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Author Topic: Corporate Assassins  (Read 1585 times)

Veiki

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Corporate Assassins
« on: 14 Oct 2016, 02:05 »

Corporate Assassins
We all know the saying, “business is war.” Nowhere is this adage practiced more seriously than in the Caldari corporate world. The soldiers in this fight are typically thought of as the salesmen, managers, executives, and other boardroom warriors. However, from time to time a very special skill set is required to deal with an equally specific threat. For these situations, corporate assassins are sometimes required to resolve issues that cannot be otherwise remedied through conventional channels. In the most extreme cases, these highly-trained operatives, most of whom served particularly arduous and dangerous careers in the Caldari Special Forces and intelligence groups, are hired to carry out very selective missions with very limited goals. The missions they are paid, - highly paid at that - to undertake would rival any holovid espionage movie, though the consequences are, of course, much more serious. You don't want to mess with these guys, and gals, as it is usually the last thing you'll ever do.

--From the mission Hunting Black Dog.

The surprise of sweet lore vindication as a Kaalakiota deniable asset while carebearing for The Company lol
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Samira Kernher

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Re: Corporate Assassins
« Reply #1 on: 14 Oct 2016, 03:43 »

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Silas Vitalia

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Re: Corporate Assassins
« Reply #2 on: 14 Oct 2016, 08:49 »

This was always one of my favorite aspects of Caldari lore, that there's a world underneath the corporate surface of plots and counter plots and covert agents and corporate sabotage and hacking and poisoning and all sorts of cyberpunk business going on.  Sleeper agents and that lowly secretary actually being special ops, all the good stuff.

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Elmund Egivand

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Re: Corporate Assassins
« Reply #3 on: 14 Oct 2016, 09:25 »

This was always one of my favorite aspects of Caldari lore, that there's a world underneath the corporate surface of plots and counter plots and covert agents and corporate sabotage and hacking and poisoning and all sorts of cyberpunk business going on.  Sleeper agents and that lowly secretary actually being special ops, all the good stuff.

I had always figured that Caldari State and Gallente Federation each embodies half the cyberpunk tropes. Caldari State is where all the Megacorp shenanigans are at. Hedonism, empty entertainment, consumerism and deviancy are taken by the Federation. Both cover the high tech low lives in their ghettos and slums and such.
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Silas Vitalia

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Re: Corporate Assassins
« Reply #4 on: 14 Oct 2016, 12:39 »

This was always one of my favorite aspects of Caldari lore, that there's a world underneath the corporate surface of plots and counter plots and covert agents and corporate sabotage and hacking and poisoning and all sorts of cyberpunk business going on.  Sleeper agents and that lowly secretary actually being special ops, all the good stuff.

I had always figured that Caldari State and Gallente Federation each embodies half the cyberpunk tropes. Caldari State is where all the Megacorp shenanigans are at. Hedonism, empty entertainment, consumerism and deviancy are taken by the Federation. Both cover the high tech low lives in their ghettos and slums and such.

^^ Indeed!  There was an old thread here about Ver 1.0 Gallente looked way, way different for general theme and feel.  Actually the old hand-illustrated faction images had so much more personality than the current 'everyone is sleek and fit' ones.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[spoiler][/spoiler]
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Elmund Egivand

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Re: Corporate Assassins
« Reply #5 on: 15 Oct 2016, 02:09 »

That's kind of one of the things I'm disappointed with the character creation in Eve Online. Yes, the avatars are really pretty and the customisation is really detailed. I can even sculpt individual wrinkles, dammit!

But at the same time, there seems to be a, well, lack of choices to really add character to the characters. Like you know, punk-style clothing for Gallente, even more corporate stiff-upper-lip fashion style for the Caldari, Jin-Mei or Deteis eastern-inspired clothing, cloaks and robes or clothes with tribal styling for the Minmatar, not even the Matari body tattoos for the characters themselves. Only the Amarr seems to not have such an issue.
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Veiki

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Re: Corporate Assassins
« Reply #6 on: 23 Oct 2016, 11:21 »

Yeah what drew me to the Fed initially was the cyberpunk tropes of powerful corporations in a democratic society cynically buying out politicians and using their army of lobbyists as another branch of market competition and dominance; the frustrations of individualism being expressed only in empty consumerism as all your personal data is sold off to be used by advertisers; the collusion between governments and big business expressed most obviously in the cozy relationship between the military and the arms industry to such an extent the CEO of a weapons company becomes President and must make war palatable to the masses through the propaganda of vast interstellar media apparatus.

What drew me to the State was that it had the cyberpunk tropes of corporations that rule everything; political affiliations are no longer tied to nation-states and allegiance is sworn not to the flag of a nation-state but the corporate brand; where individual lives are controlled and watched to such an extent and with such perfection that people don't even realize it; and underneath the lives of corporate workers living their middle-class dreams there's the currents of proletarial dissent, corporate assassins, and mercenaries working as deniable assets for the highest bidder.

But then you actually try to rp a character as a product of those worlds and Fed loyalists just go, "Muh Freedom," before trying to  play at parliamentary procedure and State loyalists go, "Muh honour," before trying to play at toy soldiers.
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Arnulf Ogunkoya

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Re: Corporate Assassins
« Reply #7 on: 23 Oct 2016, 13:24 »

I think people playing Caldari characters would be well advised to take a look at the background materials for SLA Industries. At least sans the aliens and psychic weirdness.

Whenever a play a session of it I get a strong sense of how odd the SLA worldview is to a modern person. And I usually feel slightly soiled by trying to model it.

As for the Fed. Perhaps Shadowrun and the poltical dance of UCAS federal government, Tribal administration and the Tir might offer inspiration for disparate cultures interacting?
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Persephone Alleile

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Re: Corporate Assassins
« Reply #8 on: 26 Oct 2016, 09:09 »

I always liked the corporate assassin in Johnny Mnemonic. Vat grown, super-assassin with a spool of monomolecular filament in a detachable thumb and genetically engineered to look like a random tourist.
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