Twilight Atelier Shipbuilding

## Overview

Twilight Atelier Shipbuilding is a civilian shipbuilding company based in the CES, with a high emphasis on quality over quantity.

## Founding

They were founded around 80,000 Earth years ago as a rising number of civilians expressed interest in going to space as a form of leisure. Up until this point, the small population of Paradiso and the lack of places to go, meant there was no need for civilian shipping beyond mining ships. The founder, Daniel Marett, an experienced ship builder for both the navy and mining companies, thought up Twilight Atelier, and decided to pursue making his own business.

### The Beginning

In the beginning Marett had a hard time convincing people to fund his idea for a high quality civilian shipbuilder, people expressing doubt that even with a growing interest in space travel, with no where to really go and a small pool of people rich enough to want to buy their own ships. Using a lot of his own money and scraping buy with a lot less support than he wished, he launched Twilight Atelier and began the process of building his dockyards, a facility hidden inside a large asteroid.

The first ship commissioned was a personal yacht of a very wealthy actor, small and luxurious, but only an intrasystem craft. As the company worked on the ship, a lot of other potential buyers decided to wait and see how the ship would turn out, how the process worked, how the company treated their customer. The first ship launched 3 Earth years after the founding and dock building. The actor was happy, but other customers were still weary of the idea.

### Shaky Grounds

After the first ship was finished, other buyers often expressed interest, but were weary and distrusting. After all, most of them knew space was a hostile environment, and there wasn't really anywhere to go, so what sort of investment would a ship be to them? The company during these times was very shaky, with a lot of employees posed to leave at the first sign that the company was going under and investors nagging Marett to make some progress with his business.

### The Deal

Twilight Atelier's savior came in the form of another start up business, ZeroG Cruise Lines.

ZeroG wanted to make a cruise line that flew in space and around the mining systems, providing luxury and comfort while also providing something no oceanbound ship could, a commanding view of space itself. The company wanted to start with a single cruise liner, but it had no designs, so that would have to be commissioned as well, as well as a promise that ZeroG would service its fleet (if it got that big) only with Twilight Atelier, at a discounted price, no matter who else could in the future.

Marett took the job, personally overseeing the designing of the ship before it was built while ZeroG began to advertise their own business and reserving slots on the ship for future first cruise.

The ship, named the *Stellar Velvet*, was launched and its first cruise was totally sold out, with the next scheduled cruise afterwards about 75% full at time of launch. This boon of money for ZeroG allowed them to commission yet another ship (Which would go on to be named *Stellar Lace,*) and giving the company the income needed to stay afloat while other rich individuals began to express actual interest in buying rather than hesitancy.

## Current Day

Twilight Atelier Shipbuilding is currently a prosperous shipbuilding company. They service and repair all their ships at their yards in their asteroid. They have a deal with the oldest mining Company, Black Opal Mining Company, for deals on various ores needed, and ZeroG still is a loyal customer of theirs.

The current CEO, Thomas Iseni, inherited the company from his mother.

### Focus

The focus of the company is quality, only the finest materials, parts and service goes into making the ship, and outfitting it luxuriously to the taste of the client. Each ship design is triple checked for flaws, weaknesses, anything not up to Twilight Atelier quality standards.

Sip designs can be commissioned (to be built elsewhere, if one wishes) for a price as well, though Twilight Atelier prefers to be the builder of their own designs. Customers can choose to allow the company to keep the design to offer to others, keep a copy solely for the customer or have the design wiped from their databases completely, leaving the only copy the one the customer owns.

Repair facilities are meant solely for ships built by, or in service of, Twilight Atelier. Outside ships are welcome to use them, though at a higher cost.

## Notable Ships

The first luxury cruise spaceships, the *Stellar Velvet* and the *Stellar Lace.*

The Mavar-class luxury liners were built by them, used by ZeroG for the run from Inferno to Sol, as well as ‘pleasure cruise’ around the mining star systems.

The company was commissioned to design the Jublieus by Galactica. Jublieus' design was wiped from Twilight Ateliers system per order from Galactica and classified as government property, and later built by the military.

## Trivia

* Has special permits from the government to build active and passive defenses into their ships, customers just need to clear the purchase with government before they finalize the commission.
* All ships built by them have the logo of the company somewhere on their outer hull. Commissioned designs do not. (Jublieus has the logo on its hull as a thank you to the company for the design, though it is hard to find.)