Kedalion

Welcome to Kedalion. The Corporate Council invites you to visit the Grand Showcase, and see what services we are able to provide. Visitors are reminded that they are responsible for their own personal and data security while on planet, and no liability is accepted by the corporations for the unsanctioned actions of any person. I am an Opti configured to help guide you through your visit - in the event of a question requiring human intelligence, I will be able to pass you on to a human operator.
- Introductory recording for the Gamma standard visitor assistant, provided to visiting diplomats and businesspeople.

• The Kedalion system has one inhabited planet, with three (uninhabited) moons. The other planets in the system are unremarkable gas giants.
• Before the war, Kedalion was a centre of industry - with particular specialisms in manufacturing, automation, and cybernetics.
• The system was also infamous for a tangled culture of corporate espionage, both within Kedalian society and against foreign businesses.
• Following the War, Kedalion is scarred both from planetary bombardment and from the waste produced by those facilities.
• The corporate leaders from before the war have not been seen for some time, and the planet’s day-to-day management is controlled by a series of optimisation programmes which keep the cities running according to schedule.

From the start, Kedalion was pure business - settled close to both the resource-rich Achelia, and the (at the time) wealthy Eunomia, Myriad Manufacturing Corp and their partners aimed to create an industrial and engineering powerhouse. Free from excessive regulation. Free from the constraints of an already settled planet. Free from anyone else's taxes. With some generous trade deals set up in the early days (already accompanied by allegations of corruption and espionage), Kedalion grew quickly. The executives of the corporations made more and more money, the workers kept a good enough life that it wasn't worth leaving, and the corporate espionage operatives were kept busy acquiring or destroying secrets, technology, prototypes, and people.

By the time of The Ananke Conference, Kedalion was ruled over by a council formed of representatives from the various corporations with an interest there - their representation proportional to their contribution to the economy. The three big players were Myriad Manufacturing (the founders of the settlement, and still the largest corporate interest there), Opti Automation Solutions (a close second) and NewYou (a distant third, specialising in cybernetic enhancement). Much of the day to day running of operations was handled by “optis” (or “optimisation engines”), not true artificial intelligences, but programs which could optimise towards a preprogrammed set of goals and priorities, taking into account all the data available and any preset limits. The leap to a true AI - which could change its goals in response to a changing situation - was never made.

Following the conference, Kedalion announced a new corporate strategy and the development of a new set of optimisation processes to improve Kedalion’s strategic position. The planet immediately began gearing up for war. Following the takeover of Achelia by the Tungsten Roses, Kedalion invaded their former trading partner. The initial attacks were repelled - though not without some significant Achelian losses - but the tide of war turned when the factories of KlayCorp (and Achelian corporation) began to pump out Kedalian drones. This turned the tide of the war to Kedalion's favour, and also allowed KlayCorp to seize control of Achelia back from the Tungsten Roses - control which was almost immediately surrendered to Kedalion in an extremely one-sided peace treaty.

Now Achelia is under almost complete control of Kedalion, and KlayCorp sit on Kedalion's corporate council. While this is seen in Achelia as a great betrayal, for the Kedalian people this kind of corporate backstabbing is just business as usual.

Factories cover huge swathes of the planet, but now that Kedalion is not actively at war many of these are being dismantled or repurposed. The planet bears some scars from the war against Achelia, but the forces of the Tungsten Roses only managed a few strikes within the Kedalion system.

The people live in cities, many of the purpose-built in the early stages of the war. Living conditions are not exactly spacious, but nor are they so cramped as to allow disease and misery to spread - and under the guidance of Nix Ralone, OAS Vice President of Forward Strategy, projects are underway to return to pre-war living conditions, or even better. People live in tall tower blocks run and monitored by the cities’ optimisation systems, with each individual allotted a living space with a specified number of square feet and regular deliveries of nutrient paste and sanitation products. Entertainment is available, mostly in the form of streams pirated from Kybele, and each skyscraper has an exercise suite to keep people in good health.

The autonomous security network monitors who goes in and out. Now that the war is over, this is mostly used for basic border controls, and to ensure that smugglers at least have to make an effort. While bandits were a problem in the system during the war, now that the Kedalian drones are not needed for the war effort, the bandits are finding it much harder to operate.

This situation isn’t popular with everyone and there have been several attempts at rebellion, notably one by the Menagerie gang, who smashed several living units in protest at the lack of personal freedom. The gang members were removed from the situation and put in ‘Ultimate Safety Bunkers’ for their own protection. This stuck many people as odd, as the Ultimate Safety Bunkers had otherwise been reserved for Kedalion’s elite of executives.

Little has been heard from the bunkers, but occasionally hackers from the Menagerie manage to get some contact with the outside world. The picture within is one of absolute safety, with any possible hazard removed from the environment and inhabitants often sedated if they attempt anything remotely dangerous - or controversial. With the war now over, the executives have mostly returned to public life (or officially retired), but nothing further has been heard from the Menagerie.

The general population of Kedalion lives in carefully planned cities, and most eat the nutrient mush rations which are supplied from automated farms outside the cities and made from crops carefully engineered to be nutritionally complete. The joke is that these are enough for you to survive on, calculated down to the calorie, by some Opti which has been told to keep everyone alive at the lowest cost possible. This doesn’t seem to be entirely accurate, as the nutrient paste does at least come in a few different flavours, and various entertainments are provided. Black market farms and food smuggling were rife for a while, but tightened security measures have made this difficult. Often, the people can be found in the small stretches of park land between the tower blocks - either participating in communal tech projects (and trying to be the first to run off with the idea and sell it to one of the corporations), or just enjoying the dubiously fresh air.

Life is no different for the executives of smaller corporations. Most of their time is spent reassuring the public at large that they are still in charge, and this is all for their own good in the long run, but their assurances fall mostly on deaf ears. The Executives of the larger corporations spent most of the war in heavily fortified bunkers, allowing Optis to manage their day-to-day operations, but have now emerged and are once again taking control of their companies.