Working on my backstory [hider=WIP BACKSTORY] Alarico Rallo, born in Midgar, had a wealthy upbringing. Letizia Rallo, Alarico’s father, owned a fledgling heavy industrial company that specializes in iron metalworking and heavy machine goods. Combined with the wealth gained from past ventures and family ties, money was no issue at all for young Alarico. Afforded the best private education and tutoring, Alarico quickly became well-versed in academia, especially in the theory of management, engineering, and finances. Once coming of age, at the ripe age of 23, Alarico Rallo took over Rallo Heavy Industries as his feather died from health complexes after a mana-incident back some years ago. In his written will, Letizia expressed great concerns for the company and if his son could successfully lead the business. Not wishing to fail his family name, his father, and himself, Alarico Rallo went on a ruthless journey to ensure that General Machine & Tool would become a titan of industry. With no concerns for morals and ethics, a lesson influenced from his father’s actions, Alarico first sought to defang the growing labor movement within his local state. A union threatens the profits and bottom line of the company, with their so-called labor rights. Alarico will not have his material interests be stamped on by some lowly-poor workers. With his wealth, the man hired a sizable army of lobbyists to flood the courts, demanding that labor-rights and anything associated with it were highly dangerous to “freedom” and whatever else the lobbyists could come up with. This was his aboveboard approach, but Alarico employed plenty of belowboard tactics to ensure that any leftist movement will not stop the business. Strike-breakers, thugs, and criminals were hired out to do damage and harness the organizing and militant workers. Soon, Alarico joined up with other local companies to mount an effective campaign to stop the rights of workers and others, resulting in a success in the area. The radicals were stopped, for now, and Alarico now had other competition to deal with. In an effort to beat out the other companies, Rallo lowered his prices to the cheapest. Alarico had enough wealth to outlast the others and simply just waited for them to become bankrupt. Slowly but surely, all but the biggest heavy industrial companies in the local area were unable to sustain this war of attrition, with Rallo happily buying out whole businesses in wake of CEOs declaring bankruptcy. Once the whole ordeal was done, Alarico had a local monopoly on heavy industrial goods and machines (iron, rollers, large-furnaces, etc). A few years passed and Alarico’s coffers refilled, much more bigger from last time. In his pursuit of more wealth and political power, Alarico started to employ more ruthless methods of corporate and industrial espionage and sabotage against his regional competition. The political theatre also became a battleground as Alarico and others sought to gain lucrative contracts from state and city governors, along with the land rights to resource rich lands of ore, coal, and potential mana deposits. As the battle for contracts and land rights went underway, Alarico expanded General Machine & Tool into the realm of military production, in an attempt to bring in more wealth, equaling more political power. Asgard needed to update its arms, mainly its ballistic rifles. The old muzzle loaded percussion cap rifles were quickly becoming obsolete as the eastern city states were phasing in brand breech-loaded rifles. A new open contract was opened to the whole of the empire. The millions of old rifles had to be refurbished into some kind of breech-loaded design. Alarico, along with the rest of the companies in the empire, jumped on the contract. In total, six guns were present with Alarcio’s design winning out at the end of the trials. Alarcio’s design was simply a trapdoor method, cutting the muzzle-loaded breach and then installing the new breech-loaded trap door instead - a economic design that did not break the bank. General Machine & Tool got the contract and became quite more wealthy, having to convert millions of rifles into the new breech-loaded design. Time went on, and Alarcio established more military-industrial complex linkages to the government, producing more war goods for the Asgard military. Production expanded, more ore was needed, more factories had to be built and filled with machines, more workers, more everything in terms of heavy industry. In time, General Machine & Tool became the titan of industry that it wished it was. [/hider]