Barghest Precision Machining
Written by: Null Kit
It's typical for smaller companies to settle into a niche overlooked by larger corps and stick to it until they go out of business or they make enough capital to move onto bigger things and forget their core customers that brought them to that point in the first place.Still salty about their old lines getting discontinued, herr Kitten?For Barghest, that niche is augmented combatants: Exclusively an aftermarket company for cyberware, Barghest Presicion Machining produces the various components needed to turn stock cybernetics into an extension of the user's violent intent. From defensive/structrual accessories like reinforcing-struts and ceramic plating all the way to select-fire submachineguns, monofilament blades and cutting edge fire-control software, the corporation produces it all in their Raleigh-based manufacturing plant and ships the parts out to cyberclinics around the CAS to be retrofitted onto corporate and government military-spec cyberware and personal, and occasionally some of those parts trickle their way into the Shadows, to the delight of the more descriminating street-samurai.
You'll also be able to smell a Mr. Johnson from Barghest a mile away - literally. Drekheads reek of tailored pheremones. Makes all their friendly-sounding smalltalk feel phony as hell just by association.
Funny thing, for all the Barghest tech that find themselves on the black market, the corp will rarely offer branded gear as an incentive for jobs. Usually they'll pay in straight cash and medical services, but on the very rare occasion they hook you up with chrome, expect anything connecting it to Barghest to be filed off for the sake of plausible deniability.
Structure
Barghest follows a standard corporate structure, with a board of nine directors overlooking a cascading tree of departments and delegates.
Public Agenda
Barghest Precision-Machining manufactures and distributes combat-oriented aftermarket parts, accessories and modifications for cyberware manufacturers and cyberclinics.
Assets
The company's base of operations in Raleigh consists of manufacturing-facilities, one for processing of raw materials and primary structural-components, and another for manufacturing of precision components, which also houses their corporate headquarters and several smaller facilities and offices in surrounding properties. Distribution is delegated to Kurabokko Metahuman Technologies in exchange for bulk-discounts on purchases and security is similarly provided by Dragoon Tactical Investments Ltd. in exchange for the same.
Not that architecture is a prime concern on this cache, but godDAMN are Barghest buildings the ugliest I've ever seen. All off-white and teal unibody on the outside, while the inside's this uncanny mix of semitransparent plastics and faux-wood panelling. It's like the place was designed by dentists...
Moving on from Redhat's understandable disgust to a more pertinent note about security, though: Dragoon mostly handle HTR and high-security areas, while Barghest have their own 'in-house' security for the day-to-day stuff. Employee-discount on chrome means they're packing more punch than you'd expect, but they're still mostly just there as scarecrows and to buy time until DraGoons show up.
History
Barghest's founding is something of a unique one, having its roots in the aftermath of a botched shadowrun, the details of which can be found on the profile of its founder, Hugh Provost.
Built atop the chaos of Crash 2.0 annahilating both its founder's original identity and the ownership of several properties in the Neuse districts, Barghest initially began life as a manufacturer of licensed aftermarket components for other corps' cyberware, usually high-quality replacement components for high-wear systems such as cyberlimbs. Business was initially sluggish and it looked like it was going to join the fifty percent of companies that didn't last three years, but after patenting and marketing a ceramic insert for UO's corpsec-grade modular limb product-line, the company quickly found its second wind specialising in more combat-oriented wares for cybernetics.
Barghest's biggest break came in 2070 in the qualifiers of the International Urban Brawl World Cup, when Seth "Macho" Camacho of the Atlanta Butchers scored a last-minute tie-breaking goal against the Seattle Screamers, single-handedly pushing through a five-man defensive line and disabling four opponents before scoring. Multiple close-ups of Macho's battered but unbroken cyberware poking through what was left of his armor disseminated throughout the matrix, Barghest's monstrous iconography still gleaming through the debris and blood, and Barghest became an international name in combat-cyberware overnight as a result.
Didn't hurt Barghest's PR that Seth's uniform was shredded enough for his junk to be on full display. Who knew they even made piercings like that anymore? <//LINK BLOCKED//>
Shoutout to whoever blocked that image and stopped me from calling Overwatch on this cache.In the ten years since then, Barghest has, made fewer waves and sat happily on the laurels of being a contending choice for corpsec and Urban Brawl players, but with the recent acquisition of its third factory and an ongoing contract with Dragoon Tactical Investments Ltd. signed up, it seems the corporation is looking to expand further from its humble beginnings, including rumors of plans to go multinational and apply for extraterritoriality. We'll see how that goes.
"Never settle for second-best."
Founding Date
2066
Type
Corporation, Manufacturing
Location
Manufactured Items
Notable Members
Ongoing Contract
As part of their deal, Barghest gave a 5.1% discount on its products to employees of Kurabokko and workers in warehouses operating on Kurabokko infrastructure, intended as a means of endearing themselves to the workers but rumors from further inbside Kurabokko suggest that Akamatsu didn't care for Barghest intruding on Kurabokko's own cyberware customer-base, and only continues to tolerate it as long as Barghest's payments continue to outweigh their supposed theft of profit.
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