Home Sweet Porg

[Janick Beauchamp]

Now that Griet was able to get the business portfolio of Utai Magic Circle sorted out, she thought of another opportunity for expanding the portfolio. However, she read about, from the distance business courses she was taking from Zalera Business School, whose physical campus was on Exocron, about the pitfalls of expanding a business in unrelated directions. For each Sith Inquisitor, who successfully entered the ergonomic assessment market after starting out as a news company, being the main one in the Caldera, there were failures. She stood with Janick, writing on the business datapad with Jane's signature ready to be affixed to it. But upon realizing that Porgs were sentients, she had to change the content so that the recipients would actually agree, while the execution would only be slightly changed. Instead of farming Porgs, they would use Porgs for wellness purposes. Once Janick was done getting the closing content on the holomail, Griet pressed the resulting Send button for some informal letter of transmittal... and began thinking as to how Utai Magic Circle's stake would be funded, some sort of futures on a restricted material pwehaps.

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ATTN: [member="Lord Mettallum"], [member="Saab f'Czeht'sk"]

Subject: Porg wellness retreats

I have a business proposal for you: since Porgs are getting fashionable to have around across the galaxy, we could get together and run one health retreat each in locations of your choosing, with Porg staff helping the retreats' patients deal with stress while reconnecting with nature. We would like to discuss more details, such as the location, funding and the scale of the Porg wellness retreats.

Janick Beauchamp
Owner, Utai Magic Circle

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[Lord Mettallum]

Lord Mettallum was surprised when he was sent a business proposition to create a Health retreat staffed with progs. Lord Mettallum had a little laugh as this was clearly just a way to exploit porgs like the many health retreats that exploit droids, this however did not deter Lord Mettallum as he knew that lately Porgs have been talked about everywhere for no apparent reason and as if the Maker has just created them as a marketing tool. Lord Mettallum decided this should be a very good investment as long as he can get one on loronar. One thing that did surpise him about this proposal was that it was made by Utai Magic Circle which to Lord Mettallum's knowledge creates force infused products. Lord Mettallum decided he can ask that question during a meeting with them.

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ATTN: [member="Janick Beauchamp"]

Subject: Re: Porg wellness retreats

I Lord Mettallum have received your proposal and it has intrigued me and as you are correct that the interest in Porgs has recently sky rocketed I Lord Mettallum will be happy to meet up and see if this "health" retreat is worth investing in. Now I Lord Mettallum must ask when and where a business meet will be and if any other companies will be there.

Lord Mettallum
Metal Lord, Foundry Of The Maker

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[Janick Beauchamp]

Since Griet could tell that she couldn't expect a response from that Verpine just yet, she concluded it might be best to hold a separate meeting with [member="Saab f'Czeht'sk"], while the Metal Lords were ready to host a health retreat on Loronar. But her superior, Janick, knew as well as anyone else that using a risky financial instrument as collateral in a business venture made the venture equally risky, if the seed money came from only one source. Janick might have a sound rationale for those Porg wellness retreats, she might spot an opportunity, but she probably means a wellness retreat as a wellness resort, much as would be the case for the Runinn-Zhanmud in the Luminoss region on Yuuzhan'tar, she thought. For this operation, Griet wrote the message on the datapad, that is, the Magic Circle's reply to the Foundry of the Maker, and then runs it through Janick prior to hit the Send button, with the final responsibility for the actual sending.

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ATTN: [member="Lord Mettallum"]

Subject: Re: Porg wellness retreats

For the meeting, we will have one on Loronar in three days. If these details don't work, please let me know.

Janick Beauchamp
Owner, Utai Magic Circle

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[Lord Mettallum]

It seemed [member="Janick Beauchamp"] was someone who liked to take risks as you normally find companies having meetings setup on their own turf and so they would have some sort of mental advantage in negotiations but she had setup the negotiations in Lord Mettallum's territory and one would have assumed already had the location booked before she even had confirmation that FOTM would be interested in such a business venture, she was a true gambler indead. A few hours later Lord Mettallum realised she never gave the adress of meeting so Lord Mettallum who had access to most of Loronar's government information decided to check the system for any facility booked by Utai Magic Circle. After a day of searching the database he was able to find a facility that seemed to be booked by Utai Magic Circle.

Once the day came Lord Mettallum went to the facility where the business meeting was assumed to be hosted at. Lord Mettallum only had a few civilian body guards he had hired to protect him as he felt no need to bring his more intimidating GP Series Guardian Droids. Should Lord Mettallum have gone to the wrong place he would quickly message Janick asking for the correct location which hopes would not happen.

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

Janick was a gambler all right; managing a portfolio of futures worth five billion credits was akin to professional gambling. She had to set aside some time to watch over the markets, and comb the markets for any significant movement, usually not making more than one move on a particular component of the portfolio on any given day. Luckily, for that part of the job, she kept track of the price at which she bought those futures, and if it is worth selling it in her mind, that is, close her position, she will. It was a big gamble, but for her concept to work, she needed some in several areas of the galaxy, and Loronar was the Core Worlds one. Some more elsewhere in the galaxy, such as the forests of the Fourth Moon of Utapau, were in the plans. Once she arrived at the designated facility as booked by the Magic Circle, which was pretty diminutive by virtue of the small number of civilian guards, whom she expected at least one of them to be taking the minutes, she realized that [member="Lord Mettallum"] was there somewhat in advance.

"Welcome, milord. I trust you are willing to discuss the projected market for a Porg health retreat?"

 

[Lord Mettallum]

"Thank you and yes I Lord Mettallum have come to speak about this new market you have informed me about. Now I Lord Mettallum am sure you understand that this new market is quite a risk and could easily fail so I Lord Mettallum will ask you a simple question. Why should I Lord Mettallum invest money into this Porg Health Retreat market that you have spoken about"

While yes the idea of the Porg Health Retreat intrigued Lord Mettallum and yes he would love to have one on loronar the biggest problem with investing in such business ventures would be that it could easily turn into a bad investment and cause Lord Mettallum to lose quite a bit of credits. One of the main reasons he could see this buisness venture fail is the fact that the retreat was going to be staffed by porgs which are small birds that would probably drop any food or drinks they were meant to serve to customers.

[member="Janick Beauchamp"]

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

"Porgs are sentient beings, and they have proven that they have the ability to make nearly every organic species unwind from a wide variety of non-Porg stresses. Usually sentients would not drop food or drinks on other sentients"

She began to put on the table the very scientific, peer-reviewed articles that were conducted on the topic of how effective Porgs were at easing stresses in other sentient species. Loronar being densely populated, there was enough demand there to sustain even a small health retreat; perhaps [member="Lord Mettallum"] preferred to do it that way. So she decided to switch gears and instead buy futures based on the stock of the venture to base said venture on, essentially taking out short-term loans from itself, collateralized against the venture. However, in such risky markets, it was a viable alternative to taking out loans from banks, knowing that the interest rates will be much higher, and more expensive. If the bank allowed them to take out loans, but in her experience, it is better to reserve loans for expansion in case it does take off, especially if the first-mover window is still open.

"That said, it is better to start on a small scale, with a small number of patients that can be accommodated at any one time. If a small-scale operation simply cannot keep up with the demand, then you can consider expanding, on your terms"

 

[Lord Mettallum]

" I Lord Mettallum feel like small scale would only be used for a test and if this health retreat goes well I Lord Mettallum would be happy to invest alot more into it."

Some things still bothered Lord Mettallum about this and they were mainly how the porgs would be treated since it would be easy to confuse this operation as a way to enslave porgs even if they were not being enslaved and the other problem would be customers who would come to the health resort who would probably be rich snobs not thinking porgs are sentient and abuse the poor porgs

"Now I Lord Mettallum think you do not understand most sentients have hands instead of wings or other body parts when serving drinks and not wings like a porgs so we would need specialised equipment for them and now the main problem I Lord Mettallum now see with this is that activist would mistake the porgs as slaves and our customers will mistake the porgs as non sentients and abuse them which would be bad for my reputation. How do you suppose we make sure both of these things don't happen"

[member="Janick Beauchamp"]

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

"Security will be trained to ensure that the clients won't mistreat Porgs; clients found to be mistreating Porgs will have to forfeit and then some. Because Porgs are, in fact sentient, the care standards for the Porgs will be more stringent than what's normally in use for animal-assisted therapy using avians"

The tricky part. How to make sure the Porgs aren't being enslaved. I must confess my knowledge of animal-assisted therapy is very, very limited, and that standards of animal care are pretty much all I know about it, she thought, while being reminded that, in the world of animal-assisted therapy, certain animals worked best for a specific set of conditions. Yes, [member="Lord Mettallum"]'s concerned were legitimate. Yes, Porg-sized avians were regularly used for animal-assisted therapy when avian creatures were used. But exactly what those standards are, she had little to no clue, and the administrators will likely know better. So at least one of the admins should be familiar with what those standards are, probably the head honcho and the talent manager would need it most, even though not everybody in the management team might be. Then again, exactly in what way those care standards would be more stringent will depend on what the differences between taking care of sentients and non-sentient avians used for AAT are.

 

[Lord Mettallum]

"Well while this business venture has some problems I Lord Mettallum can't assume you would have had everything fully planned when you decided to pitch it to me and we have plenty of time to iron put the plan and make something great that would bring in the credits. Now you have pretty much sold me on this pitch and since something like this can be a costly venture to make sure its a high quality health retreat I Lord Mettallum will offer 5.2 million credits in return of a health retreat on Loronar and 20% equity also I Lord Mettallum would be happy to provide security to all the health retreats that are created and maybe train some porgs as security too. Any objections?"

Lord Mettallum had been somewhat convinced this could work and with any investment it was a risk that had to be taken for credits since they do say only one in four investments turn a profit. Lord Mettallum of course would be hoping that this would be the one to make a profit.

[member="Janick Beauchamp"]

 

[Janick Beauchamp]

"I do not have any objections"

This meant that Lord Mettallum would assume complete ownership of the Loronar operation, and the remaining 21.6 million would be borne out of the Verdict's futures portfolio, with that end of the seed money, the operations in the Colonies, Inner, Mid and Outer Rims essentially coming out of a loan to itself, she thought. With that said, another of the civilian guards hired by [member="Lord Mettallum"] drafted up a MOU detailing all the terms of the business deal whereby Lord Mettallum would provide security to all locations, and have full ownership of the Loronar operation for 20% equity, at the cost of 5.4 million. The document was printed in two copies, the original and a carbon copy, with Janick intending to keep the white copy and the Meta Lord keeping the yellow copy. The Verdict's crew will surely be grateful if the Outer Rim location was on the Fourth Moon of Utapau, also contributing to the benefits of low gravity, or so Janick's train of thought would lead her to think. Or to Kal'shebbol/Karideph. She hands the tentative document to the Metal Lord...