User:GreytideSkye/Sandbox/Lore:Syndicate
Syndicate |
Other Names: Syndicate of Common Interest |
The Syndicate is the most common group of evil you'll encounter in the Nova Sector. Wherever there is greed, profit, or idealism to be gained from lashing out against the system, the Syndicate will be there. Comprised of numerous groups with varying goals, they cooperate to spread their reign of terror farther than light itself. Much of the Syndicate hates the Sol Federation. Some of the Syndicate hates Nanotrasen directly. Some of the Syndicate hates Nanotrasen for being a member state in SolFed. Regardless of their overarching desires, the Syndicate is actively haunting your station, looking for the slightest hint of weakness or profit to exploit.
by god this is not great writing but hey it's getting organized
On the Origins
Syndicate got together when John Syndicate with Cybersun decided "hey I wanna fund some people to go make me money" and John Tigercorporation was like "hey I do evil for money to throw at Changeling dancers" and they held hands.
What's in a name?
The name "Syndicate" strikes fear into hearts in the universe, and fear is a tool just like any other. Some groups might have their agendas better served through peaceful means, but if you have a hammer with the might of the name "Syndicate" backing it, empowered by a history of atrocities and attrition? Your problems look like nails. Besides, you're not going to hear about the "peaceful" solutions. Not newsworthy, not notable. Just stuff happening.
Usual Suspects
Various groups participate.
Cybersun
The face of modern Mars Independence, Cybersun is a Soverign Corporation, rival to Nanotrasen. Directly competing in a few technological markets, and indirectly competing on a brand level, Cybersun has personal reason to want Nanotrasen dead, and the pocketbook to fund it.
CyberSun is pulling away from "disgraced company who fucked up by raising the alarm about silicon rights being bad too early" and moving more towards the Legitimate Company, the Lex Luthor of the Legion of Doom. Evil, smart, and powerful, but a public figure. Any Syndicate who attacks you and says they're with CyberSun is clearly actually an anticorpo lunatic trying to frame the benevolent face of Mars Independence and fine supplier of... whatever gadgets they sell.
Plasma Runners
It's simple: The Plasma Clique wants to control the flow of Plasma. Folk want to buy more Plasma than they're allotted. Thus, there's profit in smuggling Plasma. And once you've started doing crime, you need to do crime to keep your crime going. The market's content and nobody's buying the surplus of your Plasma? Whoops, their stockpiles caught fire. What a shame that Plasma's so flammable.
The Biker Gang aesthetic came because biker gangs are cool and the uniforms are cheap.
Attacks the station to steal their plasma, or disrupt their cargo supply, or make in-roads with other groups, or because someone paid enough.
Cyberpunk Protagonists
There's cyberpunk dystopian groups in SolFed, e.g. the Librean Federation. Anyone who opposes SolFed en masse must be evil, must be the Syndicate. Thus, the Syndicate has a bunch of Cyberpunk Protagonists.
Tiger Collective
The Cathedral of the True Angels.
The Tiger Cooperative is more of a nickname or secondary name. Tiger is centered and based on the fact that they fanatically worship Changelings, to the point of believing that the ultimate show of devotion is allowing yourself to be consumed by a Changeling, dubbed True Angels. Tiger focuses on finding Changelings and either capturing or inviting them to join the Cathedral so that they may be worshiped alongside other "True Angels." Tiger is likely to partake in many kidnappings of people from all over so that they can sacrifice and feed these victims to Changelings.
Herbellion
On the surface level, the Herbellion is easily the most approachable Syndicate faction. Most known members are simply folk who picked a cause, any cause, and declared themselves part of the Herbellion. <few lines about the various causes> But a random group of almost-contradictory activists does not make a terror organization. The truth at the heart of the Herbellion, the organization, the logistics? The only cause they serve is the Syndicate. Steering a hundred different ideologies and wannabe martyrs into a smokescreen of seemingly random attacks takes effort, but for the Visionaries, the social landscape is their canvas, and disorder their paint.
Pitch
That's a mighty awful tree next to your yard, hogging all the sunlight, those thick roots choking out your plants. Choking out everyone's plants. None'd stop you from taking an axe next door and just swingin', none except the owner and his gun and the police. You could do it, but you'd be going big when you should be going wide.
They tell you to make sure your plants have enough light, but y'wanna know the secret? Gardening's all about the soil. It's about recomposition after y'get the nutrients mixed back in. Easy way's dumping a whole sack o' shit and smearing it around, but then y'got a yard fulla shit and the tree's eatin' most of it anyways. No, y'need that tree to start rottin', break off pieces of root so far down y'can't even see, let the worms churn that back into nitrates for yer own garden, fer the good plants, fer th' good of all plantkind.
Y'gotta start with good soil. Some of this, the rocky clay sorta shit, y'got a stronger hope of SolFed votin' unanimouslike on anythin' than y'do growin' a flower on a boulder. High quality soil, all y'do is sprinkle a single seed and y'got harvests for life. But with that tree and that neighbor, y'ain't gonna keep that high quality soil fer long. So you look. You dig a little. You find where the soil's just ripe enough, where th' tree's roots ain't the strongest, and that's where you pour your heart and soul.
Yer addin' the seeds of rebellion to the mix, you're sprinklin' a little water in -- not a big ol' Cybersun Automated Irrigation Tray, mind you, you'll get noticed -- but a midnight waterin' or two, a sympathetic union tech lettin' a few switchblades fall off a truck, someone lettin' slip when a Blueshield's away from their Captain, hype up an officer's jilted lover a lil', and then you wait. Y'ain't gonna see the fierce battle underground yourself, as yer plant's roots snake out and strangle the tree, and the tree ain't gonna notice, not right away, not one battle. When yer wagin' a quiet war against a tree, you're seedin' and feedin' the whole pasture.
And then there's yer choice of plant. Y'just plop a tree saplin' down, y'ain't gettin' that t' outgrow outta the shadows of giants. Y'start with underbrush and y'work up. Y'gotta know yer soil and yer plants; ain't growin' a cactus in marsh, after all. Y'got the upstarts, the ones that sprout up on their own. The weeds. Everyone knows a dandelion when y'see one, fightin' for itself no matter who's around, no matter the consequences. A dandelion ain't got forethought, it ain't got subtlety, and it's mighty easy t' pluck outta the ground. Yer fight ain't with the dandelion, and a lesser gardner'd just pluck and burn 'em, but y'gotta take the big picture in. Prop 'em up, hold 'em up, and with a single puff, there's a hundred of 'em in yer neighbor's yard. Again, betting on 'em ain't a winning strategy, but if yer enemy's glarin' at bright yellow weeds, spendin' on surface-level herbicide, they ain't clawin' at the heartier underbrush, the fights worth winnin'.
Nah, th' fights worth winnin' are the ones there, just achin' fer y'to water 'em. Th' plants that belong there, th' wildflowers, th' local herbiage. Hell, y'search long enough, y'find the law protectin' some of th' plants, th' endangered folk, th' noble causes and th' underdogs th' public loves t' root for. Th' ones already gettin' choked by th' tree, who y'can come in and save an' prop up 'till they propagate even further. Some y'need t' keep an eye on, groom an' curate an' prune t' th' best them they can be, but y'casionally find a few jus' needin' a tiny kindle, a single drop o' water t' turn th' tides.
Oh sure, once'n a blue moon y'fin' an exposed root thick 'nuff t' call yer cousin over with 'is glowin' axe and 'is C90s, an' y'let 'im fight with th' neighbor, but t'ain't you, yer just a humble farmer, ain't harm none never, ain't raise yer voice out loud, ain't more aggressive than passive, ain't yer fault when that tree finally done rots an' falls on th' neighbor's Cadillac.
And yet, the tree is dead and the ground is planted according to your design. The future of the pasture is entirely your vision, not because you attacked the tree, but because you planted spite in the right spots and grew malice. There are a lot of trees in the universe, and the Syndicate has a lot of pasture to reclaim. If you were just a plant, this conversation would have ended halfway through the rustic farmer metaphor. You have the talent to be a gardener, a Visionary, and we want you to help build the largest homestead ever seen, continuing with the Nova Sector.
Welcome to the Herbellion.
The Name
The name "Herbellion" comes from careful focus study, of something that sounds united enough that half-hearted folk with a cause will rise up to join, strange enough to be passed off as a rumor or bupkis, and uplifting enough to not immediately inspire disgust, invoking the foot-in-the-door phenomenon to prompt further dialogue with "good" folk.
That, and given the vast quantity of Colonial Seed Vaults in various states of rediscovery and oppression, a good 1/3rd of the Herbellion's earliest cases were supporting freshly grown Podpeople in fighting back against their technologically advanced capitalist oppressors. Even though that era has come and gone, having a good chunk of people (partially) owing you their freedom is something strong enough to build a Brand around. Plus, it's deflective; it sounds like a Podperson-run initiative, but looking there for them gets you nothing but pissed off plantfolk.
This plays into my favorite phrase, "This would reinforce the themes of treating Pod People as incidental and disposable tools, ignoring their sapience."
Summary
So there's your character study for the Herbellion. The arm of the Syndicate who scouts for brewing conflicts and feeds the ones that'll hurt Nanotrasen, that'll hurt SolFed. More directed than "mysterious chaos giving random people guns," but less traceable than a dedicated military strategy. You should go play the game, Heat Signature.
If your Syndicate is in the Herbellion, they've got their ear to the ground, listening for brewing trouble and making sure it happens. You're telling people what they don't want to hear, you're being honest when the truth hurts and lying when it'll cause tragedy. You're likely not on-station doing the actual terrorism, but you're possibly scouting for it.
If your Syndicate is helped by the Herbellion, they've got some radical cause that puts them against the status quo, anything from a single-issue dispute to a confirmed source of oppression they want ousted. As long as championing your cause hurts the Syndicate's enemies, directly or otherwise, you might just find yourself with 20 telecrystals and a Sears catalogue in your PDA. You'll also be told you're "In The Herbellion now," if hearing that makes you feel confident enough to go forth.
If your Syndicate is helped by the Herbellion and proves very useful, you might be asked to come back for a second audition. You might get on some farmer's speed-dial, you might get yourself a desk in a Gorlex CyberSun-leased office building with an apartment and a phone that rings and tells you where your next... babysitting appointment is.
I feel like the Herbellion is taking a bit of the secret espionage cues from MI13, the whole Men In Black idea, the whole "we are behind the conspiracy" haughty vibe. I played a fair bit of The Secret World as it was dying, and I love those vibes too.
Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.
| Nova Sector Lore
| |
| Common Species | Humans, Tiziran, Unathi, Moths, Ethereals, Azulae, Slime Hybrids, Teshari, Synthetic Humanoids (and assorted robots), Pod Persons |
| Other Species | Genemodders (Felinids, Ice Walkers, Dwarf), Ashwalkers, Hemophages, Snailpersons, Ordoht (Formerly Skrell), Plasmamen, Flypeople, Vox (Primalis et al), Tajaran, Vulpkanin, Xenomorphic Hybrid, Rouges (Abductorkin), Miscellaneous Species |
| Nanotrasen | Nanotrasen, Central Command, Emergency Response Corps |
| External Groups | The Syndicate, Interdyne Pharmaceutics, DS-2, Cargo, The Spider Clan |
| Nova | The Nova Sector, Indecipheres, Freyja |
| Concepts | Bluespace, Plasma, Faster Than Light Travel, Resonance ("Souls"), Death |
| SolFed | SolFed, Earth in 2565, The SolFed Armed Forces, |
