Ublicto's Human Lore Deputy Application

[Ublicto]

Ckey/BYOND Username: Ublicto
Position Being Applied For: (Wiki Maintainer, Lore Developer, Deputy Lore developer): Human Lore Deputy
Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page?

Yes
Past Experiences/Knowledge: None, but I like to think I can write well.
Examples of Past Work: None, but I can write a sample news article or something if you need it.

Time on server: Probably close to four months

Why are you applying for this position and why do you believe you would make a good Human Lore Deputy?

I have a strong interest in Aurora's lore and enjoy world building. Aurora has a strong universe already established and I think it could benefit from filling in many details especially when it comes to being able to create more unique characters for the role playing game Aurora's lore revolves around. I am most interested in expanding Aurora's depth rather than its breadth and elaborating on the implications of various parts of the lore I don't think are explored. For example, how would the average citizen of the ASSN react to their country losing very close to half its territory? How would the average Bieselite who believes in the Republic respond to the Nanotrasen dominance over their government? Both of these questions among others create a good basis for stories to expand the Aurora universe.

 

What is your favourite part of Human Lore and why? What is your least favourite? (Note: If you submitted something that was canonised and is now part of human lore, you may not select your own canonised submission as your favourite or least favourite part of the lore.)

I am a fan of the Solarian Alliance's warlord period, and dislike the Nanotrasen stranglehold on Biesel. The warlords of the Alliance create a lot of interesting circumstances for Alliance origin characters and serve as an excellent way to force the ASSN to reform and push forward the story of that state in particular. The story of military usurpers and regional military commands losing direct contact with the central government reminds me vaguely of the late Roman Empire to a degree and there is a lot of room for lore expansion coming from that angle. The ASSN as this slowly dying state that refuses to go peacefully into history or as an empire given new life by a close brush with death both give some really good ways to tell a story.

However, Biesel is at the other end of the spectrum as far as states go. It is too stable and too predictable. For a Republic that must justify itself to its people with republican principles it delivers on little of its promises. The Nanotrasen control of the state and lack of real internal problems or opposition creates a stagnant and less interesting environment for story telling I think. Biesel needs a certain degree of stability to be the basis of the Horizon and to make sense as the home of Aurora's story, but it also needs real challenges and real internal problems to make it a more interesting state to create characters from and a good place to tell stories around or in.

What are three projects (medium to large sized additions, reworks, or arcs) you would like to do or help organize if made Human Lore deputy? (NEW PLANETS OR FACTIONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM ADDITION AT THIS PRESENT TIME. DO NOT INCLUDE THEM IN YOUR ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION.)

I would add or change details about the structure of human governments and make sure these reflect different values. I would like to see the ASSN reworked into a more unitary government or at least the way planetary leadership interacts with the central government elaborated on to reflect the authoritarianism that permeates its political system. I would also like to create more significant differences in the values each state beyond what exists now. Biesel and the Alliance should have different cultures and I am a fan of the work that was put in to make the Empire of Dominia culturally and organizationally unique. The Coalition of Colonies and Elyra could also greatly benefit from going into more details about the structure of their government and how that reflects their values or histories. . For example, in such a decentralized state the capital could move every time a new leader is chosen to the leader's planet. One year Galatea might have the capitol and the next year Xanu. This could also be a great way to add details to less explored parts of the Coalition where maybe some power sharing agreement results in the capitol being moved to a

With regards to arcs I think one about the internal politics of the Republic of Biesel would be great. Biesel in general can take interest from the politics of historical Republics where elite interests and popular interests were constantly interacting with each other and running into conflicts. A good arc can be a constitutional crisis caused by a powerful and popular populist senator being killed by the SCC after demanding economic or poltical reform. It would create a lot of tension between what Biesel is supposed to be and what it actually is and can be reflected in game with new antag gimmicks or events that divide the crew and change characters even if they don't involve very much shooting. An arc about Biesel's politics would also create more lore depth for the faction in general.

A second idea is the Sol Alliance rebuilding its international standing. The Horizon could host diplomatic missions or ferry an ambassador from Sol to Biesel with the possibility of attempts being made on their life or other interference that the crew would have to respond to. Depending on the crew's response and methods of dealing with the crisis - or failure to deal with the crisis - relations between two of the largest interstellar states in the game would be affected.

A third idea is The Dominians and Elyrans stirring up chaos. There could be some sort of incident between the two states and the Horizon is called in to protect the SCC's interests. This could be reflected in game by Elyran and Dominian ghost roles being available at the same time or the Horizon having canon away missions where it has to potentially skirmish with Dominian or Elyran forces or simply retrieve some bit of technology that the locals may not want to give up. There are plenty of interesting things to do with this and a lot of them don't need to be world shaking.

 

What do you believe are the current strengths and weaknesses of human lore? Why? What would you do to improve upon the weaknesses?

A big strength is the diversity of peoples, states, and cultures. This gives a lot of room for story telling and a great diversity of characters to encounter in game. A weakness I think is the general homogeneity in social values between any culture which doesn't have a gimmick of sorts. I know that introducing some prejudices or values that are debated in the real world can make some people uncomfortable but if done right I think it could make the world much more engaging and give a lot of new ways for characters to relate or not to relate to each other in game.

From a story telling perspective the SCC also seems much too powerful. Even though it has detailed lore and history it seems to win all the time and I think giant corporations openly defying state authority despite the fact that they lack armed force in most cases to back that defiance up is a little unrealistic. Especially considering that Hephaestus Industries just bought the Hegemony's economy. I always thought it would be nice if the SCC had real threats and there were times where the megacorporations that define so much of the story tended to blend with states and it wans't clear where the interests of the corporation ended and the state's interest began. Something like this exists in the Cyberpunk series where the mega corporation Militech has been nationalized by the United States government but still functions on its own and has its CEOs become American presidents. The line between Militech and the government in cyberpunk is very blurry and although we are getting some of that with Nanotrasen and Biesel I think a similar relationship could and should be extended to other states and other corporations to different degrees.

What are your thoughts on the past arcs that have been organised by the human lore team?

I was not here for many of those but I am a fan of the direction Mictlan is going. I like the potrayal of counter-insurgency and the realities of the Republic of Biesel's war effort on the planet. It feels realistic, its polarizing, and I can easily imagine a government in real life resorting to such brutal tactics because they do it all the time.

Apart from that reading the wiki I really like the story of Admiral Frost. Obviously he's an incompetent fascist dictator but his rise and destruction of the Alliance's government is a good story and also feels believable in a number of ways. His fall is also similarly good and I like how despite his incompetence he died in power and made those who outlived him pay for his actions. He's a figure in the Aurora universe that casts a very long and dark shadow over it and tells a realistic and I think important story.

What is an idea for a future arc that you would like to have a part in writing and organising in the future? (Note: If you provided an arc or arcs as part of your answer for question 3, you may expand on the ideas for that arc or arcs here, or you may provide another idea.)

The Elyra-Dominia skirmish arc would feature a few away missions and some space missions as well as giving ghost roles work during extended or potentially regular rounds. Having the Horizon transit a region where little central authority exists going from one spot to another retrieving technology or otherwise checking up on SCC outposts could create a more "Star Trek" feeling that I think the HRP space ship based nature of the server can be really good at making interesting. Outposts could be afflicted by Elyran or Dominian saboteurs, tajara or unathi groups trying to take advantage of the chaos (although that would involve the other lore teams), or involved in a multitude of other problems or projects. An arc like this would not be aimed at giving the Horizon participation in some world changing battle or series of events but instead creating interesting missions for the Horizon crew and canon events in a more episodic way.

Have you ever been subject to any strikes or bans of any kind from Aurora's moderators or admins? If so, how long ago were these actions and what were they for?

Yes I have received a week long antag ban and some notes for extremely aggressive antag play.  This was nearly two months ago by now and I haven't got any notes since then.

Edited October 27, 2023 by Ublicto

[La Villa Strangiato]

Biesel is under the purview of the loremaster team (being myself and Triogenix at the moment), and human lore did not write either of the Mictlan arcs. I would suggest thinking of an arc outside of the Corporate Reconstruction Zone/Tau Ceti as your example arc.

Edited October 26, 2023 by La Villa Strangiato

[Ublicto]

Example arc idea has been edited.

[canon35]

1. What is your current thoughts on parts of the setting where human and non-human lore cross over? Do you think there should be more? Less? What are the strenghs and weaknesses, in your eyes, of these crossovers?

2. What are your plans to advance the setting for the nations besides Sol? It obviously has gotten the most attention with active lore developments like with the article arc for San Colette, I am curious to know what you think other nations should be doing.

3. What is your thoughts on Off-worlders? Do you think they should be expanded, cut down, or removed?

[Ublicto]

9 minutes ago, canon35 said:

1. What is your current thoughts on parts of the setting where human and non-human lore cross over? Do you think there should be more? Less? What are the strenghs and weaknesses, in your eyes, of these crossovers?

2. What are your plans to advance the setting for the nations besides Sol? It obviously has gotten the most attention with active lore developments like with the article arc for San Colette, I am curious to know what you think other nations should be doing.

3. What is your thoughts on Off-worlders? Do you think they should be expanded, cut down, or removed?

1. I think in general crossover shouldn't put the aliens as part of a human story or the humans as part of an alien story. I think the tajara in particular have a lot of interesting stories to tell on their own and a larger power intervening on one side or the other too much can suppress that. What works best I think are stories that use humanity as a plot device to advance something related to the aliens. Maybe the tajara lore people want to restart their three way civil war again and use human weapons and aid to intensify it. Maybe the Skrell writers want to have traverse rebels hire human mercenaries or something to escalate the conflict and destroy what chance at peace exists.

The way aliens interact with humans or other aliens should be much the same. I don't think humans or aliens should be imposing things on the other unless there's a good story reason to do so, all of their interactions should help advance their own story and use the other party as a plot device. I would be against something like the SCC taking over the Hegemony with a coup for a story where the SCC is the focus. If that happened it would have to contribute something positive to the Unathi's world.

 

2. The Coalition I think should be expanded and there should be some exploration into what its citizens view it as. Is it basically a military and economic alliance sort of like a combination between the EU and NATO, or is it a real state? I imagine there would be voices for centralization and voices against. Xanu and Gadpathur might like centralization as a domestic policy for different reasons even though they normally oppose each other on foreign policy for example. The Coalition's response to the Alliance's reunification can create a lot of interesting tension and should have a lot of news articles written about it especially when the Alliance starts reorganizing itself and becoming stronger as an institution so it can support looking outward.

Dominia and Elyra have a lot to write about as well. Elyra is a state with a lot of religious influence in a very materialistic world and I think it would benefit to take Elyra in a direction which keeps it a secular state but extends the role of religion in a cultural way. In Dominia religion is politics and cannot be separated from the state. There i think it would be good to introduce some instability. Dominia has a social system which would generate a lot of dissatisfaction among large groups of people and give them little legal outlet to deal with their problems.  Dominia deserves a story about struggling to reform or to resist reform and the consequences of that to their religious system. Maybe even as great as a short-lived (or permanent) schism of their church.

In general though I think Elyra needs more religious influence and Dominia needs less stability.

 

3. I like the idea of scarabs but I dislike the fact that they're part of the Coalition and one mostly unified fleet. There is so much space and there should be a category of off-worlder who belong to no nation and are much more spread out. There would be countless isolated asteroid colonies, generation ships, or whatever else outside the boundaries of any state. It can be the case that the farthest humans from Earth are on generation ships that launched long before the Interstellar war. A new category of scarab or entirely different offworlder that represents more isolated ships or asteroid colonies/space stations could be a solid addition. They could also contribute to events for the Horizon in ways that scarabs could not. They could be an enemy more interesting than random pirates or be the crew of some of the stations that populate the space the Horizon is passing through. There are plenty of ideas for new ghost roles or antag gimmicks involving them as well.

Alternatively off-worlders could remain almost entirely as is and only be tweaked slightly so that scarab is a more expansive term which encompasses people who aren't part of the main scarab fleet and crew those isolated ships and stations. Over a long time the scarabs could have split and the present scarab fleet is simply the largest group of them around. Whatever is done I think off-worlders in general need a way to be independent of any state or the larger scarab fleet without being a scarab sadar.

[dessysalta]

Ublicto is easily (sorry, guys) the best writer on Aurora and I will say this with my chest to whoever asks. 

That out of the way, I have a great relationship with Ublicto as a writer, from gold-standard antagonist gimmicks, to heart to hearts between my Kira and his Elwood, to getting and giving advice to one another on how to properly accomplish certain things in-game or OOCly (from application recommendations to chit-chat about how to write exploitables). I think the best thing I could say about him is how amazingly competent in Aurora's human politics he is; he has an amazing understanding of how things tick and I love his sense of direction.

I have questions I'd ask him about things like antagonist factions, more Sol nonsense, etc. but I'm a little afraid of overstepping given the seriousness of a deputy position (not to mention the submissions have already closed, so I want to prevent giving the lore team a headache because of me). Seriously, this dude rocks. Get him on the team ASAP, and I'd like to apologize for not giving a +1 earlier when I noticed people were doing it to the other apps.

+1

[The7thLain]

Hi, pardon the delay on these questions. I've had some personal events delay these for you and all other applicants. I will ask you three questions, the first I will ask to all applicants and the latter two will be tailored to your application specifically. Consider these questions as being from both myself and my deputy.

1. On balance, how do you see the Human Lore of the server being different with you than without you; what is something that only you bring to the table as a deputy?

2. We've received some criticisms from the community before about focusing too heavily on government or military lore, as some in the community feel that it is too detached from their characters. This is a compound question: how would you make the government lore of the various factions have a place on the ship and in the lives of player crew characters without making it intrusive, and similarly, what are aspects of human lore that you would want to write about/develop that are not related to the government lore?

3. A lot of the arcs you've proposed here seem rather confrontational. A complaint that arcs ran by the lore teams in general have received before are that arcs are too combat heavy and result in too many deaths. Do you have any ideas for future content which may address this concern or future arcs that might not involve conflict between the various factions in the setting?

[Ublicto]

On 23/11/2023 at 00:44, TheBurninSherman said:

Hi, pardon the delay on these questions. I've had some personal events delay these for you and all other applicants. I will ask you three questions, the first I will ask to all applicants and the latter two will be tailored to your application specifically. Consider these questions as being from both myself and my deputy.

1. On balance, how do you see the Human Lore of the server being different with you than without you; what is something that only you bring to the table as a deputy?

2. We've received some criticisms from the community before about focusing too heavily on government or military lore, as some in the community feel that it is too detached from their characters. This is a compound question: how would you make the government lore of the various factions have a place on the ship and in the lives of player crew characters without making it intrusive, and similarly, what are aspects of human lore that you would want to write about/develop that are not related to the government lore?

3. A lot of the arcs you've proposed here seem rather confrontational. A complaint that arcs ran by the lore teams in general have received before are that arcs are too combat heavy and result in too many deaths. Do you have any ideas for future content which may address this concern or future arcs that might not involve conflict between the various factions in the setting?

1. When compared to a lot of the other applicants I think I would offer a different level of depth to human lore. While many of their ideas are good and deserve implementation, I feel as if my suggestions for expansions in the lore and story arcs would make the Aurora universe feel more lived-in and give new meaning to many of the identities and ideas characters on the Horizon have. Having the Horizon participate in a lore arc as a minor element or even only observing the effects of the arc through a series of events and mini-events that have low to moderate stakes would encourage character development influenced by ongoing lore while also creating a solid middle ground between the Horizon being the center of the universe and just another space ship. A lot of the broader world-changing lore changes I support would also make the values and cultures of the characters on the Horizon more diverse. Another applicant has raised the fact that a lot of the lore is "Americentric" because 21st century American culture is treated as the default and they are absolutely correct. Aurora is heavily influenced by the cyberpunk genre which in turn reflects the concerns of Americans from the 1980s both in terms of foreign economic dominance and machines taking over from humans (a concern today as well). The changes I have said I would make in my application would do the most to change that I think.

Among all applicants, I think the changes and new lore I would make would do the most to make Aurora's universe more unique and engaging for players.

 

2. Consulars are an excellent way to bring in geopolitics and for a while now I have thought we should have at least two slots for them. Besides that, I have said that I want to increase the cultural differences across the Aurora universe. I generally dislike how the baseline for culture in Aurora is 21st century American culture and am interested in taking different directions in different ways. While Biesel might be more "21st century" than the others, I think most of humanity should feel as different from us in our version of 500 years in the future as our ancestors were 500 years ago from now. In particular I think the implications of a lot of cultural practices are not explored. How would Eridani society sustain itself when societies that put career success above everything else right now suffer from demographic crisis? How would the genetic engineering of elite Dominians affect the population? Would it deprive them of whatever social mobility could exist for them in a society like Dominia? Maybe gene-boosted primaries have to be sectioned off from society because they're so resented by everyone else that excessive public exposure risks mob violence against them? How would the hyper-militarism of Gadpathur affect what jobs and communities its exiles organize. Maybe there are Gadpathurian exile mercenary companies because the only job skill many exiles might have is being a soldier.

 

3. I think my Elyra-Dominia arc could be as dangerous for the Horizon as the event organizers would like to make it. There could be away missions with little combat that focus mostly on engineering and medical, or there could be high intensity away missions where some faction mistakes the Horizon for their enemy or otherwise tries to force it or its away team away from something important.

 

If we want to avoid combat or confrontation between factions however it might be best to focus on a diplomatic arc. It would be interesting for the Horizon to carry a Solarian delegation to a diplomatic meeting in the Republic of Biesel or carry a Bieselite delegation into Solarian space. I'm sure many would like to visit Earth as part of a peaceful event. The Horizon could also participate in a cooperative mission with the Coalition, Elyrans, Dominians, or any other power to find something of mutual interest to both the SCC and that power. Regardless of what is done I would like to see the Horizon be part of a larger story rather than the subject of the entire story or a bystander. Players should feel as if their characters live in the setting rather than that they are the setting. Having the Horizon not be the most important thing in the universe and contributing to a larger concern can do more for player engagement than maximizing the stakes or violence like the ICV Wolf event (which i enjoyed) did.

[The7thLain]

Hello. Thank you very much for applying, I'm happy to see that we have passionate people in the community who want to contribute to the human lore of the server. Unfortunately, we've decided to proceed with another candidate. I hope that this does not discourage you from continuing to be an active member of the community who cares about human lore.