#i get why shops in town are overpriced now but.... ahh??

[scoriasoil]

Meta: Promethea, its economy, and why Rhys is bizarrely the biggest philanthropist in the galaxy (that we know of)

There is a wry barometer in the field of human geography that tells you when a neighbourhood is getting wealthy: someone opens up an independent coffee shop. You generally won't find one slap-dab in a poorer neighbourhood. They cater to people with disposable income to burn on overpriced cupcakes and fancy renditions of bean water.

You might already see where I'm going with this and how this principle applies to Promethea. Rhys’s impact on the planet is something that I don’t think the fandom discusses enough, but when you think about it, it is insane, so I gave it a spin.

Promethea before Borderlands 3

It's hard to believe that any planet could be worse off than Pandora, but back before BL3, Promethea canonically fit the bill.

The events of BL1 take place largely in the context of Atlas attempting to colonise Pandora. Despite the fact Promethea was Atlas's HQ at the time, propaganda posters nonetheless remind Pandora’s citizens: "At least you're not on Promethea!" This tells us that whatever wealth the Atlas Corporation had, prior to its collapse at the hands of Hyperion, it was not sharing it with the general population of Promethea.

And things have not improved there by the time Borderlands 2 rolls around. NPCs in Sanctuary will occasionally echo in idle dialogue: "At least you're not on Promethea!" Pandora—a planet defined by mindless violence, scattered patches of infrastructure and no discernible healthcare/education system—is still a better option than the planet that once headquartered Atlas.

Promethea in Borderlands 3

BL3, bear in mind, takes place six years after BL2, and around five years after Tales from the Borderlands. When we're first introduced to Promethea in BL3, Claptrap now describes the planet as thus:

Ahh, Promethea! A shining metropolis and the home of the Atlas Corporation. It's the most technologically advanced planet in this arm of the galaxy!

What we learn of Promethea is that it is "glimmering with new technology and an unsustainable amount of noodle shops." We meet Lorelei, born and raised on the planet... working at an independent coffee shop. What we see of Promethea itself is indeed a "shining metropolis" with impressive buildings and cute little business parks.

To make the most applicable real-world comparison, in the space of five years, Promethea has gone from a washed-up, dilapidated ex-mining town to New York.

Where did all this money magically come from?

Literally just Rhys. Well, Atlas 2.0, under his leadership.

The in-game description of Promethea in BL3 attributes all this wealth to the original Atlas "first [discovering] a Vault on Promethea, [triggering] a new golden age of... profit margins," but this is obviously untrue. The original Atlas knew of Promethea's Vault in BL1, but the planet was still so poor that Pandorans were being reminded of how awful Promethea was in comparison. The Atlas corporation did not invest in Promethea's people and infrastructure at this stage. Even if Atlas was hiring directly from the Promethean population, it still wasn’t enough.

So who did? Lorelei tells us. "Promethea was finally crawling out of the gutter," she says, "really becoming a decent planet again.... then Maliwan thought better of it." She is referring to recent history here by implying that Promethea was only making decent strides just before Maliwan invaded. She's referring to the Rhys-era of Atlas.

Sidenote: Lorelei's whole schtick is that she was originally a barista who really likes coffee, but it occurs to me there's more to it than that. Coffee is not a staple but a luxury, and it's entirely possible that Promethea did not have coffee until recently, explaining her fixation on something new and shiny—as well as the fact Promethea has "an unsustainable amount of noodle shops." Food for the sake of enjoying food is a new concept on the planet. The hallmark of a wealthy, industrialised civilisation.

But what is especially interesting to me about Lorelei is that we can hear her first meeting with Rhys, when he stopped off at her coffee shop and was promptly intimidated by her. The fact she then jumps from barista to the head of Rhys's army indicates that Rhys hired Lorelei not because of her war experience (she gleefully tells us she had none)—but because he, well, liked his barista as a person, and trusted her.

Lorelei herself talks favourably of Rhys on a personal level, referring to him not as one would an employer but just, well, 'Rhys.' In other words, the CEO of Atlas befriended his barista, presumably because he makes a habit of mingling with average Prometheans.

What's your point?

My point here is this: we know Pandora barely has a centralised economy in BL1, and Promethea is still seen as worse than a planet where skin pizzas are a feature of the local cuisine. There is no way Promethea had any consistent source of income whatsoever, because Atlas sure as hell wasn't sharing its wealth.

The only thing that could have possibly brought money to the planet was Rhys showing up with the "alien tech" he mentions in the ECHO of his interview with Promethean media. That is, what he found in the vault in Tales.

But he could have done what Atlas 1.0 did, and not shared that wealth with the citizenry. Yet we see him befriending average Prometheans like Lorelei, and we see how Promethea has gone from 'worse than Pandora' to a "shining metropolis" in the space of five years where the only change in Promethea's landscape was Rhys's arrival.

Rhys not only invested a little here and there in the infrastructure. His Atlas has put enough into the planet that everyone is so well-off enough that there's a market for independent coffee shops. I cannot overstate this enough: this from a planet that only five years ago was worse than Pandora.

When Rhys says, in his media interview, that he believes "a company should lift its employees on its shoulders," this sounds like empty corporate-speak—until you look around and see that's exactly what his Atlas did.