[Nath]

Rhonabwy actually owns some 4% of Ares Macrotechnology, and Hestaby gave Arthur Vogel a part of the money he needed to buy Aurelius shares. Between 2060 and 2064, there was even three great dragons involved in Ares Macrotechnology management, since Nadja Daviar was following the instructions of a "seven years plan" left to her by Dunkelzahn regarding Ares.

[Mirikon]

Note where he said 'position of power'. Being a significant shareholder doesn't count. Celedyr has a position of power at NeoNET. Lofwyr has a position of power at Saeder-Krupp. The Smoking Mirror has a position of power at Aztechnology. Other dragons might have influence in the megas, but a position of influence is not the same as a position of power.

[Nath]

Depends on your definition of "power".

As the director of research of Neonet, Celedyr is bound to obey to Chief Executive Officer Richard Villiers, and all his activities are overseen by the board chaired by Anders Malmstein. Yet he has power, or so are we told.

The Smoking Mirror doesn't even officially have a status. Oscuro and the High Priest of Tezcatlipoca were board members. As far as their status go, they had the same powers than any other of the shareholders. The dragons of Aztechnology? The two that have been mentioned were also "only" board members. And it is doubtful, to say the least, that Dunkelzahn actually had any pull over Aztechnology actions as such.

Arthur Vogel was a major shareholder and had the board vote him director of AresSpace. As such, he has power, but it relies entirely on the money Hestaby and the Pueblo gave him. Hestaby can have way more than a mere "influence" over him. If she asks him for something, I don't think he can refuse.
There are less information on Rhonabwy position inside Ares. A 4 to 5% stake in a corporation is usually enough to get a representative elected to the board (even if we were never given more than a handful of name sitting on Ares board).

When California was falling into pieces, Ares supported militias in northern California that played no actual role with regards to the San Francisco situation, but prevented any attempt from Tir Tairngire to expend further south. Which was perfectly in line with both Hestaby and Rhonabwy objectives.

[Crimsondude]

To be fair, the names of the other Ares board members has never been given because it's also been held that most if not all of them are Damien Knight's yes-men.

[Nath]

Yet, Vogel and Aurelius were able to have Paul Graves recalled and Michele Borden replacing him on the Corporate Court, in spite of Damien Knight opposition. The whole "civil war" at Ares implies there are now enough swing voters on the board for such thing to happen.

Rhonabwy or his representative is quite likely to play such a role: I doubt Knight, Vogel or the Draco Foundation would have enough leverage over a great dragon to force him to vote a certain way on a regular basis.

[Crimsondude]

True. So that's not to say it can be expected for them to remain anonymous. It's just that there was an excuse not to bother for a long time.


The largest shareholders plus Rhonabwy own about 65% of Ares, so it stands to reason that there could be a great deal of play to influence the remaining 35%.


This isn't my wheelhouse, save for my interjection of Seraphim shenanigans, so that's about the extent of my knowledge. I know that per canon that Gavilan Ventures has two board seats (Daviar and Aurelius), but nothing else about how seats are apportioned.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

My suggestion, however, is not nullified.  No Great Dragon would have any significant leverage over any other; the Great Dragon Corporation (GDC) would be, for all intents and purposes, a front.  A very sizeable, very significant front company, I agree, but a front company nonetheless.  Consider the history of the Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaft Bank.

Seven corporations, heavily in debt to the most significant world lender, get together and perform a buyout upon the bank.  The bank winds up having so much capital and influence via its shareholding corporations, it can functionally declare new nations (in the form of multinational AA-rated corporations) the world over, nations which other, actual nations, are required to recognize - and recognize the extraterritoriality of.  In this way, those Big 7 essentially made the leap from 'really big fraggin' company' to 'independent corporate nation-state'.  They may now be the Big 10, but they still a) possess strictly equal shares in the corporation that gives them authority (i.e. ZOG), and b) are still generally at odds with each other.  Consider the chances of Saeder-Krupp cooperating with Aztechnology ...

... then realize that at a certain level, in very restricted ways, they do so on a day-to-day basis.

That's the sort of thing I think the Great Dragons might realize they need to do in order to survive and thrive in the modern world.  Oh, great dragons are incredibly powerful, and most if not all of them have amazing amounts of corporate holdings and influence, but in the larger scheme of things, that does not eliminate their functional vulnerability to what Sirrurg faces - a direct challenge to a right they've had all their lives, of being apart and above metahuman laws.  In the Second Age, the dragons ruled completely, incontestably.  In the Fourth Age, the dragons no longer ruled, but could act with relative impunity, and answered to no law but their own.  Now, in the Sixth Age, humanity's rapid development of technology and increasing knowledge of magic means that even at this early stage, in less than half a decade (incredibly swiftly in the eyes of a GD) an act which would have gone unanswered in the 4th Age has earned a Great Dragon injuries, perhaps serious ones.  The ephemerals have got very real and very dangerous teeth.

Doing this isn't the only way, I'm sure, for Great Dragon society to establish itself as a seperate entity, beholden primarily to their own laws, but it is the swiftest, most sure way to use metahuman laws against metahumanity in the establishment of the rights and untouchability of the Great Dragons.  Like the megacorporations, they don't have to agree to most things - only to this one little sub-section of things.

But if they manage it, watch out ...

[Mirikon]

Actually, that sounds like the kind of thing Hestaby would propose. The problem being that the conservative traditionalists on the council would never listen to such a plan.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

While I feel that it's precisely the sort of thing that Lofwyr would realize he's already doing, and if he wants to preserve draconic society in even roughly the form it is, he's going to have to propose it incorporates. 

[Crimsondude]

Yes, but Lofwyr is above all else an independent loner. He does not ask for help, hates cooperating, and believes in Survival of the Fittest. He has just been able to show most clearly through the years Shadowrun's been around that he is, or is more often than not).

The thing about dragons and great dragons is that they are ancient, and slow to change. The corporation, even modern nation-states, are relatively new creations in their lifetimes. They were asleep for 95% of the existence of democracy, so introducing representative governance and consent of the governed and the Rule of Law (which is to an extent the basis of the corporation, so this isn't a complete tangent) are as new to them as it was to a Russian who was alive to see the October Revolution and then watched the Christmas dissolution of the USSR announced.

[Nath]

This isn't my wheelhouse, save for my interjection of Seraphim shenanigans, so that's about the extent of my knowledge. I know that per canon that Gavilan Ventures has two board seats (Daviar and Aurelius), but nothing else about how seats are apportioned.

Well, I guess getting into the details of how corporate governance actually works would not appeal to the audience.

Nowadays, most corporations' board elections are completely locked by the board itself. Ahead of the stockholders meeting, the board gives its "recommended" list of nominees, with as many candidates as seats (as you mgiht expect, most of the time, it's the list of the uncumbent board members).
Stockholder can propose additional nominee. The bylaws also often gives the board ways to dismiss 'non-representative' candidate that they consider unlikely to gather a significant numbers of votes.
During the meeting, the stockholders cast their vote on any number of candidates they want. It is pretty common for corporate bylaws to states stockholders who don't cast an absentee ballot or attend the meeting are counted as voting following the board recommandation for the board nominees.
- If the number of candidates is the same than the number of seats up for election, those who get a majority of votes are elected.
- If the number of candidates exceed the number of seats, those who got the most vote (even if it less than the majority) are elected.
Since stockholders can vote for any number of candidates, it is possible to have a board entirely elected by a single faction.

So most of the time, the real deal is one ahead. One or several major stockholders with a blocking minority (usually set as one third of the stock) will threaten to use that power to make the entire election null, and require the board to nominate and promote one or several candidates of their choice. They can even get a Shareholder Agreement that officially gives them the power to nominate one or several candidates on the board's list.

Board conflicts like those of Shadowrun usually only happens when one or several stockholders have such Shareholder Agreements who guarantee them a seat. Otherwise, corporate elections rather are the "winner-takes-all" type.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Yes, but Lofwyr is above all else an independent loner. He does not ask for help, hates cooperating, and believes in Survival of the Fittest. He has just been able to show most clearly through the years Shadowrun's been around that he is, or is more often than not).

Though I agree on your 'reaction level' of dragons, I disagree on your analysis of Lofwyr; he is not an independent loner.  He has gathered about himself the largest corporation in the world, and it is not even the entirety of his realm of influence and command.  He is in a position of power, or at least influence, in regards to the rest of dragonkind, and possesses access to some of the most critical and important information gathered by past Loremasters.  Lofwyr isn't an independent loner; he's a dominating personality.  He doesn't want solitude or quiet, to act and survive on his own, or adverse to cooperation; he wants people to command, armies to order, chess pieces to move, and puppets to dance.  He wants to be the center of the universe, Master and Commander, he who orders the music of the spheres.

He's not the physically strongest great dragon.  He's not the mystically strongest great dragon.  He isn't the most charming, or even (probably) the most intelligent - though he might be that.  He's the great dragon with the most determination to make things the way he wants them to be.  He's what Xanatos wants to be when he grows up, because even when he loses, he gains something of value out of the encounter.

All this said, and knowing the 'rate of change' of a Great Dragon, I believe (on admittedly thin evidence) that Lofwyr is changing.  Hestaby may have won the Rite, but it was also indicated that Lofwyr is studying up on the actions, reasons, and consequences of certain deceased Great Dragons.  Lofwyr also has what's probably the most exposed power-base in the world, which means he has the biggest target painted on his back if it comes down to an Us vs. Them proposition.  He wasn't around during the Business Accords bit, but he was clever enough to use that information to leverage himself into being the single biggest individual player - and player in general - at that particular board.

Furthermore, Hestaby is looking at cooperation, and in a way appeasement; this doesn't fit with forming a 'dragon nation'.  Lofwyr is/would be looking at self-defense and using the weapons of the enemy against them, as it were.

[Sichr]

If dragons weren`t able or willing to form some kind of united front or "Dragon Nation", when they were facing Horrors, Scourge and total anihilation of species all over the planet, the strongest "external threat" ever, I don`t think that there is anything in 6th world that forces them to do so.

[Mirikon]

Indeed, it takes a lot to get the dragons to agree to do anything as a united front. In fact, there were only a few cases in the Fourth World where that happened. Notable cases would be the Council that threw the Outcast out of draconic society for breeding children with humans, and the Council where the dragons had decided they'd had enough of the Therans in Barsaive. As part of their actions on that second one, four Great Dragons (including both Dunkelzhan and Ghostwalker) got together at a major power site and did ritual magic to bring down serious calamity on the Theran city of Vivien. Yes, that's four Great Dragons getting together to do what even they considered to be high level ritual magic. This is what happens when dragons decide someone has become too big an annoyance to deal with piecemeal any more.

[Nath]

He wasn't around during the Business Accords bit, but he was clever enough to use that information to leverage himself into being the single biggest individual player - and player in general - at that particular board

Technically he was. Lofwyr took over Saeder-Krupp around 2035 or 2036 ; the Business Recognition Accords were proposed for ratification in 2042.

However, the BRA were only the last step in making the Corporate Court recognized as the supreme authority over extraterritorial megacorporations. The Inter-corporate Council in 2013 was merely an "initiative" from seven ambitious corporations to establish a new international arbitration body specialized on extraterritorial issues. It failed spectacularly, and the same corps went for second try with the Corporate Court in 2023. Between 2023 and 2042, the Corporate Court went to become the reference arbitration for all extraterritorial corporations. I guess it probably helped that a number of bigger rival corporations probably tanked during the economical crisis that followed the 2029 crash, while Fuchi and Renraku were to become the powerhouses of the new Matrix.

I'd rule out that Lofwyr simply was lucky enough for one of those seven corporations who were building the new world order to be headquartered right next to the place he fell asleep at the end of the Fourth Age. It is more likely that during the early years of the Sixth Age, Lofwyr first thought on a territorial basis, like everyone's used to do during the Fourth Age (and most of the Fifth, to be fair). And so did he invest into BMW which was in his mind the local powerhouse.
There probably were several others groups like the inter-corporate council/corporate court that we never hears about because they failed to take the top spot. Possibly, the corporate court was the successful one precisely because it was the one that involved the corporation Lofwyr choose to invest in (also maybe Ryumyo connection to MCT ; Dunkelzahn came late to the party, using Damien Knight to take over Ares Macrotechnology in 2033).