Sierra Bulchenko

Sierra Bulchenko is sort of the megacorp equivalent of the mayor. Unlike other cities, Seattle is cautious of letting corporations have too much influence (though don’t underestimate the power they already have) and doesn’t want a war starting. To combat that, there’s a sort of corporate council in the city and the leaders appoint people to arrange new real estate acquisitions and make whatever deals with the city need to be made on behalf of its members, meaning that they all get the same deal and no one (at least no one in the council) gets left behind. It also means that only a certain number of major corporations are let into the city, since the council gets to vote on new inclusions, and none of them seem very interested in sharing the pieces of cake they already have with a new group.

''#Raster: We’ll see if that holds. I hear that there are a couple of corporate petitions for entrance into the area that Misty and Hooper are quietly pressuring the council to approve. It’s not often they talk about corp politics, so something’s brewing. No names yet, though. ''

The corporations that are here carry some signiﬁcant weight as the main avenues of revenue for the city as a whole — whether as taxpayers, clients, or employers, the members of the corporate council are major movers and shakers in any official setting, as well as many that are less-legitimate. The upside of having a council position is that it’s stable; a corporation can be removed from the council, but it’s a complicated legal process and none of the members wish to encourage it. Planning to blow up the city might get you booted, but it’s hard to say for sure. It’s much easier for a corporation to simply withdraw from the council, which they can do at any time. Withdrawing from the council is also withdrawing from the city, however; only two corps have done so up until now, and both were in quietly dire straits at the time.

''#Mikhail: Failing health and assassinating the “heir apparent” will do that. ''