Shinra Research and Development
| Shinra Research and Development. | |
|---|---|
| |
| Also Known As | Shinra Electric Power Company, Inc. (formerly) Shinra, Inc. |
| Organization Type | Financial Institution |
| Leadership | Reeve Tuesti; Vanessa Valentine |
| Membership | Thousands |
| Associated With | World Regenesis Organization |
| Related To | Final Fantasy VII |
An old but renewed energy corporation, now turned into almost exclusively an R&D organization, headquartered in Midgar, Shinra, Incorporated, forms the backbone of countless businesses across the Planet, ranging from household electronics to military-grade automated drone-weapons, to supplying tools for fishermen and the tools required to mine out environmentally-safe coal from the Corel Mountains.
Led by its C.E.O. Reeve Tuesti, and the Board of Directors, the company has been constantly on the rise since joining with the WRO in the wake of the Deepground Rebellion.
Contents
History
The history of the Shinra Corporation.
Shinra Manufacturing Works
Nearly a century ago, the original Shinra Company was a small weapons manufacturer known as the Shinra Manufacturing Works. When they discovered how to refine Mako energy pulled from the planet's mantle as an electrical energy source, they exploded in power. The company spread power to the entire world, setting up Mako Reactors in multiple places all across the world, and quietly taking over every aspect of the Planet. With their ever-increasing finances, they began expanding into many areas, including space exploration, weapon development, and social services. As people became more dependent on Shinra's power and supplies, President Shinra, company owner and leader, became the de facto President over much of the world.
In order to keep control over its burgeoning empire, the Shinra company divided itself into several divisions operating over the different facets of their operations, and a Board of Directors was formed, and the company officially incorporated and renamed to the Shinra Electric Power Company, Incorporated.
Shinra Electric Power Company, Inc.
Its different divisions each began to flourish: the Public Safety Maintenance Department began forming a private army and using augmented Mako-showered soldiers to form an elite group of supersoldiers, ironically titled SOLDIERs, as well as establishing a more shadowy group as the Special Investigation Division of the General Affairs Bureau, more colloquially known as the Turks. Meanwhile, the Urban Development Department was already formulating the plans to build a massive city to house Shinra's headquarters and the most powerful reactors in the world to power it. The Science Department was utilizing all tools available to create new avenues for the company to follow, including the development of Materia, or condensed spheres of Mako that could be used to cast wonderous magics. The Weapons Development Department carried on the legacy of the original Shinra company, and produced machines of warfare, ranging from rifles to missiles. The Space Exploration Department began borrowing from other departments to form the basis of a missile program, and began scouting pilots.
Shinra constructed the metropolis Midgar, which housed the headquarters for all their actions as well as eight large Mako Reactors. It ultimately has control over the city and lives of its people, although the company introduced a figure-head mayor. It obtained control of much of the world's information and broadcasting services, and created a propaganda news service called "Shinra News". The main purpose of this propaganda machine was to declare those considered disloyal to Shinra dead and to considerably distort events to Shinra's favor. Though, in protest to Shinra's lies, an anti-Shinra news service called "Shinra Truths" appeared.
When most of the two main continents of the world had been overtaken by the Shinra empire, they set their sights on the independent island nation of Wutai, which stood defiantly against Shinra's operations and refused to have their land taken over by them. This sparked a vicious war between the two groups -- Shinra, Inc. and the nation of Wutai -- into which the company put its full force and might, to make an example of these people. Public Safety Maintenance soldiers were used to invade the country, and for four long years, the conflict waged. Finally fed up with this, President Shinra authorized the first full-scale mobilization of SOLDIER, with SOLDIER First Class Sephiroth leading the operations, along with his best friends, Angeal Hewley and Genesis Rhapsodos, both SOLDIER First Classes as well. With their activities becoming of world renown thanks to "Shinra News," these three began to fan flames of support in the continental empire and helped turn public resentment towards the backwards Wutai government, who wanted to keep their people in the dark ages forever.
Dissent had long been felt amongst the people under Shinra's rule. As the Mako Reactors destroyed wildlife and outcast villages, people began to despise their work. Many began researching Mako, and realized that Shinra was ripping life out of the Planet. Some Shinra employees deserted as they discovered the truths of the company, such as First Class SOLDIERs Zack, Genesis, Sephiroth, and Angeal. Anti-Shinra groups such as AVALANCHE and the Wutai Crescent Unit sprung up to combat the army. The Turks themselves at a point, had mutinied over their leader's unfair treatment and the immense amounts of human rights abuse, causing a major fallout of many members.
Downfall
Five years after Sephiroth's apparent death and only a day after the unfortunate terrorist action of a new AVALANCHE group destroying a support mechanism for a Midgar plate, thus dropping it onto a fully populated slum area, President Shinra was found dead in his office, slain by the legendary blade Masamune, Sephiroth's weapon of choice. Immediately after, President Shinra's son, Rufus Shinra, took hold of the company and began to change policies in response to his father's death: fear would be used, rather than money, to control the world. It was Rufus's guidance that led Shinra into nearly tripling its Public Safety Maintenance program, eradicating Urban Development, shortcutting Science -- resulting in the abandonment of Professor Hojo, the chairman of the Science Department -- and putting all of the company's extra money into weapons development.
Shinra's final downfall came with Sephiroth's successful summoning of Meteor and the arrival of the WEAPONs, the Planet's defense mechanism. In an attempt to destroy the WEAPONs, then-President Rufus Shinra fires the Sister Ray, destroying Diamond WEAPON. Diamond fires off a salvo of energy before dying, and causes heavy damage to the Shinra Building. President Rufus Shinra is seemingly killed in the explosion, but is shown to have survived after a daring rescue and evacuation process by Vincent Valentine and Yuffie Kisaragi.
As the Meteor falls on the city, it rips apart what remained of Midgar. When the Lifestream ejected from the Planet to stop the Meteor, the people realized how important the Lifestream was, and Shinra could no longer use it popularly as an energy supply.
Over the years after Rufus Shinra's recovery from the accident and surviving the Geostigma incident -- in which mysterious ailments began to plague the people of the Planet, only to be solved by the death of Sephiroth's Remnants -- and the resurgence of a former Shinra science project, the Tsiviets, the ex-President and his entourage started to fade from notoriety as the people of the world wanted to put the black past of their world behind them. With the World Regenesis Organization founded by Reeve Tuesti -- the former chairman of Shinra's Urban Development Department -- already bringing much of the world back to full operations after the fall of Shinra using natural energy sources rather than Mako, the need for the Shinra company slowly dwindled away, with Rufus aging and keeping only his most trusted friends around him. Eventually, what was left of Shinra was part of the WRO, with Reeve Tuesti chairing both companies.
Organization
Board of Directors
Chief Executive Officer: Reeve Tuesti
Science Department: Vanessa Valentine
Resource Development Department: Currently Vacant
Energy Department: Legrand
Internal Affairs Department: Overseen by the Turks
Military: Colonel Stag Temple
Science Department
The Science Department is responsible for Shinra, Incorporated's new inventions in the fields of study and research, including geology, volcanology, astronomy, biology, monster research, physics, chemistry, and atmospheric science. This department is also responsible for research into the Lifestream -- though with strict oversight and full disclosure of research revolving around that, to keep the company's reputation safe -- and into the remaining Materia deposits left in the world.
The chairman, Vanessa Valentine, came on high reference directly from the World Regenesis Organization, and is a lauded research scientist. The highest ranking employee being known as Legrand, in charge of several genetics and Mako study projects.
Energy Department
The Energy Department is responsible for monopolizing on all of the natural resources devoted to energy production discovered by the Resource Development department. A return to previous operations, this division of the corporation is used to refine and market vast natural resources, including gems, coal, natural gas, fossil fuels, and monster-based fuel sources.
Military Division
The Security Division is the official in-house protection for the Shinra Company's private assets, rather than their clientele's. They are made of the best of the best that Shinra recruits, dressed in blue uniforms with shoulder pauldrons, helmets, and weaponry very reminiscent of the old Shinra corporation's troops' uniforms. They are, in fact, as close to SOLDIER as Shinra can manage today, but the vast majority of those forces have been moved to the World Regenesis Organization.
Some SOLDIERs have retained loyalty to Shinra and have become generals or high ranking officers in Shinra's private military. The company gets to retain its armed forces due to the mistakes the company's heads have made in the past, which has left them with many enemies, as well as an already sizeable force they've been maintaining for the last 20 odd years. This, coupled with Shinra's formidable resources, even diminished, makes them the second military power in the world, a distant second, however, to their parent company, the WRO Troops.
The Shinra Military Personel are equipped with a combat bayonet, top of the line assault rifles, a backup pistol, and a small array of grenades. They are adequately trained to handle any type of combat, and with veteran SOLDIERs forming a fair number of their officers and training personnel, coupled with the Shinra training simulators, are capable of handling almost any situation.
Current Projects
Urban Renewal: Being the primary employer and manufacturer in Midgar, Shinra has begun and completed several urban restoration and renewal projects, such as removing the plates from over the Slums and generally making the Midgar capital a more beautiful center of trading and development. Obviously, not everything is completed, as Shinra's damage extended for over a century, but the current state of MOST of Midgar has been much brighter and well maintained.
Energy: Shinra has always been an electrical and power company at the core. This has remained unchanged, but after the WRO took over, the science and energy departments at Shinra started looking to cleaner sources of power, and have made great leeway into more efficient energy sources.
Science: Shinra has always been home to the top scientists on the planet, and their downfall has done little to disparage this. Working off great minds such as Professor Gast's and Professor Hojo's research, Shinra's latest science division head, Vanessa Valentine, assited by Legrand, has lead great discoveries into the human genetic potential and the DNA of different races sharing the planet. Other scientists have furthered self-defense technology as well as military advances for the WRO. Wars may be over, but after the Remnants of Sephiroth incident, and the Tsviets and Deepground, there is a lot from the past that the people of the planet need to be protected from.
