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Background Organizations
This page list all the organizations that are mentioned in Aftershock background or that otherwise play an important role within the mod's lore. (very early draft at this point)
Most historical earth governments crumbled or otherwise became unrecognizable during the FTL discontinuity, as such references to current governments should be avoided except for vague historical mentions. The currently active governments of Earth and the Solar System have no official presence in the frontier, and act mostly through UICA.
Formed relatively recently, near the discovery of the new FTL method, the United Interstellar Coordination Agency is a loose confederation of Solar Corporations, Governments, and NGOs dedicated to reclaiming and bringing most extra-solar colonies back under Earth's wing by claiming colonies for their former owners. While the UICA aims to be peaceful in these goals and offer a harmonious and smooth integration, not all colonies are willing. Due to this, the UICA mans a standing army formed through both funding from its members and other volunteers, as well as soldiers and accoutrements to aid in a smooth transition of power in colonies, and to put down rebels.
To note however, members of the UICA council do not need to be either important nor powerful, they only need to hold enough of a prominent position to be able to demand a position; for example a UICA council member could simply be a small Solar Corporation or government that holds a starlifting platform built by an AI during the Hyperspace Expansion era; the starlifting platform itself is not that useful, but due to the fact it is irreplaceable, irreparable, and built by said hyper-intelligent AIs, they are given a prominent voice in the UICA.
The UICA in general, but especially its soldiers, are commonly referred to as 'jarheads' due to the unique shape of their space helmets.
Starting out as a design bureau of the Soviet Union, TsKBEM started out as a manufacturer for the USSR, designing ballistic missiles, launch vehicles, satellites, and other spacecraft. During the later years of the USSR, it started to shift towards a mixed economy, allowing TsKBEM to operate outside of the USSR for profit, and propelling it forward financially as it had a virtual monopoly on the transportation and construction of the Russian section of the ISS, with its only real competition being the United States NASA; with these factors, it was able to negotiate with the Soviet government to organize a merger between several design bureaus, including TsNII RTK. This, combined with its inflated income influx, meant that TsKBEM could afford to run it's own factories, allowing to transition from using leftover military technology, to being able to design its own tailored for other customers.
From these steps, it was quick to see that TsKBEM was propelling itself to be among the exclusive group of solar corporations; aiding in the colonization of several extrasolar colonies, supplying rockets, landers, habitats, and robots. TsKBEM was so extensive that even today, long after TsKBEM dissolved, adapted or even original TsKBEM designs can still commonly be seen within recently settled frontier worlds, where their ubiquitous design specs and relative ease of fabrication make them attractive to less fortunate colonists.
Less an organization or group, but more of a subculture of people. They are survivalists that beg, borrow, or steal their way to abandoned colonies that seem unlikely to be reconquered, either because the original owners have vanished, or the colony is unlikely to be profitable for the solar corporation that theoretically owns it. These people spread out onto the edges of the frontier, enthusiastically squatting and building tiny kingdoms often consisting of just a couple families or few people. These mutual aid societies are wildly varied in their laws; influenced by the people who set them up, but they all share in a distrust for those that wish to impose restrictions upon new colonization efforts.
One interesting note, is that Prepnet Phyle believes that a second FTL discontinuity is inevitable or imminent, and prepare for this by supplying and preparing their colonies with long-term isolation in mind.
Solar Corporations are vast corporate entities and conglomerates that formed when outer space was privatized during Earth's early space age. All solar corporations are space industry giants, they build ships and orbital foundries, manage interstellar shipping, and control their own colonies which sometimes might span entire planets.
The difference between the average, corporation and a Solar Corporation can be exemplified with as follows:
- SpaceY owning the economic production of well populated Galilean moon is a Solar Corporation.
- SpaceY owning a large city in Ganymede and having a monopoly in space travel between it and Earth is a Solar Corporation in making.
- SpaceY launching its own private missions to other planets is just a normal corporation.
- Wraitheon Industries ltd.
- EINAC Domestic Works
- Mercurial Genomics
- TsKBEM
Mercurial Genomics (or, less commonly known as Whately Corp due to the prominence of the founding Whately family and their ongoing leadership in the corporation) is a solar corporation, specializing in Uplifts and Alterations. They became prominent before the Hyperspace Expansion thanks to their invention of domesticated pets that had enough intelligence and modified vocal cords to communicate at a limited level with people, termed "talkies." The profit of this invention, and many others helped fund a number of remote research stations across the solar system, and with the Hyperspace Expansion, to the rest of Orion's Arm.
Mercurial Genomics is known for pushing the limits of biological science with their corporate motto being "Worlds Without Boundaries", and the Whately family is known for the habit of exiling members of their family caught breaking UICA laws to remote systems.
Mercurial's strange and unique uplifts continue to rake in profits across human space, both for their vanity; but also as body guards or private soldiers.
A vast industrial conglomerate whose origins can be traced back to Earth's Early Space Age, Wraitheon specializes in cutting-edge robotics, AI solutions, and exotic military hardware. Although deeply lessened after the loss of its in-house hypercomm AI technologies during the discontinuity, the company still controls a sizeable portion of the Solar System's deteriorated industrial base, and is one of the Key powers and main suppliers of UICA (although of course they have no qualms about selling military hardware to other clients). The public knows little else about the current goals and operations of Wraitheon, for the corporation is heavily automated and its few human elements are infamously secretive; and even less about its history, for much of its public records where lost or purposefully obscured in the centuries following the discontinuity.
Out of public view, the enigmatic leaders of Wraitheon fashion themselves as the rightful heirs, keepers and re-builders of the advanced technology developed during The late Hyperspace Era. Shielded behind UICA they obsessively scourge the frontier for technologies at the expense of almost anything else, in a desperate search of the keys to re-ignite Singularity before they degrade into uselessness. At their best, their chartered explorers and robotic ancillaries cooperate, research and trade knowledge with newfound-worlds for the betterment of all. At their worst, they raze and subjugate the same worlds just to ensure access to what little advanced technology they possessed; for if some must be sacrificed to reclaim mankind's lost knowledge, then they will be.
Other smaller corporations mentioned within Aftershock
- Thistle Industries: An Earth based food and drink processing conglomerate. Briefly managed to patent the chemical formula of water in the late 21st century.
- FoodCo: A widely spread fast-food franchise from before the discontinuity. Can have a similar feel to its vanilla counterpart, with heavy branding around the word FOOD and FOODPERSON.