Difference between revisions of "Catgirl Industries"

Revision as of 18:14, 27 August 2011

History

Founded: 23.3.2015
Founder: Cathy, Vivio (both catgirls), 15 other catgirls and Cortana (AI)
Members: 29 (in early 2016), 28 catgirls and one AI
Position: Mobile company complex, most times near Mars or the Belt
Official Languages: English and Japanese
Ethnic Groups: Catgirls only
Allies: Panzer Kunst Gruppe, Furries (minor)
Enemies: Catgirl slavers
Political Influence: Minor to Non-existent
Government: Direct Democracy

How it came to be...

Cathy is a catgirl that biomodded herself accidentally while building her spaceship Stargazer back on Earth in 2011. She worked as tourist guide first and became a member of the Senshi Armed Forces after SOS-Con until the end of the Boskone War in 2014. Her ship, the Stargazer, is well known throughout the solar system.

Vivio is a victim of a Boskonian catgirling machine on 2462 Nehalennia, which erased her whole memory and left her mind blank. Instead of being sold to Earth, she was used by Quattro, the daughter of Agatha Clay, for memory experiments. In 2015, Cathy and Ford Sierra went undercover on Nehalennia; Quattro captured Cathy and copied several years worth of her memories, before uploading them into Vivio’s mind. (Her plan was to interrogate Vivio, erase her, then reload from the stored copy, comparing and cross-referencing answers.) Vivio is, in essence, a fork of Cathy. Shortly before she could be erased for good, Vivio was freed by Ford Sierra, Cathy and the Panzer Kunst Gruppe.

When Cathy began looking for something useful to do after her mission on Nehallania, Jet passed a remark about the lack of small surveillance drones for the Panzer Kunst Gruppe. Vivio suggested that the rescued catgirls including her and Cathy could build the drones, pooling their abilities. Cathy and Vivio managed to persuade a number of Catgirls from Nehalennia to join their effort to build the drones for the Kuenstlers, and so Catgirl Industries was born.

Catgirl Industries

Catgirl Industries is known for producing small customized drones, ranging from basketball up to truck-wheel sized. Their first prototype, built for the Panzer Kunst Gruppe, looked like a dull black sphere somewhat smaller than a basketball. It was a quick and agile ground recon drone with enough armor to survive being used as an ad-hoc thrown projectile by a Kunstler.

The prototype impressed the Gruppe, and they followed the prototype with a contract order. The money from the contract allowed the catgirls to begin construction of their own space station.

In late 2015 the first additional catgirls from 125 Liberatrix joined the company. With the money they got from their new point-defense drone series, Catgirl Industries began to expand the conglomerate of containers as their orbital base for production, research and living. Since then the base and the member count of Catgirl Industries has been increasing slowly but steadily.

Catgirl Industries Home Base

The home base of Catgirl Industries, called Jenga by most people, is an ever-changing pile of large modules made from waved steel, most of them 24 or 16 meters long and 8 times 8 meters wide. They have several standardized airlock openings, so they can be combined in a lot of different shapes. Thick blue glowing ‘energy cables’ run on the surface of the station, which was a result of the waving of the first modules. Many of the base systems cannot run on power distributed through internal cables.

In the beginning of the complex, the modules were just a free floating habitat, but since mid-2016 the owners of the base began to upgrade most of the modules with engines, independent life-support and some concealed defense weapons. This mobility allowed Catgirl Industries to provide direct support for installing some of their products for larger scale contracts beginning in late-2016. Most of the module infrastructure is built into the thick bottom and ceiling of the modules to keep it out of the way of the interior areas.

The modules have been set up for different purposes. Many of them are large factory and workshop areas, often connecting multiple modules to a longer continuous structure. Many of these areas are used for the research projects of Catgirl Industries, others are used for creating the drones the company sells.

Storage modules are usually close to the factory modules. Especially Handwavium is mostly stored in one or a few special modules, to prevent accidentally contaminating the living and working areas with it.

A few modules are configured as hangars for a small number of waved cars used by Catgirl Industries. When they have to ship larger amounts of goods, either resources or finished products, the company hires other Fen for the transport. Many modules are equipped with additional docking adapters on unused airlocks to allow larger ships to come to the complex.

The rest of the modules are used as living space. Most of them are divided into two floors to use the space more efficiently. Each catgirl has its own rooms and it is rumored that lots of the personal money of the catgirls go into furnishing their room comfortably. Some of the living areas are not inhabited at the moment, they are either reserved for visitors or potential future members. Others are used as common meeting places, exercise rooms and offices.

Cortana is networked to all of the public places in the module complex and can connect to most private areas on demand. She is responsible for maintaining the computer infrastructure of the company and its own cyberspace. All the modules have a representation in cyberspace, in addition to a huge virtual area that can be used for any kind of planning or activity. The complex has an Interwave backbone node, but its unknown to outsiders which module contains the transmitter.

The exact number of modules seem to fluctuate, because the catgirls seem to like taking them apart from time to time and reassemble them into different configuration and modules, but on average the count has been growing continuously.

Catgirl Industries Research

Since the foundation of Catgirl industries the company has done a large number of research projects, most of them only for a few months. But there are a few research projects that have been continued permanently.

Catgirl Industries also acquired several Boskone technologies during the raid of Jet Jaguar, Sierra Ford and Cathy that freed Vivio.

One technology captured on the raid on Nehallenia was a substance Catgirl Industries named ‘Memetic Plastic’, a latex- or plastic-like substance that reacts to special stimuli by nearby control systems, changing back and forth from a semi-liquid to solid form and can even apply some bending force on itself. Depending on the kind of handwavium used in creation, it has different attributes. In its original form its breathable and can stick to skin and fur without damaging it. Other forms are airtight and can be used for creating a vacuum resistant surface. Some catgirls at the company are working on combining the different kinds of Memetic Plastic in one batch, others are experimenting with creating morphing clothing or even space suits out of it.

Catgirl Industries also got the Catgirling Machine that was acquired during the raid. They have joined the Fen research community that has been working on reverse-engineering the machine. Their machine is still working, and they sometimes offer to turn people into catgirls, but they don’t advertise this. The ‘Cats in paradise’ groups knows about the machine. The memory-wiping part of the machine seems to have been removed.

Catgirl Industries Members

The non-AI members of the company are exclusively catgirls, all of them seemingly well versed in construction and tinkering with waved drones. Many of them exploring other construction related research project, from creating unwaved plush catgirls for children that can purr up to experiments with large capital ship lasers.

Both Cathy and Cortana have joined GJ teams and the Panzer Kunst Gruppe on some occasions for special missions, even after they started their company. Some of the other company members have done the same.

Most of the members are known to leave their Home Base only in small groups, but almost never alone. It has yet to be seen how the rest of the “cat gang” will react if some of their friends are stuck somewhere because of a problem. Speculations on Interwave forums go from ‘will log a formal protest” to “will release their secret drone swarm of Doom to break their friends out”.

First Products

PKG recon drone (the “cannon ball”)

A black basketball sized surveillance drone with eight internal cameras and microphones (360° stabilized vision) in a 2cm thick hollow sphere of waved steel and filled with a shock absorbing gel. The surface of the drone is covered with an waved material that can stick to nearly any other material, while allows the drone to roll up to most walls and ceilings. Remote controlled with autopilot, no AI.

Defender drone mark 1

An ion drive powered drone built around a central laser cannon. It has in integrated waved energy core, its well armored and fast enough to intercept missiles and smaller crafts and shoot them down. In an emergency they can be used as kinetic missiles. Fast and agile, but not enough endurance for protecting anything except space stations or asteroid habitats.

Trivia

• Catgirl Industries has yet to release a product with an on-board AI. All of their work has well-written firmware with autopilot software, but they are all remote-controlled only. Some customers have asked to leave space in their drones to be able to add an AI core later.
• Most company members are enthusiastic users of augmented reality and cyberspace.
• Most of the modules of the Home Base have been built from Battle Steel bought from Hephaestus, who also helped with the construction of some parts of the modules.
• Catgirl Industries has offered a bounty on for capturing Boskonian catgirl slavers together with Space Patrol. The bounty will mostly paid in hardware or services, and only if a Great Justice or Space Patrol office validates that the right people were caught.