The Big Ten: A Note

Written by: Null Kit

The more astute among you might have noticed there's no articles on the AAA corps in our DataCache. This is intentional: We're trying to keep things focussed on Raleigh, and if you want to learn about global megacorporations, you're probably best off perusing other, less specialised data-havens (or god forbid, look them up yourself). Even then, there's a myriad of small and large interactions between the AAAs and Raleigh, not enough to justify a whole article, but deserving of mention some way or another. This page is here to give a short summary on the Big Ten and where they stand in Raleigh.

Ares Macrotechnology: Full-Auto Capitalism

Ares might not have an arcology or major political holdings in Raleigh, but that means little when the corp is popular and ubiquitous enough among Raleighites simply by existing that they have all the influence they could want, up to and including being the primary cause behind Raleigh's current interest in faux-vintage aesthetics and architectural styles. Ares holds the majority percentage of owned subsidiaries and corporate-citizens in Raleigh's city limited, and the citizenry's choice of weapons favor them more than several other megacorporations combined. This dominance has been shaken a great deal in recent years however, between the fallout of the Excalibur incident threatening consumer-confidence and Knight-Errant losing further ground to local upstarts Dragoon Tactical Investments. Unlike the other corps, Ares is looking to regain this lost footing by focussing on the political scene of Raleigh, funding special-interest and lobbying groups to keep their chain of sweetheart-deals and regulartory exemptions.

Saeder-Krupp Heavy Industries: The Dragon's Share

Ares might be the most popular megacorp in Raleigh, but it's Saeder-Krupp that has the most influence in the city's core infrastructure: It was their construction corpus that constructed the Downtown Elevated Plaza, it was the SK-subsidiary Bouygues that did the lion's share of work on the ill-fated Forestville renovations, and despite the scale of that project and its subsequent response it's looking like SK are going to be the corp of choice that makes Raleigh into a true sprawl. Despite this and their substantial pull within the city's political circles, there are no SK arcologies or major territorial residences in Raleigh (unless you count their airport as one). The majority of SK employees are either native raleighites or non-territorial migrants from other corporate territories, brought in to work on whatever project they are cooking up with the city council and returning to their homelands when the work is done.
That said however, things are rumored to change now that the respective arcologies of Evo and Aztechnolgy are starting to gain substantial purchase on the city's economy, and the word is that Lofwyr is looking for some permanent real-estate of his own in the city.

Aztechnology: Hungry for Blood

Aztechnology's grasp on Raleigh has always been a weak and fickle one, ever since their disasterous "People of Stuffer Shack" touched a lot of nerves in North Carolina started the downward trend, and even with an Arcology sitting in the city, it's rare to see all but the most reluctant praise for the company or its known subsidiaries. The corp has only been able to make major footholds in the city's economy through a mixture of local-branded subsidiaries that obfusicate their connection with Aztechnology or through simple ubiquity and unavoidability of their products and services. Recently, Aztechnology have been focussing more on their brand-image and public relations in the local area, in particular to take everyone's mind off certain geopolitical matters taking place down south.

EVO: From the Chrome Heart

Unlike the other megacorporations taking a more broad-spectrum approach to economic supremacy, EVO have been making their waves through Raleigh by, unsurprisingly, investing exclusively into their forte of transhumanism and medical-sciences, syncing themselves quite nicely with the city's primary industries of medicine and biotech and drawing unwanted attention away from recent controversies in the North American continent. From the Metahuman-Architectural Haven, the corp has been fighting a subtle but gruelling battle with fellow biotech specialists Universal Omnitech over who gets the largest slice of the city's medical pie, with particular focus on disrupting their ownership of the city's School of Medicine through any means necesarry.

Wuxing, Inc: Inscrutable Royalty

Fittingly for a company that goes out of its way to stay below notice, Wuxing remain far below the radar of the layman's attention in Raleigh, instead working behind the scenes to nestle themselves in the city's economic sectors as providors and suppliers of whatever other corporate-movements might be happening, concentrating on real-estate financing and shipping systems to meet the demands of the city's expansion. The megacorp seldom makes large moves in Raleigh, but a surprising number of key economic decisions in this past decade have been decide by whether or not they meet the approval of the Wuxing-subsidiary that holds the chequebook, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the other megas.

Shiawase Corporation: Invisible Strings

The sheer age and commonality of Shiawase makes cataloguing their actions exclusive to Raleigh difficult. The old Zaibatsu is happy to take the same slow-and-steady approach to taking over Raleigh as they do the rest of the world, by having a finger in so many proverbial pies of economics and consumer-products that allowed them to scoop up prime real-estate in Morrisville to construct the Raleigh-Shiawase Omni-Consumer Complex. But the advancements of EVO and Saeder-Krupp in particular have provoked something in the long-runner megacorp, who are now initiating plans to make their presence in the city less of a background one, with rumors of Shiawase taking interest in real-estate in the Concrete Forest of all places.

Renraku Computer Systems: Strings of the Puppet

While the corp posesses its own substantial presence in Raleigh's commercial and economic sectors, few of its buildings openly bare the megacorp's branding or take full advantage of the corp's extraterritoriality: Instead, Renraku controls most of its share of Raleigh's pie through a number of micromanaged subsidiaries, trading in overall brand-recognition for more localised 'family-run businesses' presence. Surprisingly, the corp's goals through its proxies appear to be targetting Neuse and the Concrete Forest with an apparent intent to 'retake' the barrens and Z-zones from lawless inequity and have the lion's share of cheap zoning and property, a plan that has not gon unnoticed by Saeder Krupp, owing to the latter's pot-shots taken at Renraku's subsidiaries through deniable-assets.

Horizon: Personality Redefined

Horizon's once-tremendous hold on Raleigh's media and entertainment industries was understandably hamstringed by the revelations of its involvement in the Yucatan uprising and the Technomancer slaughter in Las Vegas, tarnishing its reputation in Raleigh as the second most cuddly corp after pre-'People of Stuffer Shack' Aztechnology (ha ha) and reducing the Persona 2.0 useage to one of the lowest in the CAS. No doubt this will only be a temporary slip, owing to the corp's mastery of PR and brand management, but the local branches are having to take a more measured, careful approach to rebuilding their goodwill in the sprawl, and have been sparing no expense in more closely tailoring their more recent aesthetics to appeal to Raleigh's current fascination with vintage-inspired art deco/future-retroism aesthetics.

Mitsuhama Computer Technologies: Old is New

Deciphering Mitsuhama's intentions with Raleigh beyond their publically stated goals has not been easy, in part due to the close-lipped traditionalist nature of their upper-management and to their infamous 'Zero Zone' policy extending to their cybersecurity systems as well. What has been deduced is that MCT is looking to consolidate its position of the tallest crab in the megacorporate bucket by increasing its presence towards the geopolitical elements of Raleigh, and to that end has begun construction of an new, full-sized arcology of their own within their Durham territories to act as a shining incentive.

SpinGlobal: New Kid on the Block

If Redhat's input is to be believed, Johnny Spinrad is both lionized by most of Raleigh's public as a true 'self-made man' for his economic/corporate maneuvering and endlessly joked of as being a 'yuppie's yuppie' for his eclectic and egocentric attitudes and policies. Owing to the latter element and to the corp's own relative youth, SpinGlobal's presence in Raleigh is much more limited than the other megas, with minimal extraterritorial presence and only a handful of scattered businesses among commercial and industrial districts. This is set to change, however, with procured internal correspondances hinting towards a 'Red Oak Raleighite' business-plan being disseminated across the corp's storefronts and subsidiaries to prepare various lines of products and media tailored for the city's specific tastes.

NeoNet: The Bones of Giants

Despite being no more, NeoNet has earned an honorary mention on this article for the effects of its demise. Much of Raleigh's Oak City Local-Grid was based on and supported by NeoNet supplied infrastructure, and although the interruption to the city's matrix connectivity was minimal, it was still sufficient along with the disruption of GOD/demiGOD service to cause short-lived but catastrophic effects on the momenterily lawless grid. Raleigh has since moved more of its cyberseciruty infrastructure onto 'in-house' providers, but only time will tell if this will be sufficient long-term.