Guardian
"We Stand Between You and Harm."
Overview
Guardian keeps you safe. That's the promise—printed on home security systems, embroidered on private officer uniforms, projected at the start of every Guardian Combat League broadcast. In a Sprawl where danger is real and omnipresent, Guardian offers protection.
The corporation controls security throughout the Sprawl: home defense systems, private police forces, personal protection, weapons manufacturing, combat sports, and "justice solutions." They don't just profit from fear—they cultivate it.
The reality is that Guardian profits from violence, both defending against it and providing it. The same corporation selling you home security is selling weapons to the people you're afraid of. Peace is bad for business.
Visual Identity
Mark
Icon for favicons, app icons, and compact displays
Wordmark
Full brand identity for headers and marketing
The Logo
The Guardian logo is a seven-pointed sheriff star rendered in navy and silver. The shape explicitly references law enforcement heritage—the trusted authority figure keeping chaos at bay. Displaying the Guardian star signals protection—or threat, depending on which side you're on.
Architecture
Guardian facilities balance military efficiency with civilian comfort:
- Fortress-style exteriors — Strong walls, secure perimeters
- Command center interiors — Banks of monitors, tactical displays
- Client-facing areas — Warm wood, comfortable seating
- Training facilities — Gyms, ranges, combat arenas
- Private areas — Where the violent work happens, never visible
The Citadel in Neo-Denver is built into a mountain—literally impregnable, housing Guardian's global command center. It looks like what a child imagines when they think "safe."
Headquarters
Leadership
Victor Rothwell
CEO, The StrategistVictor is the military mind of the Rothwell family—the one who was always the family's muscle. When threats emerge, he plans the response. Cold, calculating, occasionally frustrated by his brothers' caution. He believes they've been too conservative—that they could control far more if they were willing to take risks.
He built the first Guardian force as family protection, then realized protection could be sold. He understood something fundamental: violence is always present. The question is who controls it. By monopolizing legitimate violence—security, defense, enforcement—he made himself essential.
Known Traits
- Presents as a military patriarch—disciplined, honorable, protective.
- Appears at veteran events, Guardian Combat League matches, and security conferences.
- Looks like the general you'd trust with your life.
- Has personally killed more people than most armies. The discipline is real. So is the violence.
Victor believes he's providing order in a chaotic world. Without Guardian, violence would be uncontrolled, unpredictable, worse. He's not wrong. He's just also profiting from ensuring the chaos never fully ends. He has prepared contingencies for civilizational collapse—not because he knows when it's coming, but because collapse is always coming.
Products & Services
Guardian Home
"Your castle, our walls."
Complete residential security systems from street-level monitoring to panic room installation. Guardian Alert provides 24/7 surveillance with armed response capability. Every home can be a fortress—if you're willing to pay for the walls.
Guardian Protection Services
"We stand where you need us."
Private police forces, executive protection, and rapid response teams. From personal bodyguards to corporate security details to neighborhood patrol contracts. Guardian personnel are everywhere—keeping order for those who can afford it.
Guardian Combat League
"Where warriors are born."
The most-watched combat sports organization in the Sprawl. Professional fighters compete in Guardian Arenas across the world, with the flagship Neo-Las Vegas venue seating 80,000. Violence, sanctioned and spectacular. Training programs breed the next generation.
Guardian Arms & Defense
"The tools of protection."
Weapons manufacturing and defense technology for individuals, corporations, and governments. From personal sidearms to automated security drones to military-grade armaments. Guardian supplies both sides of every conflict—ensuring perpetual demand.
Corporate Divisions
Consumer Security Public
Home security systems, personal protection devices, neighborhood monitoring. The most visible face of Guardian—keeping families safe. High volume, recurring subscriptions, fear-based upgrades.
Private Forces Premium
Private police, executive protection, corporate security details, rapid response teams. Professional violence for those who can afford it. The muscle behind corporate power.
Combat Entertainment Public
The Guardian Combat League, training academies, arena operations. Violence made spectacular and profitable. Breeding grounds for the next generation of Guardian personnel.
Arms & Defense Premium
Weapons manufacturing, defense technology, security drones, military contracts. Guardian supplies both sides of conflicts—ensuring perpetual demand for protection.
Justice Solutions Confidential
Private detention, investigation services, bounty operations, "conflict resolution." When legal systems fail, Guardian offers alternatives. Profitable alternatives.
Special Operations Deniable
The division that doesn't exist. Wet work, extractions, destabilization, whatever clients need that can never be acknowledged. Victor Rothwell's personal instrument.
Core Values
"At Guardian, we believe everyone deserves to feel safe."
Protection
Standing between our clients and harm, always vigilant
Courage
Facing threats so our clients don't have to
Peace
Working toward a world where security isn't necessary
Integrity
Upholding the highest standards of honorable service
These values are displayed in every Guardian facility. Employees believe they're keeping people safe. The reality is that Guardian profits from fear and violence, and a peaceful world would bankrupt them.
Strategic Agenda
Guardian's public mission is "providing security for a dangerous world." The reality is fear cultivation and violence monetization.
The Fear Loop
Safe people don't buy security. Guardian ensures no one feels safe.
The AI Doctrine: Protection From Tomorrow
Nexus promises transcendence through AI. Helix promises biological enhancement. Guardian asks a simpler question: What happens when that goes wrong?
AI Safety Services
Someone's selling you neural interfaces. Someone else is selling you genetic optimization. Guardian sells protection from both—and from everything that comes after. AI-powered threat detection. Neural firewall systems. Cognitive intrusion alerts. Defense against the very technologies everyone else is rushing to embrace.
The AI Safety division monitors clients for unauthorized neural access, malicious code injection, and consciousness tampering. They don't ask what you're afraid of—they make sure you're afraid of everything, then offer protection from all of it.
Consciousness Insurance
What's your mind worth? Guardian has an answer: whatever you're willing to pay to protect it. Consciousness Insurance products range from basic neural backup to full identity reconstruction packages. Your thoughts, memories, personality—all backed up to Guardian secure storage, recoverable if anything happens to the original.
Standard plans cover "cognitive death"—loss of consciousness through neural attack, upload failure, or consciousness theft. Premium plans cover identity fragmentation, memory corruption, and "existential discontinuity." The fine print is extensive. The fear is real.
Guardian's consciousness vaults contain millions of backed-up identities. Some belong to living clients. Some belonged to clients who never made claims. What happens to an unclaimed consciousness backup? Guardian's terms of service are silent on the matter.
Backup Systems & Recovery
Nexus talks about uploading consciousness. Guardian talks about what happens when uploads fail. Their recovery services promise to retrieve, reconstruct, or restore any client consciousness—from any system, any storage, any situation. For the right price.
The technology comes from partnerships with both Nexus and independent researchers—Guardian doesn't build, they protect. Their recovery teams include some of the Sprawl's best neural surgeons, consciousness engineers, and "identity specialists" who can piece together fragmented minds from corrupted backups.
The service creates a dependency loop: fear of consciousness loss drives backup purchases, backup reliance drives recovery insurance purchases, and the knowledge that backups exist makes consciousness attacks more appealing to those who might otherwise hesitate.
What Is Guardian's AI Strategy?
Guardian doesn't build AI—they profit from fear of it. Every advance in artificial intelligence, every new neural interface, every consciousness transfer technology creates new threats. New threats create new markets. Guardian's AI strategy is simple: let others innovate, then sell protection from the innovation.
Amplify AI Fears
Sponsor research on AI risks, neural vulnerabilities, and consciousness attacks. Ensure every breakthrough comes with publicized dangers. Safe technology doesn't need Guardian protection.
Control the Defense Market
Whatever Nexus builds, Guardian protects against. Whatever Helix grows, Guardian monitors for threats. The offense/defense cycle never ends—Guardian only needs to stay one step behind.
Own Consciousness Insurance
When minds become digital, they become vulnerable. Guardian positions itself as the essential backup—the insurance policy for your very existence. Immortality is worthless if someone can delete you.
"Nexus sells you eternity. We sell you the guarantee that eternity doesn't end in screaming." — Victor Rothwell, Security Conference keynote, 2181
History
Guardian's story begins with the Rothwell Foundation's split in the 1850s. The brother who became Victor took the domain of protection—understanding that controlling violence meant controlling power itself.
The Foundation Split
The Rothwell Foundation divides. The brother destined for Guardian takes the domain of protection. He builds the first private security force—family guards, then estate protection, then corporate contracts.
Private Police
Expansion into formal security services. Guardian forces protect factories, break strikes, maintain order where public police won't. The line between security and mercenary blurs.
Combat Sports
Launch of the Guardian Combat League. Violence becomes entertainment. Training academies produce both fighters and future security personnel. The pipeline is established.
Military Contracts
Guardian becomes a major defense contractor. Arms manufacturing, private military services, government security partnerships. The distinction between corporate and state violence erodes.
The Cascade
Chaos. Violence everywhere. Guardian forces maintain order where they're paid to—and watch everywhere else burn. In the aftermath, Guardian is one of the few organizations capable of providing security. Their price rises accordingly.
Total Control
Guardian controls legitimate violence throughout the Sprawl. Security, enforcement, combat, weapons—if violence is involved, Guardian profits. The fear never ends.
Key Locations
The Citadel Headquarters
Neo-Denver Protected Zone. Built into a mountain, containing global command center, training facilities, and the most secure bunker complex on Earth.
Guardian Arenas Entertainment
Combat sports venues throughout the Sprawl. The flagship in Neo-Las Vegas seats 80,000 and hosts Guardian Combat League championships.
Regional Command Centers Operations
Fortified facilities in every major Sprawl zone. Local command, rapid response staging, detention facilities.
Connections
Guardian's position is deceptively simple: they sell protection. But in a Sprawl where every corporation creates threats, and every faction represents instability, Guardian sits at the intersection of everyone's fear. The brother who controls violence controls everything.
The Rothwell Family
The Rothwell Foundation
Parent · Founding Dynasty
Guardian exists because the Foundation split in the 1850s, and the brother who became Victor claimed the domain of protection. The Foundation's immortality technology keeps the Rothwell brothers alive—and their centuries-old rivalries simmering. Victor answers to the family's collective interests, but he's always believed the others are too cautious.
The Seven
Corporate Network · Sibling Corporations
Guardian is one of The Seven Rothwell corporations, each controlling a different domain of human need. Together they form the most comprehensive consumer control apparatus in history. Guardian's role is specific: when any of The Seven face threats—protests, sabotage, competition—Guardian provides the muscle. Protection is the family business.
Sibling Corporations
Wellness
Sibling · Healthcare
Wellness heals; Guardian harms. The two brothers have the most openly contentious relationship in the family. Yet Wellness clinics rely on Guardian security, and Guardian personnel receive priority Wellness medical care. Dependency masked as distaste.
Wholesome
Sibling · Food & Agriculture
Wholesome controls the food supply. Guardian protects the supply chains—agricultural zones, processing facilities, distribution networks. When food riots erupt in the Sprawl, Guardian forces restore order. Both brothers profit from the hunger that follows.
Triumph
Sibling · Media & Entertainment
Triumph broadcasts the Guardian Combat League. Triumph's news networks amplify crime statistics that drive Guardian subscriptions. Victor and the Triumph brother understand each other perfectly: fear sells security, and security sells entertainment.
Relief
Sibling · Substances & Comfort
Relief dulls the edges; Guardian sharpens them. Guardian officers confiscate unlicensed Relief products while the corporation itself maintains exclusive distribution rights. The war on unregulated substances generates arrests, which generates security contracts.
Inspire
Sibling · Education & Ideology
Inspire teaches people what to think. Guardian ensures they don't think anything else. Inspire's educational curriculum includes mandatory Guardian safety modules. Guardian recruits from Inspire's disciplined graduates. Indoctrination with enforcement.
Good Fortune
Sibling · Finance & Gambling
Good Fortune controls money. Guardian controls what money can't buy—safety. Good Fortune casinos are Guardian's most profitable security contracts. The gambling floors are monitored by Guardian AI, and debts that can't be paid financially are sometimes paid in other ways.
Corporate Rivals
Nexus Dynamics
Rival · Digital Threats
Nexus builds the neural interfaces. Guardian sells protection from them. Every Nexus breakthrough creates a new attack surface, and Guardian's AI Safety division rushes to monetize the fear. The irony: Guardian's own surveillance systems run on Nexus infrastructure. They need each other and resent it.
Helix Biotech
Rival · Biological Threats
Helix optimizes bodies. Guardian protects them—from the very modifications Helix sells. When gene therapies go wrong, Guardian's recovery teams extract victims. When bioweapons leak, Guardian quarantine forces lock down districts. Helix creates the problem; Guardian charges for the solution.
Faction Relations
The Collective
Enemy · Anti-Corporate Resistance
The Collective views Guardian as the enforcement arm of corporate tyranny—and they're not wrong. Guardian forces have raided Collective safehouses, disrupted supply lines, and "processed" captured operatives. The Collective responds with targeted attacks on Guardian infrastructure. An escalating war with no end in sight.
The Seekers
Complex · Spiritual Movement
The Seekers' philosophy of transcendence doesn't threaten Guardian directly—but their growing influence destabilizes the fear-based order Guardian depends on. People who believe in something bigger than survival buy fewer security systems. Victor watches the movement with quiet concern.
Key Individuals
Secrets
- Both Sides: How explicitly does Guardian sell to both sides of conflicts?
- Combat League Fixing: Is the Guardian Combat League legitimate or managed entertainment?
- Government Contracts: How much of the Sprawl's "public" security is actually Guardian?
- Special Operations: What does the deniable division actually do?
- The Brother's Body Count: How many people has the Rothwell personally killed?
