Stellvia Corporation
Stellvia Corporation | |
![]() Crew insignia and logo of Stellvia Trading, Inc. | |
Nicknames | Stellvians |
---|---|
Home Base | Stellvia Station |
Population (2015 rough) | n/a (<200) |
Political Influence | Minor |
Allies | Warsies, Senshi, Blue Blazers, Soviet Air Force, Space Pirates |
Major Achievements | L5 Station Stellvia Kaboomite Founding member of the Space Patrol The Whole Fenspace Catalog |
Stereotype | Mostly-agreeable Fendanes with an annoying boss. |
Stellvia Corporation is a holding company founded on 1 July 2009, with Noah Scott being the sole stockholder.
Like many Fen businesses, the inner core of the organization form a small pseudo-faction in their own right. Noah Scott is the de facto leader of the Stellvian pseudo-faction, and has been since he created it in May 2008. The pseudo-faction's other full members are Leda Swansen, Jake Hansen, Patty O'Neill, Kelly Harrison, Micheline Rouleau, Jerry Freedman, Lea Meadows, Dr. Sergy Gudanov, Kohran Li, Yayoi Fujisawa, Star, Safety, Miyuri Akisato, Takami Sakuragi, Shizuka Hayama, Kagome Mishima, Yomiko Readman, and Yoriko Nikaido (from May 2008 until June 2013). Sora Hasegawa is also considered to be a Stellvian (except by Safety), despite her full-time membership in the Soviet Air Force since July 2013.
A.C. Peters, Katz Schrödinger, and Yuu Inagawa have been given "honorary Stellvian" status, which primarily gives them access to the original Stellvia station ring. Natsuko Aki has been offered the same status on occasion, but always refuses it.
The Stellvians as a pseudo-faction are known to be on friendly terms with the Senshi, the Warsies, and the Soviet Air Force, and have a rivalry with the Ninja. The Stellvians "punch above their weight" in Fenspace politics because of their financial backing of the Space Patrol[1].
Stellvia Corporation owns or has controlling interest in three companies, and has minor holdings in many other 'Dane and Fen businesses.
Stellvia Trading
Founded on 1 July 2009 to administer the Stellvia space station, Stellvia Trading is 100% owned by Stellvia Corp. This is the company that most people think of when they hear the name "Stellvia".
Stellvia Trading originally specialized in selling finished materials from Earth to Fen for the first few months of its existence, continuing how Noah Scott was earning a living before incorporating. However, Stellvia Trading's reaction to the Kaboomite Incident at Worldcon Floating Island that summer drove most of the Fen trading business away from Stellvia and into Fenspace proper, especially to The Island.
Faced with bankruptcy, Stellvia Trading began an ambitious project of offering space tourism to the people of Earth. Purchasing one of the two Concorde aircraft owned by the Airbus Factory, the company rebuilt and handwaved it into a luxury passenger spacecraft, christened it Ad Astra, and began offering weekly luxury transportation between Sydney's Kingsford Smith International Airport, Kandor City, and Stellvia, which had been renovated to include a small hotel facility. This worked so well that Stellvia Trading began an expansion project to increase the station's available hotel space, which was scaled up to meet vastly increased demand after the company's directors acted to prevent the destruction of Aukland in July 2011.
The expanded hotel was opened for business in April 2012, mere weeks before the SOS-Con. Stellvia Corporation rented out an entire level of the new hotel facility to Operation Great Justice until mid-2013, which brought some of the previously-lost Fen business back to Stellvia and paid for the station's first dry-dock facility. Many groups that wanted a presence near but not on Earth rented space in Stellvia, beginning with the Banzai Institute, the SEBureau, and Stellvia Trading itself. The dry-dock was rented to the SEBureau's Above and Beyond Development as soon as it was completed in February 2013, and was used to support Operation Great Justice until the end of the Boskone War in January 2014. Despite all the construction, the original Stellvia station ring still exists; it is now Noah Scott's private residence, and access to it is restricted to the Stellvians (see above).
In order to help stave off a post-war economic depression and in a paranoid response to a possible increase in 'danelaw interest in cislunar space, Stellvia Trading began an ambitious station expansion project in early 2014, with the intention of adding an additional ring to the station. This plan fell through with the successful completion of the April Fools' Purchase and the creation of the Artemis Foundation (see below), but the ring was near completion. The only confirmed clue as to the disposition of this ring is a folder named "Design Specifications - Odyssey" seen on Noah Scott's desktop.
Stellvia Trading owns the Stellvia station, its support agricultural station Wonderland, and the Ad Astra outright. It also maintains and provides home port facilities for Noah Scott's private yacht Epsilon Blade and (after 2014) his daughter's private yacht Digamma Thunderbolt.
The company is run directly by Noah Scott, with the assistance of his "angels" and specialists in various fields, both human and AI.
Nikaido Foundation
Main article: Nikaido Foundation
This philanthropic organization was founded on 15 June 2013, after the loss of Stellvia Corporation's vice-president Yoriko Nikaido during Operation Great Justice.
It acts to funnel contributions of all sorts - financial gifts, expertise, and anything in between - from factions, businesses, and individuals to where they will do the most good, especially but not exclusively to the Space Patrol.
The Foundation is owned 51% by Stellvia Corp., 15% by the Soviet Air Force, 10% by Operation Great Justice, and 8% by Greenwood, Unlimited. The remaining 16% is owned by other companies and individuals. (For many reasons, most of which are political, the Banzai Institute does not have a financial interest in the organization.)
Thanks to extensive automation, including AI assistance, the foundation's staff is very small. Day-to-day operations are handled by Aoi-chan, the foundation's AI system, while personal meetings are attended by any of the organization's five field representatives. Oliver Towne manages the foundation on behalf of the shareholders.
The organization's physical offices are in the Watchtower, in Kandor City. They have three 'waved 1985 Lincoln Town Cars at their disposal for day-to-day operations.
Artemis Foundation
Main Article: Artemis Foundation
The Artemis Foundation was founded on 1 April 2014 to support the April Fool's Purchase. Nobody was more surprised than Noah when the Purchase was approved, and he quickly expanded the Artemis Foundation from a shell company to an actual corporation.
Their primary business is administration of Project Artemis, the space science body formed after NASA's operations were absorbed by the TSAB. In support of Project Artemis, they also operate the shipyard Ley in the Main Belt, where they build unmanned probes for themselves and Shuttles for themselves and anyone else who can afford to buy them (under licence from the Soviet Air Force, which irks them no end). In order to break even, they also deliver 'Danelaw satellites to Earth orbit and maintain the International Space Station.
They are owned 85% by Stellvia Corp., 5% by 'Dane interests supposedly not connected with NASA, and 10% by other Fen organizations and individuals.
The Artemis Foundation employs many of the civilian scientists and researchers previously employed by NASA, and leases the Shuttle processing facilities located at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Their physical assets include the Shuttles Challenger and Phoenix, Main Belt Research Stations McAuliffe and Chawla, shipyard Ley (located on asteroid 2709 Sagan), many varieties of unmanned exploration drones in orbit around all four of Sol's gas giants and throughout the Alpha Centauri system, and administrative offices in Crystal Kyoto, Starbase 1, Starbase 2, and Stellvia. They also rent small offices in Canberra, Australia; Baikonur and Astana, Kazakhstan; and Washington, DC, USA, but their main administrative offices are in Port Phobos.
For obvious reasons, the Artemis Foundation does not get along well with the TSAB.
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