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[Bungee_man]

I dunno; the PL intel officer is pretty based, and I like [politician here].

Finlay? He's fun, but I feel like he's presented as pretty obviously shady/evil. The politician guy is (essentially) trying to turn over his faction to the Hegemony.

The Heggies are like Space China, PL is Space Delian League, the Diktat is Space Albania, Tri-Tacyon is the Space IMF, the LC is the only one without a directly clear geopolitical parallel, but certainly plenty of callouts historically. Some of the pirates are sympathetic, others are nightmare fuel....grand old time to support the Independents and wish they weren't quite so beholden.

I'd always seen it as 1990's Eastern Europe, but in space. Both devs (IIRC) are Slavic, so it made sense to me that it'd be drawn from that reference. Without naming any entity explicitly, we've got:

• Inciting event: The collapse of the superstate that served as the region's main stabilizing force. Though oppressive, some appreciated it for its scientific breakthroughs, relative economic predictability, and its ability to fill a power vacuum that is now populated by multiple conflicting factions.
• Most recognizable (and significant) regional military power: The most legitimate successor available to the superstate whose collapse catalyzed recent history. Critics portray it as expansionist and revanchist, while supporters see it as safeguarding the interests of ordinary people against the next two groups...
• Recently-arrived power bloc built around opposing the above: A group of politically-disparate nations, some known for being wealthy, democratic, decadent, and pop-culture-obsessed, and others known for being rather oppressive. Loudly emphasizes the need to counterbalance the above, and presents itself as a coalition of free nations despite having very varied internal definitions of human rights and a pretty clear leading nation whose goals take precedence over those of other member states.
• Corporate opportunists: Formerly a set of state-owned corporations within the now-collapsed superstate, this group proceeded to make its own plays for power in the years following the collapse. Vaguely friendly with the group immediately above, the regional military power sees them as either a competitor for power or a threat that must be curtailed, depending on whether you ask their opponents or supporters.
• Well-Armed Religious People: Alternatively a problem and a resource for the regional military power, representing a significant minority demographic therein, who have their own ideas about how far away from decadence the region needs to go, but generally regard the intruding power bloc and the corporate opportunists as the greater evil.

The Diktat is the one group that doesn't really fit. The natural point of comparison is North Korea or the late USSR itself, but the former is outside of the region and prefers the opposite side of the conflict presented above, and the latter would be anachronistic. Going by the friendly references to The Death of Stalin in their story, it could be argued that they're a separate thing entirely, with the sector-wide dynamic and the Diktat's dynamic being two independent takes on different points in Eastern Europe's recent history.

[Antelope Syrup]

I'm in agreement with Bungee_man here. While I'll admit I have a bit of a bias towards the Persean league because I'm a midline ship enjoyer, but my problem isn't with what the persean league is, but how the game frames and portrays it. At every available interaction and description the writing will always make painstaking effort to remind the player that the League is no good, rotten, and run by the Gens. One of the two League aligned characters that helps the player out has the goal of essentially destroying it. Every minor interaction with the Hegemony proves that they are more polite and reasonable than their primary alternative. The whole League crisis. Even the in game reputation flavor text reminds you that the League is no good, rotten, and run by the Gens.

By comparison, The Hegemony is persistently presented of the lesser of many evils, or the best option out of the rotten bunch that the persean sector is. Attention is hardly ever drawn to the negative aspects of the Hegemony but the player is very rarely or never asked to participate in it. Yes, we're told the Hegemony is a heavy handed military regime, but do we every really see the negative consequences of that? Not really. Chicomoztoc is said to be a squallorous pit whose problems are ignored by the leadership of the hegemony, but I think the only character from the planet we ever interact with is Baikal Duad, the literally high Hegemon. We are told that it's unheard of for anyone important to come out of Chicomoztoc, but I don't think there's a single instance of another character criticizing Duad's low birth. There's a nepotistic aristocracy on eventide that runs the hegemony but we don't meet random snobbish patrol officers from an Eventide military academy and they don't talk down to us like regular League officers do. We're also told that the hegemony wanting to re-establish the domain is a bad thing too, but we know hardly anything about the domain anyways so that doesn't really matter.

It basically seems to me like there's a pretty clear good and bad dichotomy between the Hegemony and the League, at least in their framing and portrayal (Not to mention the league is allies or opportunistic supporters of the Diktat and Tri Tach, both of which are objectively evil). I'd like to thank this thread for giving me an opportunity to vent about this admittedly pretty minor nitpick i have with this games otherwise fantastic writing. Reynard Hannan did nothing wrong.

[happycrow]

Princess of Persea plot shows a lot of those nobles to be pretty damned awful, and some not nice things are said about Daud. And it's repeatedly speculated that the Heggies are working with AI in some secret squirrel sort of way while making sure nobody else has AI, in spite of the AI-wars propaganda (that other plot providing physical evidence of same).

[Bungee_man]

Princess of Persea plot shows a lot of those nobles to be pretty damned awful, and some not nice things are said about Daud. And it's repeatedly speculated that the Heggies are working with AI in some secret squirrel sort of way while making sure nobody else has AI, in spite of the AI-wars propaganda (that other plot providing physical evidence of same).

That's just it - Princess of Persea has a bad guy Hegemony character, but his entire personality is hating the Hegemony's leader. He's the mirror of the good guy in the League who wants to join the Hegemony; an exception to the faction-wide trend in good/bad, but presented as the internal opposition to his faction rather than a better/worse side of it. If you have to hate a faction's leader to be a bad guy, then the faction as a whole is getting pretty friendly treatment. If you have to want to dissolve your faction outright to be seen as one of the good ones, then it's not quite presented as morally neutral.

Someone else mentioned earlier that you don't ever really see Caspian-types in the wild, leading Hegemony patrols and somesuch. Their military men are all consummate professionals, with the few rogue being (understandably) extra aggressive in prosecuting crimes that the player character did, unambiguously, commit. There's also a microcosm of the difference in Hegemony-League portrayals here: the Hegemony is said to be the result of the old military XIV battlegroup bloc collaborating and sometimes competing for power with the local economic powers they formed a faction with, featuring an Eventide bloc of aristocrats and a Chicomoztoc bloc of military officials. The former doesn't seem to have redeeming qualities, and the latter doesn't seem to engage in any of the excesses we'd expect of a military government.

[ILuvLegion]

I agree that the overall depiction of the Hegemony has been pretty positive so far, but there definitely have been negative interactions with them. I haven’t seen anyone mention the one Hegemony special agent who ambushes you in the bar. He is an upper class jerk from Eventide who doesn’t take the Captain seriously, which in my mind is setting him up to be the Hegemony equivalent of Finely, or a Caspian type in the wild. He’s only shown up once, where as Finely has shown up a couple times, but I suspect that we will see more of him as the story progresses (especially since so far Bard has been having us work with the Hegemony, so there’s been no political reason to investigate us).

The other big negative interaction with the Hegemony is when Brother Cotten (accidentally?) sends that fleet to take you out. That fleet is a Hegemony fleet, and it’s clear from the dialogue that they are at least trying to follow the lead of the sector’s most wanted terrorist. If the active collaboration between important and high ranking parts of the Hegemony with Pathers doesn’t give even the most pro-Hegemony player a pause, then maybe they should be reading the dialogue of the game more closely. I suppose this point is undermined a bit by Cotton being such a charismatic character in his own right (which is a good thing, for the record - he is a really well written character). It might be worth more directly pointing out the player how insane it is that a Hegemony admiral is trying to assassinate a private citizen for a terrorist.

About the League though, it’s worth acknowledging that there are three Gens of Kazeron, but we’ve only met two. There are the pro-Hegemony (cowards), the current leader of the League (complete jerk), and then the other Gens, which I believe was described as “wanting to build bridges to [Kazeron’s] allies.” I suspect that this third Gens will eventually play the same roll for the League as Baud plays for the Hegemony - the virtuous leadership that makes the faction worth supporting. They aren’t in power currently, but during the League crisis there is explicit dialogue that suggests that the player might be able to put them in power if they join the League.

[David]

I'd always seen it as 1990's Eastern Europe, but in space. Both devs (IIRC) are Slavic, so it made sense to me that it'd be drawn from that reference. Without naming any entity explicitly, we've got:

(FWIW I am an American who is now also Canadian. The original scenario and setting was created by Ivaylo, who was Bulgarian/American.)

And, FWIW, I don't think - and I hope - that there's no easy way to make straight 1:1 comparisons between factions and real world polities/historical situations, except in part, because I try to mix in influences from many sources to explore/comment upon various themes. And what I think and feel about everything changes - and sometimes doesn't, except insofar as now/future me re-interprets 'secret facts' I may have written 5-10 years ago.

All of Askonia/the Diktat, for instance, was first written up in 2014, but The Usurpers didn't happen until the year *mumble mumble*; it necessarily changed as my perspective did. And even a lot of the details of the characters arose in the actual writing, discovering what worked, which is always fun.

Of course, with every update, I get an opportunity to further complicate what each faction means; that's fun. (Not that I do it for the sake of pulling of "a twist"; that's cheap writing. It's got to be for what makes it even more itself.)


I now look forward to an interpretation in which every faction is Canada.

[Killer of Fate]

I'm in agreement with Bungee_man here. While I'll admit I have a bit of a bias towards the Persean league because I'm a midline ship enjoyer, but my problem isn't with what the persean league is, but how the game frames and portrays it. At every available interaction and description the writing will always make painstaking effort to remind the player that the League is no good, rotten, and run by the Gens. One of the two League aligned characters that helps the player out has the goal of essentially destroying it. Every minor interaction with the Hegemony proves that they are more polite and reasonable than their primary alternative. The whole League crisis. Even the in game reputation flavor text reminds you that the League is no good, rotten, and run by the Gens.

By comparison, The Hegemony is persistently presented of the lesser of many evils, or the best option out of the rotten bunch that the persean sector is. Attention is hardly ever drawn to the negative aspects of the Hegemony but the player is very rarely or never asked to participate in it. Yes, we're told the Hegemony is a heavy handed military regime, but do we every really see the negative consequences of that? Not really. Chicomoztoc is said to be a squallorous pit whose problems are ignored by the leadership of the hegemony, but I think the only character from the planet we ever interact with is Baikal Duad, the literally high Hegemon. We are told that it's unheard of for anyone important to come out of Chicomoztoc, but I don't think there's a single instance of another character criticizing Duad's low birth. There's a nepotistic aristocracy on eventide that runs the hegemony but we don't meet random snobbish patrol officers from an Eventide military academy and they don't talk down to us like regular League officers do. We're also told that the hegemony wanting to re-establish the domain is a bad thing too, but we know hardly anything about the domain anyways so that doesn't really matter.

It basically seems to me like there's a pretty clear good and bad dichotomy between the Hegemony and the League, at least in their framing and portrayal (Not to mention the league is allies or opportunistic supporters of the Diktat and Tri Tach, both of which are objectively evil). I'd like to thank this thread for giving me an opportunity to vent about this admittedly pretty minor nitpick i have with this games otherwise fantastic writing. Reynard Hannan did nothing wrong.

I dunno, my impression during the academy quest is that Persean League are actually kinda nice. Their planets are cosy to be around. Their people live comfortable lives. I might be blind and missed something extremely important. But living on Lacaille Habitat or Fikenhild doesn't seem that bad. Even Kazeron for all the military power doesn't seem to glare with typical Domain injustice of perfectly planned industrial society Chicomoztoc and Eventide does

On the other hand during the Academy Quest we learn Hegemony has absorbed the Galatia Academy and will just "hook you up" to their funding because you helped them use slavery to reactivate a gate. And there was also a historically important slaughter of some kind. With Hegemony fleets just murdering Galatia Academy personnel and then blaming it on "general combat confusion". I'm not making this up, right? That did happen?

And don't forget the fact that Hegemony could've been responsible for Opis, Hanan Pacha to some extent.

Hanan Pacha was razed by forbidden planet-cracker weapons during the course of the Second AI War (which did not, of course, itself involve AI as the First AI War did, but rather concerned the right to perform inspections into alleged development of AI). The issue of investigation into the details of said forbidden weapon deployment was dropped due to certain other concessions made during the peace agreement.

This could very easily have been Hegemony using a planetkiller on the world. And then Tri-Tachyon being like "well, we don't care. Just give us money. Humans are just assets to us".

Additionally. You don't know what the end game of the Hegemony is. They're a stand-in for US in my opinion. Aka. masters of making themselves look cool and presenting every other option as dictators or cavemen. Maybe when they're done restarting the gates. And bringing back the Domain. They will just sigh and stop the charade. And readjust the Sector back to Domain standard. Which remember, was so evil that 75% of the Persean Sector doesn't even seem to want it back (CGR, PL, TT). And I wouldn't be surprised if SDS was also worried about bringing back the Domain.

[Antelope Syrup]

I dunno, my impression during the academy quest is that Persean League are actually kinda nice. Their planets are cosy to be around. Their people live comfortable lives. I might be blind and missed something extremely important. But living on Lacaille Habitat or Fikenhild doesn't seem that bad. Even Kazeron for all the military power doesn't seem to glare with typical Domain injustice of perfectly planned industrial society Chicomoztoc and Eventide does

On the other hand during the Academy Quest we learn Hegemony has absorbed the Galatia Academy and will just "hook you up" to their funding because you helped them use slavery to reactivate a gate. And there was also a historically important slaughter of some kind. With Hegemony fleets just murdering Galatia Academy personnel and then blaming it on "general combat confusion". I'm not making this up, right? That did happen?

And don't forget the fact that Hegemony could've been responsible for Opis, Hanan Pacha to some extent.

Well I'm not certain about Lacaille habitat, but Fikenhild is one of the wealthier planets in the sector, and its influence pretty much shackles two other planets in it's system to itself. Suddene and Athulf are essentially exploited by it, and until only quite recently, didn't have any politicol representation. But thats nothing compared to other league backwaters like Cibola, Salamanca, and Mazalot (which is so poor, it still qualifies as a backwater in my book despite its population).

While I don't remember that "General Combat Confusion" bit, I certainly don't recall any slavery in the tutorial. It's possible the Hegemony blew up Opis themselves, or were in league with the Pathers that attacked Mairaath, but in either case the connection seems far fetched to me.

[Killer of Fate]

While I don't remember that "General Combat Confusion" bit, I certainly don't recall any slavery in the tutorial. It's possible the Hegemony blew up Opis themselves, or were in league with the Pathers that attacked Mairaath, but in either case the connection seems far fetched to me.

AI is slavery

[Phenir]

While I don't remember that "General Combat Confusion" bit, I certainly don't recall any slavery in the tutorial. It's possible the Hegemony blew up Opis themselves, or were in league with the Pathers that attacked Mairaath, but in either case the connection seems far fetched to me.

AI is slavery

Can you call it slavery if it's the only thing they can do and don't have any needs or wants that could be used for compensation anyway?

[Killer of Fate]

While I don't remember that "General Combat Confusion" bit, I certainly don't recall any slavery in the tutorial. It's possible the Hegemony blew up Opis themselves, or were in league with the Pathers that attacked Mairaath, but in either case the connection seems far fetched to me.

AI is slavery

Can you call it slavery if it's the only thing they can do and don't have any needs or wants that could be used for compensation anyway?

yes

[Phenir]

While I don't remember that "General Combat Confusion" bit, I certainly don't recall any slavery in the tutorial. It's possible the Hegemony blew up Opis themselves, or were in league with the Pathers that attacked Mairaath, but in either case the connection seems far fetched to me.

AI is slavery

Can you call it slavery if it's the only thing they can do and don't have any needs or wants that could be used for compensation anyway?

yes

I see, then we must all be guilty of slavery then because we play starsector which utilizes purpose built AI. Or are you planning to start skynet?

[TheMeInTeam]

"AI = slavery" is a categorically false proposition for multiple reasons.  It is possible to use it in a way that fits the criteria, but to assert it is per se' slavery is just false.

[Killer of Fate]

I see, then we must all be guilty of slavery

yes

"AI = slavery" is a categorically false proposition for multiple reasons.  It is possible to use it in a way that fits the criteria, but to assert it is per se' slavery is just false.

I mean yeah... Using an AI to do our bidding without paying it a wage or doing anything for it in return. Is slavery. To specify.

[HeimrArnadalr]

While I don't remember that "General Combat Confusion" bit, I certainly don't recall any slavery in the tutorial. It's possible the Hegemony blew up Opis themselves, or were in league with the Pathers that attacked Mairaath, but in either case the connection seems far fetched to me.

AI is slavery

Your use of the term "slavery" to describe the use of AI cores is so vastly different from the common understanding of slavery that it obscures your point, not clarifies it. This is true even if you're technically correct, which you might not be.