Regenius
01-08-2006, 18:53
The history of Regenius begins with the history of one man. Frederick J. Alexander was born in 2022 to a world of strife. European Unification had brought a third superpower on the scene and upset the careful balance struck by the aging United States and the tenacious People’s Republic of China. When Russia joined the EU in 2035, China perceived a military threat. The People’s Republic stripped away what limited rights it had reinstated and prepared for war. Open hostilities broke out when a nuclear weapon was detonated in Berlin during the G8 council. Later traced to rouge terrorists from the old North Korean state, the Chinese were blamed for the attack on the western world and the invasion of China began. Frederick J. Alexander, then a child prodigy of aeronautics at MIT, was called back by his homeland of Germany to the Air Force. Alexander willingly served; most of his family was from the Berlin region and died in the attack.
For the next 12 years, Alexander worked with German engineers developing some of the most terrible airborne weapons of the war, including the HC-514 Panzeradler, the Iron Eagle, Earth’s first orbital attack craft. Able to fly above Chinese detection by dive bombing from space, the Panzeradler turned the tide of the war, culminating in EU victory in 2047 with the treaty of Tokyo Bay. Alexander was honored as a “Hero of the Union,” and when the state owned Bundesflugzeugwerks came up for private ownership after the war, the engineers gave their unanimous support to Alexander, the Iron Eagle who had saved the Union. He humbly accepted.
The company went public in 2049 and the capital was used to rebuild Earth’s derelict space industry. Slowly, the BFW bought out its competitors in the EU and became the premier aircraft and space vessel construction firm in Europe with the hostile take-over of Airbus in 2053. Despite having amassed vast resources and an incredible market share, the eternal bone of contention for Frederick J. Alexander was his board of trustees, the major shareholders of the company. That was soon to change.
On March 2, 2064, Frederick J. Alexander went before the BFW Board of Trustees offering to buy out their shares. Many gladly gave up their shares to the Hero of the Union, making a small profit along the way of course. Alexander managed to procure a further 23% of the company, bringing him to an even 50% of control. However, 7 men, forming a group calling themselves “the trust” refused to budge. The Trust were convinced that the incredible military technology now being produced by the BFW were being sold to warlords and threatened the very European Union that Alexander was supposedly a hero of.
These allegations were, of course, true. In the years since the war, BFW had surpassed even the mighty armies of America in technological expertise. Most of Alexander’s personal wealth came from selling surplus Panzeradlers to various rogue nations of the world. While officially, Alexander maintained that arming these nations was, “Critical in providing buffer states against the expansion of enemies of the freedoms of the western world,” the truth was that these craft were used more against the nation’s own people or its neighbors than against the big three.
On June 15th, 2064, Ernst Siegfried, leader of The Trust, went before the European Union’s Supreme Court in Geneva with accusations of high crimes against the Union by Frederick J. Alexander. Frederick J. Alexander entered the courtroom in full military regalia, his medals shimmering in the summer sun. He sat in full silence as the Trust’s well funded lawyers made their air-tight case against Alexander. Witnesses, go-betweens, smugglers, and transport operators all testified that he had sold the planes to unauthorized nations. Alexander refused to question a single witness, passing every chance with a wave of his hand. Finally, the prosecution rested, and Alexander got up to make his case.
In what is considered to be the founding moment of Regenius, Frederick J. Alexander drew the ceremonial sword of his uniform and decapitated Siegfried in one clean swipe. Screams went up from the courtroom as Alexander replaced his sword as his pure white uniform was dyed a sickly crimson. The head of the tribunal demanded that the master at arms seize Alexander, but the court neglected to realize that it was a BFW security firm that had its guards in the courtroom that day. The master at arms stood his ground. Alexander turned to the bench and stated in a cool tone, “Due to the absence of a prosecution, this case is dismissed.” Alexander then walked out the door, flanked by the rows of his guards.
The reaction was incredible. Riots broke out across the EU demanding that the world’s wealthiest gun-runner be held accountable for the murder he committed on national television. In BFW’s home region of Brandenburg, the riots were non-existent, as 90% of the working class was employed by Alexander either directly or indirectly. Alexander’s private military mobilized, under the authorization of the Brandenburg government he had his workers vote in. In one fell swoop, Brandenburg had effectively seceded from the EU and was under the direct control of Alexander.
Alexander’s new powers did not stop at the borders of Brandenburg. Siegfried’s death broke the 50-50 stalemate between Alexander and the Trust, and the latter quickly collapsed. The BFW was dismantled and reorganized as the Regen Corporation on 17 June, 2064 under the sole direction of Frederick Alexander.
The EU reacted quickly, but found that its BFW equipment simply died when started up, thanks to a clever kill-switch built in by Alexander years earlier. Possessing the last fleet of Iron Eagles in Europe, those regions of the EU that had not been bought off by Alexander were bombed into capitulation. The EU officially ended hostilities on December 25, 2064 in the Christmas Declaration, making Brandenburg an “Independent Economic Zone,” effectively giving the Regen Corporation and Alexander their own country outside of EU authority.
Just because the EU couldn’t touch Brandenburg did not mean that Brandenburg did not touch the rest of Europe. Alexander bought off the major courts, shooting down anti-trust suits as Regen expanded from its traditional Aeronautics and security services into a full fledged conglomerate, offering everything its people could need at prices no one could beat. Through sheer cut-throat capitalism, Europe was brought under the thumb of the Regen Corporation by 2070.
Even though the Regen Corporation made no infringement on personal rights (indeed, the de jure EU government that remained in power had the rights it guaranteed to the citizens of Europe expanded), resistance movements formed, most notably the Crimson Wing under Nathaniel Radlin.
Consisting mainly of communists, anarchists, and hardcore EU supporters, the Crimson Wing terrorized France and Spain for 2 years before Radlin was captured in 2069. On 15 June 2069, the five year anniversary of Siegfried’s murder, a tribunal found Radlin guilty of crimes against humanity and was executed with the same sword that had started the expansion of Alexander’s power half a decade earlier. Radlin died with the words that have inspired subsequent resistance groups, “Capitalism has enslaved man, and communism shall liberate him.”
With the resources of all of Europe under his control under the slick supply networks of Regen Corp (in place of the bureaucratic dealings that had doomed airbus), Regen quickly surpassed Boeing and Lockheed Martin combined and won its first US military contract in 2073. This marked the beginning of the end of the US air-space industry. By 2080, all air and space craft in the US bore a gleaming Regen Corporation logo.
Frederick J. Alexander would not live to see his dream of all of the Western World’s air and space craft produced by his company. He died on 18 October 2078 from a massive stroke. Due to the large supply of Regen blood thinners he was taking (Regen had acquired 75% of the world’s pharmaceutical industries by that point), many conspiracy theories have emerged that his death was nothing short of assassination by the remaining members of the Trust who were still seeking revenge. Officially, high stress from the buyout of Boeing is what sparked the great leader’s demise.
The death of the man who had made the Regen Corporation struck the company hard. An international day of mourning was declared by the EU, and all workers were given the day off as company executives struggled to determine who would succeed Alexander. Frantically caught in a power struggle, the various officers voted Frederick Alexander’s son Thomas into power as a transitional figurehead. They severely underestimated just how little a distance the fruit can fall from the tree.
Thomas Alexander (referred to as Thomas Alexander I in the General Chronology of Regenian Leaders to avoid confusion with the current CEO Thomas Alexander II) is considered to be the man who created what can truly be recognized as the modern Regenian state. A tenacious, power-hungry, paranoid man, he pursued power as his father pursued wealth. The de jure state of the EU, which had been long since replaced by the de facto Regen Corporation hierarchy, was formally disbanded at the Congress of Madrid in 2089, leaving Thomas Alexander I in sole control of the continent. Applying the same methods of buying off courts and creating massive conglomerates that his father had used to conquer Europe, Thomas brought the Americas under his control by 2093 after much resistance by the Free Western Governments, a loose economic alliance born from the ashes of NAFTA to resist Regenian conglomeration. The last Free Western Government formally voted itself out of existence in 2102 on the island of Haiti.
While his father had left the old governments to rule the land in name, Thomas Alexander I forged his unique system of government to rule the land. Branding himself as a “capitalist libertarian,” he more or less did not care about the personal lives of his people so long as they continued to purchase Regenian goods and did not threaten Regenian property or customers. To this end, a congress in New Berlin was called of the heads of the major pillars of Regen Corp’s many subordinate businesses and a draft of the Declaration of the Rights and Restrictions of Man was created. This document foreshadowed the modern “Guidelines for Citizen Conduct,” but the two differed in the critical manner that the former allowed for the collection of taxes, which Alexander practiced. At this point, while Regen controlled nearly all of the West’s airspace and military companies (China proved reluctant to accept Regenian business), it only controlled 75% of its territories’ agriculture and pharmaceuticals and only 60% of heavy industries like mining and smelting. Regen never entered the consumer goods business, and thus the strange dichotomy of a near control economy in some fields was balanced by true no-holds-barred capitalism in the consumer realm. The dismantling of the courts combined with the tax financed Regenian Security Forces, however, kept crime to levels unheard of before the great expansion of the company. The invisible hand even managed to keep itself in check. Thomas Alexander I calculated that since an average of 60% of an employee’s income was spent on Regen products, then he could raise wages by 30% and still make a profit. Thomas raised the unusually low (but not critically low) wages of his father, and productivity soared. So did the profits of the Regen Corporation, allowing its influence to expand ever further as independent companies were forced to keep their wages high despite the total lack of minimum wage laws to keep workers from flocking to the perpetual job openings offered by Regen’s new businesses which seemed to be growing exponentially.
In 2132, Thomas Alexander I made a press release, making it clear that his son, Jonathan Alexander (designated Jonathan Alexander I) was to succeed him as head of the company, and it did not come a day too soon. Continuing a proud tradition of patriarchs dying under suspicious circumstances, Thomas Alexander I was struck by a high speed train having “tripped” over himself and was killed. Jonathan insisted that no autopsy be performed and that the casket should remain closed during the funeral. Many pointed to this as signs of murder, but years later it was revealed that the train had imprinted the Regen logo from its front in the remains of Thomas Alexander I’s face and Jonathan I decided that pictures of such an injury would only fuel fledgling resistance movements. When a satirical comedy news program managed to procure the only known picture of the body and aired it, Jonathan had its anchor put to death for crimes against the Regen Corporation. The charge was completely trumped up, but it mattered not. The courts had been formally disbanded by Amendment 23 to the Declaration of the Rights and Restrictions of Man 2 years earlier. Through the years, the Regen Corporation continued to practice its cut-throat capitalist with major industries while fostering true capitalism in the private sector. However, Asia remained impenetrable to Regenian influence, even though North Africa (Treaty of Tripoli of 2134), South America (Declaration of Santiago of 2145), and the Middle East (The Jerusalem Accords of 2152) had all fallen under Regenian “control.” The People’s Republic became a refuge from the capitalistic meritocracy of Regen, which would ultimately lead to its undoing. Without unemployment insurance, those not skilled enough to secure a job with Regen or the private sector (or those without the connections to secure the said jobs) fled to China, causing the economy of the People’s Republic to stagnate under the stress. Otto Alexander I, spying an opportunity, decreed that all criminals were to be expelled from Regenian territories to China to increase the crippling flood of ineptitude and lethargy.
Otto Alexander I, however, was too confident in believing that China was no longer a threat. For, while Regen had devoted its enormous resources to making incredible developments in the fields of nano-robotics, artificial intelligence, cybernetic implants, and energy solutions to improve the lives of man, it neglected space travel, the very thing that had forged the BFW so many years before.
On January 1, 2174, while Otto was celebrating the 125th anniversary of the BFW going public, the Chinese government announced that it now possessed faster-than-light capabilities with the successful testing of its first FTL craft. Stunned and shamed that he had let the mighty space wing of Regen Corp fall into disrepair, Otto I peacefully stepped down as CEO of Regen Corporation and handed power to his brother, Jacob Alexander, to be known to the ages as Jacob the Great.
Jacob’s first move was a fast and furious capitalistic assault. Limited capitalist reforms in the People’s Republic had been made to try and jump-start the sluggish economy which was collapsing from crop failure due to the influx of immigrants. One of these reforms was the creation of a People’s Patent Office. While the Regen Corporation had always believed in freedom of information (Patents were banned in Regen-influence territories, anyone with the money and know-how could produce any product they desired), they quickly exploited this weakness of their enemy, purchasing all patents related to FTL technology through front organizations in the Independent States, mainly Mongolia due to its proximity to both China and Regen powerhouse Russia. This sudden influx of foreign wealth boosted the Chinese government and did give them the kick start they needed to revive their economy into something that could rival the European branch of Regen Corporation. Many citizens openly slandered Jacob the Great, saying he had fallen asleep at the wheel just as his brother had, allowing the Chinese to rebuild their economy and acquire FTL technology with no response by Regen Corp (the acquisition of FTL technology by Regen via its fronts was not made public). Jacob simply patiently waited and began construction of a new fleet of ships in Regen’s orbital shipyards.
The ships were called Blitzadlers, Lightening Eagles, after the Panzeradlers that had given Frederick J. Alexander his start. The new ships had FTL drives and the most advanced Regenian weaponry on board. The 6 person craft could enter into short range FTL “sprints,” pop out of nowhere over the enemy target, bomb them into submission, and the sprint back to base before the enemy had a chance to scramble fighters. And that is exactly what Jacob the Great intended to do.
Since the Great Sino-European War, China had put its money into orbital detection and defense systems, making a future strike by Iron Eagles impossible and allowing the Chinese to build up a sense of false protection behind their walls. On April 18th, 2179, the Blitzadlers made their strikes, incinerating 90% of China’s military strength before they even had a chance to raise their military to their full alertness level. Their response consisted of a sole archaic nuclear warhead that managed to get off the ground. It was promptly shot down by a Blitzadler. In all, some 2 Billion Chinese citizens were killed within the single 24 attack run. Beijing surrendered, but not before the hardliners stripped every piece of military hardware left and began a new wave of resistance under Radlin’s motto; Capitalism enslaves where communism liberates. Under General Sum Wang Fu, they came to call themselves the Black Lotus, and they were fixed on revenge.
With a great victory in China, Jacob the Great dismantled the old government with the Treaty of Ulan-Bator of 2182, brining Regen rule to the area. The Black Lotus was fuelled by the dissenters who were exiled to China before the Sino-Regen War and quickly made life miserable for Regen Corp China. Infrastructure was bombed, Regen leaders were killed, and prices skyrocketed. Many were voicing concerns over the instability in China, so Jacob the Great decided to do something about the situation. He moved to distract the world with the Glorification Crusade.
The Glorification Crusade was a move by Jacob the Great to instill a feeling of awe for the Regen Corporation in the Incorporated Citizens of the world (not to be confused with the Free Citizens of the remaining Independent States). Massive monuments, museums, academies, and public works projects were commissioned out of Jacob the Great’s own pocket money. “Government involvement in projects like these is a crime against humanity,” Jacob was quoted as saying, “but this is a gift to humanity.” Within 5 years, all of Regen’s territories were fully electrified and had safe running water. These utilities were turned over to private companies to run who knew that maintenance would be profitable while start-up was costly. In New Berlin, capital of the old Brandenburg region and home of the international headquarters of Regen Corporation (which had retained its title despite the fact that nations no longer existed in the territory of Regenian influence), the Thomas Alexander I Library was commissioned as a receptacle of all of the knowledge of man (it compiled 85% of the world’s estimated information within 3 years alone, and achieved 99% compilation in another five). In the center of New Berlin, an enormous statue to Frederick J. Alexander was constructed and was hailed as a new Colossus upon its completion in 2197. Made from solid gold, the statue’s gleam could be seen over 70 miles away on sunny days. When lightening struck the statue on New Year’s Day 2200, many took it as a sign that the heavens disapproved of Regen Corporation. Jacob the Great, then 78 years old, climbed to the top of the statue in the storm. He pried off a piece of the partially molten metal with a silk gloved hand and yelled to the heavens, “May the Gods judge Regenius as they judge me today!” He was immediately struck by lightening and fell 100 feet to the ground below. Jacob the Great was revived using cerebral resuscitators, recently developed by Regen’s medical division, but died two days later, still clutching the piece of gold of the great statue. The Cross of Jacob the Great, as the x-shaped piece of gold has come to be known, is the only remaining piece of the great statue remaining and had been worn out of tradition by each CEO of Regen Corp as a symbol of the pitfalls of pride.
The scarred statue remained unrepaired through the subsequent leaders, but the Glorification Crusade had its desired effect. The Regen Corporation replaced religion for most of the influenced world. Asia still firmly resisted Regenian control, but through Jonathan II and Otto II, that was slowly changing. For every three steps forward, however, it seemed like the Black Lotus dragged the Regen Corp two steps back. While the rest of the world was distracted from China’s ails, Regen simply could not fully secure the old People’s Republic the way it was controlling the rest of the world. A new man was needed for the job. Regenius would find that in a woman.
On August 24th, 2242 in Barcelona, Otto Alexander II was meeting with his son, Benjamin Alexander, head of Regen Corporation’s Air-Space division and future heir to the Regenian seat of power. The CEO exited his limousine to greet his waiting son on the steps of the Regen Regional Headquarters, when a Black Lotus suicide bomber burst through the crowds and detonated his bomb, killing both men instantly. Otto II was an only child, with only two children himself. With Benjamin killed in the blast, the only choice left was his daughter, Miranda Alexander.
Miranda was a fiery red-head who emulated Elizabeth I as her role model. Having been cast aside for her gender to Regen’s Medical Division, she made the best of a bad situation and managed to increase pharmaceutical output despite budget cuts to her departments. Through use of intimidation and outright seduction (many called her, “The Virgin Queen” as a joke when both Otto II and Benjamin were out of the room), she kept her subordinates inline and defiantly loyal as well as overly productive. She was headstrong, tenacious, and defiant, and she would use those skills to finally pacify China.
Miranda made a bold move that would go down in the lore of Regenian history. She offered to meet with Deng Tian, leader of the Black Lotus. To the surprise of the Influence World, he accepted. They were to meet in private, no attendants, no ministers, not even guards, to discuss limited Chinese autonomy in exchange for the cessation of Black Lotus activities against the Regen Corporation. On October 30th, 2243, the seductive leader of the Influenced world met eyes with the short and rather ugly leader of the Free World. The two stepped into the Imperial Suite of the Red Dragon Hotel in Beijing. Their guards waited outside.
Hours passed. The sun went down. The fierce and firm voices of diplomacy gave way to calmer, friendlier voices as the night went on. At around 11:00, the voices completely died away. Under strict orders to not enter the room until 7:00 the next morning, neither set of guards made a move. At 11:30, a fierce scream ran through the halls of the hotel. The Black Lotus guards were distracted for a moment, just long enough to allow Miranda’s guards to shoot them dead on the spot. The two guards then entered the room to discover the CEO of Regen Corporation completely naked and covered in sweat and blood. The body of the Black Lotus leader lay dead on the bed, his jugular ripped from his throat, still gushing blood over the bed. One of the guards feinted from the excessive blood and the sight of the seductive Miranda’s heavenly body. Miranda simply turned to the other guard and told him to radio a list of the locations of Black Lotus strongholds. While engaged in a moment of passion, Miranda managed to slip Deng Tian a pill of truth serum and interrogate him. Once she had the information, she simply bit out his trachea.
Within two hours, waves of Blitzadler Mk IV’s made their bombing run and took out the remainder of the Black Lotus resistance. Officially, the Regen Corporation maintained that Deng Tian had attacked Miranda and that she had defended herself. When photos of the CEO nude in the hotel room surfaced, rape was added to the charge. It was not until the massive declassification of ancient Regenian history that the full story was made known. With a simple act of passion, Miranda pacified an entire nation. With China fully brought into the Influenced world, the Independent States fell one by one until New Zealand voted itself out of existence on 13 November 2257 with a majority of 297 to three. With that, all of Earth was now without official government and totally under Regenian influence. From the cosmopolitan ultratopolises of New Berlin and New York to the most remote desert hamlets of Saudi Arabia, Regenian products could be found in every corner of the world and in every place in between. And, where Regenian basic products and infrastructure went, free-market consumer capitalism was sure to follow.
Capitalism, unlike its predecessor mercantilism, assumed that the world’s resources were infinite and that anyone with the tenacity and knowledge could secure their own slice of the pie. Science, however, argued to the contrary. Despite incredible advancements in agriculture and energy usage, the world was slowly dying. Entropy was taking its toll, and Jacob Alexander II, son of Miranda the Seductive (despite the fact that Miranda never married and never took an official concubine…) received the disturbing Hamburg File. The report, compiled by the Regenian Environmental Authority under Ryan McCabe in the city of Hamburg, maintained that the world would begin to run out the resources needed to maintain the world’s population by 2300, something that did not bode well with Jacob II. It was 18 February 2269, 31 years left for the Earth on its death clock, and Jacob II was faced with a disturbing choice; either reduce the Earth’s population with genocide the likes of which the world had never known, or launch an exodus to the stars. Regen had found that colonization of other planets would have been unprofitable, and no private firm had been able to break Regen’s space monopoly to try themselves. Start up of a colony on another planet would have required 50 years to make it viable, far too much time for the dying Earth. Regen needed to find another Earth, and it needed to get the life support capability to get there.
With that, Jacob II declared Operation: Exodus on March 2 2269 (205 years to the day when Frederick J. Alexander went before the board of trustees to buy their shares), to a council of the leaders of the world’s most powerful non-Regen companies. Contracts were issued to mobilize the entire industry of Earth to an unheard of goal; transporting the entire population of the planet, some 29 Billion people, millions of light-years to a yet-to-be discovered planet. Many called him crazy for being so compassionate and insisted that it would be far more profitable to move only 20% of Regen’s employees and their families, some 5 Billion people. In an uncharacteristic move, Jacob II declared, “A human being is not like any other resource. Our scientists can tell you exactly how long a certain piece of coal will burn, how much water it can boil, how much electricity it can generate. But the potential of any one human being is infinite, and if we leave behind a single human being, we leave behind infinite opportunities, as well as our dignity as human beings for condemning a man to die for our consumerism.” Jacob II then waved the cross of Jacob the Great, and the meeting cleared to begin work on the impossible dream.
Cryogenic technologies were developed, logistical buildings were built, citizens were issued evacuation numbers, and ships were constructed. Thousands of Rabe class transports were constructed, bearing the picture of a Raven clutching the Cross of Jacob the Great. A huge portion of the outback was turned into a gigantic spaceport, as the production and evacuation equipment for 29,000,000 transports were fabricated. For most of the process, the ships were built with large empty portions for future inventions to retro-fitted in. Time was of the essence.
The ships themselves were completed by 2285; the cryogenic tubes were perfected by 2276 and fully installed by 2287. Navigation, life support systems, and most everything else the ships needed were successfully designed, constructed, invented, and installed by 2290. The ships were ready, but they lacked a location to go to.
With that, every radio, optical, neutrino, and space telescope were networked together to systematically scan the skies for a place to call home. On January 5th 2291, an Earth like planet was confirmed orbiting in the Hadrin system. For the first and only time since the operation began, Jacob II gave the world the day off in celebration. When Jacob II was shown an image of the system, he pointed to a bright planet near the sun and proudly declared, “There we shall re-build our people. I christen ye, Regenius!” as he stabbed the Cross of Jacob the Great cleanly through the planets center. A scientist then pointed to a second planet in the system and informed the CEO that the planet he had selected was inhabitable and covered in molten rock and that that the second planet was the Earth-like one. Without missing a beat, Jacob II removed the cross, stabbed the second planet, and shouted a defiant, “Regenius II!” Having invested every hour of nearly the past 25 years to securing humanity’s future, the aging leader fell over dead on the map, impaled on the other end of the cross. He died with a relaxed smile on his face.
His successor, William I gave the go-ahead for the exodus. Citizens were gathered and transported via Blitzadler Mk VII’s to the launch site in Australia. The first ship, Rabe-I, was launched on Columbus Day 2292, 800 years after Columbus’ historic voyage. William Alexander I declared, “He discovered the new world. We go to discover new worlds.” William I launched on Rabe-29,000,000, the last ship to leave the Earth, on December 15th, 2292. With 8 years to spare, humanity abandoned the Earth. An autonomous drone was left behind to check up on things. With 99.99% of humanity asleep and 99.99999999999999999999999999999% of humanity in orbit (one lone human being, Brandon Whitefield, stayed behind), the human race made its exodus to Regenius II and its nearby worlds on Regenian craft. As Rabe 29,000,000 pulled out of the Earth’s orbit, the pilot made a record in the log stating that he witnessed a large golden shimmer from central Europe. Even though the great cities of the world had been stripped of materials to make the fleets, the large statue of Frederick J. Alexander still stood, in its “original” damaged condition. The cross was now the only piece of the statue humanity still possessed, as Whitefield died in two weeks from the excess chemicals from the fuel produced for the ships in the atmosphere. Humanity’s footprints would grace the Earth no more.
William II, along with the rest of humanity, awoke 4 years later in orbit around Regenius II. William was informed that due to a malfunction in William I’s life support system, he was now the leader of the 29 Regenian Influenced peoples. He was all of 15 years old. William II decided to follow his father’s landing and initial colonization instructions. Regenius II was settled within the year. On 17 May 2297, the inhabitants celebrated their first Colonization Day. The first non-Regen corporations businesses, aside from illicit prostitution, appeared around 2300.
The New Regenius lacked a lot of the law and order of the old Earth. After an initial push for wide scale order (fiercely resisted by the Libertarian citizens), William II gave up on keeping all of Regenius II under firm law and order and settled for securing the lives of his citizens and the property of his company. The old security divisions were disbanded and replaced with the Corporation Space Marines, essentially fulfilling the role of frontier justice. The old laws were repealed, and a new set of protocols, the Guidelines for Citizen Conduct, were imposed on April 7 2305 with great success. Despite the reduction in crime enforcement personnel, crime actually decreased as the frontier gave birth to its first major non-critical industry; small arms.
Determined to not make the same mistake twice, William II ordered other planets to be colonized in what is generally considered to be the closest thing to an imperial decree any Regen CEO has ever dared to issue. The discovery of mineral wealth on Arctan and Arcsin prompted colonization, but the cooler climates quickly killed colonists. New Jamestown was successfully established on Arctan by 2315, but the far more mineral rich Arcsin proved to be a far deadlier planet with its harsh winter climates. Regenian engineers produced autonomous robotic beings to prepare the planet for future colonization. Officially branded as Eisenmench (Iron man), the large, bulky robots were branded as Trolls by those that worked with them. The name has stuck to their sleeker descendents to this day.
Even with Troll preparation, Arcsin’s climate was simply too frigid for normal humans to endure. Colonists underwent genetic manipulation and cybernetic implants in Regen’s Gentech Labs to become Jalkash, named for Dr. James Jalkash, the father of modern human-cyborg interfaces. The first wave of Jalkash, numbering about 175, landed on Arcsin July 7th, 2322, and immediately began working in Troll built mines, supplying the fledgling Regenian Empire with precious resources. The first batch of Space Marines arrived shortly thereafter to keep the peace.
The tremors of colonization and the nature of Regenius II took its toll on its leader. At the age of 40, William II stepped down, allowing his son Jonathan III to ascend to wear the cross. When a tropical paradise was discovered in the nearby Jiltak system, he ordered its colonization. Paridiso was colonized 2328 by humans and the construction of the CEO’s summer palace was completed in 2332 near the equator. New Arlington, a nearby planet, was colonized the next year and became the center of the Regenian Military force. Shipyards were constructed, and the transports and escorts needed to maintain inter-planetary trade quickly came into being. The Corporation Star Fleet, commissioned in 2347, launched its first vessel, a Penguin class cruiser, in 2351 to maintain the trade route between the Jiltak and Hadrin systems. With the launch of the Penguin, pirating plummeted for those too poor to buy off Star Fleet officials.
Various CEOs would come and go, practicing a policy of expansion of current planets as opposed to further expansion. Slowly, Regenius gained its grip on the galaxy, with Regenius II welcoming it billionth planet-born citizen in 2367 thanks mainly to the savage nature of the frontier. The last of the great Exodus ships had been fully integrated by 2375, with the last one, William I’s own Rabe 29,000,000, carefully preserved to become the Museum of Regenian History, displaying artifacts including Frederick J. Alexander’s sword and the Cross of Jacob the Great when not worn by the CEO to this day.
On September 7th, 2407, a survey mission out of New Arlington encountered a blip on its long range scanners. Turning to investigate, the Puffin class science vessel came across a huge primitive starship of unknown design. The scientists tried unsuccessfully to hail the vessel, but suffered terrible headaches throughout the process until the migraines became so unbearable that they were forced to return to base. Little did they know, but they had just encountered the Fandarians.
The Fandarians knew they were outclassed, and so they approached cautiously. However, they had the dismal luck of trying to make first contact with Robert the Merciless wearing the cross. Robert was raised in the security division of Regen, making the rank of High Admiral of the Corporation Fleet by the age of forty-five. When his engineer older brother, Charles, declined the CEO slot to focus on infrastructure development on New Arlington, he gladly took up the position of leadership and invested heavily in the fleet and the marines. With a massive military, he was itching for a fight, and the Fandarians were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Fandarians, telepathic Octopi from the planet Fandar, sent another ship to the site of the first, where three Great Blue Heron class super carriers were waiting. The ship was destroyed, and open war was declared between the two races.
What the Fandarians lacked in technology, they made up for in numbers. Their ships swarmed the Jiltak system on November 6th 2407, taking Paradiso easily. Marines put up a fierce guerrilla fight on New Arlington, but the base of the Regenian Fleet finally fell January 26th 2408. It has been greatly disputed between historians whether the Fandarians left no survivors, or if the marines fought to the last man. Either way, “Avenge Arlington!” became the battle cry of the Marines, and the 31rst Space Marine Company still wears it as their logo.
Disgraced, Robert the Merciless pulled back to the Hadrin System. Scientists estimated that the inferior technology of the Fandarians would be unable to detect Regenius for at least 10 years. Charles the Builder, brother of the CEO, recommended a crash-economic program to build trolls to fight the swarms and his brother agreed. The vast asteroid belt of the system quickly became developed with a maze of stations, mining facilities, repair structures, and habitations that collectively became known as, “the ring.”
The Ring’s resources fueled an army of trolls and enhanced Jalkash soldiers filled the ranks of the biological space marines. The force matched the Fandarian’s numbers and Regenian technology outclassed Fandarian vessels by several hundred years. The Fandarians were torn to pieces at the Battle of Jiltak Prime on August 29th 2412, and their remaining forces retreated far beyond long range Regenian scanners. Robert the Merciless fully intended to bombard New Arlington to its molten core to destroy the large Fandarian population left behind, but Charles the Builder, emotional about the buildings he had designed on the surface, managed to convince the CEO to offer amnesty to the alien invaders. Robert the Merciless offered the Fandarians their lives in exchange for slave labor, and they agreed. With Robert’s death with no heir, Charles finally ascended to the rank of CEO and forgave the war crimes of the Fandarians, offering them full amnesty and incorporation into the Regenian ring of influence.
By 2450, the war torn planets had been rebuilt. The Fandarians remained distrusted but accepted members of society. The Ring was driving the economy beyond the point where the Regen Corporation could keep up, and for the first time in Regen’s history, contracts for heavy industrial applications were given to private corporations. Meanwhile, the private consumer industries of the worlds boomed, jobs were plentiful, money was ample, and all was going well, until the Rosebud incident.
On March 31, 2463 The Rosebud, an independent luxury liner, set sail from Regenius II for Paradiso. Midway through flight, the craft received an order to cut its FTL drives from what appeared to be a Regen security craft. The Rosebud complied and the craft latched onto the side of the luxury liner. Twelve heavily armed officers boarded the craft and informed the captain that a dangerous narcotics runner named Ralph Jacobin was on board and they had orders for his arrest. Since he was probably armed, they asked the captain to ask all passengers to return to their quarters. The captain complied and then the officers pulled their weapons on the captain. They seized control of the bridge and radio room, tied up the crew, and then proceeded to go from cabin to cabin robbing the passengers blind. They disabled the life support and the engines and then boarded their craft and fled. Two weeks later, a search and rescue craft found the ship with all 218 passengers and 56 crew dead from asphyxiation. Analysis of the security tapes of the ship caught one of the marines removing his mask temporarily for air. It was enough to identify him as Franklin Diachenko, a lieutenant in the Fleet. Analysis of the ship placed it as the one that had performed the robbery.
The men were arrested, but the Captain of the ship, James Wilson, had the money to buy his way out of an execution and into slave labor. The public was outraged. Trivial crimes could be bought or sold, but justice for 250 dead simply was not for sale. Riots broke out on a wide scale. On August 19th, 2467 Paradiso was declared in open rebellion and the CEO, Linus I, was forced to pull out of the summer palace. The rebels took the palace and spray painted “Capitalism enslaves where communism liberates” in red paint in the CEO’s bed chamber. With a resistance just a fierce as the Black Lotus but lacking a seductive CEO to trick its non-existent central leadership, the Space Marines who landed on September 1rst, 2467 found themselves fighting an infestation more than an organized resistance. The body count started to rise as rebels were gunned down by the Jalkash super soldiers in horrendous numbers.
On September 23rd, 2469, two years into the military occupation, the resistance showed no end in sight. The Regenian Times then broke the story that photographs of the mass cremation pits used by the soldiers to dispose of the thousands of bodies of resistance fighters were being seized by Regenian Forces. Demanding that the government’s precedent of not restricting free speech gave tacit consent to its work, the paper appealed to the CEO to permit the publishing of the photographs without Regen involvement. The CEO refused, and the papers ran photographs that did manage to run the blockade. Linus I ordered the times shut down and its presses destroyed. Upon seeing personal liberties infringed upon, riots broke out on Regenius II that the space marines failed to quell. Linus I was evacuated to the carrier Bald Eagle pulled out to a high orbit around Regenius II.
With the evacuation of the CEO, anarchy ruled the streets. Mobs formed, and powerful crime bosses raided space marine armories and cut out their own territories on Regenius II. On Paradiso, large communes emerged, keeping the people fed but removing their luxuries. Even New Arlington suffered massive social unrest as Fandarians, sick of being treated like second class citizens and sensing the power vacuum, launched an uprising that successfully seized control of the countryside form the military. The mining colonies of Arctan and Arcsin remained loyal to the company, mainly because they were completely reliant on Regen Corporation imports for survival, but partly because communication was so poor that many of the facilities did not even realize that the Alexandrian Exile was occurring.
Linus I was a weak leader, but to his credit, he realized that he was a weak leader. Effectively cut off from all communication with his company, Linus was left with nothing more than the Fleet that had assembled in orbit around Regenius II. Linus did have an advantage in his military advisor, Sky Marshall Winston Dean. Dean launched a risky plan that focused less on military might to re-conquer greater Regenius than on reclaiming hearts and minds.
Dean realized that the general population still supported Regen Corporation; they had just over-reacted to the over-reactions of Linus I. Dean decided to try and unite the people with an all out war to re-claim new Arlington from the mutual enemy of the Fandarians. All out orbital bombardment relieved the forces at the aptly named Ft. Alamo and allowed for the re-conquest of the planet. The remaining Fandarians were pacified by February 17th 2471 and the process of re-patriotization was begun.
Now with a base of operations, Dean decided to move against Paradiso. The environmentalists that had initially supported the commune system on the planet grew to despise it as lethargy and free-riders doomed the communal system. With crop failures, starvation was imminent. Dean offered the residents amnesty in exchange for moving off of Paradiso and dispersing to other worlds once the conflict was over. They agreed, and Regen agriculturalists swarmed the ruined fields to attempt to salvage as much of the company’s crop as possible. Through careful rationing, mass starvation was avoided on Paradiso, although malnourishment was commonplace throughout the reconstruction process.
With a re-built and restocked fleet, Dean moved against Regenius II. Dean deployed his space marines essentially as a well funded game, forging alliances to slowly but surely take out the mafia forces that were running rampant through the streets. Of the 13 major gangs, 7 had their leaders assassinated, 3 were completely destroyed through all out wars, and the remaining 3 were repatriotised into the space marines.
With massive damage to the infrastructure of the empire, Dean requested emergency reconstruction powers, which Linus I was more than happy to grant. Sky Marshall Dean guided the worlds of Regenius on an economic recovery program powered by extreme militarism and nationalism. By 2480, reconstruction was complete, but so was Sky Marshall Dean’s grab for power.
The aging Linus I died without heir. His cousin, Patrick Alexander, offered to take the cross, but Sky Marshall Dean refused to respect the will of the new CEO. A power struggle ensued that culminated in the Partition Agreement of 2483. Under it, the military and law enforcement as well as several weapons development industries came under sole control of Dean while Patrick would be allowed to wear the cross and maintain the rest of the corporation.
The agreement stood for 400 years, as the Sky Marshals slowly seized more and more power from the CEO, slowly turning Regenius from a prospering capitalist libertarian state into a police dictatorship. Rights were stifled, the economy suffered, and the state was on the verge of total collapse due to exorbitant military spending.
On 15 June, 2864, CEO Connor Alexander III gloomily ascended the steps of Fleet headquarters on New Arlington to sign the renewal of the Partition Agreement. Dressed in full regalia, including the Cross of Jacob the Great and the sword of Frederick J. Alexander, Alexander entered the facility. Traditionally, the treaty was signed in the summer palace on Paradiso, but 50 years ago the Sky Marshals demanded that the treaty be signed on their territory, and the CEO’s were powerless to stop them. Connor III, the new CEO upon the death of his father Jacob IV, greeted the elder Machiavellian Sky Marshall Niles Franklin. Franklin had become the de facto CEO of the entire corporation under Connor III’s predecessor, and firmly intended to maintain his power. As per tradition, the sky marshal signed first. He noted that the date was 800 years to the day since the slaying of Ernst Siegfried that had started Frederick J. Alexander on his way. While the sky marshal was bent over signing the document, the CEO drew his sword and decapitated the sky marshal with one clean swipe. The head of Niles Franklin fell before the feet of the CEO he tried to strip the powers of just as the head of Ernst Siegfried had done.
The guards of the room raised their weapons. Connor III lifted the cross of Jacob the Great high above his head and shouted, “My name is Connor Alexander III! The blood of Jacob the Great, William I, Miranda, and Frederick J. Alexander himself flows through my veins! In the name of the Regen Corporation, lower your weapons!” The guards capitulated, and Connor the III addressed the worlds of Regenius. “Never again will the CEO’s of the Regen Corporation, leader of the Regenian people, bow down to a false emperor! The age of disgrace is over, may capitalism set us free!”
Regenius
12-10-2006, 03:57
The military dictatorship was disbanded, and Regenius entered into another golden age of prosperity. The chain of Alexandrian CEO's continued uninterrupted and undisputed for the next 50 years, or so everyone thought.
On 6 November 2905, Jacob V was making preparations to receive Ryan Harrison, the head of Regenian Millitary Development over the current status of retrofits in the fleet. Harrison's personal shuttle craft docked at Newport 3 in orbit above Paradiso for transfer to a craft capable of atmospheric landing. Out of nowhere, a wave of small attack craft suddenly appeared on radar screens on the station. Sensors detected nuclear tipped torpedoes on the craft, and the station went to red alert as Harrison's guards were scrambled. Only two ships made it off of the station before the first salvo hit, knocking out all of the station's systems, including life support. A wave of the CEO's personal guard were deployed from the plannet's surface to deal with the threat, which they did quickly but not quickly enough. Resuce teams who entered the depressurized radiation-soaked station found only charred corpses, including that of Harrison.
A lone terrorist pilot was recovered from the conflict, a man named Joseph Malancov. Even under the most intense of Regenian interrogations, the man refused to let anything slip, other than that the group he worked for viewed Harrison as a traitor and did what they felt necessary to protect Jacob V. The CEO himself entered the cell and ordered the gaurds to leave and all recording devices turned off. Anxious security personel watched through a two way mirror until Jacob ordered the blast shields closed. Sealed off, the two men talked for several minutes. To this day, the exact nature of their conversation remains unknown, but many speculate that Malancov's group, the Regenian Liberation Army, was trying to warn Jacob V of the impending threat on his life from the corporations that supposedly served him. As sophisticated as the RLA's intelligence networks were, they overlooked a critical fact; Jacob V was not the target of a vast conspiracy; he was a pawn in it.
Many had always thought it was odd that of the billions of cryogenic pods that made the exodus over from Earth, only a single unit malfunctioned, most thought that it was even more odd that the malfunction caused the death of its owner, and almost everyone was suspicious of the fact that the one death was none other than CEO William I. Despite an official investigation by Regenian Air Space Technology Advancement, no foul play was found and rotten luck was blamed as the culprit. How very wrong they were.
Deep in the bowels of Regenius' Biological Research Department, successful human cloning was being developed ten years before operation exodus. Westin Hunter, head of the department, saw a way to make a huge profit and gain insurmountable power with the new technology; clone the CEO, install a puppet on the throne, and sell off decisions to the highest bidder. Teaming up with Dr. Charles Montague, an officer in the interrogation corps of Regenian Security Inc, Hunter saw to it that the necessary cloning equipment and mind control serums were procured. Since human age advancement had not been developed yet, Hunter knew he would have to find an infant heir and clone him now and bide his time until his doppelganger could take the thone. When William I's wife Regina became pregnant with William II, Hunter had a contact in the hospital swipe a vial of the fetus' blood. A clone was developed, almost 2 months to the day behind his real counterpart.
The clone was brainwashed and indoctrinated to behave exactly has William II would. When William the I took control of the exodus, the conspirators decided to launch their plan. As the real William II began to enter his pod, Dr. Montague (then chief medical officer to the Alexander family) cited faulty readings on the child's heart monitor to demand a full physical. The guards agreed and left the room to give the two some privacy. The doctor injected William II with potassium cynanide, and swapped the body with the clone's. The clone was placed into cryogenic sleep in William II's tube. The doctor then decided to investigate William I's equipment, which he then proceeded to "calibrate." William I died in orbit, and a brainwashed youth was now on the Regenian throne.
Montague and Hunter both got obscenely rich off the scheme. They carefully used the ruler as a puppet, keeping his veins full of enough sodium pentanol to ensure that he would not know any better. Once the two men had amassed enough wealth, they decided to call it quits and never influenced William's heirs. However, the bloodline was technically disrupted, and a forgotten tenacious younger child was going to make a stab at the throne he felt was rightfully his.
Until the declassification of the Hunter Scheme, as it has come to be known, most Regenians did not know that William II was a twin. His name was wiped clean of chronological records, and for good reason. He was affectionately known as the "lost Alexander," to those few who actually knew him. Hunter had counted on the malfunctioning cryo pods to kill both William I and Samuel, his other son, simultaneously as they were opened, but a true malfunction kept Samuel's pod from deploying. Essentially, his door was jammed, and having watched the CEO of Regenius die at that critical moment upon revitalization, the technician on deck was too terrified to try to re-annimate the other potential heir to the throne. Samuel's life support system still worked perfectly, however, and the military elite decided to hide the frozen heir as a sort of "break glass in case of emergency," back up to William II if and only if the 15 year old started to act irresponsibly. When the clone was revitalized, he did not ask about Samuel, as he had not been raised with the twin and the cryogenic revitalization process wiped out a lot of the implanted information in his mind. The generals on deck did not seem to mind the fact that the young Alexander had completely forgotten that he had a brother, and Samuel's pod was stored in a secret military facility for centuries.
Enter Thomas Winchester, a paranoid schizophrenic who turned out to be right. Convinced of a massive government plot to unseat the throne, Winchester dove through thousands of records to try and find evidence. Pay stubs for Montague and Hunter made him suspicious, and slowly he pieced together the plot from traces of genealogical references that were not "re-claimed" by the company's attempted purge of Samuel from the Earth. The realization cleared up his mental disorder, and he vowed to return Samuel to the throne, due in no small part to the fact that Winchester's own family line had been shafted for the throne during the 400 years of military rule in Regenius. Winchester recruited members, and formed the Regenian Liberation Army. The RLA's first goal; to liberate Samuel from his crypt.
On March 23, 2899, Winchester's men launched a daring raid on a forgotten military warehouse on New Arlington. The raid was successful, and they recovered the precious cargo they sought; Samuel's cryo pod, still functioning after around 600 years. Using advances in cryogenic revival technology, Winchester's men successfully managed to revive the heir to the throne.
The raid showed up as a blip on Harrison's files, as he was a head of a classified department. Orginally he thought nothing of it, but decided to investigate the case on this own time. There, he stumbled upon the ancient plot to brainwash the CEO and the false bloodline. Instead of demanding honor like Winchester had done, Harrison soley desired power. Harrison decided that new advances in mesmeric technology would allow him to be able to manipulate the CEO without going through all the trouble of getting a clone made. Harrison began to make the contacts he would need to get close to the CEO.
In the meantime, the RLA built up its forces from those who disagreed with the course the government was taking, particually miners frustrated over the slow progress of planetforming the Arc planets to be able to fully harness their industrial wealth. Some of the best pilots Regenius had to offer answered his call and his numbers swelled.
In October 2905, RLA picked up on Harrison's plans and decided to strike hard. They noticed his meeting on 5 November, and felt that it would be when he would try to make his move to brainwash the CEO. Little did they know that Harrison had successfully started his program a full two years earlier at a small party at the CEO's summer estate on Paradiso. While they thought they were preventing a mind-wipe, they were playing into the hands of a fully indoctrinated CEO.
On November 5, 2905, Joseph Malancov must have tried to reason with Jacob V in their secret meeting and finally realized what had occurred; the CEO was already gone, the only remaining option was termination. Biting down on a special molar in his mouth, Joseph blew a deadly cloud of poison gas into the CEO's face, killing them both instantly. When the guards heard the bodies hit the floor, they rushed in, only to find the two green-tinted corpses lying on the ground.
Jacob's son, James took the throne and immediately swore revenge on his captors. Samuel had instructed his pilots only to kill if the CEO was already too far gone to be salvaged, so he managed to surmise that he had struck too late. Samuel decided now was the time to go public and demand that the throne be turned over to him before James got too comfortable there. On December 21, Samuel addressed the people with the full story, demanding that since his was the only true bloodline left, he should be entitled to the throne. James tracked the transmission and had Samuel arrested and put on trial for claiming a false birthright before a shareholder's meeting to determine the new CEO of Regenius. Samuel relished the opportunity to explain to the world in detail all the intricacies of the plot.
The trial was closed to the public save for stockholders with more than a 5% share of the company, it would be years before the average citizen would know what had occurred. Samuel pleaded his case, using stolen government documents during the raids the group conducted before targeting Harrison to prove his side. James countered by saying that even though William II was a clone, it was still Alexandrian blood in his veins, so he was entitled to be chair. Samuel then produced his most damning evidence; since William II was a clone, he was conceived after the real William II was, meaning Samuel was the elder of the two and the rightfull heir to the throne now that he was no longer incapacitated. The stockholders disagreed, citing concerns that placing a revived 600 year old teenager on the throne was too risky a move. Furious, Samuel stormed from the room and ordered his pilots to raise total hell in Regenius, and they did. Virtually all commerce was shut down for a month as the Regenian Security Force regrouped to try and deal with the new threat.
On April 17th 2907, the critical point of the war came. James discovered that Samuel was going to be appearing at a mass rally on New Arlington as part of a recruitment drive. What James did not know is that Samuel was planning the event as a trap. Early on the 17th, wings of the CEO's personal guard, lead by James himself in the primary attack craft entered New Arlington's atmosphere. James, a well qualified fighter pilot, had always envied the epic stories of the past CEO's of Regenius and wanted to personally participate in the destruction of this particular foe, especially after the dishonor he served upon Regenius by stealing the Cross of Jacob the Great and the Sword of Frederick J. Alexander from the Regenian Galactic Museum 6 months prior. Samuel, who had just as much respect for the ancient CEO's, donned the items in what he could feel would be a climactic battle.
James' attack group scanned the neighboring forests and found no signs of missile or laser weapons, only small grade explosives that were presumed to be part of the known minefield in the area. The group fell into a v-formation and prepared to strafe the stage where Samuel himself could be seen addressing the crowd. Samuel saw the signature crimson attack craft of the CEO and smiled as he dictated to the crowd the simple message, "so it finally ends here."
The artist Patrick Lopez immortalized the resulting scene in the image that most Regenians think of when the story of the rise of Samuel the Defiant is mentioned. In the exquisite work, Samuel has lept from the stage and sank his blade into the Earth, where a resulting fissure has released thousands of Ravens into the heavens to tear Jame's forces to shreds. In reality, Samuel had strapped small grade explosives to thousands of Ravens in the forest and had them released as James' forces flew overhead. The birds were sucked into the engines of the craft, causing them to explode instandly. The standard issue wingless attack craft dropped out of the sky like flies, but even though Jame's specialized craft was badly damaged, his wings still allowed him to glide with relative control. He aimed his ship straight for Samuel.
Samuel hopped off of the stage as the crowd parted in sheer panic around him. He walked twenty feet, planted his sword in the Earth, walked back twenty feet, and waited. James' ship hit the ground hard about 400 yards off and slid through the red Earth, kicking up a crimson dust that engulfed the craft. Samuel stood defiantly as the flaming wreck moved closer and closer. The craft began to slow down, and stopped when it touched the hilt of Frederick's sword. Samuel calmly walked up to the craft, removed the sword, and sheathed it. He opened the ship's cockpit to reveal only the remains of an ejected seat. Samuel smiled, for he was no longer the Lost Alexander. To this day, no one knows of the fate of James, but Samuel's first act as newly elected CEO was to increase spending for the intelligence department to ensure that never again would an Alexander come out of the woodwork to seize the throne. Samuel the Defiant, as he became known, soon became an immortal figure representing the endurance and tenacity of the Regenian people, eventually being rewarded in 2978 by being placed on the Regenian 100 Credit note and receiving credit for being the oldest known Regenian upon his death at the age of six hundred and twenty three.
When current CEO Thomas Alexander II took control in 3056, he pledged to break Regenius out of its minor recession by scaling back operations and encouraging the free market to fill the gap. So far, the strategy has worked, and as Regenius nears the 1,000th anniversary of the slaying of Ernst Siegfried, hopes are high for a new wave of expansion and colonization to expand the resources of Regenius and relieve the growing population density problems on New Arlington and Regenius II.