Wong-Hopper Consortium

The Consortium operates massive spinships — vessels large enough to generate centripetal gravity for their crew — whose personnel spend their lives in space and require gene therapy to walk on a standard-gravity planet such as Delos. Delegations travel with armed retinues: the seven-member delegation to Delos is accompanied by two dozen soldiers in matte gray carrying short rifles rather than the energy-lances favored by Imperial household troops. The Consortium employs or is accompanied by scholiasts and uses QET (quantum entanglement telegraph) waves to transmit news and commercial intelligence across interstellar distances. Its commercial reach is such that even in the Jaddian Principalities, satraps and princes bend to its demands.

Consortium Directors maintain personal networks of trusted contacts and exercise operational discretion independently. Director Feng personally vets and vouches for free traders used in sensitive logistics, maintaining operational security by withholding the identities of palatine clients even from the traders she employs.

The Consortium maintains regional offices across the Empire, including a Marinus office. It employs its own bonecutters — surgeons and magi — who are less constrained by the Holy Terran Chantry's restrictions on human modification than palatine medical practitioners, enabling body alterations beyond the range permitted under standard Imperial norms.

The Consortium serves as a primary procurement agent for uranium, operating supplier contracts across multiple star systems. Its previous primary supplier, the planet Cai Shen, is destroyed in a Cielcin raid. News of Cai Shen's fall reaches Delos by QET wave carried aboard a Consortium fleet, which broadcasts the final news packets alongside its visit announcement. The fall of Cai Shen makes House Marlowe — which sits atop some of the richest uranium deposits in its sector — the new largest licensed supplier, compelling the Consortium to negotiate a new contract on Delos. Director Feng leads the delegation to Devil's Rest for this purpose, accompanied by junior ministers including Xun Gong Sun and a woman with golden tattoos on her scalp.

Director Feng later facilitates the covert departure of Hadrian Marlowe from Delos. Traveling to Euclid on Consortium business, she provides a personal referral to Lady Liliana Kephalos-Marlowe for the Jaddian free trader Demetri Arello, who formerly ran Lothrian orbital checks for sensitive Consortium cargo. Feng maintains operational security throughout, declining to identify to Arello which noble house Hadrian belongs to.

Director Adaeze Feng leads the Consortium delegation to Delos and holds the title of Director. She maintains a close personal relationship with Lady Liliana Kephalos-Marlowe of House Marlowe. Xun Gong Sun serves as a junior minister in the delegation. The scholiast Terence accompanies the delegation. Lord Luthor Astin-Shin-Mataro, the Minister of Finance of Emesh, formerly held a position in the Consortium's Marinus office before his marriage to Count Balian Mataro; his unusual forest-green eyes, implied to perceive beyond normal human visual spectra, are attributed to a modification performed by Consortium bonecutters.