Youn Independent Merchant's Guild

*Created by: Jay Hailey, Garry Stahl
*Appearance: Starbase 600 Game, Outwardly Mobile.
*Number of Members: approx. 5000 Captains and Ship's Masters
*Nature of Members: Youn ship owners. The "free traders" of Youn. However Youn would class all ship regardless of size as "free traders".
*Organization: Guild. The Guild acts as a rule making body for trade and ship standards. It mediates disrupts between members, and is a clearing house for information on trading conditions, possible jobs, and space hazards.
*Game Role: A source of problems and McGuffins.
*World Role: Omnibus organization for the Youn trading community.
*Relative Influence: Major within the Zantree Alliance. Youn merchants represented the bulk of the available space capable cargo capacity. Less so in the Far Sector at large.
*Public or Secret?: Public.
*Publicly Stated Goal: Grow rich fat and happy. Die of heart failure at an advanced age surrounded by countless great-grandkids and the proper trappings of wealth.
*Relative Wealth: Great, as a group the Guild controled 65% of the trade within the Zantree Alliance. The glory days of monolopy are over. They fight for ever pfenning now. Individuals within the Guild can vary from Merchant prices with fleets of ships to barely solvent bottom feeders.
*Group advantages: Generic advantages of any organization. Strength in numbers. A group reputation, if they have never met you before. A unified public face.
*Special Abilities: Political lobbyists, special regulations, and all the advantages lots and lots of filthy lucre can get you.
*Group disadvantages: Money-grubbing, do anything for a buck capitalists. "But you say that like it was a BAD thing."
*Special disadvantages: 800 years of solid tradition can sometimes get in your way, not help you out.
*Those who favor them: People with goods to move, places to get, or being paid by them.
*Those opposed to them: Socialists, merchants that are not part of the Guild, Ferengi, Orions.
*Area of Operation: The Zantree Alliance, Far Sector, Balmorian Federation, edges of the Klingon Empire and the Kliges'chee implosion zone
*Headquarters Location: Tilayoun
*Public Face: We have it, you need it. You have it, we want it. Will buy, sell, and trade.
*Notable Members: None as of yet.
*History of the Organization: The Youn Independent Merchant's Guild was first concerned with the regulation and protection of merchants on the home world of the Youn. It started as the creation of a single nation to keep its merchant fleet in check. As the world united the Guild expanded until it encompassed all the merchants of Tilayoun.<P>At this point it began to stifle, with no one to compete against but themselves the idea of adventure capital and the lone seafaring merchant was dying. Some merchants even tried the model with large cargo aircraft, to less than satisfying results. Even so the brief period of the airships is held close to the sacred myths of the Guild.</P><P>Space flight came just in time to keep the Guild from becoming a parody of itself. With a sudden frontier of unlimited dimensions opened in front of it the Guild exploded out in gleeful eagerness. In time the Guild became equal to the government itself in power. While the two are technically separate, one seldom works against the interest of the other. "What is good for the Guild, is good for Tilayoun."</P><P>As a result when the question of the Zantree Alliance came up the Guild got certain concessions. Not as much as they would want, but more than the Poong and Olympian merchants would have liked to have seen. As a result, the Youn Guild experienced another period of fast growth.</P><P>The Kliges'chee problem cut into the Guild control of commerce, to the general health of commerce. More ships were needed than the Youn had and the emergency of survival placed the Youn concessions on the shelf. The Guild was determined to get them back of course, but once liberated the Poong and Olympians were unwilling to submit to the concessions again.</P><P>On the positive side, the end of the Kliges'chee problem has meant an opening of new and unexpected markets. The only cloud is the Ferengi and Orions, if anything races more money grubbing that Youn. Perish the thought. The opening of Oz has meant a gateway to the markets of the Balmorian Federation and the Kogari Region (It annoys them that the Aneilogs a near socialist nation controls Reminiscence Station .</P><P>The Youn grumbling about the loss of the Concessions was one of the principle wedge issues that drove the Zantree Alliance down. The Poong, Kee and Olympians joined the Federation, as did a number of lessor members line Minar. The Tabooists drifted back to whatever they do. Any chance of concessions died with the Alliance. They tried to hold the Federation up for concessions in exchange for there all important membership and where told to "go fish".</P><P>The Guild is enjoying a time of unprecedented growth and profit. When they stop grumbling and look at it.</P><P>The only fly in the profitable ointment is the three way trade war with the Ferengi and Orions. This lukewarm situation with shifting alliances and occasional hot flashes has gotten some of the more aggressive houses banned from Oz and by association the Federation at large. An economic death sentence. Yes the other tweo parties are suffering the same fate. The dumb ones at least.
Category:Groups
Category:Political Units
Category:Far Sector
Category:Unfinished Articles