Gas Miners Guild
| Gas Miners Guild | |
| Origin | |
| Alignment | {{{alignment}}} |
| Profile | |
| Date of founding | 280-300 A.S. A.S. |
| Date of dissolution | still active A.S. |
| Founder(s) | unknown |
| Current leader(s) | Guild Chairman |
| Base of operations | Aomori Station, Honshu |
| Primary role | |
| H-Fuel mining, refining and sales | |
| Secondary role | |
| At least partial protection of Sigma systems | |
The Gas Miners Guild (GMG) is a large organisation with a substantial stranglehold on the H-Fuel industry.
Synopsis
The GMG maintains it's claims on three of the five known Sigma systems (Sigma-13, Sigma-19 and Sigma-59), supporting their own mining bases and even trade lanes in those regions. The main distribution station and administratorial office is located in Honshu, on the conveniently placed Aomori Station. Distribution of H-Fuel consists of transporting the refined gas to Kusari, where it is sold to corporations dealing with redistribution both in Kusari itself and shipping to other houses. Kishiro Technologies is currently the Guild's main partner in H-Fuel distribution.
GMG security forces are noted for their unorthodox security tactics, utilising a form of guerilla warfare that uses the limited visibility inside the Crow Nebula to their advantage. The guild is known for using large numbers of strong and agile fighter and bomber craft to their advantage, while refusing to field capital class vessels altogether.
History
The Rise of the GMG
The Gas Mining Guild began it's operations somewhere between the year 280 and 300 A.S. right after the massive Honshu food crisis of 250 A.S. caused by a failed Alien Organisms dispersion experiment. The crisis led to the bulk of the Honshu population losing their only source of revenue. Seeking new opportunities, the former fishermen started setting up new businesses, mainly gathering and selling hydrogen and helium isotopes to Kusari corporations in the abundant Crow Nebula. Without the modern miracle of jump gates, these journeys would take months before actually bringing in profit. Despite that shortcoming, it wasn't long until the corporate sharks of Kusari realised the gold mine that mining and refining fuel was, and the small Honshu businesses quickly felt the pressure of corporate prospectors encroaching on their mining fields. Rather than ignore this forming competition, the businesses had banded together to create the Gas Miners Guild.
By the start of the next century the GMG claim on the lucrative Sigma-13 system was put in stone by the Kusari government, and the Guild's own gas refining facilities. To enforce their claim even further, the Guild signed an exclusive sales contract with Samura Industries in 330 A.S., forcing Kishiro Technologies to pursue other markets and effectively removing the competition. The construction of the Osaka Storage Facility in 350 A.S. marked the beginning of a period of excessive income for both the GMG and Samura for the next 200 years.
New enterprises
Despite their assured stranglehold on the lucrative H-Fuel trade, the Guild had never stagnated in any one place for long. Opportunities were aplenty in the rich but dangerous Border Worlds, and it wasn't long until the gas miners came in contact with Corsair raiders, spreading their alien trinkets and devices by the dozens. These would be called artifacts. The GMG would quickly become the middleman in the transport of these artifacts to Kusari. A short lived deal that would provide the Guild a grudge against the quasi-legal Hogosha and their Corsair partners.
In the end the GMG stuck to what it was able to do best: obtain H-Fuel. Survey parties were always being sent out across the nebula stretch, randomly combing it in search for more gas deposits. It would be until 550 A.S. before these searches would finally bring fruit. The Sigma-19 system, abundant in gas pockets, was branded as the next logical expansion point for the Guild. With the location now selected came the question of awarding the construction contract. While Samura pushed to renegotiate their H-Fuel contract to a lower price, the GMG decided to scout out the competition instead. After a steady period of negotiations, an agreement is signed in 550 A.S. contracting Kishiro Technologies to finance a Jump Gate to Sigma-19 in exchange for distribution rights.
Eighty Years War
Year 600 A.S. marked the escalation of tensions between Imperial Rheinland and it's closest neighbours. It's factories had managed to create the biggest fleet in all of Sirius, fueled by an enormous and resource hungry industrial machine. The ever increasing fuel demand of such a fleet put an extraordinary strain on the Rheinland economy, which having no fuel deposits of it's own was forced to import all of it's H-Fuel from Kusari. Suffering exceedingly large losses to it's treasury, the Rheinland Emperor decided to put his great military to use.
Come 620 A.S. the Rheinland Military had dispatched the bulk of it's fleet to cross the Frankfurt system into Sigma-13, and secure more gas fields for Kruger Minerals to exploit. This unprecendented event would mark the start of the first major conflict in Sirius, later known as the Eighty Years War.
Initially the invaders' progress was successful, with Imperial forces seizing much of the Sigma-13 system and pushing the GMG into a desperate defense at the Gas Miner Naha. Rather than opting for Kusari Naval intervention, the Guild utilised it's own numbers of small attack craft to great success, engaging in guerilla warfare inside the nebula, miring and destroying the massive and cumbersome Imperial fleet. With the initial attack pushed away from the central GMG gas miner, the war turned into a stalemate.
Several long years of conflict later, the Rheinland Military had lost nigh all of it's initiative, with it's forces stretched thin and it's H-Fuel reserves catastrophically low. GMG forces slowly pushed the immobile Imperial fleets into the Yanagi nebula, until reaching the culmination of the war when the remainder of the Rheinlanders jumped into Sigma-13 for the final shot at taking over the system. This engagement would be known as the Battle of the Yanagi Nebula, and would end with a decisive victory for the Gas Miners Guild, leaving a massive trail of wreckage floating in it's wake.
With the destruction of the remaining Rheinland fleet, the long period of the Eighty Years War was finally over and the Imperial forces had retreated home to face their internal problems. As the eighth century loomed over the horizon, the Popular Revolution began in Rheinland forcing the Rheinlanders to finally lose their claim to the Sigma-13 system. The GMG was left to pick up the pieces and begin regaining their power in the region.
