Análisis de redes sociales (ARS) y redes de conocimiento

Section 4.4: Crew Allegiances and

Backgrounds Backgrounds

A spacer's Allegiance reflects their current employers, or an organization or political faction they're loyal to.

An Allegiance might be a military organization, a law enforcement agency, an organized crime cartel, or a politi-cal movement.

Backgrounds reflect a crew member's life experiences before they joined the ship, including any formed Alle-giances. Many spacers have groundside careers before they take to space, and sometimes, these careers and life events can help the crew in a crisis.

Allegiances are listed first, then Backgrounds. Members of a ship's crew all have the same Allegiance, but usually have different Backgrounds. They may also have an Allegiance for their Background.

Children of the Firmament Children of the Firmament

Crew Background/Allegiance

“The galaxy is a vast place, and the wisdom of the Predecessors awaits us among the stars. Can you feel it, waiting patiently for us?

No? Just a little more training, and you will …”

Zealous followers of a mystical religion, the Chil-dren of the Firmament delve deep into the mysterious powers of the mind, and use them to quietly slay any who oppose their beliefs. They believe the Predeces-sors evolved to godhood using these powers, and see such a destiny in store for the faithful. The Children are a mixed bag, but not as mixed as the opinions about their way.

Relations:

￭ The Children of the Firmament: The Children see themselves as the only true seekers of en-lightenment in the galaxy, and grieve that no one else seeks to unlock their true potential and follow the path of the Predecessors. Their teach-ings counsel against vanity and self-righteous-ness, but make clear that they are to act against the enemies of their faith whenever necessary.

The Flag of Joy sect on Mars are particularly proactive about assassinating those who oppose the Children's existence, giving the entire orga-nization a sinister reputation despite their gener-ally peaceful and gentle ways.

￭ Free Traders: The Children of the Firmament have the highest respect for Free Traders just as; Free Traders seek their own path through physi-cal space for their own fortunes, the Children chart a path toward enlightenment, against the flow. The Free Traders don't reciprocate this re-spect, but a fair number of dedicated Children used to be Free Traders.

￭ Quaternary, Inc.: The Children know of the internal issues at Quaternary, and see the corpo-ration as yet another massive, soulless monolith, emblematic of everything wrong with Assembly society. It sees a patchwork of species and cul-tures, overseen by incompetents, brought to-gether for nothing more than profit, that solves what problems it can by shooting at them.

￭ StelNav: The Children of the Firmament fre-quently come to disagreement with StelNav of; -ficial Assembly doctrine on Predecessor arti-facts is to quarantine them for scientific study, while the Children want them for spiritual study, and use by all the worthy.

￭ The Titan Marshals: The Marshals and the Children tend to avoid one another the Mar; -shals consider the Children well-meaning but rather creepy cultists, and the Children consider the Marshals just another well-meaning but au-thoritarian power group, to be avoided when possible.

￭ The Triumvirate: The Children aren't above purchasing Predecessor artifacts on the black market, and the Triumvirate knows it. They also

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Joy be unto you, worthy supplicant! We humbly welcome to the Teachings of the Flag of Joy. We pray that you enter this temple prepared for an enriching, ennobling, mind-shattering experience. You enter with a whisp of soul, flimsy and impermanent, but here you will forge your own, strong as steel and supple as thought.

In the time before time, the Divine Mind extended tendrils of awareness to infinitesimal seed-souls, arisen in the cosmos; and you were one of these. Great Blessing! You gained awareness, a sense of greatness and purpose; but it is not truly yours. To return to the Divine Mind, maker of all, you must forge a soul of your own. And to do this, you will study, learn, and live the Teachings of the Elder Brothers.

The Elder Brothers, the Ones Who Came Before, protected us, taught us the little we know, they defended us, they punished us when we strayed, and they showed us mercy when we fal-tered. They are gone now, returned to the Fire-Mist of the First Swirling, but they left behind keys and signs for us to ponder.

The steps along the path home consist of the Seven Powers of the Divine Mind: the knowl-edge of thought, the manipulation of objects, the manipulation of energies, the mastery of the body, the sight outside time, and the channeling of life-force. These are the Six Known Powers, and the Unknown Power, the secret of the greatest Saints and Adepts, is the seventh; of it, it is not lawful to speculate. The Seven Powers correspond to the seven star types, the seven ages of civilization on each world, and the seven stages of biological evolution; the clues are there for all to see, are they not?

Prayer, chanting, ablutions and years of dedicated service will be required of you, to build up the inner strength you will need, and to prove your worth. These will be a vexation in the early days, but in time, they will be a great comfort, and a guide along the way; they are the road, and the signposts along the road, and the tiniest ritual contains the greatest significance. Therefore, you are urged not to alter the prescribed routines in the slightest, for disaster may strike the doubter, and the journey is fraught with spiritual peril.

We are surrounded by unbelievers. Show them mercy, if they do not occlude our path. If they cast a shadow on your way, move them aside. If they threaten the spread of the Teach-ings, remove them, and make them an example. The Elder Brothers did the same in ages past, and we are to emulate their example in all things.

Each world has stories of a great city or country or island, cast down for its hubris and heresy; this was the work of Those Who Came Before. It is sad that to the Seven Powers must be added a final implement, the knife; and to the Flag of Joy must be added the Blade of Sorrow. All may see the Flag, but may few see the Blade; and none may live to speak of it.

know that the Children are well-funded, and take great care never to cheat their psionically powerful clientele.

￭ The Uprising: The Children and the Uprising sometimes find themselves working together, as the Children are often marginalized by the As-sembly, and many of the Uprising's liberal members are sympathetic to the Children's quest for enlightenment. However, the Children have no real political agenda, and the Uprising fre-quently tries to enlist their aid in assassinating their political enemies, an idea that makes the Children deeply uncomfortable.

Meks cannot be Children of the Firmament.

Free Traders Free Traders

Crew Background/Allegiance

“Ancient tribes developed their own tradi-tions, haphazardly, over millennia. Each Free Trader ship is its own tribe, with its own tradi-tions. They bring us meaning, bring us closer than family, and they're more important than the wealth we seek among the stars.”

Free Traders are merchants and explorers that band together, free of corporate interference, to seek their fortunes together. Free Trader ships each consciously and deliberately develop their own unique culture, but all Free Traders have certain things in common. As a group, they all value independence, skill, innovation, equality, and practicality. Free Traders sometimes get involved in questionably-legal activities like smug-gling, but they aren't dedicated criminals they just; prize self-detemination above any local laws.

Some xeno-sociologists say that the Free Traders are a snapshot of the future, when the cultures of each individual world are forgotten, and organic lifeforms

all see past color, gender, scales and fins and body chemistry, to see all life as part of one family. The in-dustrious and pragmatic Free Traders don't have a comment on this there are worlds to trade with, and; work to be done.

Relations:

￭ The Children of the Firmament: The Children are very friendly with the self-directed Free Traders, even those from ships honoring ancient religions, see the Children as ritualistic zealots more interested in praying and burning incense than in hard work.

￭ Quaternary, Inc.: Quaternary are the incompe-tent antibodies of the corporate body of the As-sembly. Fractured, lazy, suspicious, and violent, they make a living blowing up other corpora-tions' irresponsible mistakes. It's a good thing the Free Traders seldom cross paths with Qua-ternary agents.

￭ StelNav: StelNav exists to keep the spaceways safe, but they have established patrol routes that Free Traders often travel long past. StelNav worries that the Free Traders may awaken some danger like the Dark Cloud out among the Edgeworlds, but this has been a baseless fear so far.

￭ The Titan Marshals: The Titan Marshals are extremely suspicious of the Free Traders, be-cause of their occasional ties to smuggling ac-tivities, and their extremely tight-knit mini-soci-eties are hard to infiltrate. Nevertheless, they're law-abiding citizens that deserve protection.

￭ The Triumvirate: The Triumvirate finds it use-ful to contract Free Traders to facilitate smug-gling operations on a regular basis. That said, the Free Traders find nothing to admire in the Triumvirate, aside from their often-professed love of honor and loyalty.

￭ The Uprising: The Free Traders appreciate the Uprising and its dedication to freedom, but see the rebels' cause as doomed. Why bother over-throwing the old order when you can just leave for deep space, and make your own new order in your own ship?

Quaternary, Inc.

Quaternary, Inc.

Crew Background/Allegiance

“New orders from home office. We are to proceed to … and there we … WHAT?! Those id-iots! They are trying to get us all killed!”

Quaternary, Inc. is an interstellar, interspecies cor-poration involved in mining and manufacturing throughout the Assembly. In the corporate world, they're well known for their troubleshooter teams, cor-porate agents that they dispatch to discreetly resolve issues that other corporations find too difficult to han-dle. Maybe AgriVision finds that their genetic engi-neering experiments have created mutated predators, that have escaped and are destroying a planet's ecosys-tem. Maybe Bold Horizons finds that a huge shipment of arms to an Edgeworld government was hijacked by pirates. Whatever the case, Quaternary excels at deal-ing with these issues.

If only it was as good at dealing with its own is-sues. Contrary to its cheerful (and non-stop) advertis-ing, its corporate newsletters, and its public statements, Quaternary is a bureaucratic nightmare for employees.

Although corporate agents receive excellent training and equipment, when they do receive it, their orders are often vague and contradictory, and unscrupulous business-beings find it easy to manipulate their way into easy management positions that reap huge divi-dends. Quaternary agents are paid moderately well, and do their jobs, but dealing with their company and the incredibly dangerous missions they're sent on quickly turns idealism into jadedness.

Relations:

￭ The Children of the Firmament: Quaternary hasn't dealt with the Children very often, but has occasionally sold them Predecessor artifacts at a huge markup. Frankly, the Children scare Quaternary agents, who realize that religious beliefs can't be easily swayed by advertising and financial shenanigans.

￭ Free Traders: Quaternary, like most big corpo-rations, tends to look on Free Traders with sus-picion. They make money like big corporations, they know all the best trade routes, but worst, they solve their own problems, without the need for big, expensive corporate agent teams. They cost the company money by simply existing.

￭ Quaternary, Inc.: Quaternary bills itself as a great place to work, a wonderland of exciting opportunity. In truth, it is one of the first

inter-species corporations in the Assembly, but while younger corporations have grown and adapted, evolving to better fit the customs of myriad worlds and cultures, Quaternary has changed by fits and starts, developing into a schizophrenic nightmare torn apart by conflicting ideas instead of strengthened by them.

￭ StelNav: Quaternary is, ostensibly, a law-abid-ing corporation that simply relies on StelNav to keep space safe for them to conduct their busi-ness and investigations. The sad fact is that Quaternary agents sometimes get in over their heads, or even make matter worse, requiring rescue from Assembly marines. Needless to say, in cases like this, no one gets bonus credits at the end of the month.

￭ The Titan Marshals: The Titan Marshals are a terror to Quaternary. Many of the corporations that call on Quaternary to solve their issues need discrete help because of questionably legal activities this is why they call on Quaternary; instead of the Assembly government. While StelNav is too busy to normally meddle in local law enforcement, the Titan Marshals are fully capable of making life a living hell for Quater-nary's clients.

￭ The Triumvirate: The largest criminal syndi-cate in the Assembly has a complex relationship with Quaternary. The head office knows that many local managers for the corporation are embezzling funds and working with the Tri-umvirate to launder money, but their corporate structure makes it hard to do anything more than dispatch a troubleshooter team to sort it out. And when these teams disappear, well, that's a tax write-off.

￭ The Uprising: Quaternary has nothing to do with the Uprising, officially. Unofficially, a number of local Quaternary managers funnel weapons and gear to the Uprising, when they can. The head office is horrified by the Upris-ing, privately many of the reforms that various; Uprising factions propose would actually make it harder to make a profit. How can anything be more important than making a profit!

￭ Quaternary, Inc.

Skills:

Bureaucracy, Intimidation, and Small Arms +1.

Qualities:

Competitive, Devious, Greedy, or Lazy.

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“You enter this hall as cadets of the graduating class of 228 F.A., but you will leave com-mencement as officers of StelNav, ready to take up the heavy burden of protecting the As-sembly from all threats, without and within.

“There has never been a time when the Assembly needed you more. The threat of the Dark Cloud from central, the ever-present menace of raiders from the Slaver States, and a strange new civilization recently discovered to edgeward, all mean that we must remain watch-ful. Our civilizations, the Terran, Prelloth, Malkaari, Vared'lai, and others, may not always have been allies, but are joined together now in mutual pursuit of peace and freedom for all.

“You will join ships, stations, and ground crew. Soon your day to day duties will seem normal to you, and war will seem far away. But if you remember any words spoken to you on thsi ex-citing day, remember this: You must be ready, at all times, to fight and die for what you believe in. Undreamt-of terrors await in space, and we must remain vigilant against lawlessness in our own space, as well.

“Join me in the StelNav Oath of Office.

'We are the Interstellar Navy of the Assembly of Peaceful Sapients, of which I am now a part.

'I hereby swear to uphold the Articles of Assembly, to my last respiration.

'I swear to defend the laws enacted by the Assembly councils, and to defend the worlds, peoples, colonies, sapients, and creatures of the Assembly.

'Ever watchful, ever dutiful, I swear I shall be ready to take up arms when com-manded, and to lay down arms when commanded.

'I will be the shield of the weak and the watchman of the proud, the defender of the just and the impartial captor of the unjust.

'Nothing can cause me to deviate; my oath shall stand eternal.

'All that I hold sacred, and all whom I revere, stand witness that I remain obedient to this oath, until my death or the end of this galaxy.'

“This class made me prouder than I have ever been, but you aren't students any longer.

You're officers; and I am proud to serve with you now. Dismissed!”

StelNav StelNav

Crew Background/Allegiance

“Duty. Honor. Service. Loyalty. Discovery.

Justice. StelNav stands for all these things.

StelNav doesn't take every applicant, not just because there aren't many that qualify, but be-cause we are meant to be exemplars, to show the Assembly at its very best.”

The interSTELlar NAVy is the Assembly's inter-stellar exploration and military force, dedicated, in the-ory, to justice, diplomacy, freedom, and peace. All StelNav officers and crew receive rudimentary weapons training, and learn how to man a ship's sensor pods and gun turrets. StelNav are truly the hands and eyes of the Assembly, and they carry their responsibili-ties with pride.

Relations:

￭ The Children of the Firmament: The Children of the Firmament are worrisome. Their right to practice their religion is guaranteed by Assem-bly law, but accurate intel about their practices is rare, and the rumors are disturbing. Many of the Children have been caught in possession of ancient, massively powerful artifacts of high technology taken from archeological sites.

Many critics of the Children, particularly the Martian branch called the Flag of Joy, have turned up dead or worse. And besides all that, the Children evince psionic powers that even StelNav's Psi Ops branch finds impressive. The Children are a potential threat, but one that must be protected until proof is brought to light.

￭ Free Traders: Free Traders are an unconven-tional faction that presents certain problems for StelNav. It's hard for them to protect citizens that regularly blaze new trails into deep space, and seldom ask for help or file reports. Worse, the Free Traders don't trust authorities like Stel-Nav, and Free Traders' smuggling activities brings them a lot of suspicion, as does their in-sular society.

￭ Quaternary, Inc.: To StelNav, Quaternary Inc.

is just another equipment supplier, and a corpo-rate interest that needs to be protected and de-fended. With their internal troubleshooter teams, they're good at taking care of their own issues, but sometimes they need a little help.

StelNav Intelligence reports severe internal

governance issues at Quaternary, that hints at graft and corruption inside the organization. If true, StelNav might have to take a more

governance issues at Quaternary, that hints at graft and corruption inside the organization. If true, StelNav might have to take a more

In document UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID (página 142-158)