Corporations are not the lifeblood of our economic system - that would imply that our economy is a single being, when the multitude of competing interests would suggest it is anything but that. Instead, the integrated interstellar economy can only be understood as an ecosystem - and, as with every ecosystem, special attention must be paid to its apex predators. These apex predators are, obviously, those Petacorporations which dominate our interstellar markets - but what interests us most is how these predators interact and compete with each other...
- Araba "2sdaemon" Gyambibi, Blood for Data: Life in the Corporate Shadow Economy
Hard to imagine we almost went extinct 80 years ago.
Picture a China with 1.5 billion people, and a Bharat with nearly 2 billion, in those same, small, Earthbound borders. Both were screaming not only at each other but the world at large for land, land, land, anywhere to put these bloated hordes of people. Collapsing coastlines in the Pacific, drought and crop failure all across Africa, refugees fleeing wherever possible. Total, civilization-destroying war for land and resources and water and literally anything you could imagine didn't just seem inevitable, but imminent.
And then that patron saint of geniuses Tai Wenyang not only comes up with a wormhole generator, but one so stupidly efficient you could run it off a wall socket. Instantaneously there's a release valve for all this excess population - and for all this excess pollution to boot. Forget CCS - just pop open a 'hole where the smokestacks used to go with the other end on Mars, push the exhaust pipe through, and call it a day. Forget a need for resources - suddenly all the worlds in the universe were viable options for people to live and robots to go mine. Sure, CYCLE owns, like, half the universe - but hey, I'd rather the rest of us get the other half than have to just share one shitty planet.
- Anonymous, 04/20/32(Sun)17:32:47 No.401908038583055039, found on /his/
Fuck off, you fucking cuck, what are you, a fucking commie? You want their money go out and work for it, god you fucking beta cucks sometimes.
- Anonymous, 04/20/32(Sun)17:33:59 No.401908038583056124, found on /his/
Fuck off back to /pol/ you degenerate, we're trying to have an intelligent conversation here.
- Anonymous, 04/20/32(Sun)17:38:16 No.401908038583056719, found on /his/
Automation was supposed to kill the workforce, make it so the rich would never need us again because robots could do everything they ever wanted. But it was the 2022 discovery of the 'Galatea' myomers, leading up to Chen Shikang's 2024 invention of the first true physical augmentation device that changed that economic calculus. Initially built as replacement limbs for the disabled, the field truly exploded, no pun intended, in the wake of the devastating wars that racked our country and led to the final destruction of Pakistan, and, of course, Nanjilji's founding of Kartavirya Bioscience.
These days, of course, myomer technology sees its greatest development in combat walkers, with Fusang's 50-ton M8 Wildcat the current dominant force, but there are rumors from Newest York of a 60-ton model...
- M L Karthikeyan, Cybernetics: A Century of Progress, in The Former Times of India, May 22nd 2128
The year is 2147.
Humanity is no longer bound to a single planet, which, in all fairness, is a distinct improvement.
Less of an improvement is how, exactly, that's worked out - the CYCLE conglomerate, by virtue of its monopoly on wormhole technology, owns 10% of everything that isn't in the Solar system. Naturally, many of the other players in the corporate ecology are unhappy with these circumstances, to say nothing of the old metropolities of Earth or their gradually-increasing numbers of daughter colonies throughout the universe - but until an alternative presents itself, they have little in the way of recourse.
One of the disappointing facts of humanity's expansion, however, has been that despite the predictions of Drake's Equation, the Fermi Paradox has remained as one of the niggling questions for the ages, despite humanity's colonial bubble reaching out over 300 light-years from Earth, a loose collection of empires numbering nearly 900 settled worlds (and four times that in robomining colonies).
At least, that was the case until about two weeks ago.
Around the star Alpha Musca orbits an Earthlike planet that initial exploratory teams had designated 'low interest', due to mountainous terrain, cold temperatures, and 36-hour days; the lone salve was the eminently comfortable gravity of 0.86 Terra Standard. As a result of the fairly miserable conditions, the only colonial bidder that bothered was Armenia, which sent 5000 colonists to the world they renamed 'Shamiram'. Shamiram remained stultifyingly dull until six months ago, when several colonists went missing unexpectedly. Assumed to have simply frozen to death on a foraging expedition, the others mourned briefly, then went on with their hardscrabble life.
Then Milena Sarafian returned seemingly from the dead. The last survivor of the expedition, she had found the germ of the lie to Fermi's paradox: an underground cavern containing the ruins of an alien civilization.
The news electrified humanity. Sure, we were still alone in the universe - but now we had proof that other intelligent life had arisen, and, of course, a new mystery to investigate - or, more commonly for the Corps - a new opportunity for profit.
That's where you come in.
Shamiram is an RP of political intrigue between rival gigacorporations in a vaguely-cyberpunk universe. As participants, you would have near-total freedom to design a gigacorporation to compete for control of the colony, or join an existing gigacorp. And, of course, because the colony is, as yet, small, this will likely, at least initially, wind up a very personal-level RP, all the better for everyone's Personal Involvement.
With this said, I will not be a participant: instead, I will be 'running' the game in 'real time', so to speak, with events occurring that will have effects on the RP (and so participating would be a bit cheaty). I'm quite fond of gamification, as some of you may be aware of, so I'll be constructing a few relatively simple systems by which we can track what your corporations or characters are good at, and in so doing really clarify the character of these corporations (since there will be Numbers attached, instead of Vague Declarative Statements), as well as provide mechanisms by which they can meaningfully compete against each other, instead of just sort of, well, making Vague Declarative Statements and hoping for a Yes-And.
Hopefully this makes it something that will sustain activity, since if there's a lull, I'll just take it that everyone is done and move along to the next event, which should hopefully avoid the issue of 'everyone is waiting for one guy to post' that eventually results in 'everyone lost interest'. Of course, there is still the one point of failure (me), but you all also know I'm always on Discord so there's always the option to simply nag me there.
At any rate, this is still largely counting my chickens before they hatch, since this is merely an interest thread. So, if you're, uh, interested, lemme know!
