Benedict Jacka

A few of the most notable non-British and non-American corporations operating within the UK.  Due to the sheer number of such corporations (the list of drucraft companies with an office in London alone would run to pages) this should be viewed as more of a random sample than any kind of comprehensive guide.

Maar Group a.k.a Maar Gruppe

A German group that specialises in the use of Matter drucraft in heavy industry, particularly in products utilising steel and other metals.  They produce engines, parts for the automotive sector, and factory machinery.

Maar Group is very large, on a scale with Sinocorp or the US giants, and owns a vast network of Wells spread out across the world, including a Matter S Well in the UK.  It prospered in the late twentieth century, swallowing up many smaller drucraft companies and extending its reach wider and wider.  However, in recent years it has started to falter due to conflicts with the German government, which has repeatedly penalised Maar for regulatory noncompliance, especially with environmental impact laws.  As a result, Maar’s growth has stalled, and now that its international sales have started falling as well, it’s widely believed that its finances are looking a lot shakier than they once were.

Sinogroup a.k.a. Sinocorp

The Chinese state-owned drucraft company.  Its official name is the China International Mineralogical Support Company, but most non-Chinese just call it Sinocorp.

Sinocorp is the entity designated by the PRC to govern the sale, purchase and leasing of Wells and aurum outside of China.  It doesn’t quite have a monopoly on all Chinese overseas drucraft, but it has enough advantages that it’s hard for most private Chinese companies to (legally) compete.  As such, most don’t try, and the result is that Sinocorp is absolutely enormous.  They buy up essentia and Wells in vast quantities and ship the aurum back to China.  This is not always viewed positively by the countries in question, and Sinocorp gets a lot of bad press, not to mention frequently having its permits denied.  Still, given who owns Sinocorp, governments are reluctant to oppose them too openly.

Sinocorp has no particular speciality as regards drucraft and will buy Wells of all branches.

Alopex

A drucraft company based in Taiwan, Alopex competes with Sinocorp around the world, but especially in South-East Asia.  They’re banned from operating in the PRC, but can act freely outside it, and frequently come into conflict with Sinocorp in countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines.  Despite being a fraction of the size of Sinocorp, their greater agility has often allowed them to take Wells that Sinocorp has been too slow to acquire.

Alopex specialises in the use of drucraft in the electronics sector, and are generally considered to be on the cutting edge of research as regards the applications of drucraft to semiconductors, integrated circuits, and robotics.

Mitsukuri

A Japanese company highly focused on Dimension drucraft.  While they use Wells of all branches, they’ve always been extremely focused on the Dimension branch, to the point of aggressively buying up Dimension Wells and recruiting any drucrafters with a talent for using them.  Their goal is to acquire a monopoly on Dimension sigl production within all the countries they operate in, and, while they’ve never fully achieved this, they’re still the UK’s most prominent provider – most people buying a Dimension sigl in the UK are going to think of Mitsukuri first before looking at other options.

Although Mitsukuri is a multinational corporation, its upper management is all Japanese, and many ex-employees have claimed that it’s impossible to be promoted above a certain level in Mitsukuri if you aren’t a Japanese national.   

Blanchet

A French multinational that specialises in buying up essentia in countries where it’s abundant and reselling it where it’s in higher demand – buy low, sell high.  It’s a simple business model, but one they’ve perfected over a long time.

Within the UK they tend to focus on Primal Wells, for the simple reason that it’s the branch other corporations and Houses are least interested in.  Their operations are thought to be highly profitable, but despite their wealth they’re notoriously tight-fisted and have a reputation for paying their employees as little as they can possibly get away with.

A brief overview of drucraft corporations that supply the US military.  While the continental USA has strong essentia resources, the US military’s demand for sigls is enormous, and US defence contractors have to go outside North America to meet its needs.  Due to its historical links and the strength of its Wells, the UK has traditionally been a popular place for them to look.

Schumann-Kraus Heavy Industries

The largest drucraft corporation in the world, Schumann-Kraus Heavy Industries was formed via a series of mergers in the twentieth century.  They specialise in Matter drucraft and use it for metal fabrication, oil production, chemical engineering, and many other purposes, spread out across their dozens of subsidiary companies.  Their military division focuses on weapons and systems for the US military’s armoured vehicles.  It’s a relatively small part of the Schumann-Kraus conglomerate, but SK is so big that a ‘relatively small part’ is still enough to make them one of the US military’s top three suppliers.

Within the UK, Schumann-Kraus focuses on Matter and Motion Wells.  They hold an S-class Motion Well in England under a contract by which they agree to supply the sigls it produces solely to the UK and US armed forces, though in practice the US gets the lion’s share.

Lumen Group

A defence contractor with roots in the US North-East.  Unlike Schumann-Kraus, Lumen Group are exclusively a military supplier.  They specialise in Light essentia and its applications in missiles, missile defence, stealth systems, and sensors.  Since the continental US is relatively poor on Light essentia, Lumen Group has had to source their Light Wells overseas, and as a result has become a very international corporation with extensive regional offices around the globe.

Lumen Group hold a permanent Light S Well within the UK, which they use to produce Light sigls for their various secret projects.  They dislike publicity and refuse to disclose where their sigls are used, but it’s generally understood that they’re one of the main suppliers of the US special forces and nuclear weapons divisions.

Tyr Aerospace & Defense

As their name suggests, Tyr’s background is in aerospace, though they’ve since diversified and now produce sigls for all branches of the US military, not just the air force.  For some years now, their biggest profits have come from Light sigls sold to the US Army;  this has brought them into competition with Lumen Group, and the two companies now regularly bid against one another for contracts.  For the most part, Lumen Group has held the edge in this rivalry due to the larger amount of Light Wells under their control – they can supply far more Light aurum than Tyr can, making it hard for Tyr to compete.  In response, Tyr has launched a drive to expand their Light holdings, and they’ve been aggressively buying up Wells across Western Europe.

Although Tyr is primarily a defence contractor, they do sell to private clients, and they also supply the US space program via contracts with NASA.

LX Systems

A company that exclusively sells to the US Navy.  They focus on using Matter, Motion, and Light essentia in the construction, maintenance, and repair of naval vessels.  They’re less international than the Big Three and are concentrated on the US East and West Coast, but they do have some longstanding links with British shipbuilding firms and have an old regional office in Liverpool, where they’ve been quietly sourcing essentia for their US operations for many years.

Harcourt Neuman

An extremely secretive company who are involved with the NATO establishment in some way, but who refuse to say what they do or how they do it, apart from vague statements about applying drucraft in the realm of ‘security’.  It’s generally believed that they primarily work for the NATO countries’ intelligence agencies, especially the American CIA and NSA, the British MI5 and MI6, and the French DGSE.  They run a small locating service in the UK and seem to be especially interested in Light and Life Wells, though what they use them for is unknown – they don’t sell on the Exchange and seem to bring in their own shapers to handle them.

A brief overview of non-military U.S. corporations that trade in the UK.

Atlantic

A corporation based in New York.  Unlike most drucraft companies, they do not have a shaping department at all and their business is entirely financial.  They buy and sell the rights to Wells without ever leaving their offices or touching a sigl with their own hands.

Although a US corporation, Atlantic employs a lot of British traders and their London office has been running for longer than most UK companies have existed.  Due to this and their long-standing relationship with the Board, they’ve been able to get away with buying up more UK Wells than most foreign companies would be allowed to hold.  At the moment they hold one of the UK’s S-class Matter Wells.

Asmart

A subsidiary of a US retail giant.  They made headlines in the drucraft world in 2009 when they bought House Egmont’s Light S Well through one of their subsidiaries, becoming the first corporation in decades to displace a Great House.

Asmart is the dominant player on the UK drucraft scene – they sell about as many sigls by volume as their two nearest rivals combined.  For the most part they do this via quantity, not quality – they don’t sell many high-grade sigls, but they dominate the C- and D-class sigl markets by sheer volume.  They’re able to do this by undercutting virtually everyone else on price.  If you want any kind of basic low-rank sigl, the Asmart version is almost always going to be the cheapest one available.  Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and Asmart sigls are notorious for poor quality and short lifespans.  Still, if you really need a particular sigl, and you’re working on a budget, Asmart can hook you up for less money than pretty much anyone else.  As a result, even people who hate them still buy their stuff.

As mentioned, Asmart hold a Light S Well, though if they sell S-rank sigls, they don’t advertise it.

YouHealth

The UK trade name of a US healthcare giant that specialises in medical drucraft.  If you live in the UK and want a Life sigl, there’s a pretty good chance that YouHealth will be the ones to supply it.  YouHealth are the dominant player in all areas of Life drucraft in the UK – locating Life Wells, shaping sigls from them, and supplying them to medical drucrafters.

YouHealth have a bad reputation in the drucraft world.  There are persistent rumours that they’ve built much of their medical expertise via highly unethical experiments in parts of the world where you can do medical trials without much regulation or oversight.  YouHealth are also notoriously trigger-happy with libel suits, however, so few people are willing to go on the record with such rumours.

Gladeshire McKeon

Another US financial company, Gladeshire McKeon work through intermediaries, subcontracting various drucraft operations and then packaging them under the Gladeshire McKeon brand.  They compete with the British Houses for the upper end of the sigl market – their sigls are typically somewhat more affordable, although despite their best efforts, they’ve never managed to build quite as good a reputation for quality.  Their reputation isn’t helped by their high turnover of upper management – Gladeshire McKeon executives usually only last a few years before being replaced, often in a very acrimonious way.

Voyager

A Silicon Valley startup that began in software and pivoted into drucraft.  They specialise in locating, and pioneered many of the features that are now standard in Well registration apps.  Other corporations were quick to copy Voyager’s innovations, so they were never able to dominate the market as thoroughly as they’d hoped, but Voyager were able to make a sizeable amount of money along the way.  Nowadays Voyager have taken a step back from locating and spend most of their efforts selling their technology and expertise to other drucraft corporations, playing off their rivals against one another for their own profit.