Bowman Trading & Salvage

The Bowman Trading & Salvage Corporation was set up in the Spinward Marches sector, around the Imperial year 1100, by Baron Gustav Von Feldspar. Beginning as a small exploratory venture, over a number of years it grew into a major system-spanning business empire with an established transportation route spanning a number of major systems within the Spinward Marches.

Early Years & Formation An educated member of a planetary government elite, Baron Feldspar trained as a merchant in his youth, but soon bored of routine life within the confines of established business. He ventured toward the fringes of the Imperium in search of new entrepreneurial opportunities, and linked up with a small band of mustered-out Imperial Naval and Marine types. Based from a single Scout/Courier ship, won in a poker match but barely adequate as an exploratory vessel, this group soon found itself beyond Imperial borders, specifically in the District 268 subsector.

Exploring the Bowman system, the band came across an abandoned Leviathan class Merchant Cruiser starship, infested with a Reticulan Parasite-class alien (which had destroyed the ship's crew). Ridding the ship of this menace (in a harrying encounter), the band now had an asset with which to undertake serious ventures. The ship was legally salvaged and rechristened MSS Romulus (civil registration MC-57565). Thus was formed the "Bowman Trading Company" (as it was initially called).

Initial Growth & Interruption of Service The next several years saw slow but profitable expansion as Bowman - with its small two-ship fleet - undertook trade throughout systems in District 268 as well as the neighbouring Sword Worlds, Rhylanor and Glisten subsectors. Normal trade was sometimes interrupted as Bowman's crew became entangled in small backwater conflicts, including one incident involving the overthrow of a small, despotic government. However, steady growth was experienced.

It was in this period that a member of Bowman's original staff, Logan Chamberlin (an ex-naval pilot), pulled a confidence scheme, stealing the Romulus with a crony while the remaining crew, Feldspar included, were planetside. Bowman's chief asset gone, the future looked bleak.

Meeting up with a new security chief, ex-Imperial Marine Major Roger Heddon, and now relying solely on its scout, the company hired itself out to a scientist on an exploratory archaelogical mission. In the following adventure, the Bowman crew discovered, in close orbit of a star, a starship of ancient origin - including its crew, still in deepsleep.

A Breakthrough Venture Bowman's breakthrough venture occured approximately a year later. Following their exploration mission they were reunited with the Romulus, and continued trading activity. Venturing coreward, Bowman and the Romulus found itself in another adventure, this time on the Asmodeus system in the Querion subsector. Asmodeus had suffered a nuclear war approximately 100 years prior, but Bowman stumbled across a stalemated war between two opposing robotic defense networks. Bowman's crew managed to penetrate the inner command centre of one of these networks and shut it down, thus assisting in its defeat and ending the conflict. This done, instead of merely leaving, Baron Feldspar took it upon himself to salvage the entire robotic network of the defeated system. Transporting this technology to distant worlds allowed Bowman to reap a tremendous profit. Thus "Bowman Trading" became "Bowman Trading & Salvage"...

Corporate Operations The Asmodeus salvage operation enabled Bowman to build a fleet of Free Traders and Far Traders, and undertake dedicated transportation and trading operations, mainly in the Rhylanor subsector and its neighbours. Baron Feldspar relocated his headquarters to a sector once more in District 268, again on the fringes of Imperial control. A number of other adventures were to follow - including a surprise attack by Ine Givar terrorists against the Bowman head office campus - but the company would survive them all.

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