Superbloc
The Superbloc is the team Hershel works for. It’s the communist alliance — 70 republics across the world — that fields the Operant Bureau, runs its spies into capitalist countries, and ices its veterans when they fail. Officially it’s called the Supreme Union of Proletarian Republics. Commonly it’s called the People’s Republics. Nobody you’ll meet in Portofiro calls it any of those things. They just call it the Superbloc.
The Superbloc is one of three great powers in the game’s world. The other two are La Luz — a techno-fascist empire on the rise — and EMTERR, an investment bank that owns most of what isn’t ruled by either of the other two.
The state of the bloc in ‘96
The Superbloc is old and tired. The official ideology is post-historical materialism. The actual situation is:
- 70 republics, “fraught” relationships with each other.
- Hundreds of millions of people, but no recent victories worth bragging about.
- An intelligence service (the Opera) that still pretends it’s playing on equal footing with La Luz and EMTERR.
Hershel’s own read on the bloc, in her internal monologue, is that the Superbloc seems “befuddled that the rest of the world has left it behind”. That’s the player POV. You are an operant of a power that is convinced it should still matter.
This shapes the entire Portofiro arc. La Luz is moving aggressively. The Weeping Eye is crackdowning in a former Luzian colony. The Superbloc’s response is to thaw out a disgraced operant, send her to babysit an asset, and then cancel the assignment when the asset gets killed.
Why Hershel is here
Hershel was born in Mircea — outside the bloc. She fled into the bloc as a radicalized student in the late ’70s or early ’80s and joined the People’s Republic of Kohila, which is the Superbloc’s anchor state. In ‘82 the Opera recruited her. She’s been a Superbloc operant ever since.
The Superbloc is, in other words, her adopted country. Going back to the Freezer in Novessa means going back inside it. Staying off-book in Portofiro means staying useful to it.
Overview[]
The Superbloc is a communist megastate that consists of 70 republics with a combined population in the hundreds of millions. It is one of the three great powers of the world, the others being the burgeoning techno-fascist state La Luz and the global investment bank EMTERR.
Although united by its core ideology of post-historical materialism, the Superbloc’s constituent republics have a fraught relationship with each other. The Superbloc as a whole has also seen its ambitions wane with age, and in recent decades it has accomplished little of note. Comparing the Superbloc’s stagnation to La Luz’s dramatic ascension, Hershel Wilk observes that the Superbloc seems befuddled that the rest of the world has left it behind.
The intelligence agency of the Superbloc is the Operant Bureau, which has agents embedded throughout the capitalist Developed World.
Member States[]
The wiki only lists Kohila by name as of the game’s launch — it’s the Superbloc state most relevant to the plot, since it’s where Hershel lives and where Opera leadership sits. The other 69 republics are background. Expect them to surface in offhand references rather than as locations you visit.
Why it matters to the player
A few practical takes:
- Loyalty is the load-bearing question. The Superbloc owns Hershel’s name. Every time you go off-book, you’re spending Superbloc credit.
- The bloc is not the good guys. The Opera files its torture branch under HR (see the Operant Bureau entry). The Freezer is informal incarceration. The Superbloc’s ideological project is morally serious but institutionally compromised.
- The bloc is also not the bad guys. It is the only counterweight to La Luz and EMTERR. Most of the game’s writing treats it as a flawed home rather than an enemy.
The Superbloc / La Luz / EMTERR triangle is the political board you play on. You’re CASCADE, and CASCADE is Superbloc.
Overview[]
The Superbloc is a communist megastate that consists of 70 republics with a combined population in the hundreds of millions. It is one of the three great powers of the world, the others being the burgeoning techno-fascist state La Luz and the global investment bank EMTERR.
Although united by its core ideology of post-historical materialism, the Superbloc’s constituent republics have a fraught relationship with each other. The Superbloc as a whole has also seen its ambitions wane with age, and in recent decades it has accomplished little of note. Comparing the Superbloc’s stagnation to La Luz’s dramatic ascension, Hershel Wilk observes that the Superbloc seems befuddled that the rest of the world has left it behind.
The intelligence agency of the Superbloc is the Operant Bureau, which has agents embedded throughout the capitalist Developed World.
Member States[]
- People’s Republic of Kohila