A couple of questions to the CB staff about fluff direction and the Infinity fandom

I know and it would be great if someone would write a lot of fiction to compose such book on Infinity lore))

But ripping one quote and unleashing inner Jericho pipes because of it is not a good thing. I think I`ll wait actual book to read and express my point than. It`s somewhere in delivery void along with JSA pack))

 

Might be worth pointing out that the absolute worst quotes everyone loves crawling over are associated to a single division within the ISS.

I guess it leads to the next question of why these assholes haven't been reigned it, but I have a hunch it has something to do with being backed into a corner and fighting literal terrorists supported by the rest of the sphere + aliens.

 

After uprising IIRC, uprising is concluded.

Efficiency? moral boost? seen/ made heroes from Yu Jig media? too unstable region to use a less brutal division? many reasons why they would not be touched really.

 

I just read a bit on and it seems that Sun Tzu is the one who retains the moral character of Yu Jing. He opposed the bombardments, the mass killings of civilians, etc. Finally, after an (unrealistically) brief conflict Yu Jing has to give in because of public pressure. The atrocities committed come to be the cause of YJ's defeat.

Even though the forces involved seem to be absolutely brutal and inhumane, I think that CB is clear on its own perspective. Such atrocities are not condoned or played down in the texts. My interpretation is that human rights are an important value to the writer of this background.

I think I have to change the way I used to look at the Infinity background and accept that it is a lot darker. I can live with that. I like it realistic. I guess somehow the Yu Jing players can still carve out a narrative that their forces are heroic, even though the actions of the Yu Jing government are indefensible. I am certainly not a fan of the present Chinese government, I don't see anything positive in feudal Japanese codes of conduct. The JSA appear like WW2 Japan. Pretty horrible.

I think I will just get used to playing Infinity from now on treating Yu Jing and JSA as villains. I have to fight them anyway. It does not mean that i have a problem with real Chinese or Japanese people.

 

For once we agree on something.

 

I'm glad you have come to this conclusion.

Thit is a fair assessment, as far as I'm concerned. In the same vain, other people might enjoy playing the villain in a tabletop wargame / roleplaying game without condoning warcrimes in the real world.

 

Nothing is honestly out of character for Yu Jing in this. ISS have always been the militant police force of an authoritarian regime. Having been playing since Human Sphere N2 release, nothing surprised me by Yu Jing's actions. What I found most interesting was that the civilian population called for a cease and desist. I was glad to get some view point into the fact that the general population is not always yu jing, and yu jing is not always the general population. What did surprise me was O-12's lack of action. Granted it has some parallels with todays world, but O-12 was supposed to be stronger.

 

No, it's in Treason, which takes place just after Uprising. And has the wonderful line:

Are you seriously telling me that the air quotes around "pacify them" don't mean "kill them all"?

Seriously?

You're comparing someone who is complaining that the faction he's played for over a decade is suddenly grossly incompetent and genocidal to a fucking social justice warrior?

I'm trying really hard not to use Sailor Weapons-Grade Vocabulary on you because it would get me banned outright.

Please do not make that comparison again.

 

"Suddenly"? The background for the ISS and the treatment of the Japanese has been consistently bleak and harsh, and the actions of the Yuandun Division are at most only a step, perhaps two, beyond their prior actions. Removing citizenship, levying harsher taxes and additional duties, literally using JSA troops to flush out snipers and mines, treating any and all expressions of Japanese culture as reason for detention and lifelong suspicion, disappearing thousands into secret prisons, waging campaigns of extermination against dissident and criminal groups, leaving some organizations alive in order to maintain a culture and environment of fear? ALL of that is and has been part of the YJ and ISS background for years, with their actions now being entirely in line with it.

 

Oh man, I haven`t addressed any of this to you personally and I don`t want to make you angry. Situation evolved a bit. Now there are complains about someone headcanon on new book that doesn`t match same person headcanon on whole faction.

On incompetence and bad faction portrayal I may agree or disagree with you later. So far without book I have no opinion. Will have after read of course.

On fluff presented in Treason I see carbon copy of WWII Soviet propaganda. There was popular motto at time:"Kill German". Plain and simple, without any insight or sorting. My call on this is not "evil military maniacs" but some brainwashed guys.

 

Ok lets agree its a misunderstanding and move on from that please?

 

Yes, some YJ commanders have treated their JSA troops like shit. There's a word for that in the US military: Incompetent Officer. In Vietnam, officers like that had a frag grenade rolled into their tent (the source of the word "fragging").

The problem is that the actions of the Yuandun division are the step from "overly aggressive" to "war crimes".

And I meant that suddenly, the best external intelligence agency in the Sphere can't see what must have been multiple years worth of meetings between ONE MAN and entities that the Yanjing normally keeps an eye on, just to make sure they aren't going to attack (militarily or economically).

I mean that suddenly, the best counter-insurgency agency in the Sphere is doing everything in their power to make the insurgency succeed.

I'm going to tell you a pretty horrible secret: most US troops consider the Iraqis and Afghans barely human, and definitely barely civilized. We still didn't go out and kill entire villages because someone took a shot at an American soldier. And in Afghanistan, it generally worked (at least until the Pakistani intelligence agencies stirred things up again). A 'major Taliban attack' was one dude with an RPG. One man. Not a whole company of Talibani, just a single man. And in Afghanistan, it's equally possible that was just someone screaming "get off my lawn" in Pashtu, punctuated by the RPG.

 

I also think 'pacify them' could be an issue of translation in which they aren't intending 'kill literally everything'.

We don't know, because it is translated, and from another culture entirely.

That's part of the issue - the fluff is coming from spain, translated a bajillion times, and might get a little muddled. That's why I'm willing to say 'open to interpretation' on stuff like that. And to be fair, Germany, while in total control of france, still didn't manage to make any headway in stopping the french resistance, and in warzones, almost every army that isn't from a modern western nation, will absolutely kill their way through, taking out anything and everything that looks threatening, because unfortunately if the enemy is willing to hand their kid a grenade, that kid is now a threat to you and your buddies, and if you don't have a moral code which forbids shooting a kid because he might have a grenade...

Point being, I think the implication here is that the yuandun are a division of bastards sent in to try and pacify the area by blunt force - which has worked before, and has also failed spectacularly before. At least they aren't raping and pillaging their way through, and there is mention of military tribunals against some of the ISS officers, so they are showing more restraint than an overwhelming majority of armies in history.

 

I've been saying this for years. It's embarrassing that the lipstick on PanO and ALEPH works on some people. It's dystopian.

 

It has been retconned that most of those were JSA officers with the motto of "victory at all costs" and little care for non-"samurai" lives (Haramaki)

It was written in spanish or galician. And the meaning is the same.

I was sold on a gray verse, believable and realatable. Not a cheap knock-off of WH40k, where the atrocities are so over the frigging top they escape altogether human comprenhension, curve back, and get out again, producing stupid memes and cartoonish characters like Inquisitors whose first and favourite option is Exterminatus their breakfast to eat the eggs.

So I either take Infinity seriously, or not. If I don't, bye bye: I'm here because of the fluff, because the rulebook is so badly written, so lazily copied from N2 and then modified, it is a mess that seems taken from Spain's law.
In which, if you are curious, things do not work. You can search google for that, if you want. Urdangarin, La Manada ("the pack"), and other jewels are fine examples. Or like if someone enters in your house and gets injured, you are responsible and judged.

 

The atrocities are not over the top, nor do they escape human comprehension.

The fluff has no body count, no indication that there was more than, at most, a nanking incident (which is obviously a war crime and bad), we haven't begun to talk about atrocities in the human scale. In the last century, humanity has done things that make this look like sunshine and daisies, and the fact that the book mentions ISS agents being brought before courts and punished implies that it isn't an industrial scale slaughter.

People need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and say 'ISS are bastards, and Yuandun are mega-bastards' and realize that it doesn't mean the entire YJ populace are mega-bastards, you can play the faction without being mega-bastards, and the fluff doesn't, at any point, actually touch on genocide or the real depths of human depravity.

If you want to know what true atrocity is, I suggest you read up on the Rwandan genocide, the fun times of Pol Pot, the antics of Stalin, or the lovely starvation fun times in China and the USSR whenever they messed up their policies and decided 'eh let Ukraine/peasants starve'. Or go back before the industrial revolution and look at basically any war ever, where the end result was slaughter and rape galore.

Infinity is positively sterile in comparison, and the hyperbole is making it hard to talk reasonably about the fluff. Yes, ISS is bad, no, I don't like it, but making huge sweeping generalizations based on a pair of quotes from an officer giving a fire and guts pep talk is not really good form.

Patton said he'd use german guts to grease the treads of his tank, Rommel said if you don't have orders, find someone and kill them. Both of them knew their soldiers were smart enough to understand the context, that they still had to follow some basic rules of war.

Maybe ISS did, maybe the didn't, but without a complete lore expose, we won't and can't know. So I'd rather look at the clues that hint that this is an isolated war crime like a nanking incident, rather than assume this is the start of the 40k exterminatus push.

 

No offense but what the heck are you talking about? Spanish people can't write rules or that Infinity is... based on Spanish law? What?

 

But I'm being told that Yu Jing was always authoritarian and nazi and evil like that!

And I'm being told that the fluff has this wonderful greyness!

And many more contradictory statements!

Can you see how confusing this is to me, an influenciable 20 year old, sir or ma'am?