Origin: Liberty
Alignment: Unlawful/Corporate
ID: Pirate/Smuggler
IFF: Freelancer
Date of founding: 22-500 A.S.
Founder(s): John Tet, Aaron Tet.
Base of operations: Unlawful liberty space
Primary role: The Protection of New York from the unworthy
Secondary role: Regaining its WorldBank assets, Money Washing by smuggling.
Ships: Generic (With an option for a possible Generic Corporate shipline.)
Zone of Influence: Liberty space.
[Note: Tet has not yet been in contact with ANY factions, this is a projection.]
Regards as friends:
Rogues - For supporting a common enemy, Their simplemindedness creates an opportunity to convert.
Outcasts and Hackers - Their search for the Bends of the Bow by use of Cardamine leaves opportunity for conversion and assimilation.
Regards as neutral:
Junkers - For cleaning up New York by removing scrap metal, a healthy source of fresh believers.
Regards as enemies:
[TAZ] - Their way of life and world views hurt our very souls.
Xeno's - They are another possible source of new believers, and as such Tet tries to placate them into a sense of neutrality. Yeah, who are we kidding? Fat chance.
Everyone else with a base in New York.
.
Ship List
Trading and Commerce Division, in no particular order:
Remember that the Tet Corporation has only just risen from the limbo of total bankruptcy. We are in utter chaos, and it shows. There is no standard model for our fighting forces. use alternatives to your hearts content. Lets fly some unorthodox ships. [please note that these ships will be sorted by rank later.]
Time line:
22 AS.
Shortly after landfall, Aaron Tet rises from the chaos of the early settlement as a shrewd businessman and banker. As a side job, he preaches to the settlers of Manhattan. Coupled with the dismal living conditions and desperate poverty, he takes the opportunity to become a very popular figurehead for the large underclass. Aaron uses his (by modern standards) small fortune to support those people who are unable to feed themselves. This slowly becomes a corporate front, called the FoodBank. Archaelogical excavations have proven that it was of great value to the early healthcare system of planet Manhattan.
29 AS.
Aaron Tet grows disillusioned by his power over the underclass, and changes his religious views with intents of enlarging his power. After a standoff between his cult (which went onder the moniker of ''The group of the Rose'' and the early colonial authorities, he is imprisoned and fades into obscurity. All his assets are transferred to his only, adopted son, John Tet.
Late 43 AS.
After a disagreement with the management staff to broaden the Corporations views, John decides to purge key management figures. These figures join the newly formed Valhalla Corporation, a group which later becomes Ageira technologies, and a prime compeditor of the future FoodBank's Tech division.
92 AS.
John passes away without a heir. But the Cult introduced by his father remains a key part of the Corporation, and becomes a small substream in the Manhattan social whirlpool. With John dead, The Corporation can finally broaden its views, and branches out to pharmacy, economy and technology.
98 AS.
After a shocking undercover broadcast, shot by a reporter of the press, the inner circles of the Cult are brought to light, bringing about a public relations disaster. The FoodBank's history of fanaticism becomes public knowledge, but some goodwill is raised by the Corporations largely flawless reputation.
204 AS.
The religious teachings first introduced by Aaron have been completely subverted and the original transscripts remain largly lost.. In the mean time, the FoodBank group becomes more of a social subgroup then a Corporation, with entire families swearing by the subverted views of Aaron Tet.
338 AS.
The FoodBank ceases to exist after an intense rivalry with Cryer, a new but succesful group. It is largely integrated into Cryer after a takeover.
440 AS.
Whatever remains of the former Foodbank daughter-groups reform under the newly created DeanCorp group. After another destructive public relations affaire involving the psychopatic mania of a member of the board of directors, who is later called a ''Religious Gunslinger'', The religious teachings of Aaron Tet are sworn off, and families are no longer forced to comply with Aaron Tet's religious views. In secret, though, the practice continues.
500 AS.
The Texas incident shocks Manhattan's communities. The DeanCorp Acadamy's religion and philosophy teachers are Apalled, and pressure the Board of Directors to change policies. After years of infighting, a new directive is reached: The New York system must be defended at all costs, and its prize jewel, Manhattan, must be preserved. DeanCorp symobolically changes its name yet again, to the Tet Corporation. A name that lasts until the present day.
587 AS.
The Tet Corporation, for the first time, employs its most powerful resource: Its devoted followers. A fund is set up, and the millions of citizen's the corporation employs are forced to a 10% cut in salaries, which streams directly into the fund which is Sarcastically called the ''Tenth Credit'' in public opinion. The board of directors take on a 90% ''Bonus Tax'' for every credit they make on top of the minimum Liberty wage, after governmental taxes are subtracted. The fund (Called the WorldBank as a homage to the ancient and forgotten FoodBank) is run with a suprisingly low amount of corruption, and within years its assets swell to immense proportions.
671 AS.
The Tet corporation and its WorldBank buys assets all over Liberty, and a few parts of Kusari. and even a contract with the Armed Forces of Kusari. This in turn, leads to bankruptcy as Liberty voids most of the Tet assets in return. This day, known to Tet as ''The day the Rose was pulled'' marked the beginning of the end of its legal existance.
723 AS.
The Tet Corporation now exists only in unlawful area's of liberty space. Through the years, an estimated 19% of its remaining assets were transferred to illegal holders. Most of its most devout followers have fled Manhattan and linked up with the Liberty Rogues and other unlawful organisations, whilst the entire WorldBank fund still resides on planet Manhattan, safely tucked away under the arm of a few mysterious shareholders. Tet loses its hold on Kusari military hardware, but unlawful parts of the Tet Corporation claim there are still a few sources of Kusari tech, seeing Kusari military hardware on Tet ships is not a rare occurence.
819 AS.
Between 723 and 819 AS, the new Tet Corporation, a collection of religious fanatics and businessmen from all over Liberty rise to power as the most recent unlawful organisation. They recruit from Liberty rogues, Junkers and even Xeno's by use of missionaries, propogating the religious cult of Aaron Tet. They have one purpose only: To protect Manhattan, the Rose of the Universe, from its many Enemies.
The Teachings of Aaron Tet (Oldest known manuscript, circa 20 AS.), page 1, Chapter one, Section one.
<prior information is corrupted> the Beginning, There was only the Prim, that primordial soup of creation. Out of the Prim arose Gan, animating spirit of the Dark Tower. From the magical waters dripping out of his navel, Gan spun the physical universe. But sensing that one world was not large enough to create all possible manifestation of life and experience, he divided the unverse into multiple, parallel realities, and set six Quantum Beams in place to maintain the alignment of time, space, size, and dimension in all of them. Like a Gray-Black Jewel, Gan sat at the center of the worldweb, singing the rocks and mountains and trees into existence, singing the song of the White.
As the water of creation dripped from Gan's body, still sparkling with the Energy of life that Gan had imbued it with, Maerlyn caught drops in his hands. cupping the precious fluid until it solidified, it was formed to be the first planet. Manhattan...<further information is corrupted>
-----
Hello there, friends! I was thinking about the concept of an unlawful corporation a bit earlier today, and thus i wrote this faction concept as an experiment. I wanted to know what the community thinks. Not that i have the credits to even try and get this approved. yet.
Disclaimer: shamelessly lifted from a certain popular author known as Stephen King.
The Teachings of Aaron Tet (Oldest known manuscript, circa 20 AS.), page 232, Chapter Sixteen, Section Five.
The universe (Gan said) is the Great All, and offers a paradox too great for the finite mind to grasp. As the living brain cannot conceive of a non-living brain - although it may think it can - the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite.
The prosaic fact of the universe's existence alone defeats both the pragmatic and the romantic. There is a time, yet a hundred generations ahead, after the old world moves on, when mankind will achieve enough technical and scientific prowess to chip a few splinters from the great stone pillar of reality. Even so, the false light of science (knowledge, if you like) shines in only a few developed minds. Yet, despite a tremendous increase in available facts, there are remarkably few insights.
"Maerlyn, our many-times-great grandfathers conquered the-disease-which-rots, which they called cancer, almost conquered aging, walked on the moon, began to live on other worlds then these. "
"I don't want to believe that," the Maerlyn said, flatly.
To this, the man in black merely smiled and answered, "You needn't. Yet it was so. They made or discovered a hundred other marvelous baubles. But this wealth of infomation produced little or no insight. There were no great odes written to the wonders of artificial insemination - having babies from frozen mansperm - or to the cars that ran on power of the sun. Few if any seemed to have grasped the truest principle of reality: new knowledge leads to yet more awesome mysteries. Greater physiological knowledge of the brain makes the existence of the soul less possible yet more probable by the nature of the search. Do you see? Of course you don't. You've reached the limits of your ability to comprehend. But nevermind - that's beside the point."
"What is the point then?"
"The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.
"You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?
"Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.
"If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?
"Perhaps you saw what place our universe plays in the scheme of things - as no more than an atom in a blade of grass. Could it be that everything we can perceive, from the microscopic virus to the distant Horsehead Nebula, is contained in one blade of grass that may have existed for only a single season in an alien time-flow? What if that blade should be cut off by a scythe? When it begins to die, would the rot seep into our universe and our own lives, turning everthing yellow and brown and desiccated? Perhaps it's already begun to happen. We say the world has moved on; maybe we really mean that it has begun to dry up.
"Think how small such a concept of things make us, Mearlyn! If a God watches over it all, does He actually mete out justice for such a race of gnats? Does His eye see the sparrow fall when the sparrow is less than a speck of hydrogen floating disconnected in the depth of space? And if He does see... what must the nature of such a God be? Where does He live? How is it possible to live beyond infinity?
"Imagine the sand of the Empty Space, which you crossed to find me, and imagine a trillion universes - not worlds by universes - encapsulated in each grain of that desert; and within each universe an infinity of others. We tower over these universes from our pitiful grass vantage point; with one swing of your boot you may knock a billion billion worlds flying off into darkness, a chain never to be completed.
"Size, Maerlyn... size.
"Yet suppose further. Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met at a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower, A rose, A planet called Manna Hatta. And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the Godhead itself. Would you dare climb to the top, Maerlyn? Could it be that somewhere above all of endless reality, there exists a room?...
"You dare not."
And in the ancient wizards's mind, those words echoed: You dare not.
Cleared up the relation between Tet and Kusari, namely that a massive Libertonian backlash occured when Tet displayed interest in Kusari holdings. (Xenophobia, perhaps? or something political?)
------
The White is the personification of all that is Good in the world, and the only people who qualify are those who follow Gan. As luck would have it, that includes everyone in the Rose, no nobody else.
The Red holds the middle ground between The White and The Black. The Red is seen by the two other Factions as a necessary evil, for without destruction exists no change. Both powers use the Red to destroy so that they may recreate. These people are influenced by the sorcerer Maerlyn. One could say most pirate factions in sirius fall under The Red.
The Black
Keywords: Evil, Unjustness, Defilement, Bent.
The Black is the supreme evil in the world, followers of the Man in Black. Personified in our universe as the populace of New York in particular, and in a lesser way the rest of sirius. Corporations, the unbelievers on Manhattan, and the lawfuls of New York are all regarded as of The Black. Please note that the peacekeeping forces of the Liberty Navy, Police and Intelligence agencies are not regarded as of The Black. A lawful peacekeeper who happens to be a believer is regarded as a neutral party or ally, peacekeeping forces that are based on Manhattan proper, though, will be engaged with great ferocity.
Personifications of the Universe:
Gan
The creator of all that is, and all that is just, Gan is not a god, known from older human sacred texts. Though one could look at him as God, Allah or similar Monotheistic deities, Gan seems undoubtedly human in nature, speaking to his subjects and rivals on a even level. He is the personification of the tower, yet part of the tower itself, yet also an inhabitant of the tower, forming a holy trinity of ''The Construct, the Foundator and The Debator''
Maerlyn
Maerlyn's exact role in the universe is largely unknown. On some occasions he uses great brutality, and in other cases ignorance and stupidity. Maerlyn is the creator of the Bends 'o the 'bow, ancient relics scattered all over Manhattan. After a debate with Gan, Maerlyn split the world in Good and Evil, and was shunned from the tower.
The Man in Black
The ruler of all that is evil, yet the Man is a fickle being, able of compassion and emotion, and unwilling mercy. Not much of him is known outside of the remaining fragments of Aaron's scriptures. It is said that he is in constant debate with Gan in the top room of the Tower. He has once reinvited Maerlyn into the discussion, but his chaotic demeanor caused him to fail the stairs that lead into it.
<The following text is a summary of an unknown Deciple of the Tet University and Highschool. It's direct source is not known.>
Before the first day dawned over Manhattan, Maerlyn came into existance. He spat a glob of silver spit on the open window facing the morning sun, and as he spread it with his fingers, he created a glass surface. On it, 12 globes were drawn, and the first rays of the sun projected them into reality. Maerlyn took these rays of the First dawn, and formed them into globes of even size. And the Man in Black gave these Bends their form. Gan nodded solemnly, for what he saw was the creation of humanity.
Maerlyn however, imbued the globes with strength and power. And the Man in Black created the Antithesis of all Bends, The Black Thirteen.
However, even for the Man in Black, The Black Thirteen was too powerful, and after an intense debate with Gan and Maerlyn, he proposed to repent for his mistake by taking a journey to the end of all existance itself. When he, The man in black, travelled, he soon found his powers to be drained by the malicious globe. He was forced to ditch it, and in a burst of rage, threw it with unholy force.
It eventually crash landed and broke on a place called Earth, and on the next sunset, the heat of nuclear fire laid aflame every nation. It is believed that even now, every human being posesses a fragment of Black Thirteen. But it was not until The man in Blacks return to Manna Hatta that the truth was revealed: The Black Thirteen had never left. It still resides somewhere on Manna Hatta, where the twelve other Bends of the Bow keep it in balance.
-Excellent summary, Diciple Artair, Most splendid. A+
-In Black, Corruption and Power and Death and Hate and Nuclear Fire.
No Bends have ever been found, but it is said that the person who retrieves one will gain power over its aspect. Yet a human cannot hope to hold this power, as it is addiciting and deadly beyond any drug. It is said that the usage of drugs such as cardamine activate certain Bends within oneself.
A person who obtains the Black Bend would quickly find himself suffering in the worst way imaginable, The-Disease-That-Rots Laid on his Soul and<Further data is Corrupted>
------
I can go on writing pieces like this indefinately, so i won't. I'll update the first post with more specific diplomatic information soon.
From most to least important, these are the official phrases that are used to denote rang and stature. One might notice the repeating of the term Ka. Ka signifies lifeforce, conciousness, duty and destiny.
The White
The Dinh, or more commonly used, The Director is the last remaining member of the Board of Upper Management. He is the final authority in every business the Tet Corporation has, including Diplomacy and war, except for Religious matters.
Ka-Dinh A leader of a group (Ka-Tet) of gunslingers. Officer and battlefield leaders.
Ka-Sai A novice Gunslinger, considered a Man above Man.
Ka-Tel An apprentice Gunslinger. Still in training.
Sai A Sir, term may have once been lifted from the Kusarian ''San'' It denotes respect, and is the rank every new recruit starts out as.
The Red
Kas-Ka Gan, The Singer of Gan's song, The Prophet of Gan himself. This person governs everything Spiritual and Religious. He is a personification of The White itself, and has a strong diplomatic presence.
Kas-Khef A prophet. In the event a Kas-Ka Gan dies, A new one will be chosen from this group. They are signified by immense willpower and strength. A member of the Fifth level of Khef, allowing the user to travel long distances on foot through barren lands by pure willpower alone.
Ka-Me A wiseman. A intermedary rank of the spiritual line
Ka-Babbies A rank often shunned and disgraced by newcomers, but many of the spiritual line were once Ka-Babbies. Spiritually reborn men and women.
-----
Honorary and Dishonorary titles, its not uncommon to see these titles outside of the Tet, and is even given to Rogues or even the rare Xeno.
Te-Ka A Friend of Destiny, a person who has aided Tet's cause by donations or actions of valor. Examples: Te-Kas-Ka For a honored Prophet, or Te-Ka-Tel for an Apprentice Gunslinger with a history of passing on his looted profits to the cause.
Ka-Mai Destiny's Fool. This person has crossed paths with the Tet far too many times. His name is now an ulcer on Gan's body.