Horizon, how did they get on the court? Options

[MITJA3000+]

I'm guessing there isn't a new corpbook in the horizon (pun not intentional, for real) for the 4th edition, I'm just asking you guys for theories about how Horizon got on the corporate court big ten. Every other megacorp has their long fingers in just about everything, from consumer goods to research and so on, at least almost. Horizon, on the other hand, is described as group that concentrates on pr and media stuff, and somehow I don't think that being one of the Great Big Ten fits their profile. And how did they steal Cross' seat?

[Rotbart van Dain...]

With the power of meta-plot.

[Thain]

They earned their seat the old fashioned way, one shadowrun at a time.

Horizon used the second Matrix crash to make its move. Horizon was a media and PR corporation originally. And a damn good one, considering that Tir Tairngire was a client! Also, even if they are primarily invested in media and entertainment they are also strong in consumer goods, real estate, and pharmaceuticals.

Think of it as a combination of Time-Life, AOL (at its peak), Microsoft, Trump, and Pfizer. Only bigger, meaner, and with many more bodies under the executive washroom's mahogany floorboards. Think of how media dominated the people of Shadowrun are... and tell me the world's biggest PR firm shouldn't at least be as powerful as an arms manufacturer.

Cross Applied Technologies, fyi, went bust during the second crash, and was gobbled up piecemeal by Ares Macrotechnology. Damian didn't swallow every piece of CATco... just enough subsidiaries and holdings to nullify its AAA status. Horizon slid into the still-warm seat shortly after.

Of course, this being Shadowrun where megacorpratations are seemingly incapable of heading to the office supply store for copy toner withoutout hiring a team of `runners, you can bet your Predator II that someo shadow activity surroundd all of this.

[Witness]

Strictly non-canon of course, but in my SR3-SR4 spanning campaign, Horizon started out as the producers of a popular Matrix game that spawned an AI.
Later on, that AI adopted the guise of the Dissonance to cause Crash 2.0, so Horizon was his little toy corporation and made it into the big leagues partly because of prior knowledge of the crash and partly because of the endeavours of one of his team / one of my players, who due to weird experimental cyberware had turned into some kind of autistic-savant accountant / financial wizkid. Personally I hope they never elaborate enough to contradict my (or your) take on it!

[PBTHHHHT]

[Thain]

CATco was always the "Lil'est AAA" and was dwarfed by every other one of the AAA's. But even the smallest AAA has more resources than God, so the musical chairs would have been confined to those who could afford to play the game: the AA's.

I'd say NeoNET (the whole Fuchi/Novatech/Erika/Transys Neuronet boondogle) would have been able to afford to make a play, but was waaay to busy just trying to keep their head above water from the Crash blacklash to do it.

Zeta-Imperial Chemicals (Zeta-Imp Chem) had the cash to have done it...

Sol Media is a natural rival for Horizon, and Marina Nidos likes to take chances (plus the Aztlan connection)...

Esprit Industries would be interesting (as S-K is on the board, but its still a seperate corp)...

Chrysler-Nissan and/or Ford are big enough in SR to make a play, but as a Michigander I have trouble picturing them as healthy companies ;P

DocWagon, Lone Star, and MET2000 are all healthy AA megacorps. But I think they are all a bit to specialized to make the jump into AAA. Of them, I think DocWagon has the best shot, and might have hired an "expolitory commitee" to investigate the competion.

There is a lot of good runs to be had from the whole thing, and I'm sure that the game is still being played after the fact.

[Demonseed Elite]

Chrysler-Nissan hasn't been a healthy company at pretty much any point in Shadowrun's history. They've been limping along after a bad merger between Eastern and Western companies that have been at their own throats since. This is mentioned in Shadows of Asia, and was mentioned elsewhere before that.

Monobe and Yakashima are two other AAs that might have conceivably made the jump into the Corporate Court, but there's politics there. Either one of those would have bolstered the Japanacorp faction and the other AAAs wouldn't have wanted that. Remember that it not only takes the financial power to get into the Corporate Court, but it also requires political influence. The existing AAAs jockey to get their favorite horse added to the open seat, and it's possible they all saw Horizon as the least threatening (or most useful) of the options.

Oh, also:

[Thain]

[MITJA3000+]