Helios Orbital

Helios Orbital (Helios-Kline Orbital)

Originating in Germany, Helios Orbital rose to prominence in the late 21st century by seizing the last frontier: space. While other corps bled each other dry on Earth, Helios looked upward, carving out dominion among the stars. Their crown jewel is Selene Prime, a lunar megacity that glitters above Earth as both paradise and fortress.

  • Selene Prime
    Built on the Moon’s near side, Selene Prime is a monument to excess. Its glass-domed luxury hotels, gravity-modified pleasure districts, and orbital views attract Earth’s wealthiest elites. Entry is restricted to those with the right connections—or the money to buy them. To outsiders, Selene Prime is a dream vacation. To residents, it is a gated empire, secured by Helios enforcers and kept exclusive by its most valuable commodity: oxygen.

  • Oxygen Economy
    Unlike Earth, air is not free on Selene Prime. Oxygen is currency, ration, and weapon. The corporation decides who breathes comfortably, who struggles, and who suffocates. Helios has perfected oxygen credit systems, where debt is not just financial—it’s biological. Miss your payments, and your supply is cut. Entire gangs and syndicates in Night City are rumored to be backed by Helios oxygen credits, a form of leash and incentive rolled into one.

  • Helios-Kline Expansion
    Beyond Selene Prime, Helios controls asteroid mining fleets, solar energy relays, and orbital luxury stations. They market themselves as the gateway to humanity’s future, selling dreams of exodus to the stars. In truth, their colonies are gated playgrounds for the rich, their hotels floating ivory towers, and their asteroid mines staffed by desperate workers under the harshest oxygen quotas imaginable.

  • Philosophy & Culture
    Helios preaches the idea of ascension—that only the chosen, the wealthy, and the visionary deserve to leave Earth’s decay. Their employees speak of “the right to rise,” and their propaganda frames Helios as the arbiter of humanity’s next stage. Oxygen is not merely survival—it is privilege, status, and proof of loyalty.

Arasaka Corporation

Arasaka, rooted in Japanese tradition, remains one of Earth’s most ruthless megacorps. Where Helios claims the heavens, Arasaka claims the streets, the governments, and the underworld. Their security forces, weapons manufacturing, and financial blackmail networks reach into every level of society.

  • Arasaka believes in dominion through fear—surveillance, assassinations, and cultural infiltration. They prefer loyalty enforced by honor and blood, not by oxygen credits. Their foundation is the Earth itself: its governments, its armies, its secrets.

  • To Arasaka, Helios’s lunar utopia is both threat and insult. It represents the arrogance of abandoning Earth for the stars, leaving the rest of humanity to rot. Arasaka whispers that Helios is fragile—“A city of glass domes, waiting to crack.”

Conflict

  • Arasaka’s Domain: Earth, security, political leverage, and fear.

  • Helios’s Domain: Space, lunar colonies, oxygen control, and exclusivity.

Both corps despise each other, but need each other’s infrastructure: Arasaka’s ships pass through Helios orbital gates, and Helios colonists rely on Earth-based supply chains. Their rivalry plays out in sabotage, espionage, and proxy wars through gangs, syndicates, and mercenaries.

Night City whispers it plainly:
“Arasaka owns your life on Earth. Helios owns your breath on the Moon.”