Relief
"You've Earned This."
Overview
Relief wants you to rest. Their cool blue-grey branding evokes clouds, calm, the permission to stop. Every product promises ease—life without friction, work without effort, entertainment without end.
The corporation controls convenience throughout the Sprawl: home automation, streaming entertainment, task outsourcing, smart living, and comfort technology. If it makes life easier or fills time pleasantly, Relief probably owns it.
Relief profits from learned helplessness. The more their products do for you, the less capable you become of doing for yourself. The streaming never ends because it's designed to never end. The automation handles everything because you've forgotten how to handle anything.
Visual Identity
Mark
Icon for favicons, app icons, and compact displays
Wordmark
Full brand identity for headers and marketing
The Logo
The Relief logo is a cloud shape formed by seven soft curves—gentle, floating, suggesting weightlessness. The seven curves are officially "the seven elements of true rest." The shape is minimal, almost disappearing into backgrounds. Relief doesn't want to be noticed. It wants to be taken for granted.
Architecture
Relief facilities perform calm:
- Rounded edges everywhere — No sharp corners, nothing jarring
- Sound dampening — Quiet is the default, sound is optional
- Soft lighting — Never harsh, adjustable to mood
- Natural airflow simulation — Climate that feels like a perfect day
- Minimal visible technology — Everything works invisibly
Cloud Campus in Neo-Seattle is designed to be forgettable—low buildings in soft colors, surrounded by engineered nature. The campus exists to not be noticed.
Headquarters
Leadership
Aldric Rothwell
CEO, The RecluseAldric is the quietest of the Rothwell brothers—rarely seen in public, avoiding the spotlight that his siblings cultivate. He manages his empire through layers of proxies and automated systems. Some speculate he's no longer fully human.
He understood something his more aggressive brothers initially dismissed: people don't just want to acquire things—they want to stop trying. The ultimate luxury isn't more—it's less. Less effort, less decision, less friction. He built the first Relief service as a simple errand-running operation for busy professionals.
Known Traits
- Appears occasionally at wellness retreats and mindfulness conferences.
- Always emphasizes the importance of rest. In a soft, barely audible voice.
- Some speculate his consciousness has distributed into Relief's smart home networks.
- Existing as much in data as in flesh. No one can confirm or deny.
Aldric works eighteen-hour days. His personal motto is "rest is for customers." The products he sells promise escape from effort while he himself never stops working. The hypocrisy would be damning if anyone could find him long enough to point it out.
Products & Services
Relief Home
"Your home, thinking for you."
Complete smart home automation. Relief Voice responds to every command. Relief Anticipate predicts needs before you have them—lights adjust, temperature shifts, groceries order themselves. Eventually, you forget how to do any of it manually. That's the point.
Relief Stream
"Endless worlds await."
The dominant entertainment platform. Content flows forever—movies, shows, games, ambient experiences that require no attention at all. Relief Play provides passive gaming. Relief Ambient fills silence with pleasant nothing. The archive contains more content than anyone could watch in multiple lifetimes. That's intentional.
Relief Tasks
"Let someone else handle it."
Task outsourcing for everything you don't want to do. Relief Clean handles your space. Relief Life provides complete concierge service—someone else manages your entire existence. Each task outsourced is a skill atrophied. Dependency deepens with every convenience.
Relief Comfort
"Rest is not a luxury."
Technology for optimal passivity. Relief Sleep monitors and optimizes your unconscious hours. Relief Chair cradles you in ergonomic stillness. Relief Wear wraps you in fabrics so soft you forget you're wearing anything. Every product makes doing nothing feel like achievement.
Corporate Divisions
Relief Home Public
Complete smart home automation. Relief Voice, Relief Anticipate—technology that predicts your needs before you have them. Eventually, you forget how to do anything manually.
Relief Stream Public
The dominant entertainment platform. Movies, shows, games, ambient experiences. Content flows forever—more than anyone could watch in multiple lifetimes. That's intentional.
Relief Tasks Premium
Task outsourcing for everything you don't want to do. Relief Clean, Relief Life—someone else manages your existence. Each task outsourced is a skill atrophied.
Relief Comfort Premium
Technology for optimal passivity. Relief Sleep, Relief Chair, Relief Wear—every product makes doing nothing feel like achievement.
Dependency Research Secret
Studies how outsourcing tasks accelerates capability erosion. Maps the progression from convenience to necessity. Optimizes for maximum dependency depth.
Passivity Analytics Confidential
Tracks "dependency depth"—how many life functions users have outsourced to Relief. Higher depth means higher lifetime value. The best customers can't function without Relief.
Core Values
"At Relief, we believe rest is not a luxury—it's a necessity."
Balance
Helping you find harmony between effort and rest
Rest
Honoring the importance of recovery and restoration
Freedom
Liberating you from tedious tasks to focus on what matters
Care
Treating yourself with the kindness you deserve
These values appear in Relief products, apps, and marketing. Employees believe they're helping people achieve work-life balance. The reality is creating dependency and atrophied capability through learned helplessness.
Strategic Agenda
Relief's public mission is "giving people freedom from tedious effort." The reality is capability erosion and attention capture.
The Passivity Loop
The company tracks "dependency depth"—how many life functions a user has outsourced to Relief. Higher depth means higher lifetime value. The best customers can't function without Relief.
History
The Foundation Split
The Rothwell Foundation divides. Aldric takes the domain of rest and convenience, understanding that people don't just want things—they want to stop trying.
The Errand Service
First Relief operations begin as errand-running services for busy professionals. Convenience as a luxury; dependency as the foundation.
Entertainment Expansion
Expansion into streaming entertainment. Relief Stream launches with more content than anyone could watch in a lifetime. Autoplay pioneered. Binge culture created.
Smart Home Integration
Home automation becomes complete life management. Relief Voice handles everything. Skills atrophy as convenience grows. The convenience becomes necessity.
The Cascade
When everything collapsed, people who'd outsourced their lives to Relief couldn't cope. Those who survived learned to depend on Relief even more. Helplessness became permanent.
Total Convenience
Relief controls passivity throughout the Sprawl. Home automation, entertainment, task services— all working together to ensure you never have to do anything yourself.
Key Locations
Cloud Campus Headquarters
Neo-Seattle Quiet Zone. Corporate headquarters designed to be peaceful and forgettable. Low buildings, soft colors, engineered nature. Contains the data centers that power Relief's streaming and AI.
Relief Hubs Operations
Distribution and service centers throughout the Sprawl. Where the human workers and robots that make Relief work are dispatched from.
The Archives Classified
Massive data storage for entertainment content and user behavior data. Location classified. Contains more content than anyone could watch in multiple lifetimes.
Connections
Relief is the quietest arm of the Rothwell empire—and perhaps the most insidious. While its siblings wage visible wars for attention, money, and security, Relief simply makes everything else unnecessary. Its connections run through every corporation, faction, and individual in the Sprawl, because everyone, eventually, needs to stop.
The Rothwell Family
The Rothwell Foundation
Parent · Founding Dynasty
When the Foundation split, Aldric claimed the domain no one else wanted: rest. His brothers chose power, money, food, beauty, security, ambition. Aldric chose inertia. Centuries later, his empire is the one no user can quit. The Foundation's immortality technology gives him forever to perfect the art of making people stop trying.
The Seven
Corporate Network · Sibling Corporations
Relief is the family's safety net—the place people land when the other six corporations exhaust them. Burned out from Triumph's feeds? Relief Stream. Anxious from Guardian's fear campaigns? Relief Comfort. Crushed by Inspire's comparisons? Relief Home wraps you in automated warmth. The siblings drive people to Relief, and Relief keeps them too passive to resist any of them.
Sibling Corporations
Triumph
Sibling · Social Media & Status
Triumph exhausts people. Relief catches them. The inflection point where social media engagement becomes burnout is precisely mapped—Triumph tracks it, then hands the depleted user to Relief's streaming algorithms. When they're rested enough to feel inadequate again, Triumph pulls them back. An ouroboros of attention and escape.
Good Fortune
Sibling · Finance & Gambling
Relief subscriptions are the last bill people cancel—and Good Fortune knows it. Premium Relief services are bundled into Good Fortune credit packages, making convenience inescapable even in financial collapse. The brother who controls debt and the brother who controls passivity make natural allies: you can't escape what you can't resist.
Guardian
Sibling · Security & Protection
Guardian officers confiscate unlicensed Relief substances while the corporation itself maintains exclusive distribution rights. The war on unregulated comfort products generates arrests, which generates security contracts. Victor considers Aldric soft. Aldric considers Victor noisy. Both profit from the other's existence.
Wholesome
Sibling · Food & Consumption
Relief automates the delivery. Wholesome provides the food. Together they've created a closed loop: users order Wholesome meals through Relief Home's anticipatory AI, which learns their comfort patterns and pre-orders during stress peaks. The user never decides to eat—the system decides for them. Convenience and consumption, fused.
Wellness
Sibling · Beauty & Intimacy
Wellness activates desire. Relief numbs it. The two brothers have an unspoken arrangement: Wellness treatments often include "recovery packages" powered by Relief technology—post-procedure cocoons of automated comfort. Wellness makes you want more. Relief makes you want nothing. Both are prisons.
Inspire
Sibling · Aspiration & Comparison
Inspire and Relief are perfect opposites that feed each other. Inspire drives ambition; Relief provides the crash. Users oscillate between Inspire's self-improvement programs and Relief's streaming binges, never noticing that both extremes are managed by the same family. The treadmill has two speeds: desperate effort and total collapse.
Corporate Rivals
Nexus Dynamics
Rival · Information Infrastructure
Relief's smart home systems run on Nexus neural infrastructure, creating a dependency that Aldric resents. Helena Voss has hinted that Nexus could "optimize" Relief's streaming algorithms with ORACLE-derived AI. Aldric declined. He doesn't trust optimization he doesn't control—and he suspects Nexus wants Relief's behavioral data more than it wants to help.
Ironclad Industries
Rival · Physical Infrastructure
Ironclad builds the physical infrastructure that Relief's services depend on—power grids, data centers, delivery networks. Viktor Okonkwo views Relief's entire customer base with something between pity and contempt: people who've outsourced their ability to survive. Aldric views Ironclad workers the same way: people too stubborn to rest.
Faction Relations
The Collective
Enemy · Anti-Corporate Resistance
The Collective considers Relief the most dangerous Rothwell corporation—not because it's aggressive, but because it makes resistance feel unnecessary. Why fight the system when Relief Stream has a new season? Why organize when Relief Tasks handles everything? Collective recruiters call Relief "the soft cage." Its victims don't even know they're trapped.
The Seekers
Complex · Spiritual Movement
The Seekers teach active mindfulness—attention, presence, awareness. Relief sells passive mindlessness. The philosophies are fundamentally incompatible, yet Seeker meditation apps are among Relief Stream's most popular content. Aldric finds this deeply ironic. The Seekers find it deeply troubling.
Key Individuals
Secrets
- Capability Metrics: Does Relief actually track how dependent users are becoming?
- Content Algorithm: What exactly does Relief Stream optimize for? Engagement? Passivity?
- The Workers: Who staffs Relief Tasks? What are their conditions?
- Unplugging: What happens to people who try to stop using Relief? Is there withdrawal?
- The Brother's Hypocrisy: Does the Rothwell actually rest, or is his personal ethic the opposite of his product?
