Organisation type: Hamburg-based Collective of shipping guilds, spacer’s advocacy movements, pleasure executives, profiteering from frontier colonisation efforts. Amoral, frontier-focused. Establish a network of Hanseatic ports at Rheinland’s borders.
Public organisation MO : Export Rheinlandic goods to remote ports inaccessible by large corporate enterprise. Provide free protection of human transport and commerce environments in open space, beyond territorial port law, including venues for black-market meetups and off-books research programs aboard the suites of plush, ample custom liners and yachts.
Private organisation MO : Profiteer as middle-men for fringe movements.
The history of Rheinland has long been dominated by acts of mercantile corruption and exploitation. The result of this phenomenon has been the predominance of special interest groups seeking to milk the pot. Oligarchic governmental practices dating back to the initial years of colonisation created significant divides between the wealthfare of the haves and the have-nots, a condition worsened with the fall of the Rheinland empire and the removal of the social protection conditions from Rheinland’s aristocratic class and upper-tier bourgeoise (descended from the Rheinland’s crew), and the rest of the population, many of which found themselves delineated between the mining, agricultural and shipbuilding industries that had built the Rheinland economy. As special interest groups started to send Rheinlandic star systems soaring up the corruption index, the largest corporate hegemons – specifically Daumann and Republican, became increasingly massive, at the detriment of corporate entities viewed less favourably in the eyes of the new regime.
An unspoken victim of the increasing corruption of Rheinland – a victim of the preservation of the Imperial social castes without any adherence to the Imperial labour protection agreements in the new republic, created enormous pressure upon self-made commercial business practice and regional governments, uncomfortable with forced subordinance to New Berlin hegemons and the industrial titans of the Ring. Equally, whilst foreign industries such as USI and Border Worlds Exports started to press towards the borderworlds, the construction of Solarius under the empire and the settlement of Munich marked the far limit of Rheinland’s borderworlds expansion, the 80 years war effectively filling the Rheinlandic military industrial complex with an aversion to economic expansionism that rival houses such as Kusari and Bretonia were not impacted by. Rheinland, once the homeland of great pioneers such as Franz Schulman and Von Rohe, never began to fully realise the ambitions of either explorer – to this day, the economic wealth of the borderworlds remains locked beyond the domains of house Rheinland, and furthermore, the Rheinlandic shipping industry.
One domain in which the Rheinlandic borgeoise still possessed relative autonomy is in the human transport, provision and VIP preservation industry. From handling the secure (and comfortable) transit of politicians, executives, to commuters, to scientists, the Rheinlandic franchises of Orbital Spa and Cruise lines have always been uniquely equipped to exploit the rampant corruption within the Rhein for its own purposes – Orbital Spa and cruise itself has an extensive history of acting as middle-men for the Hogosha and the Corsairs, with as many of 35% of Sirius’s top-level artefact deals taking place amidst the Hawaii’s artisanal decks. After all, nobody remains more aware of a customer’s tastes, desires, and weaknesses, than a member of the hospitality industry. Within Hamburg especially, the Hansa holds significant weight as an umbrella organisation for small shippers hoping to prevent being swallowed by aggressive takeover practices by the Neu-Berlin owned Republican shipping corporation.
Hansa franchises specialise in exploiting gaps in the market organised conglomerates simply cannot manipulate, including grey market retail of commercial materials obtained off-the-shelf from Rheinland’s massive domestic overproduction. From engine components fresh from the ring, to blatant artillery retailing, the Hansa uses the slightly-shady connections it fosters with Rheinland’s fringe groups to exploit off-the-books secure personnel transit operations – from thrillseekers to playboys, there remains a general expectation aboard Hansa vessels that anybody is allowed to board, and everybody is allowed to leave, without a pre-boarding search. This occasionally leads to high incidences of low-grade contraband aboard Hansa ships, if only in small quantities. Despite these infractions, the law mostly tolerates the Hansa due to their links to mayoral spaceport governors Hamburg-wide, their economic beneficence through the Baden Baden pleasure industry, and the services they provide to colonisation efforts at the extreme borders of Rheinlandic space. Hammersee and Saarbrucken, for example, remain difficult to profitably provision for larger shipping concerns, in part due to the delicate regulatory environment involved with provisioning contested space. The Hansa, having no such concerns, retains representatives amidst the colony sites of these fringe worlds, effectively serving as an extra governmental social service in these diminutive, import-dependent townships. As old as Rheinland itself in history, the Hansa’s purchase of a large number of Orbital Spa and Cruise franchises within the Rhein represents mostly a strategic move to protect the institution from corporatist lobbying – after all, nothing challenges big money like big money.