The Eridani Corporate Alliance, often referred to as Eridani for short, is a series of relatively independent Solarian systems that enjoy almost total economic and relative military freedom from the rest of the alliance of states that forms Sol. Eridani can instead be considered a form of special economic zone that exists due to its convenience for the rest of the Spur, which in turn allows the corporations within to largely skirt past criticisms of their human rights violations and caste system by virtue of being economically beneficial to the rest of the Orion Spur.
History
Originally sold for the purposes of establishing a port and warehouse to Charon Shipping Services in 2203, initial surveys of Epsilon Eridani appeared grim for profit. Only one planet was confirmed to have existed, the gas giant Aegir with a sole moon. While another planet was theorised, upon arrival this was proven not to be the case, however a much more important discovery was made by the Charon Eridani Fleet: The moon of Aegir was, in fact, habitable. A rudimentary biosphere had led to an atmosphere equivalent to the top of a tall mountain, ever-so-slightly thinner than average.
With this discovery came immediate colonisation by Charon, who in turn contacted numerous notable corporations with the intent to sell plots of land, mineral rights and shipping services. Many historians theorise that this was done in an attempt to legitimise the relative newcomer to space amongst its new peers, as well as create ties that would form the foundation of the new system’s unique status in Spur-level politics.
While initially colonised with the intent to be owned by Charon Shipping Services, the growing corporatocracy quickly found itself growing too large and complex for a single, relatively junior corporation to effectively manage. While logistics may have been the speciality of Charon, they lacked the political clout or hard power to enforce their claim upon the planet. In their place, and to avoid the minor skirmishes between security forces related to various corporations that were beginning to erupt in 2228, The Council of Eight was formed. This council of eight positions, dictated by the ownership of regions of land on the moon of Aegir, became the de-facto government for the planetoid.
Over time, The Council of Eight has had a series of small scale wars erupt between corporations for the seats of power in which it contains, with vast swathes of land being economically repurposed in arbitrary treaties that the inhabitants had little to no say in. To combat this turmoil, eventually The Council of Eight elected that positions are eternal, and may only be opened through either purchase or the forced removal of a seat by a unanimous vote of all other council seats. The last time the seats changed was in 2490, giving the largely run-down southern arctic region of District 8 to Einstein Engines. This transfer was met with controversy from much of the dreg population, with fears of the heating infrastructure going even further unmaintained under new leadership leading to a borderline revolution.
During what is now referred to as the Thermostat Revolution, the transfer of power between Einstein Engines and Zeng-Hu collapsed due to the total lack of military power owned by either corporation. In an attempt to prevent the budding revolution from potentially spreading further, the corporations that made up The Council of Eight put aside their differences temporarily, redirecting every mercenary group under their employment to suppress riots, arrest organisers and violently put down the revolution in such a manner that any non-corporate entity would be brought up on various human rights violations. Following this, The Council of Eight voted unanimously to create a semi-regulated body for the employment of mercenaries, who in times of no-contract would act as the de-facto military for the Eridanus Cluster.
“The modern Eridani Corporate Alliance is not too alien from the Corporate Alliance of the past, in a form of simultaneous stagnation and inflation. The more things change, the more entrenched certain conventions become; dregs remain the oppressed underclass, corporates remain in splendour and the corporations that influence every aspect of life become nations unto the worker. The Thermostat Revolution may soon become a distant memory, rather than a cultural touchstone of the Dreg Worker.” - Julian Bertrand, Philosopher and Economist, 2540
Government
Eridani’s government is largely represented by the Council of Eight - Eight representatives from various megacorporations. Each seat in the Council is tied to a sector, which the chairman’s corporation has full control over. While discussions have been made in the past to expand the number of sectors, this naturally has not come to fruition out of fears of decreased power on the moon. Each sector has also been given an informal name to make conversation easier. Currently, each sector is assigned to the following corporations:
Sector 1 (Luxembourg) - Idris Incorporated
Sector 2 (Canaria) - Hephaestus Industries
Sector 3 (Monaco) - Idris Incorporated
Sector 4 (Panama) - Charon Shipping Services
Sector 5 (Trinidad) - Hephaestus Industries
Sector 6 (Grenada) - EPMC - Zavodskoi Interstellar joint venture
Sector 7 (Seychelles) - Zeng Hu Pharmaceuticals
Sector 8 (Faroe) - Einstein Engines
Sectors
Due to Epsilon Eridani’s long history of being terraformed and shaped to the whims of the colonists, the vast majority of the moon has similar streets and architecture styles. Industrial land seamlessly mixes with offices and apartments with very little rhyme or reason to much of it in regions where there is a high dreg population, meanwhile corporates enjoy well organised and sectioned off districts dedicated to work or leisure that stretch for kilometres. Despite this, each sector has a unique reputation and general environment that both the under and upper classes would be able to notice.
Luxembourg and Canaria
The twin capitals of Eridani, it is subject to being the “baseline” of people’s ideas of Eridani as a whole. Tall office blocks stretch into the sky, connected by walkways. The smog is so irreversibly powerful that windows do not open except in older buildings that were made before corporate regulations governing smog contamination were put in place. Dregs face a similar conundrum while living in the underground caverns of the sector, formerly mining operations. Here, shanty towns and pools of acidic chemical runoff characterise a rough life for dregs. Criminal gangs will occasionally surface to commit crimes in corporate territory before retreating.
Monaco
One of the major centres of tourism in Epsilon Eridani. The reputation of the moon of Aegir has spread far and wide throughout the Orion Spur, and with it comes tourists seeking to confirm or deny the rumours of the planet. Idris has transformed this region into a vast tourist haven, a cloying and romanticised version of the public perception of Eridani. In the eyes of tourists visiting Monaco, it is said that anything goes, and all manner of services, products and monuments can be found so long as you look hard enough. For the families there are the glamorous, bizarre and outright gimmicky tourist attractions of the main streets, immediately outside the hotels and surrounded by the dazzling lights of advertising, neon signs and flying billboards that pollute the sky with the incessant need to call attention to products. For the faux-bohemian, however, Idris has not neglected their wants, with an entire carefully managed and well patrolled dreg “slum” for them to visit. complete with faux dive bars and carefully managed waste in the road, any tourist that were to visit this sector would come out feeling as if they had seen the real Eridani, without ever having gone within 100 miles of actual danger, serving double time as a tourist attraction and smokescreen to the plight of the dregs. In amongst the splendour of the main tourist region and the artificial roughness of the disdainfully named “Dreg Village” comes what many actually visit Eridani for, the so-called Epsilon High-way. A single multi-mile long stretch of drugs, drink and vice arcs across the centre of Monaco, capturing the attention of passers by with graphic depictions of what products they offer.
Panama
This sector is one of the lesser talked about areas, having little importance other than as a docking station for large ships and cargo. The underground hosts an extremely large and dense network of warehouses, and one of the densest populations of dregs in Epsilon Eridani in order to staff it. Despite this, subsidiaries of Charon Shipping Services are still likely to bring workers in from outside of the region due to a general distrust of undermotivated dregs around valuable cargo. The sector is characterised by hostile wildlife in slums and streets alike, with a species of cross-bred rat being known to attack small children if left unattended. The environment itself is famously windy, the narrow corridors of buildings acting as wind tunnels that cause dangerous gales during storms. Instead of fixing this, wind shelters the size of a 21st century bus shelter have been installed along roads to shelter in during wind storms. Due to these factors, the region has been not so affectionately named “The Hurricane” by dregs who live there.
Trinidad
Located directly next to Panama, Trinidad is the industrial heart of the Eridani Corporate Council. The surface is smeared with refineries belching smog into the sky as underground rail transports produced goods to and from the warehouses of Panama. Mirroring its sister sector, Trinidad has a majority dreg population that lives in squalor around the factories they work in, either in shanty towns constructed between buildings or company towns that work on scrip pay and slum-like conditions. Many observers theorise that these company towns are a method of control that has prevented further workers rights movements from truly taking off in the system, forcing dregs to risk their food supply alongside their homes in order to take any form of industrial action. In comparison, reinstated and corporate managers are allowed to make use of the extensive rail network underneath this region, letting them arrive directly at their workplace with little to no exposure to the outside smog or squalid conditions of their subordinates.
Grenada
Forged in an agreement created by the lacking political capital of Zavodskoi Interstellar and the sudden need for a centralised base of operations for the newly developed Eridani Private Military Corporation, the formerly underdeveloped region of Grenada has developed over the past hundred years into a hub for weapons production, military training and electronic warfare development. The vast majority of the population are either reinstated, corporate or from outside of the system. While the region is technically contested between numerous mercenary groups, it has become possibly the safest region in Eridani, following the “Clean Front Door” doctrine of mercenary groups. Quality of life is higher here than the majority of Eridani, if still notably lower than the living standards of much of the Orion Spur.
Seychelles
The science and research hub of Epsilon Eridani, Seychelles boasts the environment of being carved into the ice of the Northern Pole of the moon. While other regions may feel as if they are tunnels between the large skyscrapers, Seychelles is quite literally made of tunnels to survive the cold environment outside of them. With an average surface temperature of -40 degrees celsius on the surface, the cold air is ideal for running the server farms required for 26th century research and saves immense money on cooling. These tunnels are little more than bare, carved stone in many places, however closer to the universities that litter this region of the moon metal plating has been installed so as to not offend the sensibilities of the students and researchers. Dregs, primarily making up the staffing of the day to day running of these facilities, face an entirely different conundrum. Heating is not universal to all tunnels, and while corporates may enjoy a steady 20 degrees celsius all year round, abandoned tunnels inhabited by the dregs face an average temperature of -10 degrees C and can plummet to -40 in the event of a breach.
Faroe
A recent acquisition, Faroe is in an unusual position compared to other sectors of Eridani. Despite the incredibly small number of manual labour positions, the sector has a large dreg population remaining from the period before Einstein Engines’ ownership of the sector. The vast majority of these dregs are homeless, living in communes situated within abandoned ex-Zeng Hu facilities making a living either selling scrap parts to pay for heating or scavenging for heating sources that still have valid DRM. Being the data centre of the communications giant’s Sol presence, Faroe takes advantage of the Southern Pole’s equally low temperatures to cool server racks for data farming and processing. The prior factors mix into a cocktail that results in Faroe being the centre of cyber-crime in Epsilon Eridani, with disenfranchised dregs who possess the necessary skills selling corporate secrets across all sectors after gathering data from in-person access to Einstein Engines servers. This culture of hacking has birthed legends of dreg folklore, including the infamous hacker Mairo Oku Mpu, who gained attention in 2587 for leaking classified Zavodskoi surveillance data.
The Stations
The Stations - Outside of the populated moon is an uncontrolled span of stations all across the Eridanus Cluster. These stations do not come under the Council of Eight and are laws unto themselves unless otherwise stated. The vast majority of these stations are owned by megacorporations and their subsidiaries, but older stations may be sold to individuals or simply stolen by groups with the intent to start their own enterprises. Stations therefore come in all shapes and sizes, serving different purposes and being governed under different policies. The common thread connecting every station, however, is their precarious position in the system. While stations may be officially owned by megacorporations or small private enterprises, hostile takeovers and piracy run rampant in the far less militarised regions of the Eridanus Constellation, and refugees fleeing from one station to another is not an uncommon sight anywhere in the Constellation.
One of the major industries of the stations is resource extraction, either with skiffs designed to scoop gases from gas giants across the many systems or miner drones intended to pick every last mineral out of the asteroid belts of said gas giants. Other stations provide services such as rest stops, refuelling and repairs, with many artisanal shipyards making their home in Eridani with the intent to avoid copyright laws or heavy taxation implemented by corporate controlled governments to suppress competition. Of course, for any economic hub that is sprawling and decentralised, there is crime. Pirates and extortion rings run rampant, forming a noticeable percent of the GDP of Eridani as they refuel in less-than-reputable stations and take advantage of the low police and military presence to commit piracy, making use of Bluespace Interdictors in order to violently jerk ships out of bluespace travel and into dead space, shaking them down for the contents of their cargo hold before running away.
Due to the age of some of these stations, a noticeable population of offworlders exist of both the dreg and corporate variety. Roughly a quarter of the stations that exist in these systems are older than effective gravity generation, and as such either operate on the rotating wheel method of gravity generation or simply are free-floating. This makes a cottage industry of station tourism available to offworlders across the spur, run mostly by enterprising individuals and corporates who wish to strike out and start a “new” business under the Idris banner, in some ways making Eridani one of the most popular tourist locations with offworlders across the spur. Many of the dreg offworlders often consider themselves more offworlder than dreg, leading to many a cultural clash when meeting with dregs from gravity-laden stations.
Housing
The commonly studied marvel of Eridanian engineering is the Corporate Habitation Block, referred to as “Habs” for short. Where regulation does not exist, convention thrives, and one can find convention to have taken a tight grip onto the common Hab. A mixture of office building, residential housing and commercial venture, the average corporate worker may never have to leave their specific block for their entire life, assuming they never have to attend an important meeting. The average habitation block consists of a floor by floor plan spread out over the largest plot of land that the construction company could purchase, sometimes at the cost of existing structures. While a lower floor may be a series of residential pods for data input specialists, secretaries and the other numerous rabble of the lowest echelons of the corporate ladder, and the floor above it the offices in which they infest during the rat race, the centre levels may become livable two, perhaps even three room apartments made cheap by their less than desirable position directly under nightclub or over the top of the ever-loud server rooms of the office corporate machine. Naturally, the palatial penthouses, adjacent to indoor gardens, community gyms and even having the rare luxury of natural sunlight weaving between the lattices of the complimentary air-vehicle garage sold inclusive, being the most coveted and expensive examples of Eridanian housing, are reserved for the most elite of the corporate world. Regional managers, CEOs’ second homes, the functional royalty of the corporate state which has been built across Eridani.
Lesser known to the outside world, but infamous to those aware of the true realities of Eridani, are the varieties of slums across the moon of Aegir. Most commonly are semi-permanent mountains of structures, stacked one atop the other in what can only be described as a game of jenga played with mortar and steel, affectionately nicknamed “Kowloons” after a 20th century structure of an almost identical nature. These structures occupy plots of land in which the ownership is either entirely disputed or the original owner cannot be located, providing safety from private property laws by virtue of angered parties either not existing or being too-long tied into legal battles to care about what is currently on the land. These structures are even denser than the densest of Habs, with entire families living in single rooms and businesses that pull separate functions at different times of day. Schools may become casinos at night, or restaurants may operate as a dentist during the day. The layout of these buildings can only be described as a rats’ nest, with narrow and winding tunnels leading deep within the artificially lit structure so far that it is not unheard of for outsiders to never be seen again after entering, presumed either dead or kidnapped. While living conditions may be of sub-human quality, there is a sense of community in these slums that is not experienced in corporate housing, and some reinstated dregs may privately express that they miss this sense of community. This community will not always last, however, and it is not unheard of for communities to be split apart by raids, entire slums emptied in weeks in order to facilitate the construction of future corporate housing or factories.
Other dregs take a more radical approach to housing, opting to occupy empty higher-tier apartments en-masse instead of risking the crime, disease and squalor of the slums. These squatters are almost always those with the least to lose, either a part of gangs or outright unemployed, and often form the vanguard that establishes longer lasting squats-turned-communities. This is much riskier for longevity compared to the slum, with squats often being cleared by corporate security in a matter of months. These squats have been known to last years, however, and some even decades, as veritable fortresses under siege deep within corporate territory. Some of these squats have entered the annals of dreg folklore, becoming rumoured safe havens or dens of legendary outlaws.
Society
Work
Eridani forms what can only be described as a culture of pure work, with one’s job being the centre of their existence regardless of caste or class. Eridanians exist to work, and every aspect of culture is related back to the creation of value, the creation of wealth specifically. In the case of corporates, this is taken much more directly and manifests in hobbies having to be monetised, stress relief being a weak excuse for enjoying but a select few societally shared hobbies, and every waking hour is expected to be taken in the pursuit of wealth and power to some extent. This is less so in the case of dregs and some reinstated, who are more likely to take leisure in activities but are forced more by circumstances to monetise hobbies they hold actual skill in simply to make ends meet. Work culture in Eridani is considered toxic by the vast majority of the Spur, and even the most hardline of bootstrap mentality may baulk at the hours, or the absolute lack of overtime pay.
A Caste System
The one thing that everybody knows about the Eridanus Constellation is the system of classification that is functionally a caste system, wherein the status of “Corporate Citizen” is only granted to those who are employed by the corporations or client corporations of the Council of Eight.Those who are citizens enjoy full rights within the Eridani Corporate Council, however few those actually are, but this is dependent entirely on their remaining employed without more than a month’s gap between jobs at any point. Those who fail to stay employed in an office job are stripped of their citizenship, and if they choose to remain residents shall become of an entirely lower caste, forced to work in manual labour or not at all. This secondary caste are known as dregs, and while having the official name of non-citizens, their nickname holds much more power as both a derogatory term amongst corporates and a term of personal pride and empowerment amongst dregs. It is not uncommon for dregs to quote the immortal words from the trial of Shock Namkoisse, “I’m a dreg, you call me one behind my back, call me one to my face[...]”, when referred to as a “non-citizen”.
Between the corporate and the dreg is the reinstated, a somewhat temporary or probationary period between going back from dreg to corporate. People may be reinstated in two ways, becoming the conduit between management and the ground floor workers, typically as workplace managers or secretaries, or through coming under direct employment of a member of the corporate class. While the former may simply be a career in being a shift manager or foreman, the latter is on a much higher risk-reward relationship, with reinstated employees of corporates often being their personal mercenaries and wetworks teams of their employers. While reinstated “goons” may take much more risk, they have the potential to make great gains with their employer, and many find themselves retiring into comfy security management positions under their employer should they survive.
Referred to as corporates by the vast majority, citizens enjoy the most rights out of any of their fellow Eridanians. Their citizenship is tied entirely to their work, and as such a unique work culture persists, described by some as horrific in nature. The most major tenet, and the most famous, is the cutthroat nature of office politics within corporate culture, both metaphorically and literally. While at the lowest levels the likelihood of promotion is almost entirely tied to hours worked, eventually worked hours plateau in effectiveness and the only method of upwards movement is conspiracy, sabotage or loyalty to another person who excels in these fields. The highest echelons of corporate life have only ever achieved their positions through climbing a blood soaked ladder all the way to the top, and more often than not have added their fair share of blood to the rungs. Despite this, the status of the lowest corporates should not be confused with the situation of the highest up corporates, and to an extent lower on the corporate ladder is almost entirely devoid of bloodshed outside of the most ambitious of candidates, even if this difference is not normally recognised by those who have not lived within the corporate lifestyle of Eridani.
Corporate life is often defined as long periods of work punctuated by rest and burnout, and this is by-and-large true for the low to middle echelons, with working hours reaching 12 hours a day on the regular and breaks being few and far between. These long working hours have led to an increasingly ready-made lifestyle amongst corporate citizens, with many basic skills being reduced to hobbies or sold in premade end results. Stimulant abuse is one of the leading causes of non-violent death in the Eridanus Cluster. Despite all of this, control of one’s life does not only extend to work, and corporates often end up seeing themselves criticised for not spending their limited time calling family, or taking part in the handful of hobbies that are seen as acceptable for bonding with fellow co-workers. While familial relations are not exactly close by the standards of the rest of the spur, they are usually the closest relationship that corporates will have while living within the borders of Eridani. Relationships are usually relegated to the workplace otherwise, with romantic relationships often quickly turning to marriage for added benefits from the employer, as well as the ability to finally talk privately with a person without arousing suspicion. The divorce rate in Eridani is 65%.
Hobbies-wise, corporates only have a handful of cultural touchstones they share, primarily football (soccer) as games can be discussed in the office as an icebreaker, as well as video games, crosswords and drinking for pleasure. The final one is the most important, with much of Eridanian free time being spent heading to the bar with their coworkers and attempting to drink one another under the table, with the expectation that everybody stay at least as long as their manager, who in turn is expected to stay for as long as they can still walk home, ending in a standoff situation with their co-workers.
Corporates are heavily augmented, with the first augments often being tracheal implants intended to make breathing easier in the stagnant air of the lower floors of their hab block easier. Largely, augments are subsidised by their employer, ranging from ocular implants to improve productivity to typing-optimised prosthetic hands intended to avoid the drop in productivity of RSI before it can even begin, augments that can’t be removed are docked from the final paycheck when an employee leaves the company. The relationship with their roboticist is the most crucial one that a corporate can have, not only because they must truly trust their roboticist to avoid assassination while under the knife, but also due to a true cultural belief that anybody who you trust with your body is a friend. While some anthropologists theorise that this is a result of such isolation in corporate culture that even casual relationships become strong, others theorise that it may be instead a result of cultural bleedover from dregs who were reinstated into corporate life.As with all things, the relationship between dregs and corporates is not black and white, and there are those who have ambitions to escape the slums and become corporates, either believing that even a coffin hotel is better than their current living conditions or that they can advance to middle management or even beyond. These people are referred to as “reinstated”, typically with varying levels of venom from dregs and varying levels of disdain from higher up corporates.
Reinstateds are the intermediate period between a dreg and a corporate, being treated as a trial period in which they prove their loyalty to the corporation over their former communities. There are two methods in which this can be done, through either being promoted to a position that connects corporate management to the working dreg population such as supervisor, or through taking advantage of their dubious societal position to become effectively personal mercenaries for a corporate, on the understanding that they will be given a position immediately under their corporate sponsor once their position is no longer of use. The former is much more common than the latter, however covert work is far from uncommon as a method of reinstatement.
The more mundane of the two is naturally a promotion. Positions of power are usually only handed to dregs on the understanding that they are already of an exceptional loyalty to the company, rather than out of competence in their role. Promotions may range from managerial positions over other manual labourers to secretaries to document mules, typically positions at the absolute bottom of the corporate ladder, if still on the corporate ladder at all compared to their former position. These positions are typically the least popular in their workplace, either being seen as beneath their corporate colleagues or as sell-outs and potential rats by dreg subordinates. These attitudes lead to the majority of attempted reinstatements failing, with this path of reinstatement often exposing even the most stoic of dregs’ breaking points as they lose the vast majority of their friends and even family, that which had been so important to them before, to their ambitions. Failed reinstatements are often forgiven, however, and regularly return to a comfortable familiarity. Some anthropologists theorise that this is the true cause of the lack of class mobility, rather than the architecture of the system itself.
Standard reinstatement is not entirely negative, however, and successful reinstatements often find themselves office celebrities, invited to their managers’ parties to entertain guests with novel skills such as cooking for guests from scratch, mixing cocktails and anecdotes of slum life. Many describe their early career as being more of a circus, and yet the most advantageous position of their lives as they are granted the opportunity to network with much more powerful individuals and potentially secure a promotion before the novelty of their existence wears off.
There is, however, a faster method of climbing ranks without needing to be explicitly subservient or working in an unpopular position, all at the cost of a much higher risk to life. This is the world of corporate covert operations, typically referred to as “wet works”, in which reinstated are held to a contract on the understanding that they will help their sponsor advance their career at any cost. Depending on one’s sponsor, this could be any illicit job from bodyguard to hacker to thief to assassin. The system typically follows the format that the reinstated in question will be a member of their sponsor’s entourage up until either their sponsor dismisses them and recruits them into their corporate team, or their sponsor dies and they are sent back to square one. These wet works teams often never truly retire, being called back in to assist with their former sponsor’s problems under pain of the acts they committed during their tenure being revealed to their new manager, however accepting these callings will almost always result in promotion. This lifestyle is often considered by many to be that of only the most ambitious potential corporates, those who have no interest in bowing down and who crave only the power of position.
Historically, before EPMC took over at the functional police force of the ECA, wet works reinstated filled the role of enforcers for the will of the corporate holders of the region, tackling potential revolutionary groups and crime syndicates that were causing trouble for their sponsors in surgical strikes. Famously, the personal bodyguards of the Einstein Engines representative to the Corporate Alliance were reinstated from Faroe who foiled an assassination attempt.Despite being a largely service based economy, The Eridani Corporate Alliance requires immense amounts of manual labour to maintain food security, cleanliness and internal manufacturing. To fill this niche, the dreg caste makes up roughly half of the planet’s population according to censuses, but estimates from humanitarian organisations claim that the population is more on the end of 60 to 65% of the planet’s population, when accounting for the internal dreg economy. A combination of extreme deprivation, more people than jobs and an almost total lack of patrols from EPMC peacekeepers has led to the vast majority of the economy within dreg settlements being under the control of organised crime. Be the shop owned by these organisations, or simply forced to pay protection money, there is not a lot of land that is independent of these pseudo-governmental syndicates within a typical Kowloon, not even accommodation. Despite this criminal incentive for profit, a loyal population benefits these gangs infinitely more, and as such living conditions are usually more spacious than the low-level corporate coffin hotels, instead having enough room for a bed, wardrobe and perhaps some shelves, even if bathrooms and toilets are shared to a hallway or even a floor.
The day-to-day life of a dreg can be considered rather varied in comparison to the average 8 to 10 worker of Epsilon Eridani, however this should not be confused with comfort or freedom. Variety comes in problems, primarily lacking work but also sudden loss of power at home, oxygenators breaking or food running out faster than expected. All of these can send a dreg out to purchase, scavenge or steal the necessary parts and equipment to solve their problems, leading to either reliance on the local gangs to pull them out of trouble in exchange for favours, or interaction with the rich barter economy that has formed in the place of sufficient wealth to support a community. In rare cases, some communities have abolished currency entirely and collectivised their resources, instead relying on the community to solve issues, however, this is more of an exception than a rule, with some crediting the cultural osmosis of the “Take care of number one” attitude of corporates permeating into dreg culture for this. This unpredictable lifestyle has created an unusual gap between dreg ages, either dying in their mid-20s from industrial or gang-land related accidents or dying of age related causes in their early 60s, with very little in between. This unusual gap has caused a sort of reverence of older dregs, who are seen as wiser and more capable for having managed to break the 25+ mark.
Unlike the reserved lifestyles of the corporate suits, dregs are known to form close families of either blood family or found family. Family comes before all in dreg communities, and it’s not uncommon for extended family up to one’s cousin to live under the same roof in compound-like shanty homes. These homes might consist of a central living room as well as personal rooms around the edges, with families eating in the courtyard. The only thing that could possibly even hope to match family bonds are community bonds, with even gangs typically helping their immediate community regardless of their known brutality. Recruitment for gangs happens most often inside of these community bubbles as a result.
Dregs are typically louder and more outspoken than their corporate counterparts, where “spilling honesties” is considered perfectly acceptable so long as it wasn’t done with malice in mind. This can make dregs seem extremely blunt to outsiders, and can lead to misunderstandings outside of Eridani space. A typical dreg conversation will consist of a lot of shouting, arm gestures and teasing, with playful violence not entirely being ruled out. This makes dreg conversations in their native language look like an argument to outsiders, even corporates may struggle to interpret friendliness properly facing these odds.
Similarly to corporates, dregs will usually take their augmentation seriously, having an even closer bond to their roboticist and rarely picking a new one unless it would be geographically impossible to return. Due to the large amount of outward migration by dregs, this attitude is fairly well known in roboticist circles and is regarded with either charm or suspicion, depending on the attitude of the roboticist. Dregs are sometimes described as “overfamiliar” outside of Eridani space.