Story Questions Points to clear up

[_____________Kirrana]

I have a number of questions about the story which some people out there might know the answers to so here goes.

Sol Banking Corporation do we have any background details about them, or any knowledge at all.

Also ICC Interstellar Confederation of Corporations, what is this I assume its a group of the large corporations formed to almost police each other. But are sol and Omni a part of it.

Also listed in the COT are 12 clan guilds I know of perhaps just a few

Knight Guild
New Dawn
Sentinels


what are the other guilds ?

Also what other groups do we know about in the story so far

Red freedom, Dust Briadge, cyborgs, nelebs

[Myers]

All of the history I got of Sol Banking I got from the timeline. I got information on the ICC from the timeline and here http://download.anarchy-online.com/ (the old Anarchy Online website)
There are two clan guilds in the Present Section of the current website. (Terra Firma and The Pilgrims. The Pilgrims was added today)

[Myers]

Heres what it says on the ICC
History
When the UN collapsed at the end of the 33rd century, and no governing body assumed control, there was a period of great competition among the Hypercorporations to assume control of the uncertain population. Every corporation tried its hardest to establish itself firmly on the various planets throughout our galaxy, and to defend its resources from the competitors.
This was a time of squandered resources, and after 270 years of increasing protectionist mentality, the giants formed the ICC. This was to the benefit of all, as they could all share markets and peacefully agree on trade and resource allocation.
Purpose
The ICC's main purposes are the following:
-To oversee fair trade.

-Uphold patent regulations.

-Lease out solar systems.

-Run the Intergalactic police force.

Today
Today, the ICC consists of 23539 megacorporations (1.000.000 employees and more) and 5 hypercorporations (1.000.000.000 employees and more). It is based on Earth, and the entire continent formerly known as "Oceania" has been converted to its headquarters.

More than 500 million functionaries are employed by the ICC in its tracking of, and running of, the galactic corporations.
Politics
Although the ICC was initially meant only as a trade board in the strictest sense, bureaucracy has a tendency to gather power. At the current place and time, the ICC is more of an Intergalactic Government than it was ever meant to be by the founders more than 25 thousand years ago. Thus, there has been an increasing growth of tension within the ICC.
Today the ICC members elect a new board every twenty years, using the principle of one vote per credit revenue. The 20 members each act as Chairman of the board for one year, and as board members for the remaining 19 years.
Historically, the ICC has not been seen as a clamp on growth, as it was the small market and not the availability of resources that was the limiting factor. The opposite was the case on Earth before the advent of Bubble-Space technology. Put in layman terms : You don't care much about others being richer, as long as you are filthy rich yourself.
As has been mentioned, there is now a growing tension in the ICC. Some of the bigger members of ICC (for instance Omni-Tek®) feel that the equality-principle to be a problem, and that it does not properly reflect the the true size and power of the hypercorporations -- as reflected in "The True Measure of Influence in the Galaxy: Revenue" (Philip Ross, CEO Omni-Tek® Rubi-Ka).
On the other side there are the conglomerates of smaller corporations lobbying under the banner "One corporation, one vote !". This solution would naturally lend great support to the decentralized solutions. The Hypercorporations would undoubtedly keep the upper hand in this conflict, if not for the fact that they have been unable to cooperate to any degree. This is of course due to the lack of mutual trust.
Future
The stability that the ICC has offered for more than 25 thousand years due more to growth potential than efficiency in government, seems to be declining. How the ICC will face up to the challenges is unknown. But the demands of change, if not the direction and the means, are unison among almost all members.
Time will tell.

[______________Ragnar]

Originally posted by Myers
Heres what it says on the ICC

Hmm. That's what we get for leaving bits and pieces of the past lying around.

I hate to tell you this, but everything in that document is just plain wrong! Eek. I don't know who wrote this, or when, or who he or she talked to, but...no.

I'll make a note of this and speak with the web editor tomorrow, to discuss when we can put up the Real Deal on the ICC. Hopefully next week some time.

Sorry for the confusion - I didn't know you could access the old site anymore, as most of the story info there is hopelessly out of date (and wrong).

-Ragnar

[______________Salada]

All congratulate Ragnar in achieving the 30 posts count mark!

PS.
The ICC's main purposes are the following:

• -To oversee fair trade.
  
• -Uphold patent regulations.
  
• -Lease out solar systems.
  
• -Run the Intergalactic police force.

Is also what the Omni Guards will tell you if go ask them, "Tell me about the ICC."

So, if that information is wrong, and you are planning to change/correct it, then you'll also need to correct/discipline these NPCs at the same time.

[Myers]

Originally posted by Ragnar


I hate to tell you this, but everything in that document is just plain wrong! Eek. I don't know who wrote this, or when, or who he or she talked to, but...no.

Wow. Now I don't know what to believe.

[______________Ragnar]

Originally posted by Myers
Wow. Now I don't know what to believe.

Believe the Ragnar!

I realise that mixed information is very confusing, and very unprofessional. It's a good thing we're reworking the NPCs one by one, and hopefully we'll be able to get rid of any misinformation out there.

By the way, the official timeline is an extremely safe bet when it comes to background information on Rubi-Ka. We're also working on a few other things that will fill in the blank spots and correct our mistakes.

-Ragnar

[______________Salada]

Originally posted by Ragnar
Believe the Ragnar!

I realise that mixed information is very confusing, and very unprofessional. It's a good thing we're reworking the NPCs one by one, and hopefully we'll be able to get rid of any misinformation out there.

By the way, the official timeline is an extremely safe bet when it comes to background information on Rubi-Ka. We're also working on a few other things that will in the blank spots and correct our mistakes.

-Ragnar

<(o_0)> (>-_-)> Q(o_-)Y

Make sense, no?

[Bionitrous]

Now I gotta check out the Story site twice in a week? Getting spoiled here. Off to check out the deal on The Pilgrims ....

[_________Crazynotion]

This makes my entire position tenuous as heck and VERY confusing!

My own understanding of ICC and how OT was involved is that the ICC is similar to the UN, with OT having a similar 'power bloc' over ICC as China and USA have over the UN today.

That doesn't mean that OT are not beholden to the ICC, but that any anti-OT directives in place by the ICC are either given with HUGE concessions to OT elsewhere, or are things that actually OT couldn't care less about (eg: OT probably doesn't actually care that everyone has access to insurance technology. They may shout and make a stink about it, but at the end of the day do they really honestly mind? Probably not).

I was also of the impression that (like USA/China and the UN) Omni-Tek was the biggest 'military superpower' in the ICC and - as such - provide the strong arm of the ICC when required.

This in itself leads to an interesting standoff on RK - the ICC may well intervene, but they end up fielding OT troops against OT troops, which is just plain silly.

Again (my understanding here) was that any ICC concessions given to the Clans were effectively 'cleared' by Omni-Reform first, and Omni-Tek retains a pretty good hold on the world, the notum, the galaxy and pretty much anything else it touches.

Obviously OT doesn't quite have carte blanche in it's actions - but it has political and military clout and isn't afraid to use it.

And again the obligatory flame-shield:

For all you patriots out there in the US or China, I am using the political relationship between US/China - UN as an example of how I saw the OT - ICC political relationship. I am not implying - nor intending to imply - any other similarities between Omni-Tek and the US of A or China.

*** Big Disclaimer ***

This is how I saw things. This probably is all entirely wrong, so do not quote me please! If you happen to be Ragnar and happen to know the truth (or at least the truth as cleared for public release) then feel free to provide corrections

[______________Ragnar]

Originally posted by Mechanita
This makes my entire position tenuous as heck and VERY confusing!

[snip!]

This is how I saw things. This probably is all entirely wrong, so do not quote me please! If you happen to be Ragnar and happen to know the truth (or at least the truth as cleared for public release) then feel free to provide corrections

I happen to be Ragnar, amazingly enough.

Like I said earlier, we definitely need to clear up some of this confusion. With a complex backstory - and a bunch of different writers at different times in the development process - there will be mistakes. But that's no excuse for this mess.

The old site has lots and lots of misinformation, and we need to replace all of it with the correct information. We've done a lot of that through the novel and the timeline, and through stories and articles on the website - like the complete Tir Accord, for example - but there's still much to be done, and ICC is one thing that the players have received contradictory information about, both in-game and out-of-game.

We're going to write up a description of the ICC and its role in the galaxy as soon as we have the time to do so.

Thanks,
Ragnar

[_____________Kirrana]

He he ok maybe I better wait,

I was in the process of updating my site trying to create a place which held all the background information we have to date. This was in hope of the story taking off again.

The aim was to try and list for the new players some of the information we have. This will be a mixture of both player material and offical information.

Most has been collected via the boards, the old funcom site and a few other AO sites around. It was in doing this i noticed I few things even I did not fully understand that I thought might be in the book.

ICC and Sol banking for example. But there are also some other funny points.

For example I have at least 3 pictures of Ross each one looking different the early versions have him about about 60 up to the in game version which he looks about 40.

Maybe Omni-med have some youth potion making him appear younger.

Well anyway I am going to set myself down as an IC reported on Rubi-ka again, reporting on the news stories as I see them. But also getting behind the headlines, finding out what people on the street think.

Trying to make the events characters come alive, some like Throll have made up a lot of depth to their char it makes interesting reading. I hope we have many more to look forward to.

It will also be interesting to see how the NPCs work out but I am still worried the static nature of NPC might hurt the game as FC becomes far to relient on them and we miss the talents of Dave Diamondcut, Throll, Mr Shade and others.

Kirrana

Oh my site is at http://omni-tek.tripod.com/index2.html the links might be a bit odd and some of the pages are not right. You can blame the heat its to hot to work here at the moment.

[______________Ragnar]

Originally posted by Kirrana
I was in the process of updating my site trying to create a place which held all the background information we have to date. This was in hope of the story taking off again.

Excellent idea, Kirrana, and I'd love to see the result. I'm sorry there's contradictory information out there, but the sources that are "canon" at this point are:

- The timeline
- The novel
- All the stories published after the game's launch
- "Most" of the game's manual, including the stuff on Sol B.C. (the story characters were altered quite a bit prior to the launch of the animated series - Eleena Oak, for example, is nothing like the Eleena described in the manual, which was written waaay prior to the game's release)
- The animated episodes
- Everything on the current story site
- Everything in posts made by yours truly!

There will be more information as time goes on, but there's only so much we can push out at once! There's a hell of a lot of background information...maybe a bit too much.

I hope you'll keep working on your site, and let me know if there's specific stuff you feel we need to provide more information about! It's hard to know exactly what to focus on - that's why we haven't prioritised the ICC, for example.

-Ragnar

[LTK]

Things seem to be picking up BIG-time.

I'm geeked. I have way too much content for Talk Deviant tonight! h00t!

[_____________Kirrana]

Be careful Tarryk I am going to have to interview you soon for my site then we will learn the truth about the hair lose.

To wig or not to wig

[LTK]

To wig or not to wig

Ack! See, now, we didn't even have to go there, did we...

[Gridfan]

Um Ragnar as a writer could you make a educated storyish told guess on Tarryk's hairloss? *Grin*