Schwarzstein Metall

Schwarzstein Metall is an ancient mining and metalworking conglomerate headquarted on Tiegel IV. It was once a major Defense provider of combat vehicles for the Rim Worlds Republic but suffered massive damage during the Amaris Civil War that destroyed most of its major war factories. In modern times, it remains a major producer of alloys and weapon systems, but no longer produces full vehicles.

## Company Information

### Primary Sites

* Tiegel
* Grenze

### Product Ranges

* Mining and Construction
* Alloys and Armor
* Weapon Systems

### Specialty

Advanced Metalworks

Schwarsteinn Metall was founded a scant sixteen years after Tiegel IV's initial colonization by private interests from Terran Entrepreneurs who sought to gain great wealth far away from Terran Space, avoiding both the general chaos of the Terran Alliance descending into a failed state - and then a dictatorship under the nascent Hegemony - as well as its overbearing taxation and rules. Ironically, though it began as a ruthlessly materialistic and corpocratic entity, after a few decades many of its higher ups would 'go native', influenced by the Neo-Pagan spirituality widespread among the original Tiegel settlers.

From the start, Schwarzstein Metall focused on civilian sectors of mining, metallurgy and construction. Though some small-arms subsidiaries existed, they remained relatively minor until the second half of the 24th century, with civilian industries representing a much larger percentage of SM's activities and profits. This changed only when the government of Tiegel IV became increasingly wary of their neighbors in the Rim World Republic and offered incentives to expand the defense sector. This concern would prove vindicated as the Age of War erupted throughout the Inner sphere a mere two decades afterwards.

During its first 50 years of existence, Schwarzstein Metall became a common sight on many worlds of the northern periphery, including many worlds of the RWR, as it was at the forefront of mineral prospection and extraction, soon adding construction and limited terraforming to its belt. With so many worlds struggling to locate mineral resources - the general incompetence of the prospectors of the time lead to the long-enduring myth that the Republic had 'no mineral resources' - SM was systematically sought after to locate, secure and exploit deposits across the entire regional sector, propelling it to a household name long before Tiegel IV itself even began doing any serious trade with the Republic.

Starting in 2388, Schwarzstein Metall's Tiegel IV plant introduced the first of the Golem line of tracked, fuel-cell based combat vehicles, which would become synonymous with Tiegel's planetary defense force, the Granite Demons. SM's combat vehicles provided considerable amounts of deterrence against invasion especially due to their use of a then-secret armor alloy that greatly outlasted the Primitive Armor common on Age of War machines of the time, and was more in line with later Standard Armor.

From this point onward, the company would experience almost four centuries of growth and consolidation. At its peak, Schwarzstein Metalls had assets, subsidiaries or branch offices on nearly a hundred worlds between the Rim Worlds Republic and the nearby Lyran Commonwealth. The Tiegel System, however, remained its most important world, as the rare metals in that system were almost ludicrously abundant. The Grenze system also became an important key sector as it is where Schwarzstein Metall built the Rim Worlds Republic's first orbital Endo-Steel mixing factory after that vital technology began to proliferate. Grenze also became the site of SM's largest Aerospace-Grade Ferro-Aluminum and Ferro-Carbide foundries.

The Reunification Wars were little more than a speedbump for the conglomerate, as Tiegel IV caused considerable difficulties for the SLDF to occupy due to the ferocity of its native defenders, and damage was shockingly minimal due to the sheer durability with which major buildings are constructed on the charred volcanic world. Indeed, with perimeter walls of reinforced concrete and composite matrices meters thick, even Mech-grade weapons were all but impotent besieging the immense war factories that had developed over two centuries. It was only during the Amaris Civil War which tore apart the whole of the Inner Sphere that Schwarzstein Metall's sprawling tank factories were destroyed by SLDF supreme commander Alexander Kerensky using massive orbital bombardment against the heavily hardened target.

The loss of the highly centralized and massively scale-efficient megafactories was a major blow to Schwarzstein Metall's defense branch, which found itself nearly dispossessed overnight. Thankfully, the civilian branches ensured the company would avoid bankruptcy. In the wake of the massive devastation from the Civil War, and the subsequent Succession Wars, there was always a need for reconstruction and for more resources to be fed to the unrelenting war machines. SM never rebuilt any new megafactories like that which had been built on Tiegel, and opted to let other manufacturer draw the attention of angry warlords by manufacturing Mechs and tanks. For its part, they were more than content simply making the weapons and armor alloy for said Mechs and tanks.

In this period where the civilian half of the corporation took center stage, Schwarzstein Metall promoted itself as a center of advancement and learning in the field of material sciences, sponsoring several universities from Ladenburg to Tharkad in order to promote the advancement of sciences. After its foundries producing advanced Ferro-Fibrous armor for the Lyran Commonwealth were targeted not once but twice by the Draconis Combine with tactical nuclear strikes, the corporation decided to take on a far more discrete approach to its research, discontinuing the sale of such advanced materials to the Inner Sphere, pretexting the know-how and machinery lost, while working in secret to preserve knowledge.

It was only with the rediscovery of many technologies deemed lost through the Helm Memory Core that they were able to operate openly once again. The appearance of the Clans, and their subsequent takeover of Tiegel IV would only serve to stimulate Schwarzstein Metall's research into material science, improving their formulas to match the Falcon 'occupier's own with an almost disconcerting speed and ease. With Tiegel IV ultimately ending up under the control of the Ashen Corsacs, it would then go on to perfect and mass-produced several experimental projects it had been working on since the Succession Wars.

## Branches

### SM-Mercury

Named after the Roman god of profit and commerce, SN-Mercury is the branch of Schwarzstein Metall dedicated to mining and construction. The oldest and most widespread, it made its name providing heavy machinery of all kinds to frontier and developing worlds and often set itself up to remain a primary supplier to local ventures, sometimes purchasing planetary deposits entirely to add them to its ever growing resources. The most impressive produces of SN-Mercury however are its line of large support vehicles and IndustrialMechs used for mining and construction, with some even qualifying as Superheavy vehicles.

### SM-Vulcan

Though the smallest branch in terms of product range and visibility, SM-Vulcan is nonetheless a major component of Schwarzstein Metall that straddles both the military and civilian sectors. Named after the Roman god of the forge and volcanoes, it is an entire branch dedicated exclusively to production and research into metals and alloys. Despite appearing very minor to the outside observer, it boasts several hundreds of alloys, which can be further reinforced with various, advanced methods of metal foaming of composite matrices. It supplies everything from the ubiquitous structural steel used for construction in low-tech worlds to large billets of Endo-Steel that can be worked and pressed into the complex shape of a BattleMech's internal skeleton.

### SM-Mars

The youngest - though not by much - branch of Schwarzstein Metall is named after the Roman god of War, Mars. It was once reputed for producing Heavy and Assault combat vehicles with heavy arms and armor, lacking in speed and fancy high-tech equipment, but with a rugged and reliable simplicity to its systems and weapons. The massive, sprawling final assembly plants were destroyed by the SLDF on Tiegel IV during the Amaris Civil War, and lay in ruin to this day centuries later, but the (somewhat) smaller plants that produced weapons and sub-components escaped the destruction.

Though originally focusing on simple and straight-forward Auto-cannons, LRMs and Lasers, high demand for Gauss Rifles and PPCs forced it to branch out into such designs as well, eventually becoming the 'weapons supermarket' of the the Rimward Periphery. Whatever it is that one wanted, chances are that Schwarzstein Metall had at least one model of it, though more likely 3 to 6. This state of affairs only expanded after the Clan Invasion, as the takeover of Tiegel IV by the Corsacs allowed SM to upgrade its weapon production lines to Clan-Tech level across the board, introducing many new weapons such as ATMs and Heavy Lasers, and even performing industrial espionage and retro-engineering IS-base technologies such as Heavy Gauss and Plasma using samples acquired through the Diamond sharks.