More UW Musings

Some days I really feel the need to cut down on the coffee consumption, especially when it results in little plot bunnies like the following.  To understand where my noggin was going with this, we can take the sane route or the full gonzo fanboy moment route...so of course I'm taking the latter.

I have a growing desire to put Uncharted Worlds to the test which, right at the beginning of the holiday season, qualifies as extremely poor timing.  At the same time, as is usual, I have a zillion irons in the fire which means that nothing gets my full concentration much, and in turn it means that I tend to mash-up and cross-attach things with ridiculous abandon.  So with that as a little explanation for why this particular bit of whimsy hit so indelicately, I was mulling over Factions whilst on my commute and hit upon a couple of stark visual differences for rival factions.  Not so much in the black hats versus white hats sort of way, since my default is at least four or five factions: specifically, I was thinking about establishing clear visual differences between ships.  With the mechanics the same regardless of how things look, I thought it would be fun to have something pretty but impractical around the setting.

And then my noggin got to work on things like the British Raj, and how it was less the result of official policy to go out and found an empire and more an exercise in the Honorable East India Company doing what it did and then telling London that they now owned another chunk of the Asian subcontinent.

Thus, since there are also going to be Career choices that empower this once Far Beyond Humanity is finished, we get these happy chaps!  Share, enjoy, file off the serial numbers, file and spindle and fold and mutilate as you like.

(With apologies to JK Rowling for the violence I am about to do to her handiwork!)

THE COMPACT OF EMRYS

A Faction for Uncharted Worlds

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Potterverse-like wizards in Victorian Science Fiction starships.  (Or, if you prefer, Space 1889 British with Magic-using nobles and officers.)

Brief Overview

Xenophobic, insular, generally conceited masters of all that they survey, and legends in their own minds.  The Compact is best known for seemingly impossible and primitive starships that defy normal understanding of physics.  They simply should not work, they certainly should not be practical, and yet they do and they are.  The default answer to questions like "how is that even possible?" boils down to "it's magic".

Said vessels are marvels of design that look like nothing so much as the results of Jules Verne holding a weekend symposium with the people at Industrial Light and Magic for a reskinning of Star Wars in a proper steam-punk motif.  For all that, they are no more difficult to operate and maintain than any other starfaring vessel once someone spends a little time to get used to the quirks and peculiarities of the workings.

The Compact is officially insular, wanting as little to do with outsiders as possible.  Unofficially, the rich and powerful among its citizens have a regrettable habit of doing as they damn well please. On occasion, this has forced the Compact to intervene outside of their own jealously guarded borders, which are often then moved to incorporate the new world later on.  This is how their empire has expanded, slowly but surely, to include a lot of people who are "not at all the right sort" but who are now considered to be citizens subject to the Compact's laws and due protection from all foes.

The Compact is also officially deeply disturbed by the presence of things like Psionics, "magic" that isn't their version of the arcane, Artificial Intelligence, nonhuman intelligence, and any evidence that they are not the best, brightest, and most advanced civilization possible.  They spend a lot of time looking and sounding vaguely displeased.

If not for the pressure of the Spugs* it is rather unlikely that the Compact would have anything whatsoever to do with anyone outside their current borders.  As it is, necessity makes for strange bedmates.

Dirty Laundry

For all their emphasis on the glories of tradition, the Compact has no history.  Or, more correctly, what they tell themselves is almost entirely made up.  While they venerate the person called Emrys, who is traditionally described as an elderly man with fantastic control of arcane powers and wisdom without equal, there is no actual evidence that such a person ever existed.  Also, they venerate people they call Four Founders, but the main evidence that such figures exist is that they are said to have done so.  Finally, for all that they bristle protectively about their prized ships, they didn't build them so much as find them--and don't understand how they work any more than anyone else.

Why Work For These Guys?

The Compact, or rather, wealthy citizens of the Compact, make decent enough patrons if you can stand the sneering and clumsy lack of cultural sensitivity.  Because they don't usually have a firm grasp of economics, it can be quite lucrative for relatively little effort if you're lucky enough to land a patron with more money than sense.

The Compact As Origin

 Not everyone who comes from the Compact is a Honorable Sir Snooty Silverspoon the Umpteenth.  It's as valid a part of the Galaxy to have come from as any other.

Next up, the Tron: Legacy inspired faction, if I can think of a name!  And possibly the Not-Jurians-from-Tenchi-Muyo with their tree-based Artificial Intelligence and wooden starships.

*Space Bugs.  You can thank Ed for introducing me to the term!  In UW, they'd be a sector-level Threat rather than any sort of faction since they have less than no interest in negotiation and diplomacy.