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. When the Eunomian government became embroiled in both a civil war and a war on Selas, Kedalion were quick to join the fight. The corporate espionage operatives quickly found that their skills were equally applicable in sabotaging enemy production, or stealing plans, so long as they could get in system. In short, Kedalion were terrifyingly effective. Kedalion began the war allied with the Eunomian Government, and Achelia, but quickly forged an alliance with the Dusk Briareons in an attempt to break the Briareon food bloc. Although Achelia appeared to turn on Kedalion during the mid stages of the war, the incident was quickly written off as an accident.

While Kedalion’s efficient war strategy optimisation certainly helped, the fact that they were fighting a war on so many fronts slowly lost them their initial edge. They ceded Briareos and Selas, but maintained a steely grip on Cheimeros once it was annexed. However, these fights were not without many losses.

Factories cover huge swathes of the planet, some still pumping out drones and other autonomous fighters for the ongoing war, some providing necessities for the remaining people, and most glitched out and filled with wildly flailing machines as a result of constant cyberattacks. Most of the remaining space is useless - either bare craters, or zones too filled with radiation, toxins, or other hazards for anyone to survive. While much of this is from planetary bombardments and other attacks by Kedalion's enemies, a large proportion is self inflicted, as the need to produce more and more weaponry outstripped minor concerns like environmental pollution, or careful testing of new designs.

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. 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 will have an exercise suite to keep people in good health..

The autonomous security network monitors who goes in and out. Broadly speaking, the answer is ‘nobody’. The hazards of the ruined planet and those few bandits who have managed to escape the enforced infrastructure is too great to allow that kind of risk to human life, and so only people performing essential tasks are allowed out of their assigned quarters with any regularity.

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.

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, but the general gist appears accurate. Black market farms and food smuggling were rife for a while, but tightened security measures have made this difficult. Anyone who wants to venture out of their home has to either have incredible hacking skills or somehow get the security systems on their side. After that, it’s wise to go armed, as most people who have avoided the tower blocks are not known for their friendly demeanours.

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 have not been seen in years, and while information public information suggests that they are still controlling the Optis which work for the betterment of Kedalion, some wonder whether it is in fact the other way around…