Alternate world CS, Instrumentality of Mankind

[Avenger]

Money

At the current state of technology individuals can freely manufacture and use almost anything they want, assuming they can acquire the correct templates and raw materials. Manufacturing any of these items requires little more than the machine and a supply of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, iron, aluminum, and tiny amounts of various trace materials. All of these materials are sufficiently abundant that acquiring them is easy and inexpensive. As a result, the need for food, clothing, medical care, information access, and other basic needs are all easily met. However, there are still items of value that individuals work very hard to obtain. Even in the so called “post scarcity” society, some types of scarcity remain very real.

Common goods are freely available to all, or at least to all who meet certain criteria. These criteria take one of two forms: Elector-ship or works. In civilized areas where material resources allow, free access to all common goods is offered to residents who have are Electors. Once an individual is an Elector, the energy, living space, and raw materials they use in the course of their daily lives are all freely available.

Citizens are expected to pull their weight by contributing to some work in the society, typically requiring between four and eight hours every week. This work may be selected by the nationalized organizations, the Megacorps that oversee the management of resources, or in some circumstances by individual who controls access to large amounts of energy and raw materials. Unless someone has especially valuable skills, this labor is often dull but safe work that can be done more easily by humans than robots.

Assuming an individual has acquired Electorship or put in their share of work, they will have access to a supply of energy and raw materials that allows them to use their replicators machines to manufacture what they need. Visitors are generally also allowed access, though anyone staying long is expected to contribute through works.

While this allowance covers most necessities and even some luxuries, it has limits. These limits are impressively lavish by 20th century terms, allowing residents to create a dozen suits of clothing and provide food for half a dozen people every day. Individuals who wish to exceed their allowance can either use credits to obtain more access to resources and energy, or they can pool their resources with others to accomplish their goals.

Credits are earned by providing some service. Most citizens can use their credits to create a small and very minimally equipped travel pod to travel to a nearby habitat or planet. However, even the smallest actual interstellar spacecraft are far too large and difficult to create to be available on the amount of credits an ordinary individual can acquire in a reasonable amount of time.

In addition to large-scale uses of resources and difficult-to-manufacture goods, there are goods that are intrinsically scarce, such as relics and handmade goods.

There are three other items that are scarce and are thus quite valuable: living space, skilled sentient labor, and novelty. The majority of humanity lives in standard-sized dwelling units, which typically range from one hundred cubic meters on smaller or poorer areas to two hundred cubic meters on wealthy and prosperous locations. Since each cubic meter of a habitat must be manufactured and the process of manufacturing or expanding a space habitat is far from simple, space is at a premium. The only exceptions to this scarcity are on planets which can be inhabited by properly adapted bodies without the necessity of complex life support or the danger of vacuum waiting just outside every exterior wall. As a result, owning a larger dwelling space in a habitat is worth a significant amount, and large villas and private asteroids are luxuries possessed by only the highest credited individuals.

While labor has become relatively cheap, skilled labor is far more expensive. Buying a unique custom design, for example, can cost as much as a small standard spacecraft depending on how much this design deviates from standard models. The same is true for everything from custom-designed clothing to complex pieces of technology designed for a single specific usage. While the actual manufacturing costs of these items is no more expensive than any other similar item, the time and effort needed to design them can make them exceedingly expensive. The final commodity that is both scarce and valuable is novelty. While anyone can drink a fine wine or wear a wide range of designer clothing, other commodities are kept deliberately scarce. Cutting-edge fashion, new music, and food designs are harder to find because the templates needed to manufacture them are encrypted and cannot be copied easily. The copy protection used on the templates for newly created goods automatically expires within three years at most. In addition, this copy protection is never perfect; someone always manages to create pirated versions of these new goods within two to six months. However, from the time templates are created until the time that someone pirates them, these items are only available to individuals who are willing and able to pay for them.

Concepts like copyright, trademark, and intellectual property are fighting a losing war. Despite the best methods of encryption, DRM, and similar anti-piracy measures, very little escapes the clutches of pirates for long. It’s not unheard of for copies/blueprints of new goods to be shared on pirate networks before they’re even officially released. In response, some manufacturers, designers, and artists attempt to produce goods that are irreproducible and thus more highly valued.

Standard procedure is to restrict access and heavily encrypt templates needed to create dangerous items, such as military-grade weapons and similar dangers. However sufficiently dedicated individuals can eventually decrypt or reverse-engineer such designs, if they can get their hands on them.

Many dangerous technologies are specifically designed to make use of various exceptionally rare or human-made elements, such as radioactive elements. Therefore, the government attempts to restrict access to their manufacturing.

Social Networking and Privacy

It is common for individuals to have a massive presence on multiple networks simultaneously. Each person creates a constant data trail of location and activity through their network presence, social profiles, online activity, and personal gear. If those connections are monitored, it’s possible to find out what they’re accessing, with whom they’re interacting, and where they are located. This activity can also be traced into the past via various records, as well as extrapolated in the future with a fair amount of certainty using predictive algorithms and historical records. Publicam, and private sensors record an individual’s activity in most public areas. AIs and pattern-matching algorithms scan their biometrics on a regular basis. Businesses and other individuals will retain peripheral records of economic transactions through social networks or credit transfers. Other people around them are also lifelogging and looking through walls, clothes, and public records with sensory and software suites.

The indirect data of individual actions accrues in everyone and everything in their vicinity. Then there’s the publicly available information each individual generates with status updates and media sharing. That information is also supplemented by “private” recordings, archived in enhanced memory or external storage hosts. Even the soft, wet recording in the brain is stored in the soul is backed up regularly.

Pervasive surveillance is a social norm. Most people appreciate that they are being watched and recorded every moment of their lives. For some, it’s a reminder that they’re always on, constantly building social networks, fame, or infamy. Others take comfort in observation, knowing that they are being watched but that the same systems also look out for their personal safety and the calm, safe, dependable operation of their homes. Everyone benefits from the changes in law enforcement and public safety: crime is down, perpetrators are almost always caught and victims are compensated.
Privacy, however, is not dead. Homes and personal areas feature privacy filters that allow access only to authorized individuals. Privacy modes can be erected to withhold information and deter tracking. Anonymization services, encrypted communications, and crypto-cred enable people to hide their activities from watchful eyes. Disguises, privacy shrouds, and pseudonymous bodies allow for individuals to go about their physical business without recognition. Other tricks of the trade remain for spies, criminals, and revolutionaries.

Privacy is a prized possession for most inhabitants of the Instrumentality, but it is so rare that for many people it might as well be a foreign concept. Privacy consists of two concepts that are now completely separate—the ability to remain unnoticed or anonymous and the ability to avoid unwanted intrusion. The first is largely absent from the lives of most people. Anyone who uploads anything to a non-private network understands that anyone who wishes to do so can gain access to it. Likewise, anyone who spends time in a public place understands that anyone can learn where they went, what they did, and what they said due to the ubiquity sensor-enabled devices. As a result, everyone’s public life can be transformed into an easily searchable database. Almost everyone keeps such a record of their own lives, commonly known as a lifelog. Most people allow their lifelogs to be public, understanding that anonymity is now an archaic concept.

While the interiors of private dwellings remain free from continuous surveillance, almost all habitats have emergency sensors in every building providing a full record of events to emergency service workers. These emergency sensors do not record anything other than the absence of potential dangers if they are not triggered by specific events. This limitation allows individuals privacy within their own residences—as long as they are certain no one has planted a secret recording device in their home. Ultimately, remaining unobserved is a matter of both care and trust, and everyone understands that most of the time everything they do will be part of the vast public record. Even the government is accountable to their people. Monitoring citizens can catch abuses of power, violations of rights, or unethical activity. The government watches the people, but the people watch back. Personal transactions and activity are logged and recorded by marketing corps. With few exceptions, they have no control over how this data will be used or to whom it will be sold. In many cases, they may not even be aware it is being collected. Even if they are, the social cost of not using such services is too high—opting out has its own price.

In vivid contrast, the freedom to avoid unwanted intrusion is carefully prized. Unwanted personal or data intrusion into someone’s private dwelling or personal electronic files is a serious crime. Most people expect to only experience data that they are looking for or that they might be interested in, and that any data they are not interested in will quickly vanish. Being surrounded by a large amount of unwanted data is not just annoying and distracting, it is also deeply frightening, because it means that there is a serious problem—it could even mean that the entire habitat is under direct attack by infowar weapons.

[Avenger]

Human Breeds (update)

The Human species, known also as Humans, Terrans, or Earthlings, comes from the planet Earth. Since the human brain was able to be digitized Humanity is defined as a state of the mind, not the body. Human identity is centered in the mind, called a Soul, which can exist living in virtual worlds or dwelling in a vast array of strange and bodies. While some bodies do have hormones that affect the mind differently than baseline humanity, the majority of the mind is structurally the same across humanity. Humans are raised in Baseline bodies, or as close as physically possible, until they are reach the age of 25 when their brain patterns are fully formed. Individuals can even travel by transmitting their souls and being uploaded into a body on the receiving end.

The generally approved of bodies are fairly tame compared to the abilities of technology. Of course there are provisions for extreme genetic, cybernetic, and other augmentations as long as they are under the careful guidance of the state. There are non-human Souls created, such as artificial intelligences and mutant animal, though the rights and status of these beings are less than human.

In all but the most impoverished regions of the human space, the vast majority of humanity is smarter, healthier, and richer than any humans have ever been. Many unusual environments require those living in them to choose from a very limited range of bodies.

When new bodies are combined with cybernetics, humans can gain even more amazing capabilities. Individuals can improve their minds and their bodies in almost any fashion their imaginations can dream up, and the state allows. Experiences are now a form of not only education but also entertainment. Disease and illness have been largely wiped out and even the worst injuries can be treated with bio wizardry. However these benefits are far from free. The issue of economic inequality producing inequities of physical and mental capacities is both relatively new. The Generation gap has become a chasm as lifespans increase. No longer do the elite fear death, and no longer can the young hope to replace them. Sometimes, though, this separation is ideological in nature, such as the Altarain Syndicate.

For anyone with basic cybberjack life is filled with data. For people with the best cybernetics, all information available on the net is available at a thought. People who get too lost in looking at data are widely viewed as socially inept. As a result, implants that allow multi-tasking or temporarily speed up thought are in great demand, since they allow individuals to do extensive research and rehearse each statement they are going to make without a moment’s pause

One of the oddest experiences for those who explore unusual environments the unavailability of data. They look at an alien plant and their search returns various error messages meaning that there is either no data at all on the subject or that the only data is purely speculative and should be regarded as dangerously unreliable. This can be especially troubling when the subject in question is a small creature that has just landed on the person’s shoulder and the individual wants to know if it’s harmless or deadly.

The distinction between ego (your mind and personality, including memories, knowledge, and skills) and body (your physical body and its capabilities) is one of the de fining characteristics of life in the Insrumentality. Your body is disposable. If it gets old, sick, or too heavily damaged, you can digitize your consciousness and download it into a new one. The process isn’t cheap or easy, but it does guarantee you effective immortality—as long as you remember to back yourself up and don’t go insane.

The term body is used to describe any type of form your mind inhabits, whether a vat-grown clone, a robotic shell, a part-bio/part-synthetic cyborg, or even the purely electronic software state. A individual’s body may die, but the character’s ego may live on, assuming appropriate backup measures have been taken. Bodiess are expendable, but the ego represents the ongoing, continuous life path of a mind and personality. This continuity may be interrupted by an unexpected death (depending on how recently the backup was made), but it represents the totality of the person's mental state and experiences. Some stats and traits, however, are determined by one's body and so will change if a person leaves one body and takes on another.

As Souls can be digitized they can also be backed up, copied, and merged. A Soul can be split into multiple instances and then merged back, the combined Soul having the combined memories and experiences. People are essentially software that can move between different kinds of bodies, be edited and transmitted. Most individuals do this for a few hours however some attempt to go for months or years ( becoming a separate individual eventually) and some try to make as many copies as they can to live forever. One can travel by beaming your soul across the information networks and downloading it into a new body, usually rentals or using other people as living taxis. Those that can't afford it sometimes trade bodies with other travelers. Identity is something fragile. Death is no longer a certainty, though it is a possibility. Those that can afford it have reincarnation insurance. The super rich entertain themselves with experiencing death. Souls can be destroyed for particularly heinous crimes. Purely electronic individuals inhabit virtual worlds, some are set aside for multiplayer games. Experience playback is a type of memory implantation that consists of the recorded sensory impressions of a single individual.

( Souls can have mental enhancements from Rifts Chaos Earth human special abilities from Rifts Lone Star. Humans that are not Psychics/mages add +20% to any three separate skills. May buy robotic skill packages at the same cost as those for robots. Any Body may have animal genetic enhancements Rifts Lone Star. Any body may also have have cybernetics or non md bio wizard augmentation.)

Pods (from “pod people”) are vat-grown, biological bodies with extremely undeveloped brains that are augmented with an implanted computer and cybernetics system. They are ran by an AI. Because pods underwent accelerated growth in their creation, and were mostly grown as separate parts and then assembled, their biological design includes some shortcuts and limitations, offset with implants and regular maintenance. They lack reproductive capabilities.

Humans have a fairly common body structure. Most Humans are baseline Earth stock, but some groups have significantly altered their bodies. This is mostly done to better live in non earth like alien environments. The following types have become successful enough to have a notable percentage of the population.

Baseline (very low cost)
These are baseline unmodified humans and make up the majority of humanity. Their genome has been cleansed of hereditary diseases and optimized for looks and health, but has not otherwise been substantially upgraded. Almost none are Savages, those born with all of the natural defects, hereditary diseases, and other genetic mutations that evolution so lovingly applies.

May have physical enhancements from Rifts Chaos Earth. For settling inhospitable environments may have some alien type and planet bonuses from HU.


Homo Gravis (low cost)
Adapted for life on high-gravity worlds, Homo Gravis (Also called Squats) are thick-set, muscular Humans with strong bones, high-pressure circulatory systems, and lungs able to handle dense atmospheres. Tougher and stronger than normal Humans, they make good soldiers, barroom brawlers, miners, engineers, and heavy laborers. In normal Human society, they often have difficulty using equipment designed for standard-size Humans (the GM may impose Skill Roll penalties for the use of some tools, if appropriate).

+6 to PE and PS, +10 to SDC -3 to PP

Homo Oceanus (medium cost)
Homo Oceanus (also known as Merfolk) live on many water worlds and the oceans of Earth. They can't literally breathe water, but their enhanced lung capacity allows them to stay underwater as long as seals. Their large, rounder-than-normal eyes help them to see without difficulty when they're deep underwater, but are also sensitive to bright light (such as direct sunlight). Additionally, their eyes have nictitating membranes and their corneas adjust to counter underwater refraction. An insulating fat layer helps them withstand the effects of living in frigid waters, and their webbed hands and feet allow them to move through those waters with ease. They store oxygen in their muscle tissue, and they do not suffer negative health effects from pressure changes. They can safely descend to about 200 meters depth (roughly 6 atmospheres of pressure) without suffering narcotic effects or other diving problems. They possess a transgenic swim bladder for controlling buoyancy.

Hold breath 10x longer than baseline humans. Gets swimming skill at 80% and night vision. Double effects of light exposure, such as temporary blindness

Homo Iter (low cost)
First bred in orbiting space habitats before the invention of FTL drive, Homo Iter (also called Spacers) continue to thrive in space stations, asteroid colonies, orbital habitats, and other zero-G environments. Created and trained to spend their entire lives in space, Spacers have bones and muscles engineered not to weaken in zero gravity, increased resistance to radiation, lungs designed to handle low pressures, and toes as dexterous as fingers. However, their bodies do not handle normal gravity well; to a Spacer, walking on the surface of a planet feels like dragging himself through a thick, soupy atmosphere. Skin is black and able to resist radiation damage.

0-G movement skill at 80%, Prehensile feet add 1 attack per melee with feet, -4 to SPD when not in 0 G, Radiation Resistance (takes quarter damage from high radiation), Hold breath 3x as long as baseline human, -2 to physical attributes in normal gravity.

The following bodies are in enough production for them to be common however not common enough to find whole communities of them.

Mentats (very high cost)
Mentats are genetically modified to increase cognitive abilities, particularly learning ability, creativity, attentiveness, and memory. Rumors exist of super-enhanced Mentats with more extreme intelligence mods, but brain-hacking is notoriously difficult, and many attempts to redesign mental faculties result in impaired functioning, instability, or insanity. They look close to human, but are different in very noticeable and sometimes eerie ways: lack of hair, larger craniums, wider eyes, smaller noses, smaller teeth, and elongated digits.

Use Psi-X aliens from Rifts Lone Star, but add +4 to ME. Can take any OCC, same as humans.

Olympians (medium cost)
Olympians are human upgrades with improved athletic capabilities like endurance, eye-hand coordination, and cardio-vascular functions. Olympians are common among athletes, dancers, and soldiers.

+5 to all physical attributes. +1 attack per melee, +2 to perception, +4 to one physical attribute of choice.

Chuckies (medium cost)
Chuckies are transhumans modified to retain a child-like form. They are smaller, more agile, and less resource-depleting, making them ideal for orbital living and spacecraft. Some people find them distasteful, especially when employed in certain media and sex work capacities.

-4 to PS, -2 to PE and SPD, +1 to MA on Humans

Apples (high cost)
These Bodies are tailor-made for media icons, elite socialites, actors, models, and narcissists. Apple gene sequences are specifically designed for distinctive good looks. Ethereal and elfin features are common, with slim and lithe bodies. Their metabolism has also been sanitized to eliminate unpleasant bodily odors and their pheromones adjusted for universal appeal.

+8 to PB, +4 to MA on humans

Livingston (very high cost)
Livingstons are rugged and durable designs capable of weathering a range of harsh environments. They are the ideal body for exploration assignments and are popular among rift exploration teams. Though pricey compared to other bodies options, many traveling to less habitable and dangerous environments have found the investment worth it.

Have the major super ability ‘Adapt to Environment’ from HU.

[Avenger]

Notes on OCCs


Mind Bleeders

Mind Bleeders are an extremely rare result of Psi-Stalker/Human pairing. They inherit their Stalker parent’s looks but are pitch black in color. Scientists are still at a loss to explain why these unusual children are born. Mind Bleeers are different from other children. There is something innately otherworldly about them, besides the way they look. And though they seem to have a firm and grounded view of the world, they always seem to be one step removed from it.

Parents of Mind Bleeders oftentimes have difficulty adjusting to their strange child and many are given up for adoption. Almost all of these are recruited by the Instrumentality where they work as spies, sting operators, and interrogators.

(Mind Bleeder OCC, can also bleed PPE the same as ISP. Mind Bleeder can store bled skills and memories into a TW memory stick at a cost of 15 ISP.)


Psi-Warriors

Originally formed as a philosophical study group situated, the Psi Warriors are revered as guardians of order in the Instrumentality. Their training can induce psionics into those not born with psychic powers. They use these powers in order to transform themselves into living weapons and shields. Psi Warriors are trained in various forms of martial arts in addition to modern armaments for ranged combat.

Recruitment within the Psi-Warriors is limited to those who demonstrated loyalty to the Instrumentality, in addition to physical and mental potential. The recruits are drawn from across the Instrumentality for testing. Upon being identified, a student would be put into service to study under a veteran Psi Warrior and would continue studying under that master until their own promotion was warranted, although other Psi-Warriors would occasionally assist in their training. Training could be very harsh, but not cruel, and could often take years. Managing one's emotions and controlling one's fear in the face of adversity is a paramount aspect of their training.


Praetorian Guard

If the Altarain Warrior Women are the result of an "assembly line" process of genetic modification and enhancement, the Praetorians are custom models. Each Praetorian is a unique investment who undergoes a genetic enhancement process that has been specially adapted to her particular physiology and genome. They endured years of selection procedures and training aimed at achieving perfection in soldiering. Extreme standards were set for combat fitness, stamina, strength, dexterity, mental acuity, reaction time, loyalty and intelligence.

Praetorians are responsible for the protection of the government’s political branches and directly serve the Supreme Leader as primary bodyguards. Praetorians always keep a contingent with the Supreme Leader for protection, but also travel individually as envoys. They are trained in the arts of assassination, both improvised and professional, in order to counter possible attempts on the life of those they protect. They also specialize in carrying out field missions on behalf of the various legislative departments. In addition they have been loaned to guard to persons of interest though many are not sure whether this is to genuinely protect their charges or to keep an eye on them.

( Altarain Warrior Women with the OCC of Cyber Knight, Master Psionic option. All have bio-wizardry enhancements )


Commissar

Commissars are attached to institutions (and in the military various units) acting as the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education, loyalty to the government, and serves as the spiritual leader of a organization. In the military commissars are tasked with the duty to maintain the morale of the troops as well as provide spiritual and moral leadership. The Commissar is empowered to use any means necessary to ensure the loyalty and moral purity of his or her charges, and is regarded with a mixture of fear and admiration.

Commissar (Use Priest of Night OCC (nightbane) with skills, abilities, and powers of a Void Priest (manhunter). Standard equipment includes 4D4 Void Cyberworms. )

[Avenger]

Government Structure

On the surface, the Instrumentality presents itself almost as a new type of nation state under a sort of federal structure with a democratic process. Unlike all such previous arrangements, however, the view is that the government is not a political alliance but a commercial enterprise with civic trappings. Tacked on to the economic network is a civic infrastructure, sustained by the Instrumentality to coordinate civil affairs, manage public interest, and promote a healthy economic environment. In effect, it is a government run by economic organizations, with a democratic facade.

The Security Council holds all real power in the Instrumentality, all decisions of true importance are made here. The Supreme Leader chairs the Security Council. The Instrumentality also maintains three entities as the democratic facade: the General Assembly, the Senate, and Judicial Committee.

The General Assembly

The General Assembly draws representatives from each and every settlement that holds full membership in the Instrumentality. Representation is based on population, with each receiving at least 1 representative, and representatives serving 3-year terms. Every settlement is counted, and even areas wholly-owned and operated privately are given representation unless they specifically waive the right.

Voting and citizen participation are emphasized and encouraged, and the political process itself is a major media spectacle. Candidates come from a wide range of backgrounds. Representatives are very accessible to their constituents, making appearances at virtual rallies and town hall meetings. Campaign contributions plays a major role, but is not always the deciding factor.

Despite the pomp and sometimes shallowness of the representatives, actual political issues are often relevant to the proceedings. Hot-button issues are major talking points. Representatives often poll their constituents, and public referendums are also a significant part of the political process. Nevertheless, outsiders to the Instrumentality are likely to notice that most such issues are debated in the context of a very narrow ideological tunnel, with few outside-the-box options ever seeing real consideration.

The Senate

What the General Assembly does for the public, the Senate does for mega corps and other large organizations (mass organizations such as trade unions, women's and youth organizations, religious groups, minority organizations, etc.). Every organization is granted one senator to appoint who is chosen from the Assembly. These senators legislate everything of importance to the Instrumentality. For decision-making purposes, each senator’s vote is weighted based on their current public shares price. Non Megacorp organizations are assessed a rating by the Intelligence Agency each quarter, based on the assets they make known. In contrast to the Assembly, the Senate is where the bulk of the Instrumentality’s legalities and day-to-day affairs are decided and implemented.

The Judicial Committee

The Judicial Committee is a collection of judicial officials that are usually elected from the Senate’s ranks, though in a few cases non-Senate delegates have been appointed as well. The Committee is the Instrumentality’s judicial branch, making judgments when necessary in legal affairs and disputes, as well as criminal cases. Committee decisions are overridden by, and may be appealed to, The Police and the Security Council.


The Security Council

Though thousands of Megacorps are full members of the Instrumentality they have no actual voting power (outside of the Senate) and hold no shares in the Instrumentality. That privilege is set aside for the Instrumentality’s Nationalized Industries. It holds de facto executive power, has veto power over all legislation, and is the final answer on judicial cases and appeals. The Supreme Leader acts as a Chairman of the council. The Supreme Leader's cabinet makes up the executive board (all executive directors) while the Security Council acts as a separate supervisory board (all non-executive directors). The executive directors are accountable to the Supreme Leader and report to the Council on a regular basis.

Like most corporate executives, the Supreme Leader is answerable to the board of directors. The Security Council's board is half elected shareholder representatives and half political appointees chosen by their Nationalized Industry. Like the shareholder representatives, many of these appointees hold other jobs and leave their day-to-day board duties to deputies and assistants. What this means, specifically, is that the Instrumentality's upper management is free to go about its day-to-day job while its theoretical overseers pad their résumés and pocketbooks and interfere only when a specific emergency or political agenda demands it.

In practice, the Security Council is the lead authority within the Instrumentality. Despite its dominance, the Council is careful to not oppose public or cooperate opinion too drastically, especially in cases of near consensus. They are well aware that they rely on the good will and support of the populace and Megacorps for continued smooth operations, and they employ armies of social engineers to ensure such compliance. The last thing the Council wants to do is to come off as some sort of dictatorial regime, and they take pains to avoid this. This does not mean that they don’t throw their weight around when necessary, as the smoldering ruins of a few uppity Meagacorps and colonies can attest to, but such matters are always handled with subtlety and finesse, even when conveying a sincere message. For the most part, however, the Council is content to screen its affairs and keep them from public view, concealing them behind the spectacle provided by the General Assembly. It is rare to see mention of the Council in Instrumentality media feeds.

Each member holds a percentage of shares, an investment in the Instrumentality itself. This stake in the Instrumentality determines their voting power for decisions made by the Council. No single entity owns a majority (the Instrumentality bylaws actually forbid this). In practice, this means that plenty of deals are made between the members about how each will vote and what reciprocal favor such a vote might earn. The major share-holding members can overrule the others if they are united. The minor members, however, can often hold the balance of power with their more modest percentages when the major members can’t agree.


Council Members
The security council members are a conglomeration of several economic bodies who themselves rose to power and prominence as traditional governments failed. During the Pacification Campaigns to unite humanity, the Instrumentality appointed a Lord over each of them, and gave them a quasi monopoly as Nationalized Industries. This nobility and the economic corporations are interlaced just as the nobility are interlaced with the government. The Nationalized Industries appoint nobles as the executives of local areas. These nobles are more like chief executors in the overall power structure, rather than absolute rulers. One can gain nobility by becoming the head of a large subsidiary, for example.

A small number of regulatory agencies have power over Nationalized Industries, and they are subject to any applicable local taxes, but, provided they do not blatantly violate law, regional managers can usually conduct their company's business as they see fit. Because a direct confrontation with the Instrumentality would be bad for business, intentional violation of laws is done only on a covert basis.

Individual planets are more or less autonomous and can have practically any form of government. In return, the Nationalized Industries agrees to patrol the space between the worlds, to protect interstellar trade, ensure the rights of the citizens, to encourage travel and commerce, and to arbitrate diplomatic relations between worlds. Nationalized Industries only rule planets if they enter the politics sphere and have one of their members (or more often hired retainers) run for office. The Nationalized Industries can build anywhere instead of just on planets they rule. Member worlds agree to pay taxes and obey laws that the Instrumentality requires. Beyond this, individual worlds are more or less left to their own devices so long as they acknowledge the power of the Instrumentality to rule the space between the stars


The Executive
Executive power is vested in the Supreme Leader who is chosen by vote from the Security Council. His three cabinet members are chosen by him and head the executive portions of the government. Funding and ultimate control for these organizations derives from the Security Council. Often private organizations or nationalized industries are subcontracted by these organizations to provide services. With the exception of private citizens, corporate security, and security firms, all significant force of arms are contained in these sections. This is to make sure that the well armed groups are subservient to civilian control.

The first is the Military, which is divided into Army, Navy, and Spacy. This division also handles foreign relations, quick response expeditionary forces and foreign intelligence gathering. Second consists of the Police which covers enforcement of domestic issues, such as the police and criminal investigation, internal intelligence, regulatory bodies, propaganda and the electoral system, and the executive portions of the justice system. The first division generally handles external duties and the second handles internal. The third is Political and consists of subjects concerning Nationalized Industries and the Security Council. The Intelligence Agency is a major part of this section.

Below the Supreme Leader and cabinet are the other senior officers. In theory, like the Supreme Leader and Cabinet, they serve at the pleasure of the board; in reality, they are usually picked by the Supreme Leader and Cabinet from within the Nationalized Industries or from top megacorporations around the Instrumentality. In some megacorps, these senior officers represent factions within that the CEO needs to placate or visibly support for internal political reasons. The strongly elitist, almost tribal, corporate culture of the Instrumentality tends to aim upper management’s political shenanigans outward, toward their theoretical overseers on the Security Concil. Partisan empire-builders are rare – or get sent off to build actual empires on another world for the benefit of the Instrumentality

[Avenger]

The Intelligence Agency

Officially, the Intelligence Agency ( Intelligence Agency for Fair and Free Markets) was originally an organization meant to maintain as fair and free a market economy as possible in the Instrumentality. In a classic example of mission creep, it's authority and agenda has expanded well beyond its original outline. The Intelligence Agency is under the direct supervision of the Security Council, being granted limited authority over local administration, and, to an extent, Instrumentality military forces. As an internal security organization the Intelligence Agency also has jurisdiction over other government agencies and keeps a watchful eye on the military for possible signs of subversion.

Not wanting to corrupt its image by mimicking some sort of nation-state regulatory body, the Instrumentality set up the Intelligence Agency as a cooperative effort, a burden and responsibility shared by the members of the Instrumentality. This leads to accusations that the Intelligence Agency acts preferentially towards the Council members’ specific interests. To counter this and develop more of an air of impartiality, the Council has adopted a hands-off policy towards most activities. It is worth noting, too, that Council members are also subject to scrutiny, though there is undoubtedly some institutional bias at play.

The secret agents and cloak and dagger stuff are but one subset of this organization. Other divisions include a full-blown paramilitary division to keep the regular army in check and act as a regime protection force, a political and administrative division, a propaganda division, an R&D division, you name it. The Intelligence Agency has been called a "state within a state", they have not only had their own military, they have their own schools, clubs, youth groups, medical corps, science corps, and even their own courts. They are geared towards being an elite society within but apart from the rest of the Instrumentality, one that would need as little contact as possible with outsiders. If a member of your family is in the Intelligence Agency, then you basically move into a completely different social circle.

They exist under a single command and with a single goal: protect humanity from threats. What the Intelligence Agency is allowed to consider a threat for legal purposes is staggeringly broad. Laws concerning the Agency's ability to police the populace are extremely draconian and remove anything most people would consider civil rights. Though few of the influential personages within the Consortium care to challenge this development, as it serves their own interests, it is a matter of time before it oversteps its bounds and the Council is forced to leash their guard dogs.

Several divisions exist within the Intelligence Agency

The Planetary Stock Exchange (PEX), the largest exchange system within human space. Though many other exchanges exist, PEX remains the most significant. To counter the lag problem with interstellar communications, which limits most exchanges to trading within their local spatial “neighborhood,” PEX offers an expensive option for trading via Altarain communication channels. Though PEX trades primarily in stocks, a dozen other backed exchanges trade in commodities, futures, and other securities

The Progress Bank (PB). The PB was specifically set up to help build the Instrumentality while remaining free from its political affairs. Though a subsidiary of the Intelligence Agency, PB has its own budget. The member corps, including those on the Security Council, are legally barred from seeking to influence its decisions. Bank officials also have lengthy tenures, to limit intrigues over appointees. As the Instrumentality’s central bank, PB sets monetary policy and interest rates, stabilizes prices to keep inflation low, issues currency, stimulates the economy, and manages foreign exchange transactions. It is also the prime lender for government social enegineering initiates.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is the premier intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination branch within the Instrumentality. Operating on a complete, rather than regional, basis, it spans the worlds trying to find as much information about the strengths and weaknesses of the Instrumentality's enemies. It is mostly an exterior-facing intelligence agency, as opposed to the FSB, which is an interior-facing security agency. It specializes in analysis and forecasting, handled by squadrons of internal bureaucrats who specialize in conducting analyses on emerging trends and conditions. Given their privileged access this enables some impressive forecasting capabilities. If any anomalies are detected or irregularities noticed in the data flow an investigative team is dispatched.

The Council on Advanced Technology (CAT) is composed of scientists, philosophers, and experts, many of whom have experience as political advisers. They are influential since they have the ear of the Security Council in their analysis of the potential social and cultural impacts of new technology adoption. They primarily approach technology through the lens of the precautionary principle, meaning that something must be proven non-harmful before it can be adopted. Even if a technology is unlikely to be catastrophic, they often approve it only for limited applications, pending further evaluations. CAT is continually under pressure to approve new technologies to release into the market. The Security Council has made it clear, however, that they support CAT’s precautionary approach. Corporations that have gotten too pushy have found their licenses revoked.

The Federal Security Bureau (FSB) is tasked with investigating mortal and mundane crimes such as trafficking, extortion, terrorism and organized crime when dealing with megacorps and Nationalized Industries. Financial experts argue that a nominal framework of competition regulation is necessary to derail monopolies and corruption, approve mergers, monitor risky investment and lending practices, and otherwise foil destructive efforts to game the system. The majority of activities are ongoing investigation of financial irregularities. Auditors may be tasked to uncover tax evasion, insider trading, pyramid schemes, cartels, corruption, and much more. Agents have significant powers to subpoena records and investigate internal files of Megacorps. It should not be assumed that auditors are just accountants with attitude: a specially tasked branch of auditors practices more direct methods of investigation, including surveillance, physical infiltration, digital intrusion, social engineering, psychosurgery, and occasionally other, less savory tactics.

The Department of Psychohistory (DP) combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people. The Instrumentality uses extensive manipulation of other cultures based on psychohistorical data to achieve their own ends. However, algorithms must be developed to predict the actions of a sentient alien race. Psychohistory is used with other races, but with less skill or success.

The National Secure Storage and Vaccination Authority (NSSVA) is a division tasked with securing, transporting, storing, neutralizing, analyzing and dissecting all the unpleasant monsters and other dimensional beings. Their remit includes the collection, archiving and occasional destruction of arcane tomes with knowledge that must not be disseminated to the general public. The NSSVA exists to identify, analyze, and counter these risks. The group maintains a huge storehouse of historical records pertaining to these beings. It is their task to destroy the physical manifestation these monsters as well as protecting mankind from itself, by combating such internal threats to the Instrumentality as species treason and cults.

Subordinate to the larger divisions are several smaller organizations. These Organizations are significantly smaller than the main three, and are often formed to combat specific, rather than broad, threats.

[Avenger]

edited out

[Avenger]

In the galaxy there is various odd alien fauna and flora, but there are few living alien races comparable in intelligence to humans. However, human archaeologists continue to find the remains of several highly advanced civilizations all the time. More worrying is the fact that they all seemingly became extinct shortly after they discovered interstellar flight and started exploring deeper space. There turns out to be a reason for that.

Splugorth, Demons, and Dominators

The Splugorth are an ancient intelligent race of nearly immortal creatures. They are said to be the oldest intelligent beings in existence in the galaxy, created at the very beginning of the universe, spawned from swirling gases and enormous amounts of energy.

A malevolent and ruthless race, the Splugorth appear to have wished to enslave the younger intelligent races of the galaxy. The Splugorth were able to exploit magic, allowing them to travel across the galaxy at a whim through the development of magic interstellar drives and a network of Stone Pyramids that instantaneously connected their far-flung interstellar colonies.

One of the few already sentient races the Splugorth had encountered were the humanoid Dominators, who at the time were in the midst of a slow, sublight interstellar expansion to distant planets beyond the home star system. The Dominators were probably the first species in the Milky Way Galaxy to have evolved sentience. When they met the Splugorth, they fought against them. The Dominators's war was futile and they were forced back to their remote worlds in the outer rim of the galaxy's Halo Stars.

The fury of the Dominators cooled over thousands of years of imprisonment, but their technological progress continued. Eventually they gained the immortality. Unfortunately, the side effect of this process was that the Dominators gradually lost the ability to feel any emotions at all and became the soulless machines. The Dominators began the war against the Splugorth once more.

To combat these terrible foes, the Splugorth created new warrior races to battle for them. The Splugorth designed their warrior species to be heavily magic using. Unfortunately, the raw emotions, magic energy, and collective unconscious beliefs of these new races weakened the walls of this universe to others. The dimensional instability allowed the Demons, a terrible collection of entities who could enslave minds to create living gateways into the material world for others of their kind.

The Splugorth's empires were ultimately devastated by the aftershocks. This Demon Plague further devastated the population of intelligent beings in the galaxy. The Demons would seek out to fee upon strongly pychic and magical beings. Soon after a species would create a large enough energy signature to be detected the Demons would arrive on their world and consume them. The Dominators could not counter these new entities. Eventually the Dominators became devoted to destroying all life in order to sever the demon's access to this reality.

The Dominators are to busy fighting the Splugorth and the Demons to personally destroy all life. so, in order to do this the Dominators created two mechanisms; the Fermi Virus and the Machine People. Typically highly magical species are immediately consumed. Non magical races eventually discover magic and develop technology that would bring in the Demons. This becomes a problem if a large star spanning empire is consumed. Small outbreaks of intelligent conscious life is not a problem, but if they start to become large star spanning empires the amount of Demons becomes massive. Consequently, they show little interest in non-sapient life, or civilizations that have not progressed beyond their own star system.

Fermi Virus and Machine People

The Fermi virus was set in place by the Dominators to infect emerging civilizations, is something far more complex than just a computer virus. Largely defeated and eradicated from human worlds, occasional breakouts of the Fermi virus still occur, primarily due to scavengers or others becoming infected when messing with old relics of alien civilizations.

Spread through the galaxy using self replicating probes, The Fermi virus is unlike anything that humanity has ever encountered so far. While it bears similarities with both computer and biological virii in regards to infection of hosts and propagation, it is not bound by any limits of form or transmission vector.

The probes also act as a beacon, aimed at alerting the Machine People to the appearance of new star-faring cultures. The probes allow instant travel between a certain number of them. The civilizations that use them evolve along the paths the Dominators desire. The probes are notoriously hard to detect remotely (infrared, ultraviolet, and visual spectrum seems to be all that they show up in, otherwise they are invisible) but with sufficient processing power they can be found. They are widely distributed. They are attractive to intelligent lifeforms, who see them simply a transportation mechanism, rather than also a local laboratory- the specimens enter the lab of their own volition.

The Fermi virus is amazingly effective and infectious. It is highly intelligent and adaptive, able to mutate into new forms. Much like certain virii are able to cross species boundaries or change their vector from contact to airborne, it is also a self-morphing omnivirus, capable of altering itself and its transmission vectors to bypass infection safeguards. Like a retrovirus that incorporates genetic information into the genome of the target cell to subvert the cell to do its bidding, the Fermi virus does the same but on a more complex level. It is also known to rewrite a host’s neural code in a similar manner, in effect restructuring the target’s mind and personality.

The virus is a strange, pervasive, evil force capable of corrupting machinery as well as men, but it is especially able to pervert machines of exceptional complexity, or sciences that cross the line between machine and man. Mankind's thinking machines not only went berserk, but behaved as if with orchestrated, malicious intent.

While it began as a digital computer virus it has transformed to be communicable via at least three other forms: biological virus, a nanoplague, and psychic hack. Humanity has been partially inoculated against the virus, even so, the best that can be hoped for in outbreaks is containment and destruction.

The Fermi virus will typically cause a civilization to collapse and at best set a species back thousands of years. Usually the species will go extinct after an outbreak. However some limp on. In this case the Machine People come into play.

The Machine People evolved out of a nanoplage swarm that mutated into a cautious, predatory species that fed on larger, dangerous creatures. Rather than actively hunting such prey, this species developed versatile methods of capturing and immobilizing their competitors. Over time, this method of trapping prey spurred basic intelligence and provided them with the evolutionary advantage that paved the way to sapience. At this point the Dominators contacted and uplifted the Machine People, turning them into their servants. In exchange the Machine People were allowed to live.

The Machine People evolved from ambush predators rather than endurance predator like humans. As a species they rose to the top of their food chain by passively trapping their prey. Their first instinct is to wait and stay hidden; they don't have that human urge to get together in a big group and do things. Segments of the Machine People will then spin separate plans. They watch civilizations that are dying and when they feel is right they offer them salvation. However the help from the Machine People stops a civilization from advancing or having initiative. Over a long period of time, this causes the victim to lose sentience.

They are able to assimilate technology and information quickly, being able to communicate with almost any advanced race. The Machine People are scavengers at heart. They use ships and technology from other species that they either took them from other nations and integrated them into their fleet, or they traded for them. This helps them with their cover that they are from a multi species federation that seeks to guide the development of the younger races. Some useful beings are used to crew their ships, and these beings are treated well and happy with their situation. They've taken advantage of dead civilizations in the past, absorbing their advances for their own use. Also they've taken advantage of wounded civilizations. The Machine People visit these wounded civilizations and cut deals with those eager for a short-term advantage, slowly luring that civilization into becoming the Machine People' next meal ticket.

The Naruni
Upon initial examination most Humans quickly recognized the Naruni to be uncannily similar to popular depictions of a certain class of science-fictional extraterrestrial. Often called "Martians", "Zeta Reticulans", "Little Green Men", "Enochian Angels" and so on, the most common and neutral term for such aliens was "Grays" after their skin color. These depictions were based on a series of reported encounters between such beings and Humans, occurring primarily in Earth's period of rapid industrial development following the Second World War and ending some time before the Small War and the creation of the United Nations Peacekeeping Army.

In such encounters, Humans living in isolated locations were typically abducted by Grays using ships colloquially known as "UFOs" (Unidentified Flying Objects) or "flying saucers", after their disc-shaped bodies. Though most abductees' memories were hazy, possibly modified (as the Naruni reveal that it was them who allowed the subjects of their experiments to retain their memories in such cases), they did describe undergoing strange, high-tech medical procedures, sometimes finding themselves with an unplanned pregnancy soon afterwards. These subjects usually reported one major operation or procedure being done on them in their first abduction, and one or more secondary abductions taking place afterwards, as though their captors were checking on the progress of their modifications.

The Naruni confirmed what the Humans had long guessed, that they and the Grays were one and the same. They moreover intimated that their interference in Human culture went back far longer than Humans had surmised, dating millennia back to the dawn of Human civilization and, according to them, the very first beings identifiable as modern Humans, implying that, if they did not create or transplant Humans on Earth, they controlled the Humans' early development to an astonishing degree.

Human religion and mythology had long had a near-universal fascination with supernatural beings known by various names -- elves, leprechauns, duendes, tengu, and so on. Universally depicted as humanoids diminutive in stature and slender in build, they were notorious in legends for being capricious and amoral, appearing sporadically to make odd and unreasonable demands from Humans and employing a bizarre array of magical powers to enforce their obedience.

These legends were apparently based on early interventions of the Naruni, who nursed Humanity from its prehistoric origins and, acting as gods to some civilizations and devils to others, set the bounds for the growth of its civilizations. They claimed special credit for inspiring the pyramids of Egypt and the standing stones of the ancient Celts.

The Naruni kept up a continuing program of steering Human development, meanwhile performing equally mysterious experiments on other animals and leaving the crop circles and other patterns as covert signals to each other during their missions. The Naruni's interventions had grown less prominent as the Human civilizations developed, until they suddenly accelerated to a staggering pace during the last half of the 21st century, a time of great conflict as Humans neared self-destruction multiple times.

There is an ultimate purpose they have for Humanity, and they seem to be working to tailor-fit the Human species to that ultimate destiny, protecting and nurturing them along the way. They apparently find this process itself a thing of beauty, frequently commenting on the aesthetic pleasure they received observing the development of the Human mind from its primitive roots. However some fear while the Naruni are pursuing a "secret agenda" involving Earth, the intended destiny is not necessarily in the Humans best interest.

The Naruni claim to see their relationship to Humans as analogous to that between a parent and a child — in their own words, Humans are part of their "extended family". They and Humans are but one example of many similar relationships between their and younger species throughout the galaxy. Indeed most the alien races that in the instrumentality have a similar story concerning the Naruni. Interestingly they react to the common description of themselves as "invaders from space" by claiming that their goal is not to "invade" — presumably, not to take the stereotypical role of conquerors and overlords often ascribed to them by Earth popular culture during the UFO craze — but to "pervade".

They may be the reason for so many of the few living alien species being humanoid and existing on earth like planets. Their influence is likely the cause for humanities, and the other aliens, advancing to an advanced state before triggering the Fermi Virus or being eaten by Demons.



Kreegor Empire

The Splugorth, in a bid to save their empires from the Demons and Dominators created the Tarlok and Kreegor Empire. Instead of their traditional methods they created the Empire to display altruistic overtones, but one that engages in mind-control and population replacement on worlds under their domain. The Tarlok run the empire with the Splugorth in charge.

On the whole the Empire is highly collectivist in it's operation. The Tarlok believe that they should work for for the greater good of the Empire as a whole in their own way -- be it as an infantryman or an engineer -- and that all shall benefit from this collectively. The Tarlok generally believes that this applies to other species as well and that they can and should be brought into the Empire. Tarlok Society is highly structured, this makes Tarlok civilization hard to infiltrate and when combined with their psionic and magic resistance makes the Tarlok very hard for Demons to corrupt. Nevertheless, the Empire can be quite intolerant of deviant beliefs, forcibly re-educating those who adhere to incompitable belief systems, and are more than willing to eradicate entire populations who do not submit.

Several intelligent alien races and even some humans who have turned their backs on the Instrumentality have allied themselves with the Tarlok. Some human worlds have been conquered and the treatment of humans has been fair.

The Tarlok empire has gone through 3 phases of expansion since their founding. These phases are marked by Tarlok military campaigns during which nearby worlds are colonized, conquered, or sometimes peacefully persuaded to join the Empre through diplomacy and a manifest demonstration of the benefits provided by advanced Tarlok technology.

There have been reports that the Tarlok have begun to take a tougher line against some conquered worlds, sterilizing their populations so that the original population will die out and leave the worlds open for full Tarlok colonization. This could represent a new Tarlok policy towards all aliens or just a Tarlok desire to reserve the resources of their conquests for their own people.

(Tarlok are all nega psychics)

[Avenger]

Powerball

While its ostensible purpose is entertainment and to slake bloodlust, the sport was designed to demonstrate the futility of individualism. No better way to show that than with some good old-fashioned violence, where fatalities are a very real possibility every single game, if not the major selling point. Usually, the deaths will be of the many young rookie players, but sometimes, a veteran slips up, or a longtime feud will come to a sudden, violent end.

Two teams clad in body armor skate on around a banked, oval track, surrounded by high transparent walls. The object of the game is to score points by the offensive team (the team in possession of the ball) hurling a softball-sized steel ball into the goal using a long-handled stick. Players use the stick to handle the ball and to strike or "check" opposing players.

League play allows players to earn points for successful actions over the course of a season. Most commonly, players acquire better equipment or offensive armor (gauntlets, edged armguards, spiked helmets, etc. Fans also come and go with the success of a team, and equipment during a game can be affected by how many fans have turned up and ticket sales.

The game is formulated on the basic fact that the team picking up the ball has to get round the track with the ball and put it in the opposing team's goal within three laps of the track. Any of the players on either team can field the ball and move forward as fast as possible and pass the ball to one of the offensive players. Once the ball is held by an offensive player, the balance of the team forms in order to allow the offensive carrier to move around the track.

The team without possession of the ball is defensive and acts to prevent scoring. A defensive player is allowed to intercept a ball being passed, or pick up the ball that has been knocked out of the offensive ball carrier's stick and can try to pass or score with the ball. No permanent goalie or goal defender is allowed in the scoring area. Defending players can only be in the 15-foot-wide red scoring area when an offensive ball carrier is making a try for a goal.

As the ball travels almost too fast for the naked eye to see, spectators are entertained by numerous collisions, bashings, and all-in-brawls. It is a full-contact sport in which players have considerable leeway to attack opposing players in order to take or maintain possession of the ball and to score points. A player could only have so many penalties before "fouling out" of the game. Fighting is a completely normal and acceptable occurrence, with time penalties handed out to the fighters. For all of the assumptions and rationalizations for fighting, a team would rather win the game than risk losing the game because of, or despite, fighting.

When a player commits an infraction (provided the ref sees and identifies it), play is stopped once the offending player's team touches the ball. Said team is then forced to play short-handed while the penalized player sits in the penalty box and can not be substituted. This gives the opposing team a "power play" for two minutes for a minor infraction or five minutes for a major. The penalized player returns to the ice when the other team scores a goal (on minor penalties only) or when the penalty's time runs out. If two players are in the penalty box, their team is forced to play, called a two man advantage. If a third players is then sent to the box, the third penalty will not begin until the first has ended, as teams cannot play under a certain amount of players.

When a fight breaks out play is stopped immediately while the players circle each other and duke it out (fights or pushing/shoving involving three or more players, however, are usually broken up by the referee before things get nasty). The fight is supervised by the referee and linesmen, who will step in when he feels the confrontation is beyond reasonable limits (however, they will allow the fight to progress for a variety of reasons, including not wanting to get hurt themselves. As long as both fighters have tacitly agreed to the fight, it will proceed until one knocked over). After the fight is broken up, the offending players are given five minute penalties for fighting.

Because it is such a physically taxing game, substitutions are done frequently (every few minutes or so) and often in the middle of play, which are called "line changes." Teams are still required to have the same amount of players on the track at a time, however, and a sloppy line change could result in a penalty for having too many men on the track.

Each team comprises 9 players on the track at one time and there are 22 players on each team. The non fielded players are positioned in the Infield area during play until called into action.

Defensemen: Defensemen are usually slower, tougher players whose job is to stop the opponent from scoring. They are allowed to go both clockwise and counter clockwise on the track. They have quad skates and long sticks. 4 defensemen are fielded at one time.

Linemen. Defensive players that are able to enter the scoring zone when their team is on offense to clear it of defenders. They have inline skates and short sticks. 2 linemen are fielded at one time.

Center: An offensive player, the centre is a hard position to explain. A good comparison is to the midfield position in soccer; they are offensive scoring players, but are expected to help defend. They are allowed to clear a goal of defenders. May be the team leader, but usually not the captain. They have quad skates and long sticks. 1 center is fielded at one time.

Wingmen: The centre has a left wingman and right wingman on who along with center pass the ball, and score. Offensive players, they score most of the goals for the team, with the center usually assisting them. One is often the captain of the team. They have inline skates and long sticks.

[Avenger]

Expendable Shock Troops


Kill Hounds

At the time of their introduction, the Psi Hounds/Dog Boys represented the future of expendable soldiers. As a result of the genetic modification that enhanced their growth process, the enhanced canines aged at over twice the rate of Human beings.

A recent Instrumentality project has successfully introduced a variant on the basic Dog Boy design, called Kill Hounds. In addition to increased strength, endurance, and aggression the primary modification is the maturation rate. Kill Hounds are born in hatcheries producing a battle-ready young adult in one month.

Every aspect of them is designed for intimidation. You can tell by looking at them, these are no ordinary Dog Boys. All Kill Hounds receive basic training in core military skills, such as weapons handling, marksmanship, and other essentials. As there is no individual reproduction, the Kill Hounds are all male and during their initial growth period they must consume massive quantities of food.

Given the short period of time between the gestation process and accelerated growth to adulthood training is rushed. Through a flash-learning program, the clones are effectively "programmed" as disciplined shock troops and nothing more. The speed of their growth, equaled by a limited form of education, produce less skilled troops compared to Dog Boys. However they are more adaptable than Skelebots and their initial construction cost is less, they are replacing Dog Boys in high casualty low skill functions.


Skelebots

Ohm is ultimately is the controlling force behind all of the automated battle units. It pools data from battle units, develops tactics and coordinates attacks. By far the most common units are the Skelebots, artificially intelligent autonomous war machines. Skelebots are developed and intended to be similar to a human endoskeleton in look and function. This allows them to use the same equipment as humans and mutant animals.

Each Skelebot contains a CPU. The CPU can be updated with multiple database files related to infiltration techniques, basic training for soldiers, emergency medical training, sniper training, an extensive tactical database, and detailed files from other Skelebots, potentially making each unit a combat veteran.

Ohm controls the battle units through a central control mainframe located on a well-defended facility. Using direct link command , the battle units are hooked into the central control mainframe and share a collective conscious. However, there are many partially autonomous Skelebots not under Ohm's immediate control. In this mode, battle units are immediately independent of Ohm but are programmed to return and download information. If the central control mainframe is destroyed they revert to autonomous mode.

[Avenger]

Security Council Control of the Instrumentality


Fascist corporatism was described as a top-down model of state control over the economy, and corporate interest groups controlling and 'representing' facets of society, which perfectly describes megacorp control of their populations, and the Instrumentality itself.

The government of the Instrumentality is legitimated by elections (through the General Assembly and Senate) that are free and fair but emptied of substantive meaning in their ability to change the State's policies, motives, and goals. In other words, the government has learned to control elections so that the people can exercise all their rights without truly changing public policy. While they follow basic democratic and republican principles, there can be major deviations towards authoritarianism.

Under managed democracy, the electorate is prevented from having a significant impact on policies adopted by the State's continuous use of propaganda techniques. The 'democracy' of the Senate and General Assembly is an illusion of representation that ensures a compliant, content workforce for the megacorps, nothing more. The Instrumentality is a enclosed society that is indoctrinated to fear outsiders.

The people really do get to vote on stuff and their votes really do get heard on many things (Should we put a park in the main habitat hub? Who, among these five candidates, will you choose to represent your voting block? Should we make it illegal for non-military entities to carry fully automatic pulse lasers in public?). However the Security Council get to decide what's on the docket for voting. Can't complain that your vote wasn't counted when no vote was held. And if you object to it, well, governments have to do distasteful stuff all the time to protect their citizens.

The security council is a last-ditch effort to preserve certain aspects of capitalism in a setting in which capitalism as we know it is essentially dead. Capitalism asserts that the owners of a business are those who provided the investment of cash (i.e. the capital) to get it started and that as exclusive owners they are entitled to all the profits produced by the business, even if they are not actively involved in production themselves. Capitalists don't build things or write programs or perform services; they pay others wages to do those things for them and then reap the rewards as the legal owners of the product that their employees have created.

The capitalism of today no longer makes sense, as manual production has now been made largely redundant. The owners of replication machines now do the production themselves with ease, so there is no manual labor to exploit. Instead the megacorps have shifted focus entirely to the buying and selling of Intellectual Property through copyright. The replicators require plans to create things, after all, so capitalists can still get rich off the control of these plans. So they might still fund a R&D dept. to crank out new product designs (or they might simply purchase them from other corps, steal them, or acquire them in a hostile takeover), but there is little supply-side manufacturing anymore since that is almost all consumer-driven. People now have the means to make pretty much anything they want ad infinitum, so capitalists claim sole rights over specific plans and pressure the inner system governments to enforce those copyrights.

Most megacorps are decentralized, non-asset-based legal entities. Some megacorps are in fact entirely “virtual,” with no physical assets and each employee acting as a mobile office. A few major megacorps literally consist of only a dozen personnel.

While you are 'employed' by a megacorp, for the duration of your contract, you and everything you do are megacorp property; your thoughts, experiences and memories become owned by someone else. For example, if you learn a skill during that time, expect to have it 'repossessed' when your contract ends. If your memories become megacorp proprietary data, expect to have them removed. If your job function requires you to possess a certain personality, expect your base personality to be modified for the duration of the contract (the most common of which is 'company loyalty').

Megacorps in the Instrumentality are transpersonal entities that hold legal status as copyright holders. The Security Council is a huge and powerful bloc of the ruling megacorps (Nationalized Industries) whose goal is to ensure the perpetuation of capitalist principles, including private ownership of product plans and enforcement of copyrights.

The Nationalized Industries of the Security Council run an enclosed, fully-regulated society across their entirely-owned subsidary habitats for their benefit; instead of 'owning the government' or 'manipulating the law', they ARE the government, and the 'law' is corporate procedure, mission statements and core values. The political body of the Security Council makes decisions based entirely around profit margins, demographics and resource management. The corporate culture is the lifestyle and belief system for those that inhabit them. Every single aspect of life is corporatized and rendered down into a commodity; everything drives profit, and regulated for the sole benefit of the Instrumentality. This includes indentured servitude, not 'employment' as such, and the concept of driving and manipulating the direction of humanity via eugenics programs entirely as a profit-generating enterprise.


The Nationalized Industries of the Security Council together own more than 80% of all property within the State. Each of the Industries is made up of thousands of companies of various sizes and various sorts, ranging from simple mining companies to powerful police companies. Each Industry rules its territories like their own kingdom with little or nor interference from the other corporations. Competition, efficiency and market share is more important to the corporations than accumulation of wealth (although the latter is often a happy by-product of the former). In higher matters, such as in foreign policy and market regulation, the Supreme Leader and is cabinet/board of directors, has the highest authority. The Supreme Leader also makes sure that the social infrastructure of the State remains intact and settles all major quarrels between the Nationalized Industries.

Security Council Factions


The factions are the three power blocs in the Instrumentality's corporate world. For the most part, what passes for political affiliation in the Instrumentality is achieved at the corporate scale, with the majority of employees being indoctrinated into their megacorps's prevailing philosophy. There are exceptions, particularly where employees have transferred between corporations, but these are few and far between. Although each individual megacorp is also a unique study in and of itself, containing within it many different positions and dogmas, the political mindsets of the Instrumentality can still roughly be grouped into three main factions.

Generally regarded as the most powerful faction are the Patriots. They are genuinely patriotic and extremely proud, less concerned with trade and more with the position of the Instrumentality politically and militarily.

The Practical faction cares little for limiting concepts like ethics. This bloc is frequently associated with organized crime and has an exploitative view of international trade. It also takes a zero-sum view of profit and loss in cluster-wide markets.

The progressive bloc believes in the principles of free trade and generally cooperative relations with foreign powers. They are also the largest supporters of the guided evolution of humanity.


The current Supreme Leader is Lord Karl Prosek. He is a well-educated, widely-read man who genuinely cares about the fate of his country; it is because of this concern that he has adopted the hard-line approach to ruling that he has. He is a member of the Patriot branch of the party belonging to it mostly as a result of his career military background. (Has night lord statistics equal to that of Moloch )

Heading the Military through the Ministry of War is Lord Cabot who is a hard line Patriot and a veteran of extradimensional extermination wars. Despite his military brilliance he is very traditional and this colors the management of conquered species. He prefers to stay out of politics and focus on destroying evil. The military tends to be more patriotic on account of their subjugation role. (Has night lord statistics equal to that of Magog )

Part of thePpractical branch, Lady Josephine Prosek has many views that cross over into the Patriot branch through her family lineage. At the end of the day she is pragmatic in heading the police Ministry of Security. In addition to being brilliant, charming, and personally very persuasive and is most likely next in line to be the Supreme Leader as she is looked well upon by the public. The police branch tends to be more Practical as they have to use soft power to keep society distracted and in line. (Has night lord statistics equal to that of Lilith )

Heading the Progressive branch is Lord Desmond Bradford who leads the political Ministry of Thought. Very progressive in genetic and educational manipulation of individual wants and desires he would prefer to replace most humans with mutant animals and robots. He and Karl Prosek personally like each other however they disagree on politics. Josephina and himself dislike each other however have very similar pragmatic politics. He and Cabot dislike each other both personally and politically and generally stay out of each others way. The political burro racy tends to shift to Progressive depending on what is required of the regulation of the government. (Has night lord statistics equal to that of Lilith )

Disassociated

Standing outside the traditional power structures are two distinct groups who together make up the "disassociated." The first group is composed of those who've fallen off the bottom rung of the megacorp ladder. While they retain their citizenship, in practice these few people simply fall through the cracks between the megacorps and have essentially disappeared from the system, usually permanently. The second group includes those who've found themselves moving between two or three different corporations—usually upper-middle management transferred between corporations in a giant game of pass-the-personnel—and who have in the process realized quite how thoroughly indoctrinated the average employee is.

Those from the first group tend to take part on some level in the criminal underworld, while those from the second often end up doing very well in non-standard careers or in unlikely places within the corporate structure, united solely by their lack of adherence to any franchised corporate ideology. Their opinions as a result are incredibly diverse, and as long as this discreteness remains the case (and their membership stays as small as it traditionally is), they'll continue to exert little significant pressure on State affairs.

[Avenger]

Simple diagram of Bureaucracy

Supreme Leader (Ohm) <CEO-----Security Council(Consisting of Nationalized Industries acting as a Board of Directors)----
| |
| |
Cabinet/Executive Board Functions |
[Military aka Ministry of War (Army, Navy, Spacy and foriegn relations)] |
[Police aka Ministry of Security ( Judicial Committee, Propaganda, Senate and General Assembly elections)] |
[Political aka Ministry of Thought (Intelligence Agency and Nationalized Industry regulation)] |
| |
| |
| |
Bureaucracy of the Executive and Nationalized Industries (Upper management mainly made of Nightlords/Ba'al, Altarain Syndicate Mechnoid Overlords, Psi Stalker Khans, Owners of Megacorps.)

[Aramanthus]

Very nice. I like this a lot. I think that it can be of use to those of us who have a need for ideas.