So, the lore section for this starts off with a recap of the previous book's shit; however, it then states that there's the possibility that not everything said in the previous book "might not be entirely accurate" to what actually happened, basically the devs' trying to cover their own asses after the massive shit pile that was the previous game. Anyway, the book does go on to state that the corps are, indeed, not perfect and did in fat end up crossing a number of lines... before turning right the fuck around and going right back to propagandizing how great they are.
HSD, everybody. At the very least, the game does seem to be trying to edge away from the idiotic "corps always good, governments always bad" crap that the original book had in favor of a more classical "cyberpunk anarchist" plotline. Not very well, mind you, but it's still more effort than I see out of most furries... and that's pretty sad.
From here on, the entire story becomes a confusing circlejerk of self-wanking shit that even I can't keep track of; I'm just gonna leave a brief cliff notes version until we get back to the good stuff:
- In HSD, once you get rich enough, the corporations somehow cease to have any control over you.
- In HSD, everything is equally cheap and easy to magically 3D-print, whether it's something as small as a pencil or as big as a damn house.
- In HSD, the various corporations often have galaxy-wide wars covering multiple planets, that the populace is somehow completely unaware of for the most part, and are supposedly somehow good for the economy and stuff.
- In HSD, the furries somehow have a better grasp of mental illness then mankind ever did; apparently, they try to treat people for it, whereas the human race often shunned and abused the mentally ill. Because the book seems to have forgotten the original message of "getting in touch with your human side".
So, with that shit out of the way, now for the section on the various Mega-Corporations; there's eight (technically seven) major power-players in the setting:
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MarsCo.: The original corp that was the only survivor of the fall of mankind; somehow over the course of 700 years, the company ended up branching off into 6/7 other mega corps in addition to the original, with those companies splitting off into smaller companies. In general, MarsCo. has... very little in the way of uniqueness, being basically "a big corps that makes money". That's seriously it.
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Applied Science and Robotics/ASR: A corps that focuses on advanced technology; cyborgs, artifical robot limbs, AIs, you know the drill. They're the ones that originally came up with the sapient robots - called "Cogs" btw - mentioned in the previous book. Also, they have access to long-range teleportation, matter/energy conversion, energy shielding, and have the ability to casually read the minds of everyone that they encounter. Somehow, we're supposed to think that's a good thing and that they won't try to abuse it.
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Inner Ring Police Force/IRPF: Space police, essentially. Gigantic police state. Often collaborates with criminals to bring down other criminals and tends to ignore smaller crimes in favor of catching more "notorious" thugs. Not much to say.
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Progenitus: Space doctors. Basically, the furries' idea of a welfare state; every citizen living under Progenitus's "care" will be constantly followed and made sure that they are healthy. If they aren't healthy enough, then the citizen in question will have their citizenship revoked. Also has facilities where they keep sapient clones of people that they regularly torture and execute to find more medical knowledge.
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Pulse: A corps focused on entertainment and sports, with the apparent goal of mass self-improvement. In this case, it means that they both regulalry release dangerous monsters into civilian locations, then give a few civilians weapons to see how they react. They also regularly transform and mutate people on the street into new forms, apparently for shits-n-giggles.
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Spyglass: Communist CIA. Corp that focuses on stealing and selling the secrets of other corps; this somehow hasn't resulted in them getting annihilated by every other corp in the setting. Also regularly engages in assassinations and wet-work, because that's totally morally acceptable and benevolent behavior in a government entity.
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Lumen: A corp entirely ran and staffed by a race called the "Cogsue", which are basically cyberpunk kitusne, and are both the setting's "kender" equivalent and the author's personal fursona race. Hilariously overpowered in terms of stats, have no real weaknesses in anything, and has access to tech even more advanced than the rest of the setting, such as portable FTL travel, which "runs the risk of destabilizing the corporate balance of power", somehow. Revealed to be a branch of ASR.
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Transcendent Technologies Incorporated/TTI: The big asshole corp of the setting; specializes in organic technology and screwing around with the eldritch. Focuses heavily on occult and creating supernatural implants that are far more likely to kill you than do anything of worth. Revealed to have quite literally destroyed the universe 15 time previously, only getting away with it because of their ability to casually manipulate time and space. Also has created a serum that allows the user complete immortality, able to withstand the vacuum of space; the drawback is that it makes the user go completely bug-fuck insane. Oh, and they casually resurrected an alien species that now wants to kill them all. Why? Who knows.
Anyway, the reason why I mentioned the corps here, instead of the first book's section, is that
A: S&S has a better write-up than the first book ever did, and
B: S&S strongly hints that all of the various corps are, in fact, still under the control of MarsCo., which is in turn under the control of either an AI, or possibly some of the last surviving humans. How? No one knows; like I said earlier, the book doesn't ask itself a lot of questions.
Moving on...
Anyway, we finally get some info on the antagonists! First, the Palemen; as mentioned previously, they're the race that destroyed the moon colony. As it turns out, they're basically mankind's attempts at beating the furfag corps at their own game, being a race of artificially created eldritch monsters designed to kill the furfags.
And, honestly... they're pretty dope, being basically what the chakats and furfags claim to be; an actual race of badasses. They're immune to extreme temperatures, capable of invisibility, near-impossible to capture or kill - in text at least, gameplay is a different story - and generally capable of making the corps' conquest a hell of a lot more difficult.
Story-wise, it's a bit...odd. It gets "revealed" that the second-generation of the Palemen suddenly betrayed humanity - turns out, a bunch of surviving humans had managed to secure themselves in bunkers below ground and the ocean - and apparently assisted the corps in destroying humanity, though the book
strongly indicates that they were basically manipulated/controlled into doing so. The Palemen were left on the dead Earth while the corps got to fuck off into space and create their little utopia; nonetheless, the Palemen managed to survive, and even managed to make their own societies of sorts on the planet.
Then, of course, the corps showed back up, sending their little moon colony down to Earth. The Palemen hijacked it, intending to try and get the corps to back off - turns out, the Palemen legitimately didn't even want to fight anymore and just wanted to live in peace. Naturally, the corps kept covertly sending soldiers down there to kill them all off, since the Palemen weren't under the control of the corps and are therefore "evil", and the eventual issue of the Whispers creating a tower of blood to reach the moon ended up forcing the Palemen to start evacuating the Earth.
Even then, the Palemen still try to play nice; they very strictly avoid attacking civilians and children, try to covertly negotiate and manipulate people into backing off without violence, and generally just try and stick to the shadows and live peacefully. The corps see this as an act of terror against them; after all, if you're not willing to put children in gas chambers for the sake of progress and profit, then are you really the hero?
Anyway, moving on again...
From here, it starts talking about the Whispers, the blood monsters. It's revealed that they're agents of HYDRA, which is revealed to be an eldritch horror from beyond the stars. HYDRA, or Apophis as it's also known, is made out to be this "true neutral" monstrosity, merely looking to destroy everything so it can learn more about them - that's why it helped the furries destroy the Earth, because it wanted to see what would happen, basically. It's revealed that TTI is basically looking to try and control the damn thing, to use it as a weapon; why? So nothing can ever stand against the furries, of course!
Meanwhile, there's also revealed to be another horror, known as Ra, that both the furries and HYDRA/Apophis are completely terrified of; whereas HYDRA kills everything out of curiosity, Ra kills everything because it's, as one person summed it up, "a greedy piggy that wants to devour everything". Whereas HYDRA/Apophis uses blood and has darkness motifs, Ra uses sound and has light motifs. Whereas HYDRA seemingly just showed up somewhere and the corps have no idea where it's from, Ra as it turns out was chilling in the depths of Europa and only really started becoming active after TTI started to start messing with time-space shit, which apparently managed to piss it off.
Oh, and if you haven't figured it out yet; HYDRA/Apophis and Ra are supposed to be the setting's equivalents of the Christian Satan and God, respectively. Apparently, all miracles and supernatural happenings that have ever happened on Earth were caused by humans accidently invoking one of the two, somehow, and since the corps state that Ra is this evil monstrosity that wants to destroy everything, then it's evil, no questions asked. Weirdly, HYDRA/Apophis does the exact same things, but... it's regarded as neutral at worst.
Anyway... there's a bunch more shit about various other dimensions and such - including one that looks like fucking Yharnam, of all places - but... there's not actually much substance after the shit about Apophis and Ra. The aforementioned different dimensions aren't really fleshed out properly, so you can't really use them in gameplay, and there's another bit about TTI making various god-like creatures through genetic manipulation, but again, they aren't really fleshed out properly. The setting and lore details pretty much end after the shit about Ra.