Contractors and Society by COG

[halakay]

So, we’re closing shop. But before we go, we thought we’d have a big Ask and Tell, so that we can give a little insight into what we were aiming to do, what changes we had made to the original game and why we did it. Now, with the cancellation of our contract with Paradox, everything pertaining to the setting is once more the sole property of Paradox Entertainment, so we can’t copy/paste straight from the text we have. However, we hope to answer a few questions, and perhaps inspire you in your future Mutant Chronicles games.

Without further ado, here’s the COG take on:

Society and Contractors

The big event that has formed COG’s Mutant Chronicles is the Second Corporate War. It lasted for 40 years, and left hundreds of millions dead. Fifty years after it ended large areas are still depopulated, and many cities are still wholly or partially ruined. The megacorporations lost great assets during the war, mainly because many smaller companies – so-called affiliates – jumped ship and left the parent megacorporation.

We use the word “contractor” as a catch-all for the megacorporations, their affiliates, the cartel, the Brotherhood and freelance companies. Why? Because the society of Mutant Chronicles is ruled by contracts. The employees/citizens of the megacorporations have a contract with their corporation that guarantees certain rights and certain obligations. This also helps explain the social classes of some corporations – the kind of contract a Bauhaus noble has is widely different from the one a thrall has, for example.

The Cartel

The Cartel really came out on top following CWII. They are much like the paranoid (mainly American) vision of an all-powerful UN. While it still serves as a forum for the megacorporations, they have little influence on the actions of the Cartel, and the Cartel acts completely independently from the corporations. Following the war, it secured a monopoly on interplanetary trade – the overwhelming majority of all interplanetary cargo in the solar system travels on enormous Cartel vessels called Bulk Haulers. It also controls stock markets and banks across the solar system through the immensely powerful Omnibank.

The Brotherhood

If the Cartel benefited from the war, the Brotherhood lost an equal amount. It has nowhere near the influence it wielded prior to CWII, and a lot of small cults and religions have started sprouting up that the Bortherhood is incapable of stamping out. This lessening of central power has also caused the Brotherhood itself to give rise to different, semi-independent organizations called Chapters. While each Chapter is loyal to the Cardinal and the Curia, they have their own theological views and practical approaches on how to best serve the Light.

Capitol

Capitol remains pretty much the same as in the original MC. It is still the largest of the megacorporations, although the split-off of Sundiata took a lot of employees and industries with it. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how the Capitolian “democracy” worked. While in theory every Capitolian citizen has at least one share and can thus influence the election, the elections will basically become huge events where the presidential candidates vie for the favours of a handful of the largest shareholders.

Mishima

With Mishima, we basically got a “Remove or Rework” from Paradox. They felt that the Feudal Japan image was to much 90s. We solved this by removing the samurai from power in an event called the Quiet Revolution - an event that took place towards the end of CWII and which ended Mishima’s involvement in the war. With the removal of the Overlord and the Lord Heirs, the individual keiretsu are now kept together through the subtle influence of the so-called Tong societies. The Tongs are a combination of secret societies, revolutionary councils and mafia organizations. They rule Mishima by influencing workers and pressuring industry leaders. If subtle hints don’t work, they will use extortion, threats and – in extreme cases – lynch mobs or assassins to force an individual to cooperate. Even though the Tongs were brought to power through popular revolt, they are not working for the freedom and equality of Mishiman citizens. Their main concern is to preserve Mishiman culture and society.

Bauhaus

Bauhaus also remains basically as it did in the original MC. However, a lot of noble families have left the corporation to form affiliates, and Bauhaus is involved in petty little wars all over the solar system trying to reclaim its renegade companies. One change, however, is the status of the thralls. They now make up a slave-caste within Bauhaus, and are more or less the direct property of individual noble houses. The thralls are guaranteed food and shelter by the corporation, and in return they have to slave away their lives in the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs within the Bauhaus industries.

Imperial

Imperial is not greatly changed either. The clans are a bit more independent – particularly, individual clans no longer control just “special forces”, but actual armies of their own. We’ve also given the Serenity a pseudo-religious role within the corporation. The story goes that the first Imperial Serenity, Victoria Paladine, was one of Nathaniel Durand’s disciples back during the Venusian Crusade. Following Durand’s death, she and Alexander Toth vied for the cardinalship. Toth won, and Paladine went on to become the first Imperial Serenity. The current Serenity therefore has a sort-of-legitimate right to the cardinalship – a right she will of course never try to enforce – and many Imperials regard the Serenity as a kind of religious figurehead. It is not uncommon to find icons of the Serenity in shops and homes, and in more backwards and superstitious areas there are even small cults dedicated to the Serenity.

Sundiata

Sundiata is a very young megacorporation – it was formed in the aftermath of CWII, when a Capitolian conglomerate broke free. The corporation has a North-African/Arabic culture – a culture which is much older than the corporation itself. It long existed as a minority culture within Capitol (and in some places among the other megacorporations), which helps explain how it could come seemingly out of nowhere and still have a unique society. Sundiata values education and intellectual pursuits. It is led by a council of so-called Polymaths – intellectuals who guide the corporation according to their own philosophical and scientific theories. However, Sundiata is not a society of free thought and honest debate. It is more to be likened to ancient Greece, where the authority and standing of the debater is more important than actual evidence and soundness of a theory. The rapid rise of Sundiata is linked to a unique brand of technology called Bordertech – able to circumvent the ravages of the Symmetry and create almost supernatural results. The most mainstream applications of Bordertech lie within chemical products, communications technology and spacecraft.

Sundiata has been a problem child of ours. As you can probably gather from the above, they actually started out as Cybertronic. However, the ‘tronics where another area where we got a “Rework or Remove” from Paradox. In the process of reworking Cybertronic into a functioning society of its own, it eventually evolved into Sundiata. Bordertech started out as a direct copy of the cybernetics and other advanced technology of Cybertronic. As Sundiata became its own entity, so did Bordertech gradually turn into something more subtle. We still had a lot of work to do with regards to Sundiata, but it was slowly shaping up into something I think could have been pretty cool.