MOD:WCU:bgFactions

Okay, so to granularize the factions:

Pilgrims (like Asimov's "Spacers")

• Border Worlds' (Crushed) Pilgrims
  • Pilgrim Revivalists
  • NeoPilgrims
  • PragmaPilgrims

• ResettledPilgrims (Escapers, in the Tri-System)
  • Bex faithful, history revisionists, and the religious majority
  • Bex unfaithful, anti-revisionists, persecuted, discriminated against, become pirates out of necessity. But unlike pirates in the rest of the world, they also feel more self-righteous and are more industrious, and progress more rapidly than the rest of the Tri-System's society in some respects. So big and powerful, in fact, that they become sub-factionalized, eventually; but that's yet to happen at this point.

Terrans

• Old Earth Terrans
• OuterColonists (Settlers)
  • Gemini Settlers
  • Landreich Settlers
  • (other settlers)
• Terran Confed (political)
  • party x
  • party y
  • Tolwyn's political arm (Sol)
  • Retro infiltrators (Gemini)
• Terran Confed (military)
  • Stright and dumb
  • Tolwyn's military arms (Black Ops, Black Lance)
  • Tolwyn's opponents (Blair, Eisen)
  • Corrupt officials (specially in Gemini) having deals with mobs, they help finance Tolwyn's Black Lance expenses, Tolwyn guarantees their protection from whistle blowers through his influence in the Black Ops forces. Note that Black Ops forces do have a share of the official budget, but Tolwyn needs the money laundering industry (Smile) services that only Gemini has developed to such high professional levels, in order to finance Black Lance.
  • Mandarin infiltrators
• Terran Confed (civilian)
  • Industry, corporations
  • various cartels, various mob alignments. Fuels, radioactives and shipyards are the biggest industrial cartels. Mobsters exert influence by controlling most mining, supply side; and by money-laundering and selling ships and weapons to pirates, demand-side. They keep a balance between manufacturing and corrupt-Confed sourcing, so as to pit those two sides against each other and gain from their competing in price. They hate Menesch because, by bringing free kat ships, he's put a hole on their former quasi-monopoli, --or rather "trust".
  • Merchant (haulers)
    • Independent
    • Guild
• Mobs
  • Lynch
  • Lang?
  • Kroiz?
• Pirates
  • clan x
  • clan y
  • ....
  • militia undercovers
  • Also I'm pasting here from a forum post, an alternative pirate sub-classification:

Allright, factions... In the post I mentioned earlier, Ron Losey offers a classification of pirates into 3 categories: 1) Extremist Pirates: Attack ships as a way to blockade an enemy's shipping as well as to make money to finance their operations. There are such extremist Muslim pirates operating currently in Indonesia and Philipines. Unlike other pirates, they might use suicidal techniques, are well organized, and are often not aligned to any government. 2) Rogue Pirates: Work for themselves, can't organize beyond very small groups as they mistrust each other as for sharing the loot. They also need to worry about where to sell their stuff, or where to store it until it is sold. These are possibly the most common pirates, as entry cost is rather nil. 3) Privateers: Privately owned warships or fleets that agree to attack the shipping of one or more nations, but NOT those of the nation they are loyal to. They are well organized, better armed, and have no problems finding a friendly port, or where to sell their loot. We could have such a classification, and perhaps a fourth one, like Privateers, but whose loyalty is to a faction, not to a nation. This doesn't mean we need to openly distinguish them, but it does mean not all pirates would behave in the same way. Note that under this classification, Retros would be a sub-type of pirates. Again, this doesn't mean we need to change anything. Actually, one thing would be great to change, even retroactively to Priv and RF: It would make a lot of sense if retros, after a successful atack, would pick up loot with their tractor beams, just like pirates do. There's no reason to assume retros are so rich they can just leave and ignore the stuff in space...

• Militias
  • Federally-supported
  • Local-funded
    • Funded by local industry
    • Funded by local mobs
  • Guild-funded
  • Mob infiltrators/informers
• Hunter
  • Militia/Confed aligned (many sub-sub-factions)
  • Mob-aligned
  • Mercenaries' Guild
• Mandarins
  • Ideological Mandarins
  • Convenience Mandarins
  • Confed undercovers
  • UPDATE: If we have mandarins be controlled by Tolwyn, as has been suggested, then the subclassification above would apply to mandarin recruits who aren't aware who they are really working for, and there would be mandarin leaders that do.
• Religious/Philosophic Ideologues
  • Steltekers (Materson their leader?)
  • Retros

Kilrathi

• Kilrathi Rebels
• Kilrathis
  • kat merchants
  • kat insys
  • kat military
  • klan x
  • klan y
  • ...