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.
Are there any ‘rules’ or ‘guidelines’ by the Board about transparency? As in corporation have to tell how they are operating, who they are selling to, etc.?
What about Houses?
Are there explicit requirements for corporations to sell sigils in The Exchange? E.g at least be able to show that their essence/aurum comes from legitimate source?
As always great article it’s great to see what the biggest Drucraft corporation in the world is! I do wonder if some of the mergers involved US or UK corporations as otherwise I don’t think Germany by itself could control that amount of market share.
Something I noticed though is that all the corporations that have S Wells are foreign owned so far, as aside from Cambridge Group none of the UK corporations were said to have them.
Is that why Charles and House Ashford wanted to get the A class Well away from Tyr in Book One to make sure that foreign corporations didn’t dominate the market and thus weaken British influence over their own Wells?