I asked my backers to give me a month to write what I would like, and they kindly obliged by giving me the space I need to do what has weighed on my mind for awhile. In fact, since I’ve been working on the Trader Band, I’ve thought about Kronos a lot, and rather enjoyed fleshing out this part of the Psi-Wars galaxy (and this approach to fleshing it out, so I might do it more often for other parts of the galaxy). I have noticed some holes in the faction structure of Kronos, not that every niche needs to be filled, but there were a few I really wanted to touch on, three to be precise. I haven’t finished the third yet, and I might shift it to be a broader faction, and it might not be finished by the new year but the other two are done, and today, I present the least interesting of the three. Tomorrow, I’ll present the most interesting (to me) of the three.
A Gap In Tolerance
This first faction arose from a discussion with Autumn Rain about the Shinjurai of Kronos. I was discussing how the Shinjurai of Kronos are more tolerant than the Imperials, and thus better at administrating the highly heterogeneous environment. To me, Kronos reminds me a lot of Hong Kong: a highly successful port full of crime, innovation and a melting pot of multiple different groups rubbing shoulders while an older administration tries to keep the piece and a newer administration comes in and imposes its will. Naturally, the older administration had a better handle on keeping a lid on the tensions, and the newer administration stokes tension. I think if you look at the history of Kronos and the role the Shinjurai played in it, that makes sense.
Except Autumn Rain pointed out that when Ren Valorian conquered the world, the lore states there was a riot in which many members of alien minorities were killed and their businesses ruined. Ah. Hm. Good point!
I can go back and change that, of course, but I don’t think I should. I think it’s possible for both to be true. You can have a highly tolerant society that has adapted to living with multiple cultures and the tension that comes with it, but also have large parts of that society that does not tolerate others. In fact, if you look at some of the major factions of Kronos (the Bloodsiders, the Asrathi mafia) ethnic tension is written in. It’s a challenge, and not everyone handles it as well as others. Shouldn’t that apply to the Shinjurai too?
I had a long post diving into the sociology of how a larger group can be both highly tolerant yet have large factions that are not at the same time, but I don’t think I’ll waste time with that. Suffice it to say that I think it’s plausible for both to be true.
The problem, though, is we don’t really talk about this faction of Shinjurai and/or Kronos natives that aren’t as high minded when it comes to inter-ethnic harmony. Who were the people who rose up against the aliens of Kronos? What do they do now? How do they feel about the Empire? I would expect the Empire would at least tacitly encourage this sort of thing, because of Ranathim, Asrathi and Shinjurai are fighting one another, they are not fighting the Empire. It would also give me one more criminal faction, and the seedy underbelly of Kronos can’t have too many criminal organizations.
Silver Faction
And so, I came up with Silver Faction. The initial inspiration was the Freikorps of (post WW1) Germany and their equivalent Silver Shirts of the US: a group of people who align with the dictatorial government, but where that government acts with the legitimacy of the state, these “Brown shirts” act as a vigilante arm. They serve an important role in dictatorship: an authoritarian government exerts top down control, but struggles to convince people that a person’s neighbors all agree with the dictator, which is a vital part of control. Having uninformed people who exuberantly and violently act out the wishes of the government implies that the government aligns with the will of the people, and also intimidates dissenters into silence, fearing that their neighbors agree with the violence of these pro-government gangs.
If you dig around in such groups, you can find they infiltrate prisons where the act as informers for the government, and fertile recruitment grounds for the military and security forces of the regime. The Empire already forcibly recruits prisoners into their services, why not also have a mercenary company that recruits the most fanatically loyal and “misguided” members of the prison populace and pitches them into the most dangerous battles as a sort of cannon fodder? That seems historically plausible.
The downside of such a group is that even if they’re ostensibly doing what the government wants, they’re an uncontrolled group of criminal, vigilante extremists. Sure, it’s arguably useful to the dictator to have “self-policing communities” this way, but a group that violently destroys businesses, even the businesses of the disenfranchised, harms the economy. Sometimes, the government needs to handle political dissent carefully, lest they trigger a mass uprising, and having a frustrated vigilante group step in and force the issue by murdering the guy in his home may trigger the very problems the regime hoped to avoid. GURPS Mass Combat accurately notes that Fanaticism is a double edged sword, producing amazing results, but locking in the administration of those units into the most straightforward courses of action.
Worse, it is also inevitable that the faction produces “losers.” When the Nazi party rose to power, the Freikorp became the SS and SA, that is, they were recruited and folded into the government, but the vigilante actions didn’t stop! If someone is fanatically devoted to your ideals, and they are effective, talented, fit and useful, you recruit them. The only reason someone would serve in Silver Faction rather then the military or the Imperial ministry is that they’re unsuitable. So you get a weird dichotomy of these being the most devoted followers of the Emperor, but also some of the worst.
I worry the faction will feel like a bad copy of the Empire. They would naturally fetishize imperial equipment and tactics, but also necessarily perform them worse. Fighting them would be like fighting the Empire, only far easier, and with them doing even worse things. If the Empire defeats you, they’ll arrest you and interrogate you and toss you in a prison. If Silver Faction defeats you, they’ll kill your family and burn your house down. Is there anything Silver Faction offers that the Empire already doesn’t?
Well, I think so, at least enough to justify a relatively quick faction page. It says something useful about the setting, in that not all the people ruled by the Empire disagree with it; some strenuously agree with it, and I think this is a truth about dictatorship that not enough fiction tackles: yes, it is the nature of dictatorship to deceive its populace into thinking more people agree with it than really do, but that doesn’t mean nobody agrees with it! Also, having an inferior copy can be useful for certain games, especially low power. Psi-Wars has “degrees of threat” based on its BAD, and BAD 0 to 2 is good for starting characters or sidekick campaigns. Finally, having “the Empire, only slightly different” is useful, in the same way that having multiple different Maradonian Houses is useful. After all, PCs in the core will often fight “the Empire” and having slightly different flavors of it keeps the game from growing stale. In this case, it’s much more integrated into the criminal world, and a Asrathi Mafioso can kill Silver Faction members with relatively impunity in a way that they can’t kill Imperial Security.
But I wanted at least one twist, and I dove into religion to find it. I figure Silver Faction has either accidentally configured itself into an Imperial Cult, or has been manipulated into it by members of the Imperial inner circle who understand how Communion works, even if these guys don’t. This gives us some interesting Communion Oaths and hints at how we might tie them into bigger campaigns, as spies and Imperial Knights find ways to manipulate these chumps into rampaging with their strange power at a specific enemy as a distraction for their real agenda.
“Can I Play A Racist Asshole?”
I felt awkward writing the character considerations. These guys are clearly bad news. Even if you want to depict Ren Valorian as an ultimately good man who is using ruthlessly practical means to save the Galaxy from itself, I find it hard to justify these guys. They undermine whatever good he’s doing with their fanaticism. And, of course, if you want to depict the Empire as bad, there’s nothing redeemable about these guys. So I wanted to talk about why I went into detail on the character considerations.
First, I have no idea what you guys are doing. Just because I see a faction as irredeemable doesn’t mean they are. As a rule, I don’t tell you what you are or are not allowed to play, unless templates become too unwieldy (hence “no PC dragons” which is more about “I don’t know how to support that” than “I find that morally repugnant.”) People see things I don’t, and may notice some elements, an approach, that I’m missing. People often come up with interesting ideas I don’t think of. Perhaps you may want to play a former member of one of these factions who still bears some of the Oaths, and is struggling to expand his or her worldview now that they’re out of the cult-like environment. Finally, a lot of people slice my ideas up and extract the marrow and use it for other things. Perhaps they’ll see the oaths and concepts and translate it to something else more PC friendly.
Second, I regularly make deep character details for groups and factions that I see as unplayable. Slavers get a ton of details, even though I doubt anyone actually wants to play them (naturally, some people do, because of course, but in that case, see point one). Even if a faction is intended as an NPC faction, GMs often build NPCs as PCs first, and so those “PC options” are really NPC options, explaining how an elite Silver Faction fighter might work.
This is the real reason I wanted this section, not to assuage guilt at writing an abhorrent faction (I, after all, write a lot of abhorrent factions. We need bad guys!), it’s to point out the design behind their oaths and to make some suggestions. While they have a point cost, I designed them to make for interesting encounters: it gives you henchmen that will refuse to die, minions whose minds rebel when you try to read them, fighters who tend to cause your non-imperial weapons to malfunction, or a thug who pauses and sniffs the air and then instantly recognizes your alien presence. I primarily gave them these powers to make them interesting, unusual encounters.
I want to finish with a suggestion: even if you want to run an Empire-focused game, where the Empire is more “morally grey” than absolutely bad, I suggest keeping these guys as bad guys. After all, “morally grey” suggests shades of good vs evil. Yes, there are imperial soldiers heroically sacrificing themselves to save people from the genocidal wrath of the Cybernetic Union, or fleet admirals who are seizing hellish slave worlds in the Umbral Rim and liberating the aliens there while doing everything they can to preserve the Lithian past. But on the other end of the spectrum, you have selfish, entitled, small-minded people who resent the success of everyone who doesn’t look like them, who see you and your insignia and your years of service, and then grin and jab a thumb at their overweight belly and say “We’re the same.” No matter how worthy your cause is, there’s always someone who takes it way too far, and these are those guys for the Empire
Mailanka's Musing 