Public The Umbrella Effect

[Liin Terallo]

The thought of contacting The Lord of Hunger had occurred to me several times. Each time, I dismissed it. It was ridiculous, really. I had been in the same room with him only recently at the auction. I had spoken to him before. He wasn't some distant figure whose identity existed only in corporate reports and rumors. If I wanted answers about N&Z, I could simply ask him.

That alone should have made the decision easier. Instead, the very thought of reaching out to him left me with a sense of unease that I couldn't quite explain. I had no evidence that he intended me harm. He hadn't threatened me persay. He hadn't attempted to take anything from me at the auction. In fact, our interaction there had been remarkably ordinary considering who he was and what I knew about the corporation he controlled.

And yet the idea of opening a private channel to him made something in me recoil. I didn't like that. I trusted evidence and patterns; things that I could observe and test. Fear without a true identifiable cause was much harder to work with.

I set the datapad down and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Perhaps I'm simply being paranoid." That was entirely possible. But it was also possible that paranoia was exactly what one should experience when considering contacting the person at the top of a corporation one suspected of quietly manipulating governments across the Galaxy.

There was another complication. N&Z had wanted me before. Not for my expertise in the ordinary sense, but for the work I had done with synthetic Force sensitivity. I had spent years making certain that research could not become a commodity. I had made promises about it. I had gone to considerable lengths to keep it out of the hands of the very people who might use it without understanding what they were creating. Reaching out to the Lord of Hunger voluntarily would mean placing myself within his reach again.

Perhaps nothing would happen. Perhaps he would simply answer my questions. Perhaps I would discover that I had spent weeks worrying about a conspiracy that existed mostly inside my own head.

But there was another possibility. And that was that I would be giving N&Z exactly what it needed to put it's hands around me again. I wasn't willing to gamble my freedom on satisfying my curiosity.

Tertius C. Nargath was another possibility. He had once been my superior. He had hired me. He knew the corporation from the inside and would almost certainly know more about it's structure than I do now. But Tertius was also too close to the problem. And I had not spoken to him since our last encounter had left me with a particular variety of social embarrassment that I had no desire to repeat. I sighed. "Apparently I have a talent for making simple problems complicated."

There was another that I could contact. Balun Dashiell came to mind first. My former bodyguard and friend had known me well enough to understand when I was frightened even when I hadn't admitted it myself.

And then there was the simplest solution of all; don't start with either of them. Find people who had no reason to protect N&Z. People who could listen to what I had found without immediately accepting my conclusions. People who might have seen pieces of the same pattern from entirely different directions.

I opened a new posting for the holonet and began to write. I wasn't going to call it a conspiracy. Not yet. I would describe what I knew. The subsidiaries. The government contracts. The conflicts in which N&Z seemed to profit regardless of which side prevailed. The uncomfortable frequency with which the corporation appeared wherever influence, reconstruction, or military procurement was involved. Then I would ask the only question I could honestly defend. Was it coincidence? Or was there something underneath it?

My finger hovered over the transmit control. For one brief moment, I thought about opening a private channel to the Lord of Hunger instead. But the feeling of unease returned immediately. So I closed the thought away. "I'll deal with him later."

I then sent the posting. For now, I needed sympathetic ears, and not another cage.

Tags: OPEN

Spoiler

This is in addition to the LFG that I had put up earlier. Anyone tagged in this post are allowed to join in, or anyone else wanting to investigate either Liin's investigation or N&Z itself along side her. Any questions, just send me a message

 

[The Lord of Hunger]

There was little within the corporate sphere to slip under the N&Z's attention. They didn't call themselves the biggest or the most powerful of corporations, others had far more military strength and economic weight, but the N&Z had a reach which was nearly unmatched. Ofcourse such a reach wasn't grown overnight, nor was it by any means achieved in a normal fashion. The name of the game was espionage, media control and ofcourse taking care of loose ends without remorse, without hesitation.

Alas, under Tertius Nargath's tutelage, the corporation might have flourished economically, but the reach of its shadows had diminished, its name no longer commanded fear as much as it used to, but things had changed. The consolidations in the outer rim, the successful push for Mahporeem to grow beyond its own planetary system, the renewed vigor in which warships left its shipyards and the strange hold the company began to acquire within the High Republic through various shell companies and equity firms was a sign that with Tertius out of the picture, the old roots of the corporation had returned, the enigma had strengthened and the secrecy had grown to become intertwined with its daily operations.

At the head of this all, where the Directors; enigmatic figures which seemed to have a dual role, with some being very visible and open, while others maintained a silence, covering themselves in the vast shadow the corporation had created. Her , Karl Von Strauss , Ronhar Tane each a director, each with authority and power akin to a grand moff within the corporation's sphere of influence, each growing not only their own hold over the company, but also the company's own reach. At the top, there was the CEO, Amalia Visconti | Mira Rhory who whilst being the most visible and known face of the corporation, had a past as being one of the handlers of the corporation's secrets, the former assistant to the former chairman, who went missing when he returned to Sith held space and whose disappearance has sparked the distrust the corporation now openly held towards the Sith Empire.

Yet all of those names, all of those faces were nothing, they were but pawns in a game controlled by a single entity; The Lord of Hunger, who upon his return had taken himself a new name going along with his younger face, a name to hide his real ancestry and instead portray himself as the new chairman, appointed by the very same financial group he owned outright and which had taken control over the stakes once held by House Nargath from Eriadu.

AND he knew, he knew as of late, there were forces working against the company, some from within, some from outside, but he didn't mind. Not because the lack of their effort, but because only he knew the very depth of the corporation's secrets, for he had made the corporation rise from the void, he had it grown to the juggernaut it had been prior to the second hyperspace war and he would once again turn it into a company one did not dare to defy...