Rony Co.

The Rony Company is not, strictly speaking, a good company. Few people claim that it is; those few eventually realize they were thinking of somebody else. It is not good to its workers, it is not a producer of good (that is, quality) product, and it is not even particularly good to their customers''.  Caveat emptor'' is the international law of Ereth, but even by those standards Rony's greatest service to customers is to give their customers reason to make purchases from someone else.

But they are cheap. And in war, inexpensive materiel carries a value all its own.

Even the idea for Rony Co. was as throwaway as its goods. A multinational conglomerate with its tendrils sunk into a variety of economies decided that Novir Corp., long considered the basement of weapons dealing, offered a little too much quality for its role in the military surplus chain. They figured there was a market for guns with a will-jam guarantee, bombs with fuses best described as "unpredictable", gizmos with side effects openly listed as unknown. Their competitors, catching wind of the plan for this company, saw a project doomed to failure and made no move to stop Rony's entrance into the war goods market. Even Rony's founders assumed there would be a burst of profit, followed by a sudden bankruptcy and dispersal of funds into the conglomerates many other businesses.

Everyone was wrong.

Eight years after Rony's founding, the company is not only alive but almost thriving. The nations and other parties interested in their goods sometimes understand the risks, sometimes not, but all work with limited funds that cannot outfit whatever armies, ships, or planes they possess with goods bought from any other company. Many of the countries who contract with Rony buy their weapons solely for deterrence purposes. After all, the army across the field can't see the manufacturing label on the soldiers' guns.

Rony's surprising success has even led to nominal R&D expenditures. This research has not yet made any of their items more powerful or efficient, but friendly fire and self-caused casualties are down fifteen percent in the last two years. This turn away from the roulette-wheel outcomes of using Rony products, along with the opening for a manufacturer to sell wares in the Bronze Cup, has led to Rony Co. becoming the newest member of the ARI corporate family.

Rumor has it Rony's brass still has not decided whether or not to become a legitimate weapon-selling operation or simply wait for some inevitable catastrophe before shutting down the business as originally planned. Either way, for the beginning pilots, Rony Co. offers the best chance to knock a competitor's plane out of the sky, at a slightly increased risk of knocking yourself out of the sky first.