Oblis Consortium

AX.GAT.07.06 - Oblis Consortium

The Oblis Consortium is a galactic-scale criminal organization that operates through legitimate corporate structures. On Astraeus Terminal, it has no acknowledged seat at any official table, no recognized standing in any formal governance process, and personnel who appear in every official record under identities that do not connect to the Consortium. In practice, it has relationships with individuals in every faction, access to information flows that parallel the official intelligence networks, and a strategic interest in the Terminal's position at the Ki Nebula's edge that makes this posting significantly more important than its size suggests.

Agent Zane Vandran is the Consortium's sector representative, the senior operative responsible for the Terminal's strategic value to the Consortium's broader interests. He operates through corporate front identities and rarely appears under his own name in official contexts. The Consortium's interest in the Terminal is fundamentally informational: who passes through, what they carry, what they know, and what the Ki Nebula's accessible systems contain. The extraction economy's material value is secondary to the intelligence value of holding a position at the edge of the explored nebula.

The Consortium's methodology is patience and position. It does not expose itself unnecessarily; it does not act when maintaining the arrangement is more valuable than the specific outcome an action would produce; it does not reveal what it knows until knowing is no longer the leverage point. Vandran's operational mandate on the Terminal is to maintain and expand the Consortium's informational position, identify what AM-7278 contains before any official party has acted on the knowledge, and ensure that the Consortium has at least one viable path to any outcome of the Terminal's current political pressure points. This mandate has a horizon measured in years, not sessions.

Working for the Oblis Consortium

Consortium membership is invisible by design. Operatives do not identify themselves as Consortium; they maintain cover identities within legitimate institutional structures; they produce results through relationships and position rather than visible action. The Consortium provides resources, intelligence support, extraction protocols, and the specific security of knowing that the organization does not abandon operational personnel who have maintained their cover and their reliability; it is too expensive to replace experienced embedded operatives, and the Consortium's institutional culture treats this calculus seriously.

What the Consortium expects in return is absolute operational discretion, results measured in information and position rather than material outcomes, and the understanding that the organization's interests take precedence over any cover institution's interests in any situation where they conflict. The cover is real until it needs to not be. Operatives who forget which one is real make expensive mistakes.

The two tracks within Consortium operations on the Terminal reflect the two primary operational models. Infiltrators are embedded inside legitimate institutions, Oryx Logistics, the Survey Corps, the Vigilants, operating as functional members of those institutions while serving as information sources and occasional influence operatives for the Consortium. Brokers maintain more independent positions, operating through the station's informal relationship networks to acquire, process, and sell information to parties whose identities the broker may not fully know. Both tracks require different skills and different risk tolerances.

New Consortium operatives arrive on the Terminal with established covers and embedded institutional positions, the Consortium does not recruit locally in ways that create visible patterns. A player character with a Consortium profession has a history that brought them to this organization before the campaign began.

Professions

Corporate Infiltrator

An operative embedded within a legitimate institution, functioning as a real member of that institution, developing genuine professional competence and relationships, and reporting to the Consortium through a contact structure designed to survive investigation. Infiltrators are the Consortium's most valuable and most difficult to replace assets. Their effectiveness depends on their cover being real in every respect except the one that matters most.

Favored Save: Wit Save (+1D)

Power Access: Cybernetic Integration. Neural processor augmentation is standard for Consortium infiltrators in information-adjacent roles, the data access and processing capability it enables is operationally useful, and the augmentation is sufficiently common in the Terminal's professional class that it does not create a profile. A Corporate Infiltrator with a qualifying implant may begin developing CI at 1D. Synthari infiltrators begin at 2D.

Progression Track:

10 XP, Deep Cover

The infiltrator has established a cover identity within their host institution that is functionally indistinguishable from legitimate membership. The cover has documented history, genuine institutional relationships, and professional competence that would withstand casual scrutiny. Add +2D to all rolls made to maintain, defend, or extend the cover in social situations. Once per session, the infiltrator may prevent a social interaction from triggering suspicion about their identity, the conversation ends without the other party questioning what they have seen, rather than the infiltrator having to manage the suspicion after it has formed.

25 XP, Institutional Access

The infiltrator has developed genuine standing within their host institution that provides access to information and spaces beyond their formal role's official scope. Once per session, the infiltrator may access one piece of specific institutional information that their cover position would not normally include, a meeting summary, a personnel file, a transaction record, without a roll. The information must be the kind their host institution holds; the access reflects relationships and informal trust rather than system-level access. Using this perk in ways that create visible anomalies in institutional records costs the cover standing that requires active repair.

50 XP, The Long Game

The infiltrator has operated at depth long enough that their cover identity has accumulated genuine institutional capital, credibility, relationships, and standing that would make an accusation of Consortium affiliation damaging to the accuser rather than to the infiltrator. Once per session, when the infiltrator's cover is directly challenged or under active investigation, they may invoke their accumulated institutional standing to turn the challenge: the accuser must produce evidence beyond the infiltrator's obvious institutional credibility, or the accusation damages the accuser's standing rather than the infiltrator's. This does not work against parties with specific documentary evidence of Consortium affiliation.

Information Broker

An operative whose product is information and whose method is the maintenance of relationships on every side of every conflict, positioned to receive, process, and sell intelligence from across the Terminal's factional landscape. Brokers operate with more independence than Infiltrators; their cover is their reputation as useful neutral parties rather than embedded institutional identity. The risk is visibility; the reward is breadth.

Favored Save: Speed Save (+1D)

Power Access: Psionics (Stage 2, 25 XP). Brokers who develop the ability to read emotional states and surface intent have a professional edge that is difficult to explain to clients and operationally decisive in practice. Psionics access at Stage 2 reflects that this is a secondary professional development rather than a primary track, brokers develop it because it is useful, not because it is the foundation of the role.

Progression Track:

10 XP, Market Position

The broker has established a position in the Terminal's information market, a reputation for reliability and discretion that makes them a resource parties return to rather than a one-time contact. Once per session, the broker may establish that they have a piece of information relevant to the current situation that they have been holding, something they acquired through their market position that has now become relevant. The information is accurate; its specific content is determined by the GM based on what the broker's market position could plausibly have produced.

25 XP, Source Protection

The broker has developed the operational practice of maintaining source confidentiality so thoroughly that even parties with significant investigative capability cannot trace information back to its origin through the broker. The broker's information transactions are structurally untraceable, the mechanics of how they acquire and sell information are opaque to external investigation. A party investigating the broker's information sources must overcome a Threshold 5 investigation roll rather than a standard roll; on failure, they identify that the broker has sources but cannot identify any specific one.

50 XP, Information Cascade

The broker has accumulated a position in the information market comprehensive enough to identify, in real time, when multiple pieces of information that they hold are part of a larger pattern, and to act on that pattern before any single party holding one piece has recognized it. Once per session, when the broker holds at least two pieces of information from different sources, they may declare a Cascade, combining the information to produce a conclusion neither piece supports individually. The Cascade conclusion is accurate; the GM confirms it and provides any additional context required for the conclusion to be actionable.

Notable NPCs

Agent Zane Vandran, Human; the Consortium's sector representative. Operates through corporate front identities that appear in Oryx Logistics' supply chain records as minor service providers. The Vigilants' analytical division has noted his corporate fronts in two separate assessments; neither assessment connected the fronts to each other or to the Consortium. Vandran is aware of both assessments. His operational style is to maintain visible unremarkability, nothing he does is interesting enough to investigate closely, which requires constant calibration of what "interesting" means in the current institutional environment.

Operator Sylen, Velhari; Consortium information broker, operating through the station's social spaces with a cover as an independent cultural events facilitator. One of Vandran's most effective current assets because her Velhari lineage and professional position make her presence at any social gathering unremarkable and her capability make those gatherings informative. Is aware that the Vigilants' analytical division has noted her professionally; is not certain whether they have noted her operationally.

The Relay, designation only; the Consortium contact who coordinates information flow between Terminal operatives and the off-Terminal Consortium structure. Physical identity unknown to most Terminal operatives, including player character Consortium members. Communications arrive through dead drop protocols. The Relay's assessments of Terminal conditions are notably accurate; the question of how they are produced is one that experienced Consortium operatives learn not to investigate.

Faction Relations

Oryx Logistics: A productive institutional environment. Their internal decision-making is accessible to our analysis. Administrator Loriya's current concerns are noted and being monitored.

The Vigilants: Their analytical division is capable. We are ahead of their current assessment. The Velhari analyst running the fourth review requires attention before she files formally.

The Span: A source network of significant breadth. Individual members are useful contacts. The institutional relationship is transactional; the Span is not aware of the transaction's scale.

Survey Corps: The AM-7278 transmission contents are the Terminal's most significant current intelligence gap. Two embedded contacts are in position. The director's decision about disclosure is the relevant variable.

Solis League: A useful source network with useful capabilities and a growing tendency toward curiosity about our operations. Boss Nelari's recent interest in what we do with League intelligence requires management before it becomes a structural problem.

Plot Hooks

The Fourth Review, Senior Analyst Orin's informal investigation of the Consortium's presence is approaching a conclusion that would, if filed formally, give the Vigilants enough to act on. Vandran has identified the investigation and has three options: discredit Orin, redirect the investigation, or acquire the draft before it is filed. He has assigned a player character to determine which option is viable and execute it. The player character has two days before Orin's next communication to her informal contact network.

The Relay's Error, For the first time in anyone's operational memory, the Relay has provided information that was wrong, a factual error that caused an operation to fail and exposed one of Vandran's cover entities to Vigilant scrutiny. The error is inexplicable given the Relay's historical accuracy. Vandran needs to know whether the Relay made a mistake, was fed false information, or has been compromised, without exposing any additional Consortium assets in the process of finding out.

AM-7278 Position, The Consortium's strategic interest in AM-7278 requires that it has a representative on any expedition that launches. Neither of the current embedded Survey Corps contacts is in a position to be part of the mission crew. A player character with Survey Corps connections has been identified as the mechanism for getting a Consortium asset onto the crew list. The asset is a real survey specialist, they just also work for the Consortium. The player character has not been told the specialist's secondary affiliation.

The Velhari Offer, Operator Sylen has been approached by a party outside the Consortium with an offer: information about the Consortium's Terminal structure, in exchange for information about the party's primary competitor. The offer is from a faction that Sylen has legitimate professional relationships with. She has not reported it to Vandran. She has brought it to a player character who is both Consortium-adjacent and connected to the offering faction. The player character is now the only person who knows about the approach, and both Sylen and the offering party are waiting for a response.