The Coop

Travellers in southwestern Taebur might spot a large group of vehicles in the distance, moving in their direction. The vehicles are mixture of Precursor Age cars, pick-up trucks, motorbikes, and even a flatbed tractor-trailer. All the vehicles are a mishmash of parts, having clearly been repaired or rebuilt multiple times with whatever spare parts were at hand. While such a sight is not entirely unusual in the Gamma Age, what makes this group particularly notable is the large group of alpacas trailing along with the vehicles and their drivers. This is the Coop as they refer to themselves, or the Travelling Salespeople as people in Ardan, Zal, and other communities in the region often refer to them. They travel in a regular circuitous route around southwest Taebur, trading with communities along the way, buying food and supplies (particularly fuel, if available) for themselves, and selling their own products and services. Most towns welcome the Coop, but also dread their arrival. The Coop offers many things communities in Taebur need or desire, particularly the know-how to repair many Old World technological devices. Many communities rely on the Coop's services to keep their vehicles and power generators running. Also, the Coop's alpaca products have become something of a luxury item in the region. People consider alpaca wool superior to sheep wool, and alpaca milk superior to cow milk. However, the Coop is notorious for trying to sell people more than what they want or need, often pushing useless products by jacking up the prices for desired products and services, and including the unwanted items as "free extras". Most notably, they attempt to sell something they call "stocks" or "shares" in their "cooprative" (a word most people are convinced the Coop just made up using animal coop as the base). According to members of the Coop, buying a sharing gives one partial ownership of the Coop. However, as best anyone can tell, buying a share is just buying a piece of paper that says they're now partial members. This partial ownership comes with no benefits and no say in the Coop's operation, as these are only "Type B" shares. But the members of the Coop insist these pieces of paper will be very valuable in the future, and try to convince people that they can buy shares cheap now, and then sell them later at a higher price and become rich off them. No one has ever become rich off a Coop share.

Demographics

The population consists of mostly stock humans and mutant engineered humans with a few engineered animals and other mutants. Occasionally, a synthetic joins the community for a while, but there has only ever been one brief period when there were two synthetics in the community, and there has never been more.

Government

The Coop is a "corprate cooprative". Even members of the Coop aren't entirely sure what that is as the pages covering it in The Secret (see History below) are unreadable. They do know, however, that they are a business, and their "government" is an executive council headed by a CEO and CFO. Again, the portion of The Secret explaining what these acronyms stand for is unreadable, but they have come up with their own meanings: CEO is "council of executives overseer" and CFO is "chief fleecing operator". They know that the latter was almost certainly not the original meaning, but it works for their particular cooprative. The executive council has 12 members total, including the CEO and CFO. The CEO and CFO are positions held for life or until either voluntary or enforced resignation (though so far in the Coop's history, no CEO or CFO has been forced to resign). The current (and 4th overall) CEO is Fazul Pareen. The current (and 3rd overall) CFO is Naja Sereen. The other 10 positions on the council are based on who owns the largest number of shares in the Coop. Every resident of the Coop receives one share in the Coop upon reaching adulthood (18 years of age). Additional shares are based on how many alpacas a resident owns, with each alpaca representing one share. These are type A shares, which can never be acquired by non-residents since the Coop will not sell the alpacas to non-residents (only wool and milk, and rarely meat if it is necessary to put down an alpaca for some reason). An alpaca's death does mean a loss of shares. Shareholders see this a an incentive to keep the alpacas safe and healthy, and to breed them so that their numbers never deplete. For more information on shares and the Coop's government system, see Alpacas of the Coop.

History

The Coop began with a man who went by the name Tesla. He claimed to have chosen it because it was the name of super-rich and successful Old World businessman whose amazing inventions included the light bulb, the automobile, the first rocket capable of escaping the planet's gravity, nanites, and many other things. Most historians dispute this and say that these things were all invented by different people over a period of time much longer than the lifetime of just one man. Many also say that there was never anyone from the Old World named Tesla and that the Coop's Tesla just made him up. The people of the Coop dismiss these historians as just being jealous that they didn't discover Tesla first. At any rate, the Coop's Tesla had in his possession two extraordinary items. The first was the remains of an Old World book called The Secret: The Definitive Guide to Success. Although much of the book was missing, torn, or just plain unreadable, what remained provided the foundation for what would become the Coop. Tesla felt that if he could attract enough people together to form a community that was also a business, he (along with his new community) would rise to pre-eminence in the world. The key, according to the book, was to corner the market with a unique product. Tesla was certain he could manage this with the second extraordinary item: a nanoblock machine. He never revealed where or how he got it. He just showed up out of the desert one day near Ardan driving an Old World flatbed tractor trailer that carried the nanoblock machine. With such incredible technology at his disposal, he soon attracted dozens, then hundreds of people to form his new community with, all of them hoping to become mega-rich. Unfortunately, Tesla's plan to use his nanoblock machine to create a product that everyone would want didn't go as he'd hoped. He hadn't realized that the nanoblock machine depleted the supply of nanounits in the region with every use. And creating things in the quantities needed was depleting nanounits faster than they could recover. Tesla found himself without a product to become rich off of. His followers, disillusioned by his lack of success, also began to leave him. Five years after he had first arrived in Ardan, the Coop had blossomed to over 800 people. In less than a year, that number dwindled to less than 200. But Tesla was not discouraged. He knew he just needed to find the perfect product. Over the next couple years, he and his followers tried several things. Today, members of the Coop don't like to talk about what these products were, since they were failures and have been stricken from the official record. However, there are numerous stories told in hushed tones amongst younger members of the Coop. These include fairly mundane things like creating farming tools, to slightly less likely things such as building brand new vehicles, to the utterly absurd such as attempting to domesticate blood birds as pets. One day, Tesla returned from a visit to Zal leading a small group of very strange-looking animals he called alpacas. He told his followers that he had met a merchant from a far-off land in Zal. He had bought the animals after talking to the merchant for a while and learning that the Old World Tesla was the original creator of alpacas. He had bioengineered them from a cross between giraffes and sheep. When he heard this, Tesla knew this had to be a revelation from the Great Intelligence that the Coop was destined to make its fortune off alpacas by selling their wool, milk, and meat. They just had to learn how to be alpaca farmers. This proved to be more difficult than Tesla originally envisioned as no one knew anything about alpacas. However, over time, the alpacas did become the product that kept the Coop afloat. In particular, they developed a method of using nanites to shear the alpacas that did not require that they over drain the region's nano supply. Tesla did not become as rich and powerful as he had hoped, but he maintained confidence that the Coop would achieve that after he was gone. He died in the year 47 (Coop reckoning, as measured from the founding of the community). He claimed to be 150 years old, but in truth he was probably no more than 80. Before he died, Tesla passed on the secret of using the nanoblock machine to his successor, Dorty Skerrit, who later also gave the secret to the current CFO. Since then, the secret has only been passed on to successor CEOs and CFOs. Since Tesla's death, there has only been one significant event. In 59, they tried to expand the size of their standard route east as far as the City of Cartoons. This disastrous action resulted in the death of Dorty Skerrit and 15 other Coop members, who were all burned alive by flame throwers when the first residents of the city they met decided that they would rather just take what the Coop had to offer rather than buy it. The Coop had to flee the city. Nearly two thirds of the alpaca flock died in the escape. Luckily, the people in the City of Cartoons did not recognize the nanoblock machine for what it was; otherwise, they would have likely pursued the Coop in greater numbers beyond the city's borders. In all likelihood, the Coop would have ceased to exist that day. The Coop has never returned to the City of Cartoons since. The current year is 98, and the Coop is approaching the centennial of its formation. While they have recovered from the disaster of 40 years ago, they have not achieved any greater success than they had while Tesla was alive. However, they are most certainly not a failure, and they see this fact as proof that it's only a matter of time before they make it big.

Natural Resources

Alpaca wool is the Coop's primary resource. However, they can also offer various services such as vehicle repair and their access to nanotechnology means they can offer some very specialized services.

Special Note: This is the base community for the Ashes of Intelligence campaign. The players in the campaign participated in the design of this community.

Founding Date

Year 1, Day 1 as measured from the Founding of the Cooprative

Alternative Name(s)

The Travelling Salespeople

Inhabitant Demonym

Shareholder

Location under

Taebur

Owner/Ruler

Fazul Pareen

Related Reports (Primary)

Related Reports (Secondary)

Alpacas of the Coop

The Coop

Type: Nomad
Population Level: 3 (173 adults)
Force: 6 (-2)
Mobility: 16 (+3)
Resilience: 12 (+1)
Learning: 10 (+0)
Awareness: 12 (+1)
Command: 10 (+0)
Wealth: 15
Reputation Bonus: +6
Skills: Diplomacy (3) +6, Handle Animal (3) +6, Knowledge (technology: nanotech) (2) +5, Linguistics (1) +4, Perception (3) +4, Profession (1) +5, Repair (3) +3, Survival (2) +6
Feats: Archaic Animal Farming (a nomadic variant of Archaic Farming), High-Tech Nomads, Nanotech Usage, Wagon Train
Benefits: People with an allegiance to the Coop have limited access to nanotech via the nanoblock machine. This does not mean they get to physically use the nanoblock machine themselves, but they do have access to products that have come about directly or indirectly through the nanoblock machine. This can mean access to nanoblocks on occasion. Allegiance also includes the standard benefits for a community allegiance.