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One thing I think is a bit lacking in Infinity is Player fluff. The fluff from CB is great but it doesn't let itself as much to coming up with background for your own group. I don't think it's impossible though. So here is the fluff I have so far for my Yu Jing. It needs a bit more information and I'm going to work on a leader/character for them.

Kudos to anyone who can figure out where I got the names from.

If you have some of your own fluff please put it here.

The Shangri-la Peace Force

Situated in the picturesque Jungle mountains of the planet of Paradisio, in Yingxian province, is the city Chenling, "New Shangri-la." Chenling was an attempt by the Yu Jing government to create utopia. Most believe it was created just to show the other powers on the planet the engineering prowess of Yu Jing by building the beautiful city in nearly inaccessible mountains and jungle. It was called New Shangri-la by PanOceanic critics and the name has stayed with it as unofficial name of the city. This is probably because of the high number of Buddhist temples. The city is was created with modern technology but with old traditional styles. One temple uses stone imported all the way from the Himalayan mountains on Earth.

Paradiso is a planet that has been contested by the powers nearly since it's discovery. It was also the main theater for the Neo Colonial Wars. Paradiso is a fertile planet, and according to terrestrial parameters, lush to excess. The city is a bit isolated because of this. The best way to the city is by air but there are a few roads that are well maintained by the Deforestation Service.

So far the attempt to create utopia has met with more success than failure but it is still far from a utopia. New Shangri-La quickly became the new Yu Jing religious center with temples to Taoism, Buddhisim, Confucian, and other religions. But the traditional Chinese religions predominate. The main defense for the city is the Shangri-la Peace force. Though policing is the main concern for them, they have always had a military bent due to earlier conflicts with other factions on Paradiso. For the last few years the city has had problems with Haqqislam illegal drug traffickers and Nomad arms dealers using their city as a way point to other parts in the Yu Jing Empire. It's also a good place to hide because of it's isolation. Some have said that peace in the city has been created with a heavy hand but of course they are only dissenters.

Currently the city has come under attack by the Combined Army. A few of the aliens known as the Shasvastii have infiltrated the city have caused damage to infrastructure and killed many citizens. Some of the religious temples have even participated in the defense of the city. Particularly the Shaolin and New Wu Tang Taoist temples. They have been a great help using both their traditional close combat weapons as well as cutting edge technology.

Special Unit "Golden Spear", is charged with finding and eliminating the alien threat. The unit is made up of the best men and women in the Shangri-la Peace Force as well as others from Yu Jing provinces on Paradiso.

Unit command has been given to the Hsien, Lee Jun-fan. A tireless and well respected commander. He's subordinates are: Crane Rank Agent, Chan Kong-sang and Pheasant Rank Agent, Li Lianjie.

Supporting the commander is the Eight Invincibles: He Xiangu, Cao Guojiu, Tieguai Li, Lan Caihe, Lü Dongbin, Han Xiang Zi, Zhang Guo Lao, and Zhongli Quan.

Cool fluff CDK, i enjoyed reading it.

I wrote down an idea for a Caledonian army when i first got into Infinity. I've now decided to do a normal Nomad list first then paint the Caledonians for fun. Here is a little taste of the idea:

Clan Thomson
Clan Thomson is a particularly feral Caledonian clan, feral being the operative word. Far from making pariahs of the dog-hybrids, this clan embrace and actively breed them. It is estimated that the hybrids populate up to 40% of the clan although battle forces can often be up to 100% hybrid.
Hybrids born outside the clan are treated even worse than they would be anywhere else in the Sphere. Even the clan hybrids treat them like scum!

Hey, I remember your fluff from the Infinity site now. I think were were the only two who did anything!

Great Idea too. I hope you expand on it.

Good stuff!
I'm really wanting to write my own force fluff, but I have yet to come up with anything I like

I found it kind of helps to narrow down what they do or what group they might be. Like say Seal Team 6 or something like that. Because I love Appleseed I immediately thought of a police force. It certainly helped they later came out with the Celestial Guard and the ISS. I at first had the city set on the capital world bu then realized there would not be much opportunity for conflict with other Factions. Looking at the map in the rule book of Paradiso shows that the world has many factions controlling a part of it. Plus it's where the Combined army is fighting as well.

That actually helps a little, thanks!
Just a little question, does the Rulebook (or books) contain a lot of fluff? I've ordered the first rulebook and I'm kinda curios to what is in it.
If it does contain some fluff, then I'll probably read that before deciding on anything.

@CDK - Haha, yeh you were the guy that got me back on track after all the list advice had removed me from my original idea! I am very grateful! I'm looking forward to going back to them after the Nomads and just painting the models instead of worrying about playing them in a proper list. I have big plans for special characters like my Clan Chief who is a wise old Dog Warrior with a huge sword.

@CF - The two rulebooks are pretty much the sole source of fluff, you won't be disappointed.

I'd say a good half of the book is fluff. First each faction and troops and then general universe stuff.

@CL: Ya it was great stuff. One thing on a fluffy force you sometimes have to make a sacrifice in things like points or SWC. Ya Lt. is 2SWC but then you have a cool force for it!

This is mine so far.

Corregidor Nomads

'Hellions' Strike Team Beta.
The second team selected to take part in the initiative, under the commander of Major Alison Channing aka Hellfire.

Strike Team Initiative
A selection of hardened Corregidor operatives, brought together as mercenary units that will hire themselves out to any task in the Human Sphere. They will not complete any mission that would compromise the Nomad fleet and are directly under the command of the Corregidor leadership. They use their missions as a cover travelling system to system to collect data, data that would not be possible to get hold of, if not hired to be there by unsuspecting foreign Companies. To this end, the Strike Teams have some of the best Hackers available and have already managed to gleam some key information in their short operational window.
There are six teams in the initiative, although only three are on active duty outside the fleet, Alpha, Beta and Epsilon. All six have their own Mercenary name that they use for all communications outside the Corregidor command and of course outside that section of the ship, the Strike Team Initiative does not exist.


Working on the actual team members at the mo. With a game scale so small, I can go to town on the actual team members as well.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:This is mine so far.

Corregidor Nomads

'Hellions' Strike Team Beta.
The second team selected to take part in the initiative, under the commander of Major Alison Channing aka Hellfire.

Strike Team Initiative
A selection of hardened Corregidor operatives, brought together as mercenary units that will hire themselves out to any task in the Human Sphere. They will not complete any mission that would compromise the Nomad fleet and are directly under the command of the Corregidor leadership. They use their missions as a cover travelling system to system to collect data, data that would not be possible to get hold of, if not hired to be there by unsuspecting foreign Companies. To this end, the Strike Teams have some of the best Hackers available and have already managed to gleam some key information in their short operational window.
There are six teams in the initiative, although only three are on active duty outside the fleet, Alpha, Beta and Epsilon. All six have their own Mercenary name that they use for all communications outside the Corregidor command and of course outside that section of the ship, the Strike Team Initiative does not exist.


Working on the actual team members at the mo. With a game scale so small, I can go to town on the actual team members as well.

Fantastic! I think it's a great background. I'm looking forward to more! I think it's great how you can focus on individual characters.

Cheers, done a few so far, still ironing out how it looks, when I've got it all together, I'll be posting it in my P&M thread.

Current team

Mobile Brigada with multi-rifle - Maj. Alison Channing [f] 'Hellfire'
"Watch the corners Quickswitch, you get us fragged again and I'll bring an end to your service record myself. Hammer, Longshot you've got the back door, we'll try and keep the runaways friendly."

Alison Channing, is young for a command such as this, only twenty eight, and one of the youngest Majors in the Corregidor forces. When soldiers like Worker are pushing eighty and still looking like a middle aged man, she has to wonder if everyone believes in her as much as she does. Regardless of that fact, and the odd snipe by others in the command, Hellfire got her nickname for a reason. Where she goes, Hell follows with her.

Alguacil combi-rifle - Sgt Maj. Charles Wilson [m] 'Worker'
"You know that bug in the colony, the one that does everything while the rest shamble on oblivious to hardship. Yeah, that's me."

Charles Wilson, a veteran of countless battles for the Corregidor forces, and a whiley one at that. Was placed under the operational command of 'Hellfire' when the Strike Team initiative was rolled out. He is her third in command, and a Sergeant Major in the Corregidor forces.

Alguacil combi-rifle (pink hair) - Cpl. Felipe Mendoza [m] 'Gateway'
"Hey Hammer, you want me to pull out next time, or is there plenty enough room in there for both of us?"

Felipe earned his nickname due to his keen eyes and ability to make an exit on command, it doesn't matter where the team is, if they need to get the hell out of dodge, Gateway will make it so every time. He's also a shameless ladies man, and although he is not stupid enough to make things personal in the Hellions, Alison has often had to send Worker and Hammer, to collect the good Corporal from the local drinking establishment.

Alguacil combi-rifle - Pte(T) Jennifer 'Jenna' Jones [f] 'Quickswitch'
"Damn it Yuki, next time aim for his chest or something, I don't need to be covered in this Gak right now. Oh feth, we got Pan-O behind, going full auto!"

Jenna Jones is a loose cannon, some might say too loose, but shes damn good at what she does and she has survived more scrapes than many would care to remember. She earned the nickname due to her operational awareness, when things start to go wrong, when the ambush comes down upon them, often Quickswitch is shooting at the incoming attackers before the rest of the team has spotted their assailants. Note Jenna was a Lance Corporal, but her actions on a mission on Dawn, got her busted back to Private and almost expelled from the initiative.

Alguacil HMG - Sgt. Shianna Jefferson [f] 'Hammer'
"Comlink just went down, I'm guessing that means the fun begins!"

Sergeant Jefferson has been a part of the Corregidor forces for nearly twenty years. A practised soldier, and a well regarded member of the Alguacil. She proved her skill with support fire and the use of Heavy weaponry seven years into her time. Since then she has proved time and time again she is one of the best close support troopers in front line operations on file on Tunguska. She was a first choice pick for Alpha team, but a broken bone in her foot meant she missed the chance, and was placed in the Beta team as it was formed a few months later.

Alguacil Sniper - Lcp. Yuki Hanamada [f] 'Longshot'
"His helmet folded like rice paper babe, if you don't like the bits I can always get Loki to pick them out of your hair later."

Yuki is a skilled sniper, and has a dry sense of humour that throws many folks off. Felipe often jokes had her great grand parents not moved away from Japan they'd be facing off against her in Yu Jing, to which she just aims her fingers at his head and smiles. Due to her position at the rear of most operations, she is confidant to bring her pet with her onto the field, a small creature she got from Paradiso called Loki.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:the youngest Major in the Corregidor forces.

Just as a word of advice, I think it's best to avoid statements like this in fan fluff, because they're open to clashing with later published material or other fan's fluff. (It's insane how many different characters I've seen that claim the "longest range confirmed sniper kill in the Imperial Guard".) "One of the youngest Majors" is one thing, but I'd steer clear of special snowflake syndrome and not make your character the most special.

Also, I assume the letters in the brackets are meant to be gender. In which case, I think there's one of them you may need to check.

Heh, its actually meant to be one of the youngest, must have screwed up when I was copying it from hand written text, have edited.

Also thanks for the spot on Worker.

After 27+ years in gaming, I don't really care much about the fluff anymore (for any game). I just put the models I like (and that I can legally field) on the table, roll dice and die horribly.

Now I'm the opposite. I don't get to play much even though I've done this for years. So the fluff has become even more important to me.

@Mrathi: loving it so far. You might want to looking some cool ethnic names. Like Tungusta was supposed started by Russians and Corregidor is ??? Spanish speaking i know that lol.

Cheers, and yeah, I have two more who are Spanish in my other notes. I will admit am making assumptions, that with the melting pot, other nationalities would have made their way there.

I like having the different skin tones though.

One of the things I got sick about 40k was that everyone, except for Dan Abbnett books, was white and British. They even went out of their way to make Tallarns blond hair and blue eyes.

I love the international feel of Infinity and how you can have troops that have backgrounds from India to Ethiopia to Brazil.

Nothing fancy about my fluff. All Nomads under my control work for BlueDagger the Arms Dealer. I run a network of illegal goods and firearms that resides on each of the Human Sphere worlds. Each of these locations are under diplomatic immunity, so I can't be touched and if anyone gives me guff I have plenty of special forces on my payroll.

I prefer to send out a team of Remotes lead by a hacker and engineer to do my trades. That way if anything goes wrong during I get a chance to test my wares

I like it but I'd like more detail. At least on the leader or something.

I was thinking of my faction fluff on the way home from work today - got a really good rough outline of my fluff and a few details that I know I want to include.

Going to write it up later on tonight once I have just re-read some of the background fluff in the rule books and wiki.

CDK wrote:I like it but I'd like more detail. At least on the leader or something.

You have what is known . BlueDagger likes to keep his identity left largely unknown and all business dealings are done through encrypted text transmissions or delegates. Being a Nomad, Aleph would love to have his head and there is plenty of other individuals in the Sphere that would like to bring his ring to justice.

Someone has to supply all your forces with quality weaponry and nano technology.

Since I've got cops maybe I should write you into my fluff!

I've edited my fluff to add the commander.

Can you figure out who he is by the name?

Please tell me if it is too Mary Sue/not appropriate tech levels or anything else


General background fluff for my Nomad faction, of which I currently have a Nomad all stealth force (representing a covert kill/recovery team):


2160 – Birth of Gao Tsai, the 4th child of a lowly and distant branch of one of the founding cryptohacker families of Tunguska.

Existing on the very edge of Centrum and the Families, Tsai quickly learned just how much of a target she was – not important or worthy enough to be afforded the protection given to those higher and closer to the ruling families and with hundreds of rivals from the myriad of lesser cousins and other relatives, as well as outsiders bent on gaining position and influence she turned her young but incredibly sharp mind to the problem of her own survival.

A talented and intelligent hacker and manipulator even from a young age, Tsai falsified test scores and genetic fingerprinting to ensure that she never stood out and planted false information into the databanks to mislead her peers and superiors about her aptitude for technology and subversion.

2178 - Gao Tsai comes of age. Thoroughly dissatisfied with the corruption she perceived within the Nomad nation, Tsai was assigned (thanks to her long running campaign of data falsification of aptitude testing) to a middle level intelligence oversight position which gave her direct control of a small network of low level classified intelligence assets, but also provides her the protection of a relatively undesirable position.

In the following months she covertly corrupted the intelligence networks of her fellow overseers, re-routing their reports and activities to suit her own ends; infiltrating agents into high technology manufacturing and bioengineering combines throughout the Human Sphere, even installing agents within the labs, cults and communes of Bakunin in her search for something that would enable her to break away from the society she had spent her life hiding from.

2180 – After 2 years running a shadow network of agents within the Nomad intelligence force, Tsai’s agents monitoring a manufacturing covert research station in the asteroid belt in the Acontecimento system (Pan-O factory/farm world) discover scientists have made a breakthrough in creating a truly self replicating Von Neumann manufacturing platform. Acting quickly, a covert recovery team is dispatched to recover the technology and destroy the station and any information it may contain in a way staged to look like the power reactors suffered a critical failure. Now the sole possessor of this technology, Tsai advances her plans to form a break away Nomad sect.

2181 – Tsai’s forces take advantage of the tail end of the Commercial Conflict and the close ties her cells had forged with the Ariadnians to begin seeding Ariadna’s Kuiper belt with Von Neumann harvesting and manufacturing platforms – miniature semi-intelligent factory and mining ships programmed to seek out certain mineral rich asteroids to process into habitats, starship modules and other basic equipment needed for any space faring community to exist. In combination with gene technology from the Bakunin fleshworks the seeds of self-assembling Dyson Trees are planted.

2182 – Tsai’s operation moves to ensure security for the Kuiper belt operations and begin covert recruitment of skilled engineers, hackers, soldiers, operatives, and other personnel dissatisfied with life in the Nomad Nation. With access to secret manufacturing plants capable of autonomously producing a wide range of goods and technologies, Tsai starts building up trade relationships throughout the sphere behind a series of shell corporations to hide both the source and scope of her operations.

2183 – 2185 – Secretly amassing the wealth, resources and personnel, Tsai heads a small army of professional operatives, engineers, hackers and biotechnicians. Numbering almost 200 people dedicated to the new nation, and many others spread throughout shell corporations and in place as part of information networks. Conflicts to keep the operation secret escalate as Tsai’s security forces track down leaks, enemy intelligence operatives and other risks. Tsai also works on acquiring advanced technology to help in her group’s bid for autonomy.

@Morathi's Darkest Sin, SilverMK2: Very inspirational! A touch further than I would have considered going myself I think, so I might have to re-address that. Having said that, I'm waiting on the rulebooks before making final fluff/decisions...

While not a requirement, I find fluff useful for providing direction for modelling and painting - which is making my starting out without it feel a bit concerning - I'm sure I'll manage though...

Keep up the good work!

I agree - the fluff helps you form your ideas for the physical tabletop game.

And that is just some general background fluff on the organisation behind my force... will be plenty of fluff about the unit and the soldiers in it coming in as I complete painting things up

C&C is most welcome (I would love for people who have a better knowledge of the Infinity universe to pick it apart, and for everyone else to have a go at it as well ).

@SilverMK2: Wow that's pretty cool. You could even get in some secret connections to Aleph to make it sound like she's a traitor but really she's just using Aleph. Or so she thinks etc.

I've not finished reading through all the faction fluff (I've not read any of the Aleph stuff yet) so there may well be a chance to add some "playing with Aleph" - I do want reasonably strong ties to Ariadna though - I like their underdog (no pun intended ), "wary of the Sphere" position (I also think they will be my second Infinity force as and when I decide to expand ).

Some really interesting stuff here guys. I'll definitely have to get back to my Haqq force fluff.
When I started the game, I wanted to write a short story about my Haqq unit. Ten military prisoners released for a specific, low survivability mission. The idea was shamelessly stolen from the movie "The Dirty Dozen" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061578/ (great movie, btw). The mission was extracting and delivering important piece of information from behind the enemy lines (actually this is very similar to the one of the first scenarios I played). They proved to be very skillful and managed to fulfill their mission. So their superiors decided not to send them back to prison but instead assign them as an escort to one of the trading spaceships. And that's how the journey begins.
Off course this is just rough description. I came up with more details, personal histories and stuff but never really wrote it down.

Looks good to me Silver, still reading the background myself, so mine will evolve as I get more acquainted with the story.

Also like that idea Ender0, and yep agree that movie is one of my personal favourites.

Well right off, Nomads do not like Aleph. They see it as the evil Big Brother. It's not the benevolent AI everyone thinks it is. One of the reasons Nomads are so good with tech is to defend itself against Aleph.

Ariadna is a natural ally to the Nomads. they also want to make sure Ariadna does not make ties to Aleph.

I've made a few changes to mine. Changes in Orange.