The Great Corporations

As every schoolchild learns, the Great Clans are actually collections of clans with inter-relationships too complex to summarize simply. The Great Corporations are even more intertwined, in ways which are much less known. All the descriptions we present here can only hope to describe their general outlines and surface activities. A more detailed analysis would require a large and complex chart of relationships accompanied by volumes of explanation.

The Nature of Interstellar Corporations

To most people, corporations are what they see planetside: organizations of people which pursue business for a profit. On interstellar scales, the picture is somewhat different. First, there is the very question of what "profit" means. Imperial Credits cease to be useful on such large scales, especially outside the more travelled regions of the Empire. Interstellar corporations are more likely to trade in goods, services and power. Second, the people (and other entities) in great corporations are practically citizens rather than employees. Although they refer to themselves by the disingenuous name of "staffers," they often look down haughtily on normal planet-bound mortals and prefer their own elite community. Staffers are born, live and die spending their lives travelling in space, and usually marry other staffers. Thus, the great corporations should be seen as independent powers and societies rather than mere businesses, with goals and values as diverse as those of any other society.

The Great Corporations in many ways are the "glue" of the Empire, providing the essential services of interstellar affairs. While the official structure of the Empire is a hierarchy of governments, the corporations cut across all boundaries. The essential laws of interaction between the two are still given, even after many thousands of years, by the ancient Treaty of New Mecca; planetary governments do not interfere in interstellar corporate affairs, and vice-versa. Only the Imperial Court has authority over both, and even that is often limited by practicalities.

Like other societies, the corporations have grown and spread with time. They are almost always present from the beginning at new settlements, since they provide the equipment and shipping which make these possible. Usually they remain in contact after helping setlers establish a new colony, operating trading posts which later evolve into branch offices. These assignments are usually highly sought after by staffers keen to make a reputation for themselves or simply to live on the frontier.

In general, the corporations have weathered the Disappearance quite well. Although some of their officers were among the disappeared, their dispersed structure and wide network of connections have shielded them from social disintegration.

Non-Chartered Corporations

The mark of a Great Corporation is generally considered to be an Imperial Charter, but there is one notable class of exceptions. A few of them date from the very earliest days of human expansion, before the Empire had even come into being, and thus have never been chartered. Emperors have occasionally thought to bring this old guard "into the fold" by granting them charters, either to honour them or flex imperial muscle. These efforts have always died before becoming overt, surely due to behind-the-scenes maneuvers by corporate officers who are fiercely proud of their ancient histories.

Galactic Ventures

The oldest of the Great Corporations, Galactic Ventures dates back to the very first days of human expansion, before the Great War. Formed from the merger of earlier companies operating in the areas of starship building and facilities, GV grew steadily in power along with the expansion of the Terran Union. Early in their history, an enterprising Chairman threw all his reputation and power behind an apparently crazy plan to travel through collapsars. Galactic Ventures had perhaps its greatest moment when this project finally succeeded. Not only did they have a monopoly on the technology for ships to pass through the newly-named C-tunnels, they had also negotiated somewhat controversial clams to the tunnels themselves. Although debate continued for hundreds of years as to whether a corporation could claim ownership of a collapsar (and GV ultimately lost the point), their early positioning gave them unprecedented influence and power, and reputable historians have argued that they were the real rulers of the early Human Federation. Galactic Ventures suffered devastating losses during the Great War, yet survived and persevered behind Tunnel. The discovery of the Spacefold Drive thrust them out of their central place in human affairs forever, but they nevertheless prospered during the wave of expansion after the war. By that time they had long diversified into areas such as biotechnology, and in addition to their former monopoly on star travel they were the acknowledged experts on planet-forming. Even in modern times, there are few places in human space where Galactic Ventures has no business.

Victory Corporation

Victory Corporation is the embodiment of the ancient agreement between the Spartans and Spacers to conduct the Great War. Originally formed to manage operations, Victory specialized in ship building and had few competitors for the warship industry. Since their business was war, they naturally thrived throughout the length of the Great War. When the spacefold drive appeared on the scene, Victory Corporation bet all its resources on the new technology, ensuring their continued prominence in the new empire (along with that of their Spacer and Spartan owners). Contrary to what many expect, the end of the Great War presented few serious problems for Victory. Demand for warships trailed off only very slowly; the new Empire had to continue hunting out remaining pockets of Crucians, and had a general need to enforce security and negotiate a few disputes between human factions. Victory's business interests gradually expanded from warships to more general military technology. In the early days of the Juba Dynasty, Axum Holdings bought a large stake in Victory and they opened a new subsidiary, Victory Volunteers. This has since become the leading supplier of mercenary troops, expeditionary forces and military training. Victory's operations nowadays remain much the same they have for thousands of years; supply of weapons, troops and training for security forces on- and off- planet. They are studiously careful to remain detached from inter-clan conflict, but have been observed to be generally increasing production since the Disappearance.

Embarcadero

An ancient and shadowy holding company, Embarcadero was first registered during the Great War, in IY-4708 on DanYar. One of an infinity of finance companies, they gradually expanded through mergers and acquisitions until the name Embarcadero was at least fifty percent likely to be found on the documents of any major deal between corporations. They have continued in much the same way ever since, generally preferring not to take direct stakes in other ventures but instead to extract large fees for arranging business. Since the scale of their operations is so vast that they could disrupt exchange rates and commodity values across the Empire at will, many economists have given serious study to the question of exactly how its owners extract their wealth. The most widely-held theory is that Embarcadero is a sort of cross between a bank and a mutual aid society, and the question of its wealth is nearly meaningless. Instead, the owners profit personally by using Embarcadero's power to negotiate deals between their own (nominally independent) business and Embarcadero's clients. There are, naturally, almost as many conspiracy theories about Embarcadero as there are serious studies of it. They are often accused of being puppet masters in various ways. At the more unlikely end of the spectrum, some see them as powers behind the thrones of almost all Emperors. Many see them as being unofficial caretakers of the entire Imperial economy, a much more plausible view. Their secretive ways invite comparisons with the Masons, and commentators frequently speculate about links between the two.

Chartered Corporations

A corporation with an official Imperial charter has permission to operate anywhere in Imperial space. Cynics have pointed out that this means little; planetary governments license planetside businesses and interplanetary space is open to all legitimate traffic. The empire itself is really nothing more than a collection of individual planets. Nevertheless, Imperial Charters are prized and valued enough for corporations to spend vast sums trying to acquire them. Aside from prestige, they carry significant political value in that an Imperial Charter implicitly confers permission to trade from all the members of the court. Typically a corporation seeks to acquire a charter when their involvement grows beyond the scale of a few dozen systems.

New Era Holdings

Another product of the Great War, New Era was the vehicle of the Freyr Dynasty, founded by Magnus I himself to reap the benefits of the Spacefold Drive. New Era has three principal subsidiaries which obviously deal with spacefold technology - New Era Transport, Yards, and Holdings. Over its long history, New Era has diversified into many other areas and is now similar in scope to Galactic Ventures and perhaps even larger. It remains closely linked with the Founders.

Exodus Holdings

Exodus were early pioneers in the business of long-term settlement, engaging in all the required areas; terraforming, transport, finance, recruiting, and retail supply. In sharp contrast to Embarcadero, they are known for maintaining a stake in their colonies. They manage to do this without circumventing the Treaty of New Mecca, by running corporations on the planets and involving themselves as little as possible in planetary government. Their early centuries were marked by several inevitable disputes by planetary political leaders who had grown to resent their accumulated power, and Exodus took occasional losses from "planetarization" campaigns in which planetary governments seized direct control of their businesses. In the long run, though, Exodus rarely lost out as such newly militant planets found it hard to trade without the cooperation of Exodus and other corporations friendly to it.

Although Exodus is often blamed for causing the Miller War, this is in fact totally untrue. Not only did Exodus take no part in the war between corporations and their planet clients, they actively opposed the war effort and sided with the colonists. With time and a consistent track record of such stabilizing decisions, Exodus has come to be a very trusted name and serious opposition to their business methods is almost non-existent. Cynics attribute this to an alleged secret policy of neutralizing malcontents in planetary governments, through methods ranging from propaganda to outright assassination. Optimists note that Exodus has been very successful at maintaining generally moderate policies, and that they stick to their core business while trading with other corporations, ensuring general corporate support for them in disputes. Whatever the truth, Exodus subcorporations are the single biggest colonizing agency among humans, surpassing even official Imperial colonization missions.

The Drylander Foundation

The Drylander Foundation is perhaps the definitive example of a corporate society. An earlier corporation, Cholomunga, specialized in settling harsh "Dryland" planets. In the early days of the Human Federation, it established the Drylander Foundation to aid in and govern these efforts. Tensions of the usual sort grew between Cholomunga and its settler clients, culminating in the Drylander Rebellion during the years of the Great War. That revolt ended with the dismemberment of Cholomunga and re-organization of the Drylander Foundation. In effect, the Drylanders had combined with a few powerful shareholders of Cholomunga to take over both. The Drylander Foundation has been closely linked with the Drylander faction at court ever since, although its practical power has declined. Nowadays the Foundation is primarily the business wing of the Drylanders, lacking any real political presence of its own.

Axum Holdings

Axum Holdings was the tool Abdullah the Great used to achieve his rise to power. Founded by his father in IY 2338, it was an impressively well-run and successful company for many years, building quietly on its strengths exploiting the resources of the Tauran home world Juba while accumulating a network of business connections across the empire. However, when Abdullah took over in IY 2385, Axum skyrocketed to new heights of success. He demonstrated his well-known genius for leadership early on, putting in place competent and aggressive managers backed by talented technical advisors. Axum increased its operations a thousand-fold in the first twenty years of Abdullah's control, taking advantage of growing disorder across the Empire to expand into new areas and new lines of business.

Abdullah was known to be willing to consider practically any proposal on its own merits, and was frankly scornful of common advice to stick with one's strengths - or perhaps trusted entirely in his own strength that he could find good people to run any new venture. The result was both wealth and power - as is well known, enough of both to propel him into the Emperor's throne and begin the Juba Dynasty.

Axum has remained largely a family-owned business, with control now spread over thousands of descendants. It has long lacked the drive and unified focus of its early days and is considered a bit of a dinosaur in modern times, dominating several niche markets but gradually declining. Nevertheless, it maintains a high level of esprit des corps, is consistently more profitable than average, and its officers are treated with respect at any business meeting.

Universal Resources

Like Exodus and Axum, Universal Resources is one of the younger Great Corporations, rising to power after the Great War. It competes most directly with Axum, specializing in resource exploitation and manufacturing. Universal has long ago branched out into arms productions and has joint-ventures in many areas with Victory Corporation. One of the more secretive corporations, its possible connections with court factions are almost completely unknown. Some speculate that it is an agent of the Spartans, perhaps because of a vacuum of information on either group's business dealings, but most scholars regard the evidence for this as unconvincing at best.

Hanse Logistics

Hanse dates its origins to the Lind Dynasty, as a simple shipping company. With time their business has migrated totally away from its origins. Now they specialize in communications and media, and own vast networks of message-relay satellites covering an estimated 70% of exploited spacefolds, including those in almost all the major systems of the empire. In recent years a number of commentators have voiced suspicion that Hanse's operations include a psi network capable of transmitting messages instantaneously. There have been several documented instances of news travelling from one end of Hanse's network to the other at speeds faster than the highest possible through normal spacefold connections. Hanse has attempted to explain these with long stories about advanced computer models predicting the news, and dropped hints that they might have access to a secret long-haul spacefold, but observers remain unconvinced. This is understandable: If it is true that Hanse runs a psi communications network, the demand for it will be overwhelming, so much so that they can both sell its services for an exceedingly high price and admit the existence only to select powerful clients.

In addition to their communication business, Hanse runs a very profitable media organization. Typically they locate content on planets and trade for the right to release it, under various conditions. They then transfer it en masse through their satellite network, with each station recopying to all its peers and a local office picking up the transmission in passing for local trade. Despite an eternal war against "privateers" who intercept and decrypt local broadcasts, then re-sell their content, Hanse succeeds well enough to be known on almost all the major planets.

Crown Corporations

Where chartered corporations are officially approved by the Imperial government, crown corporations are projects initiated by them. As such, these are few in number and tend to serve particular special purposes.

The Imperial Library

The most famous source of information galaxy-wide, the Library is so ubiquitous that people often forget it is in fact an organization. This is a great oversight, because the Library's network of agents and correspondents is among the largest of all the corporations. They include the expected technical experts of all stripes, authors and reporters, editors and managers, but also frankly commercial traders and buyers of information. Their fees, although modest, nevertheless add up to a revenue stream supporting perhaps billions of people.

As well as its primary function, the Library also operates schools across the Empire with uniform curricula, which have become the standard of education for the Empire.

The Imperial Bank

Chartered with the explicit goal of making trade easier across the Empire, the Bank is most widely known as the backers of the standard currency, the Imperial Credit. In fact, they are only one of several corporations which conduct banking business, and in influence probably do not compare to Embarcadero. For millenia one of their great assets was their claim to be "as stable as the Empire." After the events following the Disappearance, they rapidly switched to a new motto: "stability in uncertain times." Despite this, they are widely regarded as being on the road to extinction.

The Human Psi Institute

Last and emphatically not least, the Psi Institute could justifiably claim to be the greatest of the Great Corporations despite its young age, for it has surely had the greatest effect on humanity. Founded by emperor John XV to advance the development of psi ability in humans, the institute worked quietly for many years (although never in obscurity), known to outsiders mainly for the instantaneous communications network it provided. The proceeds from this network funded expansion of its training institutes, which gradually spread across the richer planets of the Empire. As is well known, the planets reached by the psi institute were also those most prominent in the Disappearance. The Institute itself naturally suffered losses as great as most of the worlds in its net. Estimates are that at least 98% of its psi-capable staffers disappeared, although exact numbers are hard to obtain since the remainder fled and went into hiding. The institute no longer pursues active psi development and now exists mostly as a historical and investigative agency, co-operating with officials in the ongoing investigation into the Disappearance.