Korbin's Bio

Nomads of Korsun
Character Bio: Korbin
Age: 48
Race: Procian
Height: 5’ 2”
Weight: 115 lbs.
Occupation: Merchant, Black Market Dealer

Personal Background

Korbin was born into a family of bankers on the Procian home-world of Iotor. Korbin’s family had lost much of its wealth generations ago when they engaged in speculation at the conclusion of the dragon wars, only to watch as most of their investments turned to ash as the post war boom turned instead to bust. Fortunately for Korbin, they had enough wealth to ensure he received a proper education and apprenticeship with the merchant’s guild.

Working as a commodities merchant, Korbin learned much about on which planets resources were plentiful and cheap, and where said resources would fetch the greatest price; slowly graduating to more expensive and risky trade goods.

Korbin also made sure to establish connections in nearly every market he visited, in order to gain valuable information before it became common knowledge and to better consolidate his suppliers and re-sellers.

Despite his initial success, Korbin began to experience the injustice and hypocrisy of the post-war order first-hand. The Volterrian commonwealth charged “franchise fees” on any planet that they negotiated trade deals with (usually the terms were merely thinly veiled guises to establish economic imperialism). The Soldien Union wasn’t much better, imposing random customs checks on passing freighters as well as a long list of obtuse trade codes; in addition to being obstructive they also charged taxes in any region where the population was being serviced by a cooperative (which after the post-war depression, was nearly everywhere).

Tired of seeing all his margins go to those who hadn’t earned it, Korbin decided to become politically active. He and many of his fellow merchants proposed several initiatives in the Merchant’s guild to help rectify the unequal gains of the post war period and economically oppose the superpowers that hadn’t respected their contribution to the war. Sadly, advocates of the Union and Commonwealth on Iotor were well paid and had deep pockets, Korbin’s initiatives were quickly quashed and many of his supporters backed off when faced with the prospect of having their trading rights revoked.

Korbin was furious, but he wouldn’t give up; if he couldn’t make an impact using legal means he would turn to extra-legal means. Korbin began acquiring post war stockpiles of munitions, equipment, and supplies that were lying around waiting to rust. He then used his vast connections to off-load these surplus military goods to a wide variety of groups that opposed either the Union or the Commonwealth. Korbin was far from the first individual to engage in arms dealing, but he was by far the best connected and skilled; his familiarity with the different markets combined with his skill crafting the best deals made him a formidable arms dealer.

Within a few short years Korbin had consolidated the black market trade in weapons, but his ambition extended beyond mere arms dealer. Korbin began to buy out small competitors in the illegal trades of metals, electronics, industrial equipment, and even consumer products; modernizing their operations and streamlining their logistics, increasing the volume of black market traffic a hundred-fold. Korbin made huge profits on every venture by evading the costly fees and taxes that had plagued him before, earning lucrative profits even after the cost of smuggling and bribes were factored in.

Korbin had become a black-market kingpin, and was soon making more total revenue than even his competitors in the drug trade; this was because he closely monitored and influenced several different commodity markets at once, and was usually well positioned to make profits in several different ways with each major transaction.

These activities put Korbin on the radar of many law enforcement agencies, though despite many active investigations none of the activities could be directly tied to him. This was because Korbin was a master at laundering all of his proceeds through front companies, and made kept all of his illicit transactions in difficult to trace currencies and small private banks that kept their client lists secret.

However, the black market had its own costs, and the many crime syndicates and pirate gangs he had to associate with were starting to get greedy; “protection” costs were rising, and sooner or later one or more of them would get stupid enough to start a gang war to cut him out of the picture entirely.

Korbin needed one final venture to earn enough capital to return to retire back to Iotor and restore his family’s banking prominence; and there was only one place he could earn enough money in a short space of time: Korsun.