Corporate Assembly
Structure
History
The Corporate Assembly could trace its routes back to the initial free trade zones established by the Colonial Earth Empire's predecessor, the United Republic. The Republic offered free trade zones and unrestricted access to the resources in these zones, as long as they paid minor taxes to the empire as a whole. These areas were mostly located within the area of space that came to be known as The Great Expanse. Because the Republic had very little in means of protecting these zones, they opened up legal lanes for private corporate armies to be formed. Consequently, a number of major commercial, financial, manufacturing, and shipping companies united to ensure their own protection. Disputes at this time were handled in Republican Courts, however, as time went on, and the armies got larger, the corporations simply ignored the courts, waging the First Trade War.
When the Colonial Earth Empire was first founded, the Corporate Assembly was one of the first to fully declare its own independence in the civil wars that were to follow. While the Noble Houses of Glass and Stars threw around the weight of countless legions, the Corporate Assembly fortified Tochi and built up their own defensive fleets to protect their space. Rumors persist to this day that the Fourth Column was initially propped up and supported by funds siphoned from the Corporate Assembly.
Thus, when the civil war ended, and the Imperial forces having bled themselves against one another, the Noble Houses soon found benefit to keeping the Corporate Assembly as allies, rather than try an exert their forces in another bloody war of conquest. Besides, the Corporate Assembly and the newly created Empire had many aligned interests. Thus, a tepid alliance was negotiated, where the Assembly had sovereignty in their own space, so long as the Empire could deploy military assets from the Great Expanse, in response to the growing threat of the Red Sun Commonwealth, who had also gained their independence in the civil war.
This was all prior to the Age of Silence, and when the Interstellar Gates began to shut down, the Great Expanse became cut off from the rest of the Empire. The economy collapsed in Corporate Space, and to fill the coffers the Assembly turned the fleets that had been untouched by the civil war, against their neighbors in the Commonwealth. The Mechanicus Jihad had decimated the Commonwealth, and their military power. Thus, the corporate fleets were almost entirely free to operate throughout Commonwealth and Corporate space.
During the Silence, the Expanse was wracked with war for nearly three decades. Corpo-states glassed and destroyed rival worlds, all in the name of overtaking one another. The Red Sun was used regularly as a punching bag for the corporations, and a means to prop up the ever growing arms industries. They regulalry invaded deep into unprotected Commonwealth space, decimating worlds in the process. However, the interior of the Assembly could not help but cannibalize itself in the process. With so many corporate interests tied up overseas, three major alliances began to form, as the copros formed intricate webs of truces, schemes, and relationships. Through a series of mergers, hostile takeovers, aquisitions and disolvements, three major conglomerates remained. IsoChem, Agri-Star and Harrison Armory. They would eventually form the Gang of Three, who sat at the top of the food chain in the Assembly. Their takeover was brutal, and left billions of civilians dead in the wake, and Corporate coffers exhausted.
When the three decades of war finally subsided, it was instead replaced with a deadly game behind the scenes. Espionage became the tool wielded by the Gang of Three and the Commonwealth. Proxy wars fought system by system, with dedicated spies and influence lasted for more than eighty years.
When the gates finally came back online, the Corporate Assembly quickly formed an alliance with the Empire, becoming a pseudo-protectorate. Several Imperial Noble families married into the powerful corporate families of Harrison Armory, Agri-Star and IsoChem. These families were offered a place in the Imperial Senate, and rocketed to grand power over the Corporate Assembly. In return, Imperial Armies began to backup Assembly security corps, and pushed into Commonwealth space. The conquest wars that followed pushed the Red Sun Syndicate for a decade and a half. But the Assembly is losing steam, and the Commonwealth forces are starting to gain ground on planets that were thought to be firmly under Corporate Control.
The Big Three, Harrison Armory, IsoChem, and Agri-Star are struggling to maintain an iron grip over the Assembly. The other corpo-families view the Big Three as fully compromised, and in league with empire, giving up their hard-earned independence. More and more meetings between the various Assembly super-corps that make up the rest of the board, and Syndicate bosses looking to pray on a potential crack in the Assembly armor.
The Assembly runs the constant risk of getting potentionally nationalized or absored into the greater Imperial Structure, and Harrison Armory is keen to see that happen. However, the Assembly's tenative military power, and more importantly their political influence behind the scenes keeps them regularly out of the Empire's focus. They are keen to make sure the imperial forces remain busy in Pacifica and Terminus.
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