So I was all set to work up a list of known powers, along with thumbnail sketches of them in prep for a new round of posts, but I had to go and get caught up on the last three weeks of DM first.

Sigh.

After two and a half seasons of leaving the setting full of holes and back-fill writing, they went and put up three episodes in a row that treated on subjects I've been speculating on.

So.

What have I learned?

Well.  DM is 600 years in teh future (no big, I guess...), and that the granddaughter of a ten year old from 'today' is going to invent FTL, which doesn't leave much room for slow ship explorations, though we can also presume FTL has gotten faster.

Also, we learned a lot more about androids, which are apparently a much newer technology... and also, since the writers are back-filling their stories, now Two/Rebecca/Portia Lin went through a years long phase as an android freedom-fighter soccer mom/lesbian before she became an amoral mercenary on The Raza... which really makes no sense.  I mean: time line aside, it makes sense that a person who has really only known torture and bloody murder escapes might treat the galaxy as a hostile place and, well, be amoral and murderous. It makes much less sense if she found years of love and peace helping the inventor of Androids (played by The Android, Zoie Palmer) spread Free Will to Android-kind with nary a gun to be found in a community of like minded... androids BEFORE joining a mercenary crew.  Also, we briefly see Shrike and Jasper, and I more or less correctly predicted that Jasper was the Previous Captain, killed by Portia to take The Raza, but it was nice seeing it, I guess.

So... I'm torn. Do I keep working, as time permits, on setting details only to risk having to rewrite as the show progresses or do I wait until they finally run out of classic Sci-Fi episodes to remake (oooh... a time travel to the 20th/21st Century episoide... how... original?) and finally cancel the show THEN do up the rest of the setting without fear?

I mean: It was nice to find some deck plans for The Raza that matched conceptual thoughts (three main decks, etc...), only to realize that the plans don't match the show (shuttle bay in the tail, rather than in the belly near the cargo bays? )... so... consistency is spotty. Sometimes its good bordering on great, other times... well...   I mean, practically overnight the Raza went from losing every single fight it was ever in to being dangerous. I can and have explained that to my own satisfaction (posted? Er... maybe not), but doing up the setting means focusing less on the ship and crew.

Quote from: Spike;984843Do I keep working, as time permits, on setting details only to risk having to rewrite as the show progresses or do I wait until they finally run out of classic Sci-Fi episodes to remake (oooh... a time travel to the 20th/21st Century episoide... how... original?) and finally cancel the show THEN do up the rest of the setting without fear?

Why would you have to? Couldn't you play a campaign and say, "okay, we are freezing the continuity to end-of-season two?"

Although it sounds like you're getting turned off of the show, so are you sure you want to do anything with it?

Its not the ongoing changes to the setting that are causing problems... things like the Corporate War, etc, as I planned to set any games (speculatively) in the years prior to the show anyway, which is one reason to try and knock out a timeline of events leading up to the show itself.

No, what they are doing is fleshing out the backstory for the entire setting, pinning down details of the history... in the late half of Season 3, which is, at the very least, oddly late.  Prior to Episode nine, the most information we had on 'when' the setting is was the fact that House Ishida has ruled Zairon for four hundred years in opposition to a similar timeline for the discontinuous 'rule' of the Megacorporations.  


As for my attitude to the show... have you not checked out the Media and Inspiration sub-fora? I've done nothing BUT mock the show since I discovered it!  That's just how I roll.

Quote from: Spike;984928No, what they are doing is fleshing out the backstory for the entire setting, pinning down details of the history... in the late half of Season 3, which is, at the very least, oddly late.  Prior to Episode nine, the most information we had on 'when' the setting is was the fact that House Ishida has ruled Zairon for four hundred years in opposition to a similar timeline for the discontinuous 'rule' of the Megacorporations.  

You could freeze the backstory to 'what we know as of end of season 2.' If it is contradicted by stuff we learn later, well... how many early-90s WEG Star Wars games now have canon-contradicted by the prequels? Not that you have to of course, but it sounds better than either waiting for the season to end (in which case what about season 4?), or retconning your ongoing game.

Quotehave you not checked out the Media and Inspiration sub-fora?

I should. I think I visited the politics fora when I first joined and said, "nope. Just the gaming forum for me."

well, season three ends in.... two weeks I believe, so its not like I've got terribly long to wait to finish out the season, and I'm guessing at least part of the last two episodes will involve the Inkblot Aliens from Another Dimension (they used to be more squidlike. I miss the squiddy-ness of them, actually...).

Okay I haven't watched the most recent Dark Matter episodes so take what I say with some salt...

I am enjoying you build out the background irrespective of what the exact details are. For me what you have written is better than what they have written. So I would encourage you to continue as you like.  BTW - I am hoping to steal your ideas shamelessly for a M-Space game in the future!

I just saw the episode in Season 1 where another merc crew imprisons the crew in the vault, the kid shoots a bad guy, and Portia finds out she is . Towards the end of the show, she says "This is Portia Lin of the Raza..."

How did she find out her name? (If this is revealed in an upcoming episode, just say "stay tuned".)

Quote from: Aglondir;986072I just saw the episode in Season 1 where another merc crew imprisons the crew in the vault, the kid shoots a bad guy, and Portia finds out she is . Towards the end of the show, she says "This is Portia Lin of the Raza..."

How did she find out her name? (If this is revealed in an upcoming episode, just say "stay tuned".)

They all (except the Kid and the Android) found out their names at the end of Episode 1, when they saw their 'wanted' profiles.  Two/Portia Lin preferred not to use her old name, apparently hating her past.

The primary form of money in Dark Matter is known as the Bar, or Bars, which come in hard plastic chits slightly larger than a standard playing card in a variety of colors (Red, Blue, Green etc), signifying denominations.  For all intents and purposes, a Bar should be treated as a Credit on on a one for one exchange*. One primary difference from 'Credits' in the traditional sci-fi usage is that there is no concept of 'virtual' bars, almost all wealth transfer is done physically, even for very large transactions.  Mega-corporations and States do offer lines of credit and engage in trade based on promissary notes, but by old law and tradition, eventually a physical transfer of goods or 'Bars' must be done to complete the deal.  

That is the glossy overview. Now lets look at the hard details, including the history** of how Bars came to be the dominant currency.



Physical Description:

A 'Bar' is a rigid block of colored plastic, roughly four inches long, three inches wide and 1/16th of an inch thick, with the 'bottom' two corners being clipped to make an imperfect rectangle. There are no obvious markings on the Bars.  Each Color of Bar indicates an exponential increase in value: Red Bars are 1 Bar, Yellow Bars are 10 Bars, Green Bars are 100 Bars, Blue Bars are 1000 Bars and Violet Bars are 10000 Bars. There are also Black Bars (100,000) and Gold Bars (1Mcr) and some specialty bars have been rumored covering Billions and Trillions of Bars, though that is mostly speculation, and the colors of such Bars is unknown.  

You might imagine that counterfeit Bars would be a major problem, and while some conterfeit operations do exist, including simply pressing simple colored plastics into rough shape, it is surprisingly difficult to do properly.  Bars may be simple in appearance, but trying to match the exact feel of the plastic,  the color palete and weight are all much more difficult than they appear at first glance. Further, the Bar is not simply plastic, inside each wafer is a thin sheet of dense foil, coded with specific details of the Bar itself... functionally a serial number... which can be easily read by any scanner.  Simple inert plastic wafers (the casual counterfeits) simply won't pass muster at any shop in the galaxy, any more than monopoly money would work in today's world.  For high value transactions, the information encoded into each Bar is scanned and is both error checked (to ensure it is properly encoded) and redundancy checked (to prevent simply cloning Bars).   Both the Galactic Authority and the Mega Corporations crack down on conterfeitting operations ruthlessly.  Shockingly, this is one area where no Mega has been known to 'cheat' the system, perhaps because the damage it would do to their own economic stability far outweighs the short term benefits of a quick cash injection.   However, many smaller corporations over the years have been caught engaging in high end Counterfietting. Usually there isn't much of a scandal or punishment... resorting to such means to stay profitable generally indicates the corporation is failing drastically anyway, but the usual punishment for creating false currency is Spacing, though other creative forms of execution have been used.

Source:

Technically any Megacorporation can 'print' and issue Bars, but for the last three hundred or so years the primary source has been the Mekkei Combine, or more specifically the Banking Cartel subsidiary, which took over the duties of Mint and Gaurantor and slowly grew to a behemoth of an organization, nearly a Mega-corporation in its own right. This would normally provide Mekkei with a outsized source of power in the Galaxy, but at the formation of the Galactic Authority a great deal of the Banking Cartel's autonomy was stripped from them, and the BC is so heavily regulated and monitored that it is functionally an arm of the GA, despite being organized under the Mekkei Combine.   It is traditional... even in the state of Corporate War (Circa 1116+) that when any Mega-Corporation mints new Bars to submit them to the Banking Cartel for approval. While not required to do this by law, failure to do so often results in difficulty using said Bars outside of the issuing Mega's territory, as the financial infrastructure is geared to the BC, and each non-standard Bar must be checked individually against the issuing Mega.  

Other Currencies:

Many smaller Corps issue Corp Scrip, of questionable legality, which is virtually useless outside of Company Stores, and is technically a form of economic slavery, though most such Corps provide official Exchange Rates as a legal sop against charges.   This practice is not performed by any of the Megas, who... if inclined... simply practice more direct forms of economic slavery.   Most independent worlds still use Bars, but larger 'states', such as Zairon, often issue their own currency often to explicitly defy the Mega-corporations.   Zairon, for example, issues the Koban, a moderately large gold coin (slightly smaller than a standard Bar), which is indexed to approximately the value of a Blue Bar (1000 Credits), with paper 'chits' assigning fractional values of the Koban for small transactions.   This is highly controversial as the League of Independent Worlds, of which Zairon is a leading member, issues its own Bars, having fought for decades to get legal approval of their 'Bars' through the Banking Cartel and the GA.   This is particularly interesting given the valuation of Bars themselves...


Economics:

The term 'Bar' was not chosen at random. The pre-Mega corporate age was one of drastic economic upheaval caused by long standing reliance on Credit/Debt financing even at the highest levels of government and business, inflation caused by out of control printing of fiat money and a host of other ills.   Many of the earliest space-farers were fleeing the turmoil on Earth, and found in Space that a simple barter economy of real goods was much more practical than attempting to export the financial woes of Earth (or Terra Prime, as it has come to be known in the Age of the Megas).  As raw resources, often in the form of refined mineral wealth, was the most in-demand trade good, as well as the most durable, many goods and services began being indexed to their value in bars of refined metal, with the classic 'Bar' being typically a bar of simple iron (these are relativly small bars, indexed traditionally to one kilogram), and eventually a complex system of relative values emerged, with more rare and useful metals being given specific values relative to one bar.   As this system matured into the Mega era, it became a matter of some pride that any given Bar is indexed to a specific hunk of metal (with higher value Bars being indexed to more valuable metals, or possibly to mutliple bars of multiple metals to its final value), or to the product those resources were put to (such as a Starship, who's Bar cost is theoretically indexed to both the materials used to make it, and the labor to shape it.  In theory if said ship is destroyed, the Bars are pulled from the market, but could be re-issued as scrappers pull 'value' from the hulk. In practice it requires absurd amounts of computer power to even begin tracking every Bar in the galaxy, never mind the difficulty of tracking 'lost' resources.  No one, except the Banking Cartel, even cares except to 'prove' value exists when the Bars are created.).    

At the individual level this does mean that wealth can be directly created by the individual.  Anyone can bring in a hunk of reasonably pure metal to any Mega Corp and have Bars issued in exchange (this includes recovered scrap metal, as well as mining). Anyone can also take any number of Bars and expect to exchange them for raw metals as coded into the Bars, though this is not normally a quick process unless you happen to be near an industrial exchange.

At the State/Mega level a direct exchange of Bars of wealth is rarely done. Bars are a convienent accounting system, but the raw resources (to include human resources) are far more important than markers.  If Zairon trades with Ferrous for ten billion Bars, they are more likely to want the metals those Bars represent, or the goods and services they represent (starships, say) than pallets of colorful plastic chits.  


History/Trivia:

Ironically the Bars, in their modern incarnation, came from Ferrous Corporation, dating back to their earliest days as a mining/industrial concern.  While the practice of trading goods and services in relation to their value in mineral wealth dated back to the earliest space colonists, it was Ferrous who standardized the proxy chit, rather than wheeling out pallets of metal, which they could do as they were the primary consumer of metals in their region. Many of the now standard practices of the Bar chit (even the use of term 'Bar', colorful plastic and the foil layer encoding all originate with Ferrous) date back to those heady day.   As they expanded, their 'Bar' chits became accepted currency even outside their original market, and they eventually outsourced the chits to the still forming Mekkei Combine, who already had a good banking syndicate as part of their Combine.

They Irony comes from teh fact that by the Corporate War Era, Ferrous Corporation has been using an economic/political model known as the Exclusionary Principle, which essentially invalidates all forms of economic transactions.  In Ferrous Corp's eyes, the Bars are an outmoded system, based on the idea that Ferrous needs to provide an exchange of value. Under EP, Ferrous sees itself as the only valid entity, with all 'others' from the individual to the state as existing only to serve the needs of the Corporation... that is to say, Ferrous sees labor and goods produced outside the Corp as owed to them in the form of a Tax (though no one in Ferrous would ever say it in that fashion!).

The Zairon Koban is not actually worth 1000 Bars in terms of metal value, though it is reasonably close.  It is a measure of Zairon's power and influence in the age of the Megas that the Koban is 'overvalued' as it is, gauranteed by the House Ishida. The actual value of a Koban, by weight of gold, is slighlty more than 700 bars, but Zairon has been able to inflate the Koban's value by backing its value. This also has somewhat inflated the economics of Zairon (as their gold, in the form of minted Kobans, is worth more than gold not minted into Kobans).  While counterfeit Kobans are trivially easy to produce (if you have Gold...), this isn't actually much of a problem, as the purity of the gold is easily tracked and the warped pressure of the inflated Kobans has become something of an economic power of itself.  On the other hand, the paper chits (fractional Kobans) are virtually worthless... even in Zairon, being little more that up-jumped promisary notes and IOUs.  Among the vast lower classes of Zairon they are quite common and useful... in a purely regional transaction.   Any sensible person exchanges their chits for actual Kobans as quickly as they acquire them.  Notably, however, many of Zairon's people make do on four to five Koban a year, with particularly depressed regions and colonies making due with as little at 1 Koban a year per person, existing at a nearly pure subsistance level... though they may, curiously, have quite a bit of practical wealth in locally produced goods and services that simply have little trade value outside the region.












* I considered trying to work out the exchange rate, as Bars do appear to be worth somewhat more than Credits, but I imagine that a: attempting to decipher the value of Bars would be an exercise of imagination more than research and B: cross compatibility is more important than fidelity to minutia.  Being lazy is actually better here, I know. Weird.

**  For the purposes of this and future posts, I will continue using the timeline I established earlier, with a minor adjustment. We can assume that, like many traditional calendars, the DM calendar was back dated to some ill defined and possibly mythical point for cultural or political reasons, so year 1 in the DM calendar would be approximately 400 years in our past.  


NB: If you get really bored and want to get pedantic about relative values of gold and iron by mass, by all means, enact the labor of improving this.  I ain't paid to do more than make it sound good to the rubes. That's you, mano.

One of my upcoming posts requires research I am too lazy to do. Yes, watching an episode of TV is too much work for me.  I've spent years training a baboon to spoon feed me so I won't have to use my arms to eat. Its not going well... apparently Baboons are poor choices for service animals, but...

Oh, right. Anyway, I'm planning to go through and list as many of the major powers and give longer briefs about them, even though we know nothing. But until I do, I guess I should unpack an idea I've been bandying about (and one that might help explain why one of literally a dozen major powers seems to be the designated bad guy, and the sheer brazen 'wut?' of their apparent plans...)







Ferrous Corp and the Exclusionary Principle:

During its heyday, under Executor Balin ( CEO from 790-843), Ferrous Corporation adopted an informal motto of Balin's that is generally summed up as "Everything from the Corp, Nothing Outside the Corp", which to Balin appears to have simply meant that his every action should be ruthlessly focused on improving the position of Ferrous Corp in the galactic stage.  While not the founder of Ferrous (or even close to it), Balin's long and very prosperous tenure as chief executive left a lasting impact on the corporation, and he left many written works for his successors that sadly found little purchase outside Ferrous Corp's elite.  However successful he was as an executive, however, Balin was apparently a poor teacher, as his guiding philosophy... at least as understood by outside observers and historians... clearly was at odds with the philosophy that he inspired in later generations of Ferrous Corp Commanders and Executors.

In 983, tired of losing political fights in the Directorate, despite constant economic victories (as Ferrous Corp saw it), Commander Elgin Valmot wrote a short treatise, summarizing and updating the teachings of Executor Balin, as he saw it, focusing on the then popular motto. It was poorly received, and even at one point banned by the standing Executor (Caldwin, 979-985) as subversive and economically illiterate. Valmot's career, which had been checkered at best, cratered and he is believed to have died in 984 in political exile trying to pacify unruly miners at a distant outpost.

But one of the handful of people who had read his work, Horace Mann*, would rise to the rank of Executor (992-1007), and he began putting Valmot's philosophy into practice, naming it the Exclusionary Principle.  In Mann's capable hands, Ferrous experienced a brief resurgence of success and the EP was believed to play a vital role in that success, a view that is not entirely without merit.  

In its expanded, evolved form, the EP essentially holds forth that the only group that matters is Ferrous Corp itself. All laws, regulations, even traditions... even things to which Ferrous has agreed, are invalid.  Ferrous Corp is the only legitimate body in the galaxy.  Ferrous feeds and houses and cares for its own to keep them, and itself, healthy and happy. Under strict EP guidelines (which not even Mann applied as written) all non-employees are nothing more that resources to be harvested as efficiently and ruthlessly as possible.  

Under the principles of EP, Ferrous Corp is no longer in the business of business. It is not a mercantile organization, it does not seek customers or clients... in its strictest sense,  FC becomes akin to a great organism, dedicated only to its own survival, preying upon everything "Other".  

After Mann came a succession of other Executors, each in some way influenced for good or ill by the EP philosophy, and by 1030, under Executor Lin Gavgras (1029-1031), it was formally adopted as the cornerstone philosophy of Ferrous Corp.  For the next sixty years Ferrous began something of a shadow war with the GA and the other Megacorporations as they put this new philosophy to use. Not openly, of course.  The exchange of goods and services still was conducted, but now rather than as a end in itself, it became a means to seek an advantage to destroy and plunder others, and Ferrous Corp's new ruthlessness proved very, very profitable. So profitable that EP was firmly engrained in the minds of every employee, every child taught on Ferrous Corp colonies, every new Commander and Executor was expected to memorize both Valmonts treatise, and Mann's exegesis.

But the galaxy is not a static and unchanging place, and the other powers responded each in their own way. The other Mega's in turn became more ruthless and less law abiding, waging their own shadow wars for dominance, the Galactic Authority became more focused on keeping the Mega's from their throats, rather than enforcing the fair trade laws protecting the non-Mega denizens of the galaxy, and the various States grew ever more distrusting of the Megas and their deals.

And Ferrous suddenly found that EP was no longer a profitable philosophy, but a straitjacket. The other Megacorporations may have become equally ruthless and exploitive, but they were still guided by principles of profit and trade, and less desirous of a galaxy with no potential clients... they could adapt to the changing face of politics, while Ferrous could not let go of the destructive philosophy they had created, not even when it no longer proved profitable.

So the very thing that had spurred the creation of the Exclusionary Principle in the first place... Ferrous being economically dominant but politically weak... was recreated by that same philosophy.

Rather than reject it... indeed it might be noted that the intellectual quality of the Balins and Manns was not being matched by their decendants... the doctrinal approach of the 'cult' of EP does not encourage thinking outside the box... Ferrous Corp simply started planning to win through sheer brazen might... even if it took a hundred years of planning...






EDIT:::  Forgot the *:  Apparently Horace Mann is the name of a real historical dude. If you're a fangurl, don't yell at me, I just plucked the name from the aether, I got nothing to say 'bout the real mofo.