O'Hare Subsprawl, Ares Extraterritorial Compound
December 10th, 2057
The door closed behind...
December 10th, 2057
The door closed behind...
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Ares Macrotechnology
cliffc999
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And, time for a database entry on which megacorporation our MC is working for.
Ares Macrotechnology
Ares Macrotechnology is (as of 2057) the fifth-largest corporation in the world, one of the seven founding members of the Corporate Court, and one of the only eight AAA-rated extraterritorial megacorporations currently existing. Since the eight AAAs that form the Corporate Court collectively control over half the wealth-producing assets of the world between them, its wealth and power are obviously immense. Without the cooperation of the megacorporate system - as set up and ruled by its ruling council of AAA megacorporations, the Corporate Court - the planetary economy simply does not function. This has obvious repercussions as to what kind of power and influence the large megacorporations have... and how cold-bloodedly they are willing to compete with each other for power and influence.
As an extraterritorial megacorporation Ares is, literally, a sovereign nation. It can grant or deny citizenship to anyone it pleases, operate its own currency, declare its own sovereign borders and guard them with deadly force, conduct its own international trade and foreign policy, and both write and interpret all of the laws on Ares territory. As per the Business Recognition Accords as ratified by the Corporate Court, extraterritorial territory is defined by three things - corporate territory must be continuous and contiguous (that is to say, it must be a single volume of space that is intuitively and obviously declared separate from its surroundings), it must be declared (that is, its status as extraterritorial megacorporate turf must be publicly posted, along with a disclosure of the ultimate owner's identity), and it must be in lawful possession (that is, the megacorporation must have purchased or leased the land from its original owner, or otherwise obtained it by duly recognized process of law in its native jurisdiction, before it can then sever the land from that jurisdiction to claim it as corporate territory).
Ares Macrotechnology began as a loose conglomerate of aerospace and defense technology firms put together by the corporate raiding of Nicholas Aurelius Sr., a senior shareholder in General Motors and an aggressive investor and futurist, at the beginning of the 21st century. A key part of the American military-industrial complex from its inception, Ares was in on the megacorporate extraterritoriality phenomenon from its very beginning. Always willing to gamble big in order to win big, Aurelius never stopped his bloodthirsty pace of corporate acquisition even during the several economic collapses and crises of the early 2000s, to the point that he was able to buy the remnants of NASA away from the failing United States government and refound it as the private space technology corporation AresSpace.
In 2024 Nicholas Aurelius reorganized his mass of corporations underneath the umbrella holding company "Ares Macrotechnology", and through luck as much as skill managed to bring it intact through the worldwide Matrix Crash of 2029. Finally growing old enough to retire, he passed his crown as CEO and chairman of the board to his son Leonard Aurelius and finally passed away of a heart attack in 2033.
Less than a year after the elder Aurelius' death, his family would lose control of Ares Macrotechnology when a previously unknown corporate raider named Damien Knight burst onto the scene out of nowhere. On January 24, 2033, the East Coast Stock Exchange suddenly received an incredibly rapid and complex series of buy/sell orders and futures trades, the legendary "Nanosecond Buyout", which over the course of sixty-three seconds of highly advancd expert-system transactions somehow resulted in Damien Knight acquiring a full 22 percent of the voting stock of Ares Macrotechnology before anyone could even realize what had happened, let alone how. Backed by a further 12 percent that was held by a shadowy front company named 'Gavilan Ventures' and swaying a crucial margin of swing voters his way via his sheer audacity and charisma, Knight was able to challenge the board of directors and be voted in as the new CEO and Chairman of the Board of Ares, displacing Leonard Aurelius to the ranks of the minority stockholders.
Proving himself to be an even more aggressive and brilliant financial genius than the elder Aurelius, Damien Knight led Ares Macrotechnology on a new wave of economic expansion that catapulted it up from the bottom ranks of the AAAs to solidly in the mid-carders, narrowly challenging such venerable giants as Renraku and Fuchi for primacy of place. Ares Arms became far and away the greatest weapons manufacturing corporation in the world, both in volume of sales and in the sophistication and power of its defense technology product lines. Ares Space challenged both Yamatetsu and Saeder-Krupp's space technology divisions as a worthy rival in the fields of orbital industry, satellite technology, and even deep space exploration. And Knight Errant became the foremost PMC in the world, larger than many national armies and an industry leader setting the standard in everything from full milspec field units to military advisors and trainers for foreign military forces to all varieties of corporate security, executive protection, and privatized law enforcement.
In mid-2057, the death of the Great Dragon Dunkelzahn would change the situation on the Ares board of directors. During the probate of Dunkelzahn's estate it was revealed that he had been the owner of the shell corporation Gavilan Ventures, and was thus the holder of the percentage of Ares stock that had given Damien Knight the critical margin to outvote the Aurelius family in the first place. Moreover, Damien Knight had managed to negotiate a deal with the Draco Foundation that gave him uncontested proxy rights to vote the Gavilan Ventures shares as he saw fit, giving him an unassailable control of the Ares board of directors for at least the next decade.
In addition, former senior Ares executive Kyle Haeffner, who had left Ares to become Dunkelzahn's running mate, had succeeded him upon his assassination to become President of the United Canadian-American States. Ares' already close relationship with the UCAS military-industrial complex is predicted to only become even closer with a former Ares senior executive now in the chief executive's chair.
Ares Macrotechnology has a major presence in every continent in the world, but its global HQ is located in Detroit, Michigan.
Major subsidaries of Ares Macrotechnology include Knight Errant Security Services, Ares Arms, AresSpace, Ares Global Entertainment (which also owns NBS, one of the three largest trideo networks in North America), and General Motors. In addition, several smaller and more obscure private security firms such as Hard Corps and Wolverine, commonly believed to be competitors to Knight Errant for the smaller-scale corporate security and local security contracts, are actually indirectly owned Ares subsidiaries.
Knight Errant Security Services
Originally founded as a private security firm that specialized in corporate site security and executive protection for larger and higher-end clients, Knight Errant has expanded to become the largest and most versatile paramilitary force in the world. Its services include municipal police contracting, urban crisis management, counter-insurgency operations, special forces operations, training and consulting, military logistical consulting, and extermination of dangerous Awakened wildlife, all for sale to any legitimate client willing to pay Ares' tab.
While all of these services are lumped underneath the overall 'Knight Errant' umbrella a Knight Errant trooper can potentially be anything or anyone from a well-trained night watchman to a beat cop to a rapid-deployment assault trooper to the deadliest type of Tier One special warfare operator, all of them wearing the same uniform and ultimately answering to the same chain of command. An opposing force can never be entirely certain about exactly who or what they'll be facing when Knight Errant takes the field against them, they can only be certain that whoever they face will have been well-trained, equipped, and prepared for their intended role. And that is quite often Knight Errant's deadliest weapon indeed.
FireWatch
While Knight Errant keeps with its corporate-military theme by having lots of fancy names for various units, FireWatch is its most elite and selective special-operations branch. Like Delta Force for the US Army, they are the most highly-trained of spooky troops and handle all types of 'black' operations ranging from conventional battlefield work to urban infiltration to whatever other missions the highest echelons of Ares see fit to trust them with.
Damien Knight
"I own this city. My technology built it, my will keeps it going, and two-thirds of its citizens work for me, whether they know it or not."
Lex Luthor talking about Metropolis? Damien Knight talking about Detroit? No difference, really.
Damien Knight is a ruthless, manipulative, powerhungry genius who is one of the most famous people in the world and yet nobody really knows who he is. His background is so scanty that it's almost certainly false, and no one will admit to knowing his actual birth name or is able to credibly prove that they have a personal acquaintance with him predating his first public appearance immediately after the Nanosecond Buyout. While it's generally surmised that Dunkelzahn and his top aides must have collaborated with him on the Nanosecond Buyout, that has also never been publicly confirmed - or even addressed - by anyone involved. The most persistent rumor is that he was actually Major David Gavilan, one of the very first neurally-interfaced 'deckers' in the world as part of the original Echo Mirage project that stopped the Matrix Crash of '29, but of course there isn't anything even remotely solid backing that claim up regardless of how many conspiracy theorists have dug into it over the decades.
The finest gene therapy and biotechnology that money can buy allows Damien Knight to maintain the playboy-handsome physique of a twenty-something Olympic-tier decathlete while being at an actual age of God Only Knows. If the theory that he actually was David Gavilan is true then the man must be pushing sixty, but he clearly isn't showing it if he is. Unmarried and with no children, Damien Knight eschews the usual 'family friendly' image of a megacorporate CEO and the accompanying desire to breed a dynastic heir and instead lives the life of a super-wealthy playboy, routinely titillating and scandalizing the glitterati with his latest affair with this supermodel or that simstar - or politician, or artist, or noblewoman, or a wide range of others. Although he has access to the finest cyberware, bioware, and genetech that many can possibly buy, and of course can afford to hire any number of magical specialists as subordinates, Damien Knight is himself 100% mundane and unAwakened.
Damien Knight is CEO and chairman of the board of Ares Macrotechnology
Roger Soaring Owl
Roger Soaring Owl, originally a citizen of the Sioux Nation of the NAN, has been the CEO of Knight Errant since its inception in the mid-30s.
A competent yet undistinguished bureaucrat, even his military experience in the Sioux forces was largely as a logistics and procurement officer. His chief qualification for remaining CEO of Knight Errant is the ability to keep Knight Errant financially solvent and free of administrative snafus and his uncomplaining willingness to put up with the micromanaging of Damien Knight, who regards Knight Errant as his personal pet project to tinker with at will.
Ares Macrotechnology
Ares Macrotechnology is (as of 2057) the fifth-largest corporation in the world, one of the seven founding members of the Corporate Court, and one of the only eight AAA-rated extraterritorial megacorporations currently existing. Since the eight AAAs that form the Corporate Court collectively control over half the wealth-producing assets of the world between them, its wealth and power are obviously immense. Without the cooperation of the megacorporate system - as set up and ruled by its ruling council of AAA megacorporations, the Corporate Court - the planetary economy simply does not function. This has obvious repercussions as to what kind of power and influence the large megacorporations have... and how cold-bloodedly they are willing to compete with each other for power and influence.
As an extraterritorial megacorporation Ares is, literally, a sovereign nation. It can grant or deny citizenship to anyone it pleases, operate its own currency, declare its own sovereign borders and guard them with deadly force, conduct its own international trade and foreign policy, and both write and interpret all of the laws on Ares territory. As per the Business Recognition Accords as ratified by the Corporate Court, extraterritorial territory is defined by three things - corporate territory must be continuous and contiguous (that is to say, it must be a single volume of space that is intuitively and obviously declared separate from its surroundings), it must be declared (that is, its status as extraterritorial megacorporate turf must be publicly posted, along with a disclosure of the ultimate owner's identity), and it must be in lawful possession (that is, the megacorporation must have purchased or leased the land from its original owner, or otherwise obtained it by duly recognized process of law in its native jurisdiction, before it can then sever the land from that jurisdiction to claim it as corporate territory).
Ares Macrotechnology began as a loose conglomerate of aerospace and defense technology firms put together by the corporate raiding of Nicholas Aurelius Sr., a senior shareholder in General Motors and an aggressive investor and futurist, at the beginning of the 21st century. A key part of the American military-industrial complex from its inception, Ares was in on the megacorporate extraterritoriality phenomenon from its very beginning. Always willing to gamble big in order to win big, Aurelius never stopped his bloodthirsty pace of corporate acquisition even during the several economic collapses and crises of the early 2000s, to the point that he was able to buy the remnants of NASA away from the failing United States government and refound it as the private space technology corporation AresSpace.
In 2024 Nicholas Aurelius reorganized his mass of corporations underneath the umbrella holding company "Ares Macrotechnology", and through luck as much as skill managed to bring it intact through the worldwide Matrix Crash of 2029. Finally growing old enough to retire, he passed his crown as CEO and chairman of the board to his son Leonard Aurelius and finally passed away of a heart attack in 2033.
Less than a year after the elder Aurelius' death, his family would lose control of Ares Macrotechnology when a previously unknown corporate raider named Damien Knight burst onto the scene out of nowhere. On January 24, 2033, the East Coast Stock Exchange suddenly received an incredibly rapid and complex series of buy/sell orders and futures trades, the legendary "Nanosecond Buyout", which over the course of sixty-three seconds of highly advancd expert-system transactions somehow resulted in Damien Knight acquiring a full 22 percent of the voting stock of Ares Macrotechnology before anyone could even realize what had happened, let alone how. Backed by a further 12 percent that was held by a shadowy front company named 'Gavilan Ventures' and swaying a crucial margin of swing voters his way via his sheer audacity and charisma, Knight was able to challenge the board of directors and be voted in as the new CEO and Chairman of the Board of Ares, displacing Leonard Aurelius to the ranks of the minority stockholders.
Proving himself to be an even more aggressive and brilliant financial genius than the elder Aurelius, Damien Knight led Ares Macrotechnology on a new wave of economic expansion that catapulted it up from the bottom ranks of the AAAs to solidly in the mid-carders, narrowly challenging such venerable giants as Renraku and Fuchi for primacy of place. Ares Arms became far and away the greatest weapons manufacturing corporation in the world, both in volume of sales and in the sophistication and power of its defense technology product lines. Ares Space challenged both Yamatetsu and Saeder-Krupp's space technology divisions as a worthy rival in the fields of orbital industry, satellite technology, and even deep space exploration. And Knight Errant became the foremost PMC in the world, larger than many national armies and an industry leader setting the standard in everything from full milspec field units to military advisors and trainers for foreign military forces to all varieties of corporate security, executive protection, and privatized law enforcement.
In mid-2057, the death of the Great Dragon Dunkelzahn would change the situation on the Ares board of directors. During the probate of Dunkelzahn's estate it was revealed that he had been the owner of the shell corporation Gavilan Ventures, and was thus the holder of the percentage of Ares stock that had given Damien Knight the critical margin to outvote the Aurelius family in the first place. Moreover, Damien Knight had managed to negotiate a deal with the Draco Foundation that gave him uncontested proxy rights to vote the Gavilan Ventures shares as he saw fit, giving him an unassailable control of the Ares board of directors for at least the next decade.
In addition, former senior Ares executive Kyle Haeffner, who had left Ares to become Dunkelzahn's running mate, had succeeded him upon his assassination to become President of the United Canadian-American States. Ares' already close relationship with the UCAS military-industrial complex is predicted to only become even closer with a former Ares senior executive now in the chief executive's chair.
Ares Macrotechnology has a major presence in every continent in the world, but its global HQ is located in Detroit, Michigan.
Major subsidaries of Ares Macrotechnology include Knight Errant Security Services, Ares Arms, AresSpace, Ares Global Entertainment (which also owns NBS, one of the three largest trideo networks in North America), and General Motors. In addition, several smaller and more obscure private security firms such as Hard Corps and Wolverine, commonly believed to be competitors to Knight Errant for the smaller-scale corporate security and local security contracts, are actually indirectly owned Ares subsidiaries.
Knight Errant Security Services
Originally founded as a private security firm that specialized in corporate site security and executive protection for larger and higher-end clients, Knight Errant has expanded to become the largest and most versatile paramilitary force in the world. Its services include municipal police contracting, urban crisis management, counter-insurgency operations, special forces operations, training and consulting, military logistical consulting, and extermination of dangerous Awakened wildlife, all for sale to any legitimate client willing to pay Ares' tab.
While all of these services are lumped underneath the overall 'Knight Errant' umbrella a Knight Errant trooper can potentially be anything or anyone from a well-trained night watchman to a beat cop to a rapid-deployment assault trooper to the deadliest type of Tier One special warfare operator, all of them wearing the same uniform and ultimately answering to the same chain of command. An opposing force can never be entirely certain about exactly who or what they'll be facing when Knight Errant takes the field against them, they can only be certain that whoever they face will have been well-trained, equipped, and prepared for their intended role. And that is quite often Knight Errant's deadliest weapon indeed.
FireWatch
While Knight Errant keeps with its corporate-military theme by having lots of fancy names for various units, FireWatch is its most elite and selective special-operations branch. Like Delta Force for the US Army, they are the most highly-trained of spooky troops and handle all types of 'black' operations ranging from conventional battlefield work to urban infiltration to whatever other missions the highest echelons of Ares see fit to trust them with.
Damien Knight
"I own this city. My technology built it, my will keeps it going, and two-thirds of its citizens work for me, whether they know it or not."
Lex Luthor talking about Metropolis? Damien Knight talking about Detroit? No difference, really.
Damien Knight is a ruthless, manipulative, powerhungry genius who is one of the most famous people in the world and yet nobody really knows who he is. His background is so scanty that it's almost certainly false, and no one will admit to knowing his actual birth name or is able to credibly prove that they have a personal acquaintance with him predating his first public appearance immediately after the Nanosecond Buyout. While it's generally surmised that Dunkelzahn and his top aides must have collaborated with him on the Nanosecond Buyout, that has also never been publicly confirmed - or even addressed - by anyone involved. The most persistent rumor is that he was actually Major David Gavilan, one of the very first neurally-interfaced 'deckers' in the world as part of the original Echo Mirage project that stopped the Matrix Crash of '29, but of course there isn't anything even remotely solid backing that claim up regardless of how many conspiracy theorists have dug into it over the decades.
The finest gene therapy and biotechnology that money can buy allows Damien Knight to maintain the playboy-handsome physique of a twenty-something Olympic-tier decathlete while being at an actual age of God Only Knows. If the theory that he actually was David Gavilan is true then the man must be pushing sixty, but he clearly isn't showing it if he is. Unmarried and with no children, Damien Knight eschews the usual 'family friendly' image of a megacorporate CEO and the accompanying desire to breed a dynastic heir and instead lives the life of a super-wealthy playboy, routinely titillating and scandalizing the glitterati with his latest affair with this supermodel or that simstar - or politician, or artist, or noblewoman, or a wide range of others. Although he has access to the finest cyberware, bioware, and genetech that many can possibly buy, and of course can afford to hire any number of magical specialists as subordinates, Damien Knight is himself 100% mundane and unAwakened.
Damien Knight is CEO and chairman of the board of Ares Macrotechnology
Roger Soaring Owl
Roger Soaring Owl, originally a citizen of the Sioux Nation of the NAN, has been the CEO of Knight Errant since its inception in the mid-30s.
A competent yet undistinguished bureaucrat, even his military experience in the Sioux forces was largely as a logistics and procurement officer. His chief qualification for remaining CEO of Knight Errant is the ability to keep Knight Errant financially solvent and free of administrative snafus and his uncomplaining willingness to put up with the micromanaging of Damien Knight, who regards Knight Errant as his personal pet project to tinker with at will.
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