¶ The Atlas Empire
Atlas, officially The Atlas Empire and formerly known as the Atlas Federation and the Atlas Corporation, is an interstellar, dictatorial neo-feudalist collective of settled provinces. These provinces are assigned by the High Atlas and managed by one of His Viceroys.
The Empire covers a sizeable tract of the Fringe and is delegated into five provinces. These provinces exhibit a large degree of autonomy, the organization method is to utilize a ‘stepladder of absolute monarchies.’ This can allow for minimal reference to higher power except for certain or express issues. Viceroys may employ their own appointed Chancellors, who are leaders of certain, assigned functions or events within a Viceroy’s territory. They must answer faithfully to their Viceroy and carry out their command.
Atlas' central government on Olympus is well-rooted in the tradition of the Atlas people and their culture, despite their leadership not originally being born in Atlas territory. Their society is very meritocratic, pragmatic, and militaristic, given their origins.
¶ Imperial Provinces
¶ HISTORY
The Empire was preceded by three previous Atlas regimes, each headed by its own respective High Atlas. Originally, Atlas was a dissident branch of a USCM Airborne Division whose overseer, Matthew Enfield, seceded and took his company with him. These former soldiers established themselves in a world they were meant to oversee previously, Olympus. With the collapse of the Fringe arm of the USCM the Atlas, as they had come to be known, were able to establish a city.
This city served as an early example of a prosperous militarized nation in the Fringe. It had come to be known as Olympus, the seat of the Atlas federation. The Atlas federation quickly spread to a few small and remote planets, establishing various listening posts and barracks for their off-world troops. Two such worlds, Sylvanis and Vulcan, were the largest of their kind. These words were established as the chief military training installation, and the largest troop containment barrack respectively.
The nation remained prosperous until, in 3281, the galactic market for the Pixel crashed. This caused widespread chaos to spread across the colony, quickly overwhelming the rather small enforcement militias on the surface of the planet. Eventually, the army was called back in to try and quell the riots, but with quickly dwindling funding and growing conflicts between the government and the people, the government pulled off of Olympus entirely.
With the Federal military in shambles, Matthew Enfield and his personally-assigned company took refuge in the halls of Vulcan, where plans had been laid to take back Olympus. Slowly, as the skeleton-company realized that they did not have the manpower required to accomplish their goals, the conscripts began to trickle out. Enfield, still believing in his mission and his life's work, returned to Olympus with only a small handful of soldiers, and was not seen again.
In a final message broadcasted from the war-torn surface of Olympus, Enfield named his successor, Lieutenant colonel Regala Peters. Regala had been a long-time Atlas soldier and loyal friend to the fallen High Atlas. Under the leadership of Regala, Atlas' objective was to establish a foothold again in the Fringe, so that it may eventually reclaim its homeworld. This regime was the shortest-lived of all major changes of power in Atlas' history. While the foothold Atlas had in the Fringe did grow during this time, it was not considered enough in size or scope to reclaim Olympus. Regala eventually passed control of Atlas to Major Shawn Rhodes and is believed to have made exodus to Civspace with husband Greg Peters.
Shawn Rhodes' regime is the least understood part of Atlas' history. Originally wishing to continue the goals set forth by Regala's regime, Shawn Rhodes focused greatly in the realm of consolidating Atlas' control over its currently-owned territories. This greatly backfired, and the lack of forward momentum caused many of the remaining Atlas conscripts to leave the fold. For a year more, this persisted until Rhodes himself disappeared. Many historians have contested that Atlas formally ended at this time.
A long period of political and operational silence followed in the wake of the collapse of the Atlas government. Two Ex-Atlas conscripts, Donn Hoffman and Lloyd decided one day, while out to lunch on the asteroid-city of Roji, to stage a coup of Rhode's title and try to manage things their way. Once the transfer of power was complete, Atlas was revived as a corporation and saught initial funding from an investor. The Islamic Caliphate in The Fringe was the first and most substantial investor in the corporation, paying for the initial hiring of an operational crew and the first stages of construction for various production facilities and accompanying factories.
In an attempt to safeguard against foreign threats and the collapse of another world under Atlas control, a colonization order was sent out for the gas giant Lapetus, in the Haven system. At the time the Haven Federation had not opened its doors to the Fringe, and so Atlas had no qualms settling the area. Their new capital, proposed as the floating city of Calypso would initially serve as a base of operations and a ship production port. With the first platform dropped into the world, Atlas began production off-world of an automated labor force to compensate for the lack of organic participants in labor. Initially, this proved more expensive than hiring people to do the work, but the ICIF again invested in this production line and within a few weeks, the first ATL robots were created. With the help of a constant supply of ATL labor drones, the foundation for what would become Calypso was created.
With the corporation rapidly expanding, Atlas began generating its own revenue from the sale of weapon and drone technology. This allowed for the easy expansion of many factories and production centers on various worlds and the negotiation of deals and even alliances with powers like the ICIF and the Holy Dominion. Separate departments for operations within Atlas were established and a company hierarchy formed over time to assist in project management. During this time, Atlas' technology level skyrocketed as the protection from outside influence and a solid financial cushion allowed the company to explore nearly any research opportunity they wanted to. Valuable sectors for electronic production were established in Calypso as it expanded. This allowed Atlas to produce and control its own territory. It was during this time of immense upward trajectory that the highest department of Atlas laid the plan to return to greatness.
Atlas began setting its sights on expansion, now possessing the ability to mobilize and move about forces capable of constructing small colonies, the first expeditions were set out of the gas world to nearby moons. The first moon visited by the company was Nomeldros, a molten moon of Lapetus. Mere weeks passed from this time until there was a mining operation on the surface of the moon.