The Conglomerate

Faction Name: The Independent Systems Conglomerate, the New Systems Conglomerate, the Independent Colonies Conglomerate, the Confederacy of Indenpendent Conglomerates, the Conglomerate, etc. ..

Summary: The Conglomerate is a group of corporations signed a contract that set very specific corporate rules to outlaw espionage and violence between each other. It is essentially used as a tool to regulate trade and is regulated by the companies themselves while also being symbolic of the collection of companies. A myraid of loopholes are greatly jumped through, such as the usage of mercenaries to sabotage claims on planetary bodies as well as infiltration of corporate vehicles and otherwise.

Population: 1.3 Trillion, two thirds in Industrial Complexes, one third in non-industrial complexes.

Government
The Conglomerate, essentially, signed a document that set very specific corporate rules to outlaw espionage and violence between the corporations. It is essentially used as a tool to regulate trade and is regulated by the companies themselves. A myriad of loopholes are greatly jumped through, such as the usage of mercenaries to sabotage claims on planetary bodies as well as infiltration of corporate vehicles and otherwise.

There is no real government in the sense of the word in the Conglomerate. The document that binds all the corporations into a non-aggression treaty is the law, but their only means of enforcing it is by restricting trade to the criminal organizations. If an organization breaks the contract beyond repair, its assets are assumed dissolved, its employees have a short time to leave the corporation or else they are blacklisted and physical assets are ascertained by force through security firms.

The genius of the Conglomerate is that their laws are homogeneous between corporations and individuals. When an individual steals or murders, they’re treated with the same punishment as the corporations; social and economic isolation. The large city-planets (called Industrial Complex’s) typically have anti-poverty population control which means black-listed individuals would be sent off-world to either prison-planets or with mercenaries.

Diplomatic Approach: Business-like, non-aggressive. The Conglomerate has strong provisions against unifying to fight, and would likely mass-hire from the large pools of mercenaries floating around to fight off any organized invasions. The Conglomerate itself does not declare war, but it is entirely possible for a corporation to send mercenaries onto planets occupied by other nations. If another nation believes the Conglomerate is attacking them, they will ask for proof and if given the evidence they would dissolve the company in question.

Current Conflicts: There are constant surrogate wars happening on unclaimed planets that surround the Conglomerate.

Economy
The economy of the Conglomerate is a beating heart with extreme ups and downs. The time between recessions and recovery happen at such a fast rate that it's almost normal for one month or week to be in desperate poverty and the next to be in great wealth. The Conglomerate would actually be highly productive if they weren't plagued with a serious drug-induced mental illness problem, severe overpopulation on Industrial Complexes and extreme white-collar crime.

The Conglomerates economy is based on strip-mining planets and astroids, mass-planetary farming of crops and trees, manufacturing animal-based renewable resources and an extremely large service sector comprised of white-collar slaves. Most blue-collar services are done by robots, to the woe of the humans who are severely impovershed and overwhelm planets that are entirely urbanized.

''There were several types of planets; those that were covered in forestation were modulated so that the whole entire planet was based on clear-cutting. This example of their efforts were so huge, it could be said that they literally engineered the plants to regrow within moments of planting them; machines would be so efficient in cutting and collecting, that the amount of organic material would be over-stimulating. The same concept was used on all other kinds of planets; huge, quick mining operations for all sorts of metals and oil were done, which effectively left planets barren for terraforming. Gas giants were used to collect massive amounts of helium, essentially destroying the demand for power. But the grandest of all were the industrial complexes.''

''Farming lumber, crops of all kinds and harvesting the metals of the earth was not enough for the companies. Industrial Complexes were always a different subject, as they dealt more with the harvesting of humans—More accurately, productivity that could only be done by human beings. These were worlds that were completely covered in concrete, made for services, administration, billing and a myriad of other tasks. To imagine this landscape, it would literally be a city that stretched from the ends of the planet; since humanity was so detached from spirituality, they relied on the materialism capitalists were so eager to provide. Machines were constantly destroying jobs, but humans continued to struggle on top of them, using genetic engineering and cyberware to ensure that they are a relevant force in their society.''

The acquisition of these planets are well-contended and involve complicated surrogate wars. They are sometimes fairly short but may take years of investment into military equipment and armies of soldiers. A mercenary faction can lose their funding if it's found out that a corporation is funding them, as it is against the treaty that the companies had signed. The most efficient way around this on paper is donation through charities.

''Corporations owned by corporations owned by corporations would fund secret surrogate wars on pre-colonized planets to have mercenaries give the tiny population foreign aid. However, they would also be given the responsibility to destroy any other mercenaries who attempt to sway the people. Once it's established they control the land, the company who funded them establishes heavy-duty mining operations. This is the way humanity has lived for several years, even with governments over watching colonized planets, and how it will be until they collapse.''

As all economies are, the Conglomerate's economy is seperated into three sectors; primary, secondary and tertiary. The primary sector of the Conglomerate is strong, siphoning entire planets with mathematical precision for food, building material and raw material for manufacturing purposes. Its secondary sector is extremely well-built, to the point where they can produce vast amounts of cheap consumer goods. Its tertiary sector is daunting to the point of extremes, often seen as absurd by any real economy.

All of this comes to a loss when we understand that humans utterly destroy every planet they touch, often leaving them dismantled, useless messes. In addition, their industry is without regulation which makes maintaining high oxygen levels a very real challenge. Their white-collar workers are constantly stressed to the point of suicide, they are often rebelious and it has gotten to the point that companies are openly drugging water and food supplies to make them more docile. Their strong, dyspotic economy comes with a heavy price tag.

Society
In the Conglomerate, there are two dominate societies that live in a sort of isolation from eachother. The average mercenary would most likely never meet the average employee from an Industrial Complex. Corporations are consumers of the services of mercenaries, and mercenaries are the consumers of goods that the Corporations provide. The disparity between the two is, in some ways, extreme, however they need eachother in order to continue running the Conglomerate how it is.

White Collar
White Collar workers are the financers, corporate lawyers, salesmen, clerks, civil engineers, biochemists, doctors, accountants, treasurers, IT spcialists, network administrators and a myraid of other sorts of professionals. They're entire lives are based on a rigorous hourly schedule, clocking in and out almost every day. Their entire society is often found in Industrial Complex's, however they can also be found managing farming, mining and other planetary operations that require human contact.

White Collar society is rather equal when it comes down to both genders and all races, however it's entirely dependent on the conditions of the work place. There are some companies that exclusively hire women, those of asiatic descent, those that are white or black-- it is variable, and often it is those companies that don't make it very far because they restrict their pool of employees by ascribed traits rather than aquired.

The worth of a human being in White Collar society is divided between workers and managers; the more docile and quicker-working an employee is, the higher value he holds. The managers value is qualitive of his workers product while still cutting enough corners to make the profit percentage higher.

Mercenaries
Mercenaries are technically not part of the Conglomerate; they are humans that live on the battlefield, in space ships or any other sort of non-Industrial Complex that will allow them to habitate. Considered socially less than White Collar employees, Mercenaries enjoy a lot of liberty and freedom in comparison, and often have higher standards of living then their counterparts. The pay-off is that they live in a world of violence, living paycheck to paycheck off of the spoils of war.

The society of mercenaries has a lot of horozontal social stratification; people are as important as the situations demand them to be. They are largely engineers, soldiers and people that physically make things happen: it is possible for someone to be considered a mercenary even if they choose not to kill, and instead maintain structures and technology.

Because there is a lack of structure in their society, leadership roles are dependent on the trust of soldiers working under them. Sometimes it's all an alpha dominance struggle, where beating the leader to death brings forward the victor as the strongest and, as a result, the leader. Most times leaders are strategically picked as a specific occupation, next to demolition or computer expert, and are thus not ascribed a higher status than the rest of everyone else.

Gauss Weaponry
Gauss Weaponry is found in various forms in the Conglomerate; there are ships with giant Gauss Cannons, as well as soldiers with Gauss Rifles. Gauss Weapons utilize a series of electromagnetic coils, powered by batteries typically, using caseless rounds pushed mechanically into a line of coils. Each coil has an infrared detector that detects the bullet and pulls it to the center of the coil. The coil shuts off, the next one turns on and the bullet continues down the barrel. On top of the coils are high powered transistors that turn the coils on and off, and there are usually some additional electronics which keep things from overloading.

Railgun Weaponry
Humans have designed Railguns for both small arm and ship-based use. Using rounds that have conductive heavy alloys that are loaded from the magazine into an eight chamber braech. The barrels of these weapons have two light rails joined by rifling walls, and the rounds are fired by passing a large electro-magnetic pulse that accelerates them down the rail.

EPFCG Weaponry
EPFCG Weaponry are firearms that utilize explosively pumped flux compression generators in their rounds to fire projectiles with the power of tens of terrawatts. Shooting armor piercing composite rigid shells, ammunition is somewhat expensive but it's piercing power is undeniably effective. It is seen utilized from space ships and small-arm weaponry.

''The Holepuncher is a ventral mounted fixed forward facing weapon that puts an anti-energy cell into a torpedo tube. Each round is cased with an explosively pumped flux compression generator which is disposed after being fired, allowing the projectile to be fired with the power of tens of terawatts. It is given the name 'The Holepuncher' because of its high penetration rate.''

Jump Gates
Jump Gates are structures built around Einstein-Rosen bridges (worm holes) in an attempt to regulate traffic between them; they are economic because very little if any fuel is used in the process, however, they are limited in the solar systems they can go.

====  Trade Lanes ==== Trade Gates allow superluminal travel within a solar sytem, must be entered from an origin point and travels around 2000 m/sec. The Trade Gates bend space betweent he rings to shorten the distance between one ring and another. For reasons of stability, a certain amount of rings need to be made per kilometer in order to keep pushing an object through. A few problems with Trade Gates is that sometimes, between the rings, there are astroids or other matter than can obstruct passage; precautions are taken to avoid coming into contact with them. Another is the fact that individual Trade Gates can be hacked into, stopping the flow of traffic of some cargo ship right into the hands of pirates.''' '''

Warp Drive
Humans have developed some ships that can activate an Alcubierre Drive (warp drive); this shrinks the space between the ship and the point where it's arriving. This allows superluminal travel between solar systems, however requires a lot of energy. Typically ships have a fuel source than the one that allows them to move through space.

Hydrogen Farming
Humans had built space stations that orbit gas giants, sending generally two different types of space ships to collect these resources. One type, called Zoners go into the Zones of gas giants where the conditions are warmer; the Zoners are made of alloys and hard plastics that have extremely high heat resistance, and the engine on the ship isolates the computers to an ideal temperature. The second type is called Belters that travel into the belts of the gas giant and usually have a much more tangible source of hydrogen to gather.

These ships are typically not manned by humans directly, making them drones in essence. The number of these ships are often in the thousands per gas giant. After the hydrogen is stored, it is sent to the space station where it is manufactured into a usable hydrogen fuel cell, then distributed towards Industrial Complex's to meet the markets demand.

Traveling Wave Reactors
In addition to having regular Nuclear Facilities, the Conglomerates past empire created a number of Traveling Wave Reactors that utilize depleted uranium-238 and a small amount of enriched uranium-235 (or another fossil fuel) to initiate fission. The beauty of a TWR is the fact that it could theoretically run for decades without refueling, and even then it's possible to reuse it's own fuel. This technology was widely used on colonized planets, however it can be sometime seen on the older Industrial Complex's, before Hydrogen Farming was possible.

Synthetic Memories
Corporations in the Conglomerate have developed technologies that can manufacture, stockpile and implant artificial memories. This is done through a neural implant popularly known as a memplant. Synthetic Memories are tailored to act like normal memories, but depending on the price, the quality of the memory may be much greater or less. Additionally, the type of memory that is invoked can be customized from topographic, flashbulb, declarative and procedural. Retrieval of the memory is inherently based on the price; if the implant is poor, then the memplant is hard to access and vague, if the implant is of high-quality than it can be eidetic.

The process of implanting synthetic memories begins with planning what sort of memory the client wants; there are pre-packaged memories to pick from which range from combat training to lectures, to sexual experiences and childhood. Customizing memories always costs more because the memories have to be constructed from scratch or from another pre-made memory. After the memory is designed, it is implanted by surgical procedure and the client undergoes a deep sleep. The sleep is as lengthy as the complexity of the request, however it could be sped up leaving the possibility of squeezing a two-hour lecture into thirty minutes.

Moneta
Moneta was originally developed to improve wakefulness for people with sleep disorders, and has piqued the interest of many laboratories who were involved in neuropharmacology. It is a heavy nootropic that has the same effect as having a major coffee hit without any caffeine jitters; its users work for longer than usual and are often suprised at the time that has passed by. It increases energy levels, altertness, allows people to stay focused for long peirods of time and can activate parts of the brain that control motivation.

Moneta, or its chemical name, Mnemosynetam, causes stimulations in acetylcholine receptors in the users synapses which causes the speed of thought to be throttled, extensively improves logical analysis and the basic ability to learn and remember. It also increases the communication between the two hemispheres of the brain in a way which leads to a more "creative" ability to solve problems. It also serves on a social level, allowing the user to become more confident, improve their verbal fluency and depresses anxiety levels.

When taking Moneta, the user has a definite feeling that an artificial substance is effecting them. There are reports of headaches, vomiting, extreme aggression, anxiety depression and uneven heartbeats for subjects that aren't on a controlled diet and sleep schedule. The magic of Moneta is that when it's used in the right conditions, the brain and muscle memory is retained long after the drug dissipates from the body. While they don't necessarily learn the same way nor have the same reactions as if they were on the drug, they do not return to their normal state of being until several years have passed.