THE PAPAL STATES: 2045-2076
2045-2073.
In 2042, the Papal States began the construction of the Hexagon — a project that took three years and required a huge amount of private investment, of which ZeoSet provided 75% of the requested budget. The undertaking involved lifting a portion of Tor di Quinto to create a pillar three hundred meters high. ZeoSet legally owns the Hexagon, and the state held no jurisdiction over it—though in the years prior it kept pressing its claim. As for the AAA corporations and a few other companies, ZeoSet made certain none of them could establish a foothold there.
Between 2045 and 2074, corporate law eclipsed the Vatican's. The cardinals had grown too close to the corporations, and they put those interests ahead of the Church's.
At the time, the Vatican's largest party, "The Cross," was split into two movements. The first were the Conservatives, who sought to purge every metahuman, infidel, and all those who practiced magic outside of the Church.
They also pushed to repeal the law permitting women to be appointed as priests — Pope John XXV's crowning achievement in 2042. Against them stood The Enlightened, who wished to embrace magic and non-humans as part of the Sixth World.
Until 2069, corporate political disputes never turned violent — or so it appeared from the outside. However, that same year, every AAA company secretly went to war against the Italian and AA-rated European corps, and ZeoSet was no exception. The AAA corporations tried to weaken ZeoSet with the sole purpose of stripping ZeoSet off of its property. However, the AAAs were confronting enemies from all fronts, and didn't succeed. This war was named "The Silent War" which lasted for two years. It was the anarchists who made it public knowledge. The Silent War wasn't silent anymore. Unwilling to see the conflict escalate, the Corporate Court ordered it brought to an end. In the Court's judgment, the AA Italian and European corporations had struck first and therefore bore the blame. The Court allowed them to keep their extraterritorialities, however, as punishment, they were downgraded to A-type companies, thus losing the right to make their own scrips.
Before the war, 95 multinationals operated within the Papal States. Only 30 outlasted the conflict — some swallowed up by the AAAs, others shut down for good. When the dust settled, with their rivals gone, only the AAAs and ZeoSet had truly profited.
Unfortunately, peace lasted only until March 17th, 2072, when the anarchists started a revolution.
The anarchists butchered ecclesiastics from both factions and struck at every remaining corporate headquarters across the Papal States. Furthermore, the anarchists believed that the Conservatives were trying to raise an army of Templar warriors under their cathedrals, and feared that this army could potentially become a serious threat. And apparently, the runners the anarchists hired confirmed their suspicions.
A few Conservative cardinals were indeed training Templar units (a thousand strong) under their cathedrals.
The rebirth of the Templars became public knowledge, and Vincenzo La Croce proclaimed himself the new leader of the Conservative faction. Without the Pope's consent, he ordered the Templars to purge all the anarchists they could find, and all the non-humans — the "Devil's pawns," as he called them at the time — who supported them. The repression proved so bloody and brutal that Pope John was forced to excommunicate Vincenzo La Croce.
The rebellion came to an end on November 5th. That same year, the Conservative faction began to gain support among a human population that had grown resentful of both the corrupt Enlightened and the corporations - the cause, in their eyes, of the economic instability. The Conservatives were hailed as the heroes who had crushed the anarch rebellion and restored peace to the Papal States.
2075.
In 2075, after the death of Pope John, Pope Sixtus VI succeeded him. He was a member of the Order of St. Sylvester and a member of the Enlightened faction. Unfortunately, Sixtus was found dead just 33 days after his election. Vincenzo La Croce was then reinstated into the Church, elected Pope, and took the name Alexander IX. Within the first two months of his reign, Alexander incited a workers' uprising against the corporations and ordered the Templars and the Praetorians to storm the headquarters of every company that had survived The Silent War and the anarch rebellion. His aim was to rid the country of corporate power entirely. He then had several cardinals and bishops of the Enlightened faction — those who had sided with the corporations — executed for heresy, "for refusing to take God's side," as he put it.
That same year, the Pope formally went to war with the corporations - he called it "The Iconoclast War." Convinced that the corporations were still licking their wounds, Alexander seized the moment to strike and to free his people from the tyranny of capitalism once and for all.
Little did he know that the AAAs and the lesser Italian and European companies would set aside their rivalries and join forces, hiring mercenaries to defend themselves against both the strikers and the Templars. Only ten of the surviving companies ultimately collapsed, undone by the devastation the Templars inflicted and by the crushing war expenses.
What the Templars lacked in numbers and in euros, faith was their driving force, and war was their element. ZeoSet was not spared in the conflict, yet it managed to push back the Templars. In the end, the fighting ceased with an agreement struck between The Corporate Court and the Vatican.
Before the Iconoclast War, the Papal States was under corporate law. However, under the new terms:
The corporations had to cede portions of their extraterritoriality to the Vatican;
The Vatican can enforce its laws on the citizens of the state;
Corporate laws can only be enforced to corporate citizens;
The corporations retained the right to grant the corporate citizenship to anyone seeking employment with a company — regardless of its rating — and to keep a number of corporate representatives in the Senate.
In the war's aftermath, the Templars pressed on with their work of purging heretics and infidels, while the non-humans were confined to the Residential District of The Hexagon.