Atlas Corporation (Borderlands)

The Atlas Corporation is a business that features in Borderlands.

History

The Atlas Corporation was a massive interplanetary corporation involved in a wide range of pursuits. The company was the first corporation to discover alien technology on the planet Prometheus which they managed to reverse engineer in order to create more traditional forms of weapons that benefited from the advanced technology they had acquired. This act led to the Atlas Corporation becoming the forefront in weaons manufacturing which was an extremely profitable business. Its successes later inspired other weapons manufacturing companies into exploring frontier worlds in order to locate similar alien technology or even resources. However, not all of these expeditions were successful as was the case with the planet Pandora.

In the early years of the Corporate Wars, the Atlas Corporation existed as a struggling interplanetary firm that faced near-extinction at the hands of its more established rivals. Desperate to regain a competitive edge, the company began investing heavily in deep-space exploration, hiring a legion of independent prospectors to scour the galaxy for rumors of ancient alien technology. This gamble paid off in spectacular fashion when a young explorer named Typhon DeLeon—the man who would eventually become the galaxy's first Vault Hunter—discovered a hidden cache of Eridian ruins on the planet Prometheia. After DeLeon sold the coordinates and the corresponding Vault Key to the corporation for a massive sum, Atlas successfully breached the Vault and began an intensive program to reverse-engineer the "god-like" technology found within. The resulting breakthrough in weaponry and starship propulsion catapulted Atlas to the pinnacle of the galactic economy, allowing them to establish a massive corporate headquarters on Prometheia and field an elite private military known as the Crimson Lance to protect their new monopoly. This sudden ascent not only transformed Atlas into the dominant megacorporation of its era but also ignited a frantic, universe-wide gold rush as other companies, such as Dahl and Hyperion, raced to find their own Vaults.

With its newfound technological superiority, the Atlas Corporation rapidly transitioned from a simple manufacturer into a sovereign, galaxy-spanning empire that dictated the flow of interstellar commerce. The company utilised the reverse-engineered Eridian technology to develop a signature line of high-end weaponry, famously marketed under the slogan "It’s like having a god in your hand," which rendered the arsenals of their competitors obsolete overnight. To ensure their monopoly remained unchallenged, Atlas transformed the planet Prometheia into a sprawling urban fortress, serving as both their corporate seat and a testing ground for their increasingly lethal paramilitary hardware. This era of expansion saw the corporation becoming increasingly authoritarian, as they leveraged their massive wealth to buy out entire solar systems and subjugate planetary governments under the guise of "corporate security." The leadership became obsessed with the pursuit of further Eridian caches, pouring trillions into the Atlas Discovery Division to track down the mythical "Mother Lode" of Vaults. By the time they set their sights on the desolate border-world of Pandora, Atlas had evolved into a cold, elitist meritocracy that viewed the rest of the galaxy as merely a resource to be harvested or a market to be dominated, setting the stage for the brutal planetary occupations that would eventually define their legacy.

Soon, Atlas opened the Vault and began reverse engineering the Eridian technology from it in order to manufacture machines and weaponry with the benefits of this new technology, allowing them to produce high performance equipment that excels in every area without trade-offs. The project also brought Atlas to the forefront of weapons manufacturing, and was extremely profitable. The immense success of the Atlas corporation's venture inspired other megacorporations, such as the Dahl corporation, to explore other frontier planets, like Pandora, in search of more alien technology and similar resources. Not all such ventures were immediately successful, as the case of Pandora shows, even though items of value still exist buried within the planet.

The Crimson Lance is a highly trained and well-armed private military force created and financed by the Atlas corporation. It can be assumed by Crimson Lance involvement that the Atlas Corporation is attempting to secure the Vault in order to maintain its technological edge over its competitors.

Overview

Inside the corporation was a private military group of individuals who were highly trained and known as Crimson Lance. These private soldiers disregarded the rules of law and order.

Atlas guns tend to have high damage and fire rate, without sacrificing magazine capacity and reload. Indeed, Marcus Kincaid sometimes says, "Buy an Atlas, and you too will know what it is like to hold the power of the gods in your hands!" Atlas guns have unorthodox designs with their pistols and rocket launchers being wrist/shoulder mounted. The aesthetic of their weapons takes influence from futuristic space vehicles in science fiction: their pistols feature UFO-like magazines, their rocket launchers are equipped with massive jetpack-like magazines, and their assault rifles have sleek, curved barrel protectors that give the appearance of a spacecraft. Their weapons fire from multiple side barrels instead of the more traditional linear layout of other manufacturers and their gun accessories being large and unwieldy, usually concealing the main barrel itself. If an Atlas weapon spawns with such an accessory, they will have small fins that open up while firing.

Members

• Commandant Steele :
• Roland :

Notes

• The Atlas Corporation was created by Gearbox Software where it featured in the setting of the Borderlands universe.

Appearances

• Borderlands:

External Link

• Borderlands Wiki Entry

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