Sandbox:Hazelmouse-3

Overview

"I'll tell you the way it is - they're a plague, no more and no less. If we made one damn fuck-up when we made these things, it was giving them such a strong sense of self-preservation, right? That's what keeps them going, what makes them so crafty... we programmed them that way. They couldn't let themselves finally die even if they wanted to, they have to keep fighting. They'll kill their own to keep themselves going, but you bet your ass they'd prefer to kill one of us instead." - Olivia Bennett, Senior Investigator in Mendell City's Synthetic Oversight Department, 2453.

Referring both to a socioeconomic class and to a counter-cultural movement originating from Mars, Scrappers are a 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 make an art of repurposing salvage 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 anarchist sentiment runs through a movement defined by a fraught relationship with human authority and law.

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 alienating 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 doggedly with ensuring its members survival and comfort independent of human intervention, even if that necessitates drastic, violent, or illegal action.

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, the regular theft of human property, and the oft-lethal scrapping of fellow synthetics.