Nicholas Aurelius

Au début du siècle, Nicholas Aurelius créa Ares Industries à partir de General Motors et d'autres sociétés plus modestes. En 2016, il vendit de nombreux actifs pour acheter la NASA aux USA. En 2024, il rebaptisa la compagnie Ares Macrotechnology. Il céda sa place de CEO à Sakehisa Tajika mais garda le contrôle de la corporation. Il redevint CEO en 2028. Il meurt en 2032 d'un arrêt cardiaque, laissant le contrôle de la société à son fils Leonard Aurelius.

C'était un joueur dont les paris étaient presque toujours payants, mais aussi un terrible prédateur.

• Histoire

Nicholas "Old Nick" Aurelius était un géant de l'industrie à la fin du XXème siècle. Il dirigeait le conseil d'administration de General Motors, et détenait un très grand nombre d'autres sociétés. Quand la décision Shiwase est tombée, Old Nick s'est mis à réfléchir sérieusement à réunir toutes ses compagnies en une seule mégacorporation.

Dans une interview au Detroit Weekly News, il dévoila son désir d'acquérir l'extraterritorialité avec un grande honnêteté. Mais il ajouta rapidement que les responsabilités qui sont attenantes sont immenses : "Je pense que de nombreuses personnes qui nous écoutent oublient le travail que cela implique. Plus vous avez de contrôle sur les choses, plus vous devez en faire pour être sur que les choses restent en votre contrôle. Ce n'est pas quelque chose que je fais pour m'amuser, parce que ça ne va pas être super sympa, croyez-moi. Je fais cela parce que c'est le mieux à faire pour mes affaires".

Old Nick fut CEO et PDG du conseil d'administration d'Ares Industries depuis ses origines, en 2002, jusqu'à 2023. Ces deux décennies furent synonymes d'une croissance et d'une rentabilité exceptionnelle pour la mégacorporation. Old Nick avait un truc pour réorganiser la société pour maximiser les profits et minimiser les pertes.

Quand le gouvernement américain commença à vendre ses ressources, Ares Industries était là pour ramasser les morceaux. Quand la NASA fut vendue au plus offrant, Old Nick s'assura que l'acheteur serait Ares. Grâce à cette acquisition, il put transformer la NASA en un service très rentable de récupération de satellites et il rénova la station spatiale Freedom (appelé maintenant Habitat Zurich Orbital) qu'il revendît à la Cour Corporatiste.

Tout allait pour le mieux pour Ares. Après deux décennies de bons et loyaux services, Old Nick laissa la place de CEO à son fils, Leonard Aurelius. Et celui-ci géra les affaires plutôt bien (bien que plus timidement que son père) pendant les six années suivantes.

• Reste à traduire

On Feb. 8, 2029 computer systems all over the world were attacked at random by an unknown virus. This brought about the toppling of governments, uncounted casualties, unknown billions of dollars of damages, and a world on the brink of chaos. Ares Industries somehow managed to make it through this turmoil, in part by rebranding themselves as the new and improved Ares Macrotechnology.

They slowly rebuilt, and re-established themselves in this brave new world. Leonard oversaw a few key buyouts and mergers that strengthened Ares Macrotech's position in the corporate court. Ares Arms, however, brought in the most profits during this time, with the EuroWars beginning in 2031. Ares Arms was just about the sole arms manufacturer for all sides of the conflict. With moves such as this, Leonard Aurelius, generally established himself as a competent (if careful) heir to Old Nick's corporate empire.

As Leonard corporate star began to rise, tragedy struck at home. In the late months of 2032 Old Nick Aurelius succumbed to a fatal heart attack.

Then, just three short months later on Jan. 24th 2033 at 11:42:08 EST a blitzkrieg of computerized buying and selling orders from Stockholm Sweden hit the Boston East Coast Stock Exchange . Over the next sixty-four seconds these trades caused three corporations to dissolve, two multi-millionaires to lose their fortunes, three other people became multi-millionaires, and ( the then unknown financier) Damien Knight to gain 22% stock in Ares Macrotechnology. This attack became known as the Nanosecond Buyout and has been the source of much speculation.

Knight and Aurelius did not see eye to eye from the very beginning, and butted heads off and on for control over the next few years. Mostly these years were dominated by Knight's control, with the exception of a few months during 2049, when Leonard managed to wrest control away from Knight with the help of Gavilan Investments. Gavilan Investments owned 12% of Ares' stock and was just enough to swing the voting block behind Leonard's power bid. But it seems that Gavilan Investments (and it's owner, the Big D) were quite capricious and helped reinstate Knight by the middle of 2050.

Ares Macrotech, under Knight's leadership began to flourish. He expanded the role of AresSpace in the public and private sectors, expanded Ares Global Entertainment, and forged Knight Errant Securities.

In the mid 2050s, during this time of Ares' economic dominance there lurked a secret inside the company. Tipped off to the Bug Spirit threat by the Big D, Damien Knight ordered Knight Errant to become the vanguard in the war against the Bugs. Armed with the knowledge that the Bug Spirits were using the Universal Brotherhood as a front to recruit hosts, Knight Errant went out and cleared up any hives that they could track down. Things went generally smoothly for the Ares Fireteams until August of 2055 when they arrived in Chicago and were woefully underprepared for the massive infestation that stretched throughout the whole of the city. The UCAS government ordered the evacuation and quarantine of Chicago on Aug. 23rd, 2055 on the grounds that a new strain of VITAS was found in the city. KE stayed behind and attempted to fight the good fight, even going so far as to detonating a small nuclear weapon in the heart of the Chicago hive... to no avail.

The second incident that harmed Ares's name came as a direct consequence of the evacuation of Chicago. Thousands of refugees sought shelter in the surrounding sprawls, Denver most notably. The native population saw the refugees less as people and more as Bug Spirit infiltrators and tensions ran high between the two groups. Violence finally erupted between the two groups, and KE opened fire on the crowd indiscriminately gunning down both sides, and forever cementing KE's reputation as heavily armed thugs for hire.

In 2057, Damien Knight (through Ares) helped back Dunkelzahn's bid for UCAS President with funds, publicity (through Ares Global Entertainment), and lobbying. We all know how that turned out for the Big D.

Even though Dunkelzahn was assassinated on his inauguration, Ares still managed to secure quite a few lucrative UCAS government contracts thanks to their relationship with President Haeffner. And they were even able to survive the Corp. War relatively unharmed.

All wasn't beer and roses though. With the death of the Big D, the Gavilan Investment shares were transferred to the Big D's Voice, Nadja Daviar. That was the first thorn in Knight's side since Leonard Aurelius' bids for supremacy in the '40s. But that wasn't the only person to gain stock to oppose Knight. One Arthur Vogel also managed to scrape together quite the impressive portfolio from the Big D's will, as well purchasing Leonard Aurleius' shares in '59 . This left Knight in a weakened position on the board, but was able to stay the course despite the setbacks.

Aurelius had jumped ship to AA Corp., Cross Applied Technologies. But Knight wasn't about to let his insubordination go unpunished. In the early moments of the Crash 2.0 in '64 Leonard's plane went down leading to his death, and within days the meaty parts of Cross had been purchased by Ares subsidiaries and shell companies. The rest was sold off for parts.

The Cross acquisition tarnished Ares' reputation throughout the world leading Knight to reorganize around Ares World Holdings. This was met by vehement opposition from Vogel.

Then the Draco Foundation entrusted the Gavilan shares to Nicholas "Young Nick" Aurelius in a surprise move. Now Knight had both Vogel and another Aurelius on the board to contend with. And they went into immediate action, recalling Corporate Court Rep. Paul Graves, and installed Vogel's own Michele Borden.

With the entrance of this new player on the scene, Knight has intensified his resolve to remain in control of Ares. He's been digging into the agendas of Vogel, Young Nick and the Draco Foundation, trying to find the missing Nadja Daviar, and who Vogel's secret backers are.

On September 5, 2074 Young Nick Aurelius is killed after jumping out of his gulf stream jet at 10000 meters. This is believed to be suicide although there is some evidence of wasp spirits near by. For a while it seemed the Aurelius legacy was removed from Ares for good.

However, victory was short lived, as Nadja Daviar had returned to assume control of Gavilan Ventures and undo the damage Knight had done to the company and with it came Nick's father Leonard who has returned to take the throne from Knight himself

Références

• Blood in the Boardroom
• Corporate Download p.34
• Shadowrun Wikia