Robotics Division

Prometheus’s Robotic Division
Prometheus’s Robotic Division is one of the oldest (300 years old) and most advanced mechanized divisions in the known galaxies. It began when staffing costs for miners started to out- price product gain. Prometheus board members went to the drawing board, asking themselves, “how do we deduce personnel costs while maintaining work quality?” The management team invested in several projects, including genetic manipulation (Naga), but found that robotics was the best solution to solve their troubles. Before long there were two-hundred major robotic factories, creating a plethora of robot types, from simple mining drones to complex explorer-borgs. While labor teams went on strike, disgusted with Prometheus’s actions, the corporation ignored their outcries, instead focusing on the capital they’d saved in labor.

This wouldn’t sit well with the protestors, who vowed to get revenge. In the interim, Prometheus was not only prospering because of their new Robotic Division, but developing  new types of synthetics called androids, who could work as social representatives. The life-like machines were able to represent the corporation as marketers, negotiators and sales representatives. They were programmed to respond to emotions while keeping a congenial demeanor. Remaining employees were outraged, and in an act of defiance, connected with unemployed miners and factory workers to strike back. Soon the two groups concocted  a plan to upload electronic viruses into the androids which would cause them to malfunction and cripple the company.

The plan worked, but perhaps too well. Soon, Prometheus robots became unpredictable, and some were even attacking living creatures. Prometheus tried to extinguish the issue, collecting and destroying the faulty robots. However, the newly developed androids proved to be difficult to capture. Their social programming and life like visages made them difficult to distinguish, and since the machines understood that they were being hunted, they blended in with other Prometheus civilians in order to hide themselves. Finally, after android operatives conducted an assault on one of the Mars corporate headquarters that caused millions of capital in damages, the corporation gave in and began to hire living employees once more. Prometheus then appealed to the Terran Alliance and soon androids were outlawed. All robots were ordered to take on an artificial appearance, banishing bio-bots forever.

Meanwhile, though robots were type casted as villains by corporate employees, Prometheus continued to manufacture the droids for unfavorable labor. Decades went by and soon the android crisis was all, but forgotten. Robots and living creatures began to work hand-and-hand again without worry of malfunctioning or uprising. Then, nearly fifty years later, the Hexisans arrived, introducing the Milky Way to advanced robotics far beyond what Prometheus had ever imagined. Prometheus corporation, enthusiasts of the drones, arranged for a billion-capital deal that gave them initial rights to Hexisan robotic development. Since Hexisans had outgrown a need for robots, they were more than willing to allow Prometheus to be the leading industry in automaton engineering. Soon, they once again the leader in robot development, not only in the Milky Way Galaxy, but the Hexisan Galaxy as well.

Vulcan’s Plague

There is a terrible secret lingering within the Prometheus Robotics Division, one that only the most trusted executives know. Somewhere out there, a decrepit capital ship carries a ghastly crew of robotic AI’s whose insurrection caused the death of hundreds of Prometheus crew members. “Vulcan’s Plague” was a massive "blockade runner" vessel that flew through the cosmos nearly three centuries ago, patrolling Prometheus’s trade routes for pirates. It was manned mostly by Prometheus droids, but lead by a small division of humans. Unfortunately for living, they would be the last human crew members of the Vulcan’s Plague. For it was during this time that the great android uprising took place, and the Vulcan’s Plague, along with six other capital ships, were specially targeted by the bionic rebels for one of their many terrorist offensives.

The radical androids had impregnated the Vulcan’s Plague with an incurable computer virus that caused the robotic crew inside to become violent and assail the living. No human member survived, and soon the Vulcan’s Plague, along with the six other capital ships, were laying to waste any living colonies in their proximity. While it didn’t take long for Terran Alliance to put down the other six capital ships, it seemed the Vulcan’s Plague would prove more difficult. For its robotic crew disappeared off of the map, as if they had bigger, more prolonged plans. At first this frightened authorities, but as the decades went on and the Vulcan’s Plague wasn’t heard from, it had all but been forgotten.

Still rumors persist that the Vulcan’s Plague has been spotted on one side of the universe or the other. Claims state that the ship is only a former shadow of what it once was, withered and broken by its many years of neglect. While Prometheus argues that that such a ship could not remain in orbit for so long without extensive maintenance, the fact that no remains of the vessel have been found leads theorists to wonder otherwise. And since the crew of nearly 600 hundred robots that once piloted crew still may be out there, those civilians who can still remember the ship shudder in fear with worry that the Vulcan’s Plague may someday return.