O-12 is the law in the Human Sphere and SWORDFOR is its strong arm: a militarized police force tasked with maintaining stability and defending justice on an international level. The design of O-12 as a faction and as an army in Infinity was based around the idea of a transnational police force. This allowed us to work with a whole series of police-themed leitmotifs and archetypes drawn from many sources and reference material as a way of providing the different units of O-12 (the latest faction to be added to the wargame) with their own personality. Some of them are rather obvious, others not so much, and you may even find some easter eggs here and there within the lore of the different units that make up O-12 and Starmada—its Sectorial Army. Let’s check some of them out.
One of the more evident ones, the Lawkeepers, were born as the happy sum of the requests made by many members of the community. Their Unit Profile was developed around the Badlands, the area surrounding Montecristo, the maximum security prison (and another obvious fluff reference) of Concilium Prima, O-12’s planet. When we released O-12, many fans asked for a miniature inspired by Judge Dredd (a character from the “2000 AD” comic magazine that’s already seen two movie adaptations). Since we’re all Dredd fans here, and we needed a conceptual design for the men and women who patrol the Badlands, we got to it and that’s how the Lawkeepers came to be. The design of the uniform from the judges of the “Dredd” movie fused with the conceptual base of O-12 uniformology was responsible for defining its final appearance.
The motorbike with which their Unit Profile is equipped took visual elements from Judge Dredd’s motorbike in the comics, as did their corps’ badge—which was inspired by the police badge that is worn by the judges on their chest. As a final detail, Judge Dredd’s famous quote “I am the law” was added in Latin as the official motto of the Lawkeepers.
Starmada’s Naval Demolition Team, the Crushers, borrow that fitting name from a Victorian English term. This is an obscure moniker that some have linked to the heavy boots worn by police officers of the time and some others to the nickname given to the Royal Navy Regulating Branch. Any of these possible origins fits perfectly with the expert demolitionists of O-12’s space navy. As an additional detail, Crusher is also the name of a member of the Infinity community from the USA.
Delta Unit. A substantial part of the Units of O-12 borrow their name from the Greek alphabet, so it’s no surprise that the letter Delta was reserved for a special ops unit as an homage to the United States elite squad. These troops wear a closed helmet, but you can be sure that below one of those helmets you can find a face resembling Chuck Norris!
The war cry of the Gamma Unit is “Gamma Unit smash!”, which is an homage to the famous quote by the Hulk, the Green Goliath from the Marvel Universe, whose powers come from an accidental overdose of gamma radiation.
Everyone knows or has heard about the sci-fi classic Mad Max, an Australian movie in which the Main Force Patrol was nicknamed the “Bronzes” due to their badges. That term stuck, and for a while, it was used as British slang in reference to the police. Starmada’s Deep Space Peacemaker Corps received the “Bronzes” moniker from the Ockers, a Neoterran mafia-like organization of Australian ancestry—a commonly found nationality on that planet. The Main Force Patrol badge from the movie also served as a reference for this unit’s logo, as well as its motto: “Maintain Right”.
Additionally, for those who don’t know, the term “Ocker” refers to tough Australians with a heavy and thick accent. Another Australian reference in these troopers’ background text is the name of the Hogan Metals Corporation, an homage to the main protagonist of the Crocodile Dundee movies: Paul Hogan.
The name of O-12’s main TAG also comes from a Greek alphabet: Zeta. However, this letter was not randomly chosen: in the professional slang of the Spanish police, the patrol vehicles are known as “Zetas” (Spanish for the letter “Z”) due to the first letter of their radio identification code.
The term “cop'' has been applied to British police since the 18th century, as well as its variant “copper”—although it’s believed that the latter is applied in the United States as a reference to the material used for police badges. For that reason, O-12’s multipurpose Remotes are generically known as Copperbots. The explanation of the name of each model can be found in their description in the Infinity N4 book. This book also features an explanation for the name of the Fuzzbots, the Baggage Remotes used by this faction, that also borrow their moniker from street slang for the police.
Giacomo Casanova likes to believe that he is the Recreation of the historical character from which his name derives. This may or may not be true, but what’s certainly true is that the aliases he uses are the same the legendary seducer used. Only Jack Watson, aka “the Sphere’s greatest detective” and rumored Recreation of Sherlock Holmes, was able to catch Casanova. There’s a certain logic to it, since he caught this agent during the so-called “Bohemian Lights Scandal”, a name reminiscent of “A Scandal in Bohemia”, a famous detective story by Arthur Conan Doyle, but also the theater play “Bohemian Lights” by Ramón del Valle-Inclán, a genius of the Spanish literature from our region, Galicia.
And these are just some of the hidden references in O-12. There are many more hidden details and homages, both in this faction’s troopers and background texts, but finding them as you read on is part of the fun. So now you know, don’t hesitate to let us know if you find any of them!
