I am pretty bummed about the change in the Corregidor background

The average American would feel as unhappy in PanO as they do in the current US. I dunno much about USAr I haven't picked a new army since they were released.

 

On Corregidor, you are free to do whatever you want when you aren't at work.

And you will work. You have to, and have no choice. But also; you never have to worry about unemployment, or not having a place to live, or not having a community that will support you day to day. If you get sick, healthcare will be there. When you are old, you will be taken care of. You are part of a project and your work has meaning, it's part of the big Corregidor plan. You will be part of a close-knit group with a rich culture, the government genuinely is made up of your colleagues and fellow workers and not the elites. It's not really capitalist at all, it's very planned. It's an anarcho-socialist city in space.

But it's still a large society, with criminals, with scarce resource, with pretty harsh frontier justice. And it votes on stuff, sure, but you actually have to go along with things. If the democratically elected Union states you have to go to work, and we aren't striking, then you gotta go. Is this a true example of a perfect anarcho-syndicalist paradise? No absolutely not, it is the product of it's environment and Corregidor doesn't have the resources to really do that.

But Corregidor didn't really choose to be this way, they had to. They were chucked into space in a rotting, exploding prison, and left to die. The only way they survived was through basically saying "you work for the community, so the community can live, and keep you alive" and enforcing that pretty harshly. The only source of income they have are zero-g/micro-grav workers and engineering, and mercenaries. So get to work. We need that money, so we can feed and clothe everyone, and keep the ship going.

It's imperfect and that's fine. It's still a society made up of people who are doing the best they can in the situation they have.

 

Like, the thing about Corregidor is

They could choose to say "fuck it" and become PanO demogrants. But they don't want to. This is their home, this is their nation, these are their people. The Nomad Nation lives amongst the stars, and it is different, but they are proud of who they are. And you better believe that on Corregidor they are not soft like we are posting on this forum; you are raised in a society like that to be hard, to put the community first, to work for the nation comrade. It's not about you. Get cracking, this duct won't fix itself.

 

And it is not ignorant to call Information given by Maya channels and Hexahedron officers a piece of propaganda. If for example the "Nomad style" article was written on Arachne, surely the wording would be different (but we only got the Maya version).

I do the same with my "Mano Roja" Nomad/CJC/Bakunin/StarCo Force aboard the Nomad vessel "Jose Galeano Lopez": fighting against the evil MegaCorps and MegaPowers that suppress people. And for me the good thing is, that I find that notion more in the Nomad fluff than in any other Faction or MERC company fluff so I do not have to make up much on my own.

 

Everything written in those books is written by an unreliable narrator

Which is a good thing. It makes it feel like real life.

 

$11.99 for the pdf here, has great stuff about Nomad uplifts as well as the Social Energy system etc.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/276404/Infinity-Nomads

I highly, highly recommend you also get the RPG core book. It's well worth it for the lore, and has an awesome gazeteer of the worlds of the human sphere. $24.99 for that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/231540/Infinity-Infinity-RPG-Core-Book

 

I haven't read a lot of the fluff. But I always got the impression that CJC has a quite brutal form of egalitarianism.

Pull your weight, or expect a naked date with the vastness of space.

It's not a utopia, or even close to ideal. But it's making a lot of their relatively meager lot. I like it that way.

 

I think it's worth noting that in Corregidor, that you have to work

Like that is not the same as in PanO or Yu Jing. In these places, you totally don't have to work at all. There aren't nearly as many jobs as there are people of working age, like not even close. More in YJ because it is less automated, but still. Corregidor? You must work. There is no space for people who won't work (can't work, we can find something for you, or care for you, but won't? Nah).

And that is one of the many cultural things about Corregidoreans (and Nomads in general, since om Tunguska everyone has a job too, and on Bakunin most people do because most people are there to do some work in it's hugely free media and scientific scene etc) that sets them apart from the Sphere. Is it a "good" thing? No, not that they really choose to be like that, but it's just what it is. But it does go a way to explain why Nomads probably see themselves as being closer to each other than the planetary factions. We live in space, we work for a living, we are free from ALEPH.

 

I'll tell you a real-life story. Not far from where I live, there is a settlement for descendants of indigenous scouts for the old South African Army in the Angolan War. When South Africa pulled out, these scouts and their families would have been left to the tender mercies of the victorious side, so they relocated them, bought some land and stuck there. They are not the same race or culture. They're just stuck there*. This would be Corregidor, if it hadn't been for the Mexican General. Strong men work in Africa and South America.

South Africa is a mess. It used to be a fascist country, and before then the Brits were busy committing genocide, and before them everybody else was killing each other. When COVID-19 hit, we were put under the most brutal lockdowns in the entire world. The army was on the streets making sure you stayed in your home. People died because of the police enforcement (not uncommon here). There was an incident a few years ago where striking miners were massacred by police.

But it's also a great place to live, despite one of the world's highest murder rates, rampant corruption and inequality**. Most people are friendly, though not so much as the other African countries. There are a few people from here who've done fairly well for themselves (and need to stay off Twitter).

Meanwhile, Corregidor works. Amazingly, it seems not to be corrupt. It's capitalist but it's also weirdly fair - more fair than South Africa. Grey is the reality of the situation but it also doesn't mean you don't get genuinely good people or organisations. Cyberpunk is depressing because everyone is in it for themselves and nobody is good. That isn't true in real life - grey means everything from good to bad. The big changes in history are brutal, but the average human being is capable of both good and bad.

*Hopefully not for too much longer - we're working on a project which may help but we're also realistic about our chances to "make a difference"
**Obviously if you are dirt poor it is not

 

I think it's a big leap to equate union skull cracking with capitalist dictatorship. As put nicely by TenNoBushi, it's down to necessity, not profit (i.e. a survivalist dictatorship if you will). Are union demands ACTUALLY unreasonable or are the ruling powers being paranoid? That's something that will always be on a case by case basis but if you think every union acts in a way that is conducive to the long-term sustainability of their workers then sorry but you have a very rose-tinted view of unions - many do make unreasonable, unfair and downright self-destructive demands because they don't think in the long term or are led by corrupt, greedy and downright selfish people. So yes, it's perfectly reasonable that Corregidor does get tough with them when those unreasonable demands risk the ship literally falling apart (as opposed to the company going under or not making as much profit as it could - and even then they need the profit to pay for fixing the ship). Also, consider this: do you seriously expect that the Alguacils can afford to be THAT unreasonable? Corregidor doesn't have the means to oppress its people the way the other powers do. So if it's police got out of line, there's little that could be done to stop the population, many of whom are soldiers and therefore armed, just rising up, which is an even bigger risk to the ship...

Well, the reason PanO goes to war is very simple. In fact it's the same reason that America kept undermining South American and Middle Eastern governments in the 60s and 70s. Why half of Europe had Empires, why everyone messes with everyone elses elections and why every billionaire just keeps getting richer. Because they do not hold any ideal that there is ever "enough". They have economies based, as we do now, on growth. And war grows economies, always has. The world never got richer than in the aftermath of WWII. PanO, Yu Jing and Haqq make war (in secret and openly) because even though it's citizens can live in luxury, they don't believe they do live in luxury - someone will have it better than them. You see it on University campuses the world over - middle class students who have never had to do a days real labour in their life insisting they are hard done and deserve more... I recommend reading Tom Olivers book "The Self Delusion" for a good overview on how societies that encourage narcissism drive exploitation.

By contrast, the Nomad nation, and particularly Bakunin, is bult on the unspoken anarchist foundation that everyone should have "enough" and any more is a bonus (ok, Tunguska ruthlessly exploits other people but it's naked about that and is simply taking advantage of the weaknesses in other systems). People of all walks of life are truly grateful to have food, water and air without someone peering over their shoulder all the time.

But... that doesn't mean that they are somehow free of human nature and people don't want more, especially in a scarce society with all the crime, poverty and violence that scarcity brings. Hence the need for police forces, and harsh ones at that. The Nomad Nation simply isn't where it wants to be as a society yet. It can't be (it's too young and too poor) and it's always being pulled away from that ideal by the societies around it - that doesn't mean it won't get there. Through the books, if you really read into this history of the Nomad Nation, although it's a scare society, they have got less scarce as they've become established, the old differences between nations and people and races and creeds are being forgotten and they have some hope of becoming the ideal they try to live up to. But change on that scale takes generations more than the Nomad Nation has yet existed. To end on another Sci-fi allusion: The Nomads want to be The Culture (by way of The Ousters from Hyperion) but are generations off being able to be that society through both material and social facilities.

 

You really need to get the RPG Core Book and Nomad book.

There is a lot of room for interpretation. However I for one am suspect of the greatest zero-G workforce in the sphere being kept on a ramshackle ship when Tunguska and Bakunin can expand at will and live lives of luxury. I think the best way of imagining the working class of Corregidor is like the end of the train in Snowpiercer.

 

My advice is try not to colour complex societies like Corregidor with one and the same brush. Even though Corregidor and his outposts are far from the number of citizens PanO or YuJing can boast, it is still in the millions. As a result of their whole background and how they came to be the Corregidorians (and Nomad society as a whole) are on average much more varied compared to many of the much bigger powers in the HS. Trying to paint them (or any bigger society) simply as "the good lads" for me is the real faux pas since it means ignoring most of the kaleidoscope of ethnicities, values, cultures and worldviews that Corregidor comes with.

Corregidor is big enough to be all the things it has been described as in this threat.

 

I always loved that CJC has always been the most honest faction in infinity. No unreliable narrators, no propaganda, no attempt at painting a rosy picture of its nature.

Earn your air.

@L2590 had it spot on with 'Survivalist Dictatorship.' It's a giant crate full of the worst dregs the human sphere had to offer, murderers, war criminals and the like abandoned in the most hostile environment possible. There is no one in the sphere that will take them so they are a faction that does whatever dirty deeds will keep the light on. They are fluffed as deniable assets and mercenaries, which means they are getting the dirty deniable jobs no one else in the sphere wants to be tied to. That in no way builds a happy free hopeful society. That breeds a brutish 'might makes right' ethos closer to a chimpanzee tribe or hunter gatherer proto-tribe than a functional society.

Take too much? You die. Don't contribute? You die. Your fellow space-apes will look out for you in as much as it keeps the rest of the tribe alive, if they don't they might get eaten by a tiger/bleed out on the deck plating.

What assets do they have to bargain with? Human lives and labor. They 'protect' their workers because it's the only capital they have to spend and wasting it gives a prison yard reputation for weakness, not from any idealist perspective. And if an asset is more valuable being literally sold as chattel, they do it. If you aren't useful even for that, enjoy your free airlock ride.

To be fair, infinity is a work of fiction, the only place it could ever work.

 

The Corregidor fluff plays up the criminal elements, but the largest group by far that contributed to the population were the refugees and zero g workers (which is where surnames like Kowalsky come from). This Aristeia! fluff tells us that the Lazareto module is actually quite pleasant to look at, with colourful buildings in traditional style.

Also: Australia. A good example of what happens when you dump criminals somewhere and leave them alone. (somewhat not serious)

 

The reason why PanO engages in foreign military adventurism, imperialism, espionage etc is for economic purposes benefiting it's ruling class, not it's demogrant class.

PanO's elite are the corporate elite, and they are not demogrants, they are VERY wealthy. And they want more. Demogrants in PanO live with a UBI equivalent that exists to essentially 1) keep the population from just fucking dying because there literally aren't enough jobs, and 2) you actually need people to have money so they can consume. PanO needs Demogrants more than it needs the money it gives to them, because without Demogrants, who gives you millions and billions of consumers to watch mayanet channels and generate you the ad revenue? PanO has a lot of resources, the UBI for it's people is pretty inexpensive when compared with the economic benefits of billions of people then being there to consume your content and goods and pay for that. It's essentially a way to keep that society running on a capitalist basis so the wealthy can continue to make shitloads.

 

And yeah Corregidor has it's fair share of perfectly normal people, it was formed from a combination of criminals, political dissidents, terrorists, undesirables etc (some of whom were in fact pretty good and decent people!) and their families, but that was a long time ago. The modern generations of Corregidor are born and raised there, and are not criminals, nor are they terrorists, freedom fighters, political dissidents etc, but are in fact Corregidoreans.

Now, does the origin of Corregidor feed into it's culture? Yes. But I bet that Corregidoreans actually embrace their culture. They think being a mish-mash of sub-saharan African tribal outcasts, south american radical marxists, indonesian criminals and so on has led to them being a melting pot of tough, frontier survivors, ten times harder than any landlubber. And maybe they are! I dunno that you or I would like to live there so much, but maybe we would get along fine as long as we worked hard and did our job. I get the impression that Corregidor is very much a place where you earn respect by doing, start at the bottom and work your way up. There's no MBAs coming in as your boss in Corregidor, the guy in charge of your section was doing your job, did it the best, and worked their way up.

Is that so bad? Well it's not perfect. But there's probably a lot of things about Corregidor that are better than living in our societies. I doubt that you'd die of starvation on the streets of Corregidor because your job was automated away, like in the US. I doubt you'd be evicted from your home by a dodgy landlord and be cast out into the streets to freeze. They'll find you something to do, and somewhere to live.

 

That vibe is definitely consistent. Everything about the faction screams brutalist meritocracy. Lends itself very well to space pirate paint schemes.

 

Corregidor has always reminded me a lot of the OPA in the early Expanse books, especially with the various internal subfactions squabbling with each other. There's definitely solidarity there, and while there may be a lot of intersocietal violence there's a broad understanding that the ship needs to keep running. Everyone dies if the air scrubbers break, so even amongst antaonistic groups there's a shared purpose or project to some degree. I do typically describe them to new folks as "a violent mercenary labor union in space" and I think at the baseline that's still reasonably accurate.

My parents are union folks, and they worked with plenty of people they wanted to throw out an airlock - but they'd never see that as a reason to stop the 'project' so to speak. They were all in it together, even if they wished some of them weren't.