Alusia

The Alusia Foundation, known colloquially as Alusia, is a technology company with a history of significant contributions to scientific discovery. From the biophotonic decarboniser to the toroidal ceramic aqueous matter container (ToCAMaC), much of the modern world has been developed by the R&D teams at Alusia.

The Alusia Foundation began its existence as an archive of academic research from several universities, designed to facilitate scientific research by centralising information storage. It served this purpose well for a short while, before the universities deemed Alusia to be too unprofitable to be worth maintaining. Many of the records were distributed amongst the universities, but the Foundation's name and many publications on mechanical engineering were purchased by the West Eastern railway company.

West Eastern combined Alusia with its R&D teams, in the hopes of making their trains more efficient. The results, including the external combustion engine, launched West Eastern into a golden age, which ended once Alusia patents expired and other railway companies could once again compete with West Eastern. In the downsizing that followed the end of the golden age at West Eastern, Alusia was spun off, and continued on independently.

Alusia then grew into the company as it exists during the events of Reference II, branching out from mechanical engineering to eventually have teams undertaking cutting-edge research across many areas of science. This period in Alusia's history has seen major contributions to society from many of its research divisions.

In the years leading up to the events of Reference II, Alusia had been gradually declining in research output, with a long time having passed since the last noteworthy breakthrough. That was until the Bookworm, an invention with such great potential that it made international headlines, even outside of the scientific world. The events of Reference II are set during an Exhibition of the Bookworm.

In a secret location somewhere in the desert stands the Alusia Laboratories, a towering and expansive maze of research laboratories, offices and conference halls in which Alusia conducts its research.

Near the entrance to the Alusia Laboratories is a large library, with a collection dating back to the acquisition of Alusia by West Eastern. Over time, the Library's collection has grown to become one of the largest repositories of information and knowledge in the world. In addition to Alusia's archive of academic papers and journals, the Library also has many works of popular literature, and an extensive selection of newspapers.

In Reference II, there is not an IC equivalent to the internet, so sharing of information between institutions is much more restricted IC than it is OC. The access to the information afforded by the Library and archives has been a large part of the reason that Alusia has been a major presence in scientific research throughout its history.

While much of Reference II will be set in Stories created by the Bookworm, the Out-of-Story action in Reference II is set in the Alusia Laboratories, and primarily within the Library, though opportunities to explore other parts of the Laboratories may arise during play.

“The Alusia Foundation is one big happy family! The employees often spend evenings cooking, playing games and living with each other. The fun never really stops for Alusia staff, and many of our brightest ideas were thought of over dinner, not in a laboratory!”

Laszlo Arbim, HR Director at Alusia

Owing to the remote location of the Laboratories, many Alusia employees choose to stay onsite between workdays, making use of the conference facilities – a portion of which have been assigned to the Exhibition guests.

Since many of the employees live so close to each other, they spend much of their evenings together as well. This has led to the distinction between work and life to become a bit blurred, with chatter over dinner often devolving into deep academic debates, and conversations in the labs are often about the results from last night's board games.

The Alusia Café is a very popular place among employees for socialising and taking a break from their research. During Reference II, this café will be open to the PCs at various points, so they too can socialise with each other and the employees.

In many ways, Alusia has formed its own Commune, and encourages its employees to buy into this idea. Ideally, the employees think of themselves as part of Alusia, rather than as part of the Commune they were from previously.