Ultor Corporation

The Saints Row Wiki also has an article about Ultor.

The Ultor Corporation, named after the ancient Roman temple devoted to the Roman god Mars, was the body in complete control of governance and industry on Mars prior to the First Martian Revolution when they were overthrown by the Red Faction insurgency and the Earth Defense Force. While Ultor had interests in nanotechnology and weapon manfacturing, they were primarily a mining company; this can be seen in their logo, a stylised continuous mining machine blade wheel.

Their rule was an infamous chapter in the history of human settlement on the red planet, marked by the virtual enslavement of their workforce and free run to characters such as their insidious head scientist, Axel Capek.

History

Colonization of Mars

The Ultor Corporation colonized Mars in around 2050 to take advantage of its vast untapped mining potential, and the advantages of its remote location. They shipped it all back to resource-stripped Earth, centrally a substance known as Noachite which in Earth's economy could make fortunes. The Corporation saw everything in terms of profits, and ignored increasingly hostile relations between the miners and the security forces, their technicians carefully filtering all message traffic between Mars and the Earth to keep it unaware of the situation.^[1]

Rise of Capek

Meanwhile the head of the research department, an unethical scientist named Axel Capek, performed all manner of experiments far from the prying eyes of any moral authority. Nevertheless, he basically created the field of nanotechnology, backed by the enormous resources of the Ultor Corporation. His unparalleled advancements which would effect the fate of Mars for centuries after his demise.^[1]

When Capek first arrived on Mars from Earth, he faced significant opposition to his immoral experiments from the then Administrator. This came to an abrupt end when the Administrator became a test subject in Capek's experiments. His replacement, Administrator Davis, along with the new deputy administrator, Richard Gryphon, and any other prospective opposition within Ultor were cowed as a result and he had free reign in his experiments.^[1]

Even then he didn't have, in his own eyes, enough control to fully push his research to its heights. He long believed that an uprising among the miners would be beneficial to him, allowing him spirit away prisoners in all the confusion and fighting to use in his research and obtain more test subjects, as well as providing an excuse for those already taken. It is likely then, that as a result he deliberately helped create the First Red Faction Uprising, which was likely the reason behind spreading the disease through the Martian population prior to the conflict.^[1]

He would experiment on captured miners, turning them into deformed monstrous mutants through nanotechnology.^[1]

The MASTers expedition

"I've ordered the shaft sealed, and its location obscured. This is a plague which could devastate Mars, an Armageddon only a madman would unleash."

―Axel Capek about the alien species.^[src]

UltorMars — Mars under the Ultor Corporation

Unbeknownst to most outside his department, many of his breakthroughs, if not all, in the field were originated from the ill-fated MASTers expedition he lead back in 2067. He discovered an alien species hibernating deep within the bowls of Mars known as The Plague, which his observations seem to indicate the possibility they utilized a form of organic biotechnology interworked into their own bodies.^[2]

The bulk of Martian Advanced Science Team died at the hands of a few of the creatures and Capek, its leader, was forced to ascend alone. After he escaped, he had the entrance of the ancient shaft sealed beneath the molten magma of an Ultor facility.^[2]

After the MASTers expedition, Capek continued his work. He created his own mutated Plague which would be later appear during Red Faction uprising, encountered most notably by hero of the revolution Parker. At the time they were often simply known as 'mutants'.^[1]

First Martian Revolution

"This whole place is going to hell. I knew Capek was trouble the minute I laid eyes on the freaky egomaniac. But he's Ultor's golden boy and no one listens to me. This complex is going to explode and I'll have to put the pieces back together. I'm gonna make sure Capek's caught in the blast."

―Colonel Masako^[src]

1stRFUprising — Fighting between Red Faction and Ultor in the First Martian Revolution

In 2075, the First Martian Revolution finally kicked off with growing discontent amongst the miners and a disease which ripped through their ranks, secretly controlled and instituted by Capek.^[1]

The miners in M4 mine rose up supported by a growing movement amongst the miners called the Red Faction, lead by their charismatic and mysterious leader Eos. First up on their agenda was finding a cure for the Plague, and when Gryphon defected they knew just who to look to.^[1]

Axel Capek was relying on Colonel Masako and her Mercenary Regiment to defend his facilities, but what he didn't factor into account was that while he had crushed all thought of opposition in the Administrative department, he still had one enemy within the company who wasn't threatened by him. Masako withheld her troops from the frontline until after the miners lead by Eos had raided is main Laboratory complex.^[1]

Only once Capek was dead did Masako join the fray, driving back the miners. When the miner revolt began to falter, they got out a message to the Earth Defense Force who came to their aid and helped depose the Corporation.^[1]

Earth Conflict

In earth, they were aiding both sides on the Commonwealth Civil War it might be that during their fall in Mars, They switched sides to the Red Faction for taking down Sopot forces. However, the reasons of their close down are still currently unknown as there are no facts to prove it.

Martian Remnants of Ultor

After the fall of Ultor, Capek's personal cadre of scientists fled from the victors deep into the Martian caves. With them was much of their research, and a device known as the Nano Forge. They would later emerge, after the terraforming, upon the surface in the furthest reaches of the Badlands, but their bitter exile had turned them into the Marauders, a savage warrior culture who hated both colonists and EDF. Nevertheless, they kept alive the scientific devotion of their ancestors continuing triumphing in the shadow of red planet..^[3]

Known employees

Davis - Administrator
Richard Gryphon - Deputy Chief Administrator
Axel Capek - Head Scientist
Colonel Masako - Leader of the Mercenary Regiment
Isondo Barnes - VP of Marketing
Hawkins - Scientist (died in the MASTers Expedition)
Wiley Newell - Scientist
Gerardo Ybarra - Scientist
Kristen Pahlke - Scientist
Riley Gibson - Security Guard
Hendrix - Security Technician (also Revolutionary)
Parker - Miner (also Revolutionary)
Orion - Lieutenant Miner (also Revolutionary)
Ray Mason - Miner (also Revolutionary)
Felicia Lu - Miner
Loftus - Employee

Trivia

The logo is likely based on the Combining Cyrillic Millions symbol, albeit it is reversed, and connected by an inner circle.
Ultor also appears in Saints Row, another game series created by Volition. It is a clothing, media and military group, and sometimes serves as antagonist. This Ultor also utilizes the exact same machine blade wheel logo. Volition have confirmed that the Saints Row and Red Faction universes are not linked, and that the Ultor references were only intended as Easter Eggs.^[4] After the rights to Red Faction were sold to a different publisher, Volition destroyed the Earth in the Saints Row universe. Whether or not current or future Red Faction developers want to make any connection is up to them.
- In Saints Row 2, the CEO of Ultor is named Dane Vogel, sharing the name of Mount Vogel.