Hope's History

Year 0 / The crash

Why, how or when people left Earth is unknown. All we know is that this wasn’t the only ship, and what happened right when said ship entered OP 220144 b’s atmosphere: they crashed.

The loss among the persons onboard is rumored to have been catastrophic, so the survivors entered a frenzy phase where they had to set things up in order of not having any more death post crash.

They stripped the ship’s remain bare, loosing in the same time the technlogies that made them survive the trip from Earth, removing forever the possibility to return one day from where they came from. The only thing they managed to keep safe were the frozen embryos.

Years 0 → 120 / The Foundation Era

Using Earth knowledge and salvaged materials, the survivors built at a pace that should not have been possible. They had blueprints, engineering knowledge, and the particular focus of people with nowhere else to go. The planet’s own mineral resources fed the early construction: iron, stone, whatever was accessible on the surface and near-surface of Hope itself.

Governance emerged from necessity rather than design. The early administrations were functional rather than ideological: keeping people fed and housed was the politics. The ideology came later, once survival was no longer the immediate question. And if they ever failed, they got replaced at the blink of an eye.

Countless corporations formed during this period, competing for contracts in the expanding city. Most did not survive the century. The ones that did understood something the others didn’t: the infrastructure was the prize, not the buildings built on top of it.

Year 120: Pythia Solutions is founded

More about Pythia here: Pythia Solutions

Pythia’s creation didn’t exactly made history, since tons of corporations were created the day before, and tons the day after. They simply got lucky enough to be able to adapt to the the field’s reality rather than staying focus on their expertise.

Years 120 → 285 / The Verticalization Era

Through Pythia’s help (and good positioning with the government), Hope slowly took its Coruscant-esque appearence it has today. Skycrappers everywhere, industries, huge public transportation networks (only the top 1% get to have their own vehicles, since letting everyone having their vehicule would make huge traffic jams)

Gaspra’s moon was colonized in the Year 130, when scientists raised huge alarms that the planet’s resources weren’t finite, but Hell’s colonization happened 65 years later, in the Year 195. At that point, Hope’s economy was about to collapse.

Year 286 / The Partnership announcement

Almost out of nowhere, the government announced a solid partnership with what was now one of the few megacorporations on the planet’s surface, Pythia Solutions. This partnership would provide the Government with more “bandwidth” for their operations, and ability to answer the inhabitants pleas for more a decent condition of living, which was forgotten during the Verticalization Era.

Years 286 → 325 / The Consolidation Era

It turns out that the Governments own ministries were in a dire position, with less and less fundings. Its own military was reknowned to be violent and unreliable unless things needed to be broken (including bones). Operating a huge cleansing would be extremely dangerous, since it would leave the Goverment defenseless. Plus, the military members are extremely patriotic, which causes problems on several layers if purged.

Adding Pythia as an extension of their own power provides the Goverment with a new military service composed of mercenaries known to be discreet and efficient, the polar opposite of what was currently in place. The Government liked it so much that knowing if those mercernaries are controlled by Pythia or the Government is becoming blurry nowadays

Year 325 / Present days

Pythia Solutions is Hope’s biggest megacorporation, and the Government is their biggest client. While Pythia has all interest keeping the Goverment has a client, the Goverment can ditch Pythia (with a lot of convincing) at any time. Dozens of other megacorps will jump on the occasion to replace parts of the services Pythia Solutions were offering.

The player joins Pythia here, as a junior project manager, fresh from a degree they are still paying for, needing the job. They have no idea they are entering an institution this old, or this deep.