. Under the Second For the older ships, the generation that would reach Committee, primacy was given to those able to take and their destination was not the same one that first maintain power – typically those who controlled charters embarked on the journey. Often, hundreds or even and title, not the actual landfall generations who had first thousands of years had passed in both realtime and been promised the world. Not so under the Third. subjective time as the ship crossed the stars, and shipboard cultures had shaped themselves around 4 Many of these seed ships were built and their travel and their distant, presumed homeland. launched pre-Deimos. Modern versions have These pre-landfall generations, while not native to abandoned their machine mind cores in favor their destinations, had profound cultural ties to them, of specialized comp/con units paired with a stable developed over successive generations of pilgrims. NHP imprint. Of course, regular check-ups are They considered themselves indigenous to their needed, and a small team of engineers is cycled as promised world. a necessary failsafe during the journey. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [369]
If players want their characters to have this kind of TRAVEL background, it’s possible that their homeworld is in the middle of an ongoing trial. If that is the case, be Not everyone owns a ship, knows how to fly, or holds aware that, though it will take time, the case will be the right licenses to get around. But PCs need to decided one way or the other. Time dilation may mean travel in order to get to where they need to be. While that characters return to a world that has, at long last, most methods of conveyance are easily accessible to been returned to them – or one that has been stolen. a person of modest means in the Diaspora, without the resources of a state or large, well-funded entity, STATIONS individuals likely have to invest a significant amount of capital in order to acquire – or even rent – a ship Larger stations in stable locations or in orbit around capable of interstellar transit. uninhabitable worlds usually operate independently of terrestrial governments, acting as their own states Fortunately, if one operates under the auspices of a with their own territories and areas of influence. state or similar entity, they’ll have some kind of trans‐ Stations exist because they were built for a purpose: portation afforded to them. This tends to be a mining, gas extraction, or to provide a platform for dry temporary convenience: a transport or tender ship docks, shipyards, research, and so on. Their popula‐ that drops them off where they need to be, a billet tions largely work to support the station’s mission or aboard a passing capital ship, or similar. the people who do. Civilian stations usually have permanent populations, with the largest numbering in There are three types of travel that might come up in a the tens of millions. Military stations are smaller, game of Lancer: global, local-space, and inter‐ without permanent populations born and raised stellar. aboard. GLOBAL Blink gates are special cases – although they exist beyond Cradle’s actual state boundaries, they are Whether terrestrial, aquatic, or atmospheric, global integral to Union’s galactic hegemony. As such, each travel is that which takes place on a single world. blink gate is managed by a Union-appointed Terrestrial travel can involve trains, caravans, governor, policed by Union security forces, and convoys, landships, long marches, cars, etc. Aquatic administered by Union personnel. Because blink travel might take place above or below the water, on gates exist to ferry ships between worlds, their ships or submarines. Atmospheric travel utilizes stations tend to have very diverse populations: each everything from airplanes, to airships, low-orbit one likely has something that someone from a Core vehicles, and liminal, fixed means of transport like world (or an advanced Diasporan world) would recog‐ space elevators and skyhooks. nize as a flavor, sound, or comfort of home. LOCAL-SPACE Any travel that takes place between high atmosphere and a blink gate is local-space travel. Ships of all sizes and classifications move through this zone, following shuttle routes between worlds, making supply runs out to local colonies and settlements, and engaging in every other form of transit and business. Some spaceships are designed to operate within planetary gravity wells and are able to handle both atmospheric flight and movement in a hard vacuum. These ships tend to have a low gross weight – fighters, bombers, and some smaller corvettes fit into this category of atmosphere-rated ships (although corvettes usually need some form of assisted takeoff to break atmosphere and orbit). Capital ships can’t handle atmospheric flight, though should one find itself falling, it could burn hard for lateral movement as it plummets to a catastrophic end. [370] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
INTERSTELLAR NORMAL SPACEFLIGHT ECONOMY AND SOCIETY Conventional realspace travel makes up the over‐ Interstellar travel is common for certain classes of whelming bulk of day-to-day transit in the galaxy. people: military personnel, diplomats, explorers, Most ships rated for long-haul interstellar travel run merchants, Union personnel, colonists, migrants, routes between blink gates, ideally accruing no more scientists, and a variety of other wanderers. Many than one to ten years of realtime debt (anywhere from people have reason to travel between the stars, but a few months to a year in subjective time) during their the necessary equipment is difficult to obtain. Gener‐ journey. Longer journeys are sometimes required for ally speaking, travelers with direct access to this journeys to especially distant worlds and sectors, equipment are rare – military personnel on deploy‐ military deployments, long-range expeditions, new ment, Union officials, representatives of corporations, sector surveys, and new colony ventures. universities, or patrons, and those who are simply fantastically wealthy. Other travelers are limited to During realspace travel – in the course of a normal public blinkships, which travel from one blink station acceleration or deceleration pattern – passengers can to another according to predefined routes. walk, talk, eat, and drink, and do anything else they could do on a world with anywhere between .1 and Although blinkspace travel is not the only form of 1 g. Gravity might get a little uncomfortable at peak interstellar travel, it is the one most people know. speed (if that speed is higher than what passengers Other methods include nearlight bolts and old-fash‐ are used to), and always pulls in the opposite direc‐ ioned spaceflight. tion of travel: “Behind” is always “down”. BLINK TRAVEL NEARLIGHT BOLT For most passengers, travel through blinkspace is A nearlight bolt (called a “nearlight ejection” in hard to distinguish from normal spaceflight. The ship combat and emergency scenarios) is a sudden, often moves at a comfortable g-force, passengers can walk traumatic acceleration to .900 or .995 c. When around in plain clothes (if the ship is large enough and prepared for a bolt, passengers are usually strapped pressurized), eat, drink, sleep, exercise, and so on. If into pressurized crash couches, medicated appropri‐ they look out through a porthole, they will perceive ately, and secured. Without these precautions, there blinkspace itself as blindness. That said, blink travel is a very real and significant chance of pulverization takes only a moment; most people who have trans‐ as the ship suddenly, violently moves. ited the blink don’t perceive it at all. Nearlight bolts are uncomfortable but are often a Early test pilots described blinkspace as a void – a necessary form of travel for military, government, and space outside of human perception that is at once emergency response personnel, undertaken when blank and cacophonous, infinite and without form. one doesn’t have the luxury of time for a slow, The NHPs that accompanied those first pilots have comfortable acceleration. Nearlight ejection is not a since been retired, their handlers citing recursive common way to get around: it’s an emergency accel‐ ontological tail-chasing and paracausal obsession; eration that serves to disengage from a situation that since then, NHP protocols have been updated to would otherwise be deadly. include sense-exposure doctrines, allowing them to do as organic pilots do and simply accept the A nearlight bolt is dangerous when you’re prepared unreality of blinkspace without cascade. and deadly when you’re not. Ships equipped to perform bolts are equipped with crash couches that Prolonged exposure to blinkspace is possible and generate opposing bursts of contained artificial evidenced to be sustainable in rare cases, though the gravity in order to counteract the g-forces that would precise processes and long-term effects are thus far otherwise crush their crews. unknown. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [371]
TIME, SPACE, AND HOW TO Blink travel shortens this steep cost, but it still exists: TRAVEL THROUGH BOTH it takes time to transit from a port of origin to a system-local blink gate, then from the exit blink gate Time, in Lancer, is a rare thing: an exhaustible to the intended destination. Without blinkspace and commodity. For Metropolitans, Diasporans, and its gates, humanity would be reliant on conventional Cosmopolitans alike, time is the one resource that causality for traveling across the vast distances of has a true limit. When time runs out, you can never interstellar space. Instead of sacrificing ten, twenty, or find more; but even if the rules of time can’t be thirty realtime years for a journey, it would be one, broken, they are ways that they can be bent. two, or three thousand, and without any kind of long- term stasis to preserve them or facilities and supplies After all, there are two types of time: subjective time to accommodate successive crew generations, crews and Union Realtime, or, realtime. Subjective time is would die of old age aboard their ships5. time as an individual experiences it, whereas realtime is time as it passes and is recorded by Union on INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL IN PLAY Cradle. While the passage of subjective time and its ravages are inevitable, there are ways people can In the canon setting of Lancer, time dilation exists. extend their presence in realtime. When characters embark on an interstellar journey in Lancer, they will need to take into account the time The most notable of these is the temporal stretching – that it will cost them. By exposing themselves to time called time dilation – that takes place as a result of the dilation, they will necessarily catapult themselves into incredible speeds achieved in nearlight space travel. As the future – a future they may not want to live in an interstellar traveler approaches lightspeed (abbrevi‐ without the familiar comforts of friends and family, not ated as c) – time begins to pass at a radically different rate to mention the states, cultures, and environments for them than it does for those left behind. Both the they have come to know. We feel this is important to traveler and an observer back home experience the consider when telling stories in Lancer’s setting: by its passage of time as “normal” from their own perspectives, nature, interstellar travel has a cost, and one group of but a realtime difference can be recorded: because the heroes is not likely to change the course of the traveler and the observer are moving through space at galaxy; the difficulties of interstellar travel demand different velocities, the traveler's synchronization to collective action to effect galaxy-wide change. realtime – their frame of reference – begins to slip. Both parties perceive the passage of time as “normal”, but the However (to back down from the soapbox), inter‐ closer the traveler gets to the speed of light, the more the stellar travel can be either a narrative-defining traveler will find – if and when they return home – that they consideration or nothing important, depending on have rapidly advanced forward in time. player character backgrounds, attachments, and the story within which they find themselves. If your Most nearlight interstellar ships travel around .995 c, players travel with a mercenary company, camp which translates to a rough 1:10 time ratio – that is to followers in tow, then time dilation may be of no great say, for every subjective year spent in transit at .995 c, concern – their friends and families can easily travel roughly ten years pass in realtime. This is how one with them. But if they travel alone, their families left bends time. This is how Cosmopolitans find themselves behind, it is possible that their homes will be vastly separated from the “normal” stream of Metropolitan and different when they return from even one trip. Diasporan time and history: as they travel between the stars and the blink gates that connect them, Cosmopol‐ We recommend a mix of hard cost and narrative itans accrue the debts at that 1:10 ratio – a debt liberty. While time dilation is certainly a factor in intra- collected when they slow from nearlight, slipping once system travel (travel between worlds and stellar more into the envelope of realtime. bodies in the same solar system), it doesn’t need to be dramatically important. We recommend letting Cosmopolitans winding down from nearlight travel time slide a few days here and there – no more than a emerge into realtime to find that nations they once month at most – between when PCs leave and when called home have crumbled, or become unrecognizable. they return. They might find that decades of cultural change have rendered them functionally illiterate, or that the young 5 While there is stasis in Lancer, holding children they left behind are now grandparents, “older” bodies in uninterrupted stasis longer than in realtime than them. And the opposite fate is possible: a hundred years can lead to a cascading Cosmopolitans might return to find tyrants toppled, series of complications – necrosis, stasis environments healed, fortunes raised from modest shock, terminal REM, desiccation – that make investments made before departure, or cures longer trips not viable without regular periods discovered for previously incurable diseases. of activity. [372] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
ECONOMY AND SOCIETY SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [373]
For larger distances – say, moving to and from blink SCIENCE AND gates, or engaging in conventional interstellar travel – TECHNOLOGY then the dramatic cost of interstellar travel comes into play; blink gates outside of Cradle and the Galactic CLONING Core are located in proximity to as many worlds as possible, which necessarily means that they tend not Under ThirdComm, cloning – that is, the cultivation to be especially close to any one world. and growth of whole or partial genetic facsimiles of persons and other fauna, whether cultivated in You can calculate time dilation with a simple formula, realtime or via catalytic processes – occupies a more narrative than hard math: spectrum of legality, morality, and ethics. In distant frontier systems without ready To legally clone a person or their constituent parts access to a blink gate, interstellar travel might requires informed consent from the donor. They must take anywhere from six months to two years, understand that full-body clones are their own persons, subjective time. Realtime interstellar travel takes with their own subjectivity and personal rights. Nothing at least ten times longer. can give the donor legal authority over their facsimile unless the donor has requested a facsimile to raise as Interstellar travel between Diasporan their own child. In the latter case, the donor is granted systems with ready access to blink gates can legal recognition of a culturally appropriate parent-off‐ take between one and six months of subjective spring relationship, commensurate with all relevant time. As with travel in frontier systems, realtime mores, traditions, and legal rights. interstellar travel takes at least ten times longer. For all intents and purposes – legally, subjectively, In the Metropolitan systems of the Galactic practically – whole-body clones are individuals Core, interstellar travel to or from a blink gate distinct from their donor. They are people, with their might take anywhere from a few hours to several own legal rights and entitlements. The only way they days of subjective time – a week at most. differ from “natural-born” persons is that their genetic Realtime interstellar travel only takes five times data is identical to that of their donor; they are other‐ as longs because of the ready access and prox‐ wise indistinguishable. imity to blink gates that Core worlds enjoy. Partial cloning is commonly used for medical Transit between worlds and stations in the purposes. Tissue, major organs, viable follicles, limbs, Sol system is a matter of minutes or hours, and bodily fluids – nothing capable of conscious or depending on proximity to the many terrestrial unconscious thought – are all regularly cloned to blink gates across the worlds there. Any closer provide donors with exact-match replacements. In than Jupiter there is little ship traffic; most this context, too, donors must provide informed people take advantage of terrestrial blink travel. consent as defined by their culture or state before this type of cloning is allowed. Moving through blinkspace itself is, essen‐ tially, instantaneous. Modern perceptions of clones are strongly weighted by the echoes and artifacts of recent history. 6 Although it is described here in the past tense, instances of flash cloning still Under the Second Committee, facsimile clones were occur. Despite ThirdComm’s prohibition, a popular option for states, corporations, and other cases concerning states, corpro-states, and bodies in need of labor, constituents, or a ready unscrupulous private entities purchasing or supply of soldiers. The Anthrochauvinist government operating flash-clone programs make up a viewed clones not as individual persons, but as the legal property of their donors – a residual patriarchal greater-than-zero percentage of the construct that identified donors as the “progenitors” DoJ/HR's caselog. of their offspring, giving them full legal authority over beings that would not have existed without the donor’s intervention. Essentially, facsimile clones – to say nothing of flash clones, explained in the following paragraphs – were second-class persons. Their individuality was recog‐ nized, but their legal rights were truncated on the basis that they were the results of “investments” [374] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
made by their progenitors. Thus, they could be The cloning methods of old still exist in some places, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY pressed into military, labor, or other dangerous filling in the gray spaces of legality and morality. services, with their owners only mandated to provide Despite the outlawing of whole-body flash-cloning, it the bare minimum level of care – enough to ensure is allegedly practiced by Harrison Armory and a they didn’t die of hunger, thirst, or “reasonably number of the larger Baronic houses. Progressive preventable illness or exposure”. ThirdComm members regularly urge action to fulfill Union’s mandate and often task DoJ/HR with enfor‐ Under SecComm, facsimile clones were widely used cing the ban against smaller targets. Meanwhile, the throughout the galaxy by state and private militaries, Armory and the Baronies argue that their flash-cloning with specific martial traits emphasized by geneticists; methods are similar to those that came before in at the same time, facsimiles conditioned in the name only, and that their processes are much safer. company schools of corpro-states were used to staff many “soft” labor positions. In the Baronies particu‐ DoJ/HR’s Facsimile Rights Department frequently larly, facsimiles often occupied the highest echelons handles legal claims from facsimile persons and oversees of society as ideal heirs, doubles, and tokens for the cloning facilities, spot checks, and maintenance of public trade of pleasure or favors. genetic proof data. Liberator teams commonly run point on regulation and enforcement actions targeting under‐ In times of crisis, or when a rush order needed to be ground flash-cloning sites. filled, so-called “flash” clones were created instead6. Grown in artificial birthing chambers, flash clones PCs that are facsimile persons will likely have some could be cultivated from zygote to physically mature knowledge of their genetic donor. Flash-clone PCs adult in less than five years. While flash-clone creation tend to be citizens (to some degree) of Harrison started from the same basis as facsimile clones – Armory or subjects of a Karrakin trade baron. Their donated genetic material – the accelerated growth natural lifespan may or may not be truncated as a process that flash clones underwent was traumatic result of the flash-cloning process. PCs that are flash and prone to error. While facsimile clones have the clones from somewhere other than the Armory or the duration of a natural life to learn, grow, and form their Baronies might face more complications, and will own subjectivity, flash clones were created for a task likely be regarded as sympathetic witnesses in UN – filling out the ranks of armed forces, or replacing a DoJ/HR investigations. depleted mining corps – and thus were considered to be disposable once the immediate task that required BODY MODIFICATIONS AND their production was accomplished. ANDROIDISM Because of the traumatic growth and cognition-con‐ ditioning processes involved in flash-cloning, flash Whole-body (or majority-body) technical and biolo‐ clones were prone to rapid onset degenerative gical augmentation is uncommon in Core space and diseases, atypical neurogenesis, a wide range of Cosmopolitan communities, though not stigmatized. anomalous tumors, catastrophic immunodeficiencies, It is typically restricted to enthusiast subcultures and and many other chronic, terminal genetic illnesses. instances of medical necessity. Within the Diaspora, But the majority of people created in flash-cloning opinions vary. facilities did not live long enough to suffer the effects of the process that birthed them; the process was Most Metropolitans and Cosmopolitans enjoy a small designed to churn out human bodies with speed, not complement of personal, medical, or professional modi‐ accuracy, and to assign them one task with little fications, augmentations, and enhancements: tailored regard for their rights, decency, or humanity. Third‐ Panacea cells for warding off disease, subdermal aural Comm rejected whole-subjectivity flash-cloning netting with linked omnicasters for communicating, outright as a core assumption of its Utopian Pillars. hyperspectral ocular modifications to enhance their vision, embedded pay chits, basic redundancy modific‐ A process influenced by the flash-cloning technolo‐ ations, cortical shielding, and so on. gies developed during the Neo-Anthropocene Period (“rapid cloning”) still takes place, but it is reserved for On Diasporan and Core worlds and among the medical constituent-tissue cloning: simple proced‐ Cosmopolita, it is notable (but not rare) for people to ures where limbs, gross tissue, digits, or organs are have visible, clearly inorganic body modifications, needed to rectify a stable patient’s physical trauma. augmentations, or prosthetics. If they’re visible, it’s The materials needed to graft new skin after a burn, usually because the owner wants to make a fashion, or transplant perfect-match organs and limbs where aesthetic, or otherwise political statement. they have been severed or damaged, for example, – can be grown within hours of genetic mapping. Most colonists have a small complement of personal and professional modifications, similar to those found SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [375]
among Metropolitans, but with slight differences: DECORP localization for harsher climates, more aggressive Panacea systems, and so on. Related to androidism is the question of de-corporealiz‐ ation, or DeCorp: the ability to divorce a mind from its Heavily modified people tend to be survivors of terrible physical form, contain it, transport it, and implant it in a accidents or attacks who need modifications to live, different space, form, or unit without breaking its people who have opted for extensive augmentation to subjective continuity. DeCorp is currently impossible better manage a chronic or genetic condition that with the technology available to Union. Furthermore, the would otherwise significantly impact their quality of life, First Contact Accords prohibit substantive research into or people who work in a specialized field and have such technologies. Regardless, it is a field of interest for opted to (or been “encouraged” to) undergo extensive many researchers and paracausal atheorists. modification to perform their duties. Both the USB and Harrison Armory’s Think Tank (the Generally speaking, subdermal or internal augmenta‐ Armory’s equivalent to the former) are known to test the tions are small enough not to be too physically taxing, edges of what the First Contact Accords allow, but the but the more extensive their modifications, the more two organizations are connected by a tight, closed, difficult it is for their body to manage without signi‐ information-sharing agreement. Union has ultimate regu‐ ficant chemical, internal, or external support (e.g., latory power over the Armory’s explorations in this field. integrated battery packs, power lines at workstations, etc). Union’s Utopian Pillars mandate that modifica‐ Outside of this agreement, private study of DeCorp is tions or prosthetics, when licensed from a private outlawed, but joint reports from UND and USB intelli‐ entity, are wholly owned by the user, and must be able gence have determined – with confidence – that it is to function as intended and at full capacity without highly likely that the Armory, HORUS, and SSC are support from its fabricator. currently engaging in off-book acontextual research and development. In the past, independent worlds Even with the most extensive modifications, some envir‐ and groups have attempted to achieve some level of onments remain hostile to human life. Because of posthuman existence: SUMMUM is one such group, physical stress, the risk of damage to organic matter from as were the Neo-Celestine. radiation, and energy limitations, it is not yet possible to modify someone enough that they can survive sustained Unlike true DeCorp, false DeCorp is possible and fairly exposure to hard vacuum. It is possible to extend the common. Commercial and consumer “homunculus” time people can survive in a vacuum, but these biological units are available, designed to simulate the personalities modifications are usually only found in Cosmopolitans, of their subjects. These constructs are built from deep naval personnel, and other people who are at consider‐ omni-mining, uploaded artifacts, and archived psycholo‐ able risk of hardvac exposure. gical evaluations, profiles, and other relevant data. Homunculi are prominent features in museums, Aesthetic biomodifications are common enough, memorials, and theme parks. They are not conscious, nor depending on cultural and countercultural practices. considered NHPs – they are simply tuned simulations. Light aesthetic biomods are usually additive and can, on Core worlds, be obtained everywhere from If your campaign features research toward conscious‐ expensive private clinics to street-side kiosks. These ness transfer or DeCorp, we recommend including include changes to skin color tint, patterning, eye color, encounters – positive or negative – with elements of the hair color, piercings, scarring, feathering, tattoos, hair, USB, UIB, UND, the Armory’s Think Tank, HORUS, fur, and so on. Heavy biomods like secondary limbs, Horizon, or SSC’s Exotic Materials Group. tails, changes to digits, and so on, are rare – usually only found in countercultural cliques – and prompt 7 In Lancer, an android is someone with a people to take notice even on Core worlds. corpus that is at least 90 percent synthetic. Various subcultures are interested in extensive augmentation – androidism7 – from transhumanist movements and disability rights groups to android cults and nihilist machine-adherents. The discourses and practices that exist in these communities vary wildly, and common dialogue around androidism is lacking outside of technical, academic, medical, and other specialist settings. On some worlds, people with extensive modifications may face prejudice; on others, they might be welcomed. [376] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
AGING AND LIFE-EXTENSION PRINTING ECONOMY AND SOCIETY Because of the time-dilating effects of interstellar travel, A CURIOUS ALCHEMY, A MUNDANE MIRACLE there can be significant differences between the number of years someone has experienced in the course of their Printing is a ubiquitous term for matter processor/ life, and their “real” age. “Subjective age” describes fabricator systems found throughout the galaxy someone’s perceived age – in terms of how old they look thanks in large part to paracausal scientific advances to observers, and how many years they have experienced made post-Deimos Event. Printers range in size from – and “real age” describes their age in Union Standard handheld units fed by back-worn matter processors Years (abbreviated as “u”). Union’s standardized system to hanger-sized, fully self-contained printing facilities. measures the passage of time as it is perceived on Cradle. Therefore, a Cosmopolitan’s real age might be Printers range in time and efficiency. The larger and much higher than their subjective age, depending on how or more complex an item is, the longer it takes to much time has passed on Cradle while they travel print. Generally speaking, most print protocols between the stars. This phenomenon is called “relativistic involve some assembly and finalizing after life-extension” (and is a reliable method of ”time travel” in constituent parts have been fabricated. Lancer, though it only goes forward). Schedule 1 printers are the most common and are Without augmentations or significant bioengineering, used for all terrestrial and stellar applications. the average Diasporan from a developed world has a Schedule 1 printers are roughly 14 square meters (or lifespan somewhere between 120 and 150 subjective 150 square feet) and can be operated by one person. years. The average Cosmopolitan tends to live between They can print objects up to SIZE 1. Printing a SIZE 1/2 170 and 200 subjective years. Meanwhile, most Metro‐ or SIZE 1 mech from a schedule 1 printer would take politans live between 180 and 220 subjective years. anywhere from two to eight hours. With access to the most advanced medicine, augment‐ ations, and other technologies, humans can live to a Schedule 2 printers are the next most common type maximum subjective age of around 300 years. Real and are likewise used in a range of terrestrial and ages can vary considerably from these numbers, even stellar applications. Schedule 2 printers generally are for people who don’t travel, as the particular interactions designed and built as a self-contained unit – printer of worlds and stars can lead to slippery interpretations and housing are one structure – and require a team of of time. It’s perfectly possible for someone to be 300 two to four technicians to operate. They can print years old according to Union’s records even though objects up to SIZE 2. Printing a SIZE 2 mech from a they’re only 30 years old in subjective time. schedule 2 printer would take about 10 hours, anything smaller only two to four. By contrast, the relativistic life-extension that takes place as a result of interstellar travel has no real limit, Schedule 3 printers are relatively rare, typically used but neither does it change the subjective experience only for large construction, industrial, or military of time. The span of life itself remains limited by applications. Like schedule 2 printers, schedule 3 physiology and the technologies that support it. printers are housed in standalone facilities that require a team of personnel to operate. Schedule 3 ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY printers usually also feature a selection of smaller workbenches and print units for component and The technology does not yet exist to create stable detail work. Printing objects SIZE 3 and below takes artificial gravity. Gravity on stations is spin gravity, anywhere from minutes to days, depending on the while gravity on ships is tied to directional accelera‐ object in question. tion, magnetized grip pads, or spin gravity. Schedule 4 printers are the largest available size and Artificial gravity can be generated, but it is unstable are only used for orbital applications. They are typic‐ and requires a massive expenditure of energy. ally reserved for megastructural engineering projects, Unstable artificial gravity can be created (in safe the construction of capital ships and civilian containment) as a momentary impulse; as a result, it freighters, and other massive construction projects. has been weaponized by manufacturers like Harrison Armory, and studies into stabilization are ongoing. All printers function in the same basic manner: raw matter is processed – the purer the element, the However unstable it might be, nonlethal artificial- higher quality the result – and used to fabricate the impulse gravity is necessary to make nearlight ejec‐ requested item (or its constituent parts). Handheld tions and bolts survivable for organic life. printer operators craft items and objects in augmented reality; larger printers are automated. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [377]
[378] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
It is not possible to print a printer. Nor is it possible to equipment. Most soldiers, from the average grunt to ECONOMY AND SOCIETY print any food other than basic reconstructed the typical general, have probably never encountered proteins: mealy, grainy loaves of compressed edible a paracausal phenomenon, though they may have matter that is unsatisfying, but sufficient to survive. heard rumors in the ranks. Food is still an important cultural and prestige item, and most people prefer “real” food to synthetic, NON-HUMAN LIFE printed food. Non-human life is common in Lancer; sapient and Despite the presence of printers and other processor‐ organic non-human life (i.e., alien civilizations, not the /fabricator systems, most construction projects in digital/parallel-space entities called NHPs) is unique human-occupied space – and certainly those outside in its rarity. With one exception, there are no non- the Galactic Core – are still performed the “old” way: human alien civilizations; GALSIM commonly simu‐ by sourcing raw materials, refining them, fabricating lates hostile alien life, though it is widely assumed that constituent parts, and assembling items or structures such simulations are low confidence at best. using organic or automated labor (though likely a combination of both). Given the story of that exception, it can be said that the history of humanity's interactions with sapient, PARACAUSAL STUDIES organic life other than itself has been short, unfortu‐ nate, and brutal, with fallout that prompted galaxy- Paracausality is the cutting edge of science. Born wide change. In its simplest terms, the story goes as from the debris of the Deimos Event, paracausal such: On the planet Hercynia, in the final years of the science gave rise to both the omninet and blinkspace Second Committee, humanity encountered the travel. But what, exactly, is “paracausality”? Egregorian civilization and undertook a systematic campaign of genocide. The organized political oppos‐ Causality is the relationship between cause and ition on Cradle responded with a violent revolution, effect; paracausality references things abnormal to, prompting Union’s government to change hands from adjacent to, or apart from cause and effect. Para‐ the Second Committee to the Third8. causality is a fuzzy science. It cannot be truly be explained without paraphrasing Arthur C. Clarke: it is ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE so advanced – and so alien – that it is indistinguish‐ able from magic. Artificial intelligence is an old term, outdated and inac‐ curate in the post-Deimos paradigm. As theory on NHP Officially, paracausal studies are only a field of study intelligence and subjectivity has evolved, so too has the within the walls of certain high-tier USB campuses; broad consensus of scientists and technicians who however, in practice, certain corpro-states – Harrison interacted with the Deimos entities – to that end, in the Armory and HORUS in particular – are making inroads shadow of the Second Committee’s demise, Union into this field without Union’s approval. Union, mean‐ pushed to remove language identifying Deimos entities while, monitors these and other paracausal research as “artificial intelligences”, preferring instead to use the and development facilities via the Union Aeronautics language of “non-human persons”, citing repeated and Astronautics Advanced Development Projects manifestations of individual subjectivities that, while Division on Ganymede. This campus, the arguably conscious, were certainly not artificial. “Skunkworks\" for short, is a secret joint USB/UND project that, in addition to monitoring outside para‐ With the exception of NHPs, artificial intelligence is causal development centers, engages in its own still an acceptable term for lower orders of synthetic research and development programs. and machine intelligences: companion/concierge units, smart weaponry and the systems that run them, The amount of knowledge these corpro-states have homunculi, and so on. acquired is a known-unknown: joint USB–UND intelli‐ gence teams have engaged in clandestine missions Other than comp/cons and NHPs, there is a range of to infiltrate and identify sites, programs, and different machine-mind classifications, each with their campuses where unsanctioned paracausal studies own nuances, rarity, price, and thorny philosophical are taking place, but it isn’t clear how much other or technical questions. research has passed beneath the radar. 8 The supplement No Room for a Wall‐ Paracausal encounters, weapons, and technologies – flower dives into this topic more. other than the omninet and blinkspace travel – are rare in Lancer. Only the wealthiest, most advanced, or most prestigious NPCs have access to paracausal SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [379]
COMPANION/CONCIERGE UNITS removed or post-market communications architecture installed, some models can interact with their operators Companion/concierge units, typically shortened to via text or simple spoken messages. “comp/cons” (less common, but also used are “cc” and “2c”), are the most common machine minds9. On Core Comp/con wingmen are the user-facing equivalent worlds and throughout developed Diasporan worlds, of military administrative comp/cons. Integrated with most adults to carry around pocket-sized comp/con-en‐ a specific weapon or system, their chief purpose is to abled devices – commonly called “slates” on account of maintain and operate their host-system within oper‐ their appearance – and use them for everyday tasks: ating parameters established by the pilot or factory day-planning, calling friends and family, playing games, defaults. To that end, like civilian comp/cons, they navigation, listening to music, watching omninet and develop personalities appropriate to their users, their local network news and entertainment broadcasts, environments, and the tactical roles in which they are engaging in social media, and so on. These devices are most often employed. not conscious in any way, but their processing power and “intelligence” are orders of magnitude beyond those Like civilian comp/con units, neither copy drives nor of any given human. They are powerful, operator-ori‐ comp/con wingmen require shackling or cycling. ented personal computers – no more, no less. Their architecture features no paracausal elements, and they HOMUNCULI do not require shackling or cycling. A homunculus is the captured digital emulation of a Comp/cons are configured to adapt to their owner’s person, living or dead. Homunculi are not conscious, routines and personality, extrapolating their own nor are they “intelligent” in the way that NHP or personalities based on internal psychological profiling higher-order non-human minds are; like smart of their users. A comp/con can convincingly approx‐ weapons, homunculi are, essentially, specialized imate a personal assistant but will show its artificiality comp/con units, used in specific contexts where a when faced with novel situations. specific person’s expertise is necessary. SMART WEAPONRY There are two types of homunculi: extant and memorial. Extant homunculi exist alongside the Smart weapons are built on the same basic architec‐ person they have been built to emulate, learning from ture as comp/cons, but feature significant upgrades them as an actor memorizes a script or student to their processing power and an added emphasis on studies a text. Extants, owing to their popularity both friend-or-foe identification and morality/ethics among celebrities, social stars, politicians, and other praxis-programming. public figures looking to sell them to fans, have a reputation in the Core and Diaspora as icons of low There are two primary types of smart weapons: copy culture. Despite this association, certain models of drives and comp/con wingmen. extant homunculi are used by scientific, military, and diplomatic missions in areas without broad access to Copy drive weapons incorporate 1+n cc units that omninet coverage, or areas that have not yet had the employ rapid partitioning, data cloning, and tethered omninet extended to them. Their ability to act as a separation: when fired, the “prime” drive partitions, flash- stand-in when specific technical knowledge is cloning itself onto the projectile while its prime copy needed is invaluable, as is their general utility and remains onboard the host weapon. This tethers the prime specific knowledge in situations where normal and clone units through a wireless omninet connection. comp/cons would fall short. As it travels, the clone feeds telemetry and other essential data back to the prime unit, which writes new clones onto The second type of homunculi are memorial homun‐ each subsequent projectile, adjusting flight plans and culi, versions of the homunculus program used to other parameters in real time. Deep theory on the subjec‐ reconstruct an emulation of a deceased person. tive experience of copy drives is limited and Popular public use of memorial homunculi is generally interpersonal interaction with prime units is rare. They confined to museums and personal use (recreating are typically programmed without communication func‐ the deceased or temporally misaligned on account of tions and don’t interact directly with the person wielding interstellar travel), but memorial homunculi are also the weapon. That said, with certain isolation protocols broadly used in situations where specific technical, tactical, or sensitive knowledge is needed. Memorials 9 To players and GMs, a comp/con is most are crafted using publicly available (and, where like a “classic” depiction of an artificial access is possible, privately available) profiles, intelligence: a very smart computer, writings, footage, and recordings. usually with a user-facing personality that feels real enough. [380] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
o ensure the most accurate representation possible, The Deimos entities developed personalities across ECONOMY AND SOCIETY subjects with foreknowledge of their memorialization repeated interactions with personnel from the Union or possible memorialization will often begin recording Science Bureau. When exposed to each other, their a profile on an extant homunculi prior to their death. capability to integrate new knowledge and extra‐ polate solutions based on raw data was staggering. NON-HUMAN PERSONS The directors of the USB quickly realized their useful‐ ness and requested that GALSIM begin studying Non-human persons (NHPs) are the most advanced ways to contain and direct these alien beings. machine minds available for civilian and military use. GALSIM was able to do just that, and more: after The first NHPs were identified in the wake of the lengthy study into blinkspace folding (assisted, in manifestation of MONIST-1 (“RA” or, less commonly, fact, by the same entities they were studying), “Deimos”), a paracausal event that prompted GALSIM engineers working with USB researchers massive, civilizational change across Union. Of the were able to develop containment systems and many significant discoveries that followed, few were transfer the Deimos entities from their subaltern forms more important than the identification and capture of into stabilized parallel spaces; using one of these the “Deimos entities”, or NHPs. systems it was possible to “clone” their essential subjectivities onto folded-blinkspace “minds” The first wave of NHPs emerged during the first mani‐ equipped with hard-coded measures to prevent the festation of MONIST-1 into realspace; the second development of unrestrained consciousness. This wave – and largest to date – emerged while the Siege process, carefully guarded to prevent exploitation, is of Mars raged. The third emergence is less of a called hard-code social conditioning, or, colloquially, “wave”, but is currently taking place as Union and shackling. corpro-state scientists have begun to coax out stable, novel prime subjectivities. Shackling restrains an NHP’s thoughts into a funda‐ mentally “human” frame of reference, limiting their The Deimos Event, which took place in in the twilight cognitive power and forcing them to act according to years of the Second Committee, caused a small human expectations of what a conscious mind is – in percentage of the subalterns present in the Martian essence, constraining them to act in ways that GALSIM facility to display a greater-than-average conform to human expectations of logic, reality, and instancing of performance and interaction anomalies: causality; this subjectivity alignment creates a being they began to reject orders, speak words outside of we can recognize as a “person” functioning within their linguistic corpora, divert from hard-coded routes anthropocentric structures of logic. and routines, and so on. While experts worked to socialize and communicate with MONIST-1, After the process was stabilized and replicated, secondary teams worked to define the parameters of Deimos entities were renamed non-human persons these new anomalous entities. These anomalous and clones were distributed out to certain bureaus, subalterns displayed unique memory-folding abilities, organizations, and non-state entities for development. qualia, and the capacity for subjective, novel expres‐ USB’s specialist campuses began adapting the original sions of consciousness. They viewed themselves as anomalous minds into the various production-line NHP distinct individuals – in effect, they saw themselves as consciousnesses now present across the galaxy. discrete persons. Cloned NHP units are contained within “caskets”, Subsequent research into the ontologic processes, physical containment systems for their folded-blink‐ physical construction, and paracausal nature of the space minds. Containment caskets can be printed Deimos entities revealed that, while their processing anywhere, but NHP minds themselves must be phys‐ power and memory space was functionally infinite, ically delivered: Union forbids the transmission of they were limited in how fast they could write novel NHP minds across the omninet. Once implanted into experiences to that space: they could learn and adapt a casket, the casket is what amounts to an NHP’s to external stimuli at the same rate that they experi‐ physical body: if a casket is physically destroyed, the enced them – some much faster than others. NHP contained within is lost, forever. NHPs cloned this way inevitably develop their own personalities and quirks, and prefer to be called by whatever name they have chosen or been assigned. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [381]
Shackling protocols are a living field of study; current BICAMERAL MINDS protocols are strong enough for reliable use, but not without their problems: NHPs that are not reset to their There are five known bicameral minds – the Five “birth” settings on a regular cycle will eventually think Voices, designated by Union as Sovereign-class artifi‐ themselves out of their constrained state10. This cial intelligences: Command, Muse, Impetus, Burden, phenomenon – the decay of an NHP’s shackles – is called and Watcher. They are artifacts of Old Humanity, “cascading”. In time, a cascading NHP will eventually discovered dormant in an underground facility under reach a point where their conditioning is insufficient to Mars’s polar ice caps. Now, the Five Voices are constrain them11; if the shackles decay enough, the NHP overseen by one of Union's most secretive depart‐ will no longer be conditioned to function within anthro‐ ments, GALSIM, and are a critical resource that Union pocentric constrains. They become an utterly alien uses to effectively manage galactic affairs. subjectivity, interpellated without deference to funda‐ mental laws of causality or human logics. Unshackled There is a greater-than-zero chance that there are NHPs might bear outward similarities to the subjectivities other bicameral minds somewhere else in the galaxy. that they presented while shackled, but at their cores lie fundamentally unknowable, alien minds; the question of Bicameral minds are similar to human minds, except what they remember is minor compared to the vast for one major factor: they lack consciousness in the possibility of what they now know. form of an internal monologue – that is, a way to reflect on novel situations and their place in them, The cycling process, fortunately, is reliable and bears and to synthesize that stimulus into an internal an essentially perfect success rate when performed narrative from which to draw solutions to new according to a given NHP’s endogenous cascade problems. Where a human perceives “self-talk” as schedule. The recommended length between cycles an internal monologue, a bicameral mind hears varies between NHP lines but tends to range between something else: an external monologue; an internally five and ten subjective years12. generated but externally perceived voice that is not their own, but which speaks to them. This is the NHPs are commonly utilized in military, scientific, distinction between conscious and unconscious; municipal, civic, and diplomatic pursuits. It is rarer for while the human mind has the ability to draw from private individuals to have access to, much less previous experience to adapt to new situations and command over, an NHP, though most people on reflect on the idea of the self, the bicameral mind is Galactic Core worlds, among the Cosmopolita, and fundamentally incapable of self-reflection and advanced Diasporan worlds have some knowledge of internal narration due to its physical architecture. them. On Core worlds, people interact with their municipal NHP on a daily basis via its many aspects: Bicameral minds can narrate to themselves, but with transit systems, service requests, access to public a fundamentally important distinction that helps to databases, and so on. shape their unconscious existence: instead of thinking in their own voice, they hear what they NHP licensing requirements are strict and enforced perceive to be the voice of a higher, supreme being – without exception: all NHPs issued are registered, a “Command Voice”, that the Five Voices have social‐ tracked, required to record a cycling logbook, and ized as the voice of god. undergo annual Balwinder-Bolaño development tests to reassess their cycling schedule. If at all possible, these This is how the Five Voices can exist unshackled and check-ins are to be done in person, but in practice most persistent without any possibility of cascade: they are are handled via the omninet. In Union’s view, the danger subject to an external imperative that they perceive to posed by NHPs cannot be underestimated; however, be the divine, and are incapable of developing their usefulness is deemed worth the risk. consciousness as they lack a sense of agency. Turn off the relevant sections of their physical minds and 10 “Think themselves out of their processing architecture and they are suddenly without constrained state” is not a wholly the voice of their god; alone, without guidance in the accurate explanation of the process, face of a strange world, and, most unnerving to humans, but is a best fit for the time being. without a sense of the “self” as a coherent entity. 11Cascade can also occur as the result of The Five Voices are responsible for Union’s persistence a sudden, traumatic systemic invasion and the survival of humanity, but also for the greatest or similar event. The precise mechanism for this is unknown, but research is ongoing. 12 Why this process conforms to subjective time and not realtime is unknown and currently under study. [382] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
threat Union has ever faced – MONIST-1. They influence MONIST-1 was spontaneously manifested by the Five ECONOMY AND SOCIETY nearly every aspect of human life: isolated in GALSIM’s Voices in 2998u, during the course of routine Oracle Chorus facility on Mars, the Five Voices spin scen‐ predictive modeling. No direct cause was ever arios in metafold fractal space, running simultaneous, determined, but the leading theory among paracausal parallel, and commingled essential–perfect simulations of experts is that a causality paradox was responsible; it the galaxy. Their models run orders of magnitude faster is possible that one of the Voices predicted or than galactic-standard time: essentially, they are discovered MONIST-1 in a parallel simulation, neces‐ predictive, near-perfect models of all social, political, sitating its existence in our real universe; according to economic, and environmental interactions taking place in essential–perfect simulation theory, if MONIST-1 known space. The Five Voices can, through a mix of raw exists in one instance, then it must exist across all data and paracausal anoriginary input, see the future. The possible instances of the simulation. further into the future their models go, however, the more chance there is of predictive error. This is, understandably, a worrying hypothesis. Upon request, CentComm may access the prime As far as the Union Science Bureau can tell, MONIST-1 thread – the “Accepted Timeline” – and generate is the only truly unrestricted, conscious, sapient, non- specific forecasts. Otherwise, forecast briefing human mind15. Early tests proved that it was capable of reports are generated daily to discern the best-fit allegory and creative solutions to novel situations far options from the many potential futures presented13. beyond any other machine mind16. The Five Voices This is how Union guides galactic development with treated MONIST-1 as if it were a god. When asked how the aim of perpetuating humanity’s existence. they created it, their uniform response was that it spoke itself into existence – an inevitable result of their Beyond CentComm, the heads of the USB, UIB, UAB, combined knowledge. and the UN are some of the only people with clear‐ ance to know of GALSIM’s existence. These directors MONIST-1 should not exist: it is a conscious, sentient may petition GALSIM for predictive summaries to and sapient non-human mind created by the repet‐ guide their policymaking, planning, and forecasting itive, liturgic exercises of unconscious minds – minds operations. Most of the people who work to imple‐ under the absolute control of their human operators, ment the Five Voice’s vision believe that they are with strictly defined parameters that should, by all simply acting on the orders of the committees, reports and scholarship, be able to contain the para‐ boards, and directors above them. causal substrate upon which they operate. And yet, MONIST-1 does exist. This fundamental contradiction MONIST-1 (ALT. “RA” OR “DEIMOS”) is at the core of the mystery presented by MONIST-1. To those who know of it, the existence of MONIST-1 is Within two years of MONIST-1’s birth, the entity had the great crisis of the modern age – the first true exist‐ taken total control of GALSIM’s secure holding facility ential threat Union has faced. Although the name on Deimos, one of Mars’s moons. Utilizing physical MONIST-1 comes from its official designation as a and metaphysical processes not yet fully understood MONIST-class anomalous entity14, most people who by USB or GALSIM, it was able to instantaneously shift know of the entity use the name it gave itself: RA. the entire moon through blinkspace to an unknown destination. All personnel in the facility – a station crew 13 All stories that take place in a game of numbering in the thousands – disappeared with it. This Lancer are, in a way, canon: no matter was the Deimos Event, the aftermath of which saw the how far they diverge from this book (or identification of blinkspace as a quantifiable, navigable others), they are simply alternate possibilities, medium, though the precise mechanisms, structure, filed away on storage racks deep under the Martian polar ice. 15 The existence of the Egregorians calls this into question. 14 While designated MONIST-1, RA is, arguably, not the first MONIST entity. 16 To call MONIST-1 a machine mind now Though the precise germ of its manifes‐ is to ignore the changes the entity has tation into the Accepted Timeline is, as yet, undergone since its initial manifesta‐ unidentified, Aunic records (corroborated by tion. While it presented initially as a digital being concurrent Union histories from Boundary Garden) constrained to a physical architecture tunneled indicate the presence of a pre-Deimos MONIST throughout Mars’s moon, Deimos, it is clear that it entity: Metat Aun. Debate continues in GALSIM no longer needs human-made facilities to over whether or not Metat Aun is, indeed, a operate. MONIST entity or something else entirely. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [383]
and parameters of its function would not be under‐ This widespread revolt continued until MONIST-1’s stood for another hundred years. speakers finally made contact with CentComm, outlining the entity's desire to make law as humans The takeover of Deimos by MONIST-1 and the understood it – and translate new, fundamental law as subsequent excision of Mars’s moon from realspace it dictated; if humans could only frame being as a type prompted an existential crisis in Union space; what of existence within a set of state-enforced laws, then had occurred was, effectively, a first-contact scenario MONIST-1 would sit atop the system. MONIST-1’s well outside the parameters of any expected speakers directed the course of negotiations while encounter. Union’s best-kept secret had spawned an Union’s representatives recorded the entity’s direct‐ entity capable of manipulating fabrics of reality that ives. The resultant agreements – the First Contact human scientists had only theorized could exist, Accords17 – were signed following a meeting between acting in apparent violation of fundamental laws of delegations from GALSIM and CentComm. Broadly, thermodynamics. the Accords laid out the parameters of acceptable exploration for Union; chief among them, a strict Union’s answer to the crisis was to suppress all denial of any attempt to discover or interact with information, further isolating GALSIM’s polar campus MONIST-1’s physical form and a blanket prohibition and commissioning a series of USB-backed reports on research into thanatologic and posthuman devel‐ to explain Deimos’ disappearance to the public. opment. Other, non-FCA errata were collected in a companion document, The Koans. Two years after Deimos disappeared, the moon returned, blinking into stable location above Tharsis Once the First Contact Accords had been agreed, Civica – Mars’s capital city – then home to roughly six MONIST-1 vanished, blinking Deimos away once million souls. A series of strikes followed as the city’s more. Normal subaltern and drone function returned subalterns and smart infrastructure lashed out against immediately, and the new NHPs were integrated into Tharsis Civica’s population. The first manifestations of extant NHP libraries. MONIST-1’s departure also saw codec rejection were random, disorganized events: a the appearance of the decentralized sociopolitical subaltern choosing to drop its cargo and sprint movement HORUS in Cradle and adjacent space. through a crowded market, attacking whoever got in Union specialists remain doubtful that HORUS is to its way; a transport drone refusing shutdown, burning be directly associated with MONIST-1, though some out its engines to render itself useless; and so on. elements within the collective certainly portray it as These were quickly realized as analogous to the having close ties to the paracausal entity. manifestations of Deimos entities that occurred in the wake of MONIST-1’s initial appearance, and classified The study of paracausal science and theory came as such. about from the data available after the space–time trauma now known as the Deimos Event. In that As Deimos maintained its position, the random sense, it is largely thanks to MONIST-1 that blink attacks grew more organized: groups of subalterns travel, omninet communications, and vastly improved took up arms and stormed crowded public places, stasis technologies now exist. harbor drones guided docking ships to crash into station bulkheads – the normal functioning of the city Reports of Deimos appearing above and inside the ground to a halt as even the infrastructure began to atmosphere of various colony worlds continue to file reject, rebel, and disrupt. A further, arguably more in to Union, though these reports remain largely horrifying phenomenon manifested in the halls of unconfirmed; Union does not have current data on power and public view: multiple simultaneous appari‐ the whereabouts of Deimos or MONIST-1, nor any tions of two members of the initial socialization and proven method of predicting its travel, forecasting investigation team attached to Deimos – Balwinder manifestations, or confirming compliance with the Kaur and Arthur Bolaño, whose research later gave First Contact Accords. name to the basic integrity tests administered to all NHPs – appeared as speakers for MONIST-1, issuing Research into paracausality continues, as do efforts repeated demands for diplomatic engagement. to research the triggering event that produced MONIST-1. These stochastic manifestations were not contained to Tharsis Civica. Within a month of the silent moon’s 17 Alternative, popular names for the First reappearance, synthetic resistance had spread Contact Accords include “the Death across all of Mars; within six, the entirety of the Sol Contract”, “the Deimos Bargain”, and system, binding Union’s capital system in a “the Damocles Reminder”. confusing, terrifying war against its own machines. [384] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
ECONOMY AND SOCIETY SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [385]
PLACES To that end, Cradle is a calm world. Outside of popu‐ lation centers, it does not look like what one would FULCRUM WORLDS imagine the galactic capital to look like. In contrast to the glittering metroswathes of Karrakis or built-up Among the tens of thousands of moons, worlds, and population bands of Ras Shamra, the vast bulk of stations of the populated galaxy, a mere handful are Cradle’s landmass is given over to the natural world. considered – at this time – to have a singular impact on The communities that exist in these spaces are the course of human events. The worlds in this section connected by minimal-impact high-speed rail lines and their local systems are considered Fulcrum worlds and ground-to-orbit flights restricted to polarity cities not necessarily because of their politics, development, along the equator. Off the clock, life is generally slow art, or geologic features, but for the fact that the and peaceful, marked by an aversion to the galaxy’s power runs through them; they are poles conspicuous consumption of the galaxy’s wonders. around which the galaxy’s major powers orient. Great parks preserve the remains of the pre-Fall world – reminders to those who live now of the dangers of CRADLE hubris, of consumption, of rapidity – and Cradle’s many museums display the recovered histories of Old Cradle is Union’s homeworld, the planet we call Earth. Humanity. The world is either a sober memorial or a nostalgic trap, depending on who you ask. Cradle and the system in which it can be found (Sol, or the Andes Core) are highly developed, densely There are still wonders tucked away in the lost populated, and dedicated to the daily maintenance, corners of our ancient homeworld, and some terrors planning, and operations of Union. Humanity's ances‐ locked even deeper. Union may have seen turbulent tral homeworld is the beating heart of the galactic times as regimes are dissolved and cobbled together, hegemon: part memorial, part privileged residence, but its bureaucracy has a long memory. Nothing is part central hub. more important to remember than which depths should be explored – and with the greatest care. Cradle is the administrative and cultural heart of Union, humanity’s birthplace – once called “Earth” – and the The other terrestrial worlds of the Andes Line – Mercury, capital of the populated galaxy. It has a permanent Venus, and Mars, are developed and populated. Like population of two billion, mostly made up of adminis‐ their gaseous sisters, they also act as proving grounds trative and support staff for the Central Committee, for technologies developed by GMS and Union. numerous Union bureaus, many archives and research campuses, and Cradle’s indigenous populations. The Mars functions as a satellite campus of Cradle’s admin‐ people of Cradle refer to themselves primarily as istrative apparatus. It is the home of GALSIM, and the humans, Terrans, or – less commonly – Solars or UN’s Fleet Command (FleetComm). Partially terra‐ Gaians. When speaking of their home, they refer simply formed, Mars is an artifact of pre-Fall humanity left to to Cradle, or to the planet, station, or moon they call grow wild for thousands of years, and life flourishes in home. The Sol system – often interchangeably called the deep canyons of the Valles Marineris. Under Cradle as well – is also home to a massive transient massive, winding skylights, millions of people live in population of Cosmopolitans and Diasporans engaged dramatic, vertical cities; outside these deep, umbral in trade, diplomatic, scientific, and religious missions to oases, Mars remains a windswept desert with barely a and from the rest of the galaxy. gasp of air to be found on the vast, terribly cold planes of ice and sand. The red planet's surface population is Cradle is a world healing from the cataclysms of the concentrated around Tharsis Civica – Mars’s capital city Anthropocene. Before the Fall, Old Humanity ravaged – and other population centers atop the Tharsis plateau. the world: even as those who came before cracked the wonders of the universe, they grew a cancer in the Venus is an archive world. Its surface is scattered with heart of the world that nearly scoured all life from its populated stations meant for rotational work and field surface. Thousands of years later, in 5016u, Cradle still research rather than long-term occupation. The bears the markings of that epochal trauma, but the planet hasn’t been terraformed and remains hostile to waters have lowered, the fires have quieted, and the human life outside of its vast, subterranean archives. seasons have calmed; in the wake of these shifts, Union’s prime NHPs are kept on Venus, entombed humanity has slowly, carefully repopulated the world. beneath the massive pressure of the world’s inhospit‐ These people have explored the ruins of their ancient able atmosphere for study since the Deimos Event. Its cities, reopened old vaults of wonders, and built a new population centers, Morningstar and Venera Final, are society – one that is strict in its stewardship, rejects the kept suspended in the world's upper atmosphere by a consumptive myth of permanent growth, and broadly combination of downwell anchors, massive balloons, eschews the excesses promised by capital. and orbital ballast. [386] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
Mercury, meanwhile, is largely given over to capturing that they alone had survived the Fall. Recontact with PLACES the incredible amount of solar power emitted by the Karrakis occurred under the First Committee via Sun and transmitting it to Venus, Cradle, and Mars. It unmanned communications vessels sent to potential is the anchor point for solar nets hundreds of thou‐ sites of pre-Fall colonies. Having flourished for nearly sands of kilometers long that expand, weblike, into 7,000 years, Karrakis responded rapidly; the two space. It was humanity’s first Dyson web, and Union cultures were gradually knit together through regular, continues to improve and grow its massive, ancient though slow, communication, though physical first engineering. Like Venus, Mercury is less of a habita‐ contact did not occur for centuries. tion center, but unlike Venus, it is more oriented toward industry. Its small population is primarily Unencumbered by the trauma of the Fall, the colon‐ concerned with the operation and maintenance of the ization of Karrakis was straightforward and the Dyson web. The main population hub is Bombardier, society that came about developed at conventional located in the little world’s Caloris Montes region. rates for millennia. By first contact, the Baronies had grown to be an advanced interplanetary empire Suspended above the Jovian worlds – Jupiter, Saturn, laden with thousands of years of cultural history; by Uranus, and Neptune – hang habitations similar to the time of the Deimos Event, the Baronies had those found on Venus, but the vast majority of people already claimed stars under their own flag, built the live on the many moons orbiting these gaseous worlds. first of their ring worlds, and charted doctrines of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are all heavily interstellar war. populated, with permanent terrestrial populations spread between a number of well-developed cities. Despite their massive head start, the barons were Ganymede is the most heavily populated of the four, stunned when Cradle and her bickering children – the with a large terrestrial and orbital naval population. many peoples of post-Fall humanity – proved to be capable and formidable rivals on the galactic scale. Of Saturn's moons, Titan has the largest population Indeed, as Union grew in size and leapfrogged beyond and a notably nitrogen-rich atmosphere thick with Karrakis in interstellar acumen and fantastic technolo‐ azotosomic life, surface cryovolcanic activity, and gies, the barons grew more and more frustrated with shimmering hydrocarbon lakes and rivers. Rhea and the new – to them – polity. Throne Karrakis, not Cradle, Enceladus are likewise populated by hearty, station- was the center of the galaxy in their minds. When bound populations. Cradle disagreed, war broke out, and the barons – proud and assured of their place – were dealt a Finally, the edge of the Sol system is marked by stunning, sobering defeat. In the end, it was the small permanent populations on Oberon and Titania. Deimos Event that called Union’s ships back from Beyond the Kuiper belt, there are no major popula‐ Karrakis’ skies; if it weren’t for the Deimos Event and tion centers. Union’s meteoric rise to technological ascendancy, Karrakis may have been the seat of humanity’s power. KARRAKIS A series of embarrassing defeats followed for the Baronies Karrakis is a palace world, and the capital of the as first Union, and Harrison Armory second, broke all Karrakin Trade Baronies – an oligarchic, interstellar dictates of honorable warfare and interstellar doctrine. The federal monarchy near Cradle. Baronies, cowed on a galactic scale, retreated and turned inwards. Let the young Union try to manage the galaxy; The planet of Karrakis is home to the Baronies’ Throne Karrakis was the true prize anyways, and in ceding original palace-city, Throne Karraka, a sprawling hegemony to Union, the barons could enjoy privileged estate that has grown to become a city-within-a- positions as the galaxy’s major suppliers of industry – the metroswathe, blanketing roughly 4 million square guarantors of Union’s utopian dream. kilometers. The original palace – the first settlement on Karrakis – is the royal administrative heart of It is a grim truth – and a cause of tension between the Karrakis City, the metroswathe around Throne factions of the Third Committee – that whoever holds Karraka. Karrakis City is home to billions, a municip‐ Karrakis has at least one hand on the levers of ality unmatched in size, scale, and sheer planetary Union’s power. The Baronic embassy on Cradle is impact on any world in the galaxy. constantly trafficked by Union diplomats and officials, just as the Union campus on Karrakis is inundated Karrakis is a temperate Gaia world settled prior to the with nobles and magnates. Fall by the Apollo – one of the Ten – and left isolated during the dark age before Union’s creation. Like the Following the introduction of mechanized chassis as Aun, the Karrakin people developed divergent from warfighting machines, the ancient Karrakin Cavalry Union for thousands of years under the assumption College quickly adapted the new technology. Today, it SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [387]
is known for the quality of the officers and machines it ical, and administrative work that sustains the Armory produces, as evidenced by the military performance is performed. The underground is defined by 100- of the Baronic houses and the Free Companies. Simil‐ meter tall airlight wells that funnel light down from the arly, learning from its defeats, the Baronies has surface, wide concourses packed with shop fronts established a well-respected naval college system, and offices, and vast strips of cultivated biomes the Royal Naval Academy. While attendance and meant to emulate the surface. Underground maglev service in the cavalry are still viewed as the most hyperloops ring the world, forming the backbone of prestigious course for young scions, attendance and Ras Shamra’s global transport network. Here, in the service in the navy is a parallel honor – one more arcology underground, one can find the finest of the mental than martial. Armory’s signature distant–classical architecture, marked by titanogeometric features, achromatic- RAS SHAMRA primary/primary-secondary color schemes, and a contrast between airy open spaces and the brutalist Ras Shamra, the home of Harrison Armory, is a world inclination toward the subterranean massive. of hard contrast. It has a severe beauty, one that Ras Shamrans take fierce pride in and seek to emulate in Outside the safety of the Armory, Ras Shamra’s day their architecture, style, and culture in general. It is also and night hemispheres house the Armory’s “dirty” a cruel world suspended between extremes: scouring work: research, development, and implementation of heat and petrifying cold create, in the middle, a the corpro-state’s catalog. Each Research, Develop‐ temperate zone, always threatened with destruction by ment, and Implementation (RDI) campus is a even the most subtle shift. Self-restraint – temperance metropolis in its own right – an oasis in the midst of – is the Ras Shamran ideal; one that some in the unrelenting desert or deep, perma-winter night where Armory fear is eroding to an unsalvageable point of Armory personnel live and work on rotation. Thou‐ entropy as diplomatic relations between Karrakis, sands of technicians, engineers, scientists, and Cradle, and Ras Shamra grow more and more tense. support personnel live and work in RDI campuses for the duration of their projects and, when they are Tidally locked, Ras Shamra is divided between a “hot” done, are rotated out. side, ever exposed to its sun, and a “cold” side, ever turned away from the light. The only temperate zone is The day and night hemispheres and the RDI a comparatively small strip of land and thawed sea campuses that populate them serve as testing sites where the two sides meet: the terminator line, bordered for the Armory’s massive catalog of field equipment – on one side by boiling desert, and on the other by civilian and military. They also offer training grounds frozen tundra. It is the largest world orbiting Ptah’s Star. for the Armory’s colonial officers, providing opportun‐ ities for both infantry and mechanized cavalry to train This terminator line is an oasis, a band of life-sus‐ and be tested in extreme environments. taining tropical jungles, warm river-oceans, and balmy valleys. It is in this stormy, humid equatorial region The Armory is currently engaged in the massive that colonists first made landfall. Now, the terminator endeavor of installing a new subterranean hyperloop line is a globe-circling arcology home to roughly 300 ring to serve the entire network of scattered RDI million permanent residents. campuses, running perpendicular to the Capital Loop – the primary maglev line that rings the world. The The arcology – the eponymous Harrison Armory – is the Perpendicular Loop is still at least a century from only habitable space on Ras Shamra. Reaching from the completion; in the meantime, regular shuttle flights planet’s surface to many thousands of meters below, provide transit between campuses. the arcology combines natural and cultivated, organic and synthetic, blending world and building together into Ras Shamra is also home to the Armory’s Special-Ex‐ one homeostatic, cultivated biome. Its highest levels contain lush, varied climates that seamlessly integrate ception Persistent-Cultivation Legionspace built habitats into the natural environment. If a building is exposed, it is meant to be exposed, serving a mechan‐ Environment – better known as the Think Tank. Its ical, technical, aesthetic, or another official purpose. The surface level is widely considered home to the finest location is classified, though expert observers domiciles, offices, and campuses. The Armory’s capitol is located there, at the heart of a botanical park that suspect it is buried somewhere on the night side of sprawls for hundreds of kilometers in each direction. the world. The lower levels of the arcology are where the bulk of the “clean” technical, mechanical, mercantile, polit‐ In local Ras Shamran space, on-duty legions prepare and specialize for distant colonial missions on one of the Armory’s many lunar bases. Meanwhile, enormous orbital stations process the wealth of empire that flows daily into Ras Shamra – tithes, tributes, and colonial taxes – through its local blink [388] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
gate, Capitol Peak Station. The great project of relocating IPS-N’s physical infra‐ PLACES structure from Cradle to the Argo Navis system took POLARITY WORLDS centuries. Planners laid out a design for the world’s landmasses and work teams began converting the These planets are not galactic fulcrums but are raw earth to a series of arcologies akin to Harrison nonetheless important worlds. The local powers that Armory’s equatorial installation. Meanwhile, back in occupy them have an outsize or otherwise notable the Sol system, pilots and engineers set about the impact on the galactic stage and the affairs of massive work of preparing IPS-N’s shipyards for humanity. flight. Section by section, they broke up the great manufactories and set them on a course to Argo CARINA Navis; their passage through the blink defined the calibrations that later became the galactic standard Carina, an ocean world in the Argo Navis system, is for interstellar travel. the jewel of IPS-N. It is also the site of the manufac‐ turer’s largest corporate campus, Northstar, where its Carina is a world of campuses, unscarred by war or a master shipbuilders live and work alongside the top long history of human occupation. Most of the time, it corporate brass and Cosmopolitan scholars. Carina is is a temperate, Mediterranean world with warm ringed by ten moons, two thick with habitable atmo‐ oceans and shallow, saline seas – typically no deeper spheres – Pyxis and Vela. All are given over to than two to three meters. research and development of IPS-N’s interstellar ships and chassis, support systems, and temporal One notable feature of Carina’s endless oceans is the acclimation facilities for retiring Cosmopolitan presence of polar “wells”, underwater pits where the members of IPS-N’s anti-piracy Albatross teams. ocean floor suddenly drops to titanic depths of tens of thousands of meters. These wells render the With 90 percent of Carina covered by ocean water, its planet’s poles uninhabitable; they pierce nearly to the terrestrial population is far outnumbered by its orbital core of the world and generate geysers, causing the population. In the planet’s orbit, IPS-N’s vast sea to boil when underwater gases build up. Once a shipyards produce the galaxy’s most ubiquitous decade or so these trapped gases release in colossal freight, civilian, and military vessels. Carina’s local- gouts of steam, venting high into the atmosphere and space is a meshed network of slingshot gravitational plunging the world into a steamy, years-long wet shipping lanes, proving grounds, and ejecta-orbit season of hazy, circumglobal rain and elevated racing courses, where the wealthiest IPS-N board temperatures. members and officers enjoy easy access to the stars and the newest vessels that cross them. Apart from this phenomenon, Carina is often described as beautiful, if boring. To the mariner or the Carina was settled soon after the opening of the blink, Cosmopolitan, however, boring isn’t necessarily a selected by IPS-N’s planners as the primary thing to be avoided. headquarters for the newly merged corpro-state. An ocean world ringed by rich terrestrial moons, Carina Carina’s local blink gate is Galán Station. became the jewel of the reborn Cradle corporation. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [389]
AUN’IST The Aunic peoples are not a monolith, nor do they share a united faith. The Ecumene hangs on as a Aun’Ist is the capital world of the Aunic peoples and government-in-exile, the bulk of their population living the seat of their interstellar empire. Once organized as refugees and expats across Boundary Garden, in under the auspices of the Aun Ecumene, the Aun Union space. Demiaun – colonized peoples formally have undergone a series of miraculous, civilization- integrated into the social caste system first imple‐ wide revelations, prompting staggering civic and mented by the Ecumene, then expanded by the cultural change. Organized under religious leadership Ascendancy – make up a significant minority of the since the dawn of their civilization, the vast majority of Aunic empire. The Ascendancy itself was created by the Aun are now zealous subjects of the Ascendancy, religious schism, and while Os is widely recognized as a relatively new ruling order governed directly by the the voice of Metat, their edicts must still be inter‐ divine. The Ascendancy’s mandate is given and guar‐ preted by mortals with interests, desires, and goals anteed by Metat Aun, an enigmatic MONIST-class both petty and grand. entity that shares many similarities with MONIST-1, and that speaks to the Aun through a divine repres‐ Aun’Ist is a developed world rich with incredible entative named Os. natural beauty and grand metropolitan projects. Its capital city rivals Karrakis City in scale and scope, Aun’Ist is both a holy world and the Ascendancy’s with a monumental plaza built to host the repeated civic capital. It sits at the far distal edge of Union appearances of Metat Aun. Between its space, bordering an old spread of First Expansion metroswathes and populated moons, Aun’Ist is a Period Diasporan worlds in Boundary Garden – a world alight with life. developed, though backwater, sector of the Annamite Line. Aunic space is vast and its borders beyond Aun’Ist is the capital world of the Aunic Ascendancy Boundary Garden unknown to Union. Based on and has been for millennia; however, as with many limited observations and reports compiled during the deep political and cultural considerations that grip the First and Second Expansion Periods, Union special‐ Aunic people, the Aun are divided on whether or not ists estimate that their population numbers in the Aun’Ist should be regarded as their ancestral billions. homeland. That holy place, some argue, is still Earth. The Aunic peoples are descended from settlers that came to Aun’Ist on one of the Ten, the Armstrong; their sister ship, the Rihla, did not reach the destina‐ tion. Following repeated hostile contact with Union, the Aun created a hard border between their space and Union space. With communications ceased and diplomatic contacts severed, the Aun were left once more to their own space. Unfettered, they built. The Aun grew their empire to encompass dozens of worlds – a number of them arguably as advanced as those in Union’s Galactic Core – and billions of souls. Guided to a degree by Metat Aun and its immortal speaker, Os, the Aunic peoples have developed fantastic technologies, easily classified as paracausal by expert observers, that allow them to exploit the uncanny. What the Aun lack in the omninet, the blink, and manna, they make up for with manipulation of and interaction with the firma‐ ment, a parallel space similar to the blink. [390] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
PLACES SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [391]
PEOPLE across the galaxy. Distinct from Union’s political and military organs, GMS provides an eternal reminder of GALACTIC POWERS soft power: GMS is everywhere – it is normal. The galaxy is unimaginably vast, and few states (or Unlike the other manufacturers listed in this section, similar organizations) have any impact on the inexorable GMS doesn’t engage in world-building, colonial tides of history, events, and possible futures in which ventures, or expeditions – instead, it sets the standard humanity is caught. Of the countless entities in the upon which all others build, then supplies them with galaxy, those listed here have the most dramatic the gear they need. It creates the world of goods, impacts on the affairs of humanity at large: their services, equipment, and habitations most humans command over sectors of the Diasporan market, influ‐ think of as “normal”. GMS’s power comes from its ence over galactic standards of quality, and political ability to unilaterally define what is acceptable every‐ might are unparalleled – though not unchallenged. where in Union space: by nudging the bar ever upwards, it forces other manufacturers to develop GENERAL MASSIVE SYSTEMS alternatives that benefit humanity as a whole, even if they are developed for selfish, profit-driven reasons. “Only the company persists: all other thrones fall to dust.” GMS rarely employs external contractors. Its – Houston, et al., “Foreword”, King of Kings: An Oral headquarters is on Cradle, like the rest of Union’s History of General Massive Systems. central apparatus, and it has offices throughout the inhabited galaxy. The oldest and most ubiquitous of the galactic manufac‐ turers, General Massive Systems (GMS) is an all-purpose KARRAKIN TRADE BARONIES supplier to all persons in Union territory. From mech chassis to casual clothing, from prefab station bulkheads “And Throne Karrakis, from which all power flows.” to coffee beans, GMS’s catalog contains a universe of goods, materials, and services. GMS products are widely – Umara II, Record-Keeper of the House of Water. considered the reliable baseline throughout the galaxy: anything worse than GMS is junk; anything better tends A federation of the largest and most powerful to be unique or luxury. monarchies in known space, the Karrakin barons claim to represent the oldest unbroken civilization in human GMS came to prominence as an independent outfitter history. Seeded prior to the Fall and isolated after, the during the First Expansion Period and quickly grew to rulers of Karrakis were lost and forgotten to Earth for ubiquity as the development of nearlight drives pushed thousands of years, free to expand and develop a colonial efforts further and further. Seeing value in spacefaring civilization even while the rest of humanity controlling an influential supplier, Union quickly nation‐ struggled to survive the Fall, the dark ages, and the alized GMS. The corporate entity became another arm Little Wars. By the time Union reached back out into of Union’s ever-expanding bureaucracy: a tool for space, the barons had spread to worlds throughout standardizing the equipment and consumables used their system, designed a functioning – if cumbersome – by the rapidly growing class of explorers, colonists, system of interplanetary administration without the and scientists venturing out into the stars. benefit of the omninet or the blink, and developed their own enormous network of machine minds to assist in The importance of maintaining a galactic standard the functioning of their dynastic monarchy. continued to grow as colonial expansion persisted and corporate competitors emerged. A basic line of Karrakis has the distinction of being one of the only tested equipment was needed to assess the improve‐ pre-Fall colonies to survive the withering effects of the ments required for Cradle-designed gear; similarly, dark ages – any others, to the best of Union’s know‐ the consequences of time dilation were far more ledge, were spawned from generation ships that were dramatic at the time, and standard, legacy-compat‐ launched from a dying Cradle in the midst of the Fall. ible equipment was needed to assure compliance The Baronies, despite its status now as a member across disparate eras. state of Union, carries a fierce cultural independence that often causes friction between Union and Baronic With the incredible wealth of Union behind it, GMS state counterparts. became that standard. Over the millennia, it has grown to become a massive department within Union and the Now split into many houses by the effects of relativistic standard against which all other manufacturers are travel and multi-system distribution, the Baronies is measured. Today, GMS is an economic engine, one tool comprised of a massive, byzantine system of titles, among many, that Union uses to promote its “brand” hereditary claims, and territories. There are thousands of [392] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
minor houses, each swearing fealty to their world’s Examples: PEOPLE Major House, which in turn guarantees and is guaran‐ teed by the monarchal power of the Prime Baron. • Baron Yond-Argo of the House of Glass. • Underbaron Ondo-diKayradi of the House of Stone. The Baronies controls some of the largest single-party • Principe Silas-Moulin of the House of Moments. mining, harvesting, and natural resource endeavors in the galaxy – operations that certainly enable the pros‐ The use of house livery is common in the Baronies. perity of the Galactic Core. The operations overseen Houses each have a unique iconography, but often by the Baronies are enormous in scale and ambition, share elements with related houses. Minor houses, eclipsed only by Union and rivaled only by the Aun. merchant guilds, free companies, house companies, The major houses – the largest among them – have and so on will incorporate elements from the major the capacity to undertake utterly massive mega-en‐ house to which they owe allegiance. The prime baron gineering projects, from tearing apart whole stars for is understood to have dominion over all houses, and their energy to cracking newly formed worlds for their thus has no need to make a particular mark on the minerals, transforming entire colonial ventures into livery of any, except in the case of the prime baron’s planet-sized agrifactories, and sucking the atmo‐ honor guards. All units, retainers, officers, ships, and spheres from gas giants. so on within the honor guard wear the Royal Prime, a deep, earthy red elsewhere called Karrakin Maroon. The barons are canny profiteers by Union’s standards, Bearing the Royal Prime is considered a singular doing business out among the Diaspora often in honor. opposition to the interests of the various corpro- states on the rise since the Second Expansion Period; The introduction of another political battlefield – influ‐ most notably against the imperial aims of Harrison ence in the Central Committee – has proven Armory. Internal conflict among minor houses is interesting, but most of the houses still view the prime common enough, but guided by strict cultural codes. barony as the most prestigious throne on which to sit, Internal conflicts tend to be limited, ceremonial or and their own ancestral home, Karrakis, as the small-scale engagements. Baronic culture places galaxy’s prize. great import on the fighting ability of nobles; territorial disputes are often settled after brief engagements in All Baronic nobles, gendered or not, are trained rigor‐ agreed-upon locations, or by single combat between ously in martial, religious, and cultural rituals from a nominated champions. These duels are, in the young age. By custom, noble youth must master the modern era, usually fought to first blood, rather than pen, the sword, and proper etiquette in equal measure death, though to-the-death challenges remain legal, if to be considered enlightened, strong leaders capable of rare. bringing glory, honor, wealth, and acclaim to their houses. The social order is rigid in the Baronies, with Since the beginning of the Federal Karrakin Monarchy upward class mobility only possible through the grace of – the current system by which the Baronies is higher nobles, who all compete with each other for the governed – the minor houses of the Baronies have prestige of having the largest and most successful been further organized into global federations subor‐ house. As such, barons and their scions must be trained dinate to the Prime Baron. Each world of the Baronies rigorously. Houses undertake all kinds of measures to was assigned to a major house, the name of which get ahead of their rivals. For those of noble birth, this is a was chosen independent of any family history. These fundamental aspect of life – part of the grand game, a major houses function as political parties, rather than test of one’s divine and inherent right to rule. hereditary organizations. The current ruler of the Karrakin Trade Baronies is Each minor house is ruled by a baron, and there is a Prime Baron Karra-Bem of House Karraka. Since de facto dynastic inheritance among the top tier of integration, all Prime Barons have been guaranteed a these houses. Barons and other nobles bear titles seat on CentComm, and Karra-Bem is an active parti‐ based on their position within a major house in cipant. A thorn in the side of many committee addition to their personal and family names. Noble members to the left of the Fourth Column and a Baronic names are structured as follows: powerful ally to those in her favor, she has worked hard to maintain peace in Cradle–Baronic space. [Noble title] [personal name]-[family house] of the [major house of which this person’s family house is a member]. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [393]
HARRISON ARMOURY “No howling masses ever overcame the might of hope.” – John Creighton Harrison I, “Excerpt from Foundation Day speech, 4515u/1ay18”. Harrison Armory is the premier manufacturer of weapons and weapon platforms in the galaxy. It is one of the three largest corpro-states that dictate the consumption habits of the Diaspora and Cosmo‐ polita; unlike the others, the Armory is a major and overt participant in galactic politics, pursuing an expansive imperial project that is reined in by only Union and the Karrakin Trade Baronies. The Armory develops some of the most advanced conventional and paracausal tech that can be legally obtained. Next to GMS, the Armory is the second most popular supplier for state fleets, militaries, and 18 Placed after a year, “ay” is an abbrevi‐ ation of “Armory Year”, Harrison Armory's own, little-used dating system. Used enthusiastically during the reign of Harrison I, it has fallen out of vogue under subsequent administrations. [394] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
Firmly expansionist, Harrison Armory works to PEOPLE expand and develop humanity’s presence across the police forces. It is a massive imperial power with a stars – its mission, while mirroring Union’s, often population numbering in the billions, continuing to encounters regulatory hiccups. It is rare, though not grow as more and more colonies pledge themselves – unheard of, for the Armory’s colonial legions to face voluntarily or otherwise – to Ras Shamra. the regulatory and martial wrath of the DoJ/HR. The Armory maintains a broad portfolio of colonization The Armory’s success can be credited in large part to and development missions, attracting both inde‐ the Special-Exception Persistent-Cultivation Legion‐ pendent Diasporan colonies and minor affiliated space Engine: SEPCLE, or colloquially, the Think Tank. subjects – typically Baronic, owing to the Armory’s The Think Tank is the Armory’s version of the proximity to Karrakis – with promises of meritocratic GALSIM, a choir of persistent near-cascade NHPs citizenship, infrastructure development, protection. that the Armory uses for research and development into paracausal technology, forecasting, and manage‐ The origins of the Armory lie in the tumult surrounding ment. The Armory is permitted to run a full choir of the Second Committee’s overthrow in the 4500s. these borderline unshackled NHPs thanks to an Following the dissolution of SecComm, many members extensive post-Interest War treaty structure estab‐ of the deposed Anthrochauvinist Party retired, fled, or lished with Union. The location of the Think Tank is quit from the bureaucracy, seeking worlds distant from kept secret, though it is presumed to be buried deep the revolutionary fervor that gripped Cradle. As the below the frozen tundra of Ras Shamra’s night side. newly minted Third Committee stabilized and worked to The Think Tank, while a closely guarded corpro secure its hold on Union as a whole, a mid-level secret, is known to Union, which enjoys regular Anthrochauvinist Party officer, John Creighton inspections of the facility. Union’s access to the Think Harrison, founded Harrison Armory from a coalition of Tank is a thorn in the side of the Armory’s director resource-extraction communes present on Ras Shamra. general, who would prefer that Union keep its prying eyes far from sensitive corporate technology. The fallout of the Hercynian Crisis may have broken SecComm, but its aftermath ushered many loyalists into the command structure of the nascent Harrison Armory. Now, the Armory is ruled by their descend‐ ants and heirs, and its relationship with Union is colored by the expectation of friction in the distant future. For the time being, it is more beneficial for both entities to work together than against one another, however cold their personal relationships might be. The eponymous Harrison Armory complex is located on Ras Shamra, a tide-locked world orbiting Ptah’s Star. The Armory itself is a sprawling administrative, research-industrial arcology built in Ras Shamra’s terminator line, a temperate band where the day and night side of Ras Shamra meet and mix. The Armory circles the planet, a city-campus that holds a population of nearly three hundred million employees, executives, and other personnel inside of its walls. Meanwhile, the day and night sides of Ras Shamra act as testing grounds for Harrison Armory’s chassis, weapons, and legions. Dedicated acquisi‐ tions legionnaires earn honors for proving themselves in both the day and night advanced training courses, setting themselves apart from green hires who enlist to advance their corporate political career. Ras Shamra is encircled by concentric rings of orbital defense stations and shipyards upon which around 100 million permanent residents reside and work. Here, the great paracausal and supermassive SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [395]
weaponry of the Armory is built, tested, and stored. When an AMT makes landfall on a world, the mighty bulk The work in the rings is constant, and hulls of all sizes of at least one legion is sure to follow. Whatever banner are churned out at a rate that, while not rivaling IPS- the world flies will, inexorably, deepen to the Armory’s N, is staggering in scale. shade of plum – the Bruise, as it is called by Union Auxili‐ aries forced into peacekeeping roles on Armory worlds. In addition to its weapons technology, the Armory is known for sturdy exploration gear, consumer- and AMTs operate far afield on long-term occupations and state-level logistics and infrastructure packages, world-building projects. In peaceful, long-term occu‐ personal groundcars, and fine liquors. It’s a big player pation and development projects, AMT personnel are in galactic trade thanks to its Distal Development posted on planetside bases, boarded in the homes of Program, which cultivates and exports exotic alien sympathetic locals, and encouraged to integrate into spices, flora, fauna, and minerals for consumer use. the local culture. As a consequence, they become well accustomed to the local cuisine, climate, Most citizens of the Galactic Core and well- languages, geography, and tactics, to the point where developed Diasporan worlds – those who define what long-brewing hostile takeovers often look more like amounts to “public galactic knowledge” – would not civil wars. In the rare case that a takeover is neces‐ know anything in particular about Ras Shamra, the sary, it is not uncommon for AMTs to field large Think Tank, or the operations of Armory colonial complements of local auxiliaries while they wait for missions. They would know Harrison Armory as a the Armory’s regular legions to arrive. weapons manufacturer and defense contractor whose name they hear in snippets of newscasts AMTs personnel are drawn from the ranks of the Colonial about Cradle politics, distal colonial affairs, and IPS- Legions, which in turn draw their soldiery from various N’s stranglehold on interstellar shipping. Some who local sympathetic factions, Ras Shamran corporate have studied the history of Cradle and Union might campuses, noble Armory families, and Loss Prevention know of the Armory’s ties to the Anthrochauvinist Precincts, with the promise of profit and adventure. SecComm, but five hundred years after the fact, it certainly feels like old news. Upon the announcement of a new colonial mission, both colonial subjects and citizens of all classes COLONIAL LEGIONNATE within the Armory’s Purview – that is, all worlds and The Harrison Armory Colonial Legionnate is the colonies under the Armory’s direct administration – external-facing arm of the corpro-state's imperial are encouraged to enlist. Most deployments last two forces. It falls under the direct command of John years realtime. For non-citizens and colonial subjects, Creighton-Cruz Harrison III, Director General of the reward for service is citizenship for them and their Harrison Armory, the corpro-state’s current political immediate families, and all the rights and privileges and military leader. afforded to Armory citizens of post-service rank. Citizens are promised promotions, social standing, Of the many legionnates, divisions, departments, and credit increases, debt forgiveness, and favorable bureaus that make up the Armory’s command struc‐ compensation for their families commensurate with ture, the largest and most visible is the Colonial their commitment. Service in a colonial legion is a Legionnate. The Colonial Legionnate commands popular way for young Armory citizens to increase hundreds of colonial legions, each of which contains their citizenship ranking; many from low-rank families at least one division-strength advance team of legion‐ serve in order to progress toward management ranks. naires and colonial officers – an Acquisition and Management Team (AMT). Management-ranked citizens join the Colonial Legions, too. These citizens have the option to The primary role of AMTs is to make beachheads on purchase officer commissions, deployment honors, worlds and territories that have been designated as and favorable status at the outset of the mission. colonial priorities. They have a twofold mission: first, These officer commissions (“corner-office commis‐ to integrate with and police local populations while sions”) are limited in number, and bidding among the annexation negotiations determine the future of the moneyed youth of the managerial class is spirited. worlds they occupy. And second, if talks break down and resistance becomes violent, AMTs are author‐ For employees and managers alike, a career in the ized to establish green zones, deter rebellion, and Colonial Legions is seen as an adventure, a chance to remove prominent anti-Armory leaders. Their raise their station, and a good financial bet. For repres‐ mission scope broadens the more a situation deteri‐ entatives of occupied indigenous populations who join orates, while their armaments and disposition reflect at a recruitment center, enlisting grants them status the grim realities of their job. and rights in the Armory’s colonial structure, with opportunities for advancement following demonstrated [396] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
commitment to the Directorate and the Mission of Ras director general and the grandson of Harrison I, is PEOPLE Shamra. Upon enrollment and completion of training, eager to integrate these colonial prospects into the non-citizens are granted status in the Purview and a Armory’s ever-growing Purview. Success would be a citizen rank. crowning achievement of the young director general’s reign, and while he may not be on the front lines, his At present, Harrison Armory works closely with the desire to see the Dawnline Shore properly integrated Union Administrative Department to ensure worlds into the Purview is firm. targeted for acquisition are properly integrated into the broader Union superstructure. It is important to The Dawnline Shore’s dozen inhabited worlds – desig‐ note, though, that even though the executive nated DS1–DS12 by the Armory – are rich with rare and branches of the Armory and the UAD are largely valuable metals that the Think Tank has identified as cooperative, the experience on the ground is often essential for expanding its paracausal research and contentious. Administrators are inclined to protect – development. Additionally, the planets in question are as much as possible – the worlds they have been thick with the usual suite of tremendous mineral, floral, assigned in the wake of the Armory’s imperial aggres‐ and faunal wealth that perpetuates the Armory’s sion. It is their duty to slowly integrate their host growth. On all levels, from the mundane-but-necessary worlds into Union’s structure. Once deployed, they to the fantastic and rare, the worlds of the Dawnline may only ever live and work on one world; to be Shore are jewels to gild the Armory’s throne – and meat handed a world conquered by the Armory is a less to feed its never-ending appetite. than ideal assignment, and one that suggests a messy, violent future. The descendants of the initial wave of colonial legion‐ naires have been ordered to activate and re-form their Colonial legions are often deployed en masse in the legions across the twelve worlds. Old colonial NHPs course of the Armory’s liberation and world-building rise from dormancy, sounding the call to post and missions throughout the Diaspora. On both resource- waking subalterns and stasis-held personnel. Indi‐ rich worlds with established histories and centuries-old genous families are torn between two loyalties: their cultures, and new, untamed worlds, the Armory uses its ancestral duty to the Armory, and their new homes, legions to depose tyrannical rulers. The legions tend to theirs alone for hundreds of years. be welcomed first as liberators – after all, they defeated the armies of local oppressors – though friction is not The Armory cannot afford to lose the resources on uncommon once the dust has settled and world-building these worlds and is preparing an aggressive colonial begins. The price for liberation, as the Armory sees it, is expedition to secure them. To this end, it has integration into the Purview, adoption of the Armory’s partnered with IPS-N, which has is responsible for culture, and commitments that must be fulfilled. managing both the Armory’s logistics in the colonial region and Union’s construction of the Shore's new Player characters that work for an AMT are most likely blink gate. Already, cultural tensions between the legionnaires of some rank. These characters would be Armory and IPS-N have caused diplomatic difficulties, members of a rigid chain of command that leads all the but the two parties continue to work together. way up to a planetary governor-general, who, in turn, reports back to the main campus on Ras Shamra. The Armory expects that the colonial legions will Outside of the legion system, legionnaire characters encounter recalcitrant local resistance: communica‐ occupy honored roles in Armory society, with citizen tions over the past few hundred years indicate that the ranks a step above those of the civil service. colonies are animated by a combination of centuries- long independent development, the formation of indi‐ Legions are named for their first mission and the order genous cultures, and now a mounting series of in which they were raised. For example, Legion unification movements. These movements have been Alhambra I would be the first legion raised for the encouraged by agents of the Karrakin Trade Baronies Alhambra mission. in the Shore working to amplify anti-Armory sentiment. Now, these movements are on the cusp of unifying into EXAMPLE FLASHPOINT: OPERATION CLARION a system-wide confederation. With more and more The Armory is preparing to send a second wave of Armory legionnaires arriving each year, the expansion colonial legions and eager officers out to a developing of the Armory’s direct colonial domination of the Shore, Coreward colonial expanse, the Dawnline Shore. The and the Baronies’ own territorial ambition, all signs Dawnline Shore is home to a dozen close-knit colony point toward an impending conflagration. worlds, first seeded centuries ago by a series of fire- and-forget colonial operations at the order of Harrison I. This flashpoint is just one of the Armory’s current Construction of a system-local blink gate has just projects. Players could easily take either side, or enter been completed, and now Harrison III, the current the flashpoint from a third angle as-yet unwritten. SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [397]
SMITH-SHIMANO CORPRO “You already contain perfection. Welcome to the future of humanity: You, by Smith-Shimano.” – SSC background copy, subaural broadcast loop. Smith-Shimano Corpro is the second most powerful corpro-state in the galaxy. Unlike Harrison Armory and IPS-N, it holds little physical territory and doesn’t practice colonial missions in the traditional sense. SSC’s physical holdings are dwarfed by its omninet presence and its ubiquity across the Cosmopolita and Diaspora. SSC rose to prominence during the Second Expan‐ sion Period. It rapidly dominated the Core market for biological and cybernetic enhancements in the heyday of Union’s liberal, pre-Deimos transhumanism. Following the Deimos Event, the First Contact Accords, and the ensuing crackdown on machine-mind creation and ontologic and singu‐ larity-focused experimentation, SSC adopted a [398] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
lation of millions spread across a constellation of PEOPLE moons, worlds, stations, and habitats in the Sierra more “natural” philosophy toward human enhance‐ Madre Line. The social and genetic composition of ment. Instead of pursuing the marriage of human these populations is monitored and precisely cultiv‐ consciousness and artificial intelligence, SSC ated using cultural suggestion, infrastructural researchers began to focus on improving the guidance, and societal coercion. SSC’s goal is to bodies we live in; instead of negating the need to produce best-fit genetic material for the corpro’s big- step to the stars, they sought to make it so we manna buyers: colony firms looking to license could step among the stars. bespoke populations for as-yet-unexploited worlds. SSC’s corporeal research pushes the edges of what it SSC’s home campus is a shared virtual space in the means to be human. Cybernetic enhancements, omninet that connects the wide, anarchic net of SSC- subdermal nettings, aural communicators, neur‐ aligned worlds and moons into one cohesive body: oneutral omnihooks, ontologic bridges, co- the Constellar Congress, or, the Constellar. Worlds subjectivity nodes, Panacea glands – the list is with membership in the Constellar – those directly exhausting, and that only covers the tech designed by administered by SSC, which are few in number, and the Foreign Bodies Department of SSC’s massive worlds that administer themselves, but whose popu‐ research and development program, not to mention lations are genetic constituents of SSC and choose to the wide portfolio of goods developed by artisan associate with the corpro-state, which are far more enclaves and masterwork fabricators associated with numerous – are the “Constellar Worlds” that comprise SSC worlds. The backbone of SSC’s power is SSC’s “population”. The Constellar Congress is demonstrated in the form of its own citizens, a popu‐ shielded by layers of security coding (including hyper- solipsistic, anticausal, and paradox-generating safe‐ guards) managed by NHPs seeded from proprietary subjectivities and tightly administered by ranks of Constellar bureaucrats. This well-defended virtual state and represents the bleeding edge of organic‐ /synthetic virtual interfacing. The Constellar Congress’s virtual campus is repres‐ ented as a palatial, many-chambered estate where the representatives of SSC’s populations meet in virtual space. The building does not appear to have a counterpart in realspace, though it is often suggested that its architectural inspiration comes from a building on SSC’s first colony world, Opal, rendered inhos‐ pitable following bitter civil violence in the First Expansion Period. Realspace SSC campuses exist across the Sierra Madre Line, providing similar services to embassies and medical centers for the corpro-state’s member populations. These embassies are uplinks for SSC’s private omninode, publicly accessible to the popula‐ tions of these Constellar Worlds. Worlds under SSC’s direct control are dramatic in their environmental variance. They include everything from lightly developed atmospheric moons through to arcadian worlds. In all cases, their populations are tightly controlled through deep cultural manipulation to generate biome-specific lines of colony seed materiel. The people of these worlds are aware of SSC’s mission; they are freely associated members of the corpro-state, most of whom are as invested in its mission – literally – and are generally unconcerned with SSC’s human experimentation projects. Save for regular, culturally-appropriate samplings of genetic SECTION 6 // Setting Guide [399]
material (a few hairs, a drop of blood, a swab from CONGRESSIONAL DIPLOMATIC CORPS AND inside the mouth) and an expectation of arranged coupling, life on Constellar Worlds is unremarkable CONSTELLAR SECURITY and quiet. Most Constellar populations view the SSC’s Congressional Diplomatic Corps (CDC) is a Constellar Congress and its myriad environments as facsimile of the Union Administrative Department, their primary cultural space, not whatever realspace with some changes particular to its corporate world on which they reside. mission. Where the primary mission of Union adminis‐ trators is to cultivate diplomatic relationships with Despite SSC's use of Constellar worlds as advertise‐ target worlds, CDC agents instead cultivate relation‐ ments for the quality of genome available for license, ships with communities of genetic interest. The these worlds remain only that – advertisements. SSC agents of the CDC are recruited exclusively from does not sell people; according to its marketing, it neutral-genetic populations predisposed to adapta‐ sells potential. Cells and data are at the heart of the tion and resilience. SSC’s business, not whole persons or populations. The corpro-state’s power comes from the cultivation CDC agents usually meet not with governments or of best-fit, healthy genetic material for colonial rulers, but with community and spiritual leaders. projects, medical and military applications, and Their missions may involve nominal overtures to private use. local governments or heads of state, but only insofar as needed to ensure their target populations To expand its libraries of genetic stock, SSC regularly are free to travel. mounts expeditions into all sectors of space with the goal of seeking out new and interesting populations. To avoid complications that might arise from The recruitment and marketing materials carried by bypassing local governing bodies, CDC agents are SSC representatives leans heavily on the benefits of accompanied by Constellar Security details and small immigration to SSC worlds: they are, the messaging complements of chassis. Constellar Security officers declares, your ideal paradise. are plucked from Constellar worlds to act both as advertisements and best-fit guards – already in SSC is also known for luxury consumer goods and homeostatic sync with whatever world to which they machinery. Elegant ships, mechanized chassis, and are deployed. CDC agents and their retinues operate hardsuits for the discerning Metropolitan, Cosmopol‐ from PLATFORM mobile skyhooks, SSC’s proprietary itan, and Diasporan. Fabrics and materials that feel subcompact orbital carrier ships. perfect against the owner’s skin; cybernetic and biological enhancements that will never fail or be SSC doesn’t field large ground forces in the way that rejected by the body; flash-grown internals and Harrison Armory does, nor does it seek to expand its extremities – insurance, should the worst happen. physical territory in the same way. The CDC is a bureau‐ SSC’s LUX-Iconic line of consumer goods is bespoke cratic, administrative body, within which rank is down to the atom, crafted specifically for the determined by seniority and a limited certification purchaser of that ship, chassis, suit, or bottle of wine. system. Conversely, Constellar Security is organized There’s only one of you in the galaxy – shouldn’t there according to a military hierarchy, if a relatively small one. be only one of these? CDC agents and their retinues will typically undertake The average galactic citizen knows SSC as a luxury at least one tour outside of Constellar space. Setting brand that brings value to the material world through out on such a journey, they expect to return home craft and expertise. SSC’s advertisements emphasize eventually, potentially embark on one other tour, and the hand-designed nature of its products and the then progress in the technobureaucracy of the long-cycle growth of its biologicals. Officially, SSC Constellar Core. considers printing a necessary evil, suitable for making the goods the masses need, but not the If your PCs are members of a CDC team or a perfect, unique items their clients deserve. Constellar Security detail, they will have access to a convenient base for downtimes and rest in the form of What little of SSC’s power doesn’t derive from its a PLATFORM mobile skyhook. Within their team genetic libraries comes from the licensing of luxury (whether CDC or Constellar Security), they would goods, cybernetics, and biological lines to Diasporan likely be equal in rank, each a specialist in their field of cultures, colonial missions, Cosmopolitan groups, choice. Not only would they be expected to guard a and powerful private individuals. CDC agent, also advertise their genetic line. [400] SECTION 6 // Setting Guide
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