Hello there everybody, first of all, I'm new to the forums as well as a GM new to Eclipse Phase. I am planning to run a campaign mainly set on Mars, so I was interested in the main parties involved, i.e. the Tharsis League and the Planetary Consortium. I've read through the contents of the core book & Sunward concerning both organizations, but I am still somewhat confused about certain aspects of it. First of all, the Planetary Consortium seems to heavily support the process of terraforming of Mars in order to make it a new homeworld for transhumanity; Mars is also said to be its core world, an apple of their eye. Still, it seems that most big habitats, all the domed cities like New Shanghai, Noctis, Olympus etc. are in fact independent and not controlled by the PC at all, which would leave the Planetary Constortium with the Progress station (ex-Deimos) and some smaller habitats mainly floating in space and/or on the surface of Mars. Obviously, they might be huge O'Neill cylinders or similar important habitats, but oddly enough, the Consortium seems to lack direct control on Mars. And then, there's the Tharsis League which 'unites' all the independent dome cities in order to promote Mars nationalism (similar to the main idea of the Morningstar Constellation, I guess). Therefore, the Tharsis League would, in fact, be heavily opposed to the Consortium; still, there are Consulates of the PC in major cities (Valles) and the representatives in the Tharsis League parliament are very often 'hand-picked by the hypercorps [i.e. the Consortium]' because they come mainly from the big cities. Furthermore, it seems that Olympus (mentioned as a member state of the League) is controlled by a Consortium hypercorp (Olympus Infrastructure Authority); the hypercorp itself is run by the governors of Valles, Noctis and Elysium, so the governors of the 'independent' cities of the Tharsis League are IN FACT members of the Planetary Consortium - why would they care about the League? Here's my question then: Is the Tharsis League essentially some sort of puppet state for the hypercorps from the Planetary Consortium, a way of controlling the Martian population? Does the Martian population participate in the elections to the 'parliament' of the Consortium, then? Or maybe it is an independent organization, but the strong presence of major hypercorps in the dome cities (Comex, Olympus Infrastructure Authority) essentially makes it very dependent on the the hypercorps presence on the planet, which essentially provides them with everything, from technology to major transport routes (see the Olympus beanstalk)? Sadly, there is literally ONE page dedicated to the description of the Tharsis League in Sunward, and it isn't particularly helpful for me. Obviously, as a GM I can make it anything I want, but I am curious how more experienced players actually deal with the subject of the League.