Kyoshi Corporation

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Kyoshi Corporation
Empire Info
Capital		Tokyo, Earth
Leader		President of the Board of Directors Akari Norimoto
Government Type		Megacorporation
Dominant Species		Varied
Population		275,000 in directly governed stations and colonies
Anthem		n/a
Color Scheme		Green

The Kyoshi Corporation, also known as simply Kyoshi, is an large Earth based mega-corporation dating back to the days of the Solar Empire. The corporation has several subsidies, but its area of expertise remains in bioresearch and biomechanical subsidies. Its most direct presence on Onia remains a Shock Trauma Armed Rescue Service operation.

Kyoshi is most well known in the Belt for their stray or active vatborne based artifical intelligence units, mainly Autonomous Laboratory EXperiment Assistants and Multi-Purpose Engineering Units, though it also has several active subsidiaries in the region from security subcontractors to a logistics firm. Still, to most citizens of the White Belt it remains another faceless entity in a sea of governing corporations.

History

Founding & Early Expansion

The Kyoshi Corporation was founded by Tanaka Kyoshi in 1951 as a small electronics consulting company during the early stages of the Japanese Economic Miracle, lasting from 1946 to 1990, in which Japanese exports skyrocketed. Tanaka, a radio engineering officer in the IJN during the war, was an early proponent of transistors, and his work as a consultant with Sony would help lead to the 1957 release of the TR-63 transistor radio, which would revolutionize the field of electronics and see the vacuum tube entirely replaced within 30 years.

In 1980, Tanaka passed away, leaving the company to his eldest son, Kobayashi. Kobayashi, a Tokyo University business graduate, utilized his inheritance to rapidly expand the company, acquiring and integrating several competing companies, and forming partnerships with manufacturing companies to streamline production of Kyoshi-branded electronics. By 1985, Kyoshi had become a keiretsu, and would spend the next 47 years becoming a powerhouse in electronics, microchip production, and software development.

In 2032, with changes to Japan's laws regarding conglomerates and corporations, Kobayashi rapidly restructured the company into a classic zaibatsu, with the Kyoshi family acting as the CEO and primary owners of the Kyoshi Corporation, and all the partner companies coming under its control as subsidiaries. This streamlining allowed for further expansion of the corporation’s interests, and they soon branched out into the field of biomedicine. Kyoshi Laboratories was founded in 2035, being Kyoshi’s oldest subsidiary.

WHile Kyoshi had established itself through its work in the electronics field, its early steps into biomedicine yielded staggering results, and over the next 60 years, the company would largely pivot into this. This took place in a time at which humanity was both reaching for the stars, and for a greater understanding of itself, and Kyoshi made multiple breakthroughs around the late 21st century. These included pioneering the processes for gene stretching and RNA modifications, resulting in the ability to halt, and experimentally reverse, the condition known as aging. To this end, Satoru Kyoshi, who had ascended to power after Kobayashi’s death in 2042, became the first Kyoshi executive to have an artificially extended life, living to 2204 using these methods. The effect of ending aging had dramatic effects on the rest of humanity, with a joint project with the early House Ajnoria on Mars leading to the perfection of this technology; the current Arch Duchess of the house, Anya Saydi Ajnoria, is one of the longest living Humans known, currently over 750 years old.

Interstellar Beginnings

By 2109, humanity had first harvested W-1 fuel for faster than light travel, and Kyoshi, as one of humanity’s most powerful megacorporations, was positioned to immediately start commercializing it. Kyoshi Engineering was founded in 2115, with the purpose of designing, building, and manning new research and colony ships. The Bōken-sha, or Explorer, was the first such Kyoshi colony ship, and was part of the fleet of corporate and government ships that founded New Babylon, Earth’s first extrasolar colony, in 2119.

The company saw continued expansion during Satoru’s extended reign, though not without complications. The early Solar Empire was a tumultuous time for any corporation, particularly one in Kyoshi’s fields. Satoru’s children, twins Kenji and Kanae, spent most of their lives preparing to take their father’s place. Learning the politics of their roles and interactions with both shareholders and the solar empire itself; which saw corporations as a means to serve the empire more than true independent enterprises. Skillful diplomacy was needed to navigate this complicated landscape; which was ultimately Kenji’s failing; dying of suspicious causes while in college at the family’s alma mater; Tokyo University. While widely speculated he was poisoned by Solar Empire forces due to his liberal worldviews, this was never definitively confirmed or denied and the records of such are now lost to time. What this did mean, however, was his twin sister Kanae would ultimately ascend to the head of the company with Satoru’s eventual death, after 164 years at the head of the Zaibatsu in 2204.

Kanae would be the first interstellar head of Kyoshi; exploring Kyoshi’s corporate settlements outside of the Sol System. While most of these colonies would be seen as a ‘short hop’ by today’s interstellar travel standards, interstellar travel was still seen as immensely risky to many in the upper classes at the time, and Kanae’s highly publicized travels broke the stigmas of faster than light travel and its effects on the human body to many outside of spacer communities. FTL travel was starting to become ‘normal’ to humanity.

Her wanderlust would be her downfall, however, for she would be the first Kyoshi head to die in space during her third tour in 2299. Little is known of the actual circumstances save for scant colony records. Kanae was visiting a Kyoshi asteroid lab in Alpha Centauri, when a nearby W1 mine of Ulysses Industrial, a rival Earth corporation, detonated, destroying the Kyoshi colony, the Ulysses mine, and Kanae and her executive yacht. To this day, the explosion remains the source of dispute and conflict between the two corporations, with Ulysses claiming the mine was well marked and Kyoshi ignoring warnings not to construct their lab near it, and Kyoshi claiming the mine was deliberately sabotaged to take out the head of the corporation.The Solar Empire officially faulted both parties, but no charges were pursued against either. To this day, a memorial to Kanae and the victims of the blast remain at the site of the lab in system space.

Birth of the Interstellar Corporation

Kanae’s daughter, Aya, ascended to the head of the company despite her comparatively ‘young’ age of 39 after learning of her mother’s death. Without her mother to guide her on the runnings of a corporation that’d rival a nation state just two hundred years prior, she relied heavily on a Board of Advisors. Under prior executives this board purely advised on specific technical matters. Starting with Aia, though, this board slowly assumed more and more real power within the Zaibatsu; however under Aya they still remained relatively controlled.

Yielding more power to a board wasn’t meant to be Aya’s destiny, however, for just 21 years after she took the reins, Humanity met its first interstellar aliens through the Rokhandan Directorate. Aya found the creatures fascinating; curious, far more advanced scientifically than humanity, but despite that friendly. Despite knowing full well the Solar Empire of 2320 may have very well attempted to subjugate the dog-like creatures had the technological scale been reversed, Aya set out to work with and make friends with them. Through a successful partnership with Hruldi, one of Fen’s clans focusing on research, Kyoshi established its first joint lab on Fen in 2335. The Hruldi-Kyoshi Laboratory remains open to this day, and was vital in initial RRCT research and eventually the A.L.E.X.A Program.

Though she had no way of knowing it at the time, this early partnership with Rokhandan researchers - Kyoshi was the first Earth corporation to establish a permanent presence in Rokhandan territory - would slingshot Kyoshi into dominance in the bioresearch field. She wouldn’t be making deals on Fen for long, though, for at home the cracks were beginning to show in the Solar Empire.

Collapse of a Solar Empire

Kyoshi and megacorporations like it had to maintain at least cordial relations with the Solar Emperor/Empress and their court. The simple reality of this forced generous concessions from corporations, appointing friends/family of the monarch to relevant positions, and making ‘gifts’ that’d equate to exceptional tax rates. Though far from ones to publicly say it; Kyoshi itself in essence was ran by a royal family, the realities of this form of government had always irked Kyoshi and other relevant megacorporations; a delicate balance of power meant that while the Emperor could effectively nationalize any megacorporation, the risk of the others allying against him or her kept this tool in check. As such, the Solar Emperor was always inclined to put these corporations against each other; some maintain this was the real motivation behind the Alpha Centauri incident of 2299 which originally made enemies of Kyoshi and Ulysses.

By the 2370s, a series of accidents and deaths led to a series of weak Solar Emperors, and Kyoshi and other corporations seized the opportunity; leading to corporations earning seats at the Solar Court and having a more direct say in the running of the Empire, with Corporations slowly replacing the noble houses of the Court of Sol for relevance within the Empire. This transition was not bloodless, but ultimately, The Solar Empire and its houses would never again be a direct threat to Kyoshi’s expansionism. This weakened Solar Empire would ultimately be the one to collapse 120 years later.

With these at the time reforms, the early 2400s were known as a era of peace and expansion within the Kyoshi Zaibatsu; the Solar Empire stabilized (If only briefly) relations cooled with Ulysses and other rival corporations, and business exploded with the Rokhandans and then the massive boom to business that was first contact with the Onk Conglomerate in 2342. As with all happy times, though, they’re destined to end.

Kyoshi was never at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence research; a biomedical corporation through and through, and so the news of the rogue Styx A.I glassing entire systems hit the Board and Aya with denial, then surprise and shock, and eventually a determination to terminate it. By this point Kyoshi had a half sizable corporate fleet; to fend off both pirates and rivals; and this fleet was pledged to the Solar Empire to combat the A.I. This would prove a costly business venture; though a worthwhile political one. With the war, the power balance briefly swung back towards the Solar Emperor; then Hermius Pertinax, who argued ‘everything be done’ to save Humanity. While Kyoshi survived nationalization with the contribution of its fleets, several costly battles set the company back a hundred years in resources, revenue, and savings.

With the war, though, the fear of A.I went through the roof in all empires; and Kyoshi’s biomedical programs saw new light with early cloning techniques. Kyoshi’s first commercially successful clone line saw success during this period, as a scared galaxy turned away from mechanical Artificial Intelligence in droves. It was during this war that Kyoshi’s first open weapons manufacturing subsidiary, Highland Armories, opened in New Babylon. This was quickly followed by a mercenary service; Momentum Corporate Security, which quickly became Kyoshi’s military in all but name during the war against Styx.

Still, the war had a costly toll on Kyoshi; by its final bloody end in 2497, Kyoshi has been reverted from a gigantic megacorporation rivaling Sol’s most powerful noble houses, to a shambled company on the verge of bankruptcy. Kyoshi only survived as its rivals weren’t any better off. It was in this environment that the sickened government of the Solar Empire finally began to fall; both with the creation of the Galactic Assembly in 2499, and Hermius Pertinax’s formal abdication in 2509. With the creation of the Galactic Coalition, Kyoshi was finally free of the pomp and circumstance a solar empire brought.

Aya did not live to see the abdication though; while Kyoshi had nearly perfected the art of keeping someone alive by 2495, the prosecution of the war had stressed Aya to the point where she died of sudden cardiac arrest. Though by this point she likely could have been resuscitated well after the fact, her final will stated she wished to die ‘naturally’. Despite the irony of this wish coming from the head of one of the known galaxy’s largest biomedical corporations, it was respected.

Aya’s first born daughter, Ryouko Kyoshi, assumed control in 2495. Her hand held the company firm during both the war’s final years and the subsequent economic collapse around the fall of the Solar Empire, barely scraping past collapse while many rival corporations; which had been dependent on Solar Empire contracts and subsidies, did not survive.

The Tree of Liberty

Ryouko saw the birth of the Galactic Coalition as the head of Kyoshi at the time. As Kyoshi predated the governments forming; and was one of the relatively few corporations to survive the economic struggles of its founding, Kyoshi initially enjoyed relative independence from this new government. As with any republic, though, the new Galactic Assembly feared rival power blocks; and after the Noble Houses had been gutted of power, the remaining corporations became an easy target. Ryouku turned out to be quite the skilled diplomat; however, and ledgered Kyoshi’s at this point 200 plus year presence in the Rokhandan Directorate to fight off attempts by the Assembly to curb the corporations power; Kyoshi became one of the first true interstellar corporations; now with established presences in the Conglomerate, Directorate, and Coalition; any one of these governments regulating the corporation became increasingly difficult, and as attention spread towards exploration with the contact of the Grand Tide in 2523, attention of the new empire faded elsewhere. Kyoshi had, once again, survived nationalization and regulation despite at this point holding an objective monopoly in several sectors.

Now free to act accordingly; Ryouko saw the corporation's second era of exploration; founding several corporate colonies, albeit this time behind governmental scouts. Kyoshi never attempted to stake any official governmental claim to any of its colonies; Ryouko had proven that through maneuvering and pitching governments against each other, they didn’t need to. This brought the downscaling of Kyoshi’s Corporate Fleet as well; the corporation became comfortable using galactic governments to do its dirty work when the time required. The next two hundred years brought relative peace and prosperity.

Still, conflict remained; Kyoshi and Ulysses had, by this point, a nearly 400 year long rivalry by the time of the Volkter Expedition in 2679, with which both corporations had won differing supply and resource contracts. An escalated conflict over a supply convoy that led to open conflict between a Kyoshi and Ulysses corporate supply fleet in 2699, though, crossed the two over into corporate warfare. The Galactic Coalition attempted to mediate the issue, but by this point the Coalition quickly realized both corporations were to the size where legal rulings were more suggestions. Relations between the two corporations remain hostile to this day. It was in this environment that Ryouko oversaw the founding of Shock Trauma Armed Rescue Service branches in Kyoshi’s outlying outposts.

After twenty years of off and on corporate conflict; culminating in the Battle of Terminus IV in 2717, the issue could not skirt the Coalition Assembly any longer; the Assembly forcing mediation between the two corporations, threatening the use of the Coalition Navy if they wouldn’t meet at the table. A line of demarcation was effectively drawn; allowing Ulysses to focus around the Volkter Zone, Grand Tide, and Conglomerate, and allowing Kyoshi to focus within the inner Coalition and Directorate systems. While both corporations routinely crossed these zones, forcing them to ‘their own corners’ would, in essence, stall significant conflict for a hundred years.

The eerie comparisons between the ‘zones of business’ imposed on these rival corporations and the eventual final borders after the Secession War only 95 years later remains a topic of historians and conspiracy theorists alike to this day.

Defining Humanity

It is said upon hearing of the successful development of RRCT in 2727 on Fen, which Kyoshi had a large stake in development of, the then 275 year old Ryouku is quoted as saying, “Soon we'll truly be asking what it means to be Human.”. She never made it back to Earth after seeing a demonstration of the technology on Fen; her yacht being lost in space during the jump.

It is here that the Board of Advisors first stepped in to run the corporation during the three week period of confusion that followed; adopting the title Board of Directors, the Board all but ran the company until the heir to the zaibatsu, Akihito Kyoshi, could be found from a vacation on Merik Reuir with his wife, Ibuki. By the time of Ryouku’s death, living ‘forever’, or at least until someone as powerful as Kyoshi’s CEO “felt the time was right”, was more than possible. Akihito thought he’d never actually assume the company ‘throne’ as a result, or at least he’d have plenty of warning, and by the time he was declared the CEO of Kyoshi, he and his wife had no heirs. Needless to say this was unacceptable to the corporation's old guard, and Asashi Kyoshi is born on March 30th, 2735.

WIP

List of Executives

1. Tanaka Kyoshi 1951-1980
2. Kobayashi Kyoshi 1980-2042
3. Satoru Kyoshi 2042-2204
4. Kanae Kyoshi 2204-2299
5. Aya Kyoshi 2299-2495
6. Ryouko Kyoshi 2495-2727
7. Akihito Kyoshi 2727-27XX
8. Asashi Kyoshi 27XX-281X
9. Board of Directors 281X-Current

Diplomatic Relations

Despite being a Earth-registered megacorporation, Kyoshi maintains diplomatic relations almost like a sovereign state; due to its considerable holdings in multiple galactic empires. Officially, Kyoshi like other corporations will do business with whomever asks, but unofficially favorites are always played.

• Galactic Coalition While Kyoshi comes up as an occasional political goal in some starry eyed representative to 'cull the monopolies', these always go nowhere. Relations maintain generally favorable, as Kyoshi remains an Earth based corporation and, mostly, pays Coalition taxes.
• Rokhandan Directorate Kyoshi's first interstellar business partner, Kyoshi remains favorable with the Directorate who treats it almost as one of its clans.
• Ayun-Ji Kyoshi maintains decent relations with Ayun-Ji by proxy; the same can't be said for any Poliesu shadow governments.
• Federation Kyoshi maintains questionable relations with the Federation; due to its historic business rival Ulysses Industries operating out of Volkter. Relations seem to be cooling; sometines.
• The Holy See The Holy See seems questioning of all corporations; Kyoshi is no exemption. No significant foothold exists.
• House Ajnoria Despite being on opposite sides of the 'stellar curtain', Kyoshi maintains some ties with Ajnoria due to historic co-projects around biomedical research in the 22nd and 23rd centuries, prior to the House's exile from Solar Empire space.

Subsidiaries

Kyoshi Laboratories

Kyoshi's oldest subsidiary, Kyoshi Laboratories dates back to the 21st century; originally for the express purposes of developing RNA technology towards reducing aging, cancer, and other related degenerative diseases. Over the years, Kyoshi Labs has become an all-encompassing biomedical firm, with time making them experts in modern medicine, pharmaceuticals, and eventually RRCT technology. Kyoshi Labs eventually became far more known for their strides in Vatborne technology though, with two primary successful lines of Vatborne seeing mass production today.

Autonomous Laboratory EXperiment Assistant (ALEXA)

Main Article: Autonomous Laboratory EXperiment Assistant

Stemming from a wartime need for manpower during the Secession War, the ALEXA program began out of the now famed Hruldi-Kyoshi labs on Fen. Facing a dire need for lab assistants and other professionals; and with the older MPEU line too expensive and too timely to mass produce, ALEXA's more closely resemble direct clones of their Rokhandan ancestors, but with several key internal differences that allow them to function more as computational assistants. While cheaper than MPEU's to produce, ALEXA's are still vastly more expensive than typical mass produced Vatborne lines, owing to their intense indoctrination into their given tasks and on-board hardware to allow them to function much like lower class Artificial Intelligence despite being 99% organic.

Kyoshi Engineering

Kyoshi Engineering was founded in 2115 to facilitate the creation of an FTL colony ship for the Proxima Centauri expedition. Since then, it has grown into the Kyoshi zaibatsu’s most reliable subsidiary; while Kyoshi Laboratories still take the limelight in progress and development, Kyoshi Engineering’s production of all manner of starships nonetheless brings in the most stable profit. In addition to the company’s duties of implementing and producing Kyoshi Laboratories designs for consumer use, the company operates 42 dockyards orbiting numerous worlds and moons in Kyoshi controlled or influenced systems, and a dozen shipbreaking yards which process and recycle hulks or decommissioned vessels.

Kyoshi-built ships fall into four categories; freighters, exploratory vessels, luxury yachts, and warships.

• Kyoshi freighters have a reputation for being rugged and reliable, if straightforward vessels with no frills out of the dock, though their simple, easily modifiable nature has endeared them to companies that choose to adjust commercial ships to fit their own specifications.
• Kyoshi exploratory vessels are, like their freighters, rugged and reliable, but this is necessary when operating in uncharted or far flung space. They are completely modular in nature, allowing for different lab, engineering, berthing, or various other modules to be added or removed as needed.
• Kyoshi executive and luxury yachts are universally sleek and stylish, combining the finest in comfort and entertainment technologies with the most modern FTL drive and calculation systems, permitting anyone wealthy enough to own one to bypass the established FTL routes at their leisure.
• Kyoshi-built warships differ greatly from their military counterparts; built for tighter budgets than governments have available, they focus on automation of most ship systems for a higher initial investment, but a far lower cost in man-hours over the life of the vessel. Generally a bit smaller than other ships in equivalent classes, they bear a stylized design reminiscent of historical Earth naval ships, with an elevated bridge and superstructure sitting proudly atop the hull.

Kyoshi Farms

Momentum Corporate Security Solutions

Shock Trauma Armed Rescue Service

Vayrand United Logistics