The Tournament Season

In recent times, Talinz fighting has become one of the most popular sports on the planet. Channels are devoted to the depiction of the sport, to the point that even college and amateur leagues can be televised and attended by thousands. A thriving amateur fighters market, driven by solid product placement on more famous fighter’s vehicles, and the subtle economics of technical specifications, has made the sport as accessible as it is likely to ever be, with smart tech-heads poring over magazines of new modules whilst sturdy athletes itch for their next match. The perfect pilot would be both, of course, but often support and pit teams build around an ace pilot.

Every now and then, an enterprising soul will consider forming a Talinz baseball, basketball or football league, but for the most part these only catch on as relatively niche sports. For now, it seems like more traditional games have kept their niche safe, even though they have been taken down a peg or two as Talinz has conquered the airwaves.

The Talinz tournament season lasts from June through to the following April. The Baku treaty was signed in May, and in respect and remembrance the season is often put on hold accordingly. This gives the sports channels a chance to diversify into other sports, air highlights reels, speculation programs and the odd rare documentary on the war itself and the growth of Talinz. Over the May hiatus, behind the scenes, new pilots are recruited; team affiliations change and deals are bound and broken. More money changes hands in that 31 day period than at any other point during the season. Once the transfer window closes on the 31^st, teams are locked for the remainder of the season. Some have also suggested that the amount of backroom deals between sponsors and apparent rival companies and pilots during that month leads to an overdose of work for police departments too; sometimes it even reaches the headlines.

The major tournaments that make up the season provide ample business for any globe-trotting major team. The general arrangement of the global sport is fairly hierarchical. Amateur teams are run in unattached local leagues, or affiliated leagues. Local leagues tend to be more casual, and run at any time, but teams in affiliated leagues tend to be vying for the notice of a scout, or the rare grand prize of a promotion and sponsorship deal. Above that, countries tend to run professional leagues, sometimes with multiple tiers within them depending on the popularity of the sport. Here, teams often represent a town or portion of a city, though some unaffiliated or oddly affiliated teams do exist. Promotion between leagues often relies on being in the top two or three teams of the preceding season, and elevation is highly prized. It means more exposure, better sponsorship, more money and a prospect at becoming the best in the country.

The best players in the country might get to represent it in the continentals. The six grand continental cups are the second-highest prizes in the Talinz world, and the finals have an audience of millions in the stadium and at home. The sporting associations of companies will sometimes attempt to make conglomerate teams from the best pilots in the league, but often these ‘supergroups’ don’t do nearly so well as a well-oiled team built on sturdy teamwork that has strived from the bottom together.

Winners of the continental cups from the preceding season are then invited to the Grand Prix. A winner’s circuit. Each team takes part in only one match a month, only 6 teams. Competitors travel across the planet, taking part in odd, custom designed arenas, with increasingly bizarre gimmicks, as countries spend incredible amounts of money in a heady mix of one-upmanship and tourist baiting. These arenas are often used in the following seasons in lesser cups, or so their absurd costs are excused by project managers. Some complain that qualification is easier for some teams than others: indeed, by their very nature some continents have more countries and thereby more competitors in their continental cups. Others claim that this makes the less competitive continents greener, and ripe for the picking by more experienced pilots. Considering the high performance and success rates of African and Asian pilots in the Grand Prix, this theory seems to have a nugget of truth in it.

 At the end of it? The grand prize. An ability to be considered the world champion. Often pilots will work for years, grinding from the bottom to achieve the honour. But a quicker route to success is available. Teams will sometimes bring in new blood, and some of the older teams now contain none of their original line up, without any loss of position. Alternatively, retiring teams in some countries might be given the right to pass their mantle to a team of their choice in a lower league. Sometimes this is done as a practical joke, and teams obviously out of their depth are promoted up three leagues, only to fall back to a position at which they are stable, often to the irate protests of the supporters of the old team, whose name they still carry.

It is this combination of mobility and interchangeability that has allowed the fighting, much like the robots themselves, to become so popular. A team could rise from zero to hero in the space of just a few years, and a soul could really make a name, if they were willing to take part…

Landon Corp

Philip and Charles Landon, media moguls, are fairly new on the Talinz construction scene, but their company has dabbled in the field for years. Originally a media company, running a few more popular news outlets and more than a few entertainment and sports channels, Landon Corp’s first involvement came when they were the first network to ever consider airing a Talinz fight, back in the early days of the sport. The viewing figures were not as amazing as projected, but Landon Corp almost saw this as a challenge. They pushed harder, advertising campaigns, outside funding and sponsorship campaigns were ploughed into the sport in response, and it is the actions of these investors that have made Talinz fighting the juggernaut it is today, not to mention the sponsorship goldmine.

Philip and Charles, however, are somewhat more thoughtful than the pioneers’ generations before. They have consolidated the gains, and made some interesting expansions. They snapped up a few popular social media sites, used them for additional advertising revenue. The corporation ate a few popular matchmaking sites, too. It seemed fairly innocent, typical dabbling in other fields. But using algorithms from matchmaking sites and compiling data from social media posts, Landon Corp’s R&D department were fervently calculating new ways to exploit Talinz for more and more money.

They came up with an algorithm, a very simple thing, really, that could compile an individual’s interactions with social media, and that of their friends, to effectively compile the perfect friend, or theoretically the perfect partner. Same tastes, opinions, beliefs. When they released it on the market, the controversy was almost as high as the sales. A moral panic swept nations. How much information were individuals comfortable with sharing with Landon Corp’s grand servers? The company certainly didn’t want to release the algorithm to a place where another could bootleg it. If they were comfortable, was it right to have a fake friend, constructed in such a way? Highly extreme cases of identity theft and recluses refusing to socialise with ‘real people’ blanketed the headlines. Landon Corp reacted with their wallet. It was all too easy to criticise larger rival news corporations, who were clearly trying to hurt the respectability of the Landon Corp name. Smaller ones that shouted too loudly were silenced with elegantly executed buyouts.

Regardless, the algorithm was massively popular. So popular, in fact, that Landon Corp opened their first factory. Almost fully automated, the Landon model Talinz frames could come with a ready installed disposition to the user, together with thoughts and opinions suggested by the customer and nuanced based on their social media interactions with Landon Corp-affiliated sites. The other technical specifications of the machines were fairly basic, and for the most part, they are not the best looking machines when bought stock. But the real service Landon are offering is cheap and easy access to their algorithm, an important factor for many purchasers, especially considering the wide availability of additional modular parts to customise the Talinz after purchase.

This technology has not been applied in Landon Corp domicile frames only. An experiment with ace Talinz pilot (and all around good clean American boy) Jonas Samson and his new Landon Corp frame – appropriately named Eagle – showed a drastically elevated level of synchronisation between pilot and frame. This is especially notable considering the airborne capabilities of Eagle, which is already a mental tax on the pilot that can often harm response times. Landon Corp press and PR were happy to report this as a triumph of the algorithm, which had created Eagle to be a perfect complement to Jonas in personality, fighting style and priority. Some rival teams have suggested it may just be bluster, and many requests have been filed to look at the hardware specifications of the model, which Landon Corp have been reluctant to release.  Some robopsychologists and Talinz experts have cautioned usage of these algorithms in synchronisation if they can cause such immense boosts, warning of repeats to the Sonia Bah incident.

Charles Landon
High Concept: Ruthless media manipulator
Aspect: It’s Landon Corp, or it can be broken.
Skills: Great (+4) Economics, Good (+3) Resources, Fair (+2) Insightful, Average (+1) Willpower
Stunts: All about green: To Charles, money is everything. Whenever he intimidates another individual using capital, he may use Economics for the roll.

Philip Landon
High Concept:  Silent market observer
Aspect: It’s Landon Corp, or it should be.
Skills: Great (+4) Resources, Good (+3) Contacts, Fair (+2) Zeitgeist, Average (+1) Empathy
Stunts: Watch and wait: Unlike Charles, Philip keeps his head at all times, and uses a network of contacts to keep an eye on the market. He may use Contacts in place of Economics when assessing the health of a business rival or Landon Corp.

Jonas Samson
High Concept: All American Talinz Pilot
Aspect: Local lad done good
Skills: Great (+4) Talinz piloting, Good (+3) Physique, Fair (+2) Rapport, Average (+1) Firearms
Stunts: Sure of himself: Jonas has been brought up from a very early age to know that any mental conflict, no matter how complicated, can often be solved by escalating to physical conflict. The world has, unfortunately, yet to prove him wrong on this fact. He may use his Physique to defend against attempts to intimidate or provoke him, in place of Willpower.

Talinz in everyday life: domestic servants

Much more than just sport, Talinz permeate everyday life, and affect the way people interact with each other and with society. These frames tend to be offered in two general formats: those for domestic use, and those for industrial use. Their jobs vary widely within these two very broad clades, and they are present in every economic sector, for better or worse.

Domestics

People will always clamour for the next new gadget, especially if it is billed as something that makes life easier. And just like the washing machines and the televisions of a post-war world before, the Talinz fell into the newfound prosperity gap of the post-Baku treaty era. For a one-off fee, small maintenance costs and a slight addition to the electrical bill, a family could have a machine to take the kids to school, take care of them if they were too young, or if parents had to stay late, manage the family finances, and wash, cook and clean to boot. It was too good to resist.

In the present, Talinz are extremely common. With a few exceptions – mainly from those who are opposed to their existence altogether, or those who have a political interest in ‘liberating’ the frames – every family has one. One might see a few hundred whilst out walking through a busy shopping centre, many likely out doing weekly groceries for their families, or perhaps picking up more specific items. If a family has a fancy new model, you might find it indistinguishable from a human walking down the street.

Such robot-human similarities has led to a number of campaigners attempting to enforce some kind of identification protocol, or stop production of these human-likes completely, under the grounds that mistaking a human for a Talinz unit could lead to any number of awkward or dangerous social encounters. Opposition to these groups have been strong, however. Many want more human-like figures. The common people have begun to empathise with Talinz in a heretofore unseen way, and having a housemaid that looks less robotic enough and so doesn’t scare the children is always a bonus. With Hana Electrics’ use of common fictional characters or the social media interfaces offered by the American Landon Corp, many people want their Talinz to look as authentic as possible. Some, it could be said, might even desire some of the social awkwardness that comes with that.

Outside of domicile servants, cafes and restaurants staffed entirely by Talinz units, or staffed with a mix of human and human-like Talinz, have become quite popular. Some more upmarket outlets might even purchase ‘skin models’ – skin-like polymer coverings constructed from images of an individual to create a perfect likeness – and challenge customers to guess whether they are being served by a human, or a robot.

Such an industry has created a hotbed for crime, however. Police can often be taxed by bodies that look lifelike until they sit under autopsy. Life insurance companies have been pressuring to shore up regulations after a number of seemingly cut and dry deaths resulted in huge payouts, only for it to turn out that a remarkably lifelike decoy had been placed in the individual’s stead.

Two years ago, workers at the Metropolitan Police department found a body so badly disfigured that any attempts to identify it were notably hindered. Police scrambled to find the killer, but couldn’t seem to find an appropriate dead or missing individual by any of the records they had. When the killer was found, it was more by luck and chance than anything else. When a few inopportune statements were made at a dinner party, a swift smack to a seemingly-human jaw revealed a Talinz frame beneath a low quality, thin skin-model. Tobias Moore, the killer, it occurred, had murdered his partner in a fit of rage after an argument that resulted in the other attempting to end the relationship. In the following week, Tobias, a Talinz technician by trade, used the body to construct his own frame from scratch, with his partner as the model, before dumping what remained in the Thames to attempt to clear away the evidence. He had rebuilt his partner’s memory using their social media profiles, recent internet purchases and search histories, supplemented by a few recordings of calls they had made. It was capable of interpolating from recent events to give the illusion of memory, and easily gathered from records of school friends and connected media a number of useful recollections of the victim’s life before they met Tobias.

It took 18 months to find him. None of their closest friends had noticed.

Texlinz

Some companies are remarkably effective at covering up shady pasts. Texlinz is one of them. Formed in Lima well before the Talinz unit was even a twinkle in its mother’s eye, Texlinz (Originally TexLima), was a robotics research unit themselves. The company itself had originally applied for the UN Development commission grant that would eventually result in the frames. It had a remarkable pedigree; having already performed a lot of important groundwork in the field of computational neuroscience, and was pulling in large amounts of money from the Peruvian Government at the time for the construction of an Artificial Neural Network to monitor the El Niño. It was, however, deemed that a private company was unsuitable to spearhead the project.

In the wake of the Talinz Project’s completion, rather than attempt to introduce a competing model, the company adapted fast, eating up as many subsidies as possible, using the profits to fund their own research into more esoteric fields. Their huge South American production base turned the newly rebranded Texlinz into the largest manufacturer of Talinz frames within three years. In a rather cynical riposte to the research councils who had denied them, Texlinz had managed to attain an immense share of the market without having to spend any of their own money on research and development.

In the meantime, the more esoteric fields would prove to be remarkably useful in the production and advertising of their own frames. Talinz units that could pick up and process substantially larger sensory inputs than competitors, those that could react much faster than their peers, even those that could be used in orbital networks were all quickly released into the world by Texlinz. They were among the first to contract with government military and police forces also, gaining a reputation for efficient, robust systems with few points of failure. It would be these latter contracts that would become Texlinz main source of income, and much of their research and development budget was funnelled into advanced team protocols, attempting to create Talinz that could best a human pilot in combat unassisted, or multiple units linked to a single ‘vanguard’ pilot, reducing manpower costs to allow the fielding of ever larger forces as the wars escalated.

The Baku treaty ended up being nothing more than a bump in the shares of the company, too. Using the programming developed from years of military hardware, they quickly co-opted them to aid fisheries, using colonial ‘net’ frames that corralled and caught fish for them. The singular ‘vanguard’ systems quickly saw use in the construction industry, speeding up the process of rebuilding after the war. Reconstructing buildings their own products had damaged, it seemed as if Texlinz had engineered the entire thing themselves. At the very least, they seemed to be well ahead of the curve when it came to adapting to the new environment.

Texlinz were one of the founders of the sport of Talinz fighting, and were instrumental in the frames public redemption in the post-war era. To this day, they still sponsor the largest tournmanet in South America, the continent-wide Andes cup, and its bigger brother, the invitational All-Americas cup. Repeated investment in local industry now makes Texlinz one of the major employers in South America, with a respectable record and a well-treated workforce that, despite all of their advances, is still primarily human. In part, it seems that these workers act as a useful bargaining chip for Texlinz when prospecting future expansions in the continent. Few governments are likely to challenge a business that would lose little by upping and leaving your country, or autonomising a sizable sector of your economy.

Key to the success of Texlinz, it has constantly been believed, is the existence of ‘The Board’. Rather than any single influential or charismatic individual, Texlinz has a reputation for elevating talented members of staff through the ranks until they sit at the pinnacle of the organisation. One of the current board, it is rumoured, even started his career on the factory floor in Rio, before being scouted for his discerning eye. Not only does this give their employees a goal and a motivation, but these conglomerate committee-led opinions give an undoubted strength to the company. How much of the rumour that surrounds ‘The Board’ is true is uncertain, and many urban legends are clearly wild and unfounded: including suggestions that they might be early experiments in artificial intelligence by TexLima gone rogue.

Statting 'The Board'

So, 'The Board' of Texlinz I have explicitly avoided giving stats. They are shady, they are shadowy, and they are hella competent. Depending on the political/social/economic system at hand, they should provide an interesting ally or opposition. Rather than individuals with stat lines, I would almost recommend GMs consider them to be opposition in the scene in the same way a natural force might be. They have a tendency to push situations in their favour, and you are only likely to encounter well-informed delegates of 'The Board'. Or they might actually be Board members themselves... Who knows?

In exchange, have some mechanics about how their communal Talinz technology works!

"When a Talinz frame fitted with the Aspect 'Vanguard module' is piloted, it can interface with local unpiloted units that also possess the module and exist on the same 'Vanguard' call frequency. These units are networked, utilising the group's combined processing power. They can utilise any skill bonuses granted by the AI cores of any unit in the network as if they were their own. The unit gains an additional +1 bonus when it combines skill to act as a team (Note that skills given to units by other members of the network do not count as actually possessing the skill at above +1 for the purposes of the Teamwork action). Unpiloted units are considered allies for the purposes of stress track and actions, with a single stress box for each member of the unit."

Talinz in Daily Life: Industry

After a short break for Christmas and the New Year, I'd like to welcome in 2014 with the first in a new series (Which when the compiled PDF is finished will be a new chapter, I hope) on Talinz in Daily Life. We start with industry:

Much more than just sport, Talinz permeate everyday life, and affect the way people interact with each other and with society. These frames tend to be offered in two general formats: those for domestic use, and those for industrial use. Their jobs vary widely within these two very broad clades, and they are present in every economic sector, for better or worse.

Industrial Frames

Robotics is a major part of heavy industry, and it is in this role that Talinz frames are perhaps considered most iconic. Bulky, robust frames are often used for heavy lifting and large-scale construction, whilst smaller frames clamber through production lines adjusting fine electronics, and soldering together smaller pieces.

Outside of this, Talinz are used as crop dusters and harvesters in agriculture; for extraction, crushing, sieving and transportation in mining and quarrying; for synthesis of dangerous chemicals, and to help produce energy in power plants, along with many more tasks elsewhere. Often, specialist frames will be built fit to purpose. South American robotics giants Texlinz, for example, have constructed a frame that closely associates with others of its type to form a ‘swarm net’ to enable more efficient, Talinz-powered fishing. These units tend to become very heavily reliant on each other during their work, and robopsychologists have suggested they may even experience a sense of grief when a member of the swarm is terminated, even after the basic personality files of the frames were prevented from developing a capacity for sorrow.

The use of Talinz frames in industry has exploded massively largely due to one thing. With an entirely Talinz-powered factory, one only needs to employ a small number of engineers in case of breakdown, and a foreman to supervise the work. Workforce maintenance costs drop through the floor, as there are no legal requirements to grant Talinz a wage, breaks, or holiday. Companies obtain the units either by purchasing direct from a manufacturer, or through part time letting deals of the unit from its owners, and so in some cases do not even need to provide shelter and charging ports for the units they utilise.

Whilst many units in industry tend to have very basic, blank personality files at first – being intentionally designed to be as boring and bland as possible in order to eliminate possible workplace fracas – the adaptability of the Talinz system often confounds attempts to make an unthinking, unfeeling workforce. All too often, the experiences and engagements of the frame with human staff and other units in the facility will affect it as an individual, causing it to form views and opinions that it might not otherwise have. Ones that might be detrimental to productivity. One of the most difficult jobs of the small human workforce is that of calling in the ‘Wipers’. Wipers are groups of outside engineers who specialise in removing any aberrant traits from industrial Talinz frames and returning them to a clean factory default, without affecting the associated experience files (Which might necessitate the purchase and downloading of expensive training packages or of lapses in the individual’s memory that might inconvenience work). Engineers within the workforce at an individual company could feasibly perform the task, but management often worries about individuals becoming too attached to individual units, and overlooking this in their judgement. Large companies might employ a wiping department, whilst smaller firms may call in private contractors.

Increased production and adoption of industrial Talinz, however, has had a major negative side effect on the humans who have now found their jobs usurped by an ever growing robotic population. Outsourced and outperformed, many of these individuals have understandably become dissatisfied with the system. Governments have scrambled to counter the rising unemployment, though different countries have approached the problem in different ways. Some have granted subsidies and tax rebates to companies that employ a higher percentage of human staff, some have introduced retraining and back to work programmes to encourage education later in life, whilst others still have set back and let the market take its course.

Disenfranchised individuals have not been silent, however. In less stable areas, protests turn to riots, and hushed talk in the back rooms of houses and meeting halls become political movements, or robotics sabotage. Assaults against the few remaining Talinz engineers at large companies are on the rise, to the point that some police departments have considered grouping these Talinz-motivated crimes as a category all of their own.

Most notable among these groups is the Grey Hand. Originally, this small internet forum was an area for those concerned about the effect military Talinz were having on the human consciousness and perception of violence. Since the Baku treaty, however, their membership has transformed into a substantially more zealous, and more numerous anti-Talinz front. This loosely-organised global network has been branded as champion by some, terrorist by others. What none can deny however, are their effectiveness. Although cells have been located and arrested, new bubbles seem to pop up out of nowhere, infiltrating both Talinz factories and houses of prominent individuals in the industry, and causing mayhem of levels varying from knowing notes left on desks, through to full-scale bombings of important warehouses. The Grey Hand is dangerous, whether one were to agree with them or not. Considerable pressure on governments from corporations in more affected areas has led to considerations of curfews, anti-social behaviour laws, and internet monitoring.

Some claim it is unwarranted escalation. Some claim it is a necessary evil.