Municipal and Corporate Law

>Not too many of the newblood seem familiar enough with how Lonestar operates, or exactly how and why the Corps operate. Here's a bit of an abridged 101 on it.

>Alk

Lonestar and Seattle

Lonestar holds an exclusive contract with the Seattle metroplex. Deal with it. Whatever you may think of the 'Star, they have the weight of municipal law behind them. Granted, this may tie their hands up a bit in some matters (after all, the UCAS still holds to the archaic notion of 'innocent until proven guilty', and other such 'rights') but it's what they're paid to handle. Lonestar is the official law enforcement agency. They only answer to the UCAS (and to the Corp Court).

Now, Lonestar is a corporation. Just like Novatech or Renraku. They care about the bottom line and public face above all else. By extention, this means that they do care about matters of upholding the law, protecting the peace, and serving the public - to the point that those matters determine whether or not they get to keep their contract with the city.

Knight Errant, amongst too many others are just all-too-eager to jump on any smidgeon of failure or lost face to drive the point home about how other services should be considered in their stead. Lonestar doesn't want that. So they do what they can to ensure the above - to the extent that it affects the bottom line.

Corporate Court (abridged)

To understand the Corp Court a bit better, you need to understand a brief history of corporate warfare in the aftermath of Corporate Extraterritoriality. Being extraterritorial means that a given corporation is not beholden to any given state authority. Even corporate executives have a measure of diplomatic immunity.

At first, nobody cared when some of the smaller corps launched into all-out, full-scale war with each other. Then, everyone else saw a particularly alarming trend: War costs money. War causes collateral damage, which costs money. War makes bad PR, which costs money. Most importantly, even the 'smaller' corps were large enough to send ripples across the pool when they were splashing. Guess what happened when war cut into the bottom line.

There is a bit of history about it that can be read up on later, but the long and short of it is that the big boys got together and told everyone else to toe the fraggin line. When bad things happened to the people who took issue, everyone else fell in pretty quick.

The Corporate Court rules with soft power. It has no direct resources of it's own, no army, or anything of the like. The rules are followed and the big boys play along because the alternative (war, i.e. losing money) is undesirable. Everyone below the big ten don't have much of a choice.

There are 3 basic rules that all Corps abide by.

1. Don't go to war.
   • Corps hate losing money. Being above the world of nation politics means that corps have to foot their own bill for the costs of fighting a war. The solution? Don't do it. It's expensive.
   • The Big Ten have managed to keep a reasonably tight lid on this. To the extent that the collective bottom line isn't threatened, they allow the boat to rock a bit - though kept well and safe from tipping over.
   • This has effectively shifted the weight from large scale, pan-corporate warfare...To low-intensity, sustained warfare involving fully deniable assets (see rule 3). Yay.
2. Don't overthrow a national government.
   • Utilities? Logistics? Law? Governance? All of the low-end, non-money-making civil drek is what governments are for. It costs money for a corp to run that stuff itself.
   • Corps overthrowing nations also makes for horrifically bad PR, leading other nations to be weary of the corporate power structure.
   • Total corporate control of government? OK. Total corporate takeover of government? Bad. The line is a bit hard to see, but it's there, and it's not to be crossed.
3. If you break it, pay for it.
   • If you destroy, steal, kill, or otherwise damage another corp's property (assets, personell, etc...all the same really. Their 'stuff') and your target can prove it, then you have to foot the bill. Period.
   • Moral of the story: Don't get caught. Use Shadowrunners.

'Penalties'

There is a saying: "A law that isn't enforced, isn't the law." Toward that end, there -are- penalties issued to offending corporations that are found to be in violation of the laws above. How severe the punishment is, of course, depends on the size and status of the corporation in question.

• For a non-AAA Corp (i.e. not the big guys).
  • The court issues a mandate to one of it's member corps to punch said offender in the face.
  • Said corp is issued a set ammount of funding from the Zurich Orbital Bank (more on that later) to finance it's operations. The mandate specifies the total costs in damages to be rendered to the offending corp.
  • The mandated corp better not render more than the allotted damages to the offender.
• For a AAA Corp
  • In the case that one of the big megacorps is found in violation...
    • For minor infractions, the Zurich Orbital Bank may increase the offending corp's fees for various services (such as higher interest rate on loans).
    • For major infractions, two other AAA corps may be mandated to render damages, just as the case for lesser corps.
• For extreme transgressions...
  • The court issues the Omega Order.
    • The order is essentially an open mandate for all AAA corps to punish the offender.
    • This is the corporate equivalent to a death sentence.

>That's the cycle of life. People deal with Lonestar, Lonestar answers to UCAS. Corps answer to the governments that they're not supposed to be overthrowing (because the Corp Court will back the government's decision if it's legit).

>Alk