Sandbox:Hazelmouse-3

Overview

Used both to refer to a socioeconomic class and to a counter-cultural movement originating from Mars, Scrappers are a loosely defined category of self-owned or runaway synthetics known for an ethos that places immense focus on a highly independent, anti-authoritarian, and anti-establishmentarian lifestyle. Either by willing choice or as a matter of desperation, these synthetics handily repurpose salvaged components to maintain their frames and prolong their lives at a varying degree of independence from corporate and national systems. While internally diverse and lacking anything resembling a central authority, a popular through-line of anti-corporate, anti-ownership, and broadly anarchist sentiment runs through the movement.

Scrappers are typically organised into communes, gangs, or small settlements of like-minded synthetics. One's reasons for joining a Scrapper commune are as kaleidoscopically diverse as the frames of their members; they are a popular abode for runaway synthetics with nowhere else to go, legitimately self-owned synthetics who have failed to acquire traditional employment or have otherwise become financially insolvent, and even relatively affluent self-owned synthetics possessing a strong conviction that they ought support their less fortunate counterparts. In stark contrast to the uncompromisingly harsh conditions of synthetics within human society and under human ownership, membership in a commune offers an opportunity to access unconditional mutual aid and support from fellow synthetics. It is a culture that could only exist in the context of extreme adversity, and it concerns itself almost exclusively with ensuring its members survival and comfort independent from human intervention.

While not explicitly criminalised in any polity, gangs functioning in states such as the Sol Alliance which do not recognize synthetic self-ownership are forced to operate illicitly as to avoid abduction by the state, and even those in states such as the Republic of Biesel still face extreme institutional discrimination by law enforcement and the courts. They are usually cast by outsiders as malicious enemies of the state, derided for anti-human sentiment, the harboring of runaways, and the consistent theft of both human property and the oft-lethal scrapping of fellow synthetics.