"Mallonie Co," Raja Farzir stated. "They are the ones suing us."
Arthur sat back in his chair, the initial panic completely evaporating into profound confusion. He blinked. "What? Who in the galaxy is that?"
"They are a software patent holding firm," Raja explained calmly, though his sensory vanes were vibrating with barely suppressed tension. "But make no mistake, Arthur. This is merely the tip of the needle of a much larger attack."
Dorian looked at his PR Manager. He could see the sheer, absolute seriousness radiating from the Qerrian. This was not a minor copyright troll. This was corporate warfare.
Feeling the heavy weight of the situation, Dorian reached inward. Without moving a muscle, he silently called out a name in his mind. Athena.
Unbeknownst to Raja and the rest of the mortal team bustling around the studio, the air right beside Arthur's chair shimmered for a fraction of a second. In an instant, the towering, radiant Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare materialized beside him, leaning casually against the edge of his desk. She crossed her armored arms, her sharp grey eyes silently analyzing the room.
Raja, entirely unaware of the divine entity standing two feet away from him, continued his report. "This is a coordinated attack from the big AAA studios."
"WHAT?!"
A loud, furious voice echoed through the hallway. Liseli and Ross Dalle had coincidentally been walking by the Junction room with their cafs and overheard the tail end of the sentence.
Liseli stormed into the room, her eyes blazing. "WHAT DID THEY DO THIS TIME?!"
Arthur let out a long, heavy sigh. He understood exactly why Raja had wanted to speak to him privately first to mitigate the panic, but the cat was out of the bag now.
"I guess the department heads need to hear this too," Arthur murmured. He tapped his desk console. "Gawain. Round Table. Call the other heads to the Junction room."
A small holographic knight materialized on the center of the table. Gawain gave a deep, flawless knightly bow. "At once, sir," the A.I announced, sending out the internal pings.
Several minutes later, the seven core members of Round Table Studio were seated tightly around the glowing holographic table. Raja had just finished catching Kasavin, Bem, and Logan up to speed on the lawsuit.
Kasavin pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, his jaw clenched tight. "I can't believe they still persist. They realized the VR engine embargo failed, so they immediately pivoted to legal strangulation."
Beside Arthur, Athena silently observed the mortal developers, her eyes gleaming with quiet approval at their analytical minds.
Dalle leaned forward, pulling up a quick net search on his datapad. "I am sorry, Raja, but I am looking at this 'Mallonie Co' right now. From their public registry, it is just a tiny, insignificant shell company. How are they a threat?"
Raja slowly shook his head. "It is not the company we should be looking at, Ross. It is their intention. I have seen this exact tactic happen before in the Core Rims. They are a small shell company, yes... but their real owners are the AAA executives."
"What?" Liseli asked, her brow furrowed. "Why hide behind a shell?"
"Because of what will happen in the next twenty-four hours," Raja continued, his voice deadly serious. "By tomorrow morning, we are going to get sued to the point where all of our fingers combined could not count the number of filings. The AAA publishers will use dozens of these invisible proxy companies to bury us."
The faces of the department heads began to pale as the horrifying reality of the corporate trap set in.
"This legal action will have a massive range," Raja explained. "There will be hundreds of different levels of litigation, claiming patent infringement, code theft, and trademark violations. We will be pushed to aggressively defend ourselves in every single level of the Accord courts simultaneously."
Logan's eyes widened in sheer horror. "But we don't even have a dedicated legal department!"
Arthur steepled his fingers, his mind rapidly connecting the dots. "At that point, the Accord law enforcement algorithms will not see all of those lawsuits as individual, nuanced cases. They will just see the sheer volume of the numbers. And as a registered business under investigation, the courts will slap us with a preliminary injunction. We will be forced by law to halt all production and distribution on every sector."
"Exactly," Raja nodded grimly. "Winning some of these cases is actually incredibly easy. In fact, a vast majority of these lawsuits will be absolute nonsense designed purely to waste our time and drain our funds."
CHIME.
Right on cue, Raja's encrypted datapad let out a sharp ping. The PR Manager looked down, a dark, humorless chuckle escaping his lips.
"Case in point," Raja sighed, sliding the datapad onto the center of the table. "I just received another filing. An independent life insurance company called 'Creed Mutual' is suing us for using the word 'Creed' in Assassin's Creed. They are claiming they held the trademark first and that our game damages their brand identity."
"Shit," Arthur cursed softly, rubbing his temples. "So... a massive delay, then? We have to halt the beta?"
"Not necessarily," Raja said, a sudden, sharp gleam returning to his usually calm demeanor. "I plan to reach out to Ratik. I have an idea on how to counter this, but I need to see the visibility and legality of executing it with her first. She knows the Sela courts better than anyone."
Arthur let out a breath of relief. "Alright," he commanded, looking around the table at his stressed but resilient team. "Let Raja and Ratik handle the corporate warfare. The rest of us will keep our heads down and keep working on the beta. Dismissed."
The department heads nodded, filing out of the Junction room with renewed, stubborn determination to protect their masterpiece.
A few moments later, Arthur was left completely alone in the room with the Goddess of Wisdom standing silently beside him.
Dorian looked up at the tall, armored goddess. He expected her to offer a lecture on tactical foresight or corporate battlefield positioning.
Instead, Athena simply gave him a warm, deeply proud smile.
"You've improved, Creator," Athena noted softly, her divine voice echoing only in his mind. "You analyzed the enemy's formation, trusted your generals, and kept your soldiers focused on the objective."
Dorian offered a small, resilient smile, leaning back in his chair. "What is a journey without a setback?"
Athena raised an elegant eyebrow, a faint smirk playing on her lips. "Is that what Uncle Poseidon tells you during your spars?"
Dorian shook his head, letting out a soft laugh. "No. Hermes actually told me that once, right after I miserably failed to steal one of Lyra's churros from the kitchen."
Athena let out a quiet, dignified sigh at her brother's antics before her expression sharpened back into that of a war general.
"Go public with it," the Goddess of Wisdom stated plainly.
Dorian blinked, entirely pulled out of his brief moment of humor. "Huh?"
"I've been reading," Athena elaborated, gracefully tapping a long, armored finger against her chin. "Your so-called 'heliopad' is a truly fascinating piece of mortal machinery. The network it connects to, this 'internet' acts as an eternal archive. It is like a digital River Lethe in reverse. Everything that goes in never truly leaves."
"Well, yes," Dorian said, still trying to follow her divine logic. "That is the nature of the internet. The data footprint is permanent. But where exactly are you going with this?"
Athena stepped closer, resting her hands on the edge of the Round Table. "Creator, look at the board. The goal of these enemies of yours is to bleed you dry by freezing your income. They are playing the long game. A war of attrition. If an enemy relies on attrition, we must counter with a strike so sudden and unpredictable that it never even crossed their minds."
Dorian frowned, his strategic mind whirring. "But how do we know what they have in their minds? How do we know what they predict we will do?"
"Because mortals rely heavily on their collective thinking," Athena explained smoothly. "Corporate executives look at history, they study past acquisitions, and they strictly learn from precedent. They expect you to cower, hide your legal troubles, and quietly bleed out in the shadows like every other small studio before you. So... we do something that has never been done before."
Athena's grey eyes flashed with absolute brilliance. "In this kind of corporate warfare, you must go public. You make yourselves entirely too big to fail."
The gears in Dorian's head finally snapped into place. His mismatched eyes widened as the sheer, chaotic brilliance of the PR strategy unfolded in his mind.
"Controversy sells," Dorian realized aloud, his voice picking up speed. "This massive legal setback will absolutely give more fuel to our haters and the AAA corporate shills. But in turn, that blind hatred will drive millions of more eyes directly to our lawsuit."
Dorian stood up, pacing excitedly around the table. "And once the entire galaxy is looking at the legal documents... it will snowball. The critical eyes of the public will look past the headlines and see the absolute, blatant bullshit behind these shell-company lawsuits!"
"Exactly," Athena nodded, a proud smile gracing her features. "And once the public realizes you are being unfairly slaughtered by the titans of industry, you play your final card. You play the 'Indie Studio' card. You become the last saint standing."
Athena raised her hand, projecting a small, golden illusion of a lone warrior standing against a massive army.
"You call upon the memories of all the small, passionate studios that met their tragic ends through this exact same cowardly tactic," the Goddess of Warfare declared, her voice ringing with ancient authority. "From my time to yours, people have never changed, Dorian. What people desperately want... is a hero to rally behind."
Dorian stopped pacing. He stared at the golden illusion, his heart hammering against his ribs. The strategy was flawless. It was a total ideological counter-attack.
"That's..." Dorian breathed, completely amazed.
"It is nothing but a framework of a plan," Athena gently reminded him, letting the golden illusion fade away. "There will be much more nuance in the execution, and you will need to rely on your PR Manager and your legal counsel for the exact details. But I'm absolutely sure our tactical lessons together have been enough for you to lead them."
…
Things moved blisteringly fast.
As it turned out, Raja Farzir's corporate counter-strategy was perfectly in line with Athena's divine wisdom. But the Qerrian PR Manager had set his sights on an even bigger amplifier: he wanted to leverage the sheer, galactic reach of Percival.
When Raja first brought up the idea, Dorian had looked at him, utterly bewildered. "Raja, you were literally standing right in front of me. You know I'm Percival. You could have just asked me directly."
But Raja had simply adjusted his tie, his expression the absolute picture of rigid corporate professionalism. "There must be strict boundaries, boss. Inside this headquarters, you are Arthur Pendragon, CEO of Round Table Studio. If I need to negotiate with the Composer, I must go through the proper channels. Meaning I only speak to Percival's manager, Ratik."
True to his word, Raja had contacted Ratik. And when Ratik finally stepped into the fray, she didn't just bring Percival's social influence. She miraculously revealed that she had already retained a team of corporate defense lawyers from the Core Rims.
Dorian didn't even know how, where, or when she had managed to hire them, but he learned very quickly not to question his manager's terrifying efficiency.
Their very first act of war was not to file a counter-suit. It was to leak the lawsuits to the press as a 'rumor.'
Controversy sells. And what an absolutely booming business it became. In the next twenty-four hours, the news grew exponentially. The AAA executives, watching the chaos from their high-rises, didn't see anything wrong with the leak.
To them, it was just a new variable, a sign that RTS was bleeding. In their arrogance, some of the publishers even decided to aggressively fan the flames, secretly ordering their heavily sponsored media outlets like VGN to run the story front-and-center.
The first twenty-four hours of the news cycle turned into a horrendous, muddy pool of digital trash. Absolute facts were reported as wild rumors, while blatant rumors were validated as hard facts. Every single gaming forum was engulfed in a raging civil war over the fate of Assassin's Creed.
And quietly, in the background of the studio servers, Gawain meticulously recorded every single hit piece, every biased broadcast, and every manipulated data trail, forging an ironclad digital dossier.
Days turned into weeks. The muddy waters only grew muddier, right up until the day of the very first trial: The 'Creed' copyright lawsuit filed by the shell company, Creed Mutual.
Inside the RTS headquarters, development had ground to a nervous halt. The entire team were glued to the massive holoscreens in the Junction room. Several major news networks were currently running live broadcasts right outside the steps of the planetary courthouse.
On the screen, a sleek black transport shuttle pulled up to the curb. A team of lawyers dressed in immaculate, razor-sharp black suits stepped out. Leading them was Raja Farzir. They ignored the flashing cameras and screaming reporters, walking silently and purposefully into the courthouse before the heavy doors slammed shut behind them.
The actual trial was a complete bloodbath.
Raja and Ratik's legal team absolutely obliterated the prosecution. In front of the Accord judge, they systematically dismantled the frivolous copyright claim. They laid out the profound, deeply original narrative lore behind the word 'Creed,' detailing the complex history of the Assassin Brotherhood and the exact thematic correlation that led to the game's title. It was a humiliating, effortlessly easy victory for RTS.
Yet, because of the massive media frenzy, the reporters waiting outside treated it like it was the trial of the century. They all knew there were dozens more of these lawsuits waiting in the pipeline.
When the courthouse doors finally opened, Raja was instantly swarmed by a ravenous sea of journalists shoving microphones in his face. They fully expected the PR Manager to offer a standard 'no comment' or a vague corporate platitude.
"Sir! Mr. Farzir!" one of the reporters shouted over the din. "How did the first day of litigation go?!"
Raja stopped on the steps. He looked directly into the camera lenses.
"We won," Raja stated smoothly, his voice carrying perfectly over the crowd. "And let me make one thing clear to the public. We will win every single case that follows this one. Because that is exactly what these shell-company lawsuits are designed to do: they're just here to waste our time."
The reporters instantly smelled the blood leaking from that aggressive statement. The crowd whipped into an absolute frenzy.
"Where is Arthur Pendragon?!" "Will Round Table Studio be forced to delay the game?!" "Are you planning to sell your IPs?!"
Raja raised a single hand, instantly silencing the swarm with his sheer, commanding presence. He fielded their questions with surgical precision, deliberately leading every single answer back to one undeniable conclusion: RTS was fighting a war against petty, time-wasting corporate tyrants.
Then, Raja delivered the final, calculated killing blow.
"What truly concerns Round Table Studio," Raja said, his voice dropping into a register of profound disappointment, "is that the Accord judicial system has allowed this blatant corporate embargo to happen in the first place."
Raja looked directly into the primary broadcasting drone, his eyes narrowed.
"The Stellar Accord is supposed to protect innovation. But right now, they are letting massive monopolies strangle the very life out of an independent studio just because we built a better game. The Accord needs to wake up and do something about this. Because we are not living in the Xerxesion Corp era anymore."
The moment those words left his mouth, the entire courthouse steps went dead silent.
Back in the Junction room, Kasavin gasped, pushing his glasses up his face in sheer shock. To invoke the name 'Xerxesion Corp' was to hurl the absolute gravest insult possible at the Stellar Accord itself.
Raja had just declared open war on the entire industry.
…
Xerxesion Corp.
The forbidden name was thrown out into the fray of hungry media sharks, and the ripple effect was instantaneous. The general galactic public, a populace that was historically entirely numb and uninterested in boring corporate lawsuits, suddenly snapped their heads toward the broadcast. To invoke such a dark, heavily censored name on live television was either incredibly stupid, or terrifyingly brave.
The 'Xerxesion Corp Era' was a universally recognized dark age. Long before the Stellar Accord of today existed, the galaxy was run by Xerxesion, a ruthless megacorporation syndicate that entirely ruled half the known universe. It was a brutal time when the space frontier was still in its infancy. It was an era characterized by extreme, unchecked capitalism and rampant resource depletion.
Under Xerxesion rule, systemic inequality was the absolute law. Planetary citizens worked grueling, soul-crushing shifts for pennies, doing so only to save up 'death money', a grim necessity to ensure their bodies were properly buried rather than unceremoniously tossed into a corporate incinerator to power the factories.
The entire foundation of the modern Stellar Accord was built on the strict promise to maintain market balance and never allow another mega-corporation to monopolize a sector ever again.
By dropping that specific name, Raja Farzir had essentially pointed a massive, glaring spotlight at the Accord's current hypocrisy.
The internet absolutely exploded.
[Avalon Forums - Megathread: RTS vs. The Galaxy - The Lawsuits are REAL]
>: PixelPlower
I honestly thought the leaks from last week were just fake rumors made up by VGN. But I just watched the live broadcast. The AAA studios literally used a shell company to sue them over the word 'Creed'?! How is that even legal?!
>: CatchEmAll_99
Guys, I am officially panicking. What happens if the court freezes RTS's assets?! I just maxed out my credit limit and bought twenty physical Pokémon Trading Card booster boxes and downloaded backup copies of Stardew Valley to my offline hard drive. If RTS goes under, these games are going to vanish.
>: CasualGamer_Mom
I don't understand why everyone is screaming. I just like petting my digital Pikachu and farming my parsnips. Why should I have to care about some boring court case?
>: StrategyKing
@CasualGamer_Mom Because if the AAA publishers win this legal war, Heliotronic Arts will buy Round Table Studio for pennies. And the very next day, your precious Pikachu will be locked behind a fifty-credit monthly premium subscription, and your parsnip seeds will cost real-world microtransactions! That is why you should care!
>: CasualGamer_Mom
...Oh my god. I'm buying ten more backup copies right now.
[Avalon Forums - Megathread: Where is Arthur Pendragon?!]
>: CodeMiner77
Raja Farzir is literally carrying the entire weight of this studio on his back right now. The PR team and their lawyers just completely dismantled that courtroom. But seriously, where is Arthur? Why hasn't the CEO made a public statement?
>: SleepyFrog
Arthur is a ghost. The dude probably doesn't even know what a courtroom looks like.
>: Void_Watcher
Honestly, I respect the silence. Arthur is probably sitting in a dark basement somewhere, aggressively coding Assassin's Creed with one hand while flipping off the AAA publishers with the other. Let the man cook!
As the panic buying settled and the reality of the situation sank in, the deeper, more politically aware sectors of the galactic net began to dissect the final moments of Raja's interview.
[Avalon Forums - Megathread: He actually said the X-Word...]
>: HistoryBuff_88
I can't believe Farzir invoked the Xerxesion Corp on a live planetary broadcast. I used to hear absolute horror stories about the pre-Accord days. Entire planets were stripped down to the bedrock just to meet corporate quarterly quotas.
>: CoreWorld_Critic
It is a brilliant, terrifyingly calculated PR move. The Stellar Accord's entire political legitimacy relies on the promise that they destroyed the Xerxesion monopolies. By publicly comparing the current AAA gaming publishers to Xerxesion, RTS just trapped the Accord.
>: ShadowBroker
Critic is right. Farzir is essentially screaming to the public: "Look! The AAA publishers are using their infinite wealth to legally assassinate an innocent indie studio, and the Accord is letting them do it!" It completely exposes the systemic inequality of the judicial system.
>: Astro_Architect
Are they wrong, though? Look at Heliotronic Arts. Look at Stellarstars. They buy up every small studio that shows an ounce of creativity, strip them of their soul, and force them to pump out garbage VR shooters. The AAA industry HAS become a monopoly. They are the new megacorps.
>: Rebel_Yell
RTS gave us games that actually made us feel alive again. They gave us art. And now the corporate overlords want to crush them for it just to protect their profit margins. I say we don't let them.
The spark that Athena had predicted was no longer just a small, flickering ember. Raja's flawlessly delivered historical comparison had poured high-octane starship fuel directly onto the flames.
The AAA executives thought they were quietly stomping out a bothersome indie studio. Instead, they had accidentally awakened a massive, furious sleeping giant, and the entire galactic gaming community was now watching their every move with absolute, unyielding scrutiny.
⋘ 𝒍𝒐𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒂.. .⋙
🎮:
- Stardwey Valley: Completed.
- Hades: Completed.
- Pokémon: Completed.
- Sky: Children of the Light: 66%██████▒▒▒▒ Paused...
- Assassin Creed: 98%████████▒
🎬:
- Spirited Away: 62%██████▒▒▒▒
♬:
- Your Song – Elton John (ch.9)
- A Lovely Night – La La Land (ch.20)
- Merry Go Round of Life – Howl's Moving Castle (ch.25)
- Small Fragile Hearts – Victor Lundberg (ch. 27)
- Skyfall – Adele (ch. 29)
- No Time To Die – Billie Eilish (ch. 30)
- Yesterday – The Beatles (ch. 32)
- Lovely – Billie Eilish, Khalid (ch. 47)
- Best Part – H.E.R. feat. Daniel Caesar (ch. 67)
- Lovely Day – Bill Withers (ch. 68)
- My Song – Labi Siffre (ch. 75)
- Isn't She Lovely – Stevie Wonder (ch. 89)
- Gotta Catch 'Em All – Pokémon OST (ch. 90)
- Don't Stop Me Now – Queens (ch. 102)
- Grow As We Go – Ben Platt (ch. 102)
- Feeling Good – Michael Bublé (ch. 104)
- You'll Be In My Heart – Phil Collins (ch. 105)
- We Will Rock You – Queen (ch. 108)
- The Bones – Maren Morris feat. Hozier (ch. 110)
- Achilles, Come Down – Gang Of Youths (ch. 111)
- Wind of Change – Scorpions (ch. 113)