Category: Uncharted Worlds

Faction Perspective: Core

Dai’Rho

Today’s Faction is the Dai’Rho. It was interesting trying to find their voice when writing this. The Heirs are dismissive and disgusted, the Ministry is frustrated, but the Dai’Rho are… disappointed? 

Interfaction Politics – Dai’Rho Perspective:

The Ministry: All that data, all that surveillance. They see, yet they don’t understand. It is important to draw wisdom from different places. If you take it from only one place it become rigid and stale.

Brekengraf: The body is a shell. No matter how beautiful, how large, how perfect you make the shell, what is within will still be rotten. Life simply happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not.

Iron Assembly: You struggled. You suffered. And now you lash out. But history will see it as just more senseless violence. A brother killing a brother to grab power. There is a better way, but your pain has hardened your heart.

Heirs of Taaj: You covet the prestige of your lineage, but you have forgotten your duty and responsibility to the people. Protection and power are overrated. The wise choose happiness and love.

GalSec: Wherever you hunt crime, you will invariably find crime, whether or not it was there before.If you look for the dark, that is all you will ever see. Focus less on punishing guilt, and more on protecting innocence.

Faction Perspective: Core

Heirs of Taaj

Continuing today with the Heirs of Taaj. Though I try to paint in primary colors, I have to be vigilant to not make the Heirs out to be flat-out bad guys. My own politics tend to color my writing quite a bit, and these guys (and GalSec) will likely get the short end of the stick. Still, I’m trying my best to give them important and meaningful redeeming qualities, hence the focus on art and culture.

Interfaction Politics – The Heirs of Taaj Perspective:

The Ministry: They impose and impinge on the freedoms of the creators, the artists, the entrepreneurs. They want a bright and vibrant society to function like dull, monotonous clockwork. Instead of inspiring greatness, they have created stagnation.

Brekengraf: Their idea of improvement and perfection is nothing short of revolting. Their life extension technologies and body-scultping are too useful to pass up, but those treatments are funding something hideous behind closed doors.  

Iron Assembly: Rabble. Dangerous, violent, uneducated rabble. Their usefulness as a workforce is debatable at best. Let them whine and complain and demand like the leeches they are, they will get exactly what they are worth and not a credit more. 

Dai’Rho: These silly, drug-addled preachers should be below contempt, yet they hold far too much of the populace under their sway. The most galling aspect of their fool religion is the ludicrous caste-abolitionism. They risk dragging us all down into mediocrity

GalSec: They throw their weight around, acting like the biggest predator in the wilderness. Their idiot laws are exceptionally frustrating, and their methods are pointlessly aggressive. Fortunately, GalSec officers are either very rigid and predictable, or easily bribable. 

Faction Perspective: Core

The Ministry

Started a new sub-group to hold my (hopefully regular) Carta Galaxia previews. I feel it’ll give me more incentive to write, as I’ve been suffering from major anxiety-induced writers block lately.

To start us off, every evening I’ll be posting a “Faction Perspective”. Basically, it’s what one Faction thinks of each of the other Factions in that sector of space. Since I’m currently working on the Core, those will be the first I’ll cover.

Without further ado:

Interfaction Politics – The Ministry’s Perspective:

GalSec: If only they were not so keen to resort to brutish displays of force. They lack discipline, tact and respect. Their violent methods and narrow-minded fixation on “justice” end up causing as much chaos as they prevent.

Heirs of Taaj: A vestigial remnant of a bygone age. They are proud, power-hungry, and only interested in themselves. They should be content with their role as figureheads, and leave the governance to us.

Brekengraf: Their fetishistic pursuit of “human perfection” has caused one too many catastrophes. If they persist in disobeying Ministry public safety protocol, then their unauthorized experiments will be terminated one by one.

Iron Assembly: A dangerous syndicate which must be monitored very closely. They provide too strong a voice for the lower castes, and are the indirect cause of much civil unrest and seditious activity.

Dai’Rho: They have forgotten their purpose: to shape the citizenry into a unified, obedient, productive force. Instead they’ve begun preaching dangerous ideas, like the abolition of the castes.

I spent the weekend putting together the faction symbols of The Core. Graphic design is in no way my strong suit, but I’m relatively happy with the way the individual faction symbols turned out.

Those who read the previously uploaded Core campaign preview will notice that the Sundered are gone, replaced with the Iron Assembly, and that a number of spheres of influence have changed. This was brought about by an analysis of the faction roles in the Core.

(Shout out to Patrick Murray for his analysis of the problems the Sundered posed, and for helping me work out the seeds of this new distribution)

The Faction Distribution chart (below) maps out each faction’s sphere of influence, and the overarching aspect they share with like-minded factions. That’s not to say that neighboring factions don’t have conflict: In fact, there’s probably more room for conflict in the differences of approach and philosophy. Similarly, “opposed” factions can also share common themes or ideals (the Dai’Rho and Heirs of Taaj both appreciate art and music, for example, GalSec and Iron Assembly both resort to force when diplomacy fails, etc.)

I’ll have a more in-depth post about each symbol (plus a smattering of rejected icons) later in the week.