Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing

Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing
Alignment	Lawful

ALLIES:

Bowex, Bretonian Authorities, Planetform

COMPETITORS:

ALG, Bristol, IMG, Daumann, GMS, Kruger, Samura

ENEMIES:

Mollys, Gaians, Outcasts, Corsairs, Red Hessians, Coalition

Bretonia Mining and Manufacturing (BMM) is one of the largest commercial concerns in Bretonia, a network of semi-autonomous operations that range throughout Bretonian space. Alongside Bowex, they form an industrial partnership and conglomerate that curries the lion's share of government contracts and favor. Their particularly poor working conditions in Dublin and beyond led to the establishment of the Molly movement, a thorn in Bretonia's side to the present day, and the Independent Miners' Guild, the largest non-aligned mining organization in Sirius and one of BMM's chief competitors.

Ships used

Ship	Class
Heavy Lifter	Transport
Repair Ship	Repair Ship
Surveyor	Heavy Fighter
Clydesdale	Freighter
Large Transport	Transport
Hawk	Light Fighter
Armored Transport	Transport
Bretonia Transport	Transport
Large Train	Train
Eagle	Very Heavy Fighter
Train	Transport
Bretonia Heavy Transport	Heavy Transport
Arrastra	Bomber
Bretonia Train	Super Train
Civilian Gunboat	Gunboat

Bases owned

Base Owner System Region Portsmouth Shipyard Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Cambridge Bretonia Peterborough Mining Facility Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Cambridge Bretonia Portsmouth Drydock Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Cambridge Bretonia Redcarr Production Facility Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Newcastle Bretonia LD-14 Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Leeds Bretonia Douglas Station Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Omega-3 Omega Border Worlds

Bribes

Base Owner System Region Planet Sprague Bretonia Police Omega-3 Omega Border Worlds Freeport 1 Zoners Omega-3 Omega Border Worlds Portsmouth Drydock Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Cambridge Bretonia Kingston Border Station Bretonia Police Manchester Bretonia Birmingham Station Planetform, Inc. Manchester Bretonia Waterloo Station Interspace Commerce New London Bretonia Durham Outpost Border World Exports Leeds Bretonia Portsmouth Shipyard Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Cambridge Bretonia Peterborough Mining Facility Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Cambridge Bretonia Halifax Freeport Freelancers Leeds Bretonia Douglas Station Bretonia Mining & Manufacturing Omega-3 Omega Border Worlds Leicester Shipping Platform Border World Exports Omega-3 Omega Border Worlds Scarborough Shipyard Border World Exports Newcastle Bretonia Battleship Essex Bretonia Armed Forces New London Bretonia Planet New London Bretonia Police New London Bretonia Canterbury Station Planetform, Inc. New London Bretonia Battleship Ark Royal Bretonia Armed Forces Leeds Bretonia BPA Newgate Bretonia Police Manchester Bretonia Battlecruiser Livingston Bretonia Armed Forces Tau-31 Tau Border Worlds Thames Outpost Bretonia Armed Forces New London Bretonia Sheffield Station Bounty Hunters Guild Manchester Bretonia Gateshead Station Bretonia Police Newcastle Bretonia

Rumors

Planet New London BMM views the Mollys as vicious hooligans with no morals whatsoever. We abhor their approach of extreme violence over sensible moderation. We refuse to have any dealings with those terrorists, and our company funds several bounties against them. New London serves as our supply base for the Thames Outpost - high in orbit above us. We purchase Food, H-Fuel, Oxygen, and Water. New London also supplies Graves and the Southampton Shipyard with these commodities. The Gold mined at our base in Dublin is brought here for shipment to the House capitols. It is closely guarded until it is within the hands of the shipper who will transport it. Dublin is not far, but Molly attacks are frequent. Thames Outpost The war with Kusari and now Gallia has done immense damage to our company. The most obvious to everyone is the loss of Stokes, Leeds and LD14 - but what is even worse is the loss of business. Other companies are filling in the gaps that our predicament has left, and those companies won't go away as easily once we're done rebuilding. The amount of money we lost in Tau-23 still makes me shudder. We sank billions into that system, trying to fight off the criminals and start up a viable venture, and then that cursed Gallic armada came along and took it all over. What's even worse is that they left those IMG traitors be - those guys threw an accord with Gallia. Typical. The Gaians have recently begun raiding the Birmingham plant, apparently because they believe we are guilty of producing gases subsequently used in terraforming operations. In my opinion, this guilt by association is not constructive and further alienates their cause from the common man in Bretonia. Not to mention, the company has posted a whopper of a bounty on the Gaians. Planetform is one thing, but if you attack BMM, you attack Bretonia as a whole. We ship Mining Machinery out to Peterborough, Birmingham, Graves, and Douglas Station. Peterborough is the new Beryllium processing plant in Cambridge. I worried for a while that we'd have to deal with those IMG criminals in order to secure Beryllium, but the Crown was smart enough to see that that would essentially give the IMG leverage over the entire Bretonian economy. And that won't do. The Mollys have been a challenge for BMM ever since the revolt on the Graves Station in 752, in which they mercilessly executed the chief of base operations, Sir Edmund Graves, and several of his senior lieutenants. They fantasized of Dublin being their own country. We asked for assistance from the Bretonia Armed Forces at the time and have been engaged in a war of attrition ever since. Welcome to Thames. This is the headquarters for BMM, Bretonia's oldest industrial conglomerate. BMM and our affiliates handle rougly 85% of all Bretonian industrial ventures, and 65% of all mining endeavours. In other words, if you intend to do business in Bretonia, it is hard to go around us. Thames is in a bad way without the mineral shipments from Tau-23 and Leeds. Even with the new Peterborough base slowly starting to replace the Beryllium train. Some people wonder whether the whole company will survive. The IMG must be real smug right about now. Parliament ought to nationalize their bases without our border and hand them over to BMM as a matter of national security. IMG is a motley collection of unemployed New London miners, former BMM malcontents, and hordes of Daumann and Kruger Rheinlanders. They have no business operating as a legal entity within the boundaries of Bretonia - the Crown ought to remove them from our border as a matter of principle. There is little we can do in the Border Worlds, unfortunately. Thames is company headquarters for all of our operations across Sirius. Supply runs from New London bring in Food, Oxygen, Water, and H-Fuel. We then transfer them for special shipment to our other bases: Douglas, Southampton, Graves, Birmingham and Peterborough. BMM and Bowex have had a long and profitable relationship stretching back over 500 years. You should never listen to what Gateway, IMG, or ALG tell you. They are young, poorly run organizations that will not be there for you in the long haul. Dozens have gone before them, and will come after them. But BMM and Bowex endure. At least the Bowex boys know the value of keeping Bretonia alive. They've been a right blessing, bringing in those raw materials that we need to keep our factories going. Having to deal with Rheinland for Aluminium now that we've lost Leeds is not the preferred option - we really need Belfast back under our control. The automated mining rigs it controls would produce all the Aluminium we need. How the IMG has done so well is beyond me. We've lost all of our operations in Tau-23, and we only have Graves left in Dublin. I'm glad Birmingham and Peterborough are getting up to speed. Leeds is a lost cause for now - perhaps we could persuade the Armed Forces to divert some troops to retake Belfast. If we can get that base back, we're back in business as far as Hull Panel production is concerned. Peterborough Mining Facility They say that space is dangerous. I believe that, so I signed up for stationboard duty. Sure, the view isn't as great in the smelter 3 control room, but at least you don't get your ship shot out from under you by Mollies, Corsairs, Hessians, Gaians... need I go on? Beryllium is essential to the Bretonian economy because it's used many ways - Engine Component construction, Nuclear Reactors, Radiation Shielding. But most essentially for us, it is part of the Bretonian Super Alloy synthesis. BMM and Bowex refused to be dependent on the IMG for their supply of Beryllium, so the Crown nationalised the Beryllium deposits north of Cambridge for exclusive use by us. If you ask me, the Crown should simply have nationalised Cardiff. That would have both given us all the infrastructure we need, and put an end to the IMG operations in the system so that all profits from Cambridge could go to the Crown. The IMG decided against siding with Bretonia. That makes them as bad as the enemy. There's rumors of another increase in the worktimes due to the ongoing war. Not sure what it'll accomplish - people can only be pushed so far, you know? Before soon people will start napping or drinking on the job, and that's when accidents start to happen. With the first three smelters operational, we can produce roughly 15 isotons of ore at a variable purity on the refined product. Once the other 9 come online, we'll have at least 30 percent more capacity then Cardiff does. That will allow us to undercut the IMG operation, so long as we get enough raw materials delivered. Mollys and Gaians have both started to show an uncanny interest in this station. So far nothing serious, but it is a sign of things to come. The Gaians probably worry that we'll end up damaging Planet Cambridge, but there's very little risk since we barely do any smelting on this base. The Mollys are just being their destructive selves. I once knew a joke about paper, but forgot what it was about. It was... tearable. If you handle any broken storage containers which contained Beryllium, don't forget to wash thoroughly afterward. Beryllium is toxic and will slowly poison you. Handling Beryllium is part of the job here. Staying alive however isn't in the job description - it's just common sense. One of these days I'm going to visit Trafalgar, and make a Corsair snack on a Cardamine-laced crumpet, and cam the whole thing. I bet that would be a hit on NeuraTube! Ten thousand thumbs up at least! Welcome to Peterborough, youngest station in Bretonia as of 819 AS, and still under construction. But that doesn't mean we don't have any fair Bretonian Stout here. Or an abundance of Beryllium for that matter. The boys in their mining ships are quickly tagging the richest deposits of Beryllium in the field. Early mining operations always start with a high yield before mining begins in earnest. A Molly and a Corsair are both aboard a ship. Who's driving? Well? Why, the Constable of course! As far as BMM postings go, this station isn't half bad. Sure, it's a new facility and bound to have a few teething problems. But I'd rather be here then on Graves. We're smackdab in the middle of a busy trade route, which means that in case of attacks, we'll have Police and Armed Forces from Planet Cambridge not too far away. Planet Sprague BMM has excavated trace amounts of Cobalt already but hopes to make further gains. Scans are showing up rich mineral strata further below the surface. Once we crack those open, it's easy credits. In the mean time, the surface crews are still constructing processing facilities and smelters. The usual Cambridge crowd are screaming about ecological damage, but that's so short sighted. Don't they want Bretonia to survive the war? A lot of the settlements we have on the planet are dug into natural rock formations. They give colonists respite from the weather outside and cause the least damage to existing plains ecosystems. Well, that's BMM's line anyway. In all honesty, I think it's just because they already had lots of holes dug from their preliminary bore sites, and support struts are expensive. Why not keep the roof up with a house? We had one of our tunnel shafts collapse a little while ago. The roof came down on the mining equipment we had there. It'll be more expensive to dig it out than to bring in new gear, so we're leaving it where it is and dropping a new shaft somewhere else. At least the corpses are already buried, so the families don't have to worry about that. This planet is riddled with alien ruins - they must be millions of years old. One of our drilling teams burst in through the roof of a small alien chamber a short while ago. I've heard the BPA got straight in there and locked everything down, but not before a few discrete items were stowed away in pockets. If you knew who to ask for, you might be able to pick up a "collectors item" to remember your stay by. Scarborough Shipyard When Kusari first threatened Stokes, BMM decided to move our primary Super Alloying plant away from there. It is a critical part of the Bretonian economy, as other houses simply don't have the know-how or the raw materials on-hand to create Super Alloys of the quality we make. Bretonia only had a few stations that could support this operation - it requires an immense amount of power, so you need a station with a large generating core to co-locate at. Graves was deemed too risky, and Southampton couldn't handle the additional demand on their grid. Scarborough really was the only choice, but Bowex was happy to accomodate us. The loss of Leeds has been hard on all of Bretonia. I doubt even those IMG and Gateway fellows over on yon South Shields have been left unaffected. In the short term, we'll not feel the loss as harshly - BMM and Bretonia as a whole has had half a decade to prepare for this. But we have got to take Leeds back if we're to have any hope of beating Gallia back - if they can restart the factories on Leeds they'll have no problems maintaining their ships right on the frontline. That'd be the end of Bretonia. Scarborough and Belfast were initially intended to be a chain of stations - resources mined from Middlesbrough would be converted to Basic Alloys and Hull Panels on Belfast itself, then shipped over to Scarborough for shipbuilding. That all went to hell when the Mollys managed to take it over. I do hope the Mollys decide to side with Gallia - that'd give the government all the reason they need to forcefully take that station back from them. Even without it, they'll have to sooner or later - without Leeds, we'll need the resources from Middlesbrough to keep the fleet operational. LD-14 Because of how dangerous it is to actually get up close to LD-14 - other than through the trade lane corridor, of course - we only end up with the crazy pirates knocking on our hull. The paint had barely dried on the LD-14 rebuild before we had to scrape Molly remains off the reprocessor baffles. Your work stay on LD-14 is based on dosage - there's plenty of folk who make a mistake or spend too long out of shielding and get sent home early. That's why everybody's so careful - you don't make this kind of pay on any other station. Of course, I've heard some people swap out their dosimeters to stay here. It's called taking 'the short time', because once you do it, well... you'll only have a short time to enjoy the extra credits. One of the big downsides of the radiation is that it's hard to get a communication out, or to get a long-range scan of the system for that matter. We can talk to the Ark Royal fairly easily because of the trade lane, but if they send a patrol we can't talk until they've made it through the field. Likewise, Gaians, Mollys or what have you don't show up on our scopes until they're practically on top of us. Used to be that LD-14 had its own Armed Forces garrison to keep the facility secure, but after the war everyone's spread so thin that the best we've got is the Ark Royal. Hopefully the new sticks they're training live long enough that we get some dedicated protectors again. Corporate did a campaign alongside the reopening of LD-14, basically talking it up to be the revival of the Bretonian economy. They put in place some safety regs, and a lot of our equipment is new, so it definitely is better than it used to be - but it's still a dirty waste and nuke plant. You'd think if they were so worried about their image, they'd at least change the name. I'm glad the Ark Royal is close by, because it seems like we can't go five minutes with someone trying to beat down the front door. I guess that comes with being in a big box of nuclear fuel with a big BMM sign stapled to it. If you wish to venture any further into the installation, I would have to first ask that you sign this non-disclosure agreement. It's standard fare for such a sensitive operation as this, I assure you. If you plan on visiting LD-14 often, you might want to invest in a dosimeter. The station has plenty of radiation shielding, but there's still enough of a low-level dose that trickles in. It's why the workers here are only permitted to work for a few months at a time. Everybody knows what radiation does to people, but it's almost worse to electronics. I can't tell you how many times we've had mining drones just give up the ghost on us, or industrial controllers spin out of control, or docking computers suddenly trying to send mooring requests to the star. Short of layering everything in six inches of lead there's not much we can do about it, other than keep plenty of spare parts around. Freeport 1 Some of the Zoners on this base are always lookin at me sideways, acting like I'm the almighty hand of BMM itself. Ah, stupid base snipes is all they are. Next one I see looking at me funny is gonna get some teeth popped outta his head. Now that Bretonia's got Nottingham under lock and key, we've pretty much cemented our claim to this space. That makes the Zoners mighty nervous, seeing as it was the governments they were running from in the first place. Hopefully they'll jump ship and scuttle off into the deep Omegas. They might not like me, but I don't like them either. This system is Bretonian space now, didn't I tell you so? The Ole Doug was originally plopped down by BMM on the Queen's orders to keep an eye on them cretinous Rheinlanders. Nottingham ain't exactly all fixed up, but we're living on her as best we can. Can't afford to contract Planetform and I don't know if they'd even want to take a job in Nottingham. Douglas Station If you're looking to make some dosh, go to Thames and fetch us some Mining Machinery. I'm sure my bosses will pay you well for it. The crap I have to work with is all but rusted and busted away, it is. This base was built here to supply Bretonia with much-needed Hydrocarbons and Polymers. First, they'll get shipped to the Zoner base here, and then off to New London to be used for our proud old battleships and patrol crafts. Too bad we don't see any of them here - the BPA and CDI instead are supposed to be keeping the lanes and Nottingham safe. Uh... Relatively safe. Poor Lying Pete has been in a frenzy of late, swishing this way and that, trying to avoid a certain Bounty Hunter. Makes me chuckle, it does -- first bit of humor I've had in many a month on this bucket of bolts I call a home. Pete thinks he's a dead man, but we know better, don't we? Bowex doesn't like coming out this way too much, and I don't blame them. We drop our goods off at either Nottingham or Freeport 1 and they usually take it from there. Occasionally we'll get the odd hot-shot Percheron captain streaking through the field with his hair on fire, trying to dodge 'Sairs. Otherwise it's on us to lug our supplies the rest of the way from the planet. In case you hadn't noticed, the fellas over at Rugen have got an industrial sized pole stuck up their arse about Omega 3. Jealousy about Bretonia settling down on what's ours, if you ask me. It's strange though - we've worked together a few times in recent years. Put a BMMer and a Daumann in a room together anywhere else in the universe and we're fine. Omega 3? Come back in an hour, and there'll only be one of us and a smoking pile of ash left. The gear here is old and falling to bits, but I'd rather sleep on Ole Doug' than Nottingham. It's mankier than a Loiner's armpit down there. Too hot around the middle, freeze your tits off at the poles. Know what happens when you got temperature differences that extreme? Big storms. They dug down into the rock to get around that, but I still reckon my bunk is better than a damp and badly ventilated ex-mine shaft. Oh, I've been walking on cat's feet around here of late. I owe one of those sly Hunters quite a few credits. Made him a bet he couldn't kill two Corsairs in one day, and whattya know, he does it! Ah, I've been avoiding him, hoping he's blown to little bits before he lays a hand on my money. We can bring Oxygen directly from Nottingham, and they're talking about mining water from the Graham Ice Cloud near the Cambridge jump gate. That sounds like a fools errand when you could import it from Cambridge. That's where we get our food from too - we could buy it from the Zoners, I suppose, but we'd rather know how it was grown. Or rather... they don't like selling it to us. Apparantly they have a very long list of customers. With the Mancs over at Birmingham getting shafted by the Frogs, it's down to Ole Doug' to pick up the slack on Hydrocarbon and Polymer production. With us doing that, and also acting as an early warning station for Corsair raids on Nottingham, I reckon we've never been more important. The Bounty Hunters here were hired to protect our shipments from Corsairs. The Hessians are more concerned with killing the Daumann boys than us, though they will attack our shipments in the Trade Lanes on occasion. Sometimes we'll even get attacked while we're mining. A ship's weapon will blow a man to smithereens; it isn't pretty. Lying Pete owes a mean-looking Hunter quite a stock of cash. The Hunter is a good-natured fellow and gave me some credits to cook up a story about him killing Pete when he finds him, if he don't pay up. Well, he hasn't paid yet but the Hunter's gotten his money's worth, I'd say. Pete turned white and passed right out when I told him the Hunter aimed to kill him. Ya know, I was chatting with a mate in the BPA a little while back, and he reckons that Daumann's reports for Corsair attacks in this area have dropped through the floor. Makes ya suspicious, dunnit? I know them Hessians prefer to hit Daumann to us, but they ain't too picky either way if they find something on the lanes. This is something else altogether.

NOTE: Page generated on the 20/12/2024 at 17:26:35 UTC