The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: SteerpikeHow powerful are the Fsywznezten dragons?  You've got a lot on vamps and their weaknesses/powers but less on the dragons.  Are they basically big lizards or are they super-intelligent ubermagic demigods?

You decide! :-p No, really, my hunch is that they're very intelligent and weird enough to rank among the Brilliant. Pretty much like traditional fantasy dragons.

Outtime Penetration

Infinity is terrified out of its wits.

The discovery of Reality Rosa three months ago (at first designated Lenin-8, later changed because of its obvious difference from the previous, more or less dystopian Lenins) started off an historical crisis in the organization. Many researchers simply refuse to believe it. Even after having seen it with their own eyes, they continue to invoke sentient memes, elder gods or variant laws of physics. For some reason Aztec steamships, stable Nazi empires, shrunken people, wizards, vampires and civilized dinosaurs are all more plausible than a functioning Marxism. This discrepancy appears inexplicable unless one considers the substantial vested interests involved.

The enormous superiority of soviet democracy to liberal capitalism, let alone the many dictatorships of Homeline, is clear to anyone who so much as pokes their nose into Rosa. But Homeline's entire world order is founded on the idea that Marxist socialism is inherently unworkable, or at least vastly inferior to capitalism. The Red World, were it to become known, would immediately, even without its own participation, gain massive support with Homeline's poor, especially in the Third World. Eventually, some goody-two-shoes or other would hitch a conveyor and inform the good Soviet peoples of their long-suffering neighbors. The worst scenario is an Interworld Revolutionary War supported by massive Fifth Columns of homeliners. In any case the implications would be earth-shaking, and a mortal threat to Homeline's capitalist world order. Most timelines that diverged with the non-invention of parachronics saw a popular reaction to market liberalism in the early 21st century. A few, such as Bolivar-4 (local year 2014) have seen a massive return to revolutionary socialism with a complete destabilization of international relations. Leading cliodynamicists theorize that the reason Homeline is still largely neoliberal is the influx of plundered outtime wealth, which had a similar function to Saudi Arabia's cushion of oil money in the late 20th century in easing social tensions. Nevertheless, there is more than enough combustible material piled up for the slightest spark to light a revolutionary conflagration.

For this reason Infinity, on the urging of its corporate and government backers, has classified Reality Rosa beyond top secret. The brass has already had to relocate some too-enthusiastic Patrolmen to Coventry, which is causing a deep crisis of confidence within Infinity itself. The so-called "whistleblowers" consider it criminal not to inform this benevolent higher civilization of Homeline and vice versa. Under the ideological impact of successful socialism, the whole organization is straining and threatening to burst at the seams. The Red Army may be disbanded on paper, and its military technique outdated, but Rosa's GWP, by Infinity's most conservative estimates, is 9 times greater than that of Homeline. Add to that the fact that its world organization is incomparably more efficient, and it's clear that within months of the Secret's discovery, the SSWF would produce a force that could beat Homeline's combined armies with one hand tied to its back. The Firefall option (see the Reich-5 section of IW) has been on the table, but was shelved for the same reason the original plan was discarded, with the added stipulation that while a revenant Reich-5 could pillage and enslave but hardly find a base of support, Rosa would have billions on their side from day one. Simply put, the Soviets would squash capitalism like a bug, be hailed as liberators by most Homeliners, and go on to spread the message across the multiverse. And it's difficult to say that Homeline would be worse off.

This situation presents numerous campaign possibilities.

If PCs represent Infinity, they themselves have to make the choices outlined above. Do they help Infinity coverup and possibly attack this reality, compared to which Homeline's most advanced countries seem like banana republics? Do they 'blow the whistle'? Or do they just get on with their jobs regardless of office politics? On the practical side, infiltration is fairly easy - there's no such thing as a passport, surveillance is light, and Soviet citizens are extremely helpful and trusting from a Homeliner point of view.

Adventure seeds

1. Rosa is a no-mana parallel, to the very uncharacteristic chagrin of Paralabs. However, much to Infinity's horror, psychotrons brought in from Homeline work perfectly - the Communists could conceivably develop psionic worldjumping. And on Rosa this isn't so much of a fringe science. The World Federation's foremost authority is Academician Sofía Bouba Diaw of the Institute of Parapsychology at the Buenos Aires Academy of Sciences. The operatives are to establish the nature and progress of her work, and take whatever measures necessary to divert the research onto harmless paths.

2. The agents discover revealing correspondence between a respected Infinity man, known for his right-wing opinions, and one 'Jack Gordo', who after some detective work turns out to be a CIA operative. Apparently the Agency plans to unleash the Gotha virus upon Rosa, in 24 hours no less. The agents have to think fast and make lots of tough and world-changing decisions. Should they warn Infinity, they might find the brass more or less unbelieving of, or even acquiescent to, 'Operation Homecoming', and themselves treated with suspicion. Homeline has a vaccine, but can the agents retrieve it from the labs in time, let alone deliver it to the Federation without revealing the Secret? And won't the CIA try to kill them as well?

[ooc]Reserved: The world today[/ooc]

L'ekoplan

World socialism meant the death of destructive conflict between states and classes, but a huge impetus to the other half of history: the growth of mankind's productive forces. The process of economic expansion was not without its contradictions. The fall of America signified "the beginning of the end of history", but new problems were already on the horizon. One of the first among these was the threat of environmental destruction. Runoff from booming industry was poisoning the people's streams and lakes. The personal automobile, that icon of socialist prosperity, was draining limited oil reserves and making the air unbreathable. More ominously, all these factors combined to produce a tendency towards global heating, with complex, self-accelerating and potentially disastrous consequences. What was to be done?

The Ecologist faction had been a tiny minority in the Comintern since the 1950s, when the first scientific reports began to mention the catastrophic potential of climate change. As the papers grew in frequency and alarmism throughout the first decade EK, the Ecologists grew in number, but were still heckled and ridiculed by their comrades. Then, a sea change. From swimming against the stream, the Ecologists won more and more support. Climate change was the big topic of the 1970s. Debates raged in all venues over whether industry would doom us all, and what could and should be done about it. The turning point was 1974, when the 55th Congress of the Comintern secured a majority for the Ecologist faction. Practically overnight, the whole official and unofficial Communist press began to shout about the need for a deep-going global ecological conservation policy. Comparisons were made between Arnaldo Prata, the main Ecologist theoretician, and Lenin himself, who in 1917 had won first the Party, then the working class, then all Russia and gone on to conquer the whole world. As Li Kai-Xi, world leader at the time, put it: Ni es tut nun ekologisti ("We are all Ecologists now").

After a month-long barrage of propaganda and preparation, l'ekoplan rolled into action. A People's Commissariat of Ecology was founded with broad regulatory powers. Practically overnight, environmental laws went from lax to draconian, and the whole world economy was spun around on a dime. Gasoline engines were forcibly exchanged with battery electric, which thanks to a 140-billion crash research program were already equal in mileage and horsepower, not to mention less complex, less noisy, less polluting, cheaper. (Just the experience of clean air, quiet and order in downtown LA is a constant temptation for Patrolmen to defect.) The liquidation of air traffic, which couldn't be Ecologized with existing technology, was a little more painful but the transglobal expansion of public rail has more than made up for it: With the completion of the Bering Bridge and the two Atlantic Tunnels, one can take the maglev to any corner of the globe from any other within 36 hours. From Shanghai to Detroit, standards were reset, factories retooled, transportation transformed, power plants closed or reviewed, fossil fuels made obsolete. As part of the susdev (sustainable development) sub-plan, the rainforests became nature reserves and strict quotas were established for sustainable fishing, farming, logging and hunting in every biome. The Communists mobilized the combined resources of world science, industry and popular enthusiasm to deal with the new enemy. The stated goal: the elimination within ten years of CO2 emissions from all sources save the exhaled breath of living things on Earth. This presupposed a number of scientific breakthroughs, not all of which materialized in time. Therefore the reduction target was not achieved directly, but they made up for it indirectly in Year 18 (1986) by culling more than 2.5 billion livestock and replacing them with state of the art karnsinta (synth-meat), also specially developed to serve the plan.

Coal and oil power was condemned and slated for liquidation, but the question remained as to what was to replace it. Water would be perfect if there weren't only so many rivers to go around. Wind and solar got big investments, but their low efficiency meant they couldn't cover the growing demand. Fission was number one contender among existing alternatives, and hundreds of fission plants sprung up like toadstools after a thunderstorm, covering 75% of power demand by 1979. Still, to planners' chagrin, it could only be a stopgap measure. Fission plants may not emit so many poison fumes, radioactive ashes or greenhouse gases, but they still directly deposit a lot of waste heat into the atmosphere. The same would be the case with peak-uranium-proof fusion power, which even the most optimistic estimates placed forty or fifty years into the future. The statistics were stark and clear: even an energy economy consisting purely of fission and renewables could not significantly slow, let alone halt manmade global heating. It seemed that, for all the progress of humanity, it was about to break its head on the disinterested forces of nature, brushed off like a film of dirt from somebody's sleeve. What to do? The answer came, surprisingly enough, from outer space.

In 1988, the 20th year of the World Federation, la cielponto, the skybridge, was anchored about fifty miles south of the world capital of Singapore. The tumolkarbon-spun space elevator was a colossal boon to science and space industry, but was constructed mainly for another purpose. Earth's orbit was to be seeded with a network of hundreds of kilometer-wide solar power satellites. 24 hours a day the solorbi now suck up clean, powerful, inexhaustible sunlight, beaming it by microwave down to terrestrial receivers and keeping waste heat to a minimum. The satellite network supplies 85% of the global power demand, and the rest is covered by fission and renewables. In case of emergency, the WSSF still maintains dozens of pebble-bed fission plants on standby. The skyhook project brought the Ekologisti into close alliance with the Kosmisti - old Bob Heinlein*, among others, spoke and voted in favor of their plans.

*Under the impact of 1930s history, Robert Heinlein's left-liberalism morphed into hardline Communism. He partook in the 1933 mutiny on the USS Langley, fled to Soviet China after MacArthur's victory and later became a commander in Raskolnikov's Red Navy. During the Breathing Spell he was a leader of the underground resistance to the Patriot Party. After the American revolution he settled in his native Oklahoma and remained an inspirer of the Party's Progressivist and Cosmist wings until his death. Comrade Heinlein is not just a hero of the revolution but one of America's greatest science fiction writers. His best known work of SF is Stellar Soldiers (1948) where the Interstellar Soviet Federation wages war against a tyrannical, selfishly individualistic alien species, and wins by calling on their lower class to revolt.

Science, technique and society

Thanks to worldwide free university, freedom of information, a generally technophilic mindset, lots of trailblazing megaprojects, and later on the liquidation of military spending, Rosa developed much faster technologically than Homeline. In GURPS terms, Rosa entered TL7 in the mid 1930s, TL8 in the early 1960s, reached the equivalent of Homeline 2008 in the early 1980s and is currently TL9 in all spheres except purely military technology, which remains on a level comparable to Homeline's 1990s.

Space exploration and exploitation proceeds under the auspices of the public space trust, Kosmorg (kosma organiseyo, literally "Space Organization"), which is subordinate to the People's Commissariat of Space and disposes of slightly more funds than all of Homeline's military budgets put together. Soviet cosmonauts walked on the Moon in 1956 and Mars in 1966. As of 40emf, in addition to exploration and communications, Kosmorg oversees the Moon and Mars bases, the budding Marsverda (Green Mars) project, the cielponto and not least the Federation's extensive system of Lagrange and orbital manned stations. Most of them are factories that exploit zero-G, and operate more like offshore oilrigs than O'Neill's idealized frontier communities. About three hundred thousand people live and work outside of the Earth's atmosphere at any given time. Despite the handful of experimental, quasi-self-sufficient colonies, there is no long-term ambitious plan for space colonization, to the constant chagrin of the Cosmist faction which has had its Kosmoplan ready for almost half a century now. The revolution freed space industry, perhaps more strikingly than any other, from its bondage to profitability and militarism. However, low public interest and consequent low planning priority remains a stumbling block in the way of a rapid conquest of the solar system - the Kosmorg receives, proportionally speaking, even less funding than NASA. A shift in public opinion is necessary before humanity can take the place among the stars that the Kosmisti think it deserves.

The mass introduction of l'inforeto, the Infonet, in the second decade, ushered in a genuine revolution in planning efficiency. With one or more online autologi (computers) in every workplace, workers, consumers and planners could distribute and discuss economic facts on the fly through so-called retsovieti or web councils. But this system is already 20-30 years old, and is only the foundation of present day autologized planning. Already past its accelerated eras of mainframe and personal computing, Rosa is now fully in the age of shielogeyo (SHE-uh-log-AYE-aw), ubiquitous computing. Commodities from champagne to shovels come equipped with minilogs and transmitters as cheap as toilet paper. The very act of removing an item from the store will instantly send a signal to the central planning database, where quantum computers equipped with powerful synthetic consciousnesses handle masses of economic data for which previous generations required hundreds of thousands of functionaries. Furthermore, the commodity itself continuously gathers extensive information about the nature of its own consumption, serving as a kind of self-contained, invisible customer poll. Every year the need for market forces to regulate the plan is further diminished, giving way to increasingly informed and responsive interlinked algorithms.

In the sphere of religion, the Communists stuck with the maxim of Lenin's Commissar of Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky: Religion is like a nail - a frontal attack only drives it deeper in. Believers were not persecuted further than the termination of all government funding and mandated atheist propaganda in the schools. The priests had to live on the alms of the congregation, like their predecessors, the apostles. The Pope, like the Moscow Patriarch, accomodated himself to the new regime as soon as all hope seemed lost. Furthermore, all the big ones have lost plenty of faithful to liberation theology-esque pro-socialist splinters. The Communist media uses every opportunity to discredit religion: the scientific healing of the blind and lame, the triotrophic microbes on Europa, and of course, the developing Paradise on (and off) Earth. At the same time the Comintern tries to manipulate faith for its own ends, through such means as the Christian and Islamic Communist Parties. In general, the Marxist prediction has come true: Piety comes and goes with sin. Only a scarce fourth of the world's population, mostly old people, today report any religious belief and the number decreases every year.

The Soviets were rather remarkably far ahead of Homeline science in many areas, mainly those in which materialist dialectics functioned as a lamplight to illuminate the facts. In chaos and complexity, they reached Homeline's conclusions nearly four decades earlier, thanks not just to the faster information revolution, but to the methodological guidelines inherited from Marx and Engels. In evolutionary biology, the theory of punctuated equilibria, or 'dialectical Darwinism' as it is known, had mainstream acceptance from the 1930s on. (Marx, while praising Darwin as the greatest scientist of his age, had already criticized his 'typical English gradualness'). Soviet science, brought up on the dialectical tradition of gradual evolution interrupted by sudden revolution, viewed Alfred Wegener's theory of continental movements as plausible already in the 1920s, although a convincing mechanism wasn't hypothesized until the late 30s. The equivalent of the Big Bang theory remains on the fringe - in the absence of conclusive proof to the contrary, cosmologists simply assume that the universe - mass and energy, or in Engels' phrase, matter in motion - has been around forever in various forms. Nobody has ever suggested anything like memetics. In general, even the most politically conservative scientists, once they finally picked up a book of Engels, Plekhanov or Trotsky, were astonished to the extent that natural and social phenomena, in all spheres from geology and biology to history and economics, approximate to the dialectical laws of motion.

Women's equality was always a big point in the Marxist program. The first step was purely negative, clearing away the lawful rubbish of past ages - restrictions on abortion, divorce, and so on. This was one of the first acts of every revolution starting with the Russian. After that came the much more prolonged and difficult task of providing a socialized alternative to the bourgeois family. Until 1923 the Soviet Federation was too poor to make much progress in this area. With the influx of German wealth, however, the government could embark on a program of communal laundries, restaurants, clothes-mending shops, kindergarteni and the like to free the working woman from her traditional lifelong galley labor. There were many setbacks and retreats but as in every other domain, the overall curve tended sharply upwards. At the same time other oppressed groups raised their voices. Homosexuality was legalized and , with the Germans inspiring their more conservative Russian comrades on this question. The nuclear family was already in full meltdown by the 1950s, with a staggering variety of family types emerging. There appeared gay parents, lesbian parents, transsexual parents, triple marriages, quadruple, quintuple and more. The largest registered marriage in the world today is a commune in Atlanta where 87 people of all ages, as well as two uplift bonobos and a golden retriever, all consider themselves in a group marriage.

But that wasn't the end of it. Having liberated economy from the blind interplay of inhuman forces, many Communists saw no reason for leaving some of society's most important work, child rearing, to a mass of generally unqualified and in many cases even unwilling labor. However, in this sphere above all it was important to tread carefully. As with the collectivization of agriculture, professional parenting was not forced through in a single swoop and still isn't ubiquitous. It began with the founding of a large network of voluntary (mostly Communist-run) Kibbutz-style communes, modestly government supported, in the late 1920s. These developed and became more and more popular until in 1950 more than one fourth of all Soviet children were being raised by professionals. Parental guidelines are laid down by the world's foremost pedagogical experts and enforced by the People's Commissariat of Education. Corporal punishment legally became assault in the 1920s and the rest of the legislation is similarly progressive and research-based. One cannot be a child's legal guardian without a government-approved parent certificate, and it's a red letter day when prospective "bioparents" receive their genitorkardo. Less than half of the present world population were raised by their biological parents, and birth rate is constantly decreasing. To counteract this, the government grows children in vats and hands them over to public nurseries, keeping population growth at a stable 1.5% for ease of planning. Parenthood by any other than professionals is viewed by the Progressivist Communists as tantamount to child abuse, and they maintain that it's only a matter of time before la biofamilio finds its place in the museum of capitalist horrors alongside the passport, the cruise missile and the internal combustion engine. On the other hand, the Proletarists and others wish to go back to the old system. As could be expected, this topic is one of the most controversial. Needless to say, it's also one of the most bizarre to Homeline visitors.

The Progressivists are also the loudest spokesmen of one of the most striking developments of the present age - genetic engineering. Genefixing hereditary diseases and so on is part of general vaccination, and nobody objects to that nowadays. Actual genetic "improvement" is a more delicate matter. Tested biomods are freely available to everyone above 16 years of age, but pre-birth modification is very controversial. Despite this, many industrial incubators (colloquially known as matrofab or "mother plants") are dedicated to creating superior specimens, with genetic designs developed through experiments on unborn fetuses. Proyekto superhomo aroused significant opposition even within the Communist Party. The Progressivist minority wants to go full speed ahead with the total upgrading of the next generation, and to branch out from there with the design of transhuman species specialized for various tasks and environments. The majority is opposed to that, preferring to stick with experiments for the time being, not so much from principles as from of the unknown long-term consequences of genetic upgrading and the tricky question of responsibility. This controversy has at times lead to near civil war conditions in the People's Commissariat of Eugenics. Animals, now, are much simpler to deal with legally and morally. Designer pets have been a common, if slightly controversial, sight since the early 1990s, and uplift versions are a recent breakthrough that presents new legalistic puzzles.

The world revolution has abolished war, hunger, poverty, illiteracy and unemployment and laid down the foundation for unimpeded human progress. But there's no such thing as a free lunch... yet.

Just as the freedom of the ancient Athenians stemmed from the fact that for each Athenian there were six slaves, so the future limitless freedom of humanity, according to the Marxist doctrine, will rest upon an army of servant machines. This is a most distant target but the Communists are already lining up the shot. The officially recognized "vanguard of tomorrow" resides at Acenkomin, the Institute of Communist Transcendence at the World Academy of Sciences. L'instituto employs tens of thousands of the best and brightest akademiani in the long-term goal of advancing society technologically to the moneyless, stateless anarchy that is the ultimate goal of Marxism. The future, according to Acenkomin, is rosy red. Advances in synthetic consciousness will permit ever greater automation, ever greater economic dynamism, and allow rational planning to smoke out the market from its last refuges. The revolution in biotechnology heralds uninterrupted mental and physical refinement, potentially raising the average human type to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe or a Marx. On the other hand, autologic "uploading" promises to let humanity elude mortality altogether. A minority view, ever more popular in recent years, holds that the end of history will coincide with the end of the hegemony of genus homo, overwhelming the old human form with a neo-Cambrian fireworks of variant sapient clades. But the biggest Holy Grail of all, doggedly pursued for the past half century, is molmash. Molecular machinery, or dry nanotech, is held to be the straw that will break the camel's back of economy. When man has at his fingertips the power to rearrange the molecular structure of matter, when anyone can produce anything, the need for trade, for money, for labor compulsion, for the police force as the guardian of inequality, will disappear entirely. Automatic supply will effortlessly satisfy even the wildest demand, and life will settle into educated leisure.

This perspective is enchanting, and not just to the most starry-eyed Progressivists. However, some voices, as usual led by the Proletarists, sound the alarm at the "unthinking cult of progress". They demand legal and practical guarantees for human supremacy in the Acenkomin's "transsocialist" vision. They demand a moratorium on the development of human-level sapient synthetic consciousness. For the answer to the obvious question, "what comes after communism?", seems more and more likely to be "tool rule". This sentiment is expressed in uncharacteristically technophobic popular films such as The Liquidator, a fantastic tale about a murderous roboto from the future.

Soviets in Action

So how does it work?

No Marxist ever suggested that society, the day or even the decade after the revolution, could let every citizen contribute "according to ability", let alone receive "according to need". "Communism" in Lenin, AKA "the higher stage of communism" in Marx, refers to an economy of superabundance, that is, in practice, the end of economy. The logical result of technological advancement is a level of productivity that abolishes scarcity altogether, permitting each citizen to consume as they please with no need for labor compulsion of any kind. At this point money and the state will be unneccessary and therefore disappear. Soviet R&D efforts are directed expressly in this direction, as we shall see later. But such a society can only appear after a prolonged period of economic development. That is the task of the socialist planned economy.

The main political purpose of socialism, or the "lower stage of communism", is increasing labor productivity to reach communism as quickly as possible. At this point there can be no question of equal reward for inequal labor, one of the most persistent myths about Marxism. Competition, or in Communistic, "emulation", is a vital productive force that must be harnessed to the full. "One man is superior to another physically or mentally," as Marx put it, "and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognises no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognises unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity as natural privileges. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right by its very nature can consist only in the application of an equal standard." (Critique of the Gotha Programme)

However, the starting point of socialism must be an economy that is higher than the most developed capitalism. This is the reason why no Marxist ever claimed (before Stalin in Homeline's 1924) that socialism can be created in one country alone, let alone an underdeveloped agrarian country like Czarist Russia. For this reason the Bolshevik revolution began with the perspective of German revolution or bust. This was because of purely material factors. On the basis of a backward economy it was impossible for the starving, illiterate and numerically weak proletariat to take the running of society into its own hands. The cruel struggle for so much as a loaf of bread, descending at times to cannibalism, meant that a privileged layer would have to rise above the working masses, with property interests of its own. "This development of the productive forces is an absolutely necessary practical premise [of communism], because without it want is generalised, and with want the struggle for necessities begins again, and that means that all the old crap must revive." (Marx, The German Ideology)

Thus, economic inequality had to make itself felt one way or another, and with it, political inequality and "all the old crap" of class society. The Leninists believed the prolonged isolation of the Russian Revolution would lead to capitalist restoration. As it turned out, it did, but only after decades of degeneration where the state bureaucracy carved out a privileged position for itself and fortified this position with a terrible totalitarian dictatorship, in the process stifling independent initiative and criticism. On Homeline, this "command economy" could and did produce astonishing results, although at a terrible human cost and only so long as it was a question of building giant factories and dams. As soon as it had to deal with a modern consumer economy with a million different commodities, this system of top-down bureaucratic command, this dictatorship of the secretariat, stagnated and finally fell. Stalinism thus depends on the contradiction between a planned economy and a low level of the means of production.

With the German Revolution, however, that contradiction was solved. Her massive, cultured proletariat, and her extreme industrial dynamism, previously bound hand and foot by the Versailles peace, permitted Germany to modernize Russia with a minimum of fuss. In the process, economic inequality was not increased but decreased. The Communists and state functionaries were strictly disallowed to earn more than a workers' wage, and they were held in check by working class public opinion. The proletarian dictatorship remained in the form of proletarian democracy, which is vital to the health of a planned economy. It's impossible for a handful of bureaucrats in the capital to plan in detail the workings of a whole country, even if their names were Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. A Five-Year Plan is not an infallible revelation, but only a rough working hypothesis. It must be continuously adjusted from below. This requires the fullest freedom of opinion and criticism, as well as workers' control over the managers and the government. In Trotsky's words, known to every middle schooler, "a planned economy needs democracy as the human body needs oxygen". The basic political unit of this democracy is the soviet.

Arbeiterräten, conseils d'ouvriers, labor councils, shoras or cordones - such mass organizations have spontaneously appeared wherever the modern working class has been forced onto the road of revolution. The Ido term still pays homage to the soviet's country of origin. Every workplace has its soviet, where managers are elected by compulsory voting of the whole workforce. This soviet also sends delegates to the city or regional soviet, which in turn sends delegates to the national soviet, and so on all the way up to the 1101-strong World Congress of Soviets, which elects the sovieto popolkomisara, Sovpokom, the Council of People's Commissars. The current Chairman of Sovpokom (as of 2008 AD/40 EK) is the Indian Communist Rajan Bhandoo, who has governed the world for the past 14 years. State administrative functions are performed by the entire population round-robin, like jury duty. This so-called admindevo is inefficient, but considered necessary to prevent a permanent bureaucracy from developing. Soviet representatives are elected every 4 years, but they are also recallable at any time by the electorate. In other words, changes in public opinion make themselves felt instantly. This was the case, for instance, when Ekoplan was implemented in the 1970s. The Communist vote dropped by more than 10% in the week after the Ecologist overturn, giving way mainly to Proletarism (which places workers' immediate welfare before such 'starry-eyed schemes'), and only picked itself up slowly in the following months. The Communists remained in a majority, however, as always.

With 120 million active members and more than four billion registered voters, the Communist International is the largest political party on any known timeline. In China and the ex-colonial nations, where the Comintern essentially built the labor movement from scratch, it regularly polls upward of 80%. In Europe and America they are happy to get more than 60%, having to compete with everyone from Christian socialists to anarchists to proletarists. Only a handful of national republics don't traditionally grant an absolute majority to Communism. These include Persia, Poland and other countries where the revolution wasn't quite as popular as elsewhere. The Comintern itself is as far from a uniform monolith as you can imagine. Ever since (and ever before) the 1921-23 ban on Party factions, the Communists have been scrupulous about Party democracy, believing it the only way to maintain and train an educated leadership. While all members have to carry out majority decisions, these decisions are only arrived at by the most furious and uncompromising factional debates. Indeed it is a point of honor for every Communist to state his frank opinion in Party discussions. There are literally dozens of Communist factions, based on every divisive issue from the rate of space colonization (Mondists and Cosmists) to the rate and social intrusiveness of technological change (Homists and Progressivists). The factions have their own daily papers, congresses and in many cases TV stations. This acute responsiveness to events and public opinion, combined with its sensitive network of Party comrades in practically every workplace, is the main reason why Communism has retained working class support and avoided any serious splits. Another factor is the abject weakness of the opposition.

Generally speaking, capitalism holds the same position as black slavery does on Homeline. It's a monstrously inefficient, cruel, immoral and long obsolete system that only a lunatic could seriously advocate. The expropriation and repression of the "bourgeoisie and their hangers-on", now generations past, is no more controversial than Homeline Lincoln's treatment of the Dixie plantationists. Historians may debate this or that measure of the founding comrades, but hardly anybody doubts the essential rightness of their cause. Public opinion regards restorationists as, at best, ludicrous Don Quixotes; at worst, dangerous fringe elements. Liberal democracy is regarded either as the midwife of fascism or a special kind of fascism. Although the latter is inaccurate from a Marxist point of view, the Comintern makes little effort to enlighten the masses on this point. The Liberal Democratic Party, which despite the name is a broad alliance uniting almost every anti-socialist under the sun from rightwing ex-Social Democrats to moderate ex-fascists, consistently fails to poll more than one percent of the global vote. Its "strongholds" apart from the United States and Britain include Poland, Persia and Georgia, in all of which they've gotten as much as 3% on occasion. The LDP holds a single deputy in the Congress of Soviets, the octogenarian Margaret Thatcher, and their constituency is similarly geriatric.

In addition to 'bourgeois' rights like freedom of speech and assembly, the Constitution of 1968 guarantees cost-free healthcare and education, as well as the right to work, to every citizen, that is, legally speaking, every human being. Of course, you can't just walk in anywhere you please and demand a job like you would demand a sack of flour, but the employment bureau is obliged to offer you some kind of employment, be it only trash picking. New social provisions, like free broadband, are amended into the constitution every few years. Basically, Reality Rosa has the welfare state to (literally) end all welfare states. The exception, of course, is prolonged, unforced unemployment, the subsidy of which is a feature of capitalism, not socialism. It used to be a felony, but with the second Great Relaxation in the first decade EK and the associated slashing of bureaucracy, was left to the discretion of impersonal economic forces. After all, there's no structural unemployment here, and morality suggests that whoever will not work, shall not eat.

Intellectual innovation is handled in an interesting way. An inventor can patent and thus own his idea. But since the means of production are publicly owned, he can't actually do much with the idea except sell it to the government, which immediately makes it public domain. Socialism eschews royalties in favor of single payments, for fear of creating privileged lifestyles. Thus, a groundbreaking innovation is rewarded by a couple million somi (somo = socialista mono, literally 'socialist money'), like a hefty bonus or winning the lottery, without the inventor ever having to prowl the corporate jungle or tangle with the tigers of finance. Wage differentials are a source of contention. The current max is 1:1.32, down from previous years, and some Communists want to abolish income differences immediately while the majority considers them a necessary spur to productivity which cannot possibly disappear until communism. The trick is to balance the creative force of egoism with the ethical demands of socialist equality. Of course, none of this applies to Communists, who by the revised Law of the Party Maximum (abolished by Stalin in Homeline's 1932) have to donate to the Party any personal earnings above minimum wage.

The shortening of the working day, not to mention the liberation of the Third World from the need to herd goats, has led to an immense flowering of culture. The kulturdomo (culture house) is a feature of the smallest little town, providing citizens with free access to instrument practice, high-quality recording studios, writing courses, theatre groups and so on. Fatly subsidized from the public chest and subject to neither government nor market censorship, the arts present a picture less like Stalinist Russia and more like Belle Epoque France, or Classical Athens, only two or three orders of magnitude more extensive. It seems like almost every week some new school emerges and fights like a tiger for its right to existence, and its self-evident superiority to all previous schools. From the most individual like literature, to the most collective like film and the still adolescent interactive arts, Soviet production displays amazing levels of creativity, daring and innovation. Not just in special venues but in the soviets, the press, the infonet, even on street corners, furious debates rage over the matist-novist manifesto of the followers of Zhang Beihong, or Izmailov's latest experimental synthetist installation. The place of advertising in public spaces is filled largely by art and science. A city bus might be an Impressionist gallery on wheels, or might be dedicated to explaining Einsteinian relativity. Streets, blocks and entire cities are often festively decorated by the local population. In Rosa, people take art seriously.

The basic economic unit of the World Socialist Soviet Federation is the public entraprezo (enterprise), which is Communistic for 'company'. The largest entraprezi are the few dozen that constitute the "commanding heights" of the economy, each overseeing assets of trillions of somi and employing tens of millions of workers. Beneath these megenti (mega entraprezi, 'great enterprises') stand millions of small and medium-sized firms. The public sector is, in fact, not wholly dominant. Private employment of labor is illegal, but independent non-profit enterprises, one-person companies and workers' cooperatives based on market principles, do exist. These elements are mainly, however, a source of nourishment for the public sector, like the public sector under capitalism is a crutch and fleshpot for the private sector. Public restaurants on every street corner provide cheap, tasty and healthy services. Apart from steadily supplanting the nuclear family, these communal behemoths are steadily outcompeting less resourceful bars and restaurants, which has provoked a measure of protest.

Reaction raises its head

As the world's stock markets plunged in history's deepest crash, no doubt intensified by the ripping of China from the fabric of world trade, the Soviet Federation's economic advance proceeded parallel with the political Great Relaxation. Radicalism and Communism grew irresistably among the workers of the world, in spite of the vitriol of the bourgeois press and politicians. So did the violent anticommunist reaction.

In America, Socialist Norman Thomas rocketed to the presidency in 1932 atop an elemental wave of strikes and factory occupations. The "sectarian mistakes" of the CPUSA (in Chairman Trotsky's words) in refusing to work with the Socialists and the AFL, limited their influence. Thomas' program was far from Bolshevik, restraining itself to partial nationalization, socialized insurance, increased income tax and Keynesianism. But even this program was extremely unpopular with the business community, and the administration came under attack from the very first day. The corporate press printed spurious allegations of electoral fraud and irregularities, hinting of Bolshevik subvertion of the democratic process.

Most of the Establishment felt quite nervous, but still believed they could control the moderate Thomas. A vocal minority, however, was terrified of the movement he represented and furiously demanded decisive action against the 'Reds'. Foremost among this tendency were the army officers, headed by the always rambunctious General MacArthur. MacArthur was already infamous thanks to his bloody crushing of the Pennsylvania miners' strike of 1930. During that historic strike, the masses were radicalized to such an extent that the organizing committees approached the function of labor councils and, despite the wishes of the leaders, the movement took on the character of a mass uprising. In the end, 122 strikers were killed and thousands imprisoned by MacArthur's troops. This was already a portent of things to come. Claiming electoral fraud and Red insurrection, in late 1932 MacArthur launched a nationwide coup d'etat. Not all the nation's millionaires were impressed. "Has he gone mad?" was the watchword in the upper-class salons. But the subsequent course of events was to make them march in lockstep behind the Great General.

Marx remarked that the revolution sometimes needs the whip of the counter-revolution. This was indeed the case in 1932. Although the coup failed to take the nation in one fell swoop, MacArthur's men seized control of key areas including much of the South and West, massacring and imprisoning labor organizers. This frontal assault on democracy radicalized broad working masses who had never had anything but contempt for the Reds. The US workers were radicalized more in a few days than in the preceding 20 years. All across the nation, bosses who supported the coup were literally sacked - put in a sack and thrown out on the street - with the workers taking over the factories. The proletarian masses did not demand Communism, only defence of the republic. But the very fact of such a working class rebellion would inevitably split the nation along class lines, pushing the upper and middle class into the camp of reaction. In the words of Henry Ford (one of the Commander's biggest sponsors): "Today, every American must choose: MacArthur... or Bolshevism". The workers had to be punished; the Communists, exterminated. As the workers' fight to defend democracy grew over into a genuine socialist revolution, MacArthur's gang snowballed into a fully-fledged fascist movement. Norman Thomas, the great moderate of yesterday, declared the necessity of using armed force to defeat the rebels. As MacArthur's army threatened Washington, the government had to relocate to Chicago. Overnight, the United States was plunged into civil strife.

Civil War Two was to last for three years and claim more than a million lives. On one side stood the Republic headed by Norman Thomas, backed by Communists, Wobblies, anarchists and left Democrats. On the other stood Commander MacArthur's hastily-assembled Patriot Party with its paramilitary Minutemen, absorbing in itself every reactionary current in American politics. There was no middle ground: America was divided down the middle between revolutionary democracy and fascist dictatorship. The conflict was distinguished by extreme brutality on both sides. General Patton, later known as the Butcher of the Bronx, was asked by a New York Times reporter why he was in favor of suspending certain constitutional rights. Patton's reply? "They didn't have Reds back then." Al Capone actually fought and died for the Republican side, having left the life of crime at a young age. "Bugs" Moran, on the other hand, ended his days as a low level fascist bureaucrat. (J. Edgar Hoover didn't have the right attitude to rise above a low rank Minuteman.) In the end, despite Soviet support and heroic resistance, the Republic was crushed, with blacks, Jews and labor organizers cruelly persecuted. Some lucky left-wingers managed to flee to the SSF. Others, such as John Reed and Big Bill Haywood, were to end their lives in hellholes like Oak Ridge Concentration Camp. The totalitarian Iron Heel of fascism was to reign for decades on the bones of American democracy, while millionaires like Henry Ford and Walt Disney profited handsomely from the workers' subjugation.

With fascism victorious in the USA, most of Latin America followed suit. As Britain had gone Fascist in 1933, this was the death of the last liberal democracy. By the mid 1930s, the entire world was divided into two great camps: on the one hand, capitalist dictatorship; on the other, socialist democracy. The equilibrium couldn't last. War was inevitable. War... and permanent revolution.

From World Revolutionary War to final victory

According to the Communists, World War One was caused by the productive forces rebelling against the straitjackets of private property and the nation state. The world market wasn't big enough for so many imperialist Great Powers, so they had to fight each other for colonies and strangle each other's industries with tariff walls. This meant that from being progressive, capitalism had become reactionary. It was up to the working class to save civilization from decline, by means of the socialist revolution. Much like the national bourgeoisie had forged nation-states from Middle Ages provincialism, and abolished the archaic feudal quirks and restrictions, thereby making possible the immense progress of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so the international proletariat would unite the squabbling nation-states and socialize the corporations into an international planned economy. This process was necessarily piecemeal, conquering one nation at a time. Once one nation had gone socialist, it was obliged to help out the others, as a "drill ground for the world revolution" (Trotsky).

Unlike Stalin's Soviet Union, Trotsky's Soviet Federation was aggressive through and through, fully dedicated to expanding its realm by armed world revolution. At the same time, the Trotskyists endeavored to restrict Red Army intervention as much as possible in favor of "homegrown" insurrection, believing that the working class had to be convinced by its own revolutionary experience before it could build socialism. In their opinion the Red Army could only assist, not supplant, the proletariat. The exact nature of this "assistance", however, was open to interpretation. For instance, in Karl Liebknecht's sly phrase, the Red Army could assist the proletariat to begin the revolution. This notion was the cornerstone of Soviet military policy from the day it became clear that fascism had stabilized itself in Italy and France.

The Red Army preserved and strengthened the egalitarian traditions from its founding. Officers (that is, "commanders") enjoyed no special privileges, eating the same food and sleeping in the same quarters as the soldiers. Ranks and epaulettes, brought back with a vengeance by Homeline Stalinism, remained in the trash-can of history. The Red Army used purely functional titles like komdiv (division commander), kombat (battalion commander) and so on. Commanders could be (and were) court-martialled for having privates polish their boots. Political commissars were abolished in 1931, by which time the commanders were considered sufficiently loyal to the new regime.

After Soviet Germany's consolidation came the fusion of the Red Armies of Liebknecht and Trotsky. At this point Mussolini and Léon Daudet could not hope to make a dent in the SSF by military means, and the arming of 30 million Chinamen (making the Soviet wartime strength larger than the entire population of France) further underlined their hopelessness. All they could do was dig in as deep as possible, close their eyes, blame the Jews (in the case of France), wait for the Bolsheviks to come, and pray. The first Five-Year Plan was openly regarded as economic preparation for a new world war. During this time Lenin and Luxemburg tried to play on the divisions in the bourgeois camp, but found that with each new revolution, the world bourgeoisie was welded closer together. The League of Nations more and more assumed the shape of the League of Defense against Bolshevism. War planning had to account for the eventuality of having to take on every imperialism in the world at once.

Even this was not a cause for despair, considering the state in which capitalism found itself. Each new month meant huge economic and thus military advance in the socialist camp, while capitalism stagnated and declined. The showdown had to come at some point, that was clear, but it was decided to take advantage of the capitalist crisis to develop the economy in the meantime. This led to an interesting situation where the SSF eventually became so rich and efficient it could abolish the state monopoly of foreign trade, and instead the Western corporations had to build up tariff walls to guard themselves against cheaper and better Soviet goods. Finally, in 1935, after intense anti-fascist agitation, Trotsky declared war upon France and Italy. Britain and Japan declared war upon the SSF, and thus began la milito mondrevolucia, the World Revolutionary War.

Armed with the world's best weapons, tactics and officers, Tukhachevsky's and Guderian's Panzerkoloni made short work of the demoralized fascist armies. A big part was played by the Soviets' extremely effective class-war propaganda, cutting across nationalism and calling upon the French and Italian workers and farmers in uniform to shoot the generals on their own side. Faced with this onslaught, many of the fascist armies simply disintegrated. As if on cue, the insurgent proletariat fell upon the enemy's rear. The Red Army was greeted with red flags by the workers of Milan, Paris and Barcelona, and within eight months, the Soviet Federation had spread to all of continental Europe. Scandinavia followed in the footsteps of Finland which had already gone red in 1931.

In the East, Korea was seized in the very first weeks. The British and Japanese blockade had little effect. On the contrary the Soviets launched a colossal new offensive to secure insurgent India and the Middle East, while expanding the Red Navy. Soon the red flag swayed over all of Asia. In the year 1938, a nuclear device was detonated over Scapa Flow, made possible by Einstein and other 'fellow-travellers', among them many Jews who had fled fascist persecution to the Yiddish-speaking Jewish Soviet Republic in the Ukraine. American scientists exploded their own a few months later, blocking Trotsky's already-unpopular invasion plans. The Second World War ended with a stalemate between the Eurasian-North African SSF and the capitalist bloc of the Americas, South Africa, Japan and Oceania. Thus began Rosa's Cold War, the so-called 'long breathing-space'.

Under the crossed atomic spears, Comintern agents for decades infiltrated the totalitarian countries, evading the secret police to call the workers to revolution. The tension of spy dramas more than once brought the world to the brink of mutual destruction. Capitalism held out longer than anyone could have hoped, based on the inertia of the working class. Finally, in 1966, the system started to unravel. Revolutions spread like wildfire across Latin America and the USA was powerless to stop them. Upon Macarthur's death, US capitalism fell to the broadest popular uprising so far. Three decades of fascist repression had completely exhausted the moral reserves of capitalism. The very word 'patriot' had become synonymous with fascist. There was no Civil War Three. The proletarian dictatorship in America limited itself to the execution of a few thousand leading fascists. Socialism secured for itself the heritage of progressive capitalism which the bourgeoisie had thrown overboard in its Nietzschean frenzy. The Labor Government expropriated Jefferson and Lincoln in the same go as Ford and Rockefeller.

America was followed immediately by Africa, Japan and Australia. In the fiftieth year of the Russian Revolution, the Socialist Soviet Federation inserted a "World" into its name, drafting a new constitution. All humanity stood united under the red banner. Well, almost. New Zealand's somewhat bizarre dictator, Michael Lee Young, resisted for another few months. He had American-made SRBMs that could reach Sydney, so the World Congress of Soviets decided to humor him for a while. Soon enough he too fell. Borders were finally abolished, and thus so was war. The government started to dismantle the nuclear arsenal and gradually disband the Red Army. All across the SSF, millions of workers erupted into the streets in wild cheering - it was like the revolution's first days all over again. The Brotherhood of Man was at hand. At last, the work of socialist construction could begin in earnest.

[ooc]This is not your usual campaign world, but an alternate history. Still, it's useful for roleplaying, particularly in GURPS as it was designed to fit in the Infinite Worlds setting. I wrote it for myself as an intellectual exercise, to straighten out my own ideas, but I believe other campaign builders may glean a few valuable snippets of made-up society. Of course, as an unapologetic Marxist, I can hardly deny a certain bias in my judgement of historical plausibility. For this reason I plan to be very conscientious with explanations. Over the course of this thread I will add OOC notes drawing parallels with our own history, showing the reasons behind my choices and answering some of the most common objections to the idea of communism. Without further ado...[/ooc]


"The greatest danger that I see in the present situation is that Germany may throw her lot in with the Bolsheviki."


"The abolition of the rule of capital, the realization of a socialist social order '" this, and nothing less, is the historical theme of the present revolution. It is a formidable undertaking, and one that will not be accomplished in the blink of an eye just by the issuing of a few decrees from above. Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port."


For I dipt into the Future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the World, and all the wonder that would be.




Perhaps it was a fortuitous hiccup of the pitiless machinery of History, perhaps the playful caprice of an inscrutable higher being. Or maybe it was just a spate of lucky weather that let Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and the rest of the Spartacist leadership elude the Freikorps assassins in 1919.

The result of their surviving, however, was to be seen four and a half years later, on October 15th, 1923. After several false starts, the Luxemburgist KPD finally won a working class majority, seized power and held on for dear life. After the blood and iron of the German Civil War, Luxemburg's party turned to the work of socialist construction with genuine Teutonic thoroughness. As Vorsitzender of the Rat der Volkskommissare throughout the crucial early years of the Deutsche Föderative Sozialistische Räterepublik, Luxemburg's name ranks alongside Lenin and Trotsky as the foremost leaders of the socialist world revolution.

A Red Sun Rises

The victory of German Communism shook the capitalist world to its foundations. The first act of the Volkomrat was to publicly annul the Versailles treaty, that "shameful contract of imperialist slavery". The second act was to nationalize all major banks and cartels under workers' management. Under the banner of the League of Nations, France and Britain tried feverishly to strangle the revolution, bankrolling every anticommunist force from the rightwing Social Democrats to the Nazis and hastily uniting them in the counter-revolutionary "Republican" Armies. It foundered on the rocks of their own workers' resistance. The British unions struck supplies bound for the German White Armies, as the CPGB tripled in size practically overnight. A botched uprising of the French Communists succeded in terminating Poincaré's intervention in the German Civil War, but ushered in the victorious Fascist coup of 1926. The sense that the end of the world - at any rate, the old world - was near, spread into the most conservative milieux of the wealthiest countries. All across the planet, people turned away from liberal democracy in increasing numbers: the poor, to communism; the rich, to fascism. The great world war of the classes appeared inevitable, and the defeat of the bourgeoisie more and more likely, as a mighty Socialist Soviet Federation arose from the ruins of capitalist Central and Eastern Europe.
[note=Infinity File]Rosa (AKA Lenin-8), 2008
Current Affairs: As victorious Marxism delivers on most of its promises, New Socialist Humanity reaches for the stars.
Divergence Point: 1919; Rosa Luxemburg escapes her Freikorps pursuers and assumes leadership of the German Communist Party, steering it to power in 1923. She, Lenin and Trotsky oversee the beginning of the World Revolution that takes place over the next half-century.
Major Civilizations: All the old civilizations are fusing into a single world culture.
Great Powers: World Socialist Soviet Federation (Representative, with elements of Athenian, democracy, CR2)

Worldline Data
TL: 9 (Military, TL8)
Mana Level: No mana
Quantum: 6

Infinity Class: Z3
Centrum Zone: Red[/note]
The German October changed every factor in the socialist equation. The numerous, wealthy and literate German workers kept their appointed managers in line, and supplanted them to a large and increasing degree with proletarian self-rule. Cementing forever the Lenin-Trotsky line of international revolution, it consigned Stalin to the background, a self-described Trotskyist to his dying day. German industry absolved the Soviet Federation of having to bootstrap itself economically. Far from devolving into genocidal totalitarianism, under Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg the federation of workers' republics eased into an ever richer and freer socialist democracy. Never strangled by the dead hand of a privileged, despotic bureaucracy, but on the contrary corrected at every step by proletarian freedom of speech, organization and criticism - that is, by soviet democracy - the socialist planned economy accumulated success after earth-shaking success.

The First Plan of 1925-29 centred around what was known then as Ostaufbau or Tyshkoshchina (after the German Volkskommissar of Planning, Lev "Tyshko" Jogiches) but is now referred to as l'esthiseyo. It involved the eastward transfer of four and a half million German workers and technicians, together with billions of marks' worth of goods and machinery, industrializing Russia at a pace that completely sidelined Stalin's effort on Homeline, which was, despite everything, one of that history's greatest economic successes. Agriculture was collectivized on a voluntary basis, backed by huge subsidies and grants from the now wealthy state. In accordance with the Marxist program, violence was avoided, and by the end of the decade, more than one third of Soviet farmers worked on the booming collective farms. The economy of Sowjet-Deutschland grew at an admittedly impressive rate of about 10%, but the former territories of Czarism experienced an astonishing average of 70% yearly growth. As Rosa Luxemburg put it in a 1925 speech to the Berlin workers: "We shall sow with knowledge, industry, and culture, those Russian steppes and those Ukrainian fields for which capitalism could find no seeds but bullets and corpses."

With the growth of proletarian influence at the expense of Soviet bureaucratism, those Communists who supported increased workers' freedom and welfare gained the upper hand. The resumption of vigorous factionalism in the united CPSF led straight to a radical extension of proletarian democracy in the whole Federation. In 1926, the Soviet Government legalized all political parties that accepted state ownership of the means of production. Dzherzhinsky was not too happy with Lenin's conclusion, first demanded by Luxemburg, that the GPU/SPE should be "dismantled, oiled, cleaned and put securely under lock and key", but reconciled himself to this decision of the overwhelming Party majority that year. Partly voluntarily, but mostly kicking and screaming, the secret police was defanged by degrees, reestablishing freedom of organization and opinion. From 1932, with socialism securely in the saddle, all parties apart from White Guards and fascists were permitted to contest elections. Thanks to their farsighted and genuinely proletarian policies, the Communists still had decisive support among the workers and thus an absolute majority in the Congress of Soviets. The world was presented with the spectacle of Communists contesting and winning Soviet elections against those parties they had only yesterday terrorized and suppressed. On the whole, this softening of the proletarian dictatorship was referred to as the "Great Relaxation".

After the German October, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania fell almost automatically, Poland had to be "assisted" by the Joint Red Armies, while Austria became a League-protected White German refuge. But the next great success internationally was the Chinese revolution of 1926. The Communist workers of Shanghai and Canton, backed by the Red Army and the rebellious peasantry, easily routed Chiang Kai-Shek and set about integrating China into the SSF. The French, British and Japanese tried to intervene, but quickly pulled out for fear of provoking the Soviets as well as domestic revolt (Japanese troops came home from China, in one general's expression, "infected with the bacillus of revolution"). This was an event of world historic importance. A colossal nation of 450 million, treated like dogs by Western imperialism for centuries, finally shook off foreign rule, rose to her feet and leapt headfirst into the modern age. China's greatest leader in this period was Communist founder Chen Du Xiu. China was so backward that she didn't even have a standardized language, let alone a tradition of liberal Enlightenment and democracy. Chen played the historical role not only of Lenin, but of Jefferson, Voltaire, and Chaucer besides. The last years of the First Five-Year Plan diverted significant resources to the preparation for China's Aufbau, and the Second Plan was fully devoted to this enormous task. An endless stream of German, Russian and other barbarians, armed with the very latest in Western science and technique, assaulted the walls of the Middle Kingdom intent on breaking down, not her dignity and independence, but her degrading Asiatic backwardness. Within a decade, simply because it had more people than the rest of the Federation put together, China assumed an economic, political and cultural leading role which she has kept ever since.

At this point, despite a number of temporary setbacks, the position of world Communism seemed unassailable. When Lenin finally bit the bullet in '28, the SSF, now headed by the troika of Trotsky, Chen and Luxemburg, was the world's second greatest power: a formidable bloc stretching from the Rhine to the South China Sea, barely hemmed in by increasingly shaky fascist France and Italy, an Imperial Japan staring collapse in the face and seething British India, with America watching in fearful resignation tempered by apocalyptic desperation. The Wall Street Crash of the same year signalled, even to conservative commentators, the final death agony of capitalism.

Free Union

The Bolshevik insurrection had counted on European revolution for its own survival. Indeed, internationalism was the basic principle of the Communist movement. The economic plan which welded together the Central and East European and Asian economies, found its parallel in the intermingling of the Soviet cultures, and the union of the various Communist Parties with a minimum of conflict. National culture was not stuffed into a bureaucratic straitjacket but encouraged to enrich itself and others in free union. The majority opinion, although far from unanimous, was that socialist culture had to be built not from scratch, from a "clean sheet", but on the basis of the massive cultural body developed under capitalism and previous class society, in the same way as socialist technique and thought. This was seen as the stepping stone to a peaceful, progressive federation of the world under a democratic planned economy.

The Chinese and Persian revolutions posed with renewed force the questions of an all-Soviet second language and a new, rational-secular system of timekeeping to replace the Christian and Islamic calendars. Fierce debate raged in the Communist International and in Soviet society at large. The two major linguistic contenders were Esperanto and Ido, the latter of which won out after Lenin's promotion of Ido as "Esperanto with the chinks ironed out". Taught to Soviet children from preschool on, this fully regular, streamlined, "Spanish-sounding" planned language rapidly became the world's most spoken. This was helped by its being an order of magnitude easier to pick up than, say, English. Today it is spoken by more than 96% of humanity, with 59% listing it as their 'second first language'. It is the language of the Plan, of the Infonet, of the Communist International, not to mention millions of original works of literature. It features next to the local national language on every roadsign and every restaurant menu in the world. There is a growing fear in certain quarters that the youth is actually losing its national heritage thanks to the immense preponderance of Ido - symptoms include the frequent erroneous transfer of Ido grammar and spontaneous direct translation of Ido idioms - but this is a hotly contested issue, being supported by many Communists and other progressive types.

The socialist calendar was introduced by referendum in 1933. It tried to kill two birds with one stone by abolishing Sunday and at the same time granting more days off - two in every six instead of every seven (today they discuss whether to extend the weekend from three to four days). It divides the year into twelve months, each with five weeks of six days. The names of the months are childishly simple (unmo, dumo, trimo, quarmo, kinmo, sesmo, sepmo, okmo, nonmo, dekmo, dekunmo and dekdumo) whereas the days of the week descend into true banality (undi, dudi, tridi, quardi, kindi and sesdi). The remaining five or six days constitute la semano federacia, Federation Week, a global year-end festival. Years were intially counted from the 1917 Russian Revolution (ero revolucia), but a later referendum changed it to 1968, the year of the WSSF's founding - ero mondfederacia, World Federation Era.

The German and Chinese revolutions, even moreso than the Russian, roused the hopes of the poor and oppressed of the world, thrown into war, starvation and poverty by aristocrats and capitalists. The international Five-Year Plan showed the superiority of socialism, "not in the language of Capital, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity" (Trotsky). But capitalism wasn't dead yet.

Quote from: Halfling FritosSeriously, though, if you're trying for an overarching flavor to GURPS, you have something that is what we around here like to call divset. You've got that fairly well handled.

There were a few things that really got to me, some good, some not quite so good,[/quote] but only two (one good, one not quite as good) really stuck:

First, I think I understand your description of Venus, and it sounds interesting, but the Master Chief narrator seems to give a mixed review of it. I'm not really sure how "terrible" it is to replace a "murderous surface with a pleasant terrestrial one". Is he admitting she did a good thing, or was that a snide comment?[/quote]The second thing is that I love Jupiter's resemblance to "enemy" films. Did the emperor continue watching them as he grew, or does the planet not have an overabundance of tentacles and sailor-girl uniforms?[/quote]Either way, the zany cliched mess that it's become seems like lots of fun, even if I would have a hard time taking it too seriously.

On a related sidenote, I've been thinking of getting a copy of GUPRS Vampire: the Masquerade, so that I could introduce my players to the system. I noticed you mentioned "vamps" and "weres". Were-- er, I mean, where do you think WoD-style vampires and werewolves would fit best in this setting?[/quote]Oh, one more thing. I noticed you have this thread arranged as if it's just for the setting, but that there's some discussion in here, too. Are you planning on having two separate threads for this setting, one for writing, one for discussing?
[/quote]

I'd like to stick with one thread. And I can never have enough discussion! :D

Venus up. Just for you, Steerpike.

Thanks for the love guys! :shy:

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawYour Venus reminds me of a planetary romance or pulp story, being inhabitable and full of stuff like pyramids.

Spot on. I was inspired by that but tried hard to freshen it up since it's a very tired cliché after all. Thus the planet is not generic pulp Venus, but society and geography as dictated by your typical dorky girl who's big into all that chaos magick and new age stuff. In the same way Jupiter is society as dictated by your typical extreme otaku. You'll see what I mean when I get around to wrapping up the writeups.

I added a new brandhand, Vozzo. My intention is to make six 250-point, six 500-point and six 1000-point brandhands that between them represent almost every theme and genre. I got the concepts ready but we'll see if I ever get around to crunching up the sheets.

Hurt me.

Quote from: SteerpikeI've been reading your Weird Sun thread on SA and loving it... Rabid in particular, and her opening monologue, as well as the description of Selenopolis, really seem to emobody the core themes of the setting.  Great stuff.

Nice to hear.


Added a couple of brandhands, more to come later.

Quote from: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2809671Only on the internet.[/url] Unfortunately this game has ground to a halt lately from my own tardiness in posting, but I still hope it can be resurrected. Highlights include levelling saloons with plasma cannons and gauss miniguns, spontaneous in-combat copulation, casual expropriation of the enemy's body and soul, roid-rage at hallucinated dinosaurs while surrounded in the jungle and an infectious optimistic attitude.

Based on The Cadaverous Earth I think you might also like Blackbird Dreaming on the same forum. It's a post-apocalyptic survival horror where the apocalypse, as it turns out, was a bit like what happened to the CE, only with less Tim Burton and more Silent Hill. Inspirations like The Stand and The Road combined with every bone-crunching, wound-infecting shibboleth of GURPS realism make for a frightening, depressing and very well-written collaborative horror.

QuoteI'm enjoying the read so far, but I do have to point something out: it's a strange space navy that has a Master Chief as (formally) superior to an Ensign.

It's not a space navy, it's a Space Force! There's not an ocean for millions of miles! :-p

Characters

Dez Landau

Dennis Landau is a spaceman in the fullest sense. Born on a ramshackle backwater L4 station to a prostitute mother and an unidentified brandhand father, Dez appears already in his infant-clothes as the very embodiment of rootlessness. From the first, he seemed cut out for a life on the frazzle. At the age of four, the kid was swaggering around like he owned the place. By six he could never stop getting into trouble. He finally fell into a bigger mess than he could handle at the ripe young age of seventeen, when an ill-advised fling with the magistrate's daughter made him persona non grata aboard his self-described homeworld. As a result, like so many of his generation, he gravitated to the Moon.

Taking up work as an oddjob contractor, he fell victim to many vices. The Selenese love of gambling, in particular, grabbed him by the lapels and never let go. He won his ship, the Dragonfly, from an exosolaroid spice trader in a not quite clean game of poker. This is the only good thing gambling has ever got him, but he never stops using it to justify his addiction. Over the years, Cap'n Landau has run rackets from one end of Sola to the other: Steller-brand magidrugs to Acidalia, CWA plasma guns to Brazilian guerillas and a slew of artifacts from the Twilight Zone to the highest bidder. As a smuggler moonlighting as a petty pirate and adventurer, Dez has optimized his "breezer" for speed and stealth over defense and raw firepower. The old fusion drive will now gleefully swallow a pixie dust injection for accel bursts of up to 15G, and the hi-technomagic invisibility enchantment makes sure the 'clients' never know what's coming until the proverbial knife is on their throat. The ship is named for the time a deal went sour in the New Guinea jungle and Dez had to escape enraged mobsters on the back of a giant dragonfly. Selling the 'Fly would more than pay off his gambling debts but Dez won't even consider it, having grown attached to the old jalopy. At present, Dennis makes a precarious living "semi"-based out of Selenopolis running wares for small and medium brands, while evading his long and unsettling list of enemies. For the right price, he can give you a lift to almost anywhere.

[spoiler=Sheet]Name: Dennis Joyce "Dez" Landau
Concept: Bedraggled yet debonaire space smuggler
Race: Human
Age: 33
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 185 lbs.
Appearance: Rugged good Caucasian looks, with slicked dark blonde hair over perceptive, slightly shifty blue eyes and a grizzled coat of stubble.

Attributes [130]
ST 11 [10]
DX 12 [40]
IQ 13 [60]
HT 12 [20]

HP 11
Will 13
Per 13
FP 12

Basic Lift 24
Damage 1d-1/1d+1

Basic Speed 6
Basic Move 6

Ground Move 6
Water Move 1

Social Background
TL: 10

Cultural Familiarities: Spacer (Native)

• ; Martian [1]; Selenese [1].

Languages: English (Native)

• ; Italian (Accented/None) [2]; Japanese (Broken/None) [1]; Portuguese (Accented/None) [2]; Spanish (Broken/None) [1].

Advantages [153]
Ally (Milky the Space Cat) (25% of starting points) (9 or less) [1]
Ambidexterity [5]
Appearance (Attractive) [4]
Born Spacer (1) [5]
Charisma (1) [5]
Combat Reflexes [15]
G-Experience (3) [3]
Gunslinger [25]
Hard to Kill (2) [4]
Hard to Subdue (2) [4]
Intuition (Magic Die) (Gadget/Can Be Stolen: Thief must win a Quick Contest of DX or ST; Gadget/Unique) [7]
Serendipity (Lucky Silver Dollar) (1) (Gadget/Can Be Stolen: Thief must win a Quick Contest of DX or ST; Gadget/Unique) [7]
Super Signature Gear (The Dragonfly) ($35,000,000) [60]

Disadvantages [-105]
Addiction (Alcohol) (Cheap) (Incapacitating; Legal) [-10]
Compulsive Gambling (12 or less) [-5]
Debt (-10) [-10]
Enemy (Martian Mob and other assorted lowlifes) (medium-sized group, some formidable or super-human) (9 or less) [-30]
Enemy (Xenotics Enforcement Agency of Mars) (medium-sized group, some formidable or super-human) (9 or less) [-30]
Magic Susceptibility (-3) [-9]
Missing Digit (Missing Thumb) (Mitigator (Cybernetics)) [-1]
Wealth (Struggling) [-10]

Quirks [-2]
Broad-Minded [-1]
Ladies' man [-1]
Cheater [-1]

Skills [81]
Area Knowledge (Earth) IQ/E - IQ+0 13 [1]
Area Knowledge (Mars) IQ/E - IQ+0 13 [1]
Area Knowledge (Selenopolis) IQ/E - IQ+0 13 [1]
Area Knowledge (Sola) IQ/E - IQ+0 13 [1]
Armoury/TL10 (Small Arms) IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Armoury/TL10 (Vehicular Armor) IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Beam Weapons/TL10 (Pistol) DX/E - DX+0 12 [1]
Boxing DX/A - DX+0 12 [2]
Businessman! IQ/WC - IQ-1 12 [12]
Cartography/TL10 IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Climbing DX/A - DX-1 11 [1]
Computer Operation/TL10 IQ/E - IQ+0 13 [1]
Counterfeiting/TL10 IQ/H - IQ-1 12 [2]
Cryptography/TL10 IQ/H - IQ-2 11 [1]
Current Affairs/TL10 (Headline News) IQ/E - IQ+0 13 [1]
Detect Lies Per/H - Per-1 12 [2]
Driving/TL10 (Automobile) DX/A - DX-1 11 [1]
Electronics Operation/TL10 (Communications) IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Electronics Operation/TL10 (Electronic Warfare) IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Electronics Operation/TL10 (Sensors) IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Electronics Repair/TL10 (Computers) IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Fast-Draw (Pistol) DX/E - DX+1 14 [2]
   includes: +1 from 'Combat Reflexes'
Fast-Talk IQ/A - IQ+1 14 [4]
Forgery/TL10 IQ/H - IQ-1 12 [2]
Free Fall DX/A - DX+0 12 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Born Spacer'
Freight Handling/TL10 IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Geography/TL10 (Political) IQ/H - IQ-2 11 [1]
Gunner/TL10 (Beams) DX/E - DX+0 12 [1]
Guns/TL10 (Pistol) DX/E - DX+0 13 [2]
Holdout IQ/A - IQ+0 13 [2]
Intimidation Will/A - Will-1 12 [1]
Leadership IQ/A - IQ+0 13 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Charisma'
Mechanic/TL10 (High-Performance Spacecraft) IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Meteorology/TL10 (Earthlike) IQ/A - IQ-1 12 [1]
Navigation/TL10 (Space) IQ/A - IQ+0 14 [2]
   includes: +1 from 'Born Spacer'
Observation Per/A - Per-1 12 [1]
Piloting/TL10 (High-Performance Spacecraft) DX/A - DX+2 14 [4]
   includes: +1 from 'Born Spacer'
Psychology (Human) IQ/H - IQ-1 12 [2]
Riding (Megabug) DX/A - DX-1 11 [1]
Savoir-Faire (Spacer) IQ/E - IQ+1 14 [2]
Scrounging Per/E - Per+0 13 [1]
Search Per/A - Per-1 12 [1]
Sex Appeal (Human) HT/A - HT+0 12 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Appearance'
Shiphandling/TL10 (Spaceship) IQ/H - IQ-2 12 [2]
Sleight of Hand DX/H - DX-2 10 [1]
Smuggling IQ/A - IQ+1 14 [4]
Spacer/TL10 IQ/E - IQ+2 15 [2]
   includes: +1 from 'Born Spacer'
Streetwise IQ/A - IQ+0 13 [2]
Tactics IQ/H - IQ-2 11 [1]
Vacc Suit/TL10 DX/A - DX+0 12 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Born Spacer'

Stats [130] Ads [153] Disads [-105] Quirks [-2] Skills [81] = Total [247]

Hand Weapons
1  Zap Glove  LC:4  $400  Wgt:1  
    stun  Dam:HT-6 (2) aff  Reach:C  Parry:No  ST:2  Skill:Boxing, Brawling, Karate, DX  
    kill  Dam:2d burn  Reach:C  Parry:No  ST:2  Skill:Boxing, Brawling, Karate, DX  

Ranged Weapons
1  Force Beamer  LC:4  Dam:3d cr dkb  Acc:3  Range:100 / 300  
    RoF:1  Shots:22(3)/B  ST:3  Bulk:-1  Rcl:1  $150  Wgt:.35  
1  Heavy Laser Pistol  LC:3  Dam:4d (2) burn  Acc:6  Range:300 / 900 (Enchanted: Accuracy 1)
    RoF:10  Shots:56(3)/2C  ST:6  Bulk:-2  Rcl:1  $2400  Wgt:3.3  
1  Magnum Pistol, 15mmCLP  LC:3  Dam:4d+1 pi++  Acc:2  Range:235 / 2600 (Enchancted: Quick-draw)
    RoF:3  Shots:9+1(3)/1  ST:11  Bulk:-2  Rcl:4  $870  Wgt:3  

Armor & Possessions
1  Air Mask  $100  Wgt:2  Location:  
1  Armored Shades (TL 9)  $100  Wgt:.1  Location:eyes  
20  C cell  $200  Wgt:10  Location:  
1  Flexible Space Helmet (TL10)  $500  Wgt:.5  Location:head  
1  Nanoweave Gloves  $30  Wgt:0  Location:hands  
1  Nanoweave Bomber Jacket  $450  Wgt:3  Location:arms, torso (Enchanted: Deflect 1: +1 to active defenses)
1  Nanoweave Trousers  $280  Wgt:2.8  Location:groin, legs  
1  Reflex Vacc Suit  $12000  Wgt:30  Location:all  

The Dragonfly (heavily modified Mahoney-class freighter)
TL10; SM+6 (20 yards, streamlined); 100 tons
Armament: 1 Strike Laser, 1 Gatling Laser, 4 100mm missile launchers
Complement: 6 (captain/astrogator, pilot, gunner, comm officer, chief engineer, medic/mage) [/spoiler]

Rogh Rockfist

Rogh use to live in Rock Orc Land. Rogh live with tribe, hunting Water Dwarfs and Wood Elves. Roogh, Elves! Rogh hate elves! Rogh come in Storm. Wierd Storm. Whole tribe come with Rogh in Wierd Storm. O no. What to do now?! But Rogh make work like Rock Orc do. Rogh learn to drive motorbike. Rogh learn to shoot! Rogh learn to make BOOOM! O o o. Rogh learn tribe too! Tribe Biker Gang now. Rogh make proud. Rogh kick ass! Puny human fear Rogh. Rock not made like puny human. Rogh silicon-based life-form. Rogh eat rocks and metal in ground. Rogh like lead in particular but on hard day can subsist on chromium or cadmium but best thing Rogh know is Braunite silicate mineral containing both di- and tri-valent manganese. How Rogh know all this? Rogh read up on Internet.

Rogh for hire now. Rogh in work for Brandy Handy Man. Rogh your Rock Orc when things need go BOOOM! So long as not work with Elves. Rooogh, Elves! Rogh also play drums in Rock Band.

[spoiler=Sheet]Name: Rogh Rockfist
Concept: Heavy metal/heavy weapons Orc
Race: Rock Orc
Age: Not know. More than 10
Height: 7'8" (SM +1)
Weight: 475 lbs.
Appearance: A huge, broad humanoid, with skin like gravel, eyes like charcoal and giant metallic canines displayed in a stupid grin.

Attributes [159]
ST 22 [108]
DX 12 [40]
IQ 9 [-20]
HT 14 [40]

HP 25 [6]
Will 10 [5]
Per 11 [10]
FP 14

Basic Lift 97
Damage 2d/4d

Basic Speed 5 [-30]
Basic Move 5

Ground Move 5
Water Move 1

Social Background
TL: 9 [-5]
Cultural Familiarities:
Languages: Rock Orc (Native); English (Accented) [4]

Advantages [164]
Combat Reflexes [15]
Damage Resistance (10) [50]
Fearlessness (3) [6]
Filter Lungs [5]
Hard to Kill (2) [4]
Hard to Subdue (3) [6]
High Pain Threshold [10]
Infravision [10]
Metabolism Control (1) [5]
Nictitating Membrane (1) [1]
Pressure Support (1) [5]
Radiation Tolerance (2) [5]
Resistant (Metabolic Hazards) (Very Common) (Immunity) [30]
Signature Gear (Weapons) (2) [2]
Teeth (Sharp Teeth) [1]
Temperature Tolerance (10) [10]

Perks [1]
Penetrating Voice [1]

Disadvantages [-95]
Easy to Read [-10]
Extra Sleep (-2) [-4]
Ham-Fisted (-1) [-5]
Impulsiveness (12 or less) [-10]
Intolerance (Elves) [-5]
Noisy (Constant sound like gnashing rocks and gravel) (-3) [-6]
Restricted Diet (Heavy Metals) (Common) [-20]
Short Lifespan (-1) [-10]
Unusual Biochemistry [-5]
Wealth (Poor) [-20]

Quirks [-5]
Rogh speak like this [-1]
Rogh cannot float [-1]
Rogh think human puny [-1]
Rogh like rock [-1]
Rogh like things that go BOOM! [-1]

Skills [26]
Armoury/TL9 (Heavy Weapons) IQ/A - IQ+0 9 [2]
Artillery/TL9 (Cannon) IQ/A - IQ+0 9 [2]
Axe/Mace DX/A - DX+1 13 [4]
Brawling DX/E - DX+1 13 [2]
Driving/TL9 (Motorcycle) DX/A - DX-1 11 [1]
Explosives/TL9 (Demolition) IQ/A - IQ+1 10 [4]
Geology/TL9 (Earthlike) IQ/H - IQ-2 7 [1]
Geology/TL9 (Rock Worlds) IQ/H - IQ-1 8 [2]
Gunner/TL9 (Cannon) DX/E - DX+0 12 [1]
Gunner/TL9 (Machine Gun) DX/E - DX+1 13 [2]
Guns/TL9 (Grenade Launcher) DX/E - DX+0 12 [1]
Guns/TL9 (Shotgun) DX/E - DX+0 12 [1]
Intimidation Will/A - Will-1 9 [1]
Musical Instrument (Drums) IQ/A - IQ-1 8 [1]
Scrounging Per/E - Per+0 11 [1]

Stats [159] Ads [164] Disads [-95] Quirks [-5] Skills [26] = Total [250]

Hand Weapons
1  Monoblade Axe LC:4  $500  Wgt:4  
    Dam:4d+4 (10) cut  Reach:1  Parry:0U  ST:11  Skill:Axe/Mace, DX-5, Flail-4, Two-Handed Axe/Mace-3  

Ranged Weapons
10  Hand Grenade, 64mm  LC:1  Dam:0   Acc:0  Range:77  
    RoF:1  Shots:T(1)  ST:5  Bulk:-1  Rcl:  $400  Wgt:10  
1  Heavy Chaingun, 15mmCL  LC:1  Dam:15d pi+  Acc:6  Range:2000 / 9000  
    RoF:12  Shots:50(5)  ST:20M  Bulk:-8  Rcl:2  $34000  Wgt:75  
1  Mortar Box, 40mmPLB  LC:1  Dam:1d pi++  Acc:2  Range:75 / 450  
    RoF:4x4  Shots:16(20)  ST:12M  Bulk:-6  Rcl:1  $1000  Wgt:12  
1  Shotgun Pistol, 18.5mmPC  LC:3  Dam:4d pi++  Acc:1  Range:100 / 500  
    RoF:3  Shots:5+1(3)/0.7  ST:10  Bulk:-3  Rcl:5  $220  Wgt:4  
1  Grenade Launcher, 40mmPLB  LC:1  Dam:1d pi++  Acc:2  Range:75 / 450  
    RoF:3  Shots:5(5)/2  ST:10  Bulk:-  Rcl:1  $200  Wgt:3  

Armor & Possessions
1  Assault Boots (TL  9)  $100  Wgt:3  Location:feet  
1  Reflex Gloves  $20  Wgt:0  Location:hands  
1  Reflex Tactical Vest  $600  Wgt:9  Location:torso, groin  
1  Reflex Tactical Vest trauma plates  $300  Wgt:9  Location:torso  
1  Reflex Trousers  $187  Wgt:2.8  Location:groin, legs[/spoiler]

Luke Vozzo McBurney

See this blade, bruce? My old man lined it with mono so's in a pinch he could slash through an ambushing standover spider's armor. His old man carved the blade from a truck spring, to defend his armageddon-sheltered family from raiders and zombie mutant koala bears. I've gutted more cunts with it than I can count. It's the Vozzo way. Vigilance runs in my blood, mate. Sharp eyes, hard yakka, twitchy trigger finger. Only way to stay afloat nowadays.

Yeah, I've been around, seen the world and all that. See, I specialise in helping wankers cark it for cash. I feel at home in most shades of blue but right now I go after vampos mostly, bash up the teethies and sell their rotten hearts to dumb rich blokes can't get it up. Pay right big bickies, y'know. Work's a piss in the woods with a smidgeon of bushman's corpsebane at hand - shit blows 'em away like bloody T for the price of piss. Trick I learnt in the Legion, see? Yeah, I was a digger. 'S how I left Aussie in the first place. Rusties maybe a pack of drongo figjams, but least they keep order in the house. I'd take them anyday over the maggoty crow eaters or God forbid, the bleedin' Abos bunging up the joint with their xenie mumbo jumbo. And not least, they pay well.

Dog? What dog? That's a Tassie Tiger, bruce. No, he's not dangerous, less you act like a wuss or a wowser. Or a wanker, heh.

[spoiler=Sheet]Name: Luke Vozzo McBurney
Concept: Wanderer-merc from the land down under
Race: Human
Age: 34
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 175 lbs.
Appearance: A lanky, sinewy, sunburnt man with a slouch hat.

Attributes [130]
ST 11 [10]
DX 13 [60]
IQ 12 [40]
HT 12 [20]

HP 11
Will 12
Per 13 [5]
FP 12

Basic Lift 24
Damage 1d-1/1d+1

Basic Speed 6 [-5]
Basic Move 6

Ground Move 6
Water Move 1

Social Background
TL: 10

Cultural Familiarities:
Languages: Australian English (Native)

Advantages [60]
Ally (Stanley the Thylacine) (25% or less of starting points) [2]
Ambidexterity [5]
Combat Reflexes [15]
High Pain Threshold [10]
Outdoorsman (1) [10]
Signature Gear (Guns) (3) [3]
Very Fit [15]

Perks [1]
Weapon Bond (Ol' Molly) [1]

Disadvantages [-42]
Addiction (Tobacco) (Cheap) (Highly addictive; Legal) [-5]
Code of Honor (Mercenary's) [-10]
Missing Digit (Missing Finger) [-2]
Odious Personal Habit (Unwashed bushwhacker) [-5]
Stubbornness [-5]
Truthfulness (12 or less) [-5]
Wealth (Struggling) [-10]

Quirks [-5]
Aloof [-1]
Always carries a jar of Vegemite [-1]
Chauvinistic [-1]
Disdains wizardry [-1]
Pragmatic [-1]

Skills [106]
Acrobatics DX/H - DX-2 11 [1]
Animal Handling (Dinosaurs) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Animal Handling (Marsupials) IQ/A - IQ+0 12 [2]
Area Knowledge (Amazon) IQ/E - IQ+0 12 [1]
Area Knowledge (Sub-Saharan Africa) IQ/E - IQ+0 12 [1]
Armoury/TL10 (Melee Weapons) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Armoury/TL10 (Small Arms) IQ/A - IQ+0 12 [2]
Beam Weapons/TL10 (Pistol) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Beam Weapons/TL10 (Projector) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Beam Weapons/TL10 (Rifle) DX/E - DX+3 16 [8]
Blowpipe DX/H - DX-2 11 [1]
Boating/TL10 (Hydrofoils) DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Boating/TL10 (Sailboat) DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Body Language (Human) Per/A - Per-1 12 [1]
Bow DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Brawling DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Camouflage IQ/E - IQ+2 14 [2]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Carpentry IQ/E - IQ+0 12 [1]
Cartography/TL10 IQ/A - IQ+0 12 [2]
Climbing DX/A - DX+0 13 [2]
Computer Operation/TL10 IQ/E - IQ+0 12 [1]
Cooking IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Current Affairs/TL10 (Sports) IQ/E - IQ+0 12 [1]
Detect Lies Per/H - Per-2 11 [1]
Diagnosis/TL10 (Human) IQ/H - IQ-2 10 [1]
Diplomacy IQ/H - IQ-2 10 [1]
Disguise/TL10 IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Driving/TL10 (Automobile) DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Driving/TL10 (Halftrack) DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Driving/TL10 (Hovercraft) DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Electrician/TL10 IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Electronics Operation/TL10 (Communications) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Electronics Operation/TL10 (Security) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Electronics Operation/TL10 (Sensors) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Electronics Repair/TL10 (Communications) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Escape DX/H - DX-2 11 [1]
Esoteric Medicine Per/H - Per-2 11 [1]
Explosives/TL10 (Demolition) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Fast-Draw/TL10 (Ammo) DX/E - DX+1 14 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Combat Reflexes'
Fast-Draw (Knife) DX/E - DX+1 14 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Combat Reflexes'
Fast-Draw (Long Arm) DX/E - DX+1 14 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Combat Reflexes'
Fast-Draw (Pistol) DX/E - DX+1 15 [2]
   includes: +1 from 'Combat Reflexes'
First Aid/TL10 IQ/E - IQ+0 13 [1]
Fishing Per/E - Per+1 14 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Forced Entry DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Gambling IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Gunner/TL10 (Machine Gun) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Guns/TL10 (Grenade Launcher) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Guns/TL10 (Gyroc) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Guns/TL10 (Pistol) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Guns/TL10 (Rifle) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Guns/TL10 (Submachine Gun) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Hiking HT/A - HT+0 12 [2]
Holdout IQ/A - IQ+0 12 [2]
Interrogation IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Intimidation Will/A - Will+0 12 [2]
Knife DX/E - DX+1 14 [2]
Lip Reading (Human) Per/A - Per-1 12 [1]
Mechanic/TL10 (Automobile) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Mimicry (Animal Sounds) IQ/H - IQ-1 11 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Musical Instrument (Harmonica) IQ/H - IQ-2 10 [1]
Naturalist IQ/H - IQ+0 12 [2]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Navigation/TL10 (Land) IQ/A - IQ+0 12 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Observation Per/A - Per+0 13 [2]
Savoir-Faire (Military) IQ/E - IQ+0 12 [1]
Scrounging Per/E - Per+1 14 [2]
Search Per/A - Per-1 12 [1]
Soldier/TL10 IQ/A - IQ+0 12 [2]
Sports (Surfing) DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Stealth DX/A - DX+0 13 [2]
Survival (Desert) Per/A - Per+0 13 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Survival (Jungle) Per/A - Per+0 13 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Survival (Mountain) Per/A - Per+0 13 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Survival (Radioactive Wasteland) Per/A - Per+0 13 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Swimming HT/E - HT+0 12 [1]
Tactics IQ/H - IQ-1 11 [2]
Throwing DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Thrown Weapon (Stick) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Tracking Per/A - Per+0 13 [1]
   includes: +1 from 'Outdoorsman'
Traps/TL10 IQ/A - IQ+0 12 [2]
Veterinary/TL10 (Dogs) IQ/H - IQ-2 10 [1]
Wrestling DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]

Stats [130] Ads [60] Disads [-42] Quirks [-5] Skills [106] = Total [250]

Hand Weapons
1  Monoblade Bowie Knife (Large)  LC:4  $1200  Wgt:1.5  
    knife swing  Dam:1d+2 (10) cut  Reach:C, 1  Parry:0  ST:7  Skill:Sword!, Knife, DX-4, Force Sword-3, Main-Gauche-3, Shortsword-3  
    knife thrust  Dam:1d-1 (10) imp  Reach:C, 1  Parry:0  ST:7  Skill:Sword!, Knife, DX-4, Force Sword-3, Main-Gauche-3, Shortsword-3  
    shortsword swing  Dam:1d+2 (10) cut  Reach:1  Parry:0  ST:7  Skill:Sword!, Shortsword, DX-5, Broadsword-2, Force Sword-4, Jitte/Sai-3, Knife-4, Saber-4, Smallsword-4, Tonfa-3  
    shortsword thrust  Dam:1d-1 (10) imp  Reach:C, 1  Parry:0  ST:7  Skill:Sword!, Shortsword, DX-5, Broadsword-2, Force Sword-4, Jitte/Sai-3, Knife-4, Saber-4, Smallsword-4, Tonfa-3  

Ranged Weapons
1  Gauss Machine Pistol, 4mm  LC:2  Dam:3d (3) pi-  Acc:3  Range:500 / 2100  
    RoF:20  Shots:40(3)  ST:9  Bulk:-2  Rcl:2  $1700  Wgt:3  Notes:[2]  
1  Gyroc Launch Pistol, 15mm  LC:3  Dam:6d pi++  Acc:1  Range:1900  
    RoF:3  Shots:6(3)  ST:10  Bulk:-2  Rcl:1  $300  Wgt:2  
4  Hand Grenade, 64mm  LC:1  Dam:0   Acc:0  Range:38  
    RoF:1  Shots:T(1)  ST:5  Bulk:-1  Rcl:  $160  Wgt:4  
1  Heavy Laser Pistol  LC:3  Dam:4d (2) burn  Acc:6  Range:300 / 900  
    RoF:10  Shots:56(3)/2C  ST:6  Bulk:-2  Rcl:1  $2400  Wgt:3.3  
1  Laser Rifle (Ol' Molly) & ETS  LC:2  Dam:2d+2 (2) burn  Acc:12  Range:1150 / 2300  
    RoF:1  Shots:30(3)  ST:8'   Bulk:-5  Rcl:1  $13000  Wgt:12  Notes:[3]  
6  Mini Hand Grenade, 40mm  LC:1  Dam:0   Acc:0  Range:38  
    RoF:1  Shots:T(1)  ST:5  Bulk:-1  Rcl:  $60  Wgt:1.5  
1  Sonic Stunner  LC:4  Dam:HT-2 (5) aff  Acc:1  Range:10 / 30  
    RoF:1  Shots:22(3)/B  ST:3  Bulk:-1  Rcl:1  $120  Wgt:.3  
6  Thimble Grenade, 25mm  LC:1  Dam:0   Acc:0  Range:38  
    RoF:1  Shots:T(1)  ST:5  Bulk:-1  Rcl:  $15  Wgt:.36  
1  Underbarrel EMGL, 25mmG  LC:1  Dam:4d pi++  Acc:4+2  Range:360 / 2200  
    RoF:1  Shots:3(3)  ST:10  Bulk:-  Rcl:2  $1000  Wgt:2  Notes:[3]  

Armor & Possessions
100  4mm Electromag Gun Ammunition  $6  Wgt:.6  Location:  
3  A cell  $6  Wgt:.015  Location:  
1  Armored Shades (TL10)  $100  Wgt:.1  Location:eyes  
1  Assault Boots (TL 10)  $150  Wgt:3  Location:feet  
3  B cell  $9  Wgt:.15  Location:  
5  C cell  $50  Wgt:2.5  Location:  
1  Drysuit  $200  Wgt:5  Location:all  
1  Filter Mask  $100  Wgt:3  Location:eyes, face  
1  Gill Suit  $2000  Wgt:10  Location:all  
1  Nanoweave Trench Coat  $900  Wgt:6  Location:body, limbs
1  Nanoweave Slouch Hat  $100  Wgt:0.5  Location:skull  
1  Nanoweave Tacsuit  $3000  Wgt:15  Location:all  [/spoiler]

[ooc]Reserved: Into The Void[/ooc]