[hider=A Speculators Guide to the Pegasus Trade] [b]Companies:[/b] [i][b]Solar Winds Trading Company[/b][/i] Headquarters: New Batvia, Venus, Sol Employees: 925 Registered Hulls: 8 League Scepters: 1 (provisional) [b]Planets[/b] [i][b] Lionel[/b][/i] System: Kappa 121-G Star Class: G (Orange/White) Inhabitants: 10 million autochthons. Assorted Iron Age societies. Exports: None to date League Presence: Class D repair base. A-Pow Presence: None. [/hider] [hider=A Brief History of Human Expansion Volume 627 Part D] [b]The Ancient and Honorable League of Neo-Hanseatic Merchants[/b] [i]“Not ancient, not honorable, and only in league to bilk the rest of the galaxy.”[/i] Charles Brandle – My Life and Times The League as is commonly referred to is an organized group of merchants based in Sol. The League holds a technical monopoly on star faring trade beyond the Sol System, a right for which individual companies pay annual dues. Originally viewed by the Associated Powers as a way to organize the gold rush resulting from the development of the Wellerman-Kashogi drive and supra-luminal travel it rapidly developed into the real economic power in the human galaxy. The League is theoretically a democracy in which each member company can cast a number of votes proportional to its earnings, though as a practical matter diets are only called to settle the thorniest trade disputes or as an arbitrator of last resort between rival companies. [b]The Associated Powers of Federated Sol[/b] [i]Join the navy they said, see the galaxy they said, pursuant to fiscal constraints and compliance with sub clause 222-AC-3 they said[/i]. Charles Brandle – My Life and Times A-Pow is the governing political and military body of the Sol system. Formed of a union of Earth, Mars, Venus, and a score or so of well established colonies in the Solar only after the pressures of extra solar expansion made it increasingly dangerous to resist. Bureaucratic in the extreme, its complicated constitution, set up to appease a dozen mutual exclusive factions means that A-Pow rarely manages to move any issue past the debate stage. It does possess a powerful fleet and several armies, largely as a way to enrich defense contractors. While some of the larger extra solar colonies are members, they are very much poor relations to the Solar core, with correspondingly less constitutional power. A-Pow is too riddled with internal divisions to have a coherent position on the League, indeed the endlessly political cycle is yet another arena for those members of the League with money to spend to attempt to buy influence. A-Pow can and does act to defend Sol and its extra solar member worlds, at least after every opportunity to dither has been exhausted. [b]Independent Human Colonies[/b] [i] Everything that can be tried will be tried, everything that will be tried will be fucked up.[/i] Charles Brandle – My Life and Times Independent settlements not part of A-Pow have been established on hundreds, perhaps thousands of worlds, asteroid belts, and deep space stations. These range from small industrial operations, to League trading posts, to collectives of political dissidents, cults, utopians, and every segment of solar society that, for one reason or another, wanted to hop a starship and get the hell out of dodge. [/hider] One benefit of Lionel’s relatively low level of ambient sunlight was that even at ‘dawn’ it didn’t get very bright. The temperature did warm significantly though, and so the beginning of a new day was marked with heat and by a sudden explosion of activity in the jungle that seemed completely arbitrary to light dependent humans. The other benefit was that you didn’t get a brilliant light shining in your bleary hung over eyes. “I’m not sure what in the name of all the Gods I did to deserve one of you, much less two!” Maynard raged as he stalked back and forth in front of Bad and Inez. The were in front of one of the warehouses from which a long train of native pack animals were emerging. Like the natives they were hexapods, with powerful jointed knees reminiscent of caterpillars. They clicked and croaked continually as the muscled panniers of woven wire filled with glittering manganese rich ore. Native guards with company lanyards chivvied them along with the points of spears. A few, very few, had breech loading trade rifles and were bestrung with bandoliers of brass cartridges that jingled as they walked. The League had long ago learned not to sell advanced weapons to natives on worlds there they wanted to operate long term, but they had also learned that you couldn’t cut them out entirely without black markets springing up to fill the void. Inez endured Alrik Maynard’s fury stolidly. He was a handsome man if you liked them a little on the wiry side with radish blonde hair. He wore a coat of brilliant green shimmersilk atop collets of fine linen tucked into polished black boots. The golden seal of a Captain and a Factor of the League hung around his neck, marked with the insignia of the Solar Winds Trading Company. Inez’s head throbbed, the hang over had been largely purged by a judicious dose of booze-be-gone, but her head still pounded from where a boot had caught her during the fracas last night. “You I expect this from,” Maynard snapped, thrusting a finger into Inez chest, “But you!” He whirled on Bad and stomped over to him, the rings on his fingers glinting as they caught the stray light of a light post on the perimeter. “The ink not even dry on your contract and already brawling in taverns like a Gods-be-damned common drunk!” “Sir,” Inez began. “Quiet!” the captain snapped, “I don’t want to hear you, I don’t want to see you, the only thing I want is this cargo delivered to Loxahar valley without incident. Unless you want me to put the damages the bar owner is claiming on your account I suggest that you ensure this goes off FLAWLESSLY. Am I understood!?”