9 members
Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles / CHOAM
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Transport -
Freelancing
The Spice Must Flow
History
Prior to the Butlerian Jihad, there was no single ruling power or economic organization among the inhabited worlds. Virtually every state had access to interplanetary trade and interstellar travel, and none could be excluded. Trade between the planets, systems and the stars was essentially anarchic and space piracy was common.
After the Jihad, interstellar trade fell in Dark Ages without machines to guide ships through hyperspace, becoming very slow and expensive. The economy (which resembled the ancient great caravan routes) had sprung up on various planets with rich, widely separated cultures who dealt only in the most expensive and least bulky items, such as luxury goods. This kind of trade worked out in 300 years before the development of CHOAM and 50 years thereafter.
The Spacing Guild brought itself to the attention of the Imperium and Emperor Saudir I in 12 BG. Swiftly realizing that the only feasible way to deal with the Guild was on a basis of mutual advantage, Saudir called for a Financial Synod to convene on Aerarium IV in 10 BG, and include representatives of the Guild, Landsraad and the imperial House.
The age-controlling properties of the spice enhanced the feelings of the feudal states of the Landsraad toward the Guild and the return of extensive trade. They were aware of their vulnerability to the effects of trade and had an added reason to wish to control the Guild. It gradually became apparent that the Guild and the feudal houses had interests that ran in tandem. Both wanted the return of trade, but only in a fashion which would permit each institution to survive.
Unlike the Guild, the feudal houses cared about the economic benefits of trade, and just as deeply about the possible sociopolitical effects of cultural interaction. For years neither the Guild nor the feudal powers could find a way to accomplish all their aims.
One of the problems was the ambitions of the most powerful of the Great Houses. Those houses that had ambitions to become the Imperial House saw in the Guild an opportunity to elevate themselves if they could seize control of this new means of trade but the Guild refused to deal with them and compromise with the feudal powers in general proved impossible for years.
While the Synod remained unable to resolve its problems, matters were never permitted to deteriorate so that the gathering broke up. The Guild was especially concerned that this not happen, for they knew that the outcome of the Synod would determine whether or not they survived.
The deadlock was broken after 2.5 years by emperor Saudir and his chief financial officer, the Dioicetes Asetirides. During the latter half of the third year on Aerarium when it began to appear that the deadlock might destroy the Synod, the emperor called the delegates into full session and presented to them the plan for the formation of CHOAM.
Manifesto
“Few products escape the CHOAM touch … Logs, donkeys, horses, cows, lumber, dung, sharks, whale fur — the most prosaic and the most exotic … even our poor pundi rice from Caladan. Anything the Guild will transport, the art forms of Ecaz, the machines of Richese and Ix. But all fades before melange. A handful of spice will buy a home on Tupile. It cannot be manufactured, it must be mined on Arrakis. It is unique and it has true geriatric properties … But the important thing is to consider all the Houses that depend on CHOAM profits. And think of the enormous proportion of those profits dependent upon a single product — the spice. Imagine what would happen if something should reduce spice production. — Duke Leto Atreides, Dune
Charter
The corporation’s management and board of directors are controlled by the Padishah Emperor and the Landsraad (with the Spacing Guild and the Bene Gesserit as silent partners). Because of its control of inter-planetary commerce, CHOAM is the largest single source of wealth in the Old Empire; as such, influence in CHOAM (through partisans within it and control of directorships) is the central goal of political maneuvering, both to receive dividends and also (it is implied) to skim off profits.
CHOAM directorships are the real evidence of political power in the Imperium, passing with the shifts of voting strength within the Landsraad as it balanced itself against the Emperor and his supporters. Directorship in the CHOAM was the key to wealth, each noble House dipping from the company’s coffers whatever it could under this power.
CHOAM essentially controls all economic affairs across the cosmos, although it relies upon the Spacing Guild for transport across space due to the Guild’s monopoly on faster-than-light travel.
