Arctara AG [BOOTLEG QIREX // AURICOM LORE]

Arctara Anti Gravity Technologies (formerly REDEX Advancements) are a racing team based in Stavelot, UEA. As of now, it is currently under the ownership of performance-ship manufacturer, Vytal Incorporated.

Part One | Historical Background
FORMATION
REDEX was founded in 2756 at Silverstone, UEA. They formed as a result of it's founder, Hannah Yu, being dismissed from the research branch at the University of Oxford-Luton. With REDEX, her aim was to monetize the MFR technology that Oxford-Luton had invented.

Being one of the key players in the ISF, Yu decided to invest most of the company's resources into developing a spacecraft for the racing league that was being planned by the Federation. She saw the league as an opportunity to showcase her vision of MFR technology to various corporations, and pushed the company into the league as one of it's founding members.

HSRL
The efforts of Yu and the REDEX team would pay off nicely, with their team winning the inaugural HSRL season - beating out Oxford-Luton's Stile-RD team, of which they were close rivals. This would start a long game of cat-and-mouse, where REDEX and Stile-RD would battle each-other tirelessly for the top throughout the early years of the now HS300 League. Seeing the success of REDEX would pour massive amounts of money into the hands of REDEX from investors and companies who wanted to adopt the technology they were developing. More money would be put into their racecraft platform, and things would only be looking up from there.

However, during the testing phase of the 2768 season, a test of an new-generation flow drive would kill Jean Roquete, REDEX's head engineer and test pilot. This incident would ground the HS300 for an extended period of time.

FLOW DRIVE DISASTER
While flying around the testing grounds of Fort Cydonia, Roquete had reported a minor control error for his engine. Half a minute later, his ship would accelerate unexpectedly and crash into the fort's wall, killing Roquete instantly. The following investigation would show that the flow drive's mechanism had malfunctioned severely, resulting in an unstoppable chain of reactions made in the MFR's chamber. Tests with completely new units of the flow drive would result in the same set of circumstances.

This would be a bad look on REDEX, as they have already accepted numerous orders from multiple manufacturers for their new flow drive. The incident would scare away the majority of their partners, which significantly impacted their funds. Yu would become increasingly stubborn during the fallout, profusely denying that the design was flawed and arguing with both investors and the ISF about the nature of the incident.

When the HS300 restarted, REDEX had fallen so far back that they would finish second-last on the grid.

ACQUISITION
Those in the company started turning against Yu. Slowly, the team behind REDEX's racing platform started dwindling, with many going to other racing teams. Projects that were promised to remaining investors would be forced into cancellation, resulting in even less funding. By 2779, REDEX had too little money to stay in the HS300 League. And so, they pulled out entirely and were expected to go insolvent by the end of the year.

Fortunately for those remaining at the company, REDEX would be bought out by Vytal, through the recommendation of HS300 champion Saya Yoshiro. Yoshiro would be named the new director of what was now Project Arctara, and immediately got to work. Engineers from Vytal would be assigned to the project, working with former REDEX employees to create a completely new platform for the HS300.

This platform would be finished in 2783, with performance projected to match the top-runners in the league. In 2784, they would re-enter the HS300 as Arctara Anti Gravity.

Part Two | Overview
BASE OF OPERATIONS
As of now, Arctara operates out of Stavelot, which is in the Belgian region of the UEA. Most of the Arctara campus sits where an abandoned race track used to stand, before being completely destroyed in the Final Russo-UEA conflict. The facilities are mostly in line with where the actual race track used to be. As such, one can easily navigate around using old track maps (which Arctara references on their navigation terminals).

In particular, there are four main buildings: the Design Center (dubbed La Source), the Center for Applicative R&D (dubbed Chicane), Manufacturing (dubbed Blanchimont), and the Test & Development Labs (dubbed Eau Rouge).

While all these facilities have been placed directly on top of where the old race track used to be, the Test & Development building is actually placed beside the track, as a means of "preserving a piece of racing history," in Saya Yoshiro's words.

LEADERSHIP STRUCTURE
Arctara operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary under the Vytal Incorporated umbrella, which would have it fall under a joint ownership between Vytal's two leads: Contrei Alvarez & Adelaide Neumann. The team's engineering and design efforts are led by a Chief Technical Officer, however most of the management falls under the team principal, three-time HS300 champion Jules Chastain. 

DEVELOPMENTS
As a semi-experimental works team, Arctara almost exclusively uses technology developed by Vytal. Described as "on-going experiment platforms," Vytal has brought a lot to the table of racing:

• The Renn-Sport lineup (RS#), one of the most successful performance-craft lineups in the HS300 Series

• JINX, the purpose built propulsion system for both HS300 and IES

• The Endurance Racing lineup (NR#), their spec lineup for the Interplanetary Endurance Series

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS
Arctara is known for their unusual technology; as stated, they are Vytal's experimental platform. One experiment to have been refined throughout their years in the HS300 is the "Jinx Is No Exception" [JINX] propulsion platform, which closely followed the philosophies of Flaubert's Stellerator. It proved to be very successful, with Arctara dominating multiple seasons using JINX. Eventually, this would make its way to civilian craft, starting with the civilian NR1.

CORPORATE CULTURE
The culture at Arctara is defined by a commitment to innovation, with many in the engineering/design sectors willingly staying overtime to solve issues or to theorize ways to gain a competitive edge against others. Staff who are on-track tend to be very close to each-other, as the long travel times of space essentially turn their crewmates into a second family. This rings especially true when it comes to the pilots, as they can be away from their homes for months at a time.