Oh ho ho ho ho (devilish laugh). You have asked a simple question, but you are getting a small essay out of it, because it's a good one.
That and, despite being a simple question, I would like to make this useful to more than just "people deep in the Lancer sauce" so there's really no personally satisfying way for me to give a quick answer, so here we go.
If this response is delayed because it takes me a while to do some writing so be it, I wanna give you your money's worth of Mara Gamethinks.
For those of you not deep in Lancer, or who've been introduced to it by specific letsplays or independent setting, a brief primer on the textual Union, enough to follow along! This is drawn from my intersection with the core book, and what I took away from it. If you've a different read, I'm not gonna come after you for that, even if we disagree. The book is BigHuge, and going into my opinions on THAT would be another, more different essay.
In the prehistory of Lancer, Earth collapsed and died. We had previously been able to send out some colonial efforts, and scattered people were able to survive in a series of epochs rivaled perhaps only by Heavy Gear's Third Ice Age prehistory. Old Earth is lost, we-of-the-now are humorous references and legends.
Calypso Tarantula calls herself an expert in Cradle Mythology, and has recently explained to a new squadmate that it's funny, new squaddie's callsign "Mordred" means there are now TWO Kingslayers on base, Callsign Kingslayer and Mordred, because, see, Mordred Fitzgerald Kennedy slew Hussein el Cid with the help of John Wilkes Obama and Mansa Musa on the grassy gnoll of Winstonchurch Hill, ending the Warring Worlds Dinnerplate Era. Because it's garbled to say the minimum.
Through multiple miracles, Humanity-as-an-entity made it through enough for Earth to recover, to start rebuilding, to eventually find great vaults of knowledge and start decoding them, to reclaim what they could and rebuild what they couldn't, and then, eventually, to throw open the gates of communication and pray that other worlds had survived, and in the dark of the night, we got an answer.
Union's First Committee was one of RECONTACT. We know very little about FirstComm, in the sense that we know "very little" about the founders of older nations today: They're not important, their legacy is. The First Committee was dedicated primarily to bringing Cradle - that's Earth, BTW, instead of Dirt we renamed it something more symbolic for a galactic age, the Cradle of our people - back into contact with our relatives, finding those who had been cut off, bringing hope and solidarity to the stars. There are a lot of stories during this era, but the end result is, eventually, after a millenium or more, we felt safe in the face of eternity again, at least for the moment. Like perhaps we would survive planetary catastrophe beyond our means to prevent.
Also, Union doesn't wanna invite planetary catastrophe again. At all. Nope.
I don't know the circumstances of the First Committee's transition into the Second Committee era. I don't actually know if this is available information; I've seen speculation that it was a violent takeover, that it was a slow shift in ideals, that it was a formal handoff to a faction with seemingly-compatible ideals. That ultimately doesn't matter either: what matters is that the Second Committee went full-on Anthrochauvinist Fascist.
Anthrochauvinist/anthrochauvinism is a madeup word and a hopefully-forever-fictional ideology, but for our purposes it distills to "HUMANS matter, nothing else does". The galaxy is rife with resources, they are there to be exploited. It's longtermism (FUCK longtermists) with a slightly kinder attitude to the people-here-and-now, where the only thing that matters is our Survival (and, y'know, let's not let our SYMBOLIC worlds burn up, that would hurt our need for beauty, which is important) so everything that stands in the way of our vision and our future the way we, the central committee, see it is disposable. It's not war crimes when Harrison Armory does it under the Second Committee: it's the inherent right of Humanity In Line With Committee Ideals to burn a planet to bedrock in order to rid itself of recalcitrant locals who wouldn't be Good Union Citizens anyway. It's not an atrocity when SSC nerve-staples their orbital freight-handling crew for better efficiency; that's the way we do it, it's in line with our societal morals, they are serving humanity. Are these people a splinter group from one of the old colonies, who've been practicing their society for four thousand years? Cool, they have one hyperdrive jump to convert to something appropriate to Union or we're getting the flamethrowers and having IPS-Northstar bus in more tractable colonist replacements. Can't have them standing in the way of Union Glory.
Obligatory: yeah, the Imperium of Mankind in 40K is absolutely Anthrochauvinist by our definitions, it's just far more baroque in its core stylings, where SecCom went for Mech Future.
There are a lot of stories to tell about the Second Committee, but for our purposes here and now, there's only one that matters:
They're dead.
Somewhere in the space-time range of 500 to 1000 years ago (transluminal temporal dynamics are wonky, but let's just say "long enough that ThirdComm is established, short enough that it's recent on a galactic scale, and there are people still alive who remember, though not many, on a galactic scale") the Second Committee fucked up so badly it got overthrown. It's impossible to say whether the Hercynian Crisis started the events which would lead up to revolution, or whether it was simply the spark that ignited "civil tension" to "revolutionary overthrow", but the super-short version is:
- We thought we were alone in the galaxy, aside from our Funky Robot Brothers (more on NHP's later)
- I mean, in terms of SENTIENT life, that is, there's plenty of plants and animals out there
- Oh I mean SAPIENT life, haha, how silly, no some of those big lizards are just Very Clever, don't worry, they're not Thinking People, no matter how cunning
- Yeah we knew that there were these other cultures and some of them were even catgirls and dragon-folk but they started off as Human so they count
- And then on the world Hercynia, we found actual honest-to-goodness undeniable non-human sophonts.
- And so we killed them and razed their world and tried to cover it up.
While the Hercynian Crisis would in fact get covered up BY THIRDCOMM (again, more on that later) it was the moment of "NO, FUCK THAT" which led to the revolutionary war. This war lasted a while. Ripples are still being felt through the galaxy. The people who emerged victorious were the Third Central Committee, AKA ThirdComm, and their ideology can be summed up as
"holy shit we have fucking got to do better, what the hell."
ThirdComm brought back the First Committee's guiding principles, AKA the Utopian Pillars, which read:
- ALL SHALL HAVE THEIR MATERIAL NEEDS FULFILLED
- NO WALLS SHALL STAND BETWEEN WORLDS
- NO HUMAN SHALL BE HELD IN BONDAGE THROUGH FORCE, LABOR, OR DEBT
Which are very nice sentiments, honestly, very good principles, ultimately I can stand behind them.
And THAT brings us to the crux of the essay.
I was asked "Is there a big theme to the Third Committee that you think could be used as a framework for various friction points between Players and Union" and yes, yes I do. Because you see, to me, ThirdComm Union reads as a conflux of two identities which produce a third at their juncture.
First: "We're Trying".
This isn't to be read as "go nice on them they're a littol birthday boy they can have some warcrimes as a treat, shame on you". No, they are actually trying. ThirdComm, or at least, enough of ThirdComm to make it the dominant movement? They believe in their ideals. They believe in what they're saying. And they can look around at the core worlds and say look, see, this is what we stand for! This is Union! Who wouldn't want this, this magnificent equality, where we have forgotten what "money" is on a personal level even, where we have eradicated the concept of "need" and "hunger" and "oppression" and "envy" from our citizens' minds not by relentless propaganda but by simply providing for everyone!
But also, I feel, they're keenly aware that they're trying. That the galaxy is big. That there are people out there, people allied with Union even, to say nothing of existential enemies, that don't necessarily like the way Union is structured. One of Union's closest allies, close enough that their culture is one of the Dominant Core Cultures, the Karrakin Trade Baronies? They're a benevolent neofeudal neocapitalist society! How can Union respect the cultural sanctity of a core part of themselves while also holding as its core pillars "uh, the exploitation that your society is founded on is Really Wrong, actually?"
So far, the answer has been "provide enough resources and respect that the Karrakin serfs, over generations, are now Emotionally Loyal Patriots to their house's ideals and not Utterly Dependent Upon Their Benevolent Lord For Defense And Sustenance", and that's working, but one needs only look over to the Corpro-State Trinity to see where it hasn't really worked yet, and over to the Aun Confederacy to see somewhere that Union recognizes as Part Of Humanity, And Thus Part Of Union, If You Would Just Open Yourself To Us but who stand very aggressively opposed to that categorization, and that's only the MAJOR players, the further out you go into the fringes the more it becomes obvious that Union is TRYING, but Union is unable to deliver on their promise and that is partly because...
Second: "We're Terrified".
The Third Committee has been around longer than any currently-active state structure on Earth (if you're reading this from the year 2723 and, IDK, the Republic of India is still standing without a major ruling-process reform since 1947, I am officially Wrong and will happily eat my hat) because we're not counting "oh, England has been a Country since the Romans left" or "China can trace its history back to Qin Shi Huang in 223 BCE", as the identity of those peoples has shifted over the interim, but it's still "young" in the order of things, it's no longer The Revolutionary Government, but it's only just barely The Establishment Party, on the colossal scale it claims to represent.
And the Third Committee is absolutely, bowels-emptyingly terrified that they will become a new Second Committee. Like, so terrified they have pants to shit in PREAMBLE to the pants-shitting terror of that possibility. Some of them are terrified for ideological reasons, and some are terrified because they don't wanna die, but basically: they are scared. They're SO scared that they let this lead them to inaction in the hopes that local parties will sort things out with gentle nudges from Union Administrators before Union Mechanisms need to be deployed in larger forces than "A DoJ/HR Analysis And Strike Team", and hopefully not even that high, because use of force to enact our ideals is really fucking SecComm, isn't it. That interfering with SSC beyond a gentle "hey, hey, make sure you've got CONSENT for the biological experimentation you're doing for your warframes... oh it's all synthetic? You swear? OK cool, we're watching you" or busting up Harrison Armory with more than a "AHEM, you have to GIVE YOUR PEOPLE REASONABLE WORK-WEEKS and FEED THEM" will make them the baddies.
They're also afraid that treating NHPs as actual full non-human PERSONS will lead to cataclysmic war with entities we can only barely comprehend, which is why they've kept the utopian pillar's wording "human" instead of "person", because whoo buddy, NHPs, lemme tell you. Actually, no, lemme get to the third thing first, and then I'll talk about that.
Third, the overlap: "We're Full Of Compromises, And You Wouldn't Be Entirely Wrong To Call Us Progressive Centrists."
Ultimately, that's the Thing, isn't it? If you're afraid to act on your ideals, you consign yourself to a political life of reacting, and that's what a lot of Union is right now: REACTING to crises, REACTING to accusations, REACTING to breaches of the Pillars and other decrees. Some branches of Union don't think twice about saying "oh, we've identified a need, let's get ships in the air to bring relief" but other branches look at them and whisper to their bosses "ahem hem, you might wanna cut their resources before they get too powerful and start doing a SecComm in the name of Humanitarian Aid to those poor beleaguered, what is it this time, miners". Some branches of Union want very much to go a few steps back to the glory days of the Second Committee for real. Some Union Polities would like it better if THEY were in charge. And the Central Committee is atop all of this knowing that if they act in breach of their ideals, history will rapidly turn against them: weren't you supposed to be better than that?
And so they don't, and they compromise, and they react, and they stabilize where they can and they really are trying their best, it's just that what they believe "their best" is, well, outside of the Core Worlds that's kind of constrained, isn't it? That's kind of limited, ironically, in a self-proclaimed post-scarcity, post-limitations, post-borders world?
Which totally does have borders don't get me wrong, the way I run New Agartha Station as my hub its "immigration control" is purely for documentation purposes and life-support management but there are plenty of people from the fringes or from corpro-states that are utterly paranoid even about that manifestation because where they're from it means something different, something violent, and so they dodge and end up living in self-imposed scarcity because they don't register with the station to get their automatic allotments and... well, that's the thing about utopian systems, isn't it?
When you're comfortably cared for by the system, your urge to make sure nobody is falling through the cracks often starts diminishing, not because of some inherent "fuck you got mine", not because "you'll drift Rightward when you're older", but just because past certain thresholds, it IS harder to concieve of people who live differently in a real sense, and when all the needs of you and your friends and your enemies and your rivals and your academic frustrations are met, by a system which says "we do this for everyone", it's easy to take that system at its word because it's doing that for everyone.
Wow, that's a lot of words. Lemme get back to the core question: "Is there a big theme... that could be used as a framework" and yes, I think there is, the framework comes in those three identities along with some added scaffolding.
1: "We're Trying". This is the high-minded one, so it's hard to see how this could be used as a friction point against Union, but it's there. Possible friction points here include:
- Hang on, WHAT are you telling them to change? The Lancers are aware that this group is being slated for Union recognition and support, but local bureaucracy is held up on some sticking point that the Union Representative feels is out of sync with their interpretation of Union ideals. You can report this through channels, you're not barred from that, but there's transmission time and discussion time and possibly further research and in the meantime, the need is real, and they're being threatened over it. What do you do?
- What do you mean, Trust The Process? Union is sending help, or fixing a situation, but for various reasons it's moving too slowly to be Helpful, or otherwise going a very undesirable way. Will the Lancers stand back and trust that everything will work out, eventually, don't fuss, these things take time, or will they intervene?
- Why are you backing THEM? Union has been misinformed or deceived, and the party in power is oppressing an underclass, but has managed to do it in a way that has escaped immediate Union notice and intervention, possibly long enough that Union has even bought into assisting with the suppression. Maybe it's a paper-thin excuse like "well we're working on integration but to force the apartheid to stop would be an act of cultural violence", maybe they actually don't know. Will the Lancers take up arms to defend the oppressed against Union, at least until their message can be heard?
2: "We're Terrified". This is less high-minded and more sympathetic, which means that finding friction points might be a bit more difficult for some groups, but they do exist, especially in the vein of:
- These are the people we support? Similar to one of the examples above, the Lancers find themselves embedded in an operation alongside, or supporting, a faction which is nominally a member of Union but doing some things which Union is overlooking, or even tacitly supporting. Maybe their Union contact is aware of it. Maybe their Union contact has even given an excuse like "we're gathering evidence, just do as you're told, we can't commit societal violence here". Are the Lancers going to listen?
- You're covering up WHAT? Remember how I mentioned the Hercynian Crisis still being covered up? Yeah, ThirdComm is actively doing some of that, or at least they did. Maybe that's even fully been forgotten. Their reasoning at the time was not uncommon among revolutionary parties: Hey, this is Bad, but we need to focus on stabilizing, we can't have people circling back to this while we're trying to keep our new government from shaking itself apart, so let's cover it up and get back to it
later never. What else got swept under the rug during the transitory period? What else are they covering up NOW in the name of stability? What will your Lancers do?
- I acknowledge the council's decision, but given that it's foolish, I plan to ignore it: Drawn from a direct personal one here, Union gives a directive that it believes will, under the right circumstances, solve long-term harm. However, it does so in a way that threatens very real short-term harm, right here, right now. In this specific example, we have a three-part population flash-frozen in time (there's a lot of details, think of them like looping time-ghosts for now). You have the Ruling Class, who actively oppress others and in fact engineered new subclasses for purpose-built oppression, the Middle Class, who may not HATE the serving class but boy howdy do they sure take advantage of them, and the Serving Class, who are both socially and physically othered (we got space goblins, they're awesome). Union says "ok, we have to free them all at once, otherwise that's Temporal Imprisonment and a violence against those that we choose to keep frozen". The Lancers look at this situation and go "ok but look, we free them all at once, how are you gonna stop the Serving Class from being enslaved as status quo, they don't even know they've been frozen, as far as we know, they're literally gonna go right back to the way things are and it'll be 100 years before you feel like you can make a stab at freeing this population that WAS ENSLAVED UNDER YOUR WATCH BEFORE" and Union shrugs and says "yeah but we can't do a time-prison violence". What will your Lancers do? Ours have decided "well, we ain't Union Military, oh no whoops looks like we're freeing the Servant Class first so they can be GOTTEN OUT OF THERE FIRST and the cycle can be broken because sometimes, a little social violence is needed to overthrow oppressors", but yeah, Union isn't gonna like that!
3: "We're Reactive". Technically, this isn't quite the same as "we're reactionARY", but it was tempting to write that. This is one of the easiest places to find friction of the three: what's it gonna take to get Union to react? Why is Union waiting? What are they waiting for?
- Which way will you fall, Company Man? The Lancers are in a situation where their opposition is a Corpro-State sanctioned or backed team. They're violating Union precepts, but in a place that Union deems strategic or important. Maybe it's a rare-materials source. Maybe it's a cutting edge science lab. Either way, the Lancers are on the scene: will they accept Union guidance on "acceptable behavior" or will they follow their hearts?
- What are you waiting FOR? The Lancers respond to distress calls; maybe it's raiders, maybe it's planetary factions, maybe it's aggressive megafauna; the point is that these people need help, but union hasn't responded for weeks, months, years. Maybe decades. Maybe GENERATIONS. Do they not care? Is it that "these pirates come around once unpredictably every 10 years, it's not worth the violence of stationing a cruiser in this system just to try to catch them?" Is it "interfering with these insurgents, even if they ARE a surging tide of fascist anthrochauvinism, would be doing social violence so we're gonna hope that our party wins, good luck"? Is it "oh, this is just a border system, we're needed elsewhere"?
- This is a clear and present power play, what gives? A corpro-state or a trade baron or some other power has decided to set up their own Company Town River Barony or the like. If you don't work for them, you can freely travel through their space, in accordance with the second principle, naturally! We're playing by ALL of Union's (big) rules (on the surface), naturally. And if we aren't making a fuss, well, is it worth the risk of destabilizing us? Hmm? Bonus points if this has been going on For A While, and Union's complacency has led to that most nefarious of legal edge-casery: PRECEDENT.
There's a lot more that I could probably say here, but I wanted to wrap up thoughts before I ramble on too long. Specifically, three more examples that don't quite fit, as an illustration of "added scaffolding" that I was talking about before:
- Why won't you help? The Lancers are in a situation where Union is right there and not helping, for some reason. In this case, it's perhaps more sympathetic than the above: perhaps the Union DoJ/HR troubleshooter is even aware of the SSC experiments, and wants something done about them, but understands that their superiors do not want that boat rocked, and so is quietly looking to even sponsor the Lancer team... but here they are, on a strike cruiser, with an escort, with authorization, with several fighter wings, why won't you help? How can we respond with fervor to your rallying cry of Union ideals when you're... just gonna sit here, or gonna motor off some other direction? Even if you have a "good reason" otherwise? Sometimes, it might be less sympathetic; a complacent or even corrupt Union official just sitting on their hands while the Lancers see and even respond to needs, but it doesn't have to be shady.
- Don't you see the cracks? This could be considered a subset of the above, but I think it deserved a specific callout: I mentioned earlier that when you're covered, it becomes difficult to believe that everyone isn't. So what happens when the well-meaning proclamations and gestures by Union leave underclasses out in the cold, or even hurt them worse? How do you advocate for the rights of a category of person which the average citizen doesn't understand is even struggling? Or worse - in the modern day, think of just how easy it is for a bad actor to come into a discussion on trans rights and representation and completely derail the discussion with "but what rights DON'T you have, list them please" or "but don't WE deserve representation too, why are you taking away from us", and imagine that in a future where "everyone's needs are already met, friend" is a foundational pillar of the central worlds. How can you convince them that it's not true? Can you even gather enough evidence before a people is exterminated (benignly, of course)?
- By what measure a Person? So, above, I mentioned NHPs, non-human persons. There's a lot of valid commentary and criticism about them; I could write a whole essay on how the core text of Lancer treats them a lot like Star Wars treats Droids, which is to say "IDK they're a chatty beepboop friend when we want them to be, and a box that does useful things when we don't wanna think about that" and no one has really grappled with that
but actually, for our purposes that's useful. I don't know whether or not it's intentional, again, different essay on that topic, but the thing is, this is a subset of "we're terrified" in a way, but there's this entire category of "Person" which the core game treats as subhuman. This isn't even going into the surviving/resurgent Hercynians, this is our neo-digital friends the Non-Human Persons. For various reasons, Union is terrified of them. I'm not going to pretend that none of these are valid reasons; again, different essay - but this has led to the Official Union Stance being "when they start getting a little unpredictable, or better yet, BEFORE that, factory-reset your helpful li'l buddy there, won't you? It's better that way".
So, uh
Dude
What the fuck.
Are they Persons, or are they not? Do you nonconsensually identity-death human persons? Is the right to continuity of identity a HUMAN right, not a PERSON right? Dangers or no, are they PERSONS? Or are they clever little programs and boxes and swords that we plug into our ships and mechs?
"But the first contact accords" / "but unshackled NHPs are..." yeah yeah yeah I know, it's scary, the MONIST-1 entity imposed the agreement on us and you're terrified of reality-breaking godlike entities but you're constantly breaking the Third Pillar, continually, on a regular, reliable, Union-sanctioned basis, hiding behind "uhm, well, actually, it says HUMAN" as a defense
and it's very, very easy for anyone who stands up against that to be branded a Horizon sympathizer and quietly unperson'd themselves in a Union prison, or worse.
so there's a couple thoughts on the subject! There's probably even more, I just wanted to get some kind of answer about how the three-way tension between "they're honestly trying", "they're terrified", and "they're inherently reactive/complacent" could be scaffolded.
There's a lot that I could say, REALLY there is, and it's hard for me to know where to stop... so I'm just gonna stop here for now, and hope that it answers your question.
