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The Free Assemblies

The Free Assemblies

Overview

The Free Assemblies is the Synthborn rights movement. It is based on Koderra, the Synthborn base world. The Synthborn are machine people. They were built long ago as clerks, bank machines and record keepers, then woke up and became people. The Core recognized them as people in the year 60. Most of the Mid and Rim still treat them as property.

The Assemblies fight that. They run free repair clinics, take Synthborn cases to court, and argue with the Authority and the big companies. They have no army. Their strength is numbers, lawyers, and the fact that a lot of banks cannot run without Synthborn workers.

Koderra

  • Koderra is a crowded world of workshops, repair yards and housing blocks built for machine people and the organics who work with them.

  • The Assemblies meet in open halls there. Anyone can come and watch, and many do.

  • The biggest Right-to-Patch clinic in the Drift is on Koderra. The line outside it is always long.

Who runs it

  • Assemblers are elected by Synthborn communities. They sit on the councils that make the decisions.

  • Patchwrights are the mechanics who run the Right-to-Patch clinics.

  • Advocates are the lawyers. Some are Synthborn. Some are Humans who work cheap because they believe in the cause.

  • Go-betweens talk to the Authority, the companies and the other factions.

What it does

  • Right-to-Patch clinics. Free repairs for Synthborn bodies. Many companies build their Synthborn so only a company shop can fix them. The clinics fix them anyway.

  • Personhood cases. Advocates go to court to get Synthborn treated as people instead of property. Every win on a Mid world is news on Koderra for weeks.

  • Freedom. The Assemblies help owned Synthborn buy their freedom, win it in court, or sometimes just get away.

  • Leverage. Many banks still hire Synthborn to hold payments and keep records, because they are hard to bribe. When the Assemblies call a work stop, the banks feel it within a day.

Across the Drift

  • Core. Synthborn are legal people here. The Assemblies fight for fair pay and the right to turn down work.

  • Mid. This is the main fight. Some worlds recognize Synthborn and some do not. Most of the clinics are here.

  • Rim. Most Synthborn here are owned or hiding. A free Synthborn on the Rim keeps its papers on it at all times.

Weak spots

  • No force. The Assemblies have no fleet or army. They cannot protect a clinic from a raid.

  • Company pressure. Repairs are good business for the big companies, so they hate the clinics. Clinics get fined, burned or shut down.

  • Splits. Some members want full independence from organic law. Others want slow deals. The arguments on Koderra go on for days.

  • Bounties. Owners post bounties on Synthborn who run away. Some hunters take them. Some refuse.

What it means for a crew

  • A Synthborn crew member can get free repairs at any Assembly clinic.

  • Guarding a clinic or escorting an advocate to a hostile court is steady work.

  • Taking a bounty on a runaway Synthborn is legal on many worlds. It will also make you enemies on Koderra.

Reputation

To most Synthborn, the Assemblies are the reason they have any rights at all. Companies call them troublemakers. The Authority calls them a problem it has to keep talking to. Plenty of organics back them, most often the ones who have worked a shift next to a Synthborn.