Pythia Solutions

Divisions (as of Year 325)

Pythia Construction & Infrastructure

The original division. Still operates, now primarily in colony development. The public face, the reason grandparents trusted the name, and why nobody has quite managed to be fully suspicious of Pythia despite everything.

Pythia Energy & Utilities

Manages power grids across Hope and the colonies (Hell and Gaspra’s moon). A quiet division. Essential leverage: whoever controls the power controls everything that runs on it.

Pythia Data, Research & Predictive Solutions

The surveillance engine, marketed as analytics, Government contracts, “Security partnerships.” The division that produced the intelligence brought to the secret meeting, and has been producing it ever since.

Pythia Defense Engineering

Weapons systems, military aircraft, hardware, but also a high-end laboratory to develop new concepts, new technologies and new ways to improve the current mass surveillance.

Pythia Strategic Operations

The mercenary arm, contracted by governments for “direct action.”. They are staffed by people who understand that their employment history, officially, looks like something else entirely.

History

Early stages

Pythia Solutions was founded in Y120 by Aaron Pierce, of the 3rd post crash generation. The company’s initial goal was building construction, but had to adapt when the market changed focus in order to not close down like thousands of other companies did at that time.

In the span of 140 years, Pythia managed to get “exclusive” contracts from the Government by showing talent, hardworking skills and adaptability. Thus, once construction was no longer the priority, they were also asked to wire buildings together.

Then, since they laid out cables, they were already there to add some more, in order to connect inhabitants together with internet. Having the cables exclusivity forced Pythia to also provide internet to the multibillion inhabitants world wide, but they managed to get through that as well.

By Y250, the Government was aware of the information potential that Pythia held, but those weren’t too kin into letting the Government have it, for privacy reason

The “Blood Bath”

Setup

Around Y240, after opening the “Pythia Energy & Utilities” branch, the Pierce family was now counting more than 40 members.

They realized that nothing was stopping them from opening backdoors and recording citizen’s browsing history, phone calls, etc.

While a half of the Pierce family directly thought about the business potentials this represented, another half was deeply upset that Pyhia could become a mass surveilling company while it started as an innocent building company. After lots of internal conflicts and tensions, the part of the family wanting to “explore” the potential decided that the family needed to be united towards one goal, and that they didn’t need “weak black sheeps” among them.

The murders

The “pro-leaking” part of the family decided to hire a mafia specialized in “removing problems permanently”, and they honored their contract. In the span of several days, every members against the idea of collaborating with the Government were found dead, in various gruesome ways. Those murders made the headlines in the press for several months, since nobody knew what was happening and the “surviving” part showed deep concern.

The deal

Right after this event, the “surviving family” met with the Government with a portfolio containing every conspiration and terrorist attacks in preparations against them. Alongside were names, coordinates, related family members and friends, and pictures. The deal was the following: those names, for “free”, against an exclusive and public partnership. The Government took the deal after 2 weeks of thinking, with the conditions that they were to decide when this partnership would end, without strings attached, and that they were sole deciders of the business that will happen between them. Pythia accepted both conditions, even though we know today that from then on, the lobbying on their part toward the government have been relentless.

Aftermaths

Signing the Partnership tripled Pythia’s wealth overnight. However, internally, the mood wasn’t to festivities. The company had to mass recruit to answer the Government’s requests that came in full force the day after, all while maintaining the media coverage and about the timing and coherence between the murders and the partnership deal. They also had to deal with the shock, because while they decided on the mafia’s hire as a whole, actually see family members dead was traumatizing for most of the “survivors”. This almost ended the family’s existence the generation after, since having heir for the family weren’t in anyone’s mind anymore.

The rogue survivor

Only one family member among the “black sheeps” survived, Anton Pierce. The morning after the first murders, he left the company to open its own, P&S Technologies, and had a media coverage about it, rendering him untouchable. Since then, he has been telling to whoever wants to ear that the Pierce organized those murders, without any claims for this. And having a rather successful corporation on its own makes him untouchable, since killing him would make things extremely suspect for the rest of the Pierce family.

Legacy

Pythia has been in the Pierce family’s hands since Year 120, not without contestation (see: The Corporate Blood Bath below), but without interruption. The current heir is the latest in a line that stretches back to the original settlers, the original construction contracts, and the secret meeting of Year 286 that made everything else possible.

The heir today

Mickael Pierce is the latest (at least, for now) heir of the Pierce dynasty. He’s officially part of the company’s board directory, but in reality, he completely controls it. The other members do more a role of advisor than actual deciders.

He appears as young, charismatic and a real charmer, which gives him this “naive” look. However, everything is calculated and he uses this as a tool to get what he wants.

Family Tree

• Generation 1 - Year 120 (The Founders)

Incorporated Pythia. Established the first government relationship through informal arrangements. Recognized that infrastructure ownership was the real prize.

• Generation 2 → 4 - Years 120 -> 250 (The Builders)

Oversaw the verticalization across 130 years. Managed the colonial expansion. Presided over the simmering internal conflict that became the Blood Bath.

• Generation 5 - Year 285 (The Blood Bath Generation)

The winning faction eliminated the dissenters. One Pierce escaped and founded P&S Technologies. The winning Pierce attended the secret meeting of Year 286. This is the ancestor whose decisions the current heir is most directly the product of.

• Generations 6 → 8 - Years 286->325 (The Consolidators)

Formalized the mercenary division. Deepened the lobbying relationship. Watched the government’s “upper hand” condition erode from meaningful to nominal.