Editing Setting:Nutopia/Factions (section)

=Influential Fringe Groups=

==Red Widow's Crew==
Among merc circles and those who deal with them, there is one name indisputably considered legendary. Red Widow is a CSC merc, most commonly pictured screaming across the sky in a glossy lipstick red Grumman-Sukhoi Combine SGx-0 Air Superiority craft. Her legend stems not only from the fact that she is widely considered to be the deadliest single person in the sky circa ACE 25, but also because the Red Widow was the first human being to undergo a full CSC procedure - the very first brain-in-a-jar. The list of battles the former auburn-haired Israeli Air Force Major turned high-profile PMC aviator has fought and prevailed in trail from, depending on who you ask, the first NATO wargames to involve CSC pilots to sorties during Armacor Intervention Actions, Shadow Wars during the height of Corporate power to the by now mythic 20:1 battle above the Mediterranean during the Fall. For reasons open to much debate, Widow acted seemingly in accordance with Liberty's general goals, although it is unclear if she coordinated her actions with them, or was simply killing her way through some age old personal grudge list.

Regardless of motive, her actions rendered her something of a pariah among corp-loyal mercs. However, she has also consistently refused to outright cooperate with Aegis or other revolutionary groups, preferring to stay completely unaligned. This attitude has hardly won her any lasting friends in the free state communities, and in many places, Red Widow is considered nothing but an overhyped Raider. This, along with a never ending string of would be pretenders to the throne of deadliest merc in the sky have forced the rogue pilot into a life dodging the spotlight. Nevertheless, some mercs that prefer to operate independently have sought her out and joined her, forming a loyal warband that follows the Widow into battle, repairs her various chassis (the red plane being her signature avatar, but Red has been known to use more low-key aircraft, vehicles and humanoid doll forms) and run her mysterious errands. For whatever purpose, Red is actively hiring Delvers to retrieve old data (ranging from pre-fall advertising videos to VI prototypes) from caches around the world. Some take this apparently random interest in various information a sign of the Widow's psychological problems; as the oldest CSC subject alive today, she is speculated to be suffering from an advanced, rare form of corporeal identity dissociation syndrome (CIDS), a mental disorder that functions in its terminal stages like an extreme version of the phantom limb phenomena seen in some amputees, and can even lead to degenerative Alzheimer's like symptoms. It occurs commonly in CSC humans, but can usually be overcome via therapy, cortex extension implants and an extended stay in a single shell. Red has not had any such luxuries, as a CSC prototype who has rotated between a number of radically different shells the fact that she has survived this long on what amounts to sheer willpower is stunning. Those slightly more optimistic about her motives believe the data she hunts is building towards something meaningful, although exactly what that is varies depending on who you ask.

Delvers who make a name for themselves may at some point be contacted by her or one of her intermediaries, often with promise of a high risk, high reward operation. At times her operation will even hire relative unknowns, rarely ever making their bought help aware of exactly whom sent them on their mission. These jobs are often high paying, marked only by the fact that they simply seem odd, a large payoff for a stroll through a picked over delve to retrieve census data or some other seemingly innocuous piece of info. Sinister rumors persist that Red's group is not above paying for cannon fodder, selecting inexperienced operators specifically because they won't be missed and using them as expendable chaff for their own operations. The difficulty in tracking down whether or not the Widow's organization did in fact offer a job makes these rumors difficult to affirm or deny. Regardless of their veracity, quick, easy money always has takers.

==Luddites== 
Luddite is a blanket term for loosely organized groups of technophobes whose reactions vary from justifiable wariness to outright ecoterrorist zealotry. The umbrella contains such such tightly knit organizations as the Focus-on-Life reservations, who function essentially as isolated, self sufficient techno-regressive communities and enjoy protection by Aegis forces. On the other hand the dogmatic, violent Schwärze Blüten movement that makes its home in the few remaining non-industrialized zones of the German Manufacturing Parks actively seeks to destroy advanced technology, makers in particular, and frequently comes into conflict with remnants of the mercenary security firm Weimulller who make their home in the same area.

Delvers rarely have cause to interact with Focus on Life reservations, although it is not unheard of for members of said communities to become delvers themselves, casting off the anti-technological ideology of their upbringing, but this is rare. At any rate, the players might find themselves contracting on for a short stint as as a security detail on the perimeter around an FoL reservation. The reservations smart enough to accept such help are more or less the only ones still around. The tech level inside a commune varies depending on its charter, most are pre-industrial to one degree or another, but small scale experiments attempting to, for instance, replicate and prove feasible correct the Soviet Revolution are not unheard of either. Regardless of tech level, even early 20th century bolt action rifles do little against a concerted attack from reasonably modern Raiders or even small Merc packs forces. It is not unheard of for the leaders of these communities to seek help in excess of what Aegis allots for their protection, hiring out groups of delvers to either bolster their security during critical times or to seek out and put an end to one problem or another.

Groups such as Schwärze Blüten, on the other hand, while of seemingly little consequence on a global scale, can prove a major adversary should delvers venture into their territory. Much like the FoL communes, the Eco Terrorists who are still alive are something like pragmatic in the way they accomplish their goals, if not in the determination and zealotry with which they pursue them. Deeming such indulgences as power armors, VIs and modern firearms as necessary short term evils they can do serious damage, and have learned through hard fought experience effective guerrilla, raid and ambush tactics. Schwärze Blüten itself is the largest and most aggressive of these fronts. While Aegis and Liberty at large has been content to allow Weimuller to keep them tangled up until now, the dormant factories in the German wasteland, could if, reactivated prove a major resource for the reestablishment of human habitation the world over. If the "Too Many Umlauts" conflict escalates further, delvers might find a good deal of work either along the front lines or striking into enemy territory to secure endangered equipment.

==Ecliptionists== 
"Eclipsed: A Critical Look At Trends of Human Technological Development" was the title of a paper presented at the First Annual Technological Reconstruction Conference, 5 AC, by an obscure cog-sci/neuroprogrammer named Daniel deVit. The study graphed a number of indices of technological progress in AI development and computation technology, arguing convincingly that had The Fall not occurred, Humanity would have reached the point of technological singularity; uploaded minds, true artificial intelligence, the emergence of a transcended post-humanity would have been possible had not the revolution destroyed most of corporate infrastructure, databanks and research labs. DeVit lamented the Fall as a disaster of enormous proportions; claiming to set humanity free, the Liberty movement had in fact doomed it to the slavery of a physical, mortal body, to the prison of a biological, imperfect mind. Having published the paper, DeVit went back into obscurity, dedicating his life to working on "cortical stack" technology - advanced imaging and storage equipment intended to create an instant back-up of an entire mind, complete with memories, emotions and personality structure. But the essay he published sparked a movement, Ecliptionism, that was to spread through all Liberty settlements.

Most Ecliptionists are scientists, working to achieve Singularity by advancing mankind's knowledge of cybernetics, neuroscience and computation. Many are Crackers, longing for power and glory, willing to sacrifice their human minds to become host to a new life form, the merging of man and machine minds. Some are concerned well-wishers or nostalgic ex-Corp dwellers, regretting the freedom that Liberty gave them and dreaming of the potential transcendence of humanity. In short, most Ecliptionists are harmless or even beneficial contributors to Liberty life. However, fringe groups espousing radical versions of the Ecliptionist creed present a very real danger to life in Liberty and worldwide. Few can forget the LADDER incident, when an Ecliptionist cult attempted to create a super-being by fusing a number of forcibly uploaded minds with an AI construct. The resultant abomination, placed in a salvaged thinktank body, went on a bloody rampage across Western Europe and was eventually brought down by an unlikely alliance of the Gibraltar Gateway Cracker community and Weimuller-remnant Merc forces. Whether or not the experiment was a failure is still open for debate; one of the last communications from the LADDER entity was the enigmatic "Free... free... the well and the wheel is one!". Even with incidents like LADDER being rare, Ecliptionist groups are a constant threat to settlement safety, digging in corporate infocaches, releasing rogue AIs into the infosphere or kidnapping humans and sabotaging Makers to create materials for unsanctioned experiments.

A common Ecliptionist symbol is a stylized eclipsed moon with an eye inside it. One often finds this symbol even in reputable neuroscience labs and respected Cracker dens. Ecliptionist Delvers aren't unheard of, but ever since the LADDER incident and the Glorious Release cult's unleashing of the serial killer construct Retribution-5 into the Sidney-Melbourne Metroplex infosphere the less extreme followers of this ideology find themselves increasingly ostracized and monitored.

==Basker Cults==
They vary from dog to horse in size. Their physical forms share few constants from place to place, some heavily muscled monstrosities with slavering sets of split jaws built for guard duty, others are spindly, frighteningly quick and agile beasts that roar across open ground and tackle their prey. Baskers (After Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles) are a phenomenon that has its roots in the run up to the Fall, but they've taken on forms and roles their original creators could scarcely have dreamed of.

As genetic hybridization and modification became commonplace, corporations looked to predator species to develop chimeric organisms for combat and security purposes. The first company to create a viable specimen was Brazilian-based Fereira Biodiversity, and footage of the first public demo of Basker-1 is now legendary. A grey, leathery body, weighing in at almost half a ton, but moving with a surprising agility and ferocity. Its genotype was never made public, even after the patent expired, but subsequent analysis showed there was Komodo dragon DNA in it, along with bear, wolf, cheetah and a variety of different species including zebrafish. It secreted a paralytic contact poison and had jaws that could tear a power-armored soldier in half. But the power and ferocity wasn't what set the Basker models apart from other, more mundane chimerics.

Fereira introduced a unique feature into the organisms it developed. Every Basker could be programmed with a hard-wired safeguard imprint. The safeguard stimulus could be anything: a particular combination of sounds, colors, shapes, odors or even personal features of the owner (a popular Basker model in rural Colombia could only be directed and commanded by prepubescent children). The safeguard stimulus was kept secret, in order to surprise would-be intruders, and was priced according to specificity; the more particular the safeguard, the higher the cost. Impressed by the popularity of Fereira chimeras, other biotech companies followed suit. Weimuller, however, weren't content with just adopting a competitor's modus operandi; they decided to improve upon it, creating the Huntsmen: Biomercs with pheromone implants that could exercise precise control over packs of Baskers.

Huntsmen divisions, like Weimuller's famous Werwolf Gruppe and Armacor's Cerberus Corps, were top-of-the line PMC's. The Huntsmen, equipped with advanced imprinting techniques and behavioral regulators, used the Baskers' full potential. They could command chimeras to track or shadow individual targets, to sniff out chemical trails and locate vehicles or bombs, to flank, surround and ambush opponents. Utilizing the powerful instinctual cunning of these constructed predators, Huntsmen could operate with more precision and efficiency than any drone operator teams.

Following the Fall, the role of Baskers changed. The designs and formulas for Basker creation, including Fereira's revolutionary process for transcoding homeobox sequences, were leaked onto the Infosphere during the Post-Fall chaos, many suspect by disgruntled project managers. The Aegis-aligned anarchist group "Ciudade Libertade" took responsibility for releasing the Basker designs and producing the first non-corporate chimeric organism, the "Free Dog", a watchhound construct popular in many South American settlements. The public-domain status of hybridization tools meant that everyone were free to tinker with Basker designs, and the fall of the corporations meant that many military or security Baskers were now free to roam the countryside in feral packs. Some Huntsmen followed, going native in jungles or forests around the globe.