Corporate Worlds
The Corporate Worlds is a sub-alliance of the greater Human Alliance. These planets were colonized during the Diaspora by colonization missions backed by major Earth corporations. As such, their local legal codes reflect the organizations that spawned them. They form a powerful voting bloc in the Human Alliance, as the representatives of their member planets often have coinciding interests -- and on the other hand, can viciously disagree like only family can.
Contents
Member Worlds
Governance
The Corporate Worlds are owned, entirely, by the founding corporations that sent them out to colonize worlds. However, in many cases, they are now the sole asset of the corporations in question, and the Earth-based corporation is a shadow on paper, or no longer exists at all.
Corporate Worlds measure themselves on a system known as the Exchange, based on stock exchanges, that measures trade surpluses and deficits between the Corporate Worlds, economic output, and numerous other arcane economic factors to rank the worlds. Being higher on the Exchange is not only a major point of pride for the citizen-employees of the world-companies, but also grants them favourable benefits when the Corporate Worlds act as a union.
Agencies
While the bureaucracy of the Corporate Worlds is deemed by some to be limitless, there are a selection of agencies that are particularly interesting to Potentials and other galactic actors. Some of these are listed below.
Corporate Intelligence
Corporate espionage has a long and storied history, and the Corporate Worlds' intelligence apparatus does its best to live up to it. There are numerous agencies, that generally work very well with each other to perform counterintelligence activities against external actors, and have also enacted successful joint espionage operations against targets outside the Corporate Worlds. However, this is only a fraction of their operations. In fact, the agencies continually conflict with each other in spying on each other, always seeking an advantage they can use to push their world-company higher on the Corporate Exchange.
Corporate Marshallate
The Marshallate are the law enforcement agents of the Corporate Worlds. They are entrusted with a fair degree of latitude in their courses of action, as they by necessity must patrol large swathes of space, often with little to no support than what they carry themselves. They are permitted to temporarily deputize willing citizens of the Corporate World's member planets when they require additional assistance, and in real emergencies, may also call for support from the Human Alliance military fleet. When a member planet's local law enforcement assets are unsuited or incapable of handling a local disturbance, they can request assistance from the Marshallate. The Marshallate is also called upon when criminals flee from one world to another.
Bounty Hunters
As the Marshallate never has enough agents to go around, the Corporate Worlds also commonly make a practice of placing bounties on the heads of those who violate its law. Generally, these bounties require that the bounty hunter bring the malefactor back alive for trial -- bounty hunters who kill their targets are more likely to be prosecuted themselves than be rewarded. After all, it is harder to make a corpse pay reparations for its crimes than a living person.
Becoming a bounty hunter for the Corporate Worlds is fairly simple, and requires only a written test which covers the legal requirements and consequences of bounty hunting via this system, and a waiver of liability on file. As such, the quality of the bounty hunters varies wildly depending on individuals -- something that has led to their less than impressive reputation, overall.
