Series Two

← Series One ― Series Two ― Series Three: All Saints →

Series Two is the second season of Grand_Tarkin's The Corporate Hub roleplay stories. Series Two premiered on 11 April 2021. The series was announced following the conclusion of Series One. The showrunner for Series Two, much like Series One, is Grand_Tarkin with the story by TheArchiteck. In contrast to Series One, Series Two will have a number of different writers and different episodes are to be produced by different writers. A writer's room was formed in 2021 to begin pre-production.

The first episode of the series, titled "Maxwell", started its premier on 11 April 2021. With the publication of Episode 1, theories around the involvement of Maxwell Seymore and his brother, John Todd Seymore, have started with Maxwell's involvement in the criminal underworld becoming the focus of the first two episodes in the Series.

The first three episodes, titled "Maxwell", "The Rules of Acquisition", and "Remission", premiered between April and May 2021. After this, showrunner Grand_Tarkin announced that there would be a mid-series hiatus, with Series Two returning for its latter half in July. On 21 July, Episode 4 Part 1 premiered. However, no further publications took place. Showrunner Grand_Tarkin later announced that the delay was due to individual writer's time commitments, with the series announced to return in December 2021, to conclude by 2023.

On Christmas Day 2021, the Christmas special "Two Christmases" was broadcast, becoming the first festive roleplay special. The special broadcast a New Years Day slot for the return of Series Two, the same slot used for the first broadcast of the Series One finale a year prior.

Episodes

Series Two is confirmed to feature eight full-length roleplay episodic stories telling the over-arching story of Series Two. Episode 1 premiered on 11 April 2021.


No.	Title	Written by	Premier	Status
1	"Maxwell"	Grand_Tarkin	11 April 2021	Released
2	"The Rules of Acquisition"	JerryDZH & TheAgentGamer	26 April 2021	Released
3	"Remission"	Arushou & TheArchiteck	14 May 2021	Released
4A	"Operation Halisayh"	TheArchiteck	21 July 2021	Released
Special	"Two Christmases"	Grand_Tarkin	25 December 2021	Released
4B	"Operation Halisayh"	TheArchiteck & Grand_Tarkin	1 January 2022	Released
5	"Koonura's Terror"	Grand_Tarkin	4 February 2022	Released
6	"There is a Tide..."	Oracle9	2 January 2023	Broadcasting
7	"Ezekiel"	Arushou & TheArchiteck	TBA	Pre-production
8	"The Cain said to Abel..."	Grand_Tarkin	TBA	Pre-production

Episode 1: "Maxwell"

Part 1

The night sky is one of those constants in the world. The sun will rise and the sun will set. In Eindhoven, this is starting to become a debated issue. The yearning of industry and mining leave heaps of ash and mammoths of grey dominating the naked view of the newest nights. On rare occasions, in rare moments of natural glory, the night sky prevails. Pushing through the smog of industry to uncover an exploration of the true ambience of the night sky. Pin-drop stars and a rich blue presence. Space, on these rare occasions, can be observed in Eindhoven.

Despite a calming view directly above, the ear is not as fortunate as the eye. Loud crashes and explosive rackets of the mechanical operation mining in the area. The night sky is silent. Eindhoven is not. Usually, through the sea of noise, nothing is distinguishable as a diversity of different screeches all fall into the melting pot that is the sound-spectrum of Eindhoven. On this night, however, one sound slithers through…

A large truck, decorated with orange-clad plates with fiery stickers scattered from the grill to the load, sits by the side of a road. Desert occupying from east to west, the truck is indistinguishable from the flurry of other vehicles that come and go through the industry heavy region every day. The considerable truck, which seems to be the origin of the blasting music, is occupied by one figure. The figure, in black from the spray-pained baseball cap covering his eyes to his steel-tipped boots, sits holding both hands on the steering wheel. Seemingly unaffected by the music, a twitch shivers down his hand every moment or two. Whenever it does, the figure shrugs – shaking his arm back to normality before resuming its place on the steering wheel.

The music continues to bellow out from the speakers of the bellowing truck when a static beep enters the earshot of the figure. A faint smile appears on the figure's face as he removes the baseball cap to uncover the scorched grey of his bristle-hair and the scared wrinkles upon his forehead. A moment passes. The man turns the music up to its maximum; the sound becoming distorted by sheer volume. Another moment passes. He puts the car into gear. Another. He begins to drive, a burst of fire from the make-shift exhaust explodes as the truck begins moving. Accelerating quickly, the truck glides down the middle of the road. Faster. He passes a turning refinery. Then two more. Then more structures which warp past from the view of inside the truck.

After several seconds, as the truck reaches an incredible speed, the view in front becomes increasingly orange as a fire before the comet-like truck comes into view. Among the flames is a large tanker affixed with the signage “Dark Angels Corporation”. Next to the tanker sits a large Dark Angels security vehicle, black and purple lining from which weapons fire hurtles towards the tanker and, at the epicenter of the burning chaos, towards the three figures standing on top of the tanker. The figures are dressed in the same black as the man in the truck, something akin to a uniform.

“M!” shouts one of the figures towards the truck which fast approaches the scene.

The man inside the truck shouts in a screeching response as he continues forward at a remarkable speed. Before those in the Dark Angels security vehicle realize what’s truly happening, the truck is rammed directly into the side of the security vehicle. The waves of the crash flow out, encountering the ears of anybody remotely close by. The impact spirals the security vehicle down a small crevice, with the truck breaking inches from the edge of the road.

Out of the truck's driver-side door falls the man, blood dripping from his mouth and nose contrasting acutely to the graze on his forehead. After a moment of fragmented recovery, the man restores his mask to his head. With an extension of his arm, he helps the figures down from the side of the tanker before he enters into the drivers side, spitting a spec of blood before closing the door and starting to drive in the hope of placing a great distance between them and the fiery carnage.

Part 2

Another twitch descends his arm as the man, accompanied by two other figures, continues to drive the tanker down a cold and dark Eindhoven road. The clear and omnipresent stars, in conjunction with the reflection of the moonlight, guide the road immediately ahead of the stolen tanker.

“Straight ahead… five more miles.” One of the people sitting beside the grey-haired man says. This person, a woman with tied up red-hair and an extraterrestrial-like scaled face, is holding a mobile phone which is affixed with a digital map.

One of the other people, this being a Terran man with green-tinted goggles obnoxiously on his face, laughs. “Hah! When you first said about Vespene Gas… I thought you were mad, M. But look at us now! Hah!” He reaches over and strongly pats the man on his shoulder.

Unaffected by the interaction, the man keeps driving. A few minutes pass of relatively awkward silence. Broken by the occasional attempt at comradery before being demolished by a seemingly systematic return to silence.

“Music?” The red-headed woman says.

The man, as if he hadn't just ignored everything else, uncharacteristically nods at the suggestion – indicating towards the decades-old stereo in the tanker. As the red-headed woman reaches forwards, an explosion of weapon-fire begins. The tanker swerves as two, significantly larger, Dark Angels Security Vehicles block the road a dozen yards before them.

“I thought you said ‘no heat’?” The goggled-man shouts, reaching for his pistol.

“This is DA! The fuck did you expect?” The red-head shouts in response, leaning out of the window to begin to shoot at the soldiers ahead.

The grey-haired man reaches back from the drivers seat towards a ruck-sack in the backseat of the tanker, reaching for a weapon to engage in the fire-fight alongside his fellow heist members. Extending his arm backwards, his other arm stays affixed to the wheel.

The man takes several moments, ruffling in the back seats as the firing continues. Followed by an explosion of the windscreen into a million shards of blue-tinted glass, a Dark Angels’ energy beam smashes through the windscreen, hitting him directly in his arm. The man, holding in a screech of pain, looks over to his right. His eyes set on the bloodied corpses of the red-headed woman and the other man, his goggles smashed.

A streak of anger quickly dashes through the mind of the man. Putting the tanker into gear, the man begins to drive forward. The speed of the vehicle rises rapidly as he drives directly towards the stationary Dark Angels vehicle. Letting out a cathartic scream, the man quickly unbuckles his belt and launches himself out of the drivers door. His trajectory pushes him through the air and down into the ditch directly adjacent to the embattled road. As he does, the tanker continues fast for a second before colliding with the Dark Angels Security Vehicle. A small breach in the tanker’s tank leads directly to a large explosion. A gust of air followed by a tsunami of fire, evaporating anybody in its path within fifty-meters.

The man, missing the fiery gusts by a mere instant, sighs as he lies in the dirt of the ditch by the side of the road.

Three Days Later...

"...and make sure not to leave any trail. I don't want that bitch Saigak knowing what we're doing, got it? Alright. I've got to prepare for a meeting now, I'll call you back tonight Peters."

There is a long pause, and a sigh.

Progenitor John Todd Seymore Junior is a busy man. He runs his own biology lab, is the head of the biology department, and leads an entire corporation's worth of people as if he were struggling with a herd of wild goats. Older department heads mumble that he is sculpted from the image of his father, John Seymore Senior, a stuffy British man who had worked closely with the legendary Robbert Teck. From this heritage, Seymore Junior believes himself born and bred to be a leader of as high a caliber as they had been before him. Whether this is actually true or not remains something of an unspoken jab between the lab boys, something which privately irritates him to no end.

Those who actually dare to whisper about him behind his back say that he is too busy to be genuinely happy, and they are probably right. Though that doesn't seem to stop him from searching for the sadistic pleasure of watching other corporations bend over to the might of BlackCon. He has grown to love that feeling of power, almost beyond reason. These days, his pet project is to infiltrate Chisel Enterprises. That corporation is too large to not have BlackCon involved in it, he thinks. BlackCon aught to have a hand in every corporation of importance, and if not a handshake then a chokehold.

He had already tried going after the Science Inquisition previously, but to no avail: simply nothing is known about them. All he managed to wrench out of Ger Loogman's head was the location of a carwash, and when Ger escaped, the tracking beacon on his automobile lead right back to the same carwash. It was all a dead end. John still can't understand how he pulled it off. But no matter; there are other, bigger fish to fry.

Sitting in the Progenitorial Office, John had just hung up the telephone and was preparing to attend a meeting of the biology department, when a news headline catches his eye. He had started paying more attention to the news after he learned of a place called the Nightlands from a casual CENN broadcast. However, this is something even more personal than he could ever have imagined.

A gasp erupts from John's lungs.

"Impossible- he died in Wiltshire two years ago."

The Dark Angels corporation released security footage of a wanted criminal, probably some gangster, who had reportedly stolen a tanker full of vespene gas. The blurry image was already gone, but something about the face had stirred up an old memory in John's mind. He rewound the footage on his television set, fidgeting with it until it stopped squarely on the face.

There was a gash on the forehead and blood running down from the nose and mouth, but that couldn't have obscured the identity from him. He had seen that face millions of times, through every weather condition imaginable. It was his estranged kid brother, Maxwell.