• Founding Year: 2625 (six months after Day Zero)
• Founder: Vira Antonis — former Last Frontier data-archivist
• Headquarters: Plant of the New Kourou Shellac Corporation, New Kourou
• Purpose: Manufacture tone-encoded shellac data disks and the hand-cranked lathes & sequencers required to read/write them, thus restoring a low-energy data-distribution chain for GAIA and its Local GAIA Hubs.

When orbital relays, satellites, and the ship’s quantum drives were fried in the crash, settlers lost every high-bandwidth channel; they needed an energy-lean, tamper-evident medium to keep GAIA’s Local Hubs patched. The New Kourou Shellac Corporation (NKSC) stepped up, pressing fungus-resin disks that could be tone-engraved and read on hand-cranked sequencers — no Quantum Fusion Battery drain required.

In 2631, after the Great War, the plant was nationalised by the newly founded Federal Confederation and re-flagged as the Federal Shellac Manufactory (FSM), which still produces GAIA firmware disks.

• Vira Antonis salvaged a micro-lathe and proved that native fungal resins could substitute pre-war shellac.
• The Settler’s Council granted NKSC an exclusive charter to supply every settlement with blanks, writers, and sequencers.

• Output scaled from 50 to 500 disks per month; half reserved for GAIA firmware, half for administrative ledgers & Weber Broadcasting Services broadcasts.
• NKSC engineers standardised the “tone-30” encoding (30 tones / sec = 9 kB / min) and sold upgrade kits to match.
• A travelling “Maintenance Carriage” toured Hope, Arla Town, Morningstar, and Firetown recalibrating village lathes.

• NKSC began pressing limited-run “Studio Shellacs” of Weber Broadcasting Services live-music sessions and sold them — together with hand-cranked tabletop players — to settlers at a stand on the New Kourou Food Market.
• Owning the week’s WBS disk became a mark of status; The New Kourou Courier Service and the Firetown Courier Service carried copies to Firetown, Arla Town, Hope and Morningstar, which got mainly sold in local pubs, spreading a shared repertoire across the Free State.

• Upon the formation of the Federal Confederation the plant, patents, and staff were folded into the Federal Shellac Manufactory (FSM).
• When the plant was folded into the Federal Shellac Manufactory (FSM), retail sales were banned. The disk presses now run almost exclusively for GAIA firmware and official communiqués.
• Ex-NKSC technicians covertly press “ghost batches” of music disks and player parts after night shift, feeding a thriving Gamma Age black market centred on Firetown.

• Data Lifeline: Without NKSC/FSM there would be no practical way to move GAIA firmware under Beta/Gamma energy caps.
• Low-Tech Renaissance: Sparked a cottage industry of mechanical craft, from music boxes to cipher wheels.
• Cultural Icon in the Gamma Age: Disks doubled as mixtapes and manifestos; Individualists and Outlaws still hoard “first-press” NKSC blanks.
• Audit Trail: Physical, inspectable media underpin legal transparency — every treaty clause and land deed in the Federal Confederation exists on resin.

Gamma-Age Hook — “The Housing Files Heist” Outlaws breach the Mayor’s Office of Morningstar, stun two Sheriff deputies, and escape with an FSM disk containing the Confederation’s master housing registry. Within days, three ex-Quantum-Fusion engineers are abducted — all flagged on that disk as survivors of a clandestine nano-project. The Federal Sheriff fears a plot to resurrect forbidden tech and hires the PCs to trace the counterfeit short-wave request that triggered the shipment, shadow the FSM clerks who handled the disk, and recover (or destroy) the data before another kidnapping strikes.

• Beta Age
• Shellac Records (Overview Beta and Gamma Age)
• GAIA
• Local GAIA Hubs
• Weber Broadcasting Services
• Technology in the Beta Age
• Exohuman Communication Technology and Media in the Beta Age
• Federal Shellac Manufactory (Gamma Age)