How Order and Chaos Is Helping the Weyland Consortium Save Humanity

“Progress demands sacrifice. Where would humanity be now if we’d refused to pay for all our advances in science and technology? If we refuse to pay more, how will we continue to move forward?”
    –Jack Weyland

How many barrels of fossil fuel still lie untapped beneath the ground and the oceans? How long have the world’s industries spewed their toxic exhaust into the atmosphere? How many humans can populate the earth before we exhaust the resources we need in order to survive?

As we draw closer to the release of Order and Chaos, the third deluxe expansion for Android: Netrunner, there are many Runners and rival corporate execs who still waste their time blaming the Weyland Consortium for all manner of Earth’s many woes.

• They like to cite Weyland’s continued support of its GRNDL division (Fear and Loathing, 97) and its use of Geothermal Fracking (Opening Moves, 17).

• They note that the Weyland Consortium has skewed the corporate landscape by playing hardball time and again, frequently gobbling up its competition in Hostile Takeovers (Core Set, 94) and then using its ties with various government officials to relax any inconvenient antitrust laws.
• Finally, they claim that the Weyland Consortium’s vast fortunes are tainted by the blood of those the megacorp has trampled under foot and buried under the foundations of its buildings. Some make these claims literally; some merely point at the economic disparity between those who live upon the Beanstalk’s royalties and those who live within its shadow.

However, the truth is that the world was broken long before Jack Weyland was born into it. Many generations of scientists and environmentalists had expressed their concerns about dwindling fuel reserves and overpopulation long before Weyland first broke ground for the New Angeles Space Elevator. And while others were looking at the countless families who had their homes obliterated to make room for the Beanstalk’s foundation – or the foundation of some other Weyland Consortium development – Jack Weyland was looking up, past the top of the Beanstalk, out to the stars, and toward the future of humanity.

Funding the Dream

In many ways, the Weyland half of Order and Chaos is about daring to dream. People like to think of Jinteki as the “mysterious” corporation with myriad inscrutable designs, and while Jinteki’s reputation is well-deserved, it’s not the only corporation with designs that aren’t immediately evident. After seeing various aspects of its multiple divisions, people often assume they understand the Weyland Consortium as a whole, but that’s the same as imagining that you know how a thousand-piece puzzle fits together after having seen only a handful of pieces.

One of the things we get out of Order and Chaos is a better understanding of what the Weyland Consortium is all about. And our glimpse of the larger puzzle begins with one of the key pieces, the new identity, Titan Transnational (Order and Chaos, 3).

As their motto boasts, the good people at Titan Transnational excel at “Investing in Your Future.” Of course, they’re also investing in their futures and that of the Weyland Consortium as a whole. The returns? You gain two influence and the ability to place an agenda counter upon any agenda you score.

Naturally, this means that Titan Transnational decks are likely to feature agendas that allow you to spend agenda counters for various rewards. Thus, your deck is likely to feature some combination of the three existing options – Geothermal Fracking, Project Atlas (What Lies Ahead, 18), and Executive Retreat (Trace Amount, 39) – and the two agendas from Order and Chaos that feature agenda counters, Firmware Updates (Order and Chaos, 4) and High-Risk Investment (Order and Chaos, 7).

As we look at what these agendas hold in common, we see that most of them give us money and access to our deck’s key cards. Then we see the ominous exception, Firmware Updates. While the other agendas give us things, this one enhances our ability to keep others from taking our things. In the midst of Weyland’s commercialism, we find a need for greater security.

Could it be that there’s more to the Weyland Consortium than the accumulation of wealth?

Securing the Dream

Of the twenty-four different Weyland cards (by title) in Order and Chaos, eight of them are ice. By far the largest percentage of the faction’s new cards by card type, nearly all of these ice can be advanced – or present the ability to advance other ice. And their prevalence in Order and Chaos points to the fact that Weyland is up to something truly massive and secret.

Weyland’s advanceable ice are one of the faction’s signature investments. Ideally, their advancement ensures they provide effective security from turn one through the late game. Some gain strength from being advanced; others gain subroutines. And, now, with Order and Chaos, some have their cost reduced for each advancement counter on them.

This new mechanic features prominently upon the expansion’s quartet of space-themed ice, Asteroid Belt (Order and Chaos, 12), Wormhole (Order and Chaos, 13), Nebula (Order and Chaos, 14), and Orion (Order and Chaos, 15).

Not only is it more efficient, per your standard click to credit ratio, to advance these ice than pay full cost for them, the mechanic plays into a number of other Weyland themes.

• For starters, these ice are strong; the lowest strength among them is the “5” of Nebula, which is still far above average for a sentry.
• You can further increase the efficiency of these ice by running Because We Built It (A Study in Static, 76) as your identity, using renewable credits to pay down on them early. Then, once they’re rezzed, you can use Constellation Protocol (Order and Chaos, 8) to move their advancement tokens to your other ice.
• Finally, Commercialization (Cyber Exodus, 58) ensures that the advancement tokens on your ice are never wasted.

With advanceable ice, you’re always able to build upon your existing defenses, so your security is limited only by your desire to invest. And it’s clear that with six new types of advanceable ice and a Builder (Order and Chaos, 16) to accelerate their advancement, Weyland is investing heavily in security.

The inclusion of the new identity, Argus Security (Order and Chaos, 1), is only further proof that the megacorp has something it wants safely hidden from the public. So it’s almost certain that the many people who think they know the Weyland Consortium will soon be surprised.

Dreams of the Infinite

Where is Jack Weyland leading the Weyland Consortium, and where is the Weyland Consortium taking humanity?

The answer: deep space.

No longer a member of Weyland’s board of directors, Jack Weyland has nonetheless been given the freedom and resources to pursue his personal ambitions. These ambitions are illustrated by the third of the expansion’s identities, Gagarin Deep Space (Order and Chaos, 2). They’re given further shape by the agendas, Glenn Station (Order and Chaos, 5) and the asset Space Camp (Order and Chaos, 10).

No one is entirely certain why Weyland has turned his attention so fully toward space, but a handful of the financial analysts following Weyland’s recent deals and interviews suggest that he has come to realize that all the world’s liberal bluster is immaterial. They say he believes it’s not a matter of whether or not the Earth will fail to support humanity; it’s a matter of when. No matter how many steps the world’s nations and leading megacorps may take to slow the pace of environmental degradation and overpopulation, they argue, the world is already a lost cause.

So they say that Jack Weyland and the Weyland Consortium are willing to break a few eggs to advance the cause of viable deep space exploration. If humanity is to survive, it needs to find a new home, maybe more than one.

It won’t be enough, either, to settle the moon or Mars. No, humanity’s new home will need to be free of its tethers to Earth, as well as its political baggage. It won’t be able to rely upon the resources of a planet whose environment is increasingly unstable, nor one in which an entrenched culture of clan-based hostilities. Humanity needs to find and terraform a virgin planet that can fully support its inhabitants.

Others speculate that, based upon the technologies his division is developing, Weyland’s true goal is to transform the human race into a spacefaring species tied to no planet at all, but free to roam the stars, marvel at their wonders, and search for sentient alien life. One can only imagine how humanity might potentially benefit from the discovery of alien technology, and those who support this interpretation of Weyland’s activities claim that he’s one of the few individuals alive who would dare to dream such a dream.

Both camps claim that Jack Weyland’s dreams of deep space exploration border on madness, but as they note, that’s a quality shared by the dreams that have inspired all of humanity’s greatest achievements. And they point out that it doesn’t matter if others don’t recognize Weyland’s true ambitions. Weyland left The Board (Order and Chaos, 11) for his dream; not even the company that he founded understands where he’s headed.

What matters to Weyland is that his dream survives the world’s petty political and economic turbulence. It needs to survive narrow-minded hackers and their violations of Weyland Consortium servers. And if it does, it can mean that the human race continues to have a future, even after the Earth no longer does.

How Will You Defend the Dream?

One of the most world’s most divisive figures, Jack Weyland has demonstrated over and over again that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to realize deep space exploration within his lifetime.

How will you defend the dream? With bluffs? With powerful ice? Or with retaliatory strikes against those who seek to steal your intellectual property? In Order and Chaos, Weyland execs gain a fantastic array of tools to win the cyberstruggles of Android: Netrunner, and it’s up to you to employ them effectively.

Will you help humanity explore new horizons, or will your efforts topple under the weight and scrutiny of a public that’s convinced you belong to a cold-hearted company with absolutely no regard for anything but its own bottom line?

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