Administrator Jayanti

Faction: Aleph

Administrator Jayanti is an ALEPH Deva who serves as a liaison between the various human nations on Paradiso. Jayanti is plugged into a massive data network, so she provides most of the technical briefings, as well as those for the higher-tier classified missions. She also speaks directly for ALEPH when required.

In her fluff sections, I wanted her attitude to reflect that of ALEPH itself: an AI programmed to love humanity and want whatever is best for us. I immediately dismissed the idea of having her speak in a robotic mass of cold jargon, as even today, we program our “AI” programs to project some amount of personality and warmth; with an additional 175 years of development, I assume that Aleph would be quite adept at seeming genuinely personable and friendly.

Imperial Agent Lao Shui, Lion Rank

Faction: Yu Jing

Lao Shui is a general of Yu Jing’s ground forces on Paradiso. Her rank isn’t one that exists in the minis game, but rather one I invented after doing some quick research into Mandarin Squares. These animal-themed ranks followed two tracks: scholarly/administrative ranks which use bird symbols (Crane -> Peacock -> Pheasant -> Egret -> Oriole), and military ranks which use mostly mammal symbols (Lion -> Tiger -> Bear -> Panther -> Rhinoceros). The Imperial Agents in the minis game are all bird themed, and all serve as some variety of special police; none are actually primary battlefield troops. Figuring that these were the equivalent of their administrative ranks, I reached to the other rank track for my supreme general.

The fluff for Infinity makes it pretty clear that the Yu Jing government are a bunch of cruel, oppressive monsters, so I took that to heart for Agent Lao Shui– she is fiercely patriotic and utterly uncompromising. When the commander she is addressing doesn’t follow orders (as she sees them), she doesn’t hesitate to berate them for treason. All in all, she was a lot of fun to write for– villains tend to be. 😉

Daryādār Esfir Kadivar, Coalition 3rd Fleet

Faction: Haqqislam

Daryādār Esfir Kadivar is a Haqqislamite flotilla admiral who briefed the Human forces on most space missions. She probably saw the least character development out of the entire lot– she’s professional and accustomed to her command, but allows the Commanders some leeway when executing their missions. I would’ve liked to do a bit more with her, but it’s hard for me to really flesh out “competent and nice”. :/

Colonel Edgar Dunstan

Faction: Panoceania

Colonel Dunstan commands a division of Fusiliers, preferring to direct their actions from the ground. In retrospect I think I may have over-promoted him given what I wanted his role to be; thinking back to my military education, which in this case consists of watching “Band of Brothers”, I don’t think a colonel would actually be running around with his dudes. But, whatever– I wanted him to seem authoritative, and that seemed to fit the bill. 😛

Colonel Dunstan was meant to come across as a fairly stereotypical “good guy superior officer”– decisive and competent, but also pragmatic, and really caring about his troops. Specifically, I wanted him to stand in contrast to the cold inflexibility of Lao Shui, the other Human ground troop commander– I wanted the players to obey because Dunstan asked, and despite Lao Shui’s orders. 🙂

Major Jovita Rios, 4th Acontecimento Armored Squadron

Faction: Panoceania

Jovita Rios is the lowest-ranking officer on the Human briefing team, and I wanted her to come across as the least formal and the most fun. Jovita remotely drives a big stompy robot, and I wanted to convey how much she enjoys that job. Her briefings aren’t written as an officer giving orders to a subordinate– rather, she’s generally sharing her own orders with you and inviting you to tag along on what she assumes is going to be a fun task.

Jovita got the least face time of all the human commanders due to unfortunate circumstances– we had a few players wander away over the course of the campaign, which required me to create fewer missions each round. Jovita felt the largest impact from this squeeze, as her missions were always more of a “side mission” thing than a core thrust of the campaign; with one fewer mission each round, the higher-ranked officers always felt like they had more information to share.

Sigh. I wish we could’ve known you better, fun robot lady. ;_;

Node 385/Blue/Tangible

Division: EI Construct

Node 385/Blue/Tangible (later 385/Blue/Abstract, following some hardware issues out in the field) was the second most interesting character in the campaign for me, as it technically had zero lines of dialogue. I’ve read a little bit of Infinity fluff, but have come across almost no examples of the Evolved Intelligence speaking directly (aside from one text block in the Combined Army section of the N3 fluff book, where it gives a Borg-esque greeting speech to a newly encountered species). Given this, I decided to have some fun coming up with my own concept for how it would think, speak, and interact with its legions of subordinates. To be clear: none of this is canon.

First off, I decided that the multitude of EI Constructs that exist throughout the galaxy (Schiavoros, Charontids, and Anathematics) are built as intelligent beings, so that they can be entrusted to competently execute missions without constant oversight from the EI itself. However, I decided that they have no voices with which to communicate with organic beings– instead, they share their observations and conclusions back with the EI, and then the EI itself addresses anyone near the construct, using the construct itself as little more than a loudspeaker.

The EI, for its part, was given one defining personality trait: utter confidence in its own superiority and near-omnipotence. It never asks questions, as it already knows all answers. It doesn’t insult people, as it has no ego to puff up. It isn’t evasive or misleading, as it doesn’t respect organics enough to consider them worth misleading. Instead, it speaks calmly, factually, and directly (in what I decided was a beautiful multitonal voice). It shares the exact information that its minions need to know, and issues short, direct orders. It has noticed that organics often punctuate a briefing with some sort of closing summation, so as a concession to us, it helpfully ends all briefings with some variation on the same helpful encouragement: “This task is of vital importance. Do not fail.”

The EI was probably the easiest character for me to write, as it was essentially communicating the way I think– no pleasantries, no egos, just utter certainty and direct instructions. Here’s what you need to know, here’s what you will do about it, perfunctory reminder of importance, do not fail. Always the same.

If only society would allow me to handle communication that way in real life. Sigh… :/

Foremost General Bok Sorak

Division: Morat Aggression Force

Bok Sorak is the leader of the Morat forces on Paradiso. My main goal with him was to correct the notion a lot of players have about Morats– some people assume they’re just Infinity Orcs (they aren’t) or Infinity Klingons (they aren’t). Morats aren’t crazed berserkers, and they aren’t honorable warriors– they’re soldiers. They’re a bit gruff and rude, but ultimately their society is regimented and focused on the greater good. Each Morat is a brutally efficient soldier, but not to the point of needless cruelty, and they have no use for individual recognition– their actions reflect on their unit, not themselves.

I tried to convey all of that through the General. He grumbles about his orders, but executes them to the letter nonetheless. He loves fighting, but doesn’t submit to that urge when it isn’t appropriate. He understands the nature of his brutal subordinates, and channels it into appropriate and useful tasks.

He probably wouldn’t be a good human general, but he’s a great Morat general. 🙂

Superior Delegate Krasz Volok

Division: Morat Aggression Force

Now, with all of the above said, I’d like to introduce Krasz Volok, who is a crazed psychopath with a fancy title. 🙂

The unit fluff for Rasyat troops is probably my favourite in all of Infinity: when Morats joined the Combined Army, they were told that they needed to train diplomats to negotiate with other species, both friendly and enemy. But Morats being Morats, the description of “person who visits other races’ commanders to set terms and make agreements” was understood as, “Drop into enemy bases and subdue occupants.” 🙂

Given this, I envisioned Rasyats as being experienced Morats who hadn’t fit in well with the normal rank and file– not bad troops, but ones who definitely weren’t at their best in a disciplined squad. I figured that these square pegs might be promoted to a better-suiting position acting more independently. Such was the career path I envisioned for Krasz Volok– nominally a “diplomat” for the Morat forces, he’s really just a crazed monkey with a jetpack and a really big shotgun.

Noctifer-Agent Keeskreet

Division: Shasvastii Expeditionary Force

Shasvastii are described as a race utterly fixated on survival, openly valuing qualities like cowardice and deception as essential virtues. I embraced this idea when writing for Keeskreet, the Shasvastii spy providing intelligence to the Combined Army forces. Keeskreet’s foremost priority is always himself, and he makes no pretense of hiding his disdain for the other races serving the EI.

Keeskreet’s briefings were always fun to write, as sniveling worms are a close second behind cruel villains on the entertainment scale. Good guys are hard for me to make interesting, but I have no problem coming up with personalities and motivations for really terrible people. And I choose not to ponder too long on the reasons for that. 😛

Luminous Purveyor of Dependable Appurtenances

Division: Exrah Comissariat

Finally, we arrive at by far my favourite character from this entire project: Luminous Purveyor of Dependable Appurtenances, esteemed Exrah merchant and ranking supply officer for the Evolved Intelligence’s forces on Paradiso. The Exrah were quietly written out of the miniatures game with the switch to Infinity N3, which is really a tragedy since I find their race really facinating (though admittedly, their models were really boring and ugly, and I would never have bought any, so I can’t exactly fault Corvus Belli for their decision). They’re a race of traders and merchants, and that behaviour is so ingrained in their minds that they ultimately decided to start trading away the EI’s technology to non-enslaved races they met when the opportunity presented itself. This was a catastrophically bad idea and resulted in their entire intergalactic trade organization being brutally wiped out once their activities came to light, but dagnabbit, I can’t help respecting their business sense! 😛

I was really fascinated by the little bug people, and ended up brainstorming an extensive non-canonical mental fiction for how such creatures would think. Our planet’s insects communicate primarily with chemical signals, so the thought occurred to me that perhaps the Exrah do as well when speaking amongst themselves. Other races couldn’t understand this form of communication, however, so the Exrah would have been forced to adapt to more traditional spoken and written forms of communication.

This, I reasoned, might result in an interesting situation: because Speech is a fairly artificial process for the bugs, they have to concentrate fairly hard to do it; so they might end up learning an extremely formalized and rather unwieldy version of the language. But at the same time, they would have no instinctual behaviours related to verbal communication– no body language or subconscious tells. So these creatures that had always valued commerce and trade above all other considerations suddenly discovered, in their first dealings with other races, that those races could not tell when the Exrah were lying.

I fell in love with the idea immediately, and embraced it as a central plot element for the campaign’s story, which ends up being about– spoiler alert— the aftermath of a shady Exrah trade deal. As for the campaign’s Exrah quest-giver, I was given a simultaneously hilarious and excruciating opportunity to illustrate my idea of Exrah speech every time Luminous Purveyor of Dependable Appurtenances spoke to the players. Because Exrah are putting a lot of focus into the activity anyway whenever they communicate verbally, it ends up not really being that much more work for them to pick out the perfect word for every situation. The result, I decided, was that Exrah verbal communication sounds like a thesaurus exploded. All of the Exrah fluff blurbs are technically written in English, but in a style that has absolutely no concept of fluidity or parsability. In any given week I would need to write ten fluff blurbs– five mission sites, and a different mission briefing for each side– and each took me an average of an hour to write. But if Luminous Purveyor of Dependable Appurtenances was included in that week, his briefing alone generally took me between four and six hours of laboriously poring over Thesaurus.com.

The work was truly agonizing, but I absolutely love the end result. The awkward insect in the adorable orange Devo hat was my favourite part of the campaign, adding a much-needed dose of humour and alien strangeness to the proceedings.