Factions

In general, the players will be aligned against one of the factions at a time.

Swords

The Executare

"Executive Luxury Private Security & Enforcement" is a mouthful of a company name, which is why its private security squad are colloquially deemed "The Executare", a name derived from a much more insulting and inappropriate name that will not be printed in this document. In their employee manual they are instructed to always use the term "Executive Luxury Private Security & Enforcement" in full, but even the Executare have taken to calling themselves Executare when they're not around superiors - it's just easier.

The enforcement arm of Paradise Lua, the Executare are putatively responsible for keeping the peace on the Moon.

You'll know them from their crimson utility shirts, baby blue gloves, and belts well-stocked with various and sundry weapons - tasers, batons, and pepper spray. They would all carry firearms were it not for a handful of incidents early in the moon's history where a suddenly depressurized corner of Paradise Lua claimed dozens of lives. Many still carry firearms, anyways.

Most of the Executare believe that the Moon is controlled by a fanciful conspiracy called "The Ouroborous", and regard anything with a circle on it a sign of the presence of The Ouroborous.

Their insignia is a pair of crossed swords.

Chosen for their impressive physique and authoritarian tendencies, Executare demand immediate deference in all situations and brutally, physically punish those who do not swiftly comply.

The Terror

The supernatural horror that grows in the hearts of the Executare is The Terror.

Most Terrors have the appearance of small shadow creatures, each of them an inky black silhouette with the body of a child, pierced through with swords. Terrors are vicious, cruel, cowardly, and ultraviolent.

Terrors are obsessed with strength, purity, tradition, and absolute conformity. The only art they condone is art depicting iconography of The Executare: swords, lightning, knights, fighting.

Swords are the suit of intellect, challenge, and conflict, and The Terror is nurtured in the hearts of Moon citizens who are too cowardly or dull to face their fears or think through things, clearly, for themselves.

Most of the Executare harbor The Terror; if their host is killed or sufficiently provoked they will cut their way out of their flesh shells to try to deal with the problem on their own.

Their goal, broadly, is to spread by making people afraid of more and more things.

Chariot

Cmdr. Gerald Yacht, Commander-in-chief and CEO of Executive Luxury Private Security & Enforcement.

A vain little dictator in a hoverchair.

He delivers speeches on the MUZ television system stoking fear, targeting ethnic groups, kids' trends and non-Christian lifestyles as degeneracy wilting the roots of society. He concocts and invents fantastical conspiracies targeting Good Regular Folk. He's consistently putting up impressive numbers of imprisonments and executions of his current scapegoat-du-jour for society's ills.

He sees pedophiles and junkies wherever he looks, and he looks everywhere.

Problems

If the players anger the Executare, they will be branded Criminals, and must take special care not to draw attention to themselves lest they attract a cloud of security.

Cups

The Anonymous

They are traffic, they are the people in front of you in line, they are everybody.

The largest faction on the Moon, they are everyone, and everywhere. They wear mostly grey.

Many of the Anonymous work a day job somewhere on the moon, head home to a small cubby that they call home, and watch television until the day is over. Many of them can go days or even weeks without experiencing one moment of genuine human interaction.

If you have a dramatic battle in the middle of a train station, huge groups of The Anonymous will be walking by, just trying to get to work, headphones in, pretending as hard as they can to ignore what's going on.

Legion

Utterly harmless individually, The Anonymous can become legitimately dangerous when there are lots of them in the same place. Riled up by changes to their routine or threats to their schedule, The Anonymous will give their hearts over to Legion to form a writhing, heaving, grasping mass of bodies, towering high and crushing anything in its path.

Cups are the suit of emotions, relationships and intuition, and the anonymous are created when people close themselves off to these things.

The Hermit

Herman Ito, reclusive billionaire. A small, old man with round sunglasses. Owner of, among others, Itophonic Headphones, Ito Getaways, ItoVR, He wasn't the face of the Paradise Lua project, but he was always the financial backing. His goal was to completely insulate himself from humanity, to create a sanctuary where nobody could harm him, bother him, or even appear on his radar.

His service staff are myriad and tuned exactly to his preferences.

Problems

If the players anger the Anonymous, they become Invisible: most people won't see or acknowledge their existence, making it quite difficult to navigate their day-to-day.

Pentacles

The Company

Paradise Lua was originally formed by WorldWide, but it is not operated as a total monopoly: a small consortium of companies are allowed to operate and compete on the Moon.

In a large sense there is no real government on the moon: only the negotiations of the consortium boards and CEOs.

But The Company isn't just the folks at the top: anybody who's bought in to the goals and direction of the various moon organizations fully, anybody who's drunk the Kool-Aid :tm: so-to-speak, is a Company Man - or Company Woman, or Company Enby. The Company would like you to know that it is extremely committed to diversity and inclusion, so long as it does not impact the bottom line in any measuable way.

A Company Person can be identified by one of a few different uniforms. You'll find them wearing a collared shirt and a puffy vest (the chests of finance workers, in particular, tend towards "too chilly"), a collared shirt under a thin sweater, a collared blouse (collars are evergreen), a blazer over jeans and a T-shirt (the "business mullet"), or the ever-classic tight black long-sleeved t-shirt with tailored jeans and sneakers.

The color story of Company members tends towards the black, brown, mustard and navy blue.

The Ravenous

Unbearably fat demons with coins for eyes, they can eat anything: metal, vehicles, walls - anything.

Coins are the suit of materialism, finances, and practicality - but when their accumulation becomes //TODO

The Devil

WorldWide CEO. // TODO

Temperance

// TODO it's a wild stranger who is particularly helpful at dealing with The Company

Problems

If the players anger the Company, they will lose access to their bank accounts, and will not be able to accumulate or spend any credits while on the station.

Wands

The System

The democratic government of Paradise Lua has been cordoned off to one co-operatively owned company, "System for Democracy, Freedom, and Open Source Software", SYSDFOSS, that argues amongst itself ineffectually in a loop, seemingly eternally, and which rarely accomplishes anything.

SYSDFOSS has been made broadly responsible for filling in the cracks of society left by the large companies. Someone has to feed and house the homeless and sick: this responsibility falls to SYSDFOSS, and they are in no way up to the task.

Often, the Moon will have a paid way to do something, like "sleep" or "eat", that is fast, convenient, and expensive/exploitative, as well as a SYSDFOSS way to do something, which is difficult, arcane, and only sometimes more reasonably priced. For example, the processes necessary to access a SYSDFOSS food bank take up to six months to complete and require comprehensive proof of no other viable source of food. Surviving long enough without food to access the SYSDFOSS food bank legitimately is, of course, completely impossible.

The bureaucratic procedures necessary for SYSDFOSS to accomplish anything seem insurmountably complicated and self-referential.

As for the many technological marvels promised by Paradise Lua to turn the Moon into a utopian society? Most of them don't work terribly well. Even corporate technology is prone to constant malfunction, but SYSDFOSS technology rarely works at all.

SYSDFOSS part-owner/contributors can be identified by their mauve jumpsuits: a color and cut chosen by committee to be minimally offensive to the most possible people.

The Bound

When Moon Citizens give in to the sense of helplessness engendered by a system designed to impede them at every turn, they give their hearts over to The Bound.

The Hanged Man

// TODO: incredibly powerful, technically, but utterly unable to help in practice

Problems

// what happens when you make the local strata angry? // fines // meetings // you find an official looking document on your door that you need to deal with

Also

The Antiouro

The Ouroborous legitimately do not exist. They are a fantasy cooked up by the Executare. The secret symbol of the Ouroborous, cicles, are everywhere because circles are a commonly used shape.

However, the anti-Ouroborous conspiracy theory community keeps getting larger and larger. These are an ever-increasing number of people shadow-boxing with reality itself and losing, badly.

The wild tales of what the Ouroborous are up to increase in scope and madness on every successive iteration: they're Satan worshippers, they control the Earth government, they're abusing their mind control powers to sneak pro-Ouroboros messaging into children's television programming. Many of the anti-Ouroborous are convinced that the Earth is flat, despite being able to look directly at it from the Moon's viewports.

The Moon

Lunette Quigley, shaman of the Anti-Ouroborous delusion and madness ahoy