Eclipse Phase - Penumbral Shadows and Thus Spoke Zarathustra | PenumbralShadows / Prospect Station browse

Prospect Station was funded by Davida Gaudens- one of the founders of the Emporia Corporation- when she became concerned about the direction the corporation was taking in terms of the new system. When the research group first incorporated to protect their research and the findings of the original Pandora gate, Gaudens and Bruce wanted to incorporate as a Public Benefit corporation in order to make sure the property of the corporation was used in a fiducially responsible manner- a problem which non-profits tended to have as there were no shareholders to hold them responsible for their use of intellectual property in the traditional manner. It was also argued that it would make the corporation better able to defend itself against the depredations of those that would take advantage of their position to try to leverage their assets. Gaudens and Bruce reluctantly agreed with the majority, and watched as their profits grew and the benefits dwindled. When the articles were introduced to convert the B corp into a C corp, it was just the culmination of events that had already been seen.

Gaudens was determined to do something beneficial with her gains from the change instead of totally divesting herself as she was inclined. Remembering her family roots in the mining industry, and being very familiar with the ongoing issues of the mining communities, she invested in an interest to probe the outer Orion cloud for planetoids that were known to exist, but hadn't been worth investigating, other than as a pure scientific endeavor. This cooperative of the scientific community and the mining community reminded her of her prior work with the gates and once the discovery of the planetoids rich in much needed raw materials for the fabbers was realized, felt that same sense of community in the organization. In this case, with her being the controlling voice, the station was developed as an open project with the help of others concerned about Emporia, feelings heightened by the move towards supply chain economics - a blight on what the Commonweath had originally stood for. As the more anarchist elements of the system were pushed outward, Prospect became a hub for these dissaffected feelings resulting in the eventual formation of the Black Seam Collective , driven not just by the feelings of open source researchers, free miners, gatecrashers, or anarchy driven revolutionaries, but an idealistic fusion of those views. Of course, just as with the Emporia Corporation, as the Collective grew larger, so did the frictions as new blood was brought into all the factions.

Prospect station is a melange of cultures - miners outfitting before going into the Cloud or down to the surface, researchers studying the cloud, or gatecrashers outfitting expeditions, you'll find a wide variety of personages at any time on the station, which makes it a lively place. Though the research facilities support the exploration and research teams sent by other concerns, they also help to improve the processes for the miners. One would think this would bring the factions together, but purist versus humanist conflicts make this an incorrect assumption. The miners vs explorers vs researchers faction and subfaction conflicts along with the baggage inhabitants bring from the rest of the system and Sol can make this a place fraught with tension.

Adding to this tinderbox, the utopia of a cooperative has not been as ideal as its tenets would indicate- operating costs of the station began to outstrip the meagre fees charged to its members, and the voluntary contributions that were expected never materialized. The station has become more striated within the habs, with the better, less crowded, more well maintained areas going to those that are able to pay- mostly the researchers with their grant money and the gatecrashers with their backers, leaving the miners in crowded and borderline conditions. The prices have also begun to creep up, and the credit of the 'company store' of the old days has begun to creep into existence.

Unlike the miners of old Earth, however, these miners have experienced better days, and are more organized within, making the environment more fraught with talk of the Workers' rights and broken promises of the past.

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