I started the file on Revlup because I wanted to write some corporate material for Shadowrun. Since most sizeable corporation get to be covered in sourcebooks and adventures at one point or another, I went for a much smaller corp to get some freedom. Revlup first appeared in Target: Wastelands chapter on polar zones. It only return in the French-only "Mauvais Présage" campaign in SOX (the final chapter is about breaking in Complexe P2).

The first version in 2003 was much shorter and a lot less well-thought. Among other things, I explained Revlup name (which as a word has no meaning in any language) with some bogus reference to made-up slang standing for "revolver up". I first thought of making it the short form a two founders name, like "Reverend & Luppesi" or "Revis-Lupton" but for some odd reason I don't remember, did not go this way. I sort of returned to that with Reva-Lupton, though these are places name, not people.

Shadowrun history diverges from reality at some point in the late 20th century. I think the consensus among past and present authors is not to refer to any real events after 1999, though there have been alreay some changes at that point (like different US President according the Neo-anarchist to North America). I still find interesting to draw parallel between the US "War on Terror" started in 2001 in real life and the war against the Amerindian insurgents in Shadowrun. If you leave aside the classical debates on the number of Amerindians in the US or the US administration moves, and take for granted what the books read, it fleshes things out to think of the war as a bumped up Afghanistan theater of operations -the Rocky Mountains are several times the size of Afghanistan - with US forces relying on technology to track small groups of insurgents, while every mistake hurts more and more the relations with the locals. In this regards, there obviously is a parallel between the Reva and Lupton facilities in Revlup history, and Guatanamo Bay detention facility. I made it like running those facilities was rather flattering to Revlup corporation, to justify they kept the name. I mean, it would be a bit like Boeing still used "We bombed Dresden" as a slogan. On the other hand, as the US lost the war to the Amerindians, there would be quite a number of people to get fond memories of when the country was still fighting against the terrorists. In the end, Shadowrun corporations aren't nice, so it can also be taken simply as satire.

When writing background for corporation, I very often come up with long and detailed account of their creation and the following events, up to the point they can become global enough. So it's quite common that I have nothing happening in the last years, usually after 2040. Which is not a good thing, since it means I am not providing much useable plot for practical play. Writing an adventure revolving around 30 or 40 years old events is more difficult. The problem is, Shadowrun history has some world defining moments like the Crash in 2029, Eurowar in 2030, CAS and California secession in 2032 and 2036, or the Business Recognition Accords in 2042. After that, pretty much nothing happens (except for nationalization in Aztlan) until 2049 and the actual beginning of Shadowrun line. From that point, most if not all significant events were fully described and thus leaves little room to insert new elements. But I ought to make some effort on providing ongoing plots.

A lot of authors, when writing background, naturally want it to be significant. This usually results in every corporations being either a world leader in something, or a jack-of-all-trades, with full extraterritoriality anyway. The way I see it, extraterritorial megacorporation should be a minority, companies with a very broad and diverse range of interests (as opposed to one-trick ponies like, say, Lone Star or Doc Wagon). That would be very different from most corps existing nowadays that are very specialized. On other hand, keeping a logic in how they grew, and how business interests relate to each other, helps giving them a distinct personality. Actually, a corporation doesn't have to be big and extraterritorial and a world leader to be significant in a game. Extraterritoriality is way too much overrated as far as most games go.
Revlup case was much more simple since I considered it should only have A rating, without extraterritoriality (well, the legit one at least). I didn't have to make them large by any means outside of the prison industry. When the players-characters will be trying to enter or exit a Revlup facility with a whole squad of corporate troops on their back, it won't matter that Revlup doesn't have a seat on the Corporate Court and doesn't produce weaponry and toilet seats inhouse.

A corporation as small as I made Revlup should probably not be ahead in cryogenics technology. I felt it had to because the it's sci-fi classic. The idea of offshore automated cryo-prison certainly better fit with Proteus AG concept. But I wasn't writing on Proteus AG. So I went for the partnership instead, with Proteus also buying some Revlup shares (by the way, the other shareholder, Temperance Investments, actually is a Renraku subsidiary). Now, to fully understand what I had in mind about former frauds and payback involving Proteus and Ruhrmetall, I think I will just direct you towards Shockwaves (the summay of German campaign Shockwellen), which is a very interesting read by itself.

I thought of the "PR issues" part as way to introduce a sample of different Revlup prisons, while providing a reason for the selection. Originally, I wanted to mention the Complexe P2 and give a summary of the events during and following the SOX campaign. Keeping track of all what's happening in Shadowrun is sometimes uneasy, with some major events requiring one specific sourcebook. The scandal in France after the escape of Complexe P2 is one of those (assuming players and gamemasters outside of France care about the French setting). The same also goes on for the desmise of the Lord Protector in Great Britain. First the news of it only appeared in the Sixth World Almanac a whole year after it happened (which, on the other hand, was the only 4th edition to touch on Great Britain). Spy Games came not that long after and provide and update on the British political stage by presenting London as a spy hotspot. I don't think this description of London really makes a good spies hotspot, but as I put it, I think that was the way to go : using the sourcebook theme as a mere excuse to keep the reader up to date.
I also introduced a British prison here to build on that storyline. At first, I had no idea where to put that prison. I thought of searching if there was one in the same county as the SAS base at Hereford or the adjacent ones. In Shadowrun, the SAS were operating in Great Britain under order from the Lord Protector's Office, in a way reminiscent of Northern Ireland operations in the 1980ies. And so I found Hewell, which had not one but three prisons (well, two prisons and a country house...).
The problem with closing a former secret prison is similar to Guantanamo Bay cases, while the activist fleet sailing to HTDC 6 draws from Green Peace campaigns against whaling or French nuclear testing, and the Gaza strip fleets. The People Nation prison gang really exists IRL, while I renamed La eMe ("The M", The Mexican Mafia) by Los Aes ("The A", because the singular La A didn't sound like a name to me).