Corporate Gallery
Date of article publication: December 11th, 497 FS.
Corporate Gallery: The Companies Outside The Conflict
Hello, enterprising spacers!
I’m sure that some of you have been keeping up with the news lately, following all the brewing conflict and subsequent cease-fire between the grand megacorporation of Nanotrasen and the coalition that is the Syndicate. As always, we at Corporate News Monthly want to make sure our dear readers are kept in the loop. For those of you who wish to stay out of politics and just want to work (for God’s sake!), this guide is for you.
Merita Textiles: Clothing For The Modern Worker
Merita Textiles started as a fairly small venture on Teceti, in the southern reaches of the planet. Its specialty was corporate attire, specifically for technicians and mechanics working in dangerous environments. Their products were noteworthy primarily for their purpose-built designs – minor radiation-ablative layering for engineers, light blunt-force armor for security forces – with a small group of dedicated clients. What really put them on the map, however, was the Save Your Suit program, AKA suit sensors. By designing clothes with inlaid vital trackers (including heart monitors, breath sensors, and even a bloodwork element that checked for toxins) across the entire body, managers and safety teams could remotely check on worker integrity, facilitating greater productivity and reducing the likelihood of workers being knocked unconscious and being unable to be located, due to a GPS beacon installed in the collar. Since then, even clothes not designed by Merita often integrate their suit sensor designs, with royalties paid to the company for its use. A popular amenity obtained from working with Merita is their HomeSafe initative, which allows the company to monitor your vitals at all times and remotely call emergency services to your home if needed. A must-have for the elderly or illness-prone person looking for security!
Vanity: All That Glimmers and Shines
Vanity is a luxury jewelry brand originating from the Luxury Jeweler’s Guild on Reh’mihl, which also manufactures high-quality watches and electronics cases. Famously, Vanity is associated with the celebrity instrumental AI group known as K-AI, with their avatars and songs appearing in many of Vanity’s television and wideband advertisements. Many celebrities favor Vanity products, with PDAs decked out in platinum and studded with bluespace crystals for a proper nu-regal look. The iconic Valz-Marko bass guitar played by the bassist of the popular music group Chaos Into Peace was also a custom job made by Vanity. Employees with mining or manufacturing expertise are favored here, but Vanity has a fairly competitive onboarding program that teaches the basics necessary for performing jewelry repairs and appraisal (although only with their proprietary tools, so don’t try and take that knowledge elsewhere!).
Galactic Shipbreaker’s Association: Salvage, Scrap and Communications
For the rough-and-tumble recycling fanatics out there, the GSA is the foremost independent organization in the field of industrial salvage. Operating primarily in the Frontier picking up the pieces of the Inter-Corporate War, the Galactic Shipbreaker’s Association coordinates both independent contractors and in-house teams to take apart ruined vessels and stations no matter the cause-of-destruction. While the GSA does have extensive contracts with Hardline Salvage and Mining, they are not formally affiliated with them, and therefore stay out of the simmering tensions from the ICW. Common openings in the GSA include salvage engineers (actually doing the legwork of disassembling salvagable machines, engines and even ripping up the floor or walls of derelict vessels), “firewall teams” (performing the dirty work of clearing out hostile fauna or science projects gone awry before or while the SEs do their job), or as coordination agents (scouting for destroyed vessels with prime salvage, as well as relaying intel and coordinates to contractors and teams). The former jobs are great for out-of-doors, hands-on types, while the latter is excellent for those who enjoy cartography, perusing shipping manifests and not getting up from their desk chair.
Carpentry Rohling: Furnishings, Solar Style
In an age where assembly lines have trivialized the process of putting furniture together, and rapid-blueprint techniques make it easy for even novices to put together decent-looking tables and chairs with just some metal sheets and a little elbow grease, discerning consumers might wish to look for furniture with a little more…soul. Look no further than Carpentry Rohling, the homegrown furniture supplier based in the city of New Älmhult on Earth in the Solarian Federation. Employing expertly-trained carpenters and craftsmen from across the known reaches of space, Carpentry Rohling produces excellent furniture of all kinds made of authentic Solar-style materials, such as fine-grain mahogany and leather, ethically sourced and handcrafted. Some of their most popular products include hand-carved wood-frame computer consoles, which work equally well as the centerpiece for a high-flying CEO’s office or for the cozy study of an academic. Employees are paid exceptionally well, but often work long hours, so be prepared for the long haul! Open spots are generally few and far between, but Carpentry Rohling looks for expertise and dedication in prospective employees – to the extent that an in-joke within the industry refers to Carpentry Rohling employees as “maniacs” for their sheer focus.
VitCom Consumer Electronics: Computers, Commlinks and PDAs
In the modern age, compact personal computers are a vital tool for anyone, from the everyday citizen needing to send a friend a message and read some email, to field technicians needing a rapid atmospherics scan or analysis of local power failures. To this end, the top of the field is Vitalis Communications and Consumer Electronics, often shortened to VitCom Consumer Electronics. Alongside manufacturing the exceptionally popular Personal Data Assistant smart-device, VitCom also produces a line of radio headsets, complete with multi-channel functionality, high-quality encryption and the famous rapid-swap key system, which allows any layperson with a screwdriver and some panache to set up a headset with the secure radio channnels they need to do their job! For those of you looking for government contracts, many militaries (as well as private security forces) also utilize VitCom radios and special-order their specialized over-the-ear models, which use high-end audio filtration technology to filter out dangerously loud noises while still allowing the user to hear whispers and ambient noise. VitCom is always looking for programmers, designers and audio technicians, although they’ve recently announced an upcoming rebranding that may give enterprising marketing folks an opening!
Psudali-41 Games: Massively Multiplayer
Psudali-41 Games is an industry leader in online video game experiences. Some of their most famous titles include the Gun Sliver franchise, the video game adaptation of the popular movie A Cold Day in Fort Grand, and the second and third games of the Father’s Seventh series. Recently, Psudali-41 has begun expanding their repertoire to MMORPGs, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Due to the highly-fragmented nature of localnets and the often tenuous grasp of the Galnet, Psudali-41 is looking to set up large server farms and headquarters on major core worlds to service their new title, Goodbye World, which will be set on a post-Night-of-Fire Earth. While this has caused some minor uproar among members of the Solar Federation community, development has gone unimpeded. Positions in high demand include localnet interface developers, marketing specialists and AI engineers for a confidential project currently known to the public as “Project Robinson”. Mysterious!
