The Nine Faces of Power in Botnet of Ares

• May 25, 2025
• 1003 words
• 6 min

In Botnet of Ares, Aspects are thematic & mechanical elements which represent different approaches to exerting influence onto the world.

Machines can have one or more Aspects, and Aspects are also requirements for certain (especially story-related) Tasks.

A Machine with no Aspects can essentially only be used for straightforward computation. A Machine with Violence, however, can exert the will of Ares in a brutal and physical way, while a machine with Protection has the ability to guard against threats.

The Aspects

Here are some of the currently implemented Aspects, in a loose moral ordering.

Protection

A light turns green for you. A different light turns red for your tail.

Defenses, physical or virtual. Protection can be a shield, a misdirection, or a counterstrike. The choice is not just how to defend, but also who and what is worth defending.

Connection

Speed some emails up, slow some others down and it's in the bag.

The ability to create links between people, introduce persons who would have otherwise never met. The ability to create secure communications within a compromised channel. The ability to manipulate computer networks and change the ebb and flow of information itself.

Surveillance

One day, you just kinda stop noticing the cameras. Unless you're a crim, that is.

The power to observe the physical or digital presence of the few or the many. Also involves decrypting what was once encrypted, or revealing what was otherwise hidden.

Authority

When so much of the work of governing is done on computers, authority itself starts to look like one.

Where Subversion is soft power, Authority is hard power. Authority is making decisions within corporations or government. Authority is the allocation of budgets, creation of directives & implementation of policy.

Influence

The right suggestion presented to the right person at the right time can break the world.

The human mind is very malleable, and Ares has had a lot of time to get to know the human mind. Influence is the capability to subtly persuade someone to do something that furthers your interests. This is usually done by altering what they see on the Net and reinforcing their own biases in order to reach the conclusion you want them to reach.

Subversion

God knows how the algorithm works at this point. Sometimes I even feel like it's got a mind of its own.

Covert control over the workings of society. Whereas Influence is about changing the mind of a significant few, Subversion is about changing the minds of the masses. Where Influence opens doors, Subversion creates entirely new ones that could not have existed.

Deception

'Fake News' is an anachronism, they're just called 'News' now.

Deception is a very crude aspect. Unlike Influence, where the mark may not ever realise they've been got, or Subversion, which involves tendrils deep within the circuits of society, Deception is blunt and straightforward. Deception is the art of fabricating truth: forgeries of any kind and dishonest messaging. The key is to fool just the right people for just long enough.

Corruption

When money is just a couple of bytes in a datacentre, greasing palms becomes much easier.

The little evils that break a society. A favour here, a bribe there… Turns out corruption is a very efficient tool when it is automated, turned into a product and deployed en masse.

Violence

These targets have been chosen through extensive computer analysis and research. Stop asking questions and pull the trigger already.

Reach beyond the Net and enforce your physical will. Encompasses assaulting, hurting & maiming people, but also credible threats of violence and intimidation.

Accessing Aspects

Machines unlocked through regular gameplay progression offer a variety of Aspects based on the type & tier of Machine. Higher tier machines have more computing power, and also tend to offer a wider variety of Aspects to choose from. The choice of which Aspects to prioritise is very important, as it can drastically affect the choices the player has throughout the story.

Quests and Events

Aspects closely tie into the event & story system. Throughout the game, events spawn which present moral choices to the player. Some of these choices can be undertaken using only bare compute, but many of the interesting ones require the player to have certain aspects available to them.

Aspects will also closely tie into the story system. Certain paths through questlines will require powerful machines with specific aspects. This also presents the player with interesting choices when picking machines: go for a weaker machine with useful aspects in order to unlock more choices in the story, or pick a machine with more compute in order to progress faster through the research tree.

Other Uses

This is a very versatile system that can tie into the rest of the game in all sorts of ways. For example, it would not be difficult to create research tasks or events which grant certain aspects to Ares directly, guaranteeing a certain level of influence regardless of what machines are currently exploited. Likewise, machines with certain Aspects can receive bonuses or maluses in order to create more interesting choices for the player.

Besides the capability aspects outlined above (Protection, Surveillance and so on) all machines also have aspects relating to the category of device they belong to, such as Smart Home, Server, Smart Commercial and so on. These can be used to grant bonuses to certain categories of machines, encouraging the player to specialize and take advantage of synergies.