Got you. I kind of interpreted that systen description blurb for jotunheim differently, ie Gal-Cop is completely unaffiliated with GalCop, but cashes in on a similar sounding name. Like opening a car company called Fard
It's pretty odd as I asked this a few months back and one of the official lore shapers (Drew Wagar) said the two were completely unaffiliated and that GalCop was fully defunct. Might be worth checking with him and Allen Stroud (he's over at Lave radio)?
And I'm not accusing you of tramplIng on official lore, just thought it best for clarification before the accusations start flying.
And I'm always happy to talk lore (although most of those chats boil down to what is and isn't canon from the prior games)
Hey! I am the loremaster of Galcop, and yeah, that Jotunheim blurb is what got me working on this whole idea about a year ago. I'm also the guy who writes a bunch of lore for the Diamond Frogs than everyone barely reads.
Originally the Diamond Frogs, who are like if Saints Row merged with Muppet Show Tonight (note: in spirit, most are not literal muppets), are consummate scam artists on top of being completely amoral mercenaries. They were to discover the last remaining branch of GalCop and attempt to find a way to exploit it for a buck. The lore blurb is actually local opinion that this new "GalCop" is a fake.
But in truth, it really
was the last and only branch of GalCop, the navy of the old Galactic Cooperative that collapsed so long ago. It went unnoticed and memberships were handed down like a secret club for generations. Because legally it was still GalCop, it meant that ancient contracts and oaths long thought lost were still legally valid, as well as the Galactic Cooperative, as GalCop had in its charter the ability to revive its parent organization.
Jotunheim has a very interesting history, which I drew almost entirely from the background sim. When I put it all together, with the canon lore of previous games, I got:
While GalCop was still strong, the Empire made it a point to purge any traces of it from its territories. Jotunheim is fairly close to Achenar, and was in the process of terraforming Jotunheim 3, aka the planet Daisy. The owners of the system were the Autocracy of Jotunheim, who are - I kid you not, this is what their actual in-game government is - "Imperial Hedonists", which is to say, they were lazy and almost cartoonishly evil slave-owners. Daisy was to be their pleasure planet.
To finance this, they sold the mining right to the Gold Company, who began strip mining the meager but still valuable resources. To cover up some questionable practices and treatment of Imperial Slaves in violation by Imperial Law, they bribed Senators and kept out any official inquiries. Ironically, this would allow the local Jotunheim branch to survive the collapse of GalCop. Over time, Jotunheim was popular for smugglers and other ne'er-do-wells to lay over.
The terraformation of Daisy was completed several years ago. Preparation was made to make large, incredibly lavish planet-wide estates at the cost of even
more human lives and money. By then, the major mining operations had nearly dried up, so the coriolis station orbiting Daisy was sold to an anonymous individual on conditions of complete confidentiality, and then named it Big Harry's Monkey Hangout.
The Autocracy of Jotunheim never had time to question what it possibly could mean. This is because all the slaves, freebooters, and other wretched masses rose up and curb stomped their oppressors, banishing them to an old mining station called Henson.
Daisy remained unspoiled, with very few low-tech settlements. The new Revolutionary Jotunheim Resistance began healing some of the damage years of neglect had done. The fledgling government put out a call for talent to help establish itself in the shadow of the Empire, who didn't even notice the change of power.
Then some other stuff happened, but we are running long for time as is. At some point a great blow was dealt and the sane half of the RJR was forced to abandon BHMH, for the old stations and settlements in the outer planets.
The other half, of course, became the Diamond Frogs. Their leader, a known jerk but a talented spin-doctor, had recognized and taken the treasure both the AoJ and the RJR failed to notice for generations - the legal rights to GalCop.
He sold these to EIC, but that is a story for another time. Everything in the last year is based on things that actually happened to my group (a massive burnout on Power Play that caused Jotunheim to collapse, followed by relocation and rebranding when player factions were put into the game!)
TL;DR - Cool Story, Frog. I plan to adapt parts of it to meet any requirements FDev will have.
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The Jotunheim branch of GalCop was so well hidden, even Drew Wagner missed it!
I know it's a stretch, but ultimately whether or not GalCop or Gal-Cop survived or if died in spirit, the ancient contracts and branding were what the East India Company really wanted, for reasons you may yet see. In other words, yes, I found your post while researching to write the backstory, shrugged, and wrote around it.
