The Big Four Most-Hated Companies of North Westmore
Ever stared at a company logo and thought to yourself, “gee, those motherfuckers at [company] are real assholes?” Well, i’s not a new thing, and everyone probably has their own opinions on that company, but you shouldn’t be ashamed to think that lowly of a company. Anyway, I digress.
Within North Westmore exist four companies that despite being some of the most profitable, are also some of the most hated by the people, be it for complacency leading to the deaths of multiple children or being implicated in some of the worst peacetime atrocities the nation has ever seen. Their names are some of the most despised, yet for the stigma that surrounds their brands they still pull through thick and thin and rake in millions of dollars each year. How? I don’t know.
So why don’t we find out? What is it that’s keeping their rotten, corpulent hearts ticking?
A Sick Fuck with a (Pizza) Dream: Faz Incorporated (nee’ Fazbear Entertainment)
Now this business has existed for quite a long, long time. Starting trade back in 1983 as Fazbear Entertainment under the chain of novelty animatronic diners known then as Fredbear’s Family Diner, it was originally founded and headed by a pair of men known as William Afton and Henry Goulding. All was going well, up until only months after opening its doors a child suddenly died when his head was cruelly shoved into the mouth of one of the animatronic performers as a sick and cruel prank by other guests.
From there on out, everything just seemed to go downhill, more and more. Every time a new venue opened up, someone always seemed to die or get severely injured, and each and every time it happened Afton and Goulding would just… ignore it. Pretend it didn’t happen. Maybe shed a few tears, send some money to the victims and then after the investigation close shop and set up elsewhere like nothing ever happened.
Part of this is the reason why Westmorians hate Faz Inc. They don’t give two shits about the people who die in their venues, and don’t even bother to ask why this is even happening in the first place.
All of a sudden, the company took an extreme turn for the worse when in 1987, four children went missing in another venue operated by Faz Inc - this time, it was a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Only a few months later, after the children went missing, William Afton suddenly disappeared and Henry vanished from the public eye after his own child went missing in the pizzeria as well. All of this happened around the time that police identified Afton as a potential suspect for the tragedy that had occurred in the pizzeria.
So if both the CEOs went up and out, if one of them was a suspected child murderer, and if the company has a reputation for being insensitive to the deaths of literal children, how does Faz Inc even exist today?
In recent times, Faz Inc has regained popularity as a provider of horror attractions and experiences. But why the sudden shift? Ever since 1987, rumours and legends of the animatronics coming to life to stalk, harass and kill innocent bystanders have been spread around like wildfire in Westmore’s pop culture scene, and Faz Inc, being the capitalist shits they are, obviously decided to cash in on these rumours. Many of the rumours were backed up by testimonies of hired night guards getting attacked by the performers for seemingly no reason at all. Few have lived to tell their tale.
As of 2024, they now exclusively provide an experience known as Fazbear’s Fright, a number of horror attractions that put a spin on the countless deaths of children within their venues and push an esoteric story that the vengeful spirits of the children now possess the animatronics, hence why they are coming to life in the first place anyway. The attraction has been criticized for being insensitive and short-sighted, presenting these tragedies as just another funny horror story for people to shriek and giggle at. But such is the way of the world.
The company is now currently run by a man known as Verdon Shire. He is cousins separated thrice to one of the victims of the 1987 Missing Children Incident; a boy known as Fritz Calhoun.
Slaves and Sweatshops: Richards
This company actually got recently shut down by the government after a number of damning exposes about the company’s practices were released by the press. Richards, stylised as
R I C H A R D S, was an influential Westmorian fashion company that produced some of the nation’s most famous designs, such as the many ornate 1960s fashion designs that can commonly be seen in old postcards of Dalesburg and the like.
Ever since 1990, as revealed by the exposes, Richards had been engaging in borderline immoral and illegal practices to produce clothing faster, such as sweatshops and in some extreme cases, slavery. This may come as a surprise to some, but in Westmore both these practices are outlawed. Especially slavery.
There had been whispers of the company’s shady dealings since around 2015, but nobody had thought much of it then. All of a sudden, in 2020, a report of an illegal sweatshop operating in Dalesburg that was traced back to the company went live and suddenly put a spotlight on what Richards had been doing behind closed doors. After a gruelling four years of intermittent court battles, protests, crashing stocks and many more factors, Richards was finally shut down by the government after being found guilty of violating the nation’s labour laws at the highest degree they could charge the company’s executives for.
The former CEO, Harold Budd, is currently serving 40 years behind bars for using slaves and for violating labour laws.
Shrouded in Mystery: the Desiree Corporation
The Desiree Corporation is well and truly strange. On the surface, it appears to be an insurance company. But what’s this? It also produces televisions, books, art pieces, money, tanks, AA guns and more?! What kind of operation is this?!
Not weird enough yet? While it can be found on the internet with a few searches, it does not exist on Westmore’s business registry at all, and no government records of it even exist elsewhere. No tax returns, no purchases, no notices from the government. Nothing at all.
What is the deal with the Desiree Corporation? And who even is their CEO? The mystery of the company has made people scrutiny it with interest, and in others has invoked feelings of hate - if they are being this secretive, what are they hiding… are they engaging in war crimes?!
Maybe we have to start thinking with a new point of view to understand what is really going on here. So don your tin hats and board up your windows, because this is going to get real weird, real fast.
OOC: This is to be treated as OOC info unless specified.
Tin Hat Drivel
The Desiree Corporation does not actually exist at all. It is a front, a “paper company” set up by the government of North Westmore for one purpose only: to reunite North Westmore and Sadoriwymmu. Well, maybe two, if you count the capture of Bronson Armani as another goal, since it seems to be mostly attacking the Arrowheads for most of its active life. Now, President Holt can’t just send the army to move into the wastes, because the PR would be terrible, absolutely terrible for him given people really don’t like the idea of reunifying through force. No, he has to play this smart, so he can maintain a positive image internally and internationally and have an ability to profess plausible deniability if something goes wrong and the jig somehow gets blown.
This is where the Desiree Corporation comes in.
Secretly, it is a proxy of the Westmore National Guard. That’s why it is shrouded in mystery. That’s why for an insurance company, it has tanks and guns and flying machines. Nobody, lest the enemies of the state and those opposed to Westmore, can know that this mystery company has roots in the enemy like this. Not convinced yet? The WNG has a unit called the 542 Desiree Special Forces Squad, that was formerly stationed on the Morst Islands, and get this: Altruist Island, now known as Desiree Island. As well as that, a lot of 542’s equipment went into the forces that now make up the Desiree Corporation’s brunt. AND AS WELL AS THAT, their headquarters, much like the 542 squad of old, are on Desiree Island!
Coincidence? I THINK NOT!
The government is sponsoring this operation. It is in their interests that nobody finds out the true nature of the Desiree Corporation or that they don’t achieve what they set out to do. There is no other way to explain it, because if it wasn’t the government why would there be basically no info on these guys the same way they have info on say, a legit PMC like the Arrowheads or even the Hedland Rangers?
What little is known of the company is that it started trading somewhere in 2010, under its only known CEO Helena DeSantos. Who Helena really is remains a mystery as well, somehow.
Inhumane Experiments: Desmond Laboratories
Imagine waking up in a sterile room one fine morning. It is devoid of colour, and the only things in the room with you are a box, a button and a strange device that promises you the ability to jump as high as you want. Pretty strange and cool, right? Now factor in this: you are here without prior consent.
This was the story of Marco Gellibrand, a man who was abducted one night by Desmond Labs to test out a device known only to the public as Desmond Boots on him. While he died in the facility to one of the tests the scientists put him through, we know of him because he was reported missing by his family mere days after he died.
Unfortunately, Marco’s story is not all uncommon. Desmond Labs are infamous for kidnapping random civilians to conduct human testing on for any matter of a revolutionary device the scientists have made to turn people into meat pretzels with. Yet for their flagrant disregard of the law, they still power on. How? Because of government funding.
The stuff developed at Desmond could change the face of the nation’s military forever. Under the nation’s own DARPA program, Desmond Labs is given free reign to conduct any testing on any kind of animal, including sapients, should it produce a tangible result that the army can weaponise later. It’s horrible, and twisted, but as the age-old motto says, “You can’t stop progress.”
For as long as Desmond has been implicated in abductions, there have been calls from upset activists to dock the company for human rights violations.Abducting people and subjecting them to man-made horrors is not fucking cool at all.