Genesis of the factions

With the discovery of hyper-propulsion, mankind leaped at the future with all its traditional fierceness and greed...
It threw itself wholeheartedly into an endless conquest of new « Terrae Incognitae »...
Seeking God and...

... Profit...

Its New World were planet-sized Americas, their discoverers and explorers were the pioneers who, with technological machetes, opened a passage to grandiose horizons.
Terra-forming led the drive for a new gold-rush. A planet's surface was pared down, purified... in a word, made ready for human consumption...
Millions of « formers » settled on these new dream-earths, sinking into colossal debt.

The re-modeling of a planet required considerable means, both in manpower and equipment. The initial euphoria of the early days gave way to a bitter realization... Terra-formers worked in extremely harsh conditions. Hostile environments, a life far from home, constant brawls, wore down even the most determined. Beside which, few operators ever saw the result of their labor (or reap the benefits), as an average of 20 years of terra-forming was necessary to get a stable habitat.
Meanwhile, powerful economic groups were building up planet-size empires. The shipping of raw materials and manpower became a primary stake in a covert conflict, which soon blossomed into an all-out war ... known as the « Hegemon War ».

The humans' swarming through space slowed perceptibly when, tired of dying in their thousands to fill the pockets of shareholders, the terra-forming operators
became a vanishing specie. The dream had become a nightmare, and the first to awake created worker's unions. A rebellion swept like an epidemic across the new worlds. In reaction, the shareholders formed in their turn a « collective » to protect their interests.

A bad image, negative publicity, repeated shortages of manpower led the moneymen to launch a « high-salary » policy, and to practice a « forced volunteers » recruiting policy.
A new social economy appeared. The drive for the psychological and social rehabilitation of injured and crippled workers developed into new research, designed to put to a new use this manna of experienced but useless workers.

Four major fields were born, four types of firms : Biogenetics, Psycho-cognitive development or PCD, Cybernetics and Biochemical Engineering.

Biogenetics Firms

After some extraordinary breakthroughs in genetic engineering, the hope of altering altering the code for specific functions, even on an adult subject, became a reality. Accelerating a subject's growth, replacing amputated limbs, inoculating class 2 « Terminator » genes (class 1 genes merely sterilize, class 2 kill viruses and parasitic organisms) made it possible to replace workers and resolve the perpetual shortage of manpower.

Psycho-Conative Development or PCD Firms

Stress, chronic depression, and the abuse of psychotropic substances provided by the local underworld, caused an exponential increase of already-existing neuroses and psychoses – and even created new ones. A massive outbreak of mental illness (maniacal or schizophrenic in expression), and an upsurge of paranoid psychoses, brought the suicide and murder rates to a dangerous level. As a result, the local authorities of planets still in the process being terra-formatted, decided on systems of very... negative quarantines, for their own profit and for the good of the operators.

Psycho-Conative Development started from the principle that a worker who is convinced he is happy, is in fact happy.

Self-Persuasion and Psycho-kinetics development (changing one's environment through the power of mind alone) created specialized workers able to perform in extremely hostile conditions.


Cybernetics Firms

Injuries due to third-degree freezing, crushing, contaminations, burns, etc, led to more and more elaborate research on intelligent prosthestics, on synthetic skins and on the replacement or duplication of internal organs. Bio-cybernetics technology grew apace and found an extremely wide, and extremely profitable, field of application.

Biochemical Firms

Working in areas as diverse as the brains neurotransmitters (psychotropic anxiety drugs, tranquilizers, ...), or nanotechnology (micro-bots, micro-tubes and extremely high resistance to pull, cold, heat, ...), biochemistry made a comfortable niche for itself in the « re-socialization » competition. Low costs, easy-to-use processes, made it the favorite solution for both the great investors' groups and the « patients ».