East India Trading Company / TCEI

The East India Trading Company—or TCEI, because someone in accounting thought it sounded more “future-proof”—was brought back in 2105 by a bunch of rich folks who thought the original EITC didn’t go quite far enough. You know, the old company that made a fortune shipping tea and committing war crimes? Yeah, that one. So naturally, someone said, “Let’s bring it back, but this time, let’s cut out the empire and just keep the profit motive!” And just like that, the TCEI was born: a business built on trade, piracy, plausible deniability, and a deep, almost religious belief in loop-holing the living hell out of galactic law.

In its early years, TCEI moved from Earth to the stars the way a raccoon moves into your attic: fast, uninvited, and with no intention of leaving. They started hauling cargo to colonies that weren’t on the map, often because someone forgot to tell the UEE they existed. Need food rations, weapons, or fifty tons of unregistered liquor? TCEI delivered—all in one crate, labeled “mining equipment.”

Then came jump points. Humanity discovered it could go even further out and screw up even more planets, and TCEI was right there behind them, clipboard in one hand, lockpick in the other. They called it “expanding markets.” Everyone else called it suspicious. But hey, if cargo goes missing and another TCEI ship shows up to sell it back to you at a discount, is that theft, or is that value-added logistics?

By the time the UEE started stamping flags on everything and calling it civilization, TCEI was already deep in the black, making shady deals and smiling through board meetings. They were the guys who could smuggle a battleship through customs by declaring it a large microwave. And during the Messer regime? Oh, baby—they played both sides like a fiddle at a redneck wedding. They shipped weapons to the government and also to the rebels… sometimes in the same crate. “Conflict drives profits,” they’d say. So does having no soul.

When the Messers finally got kicked to the curb, everyone expected TCEI to fall apart. But no—they reinvented themselves overnight. New logo. New slogan. Same dirty hands. They blamed all their shady business on “legacy leadership” and “rogue divisions,” which is corporate-speak for “we threw Dave under the bus.” And now, here we are, 2955, and TCEI is still kicking—still moving goods, greasing palms, and occasionally helping themselves to other people’s cargo… with style.

TCEI today is a beautifully dysfunctional machine where pirates wear business suits and traders carry shotguns. It’s a place where “commerce” and “crime” are separated only by a three-second radio delay and a forged manifest. They call it “agile operations.” Everyone else calls it space piracy with a PowerPoint presentation.

So if you’re tired of hauling boxes for minimum wage and want to try capitalism’s spicy cousin, sign up. We’ve got ships, schemes, and just enough morals to pretend we have ethics. At the East India Trading Company, we don’t ask questions—we just ask how much.