Ransom's Crew

'Ransom's Crew' is the name taken by followers of Marcus Ransom.

Exigence

During the Fourth Age, planet Altronis was subjugated by a consortium of business corporations, through gradual monopoly of all resources, and had begun a consequent ecological collapse. When Marcus Ransom arrived on Altronis, he objected to this situation; and supported by Gudersnipe School, organized a counter-initiative.

Purpose

Ransom's Crew was essentially a 'world-building' project, in so far as it meant to weaken the corporations' social model while replacing it by one more wholesome and self-perpetuating. To that end, members of the Crew were separated wholly from mainstream Altronis by N-Dimensional Travel and placed aboard Ransom's crippled spaceship, the Asho Zoroaster, from which they advanced into the corporations' reality for individual assignments.

Structure

The Crew was divided into multiple sub-crews or 'Cells', of which each believed itself the entire Crew, and between which Ransom and his supporters at Gudersnipe alone had social intercourse. Many members entered and exited the Zoroaster at least once; but only six, known as the 'Core of the Crew', had regular access to't;––– Slade, Hammer, Nexa, Belfast, Dallas, and Gabriel;––– other than Ransom and 2-5 lieutenants.

Doctrine

Members of the Crew, including the 'Core', lived by quasi-religious beliefs dedicating themselves wholly to Ransom himself, and keeping them nearly ignorant of the Crew's true structure and that of their operations. According to these beliefs, the area traversed by N-Dimensional Travel was the 'real world' obscured by the corpocratic social reality, and spatially quite narrow until the corpocracy was overthrown, at which (the Crew said) it would encompass the known universe. Crew Members knew little or nothing of the interstellar community; but had some knowledge of Antiquity, reïmagined as a war between two factions of gods. All Members believed in dragons, but said nothing thereof to Ransom, who disapproved of the species after a childhood quarrel (by the Crew named only vaguely, and in whispers) in the Djr Archipelago; but both attitudes resulted of the same beliefs. Speech among Members excluded most references to Altronis' popular culture (including colloquia), to release the speaker from corporations' control (this was a premise on which Hammer disliked Slade, on grounds of his flippant remarks).

Dissolution

Soon after the corpocracy was overthrown, and Altronis established in the Alliance, the Crew took to separate vocations, as below:

Nicole married Marcus Ransom and gave birth to their son Nathan;

Belfast, Ransom's confidant, once visited Arindell but returned to Altronis;

Gabriel, Ransom's protegé, attempted the Trials;

Slade resumed his right name of A.E. Clipson, as whom he became a husband and the father of two sons, accompanied (though not wholly in the begetting) by the dragon Traroth;

Hammer became foster-mother to 4 children;

[etc.]