Gas Miners Guild

The Gas Mining Guild (GMG) is a tight-knit professional organization that acts as the primary supplier of H-Fuel to the four major Houses.

Synopsis
The GMG maintains it's claims on three of the four known Sigma systems (Sigma-13, Sigma-19 and Sigma-59), supporting their own mining bases and even trade lanes in those regions. The main distribution station and administratorial office is located in Honshu, on the conveniently placed Aomori Station. Distribution of H-Fuel consists of transporting the refined gas to Kusari, where it is sold to corporations dealing with redistribution both in Kusari itself and shipping to other houses. Kishiro Technologies is currently the Guild's main partner in H-Fuel distribution.

GMG security forces are noted for their unorthodox security tactics, utilizing a form of guerrilla warfare that uses the limited visibility inside the Crow Nebula to their advantage. The guild is known for using large numbers of strong and agile strike craft to their advantage, while refusing to field capital class vessels altogether.

The Rise of the GMG
The Gas Miners Guild began its operations somewhere between the year 280 and 300 A.S. right after the massive Honshu food crisis of 250 A.S. caused by a failed Alien Organisms dispersion experiment. The crisis led to the bulk of the Honshu population losing their only source of revenue. Seeking new opportunities, the former fishermen started setting up new businesses, mainly gathering and selling hydrogen and helium isotopes from the abundant Crow Nebula to Kusari corporations. Without the modern miracle of jump gates, these journeys would take months before actually bringing in profit. Despite that shortcoming, it wasn't long until the corporate sharks of Kusari realized the gold mine that mining and refining fuel was, and the small Honshu businesses quickly felt the pressure of corporate prospectors encroaching on their mining fields. Rather than ignore this forming competition, the businesses had banded together to create the Gas Miners Guild.

By the start of the next century the GMG claim on the lucrative Sigma-13 system was put in stone by the Kusari government, and the Guild's own gas refining facilities. To enforce their claim even further, the Guild signed an exclusive sales contract with Samura Industries in 330 A.S., forcing Kishiro Technologies to pursue other markets and effectively removing the competition. The construction of the Osaka Storage Facility in 350 A.S. marked the beginning of a period of excessive income for both the GMG and Samura for the next 200 years.

New enterprises
Despite their assured stranglehold on the lucrative H-Fuel trade, the Guild had never stagnated in any one place for long. Opportunities were aplenty in the rich but dangerous Border Worlds, and it wasn't long until the gas miners came in contact with Corsair raiders, spreading their alien trinkets and devices by the dozens. These would be called artifacts. The GMG would quickly become the middleman in the transport of these artifacts to Kusari. A short lived deal that would provide the Guild a grudge against the quasi-legal Hogosha, their Corsair partners and Samura itself - who would be blamed for lack of respect, due to the lackluster intervention on their part.

In the end the GMG stuck to what it was able to do best: obtain H-Fuel. Survey parties were always being sent out across the nebula stretch, randomly combing it in search for more gas deposits. It would be until 550 A.S. before these searches would finally bring fruit. The Sigma-19 system, abundant in gas pockets, was branded as the next logical expansion point for the Guild. With the location now selected came the question of awarding the construction contract. While Samura pushed to renegotiate their H-Fuel contract to a lower price, the GMG decided to scout out the competition instead. After a steady period of negotiations, an agreement is signed in 550 A.S. contracting Kishiro Technologies to finance a Jump Gate to Sigma-19 in exchange for distribution rights. Construction would be completed almost a hundred years later, ending with the Gas Miner Ogashawa being stationed in the system, in the middle of the rich gas field.

Aside from new perspectives, the GMG surveys also brought upon them new enemies. Deep in the radioactive Donryu cloud, recon would find a jump hole into a distant nebula with a very interesting finding within: the planet there contained vast amounts of alien organisms so useful in terraforming uninhabitable worlds. Attempts at further surveying were cut short however due to sudden and unexpected attacks on the Guild prospectors. It wasn't until the attackers spilled over the jump hole into Sigma-19, that the GMG realized they had brought upon them a new faction of pirates: the Outcasts. The nigh constant fighting had since seen the GMG attacking the asteroid base Ruiz, as well as Outcast expansion deep into Sigma-13.

Eighty Years War (589-668 A.S.)
Year 570 A.S. marked the escalation of tensions between Imperial Rheinland and it's closest neighbors. It's factories had managed to create the biggest fleet in all of Sirius, fueled by an enormous and resource hungry industrial machine. The ever increasing fuel demand of such a fleet put an extraordinary strain on the Rheinland economy, which having no fuel deposits of it's own was forced to import almost all of it's H-Fuel from Kusari. Suffering exceedingly large losses to it's treasury, the Rheinland Emperor decided to put his great military to use.

Come 589 A.S. the Rheinland Military had dispatched the bulk of it's fleet to cross the Frankfurt system into Sigma-13, and secure more gas fields for Kruger Minerals to exploit. This unprecedented event would mark the start of the first major conflict in Sirius, later known as the Eighty Years War.

Initially the invaders' progress was successful, with Imperial forces seizing much of the Sigma-13 system and pushing the GMG out of the Gas Miner Naha. Rather than opting for Kusari intervention, the Guild instead utilized Kusari's neutrality in the conflict to it's advantage by basing it's remaining forces out of Aomori Station in Honshu. Using it's knowledge of the terrain and hidden jump holes all across the system, the Guild was able to send in substantial numbers of small strike craft to engage the Rheinlanders in guerrilla warfare inside the nebula, slowly withering down the cumbersome Imperial fleet.

Several long years of conflict later the Rheinland Military had lost all of it's initiative, with it's forces stretched thin and it's H-Fuel reserves catastrophically low due to GMG sabotage. In 660 A.S. the Rheinland navy was pushed away from Naha, when a daring boarding strike by the Guild took the station by force during a massed space assault. GMG forces slowly pushed the immobile Imperial fleets into the Yanagi nebula, until reaching the culmination of the war when the remainder of the Rheinland fleet jumped into Sigma-13 in 668 A.S. for the final shot at taking over the system. This engagement would be known as the Battle of the Yanagi Nebula, and would end with a decisive victory for the Gas Miners Guild, leaving a massive trail of wreckage floating in it's wake.

With the destruction of the remaining Rheinland fleet, the long period of the Eighty Years War was finally over and the Imperial forces had retreated home to face their internal problems. Three years later, in the year 672 A.S. the Popular Revolution had began in Rheinland, forcing the Rheinlanders to finally lose their claim to the Sigma-13 system. The GMG was left to pick up the pieces and begin rebuilding in the region.

Post-war Guild
In the first few years after the war, Sigma-13 was in pieces. Scavengers and pirates roamed the wrecks, looting all the valuables they could find, and the exhausted GMG would not have the numbers to stop them. Eager to get rid of the last remnants of the war from their system, the Guild entered negotiations with ALG Waste Disposal, brought to fruition by Interspace Commerce. The deal would change the terms of the Rheinland defeat, forbidding Military and Police units - as well as ships belonging to Kruger Minerals - from entering Sigma-13. Other Rheinland corporations would be allowed to pass, but not set up bases - with one exception: the ALG would be allowed to set up one base to help with the cleanup of the wreckage from the Yanagi field. Helgoland Station (as the base was christened) was set up at the edge of the scrap field bordering the trade lane to Naha, and would be the very symbol of the Rheinlanders' defeat for years to come.

The eighth century would also mark a period of increasingly difficult relations between the Guild and Samura Industries, who not only would stoically accept the Kusari government's war reparation tax put on the Guild after the defeat of the Rheinlanders, but would be trying to push down the H-Fuel price even further so as to finance their own gas mining project in Hokkaido. Convinced that Samura is abusing and exploiting their agreement, the GMG would finally agree to secretly finance Blood Dragon operations in Hokkaido, in order to stop the H-Fuel mining project there. To further aid the Dragons in their engagement, GMG veteran fighter pilots would pass on their experience in nebula engagements to the revolutionaries. This would allow Dragon fighters to turn circles around the Kusari Navy in both Hokkaido and Honshu, and conduct strikes with more precision and destructiveness than ever. Funding for the Dragon revolutionaries would set the Samura project off schedule for years to come, and would make mining H-Fuel in Hokkaido far more expensive than the costs incurred by the GMG.

By the end of the Nomad War of 800 A.S. the Guild would begin their first negotiations with Kishiro Technologies regarding construction of new gas miners, as well as H-Fuel storage and distribution. Knowing full well that the contract with Samura would soon be over, the representatives of the Guild had no intention of prolonging it. The superior gas miners offered by Kishiro were to severely push down the cost of mining gases as well. By 801 A.S. the GMG agreement with Samura would be over, and an exclusive contract with Kishiro would now be in effect. The next years up to the present day would be extremely fruituous for the Guild. Reaping the profits of cheap H-Fuel and working with Kishiro to overhaul their equipment, the GMG is now free to rise again.

Known Bases

 * Aomori Station, Honshu
 * Gas Miner Naha, Sigma-13
 * Gas Miner Ogashawa, Sigma-19