Imperial Westreach Settlement Corporation

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Imperial Westreach Settlement Corporation
(A Charter of the Imperial Department of Colonization)
    The Imperial Westreach Settlement Corporation is a colonization firm dedicated to organizing, expediting, and maintaining colonization efforts in the Westreach Cluster, a large group of stars claimed by the Imperium and containing numerous habitable and resource-rich planets. The company consolidates funds from investors, corporations, and the government to plant colonies on potentially profitable worlds and ensure their survival through resupply efforts. The colonies, once established and churning out goods or resources, are organized into subsidiary corporations in which investors get a substantial stake. Westreach holds monopoly rights on colonization in the Westreach Cluster due to a deal between the Velonnian Imperium and the corporation’s founding investors, most notably Cornelius Easthouse, head of a substantial family core-mining empire. The deal was ostensibly an effort to maximize efficiency in colonization by providing a capitalistic but centralized institution to govern the process.

    The practice of colony speculation is very widespread in the Imperium, despite the significant risk involved in such a venture—many settlements either die out due to insufficient resupply measures or inhospitable conditions or fail to produce the large amounts of resources necessary to make the investment profitable. Nonetheless, colony speculation is very enticing to wealthy investors and corporations due to the potential for indefinite and substantial revenue if the settlement proves to be productive. The remarkably dense resources of the systems under its authority allowed Westreach to quickly become a highly successful company, settling worlds like Easthouse, Greenshill, and Horizon.  

    Following the establishment of its charter in the decades preceding the Velonnian Civil War, Westreach received its business primarily from pioneers looking to begin life anew on an untouched planet. During and after the war, however, the sharp spike in demand for resources—and more important, long-term sources of said resources—drove productivity through the roof. Corporations looked to expand their operations and achieve industry sustainability by colonizing gas giants and ore-rich moons, while wealthy families and individuals moved to expand their influence by maintaining large holdings on colony worlds. To a lesser degree, the military used the company to established strategic bases of operation and resource bases in the Westreach Cluster. All this, combined with the fact that the company kept a portion of the land and revenues from each of its colonies, made Westreach one of the largest corporations in the Imperium, and made the Easthouse family one of the wealthiest and most influential.