Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

[MysticWind]

Chassis: Truck

Well, sunspot, I got good news and bad news for you. The bad news is a major fungal bloom took out 300 clicks of the road between here and there. The good news is the Crawler Don't Stop. We're going over the red stuff. The worms, well, they will not like that one bit, so the kids stay in the panic box, and everyone else carries a flame gun. You fought worms before? Good, good. And it don't look like you got your eyes chewed out, neither. Ok, sunspot, grab a flamer and a bench. And, whatever happens, whatever the worms make you see, you do not get off the Crawler while we're crossing the red. Cause, like I told you, sunspot, the Crawler Don't Stop.

The truck was a workhorse that spanned the stars, forming a major component of the Unity motor pool. Ranging from electric ultralights, to gasoline-powered pickups and utes, to diesel tractor units with semi-trailers, trucks were used primarily for supply transport. On Planet as on Earth, trucks brought unrefined mineral ore from mines to smelters, harvested crops from farming settlements to residential cores, factory-built waste fission batteries and fuel cells to newly-founded bases, and perhaps most crucially, water from treatment plants to any and all colonists. Beyond necessities, trucks brought salvage from Unity wreck sites to reclamation crews, battlefield rubble to the recycling tanks, and commodities- the lifeblood of trade pacts- between factions.

Modified for the alien high-grav terrain but not always for the atmosphere, many of these vehicles proved to be reliable, if dangerous, mainstays of the colonization effort. Just as most pilots of speeders or Terraformer Transports always carried a breather mask, or wore full-on envirosuits at all times, Chironian truckers were prepared to deal with cab breach. Especially since many of their rides were simply Earth originals hastily-converted for interplanetary travel. Yet the factions used them just the same. While far smaller than prime movers, pickers, formers, rigs, and their own successor, the supply crawler, trucks proved to be more versatile, cost-effective, and abundant.

The original Leyland-Toyota Kingsman, popularly known as the Unity Lorry, became the standard cargo truck of Planet

A panoply of vehicle manufacturers supplied trucks for the mission, but none as many as automobile giant Leyland-Toyota. Along with Chiron-compatible Startrain tractor-trailers, compact Hilux pickups, and miniature kei trucks, the Anglo-Japanese manufacturer built the Kingsman, a semiautomated extraterrestrial environment heavy hauler with a capacity of nearly 50 metric tons. Like Unity Rovers, it was equipped with a radiothermal generator- supposedly much cleaner than the microreactors of the Soviet-produced junked armored cars- and all-wheel drive. The service console contained an Oya-class (親) autodriver that could navigate around obstacles and over difficult terrain, rated for traveling thousands of kilometers without operator input. Indeed, many behind the wheel of a Kingsman were more overseers than drivers. For its durability and quality engineering, not to mention its ubiquity, the truck was widely referred to as the Unity Lorry.

As provider of mechanical expertise and a wide range of trucks, up-armored buses, agricultural machinery, Rovers, Land Cruisers, robotic laborers, vans, and even atmospheric processors, Leyland-Toyota was one of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri’s twelve Prime Contractors. However, neither Leyland, Lancashire nor Toyota, Aichi deigned to purchase a billet, and so there were few loyalist employees on Chiron to refound the company. As with many major brands, multiple succession claims arose, usually arguing on behalf of an ex-executive or another as the legitimate commanding officer. The leading pretender was once director of operations at Ashok Leyland who rebuilt the South Asian division in the aftermath of the Six-Minute War, chosen as figurehead for a NoxCo rights resurrection project (a practice often derided as “patent necromancy”). A rival company-in-exile was based in the Chiron Cartel, a group of high-ranking engineers who had defected to, and then travelled to Alpha Centauri as employees of, Foden Trucks. But due to the proliferation of Leyland-Toyota machines, factions built custom copycats, from the Emporium’s militarized Laager variants courtesy of Imperial Logistics and Materiel to the Data Angels’ open source Toyland versions by the Download A Car campaign. As L-T designs became universally adopted, ownership claims were rendered moot.

Convoy of Unity Lorries in twin tail formation shuttling goods and supplies over the Sunny Mesa

During the early colonial period, the relative speed of the cargo truck made it the preferred motor transportation for bulk delivery, alongside atomic locomotive-powered speedtrains and rail-converted rovers. Even later trucks were fielded as they were nimbler and smarter than their low-track crawler descendents. Not until the vast mag tube Planetary Transit System did their use decline. Autodriver semiautonomy, increased later to virtually full independence with Robot Cluster Control facilities, enabled massed caravans with minimal personnel. As trade routes formalized, onsite human presence could be reduced to a single crew at the head of a convoy, even three- driver, co-driver riding shotgun, and backup gunner. As valuable as their payloads were, the drive to ship more goods to more destinations in less time outweighed security considerations. Speeder escorts could be better deployed elsewhere. “Convoyers” who rode lead lorry faced a lonesome time in the empty wilderness.

A convoy captain calls Warm Welcome Traffic Control over Centauri CB. Unlike commlinks, truck radio frequencies actually increased range during higher sunspot activity

Convoyers fit uneasily into base life. Many possessed a pronounced yearning for lost Earth- some even shaky psych profiles with uncertain prognoses- and so were assigned to the solitude of truck convoying. Ironically, extended time in the lonely wild was usually salutary, leaving drivers softly melancholy yet with a certain zest for life. Psych chaplains suggested that fresh air- so to speak- away from cramped and claustrophobic colonies was the secret to improved mood, prosocial behavior. Many convoyers became devotees to the lifestyle, opting to take off on unscheduled jaunts between shipments, weaving between fungal patch and tower. Some who finished their contracts or tours went as far as to purchase their own lorries, becoming independent truckers repairing sensor installations, inspecting weather stations, assisting scientific surveys, making small time courier runs. These nomads were nicknamed “road smacers,” romanticized by basers as enviably loose and free, reminiscent of the cowboys of the American Wild West. They were said to live by the rules of the road, forging allegiances that went beyond factions.

For all of the supposed kinship among convoyers (also likened to the Pony Express) their livelihood had all the struggle, danger, violence for the frontier, but little of the camaraderie- at least not between trucks. While there did exist a rudimentary code of honor among convoy life, it was often a luxury in the face of attacks by smacer bandits, Irredeemable Holnists, Darwin Raiders, even lunatic Muckers. A particularly nasty tactic by the more duplicitous factions was to feign distress over the radio, luring overly magnanimous and credulous crews into traps off the road. Many convoy captains refused to heed pleas for help. And even when meeting a fellow convoyer from the same faction under true colors, there was no telling if its drivers might not have gone wormmad.

Notes

Opening quote is from this /tg/ post. Fun idea from that thread: “A civilization of truckers, for example - forever on the road, driving enormous landships that might as well be mobile cities, transporting goods in raw materials in mass quantity, using their vessels' enormous bulk to breach even the thickest fungus.”

Leyland-Toyota was the original name for the Company from Alien, as proposed by concept artist and designer Ron Cobb, who wanted to “imply that poor old England is back on its feet and has united with the Japanese, who have taken over the building of spaceships the same way they have now with cars and supertankers”- but obviously the movie could not use British Leyland and Toyota’s actual monikers. For an extensive origin story of W-Y, see this history on Alien Explorations. For an attempt to come up with how an actual L-T could have arisen, perhaps by preventing the earlier merger that formed BLMC, check out this thread on the Alternate History forums, namely post #7. To prevent having too many preexisting megacorps running around Planet, I made it so Leyland-Toyota only supplies the mission, and not outright joins it.

(‘)Formers are formally called Terraformer Transports in the GURPS Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri sourcebook, pg. 112.

According to the SMAC Flavor.txt, the Supply Transport module has a capacity of 2575 mt (metric tons?), which is a hundred times that of a modern day semi-truck’s load.

Unity Rover details also from GURPS, pg. 110.

Oya is a Japanese way of speaking of one’s parents, and a nod to MU/TH/UR 6000 from Alien and FAR/TH/UR 2600 from Alien Resurrection.

Warm Welcome is located in a polar region, not unlike Antarctica Traffic Control from Alien.

High frequency band radio communications, including CB and ham radio, are indeed enhanced by greater solar activity.

The idea of wandering drivers on an alien planet is actually inspired by the Rovers subculture from the Outpost Mars RPG setting by Paul Elliott.

Image Credits

Mercedes-Benz Unimog is Red Mars conceptual art by William Bennett- his work has to be seen to be believed

Space truck is from the Outpost instruction manual, page 48

Space trucks is from Outpost 2: Divided Destiny as a unit type. Here is a short story about one.

Space trucker is Tom Skerritt as Captain Arthur Dallas from Alien

Previous posts

Prime movers

Chassis: Crawlers

Pickers

Soviet fission-powered armored cars

Trains

[MysticWind]

Operation: Checkpoint Chasers

Fly, you fools! - The Fellowship of the Ring, Datalinks

Chiron Guard squaddies, themselves trespassing over Hive soil, accost an unaffiliated smacer in the zone of Nevaeh, Security Roadblock 375

Like their pickup cousins, cargo trucks were used for vendettas on Planet. War bands fielded them as ammunition, fuel, or loot mobile depots for extended raids. Discarded haulers made for impromptu barricades, even when burnt out. Desperate defenders rigged truck reactors to meltdown when their bases were overrun. But perhaps its most novel use was in preserving the freedom of movement.

Planet’s burgeoning road system gave malefactors opportunities to exploit. As factions sprung up and marked their borders, they also sought to limit access to territory. Over time, the act of taking roads and setting up checkpoints drifted from strategic necessity to extraction and extortion. Motorists became subject to search and seizure by guards toting heavy shredders and laser sidearms. These illicit sentinels permitted passage only after pocketing bribes from irritating to budget-breaking. Not only factionless smacer brigands practiced checkpoint shakedowns. Lord’s Believers forced tithers, Nautilus Pirates on shore leave, Morgan motortransaction billers, Darwin Raider roadlords demanding “Silk Road maintenance tribute,” Watchers of Chiron speedtraps, Pilgrim homesteaders performing customs inspections in the name of retrieving contraband stolen from Governor van de Graaf- nearly every faction had members complicit in highway robbery. Even corrupt Gaian Rangers erected toll booths selling mandatory “hydrocarbon credits” for passersby to offset emissions, regardless of vehicle type. Hapless travellers that lacked the energy were told to go the long way around, or off-road. For the good of Gaia, of course.

The one faction singularly opposed to the practice was the Hunters of Chiron: maker, maintainer, and now self-declared guarantor of the passageways of Planet. Having had enough of their ‘former crews disrupted while en route, the pavers of the Roadrunner Lodge and the street knights of the Saluki Lodge teamed up to create a new sweeper squadron independent of Main Force Patrol. A former National Army of Colombia commander led the initiative. The Andean country, like Chiron, suffered from “having more geography than state.” The interminable Colombian internal conflict was exacerbated by the remoteness of the periphery and by the privation of its people. This was addressed periodically by building and rebuilding roads to connect far-flung regions for security and development. But the other side of the infrastructural sword was that it allowed guerrillas and paramilitaries- later, Kellerites and hypersurvivalists- to travel around more easily, increasing rates of narcoterrorism and sales of coca, then metacoca. As these insurgents and the cartels assumed control of highways and byways, even adding their own routes, they stopped travellers to kidnap them for ransom, a steady income source. And, as on Planet, to charge unofficial tolls.

Order of battle for the Checkpoint Hunter Squad Type B of the Colombian Motorized Road Control Company’s Observation and Reaction Platoon

In response, the Colombian government developed the Plan Meteoro national highway safety program, clearing out illegal street blockades with mobile tactical teams. The commander, once the NCO executive officer of the 10th Motorized Road Control Squadron that patrolled the Pan-American Highway from Bogotá to the Venezuelan border, adapted its operational manual for a Chironian context. The so-called Meteora Record devised militarized highway convoys composed of a command staff, motorized assault groups, and an observational support vanguard. Vehicles were driven by the Superchargers of the Saluki while the Roadrunners brought the soldiers. In true Hunters of Chiron fashion, the positions were derived from British fox hunting.

Checkpoint hunting parties were led by Houndsmasters, senior combat officers seconded from the Main Force Patrol, in a single armored speeder. Motorized assault (the Field) provided mounted fire support from the rear of the convoy. Road recon (First Field) searched for checkpoints in heavy weapons Humvees. Overwatchers (Second Field) brought base of fire with roof-mounted turrets on improvised gun trucks clad in scrap metal armor or Kokirri APCs. At the back, Sustainment (Hilltop) supplied maintenance, logistics, and medical support from a medium-duty rigid box truck, e.g. the Morgan Ford 8X, the Chevrolet-Monarch Consolidated Kenai, or the Leyland-Toyota DynaAce.

Observational support vanguard (the Pack) was both the convoy’s tip of the spear and the blunt at its back. Scouts (Hound Dogs, or Dogs) on Japanese motorbikes or monobikes like the Morgan Azawakh rode at the front, searching for illegal stops. Sometimes, civilian speeders like the Fairchild-Grumman Light All-Terrain Reconnaissance Vehicle, known as the Scout Rover, acted as decoys (the Drag, from drag hunting), inviting ambushes far ahead of the convoy. The vanguard’s support included pickups (Whips, from Whippers-in) carrying infantry armed with heavy weapons including impact autocannons, a solar array laser, and MANPADS. As on Earth during the Sahara Burst Wars, CEO Nwabudike Morgan would once again sell secondhand Leyland-Toyota Hiluxes as military vehicles. Another Sustainment truck (Kennel) remained at the rear and served as a backup evacuation vehicle.

Finally, the heart of the vanguard was the Checkpoint Destroyer Vehicle (the Huntsman), a Unity Lorry upgraded with level 55 armor capable of shrugging off 7.62mm UN standard all the way to resisting particle impactor blasts. Armed with even more heavy weapons the faction could muster, 360-degree surveillance across the EM spectrum, and dozens of infantry (Terriers), the final boss of the convoy eliminated enemy checkpoints via fire and maneuver. When either the Drag or the Dogs spotted unauthorized occupiers on the road, the Huntsman would throw off its civilian disguise by raising its turrets and unloading its Terriers, which like proverbial dogs cornering a fox gone to ground, annihilated the hostiles. Whips pulled ahead to give the dismounted troops additional forward cover, and the Kennel guarded the Pack’s rear. If the enemy was dug in, the Fields caught up to finish the job.

The Meteora Record codified these specialized Hunters as a distinct unit. In time, they would be honored as a new lodge, Aullador - the Colombian Fino Hound.

While most factions reserved Wolfgang armor for wetware probes, the Hunters’ wolfmen also served as shock troops, shedding camouflage to bare fearsome helms

The checkpoint hunting parties revenged themselves against the roadblocks with uncharacteristic deviousness. Huntsmen were disguised as unassuming civilian vehicles trucking fat stores. Painted to look like Morganite, Cartel, or Bourse lorries transporting planetpearls, thorium, or nutrient bars, they were such tempting targets that perps argued it was entrapment. Hunting parties varied themselves with honeypot semiautomated caravans, surprising bandits as the middle or caboose truck grew turrets and started blasting, trailer door irising open to reveal a dozen Hunters armed with penetrator carbines.

The unlucky Spartan levy legion at Point Amphion was caught unawares when a seemingly defenseless former from a TERRA disaster relief convoy sprouted a ‘Sabre’ missile launcher, obliterating the shakedown squad and blowing past their getaway koutí to attack their field HQ hidden nearby. The bunker was razed to the ground by powerful terraforming tools, robbers narrowly climbing out of the ruins and straight into the back of an Aullador paddy wagon. The Nimrod would smash half a dozen more checkpoints before it was finally destroyed by the Infantry Support Tracks of a Pilgrim stadtholder who had caught on to the trick.

Hunters of Chiron, more stoic than Pirates but no less impetuous, eschewed using their Huntsmen as passive mobile observation bases, contrary to the original cautions of Plan Meteoro. Instead, an autodriver would take a Huntsman many klicks ahead of the Pack, let alone the Field, with only a few Hounds shadowing off-road. Stopping at a checkpoint, would-be truckjackers were presented with an abandoned cab and a cargo hold full of empty cages. As the bandits entered to inspect, wolfmen materialized from the shadows, ballistics-resistant armor deflecting futile rounds as guns were ripped out from their hands and they were thrown into their holding cells. Charged at High Hide with attempted highway robbery and illegally impeding traffic, arrestees were ransomed to their home factions.

Affectionately known as Highway Hounds, checkpoint chasers were widely celebrated among the Hunters of Chiron for cleaning up the roads. Among adversaries, they were bitterly despised- Colonel Corazon Santiago and ARC CFO-CHIO Suzanne Marjorie Fielding independently gave them the epithet ‘Los Viejos Aulladores’ - the Old Howlers, or rather, Yellers- promising what their respective factions would do to the devil dogs.

In the synthmarble halls of the Planetary Council, emissaries groused at the interfactional law-flouting detention of their citizens. No less luminary than Commissioner Pravin Lal himself accussed the Hunters of Chiron of creating militias impersonating civilians, flouting the conventions of vendetta. Warden J.T. Marsh cooly replied that his were not military forces but undercover law enforcement, upholding unfettered freedom of movement because PlanetPol wasn’t doing its job. They operated at will because as the original builders, Hunter jurisdiction extended to all of the roads. He also made pointed references to crooked Peacekeepers setting up unauthorized blockades around nonexistent conflict zones, waving in those who offered kickbacks. Lal quickly withdrew his complaints.

Notes

Operations are one-shot effects in Pandora: First Contact. I figured combat convoys are a little too niche a doctrine to be a SMAC research tech Doctrine, so I classified them as an operation. Hypothetically let’s say in a game it clears all the roads within a radius of banditry (probes?). Or it gives you a special convoy unit for you to do it yourself.

This post is indebted to Battle Order, whose in-depth “Why Colombia Raised a Highway Cavalry Corps” provided not only the inspiration but many of its details. The awe-inspiring Checkpoint Hunter Squad B, and the graphic, can be found @9:05.

I don’t actually know anything about fox hunting, besides an allegorical representation in the music video for “Sirens” by Dizzee Rascal, but Wikipedia seemed like a solid place to get an idea of the roles involved in a hunt, as was “An Introduction To Fox Hunting” by Chloe DeYoung.

The Colombian Fino Hound, or the Sabueso Fino Colombiano, has Aullador (“howler”) as one of its names in unspecified other regions. It ​​is the only recognized breed of dog native to Colombia. Ironically, the country banned hunting for sport in 2019.

Amphion was a centaur who tried to plunder Pholus of his wine and was killed by Hercules.

The reason why wolfman is in lowercase because like frogman, it is meant to be a general term for a specialist that wears the armor, not a specific tactical unit.

Image Credits

“Checkpoint” is by OmeN2501, Marek Okon. I first saw this picture on David Larkins’ Rifts 2112 blog, specifically his reimagining of the Coalition States

Predator-looking power armored humanoids are Scavs concept art by Ed Natividad for Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion

“The Wandering Earth Cargo Truck” is by Zhiyuan Li

Previous posts

Roadrunners and Saluki lodges

Kokirri Armored Personnel Carrier

Morgan Azawakh monobike

Fairchild-Grumman Light All-Terrain Reconnaissance Vehicle Chassis

Koutí

[Trenacker]

The problem with politics is politicians. Representative government is another name for rule by parochial interests. No person who owes their position to popularity can avoid becoming compromised. Our answer is now staring us right in the face: computers. To achieve true equity, we must first find decision-makers indifferent to objection. - Interlink Africa, discussion forum

Jonathan Mwangi (2040AD-MY78) was a member of the Decision Support Bureau of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri and, after Planetfall, a senior scientist of the Digital Oracle.

Mwangi was born December 1, 2040, to a middle class family in Nairobi, British East Africa. Father, a bank supervisor. Mother, a transit coordinator. The Mwangi family's experience was typical: despite over-qualification and a record of good performance, career advancement was slow because of employment preferences for the colony's white settler minority. In search of better opportunities, Daniel Mwangi took an assignment with the  Banque Nationale du Katanga in Elizabethville in 1962. Diagnosed with cancer in 1964, he died in just three months--a fate attributed by his doctors to the acute effects of Peaceful Nuclear Devices used in local mining.

Subject received his PhD in management cybernetics from Addis Ababa University in 2067, with post-graduate work in decision support systems at Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow until 2069, followed by a year at the Mihajlo Pupin Institute in Belgade.

Confirmed association with Yugoslav Counterintelligence Service, which often recruited young Africans into anti-colonialist networks. Suspected to be "The Melian Thinker" on Interlink Africa, suggesting "government by algorithm" as a corrective for the social and economic abuses inherent to capitalist systems. Arrested in Nairobi in January 2070 for distribution of literature advocating Kenyan independence through socialist revolution. Exiled.

Voted to the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri by the Yugoslav Federal Selection Board as a senior scientist attached to the Decision Support Bureau, which was responsible for providing Mission Command with computer-generated analytical products. Placed in hibernation with the staff of the Unity Robotics Laboratory, Mwangi was recovered by crew loyal to Mission Area Director Johann Anhaldt.

Mwangi performed for Anhaldt the same role he would have performed for Garland, rising within two grand seasons to the position of Chief Assembler at Lovelace, a base in central Shamash. He made significant contributions to projects including the successful Morganite search in MY15 for a Hive presence in the Nessus Canyon and the Oracle's response during the MY34-39 super-outbreak of Red Flu variant Nu.

Mwangi's was a key voice in inter-faction discussions on the value and limits of cybernetic government, which included a trio of open symposiums held at University Base and Colonial Secundus in MY50 and 55, respectively. His learning models were thought by U.N. analysts to be a significant factor in the performance of the Oracle's ninth and longest-operating supercomputer, Xaman Ek, named for a Mayan god often invoked by lost travellers.

Mwangi was among those killed in MY78 when Lovelace Base was submerged due to the Gaian destruction of the four dams above the Morganite resort settlement of Walt Disney Dome.

Sources:
Image is "Scifi Scientist," shared by Wraiith on Pinterest.

[Trenacker]

This post is going to be a look behind the scenes. I thought I'd share my creative process.

Did you know that, at last count, on February 22, 2025, there were 229 technologies and 27 doctrines in the Racing the Darkness setting? Each one is plotted on a Visio chart. Each one has an individual data card, complete with a unique flavor quote, datalinks entry, and icon in the same art style of the original computer game.

The Visio chart looks like an inverted pyramid. There are more technologies available to research early on. Most of the branches terminate somewhere between Tiers 7 to 15. The final technology, Transcendent Thought, is alone on the 24th tier. Laying out the technologies in this manner also points to critical paths. Industrial Base is a prerequisite for nine other discoveries, Atomic Engineering for seven, and Centauri Survival for six. A few discoveries are mutually exclusive: players must choose between embracing Mainframe Computing or Distributed Computing, and again between Digital Sentience or Doctrine: Disk Obedience, which is designed to prevent the spontaneous emergence of AI.

By now, regular readers know that one of my great ambitions is to present RtD as a forum-based 4X megagame. Something in the style of War in Binni. Players would assume the role of faction leaders, making choices about research, production, exploration, diplomacy, movement, and war--just the same as if they were playing a computer game. Only, instead of code to manage those interactions, we'd have written rules and human moderators.

Here's what players need to know for gameplay purposes.

Research in Racing the Darkness
Two types of discoveries are possible in RtD:

• Technologies are discoveries that lead directly to material improvements or knowledge about the physical world. These are practical advancements made mostly in lab.
• Doctrines are sets of beliefs or teachings that combine theory, history, and practice, leading your society to change how technologies are used.

Put simply, technologies are useful facts that help you to make better things, whereas doctrines are useful ideas that help your society to perform certain tasks more efficiently and effectively. Examples of technologies include penicillin, transistors, and the recumbent bicycle. Examples of doctrine include the Social Contract, blitzkrieg warfare, and the "Broken Windows" theory of policing.

Each of the hundreds of possible technological and doctrinal advances in RtD is organized along one of nine interwoven research paths. Just like the scientists at Bell Labs, your approach to research is guided: you might not be sure exactly how your experiments will turn out, but you know enough to choose where to spend your energies in the expectation that you're barking up the right tree. Technological advances are often incremental: one breakthrough creates the foundation for another. Therefore, as in the original game, your research horizons will be hemmed by your ignorance, only expanding gradually with each new dram of knowledge gained.

Looking backwards, technological "progress" can appear to follow a certain inescapable sequence. This, of course, is untrue. The discovery of fire may make it easier to practice agriculture, which in turn may produce a food surplus that fuels a population boom which makes it convenient to experiment with new forms of social organization (phew!), but there's no reason it must do so. Sometimes, a torch is just a torch. Do you ever think about all the technological roads not taken? The Concorde crossed the Atlantic Ocean in just three hours in 1969, but in 2025 the average flight time from New York to London is still more than seven hours. The Concorde was expensive and noisy, so we set it aside. And did you know that the QWERTY keyboard layout is no longer the most efficient? Too bad! Most of us still aren't inclined to switch, even if we've never seen a typewriter! A great deal depends on preferences and beliefs. Hence, factions receive bonuses for conducting research on the paths they prefer based on their ideologies, but players will find it necessary to pursue many paths in order to be successful.

The Nine Research Paths
The nine research paths correspond to what you can probably expect the technologies and doctrines on those paths to do for you.

• The Build path deals with advances in materials science and engineering. Discoveries along this path are most-useful for base-building and production.
• The Discover path deals with the Newtonian and Terran life sciences, including descriptive neurology and psychology. This path unlocks important advances for faction health.
• The Connect path features advances in information technology--computers, the data they process, and artificial intelligence. This path contains advances that boost overall research output, improve Probe Team performance, and help you to manage your Robot subjects.
• The Explore track is about engagement with the Chironian physical and life sciences. This path helps a faction better understand Planet--and, perhaps, to better steward (or exploit) its secrets.
• The Conquer set of technologies and doctrines has direct battlefield applications.
• The Expand path is all about discoveries and thinking that facilitate population growth and mobility.
• The Command path is about imposing social control over human subjects.
• The Choose path deals with the ethical challenges of tomorrow: how to use different technology to reorganize society.
• The Unity path is a short branch dealing with the Terran technologies that equipped the original mission. These technologies can be salvaged from Unity wreckage as well as researched in the classical manner.

Technological Eras
If the nine research paths are helpful to the player, then the idea of technological eras is useful to me, the writer.

For one thing, eras sometimes help me determine the sequence in which different technologies should appear, although the "floor" of the research pyramid combines technologies from multiple eras. Thus, Centauri Meteorology and Austere Medicine, two preoccupations of the survivors at Planetfall, appear alongside Expansion Foams and Aramid Fiber, which were first invented on Old Earth. As you see here, eras also help me to flesh out the alternate history behind RtD.

For our purposes, let an era be defined as a time during which certain technologies first entered widespread use. I have used the concept of eras to help me develop a vision of where technologies should appear in the pyramidal structure.

The Atomic Era (1945-1975) spans the time when the international order was transitioning from multipolarity to bipolarity and nuclear fission dominated the social, economic, political, and military scenes. Noteworthy features of this age included the liberal use of atomic bombs for war and peace, decolonization in much of Africa and Asia, and the start of the Space Race. The oldest technologies carried aboard Unity were from this period. Some was surplus that could be gotten cheaply and at the last minute, but much of it was chosen for its reliability and ease of repair because it was anticipated that the earliest colonists would have only a very primitive industrial base. Discoveries that clearly date back to this era and must be re-learned include: Doctrine: Aggression, Doctrine: Defense, Applied Physics, Atomic Liquidation, Pentomic Warfare,Nuclear Fission (unsurprising!), and Operations Research.

During the Tape Era (1975-2020), digital computers came into widespread use. Notable features of this age included the invention of the World Wide Webs, the Genetics Revolution, and the first permanent human settlements on, under, or above the Inner Planets. Discoveries from this era include: Pressure Hull, C4I, Early Smart Weapons, Blood Substitute, Cold Fusion, Crystal Optics, Magnetic Core Memory, Magnetic Data Tape, and Legacy Applications.

The Laser Era (2021-2071) covers the period during which the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri was essentially prepared. During this time, mankind settled Antarctica, began to exploit the Outer Solar System, and dealt with catastrophe rises in sea level. In 2044, the Six Minute War, a short, sharp nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, rendered the Indus River Valley uninhabitable. At about the same time, a series of bloody civil wars instigated by the nihilistic Holnist Movement devastated North America, Western Europe, and Australia. Laser Era discoveries include Gas Lasers, Hydraulic Tapping, Digital Currency, Planetary Networks, Neural Repatterning, and Diamond Batteries.

The Planetfall Era corresponds to the period when players will be fully involved with establishing their first colonies and building the makings of a subsistence economy. Technologies from this era include Terran Pseudoculture, Overhaul Techniques, Centauri Hydrology, Biostatics, and that all-important Industrial Base.

The Expansion Era is the time when players will begin to confidently expand beyond their initial borders, shifting from a posture of reaction to one of proactivity.

The Quantum Era kicks off when a society discovers new particle states that dramatically expand humanity's understanding of Newtonian physics.

[MysticWind]

Tech: Technical Cavalry

Not unlike the nomadic horsemen they adopted as cultural forebears, the Darwin Raiders won three distinct advantages from the Centaurus Steppe exposed zone. As the crossroads between factions, they are intermediaries for commerce and the exchange of research. Lack of fixed bases over vast territories halts outside invaders. And their infamous Aduu mounts: adorned with ingenious weaponries, nigh-indestructible, seemingly uncountable as blades of grass. - A Social History of Planet, vol. II

The Unity brought an abundance of utility vehicles courtesy of countries and companies trading cheap surplus for easy PR. Unlike the United Nations Space Authority-rated airlocked cab of the Leyland-Toyota Kingsman, these smaller vehicles were half-hearted in their conversions for the Chironian environment- porous vacuum seals, leaky waste fission batteries, or janky drivetrains upgraded just enough for 1.31g. And yet, the pickup trucks were invaluable to the early colonies, providing expendable logistical support to the more robust Kingsmen and full-sized Ural trucks. Before the mainstreaming of treaded transports thanks to Supply Crawlers, 4×4’s were everywhere in the colonies, carrying facility constructor kits, scout supplies, and armed fighters.

Toyota Land Cruiser carrying anti-Gaddafi Chadian soldiers during the Great Toyota War

Using civilian trucks as non-standard tactical vehicles followed multiple illustrious warfare traditions. Like Napoleonic era dragoons, these agile platforms could deploy and redeploy dismounts across the battlefield in quick order, combining the speed of cavalry with the numbers of infantry. Like Hannibal’s Numidian light horsemen at Cannae, their thin-skinned chassis was outweighed by their mobility, letting them go toe-to-toe against armor-heavy yet slower foes. They excelled at swarming tactics, striking flanks while melting away in rapid withdrawals. And when momentarily offloaded, dismounts fired their heavy weapons before their targets could engage. Irregular forces armed with technicals could prevail against well-equipped but undercoordinated conventional formations.

The ubiquitous Toyota Hilux and the Toyota Land Cruiser were the vehicles of choice of ragtag rebels and cash-strapped governments alike. In the terminal stage of the First Chadian-Libyan War of the 1980s, the FANT staged raids and ambushes in plentiful militarized pickups against more sophisticated invaders. Driving over minefields, the Chadians eliminated scores of surprised Libyans armed with superior tech: the Soviet-made T-55 main battle tank,  and the support BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle. In addition to their dismounts, Toyota gunners sported medium to heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, recoilless rifles and guided missiles for anti-tank action. Their reliability and utter hardiness as general-use workhorses led them over talcum powder-like sand dunes and through the thickest of Rasputitsa mud. Outside battle, and sometimes even during, they could be repaired in short order thanks to near-universal familiarity with their mechanical workings.

The use of pickup technicals continued well into 21st century brushfire conflicts: the Second Toyota War (Somali invasion of Ethiopia), the Land Cruiser War (Darfur War of Independence), the Second Irish Troubles, the Sahara Burst Wars, the Central African Succession War, the Second Central American Civil War, the Leyland-Toyota War, Portuguese counterinsurgencies, the civil war in the UAC, the Pax Decay wars (oft-nicknamed the Tacoma Campaigns after the North American variant of the Hilux), and myriads more. The prominent associations between their products and chaotic carnage discomfited both Aichi and later Lancashire, but over time both adapted to the needs of the market. It has been suggested that their massive contribution of oversized civilian haulers to the Unity was to downplay the potential military applications of their lighter vehicles.)

And while there was somewhat of a genericize- or genericide- of the Toyota brand thanks to technicals, they were not the only make at war. Land Rovers had a combat history in Africa and the Middle East as far back as the Pink Panther Series 2A trucks of the British Special Air Service. Of course, the first irony was that Land Rovers were notoriously unreliable compared to their Land Cruiser imitators, and the second was both ended up under the same umbrella corporation anyway with their respective parent companies’ merger. As Ley-Toy sought to revitalize the Land Rover Defender with a modernized take, they met unexpected resistance from the founder of the Ineos Group, who asked to continue building the original model. Rebuffed, he ordered his chemical gigacorp to create a spiritual successor- the Ineos Grenadier, yet another off-road utility vehicle that made its way to Planet. As did the Zhongxing Grand Tiger of Golden China’s ZX Auto, promoted into the ranks of technical-worthy vehicles by anti-Gaddafi separatist-federalists in the failed Cyrenaica uprising. (Unlike their skittish Anglo-Nipponese counterparts, Zhongxing boldly launched a marketing campaign based on their war record, declaring their vehicles “stronger than war.”) The Mitsubishi L200, Volkswagen Amarok, Nissan Patrol and Navara, Isuzu D-Max, Maruti Suzuki Jimny, GMT1300 and older platforms, Hyundai Mighty flatbeds, Soviet-made KRAZ and ZIL, Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen…

The Unity Rover descended from Solar System designs like the classic NASA 2030 Mars Gullivar to the cancelled prototype Soviet Venera-P Vesper

The Doctrine: Mobility era revolutionized Planetary travel. Having amassed the rudimentary industrial infrastructure and social organization to build wheeled speeders again, factions no longer had to settle for Unity Rovers recovered from loose supply pods. Exploration and conquest alike could be waged with self-sufficient long-range vehicles carrying crews away from base for decurns at a time. Like the original ship’s stock, these included innovations from pre-Chironian pioneers. The ruggedized drivetrain and duststorm-resistant coating of early colonial Martian rovers. The acid-proof ceramic shell and diamond film electronics, and BES-5 uranium fast fission reactor of the shelved WARPAC expedition to the surface of Venus. Shielding against radiation and extreme heat, and the speed required to remain in the Goldilocks zone at the terminator, of the Mitsubishi Suigin (水銀 - Quicksilver) mission to the dark side of Mercury.

For all of its dangers, Chiron had far fewer environmental extremes, so these features provided security in times of vendetta instead. Shredder storms, plasma-beam gun “flamer” jets, particle impactor shots, Gauss delivered depleted uranium rounds, atrocity-worthy dirty rays; speeders were built to shrug off each successive weapons generation. And, of course, the ever-present, ever-infectious biomass of mindworms. Indeed, because they were intended by mission planners to defend against the potentially dangerous xenofauna of Alpha Centauri, it was said that none could be made into technicals, as rovers were virtually militarized from the start.

Over time, these speeders grew increasingly more elaborate and well-stocked. Some, like the Morgan ExploreWorks Conquistador resembled a castle on wheels. (“Glamp or Grapple!” went the slogan for its armed model.) As speeders spouted thicker carapaces and advanced weapons mounts, they too inflated in volume and tonnage. And in retinue. The original six-wheeled Unity Rovers had room for a crew of seven, their bunks, a small galley, a mini-workshop, and even spare “waste” space. The later advanced Impact Rovers were smaller, more akin to an Earth-era heavy armored car, yet likewise included four bunks for its crew. Dress one in the latest synthmetal or silksteel coat, and you get a vehicle with protection inimical to speed. The same principle applies to oversized groups, sometimes containing slower vehicles. Even the smallest Scout Rovers traveled in units of 5-12 speeders carrying up to an infantry platoon, a logistical mechanics “tail,” repair rovers, and even troop transports.

Free Drone machinist inspects a Freedom’s Foundry Motor Syndicate Sampson dual-purpose work truck with heavy laser mining drill attachment

As the rover wars raged on, combatants raced towards sluggishness, becoming more like APCs a la the Herkimer Battle Jitney or IFVs like the Yugoslav VTI Бедем (‘bulwark’) scout car. Thus came late stage Doctrine: Mobility. Thanks to a modern Industrial Base, colonists now had the potential to handily weaponize cargo and transport trucks, vans, and other civilian designs without exhausting factional transport capacity. One fateful act of treachery reinvented the practice.

Ironically, it was not the rough-and-tumble Hunters nor the thrifty Tribals that pioneered Chironian technicals, but pragmatic University research scouts. Caught on their way to the Agrius Salt Pans monolith by a Memory of Earth quarantine squad, the Gorklov expedition was saved from evisceration by heat of battle improvisation. An Observer road garrison had appeared out of nowhere, declaring the area was sealed under the Wildfire Protocol by order of Commander Kleisel Mercator himself. When the explorers refused, they started firing.

Huddling behind the charred hull of their lead Skirmisher, scientists frantically affixed a Gatling laser from a smashed Infantry Support Track to the back of a tiny Izh 2715. Even as Chiron Guard rockets slammed into the expedition’s speeders, survivors packed into the modified Soviet pickup’s truckbed and drove out to face their astonished attackers. Weaving between Observer assault rovers, returning fire against imprecise gunners accustomed to larger targets, Gorklov’s explorers scored lucky hits off their smartwheels and left the pursuers in the dust, making it all the way back to University Base. Their testimony was instrumental in the Planetary Council passing sanctions against the Memory of Earth for unlawful obstruction of xenoarcheological inquiry. Though largely symbolic, anti-Mercator factions designated the Chiron Guard a terrorist organization. And motor combat on Planet would never be the same.

A Zamburak close-quarters technical brings Darwin Raider bannermen of the Timuri orda to quarry

Technicals built from lighter civilian vehicles proved to be just as effective at asymmetric warfare as their Old Earth ancestors were. They fit a useful niche between the prior chassis used for raid and ambush tactics, hit and run attacks, and harassing adversaries. While many times more fragile than full-sized speeders, with greater speed and maneuverability they wreaked havoc against rovers the same way rovers did unto Colony Pods, ‘Formers, and other large noncombatant vehicles. They were hardier and fielded greater firepower than Motorbikes, though also less suited for reconnaissance due to their larger profile. Masters of urban warfare, technicals could traverse narrow streets where tanks could not fit and climb wreckage that caused bikes to stumble. And they were far more affordable than specialized Fast Attack Vehicles- military dune buggies, moon buggies, Humvees, armored scout cars, even later aircushion hover and Graviton booster designs. Canny strategists systematically dismantled an enemy’s entire economic infrastructure on the cheap by destroying base improvements with sabotage and well-coordinated attacks from Technicals and Motorbikes.

On the open battlefield, swarms of technicals could flank and dogpile crawler tanks, smash troop transports, and even trip up the legs of basic Hods. However, the wild also revealed the limitations of the chassis. While they tended to have excellent fuel efficiency, technicals lacked the comprehensive life support and sustenance capacity of rovers. Thus they could not operate for extended deployments except in large caçadores (Portuguese- “hunter”) packs or mixed convoys including rovers, transport speeders, or even supply crawlers. Combined arms groups were also the only protection for technicals against air power, whose attacks they were incredibly vulnerable to. Without the cover of sub/urban buildings or Monsoon Jungle forest, even a Unity Chopper could shred technical after technical, unless its dismounts could bring surface-to-air assets to bear. And as often as technicals operated like light improvised artillery, they were vulnerable to the real thing fired by a sufficiently responsive field team- or from an autonomous intelligence.

A cat-and-mouse strategic game emerged, appropriately mirroring the tactical situation on the ground. As caçadores went after isolated rovers like whalers on the Great Northern Ocean, conventional force commanders devised ways to blunt their efficacy. Mass artillery barrages and aerial bombardments made short work of technicals in the open field. So the irregulars brought along basic air cover in the form of Unity Propeljet planes (Cessna 208 Caravan retooled for the denser Chironian atmosphere and higher gravity) armed with impact gun pods and tankbuster missiles. Dubbed “the technical of the skies,” Propeljets were civilian transport and survey craft easily retooled to close air support, providing precision strikes and ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) for ground forces. But they themselves were unable to challenge the speedy Unity Scout Chopper, save from long range with standoff munitions. Much like ground battles, the dogfights of the early era were confused scuffles featuring wreck salvage.

But as weapons science progressed, technicals outfitted with the Type IX ECTS EMP pulse generator kept opponents’ sensors confused as they swooped in from all directions. This spurred on the evolution of Deep Radar, with conventionals issuing the Mk. 45 Sensor array upgrade so aerial squadrons could be scrambled before hostile vehicles were in Comm Jammer range. Irregulars reacted by equipping their ECM technicals with the Mk. 190 FUBR fire control system; AAA Tracking lasers would paint the skies, setting ‘Copters alight for surface-to-air missiles to follow. And so on, for entire technological eras.

Anabaptiste ex-Kellerite smacer poses in front of an improvised armor-protected General Motors Nopal, Lost Valley

Most factions deployed technicals almost reluctantly, as if it was confessing the inferiority of one’s standing army. Yet it remained a popular tactic in times of material deprivation and vendetta desperation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the University of Planet continued the tradition they had reinaugurated, with the Academician extolling the virtues of making use of every tool available- paramount pragmatism in combat. Ironically, the Spartan Federation was ambivalent while Morgan Industries embraced it: While Santiago preached a similar philosophy in that a warrior should be schooled in every weapon from the throwing knife to the tactical nuke, she preferred outfitting her soldiers in the latest and greatest her armatechs could devise. And even though Morgan promised luxury for all of his citizens, he also knew to be prudent and cut costs whenever possible; so if his security forces or mercenaries were to be driven around in replicas of Old Earth pickups, well, if it was good enough in the Sahara, it was good enough in Centauri.

Of course, technical-toting irregular forces were more often rebel splitters than a faction’s wolfmen or other commando probes, let alone the ideal of patriotic citizen militias rallying in the face of foreign invasion. The Free Drones, Jin Long insurrectionists, Holnists, Garcians, even the Data Angels all militarized everyday vehicles in their respective revolts. (The latter in a less bloody capacity than the others, with a group of rogue datatechs wardriving out of Morgan Data Systems during the Angel Insurgency in a stolen Morgan Cryptotruck, airspamming each node they could link.)

One revolt was by the Dar al-Harb of Shamash (دار الحربشَمْس - the Abode of War, Šams), who attempted to establish a sunnahist theocracy on the continent. A dozen bases by the Lycatian Sea spanning multiple factions, including several nonfactional smacer warrens and even a Sons of Centauri-ra temple town, had fallen to religious mania not seen since the Crusader Wars. A previously-unknown network of terrorists slew local garrisons and seized the settlements, supported by the base population. An emergency session at the Planetary Council established unanimous consensus: late Earth extremism was not to be tolerated. The ensuing multifactional Armed Neutrality mission faced insurgents in clone Hilux technicals sporting Mk. 12(t) ‘Sabre’ missile launchers and clone CJ-series Jeeps mounted with flame guns. The quashing was bloody, but the Peacekeeping Forces who led the A.N. mission distinguished themselves with valorous distinction not seen since Jadotville.

In the aftermath, the Pan-Planetary Cross-factional Congress of the Ummah condemned the terrorism, but no delegation had any idea what had caused the reemergence of Dar al-Harb. A Planetary Council investigation indicated that a local dissenter madrasa had seeded extremist holoprop throughout Shamash; Sister Miriam Godwinson denounced the report, bitterly rejecting the involvement of any of her Believers. Others blamed New Alamut; in response, the Aga Khan pledged a Tokamak’s worth of energy credits to victims of the conflict via the AKDN. A popular techno-myth suggested that the Peacekeepers had engaged in spiritual memetic probe warfare, engineering a virulent threat that they would then swoop in and cure. This played on older conspiracy theories that the U.N. was behind the rise of Raj Thakur and his movement as a means of fostering artificial stability in South Asia following the Twelve Minute War.

Despite their meager state of development as factionless exiles, smacers did not normally use technicals, save for those most committed to banditry. In abandoning baser life for the frontier, they could not casually spare vital transport (and even shelter) vehicles for risky combat. Any modifications undertaken to their trucks were defensive for prolonging service life. Furthermore, smacers did not want to be mistaken for sub-factions or non-faction actors like the Darwin Raiders or Holnists. The former were infamous for their elite technicals, the Aduu (Адуу - horse, Mongolian), each custom to its driver and bearing at its back marksmen capable of firing while in transit. While the signature arm of Khagan Robin Huxley’s ordas was the treaded crawler minitank, their technicals were also greatly feared. So much so that despite smacer attempts to advertise the peaceful nature of their pickups, trigger-happy scouts from the based factions would attack at first sight.

Notes

The opening quote is an adaptation of an explanation of Professor Justin Jacobs for what made the Manchu (and indeed many nomadic peoples of the Eurasian exposed zone) so strong from episode 24 of the Beyond Huaxia Podcast- Who Were the Manchus? (from 12:08-13:20)

Great sources on technicals:
Dominating the Battlefield: How Toyota Trucks Took Over Modern Warfare by the History of Everything Podcast
“Technicals: Toyotas Go To War” episode 25 of Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast by Bill Buppert
Technicals: Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles From The Great Toyota War To Modern Special Forces by Leigh Neville, illustrated by Peter Dennis, published by Osprey Publishing (Archive)
“The Pickup Truck Era of Warfare” by Jack Mulcaire, War on the Rocks

I learned about the Ineos Grenadier from “Cars from NON-CAR companies” by TopCars TV.

The supposed “stronger than war” advertising from ZX is covered in “Zhongxing uses Libyan War to sell cars at the Beijing Auto Show”, CarNewsChina.

Gullivar is a reference to Gullivar Jones, eponymous hero of a novel by English writer Edwin Lester Arnold, and a predecessor to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Martian Barsoom books. Both he and John Carter show up in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. II

Venera-P refers to the Soviet missions to Venus, with P standing for приземлился (prizemlilsya - to land). Long story short, the USSR had a fascination with exploring Venus, to the point of the head of Roscosmos in 2020 declaring that “Venus is a Russian planet.” In this alternate future continue exploring the cloudy green planet. They don’t actually get to a manned landing, though, as it would be too technically challenging.

The concept of the Unity rover being large enough to fit a crew of seven comes from GURPS: Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (pg. 110), as is the Impact Rover having four (pg. 113). While RtD has a ton of vehicles including much smaller rovers, I rather like the idea of the standard rover being large, as to act as long-term mobile mini-bases on expeditions. Unit Size (pg. 123) gives some neat quantifications about how many personnel and vehicles might be in an actual SMAC unit.

Wildfire is an extraterrestrial biocontainment protocol from The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton.

The idea of Motorbikes as a unit type is conceptualized in detail by JustinTheBlueFrog on this series of posts in the SMAC Discord server.

Fast Attack Vehicle is somewhat of an unofficial military vehicle term I got from the Battlefield games, though technically it includes technicals. As always, I am thinking of the 2142 variants.

Zamburak are early modern camel artillery used by the gunpowder empires.

Caçadores battalions were both the name of  Portuguese special forces during the Angolan War of Independence and later, pro-government militias during the Angolan Civil War.

See that in-game Flavor.txt for the gear used to enable unit special abilities (Comm Jammer, etc.)

Image Credits

1980 Ford F-Series in a laser war is from Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Toyota Land Cruiser with Chadian troops is a picture I got from The improvised warfare: Toyota Land Cruiser technical in Libya by Scale Dracula

The Mars 2030 rover is unfortunately only a concept mockup from these Parker Brothers. More info:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-nasa-mars-rover-concept-vehicle/
https://www.space.com/37719-nasa-concept-rover-photo-tour.html
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-2020-perseverance/mars-rover-to-help-visitor-complex-kick-off-new-exhibit/

Sampson is concept art for the Samson assault truck from Titanfall

Toothed technical is the Bandit Technical Headhunter from Borderlands 2

Homemade armor truck is the Thorton Mackinaw “Saguaro” from Cyberpunk 2077

Previous posts

Herkimer Battle Jitney

Yugoslav VTI Бедем ('bulwark') scout car

[MysticWind]

Rigid force protection measures may alienate the COIN force from the population. By traveling in armored vehicles and wearing an assortment of personal force protection items, the public can get the impression US forces are afraid or an area is not secure. Force protection should be balanced with the need to mitigate this perception and demonstrate that the population is as safe as US forces. Additionally, sequestration of the force from the population may reduce exposure to attack, but inevitably causes the force to become disconnected from the population and reduces its understanding of the environment. Ideally, force protection measures will be planned in such a way as to align them with the imperative to secure the population. - “Force Protection Considerations”

Commercial pickup models used by pre-imperial Mexican Army motorized cavalry (Arma de Caballería)

Unity survivors included North American veterans of the internecine conflicts known as the Pax Decay wars. Thus the use of militarized pickups for urban patrols was well-acquainted by former peacemakers- and to the partisans who fought them. In the early Blackjack Century, the former United Mexican States used such armorless vehicles in unstable narco-cartel and Zapatista territories. Instead of imposing tanks, or later, clanking hods, commercial trucks painted in camouflage and mounted with heavy weapons posed a lower profile, sparking less resentment from policed populations. In accordance with the United States of America’s joint counterinsurgency doctrine, this taught an area’s residents to be as unafraid of the occupying authorities as they were unafraid of them. And, perhaps, that they were more alike than they thought.

Rapport did not come easily from captive locals. The official Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles- commonly known as “tacticals” or “tacts” for short, or as “protechs” via ‘professional technicals’- were supposed to connect their open-air riders to the needs of the people they policed, better than in the armored hull of an APC or IFV. But trigger-happy tact gunners and diehard rebels fought against one another just the same, trading potshots and .50 caliber rounds. During the Second American Civil War, hypersurvivalists on the datalinks posted unflattering comparisons of protechs to desert Special Forces technicals fielded in the federal government’s foreign misadventures. FLQ sympathizers in the Second Crisis of Québec Secession claimed that the unmarked trucks firing mortars at Francophone neighborhoods were not driven by so-called Black Watch vigilantes, but CSIS agents in taxpayer-funded protechs. And as the Second Crisis of the Twenty-First Century unfolded, Magonista, autodefensa, even narcocrat promises increasingly sounded less hollow to a public unable to fathom why the Federales, let alone the fuerzas especiales and division-sized military detachments, were seemingly camped permanently in every major Mexican city, patrolling endlessly, checking papers.

But governments continued to churn out lightly-armored policing platforms. Mexico City (later, Aztlán Tenochtitlán) was particularly keen on issuing pickups to its forces as the trucks were abundantly available thanks to the country’s considerable manufacturing sector. And regardless of public opinion, they were excellent light alternatives to Humvees for mounting heavy machine guns, autocannons, automatic grenade launchers, rocket launchers, and more exotic weaponry. As nations fell and arose amidst the Pax Decay, soldiers wearing every patch- the U.S. Army, Imperio Mexicano Marines, Royal Canadian Mounted Police SERT, ARC Strategic Supply, Centroamerican Policia Transnacional, Newfoundland Special Boat Service, Val Verde Veterans- adopted tacts.

Restoration of Earth non-standard tactical patrol pickup “Steadfast,” modified Volkswagen Amarok armed with Rheinmetall MG 3 machine gun and Wirkmittel 90 variant of MATADOR anti-tank recoilless grenade system, all sourced from mission stores

Tacticals on Chiron were used for base security, especially among factions with leaders of North American extraction. Spartans, Pilgrims, Restorationists, even Believers outfitted old Unity pickups and newly-built replicas with camo coats, protective reinforcements, and laser turrets. Tribals, interestingly, did not: asserting that Keller would not have approved of insulting the intelligence of the people with duplicitous optics, during martial law Landers deployed what spare rovers he could muster. But in loyal districts, communitarian Kellerites would spontaneously form auxiliaries, bringing out household technicals to assist their neighbors-in-arms.

Various kits were available. Less-Than-Lethal for suppressing civil unrest with minimal casualties: StickyFoam™ dispensers, acoustic incapacitators, soporific gas pods, a psychic amplification module for Hypnotic Trance, police-trained dismounts armed with stunjack cannons for Non-Lethal Methods. The Dreamers installed anti-personnel hallucinogenic projectile launchers for somnacin-laced rounds. The Watchers favored directed energy active denial microwave emitters. While lightly-armored policing vehicles affected an air more benevolent than hostile, this could backfire. Anvil of Man (formerly Morgan Infrastructure) saw a drone riot against overtime working conditions escalate into a full-blown insurrection when irate laborers overwhelmed the Corporate Security strikebreakers, seizing their tacts and firing the pickups’ psych web projectors at the overseers. The victorious revolutionaries would join the Free Drones as one of the founding bases, and the event is said to be the origin of the faction’s signature Sampson ute.

The other major kit was COIN for defeating guerrilla irregulars: psi lock software upgrade for Empath Song, next-gen particle impact slugthrowers, ‘Sabre’ missile launchers, Gatling lasers. Swarming on cheap, agile motorbikes, insurgents sought to do to them what technical cavalry had done to rovers. So invading occupiers augmented their tacts with rapid-fire ‘Copter guns used in rotary gunships, laying down massive fields of fire as if using nitroglycerine to swat mosquitoes. Since tacts were perhaps the most delicate example of Chironian “deadly eggshells” - vehicles designed for aggressive attack without heavy armor, using mobility to avoid opponents of equal or greater firepower. So insurgents responded by acquiring and arming their own trucks armed with the main guns from downed protechs. The occupation of enemy bases frequently devolved into duels between patrol tacticals and partisan technicals, invoking monstruo narco tank clashes in the late Mexican republic.

Morgan Ford-Ferrari GTP340 Assault Armor “Le Mans,” pressurized power suit intended to compete with the American Motors Corporation’s CMC-420 “Marauder” Powered Combat Suit

Besides technical combat tactics and counter-tactics to best them, the Americans who arrived on the Unity also brought along an age-old dilemma: Ford, or Chevy? For over a century and a half on Earth, consumers had wondered which was the superior automaker. With the dawning of Industrial Economics, citizens were free to engage in debate again. Spartan Paramilitary Legion support drivers shooting the breeze between shifts, Pilgrim stadtholders’ brats going mudding, Planetary Settler eco-mechanics retooling impounded cars for near-zero impact. With the dominance of light utility vehicles as the preeminent civilian pre-speeder chassis in colonial society, many considered them an attainable quasi-luxury good. Agri-homesteaders, wildcat miners, and water witchers living in base exurbs all owned family vehicles for work and personal use.

The question was where exactly these pickup trucks were sourced from. During the early Planetfall era, they were simply retrieved from ship’s salvage, or clone-manufactured at base factories by survival fiat. After the establishment of market economies on Planet with a widespread Industrial Base, then the emergence of an understanding of Industrial Economics, private businesses could now assume the mantle. As with countless other product categories, corporations of the Unity diaspora often did so by usurping a preexisting brand, sometimes by petitioning the state to “‘factionalize” an absentee rights holder.

The Ford Motor Company’s fate was relatively straightforward. The small Shelby-Miles billet consisted of several dozen industrial designers, automotive engineers, technicians, executives, their families and retainers, ostensibly sent to study how Chiron’s environment could be amenable to transport. In reality, Ford had contributed lavish sums to the mission and filed the thin excuse so that these Vacatees could escape the perceived fate of Earth. It was reasonably easy for Morgan Tactical Special Action Reconnaissance Services probes to tag and snatch the Fordists from the factions they had been dispersed to during Planetfall. CEO Nwabudike Morgan himself offered corner offices at Morgan Twin Towers and an army of drone assistants for the acquihire, with their company’s IP, data rights, and legal ownership seconded to the Centauri Monopoly. The inaugural product by Morgan Ford, a Morgan Industries company, was the Ford Strider, a mid-sized pickup. While chiefly aimed at civilian settlements, the marketing blitz included testimonials from seasoned pre-mission war veterans, including former American commandos who had served in Assyria during the Crusader Wars or in Afghanistan during Infinite Freedom, endorsing its reliability over the Ford Ranger. (“What’s good for the soldier is good for the citizen” was a slogan among early Chironian companies, highlighting the strengths of multirole goods.) The subsidiary would become the conglomerate’s foremost consumer retro-vehicle manufacturer and a star of its constellation of Earth legacy brands, receiving a company base nicknamed Little Dearborn in southeastern Golgu. Following the successful Portago Operation by T.S.A.R.S., Morgan Ford absorbed Ferrari, with expanded speeder sportscar offerings.

Chevrolet-Monarch Consolidated naturally fell into the hands of Morgan Industries’ greatest gigacorp rival. For a faction whose origin story was about the reclamation of allegedly stolen goods, the New Two Thousand pioneered the art of data extortion. While the Darwin Raiders had been content to levy tech tributes and road taxes upon unwary travelers passing through territory, Oscar van de Graaf’s Pilgrims made it personal- ransoming factions for POWs, charging families of slaves the price of freedom or simply reunion under bondage, even demanding kidnap victims pay their way out. As the New Two Thousand accumulated locations of data pods, extorted datatapes, and research data wired from browbeaten targets, they retained a respectable amount of Old Earth schematics. When it came to vehicles, they went into the portfolio of the American Motors Corporation, which van de Graaf had purchased as a patriotic pet project during the Second Reconstruction after the divestment of his original ARC to the U.S. government as an independent federal corporation. On both Earth and Planet, AMC was able to pick up the likes of Studebaker, Oldsmobile, Daewoo, and Saab, not to mention Jeep via its acquisition of Willys–Overland Motors. But when a Regulator militia uncovered a substantial data cache in Garland’s Grove, southeast Monsoon Jungle (after beating the rumored location of its pod out of the unlucky Hunter party the patrol had captured), they uncovered sufficient plans to make a bid at reviving Chevy. The new CMC division of AMC would sell new Powered Combat Suits built from the cache’s prototype designs, prompting Morgan to retaliate by selling his own line of pressurized power suits. But most of all it reignited the Ford and Chevy rivalry via the most Planet-practical commercial vehicle: the pickup. Already, such vehicles were favored by Squire van de Graaf for his vaguely Jeffersonian ideal of a faction of yeoman planters and bondservant masters. The AMC Chevy Cordillera was their breakaway hit, competing the likes with the F-2000 Mammoth, Morgan’s first F-Series built specifically for Planet. Both MFF and AMC trucks were fully vendetta-convertible. The Chevy Exurban, AMC’s semi-rover successor to the long-lasting model, was hawked by a former Malian Army’s EEI (Scout and Investigation) technical cavalry squadron commander who had fought Morgan Industries-backed Tuareg rebel militias in breakaway Azawad. His tagline for the full-size carryall: “real luxury fit for a general at war- or at home!”

Landsman sentinel of the Dabney Clan Nessus Rangers contemplates at dawn in a solar-powered Dodge Ram TRX at Philosopher’s Point, Sunny Mesa

Other legacy car companies challenged the two, with Mitsubishi Motors a distant third, finding about as much success on Chiron as it did on Earth markets. Despite its company’s bronze ranking, the Mitsubishi L2100 Proteus, successor to the L200 Triton, was among the University of Planet’s most desired consumer exports. (It was said that despite his supercilious pretensions, Academician Prokhor Zakharov was driven downcast by the defeat of his attempted revival of UAZ). Doubtless he was also disappointed that a New Ural Automotive Plant had been founded in the Restoration under the auspices of Infrastructure Directorate head Colonel Vadim Petrovich Kozlov, with Soviet-derived designs greatly sought after as an alternative to the Leyland-Toyota Kingsman. The rest were largely vehicular startups, side-hustles, and funding schemes from mercantile (sub)factions- the Bourse, Chiron Cartel, and the teams of patent necromancers at NoxCo.

All paled however to the sheer numbers of replica Ley-Toy vehicles, which on Planet had evolved into as much an open standard as the Philips screwdriver was. In open disregard for the legalistic petty Ley-Toy claimants holed up at Nox City or Cartel Headquarters, every faction built their own variants on the Unity Lorry, the Toyota Hilux, Toyota Land Cruiser, Land Rover, the Leyland 4-tonne truck, and the Leyland Martian. For all of the Peacekeeping Forces’ attempts to introduce a Chiron Intellectual Property Organization at the Planetary Council, they were the major supplier of the legendary white 70 Series Land Cruisers to humanitarian orgs from TERRA to the Chironian Red Cross.

Other vehicles never had a chance, as personnel or data stores failed to appear post-Planetfall. For all that it gave to the mission, the Chrysler Corporation did not register a billet, and few schematics of their vehicles were to be found. As such, Dodge trucks became another prized rarity among Unity salvage. So were the likes of Daimler Truck, Renault, Honda, Hyundai, GMC. A popular techno-myth claimed that the Legacy Initiative was hoarding massive realms of datatape that, if discovered and publicized by a Good Samaritan probe, could resurrect all manner of lost vehicles from Earth. And not only those for cargo or troop transport, but war machines like the M-91 Cockroach Self-Propelled Bunker and the M60 main battle tank, both from Chrysler. Finally, as living standards grew alongside research breakthroughs and technological improvements, citizens began clamoring for a taste of comfort when it came to intrabase travel. While more wanted base street-safe miniaturized rovers and civilian versions of field speeders, some looked to retro-style cars with great interest.

The Sheikh of Khobar, Triplet Cities Emirate, gifted the Unity one of only three ever-constructed prototypes of the Yamaha OX99-11, the motorcycle and music equipment corporation’s attempt at a sports car powered by their Formula 1 engine and designs

Only a handful of passenger cars were brought aboard the Unity. Most were deemed historic artifacts of cultural-social value, worthy of mankind’s mission to another star. But key members of the Galleria Alliance did not send their vehicles; the Smithsonian deigned to give away any of its original Model T roadsters, the Imperial Museum of Golden China would not part with any of the vintage Buicks owned by the last Qing Emperor Pu Yi or by Red Premier Zhou Enlai, let alone any of the monarchical carriages at the State Hermitage Museum or the Vatican Museums.

In actual practice, these were usually vanity pieces donated by wealthy collectors who had no other legacy save for the rarities they owned. In an unexpected and perhaps uncharacteristic move, Lt. Commander Tạ Dọc Thân gladly appreciated such “generous” contributions to Data Services, as they usually accompanied funds sorely needed for amassing precious data tape. (And those that didn’t, well, could be easily lost to the black market that shrouded the Unity project.) Élodie, librarian-curator of the Data Core’s Humanities Wing, sniffed at the inclusion of such garish and tasteless exhibits as an ultralux Mingjiao Buick Minivan owned by the Crown Princess of Golden China (a regifted tenth birthday present from her father Golden Emperor Sao Gong), several specimens from the Pahlavi Shah’s Maserati and Lamborghini fleets, and even a Back to the Future DeLorean prop car courtesy of Morgan Universal (cheekily sent after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the controversial merger).
 
Notes

Mexico's Sick Pickup Truck Cavalry Corps by Battle Order was both the inspiration for this post, and the entire truck series in general! I first thought to include this concept before I had watched the Colombian highway checkpoint hunter video.

Opening quote is from the Joint Publication 3-24, Counterinsurgency, 25 April 2018, 11. Force Protection Considerations III-33

Tacticals- and tacts for that matter, are suggested slang for military-built/issued technicals as discussed in this thread.

Imperio Mexicano was mentioned in, and only in, the character bio of Guadalupe Selinas Torada

Combat vehicles on Planet being “heavily armed eggshells” comes from GURPS SMAC supplement, pg. 122.

The immortal Ford vs. Chevrolet rivalry is covered in “Ford vs. Chevy: A Look at the Early History of this Bitter Rivalry” by Andrew Ekuwem, SlashGear.

Caroll Shelby was owner of high-performance car company Shelby American. Ken Miles was an English racecar driver and mechanical engineer. Together they built the Ford GT40 which defeated Scuderia Ferrari at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. For details see Ford v Ferrari.

Alfonso de Portago was a promising Ferrari racecar driver who met a tragic end in 1957.

Malian technical cavalry details from Mali’s Glorious “Armored” Corps, Battle Order.

The UAZ is Ulyanovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, or the Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant, a Russian automobile manufacturer founded in WWII.

White Toyotas for relief aid missions, peacekeeping, and conservation projects is covered in This Secret Dealer Sells White Toyotas That Save The World by Top Gear.

Mingjiao (明轎) is an “open, summer sedan chair” carrying officials in Imperial China. Source: Ruitenbeek, K. (1996). Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China: A Study of the Fifteenth-century Carpenter's Manual, Lu Ban Jing.

I first learned about the Yamaha OX99-11 from Cars from NON-CAR companies by TopCars TV

Image Credits

Concept for an armored VW Amarok is “PickUpTank” by exizt

Pressurized power suit is a early unit design for Space Marine CMC Powered Combat Suit from the game beta, 1996

Dodge Ram TRX overlooking alien planet is “Ranger Explorer” by NightrazeShadow

Yamaha OX99-11 illustration and additional info from “The Road-Legal F1 Car That Almost Was: Yamaha OX99-11” by Bring a Trailer.

Previous posts

Dreamer deviator weapons

M-91 Cockroach Self-Propelled Bunker

M60 main battle tank

[MysticWind]

Moving Heaven and Earth

Insignia of TERRA by Conclave Believer sculptor Eschatos Primo, inspired by John Page’s remark to Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence: “Do you not think that an Angel rides in the Whirlwind and directs the Storm?”

Among the interfactional endeavors overseen by the Planetary Council, the Tereno Empireo Rapidmova Reakcii Armeo, or TERRA, was far more successful than perennially moribund PlanetPol. In the wake of the demise of Armed Neutrality and loss of public admiration for the Peacekeeping Forces, the Lord’s Conclave took the mantle of global rallier. Arguing that the A.N. was a sound idea undone by petty politics, Sister Miriam Godwinson suggested replacing it with a more anodyne organization limited to humanitarian relief against natural disasters and nonhuman threats. She gave the agency an Esperanto name as tribute to Old Earth Internationalism, literally meaning “Terrain [and] Empyrean Swift-Action Army to React” [sic]. Broken translation aside, Conclavists passionately advocated for the cause, pledging their very own faction’s Human Relief Initiative to it, hosting presentation pitches at the New Jerusalem Longhouse, and reportedly hiring an Ambassador Suite freelance diplomacy team to launch a memetic campaign.

The combined forces of two of the most diplomatically-astute entities on Planet was unnecessary. Not only were the A.N.’s extermination campaigns against demon boils and plagues of Locusts extremely popular, many of the more ignored bases, never mind the less capable factions, had become increasingly dependent upon the Peacekeeper blue helmets- and HRI white helmets- for disaster response. Flood, hurricane, fire, volcano, and resource shortfall- not even the hermetically-sealed bases of Chiron were immune to age-old calamities. Thus did the Conclave take aim at the horsemen of Pestilence and Famine, letting others worry about War. Instead of shredders, TERRA brought shovels. Instead of laser rovers, they drove emergency formers.

Many factions saw alignment. Hutama, Peacekeeping Forces Under-Secretary of Economic and Peacecrafting Efforts, praised the forward-thinking proposal, seeing it as a means to salvage his faction’s fallen star while cultivating interfactionalism via reconstruction deals. Suzanne Marjorie Fielding, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Human Intelligence Officer of the New Two Thousand’s American Reclamation Corporation, suggested using relief missions as market research on the health of competitor holdings. Vadim Petrovich Kozlov, head of the Restoration of Earth’s Infrastructure Directorate, was ecstatic at the prospect of erecting infrastructure across Planet. And of course, Lena Ebner, the Stepdaughters of Gaia’s Planetsong Pollinator and Honorary President-for-life of the INTEGR movement, was gleeful to foster collaboration on Transmodern solutions. Save people, save the Planet, and along the way preach the good word of sustainable technologies- what’s not to love?

In the face of worsening tropical storms in the American South, breakfast restaurant chain Waffle House instituted comprehensive protocols to ensure continuity of operations

With both faction constituents and elites on board, TERRA needed specialists to carry out the actual disaster response. Here they saw an unexpected upswell from those who once belonged to crusades larger than nations- and perhaps now, greater than factions. Across Planet, newly-founded factional societies of the Chironian Red Cross, Red Crescent, and Red Om Movement streamed forth volunteers who had been selected by the U.N. Alpha Centauri Mission Committee for their duty on Earth. Before Chiron, many of these do-gooders had attained newfangled non-national citizenship, becoming dual citizens of the Red Cross or the Médecins Sans Frontières. Some had gone as far as to renounce their national allegiances entirely, centering their identities on healing the world’s endless supply of hurt and afflicted. With their organizations’ original patron, the U.N., isolated to a specific faction (or divided between two claimants, if one was to believe Marie du Lac), medicos now saw TERRA, and by extension the Planetary Council, their outlet to working for a single future for humanity.

Medicine men and women were not the only post-sectarians. TERRA disaster management was led by a multi-corporate team of operations, logistics, and supply chain experts from the Waffle House Storm Center and ARC (and its pet Federal Disaster Service) on Earth, veterans of climate disruption tracking and response and aftermath reconstruction, respectively. Far from the TERRA Planetary Center, former Waffle House jump team members- the volunteers who kept store locations running during storm conditions- worked alongside ARC biome recovery experts seasoned by the Trans-Mississippi Recovery Initiative to keep the afflicted fed and evacuation lorries on safe roads far from Chironian tempests. That these controllers included once-rival American nationals from both the United States and the former Christian States added to the reconciliatory bonhomie.

Environmental engineers, civil engineers, former crews, construction specialists of all kinds hailed from every faction. Gaians and Shapers, Hunters and Pilgrims, Unicorp and Cartelists, Garrison’s Settlers and Silva’s Builders. The Digital Oracle sent robodiggers and robodozers. The Human Ascendancy brought bioaugmented proto-genejacks. The Legacy Initiative recorded everything for posterity. Relief workers were guarded by a token force of Believers, Peacekeepers, Tribals, Spartans (up until the dissolution), Observers, Warmongers, and even a detachment of Chiron Interstellar Probe soldiers and SolarEx led by Force Commander Rejinaldo Leonardo Pedro Bolivar de Alencar-Araripe, who relished the rare chance to fight for a common cause. Armed solely against xenoform threats, they swore to keep absolute neutrality in the event of manmade violence. TERRA would remain steadfast to this principle, at least until the advent of mindworm taming.

The many-factioned climate army was led by none other than University citizen Tipper-Umash Valerio, Chief Meteorologist of the Unity and now Weatherman General of TERRA. A perpetual thrill-seeker, the dean of the University’s foremost climate laboratory was notorious for joining undergrads and even audit students on irregular expeditions to the warm tropical seas, watching the birth of hurricanes from Chiron’s high gravity and quick spin. While leading an interfactional emergency management org had scarcely less politics than the academy, it at least put Valerio front and center of crisis. The Weatherman General leapt at every opportunity to visit live disaster sites even when the Waffle House-ARC Recovery Index blared red. Faculty at the icy snowcaps back home groused that he was a jumped-up calamity chaser, but his service did produce further learnings in Planetary weather.

Signage in Esperanto at the agridome of New Lemnos, Mars

TERRA set a precedent for effective Planetary Council agencies like the Genetic Inspectors and Energy Weaponry Investigators (colloquially known as Buster Bumpers, or Comet Blixens after the nickname of Earth-era IAEA Rapid Response inspectors). As an interfactional venture, it was nearly as beloved as the Space Olympics. For mission decades, TERRA evaded serious scandal, a testament to the commitment of its members and leadership.

The main controversy at its introduction was purely superficial, semiotic. The use of angelic symbology was frowned upon by Yang and Zakharov as an endorsement of primitive thought-systems. But ironically, more severe criticism came from Godwinson’s ostensible co-religionists, albeit one from a particularly heretical schism. First, Cardinal Julius Cerutti of the exiled Holy See of Centauri called the use of ‘Empyrean’ in the organization’s name as “sheer sciocchezze” and “borderline blasphemy” for conflating the medieval Christian cosmology of the highest heaven with such an- earthly- entity. (Commentators have suggested that the intended word was Empirio, empirical knowledge, with Tereno Empirio meaning an objective understanding of terrain.) Worse condemnations came from the Watchtower that had evicted Cerutti from his land-based holdings; the Governing Body of First Bethel denounced the entire endeavor as “Christendom manifest, an unscriptural Trinitarian Babylon attempting to rebuild Babel in defiance of Jehovah.” The not-faction, rejecting the Planetary Council as a counterfeit of the Kingdom of Heaven in the tradition of its U.N. and League of Nations predecessors, refused any part in TERRA, even rejecting humanitarian aid workers during Hypercane Wojnak.

A slightly more material critique came from Godwinson’s use of Esperanto, and whether its status as humanity’s auxiliary language was still relevant in a time of real-time machine translations and glossal memory lectoscriptor plug-ins. After Common English, and some lobbying for Classical Chinese from the Human Hive, most considered Indonesian and Swahili as the auxlang of the future. On Earth, both had seen use by millions as their ‘primary’ second language, removing linguistic exceptions and obstructions for the sake of a shared lingua franca, fostering unity in political and economic projects. Dr. Zamenhof’s conlang had ideological purity and historical momentum, but increasingly seemed unnecessary on Chiron. Conspiracy theorists accused Godwinson of pushing the Dua Esperanto movement to make espionage easier within the halls of the Planetary Council. Esperantists doubted her piety, mocking the misuse of their holy lingvo in TERRA’s own name. Speakers of Falahbic and Wormtongue advocated the adoption of emerging languages for a new Planet. And her own Conclave saw a trend of Believers babbling in Modern Enochian, supposedly a common subset of phrases from a million instances of glossolalia, derived by a Uriel-class unnatural language model.

Notes

TERRA is from RahXephon, that series’ equivalent to Nerv from Neon Genesis Evangelion, with a similar international mandate to combat the interdimensional Mulians just as Nerv serves to repel the extraterrestrial Angels (hm). TERRA uses Esperanto names much like Nerv (and NGE in general) uses German naming.

I actually had the angelic symbol saved for use for a pre-mission U.N. agency. Recently I read from this article that its name is badly-mangled Esperanto: ‘"Tereno" means "terrain", "Empireo" is nonsense, "Rapidmova" means "rapidly-moving", and "Reakcii" means "to react". (They got "Armeo" right, though.)’ That led me to consider making it into a Chiron-based organization; after all, moving quickly on land, or just quickly moving land, is a big deal in Alpha Centauri! Thus the entire premise of this post was born. The actual intended meaning for the name was Earth Federation Rapid-moving Response Army, as per the English translation of the RahXephon Bible by Yukaka Izubuchi, page 70.

I first saw the sci-fi genre trope of widespread future use of Esperanto in Red Dwarf, which is also listed in the above article.

A primer on the Waffle House Index:
“Known Your Meme article”
“What Do Waffles Have to Do with Risk Management?” by Laura Walter, EHS Today, 2011.
“How Waffle House Became A Disaster Indicator For FEMA,” by Clay Dillow, Popular Science, 2013.
“It's a Little Piece of Normal”, FEMA, 2017.
“Hurricane Preparation and Recovery by the Waffle House Jump Team”, Government Technology, 2019
“Waffle House Index: America’s Disaster Barometer Explained” by Clara, Waffle House Menu, 2025.

Robodiggers, robodozers, and robominers are units from Sierra On-Line’s Outpost and its sequel.

Wikipedia article for the Empyrean.

Using biochemical “artificial memory lectoscriptor” molecules to selectively pass on an individual’s knowledge, whether language or otherwise, is from the short story “And Usher in These Latter Days by Paul Burgess.

The suggestion of adopting (colloquial) Indonesian or Swahili as an international shared second language is by linguist John McWhorter, as conveyed in blog article “Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian by Derek Sivers.

Enochian was a constructed language created by John Dee, court astronomer, advisor, and occultist of Queen Elizabeth, supposedly from angelic visions.

Uriel is the archangel of knowledge and wisdom.

Image Credits

TERRA symbol is from RahXephon

Waffle House Storm Center photo is from Georgia Governor Kemp’s visit during Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton in October 2024

Space base with Esperanto lettering is from Elite Dangerous (VR mode only)