Lore:Nanotrasen
 Nanotrasen |
Other Names: NT |
Many well known space stations on the frontier are operated by Nanotrasen – a company originally from Earth that holds interests in a variety of fields, but focuses on expanding, colonizing and claiming the resources of the frontier.
Nanotrasen
Nanotrasen (often shortened to just “NT”) has a mixed reputation. Some people might think of NT as a benevolent entity, but those that work for them or know them well probably call them capitalistic and opportunistic, with a “profits before people” ideology. Their business extends into multiple fields so as to maximize their profits – from buying and managing patents, to building ships and stations, doing technological research and, notably: colonizingThe nature of Nanotrasen's colonization efforts in the Nova sector have often come under intense scrutiny, accused of both merely repurposing abandoned structures, and of claiming crew members' independently-constructed buildings as official Colonies. Legally, both fulfill contractual obligations, so any scrutiny is merely superficial. the frontier.
The frontier is an untapped land of resources and valuable information... untapped from a commercial standpoint, that is. With the support/management of an ever growing NT Military branch, Nanotrasen’s colonization movements have been the recent focus of their business and the driving factor for much of their research. They manage a number of stations and outposts in valuable sections of the frontier, bringing in profit in the form of resources and research.
Which sections of the frontier are valuable? The anomalous ones, usually. One solar system in particular is home to an unusual number of anomalies (anomalies which can range from strange occurrences on station to odd creatures to weird ruins), especially affecting nearby planets such as Lavaland. The resources left behind by the anomalies, and the resources they draw in are a major line of profit – as is the research into the anomalies themselves.
While Nanotrasen isn’t some all-powerful company, and it has no support from governing bodies aside from vague permission to operate in SolFed space, its influence continues to grow. NT sits on the Luna board of directors and continues to expand, exploring and claiming new parts of the frontier without hesitating to consider the moral cost of its growth.
History
Nanotrasen was founded on good ideals. A generally altruistic group of founders, from Earth, had bright plans for it – a company that helped with technological research and with expanding the frontier, bringing that technology to those who need it. While they weren’t the ones to invent bluespace drives or FTL travel, they were some of the first to commercialize it and make a profit off of it. They made new innovations in the field of AI research and picked up many patents for their growing list of inventions, such as the Supermatter crystal.
Unfortunately, that benevolence only lasted so long. As the original founders, the old guard of Nanotrasen, started to age and step aside, the people who replaced them were not so nice. These were the people who had succeeded inside Nanotrasen from a business standpoint – even those who might have originally shared some of the founder’s ideals were now jaded by capitalism. NT shifted to a new mindset: it had to make a profit to stay competitive, and sometimes people had to set aside their morals to make a profit.
Some of the old guard saw this change and did not like it. But there was no good alternative - the only people willing to listen to them were the Lore:Syndicate, who were no saints either. Still, some of the old guard decided on those as the lesser of two evils and moved over to aid the Syndicate. Others remain in Nanotrasen, though those that stayed are more or less out of touch with the way Nanotrasen runs now. As far as they know, it has continued to follow their benevolent ideals and the new, current, management of NT would like to make sure they keep thinking that.
All the while, Nanotrasen has continued to expand. Its efforts in colonizing the frontier and claiming its resources have proven the most profitable, so that’s where they focus - and as with any sort of colonization, they need a good military to back them. That’s where Nanotrasen’s Military branch comes in, overseeing and protecting their colonization efforts (and for clarity; these members of NT Military do not work for random outpost research stations. They are not the station’s internal security - a role that is often outsourced for liability reasons - but rather the big guns that are brought in from off station to resolve crew conflict or protect NT interests.)
Because of the quick expansion of these frontier stations, their culture varies greatly. They hire a more diverse crew on the frontier than they would in the more central areas of space. These crews are often kept on a looser leash than the more central stations, and hold ideologies that are often a bit less violently capitalistic, just due to the logistics of being far away and being relatively new.
Branches
Nanotrasen is split into a few different branches. The most important ones include:
Directorate
The very highest levels of command, who don’t go out to the frontier in person, but rather manage their interests with the Luna board of directors.
NT Military/Sector Command
These are the ones in charge of the operations of the frontier sectors. NT’s military is the power backing its colonization. With duties ranging from keeping stations in line to protecting them, and ranks that vary just as greatly, NT’s Military is the acting arm of the company’s authority. While not infallible, they are NT’s most trusted force when it comes to protecting their interests on the frontier - to maximize profits, ensure expansion and reduce expensive PR incidents.
Research
Nanotrasen has a strong R&D department, with multiple stations who focus primarily on research. While some of their effort goes to research for the sake of expanding upon the company's already existing patentsBy all Corporate metrics, the Nova Sector chain of stations has proven to be a research goldmine. With each station producing dozens of patents per shift, upper management finds the expenditures to be well-recouped. They're hardly concerned, or even aware, that each shift's patents are effectively identical to the previous shift's, with miniscule alterations to the background conditions.
See: Patent 700605: Design for a Femto Manipulator in a 17% CO2 atmosphere, Patent 700606: Design for a Femto Manipulator in a 17.5% CO2 atmosphere..., the majority of it these days goes into developing improvements for NT’s other departments - such as optimizing bluespace travel for the sake of their exploration efforts or improving weapons for the sake of their military branch.
Engineering
NT’s engineering department oversees the engineering and upkeep of its stations and ships - and oversees the production, use and distribution of NT’s proprietary power sourceWhile the concept and use of a Supermatter Crystal existed well before the company, Nanotrasen developed a unique means by which to grow a small shard into a ceiling-height crystal. As most Supermatter shards must be carefully cleaved from a larger source, or produced through near-impossible atmospheric trickery, this trade secret is one of Nanotrasen's most profitable processes, leading rivals to routinely attempt to steal and reverse engineer slivers of any Nanotrasen Artificial Supermatter Crystal. , the Supermatter Crystal.
Exploration
As part of NT’s colonization efforts, it has invested into exploring the frontier so it can be the first to find, claim and profit off of valuable resources found in newly mapped sections of the frontier. NT uses its best technological advances to try and speed up exploration in a constant contest against others who want to lay claim to the resources of the frontier.
Shipbuilding
With as many ships and stations as NT has, at some point they have decided to economize by building their own ships and stations in house. The shipbuilding section of NT works on designing new station designs and at building NT’s new outposts, handing the station’s upkeepThe myth of a "cleaning crew" handling the station before and after a standard crew shift came about through strictly organic means, in counterculture response to the more sinister rumors, including:
-The stations are scrapped wholesale, biological material and all.
-A swarm of Drones and Spider Clan operatives scour stations to return them to a pristine state.
-A chronological Task Force rewinds the surrounding area to a previous point in time.
-Enough noospheric discharge is released to trick the anomalous zone into forgetting the station had ever been altered.
The rise of the "cleaning crew" myth stems from an innate desire to avoid uncomfortable questions from the prior claims, and also the presence of a janitorial staff who sweeps through.
No matter what the story, crew members finding themselves waiting for the Cleaning Crew come back with few memories of the event and oft conflicting stories, but no worse for the wear. over to NT’s engineering department once the station is put into service.
Artificial Intelligence
Working alongside NT’s research department, but with a larger focus on production than on new designs, Nanotrasen’s AI department is also quite powerful. NT AIs and cyborgs are in high demand, though most of them go towards work within Nanotrasen instead of towards third party buyers. NT’s AI department is not only responsible for the research and production of cyborgs, drones and AIs, but is responsible for the management of all the silicons currently in service under Nanotrasen - to keep them productive and to keep them in line.
Ranks
This is the general rank structure of the NT Military. Some NT Military ranks have equivalent civilian ranks inside Sector Command - those ranks will be listed in parenthesis
- Chief Advisor of Military Affairs
- Admiralty
- Section Chiefs
- Commander (Bureau Director)
- Lieutenant (Manager)
- Ensign (Asst. Manager)
- Sergeant (Supervisor)
- Private (Intern)
- (Consultant)
Important Personnel and Stations
Important stations
- Lavaland, and stations/ships in orbit around it and its icy moon.
- Stations/ships in orbit around other planets and bodies in that same star system - the Nova system.
Important Members of NT
CEO
For legal inquiries, please reference today's((This changes regularly and randomly through Wiki Magic, so don't get attached to one specific name!)) CEO below:
The Fax Machine
Rank: Director of Written Communications
Organization: Nanotrasen
Species: Bluespace Bureaucratic Entity
The Fax Machine is a mythical machine around Nanotrasen offices. While many exist across the various Nanotrasen installations, only the one True fax machine stands supreme atop the hierarchy of bureaucracy.
((FOR ADMIN PREVIEW ONLY, all of the current above at once:))
John Nanotrasen
Rank: Figurehead
Organization: Nanotrasen
"John Nanotrasen" is the name of a figurehead installed as the public face of Nanotrasen. No specific individual has been identified as ever having been John Nanotrasen, yet reports suggest that he exists.
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The Fax Machine
Rank: Director of Written Communications
Organization: Nanotrasen
Species: Bluespace Bureaucratic Entity
The Fax Machine is a mythical machine around Nanotrasen offices. While many exist across the various Nanotrasen installations, only the one True fax machine stands supreme atop the hierarchy of bureaucracy.
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The NT Logo
Rank: Iconograph
Organization: Nanotrasen
Species: Geometric Perfection
The Nanotrasen logo itself is, at present, a legal entity capable of sharing liability and negotiating legal contracts between persons affiliated with Nanotrasen and potential litigants.
Notable Individuals
In the Nova Sector, you may find yourself interacting with one or more of the following persons:
Simple Skye Fulton
Rank: Explainer
Organization: Nanotrasen
Species: Employee
Simple Skye Fulton can be found in several pages, to explain hard to understand word blocks using the XKCD-written 1000 simplest words set. She was once a worker like you, but has been put into her higher calling to show others that the company is good and that words can be good too.
John Mitchell
Rank: Imposition
Organization: Nanotrasen
Species: Genetic Misshap
John Mitchell has been on the board for as long as anyone can remember... which is weird considering some people are pretty old. Occasionally, he just does things, like pizza parties. Alot of Pizza Parties. ...Despite this, people tend to not ask why, because the answer is usually the same, "He's always done that."
Azyre W. Ruina
Rank: Guidance Counselor
Organization: Nanotrasen
Azyre W. Ruina, known to friends as "Azy," exists to fill a void in the bureaucratic weave that heralds over pitiful stationeers.
Jim Tern
Rank: Assistant to the Fax Machine
Organization: Nanotrasen
Species: Assistant
Jim Tern, Assistant to the Fax Machine, serves his mechanical master through verbiage and competence. Faxes must be responded to, and Jim Tern fulfills that niche with bureaucratic optimality.
Work in Progress: Footer subject to change at a moment's notice. Do not take a red link's presence, struck-through or otherwise, as confirmation (or denial) of their canonicity.
| Nova Sector Lore
| |
| Common Species | Humans, Tiziran, Unathi, Moths, Ethereals, Azulae, Slime Hybrids, Teshari, Synthetic Humanoids (and assorted robots), Pod Persons |
| Other Species | Genemodders (Felinids, Ice Walkers, Dwarf), Ashwalkers, Hemophages, Snailpersons, Ordoht (Formerly Skrell), Plasmamen, Flypeople, Vox (Primalis et al), Tajaran, Vulpkanin, Xenomorphic Hybrid, Rouges (Abductorkin), Miscellaneous Species |
| Nanotrasen | Nanotrasen, Central Command, Emergency Response Corps |
| External Groups | The Syndicate, Interdyne Pharmaceutics, DS-2, Cargo, The Spider Clan |
| Nova | The Nova Sector, Indecipheres, Freyja |
| Concepts | Bluespace, Plasma, Faster Than Light Travel, Resonance ("Souls"), Death |
| SolFed | SolFed, Earth in 2565, |
