Editing Setting:Nutopia/Factions (section)

=Corporate Remnants=

==Plague Doctors==

==19th Special Operations Brigade, "The Hellhounds"==
While some corporations survived by economic maneuvering, skillful information manipulation or cornering a niche technology, predominantly North American military industrial giant Armacor Holdings maintained its position through sheer weaponized force. In addition to its well known technological innovation in the fields of aeronautics and ground warfare, Armacor took steps early in its existence to incorporate and equip as many private military contractors as possible. In a process that began with a number of small acquisitions and culminated with the privatization of the American military, Armacor swiftly became a global power with few peers in terms of simple physical might.

Armacor's business could be roughly divided into the categories of arms production and security contracting. Only direct competitors in its weight class, like Illium, intact governments with serious military buildup, like China, or pernicious corps that played on the edge of their perceived league like Daibosatsu cold afford to run their own internal security forces (often bearing a closer resemblance to conventional armies) if only because Armacor had bought up all the available talent. As a result, Armacor not only controlled one of the world's largest and best equipped armed forces, but also the security forces of a number of other, smaller corps operating in dangerous areas. Consequently the influence they exerted globally was really only rivaled by Illium and the burgeoning Ustate Alliance.

Within the many subdivisions of Armacor's defense units, one brigade in the second army, forth division, appears on no official records. This is the fabled 19th Special Operations Brigade, known as the Hellhounds. While the second army was ostensibly Armacor's section for security for hire, the Hellhounds answered directly to corporate headquarters. Comprised of the most skilled, loyal and unquestioning soldiers at the corporation's disposal, they received the best equipment, and were tasked with the most sensitive, critical missions. They operated at every level from cell based false flag operations to full scale invasion of resistant territories. If Armacor needed a group or area subjugated, destabilized or made to disappear without implicating itself, the Hellhounds were the group that got the job.

==Akuma==
Akuma doesn't exist. At least, that's what all records will say, official and unofficial. If you go to the Daibosatsu office in Harajuku where Akuma, its former security and intelligence division was based, you will find nothing. The building is gutted, all valuable tech looted, all databanks destroyed. Ask Aegis intel operatives, Un-state agencies and corporate info-mercs, and they will all tell you the same thing: Akuma doesn't exist.

But someone is delivering intel. Very good intel, reliable and accurate. The sources are obscure: a dummy body in Dubai, controlled by a shady Cracker in Turkey, who got it from an infocache that was conveniently delivered just last week from Bolivar by a Delver team that say they got it from a friendly AI in a sealed-off infonet section of Howard's Dome in Paris. Try and backtrack it enough, and you come out empty, no trace of the original supplier remains. Infuriating as this is to any self-respecting intelligence operative, the fact remains that both the corps and Aegis have come to rely on this shady source. For some reason, the term for intel collected from this mysterious benefactor is "Akuma". "I got it from Akuma" has become short-hand for "don't ask where it's from, but it's good".

Shady rumors and conspiracy theories surround Akuma. It is alleged that this agency, Daibosatsu's feared "security and internal oversight division", was the first to perform large-scale brainjacking experiments. That at the height of their power, Akuma had hacked the very minds of at least 30% of Daibosatsu employees through their implants, using them to spy on the unmodified. A persistent Cracker legend has it that Akuma developed a high-level autonomous AI to serve as an information filtering and control system, and that this AI took over the entire division by mindhacking every operative at the moment it went online. According to some, this AI and its thralls still persist, and this entity is what is feeding intelligence to both Aegis and the corps. For what reason, with what agenda, not even the nuttiest and most obscure Cracker forum will say. But know this at least, Delver: Akuma doesn't exist. And those who try and find evidence to the contrary often find themselves dead, mindwiped, or disappeared.