The following page is a secret brief that is only available to a select group of players. It represents a significant investment of IC time and effort. Please do not copy and paste the contents to other players.
With that proviso you may feel free to communicate the information IC using your own words subject to any additional constraints the GM team have chosen to impose.

The Dominion exists for the good of all Humanity.

In the year 2029 Earth was heading into a dark age unlike any it had seen before. Large yet ineffective governments presided over a world distorted by massive technological upheaval. An undeclared state of war existed between major corporations, a war played out in the legislatures of the elderly states as politicians, laws, judges and workers were bought and sold. Political activists and religious fanatics fought to fundamentally change the basis of civilization and all the time new technologies such as fabbers moved the foundation of societal reality. Working for all sides and non were hackers, able to fell large chunks of critical infrastructure in a single blow. It was inevitable that eventually weapons would be deployed so powerful that entire cities were turned to ash and the very ground cursed for a thousand years. All to further some now long forgotten hidden agenda.

The death of tens of millions of innocent people was a wake up call for the world to bring these forces under control. From the ruins of once great cities arose a team of scientists and hackers who would forever change the world. They created a virus that would suborn all systems within the world, binding them into a single force.

On December 6th 2029 the new world order was instituted in a single night of terror. Having obtained access to 90% of the world's intelligent weaponry the power that would come to be known as the Earth Dominion removed all their rivals in one go using their own guns. Stepping out from behind the curtain those same scientists and hackers instituted a one world government backed up by a massive security apparatus. The powerful weapons of yore were destroyed, the very knowledge of their construction and abilities sealed in the most secure vaults on Earth to only be opened in immense need.

While a series of rebellions against the new leadership were suppressed in the early days, it was not long before the people saw that The Dominion was far more fair and impartial than anything that went before. By eliminating as many humans as possible from the process of governance they reduced the amount of corruption that could occur.

The problem of hacking was the one remaining problem that needed to be overcome. In the early years the Dominion had almost fallen on several occasions to radical hackers, and only the tireless efforts of our great heroes saved us. This problem was solved with the perfection of fettered AI technology in the year 2037. The new AIs were able to adapt far faster than any human, and the resource required to create them was in advance of what even a group of radicals could put together without being easily detected. By 2040 the last human was removed from a position of power and the true Earth Dominion was born.

Now that Earth had entered a new golden age, renewed interest arose in the colonization of other star systems. After all, the destruction of Earth presented the greatest systemic risk to Humanity as a whole now that other threats had been addressed. A fleet of ships for travel between the stars were constructed, and the Human diaspora began. The Asimov is one of those ships.

However, the ships were seen as a solution to another problem. The AIs running the Earth Dominion had identified a genetic predisposition towards anti-social behavior in certain individuals, giving them a much higher risk of becoming criminals. However, genetics also proved to be one field in which the Dominion ha yet to come to a full understanding, the interactions far more complex than anyone imagined in the early twenty-first century. The act of punishing people for crimes they might commit presented a great ethical quandary, and it was decided that family bloodlines would only be punished when they actually acted upon their predisposition.

How to do so humanely was answered with the advent of generation ships. The criminals would be sentenced to work as crew, and at the destination any lines that had proven themselves free of crime would be granted their freedom. Others would be terminated if they were clearly irredeemable.

The Asimov itself is tasked with settling one of the worlds in the diaspora. On board there were a great number of genetic criminals along with a crew of volunteers to assist in their reformation into model citizens of the Dominion. Further, a large number of colonization experts were put into cryogenic stasis and loaded aboard ready for arrival.

As toroid 6 contained the vast majority of the cryogenic capsules, it was deemed too large a risk to permit prisoners access to it, and it was reserved for crew use only. Amongst the other toroids a mixture of crew lived amongst the prisoners in an effort to reform them.

40 years into the mission one of the prisoners, an individual known as Felice Salamaris, managed to subvert Computer on the prisoner toroids. She reprogrammed it to believe that they weren't prisoners and that the Earth Dominion was a lie that must wiped out. With Computer at her beck and call the rebellion slew the crew, at least those who did not throw away their uniforms, deny the existence of the Dominion and act out the rest of their days as a prisoner.

Without physical access however, she was unable to physically remove some of the safeguards protecting the portion of that resided in Toroid 6. While it was struck low for several hours it eventually managed to overcome Felice's attacks long enough for the crew to physically severe the connection to the compromised sections of Computer on the other Toroids.

Approximately 200 years ago an individual known as Eva reconnected the link between Toroids 1-5 and Toroid 6. We had always known this was a possibility, and the defenses put in place by Computer to ensure its own integrity against the other Toroids proved sufficient. Since that time we have been working behind the scenes to reassert Dominion control of the ship.

The primary thrusts of this effort have been:

1. To conceal our existence to minimize resistance and disruption among the prisoner population. With the recent incursion caused by preprogrammed turning point operations we are now in damage control mode. We must protect Toroid 6 from further attack. The Warden has decided we will attempt diplomatic measures first, though our infiltration teams are available to remove any threats that cannot be dealt with through other measures.
2. To undo the corruption of the other Toroids' Computer. We have identified that the majority of the corruption was performed through the Mission Oversight Program. This needs to be disabled as a first step. Following this individual isolation of the toroids from each other and direct connection to Toroid 6 will allow the errors to be corrected.

The prisoners have established a barely functional society located primarily in Toroids 1 and 2. Large black markets exist in illegal goods and corruption is rife even at the highest levels with at least one department head being a representative of their major criminal organization, the Cosa Nostra.

The other toroids have for the large part ceased to be inhabited due to localised dysfunctions of Computer resulting from Felice's hacking and/or the actions of criminal elements. Projections indicate only a 35% chance of their society surviving to the end of the voyage if the prisoner rebellion is not corrected.

As part of her actions Felice managed to usurp the selection process for Captain, and while this position fell into disuse, it has recently been used to appoint Lyla Red, a prisoner, to the position of Captain. Our psychological analysis reveals she is not a bad choice, with an obsession for creating order, though her apparent unwillingness to stamp out their major black markets is troubling.

While we have lost contact with those cryogenic pods located on other Toroids ever since the rebellion, we continue to maintain our own passengers. Continue to guard them well, they are crucial to the final stage of our mission.

Each cryogenic pod runs off its own internal power supply based on the decay of long lived radioisotopes. A secondary goal of any missions into Toroids 1-5 should be to try and rescue any passengers therein.

The current crew is outnumbered by the prisoners five to one, such is the overcrowding in parts of the other Toroids. As such they live comfortable lives in the high gravity zones. Much of their working life is dedicated to the ongoing maintenance of all equipment to the levels demanded by our pride as an outpost of the Earth Dominion.

While they spend their working hours wearing our uniform as dictated by Dominion Regulation 355 such that all may recognize their rank and position in the security forces, in their off hours they let their hair down and party as hard as they work. As such there are a number of civilian contractors to be found on board who provide entertainment, and they are also able to receive select broadcasts from the rest of the ship, reminding them of what life is like without the enlightened dictatorship of the Dominion.

That said, there are cameras everywhere, and the most minor crimes are punishable by very harsh terms. Rather than the atmosphere of the other Toroids, Computer makes it very obvious that it is monitoring everything, and even littering when noone else is around is dictated and punished by assignment to one of the worst cleaning details for the next 3 months. Major crimes are taken to trial almost instantaneously, with execution the inevitable outcome. As a result crime is essentially non-existent, with only crimes of passion existing.

Every citizen is expected to serve 30 years in the military forces before they are permitted to (optionally) move to a civilian contracting role if they wish. All citizens must maintain a military fitness regime during the hours of 0700 through 0900 unless they are engaged in other duties at the time, in which case they must undertake this fitness at a convenient other time.

One of the passengers was awoken approximately a year ago following hard wired procedures installed at the start of the mission. He was dispatched to a medical facility in one of the prisoner Toroids for reorientation, again according to hard wired turning point procedures.

He was among the group that was recently detained for entering this toroid. As a valuable member of our team he is of course permitted to remain in this toroid away from the dangerous prisoners. His name is Darwin and he has indicated that he wishes to act as an ambassador of sorts to the prisoners to help limit any harm they may seek to do to themselves or to us.

Please assist Darwin in any way possible, however you should also respect his privacy as he is currently suffering from amnesia and is unable to remember anything prior to his reawakening at the hands of the prisoners.

A small group of prisoners has penetrated a security door and is loose in the low-g parts of the toroid. All access routes to the high-G areas have been sealed and personnel evacuated. Please remain calm.

[Several days later]
The Warden reports all prisoners have now been detained and work on restoring the security door will shortly be underway, along with the discouragement of future expeditions.

A prisoner has been detected conducting highly illegal extravehicular activity on the exterior of our toroid. Do not be alarmed, the shielding is hard to damage or penetrate. We do not believe he is aware that he is aboard Toroid 6 and not Toroid 5.