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)

[MysticWind]

Operation: Border Marchers
or, the Captaincy of my soul

And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew clear
There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the mountaineer.
"Ha' done! ha' done!" said the Colonel's son. "Put up the steel at your sides!
"Last night ye had struck at a Border thief–to-night 'tis a man of the Guides!"
- “The Ballad of East and West”, Datalinks

Colonization in the immediate post-Planetfall period was a cautious affair. Even the leader with least regard for human life knew the value of his workforce. Labor automatons could only be serviced so many times and were hard to reproduce. Datatape was still unable to preserve a career’s worth of experience. Memory lectoscriptor molecular synthesis was a dream. Each voyage commenced with tearful crowds waving to friends and neighbors who might soon become wormfood, or forever waylaid while fording rivers. Janky colony pods girded in prefab plastic rolled out of base gates while veteran infantry and speeder escorts scouted ahead. These could be existential undertakings for a faction, tossing a thousand of their best and brightest along with scarce foodstuffs and irreplaceable equipment off the map. The meticulously planned missions  carefully screened and trained each pioneer, almost in imitation of the original road to Unity. New bases were precisely located at optimal distances from existing settlements and proximity to discovered resources, carefully guarded. More crown colonies than Conestoga.

After two fortnights in the Demoleon Plains, a party of Noddians from The Holy Fire arrive at Exodus End, eastern Believer-Hiverian border

Generations later, the factions had matured into polities spanning thousands of miles, nestling up against one another like crabs in a bucket. Colonization evolved into a power game, expanding one’s kingdom by planting farflung outposts along ill-defined boundaries. Sometimes this required a deniable, or at least expendable, approach. With surplus populations now unlocked, governments invented a new type of colonial mission. Issuing licenses, charters, or contracts for founding self-governing outposts at their fringes, factions attracted a different breed of expeditionary. Here came the border marchers: self-organized, self-armed, self-motivated irregular colonists. Also known as military SMACERs, marqued colonists (as in letters of marque), Chironian conquistadors, questers, linemen, trekkers, or simply adventurers, they were sanctioned but not sponsored. While semi-independent missions had been commonplace on Planet, evolving chiropolitical aims led to a new class of colonist. They were to be a second wave reinforcing the sensor towers and border garrisons on the extreme edges of empire. Taming the frontier not for mere survival, but for shutting out rivals.

Unlike earlier colonization, the vast distances they covered were comparable to that of transoceanic travel- and indeed some crossed seas to relieve bedraggled exploration parties sent mission years ago. Marchers typically did not travel in colony pods, simply because they were often fewer than the minimum complement of one thousand, and because their impatient zeal eschewed the comfort of treaded habitats. But Unity Rover and Lorry convoys still required half a dozen decurns or longer of travel. While fragmentary maps from the original trailblazers helped, journeys were inevitably deadly. Even when augmented by Unity Propeljets, Scout Hawks, or Copters for aerial survey (most factions hoarded Airships for their atmospheric corps or proper colonization), marchers faced innumerable creeping threats. Burrowing worm boils hidden deep in the earth, fungal towers launching volleys at a range of hundreds of kilometers, sudden storms from hypercanes to dust blizzards, treacherous anomalies, hypersurvivalist Holnist raiders, racketeering Darwin Raiders, roguish Nautilus Pirates, dubious smacers, mindless muckers, and subversive probes.

Almogavar light infantry with analog blades for quiet killing and civilian casualwear for ease of movement

Part private security, part civilian militia, and part SMACER, marchers were more than ready for a scrap. Most were veterans of vendettas or seasoned lawkeepers. Having experience battling enemy forces and xenoforms, or accompanying someone who did, was a march prerequisite. Without much, if any, state protection, they formed their own escorts. Scouts, ‘former crew, and conveyors were revered for wilderness expertise. Each march was led by a captain, the title either from a ship’s master or after the Condottieri of old. Indeed, the most charismatic were likened to Roger de Flor and John Hawkwood. But even if its marchers preached nonaggression, or had a purely figurehead skipper, a march’s governing body was called a Captaincy, reflecting the dynamic and martial nature of such endeavors. Captaincies resembled medieval free companies in that they were not blood kin as many colony pod crews were, but found families of outcasts, misfits, and scalawags. Indeed, a popular slang for a lightly-armed freebooter was almogavar, after the renowned rapid frontiersmen-turned-soldiers of fortune of the Catalan Company. Their arms were a mishmash. Some marches bought military surplus at a meager discount, from last year’s wristfire pressurized power suits to Unity-era pneumatic shredders as suitable for reiving as they were for vendetta. Others adapted civilian tools for more peaceful ROE, penetrator hunting rifles and construction sonic hammers wielded only in self-defense.

Regardless of a captaincy’s avowed views, marches were self-selected for explorers who could fight and fixers who relished dirty work for cheap credits. After the long road, marchers were expected to join in on xenoform bug hunts, shooing smacer scavengers away from supply crawlers, clearing out monolith sites of ruiners or Unity crash hulks of wreckers, chasing down dangerous renegades in bounty missions, and above all participating in the common defense of the border. Often, they expected that not only border clashes, but outright vendetta, was inevitable. Here laid danger, but so did riches their leaders had promised them a hefty stake in. In contrast with sellshredders, marcher comp was not in contract salaries but in prospects: early entrance into the local alien artifact trade, first right to salvage pods and wrecks, untaxed planetpearls.

There was freedom from the social stultification of core bases. (Basers called marchers “half-smacers” for spurning civilization, but smacers scoffed that as Uitlanders, marchers inevitably dragged post offices, railroads, and jails to the frontier.) Headquarters deemed them border guardians and roving fixers, but many found more avenues for glory. In deepwild field labs with generous blast zones, rogue scientists could engage in experiments safe from ethics boards. Rogue scholars could spend decurns pouring over a monolith’s inscriptions, interrupted not by troops seizing it for leader and faction but by mere rivals or at worst, ruiners amuck. Feral librarians could tape-dive into Earth’s distant past in priceless troves located in untouched data pods. And so-called rogue journo “sporespondents” chronicled each discovery via intermittent infobursts. The most charismatic found great renown back at home. One witty wag briefly beat both CEO Nwabudike Morgan and Lady Lilith Vermillion at the datalinks ratings before being crushed by stampeding subrids. For a time, perhaps as long as a lifetime, there was adventure.

Finally, there was opportunity to turn rudimentary border outposts into proper castle keeps, or to build a peel and become a local laird. While hardly as nomadic as smacers, many marchers left their more sedentary and safety-minded fellows back at base to roam the countryside for target practice and loot. The fortified campsites, watchtower forts, and bunkers they dug along the way filled in their faction’s control of the map- and their own captaincy’s dominion.

Morganite treasure hunters ponder if antediluvian carved disc plates are their next alien artifact bonanza or an anomaly trap, Site Capella

New arrivals dominated with freewheeling lassitude. The Centauri Monopoly granted private individuals unprecedented 99-year leases over the Amalthea monoliths surrounding Morgan Far Ventures, not far from advancing New Two Thousand territory. Those who survived the excavations and drove the Regulator vanguard back behind the Khyber River found great fortunes. Enterprising artifact fetchers reinvested finder fees into selling weapon kits, breathing gear, Macko lizard tacos, and fungal beer to latecomers. Almogavars who distinguished themselves in combat against xenoforms and invaders were hired as almocadenes by Corporate Security or PMCs. Rogue researchers previously disgraced for unprofitable unorthodoxy made breakthrough discoveries at the pristine xenoarcheological sites, receiving recruitment offers from R&D divisions and Togra Labs. Freelance negotiators who bought the cooperation of local nomads in exchange for Hewlett-Packard iTrac field PDAs, Indian-manufactured Unity 3D printers, and spare water rations fallen off the back of trucks were given lucratively influential offices as company smacer agents. Doughty workers and controllers who remained baseside building facilities or taming landscapes were awarded with overriding shares in the improvements they constructed. Sporespondents made their names profiling the strangely parochial Pilgrims’ quaint ways and provided battlefield updates in realtime.

Morgan Industries Civic Engagement declined to send representatives for the Blood Truce talks with the New Two Thousand, or to even hire the Ambassador Suite for a peace contract. Securing the blessing of the Far Ventures base corporate board, self-appointed bush diplomats cut the final terms of the Blood Truce. Rather than demanding the Pilgrims clear out as corporate wanted, Morganite adventurers signed a gentleman’s non-aggression agreement: the Regulator militia would return to Terra Nova, but Hexham-upon-Khyber and Port Bukloh could stay if their marchers agreed to a trade ratio favorable to Far Ventures. When Morgan Corporate Policy finally came to town, tycoons of under-the-table commerce were not reprimanded, but promoted for simply good business. As the first moguls who were not executives of Morgan Industries or its subsidiaries, these border marchers became the seed of the faction’s non-corporate aristocracy. And their fief was the frontier.

Long Marchers of every origin and loyalty score burst forth from Obedience’s Reward to defend the Hiverian new frontier

Marchers formed rough-and-tumble informal societies freed from much of the onerous legalities of the core. Yet even totalitarian factions used them as a release valve to dump the most willful citizens into a container where they would be useful. After the Jin Long Uprising, Chairman Yang founded Obedience’s Reward at the very edge of the Uranium Flats. The expeditionaries of the Long March Forward were loyalists clutching battered hand weapons, rebels in chains, and a Hive Security trooper captain on a shiny motorbike presiding over all. In the construction of the unusual aboveground Hiverian base, over a hundred lives were lost from the initial fungal field pruning to the completion of perimeter defense walls. In the face of daily survival, hierarchies broke down. Trooper, veteran, and rehabs fought desert deathworms side-by-side, wept over comrades lost to Red Flu, shared clonebacco cigarillos during patrol. During a crackdown on an unauthorized mahjong den, security officers shot their own leader, electing a new captain from among their number; this time from the entire population, enlightened and not. Later pod-borne colonists would find a relaxed version of Hive culture at this captaincy, the Commandery of the Furthest Cadre. One curiously supportive of the chairman’s ideals, if not the actual man. It was said that this penal border march was Yang’s tribute to his formative years in exile with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.

Sword Paladins rally at the Bonnie Cross before anti-smacer raid, Angel of Goliad

But attempts to rehabilitate a suspect sub-faction could end in tears. The Lord’s Conclave faced difficulties in the aftermath of the rise of the Trembler heresy even with the departure of Michael Elazar and his Society. Not wishing to splinter the Believer population further, Sister Godwinson attempted to mollify reactive sects by promoting missionary work to the smacers and neighboring strangers. The largest anti-Trembler march cohered around the Church of Not Peace but a Sword, whose crusaders wore their pugnacious creed on their sleeves. Marcher zealots founded Angel of Goliad at the Rio Iyarri, seven decurns from a major base within sight of Federation patrols. While these newcomers were first appreciated for their thorough cleansing of mindworms and other dangerous beasts, the local Nauvoo Legion presence soon realized that when it came to “the God-given right to keep and bear arms,” they prized the latter far more than the former. The presidio commander was aghast when the Sword Paladins set fire to mission years-cultivated diplomacy by preemptively striking local smacers, destroying their warrens, not even allowing a chance to convert before summary execution. Despite professionalism and military weaponry, the Nauvoo Legionnaires were outnumbered and overrun by the marchers’ reckless technical cavalry charges. New Jerusalem was too preoccupied by yet another synod to send a relief mission. Ironically, a passing exile rover train gave refuge to fleeing Believers, who along with bondservant smacers escaping the impactor-foundries of the rogue church’s workcamps, bolstered the newborn Trembler Commune. The church attempted to intercept the Tremblers but were ultimately driven back by Elazar’s protection volunteers. By the time the Conclave had a chance to herd the rogue flock back into its pen, the captaincy had already sworn oaths to the Spartan Federation, whom they had enjoyed splendid trade and cultural exchange thanks to compatible worldviews. Angel of Goliad would become a stolid Santiago stronghold, an oasis of loyalty deep into the Neo-Spartan period. Godwinson abandoned the policy of dissenter-led colony missions or marches, calling for Noddian parties: wanderers of indeterminate creeds guided by strong Believers.

Gaian of the Hare Kavitha faith leads Whole Planet Regiment recruits in morning mantras, Farewell to Arms

Leaders tried appealing to “factionalists” bearing ironborn patriotism and ideological steadfastness, but in reality only the most desperate or free-spirited of the demobilized left home for a march. Convictions were difficult to divine, leading to spectacular failures. Colonel Santiago called upon the elite defenders of fallen Xerxion to build a new city on the frontier, bestowing upon them supplies and support. But upon arriving at the border, the marchers whom she thought the most battle-hardened of her citizens, revealed themselves to be anti-militarists. After the cycles of vendetta that led to their old base’s demise, the handful of survivors renounced all interest in war from their new home, Farewell to Arms. Most embarrassingly for the Spartan Federation, they next petitioned admittance into the Stepdaughters of Gaia. Over the objections of her Seelie Court inner circle privy council, Lady Skye assented, causing a diplomatic incident that was only ended when a bounty march from Assassin’s Redoubt was humiliatingly defeated by the Whole Planet Regiment, the municipal defense force. Formed from ex-Spartan special forces with embedded New Age strain Gaian advisors, slinging synthleather pouches laden with hydroponic ginseng regulators, witching tools, night vision-enhancing rations, and soundspeakers blaring peace mantras, the Regiment fused unparalleled combat prowess and unrelenting mental toughness with esoteric wisdom from attunement with the wilds. Even as Santiago thundered accusations of Probe Team mind control, the population of the newly-dubbed Armstrong Shire captaincy and its WPR ‘warrior-monks’ staunchly pledged themselves to Skye’s pacifist ideals yet prepared to defend her in both open vendetta and secret war.

In spite of these difficulties, factions came to use marches for boosting societal stability, “draining” base drone populations by encouraging ‘potential criminal elements’ to willingly go into self-exile. To mitigate the formation of splitter sub-factions, factional cores discouraged single-sect marches and directed multiple marches to enter the same territories, forming diverse boomtowns. By mortgaging the cohesion of a captaincy, a faction could internally export unrest to the periphery while dividing it against itself. Captaincies were often dotted with quasi-spheres of influence under independent guilds, cooperatives, cadres, companies, congregations, clans, and so on, popularly known as “border baronies” and pejoratively called petty baronies. These sub-captaincies jostled against one another, the smacers, foreign neighbors across the way, vestigial local factional authorities, ambitious lieutenants seeking to become border baron, and of course, their supposed captain. Far from crafting pan-polity factionalist identities, captaincies and their internal structures simply made factionalization fractal, pushing downwards into ever-smaller subdivisions.

Memory of Earth policy promoted pre-mission uniforms sans flag patches to foster post-national factionalism, but in practice ex-NATO core bases viewed ex-WARPAC comrades with suspicion. Ironically, the nostalgic costumes of Pikaaru’s Breeze were well-received by Academgorodok scientists. Amity between both banks of the Neue Rhine-Novaya Volga bloomed despite University contempt of Observer credulity

Ultimately, the chief motivation of adventurer marches was external expansion, not internal integrity. A faction pushed its borders by taming its outskirts, leapfrogging development as far as thousands of kilometers away. Not all deployed this risky strategy, but many did so in their later-early to mid-histories. Territorial growth under marcher lord ad hoc rule could be as bloodless as setting up trading posts that monopolized local resources. On remote ranges where intrafactional communications were attenuated by alien anomalies or regular Centauri solar flares, struggles for ideological influence might be won simply by whomever had the most-developed outpost, the best-tended hedge row.

But while the factions planted marches as fertilizer for periphery communities into blooming metropolitan bases, in practice marchers formed buffer states. Captaincies mastered the art of “obedezco pero no cumplo:” obedience without compliance. Soft influence could devolve rapidly into improper fraternization as borderfolk found common cause, forgetting the faction wars. Ideological syncretism spread like spores. As a plague of Locusts of Chiron swept over the Mermerus Hills, the heterodox experimentalists of The Horizon and the sympathizers of Disk Obedience at Colonia Ultimus overcame mutual distaste towards each other’s agenda to coordinate flame needlejet runs. Ex-Legionnaire washout almogavars, suppressing their reflexive haughtiness (perhaps overcompensating for supposed midgene performance), boldly attracted the swarming xenoinsectoids over the rolling landscape, zigging and zagging on foot while the Ultimus Automata Section powered up its pawnshop stock of outdated DEC-8 Talos hods, reprogrammed aerial spray roto-liquidators, and rusty Unity Walker combots. The Human Ascendancy and the Digital Oracle marchers continued to cooperate even after the flying boils were driven off; the former adopting man-piloted mechanical battlesuits and barely level 7 labor automatons, the latter modified themselves with fairly mild gene therapies for Red Flu pseudoimmunity and savant-style decision-making. This pragmatic Hybrid Affinity of low-cognition clankers and unintrusive gengineering was classic harmonizing of the frontier. They even continued to maintain cordial relations after the home factions’ longstanding trade pact was finally broken by antipodal ideological differences. As expeditionary armies from the metropole cores marched through the border for the First Vendetta of Blood and Bolts, the heretical captaincies of Ultimus Sector and Horizon Transfer were swept aside.

New State reivers in mismatched Chevalier de la Mer (Sea Knight) wolfmen suits go “dry fishing” at a harbor hamlet. L'Nouvel Etat prescribed a self-contained society, but the state itself was as dependent on above-ground goods and materials as any surface-dwelling faction. Thus its marchers tended to be more martial than others’, clustered in submarine seawolfpacks and armed camps on lonely islands off the coast. Neighbors quickly learned to stockpile depth charges and artillery

Cross-border similarities between marchers from different factions led to bloodshed as often as it did to brotherly love. Not all captaincies were blessed with bountiful quick riches. Some were quite desolate, with mines picked dry by King Priam-Planetside, Unicorp, or some other sojourner corporation. Some lacked the nutrient resources to support the sudden influx of arrivals, forcing marchers to catch and raise subrids for meat, becoming Centauri cattlemen instead of conquerors. Some were devastated by recent vendettas or SMACER wars. Under such desperate conditions, marchers turned to reiving. Disregarding whatever treaties or truces were in place, armed throngs crossed the border to steal from the foreigners. While some were more akin to probe infiltrators, or more precisely, noisy burglars, most turned violent. Marchers were more often than not raring for a fight, and a few were truly committed factionalists who believed in the supremacy of their ideology and the iniquity of their neighbors’. Though these scuffles usually involved no more than three dozen fighters on each side, at their worst innocent noncombatants were caught in the crossfire.

Over time, a sort of bloody code of conduct emerged. Reiving was intended for survival- though soon it was used to resolve insults of honor, revenge for the fallen, or satisfy sheer greed and avarice- not for the factions’ grand strategies. Thus reivers became a formalized occupation undertaken not by simple brigands but those who knew the limits of what was tolerable, so as to prevent escalation and the involvement of core militaries. Anyone could launch a border raid; not everyone could do so without excessive casualties, loot discriminately with discipline, rustle up young subrids without spooking the parents, kidnap a specific guild member or kinsman for optimal ransom, intimidate the correct outland official into a protection racket, bribe bored expeditionary guards for access to the camp armory, plant compromising evidence to sabotage a rival’s truce day, or set up an impromptu shakedown checkpoint on the way back to add insult to injury for their irate pursuers. Reivers were brutish, bellicose, but restrained when they needed be, deft in their savagery, and often dashingly larger-than-life on the datalinks. Canny border cutters formed alliances and dalliances with counterparts o’er the line; their factional loyalty was perhaps third or fourth place in their priorities.

They came to eschew full-sized rovers, preferring Radnor hoverbikes, ultra-high speed swarmcraft like the Drumsplitter hovercycle, monobikes, Combat Trikes, one-man Scout Rovers. But the definitive Chironian border reiver transport was the Hobbler. A corruption of Hobelar, the light mounted cavalry who rode on hardy Galloway nags as they reived the Scottish marches, it was a Infantry Support Track scooter heavily modified for greater speed and larger turrets. An “IST technical” in some reckoning, the Hobbler accorded reivers swift ingress and egress in exchange for substantially less armor. Marcher reivers smashed through rudimentary fortifications with the turbo-charged mobile pillboxes, letting ‘bike and swarm’ brethren flood in, grab what they could, and escape while the Hobblers retreated in reverse, laying cover laserfire at any who dared give chase. Defenders established three-man “lance” formations composed of driver, turret-gunner, and sniper. Whether on an expanded IST, a truck, or a rover, these lances could match the mobility of Hobblers, dismount, and shoot at the weakly-armored attackers at any range. Deftness with combat scooters made reivers occasional recruitment targets for factional militaries or mercenary outfits, but just as often were firing targets for the same, ordered by headquarters to crack down on disorder.

The ambiguous loyalties and force capabilities of marchers often invited comparisons with smacers. But these two types of frontiersfolk were easily differentiated by their attitudes towards civilization as personified by baselife; smacers fled from it, marchers came to build it on their own terms. Yet for all of the culling campaigns and scalper bounties issued by faction governments, most marchers had at worst an apathetic dismissal of smacers. They were at times useful as wilding guides, trading partners, and auxiliaries. A marcher aphorism, possibly Spartan, considered SMACERs to be “less aggressive than Holnists, less industrious than Hunters, less ambitious than Darwin Raiders, and less ideological than all.” Even as some border bases directed reivers to attack smacers instead of flouting interfactional law, others committed efforts to woo their friendship. Some even ‘recivilized’ nomads who were perhaps halfhearted in their original abandonment of their bases, or children and grandchildren who were tired of living in pressure tents without running water. These “cooked smacers” were eagerly brought into marcher society as more drudges for labors and cannonfodder conscripts. Wiser heads made use of their well-seasoned knowledge of the wild, promoting the most able to Ressaldar, given command over both marcher main force and smacer aux alike. As turncoats, cooked smacers proved quite able at fighting former brethren, who accused them of selling out to settle scores against former rivals. They were particularly useful against pinkmoss-troopers, a new class of smacer born from long quagmire vendettas: disbanded, deserter, or defeated faction soldiers who turned bandit. Many a bounty against the pinkmoss was fulfilled by a Ressaldar while the reward credits were collected by their marcher lord.

Romanticized illustration of Monsoon Jungle marchers. Pointed ears suggest Ascendancy Parī augments with semi-photosynthetic high-efficiency respiration skin, but the gunman is almost certainly a Gaian Ranger. The Hunter at center wields a Bunyan Lodge bloom-machete overstylized to the point of impracticality

For all of the trouble captaincies caused, factions even found uses for their impudence. Any successes a march had in producing a functional province would be the greater faction’s. Any failures could be blamed on rogue elements, ragged irregulars who could be safely suppressed by the next military expedition. And even an entirely lost base here or there would either be left to the tender mercies of a neighbor, or recaptured in the next vendetta. (This blithe cycle of settlement, revolt, and retaliation could bring fatal disaster. Worse than simply turning pinkmoss trooper or even throwing in with the Holnist-compromised captaincies Sparta Command had ordered him to crush, Polemarch Antonio Garcia raised a new flag over the ashes, made the survivors swear personal oaths for all lifetimes, and marched his Polemarchos - now, the Praetorium, with him as Princeps - home.

Most captaincies retained factional ties simply for continued material support. Ironically, some factions played diplomatic games by treating the semi-autonomous areas as outright sovereignties for free votes at the Planetary Council. Interfactional authorities took a dim view of that, defining captaincy as being a “non-corporation freehold polity.” (A typical bureaucratic misnomer, as many were indeed incorporated under marcher charters, not to mention fully-commercialized marches from the likes of The Bourse or the Chiron Cartel.) While factions sought to use the antics of their marchers as diplomatic cover, most were seen for what they were: colonies of colonies. (A taboo word that nearly all of the Unity diaspora was keen to avoid, as eventually none wanted to admit to being a colony.)

Over time, marches were launched for internal settlement. To reclaim regions devastated by vendetta or natural disasters- fungal blooming, nest manifestations, conflagration, or deluge- marchers eagerly headed to free real estate. After reconstruction and thoroughly rooting out Promise-Keepers from failed ghost bases, of course.
 
Whatever the grand stratagems the factions had for the loose cannon captaincies, they would capture the popular imagination of Planet for mission centuries, just as their cutthroat conqueror-colonizers did in premodern Earth.

[MysticWind]

Gameplay Mechanics

I often send colony pods to my borders to expand my territory with every new base. Partly to push back against other factions, but also because city spam never appealed to me. It’s not a very good strat. A sparse empire can be quickly gobbled up, and pods are easy prey as well.

Operations are one-shot effects in Pandora: First Contact. They’re basically like the support powers from Command and Conquer or other RTS games, though surprisingly few to be found in 4X. I classified Border Marchers as an Operation because I didn’t think of them as a specific new chassis type or unit. Rather, I imagine that if you were to activate this operation on a base, it would result in the local drone population dropping, but you also lose the pop. Instead you get an Infantry unit (or a Speeder, Lorry, Motorbike, etc.) with a colony module. This colony can only be built a certain radius away from your existing bases, thus forcing you to send it to your border. Also hypothetically there would be loyalty effects like the base starts with a drone pop or maybe there’s a slight chance of it defecting to the nearest faction, or their nearest base defecting to you.

Hobblers are meant to be Infantry with Speeder-level Speed and upgraded Weapon but low Armor. Or, perhaps they would be Speeders with the confounded Infantry sprite that appears after you research past Hand Weapons. I’ve always found them to be bizarre so I’m grateful that the GURPS Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri supplement by Jon F. Zeigler seems to address this:

The Infantry Support Track (IST) was one of Planet's stranger military innovations. Infantry support weapons were crucial to success on the battlefield, since they were usually required to punch through the armor worn by battlesuit infantry. However, such weapons were unwieldy in the fluid, fast-moving skirmishes typical of colonial infantry warfare. The IST was one answer. It was essentially an armored scooter, large enough to accommodate a single infantryman in a half-standing position. Quick and agile, the IST could keep up with the front lines - but it also carried substantial armor to the front, protecting its crewman. A turret was mounted on the front of the vehicle, with a modular socket big enough for a support weapon and its ammunition. This made it easy to upgrade weapons systems as weapons technology improved. The IST (also called a "combat scooter" or "mobile pillbox") was a common sight for centuries on Planet's battlefields.

Or, as kingdragon put it in this thread: “It's a glorified Segway.”

Design Notes

Last November I happened to listen to an episode of Three Moves Ahead about the Anbennar mod for Europa Universalis IV (and soon, Victoria 3). The D&D inspired fantasy setting stretches from the defeat of a massive orc invasion and birth of a new war goddess in its 1444 all the way to the 18th century in an Eberron-esque era of sparkrifles and steampunk artificery. It’s an absolutely gargantuan project. The scope, scale, and sheer density of this fictional world in a grand strategy engine is actually sort of how I envision RtD - or rather, OTL - could work as a game. Imagine, a planetary hardish sci-fi space fantasy inspired by the actual history of human civilization. Anyway, William SRD made an excellent overview of the setting:

(He actually just made a second video days ago! And is streaming a goblin playthrough! Definitely check out his channel.)

Anbennar is particularly interesting to me because its perhaps protagonist polity (out of over 700 tags) is the Corintar Order, formed from one of the many adventuring companies that took part in the anti-orc pseudo-crusade against the aforementioned Greentide, made up of the former men-at-arms of the aforementioned new goddess. The concept of adventuring company as state, that is going from a D&D-style adventuring party to becoming a kingdom of its own is just a fascinating concept to me. Enough that I wanted to bring it into this SMAC fanfic.

For one thing, I argue that an adventuring company (or adventurer’s guild) ought to be different from a mercenary outfit. Sure, as the responses there say, that’s not really the case, as these formalized adventure guilds are more like the free companies of medieval Europe, or the Kievan Rus, or conquistadors, and so on; in it for the gold, loot, and xp. Not to mention 19th century imperialist filibuster adventurers from William Walker to the French lawyer who tried to set up an indigenous kingdom in Patagonia. (I’m thinking of adding the latter to RtD. Probably too late. I will, however, have the White Rajahs of Sarawak still in power under British suzerainty.) And yeah, my characterization of border marchers does have a lot of free company DNA.

But I also think that the idea of taking the platonic idea of a fantasy RPG party- a motley crew of misfits with diverse powers and viewpoints, usually in some alignment of Good- and building a nation from an original group of mythic heroes is pretty neat. There’s somewhat a precedence for this in video games. In Baldur’s Gate II you can get a Stronghold- heck, there’s even an early ‘90s SSI RTS game where you manage one- and the much more recent Pathfinder: Kingmaker is built around the premise of building up and then managing a realm. I’m sure all of your famous post-Tolkien adventuring parties- Dragonlance’s Heroes of the Lance, the Forgotten Realms’ Companions of the Hall, the Record of Lodoss guys, the Critical Role crew- probably get some sort of estate clubhouse with titled lands. Despite being on my third campaign or so I’m not really all that knowledgeable or interested in D&D.

But I do like Anbennar, and the idea of taking the personal and turning it into an institution, even a polity. And so I’ve characterized the marchers as not merely mercs or PMCs or what have you, but as roving fixers who fulfill the three other aspects of Build/Discover/Explore, and even more. Yeah, the marchers do crib from both of the Marches of medieval Britain, places full of petty violence amidst political disorder. But as I’ve explored previously with the SMACERs, I also like the idea of imagining the basic Scout unit in Alpha Centauri as a wandering adventurer on a dangerous planet full of monsters and psi magic.

To be precise, marcher captaincies are somewhere between the default adventuring companies of Anbennar and the state-sponsored adventurers who are funded much like Columbus was by Ferdinand and Isabella, perhaps. The three factions of an Anbennar adventurer government are also useful in sussing out what a marcher frontier society hosts. Also, I call them marchers as tribute to the Greentide Marchers, but also it can be a reference to the various medieval marches in the no-man’s zones at the borders of kingdoms and countries. As one event puts it:

One of the most overlooked consequences of the Greentide was the demonstration of the effectiveness of adventuring companies in pioneer initiatives. These organizations were mostly self-sufficient and were able to properly defend themselves from most threats without relying on foreign powers. The existence of already established legal and economic systems under the guilds also allowed the quick incorporation of new territories, as adventurers could accomplish both military and civic duties. The success of the Adventuring Kingdoms of Escann over former realms, like the so-called Count’s League, can be in part traced back to these very advantages.

I got the name for captaincies from the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires, mostly because it always made me bemused. Why name your administrative unit after such a middling rank rather than a general or admiral or marshal. (Come to think of it, are the Nautilus Pirates a captaincy?) Turns out the name was after donetary captains-general. I do find it amusing though that the word captaincy sounds like colony, which here they basically are. However, they lack the hereditary aspect (usually) that the Iberian captaincies had, and in fact might also resemble the charter colonies and/or proprietary colonies of the British New World. (I actually cannot tell the difference between them, as it seems like both could involve colonization companies. If you do know please answer this thread.)

A Note on SMACERs

The smacer subculture is one of my first, and arguably unsurpassed, contributions to this project. I don’t recall what led me to combine the stalkers of the eponymous series, the Metro series, and Roadside Picnic with SMAC, but it works. Visually, I also cribbed from the Guardians of Destiny, but story-wise maybe their quest to rebuild humanity or whatever is more like marchers than smacers- I played Destiny 2 for a whiles and still wouldn’t be able to tell you its story.

But beyond the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. influence, SMACERs basically embody three aspects-

1. Reject base life to explore, live off the land, and treasure hunt: those who went AWOL, embracing a factionless life as survivalists in wilderness.

2. Birthplace of new factions and graveyard of failed ideologies: splitters that flee into the wild to build their own utopian societies. Some might make it work, and ultimately cease to become SMACERs, and become new factions, complete with sedentary bases. But most are just cranks with no sovereignty or diplomatic recognition.

3. Indigenous and ersatz indigeneity: as the first humans who settle the “deep nature” far from existing bases, they certainly have a theme of aboriginality. The fact that they have restrained, or even regressed tech bases because of lack of industrial capacity or intentional ideological hang-ups further mirrors the difference between colonists meeting soon-to-be colonized native peoples in Earth history. But while this might invite easy Wild West comparisons, there’s also the matter that most SMACER groups are descended from an established faction, and not all that long ago. So there’s comparisons to Cossack culture, and in this segment I’ve mentioned moss-troopers. Another good fictional comparison would be to Nomads from Cyberpunk 2020/2077.

Marchers, in comparison

1) go to a wilderness to tame it, even if they might stay outside just a while longer than colonists at base. Thin line between civilization and savagery, etc. They also tend to be more rapacious than smacers.

2) also experience ideological syncretism and cross-pollonization, and might come up with hybrid affinities, but ultimately are still citizens of a faction even if their captaincy might flirt with autonomy bordering on independence. Smacers are far less ideologically committed (though then again, Faction Wars is a major S.T.A.L.K.E.R. concept), and their ideologies tend to be fringe or else watered-down folk versions of a faction’s.

3) could be thought of as the British settlers who encroached on the earlier Dutch settlers in the Boer Republics of South Africa. Like the Voortrekkers, SMACERs were the first to march into remote regions to claim it as their own. (You don’t seriously think all smacers are such cultural caricatures to deny territoriality or land ownership, do you?) The marchers are the recent arrivals who bring better guns and resources and the force of empire. Both displace the original natives.

Notes

Subtitle refers to last line of “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley.

Opening quote is the second to last stanza of “The Ballad of East and West.

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

“Military SMACER” is meant to invoke military stalkers from S.T.A.L.K.E.R., in contrast with the common, usually less-trained and less-well-equipped, freelance variant. Though military stalkers are far more state-sponsored and have an elite prestige, compared to typical marchers.

Almogavars were lightly-armored frontiersmen who lived in the border between the Christian and Moorish kingdoms of Iberia during the Reconquista. Formerly shepherds, they militarized and turned into outlaws, then mercenaries, becoming an integral unit of the famed Catalan Company.
Sources:
The FEARSOME Aragonese infantry: The ALMOGÁVARES by Historia ex Hispania
The First Free Company in History (Catalan Grand Company) by SandRhoman History
The Golden Age of Free Companies by SandRhoman History

Uitlanders is Afrikaans for “outlander,” which is what the Boers called the British in South Africa. There was a whole thing between the two rival sets of European settlers in the Transvaal.

Rogue scholars and rogue scientists are character classes from RIFTS.

Peels were small watch tower houses used in the Scottish Marches to guard against Border Reivers, and the residence of many a Laird (Scottish for a lord).
Sources:
The Criminal Tribes That Invented BLACKMAIL by Alex Iles
The Criminals Who Controlled the English/Scottish Border by Alex Iles
Border Reivers: Outlaws on the Edge by Stories of Scotland Podcast, Episode 65
Who Were The Scottish Border Reivers and Kinmont Willie Armstrong by Scotland History Tours

Amalthea was the nurse of the infant Zeus, and the cornucopia was nicknamed the “horn of Amalthea.”

The Khyber Pass is a critical mountain chokepoint between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, in the Hindu Kush. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, or North-West Frontier Province, is a region of Pakistan that has been seen as a frontier both by the British Raj (who gave it the latter name) and the Mughal Empire. Populated by Pashtun tribes and underdeveloped, it has had a reputation of being a lawless place in the eyes of colonial powers, and a place visited by many invading armies heading for the Khyber Pass. “The Ballad of East and West” takes place there.

Almocadenes were captains of Almogavar groups.

Hexham is a town in Northumberland, and a place of violence inflicted by the likes of Border Reivers, Jacobites, and anti-militia rioters.

Fort Bukloh was a “a military hill station for Ghurkas” in the North-West Frontier.

The Trembler Commune, led by Brother Michael Elazar, are a custom faction from 5 Custom Factions by Pickly.

Not Peace but a Sword is from Matthew 10:34 - “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” (KJV) The sword here means division.

The Angel of Goliad is the nickname of Francita Alvarez, who saved the lives of several Texian prisoners who otherwise would have been slain in the Goliad Massacre during the Texas Revolution. I got it from the first chapter (and a nickname for a fictional character) from The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

Iyarri was a Hittite war and plague deity.

The church members of the Not Peace But a Sword being called Sword Paladins is a slight allusion to the Sword Brothers, a military order during the Livonian Crusades.

The Whole Planet Regiment is based on the First Earth Battalion, a pretty bonkers concept by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon for a supersoldier unit empowered by New Age lines. “Whole Planet” here is a play on the Whole Earth Catalog.
Sources:
the manual of the First Earth Battalion
an HTML version of the manual

Pikaaru, and the concept of naming a rivers of a space colony “Volga” or “Rhine”, are from Yukinobu Hoshino’s sci-fi classic 2001 Nights, specifically "Night 12: Symbiotic Planet."

The marcher lords were Anglo-Norman lords appointed by English kings from William the Conqueror onwards to subdue Wales. They lived in the Welsh Marches.

Hybrid Affinities are from the Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide expansion, which I don’t really like in execution because they feel rather half-baked yet conceptually restrictive, but the general idea of combining Affinities (and faction ideologies, for that matter) would work in this setting. At least, in fringe societies like marcher capitancies and the smacers.

Horizontal gene transfer exists in genetics. Close enough.

Hobelar were a light cavalry that rode hobbies or ponies and used by Border Reivers as well as Anglo-Norman troops.

In medieval times, a lance was a formation made up of a lancer, his squire, and a sharpshooter, all mounted. This was the basic unit that made up companies, and the word freelancer comes from lances fielded by mercenary free companies.

The Qing Dynasty referred to peoples such as Taiwanese aborigines who had not submitted to their rule as “raw”, and those who did so by paying a head tax, and later through assimilation to Han culture, as “cooked.” So a barbarian tamed/civilized through Confucian norms.

A ressaldar or risaldar is a native officer, equivalent to captain, in the British Indian Army during the British Raj.

Moss-troopers were mid-17th century brigands in the Scottish border country who had been soldiers in the armies during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Like the reivers before them, they robbed, stole cattle, and were a lawless menace.

Commander Antonio Garcia is the leader of the Imperial Guard, a custom faction from 5 Custom Factions by Pickly. I’m making some changes for their adaptation for this project.

The polemarch was a senior military leader in ancient Greece, including Sparta. In Ender’s Game it is one of the three most powerful leaders on Earth during the Formic Wars.

A parī is a supernatural being from Persian mythology, sort of faerie-like.

Phantasy Star Online has you playing a mercenary-adventurer called a Hunter, tasked with figuring out what went wrong on a space colony on an alien planet. Seems apt.

A “non-corporation freehold polity” like the Preservation Alliance is from Murderbot, in contrast to areas under corporate control.

Image Credits

Travellers approaching technological sci-fi complex is “valley frontier” by BBaumhauer

Survivalist in street clothes is a “Red Spy” by Vlad Tkach, Metro 2033: Last Light concept art

Alien ruins explorers trio is the art from Coriolis – The Third Horizon by Free League Publishing

Fanatical red armor army is the People’s Republic of Army from East of West

Fanatical religious militiamen are the Brothers of Tomorrow’s Fires from The Righteous Gemstones

Guru leading army soldiers is from The Men Who Stare At Goats, particularly the scene “Jedi Training”

Eurasian delegation visits colony is from Yukinobu Hoshino’s sci-fi classic 2001 Nights, specifically "Night 12: Symbiotic Planet."

Gunfight between pillars is from Coriolis - Mercy of the Icons Part 1 - Emissary Lost

Sci-fi adventurers in verdant forest is Phantasy Star Online art

[MysticWind]

All Tomorrow’s Legacies: Paul Ferenc

Born 2034, Budapest, Second Hungarian Soviet Republic. Father, a Comecon technology attache, moved family frequently between Hungary and Czechoslovakia to coordinate bloc computerization research from Togra Labs and JZD Slušovice. Emigrated to Israel in teenage years after parents hired by Mobileye. During the first year of compulsory IDF service, Ferenc was an unrepentant jobnik, dismissing the volunteer infantry as expendable “marks.” Requested a transfer to an armored unit and played the system until sent into the South Lebanon Security Belt during the revival of the Lebanese National Movement. Unofficially, Corporal Ferenc went AWOL in the aftermath of an extended firefight with Hezbollah forces less than four weeks before he was scheduled to muster out. Officially he was listed as MIA.

Under various aliases and on numerous passports, he relocated to Cyprus for several years before jump-starting a wildly successful pipeline for stolen cars through Turkey and the Black Sea ports of the Soviet Union. The Turks eventually ordered Ferenc out after he was picked up in a security sweep aimed at PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) finances. Concerned that he might face extradition back to Israel, he used false credentials to broker a tractor parts shipment to South Africa and boarded a freighter bound for Durban.

Reemerged in the Unified Azanian Confederacy during the hunt for notorious arms dealer “Contract Jack,” supplier of the civil war. Believed to have built ties in the UAC which developed into the postwar Toportyánféreg Samizdat smuggling network. Known to have recovered the patented formula for Agent Yellow high-grade defoliant while in-country and sold to Green Oasis (who had outbid Morgan Agriculture). Allegedly made contact with target, but failed to eliminate. Resurfaced in the post-Crusader Wars decimated Middle East, eliminating arms trafficking organizations by concocting false deals, poaching shipments, and assassinating agents, ostensibly to bolster his own smuggling network built from the seed money. Granted observational non-interference by Interpol for efficacy in shutting down these supposed rivals.

Samizdat smugglers disguised themselves as humanitarian relief transporters, frontline journalists, and war tourists. Ferenc himself posed as a NatGeo freelance stringer, going as far as to file regular eyewitness reports on post-nuke conflicts under the pseudonym Reuben Carver. Non-interference status rescinded shortly after slaying of three U.S. Army Special Forces servicemen involved in gun running out of Camp Simon, Nineveh Plains, Free Assyria. Infiltrated Unity crew with unknown number of surviving confederates during ensuing crackdown. Posed as a Near Eastern studies reporter for the Galleria Alliance using falsified Czech and National Geographic dual citizenship.

Survived Planetfall in dormancy. Cryocell loaded into a mid-hangar sized Unity Medical Cargo Lander along with over two hundred others’. The ‘Flying Crypt’ orbital evacuation lifeboat crash landed in the frigid environs of the South Polar Region. Its skeleton crew was killed by the first cohort of awakened passengers gone amuck, who devolved into a wrecker throng. Sharing the delusion that they had somehow returned to an Earth caught in an endless nuclear winter, they believed that they were the last remnant of civilization amidst nothing but ice and snow savages. The head ‘cryptkeeper’ styled himself as captain of a twisted reflection of Unity. Though oxygenated and hydrated via a miniature Boeing air miner powered by flexoelectric generators using saline ice, the wreckers’ attempts at hydroponic agriculture were stymied by weak seed stocks. Unfortunately for the cryosleeping, their hunting parties failed to find even a subrid. The throng turned to alternate sources of protein. For three mission years, the wreckers of the crypt roused colonists from slumber, judged if they were of use to the throng, and consumed them if not.

The cannibal crypt went untouched until an expedition under U.N. Marine Walter Kyle Planitzer encountered a hunting party. The mad muckers, having not seen “post-fallout survivors” in over a mission year (a lightly-armed group of ex-Gaian SMACERs that had gone straight down the gullet), ambushed the antarctic explorers, dragging several away. Planitzer and the survivors took shelter in a nearby cave. The captives found themselves in a caged storage closet in the crypt along with awoken unfortunates, one of whom was Paul Ferenc, stricken with a bout of SASA from the traumatic awakening. Despite cryo-blinded, sweating feverishly despite the cold, he managed to fish out his handgun he had smuggled aboard and kill the jailer come to fetch him. Flashbacking to the UAC, he shot more wreckers in a psychosomatic malarial paroxysm, mistaking them for Xhosa, Zulu, and Afrikaans mercenaries in the bush. Others joined the uprising, managing to fend off the cryptkeepers in time for the Planitzer Peacekeepers to arrive.

Honored at Warm Welcome for liberating the colonists and explorers from the latter-day Sawney Bean cult. Sought by Terrance LaCroix for the Signals Intelligence section for inexplicable combat prowess and streetwise instincts. Instead chose a civilian commission as a field librarian, documenting Peacekeeper scouting parties sifting through wrecks and pods for usable supplies, not unlike the explorers that had saved him from being turned into a kosher meal. Toportyánféreg Samizdat revived to sell unreported exploration discoveries and smuggling U.N.-controlled materials hidden in salvage convoys. After Peacekeeping Forces reestablished contact with other polities, joined the interfactional mission to retrieve priceless pre-Fall cultural and historical antiquities. UNESCO reclamation operations provided more wares for the Samizdat. Taught the art of artifact forgery by feral librarians. Toportyánféreg became premier dark market dealer in collectible Earth era automobiles from the former Unity Humanities Wing. Double-life remained undiscovered by authorities, though notorious alias “Incline” as leader of the Samizdat was marked by L’Nouvel Etat Secretary of Cultural Life Élodie for rendition to the New State with extreme prejudice.

After receiving Longevity Vaccine as a vital Talent, crossed faction lines on a visit to the Racks at Matsar. Offered services to the Legacy Initiative under former cover story as an international stringer. Noncombatant probe work took Ferenc away from the desolate wilds and into well-populated bases, gathering bits and bytes on the possible fate of the Unity Data Core for the Initiative while cultivating opportunities for the Samizdat. Participated in the founding of the Chironian Geographic Society. Once again used interfactional travel to evade vendetta embargos, broker illegal trade deals, and deliver contraband. Cushy gig lasted scarcely longer than a mission year when a mole in the Firewall tipped him off that faction informational security uncovered fragments of his pre-mission dossier compiled by the Earth era U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism.

Volunteered for a border march from Central Cache to the coast led by the factionalist Wands to protect Initiative outposts against Nautilus Pirate raids. Named for the titular Cardinal’s monologue in Act II, scene II of Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (“Beneath the rule of men entirely great, / The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold / The arch-enchanter’s wand!— itself a nothing!”), the Wands were grassroots hardliners agitating to expand the faction’s force projection against external threats and internal softness. Seen as a man of action, Ferenc was welcomed into their number, making the dangerous trek in the march vanguard, fighting his share of raiders and boils.

Led successful Hobbler-mounted defense of Kui Xing Beach against the Hawkdagger flotilla after commanding Wand arch-reader killed by Pirate bombardment. Gained datalinks renown as a quest sporespondent, providing live coverage of adventurers traversing treacherous ruins for artifacts and alien knowledge. Livecast of narrow escape from the Chthonius Cove site as lone survivor became instant cult classic. Parlayed fame into virtual studio career, live interviewing the likes of Memory of Earth ufologist Victor “the Questioner” Montoya and mystery woman Vinka Dialyse. (A minor bidding war ensued between the Observer MPI, Morgan TV, Morgan Entertainment, Knight Ridder, and Argyle Media for an exclusive livecaster contract. Ferenc pocketed the retainer fees and declared force majeure shortly before Hypercane Sam knocked out local communications for three decurns. Remained a free agent.) Rather than joining the artifact trade as a dealer or forger, diversified Samizdat activity into brokering intel on secondary markets, selling rumors to marchers, and the local hospitality industry. Under alias Incline, offered bounties to post interesting info to cloaked Usegroups, later resold by his network. (Firewall monitors would dub the Samizdat a ‘dark handmirror’ of the Legacy Initiative’s own library data troves.) Used platform to spread techno-myth that Unity Data Core was taken by ruiners to an alien temple somewhere along the coast, inspiring a second march by Young ‘Runner corehunters and nearly doubling the faction’s border population. Given extreme lassitude by Base Operations for service to the Initiative, and from a popular rumor that he was a former Shin Bet agent, a perception Ferenc did not disabuse.

Notes

Paul Ferenc is a playable protagonist from Far Cry 2.

JZD Slušovice was a Czech agricultural cooperative whose “socialist miracle” included computer manufacturing. See “​​Czechoslovakia's "Socialist Miracle” by Asianometry.

The Samizdat, (Russian: ‘self-publishing’) was underground self-publishing of dissident or otherwise anti-censor literature, hand-printed and passed peer-to-peer. This also included contraband phonograph records and tapes. There is actually a contemporary revival in modern Hungary.

The Toportyánféreg is a Hungarian folk name for the golden jackal, which is actually endemic to both Hungary and Israel (and all the way to Southeast Asia).

The concept of freelance stringers as roving journalists posting data for archival is from Snow Crash, where Hiro Protagonist makes a living as one for the Central Intelligence Corporation of Langley (a privatized merger of the CIA and the Library of Congress). Data fragments are sold to other corporations and sovereign entities who pay the stringers. This blog post by Steve Grossi describes the practice as “privishing” rather than publishing, as the information is not made public.

The “Boeing air miner” is from Red Mars, which uses complex sequences of chemical-engineering operations to refine the atmosphere for usable materials and synthesize complex chemicals. The section of the Martian colony Underhill housing the air miners is even nicknamed the Alchemist’s Quarter.

The flexoelectric effect occurs when irregular deformation of a solid material generates an electrical current, which ice can actually do, especially if containing purities. See “Salt can turn frozen water into a weak power source” by Nikk Ogasa, September 2025, Science News.

Sawney Bean is a legendary Scottish cannibal clan patriarch.

“The pen is mightier than the sword” was indeed publicized the saying with the exact wording by Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s play, though the sentiment long predates it.

[MysticWind]

More than person

Sobel Ziggurat, Shanghai Special Investment Zone, headquarters of the Mission Industry Standards Board

The primacy of the nation-state remained in place even by the mid-twenty-first century, albeit with unforeseen complications. The disintegration of many long-lived countries into successful separatist movements muddied maps. Which of the Ethiopias deserved international recognition- the communist Derg rump regime, the autonomous Tigray region, the self-proclaimed restored imperial state of Negusa Nagast Abel Sahle-Selassie (securing only the occupied Eritrean port of Assab), the free communes formed by Somaliland-backed People’s African Union revolutionaries, one of the various Morgan Industries mercantile-industrial franchises, the revived Emirate of Harar, or any other ethno-linguistic separatist with a flag and a militia? Should any of the secessionist states of the Second American Civil War have received consideration from the international community? Much less the millenarian movements formed during and after the Crusader Wars?

On the other end of the pendulum’s swing, the formation of new confederacies like Centroamerica confused matters, with critics accusing the Federation of splitting one government’s foreign policy into eleven near-identical votes at the United Nations General Assembly. (Not in the least, thundered Aztlán Tenochtitlán, the injurious insult of four of those seats being annexed Imperio Mexicano patrimony- Yucatán, Soconusco, Chiapas, and Tabasco.) If countries could claim bits of itself as separate individuals, why shouldn’t the United Kingdom be represented by England, Cornwall, Wales, Northumbria, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, like its FIFA national teams? (Though with the growing disagreeableness of the latter two, Westminster was content to retain a solitary- unitary- seat.) And what to make of pseudo-post-colonial entities with ambiguous ties to ‘former’ masters, such as the Associated Republic of Puerto Rico or the Dominion of Newfoundland? Not to mention actual colonies on the earth, under the sea, at the bottom of the world, in orbit, and beyond the earthsphere. Why was a jumped up fishing village on an IOEZ landfill more deserving of representation than half of New Guinea?

Even as hoary “we the people” commonwealths were phased out in favor of closed democracies, non-parliamentary monarchies, confessional states- governments craved legitimacy before the others. And so did another type of oligarchy previously relegated to interim historical periods before metropoles caught up with colonial expansion: corporate rule. With unprecedented expansion of the power of capital as personified by the gigacorporations, large expanses became the personal domains of private enterprise. In time, shareholders sought to protect their profits extracted from these lands before pesky international bodies could rein them in. Company executives, some of whom were now governor-generals overseeing the ten percent of the planet’s surface under corporatocracy, demanded their overlordship be codified, not arbitrarily seizable by nations dissolving charters or contractual agreements.

None were as bold as Morgan Industries CEO Nwabudike Morgan, who demanded his business be recognized as no less than a nation-state, or the equivalent of one. After all, did his company not provide for the residents of its holdings all the levels of Maslow’s hierarchy, from freedom from fear of hypersurvivalist raids to freedom from boredom through its many hypermedia amusement offerings? Why then could they not be considered citizens of Morgan, of SafeHaven, even of subsidiaries like the Yfantís Worldwide consultancy or the Rook Corporation?

The twencen Montevideo Convention had formulated a declarative theory of statehood: defined territory, a permanent population, governance, and the ability to enter relationships with other states. In the twenty-first century, multinational conglomerates possessed every criterion. Morganite employees toiled on company holdings as vast as the Peruvian Amazon, governed by internal regulations and memoranda. (CEO Morgan stated that he would have likewise claimed all of his customers as his citizens, but that meant issuing an Morgan ID to every living human.) As the company dodged regulators armed with militarized task forces, it brokered deals with friendly states with leverage that could cause Renaissance condottieri and Gilded Age robber barons alike to blanche.

Morgan’s archnemeses in the American government denounced this as pure opportunism to hide his crimes with diplomatic immunity, even as legal scholars at the Hague concluded that turning corporate officers into public actors would only make them more vulnerable to international law. Regardless, Morgan declared himself a Morganite, kicking off a global lobbying effort to grant private entities- at least those who administered territory- formal status. Highlighting the benefits of having absolute regulatory freedom, independence of monetary policy, and control over its properties both physical, data, and human, the CEO proclaimed it was high time for the multicong to replace the country as the primary organizational unit of human destiny. He campaigned across the globe, sprinting ahead of regulatory lawmen in his personal Concorde.

Morgan was perhaps fated to become champion of such an effort both in portfolio and in personality. A citizen of Africa, at times obscuring Namib heritage by identifying with the Biafrans of Port Harcourt or the Chadians of N'Djamena, he even once bizarrely claimed to hail from Kenya Colony in a bid to secure a contract for the Nairobi space elevator from local British viceroys. But of course, Morgan’s heart was in the market that spanned all continents and known space, and his soul was his firm’s.

Alan Bean Moonbase, New Houston. Known as Tri-Tex, the major colony was a collaboration between Electronic Data Systems, Majesty Air, and Texaco, Inc. Unlike their home state, New Houston did not follow Lone Star Texas into secession, swearing allegiance to the federal government, and the corporate triarchy retained its lunar autonomy after the Second American Civil War

There was precedent for corporate citizenship. Early drafts were created for those born in mid-space transit, in non-jurisdictions like the Kessler Ring, asteroids and extraterrestrial stations under ambiguous Ceres Syndicate overlordship, on seasteading vessels, or in the middle of warzones of perpetually unresolved borders. In some cases, these were individuals who were generations native to no man’s lands or frontier territories occupied by the private sector on similar timescales. Necessity birthed the idea of belonging primarily to a business. And yet, few seriously wanted to follow the Mogul on his corporatocratic crusade.

American Reclamation Corporation Chairman Oscar Van de Graaf categorically dismissed the proposal as the most expensive excuse to print fantasy passports in history, urging ARC employees to remain patriotic to the country in which he had built his company. Responses echoed across the Solar System, including from multicongs- even gigacorps- that would later make it to Alpha Centauri. Struan’s Pacific Trading Company and its Noble House had no desire to go beyond the brief they enjoyed under the British crown. Shadowy firms like Nox Conglomerate or the Kaestral Group refused to subject themselves to public daylight. Merauciel, Dai Seung Heavy Industries, Dubai Emirco: keiretsu or chaebol, Soviet or Son of Heaven-owned enterprise, no national champion wanted to discard fortunes built on the back of state collaboration, or cronyism. Least of all those who curried favor with international authorities. Comprehensive Transport gave a simple press release that it cared not to change the status quo, the virtual monopoly it held on regulating space travel (and conducting lucrative supply deliveries) in the outer system, nor the inviolable status of its Transportation Authority Police enforcement arm, both guaranteed by the U.N.

Magnetohydrodynamic drive heavy cargo submarines were the pride of the Leyland-Toyota global fleet, though the design was the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Yamato-1 and the crews North Sea Allegiant contractors

Only a handful of leading firms backed the creation of corporate sovereignty. Aberdeen-born Duncan Hughes, the undersea shipping magnate, had renounced his British nationality in favor of Scandinavian vassalage after reforms that, in his view, gave too much leeway to “Free Scottish bombthrowers and devomax loonies.” He signed on to the Morganite proposal shortly after the ink had dried on for his North Sea Allegiant’s Unity prime contract, the cryocells for his family and staff secured. Skeptics noted that Hughes had only voiced support when the NSA’s attempts to become a sort of Comprehensive Transport for the newly climate change-carved Northwest Passage were struck down by the WTO.

While more a prophet of the markets than a captain of industry, Mutiny Fund founder Nathan Weismuller delivered an ideological storm that rivaled the Mogul’s own. The longstanding libertarian crusader declared that the U.N., like the tyrannical nation-states that it served as an unholy union of, had dominated the peaceable activities of rational actors for far too long. Why should bureaucrats from any capitol, whether national or international, thwart honest attempts at generating capital? Self-assembly at any level should be met with as few restrictions as possible. An environment of friendly commercial competition would be sufficient motivation to keep the peace, aided by a little common law. Good economic agents deserved diplomatic immunity from pesky jurisdictions.

The economist’s full-throated defense of the proposal was soon regarded as a white elephant by its supporters. Weismuller insisted that the Morgan Industries programme did not go far enough; its reliance on corporations, another legal entity devised by statists, was thinking too small. Any expansion of sovereignty should not be pursued by only corpo lobbyists, but any organization or even individual capable of self-government and good faith trade. This purism, however well-intentioned, proved too utopian to many who saw Weismuller once again choosing theoretical markets over real American businesses. His rhetoric grew even deeper, suggesting that contemporary corporations were themselves legal fictions co-created by states, dependent upon the force wielded by them. Morgan soon disclaimed “freedom enthusiasts” among his own ranks, chuckling at those who would “incorporate themselves into a sovereignty of one,” which only caused Weismuller to bitterly call him on a hot mic “rent-seeker extraordinaire” and a “Bolshevik in a business suit.”

One major ally would be Togra Labs, communist Hungarian research bureau turned multicong. Zakharov Research Institute chair Soviet hero-scientist Prokhor Zakharov dismissed its commercialization of TograOS and the weaponization of StickyFoam as “teknikum science class experiments for the rich and powerful.” But monetization and clout-chasing had transformed the laboratory network into a non-state actor, then a statelet. Moving its headquarters to the less regulatory-prone loose jurisdiction of Rio Grande do Sul, Togra flew further and further from its home bloc, selling discoveries to capitalists and enforcing patents. It cut Faustian deals with underdeveloped nations, offering microreactor optimizations for access to populations of entire provinces for mass social experiments in search of Faustian knowledge. And it annexed land- Bom Dia Beach in Annobón, former oil platforms off the coast of Tierra del Fuego, entire artificial islands raised up from the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone, unmarked bases in Antarctica, Ragamuffin Road in Porto Alegre- claiming not just extraterritoriality but sovereignty over its free technical zones. Rumored to have overridden the protests of its founder-leader, Doctor Emeritus Alpheus Schreiber, the research directors of Togra Labs backed Morgan’s proposal, albeit under the stance that it was already an internationally recognized state and not a mere corporate pretender.

Besides a luxury destination for the shuttle set, the L5 Hilton hosted a variety of conferences and summits, attracting astrophysicists and cosmonauts on their way to Luna and beyond

Ironically, Morgan’s greatest booster was to be Apsara Mongkut. The United Nations Secretary-General personally gave the Mogul his time of day, listening to ceaselessly expansive, often extravagant, requests. While this nearly obsequious deference towards the SafeHaven CEO was seen as simply soothing the tempers of the largest Unity Mission Industry Standards Board member, it was all part of the plan to achieve U.N. preeminence and secure funding for its expedition. Even as the solid bloc of Fifth Force peacekeeping nations, let alone his French and Soviet allies, grew discomfited by their leader bowing and scraping before private industry, Mongkut soon revealed the game: by granting powerful privilege to influential non-governmental entities, they would owe his patronage. Or at the very least, their empowerment would be at the expense of nation-states, making the U.N. the grand arbiter.

Morgan, of course, was a master of the art of give and take, and knew this favor was not free. His mercenary diplomatic advisors, Consort of Nations hired guns who hoped to proliferate state-equivalent actors for more lucrative opportunities and avenues to power, concurred. He wined and dined U.N. elites, lavishly donating to the Unity project and offering to slash his prime contract fees. Mongkut nodded and smiled each step on the way. Promises were made, both spoken and not. After sufficient funding pledges had been wheedled, the Secretary-General convened a conference, hosted on the non-aligned- even corporate-favoring- neutral soil of an orbital commercial resort.

Completed in 2032, the L5 Hilton Space Station was the backdrop for a convention to expand the definition of sovereignty. The negotiations were short. At the keynote, Secretary-General Mongkut unveiled his framework: given these extraordinary historical conditions that had so grievously weakened Chapter I, Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter (the sacrosanctity of territorial integrity), the U.N. would extend provisional quasi-recognition to non-states with administrative control over lands and/or populations. Those with preexisting legal personality and “of sufficient relation to the global community” were prioritized. Recognizing the ambiguities created by the endless calamities that had befallen the planet, he declared that these functional sovereignties could fill the void of failed or absentee governments. As the arbitrator of the international community, the U.N. would officialize this quasi-recognition, even in cases where political difficulties prevented individual member states from extending theirs. This upturned the constitutive theory of statehood, allowing functional sovereignties to be recognized by the U.N. itself, and not “fellow” states.

This, in effect, enshrined the United Nations’ role as judge and jury. The Office of Provisional Quasi-Recognized Sovereignties would dole out official acknowledgement (and token representation as United Nations Economic and Social Council observers) of functional sovereignty. And the U.N. would enforce the rights of ‘citizens’ of these supposed non-states up to, if need be, enforcing their compliance with the United Nations Charter. (Nations intimate with the organization, such as the French and Soviet Unions during Mongkut’s time, could presumably also do so on this principle.) ‘Sovereignty requires responsibility:’ any corporation or other entity seeking it would have to answer before The Hague for their human rights record. By minding their PQRS’s, the U.N. chipped away at their capacity for Westphalian sovereignty, implying that while multinational conglomerates might be equal to states, they would always be subordinate to the supposed watchdog of the international community.

Finally, Mongkut called for more resources- out of necessity, of course- for the peacekeeping department, the Marines, Security Force, and other troops at the disposal of the international body. The convention turned Morgan’s dream into the most-watched United Nations telethon in history.

The scene before the Security Council

The L5 Hilton Agreement blindsided Morgan, who left gracefully before unceremoniously dumping his contract with the Consort of Nations during atmospheric reentry. A young Nobilis Domina Itala Palomino, fresh-faced public rep, spoke smoothly to the press about a job well-done at a summit that surpassed expectations. After hours, as journeyman memeforger she directed the disgruntled spying diplomats and diplomatic spies of the NGO to undertake a smear campaign against the industrialist. The narrative was Icarian overreach. An outrageous whopper infested the datalinks- he was conspiring to declare himself a sovereign individual, a state of one, before converting the Peruvian Amazon from corporate fiefdom to personal property: the “Morgan Free State.” An international business law expert (covertly on the Consort payroll) testified that if found functionally sovereign, Morganite franchise governments in the Ethiopias would be subject to untold fines for labor and human rights violations. The Money Bunny herself gave the score from the trading room floor by zooming into never-before-seen portraits of the CEO arriving at Kilimanjaro Port, exposing his cracking poker face as a brave false front for crushed ambition, the hint of furious eternal envy at the corners of his usual grin.

Under this cloud of mockery did Morgan address the U.N. Security Council. Invited by Secretary-General Mongkut- out of pity, some jeered- the Mogul faced a tough crowd. Both ends of the emotional spectrum had polarized against him. Against the tide of hysteria, one popular rumor said that he was contemplating resignation for a life of public service. The speech began simply enough. Morgan thanked the international body for realizing his vision of representative legitimacy to enterprises, even as the SG’s own Consort advisors quietly groused that their client was “turning the U.N. into the world’s business registrar,” despairing that Mongkut was geopolitically playing with lit matches in an ammunition depot. Meanwhile, the CEO asserted that with his company’s internationally-recognized administration, nay, ownership of Morganic Peru, the so-called Mugatustans on the Horn of Africa, and the natural resource sites of Chad, Morgan Industries would be the first multicong to seek recognition as a functional sovereignty with the United Nations. Regardless of where the company had been incorporated, he waved, it had solid ground. And all natives, whether currently working in business operations or not, would be granted recognition by the company. He dismissed the usual objection: with a venture as rock-solid as Morgan Industries, employment was practically as permanent as your average country’s citizenship. Or perhaps even more so, he smiled darkly.

Then came the first sales pitch. Morgan offered to the IOC his patch of eastern Peru, “the well-pruned heart of the jungle,” for hosting the Summer Olympics. He promised to all visitors that Morgan Corporate Policy would be unobtrusive, resembling the laws of the freest nations. Human rights and the dignity of individuals- Morgan Industries was all about that. He urged all loyal customers and brand-savvy consumers to support Morganite citizenship once available. Instead of responsibilities, it would bring benefits. Instead of restrictions, it would unlock features. Instead of taxes, there would be modest subscription fees that promised special discounts.

He next spoke on war and peace, which greatly upset delegates from nations wronged by Morgan Industries. He recounted SafeHaven’s successes, arguing that it was the greatest force for peace in many forgotten regions. The firm was more than a mere PMC, it was the world’s security guard, a night watchman affordable by most. “Protection and prosperity at a fair price.” Morgan announced that SafeHaven would be expanding in numerous additional markets, pending the finalizing contracts. He offered to consult with the U.N.’s own Military Staff Committee with the wealth of tactical and strategic expertise SafeHaven had amassed through its exploits. Or perhaps train its peacekeepers, or arm the Security Force. Drolly, the CEO suggested that Morgan Industries be considered for a Security Council seat after quasi-recognition, perhaps even a “ceremonial” permanent position on the basis of all that it had done to further international security.

Finally, Morgan dismissed rumors that his company had been working on something as wasteful as a WMD capable of targeting specific ethnic groups, quashing one of the most infamous urban legends. Rather, he pointed to the screen, he had developed something far mightier than a sword: he announced the formation of Morgan TV, a new media platform representing the official views of the eponymous company and its titular leader, rendered live in hi-fi across all dimensions. This network would bring truly premium entertainment and educational offerings to households across the globe, releasing shortly on every continent. For too long traditional nation-states had held a monopoly over information: it was time now for a different type of sovereignty to shine a neon light in the darkness. Morgan had turned the plenary session into the largest product launch in history.

The concept of PQRS outlived the fallout from Morgan’s invasion of the U.N., barely. Quasi-sovereign law was to be highly restricted by more ‘responsible’ parties- traditional states and international bodies. True to their skepticism towards Morgan’s campaign, few multicongs deigned to follow in his footsteps. To most, it was more cost-effective to maintain de facto territories with puppet regimes as legal meatshields, rather than going the whole hog by founding a corporate citizenship, printing stamps, passports, and license plates, and exposing oneself to Turtle Bay’s scrutiny. As of mission launch in 2071, the sole multicong seeking functional sovereignty was dual-hemispheric transportation gigacorp Leyland-Toyota.

Outside of private industry, however, the idea of semi-recognized non-states proved surprisingly popular. While only a handful of colonists aboard the UNS Unity declared themselves citizens of Morgan Industries pre-Planetfall, many others had chosen primary identification with NGOs, faiths, causes, and even the international bodies themselves. The post-Mongkut U.N. itself adopted a “global citizenship” for its secretariat, its lawkeepers, and transnationalist followers. Adjacent orgs like Interpol created quasi-citizenship for their own operatives. And it was not long before Turtle Bay sought to transform the extraterritoriality of its headquarters into sovereign world territory.

On Planet itself, where factions derived legitimacy and identity through shared convictions, there was no distinction between corporations that considered themselves sovereign, nor any other polity. Other businesses either recognized the laws and governance of their home faction, the multiple factions they operated in, or a loose notion of lex mercatoria ultimately subordinate to the laws of factions- or maybe the Planetary Council. (The original proposal for functional sovereignty outsourced to the U.N. OPQRS and other organs the duty to adjudicate contracts. This would lead to the unhelpful tendency for factions such as the Peacekeeping Forces and even the Planetary Council itself to appeal to the U.N Charter as if it alone could be the guiding star of humanity on Chiron.)

As many legacy businesses retained their economic and developmental importance that they brought from Earth, sovereign companies were granted all manner of honors in the Council, including the title of consulting partner in the Greater Forum. Critics argued that this was an easy way for those that hosted factional champions - the New Two Thousand with ARC, the Dreamers of Chiron with Struan’s and Sabre- to gain additional voices in interfactional discourse, influencing elections even without voting power. Nwabudike Morgan attempted to list his subsidiaries as partners, but was rebuffed.

Notes

I have a reoccurring fascination with creating future rosters for humanity-wide sci-fi endeavors, including space colonization. As part of that I’ve imagined what flag patches the mission members might wear due to their disparate origins. (Though ironically, Garland, as per “Journey to Centauri,” instructed the Unity uniforms not to bear country-of-origin markings) The image that their insignia might not be a national banner at all, but a corporate logo, struck me- the idea that in the future some people might derive their tribal identity from their employer. Maybe it’s cyberpunk, maybe it’s just being a Japanese salaryman. Or maybe it’s Xychord from Sci-Fi Channel original Crimson Force, where there’s a private-public partnership mission to Mars, undone by mutual backstabbing.

The nonsensical line “It’s the Bolsheviks all over again, only this time in suits,” is from the b-movie.

I like how these are probably the cast’s actual headshots

Or maybe for a less low-rent Mars Race, Helios in For All Mankind, who competes with both NASA and the Soviets for that one small step.

While I am loathe to pull a Solo: A Star Wars Story and create contrived origin backstories for the sake of nostalgia, I think non-national identities, both officially recognized and unofficial, does foreshadow the development of Alpha Centauri factions as post-national ideology-based polities. Also, the beginning of this post about supernations which are essentially sovereign regional pacts using constituent nations for extra votes and diplomatic plausible deniability sort of foreshadows the captaincy system, too.

The Sobel Ziggurat is named after business historian Robert Sobel, author of For Want of a Nail, an elaborate alternate history scenario about if the American Revolution had failed, leading to, among other things, the founding of world power megacorpoation Kramer Associates.

For a fun depiction of Shanghai as its own territory a la Hong Kong or Macau, check out the Pudong Special Administrative Region map by /u/Citizen_JHS.

Multicongs- “multinational conglomerates” - is inspired by the similar neologism “multicorps” from Blindsight by Peter Watts, which also has a crash program to build a spaceship -

The Third Wave, they called us. All in the same boat, driving into the long dark courtesy of a bleeding-edge prototype crash-graduated from the simulators a full eighteen months ahead of schedule. In a less fearful economy, such violence to the timetable would have bankrupted four countries and fifteen multicorps.

Gigacorps and gigacorporations is inspired by the Morgan Industries-like GigaCorp from Allegiance (2000), renamed by its Morgan-esque founder Emmet Longstreet from GigaCom after the media coined the term to describe his company.

Despite doing too much research for this post, I couldn’t really find or figure out any coherent legal arguments to justify corporate states. I assume if there was one to be made, a libertarian has already done it (maybe there is, I didn’t check). However some masterful speculative legal fiction is Shadowrun’s justification of corporate extraterritorality via SCOTUS decision Shiawase Corporation v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (2001). I was also inspired by the Ganymede Conference (2165), pg. 89 from Shadows over Sol.

Electronic Data Systems was the IT multinational founded by Ross Perot.

Majesty Air is billionaire Elliot Vaughn’s new airline in Vertical Limit.

Fantasy passports are “passport-like documents issued as a novelty or souvenir, to make a political statement or to show loyalty to a political or other cause.”

Duncan Hughes is the leader of the sponsor North Sea Alliance, from Civilization: Beyond Earth. Extra bio details here.

Togra Labs characterized as a research institute becomes a nation is inspired by the Academion Island free state from Orion’s Arm, which goes from pursuing “unorthodox and controversial lines of research” to becoming its own polity based on an artificial island after the future EU basically adopts Common Core. (Seriously, that’s how the original timeline explains it.) Truly a very University of Planet thing to do, and I basically envision Togra embarking on a similar project in the RTD pre-mission history, and I absolutely dig how Academion has a future CIA worldbook entry.

Speaking of mercenary NGO Consort of Nations and Itala Palomino again, check out this map of Trieste, The Capital of UN, also by /u/Citizen_JHS.

Financial reporter the Money Bunny, Wow Platinum, is from Megalopolis.

A CEO addressing the U.N. is inspired by this scene from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

“Beyond Territoriality: Symposium on Jurisdictional “Hooks” for (Extraterritorial) Human Rights Obligations – ‘Not-a-State’, a Duty-bearer Nonetheless: Attaching Obligations to Corporations” by Gamze Erdem Türkelli

On Functional Sovereignty

As it turns out, functional sovereignty is a real phrase that could possibly refer to “varying degrees of sovereignty over governance functions that require external acceptance for their operation” in unrecognized (de facto) states or pertinent to this segment, “when a firm presumes to exercise juridical power, not as a party to a conflict, but the authority deciding it” especially in the case of major digital firms that move beyond territorial sovereignty.

While I probably have heard of that term before, here I was inspired by functional constituencies, a concept I learned from The Real Politics of the Star Wars Senate (10:02-11:00) by political theorist Corey’s Datapad. They are essentially a way for non-planetary governments such as cultural/species blocs and megacorporations to hold seats in the Galactic Senate of the Old Republic. Interestingly, the term also exists in real-world politics, with Hong Kong having functional constituencies for different occupational groups, which also leads to orgs and companies with legal personality being able to vote, resulting in some people double-voting.

This article about the HK system also mentions Ireland having similar vocational panels and university constituencies, the Maori having designated seats in New Zealand’s parliament, and the Sami in parts of Scandinavia. I wonder if the House of Lords also counts? “It’s interesting because in most societies power is distributed in so many ways, many of which have practically the same outcomes as if that voting bloc was a constituency in itself. Eg, unions, ethnic groups, religious groups, professional organisations, etc, all have indirect power. Their endorsements sway legislatures as if they effectively vote for their own seat/s.” Perhaps having the ability to vote is just one step away from being able to outright govern.

Image Credits

Pyramid skyscraper is the Tyrell Corporation headquarters from Blade Runner

Morgan Industries office with “Director” Morgan quote is TROPHIES.JPG, one of the one-of-a-kind archived SMAC pieces by the DataPacRat.

“Texaco Service on the Moon” is by Keith Ferris, February 1970.

Toyota Maru transport submarine is by John Berkey for Popular Mechanics issue August 1990 (article “Jet Ships” - ‘by replacing propellers with superconducting magnets, jet ships may one day ply the seas at 100 knots.’ by Abe Dane)

Hilton Space Station 5 lounge is from 2001: A Space Odyssey, specifically this promo poster

Irate delegates at U.N. Security Council is from The Animatrix - The Second Renaissance, Part I

“The Securities Group” is from ‘a book of corporate + industrial photography from the 1980s’, discovered by @collnsmith

[MysticWind]

Apsara’s Aspirants: A Doctor a Day


The IRCS Misericordia, a Sakerfalke-class circumstellar cruiser, hospital flagship of the Red Cross High Charity Fleet

Nations ratified the non-national citizenship framework, daring gigacorporate giants to swallow the poison pill. With few exceptions, most transnationals declined to take the bait. But while the CEO of the foremost multicong on Earth sold the idea of sovereignties without country, paradoxically mostly NGOs and non-profits that pursued it. Nicknamed “Uncle Apsara’s Aspiring Empires,” these non-state actors were mocked by critics as ladder-climbing opportunists desperate for recognition, playing along with a charlatan. Some were drawn to the promise of greater legitimacy before the global community. Others, the potential for diplomatic immunity. Perhaps even U.N. kinetic protection. Many, to express loyalty to ideals rather than tribes. Still others, simply to codify the power they already possessed.

The International Committee of the Red Cross bloomed into a virtual polity far before functional sovereignty was a glimmer in Nwabudike Morgan’s eye. Declining state power and the explosion in catastrophes during the Blackjack Century proved fertile soil for the centuries-old humanitarian movement. As national emergency response organizations faltered, swamping the United Nations Life-Saving Service and other agencies of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee with crisis after crisis, the various Red Emblem societies took on greater and greater responsibilities to save the world.

With great responsibility came great power, or the necessity for it. The Sahara Burst Wars, the Hypersurvivalist Wars, and Ceres Syndicate proxy battles were just some of the vendettas waged by brutal non-state actors who disregarded international conventions. Struggling to preserve and heal, humanitarian organizations were forced to tread upon the treaty lines that defined them as neutral noncombatants. Following attacks by former national military units turned postatomic raiders in the aftermath of the India Border Conflict, local Red Om and Red Crescent societies outfitted their trauma teams small arms and armored ambulance formations. Microwave sublethals and smoke gas grenades gave way to shredders and H&K XM8 rifles. Datalinks bulletins flooded with vidclips of frustrated aid workers flagrantly breaking neutrality during the Second American Civil War, detaining Kellerites suspected of involvement in the Des Moines Massacre, in some cases even tattooing the Greek Red Cross upon those found guilty of killing civilians.

Over time, the ICRC reined in extra-conventional actions, issuing internal “public safety” directives, ROE with plausible deniability. Weaponizable disaster equipment like sonic hammers were issued alongside defensive barriers adorned with invisible strands of monomolecular titanium-steel alloy razor wire. Specialty “bear spray” tranquilizers were packed in every medic’s bag. Strategies grew sophisticated alongside tactics. Red Cross members feted with regional governors, bought off warlords, contracted private security muscle, hacked and slashed drone systems, even made preemptive strikes on imminent threats to refugee camps. Cross-consulting mercenary ambassadors of the Consort of Nations were impressed by the impromptu diplomatic tricks of grizzled battlefield physicians with thousand-yard stares. The cavalier ICRC president claimed that the Red Cross had not violated its neutrality in its “defense against bandits.” Speaking before the World Court, she argued that the hardware her field teams now carried were specifically for protection against Tetra Vaal bipedal walkers, which were “semi-illegal unmanned weapons” anyway.

Red Cross Hermes quarantine speeder spirits away victims of Blackguard neo-anarchist bioterror attack at Baikonur spaceport

Soon after the L5 Hilton Agreement, the Red Emblem societies applied for functional sovereignty under UNOPQRS aegis, claiming a sui generis status since  the birth of the Geneva Convention as a protecting power. Halting the unprecedented assaults against the sick and injured was just cause for trading away a little bit of neutrality. The ICRC merged with its peacetime crisis counterpart, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the various National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, creating the International Red Cross. (The International Rescue Committee re-branded to the Rescuers.) Every refugee camp, medical station, POW site, and cordon sanitaire within the IRC’s functional jurisdiction was to be protected by international lawkeepers- and if need be, the Red Cross itself. Secretary-General Mongkut, eager to relieve the burden on the U.N.’s capacities, welcomed the healers into its palace of nations, trumpeting “a victory for multilateralism against global terrorism and disregard for the rule of law.”

Skeptics accused this ascension of being a hidden fist of Swiss bellicosity in a velvet bleeding-heart glove. Indeed, Bern had toasted the emergency services empire-turned-actual sovereignty as among its greatest historical legacies. Novus Helvetia cheered on the many IGOs it hosted in Geneva to seek PQRS status, positioning sacred Swiss soil as the “Cradle of Countries.” Yet at Nyala, IRC aid workers refused to turn over injured sunnahist fighters to overzealous Helvetian peacemakers, even as the local U.N. Security Force commander argued that jihadists deserved no shelter under the rules of war. During the Smoke Jaguar Affair, the societies deployed their fearsome Guaranteed Mercy squads against a Swiss Guard unit serving at the behest of the Portuguese Brazilian government, brandishing SIG Sauer “anti-jungle predator defense” assault rifles at their erstwhile countrymen to bar entry into refugee camps in search of suspected Teraj Savantoj ecoterrorists. Its supreme Assembly no longer exclusively drew from Swiss nationals. Far from being another Genevan vassal, the “Nursemaid of Nations” foiled Helvetian ambitions at every turn.

Some attributed the crossfire as the internationalist neutral face of Swiss national spirit warring with newfound Novus Helvetian globalist jingoism. Still others suggested that it was a continuation of the battle between idealist Henry Dunant against pragmatist Gustave Moynier for the soul of the Red Cross, with Dunant’s vision finally made viable thanks to ubiquitous collapse of old norms and authorities. Either way, the IRC “proactive neutrality” mandate to protect victims of all armed conflicts at any cost rankled governments, pushing the envelope of legal technicalities.

Merckel PMC on “public service” with the Red Ujima, Southern Africa Ronivirus Hot Zone

Ironically, going from special intergovernmental organization to a sovereign subject of international law only made the International Red Cross appear more like a traditional nation-state, minus the nationality. Its headquarters went from extraterritoriality under Swiss consent to quasi-sovereignty with UNOPQRS legitimization. Red Cross citizens relocated semi-permanently to local branch offices, their primary residence remaining the wars of the world. Every refugee camp run by the organization or under its protection followed suit. Following the Montevideo Convention, here was a population with some fixed members living on established territory, and others on temporary no man’s lands, governed by a “humanitarian regime” that actively forged relationships with other sovereignties.

In matters of governance, the Red Emblems amassed considerable power projection through its network of borrowed guardian peacekeepers, international volunteers, and mercenaries. Leveraging the decentralized nature of the IRC, many national societies bought small-fry sellshredder armies to protect the neutral not-state and the wounded of the world. While careful to avoid any semblance of aggression, the organization did deploy the Ragana cyberlawfare team (so named for the Baltic goddess of death and regeneration) with its infamous DDOS Cease and Desist DDOS attacks and next-gen automated intellects upon those hapless enough to infringe upon their sacrosanct insignia.

Even the trappings of statehood were adopted. Working with other PQRS-seekers and amenable U.N. Secretariat, it adopted the .irc TLD and sent an Olympic team to the 2056 Summer Games at New Kharkhorum, winning bronze in the mix-gendered 4 x 100 m medley relay. Diplomatic passports, field service passers, and refugee emergency documents were issued under IRC authority. In afflicted areas under impromptu societies administration, license plates, postage stamps, data embosses, and even scrip were minted.

The International Red Cross retained its sui generis identity. Inspired by its members’ example, dedicated volunteers of the Rescuers, Oxfam, CARE, and other relief organizations likewise adopted fictitious dual-citizenships for their home causes, sometimes renouncing nationalities altogether. Yet none others followed the organization itself into pursuing full functional sovereignty. The Médecins Sans Frontières, while seeking legal immunity for its opreations, condemned the Red Emblem societies as “jeopardizing ancient neutrality for empire-chasing.” Thus in these cases non-national NGO citizenship tended to be largely ceremonial, though honored by overworked U.N. aid workers and grateful war-afflicted locals alike. On the ground, an MSF base was often the only functioning settlement for far stretches, conferring a sort of sovereignty of practicality and acceptance by grateful aided. In the very stars above, the International Red Cross gave dozens of medical personnel, public health experts, development administrators for the Unity mission, post-national citizens for a new world to come.

Notes

I am indebted to the ministates series by garabik (summaries), proposing many potential alternate historical microstates, some of which are not actually nations. The ICRC post in particular brought to mind the idea of the venerable aid movement becoming its own internationally-recognized entity, though that version is more like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta rather than a proto-state.

Misericordia is Latin for mercy.

Sakerfalke is German for saker falcon. This is an oblique nod to the Krechet-class cruiser from The Starfleet Museum by Masao Okazaki, as Krechet is the Russian word for gyrfalcon (used as the name for a Soviet space suit), and that ship is sort of shaped like the one in the Dean Ellis illustration.

Image Credits

Dean Ellis illustrated the cover of the first Sector General novel, Hospital Station, covered along with other lovely paintings in “Red Cross Space Hospitals” by Adam Rowe of 70s Sci-Fi Art

Fred Gambino‘s quarantine unit spaceship appeared in Stewart Cowley’s 1979 collection Spacewreck: Ghostships and Derelicts of Space. Like all of the illustrations used in the famed Terran Trade Authority art books, it was a different book cover first, created for a 1978 edition of Harry Harrison‘s Plague from Space

Merckel mercenary is concept art of an MNU officer by Greg Broadmore, for District 9