nick012000 wrote:

I would think it would vary from Ultimate to Ultimate, depending on exactly what they were doing. Ultimates who work as mercenaries for the hypercorps have C-Rep, Ultimates who do things like designing new morphs have r-Rep, Ultimates who work for organized crime have g-Rep, Ultimates who live in habitats in the outer system probably have @-rep, et cetera. As for clothes, I assume they'd probably tend towards practical clothing, rather than fashionable or artistic clothing. Most likely, their clothing is armored; a good chunk of them probably never wear anything but armor.

I suppose that makes sense. I suppose I will stick with r-rep in that case. Thanks for the input!

The Doctor wrote:

Maybe a few do not wear armor at all. In my game there is a small cadre of Ultimates who are more like warrior-monks than sellswords. They wear very simple, unarmored clothing but are scarily proficient at hand-to-hand and melee combat because they prefer the purity and beauty of such combat over firearms. This cadre is also well known for their performance art kata among Autonomists.

That's essentially the character I've designed, though his unarmed combat is more for function than beauty (he's an async with offensive psi, so touch combat is a necessary skill). I'm just trying to figure out how else to structure him in accordance with their culture. I know he has to be willing to commit fascist violence, believe in "survival of the strongest", and try to live a life of asceticism... but the material really doesn't speak much more than that about them.

Arenamontanus wrote:

There are struggles that follow rules and struggles that ignore them. The first kind is preferable if you want to stay in the game indefinitely or have to care about outside considerations like your general reputation. If you start breaking the stock-market rules you get thrown out of that part of the economy, if you shoot a opponent who has surrendered you are a war criminal. Finance people usually want to keep to the first kind, but some like Bernard Madoff go over the edge. A sufficiently ruthless person might follow Clausewitz adage "War is an act of violence which in its application knows no bounds". In a physical fight, they will not hesitate to use the most appropriate means, even if they are deadly (I am strongly reminded of Ender in Orson Scott Card's books). In an economical, political or social situation they will not hesitate to use whatever underhanded tactics will get them what they want. The difference between the mere sociopath and the ideal ultimate is that the ultimate wants to play the long game. They want to win not just today but tomorrow and tomorrow. So they will consider what bridges it is strategic to burn, and what rules are worth to follow since they give access to useful systems. Like the Nietzscheans of Andromeda, I think one can interpret the ultimates in a lot of ways, and it is pretty unclear which is "right". Most likely the ultimates disagree on that too. Some might be violence-oriented, some might be pan-evolutionists who want to drag transhumanity kicking and screaming into the future, some might be ultra-survivalists, others yet self-made sociopaths or bizarre idealists. Just like the other clades the ultimates must be bristling with splinters.

I don't think the Ultimates care about being war criminals or outcasts of the rest of society. They already are a radical group with radical beliefs, especially with how they look down on the rest of humanity. To that end, this is exactly why the hypercorps hire them as mercenaries. Hypercorps have the resources and manpower to do their own dirty work and security, but they hire the Ultimates because they don't have the moral compunctions and protocols that their own employees have. They don't choose sides, they don't care who they hurt, and they don't care how they do it. They are pragmatists to the core, who see mercenary work as a means of taking lives and resources from people they already don't like... two birds with one stone. I agree that the Ultimates are interpretable, but there's only a certain degree to which they can be interpreted. At best, you can ignore individual memes, or even a couple of them... but to completely work in opposition to the groups primary goals (like participating in the stock market as opposed to a life of asceticism) seems off. Ultimates are disgusted with the hedonistic ways of the inner system, and that includes their economy. Profit isn't the aim of the Ultimates, even when they work as mercenaries. They use mercenary work to kill those who are inferior while also siphoning their resources away from them (and perhaps using those resources to better their bodies and improve their weapon stores). I don't see why they would care about the stock market in any way. At best they threaten to crash the economy with enough work, but it would require long amounts of time and a depression is not a guaranteed way to topple their social orders. To that end, I think that the core tenet of militarism is actually an offshoot of their social darwinistic beliefs. Any means of pushing forward the development of man is a good means, and eliminating those who hold progress back is one way of doing so. That doesn't necessarily mean that all of the Ultimates are like-minded in how they should go about their goals, but they all at least acknowledge that their final goal is the perfection of the human condition. Anything that detracts from that is useless. More of my opinion on the matter is a few posts up.

Arenamontanus wrote:

You can still be a ruthless mercenary without being a total outcast. Being an outcast means you have no access to the resources of society. If nobody wants to let you into their habitat, trade with you or tell you things you are seriously hampered since stealing or sneaking around under false ID takes effort. An ultimate fraction that didn't make themselves persona non grata would get better deals and more options for how they go about their own goals (hypercorps and others also likely prefer to hire mercenaries who have an incentive not to rip them off). As we discussed in the infomorph habitat thread, there is a great deal of advantage in being linked to greater transhuman society almost no matter what your ideology is.

To an extent, they are already outcasts for their radical beliefs. Most people seem to perceive them as immoral, fascists or elitists... and that's before they do anything to them. However, people simply can't refuse their patronage, because the Ultimates seem to be the faction-neutral mercenary force that people go to when they need military assistance. They are in a peculiar position of power, as lesser groups and isolates know that the Ultimates will assist them so long as they are willing to pay. Hypercorps know that they're willing to do the dirty work that their own employees might fear doing (like retaking the Eris gate from the Exhumans). In a sense, it grants them a degree of political immunity. Of course, that only goes so far. The Ultimates should be smart enough to know that it would only take a few antimatter weapons to annihilate everything they have worked up to until now. They know that they have to continue to present themselves as a worthwhile commodity to the rest of the system, if they plan to be as intolerable as they are. That doesn't mean they need to work toward acceptance, though.

Arenamontanus wrote:

You seem to think that the ultimates were in the stock market to become rich, and that they were going to use the wealth to just roll around in piles of money. But money (and rep) are just resources, and they can be used for ascetic ends too. If you want to build something like Xiphos or design radical new morphs, you need resources. Whatever your brand of survivalism, having some extra resources is useful. And if you want to be able to stomp on your enemies, attacking them economically can be pretty effective (the PCs are expecting an attack and are holed up in an impenetrable fortress. Then the lawyers start to arrive with subpoenas...) I have looked at everything that is mentioned in the core book about the Ultimates, and nothing there seems to force ultimates to piously stay away from using money or being flexible about the means they use. They are militarist and ascetic, sure, but they are also individualists and believers in social Darwinism. In fact, they get a bonus to one Networking skill of choice - if they were uninterested in occasionally dealing with the rest of transhumanity on civil terms, that wouldn't make sense. I do not see anything that makes my pragmatist take on ultimates incompatible with what is written.

I agree that they don't stay away from money, I just saw the movement of the stock market as something they probably would care very little about. If they did, however, they might take a more... proactive approach. There are two ways to make money on the market... predict how things will fall, or make them fall in your favor. I see any Ultimates who do work with stocks doing the latter, manipulating the market to earn optimum profits, and utilize those profits for Ultimate goals and agendas. Example: a new shipping hypercorp is formed which offers fast travel from the inner system to the Oort cloud. An Ultimate market watcher on Progress takes notice, and Xiphos transfers him credits to buy up as much stock as he can. Afterwards, the Ultimates offer their security services, and the hypercorp gains reputation as being a safe and secure means of transporting product and people throughout the Solar system. Eventually, profits cap and the company has reached the apex of it's worth to the Ultimates. The Ultimates pull their security support, claiming that the hypercorp can handle its own security at this point. They immediately begin talks to liquidate the stocks they have to whomever wants to buy them. Rather than taking credit, they barter away the stocks for weapons blueprints and vast ammunition stores. Mere hours after the deals have been finalized and the Ultimates have made off with their prize, emergency reports about company ships losing control and heading into the Sun reach the Consortium. Several days later, further reports come in of ships in the Oort cloud losing their thrusters and heading uncontrollably out of the system for parts unknown, just before comms go dead. Stocks for the hypercorp plummet, and not enough salvage from the ships exist to implicate any group for malicious acts

standard_gravity wrote:

I agree. You won't be militaristic or ascetic for very long if you battle everyone just for the hell of it. You will simply be dead. To survive and prosper you have to chose your fights carefully, and strike at the right place and target at the right time. Making yourself an enemy of the world at large will not enable you to do so.

It's not about fighting mindlessly, but the Ultimates are a group with a definite goal and purpose in mind. They definitely have plans, aims and goals that they work to. They may work towards those goals subtly when it suits them, but I'd imagine that the Ultimates are not a group that normally can be described with the word "subtle".