Violet Machine

Archive Record: The History of Lilac City

At the end of the twenty-first century, Lilac City is seen as a safe haven for people who have nowhere to go. A place for the dispossessed and downtrodden to get back on their feet and start anew. Earning it the title of "The City of Healing", and it's origins are just as reflective of this statement as it's reputation is even over one-hundred years later.

Lilac City's concept came into being in response to the Energy Crisis of 1974, during the height of the Cold War between NATO and the Soviet Union. A British green energy start up named Lilac Energy partnered up with a Japanese architecture firm to propose two megaprojects to the British and Japanese governments. Shining cities set in the sea to act as green energy power plants. After much deliberation, the British Government agreed to allow the construction of a city in the Bristol channel, west of Lundy Isle. The project was dubbed "Lilac City" in reference to Lilac Energy themselves.

Construction of Lilac City began in 1977 with the laying of the base foundations for the city. Despite the daunting scope of the task, the foundations were in place by the following year, and even uncovered a U-boat wreck in the channel, this wreck was removed and is now preserved in a memorial park added to the design upon it's discovery. By 2079, Lilac City's centre was complete, with the whole of the original city beginning power production and accepting residents by the early 1980s. Initially, the only way to access the city was by sea, until a specialised motorway and railway line were built to allow people to and from the city with relative ease in the 1990s.

The 1990s also saw the arrival of the city's first corporate HQs, starting with Atmera Medical Insights in 1994 and Hadrian Security and Rescue in 1997. Eyebriws raised in 1999 when the German PMC(Private Military Company) Osiris Multinational established a headquarters in the city as part of it's brand expansion initiative, suspicions soon faded when Osiris began to demonstrate their adoption of other markets and providing Lilac City's emergency services with some of their military technologies, such as the Panzer Zentaur single-man tank and the, at the time, revolutionary Type-1 Panzer Wolf powered suit, refitted and geared for roles of firefighting, police work and medical assistance.

At the turn of the century, Lilac City's growing population and economic incline demanded for it to expand. This began with the Green Seas Expansion in 2003, and was followed by the Neptuna and Little Kyoto Expansions in the 2010s. Lilac International Airport was constructed during the Green Seas expansion, allowing greater access to the city via air. The early 2020s were a rough time in Lilac City, the people of the city grew tense with horrendous government overstepping which culminated in the Remembrance Riot in 2025 which accidentally killed 134 people and caused damage within the tens of thousands before it was ultimately calmed by a joint effort between Hadrian S&R and Osiris Multinational after the authorities were overwhelmed. The fallout of the riot called the relationship between civilian and government into question and put career politicians across Europe under intense scrutiny, with more radical ideas such as "Free City" status for Lilac City being brought forward by both non-career politicians and the general public. These talks never went anywhere, but Lilac City elected a new city council made up of non-career politicians after the original city council, including Mayor Clarence Draight, were forced to step down following the riot, beginning Lilac City's gradual societal breakaway from the UK mainland.

In 2031, Lilac City saw it's first human-like robots in the form of the Polyman built by Ironsides Robotics, while a sight to behold, the Polyman wasn't an impressive machine functionally and sold terribly, sending Ironsides into administration. AMI bought the company and adopted both staff and products into it's fold, changing their name to Atmera Technological Innovators in honour of the merger. With new resources and people, Atmera continued research into the Polyman's design and, by 2041, had successfully given Lilac City the first ever Mass produced Cyborg: The 3rd Generation Tron. The 2030s also saw the advent of a new cybernetic market: Mech-Teck, technology that could be directly implanted into a human body. Prosthesis, neural implants, cybernetic repairs for various physical conditions, all became possible with various companies such as Visor-tek, a Danish corporation renowned for their advanced self-defence tech, Utilitek, a Canadian company specialising in practical, low maintenance workplace cybernetics, and Kuroi, a Japanese firm that specialised in optical augmentations, including the Iconic BR5 multi-vision optics that can see in both infrared and ultraviolet spectrums. But there is no such thing as a free lunch, as the rise in Mech-Tek began, so did a danger to the body. It soon became clear to the general public that careless acquisition of Mech-Tek, predominantly neural implants, could cause damage to the brain and cause madness, leading to the rise of a new form of illness: Mech-Mania, a ruthless and, then, incurable condition caused by permanent brain damage.