These are possible IDEAS for factions
None of the following ideas are refined or set in stone. The purpose of this document is so that the design team can identify some ideas, concepts or elements they like from any of the factions which can later be refined. As such, excuse the casual tone - this document isn’t written for anyone outside the design team so I’m talking specifically to YOU (hi! woah forth wall break) so I’m trying to convey these ideas as easily as possible.
Kothar Deep Earth
The Kothar Deep Earth refers specifically to the executives and scientists/engineers that work for the corporation. The individuals in this faction are singularly focused on maximising profits and have little regard for the swill that inhabits District 1 - The Pit. These are your generic corporate overlord bad guys - they have infinite money, little regard for the lower class, and run a business based on building autonomous machines to replace the jobs of labourers. These people live in the outer ring of New Damascus, right up against the wall, where both sunlight and rain are plentiful. The live in enormous, lavish houses, and relish in their opulence. You can think of them like the residents of the Capitol in The Hunger Games, not inherently evil but happy to live in ignorance and easily disgusted. You don’t kill a cockroach because you think it is inherently bad, you kill it because it is disgusting and it is somewhere it doesn’t belong - that’s these guys.
The Sewer Gangs
The Serwer Gangs are a collection of groups from the criminal underworld inhabiting The Sewers. These gangs don’t operate with any sole purpose outside of maximising their turf, money and power. They have a strangle hold on the majority of the traders and retailers in The Bazaar, taking large cuts from sold goods and supplying retailers with a variety of drugs and weapons. These guys are heavily armed with a litany of cyberwear and weapons, and mainly fight between each other - choosing not go head to head with KDE’s military. Likewise, KDE avoids incursions into gang territory when possible, as they understand that dismantling the currently established criminal underworld would just make a new one pop up in its place due to the power vacuum. The gang leaders keep a tight grip on their members, as the leaders are the ones who control the supply of drugs throughout the pit, they ensure all their members are severely addicted and use access to their supply to get what they want.
Scrappers
Scrappers exist throughout District 1 - The Pit and District 2 - The Wastes. They find and scrap anything from old infrastructure to simulants. Often times, they dismantle and sell what they find as parts - this could be the reason for players finding so many upgrades in each region. Other times, if a simulant is in good enough condition, their are able to repair them and sell them as complete units - this could be the reasoning for why players always start in the pit, a scrapper finds them discarded somewhere, fills them up with Tritanite, and tries to sell them before they become awakened and leave. Scrappers are talented technicians, and while they do what they do for money, they aren’t the sleazy, raggedy vendors you typically find around the Bazaar. I think of these guys like back-ally ripperdocs mixed with scavengers/archaeologists. In day to day life, these guys are who you would go to in order to get your cyberwear repaired.
The Resistance
The resistance are your standard fight against the machine types. Think firefly’s from The Last of Us, but in this game, they’re more of an urban legend than a reality to the populous. They inhabit The Pit, and try to rally support from the various other factions and citizenry to mount a revolution. However, the gangs aren’t interested, preferring the status quo, the general public is often too scared, and the Union Workers don’t want to risk their current arrangement. Support for this group is low, and their different chapters are spread out and disorganised. Additionally, KDE will regularly send in stealthy simulants whenever support for specific individuals begins to grow, and assassinate them quietly. I’ll be honest here, I’m reallllyyy not a fan of the generic resistance vs. corporation dynamic as it’s really over done but if we do need a group like this I can figure out something that will work without being too tropey.
Union Workers
This idea would require some rework of The Terminal but I actually think it sounds sick. Basically, when simulants first start being implemented in New Damascus, the workers at the terminal formed a union and went on strike, shutting down the supply of Tritanite to The Lab. During negotiations between KDE and the Union, a group split off from the terminal and mounted a raid on the Lab, stealing a number of high powered weapons and cyberwear. With this new found leathality, the union was able to force KDE to agree that no simulants would be permitted access to the terminal, and that KDE would provide them with a consistent flow of new armaments.