Lyrus Associates (Player corporation)

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Corporation Details

Lyrus Associates
Name	Lyrus Associates
Ticker	[LYRUS]
Alliance	The Star Fraction
CEO	James Lyrus
Founded	YC107.04.03
Status	Active
Headquarters	Undisclosed
Public Channel	Star Fraction Public
Website	The Star Fraction Comms Portal
History
Alliances	Enuma Elish. M. PIRE Betrayal Under Mayhem Interstellar Starbase Syndicate
Former CEOs	none

Lyrus Associates is a long-established corporation currently in The Star Fraction fighting for freedom from statist and imperialist tyranny.

Contents 1 The Beginning 2 The ISS Days 3 Tenerifis 4 End of days 5 Change of scene 6 Star Fraction

The Beginning

Lyrus was formed back in YC107 by a group of friends in order to pool resources and thus rapidly increase the individual members capabilities. These first few friends managed to attract a few other like minded individuals, most of whom can still proudly claim to be associates.

The early days were spent mostly by mining low-end ores in hisec and running missions for empire agencies against pirate entities. This began to tire after a while. Thus the decision was made to to branch into mining and reacting of moon materials. A tower was put up in Melmaniel, which led to the frequent running of pirate blockades to fuel the tower and feed the reactor.

The next few months were spent experimenting with what could and what could not be done with a single tower, as well as researching options for expanding this. At the same time, discussions comenced between various like minded people, including James Lyrus, in the fluidcom channel "POS Funtime" about where the industry could and would go. This including discussing the upcoming upgrade that towers would be getting to reduce fuel consumption for space-claiming alliances. This discussion lead to the formation of The Interstellar Starbase Syndicate

The ISS Days

At first, the Associates were a little resistant to the idea, as joining an alliance that held no space, or even have access to any notable space, seemed somewhat pointless. However, the resistance collapsed in short order when the initial ISS deal was made for access in parts of Querious. Lyrus jumped at this chance, joined the alliance, and start scouting areas for a "claim".

Focussing on a travel pipe of systems across the top of Querious leading to Delve, Ehrine Ashbark managed to probe down a series of moons providing pretty much everything available with the exception of Hafnium. Haulers were scrambled and soon 5 towers had been anchored and a reaction chain culminating in Ferrogel and Fermionic condensates. The bulk of the associates started operating out of the primary tower in MKD-08, hunting down Blood Raiders for bounties and keeping the towers running.

There were run ins with the local pirates at times and more than a few haulers full of fuel or end product were lost to gatecamps - especially in A2-V27, the gateway to empire space. Still, Lyrus prospered fairly well, as did the alliance.

At this point the empire factions made available the blueprints for outposts and the ISS imediately saw potential to go from being "people with cheap towers" to "creators of nullsec infrastructure". An IPO was launched (one of the first launched by Pod-pilots) and ISS Marginis was declared open on ... in KDF-GY, a system chosen for it's location just off a main travel route, combined with the pressence of only 3 moons. This was in a time before the availability of Dreadnought class vessels and so a maximum hardened tower was a very difficult prospect to assault. 3 moons meant only 3 towers needed keeping upkeep costs down.

This was the first of many outposts built by the ISS and Lyrus can proudly claim to have had at least one associate involved in the launch of every single one, usually more then 1. On one occasion, James Lyrus ended up having to do a mad dash back to empire space to purchase a few missing pieces, arriving back at the platform and depositing them, shortly before the CONCORD mandated time for deployment. Missing that would have meant a 24 hour wait till the next window.

Tenerifis

ISS continued to grow, expanding into various areas after reaching deals with the holders of the space. One of the most lucrative that opened itself up was the option to rent a couple of constellations of Tenerifis from Lotka Volterra. As one of the founding ISS corps combined with the trust the alliance had, Lyrus was asked to be the caretaker corp for the ISS, running the outpost constructed there (LV Calico) in C3-0YD and administering the rent payments. James Lyrus was officially listed as the adminstrator being effectively the sole person to decide which ISS corps could move in, while Ehrine Ashbark handled the rent payments, refinery tax, and all the other book-keeping.

C3-0YD was a long way from the Lyrus holdings in Querious such that maintaining a presence at both was impractical, the the tower chain was sold off to another ISS corp (Pillowsoft) leaving the associates free to move wholesale down to Tenerifis, mine hi-end ores, claim bounties on Angel pirates and generally live a life of plenty. Sure, there were pirate incursions, but being a dead end constellation with a easy to scout pipe meant early warning of most raids. The locals were very good at being aware of what was going on and weren't afriad to reship from Hulks to Battleships to meet invaders, so most pirate groups were confronted with warp disruptor bubbles and interceptors passing orders on to fighters delegated to them from multiple carriers parked elsewhere in system. We lost the odd ship, but most pirates made it out of the system in their pods, if they made it out at all.

Lyrus went on during this time to end up with two members being full members of the ISS management board which, while rewarding in many ways, was hard work at times.

End of days

During the 3rd alliance tournament in YC108, Tyrrax Thorrk lost an Apocalypse Imperial Issue and reacted by publically announcing a declarion of war by the IAC against the ISS. Skirmishes had been fought between these two entities for a long time, which isn't that uncommon for neighbouring alliances in nullsec space, but this went beyond that. ISS had mostly managed to exist as it had by being a neutral party - offering services to everyone that didn't fire on ISS assets and not getting involved in other peoples conflicts. Fighting between IAC and ISS wasn't that large scale compared to conflicts now as neither was really a military powerhouse at the time, Goonswarm soon got involved as they didn't like Lotka Volterra (the ISS landlords in Tenerifis) and thus they sided with IAC. ISS did manage to collect a few allies during the conflict including Ushra'Khan which the ISS had supported during the pirate siege of UNITY station in 9UY.

Sadly though, the ISS had effectively been drawn into the early part of the BOB vs Goonswarm conflict that ran on for several years. Slowly the battlelines were forced back till the whole alliance was holed up in the C3 constellation leading to an eventual surrender.

Change of scene

As the ISS packed its bags and headed to the Great Wildlands, Lyrus Associates decided that it was time to do something else. They moved their assets back to empire and pushed hard to get into the capital ship production, something that Lyrus still does to this day.

Lyrus also returned the favour to Ushra'Khan in a way that the ISS was unwilling to do. UK was under siege again at UNITY station in 9UY, this time by the CVA. Lyrus was asked to help by The Littlest Hobos (comprised of ex-ISSN pilots) and ended up working along side a host of various groups, including The Establishment against the CVA.

This proved fulfilling in a way that Lyrus had never had before and they went from being a corp with an industrial focus that dabbled in combat against other pod pilots, to being a corp that fought against other pod pilots and did some industry on the side. The Hobos and Lyrus formed a new alliance - Betrayal Under Mayhem, and proceded to embark on a terrorist campaign against CVA pets in Providence.

While fun for a time, fighting random battles without a real cause behind it (other then inflicting pain on small corps/alliances), Lyrus began to get a bit Jaded again. NBSI felt too much like random piracy at times. Add this on to the fact that various members of the Hobos had personalities that grated, it became time to move on again.

Lyrus still had friends in M.Corp from our days when Lotka Voltera had been ISS landlords and so they managed to get invited to join M.Pire. Lyrus was just about to complete its move up into Branch when M.Pire were evicted by their neighbours. Moving on from their, Lyrus joined a third rate alliance called Enuma Elish with another of the ex-M.Pire corps. They proved to be terrible not showing what Lyrus considered to be a proper commitment to join combat-ops with their allies and thus Lyrus left them not long after.

Star Fraction

So Lyrus moved back to empire again and carried on longing for somewhere that felt right. The capital ship construction program carried on growing in size and scope, but other than that, the corp lacked a direction.

Then Lyrus was reminded that they had several friends in The Star Fraction who had several times in the past tried to convince them to join. On those previous occasions it had felt "right" as Lyrus was after different things, but things and feelings had changed a fair bit over the past year or so. While Lyrus had been in a NRDS alliance before, none had been as strict on that rule as The Star Fraction. Also, no previous alliance had been so focussed on what it was.

Approaches where made to Jade Constantine, who it turns out was aware of Lyrus (something that was suprising to several of the Senior Associates) and meetings were setup. Not long after, Lyrus started going on joint operations with The Star Fraction and the pair clicked together well. Lyrus was invited to become full members not long after.