Overview of Significant Institutions

The Federated Academies

Founded about a decade before Intersyst, the Federated Academies has the distinction of being the first pan-species organization. Originally intended to facilitate the sharing of information between the top universities of the three federations, it played an instrumental role in overcoming the language and culture barrier as well as in pushing for the creation of an intersystem governing body. The Federated Academies is perhaps best known to the public for creating the shared language Universal Phonetic. Today, it still aids with inter-species understanding through various exchange programs, conference and journal coordination, and the creation of curriculum guidelines from the secondary to graduate level. Its leadership is made up of a rotating panel of professors from member schools. Since they work from their respective universities, the main function of the Federated Academies headquarters in Sanmachi is to house the administrative staff contributed from member schools and to host biannual deliberative gatherings of the institute’s leaders.

Galactic Combined Press

The Galactic Combined Press is a news coordination agency that was formed by the Yispevia Tribune, Rodira News, Amezial Chronicle, and Nycean Prophet in the Frontier Dispute Era to facilitate comprehensive coverage of the heavily intertwined conflicts of the Zipper rebellion. While it is now possible for system level news agencies to disseminate their stories to all parts of the combined galaxies, the GCP is still the preferred method of staying abreast of the latest developments, being made up of over fifty member news organizations and having hundreds of subscribing organizations. Being primarily coordination and distribution oriented, the GCP does not directly employ many reporters compared to the number that associate themselves with it. The exception to this being the Interstellar Affairs Department of the GCP where reporters travel frequently between systems to report on stories involving multiple systems or to give stories about events on a single system in the context of the rest of the combined galaxies. The GCP receives no financial support from Intersyst, instead they have been granted special reserved channels on the Galactic Combined Comm Net for information distribution. GCP reporters and allied reporters are easily recognizable from their distinctly angular formal gray attire.

Arcturan Shipping Conglomerate

The Arcturan Shipping Conglomerate combines four distinct but related business ventures: shipbuilding, transport, trading, and insurance. Arcturan Shipwrights is the oldest company of the Conglomerate, founded in the days when Arcturus would sell their ships to anyone that could afford one. Nowadays, they produce ships exclusively for use by the Arcturan Freighting and Shipping Company. The designs of the core ships they produce, the mini, mid, and mega-freighter, with the exception of being larger, are more or less unchanged. Not to be confused with the Conglomerate itself, the Arcturan Freighting and Shipping Company maintains the largest private fleet of astral vessels. The AFSC is responsible for training freighter crews, managing their fleet of transports, and operating the Freighter Fighters, a small private military for defending transports from pirates. The AFSC is the organization that actually transports goods across the combined galaxies and is the shipping method of choice due to their reputation for punctuality. The Arcturan Trading Company is the largest import-export company in the combined galaxies, and the presence of an Arcturan Trading Company outlet is the mark of any galactic city. Products sold by the ATC are always in demand as Traders heavily research the markets they deal in which has made the ATC the primary moneymaker of the Conglomerate. Spacefarer’s Insurance is unique within the Conglomerate for providing services not related to the transport of goods although their main focus is on insuring the trillions of dollars of goods that are in transport at any given moment. Spacefarer’s Insurance’s excellence at reducing risks for their clients makes them the preferred insurer for companies in the Human Federation but has also earned them a reputation for miserliness.

Although their ships are generally famed for their reliability, lately there has been an intra-company feud between Arcturan Shipwrights and the other three ventures over whether to introduce Cosmitech designed ships into their fleet following the high profile failure of one of their mega-freighters.

General Proteins

General Proteins is perhaps the most well known purian company outside of the Purian Confederation and with good reason. General Proteins is the leading producer of artificial meat products famed for their pursuit of realism. General Proteins is the most recent in a long line of purian companies that have advanced the state of the purian food supply chain and allowed the species to expand. They are set apart from their predecessors not so much for their products resemblance to animal-derived meat but rather for perfecting the slow-growth, large batch production process and enhancing the transportability of a majority of their “menu.” Formed in the middle of the collaboration era from the merger of Sunilian Kreaponics and the South Hyperion Protein Company, it is one of the few purian companies to have firm control of both Hyperian and Nycean markets. Unlike their predecessors, General Proteins has aggressively pursued markets in the human and youmen federations as well and surprised the combined galaxies when they opened a branch headquarters on Daiterra.