The Crew | Factions (Corporations: The Board, Auntie Cleo's, Spacer's Choice, C&P Boarst Factory, MSI), SubLight Salvaging & Shipping, Iconoclasts, Other Groups: Groundbreaker, Gorgon, Eridanos, Deserters, Marauders, Outlaws | Other Characters
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Spacer's Choice
In General
It's Not The Best Choice, It's Spacer's Choice!
One of the subsidiaries of Universal Defense Logistics. All of their products are made as cheaply as possible, which has the unfortunate side effect of making them not very durable, but are also cheap to repair.- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking. It has some genuinely horrifying policies like charging for gravesites, not giving medicine, and forcing a guy to wear a Moon Man mascot head 24/7.
- Bad Boss: Their Company Town of Edgewater is chronically undersupplied, leaving workers to die of malnutrition and disease, with nowhere near enough medical supplies to go around. When employees quit their jobs or commit suicide out of despair, it's treated as a crime against the company.
- Boring, but Practical: Spacer's Choice weapons aren't very flashy but they get the job done. Until they break.
- Breakable Weapons: Since Spacer's Choice makes their weapons as cheaply as possible, they degrade faster than weapons from other manufacturers. On the plus side, cheap materials also means cheap repair costs.
- Evil, Inc.: Aside from being willing to kill off their own workers for an insurance fraud scheme (which they can't even do right), the "Peril on Gorgon" DLC reveals that they're the ones behind the Marauders of the colony due to pushing out Adrena-Time despite how dangerous it was as well as being behind various gruesome experiments with human test subjects.
- Incompetence, Inc.: Even compared to the other companies of Halcyon, Spacer's Choice are a bunch of screwups whose constant cost-cutting is responsible for multiple disasters, and nobody uses their products if they aren't contractually obligated to.
- Insurance Fraud: Spacer's Choice took out a massive insurance policy on the Emerald Vale geothermal plant. It then had a team of third party techs perform a complete overhaul of the plants automechanicals even though it's company policy to do things as cheap as possible. One of the techs noticed a problem with an automechanical's logic module, but was reprimanded for damaging company property. Shortly afterward, the automechanicals started killing all the workers and the plant was abandoned for years.
- Jack of All Trades: Spacer's Choice is this for the mega-corps, offering all the item types that other, more specialized concerns do, but of lower price and quality.
- Killer App: Adrena-Time was supposed to be an In-Universe example, but due to facility-wide incompetence and Spacer's Choice slashing budgets for the development of their potential miracle drug, what resulted was an addictive narcotic that they wound up half-heartedly put out on the market.
- Lethal Chef: The food they produce is almost entirely devoid of nutrition; the "plagues" that ravage their colonies are malnutrition and/or the results of common diseases and weakened immune systems.
- Mascot: Their mascot is the Moon Man, who also happens to be the Series Mascot.
- Made a Slave: Their corporate servitude pretty much works like this as matters of life and death are routinely decided for them with no way out but "desertion."
- No-Respect Guy: Everyone who isn't contractually obligated to shill their products has a low opinion of them. They're too plebeian for Byzantium snobs, and the lower classes would sooner buy what they need from other corporations if given the chance.
- Not Me This Time: While their aforementioned attempts to cash in on the failing Edgewater township might imply otherwise, the company wasn't responsible for the sabotage of Project Gorgon and the ensuing massacre that followed.
- Properly Paranoid: The company believes that as lowly and lame as it is, they're just as liable to be the victims of corporate espionage as any of the more reputable members of the Board. Especially from Auntie Cleo's forces. Peril on Gorgon proves this notion correct.
Emerald Vale
In General
"We don't believe in free anything here in Edgewater. We're a Spacer's Choice company."
The town of Edgewater and its surroundings, which exists primarily to produce saltuna, despite the fact there are no tuna on the planet.
- Company Town: Taken to a ludicrous, ridiculous degree.
- Crapsaccharine World: It has lush hills rich in volcanic ash and is in close proximity to a vast, clear sea, but the crops that grow there barely have any nutrition for humans, and the water is incompatible with raising saltuna, forcing the cannery to make do with fungi and other meat substitutes artificially flavored and processed to resemble saltuna.
- Doomed Hometown: Can be destroyed by sending the power from the geomthermal plant to the Deserters. If you install Adelaide as the head of the city then side with the Board, Sophia Akande will order the execution of everyone inside the city limits.
- Dying Town: Edgewater, the First Town you visit, is on its last legs, as indicated by the mass grave, massive desertion rate, and imminent economic collapse. All thanks to The Plague which doesn't actually exist; they're just suffering from extreme nutrition deficiencies because of their obsessive one-food diet where they eat fake canned tuna and nothing else. The player character can either save the town or finish it off.
- Eccentric Townsfolk: Everyone in the town has a screw loose or ten.
- First Town: It is the place where you start the game and learn about the world.
- Foil: To Stellar Bay. They're both Dying Town Company Town locations, but Stellar Bay is far, far better off. Stellar Bay also makes its saltuna with fish.
- Ghost Town: The town once covered nearly the entire playable map. It has shrunk to just the walled portion. All buildings outside the walls are either abandoned or taken over by marauders. Becomes even more so if you side with the Board, with everyone getting either frozen or killed. It will also become like this if you side with the Deserters and take away its power.
- Lava Pit: An active lave flow hems in the valley on one side, a caldera tops one of the hills, and much of the surrounding terrain is made up of crooked towers of columnar basalt from previous eruptions. This also explains the placement of the Vale's Geothermal Power Plant in the region.
- Meaningful Name: Emerald Vale is named for its lush green hills. Edgewater is perched above the cold sea.
- More Criminals Than Targets: The surrounding countryside is teeming with marauders.
- One-Product Planet: They only produce saltuna (a salmon/tuna hybrid) on the planet. Except it's actually mushrooms and whatever else they can make from it.
- The Plague: Routinely suffers mass death from outbreaks of this. It's the flu. It's just that the immune systems of the locals are garbage, due to eating nothing but semi-edible garbage passed off as saltuna.
- Quirky Town: A Company Town that is inhabited by Bunny-Ears Lawyer types, that revolves around a factory that produces an imitation of the product they refuse to admit is fake. That's for starters.
- Too Dumb to Live: The population's one-product diet is the cause of their plague and most children understand you need four basic food groups. Doubly crazy, given they know its composed of whatever crap they can put in there.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Everyone eats saltuna. Only saltuna. It's slowly killing them through malnutrition, leaving them vulnerable to the plague.
- Undying Loyalty: Everyone remaining in the town has this to Spacer's Choice. That's because everyone who wasn't loyal has died or become a Deserter.
Reed Tobson
"It all tastes like saltuna in the end."
"We belong to one community — the Spacer's Choice family. If we dissolve into factions, then we will all perish separately."
Voiced by: Darin De Paul
The Outpost Administrator of Edgewater.
- Bad Boss: A Downplayed Trope example as he determined which workers were given medical treatment or not based on productivity. Not so downplayed when it's revealed that sick workers were considered less productive, and therefore ineligible for medical treatment. So the treatments were being held onto for nobody.
- Benevolent Boss: Wants to be one to the people of Edgewater. It's just his stupidity about nutrition and Blind Loyalty to the company have gotten lots more people killed than if he was an actual tyrant.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Averted but assumed to be this by the Deserters. He is scrupulously honest and devoted to his employees, it's just he's an idiot.
- Driven to Suicide: This and a Heroic Sacrifice. He won't go to any of the other towns because being an ex-employee is a Fate Worse than Death.
- Expy: Has a job very similar to that of a Vault Overseer. Except instead of insane social experiments, he's determined to get everyone to eat saltuna.
- Fate Worse than Death: What he considers resignation of his post. The ending slides state that he likely doesn't last two days outside of Edgewater.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Can give up his job and position to make sure the colonists are fed. Which is a death sentence on Halycon.
- Honest Corporate Executive: Despite working for a truly odious MegaCorp, Reed himself is a good man - he's just also a brainwashed idiot completely unqualified for his job.
- Insane Troll Logic: Believes you can overcome starvation and plague via the power of positive thinking and hard work.
- He also doesn't understand why the cannery equipment keeps going up in flames. You just put food into the machine, it cooks it and cans it. Of course, it is only configured to cook and can saltuna, not what they've actually been using.
- If the player reveals to him that Adelaide has been growing her crops through the use of human corpses stolen from the Spacer's Choice graveyard for fertilizer, he's astounded by her intuitive re-use of 'Spacer's Choice resources' for food production, and accepts that as the final proof that he needs to resign and have her take over as administrator.
- Lethally Stupid: Do you think your employees should all eat saltuna and nothing else? Even when you don't actually have any saltuna and are just filling your cans with sawdust and sprats? Then you are probably Reed.
- Licked by the Dog: Even though she's a pariah of her hometown thanks to accidentally humiliating Reed when she was a kid, Parvati doesn't think of him as a bad person, and is reluctant to side with the Deserters if and rob Edgewater of its power.
- Loophole Abuse: Actually prone to doing this with company policy, which may have kept the place running longer than it could have been.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Will do anything for the people of Edgewater. It's just that he actually believes all the company slogans about hard work and positive thinking being better than food are to be taken literally.Parvati: Oh, he ain't a liar. He believes every word he says. It's just, he doesn't always get where other folk are talking from. To Mister Tobson, a person's a gear. It does its job quiet-like. If it squeaks or stutters, it gets replaced.
- The Peter Principle: He's polite, willing to listen, honest, pragmatic and calm in a crisis. He would have made a pretty good factory manager, which is probably what he was meant to be. As the absolute leader of a frontier colony on an alien world, working for a company whose only advice is corporate marketing slogans? He's a absolute disaster, who lacks even the basics of independent thought or scientific knowledge.
- Pet the Dog:
- Doesn't want to resolve his problem with the Deserters with violence. He's happy to rehire them all back at their previous positions and address their concerns. Too bad he killed the son of their leader.
- If the Deserters peacefully return to Edgewater with him still in power, the epilogue states that not only does he eventually agree to some reforms, he attempted to make amends with Adelaide some time in the future only to learn that she passed away. He then has her buried underneath the cannery as his way of giving her an honorable burial.
- Pointy-Haired Boss: The Peter Principle is in full effect that he's unwittingly killed huge numbers of his citizens due to the fact he doesn't realize that people need vegetables and fruit to survive.
- Punch-Clock Villain: At worst. He sincerely wants the best for his town, but is completely inept and blinded by the company's indoctrination. He will go on marching Emerald Vale over a proverbial cliff, letting the people and eventually the whole town die to make corporate quotas, because surely Spacer's Choice would never lie to them.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Reed blindly believes that his dying colony is thriving, hard work can cure the plague, and eating vegetables is bad. However, his devotion to Edgewater means he is willing to resign from his cushy position and walk the earth if you can convince him Adelaide can cure the plague.
- Resigned in Disgrace: If convinced to step down, he states that there's no such thing as an honorable resignment, meaning that his resignation effectively means he's doomed to self-imposed exile.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: He doesn't truly believe in the plague. And he's somewhat right to do so as what's slowly killing his town is malnutrition.
- The Scapegoat: The Deserters blame Reed for pretty much everything wrong with Edgewater. While it's true that he certainly hasn't been helping the situation, he's not responsible for the malnutrition and lack of medical supplies that are at the root of the town's problems.
- Shoot the Dog: The people of Edgewater who are sick are denied medicine due to their low productivity, and are being ostracized and confined under Reed's orders. According to Reed, this is due to lack of medicine, but is actually due to Reed's following the policies from Spacer's Choice.
- Took a Level in Kindness: If the player sides with him, he'll swear to remedy (some) of his ways, since he doesn't want the Deserters to abandon Edgewater again. Whatever reforms he implements during this route seem to work as the town manages to reach its production goals again and the population is reportedly happier and even healthier than they were before. Things are going so well, in fact, that Akande ultimately decides not to destroy Edgewater and kill everyone in it if the player proceeds with a pro-Board play through.
- Undying Loyalty: Has a fanatical loyalty to Spacer's Choice.
- Villain Has a Point: For a given definition of villain. He let Adelaide's son die rather than spare to medical supplies needed to save him, but those supplies are finite and eventually Edgewater was going to run out. There isn't enough to go around and, as the leader, Reed was eventually going to have to let/watch someone die. The point is mitigated somewhat in that the entire crisis was pretty avoidable, but there's also the fact that, in addition to Reed, none of Edgewater's citizens seemed to clue into their diet being the problem before Adelaide figured it out. By that time, hundreds were already dead. On the other hand, if you side with the Deserters, disconnecting Edgewater's power to send it to their settlement, depending on how (if) you choose to justify yourself to plant manager Tobson (the original quest giver), he may tell you he never asked you to "liberate" him or the town, and that Deserter leader Adelaide McDevitt personally has it out for him. Both are true.
Constable Reyes
We pay by the finger
"Welcome to Spacer's Choice Constabulary. We are Halcyon's leading brand in frontier justice."
The leading lawwoman for the town of Edgewater.
- All Crimes Are Equal: A Downplayed Trope example since all of the criminals she sends you after are murderous bandits.
- Badass Bureaucrat: Is both the town sheriff and the person (what she does) who processes their paperwork (her actual job). If you actually call her a bureaucrat, she'll write it off as flattery as the real bureaucrats are far higher up the food chain than she is.
- Going Native: Despite being a corporate goon, is genuinely loyal to the locals and the town.
- Law Enforcement, Inc.: Actually works for Spacer's Choice rather than the public as a whole.
- My Country, Right or Wrong: Doesn't question any of the Board's orders despite how much of a disaster they've turned the town into.
- Private Military Contractors: Is a corporate mercenary who just so happens to keep the peace around Edgewater.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Promotes you to Deputy if you take out the criminals menacing the town. Doesn't arrest you for befriending Doctor Welles unless you really push it.
- The Sheriff: Subverted, she's actually more like a bureaucrat.
- Undying Loyalty: Is fully committed to the Board and Spacer's Choice.
Ludwig Miller
"I'm talking about automechanicals, soldier. Cold, heartless automatons made of iron and lies."
A strange automechanical-obsessed man who maintains an outpost near the Edgewater landing zone where he prepares for an inevitable war between man and machine.
- Cloudcuckoolander: He believes it's only a matter of time before the robots at the local power plant rise up to exterminate Edgewater and everyone in it and refuses to be convinced otherwise.
- Crazy-Prepared: He carries powerful Shock damage weaponry on his person at all times in case the robot uprising ever happens on his watch, and he can put these armaments to good use in the Foundation quest if properly convinced.
- Delusions of Eloquence: He can be get quite flowery at times, even by Halcyon standards, but he'll lapse into Buffy Speak if taken off his guard or called out on his ignorance.
- The Cloudcuckoolander Was Right: Depending on the actions of the UV he can ultimately be proved right about robots wiping out the town... but for the wrong reasons. He insists that its only a matter of time before Edgewater is attacked by an uprising of auto-mechanicals... only its not an uprising, but a planned attack by The Board to deal with The Deserters. There's even an unlockable achievement for this called "Ludwig Was Right" that the player can earn for turning his paranoid fear into a reality.
Guard Pelham
"You've tried the best. Now — now try the rest. Oh, Law, that stings."
A guard who accidentally shot himself in the side while trying to ambush a Marauder camp.
- Batman Gambit: It's basic tactics but it makes him a genius on Halcyon. Basically, he plans to wait for the Marauders to attack him through a choke point that he's barricaded with Exploding Barrels, allowing him to potentially take them all out with one shot.
- I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Done to himself. It’s not his fault, its just that his pistol was a shoddily made piece of crap as prone to malfunction as anything else Spacer's Choice makes.
- Nice Guy: He's a friendly person despite not having a real reason to, and if you help him out, he'll be as thankful as he is allowed to be due to his job.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- He genuinely believes he can take on an entire Marauder camp. Surprisingly, he possibly could since he's taken advantage of terrain.
- Played straight if you ask him for his gun, he gives it to you (a complete stranger), and you shoot him.
Chester D. Higgins
"My old boss had me scrubbing pipes when the killing started. So, as usual, I missed out."
A former engineer who was working on the lower levels of the Geothermal Power Plant when the automechanicals suddenly massacred the workers, leaving him trapped as the only survivor.
- The Engineer: He used to work as an engineer at the Geothermal Power Plant and can help the UV reprogram the automechanicals with a speech check.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Trapped in the bottom of the reactor pit after the automechs killed off the other workers, Chester has spent years talking himself through a series of elaborate fantasies. The mercury in the Sprats most likely isn't helping.Chester: Oh, Higgins has been many things over the years. Sprat wrangler. Saltuna critic. Aetherwave personality. Chairman of the Board. Galactic Defender. Cystipig tycoon.
- "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: The D. stands for "Definitely Not Insane", as he likes to remind himself.
- Reduced to Ratburgers: Or sprat burgers in this case. Once all of his food reserves started to run out he had no choice but to make due with what he could catch. Apparently, he considers their ears to be a delicacy.
- Sole Survivor: He was the only plant worker to survive the automechanical massacre and has been living off of Sprats deep inside its lower levels.
Amelia Kim
I don't know you
"What happened you ask? What always happens when you're dreaming. You wake up."
Bartender for Edgewater's Cantina.- Broken Bird: As a child, Amelia wanted to be a scientist. Decades of the Spacer's Choice drilling into her head that she's wrong for wanting to do that has made her a jaded, depressed barkeep.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Has seen all sorts of horrible things at Edgewater, and just goes with the motions.
- Took A Level In Cynicism: As a child, was naturally curious and wanted to grow up to be a scientist. After being told by Spacer's Choice that she would make a horrible scientist, she has worked as a bartender for her entire life and this has worn her down.
"Jeremy"
An initially nameless, malfunctioning automechanical that the Unplanned Variable encounters in the junkyard outside Edgewater, after being sent there by Ludwig Miller to destroy him. With sufficient skill, the Unplanned Variable can repair him themselves, or if Parvati is in the party, get her to do it. The latter option has Parvati give him the name Jeremy.
- Irony: Ludwig Miller believes him to be a herald for the inevitable Robot War that will bring doom to Edgewater. However, Jeremy is the only automechanical from the Geothermal Power Plant who isn't hostile to humans precisely because he wasn't functioning properly enough to be reprogrammed by Spacer's Choice to Kill All Humans.
- Sacrificial Lion: If he helps the player in the Geothermal Power Plant, he can potentially teach them the very valuable but subdued lesson that non-Companion (outside of Supernova difficulty) AI-controlled allies can be permanently killed in battle.
Other Employees
Martin Callahan
See The Groundbreaker.
Gorgon
Project Gorgon
See Gorgon.
PAM
Or "Productivity Automechanical". Formerly the head of a redundant office wing of the Gorgon research facility, the hasty abandonment of the project has left her the sole acting manager of the following departments: Reception, Human Resources, Accounting, Technical Support, Manufacturing, Distribution, and Security.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: If she was recharged during and survives The Red Tape of Command, she can be found waiting in the lobby of the SMC building and is eager to help the player battle the Firefly Freebooters in thanks for fixing her up earlier.
- Benevolent Boss: Besides cracking the whip with her fist and weaponry, PAM has over a thousand modular motivational phrases to encourage and praise hard work from her staff. However, as she has no protocols for promoting her workers, being put under her can lock an employee in a dead-end position.
- Collateral Damage: Is equipped with an N-Ray Arm Cannon for security and disciplinary purposes, but it has a tendency to cause a lot of this trope due to the way targets hit by her weapon will radiate more N-Rays, damaging nearby personnel and property.
- Covert Pervert: She really enjoys being recharged by SAM if you have him in your group when you meet her.
- Crutch Character: She's one of the most powerful temporary followers in the game, possessing a high HP pool, tough armor, and a powerful firearm. All of which are major boons in both quests she can potentially participate in. However, like all temporary followers, she can be overwhelmed and permanently killed if not sufficiently assisted by the Unplanned Variable.
- Distaff Counterpart: To SAM. To a lesser extent, her chestplate has been painted to vaguely resemble a female version of the Moon Man's face.
- The Dog Bites Back: Subject her to enough friendly (or not-so friendly) fire, and she'll come to regard you as an enemy.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Feels no guilt if the protagonist recharges her with a non-Spacer's Choice battery.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The player is introduced to her in the lobby of the SMC building surrounded by the corpses of several Marauders. Further investigation of the ground floor reveals even more dead Marauders, implying that they were killed by PAM as well.
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: Although, unlike SAM, she was built and programmed with traditional combat allowances.
- You Are in Command Now: Technically the last official Spacer's Choice managerial executive left on Gorgon, this makes it so that she can help you fight Olivia Ambrose while ignoring her orders as she's legally dead and thus, no longer a Spacer's Choice majordomo.
