Question That'll Take One Reply to Answer

[Commy]

I wonder if she bought some "spores" from our good ole budy Cha Dawn...

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Commy
I wonder if she bought some "spores" from our good ole budy Cha Dawn...

I think Cheese Dong is just misunderstood

[#endgame]

Yes, you misunderstood his name. It's "Chewed On"

[Senethro]

Chowed Down

[Frankychan]

Why is it assumed (notice the underline?) that Domai comes from the Hive? I haven't found a single source saying that Domai came from the Hive. Everyone assumes that Yang spawned the Drones because the HH is demonized. What about Morgan? I always assumed that Domai came from the University or Morgan Industries.

University because of the drone problem. Morgan because of:

Some civilian workers got in among the research patients today and became so hysterical I felt compelled to have them nerve stapled. The consequence, of course, will be another public relations nightmare, but I was severely shaken by the extent of their revulsion towards a project so vital to our survival.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan, The Personal Diaries

Morgans treament of civilian workers just made me think he's more responsible for creating that mess of a faction we call the "Free" Drones.

[Chaos Theory]

IIRC, the Alpha Centauri GURPS book says Domai splits from Yang.

[Net Warrior]

"Domai was assigned to the Unity as a mining specialist, to be awakened Planetside after the regular mission crew had set up permanent settlements. However, a cryopod malfunction following the meteor strike prematurely awakened him into a miasma of toxic gases vented by the crippled ship, causing temporary damage to his memory and communication faculties. Assigned to repair crews as a common drone, Domai struggled to reassert his identity and regain his full humanity. Once recovered, Domai led his co-workers in a revolt at their brutal working conditions, commandeered a colony pod, and set out for Planet in command of his new band of followers."


....so it seems that, just like the original 7, Domai formed his own faction while still on board Unity.

[livid imp]

Originally posted by Frankychan
Why is it assumed (notice the underline?) that Domai comes from the Hive? I haven't found a single source saying that Domai came from the Hive. Everyone assumes that Yang spawned the Drones because the HH is demonized. What about Morgan? I always assumed that Domai came from the University or Morgan Industries.

I don't know why, but I always though that the Drones revolted from Morgan too. I have nothing to back this up, it is just what I had thought until you all started going on about the Hive.

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by Frankychan
Why is it assumed (notice the underline?) that Domai comes from the Hive? I haven't found a single source saying that Domai came from the Hive. Everyone assumes that Yang spawned the Drones because the HH is demonized. What about Morgan? I always assumed that Domai came from the University or Morgan Industries.

University because of the drone problem. Morgan because of:



Morgans treament of civilian workers just made me think he's more responsible for creating that mess of a faction we call the "Free" Drones.

Originally posted by Net Warrior
"Domai was assigned to the Unity as a mining specialist, to be awakened Planetside after the regular mission crew had set up permanent settlements. However, a cryopod malfunction following the meteor strike prematurely awakened him into a miasma of toxic gases vented by the crippled ship, causing temporary damage to his memory and communication faculties. Assigned to repair crews as a common drone, Domai struggled to reassert his identity and regain his full humanity. Once recovered, Domai led his co-workers in a revolt at their brutal working conditions, commandeered a colony pod, and set out for Planet in command of his new band of followers."


....so it seems that, just like the original 7, Domai formed his own faction while still on board Unity.

Now let’s start with Net Warrior’s post.
You should think about that passage. First of all, notice that Domai is not awakened at the same time as the rest of later faction readers, he is awakened on Unity early due to meteor strike. When the wording say he was assigned to repair crews you naturally assume it was on Unity. But read this passages from Centauri Arrival:

Domai sat at the edge of his bunk, staring at his hands. The lights remained dim, as Central required, and all of the other drones slept their dreamless slumber.
But Domai could not sleep. He sat in the low-ceilinged Drone Barracks room on the edge of his narrow metal bunk and stared at his hands, hands cut and scratched from hard labor. And as he stared, slowly…thoughts…began to form, swirling and gathering in the cavern of his mind. Thoughts of a different time, of rich smells and fluid speech, debates and drinking, and the feel of fine cloth on his arms, and people saluting him. Dim memories, slipping away from him, behind a wall of thick fog.
The fog of poisonous yellow gas, and blackness. People grabbing at him, his mind screaming in horror, but he could not speak…his tongue remained thick and useless. And later as the blue-suited medical techs pulled him from the tangle he tried to speak, but his thoughts would not form, as of lost in a vast dark maze.
His hands. A Talent had been crushed by a falling support yesterday. Domai had found the man and stood over him as blood leaked from under flesh and metal. Urgent thoughts sparked in Domai's brain, but his muscles stayed heavy and noncommittal. Domai could only…stare.
He stared at the Talent's hands, which were not different from Domai's hands, except for the thickness. And the fear in the man's wide black eyes ads he lay bleeding under the metal was not so different from Domai's fear when the psych whips struck his back, except perhaps that Domai's fear was slower to rise, and thus more manageable.
He looked at the walls around him. This space, cramped and dark, seemed so small and stifling under the dim yellow lights of the buzzing glowlamps.
A buzzer sounded, harsh and jagged. The full lights came up, bright in his eyes. A metal door clanged open, and fifty Drones rose from their bunks. Domai stood with them.

Episode 8, part 4

Domai watched the overseers in the mess hall. He stared at the menacing blue figures that lurked at the room's edges, pacing along the length of the plain metal curve of corrugated metal that made up the Drone Mess.
One of the seated drones, Kohai, turned his head slowly and reached out to take a nutrient stick off of his neighbor's tray. Kohai was big and dull-eyed, a drone full of spite and bitterness, and had two huge fists and a strong back from working on the skyfarm assembly line. But his neighbor, Pankol, was not small either.
The wise man sets pride aside in favor of accomplishment. Now where had that come from, leaping into Domai's brain?
Pankol reached out and put Kohai's hand in a crushing grip. The two Drones stood slowly, dull gray eyes staring into each other, smoldering. Pankol lifted his tray and smashed it into Kohai's left cheekbone; the Drones' thoughts were slow but once engaged their actions were swift. Now the two were at it, Kohai hooking bony fingers into Pankol's throat muscles.
It's going to take at least four of the overseers to break this one up, thought Domai, and then he felt an unusual thrill, the thrill of recognition, as he looked around at all the dull-eyed but ferociously sturdy drone workers around him. It would take two of them to stop only one of us.
He looked at all of the dull eyes, turned to watch the two combatants tear apart the metal mess table as they fought. The watching Drones did not move, but Domai could see vague thoughts forming behind black eyes. And the eyes grew blacker as overseers moved in to pound the two Drones into submission.
Two Drones…Pankol and Kohai. They have names.
Domai stood. In some deep part of his brain the image flashed of a noble man dressed in silk rising to give a toast on ravaged Earth. And that man's hands were the hands of a leader.
Domai tapped the two drones next to him and motioned them into the fray. Picking up a metal tray from the table, he went in as well.

This is how Domai is born. He remembers everything on Chiron. Moreover, the situation described here is obviously hinting at a base with very bad treatment of Drones. It could be University, Morgan or Hive. But that would mean three factions revolted off from Morgan Industries, which is quite excessive. However, as Chaos Theory pointed out:

Donaldson was given the name "Domai" and assigned to work as a common drone in the depths of the Hive. There, he struggled for several years to regain the use of memory and speech, avoiding drugs and nerve-stapling. Eventually he regained his identity and full intelligence, along with a deep rage against the exploitation of his fellow laborers. A few years after Planetfall, Domai led Planet's first major drone revolt. Against all odds, he and his followers escaped from the Hive and struck out for a distant part of Planet.

[livid imp]

Originally posted by Illuminatus
But that would mean three factions revolted off from Morgan Industries, which is quite excessive.

Ugh, I knew this would come up. Why would it be excessive for three factions (or even more) to splinters from one faction? Is there some regulatory committee that has decided that more than three splinters is too much? There are often dozens of splinters in any one grouping of people. Think about it, every flavor of Protestant is a splinter off the Catholic church, and are dozens of variants! There are over a hundred different dialects of the Indian language, everyone of those groups is a potential splinter group.

There are plenty for good ways of explaining who came from where, but saying that too many factions came from one source is not a legitimate point.

[WotanAnubis]

Originally posted by livid imp
There are plenty for good ways of explaining who came from where, but saying that too many factions came from one source is not a legitimate point.

Except, perhaps, that it implies that Morgan Industries is such a rotten faction that everyone tries to get away from it as soon as possible.

Of course, that concept doesn't really bother me, but some people might be bothered with it.

[Commy]

Support socialism, support the Peacekeepers...down with morgan, down with free marketers...

[Frankychan]

livid imp is my hero of the month.

Illuminatus-Thank you for the description. However, I would assume that Drone's in any faction, barring maybe the DataTech and the Peacekeepers, would treat their Drones in a similar faction.

The wise man sets pride aside in favor of accomplishment. Now where had that come from, leaping into Domai's brain?

This quote does indeed seem to reflect Yang's psyche. Personal sacrifice (i.e. Pride) in favor for accomplishment (of the group) would indeed mark this as a quote from Yang. However...

Domai stood. In some deep part of his brain the image flashed of a noble man dressed in silk rising to give a toast on ravaged Earth. And that man's hands were the hands of a leader.

This seems, in my eyes, to take away blame from Yang and shift it to Morgan. "Noble" man. "Silk". "Give a TOAST". All these seem to mark themselves as a trait of Morgan's psyche. I think Nwabudike is a sleeper, many people don't see his ruthlessness. While it might not be so blatant as Yang, Morgan's ruthlessness is devious as well as borderline criminal.

The quote I mentioned above in my previous post seems to indicate this.

As for Commy's post, I support 3/4's of it. Don't support Lal, Down with Morgan, Down with Free market.

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by livid imp
There are plenty for good ways of explaining who came from where, but saying that too many factions came from one source is not a legitimate point.

Yes it is, it is a very good point. What you forget is that this is not Earth. First off, splintering within Christianity cannot in any case be compared to serious ideological divisions between splintering factions. In addition Earth is habital and has a lot of population and resources. Chiron is alien and unknown. Resources are limited and population is valued.
It wouldn’t be hard to find three groups that would like to splinter off, but it would be hard to find three groups actually willing to do it. They would break off from main faction, head into unknown alien wilderness, carrying limited tools. They would deny themselves any help from parent faction and risk confrontation with it.
It should be mentioned that they would also need a strong ideological basis - several years on Planet is not enough to create enough strong ideological differences within a sufficient amount of populace to warrant several riots. They do not riot to a single competing faction but several different ones - what caused Morgan Industries to be so bad that three different ideological viewpoints splinter from it, while most of other factions can remain a single group? What makes Morgan any worse than Spartan Federation or the Human Hive?
It might happen once, but doing this even twice are excessive: *very faction has a limited pool of population – every revolt decreases it
*tools and materials are limited – each revolt decreases their amount as well
*each revolt with carry off a colony pod – materials for starting a new base. Any effort diverted towards establishment of a new base is thus lost.
*Three splinter off factions mean three neighbours in your vicinity. Most likely they won’t be very friendly towards you.
*Time, effort and materials intended for colony pods were wasted. Other factions have diverted roughly the same amount of materials to projects which mostly did not fail. In comparison to other factions Morgan Industries is now behind in population, wasted resources towards projects that failed and did not expand enough. It is now surrounded with one faction that is guaranteed to hate it, one that will prevent naval expansion and prehaps raid their coasts, and one that might see the opportunity to probe them for information to sell others. Even if Pirates don’t splinter off from Morgan, he would still have trouble with Free Drones and would need to ward off Angels from disrupting his operations.

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by Frankychan
Illuminatus-Thank you for the description. However, I would assume that Drone's in any faction, barring maybe the DataTech and the Peacekeepers, would treat their Drones in a similar faction.

I don't think Believers would treat them that bad - they are their fellow believing bothers as well. Spartan Federation would certainly not have guards that are easily overpowered like in the excerpt, but would treat them just as bad. Gaians and police don't go hand by hand - they would surely treat drones better than that, they are freedom loving just as Peecekeepers. Gaians also don't have a strong elite.