Iron Horizons and Genesys RPG Worldbuilding: Religions, Societies, Factions

This is the fourth post in this series in which we work through the expanded setting creation process for the Genesys TTRPG, as published in the Expanded Player’s Guide (1, 2, 3) and the associated setting worksheet.

This week, we’re going to do both steps four and step five. Step four is less relevant for Iron Horizons, as it’s focused on the cosmology, deities, and religions. I’m not Gene Roddenberry, however, so I find it unlikely that taking to space will make religion disappear from the human psyche. Additionally, this is also a future history/alternate history, so it’s based on our own world if technology took a different direction than our own.

As such, the majority of religions will be ones we are familiar with in our own world. So far, I’ve done the most work on what Christianity, especially Episcopalian and Catholic, looks like. I mentioned them briefly last time with the Cupertinan monks and Knights-Stellarum. All other religions also exist, but it feels appropiative to create a future version of religions that I do not practice and only possess a simple understanding. For the future, being able to more fully develop our own world’s religions in Iron Horizons is a goal that is top of my list when I have the resources to work more closely with sensitivity readers and believers.

Step five are where we will once again get our hands dirty, digging deeper into the concepts and ideas we had from last week regarding the different geographic regions. This time, we’re looking at the governments, societies, and other groups within the Alathni System. I touched on them briefly last time, but that is our focus for this stage of the process.

Step 4: Cosmology, Religion, and Deities

This is the framing for the individual religions. Not too in-depth, at least as far as worldbuilding tends to go. Certainly not by Brandon Sanderson standards, but nothing is complex by Sanderson standards. We’ve mentioned one religion in the last post, although they were probably better described as a cult. So let’s make an actual religion real quick.

I won’t touch on any of the real religions that exist in Iron Horizons. There is a table of options that we could roll on if we wanted, but I think I have an idea for one to go with it.

• Religion Name: Children of the Dragon
  • The Children of the Dragon is one of the many religions to develop as humanity has spread into space, each one characterized by the unique ideals of its founders. The Children are among the stranger, as their founder claims to have been saved from a bad spacewalk by a giant space dragon, who gave them a vision of a better and more moral future for humanity.
• Morality: Selfless
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Draconis Vox: The Voice of the Dragon, original identity unknown, location unknown, age unknown. The prophet of the Children, only known to have once been a roughneck working on a remote mining colony whose tether broke and drifted into the void. They drifted and were ready to die when, according to their sermon, a giant space dragon saved them and carried them close enough to be rescued, but sending a telepathic vision of a united galaxy full of benevolence and goodwill.
• Areas of Influence: The Diskward Marches, lower economic status populations across human space
• Relationship with Society: Society finds them outlandish, but appreciates what they do, especially among the poor.
• Relationship with Government: Governments have a variety of opinions- but generally mistrust them and view them as communist provocateurs.

Nice and simple. Not enough room for doctrine or theology, which usually isn’t necessary for a tabletop game. I like how it views the religions primarily through the lenses of how the religion interacts with, or is viewed by, the rest of the society. That’s something a lot of worldbuilding resources for RPGs miss, I think. There’s usually not a need to have doctrinal creeds or theologies in roleplaying games, unless those elements are essential to the narrative experience within the game itself. The evil spider-goddess cult, whether in D&D or Elizabeth Moon’s Paksenarrion world (about which I wrote my dissertation) don’t need theological treatises to fill their role in the story. Undoubtedly, some players and readers would love if they did, but they are a much smaller group of people.

Remember, in this process we’re looking at a minimum viable setting. What is absolutely essential to play in the setting? Not necessarily an extended campaign, but a multi-session adventure, at minimum. For that, we’re looking primarily at places where players and game masters can hook into the world for plots and backstories.

Step 5: Governments & Societies

Societies & Governments

That takes us to the next step- the final one in the worldbuilding process already. The next and final step focuses primarily on mechanical elements. The EPG goes into a lot more detail in this section and includes quite a few tables. I really appreciated that element.

Genesys does a really good job of including mechanics for non-combat encounters, especially in terms of the social and intrigue aspects. For Iron Horizons, that’s pretty important to the overall way the setting functions.

It’s definitely not a sword and sorcery setting where conflicts exist primarily between individuals or small groups, like parties of roving adventurers. It’s quite a bit more organized than that, even in the frontier, and looks mostly at individuals and small groups opposed against systems. As in, social and political systems, not always against an entire star system. That does sometimes happen though.

So, on our sheet, we have two large boxes for societies. You can see an example of them above. Fortunately, we touched on two societies last time, so now we can bring them into more focus and tie more directly into the potential narratives.

• Society Name: No table for this one, but that’s not unexpected given the subject matter. You can pretty easily use names from the geographic regions, or any number of the hundreds of name generators online.
• Society’s Government: This one has a table as well, with a wide array of different government structures, as well as possibilities within results to roll again for more details. In one, for example, the main result is local councils (essentially) with additional rolls to help determine if councils are elected, appointed, or inherited. I like the additional details as it helps push past the cliches into something more unique. One of the best tips of writing advice I ever heard was to never accept the first three ideas that came to mind, due to the recency bias. Unfortunately, I don’t remember where that advice comes from and the internet has not been helpful in tracking it down. Rolling dice can work a similar function.
• Regions it Controls: Also pretty important, but not too much detail here, especially having done the previous step already. It could be as broad as a galaxy or as specific as a city block, depending on the nature of your society.
• Leadership & Important Individuals: The chapter has two versions of developing leaders and NPCs— one using a single dominant personality trait and the other using the same system as player characters with strengths, flaws, motivations, and fears. That helps make very dynamic NPCs that can drive a plot for PCs to interact with.
• Objectives: I really like this one. It’s another table to roll on, and has a huge list of objectives, applicable to both societies and the other factions. Since Genesys is primarily a narrative system, and works a lot with motivation, this is a great way to establish what motivates different groups. They’re fairly overarching and broad categories, which is very helpful.
• Description: The exciting part! This is where we dive into the details and the stories of the organizations and societies that we’ve been building. The early steps were the foundations, but these are where we build the societal structures that provide the bulk of the story hooks.

Let’s go ahead and apply these information to the two societies we discussed last time: Athena Proxima and Old Alathni. After that, we’ll do the same with factions and organizations. For the most part, the tables and categories are the same, just have smaller focuses than societies as a whole. The main difference is the line for the type of organization. The table for this one includes unions, trade groups, scientific groups, criminal groups, and so on. It’s a broad category to use for what these factions do.

Societies & Governance of the Alathni System

• Society Name: Athena Proximans
• Society’s Government:
  • The Alathni Company, subsidiary of Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company, representing the Aldottorai Republic. The colony is run as a company, with a mixture of regular employees and what they call “Prepaid Employees,” which is essentially their term for indentured workers. The company pays for their transport, move, and initial settlement, with the understanding that they will work off their debt (and interest) over an amount of time specified in the initial contract. There are very few, if any, independent colonists on Athena Proxima, as the ACTC holds monopoly rights until the initial purchasing cost is repaid. As a result, the colony operates as a business, overseen by a Chief Colonial Director, overseen by a board of directors appointed by the Aldottorai Republic and ACTC, with various departments beneath them to ensure the colony functions.
• Regions it Controls:
  • Athena Proxima
    • Initial colony is named Athena Proxima, with the smaller subsidiary settlements having a combination of numbers and letters to designate when they were established and the initials of the department that founded them.
      • Athena Proxima C-7: The seventh smaller settlement to be established, along the shores of the continent, turning it somewhat into a vacation town and the crossing point to the islands between Athena Proxima and Old Alathni. Most illegal business that happens between the two societies passes through here, adding a distinct air of danger to what would otherwise be an idyllic and temperate beach town.
      • Athena Proxima R-19: The main research and development lab of Athena Proxima, this settlement is run entirely by the security and science departments, making it very difficult for outsiders to gain access. The only people permitted to live in this town are the lab employees, their families, and those necessary to support them. Nobody is entirely sure what’s being worked on inside the lab complex, but there are many rumors, some of which claim that the ACTC found alien technology in the alleged ruins in the moon, and are secretly studying them here.
• Leadership & Important Individuals:
  • Chief Colonial Director Conrad Lilly
  • Finance Director Leandra Peters
  • Corporate Security Director Devi Cox
  • Operations Director Hilda Rao
• Objectives:
  • Economic Development: The primary purpose behind the Aldottorai’s colonization efforts is to turn a profit. The Athena Proxima colony and Alathni asteroid mines are no exception. Purchasing the rights to own and colonize a planet are incredibly expensive, and the Republic wishes to pay off their bonds and loans as quickly as possible. This means Athena Proxima is structured to minimize costs to increase the profits for a better return on investment.
• Description:
  • Athena Proxima officially (at least according to the Aldottorai government) covers the entire planet of Alathni Major, but in reality only applies to the one continent. Like most Aldottorai colonies, it operates as its own subsidiary company owned first by the Aldottorai Colonial Trading Company and then, through the ACTC, the Aldottorai Republic. The vast majority of its inhabitants are colonist-employees of the company with the job of turning a previously uninhabited planet into a profitable world to boost the finances of the Republic. As a result, the vast majority of the colony settlements are cheaply made and utilitarian places meant to give workers a place to live, a place to work, a place to spend their company scrip and not much else. real money, Aldottorai dollars, are hard to come by, except when brought in from off world, and most of it goes straight to the Alathni Company as tariffs and taxes. The people of Athena Proxima are pragmatic optimists, however, seeing a future they can build with their own labor and, eventually, their own money. Once the colony pays off its debts, it can be officially integrated into the Aldottorai Republic with all the rights (and strong economy) thereof. At the local level, most decisions are made through unofficial consensus, but anything beyond that scale goes through the district and regional managers. As a result, most people on Athena Proxima prefer to keep their problems in-house or, at least, solve them through unofficial means, especially off-worlders who aren’t afraid to risk the wrath of the ACTC.

• Society Name: The Old Alathni
• Society’s Government: Local Rule— elected elders and society wide Folkmoot for decisions affecting the entire society, as well as resolving conflicts between communities. The Moot Speaker is elected by representatives from all of the communities and serves for life, presiding over each Folkmoot and acting as a mediator.
• Regions it Controls:
  • Old Alathni
    • Herald’s Town: The capital of Old Alathni, and the largest population center, built within and around the ruins of their generation ship using scavenged and repurposed technology, added onto through the black market trade of colony tech and the official support of the Cupertinans, despite the protest of the Aldottorai government. Herald’s Town is a bustling metropolis compared to most settlements on the Diskward Marches, given that it had several additional centuries to grow and adapt.
    • New Ohio: As the Old Alathni spread out from Herald’s Town, they began to settle new towns. New Ohio is the Old Alathni counterpart to Athena Proxima C-7. Sitting along the mouth of a slowly growing river running down from the mountains, it made for easy access from their mountain heartland to the coastal settlements and then, eventually, to the Islands and Athena Proxima. Unlike the dangerous current running beneath Athena Proxima C-7, however, New Ohio is a relaxed and easygoing place, with lots of trade and tourism moving through with little difficulty.
• Leadership & Important Individuals:
  • Moot Speaker Salman Nye
  • High Priestess Astride Georges
  • Militia Commander Duncan Boone
• Objectives:
  • Social Development: The goal of the original Herald colonists were artists, thinkers, and scientists. Utopians, to be precise, who believed they could create an ideal society in the stars. While that proved impossible when the ship was damaged too badly to continue, they pushed forward regardless, making the best of what they had, and still with the goal of creating a prosperous, free, and flourishing society for all.
• Description:
  • The people who inhabit Old Alathni were from the first wave of colonists, even before the Cupertinans began their process. With their generation ship having gotten lost, they ran their ship aground on the first planet they found that was close to habitable. They didn’t know at the time, having been a generation ship, that the Cupertinans were in the process of terraforming the world or that the Aldottorai Republic (whose home system had not even been discovered when the ship first left Terra) had begun the purchase process for the system. Given that it was the very early days of the process, the Cupertinans were unaware that the ship had been in the system or landed on the planet, as that would have voided the Aldottorai claim. Over time, the inhabitants of the ship began to expand as the terraforming gradually brought the world closer and closer to being Earth-like. They grew and flourished, creating their own culture and syncretic religion, ruled over by a high priestess and hereditary priestly class. Each community chooses their own leaders and chooses representatives to go to the annual Folkmoot, whose Moot Speaker serves as a de facto head of government for all the Old Alathni. They did not have an easy time early on, however, as successive waves of disease and climate instability wreaked havoc on the colony early on, and technology failures became more and more difficult to repair. They believe these trials made them resilient, however, and feel there is no challenge they can’t overcome, especially after discovering their neighbors’ expansionist itch. The communities are relatively isolated from each other and the overall population is rather small, so they often turn to outsiders for advanced or technical skills that did not survive to be taught to the following generations.

Factions & Organizations

The Holy-Mendicant Order of St. Joseph of Cupertino (Cupertinans) & the Knights-Stellarum

• Type of Organization:
  • Religious-Scientific-Humanist & Military
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Abbess-Bishop Dr. Greta Roy: head of all Cupertinan monasteries, operations, and activities in the Alathni Sector
  • Knight-Commodore Saeed Michel: Senior captain of the Knights-Stellarum flotilla responsible for this sector of the Diskward Marches
  • Friar Dr. Laszlo Hume, scientist in charge of maintaining Alathni Major’s climate and completing the ecoforming of Alathni Minor

• Objectives:
  • Act as spiritual shepherds and physical protectors of humanity on the edges of human space, mediate between warring parties, and help life flourish across the galaxy in partnership with their Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and other fraternal orders
• Description: The Holy-Mendicant Order of St. Joseph of Cupertino and their smaller, minor Order- the Sovereign Military Order of Christ and the Heavens (Knights-Stellarum) are a religious order founded under the auspices of the Coalition of Terran Religions, serving as Christianity’s representative order, dedicated to exploration, humanitarian, and scientific work, known primarily for their role in exploration and ecoforming new worlds for human expansion. Comprised of a combination of religious, technical, and military experts, they are often the ones that new worlds first look to for help. Working closely with their interfaith counterparts, these Coalition Orders are often the only source for assistance, mediation, or defense along the frontier. While the bulk of their work in the Alathni System is complete, they maintain a maintenance monastery on the planet and continue to work on Alathni Minor, making them a frequent (and welcome) presence in the system, as they are the only non-Company military presence to ever make an appearance. That doesn’t deter all pirates and organized crime, but it deters most of them.

Alathni Asteroiders United Laborers (AAUL)

• Type of Organization:
  • Labor Union
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Chloe Frank: Lead union organizer, asteroid miner, and ore hauler
  • Noah Alwin: Lead union organizer, smelter, and engineer
  • Max Merle: Lead union organizer, pilot, and prospector
• Objectives:
  • Better pay, safer working conditions, and more freedom for the crews who work the asteroid mines.
• Description:
  • The Aldottorai Republic does not like unions. As a republic keenly focused on its financial growth and profitable colonies, they try very hard to suppress unions among their colonies, even making them illegal on systems owned and operated by the Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company. That hasn’t stopped the labor movement though, especally on the hardscrabble, brutal asteroid mining camps, where they work twelve hour shifts for company scrip and in extremely hazardous conditions. The AAUL has been a long simmering idea until pushed into reality by Chloe Frank, Noah Alwin, and Max Merle following an ore-smelting disaster in which cheap construction and fatigue caused a catastrophic collapse. Technically illegal under the ACTC, the AAUL tries to stay underground in the process of their organizing and avoid the ACTC agents hunting the leaders. They rely on the Cupertinans and Old Alathni for most of their support, as well as the “prepaid employees” of Athena Proxima, as well as no small amount of connections to ore smugglers.

Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company & The Alathni Company (an ACTC subsidiary)

• Type of Organization: Commercial-Political
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Chief Colonial Director Conrad Lilly
  • Finance Director Leandra Peters
  • Corporate Security Director Devi Cox
  • Operations Director Hilda Rao

• Objectives:
  • Profitability & Stability
• Description:
  • The ACTC, and the Alathni Company, which manages the Alathni system, is the primary commercial and colonial arm of the Aldottorai Republic. They manage all colony projects outside the Aldottorai home system and are the primary trade arm of the Republic for the Diskward Marches. They hold a monopoly with all frontier sectors for Aldottorai trade. And Aldottorai sits as the heart of a massive trade network, so that monopoly carries a lot of power and influence. They guard this jealously and with force. The Alathni Company is one of the smaller and less profitable subsidiaries, as the Old Alathni prevent the company from fully colonizing the world effectively. Additionally, the fact there’s only one planet limits their capacity to raise revenue. Being assigned to the Alathni Company is usually a sign that a Company employee has disappointed the leadership. It could have been failure, mediocrity, or simply not extracting enough profit from a richer colony. This results in the Alathni Company being staffed mostly by screw-ups, black sheep, and those who could cause a scandal, adding more corruption than normal to the operations of this department, which is structured identically to the larger company, albeit at a smaller scale.

The Maturin Ring

• Type of Organization:
  • Criminal/Pirate
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Jack Maturin (Alleged): Head of the family, known to be leader of a mining company in the neighboring Kais Sector. Thought to be the leader of the Maturin Ring as well, given his position, but nobody has ever been able to prove it or find a rock solid connection.
  • Abigail Maturin: Jack’s wife, known to be a ship captain hauling ore, thought to be the actual leader of the pirate activities, or at least a spy for them.
  • Elizabeth Maturin: The eldest daughter and family heir, considered a pampered socialite who does not appreciate being dumped in the Islands to oversee the family business interests
• Objectives:
  • Profit (Presumed)
• Description:
  • The Maturin Ring is not an official name of the pirate ring, but it is suspected to be related to them, as the pirates tend to make appearances not long after the Maturin Mining Corporation begins operations in a sector and the company has unusually high profits given what is known about its mining claims. Of course, nobody has ever managed to prove a connection, and Jack Maturin has always been very good at explaining how he manages to cut costs and sell high. Most people agree this is bogus, however, and they make their profit through plundering other cargo vessels and remote mining claims. The Maturin Mining Company has recently set up shop in the Alathni system and now everyone in the know is braced for the inevitable arrival of pirate raiders.

Alathni Minor Scientific Research Association

• Type of Organization:
  • Scientific & Archaeological
• Leadership and Important Individuals:
  • Dr. Mirza Sandeep, Director & Founder
  • Dr. Thor Ferri, Chief Archaeologist
  • Dr. Amit Lacey, Chief Biologist
• Objectives:
  • Scientific Discovery: Unravel the secrets of Alathni Minor’s strange geologic features and identify other possible sites around the system
• Description:
  • Considered kooks and eccentric by the mainstream scientific establishment, the Alathni Minor Scientific Research Association is a group of researchers across all fields of physical and social sciences committed to solving the mystery of the strange ruins beneath the surface of the moon. Ostensibly neutral and acting solely in pursuit of truth, the publications of the members indicate that, as a whole, the group firmly believes that the underground structures were created by intelligent, pre-human life. While a small group, living primarily on an old station in stationary orbit around the moon, they have enough wealth and backing from across human space to conduct extensive expeditions across Alathni Minor, the Alathni System, and the asteroid field, which they believe to be the ruins of a destroyed planet. Not many people from Alathni will work for them, so they often hire outsiders to conduct the more dangerous missions, or to guard the researchers in the process.

Reflections

Oh, boy. This was a long one, wasn’t it? It’s taken me… close to three weeks to get all the way through this post, even being able to pull from a lot of the work I’ve already done for this setting. I can definitely see why this comes near the end of the process. This is the sort of thing that really catches my interest and gets me very in-depth. Even with this one, I was having more and more ideas, so I had to cut myself off where I did and force myself to not go into as much detail, which you probably noticed with the last few examples.

I do like how they have this structured and explained. I didn’t use any of the tables, but if I were doing a much larger area, I probably would have. The tables have really good stuff in them that I found got the wheels turning for possible future additions. The focus on objectives, leadership, and important individuals really helped with that, as it kept the focus on who and what the players would be interacting with.

That perspective was one I focused on for the entire process— how will these factions and societies interact with the player characters? What are the plot hooks that I can seed into them for other game masters to use? Where are there conflicting motivations between factions that would hire people to resolve? I could have come up with a lot more factions (I have close to two dozen factions in a Notion database right now), but not all of them made sense for this specific portion of the setting. I also didn’t want to do a faction or society that was too big, because I want to keep the focus within the Alathni system. Adding more factions would easily begin spilling over into more star systems. We don’t need that at this point. When I start working on a full setting book, then yes, I will include many more. But again, this is a minimum viable setting. I have to keep reminding myself to focus only on what is essential.

For these factions, I picked the two societies that inhabit the main planet, a law enforcement/military/religious service faction, a commercial/military faction, a science faction, a criminal faction, and a rebellious social change faction. That touches on all the different themes of the setting and gives different groups many opportunities to engage with the different factions and the story lines they could generate.

But that’s all for this week! Up next is the final step, which focuses on the mechanics and setting-specific rules. Fortunately, I’ve already done the bulk of the work on that one, so that should take much less than three weeks to write.