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turn3:achelia

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Achelia

“They say that from the wind's first sigh
Achelia glistered in the sky,
But as greed grew and business flourished
Its natural riches were malnourished.
The brutal planet went to battle
For promises of wealth and chattel.
But this greed was soon elided;
Achelia - a world divided.”

  • Achelia consisted of a solar system with one settled planet and an assortment of surrounding planetoids, asteroids and other celestial bodies not fit for long-term habitation.
  • Before the war, Achelia was a corporate hellhole filled with sweatshops and greedy businesses.
  • After the war, Achelia is even more of a corporate hellhole. It had a brief taste of freedom under the Tungsten Roses, but has since lost that.
  • There is strong resistance to corporate control, but this resistance is easily crushed by Kedalian drones.

A History of Achelia

It often comes as a surprise that Achelia didn't begin as a simple business venture; most people assume that the planet famed for its mineral wealth has always been a production base for the raw materials that power the Seven Systems. Originally, however, people settled for the planet's natural beauty and the captivating manner in which surface crystals shone in the darkness, making Achelia appear as a giant gemstone in the sky. It was only later, when the first settlements grew into a phase of heavy industry, that Achelia gained its reputation as a harsh, greedy planet. Once people realised that their planet's mineral wealth could be traded away for a profit, all bets were off - in a cutthroat dash to pick the world clean, corporations sprang up practically overnight. The successful stayed in power for centuries, whilst those who failed were destined to become Achelia's lower classes, toiling away in sweatshops for their former competitors.

By the time the Ananke Conference was held, Achelia was under the control of its moguls. A nominal government had been put in place; the so-called 'Regulators' acted as a diplomatic organisation and a trade watchdog, supposedly ensuring that Achelia's businesses would be protected whilst also giving its working class a tolerable living standard. To no-one's surprise, the group was corrupted. People soon stopped asking if government officials were on a corporate payroll, and instead started wondering which corporate payroll they were on. With vast wealth disparity now the planetary norm, the downtrodden needed someone to turn to - and that salvation came in the form of the Tungsten Roses. Initially a grassroots artistic movement, young sculptors, architects and metalworkers banded together to try and bring creativity back to Achelia, by combining the brutalist style of the planet's mass accommodations with the vibrant colours of idealised planets like Kybele. For the Roses, the Ananke Conference was an opportunity to show to the Seven Systems that Achelia was no longer merely one vast factory.

This progress came to a halt when war was declared. The corporations gave their greed a gloss of patriotism, pushing people to invade Cheimeros for the glory of Achelia, even when it was obvious that they were simply following Kedalion around. At the same time, revolutions broke out across the planet, orchestrated by the Tungsten Roses, pushing back against the greed of the corporations - Klaycorp, in particular.

Achelia Now

Being allied with two of the strongest military nations left Achelia in a relatively good position throughout the war, even as Eunomia descended ever deeper into violence. Whilst the planet profited on an intergalactic level, internally, there was a great deal of strife. Almost from the get-go, the Tungsten Roses, formerly just an artistic movement, banded together to make a concerted and organised effort towards resisting corporate control, and for a few years, they even managed to gain majority control of the planet, vastly improving the quality of life for the average Achelian, as Klaycorp was relegated to owning just a small portion of the land.

This all changed, however, when Kedalion finally turned on Achelia - for a few months, the forces of the Tungsten Roses, their morale bolstered by their victory over Klaycorp, were able to maintain a stalemate with the far stronger planet. However, they were betrayed from the inside - eight weeks into the conflict, Klaycorp factories began pumping out drones, made exactly to Kedalian specifications. The Roses could not hold against an attack from two fronts, and soon Achelia was back in the hands of Klaycorp once more. This was followed by a swift peace deal between Achelia and Kedalion - one that raised several red flags due to quite how heavily it rested in Kedalion's favour. Klaycorp ceded almost complete control of the planet to Kedalion, in exchange for a seat for Klaycorp on the Kedalian council. Cries of treachery abounded, with many suggesting that Okeana Klay had sold out the Achelian people for her own political gain.

The People of Achelia

Achelia now is a divided planet. Corporate executives live cushy lives in private space vessels equipped with every luxury. Klaycorp, and the few other companies that have been allowed to survive as ‘official subsidiaries’, control private armies to put down any rebellion from the rest of the population. In addition to this, Kedalion has established several 'embassies' and 'security centres' on the surface of Achelia, to ensure co-operation from both the general population and Klaycorp itself. That isn’t to say that the Achelians have successfully been subdued, however: small sweatshop skirmishes, always a feature of corporate life, have been growing into a larger movement headed by the remnants of the Tungsten Roses.

The surviving Tungsten Roses, those not killed when Klaycorp retook control, have mostly been exiled to the asteroids surrounding the planet; fleeing Achelian space, they have become a disbanded group of former freedom fighters. However, given their surprisingly organised efforts at the beginning of the war, there are some who suspect they may still be in close communication with one another.

turn3/achelia.1558435638.txt.gz · Last modified: 2019/05/21 10:47 by gm_mike