Excessive pardons, but I must admit that I don't own Corporate Download. So, that leaves me to wonder. What exactly is the Corporate Court? I have an image in my head of an orbital space station (The Zurich Orbital, ja) where corporations come to argue their case in front of some freakishly old super-cybered creepy men who float around in zero-G all day and talk cryptically and remind me of Guild Navigators from Dune. Anybody feel like enlightening me?

Corp Court is actually just representitives from the Big 8 (or so). You don't have to live in Zurich-Orbital, but most of them do just because. Not all of them are men, nor old. They don't hold a lot of real power, because they lack the full funding power and a good police force. Think of them as the UN for Corporations and nothing more.

The Court and its home are also an easter egg poking fun at right wing conspiracy theorists, remember the the orbitals full acronym is ZOG.

Correction, thats the full name of the bank, which is presumably also the full name of the orbital.

Yeah, until something happens the corps have a vested interest in, in which case all eyes are suddenly on the station and some really high powered drek goes down. For example, when the rest of the big 8 (as was) ganged up on Aztechnology and forced them to back down over certain... actions they undertook. The Court issued a Special Order (it has a proper name but I can't remember what it is) which basically licenses open season on that corp by its competitors.

The Courts primary purpose is to prevent all out Corp War because, frankly, apart from the Human cost, its just bad for business. If for this reason only, they are actually VERY important in the right circumstances and it and everyone who is a personal member wields considerable influence, if not direct power. The people chosen to represent the court are people who have reached the top but for whatever reason aren't trusted to be earthside or with an active executive post, senior board members who've chosen to push their longevitiy as far as it will go up in zero g and therefore ended up with the job, or sometimes, especially with people like Saeder Krupp, they are quite young and have proven themselves in some way adept at politics, which is what its all about at Z-O.

These people rarely have any direct influence in the shadows, although many of them have plenty of projects going earthside if you know what I mean, but the decisions that are made here may well have serious ramifications down the well. If you can exert some kind of influence over a triple A's Court Rep, you can exert influence on events on a global scale. However, interfering with a Court Rep probably carries at least a mandatory Special Order against the corp which instigated it so only the very top level runners would be involved if it ever happened.

As the name says, the Corporate Court is a court. They're the only legal authority to settle dispute between extraterritorial megacorps, or between states and megacorps. Its main power is to decide which corporations are big and stable enough to be granted extraterritoriality.

It counts thirteen justices, coming from megacorporations' legal service, or something similar, and representing them. A new one is elected every six months by the AAA megacorporations, each vote weighted according to its economic power. In turn, having a representative on the Court makes the corp a AAA. There are seven permanent member corporations, who can't lose their last representative: Ares, Aztechnology, Mitsuhama, Novatech, Renraku, Saeder-Krupp and Shiawase. Yamatetsu, Wuxing and Cross are non permanent members.

By status, each AAA corp is also entitled a share of the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinshaft Bank, which brings the money to apply the Court decision. I mentions that because the "Z-OG" acronym stands for the bank, while "Z-O" stands for the orbital station on which both the Corporate Court and the Bank are installed. But as says above, the Court members, as the bank's directors, may live on Earth and attend most of their meeting through the Matrix.

Or you get to post in Shadowland as a respected person...

Only respected? With a rep for managing Mission: Impossible style runs like that I'd expect the Johnsons to be using a waiting list just to offer you jobs.

As I took it, the Corporate Court can't actually do anything themselves, but they can allow members (or a coalition of members) to do things. In "TechnoBabel" the court's powers, meetings and the like are explained through the narrative (and you can get Technobabel through Interlibrary Loan at your local library; Public, or Private).

Yea, the court doesn't DIRECTLY affect the shadows, but they sure do affect them indirectly. When a case is before the court, shadowruns increase exponentially. Defense hiring to cover their asses, Prosecution hiring to get the dirt... you get the picture.

Moonstone-

I was understating.

Shadows of Williams' Hardwired are always nice.

The "special order" someone mentioned is the Omega Order -- basically, it's open season on the victim. I think there's only once or twice that's happened. The Ensenada incident with Aztlan, where the corps pounded the hell out of some Azzie military targets when Aztlan tried to claim control of the Panama Canal, wasn't an Omega Order. Just the corps showing Aztlan who's boss. Full details can be found in the Aztlan sourcebook, if you're lucky enough to have it (like me!).

Or me!

And man, they blasted that one base up north.

But that was an Omega order, unrelated to the Canal

IIRC, of course.

Operation: Reciprocity wasn't an Omega Order. It was just a bitchslap by the Other Seven in response to Aztlan nationalizing everything inside, leading to the Veracruz Settlement and the "arms-length" rule requiring ~3 intermediaries between the other AAAs and corps in Aztlan. MCT had a corp that wasn't beyond arms-length and lost it. The damage to Ensenada was negligible. It probably cost more to attack it and create the diversion in the Caribbean than what it cost Aztechnology to rebuild. It was just an attention-grabber, and nowhere near an Omega Order.

An Omega Order is the complete destruction of a corporation. Hence, "Omega."
It's happened once. A small corp released a virus, and the Big Eight destroyed them and executed the officers.

Omega Orders are harsh shit.

And I sold my copy of Aztlan to Pistons four years ago. It's not that interesting.

Well, not with the stuff we've got combined into the newer books, now.

But it's got the Big D in it. And the Big D is teh win.

I need a jerkoff motion smilie to respond to that.

If the rumors are true, though, Operation: Big Gun (shakes head) sounded more like an Omega order.

We have a bj smiley at U-P.

If you use it outside of the flaming sub-section, the mods slap you with an instant ban.

It's a pretty lame smiley though.

Crimsondude 2.0: Where's the reference to that small corp and its virus?

Big Gun was probably an Ares nuke or one of their Thor shots (probably aimed at what remained of Ensenada or directly at the Tenochtitlan HQ), according to shadowtalk. Big reason as to why the azzies dislike Ares.

Personally I think the Aztlan book (Nigel Findley's last work) was one of the best sourcebooks I've read. But then, I've felt that about most of Nigel's books (including Universal Brotherhood, which I am now a proud owner of).

I think the tale about the Omega Order was in Shadowfiles or the Corporate Download. I know there was some discussion of the Omega Order in Shadowfiles, at least.

Omega order! that's the one. Thanks for reminding me the name. and no, it wasn't used against the azzies, just damn close, so I apologise for any mistake I made earlier. *wanders off muttering omegaorderomegaorderomegaorder, will not forget omega order*