[center][h1][u][b]Corporations of the UCL[/b][/u][/h1][/center] [center][i][h1]Content by Auz[/h1][/i][/center] Business throughout the largest alliance in the galaxy is nothing if not cut throat. Broken down into two distinct areas, there’s the major industry titans of the Core Worlds and the wild west, fast and loose style of the Frontier systems. When war broke out throughout the galaxy it was a godsend for the Mega Corporations of the Core Worlds. A blank check handed down by the government drove each major industrial giant into overdrive. Boardrooms came to resemble military headquarters as CEOs met with their directors to discuss how to obtain their own golden ticket by any means necessary. Of course it was still the Core Worlds, the centre of the greatest Empire in the galaxy and so there had to be decorum, a sense of style and grace to how they conducted their underhanded tactics. Assassins, saboteurs, hackers and rampant online viruses were all deployed to ensure their backroom shady practice found success. Everything from ensuring hostile takeovers of smaller companies went smoothly, to stealing blueprints of emergency technologies before they could be patented to making sure any competition that couldn’t be bought was crushed through intimidation or by sheer weight of bureaucracy. Blood was spilled in but in a cold, calculating and precise manner. For the Frontier, any bountiful solar system was divvied up regardless of who or what lived there by the Core Worlds Mega-Corps. Planets were signed and sold in the blink of an eye with large swaths of populations becoming either instantly moved into poverty or wiped out entirely, while a rich minority profited. These systems were the lucky ones as others with less resources were simply cast aside and forgotten about. Forced to survive on their own, millions perished as entire economies were forced to restructure from the ground up to be able to solely provide for themselves. However, there were a few on the Frontier that thought outside the box. Some governments on sponsored their own business elite to act as independent bodies, carefully traversing the no man's land of galactic nation borders picking up whatever contracts could be found. They were fed scraps and looked down upon by each of the larger nations Core Worlds but managed to scrape out a living. Things continued on like this for a time until the massive gears of war began to grind to a halt as the four major factions fought to a bitter stalemate. The blank checks handed out by the UCL began to dry up, just as once bountiful systems were squeezed for their last bit of juice. The growth of the Core World Mega-Corporations slowed as profit margins decreased. Their acts of aggression and hostilities grew few in number but the businesses themselves were still too big to fail and remained powerful giants. As for the Frontier, through the blood soaked gold rush emerged three Mega-Corporations with each being forged in a fire of their own, leaving them strong enough to stand up to the might of the Core Worlds. Their business was open and dirty, there was no tactic beneath them and they were willing to wage open war in the street to maintain grips on their power. So a stalemate of its own came about within the business world of the UCL. Nowadays things in the Core Worlds are back to how it was before the war, shifting their focus to their immediate systems and facing off against the other industry majors. Their memories, short, forgetting the destruction they had wrought along the Frontier. Happy enough with this small victory, those who lived in the all but forgotten regions of the galaxy look to their own, new, Mega Corporations to begin to build a new future. But their victory may be short lived as the wild west attitude of said companies has formed an almost powder keg situation. Corner cutting, desperate business decisions and open malpractice of the new three major players has left a fragile path forward at best. Dicey, is the future for the people of the Frontier. [h2][u][b]Major Sectors and Corporations of the Core Worlds:[/b][/u][/h2] [h1][u][b]Tech:[/b][/u][/h1] [u]NG Ltd: [/u] Owned by the eccentric and famous trillionaire Nolan Grimes, this corporation focuses on the manufacture of physical products and hardware. While it does have it’s own software section, it’s not as strong or dominant as it’s competitor. It’s top earning portfolios lay within the robotics and cybernetic divisions. [u]Voroly: [/u] This corporation is all about software and online dominance with their highest earning sector being consumer attention, algorithmic data gathering and advertising. [h1][u][b]Mining:[/b][/u][/h1] [u]Roniry: [/u] This company mostly keeps to itself choosing to focus solely on the rare elements and mineral mining. The cost of extracting such materials is astronomical, leaving an unbelievably high barrier to entry, ensuring Roniry is easily able to dominate it’s chosen industry. [u]Tigmon Mining: [/u] This company focuses on commonly found elements and minerals found throughout the UCL. They mine planets (both populated and unpopulated), asteroids, gas clouds, floating ice balls etc. basically if something of value can be extracted, this company will plant a flag in it. [u]Jexmon: [/u] Focuses in the same areas, commonly found elements and minerals. Despite there only being two mega corporations competing for this section of industry, their bitter and long rivalry has kept things highly competitive. As a result the government has ensured neither receives an upper hand in the continual battle for dominance, it’s one less headache for the UCL. [h1][b][u]Finance:[/u][/b][/h1] [u]UCLB: [/u] Not long after the actual formation of the UCL all major finance companies and banks joined into a single huge conglomerate after the decision to create one major currency for the entire League. The power of this bank is said to almost rival the government themselves and is, as such, kept on a very tight and heavily regulated leash. Luckily for the government and the other major industries, they are prone to heavy infighting as many different and radical ideologies try to govern each other from within. Their goal always being an attempt to dominate and create an autocracy. [h1][b][u]Fuel and Transportation:[/u][/b][/h1] [u]Energek: [/u] A company that’s primary focus is on providing fuel and energy for planets and stationary ships. It does some minor work in relation to the Abzu but prefers renewable energy, mainly looking at fusion and harnessing the power of suns. They’re primary product are Dyson Swarms, enabling governments to power entire systems. [u]Heavy Freighters: [/u]Are the largest logistics company in the UCL. One arm of business focuses on the design, creation and of utility vehicles (land, sea, air, space), another runs logistics from business to business (continents, planets, systems) but their largest returns come from their military division. If you’ve ever flown in any sort of military vehicle in the UCL chances are it was made by Heavy Freighters or a subsidiary. [u] Radiante:[/u] A Mega-Corp focused on transportation for commercial use, offering transportation for individuals from land to water to air to space. They’re highest earning sector is luxury, best known for serving the rich, famous and powerful. [h1][b][u]Consumer Goods:[/u][/b][/h1] The most peaceful industry, this section is dominated by two Mega Corporations that work in symbiosis, [u]Syntaty [/u]builds the factories and creates the products, [u]ProdExpress [/u]handles the marketing and the back and forth between smaller businesses and consumers. [center][u][b][h2]Mega Corporations of the Frontier Worlds[/h2][/b][/u][/center] [u]Athlean Mining Corp:[/u] A mining giant that uses citizenry as miners, rather than it’s robotic counterparts in the Core. Excessive poverty along the frontier left no shortage of manpower for the company to capitalise on. Though due to technological inferiority and cost cutting, the job itself is not only extraordinarily dangerous but hell on the psyche. As a result heavy drug abuse is common as well as organ swapping (and organ harvesting). This has created hardcore smuggling rings and even given way to a very lucrative black market. [u]Deadcrush Shipping:[/u] Officially this company is nothing but a simple logistics operator which started by ferrying goods from one border to another and back to Frontier worlds who could not afford to do so on their own. Unofficially? They’re the smugglers that capitalise on the black market and turn a further profit from piracy. One of their favourite money making schemes was to cross the border of an opposing faction and find a planet with a surplus of trade. They then buy the goods at a cheap price point and turn a profit by selling those goods to local pirate colonies. From there the pirates would grow strong and harass the planet resulting in the government placing a bounty on them. Deadcrush would then swoop in, pick up the bounty contract, return back to the pirates under the guise of another trade detail and instead take them by surprise and wipe them out. Making profit on top of profit for themselves. This, however, works well in wartime with everyone distracted but during peacetime these short sighted dealings and malpractice have begun to catch up to them. [u]The Ebenkanesor Foundation: [/u] The third and final Frontier Mega-Corp began as a cheap (and illegal) arms operation. Unable to afford the high tech weaponry of the Core but still having the need to defend themselves, they crafted rudimentarily designed weapons from ancient times. Guns that used hammer and trigger mechanisms along with gunpowder to fire bits of lead, similar to the weaponry of the 21st century of Earth. Crude but effective, they saw some success but it wasn’t until after a large trade deal that they made the move into banking. Strange but effective the company took off, still dealing in weapons but seeing massive improvement in arms quality, range of weapon products and all things finance. It wasn’t long before rumours began to circulate that they acquired and are using highly illegal A.I. technology to run their operations. This, if true and exposed to the public, would see a UCL level intervention brought down upon them. It’s just as likely that they are now slaves to the A.I. which would be in the position to hold them to ransom. But they’re just rumours, right?