Letheia

Lethia is a Hylotl owned business. It is one of the most successful corporations in the galaxy. It holds vast wealth and power.

Operation
Letheia operates competitively, running itself in a for-profit-method. However, Letheia tries its best to avoid actions that may result in controversy at all costs, such as exploiting vulnerable people or bribing officials. This isn’t done out of some moral guidance, but rather in foresight of their long term success and stability. This results in people generally having trust in Letheia, although this trust is a bit shaken due to the incident at the Lunar 12 Erchius Facility, which the company is attempting to make amends for.

The way it works internally isn’t all that different compared to typical companies. There are several separate departments that focus on different aspects of the company. There is the marketing department which figures out how to get people interested in buying their products and the various departments that focus on the products Letheia is selling. These departments consist of an erchius department, a media department, a ship manufacturing department, a space station construction department, and a clothing department. Although the other four are run about in the same way, the erchius department is ran quite differently.

The Letheia Corporation either purchases or claims various large moons across the galaxy, setting up mining operations on them. There is usually one large facility set up per system, with various smaller operations scattered across the land. They are managed by independent managers, who oversee everything about them. Each facility has communication with the mining mainframe, reporting status updates daily. If an emergency occurs, the facility is required to both communicate the emergency, file a public report, and investigate into what the underlying cause was. The last two policies were implemented after the manager of the Lunar 12 Erchius Facility tried to cover up the incident, at first passing off the emergency signal as an “employee making a mistake”.

Each facility also has a group of hired guards, who tend to specialize handling erchius entities. Although this team of guards was smaller in the past, after the events of Earthfall the teams were expanded to handle the more threatening creatures. Their numbers are being reduced once again as the Erchius creatures weaken, although to this day it still remains higher than it was previously.

There is also a somewhat secretive technology division, which handles more experimental creations.

History
The Letheia Corporation was one of many companies to come out of the woodwork after the events of the Hylotl Floran war. Founded in 2422 GSY by a Hylotl veteran named Letheia, it started as a mining company. Although the main focus was on Erchius, the weaker versions of Erchius feasting creatures like the Erchius ghost combined with the general volatility of Erchius made the initial startup harsh. Therefore, the Letheia Corporation had to rely on more traditional mining operations to fund itself.

Letheia then contributed the money made from the mining operations back into his company, using it to purchase better Erchius mining supplies as well as moons. He would also send out explorers to claim the unclaimed. Eventually, the Letheia Corporation would start growing extensively, able to survive on the Erchius mining operations alone. From there, the growth of the company would remain tremendous, until the Letheia Corporation became the massive mega corporation it is today.

However, directly after the events of Earthfall in 3068 GSY, Erchius creatures would grow in power, making the harvest of Erchius much more dangerous. Although most of the mining operations avoided any critical emergencies, the Letheia Corporation did extract less Erchius than before, contributing to a galaxy wide shortage around Earthfall.

However, a critical incident did happen on the Lunar 12 Erchius Facility. After Earthfall, there had been an emergency communicated to the mainframe, although a few hours the facility responded again and claimed that an employee pressed the wrong button. It turns out they pressed the right button. The now empowered Erchius entities had overrun the whole facility, mutating the miners into Erchius entities themselves. However, the facility’s manager, a Hylotl named Ida Tadasuke, had no intention of the mainframe helping out, never mind evacuating the facility. She stole all of the Erchius deposits to sell at the inflated price caused by the shortage and put the facility on total lockdown, to prevent the miners from escaping.

Fortunately, it so happens that this facility was the main supplier of an economic outpost in the system, owned by Esther Bright. After not receiving any reports from the facility in about a month and risking a devastating shortage of Erchius, she deployed a small team of explorers to the facility to find out what happened. They discovered the awful truth of what was going on, and reported the situation to the entire galaxy.

This landed the Letheia Corporation in very hot water. Several systems ended their contracts with the Letheia Corporation, and Ida Tadasuke ended up in prison for causing the death of hundreds of miners, mismanagement, and corporate sabotage. Although the Letheia Corporation did not go under, their profits drastically dropped. They issued a public apology, enforcing their new policies and making all the emergency report data public.

The newfound mistrust for the Letheia Corporation allowed other Erchius mining companies to grow and get ahead. Although they have somewhat recovered in recent years, they still are falling behind.