Revision 1

Core is the dominant megacorporation of the Fragmentary Order universe and the political, economic, and technological power that defines life in the year 2251. In the in-fiction backstory, Core is the entity that pulled humanity back from a near-extinction collapse in the early twenty-first century, then went on to unify world governments, expand civilization across the Solar System, and pioneer the biotechnology that makes the game's premise possible. By 2251, however, its once-unifying grip is loosening, and rival factions are positioning themselves to seize the most valuable parts of its planet-spanning infrastructure.

At a Glance

Origins and Rise

The history that the game presents begins with a near-extinction event. Sometime in the early twenty-first century, human society on Earth came close to collapse. The setting is deliberately vague about the cause, but the result is unambiguous: the old international order failed and the structures that had sustained pre-collapse civilization could no longer hold.

Out of that wreckage rose Core. The corporation absorbed or replaced the surviving organs of state across the world and presented itself as the only institution large and coherent enough to reboot a global civilization. In the centuries that followed, Core unified what remained of the world's governments under a single operating logic and treated humanity's survival as its founding mandate.

Reach and Power

By 2251, Core's influence is woven into daily life on Earth and on every colonized body in the Solar System. Three pillars are most often pointed to in official material:

• Solar System colonization: Core organized and directed humanity's expansion off Earth, including footholds on hostile, partially terraformed worlds. The contested zones operators deploy into are spread across this expanded human sphere.

• Advanced biotechnology: Core's research arms developed the synthetic-life and cloning technology that underpins the operator-and-clone model of warfare.

• Economic dominance: Core sets the rules of the planetary and interplanetary economy. Credits, contracts, and access to whole regions of space all run through systems the corporation built and still administers.

The CORIE Framework

Core's most distinctive product is the CORIE framework, a planet-spanning operational system that structures and monetizes warfare, technology, and economic activity. CORIE turns conflict into a managed market: contracts are issued, risks are priced, and rewards scale with how dangerous the assignment is. The slogan attached to the system, that value is defined by risk, is also the philosophy by which Core measures the worth of any operation. Every deployment a player makes is, on paper, an entry inside this framework.

Fracture

What makes 2251 a story year rather than a stable end-state is that Core is no longer the seamless monolith its founding myth describes. The corporation that once unified the world is visibly coming apart from the inside. Departments, divisions, and regional power centers that once moved in lockstep have begun to act in their own interests, and new factions are pushing to take control of the most valuable parts of the CORIE framework.

Those valuable parts are described as nodes: the contracts, the infrastructure points, the contested zones, and the slices of economic flow that CORIE coordinates. Whoever controls a node controls a slice of the planetary risk economy, and by extension a slice of Core's power. This fracture is the backdrop for the entire player story; the world is not at peace because Core can no longer enforce one, and not in open war because no rival is yet strong enough to displace Core outright.

The Player's Place

The player character sits inside Core's world rather than outside it. They are a Core Era citizen, born and raised inside the system Core built. The basic loop is to log into the CORIE framework from a secure bunker and dispatch a Replicated Entity into a contested zone on someone's behalf. That someone might be Core itself, a rival faction angling for a particular node, or a smaller employer working a niche inside the larger conflict. Operators are not heroes overthrowing the corporation, and they are not wholly loyal company agents either. The Gameplay Overview article covers how contracts, deployments, and extractions actually play out.

Unconfirmed Details

Coverage so far establishes the broad shape of Core but leaves many specifics unanswered. The following are not currently confirmed:

• A specific founding date or the identity of the figures who founded Core.

• A named chief executive, board of directors, or other top leadership.

• Names of any subsidiary corporations, divisions, or branded product lines under the Core umbrella.

• A confirmed corporate headquarters location.

• The exact division between any military arm and any civilian arm of the organization.

• How Core's leadership formally relates to the rival factions now splintering off.

These gaps are intentional. Until further material is released, anything beyond what is stated above should be treated as fan speculation rather than canon.