Corporations

Antiqua does not believe that the future of computing will belong to processing speed or performance.

Antiqua devices resemble bygone technology or family heirlooms more than the typical computer or cell phone. According to their own press statements some of their products have "passed down our company for generations" even when that wouldn't make logical sense.

Purchasing anything Antiqua is a difficult process, as they are often expensive, scarce and personal. The act of even finding one seems to take on somewhat of a spiritual journey, if marketing is to be believed. Antiqua boxes smell of dust and incense. Their user manuals read like poems. They have a frequent use of viral marketing campaigns involving poems, riddles and vintage photography that seem to lead toward some sort of a 'time-travel' themed scavenger hunt, with the most obsessed fans always finding new clues out of nowhere.

Although its origins are unknown, the first COMP device was believed to be an Antiqua. Many of the oldest and most illusory cracks in the Veil often occur from an old Antiqua device, from record players to ham radios to VHS tapes. Nodes hosted by Antiqua are much more ethereal and haunted.

BANANAWARE presents itself as harmless. Family Friendly. Cheerful. Safe. Its devices are rounded, brightly colored, and named like toys or mascots. The interfaces hum, pop, giggle. Nothing sharp. Nothing dangerous. Parents approve. Schools endorse. Governments sign procurement contracts with a smile.

This is not an accident.

BANANAWARE believes there products are inevitable. Their philosophy centers on emotional comfort and early imprinting. If a child grows up trusting a BANANAWARE device, they will never question the infrastructure beneath it. Locked down, curated, and heavily filtered. No sharp edges. No risk of manifesting a cosmic rift in reality.

Publicly, BANANAWARE does not acknowledge any creation of turning any of their devices into COMPs. Privately, they own more patents for the type of hardware required for a contract than any other manufacturer.

Nodes hosted on BANANAWARE hardware have a habit of subtly guiding the formation of more visually pleasing and sedating realms within cosmOS. They are colorful, stable, and predictable, and many native Sprites would rate their existance as being more comforting. However, there are always rumors that these places feel padded, smothered, or strangely quiet, hiding much more dark secrets in plain sight.

Civiclink Authority was founded as a government contractor bureaucratic in the days of ARPANET, and has soley grown into an amorphous bureaucratic organism. more than a technology company. Supplying a number of cables and transceiver boxes across all of America, Civiclink Authority has kept a low-profile, without only a few technically literate people being able to learn about their existance.

Through their mass of sub-commitees, Civiclink Authority has actually formally made several press statements explaining the existance of cosmOS and the dangers of the Veil. They went so far as to create full sets of standards, licenses, certifications, and compliance frameworks for COMP usage. No one listened.

Within cosmOS, the contributions to the world have been translated into the bleak and barren, massive near-endless empty space. This is partially by design in order to insulate some dangers inside the machine. However, this has made the endless hallways and liminal spaces perfect for hiding in cyber space.

Their devices are ugly, heavy, and interchangeable. Interfaces are bland. They ship with minimal customization and thick manuals written by people who have given up. Mechane’s philosophy is survival through redundancy. Nothing elegant. Nothing inspired. Just enough to keep running. And Mechane Industrial hardware is everywhere. And yet, Mechane hardware is everywhere.

Cash Registers, Calculators, refrigerators, no one ever seems to remember ever installing any of them. They never seem to work well, but they do all seem to last. It's also completely obvious that any possible thing that could be used to spy on you made by Mechane Industrial, is doing exactly that.

Mechane Industrial runs off pure Capitalism, so it would make sense that networks and Nodes in cosmOS put together with Mechane often have a libertine and laissez-faire towards basically anything. Despite the obvious spyware, the hardware is still associated with crime and secrets within cyber space.

Officially, Scarfix Systems condemns any and all unsafe activity with their devices. This is likely to avoid lawsuits.

Scarfix Systems might priortize trangression over profit. They take pride out of trying to make as many allusions to The Satanic Panic within their own ethos, on the side of Satan. They claim to speak for the counter-culture, but it might be just as likely that they are using its themes for their own ends.

Scarfix devices are loud, obscene and shocking. They will loudly advertise "You Die in the Game, You Die in Real Life" as a tagline for many of their modern games. Being fairly self-referential, many of their advertisements actually promise of the supernatural otherworld filled with demons, who can only bes accessed by their hardware. They are at least honest.

Given the ethos of going over the line, there is a definite extra layer of malice within the Scarfix Systems inside cosmOS. For every enchanting goth nightclub in cyberspace, there may be another corner dedicated to a great evil or pain.

A foreign hardware manufacturer, Woden Techworks favors subtlety and craftsmanship. The Woden team officially reports that inspiration for their assembly method draw heavily from the Norse Gods, using the runic sigils to optimize the performance of their processors. Unofficially, Woden computers have been rumored to harbor old spirits within their metal casings. Despite this, their computers are still largely pretty reliable.

Woden Techworks is often considered a quirky European company. They rely on the controversial claim that meaning itself holds more power than computation itself, which is largely taken as a unique sales pitch. They continually make the claim that the correct sequence of symbols and their defined symbolism can accomplish tasks far faster and more efficently than any algorithmn, from the prospective of the observer.

Non-deterministic Code is the stand out feature of theirs devices. There is no guarantee two of the same device doing the same thing will result in the same outcome. Despite this, Woden Techworks line of products has a devoted following amongst scholars, wiccans and the odd hobbiest.

Despite being devoted to randomness, within cosmOS, Woden Techworks takes on a much more natural and balanced nature, heavily favoring treeline scenery or glacial rivers, but being prone to sudden shifts in scenery. The Woden Team actually takes the effort to treat their Nodes like real places, unlike many other companies, and will choose to meddle in favor of their own aesthetics.

Vertex System computers are fast and clean with an austere dedication to perfection against all else, making them a favorite among those with a love for engineering. Outside of their interests in high-end computer hardware, they invest much of their money to the bleeding-edge investments in science and technology.

Vertex Systems does not believe that magic exists. Rather, any unexplained feat or unanswerable question is a matter of context, and there mission statement since their founding has been to conquer those unknowns, and put a rest to those thoughts. This philosophy has rejected the Veil outright. The demons of their own infastructure have been labelled and catalogged, and put to the side until the proper time to process. This has made their systems quite the powder keg, being extremely potent and capable of creating extremely powerful COMPs, only to continually buckle under the pressure of the crucible of their own creations.