#This is dense and poorly written but that desert herb is sending me

[interdimensionalburnout]

One of the biggest things that changed in this universe when I came back to stay was the history of the Corporate Collapse.

Basically, business goons like "Jotunn Heavy Industry and Mining" and "A'Dallo Medical Research" and "Duli-En (Dulio Energy and Industry)" couldn't shake the whole turd outta their pants legs, and didn't fully kill the idea of sovereign government.

Old polities are still kicking around. During Jovian St. Germain's time in control of the entity known as "Saintworks Arms and Research," he made a play for Parnasussa, the alleged homeworld of humanity (we call the whole planet Argie, after the biggest city-state on the planet at 60% coverage). Ol' Jove didn't really swing it, though. The Magistrates of Argossia pushed him back, and all it cost them was permanent revolution for the following 80 odd years.

That's a lot of names and words! What's it all mean? The corpos couldn't dislodge the oldest and most powerful states in this poisoned, Cloud-choked galaxy. Those old polities are half-crippled and forced to do business with those corporate vampires, who have taken over every corner of the settled worlds we live in that wasn't up to resistance.

It's been like that for eighty years because technology is stagnant and the upper 5% of the galaxy are comfy in their bubbles. Even these business-warlords who act like the kings of interplanetary banana republics (without the pretense of cooperation) don't dare risk their comfort in any true wars with each other.

It'll also stay the way it is for even longer, so long as even one empire's budget, carved up eight ways to sunday before it even goes towards military spending, is bigger than the comparative rounding-error that is the six biggest corporations' total net-worth combined.