Yu Jing Fluff - Perception, Reality, Desire

This is... not how things work
The law always comes from the state, it is its weapon and non-separatable part, no matter what state, real or fictional. The State-Empire permits Secret Service to abuse human rights, field penal and slave troops, the state benefits from it and thus the state is completely complicit.

 

@fatherboxx Yu Jing state (equivalent to US senate and president) and Judiciary are separated. Kuang Shi are controlled by the Judiciary, but I'm less certain it is their invention.

@stevenart74 Bao are literal SWAT. I think you mean Zhanying or Crane, both of whom are more akin to FBI agents (the latter significantly more Judge Dredd type of FBI)

 

Not in Yu Jing, you have read the fluff right? state is one thing law is another and the emperor could theoretically and with a really solid case apprehend the entire party, the whole core of Yu Jing is that the state cannot control legally the law and the law cannot legally control the state.

 

In my few law classes here (I took those as a minor to complete my business major), Law is defined with 3 pilars: first is Legitimacy, second is custom, and third is Force.

• Legitimacy: this one is clear, laws from the ruling group perceived as having the right to issue those laws have more weight. Also, the pro-JSA will regard several YJ laws as "illegitimate" (for example, those suppressing their cultural festivals)
• Custom: referred as "how things have been done until now", since it's easier to drive using the right side if you always did so and grow around it, than getting it suddenly swapped to drive using the left. Thus, laws that go against custom will hardly be follow.
• Force: If you cannot enforce a law, there are good chances people will avoid it. For example, excess of speed where no police can notice you ignoring the speed limits. In the JSA case, they could still perform the O-Bon for example, where the police cannot see them.

Now, about the Kuang-Shi proper. I doubt they are a proper troop inside the military, being used instead as some sort of hunting dogs, to flush the target where the real agents can do whatever they intend to. Sure, it's approved by the government, and thus the government is responsible, but in the end few among the masses in the Human Sphere know about the Kuang Shi program (or choose to ignore it...).
So, it's kinda like the Tohaa & Paradiso black history... known only to a few.

Mmmmmeh... not really. Bao look to me more like a sidestep of the SWAT into Secret State Police, more oriented to detecting stuff than assaulting or providing police specialists.

Their presence in Vanilla, though... But only the celestial Guards are trained in their control, so yeah, the Judiciary.

 

@xagroth neither are a good fit. Possibly Men in Black, but breaking legs, torturing suspects and killing people instead of using gadgets to get people to talk and forget? FSB and their like does a lot of diverse work that's better attributed to ISS as a whole, Bao seem to be a dedicated unit within these organisations for tying up loose ends.

 

Red veil also shows how each branch views the other, the terracotta lieutenant is extremely snarky towards the Hsien while the Hsien is passive aggressive because he is not in command.

I do believe the Yu Jing Brass is not at all happy with the ISS but it is what it is.

 

Well... The Terracotta is the officer in the station, then comes the Emperor's authority (the Hsien, possibly even a relative...) and starts issuing orders and "inducting" military and policial assets into the SSI C&C structure.

Kinda like the FBI claiming Homeland priority on the New York Metropolitan Police. Neither likes the other, chain of command is clear... but no one takes that chain for granted. "Uneasy allies".

Well, if I can go to another 'verse... State Security, from the Honorverse... and we are talking about the secret state service for a "country" who is an expy of the French Revolution IN SPACE!!!! in a war against a kinda British space Kingdom... (names are also not very subtle... Rob S. Pierre... XDDDD)

 

Yu Jing is a bit on the old chinese idea of armonic ( balanced) estate. Where every one has his place from the son of the heavens ( emperor) to a loyal citizen. This has is good and bad things. Good is you always have a place, a job, social services but the bad is a low tolerance with what is seen as going against the society.

Correct me if i'm wrong.

Apart the core book present Yu Jing in grey term as the other factions. Insted HEN3 is focused on the ISS and the nipon issue and foment the autoritarian point of Yu Jing. I hope the new book expand a bit how Yu Jing will recover ( in material and ideological ways) from the split. Anyway i have low expectatives on the part refering to the repression, from hisorical expiriences i know how countries can get mad against independentist movements.

Pd: bostria said the book won't include porfiles as they are all online. Then i expect a heavy fluff part :)

 

Anyone have any other arguments for PanO's evil? Every time this subject gets discussed, we get this one single particular fluff bit about traffic sign updates. What about the effect of corporate lobbyism on the average person, their education, their access to news that are not filtered through corporate agendas? What about the church meddling in the state affairs in such a crucial issue as Cube resurrection? How are followers of other religions treated, or staunch atheists? Are there any known attempts to buck the status quo - have they succeeded, or did they get drawn into the establishment and became part of the machine? Or did they get quietly eliminated and swept under the carpet, just more discreetly than the ISS does it? I want to learn something more about the subject, and "but AR traffic signs, poor Ateks, oh the humanity!" repeated time and time again makes me wonder if there's anything at all underneath.

 

Well, if You read the Outrage Manga, then You'll see how progrssive, democratic and reliable the Hexaedron is, in its Defence of the Pan-Oceanian Way Of Life. . .

Even versus one of their own Top Operatives and Her handpicked "Mercenary Assetts". . .

Not they will ever, Ever, EVER flaunt the Laws of O12, such as ILLEGALLY copying some People's Cube, full the Recreation Lhost of Prototype Enhancement and then believe that EVERYTHING will went Well. . .

No, sir nothing untoward to see Here, please circulate. . . . .!!!

 

Outrage, definitely, and there are other bits in the setting books as well, plus we also have those great campy FMVs from ALIVE/TAGline of the Hexa punching out kids and being pretty clearly villainous.

 

OP: Loved your post and couldn't agree more that the more positive aspects of YJ need to be fleshed out in the background material. That said, Infinity fluff often strikes me as being just as malleable as 40K's - meaning that quite a bit comes across as factional propaganda and/or is open to interpretation. A good case in point might be the IS, which is the faction I chose to play. Sure they have the Kuang Shi and Wu Ming, but the fluff makes it "clear" that the KS are not just political prisoners (their ranks also include "recurring offenders") and the WM are simply a penal military regiment - the most dangerous and violent elements of the regular YJ forces, who are on probation in the WM Assault Corps for their sins. Not a pretty situation to be sure, but keep in mind that (as you pointed out) the IS was founded after the Triads attacked a State Empire Courthouse (killing almost 100 civil servants) and (more importantly IMO) that ALEPH actively supports the IS!

Now why might that be? I haven't found any specific reasons laid out in the background yet, but it's not much of a stretch to imagine it has to do with the "small problem" of the Combined Army's invasion of the Human Sphere. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and ALEPH knows humanity really needs a stable, prosperous and strong Yu JIng to survive. So while me and my guys are off defending the home front (with the help of ALEPH and some mercenaries) I can't wait to see what the Invincible Army (what a great name!) is going to do to those alien invaders on Paradiso! Those are the tales I want to hear CB!

 

@Space Ghost
ISS has been formed decades before CA even knew humanity existed and Aleph's support is from the formation,

@Pierzasty
That example is so prevalent because it is amazingly trivial, a hyperpower with the economic wealth of PanOceania can distribute basic information like this for free, they choose to not do it! and if Atecks die who cares, the fact they have an anti Atek lobby (something akin to have a political organisation named "kill the poor" as a present parallel) says much about PanO society in general, adding that Corporations are not beyond exploiting hired workforce and using mercenaries to subdue the strikes with guns (strikes for important things like "I don't want to outside and mine during a solar storm") also says you a lot about the public morality, its the evil Tunguska lawyers who found loopholes in the contracts and the lazy Nomad workers left (and an intermediate armed conflict between covert Nomad forces and mercenary forces), not that half of them would get lethal radiation from the working conditions in order for the mining corporation to meet their quotas. the church uses its great marketing and access to resurrection to have a stranglehold on the faithful and uses a points system in order to guide the population to do what they want.

 

Why is an authoritarian state looked at so negatively by players who, for the most part, live in democracies. I wonder why. :P

 

Not really, its not like the american separation of power between branches of government. The imperial system serves at the pleasure of the Party. No emperor is going to antagonize the party, that would just lead to them being deposed and a new emperor being put in place from the rival Dynasty.

Yu Jing trades personal freedom for security but for political reasons the party is going to be policed far more leniently by the ISS. If a party member is pockting some under the table money, the ISS will likely turn a blind eye to it. Now if a party member is working with a foreign power and therefore committing treason then I can see the ISS stepping in with full support of the party. Any corruption trials of party members by the ISS likely has the backing of rival party members.

 

Technically they can and will meet up with a Ninja, who do not exist, for the thrilling experience of their lifetime, practically for almost everything that matters for the regular Yu Jing citizen, the state and the legal system are separate.

 

One thing I would add here is that a lot of the nuance of why YJ is grey rather than just villainous is in the larger books. It's great that there is this richness to the fluff in those books but at the same time they are read and appreciated by a smaller portion of the player base.

What the faction would really benefit from is some of the short couple of paragraph stories and snippets that make it into missions or campaign events were written in a way that highlights both sides of the Yu Jinq coin. Right now those short pieces, which are where many players will draw their opinion of the faction, tend to be either pantomime villain (I get there were other ways of viewing that Crane piece recently but a number of people read it this way) or very obvious state propaganda. It's also worth noting that the flavour of propaganda shown is also one that is often associated with communism or other similar paradigms/organisations and we are inherently steered against in the West.

Equally I think Pan O seem to have a whiter appearance as those same small pieces don't seem to capture the negatives as often (see some of the many examples cited by other players previously in this thread).

Final point is there is a little bit of ludo-narrative dissonance when it comes to mercenaries. I get that the ISS uses bounty hunters (seems a little odd that the secret police uses outsiders for anything other than missions where only those outsiders were sent but I'll get over it). Pan O on the other hand uses various mercenaries in the fiction and are supposed to be the ultimate embodiment of capitalism and yet there are hardly any mercenaries available to them. This inherently shifts perception of ISS and YJ to be the money grabbing mercenary faction when really it should be Pan O.

Mercenaries provide the ideal opportunity to have the game reinforce the Pan O fluff but instead it focuses on knights and very clean cut fusilier types.

 

@Leigabar If you read the fluff in HSN3 it talks about how the Umbra genocide entire races in service to the EI, leaving one member alive with their last moments being tortured to death broadcast to the stars. So not good guys. Even the MAF is more sympathetic.

 

@BenMoss

ISS uses bounty hunters a lot because they can traverse nations, A crane agent apprehending a criminal inside PanO would be.... troublesome, to say the least, so they have a good cooperation with them.

PanO does not use mercenaries (short of) as a state military force, the PanOceania corporations make extensive use of Mercenaries.

 

Pano's black ops make use of mercenaries for plausible deniability reasons. Pano's economy domination is so vast they can use indirect means such as economic pressure to get their way. Lets not forget that Pano was original form on earth not only through an alliance of nations but wars in which they grab territory. They can use direct military force to try to get their way.

Pano, in many ways, is the bully of the setting. Yu Jing might denounced Pano as a bully, but their own belief that its their destiny to lead the human sphere makes just as much bullies as Pano. The other powers have their own myriad of issues.