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Drawing Maps - Season 6 Faction Creation Pt. 3 - Corruption
🕑 Added 2019-09-30 05:07:11 +0000 UTCHello again and welcome to the third in this season of Drawing Maps updates. Today, we'll be looking at Stel Orion and Beam Saber's "corruption" score, which is in some ways a minor element of faction creation, but in others helps set the tone not only for the faction in question but the game on whole. We also get off in the woods explaining why Stel Orion is represented by the SPACE aspect, and what that means for everything from its mech desgins to its economic tensions its surprising culture of accessibility.
Enjoy my rough (and as always, provisional) notes below!
- Stel Orion
- Type: Corporatocracy
- A loose league of republics comprised of dynastic merchant families, entrenched professional guilds, burgeoning labor unions, and increasingly faceless corporations. Has remained carefully neutral, not only because it presents an opportunity for them as a whole, but because there is real internal division about who to back in this scenario. While every Stel has presence on Partizan the planet, Orion has de-facto control of space in the system. (Only Apostolosian vessels move with the speed needed to skip past their blockade).
- Goal: Golden Streets: Make money as fence-sitting war profiteer.
- Corruption: 4
- Aesthetics, NPCs etc
- SPACE: Business, agricultural, and technical school. Extractive, refining, and mass production industries. Property brokerage and land management. Mercantilism with guild economies. Supplies nearly every stel with raw materials and finished goods, including tools, arms, simple automatons, and fuel. ‘Neutral’ defenders of the marketplace, exploiters of nature, and extollers of the blessed Contract.
- Architecture and design: Retrofuturism meets brutalism. The space-taking curves and explosive straight lines of streamline moderne, but with all the joints and screws and rivets showing. Vehicles decorated with the bright colors and logos of Googie-esque highway attractions, but spouting a miasma of industrial smoke and fog and often locked to infrastructural reach (tracks, refueling stations, electric power lines, etc.)
- Mechs: Design as above (blend the designs of Rozalski’s 1920+ with VOTOMS). The most widely used machines in space, used not only by Orion but every Stel and even the rare independent system. Many have locked hardpoints instead of humanoid hands. Emphasis on SCALE and NUMBER. Think about those Rozalski paintings of pastoral scenes with MASSIVE mechs in the background and smaller ones close up. Also: Always operationally constrained by infrastructure: Highways, railways, fueling stations, charging plugs, secure starlanes, etc.
- Additional cultural & aesthetic details
- Many non-human citizens (Behind Apostolos & Columnar, ahead of Kesh and Nideo).
- Broad use of cybernetics and medical technologies, esp. among working class, partially as prosthesis for injury, partially as prerequisite for certain types of labor. Over thousands of years, has led to to wide range (and maybe surprisingly, in-stel acceptance) of body types and and a culture of accessibility and accommodation (common knowledge of sign language, de-stigmatization of daily medical regimens, accessible architectural design)
- NPCs - TBD
- Leader: Largest family has de facto control of a merchant council, but anyone can do whatever
- Kueen Overture (KO) Rooke - Former mechanic and ace pilot, now a Hollow dispatcher. Big into divination. - Facecast: Big Freedia
- Routine Renarri: Leader of Routine Operations
- Agon Ortlights: Leader of the Company of the Spade
- Squads
- The Divine Dominion - Tier V - “It’s just a big wall, right?” “No. It’s every big wall.”
- The Divine, Arbitrage - Tier IV - It is said that divinity was too long delayed this anteperennial machine, a god of trade. But the truth is, if it wanted to be divine in the twilight era, it simply would’ve negotiated that deal.
- Company of the Spade - Tier III - Hollow mercenary unit founded by and recruiting from space miners.
- House Bittenbach - Tier III - The very first Orion House. Eschews the industrial aspirations of rival families in favor of an obsession with boundary-breaking research into the galaxy's many mysteries.
- Adamant Arms and Artifice - Tier III - Of course the largest supplier of arms in the galaxy has a branch on Partizan.
- House Callister - Tier II - The newest house of Orion, whose status was earned through “heroism in battle,” which is to say state-sanctioned piracy.
- The Scriveners Guild - Tier II - An organization of (armed) clerks who keep track of (and police) all commercial shipments.
- Carrion Collections - Tier I - Scavengers who pilot hollows. Called shameless, even (especially) by those who employ them.
- Routine Operations - Tier I - An infantry-focused merc squad with a chip on their shoulder, led by one Routine Rennari, defected Kesh nobility.
- Regions
- The Low Slate: At its most welcoming, lowland plains, warm riverlands. At its most hostile, these are lunar lowlands, as the cratered and barren southern pole of the moon, the one place untouched by the prophet’s gift.
- Type: Corporatocracy
A transcription is available for this episode here.
A full list of completed transcriptions is available here. Our transcriptions are provided by a fan-organized paid transcription project. If you'd like to join, you can get more information at https://twitter.com/transcript_fatt. Thank you to all of our transcribers!!
Comments
Remi Garreau
Love the podcast format, dying to see Apostolos, and quietly wondering if you might slap together a small setting bible so people could do home games in the unending war of the Divine Principality!
Tegan
Stel Orion is basically the perfect setting for every found family labor crew I put into all of my own games. I can't wait to meet some NPCs!
Gary Roby
I love these Drawing Maps updates! It's been really convenient to listen to while I'm working, as catching the YouTube streams has been a lot more hit'n'miss for me. More please! <3
Jordan Dickinson
The audio version of drawing maps is perfect for me as someone who has exponentially more time to listen to podcasts than watch long YouTube videos, really glad you’re testing this format out.
Cornix
this is a great format for Drawing Maps, it’s much easier to just listen and use the notes as reference when needed. and I can totally see how this will be helpful to go back to during the season if I get confused or overwhelmed by info :)
Bea
hey, just wanted to say i Love the podcast format for Drawing Maps, it's a lot more accessible for me, and i love hearing all the thought you put into worldbuilding!!
