Outer Rim Oreworks Company

The Outer Rim Oreworks Company (ORO) offered extremely low pay and forced its workers to live in very small company housing. While it was possible to rent larger quarters, ORO charged very high prices for living space. ORO gave out loans to workers who needed money for food, housing, or other essentials, but charged the workers extremely high interest rates so that they would have to work even longer shifts in the mines to pay back the debt. The company also forbade the workers from leaving the planet until their debt was paid in full. The entity would be able to leave to fight for the Republic Army, but their wages would be garnished until their debt to ORO was paid.

The Outer Rim Oreworks was a huge corporation that had several departments, including an exploratory branch responsible of finding useful planets that could be settled and exploited; a Security and Law Enforcement division that could pay the needed guards; and the Administrators, who managed the planetary mines. The mines were regularly audited by inspectors, but the Administrator was required to pay ORO for that "privilege"—as such, in at least one case, the Administrator instead bribed ORO officers so that ORO would not send inspectors.

ORO was a ruthless company that sometimes performed illegal activities; federal police and the Jedi Order were not welcome on their planets. ORO instead would rather deal with incidents themselves, one instance being when a group of spaceport customs officers seized ORO employees' supplies for their personal use and created a smuggling ring.

ORO built a colony and opened a cortosis mine on Apatros in the Outer Rim Territories near the end of the New Sith Wars. Before he became the Sith Lord Darth Bane, Dessel worked for the company as a cortosis miner, as did his father, Hurst, and Hurst's friend, Gerd .

Thanks to the work of scout Hugo Bartyn and others, ORO had several assets in the Corporate Sector.

ORO built the sole settlement on Engebo V, known as the Landing, and started a quickly profitable but ecologically hostile venture. The company deprived Engebo from valuable minerals and vital elements using questionable methods for several centuries. As soon as the deposits stopped being profitable, ORO officials left the planet, although many miners were left behind. Jaffro Davengatt, a nerf rancher and entrepreneur, settled on Engebo V soon afterward, recycling ORO's facilities and former staff for his own business for the following ten years.

ORO held a mining facility in the remote, frigid planet Gertafuu VI, settled by Aqualish and Whiphids who also earned a living by trading with furs and exotic foodstuff.

Around five hundred years before the Battle of Naboo, a team of the exploratory branch used long-range spectrometry equipment, a then-new technology, to chart the Lamaro system—which had been previously analyzed and dismissed as having little value. The long-range scouts still dismissed the icy planet Lamaremm, but noticed that Lamaredd had a higher concentration of useful metals than previously believed; scout leader Hugo Bartyn hypothesized that this could have been due to geologically recent volcanic activities, which would make the mining easier than expected. Bartyn them contacted the Senate Mining Bureau to claim the planet in the name of ORO, and afterward sent ORO his report.

Bartyn then retired as a scout and used his reputation and skills to become the local ORO Administrator of the following mines in the mountain range later known as Krakana's Maw. ORO also registered a land in the bay to Bartyn's name, allowing him to use it at his whim. ORO sent engineers and droids to build the ORO Mining Station LM0228, rooms for the crew, and waste pipelines that threw garbage to a northwestern ocean. Once the building was complete, Bartyn bribed several ORO officers so he could keep the droids.

ORO assumed that Bartyn would be wiping out the locals, known as Menahuun, and maybe obtaining more money through illegal activities. Due to this, the company retired from the planet and waited for Bartyn to give the first results. Bartyn indeed managed the mines and provided ORO with profits in little time—even though Bartyn skimmed part of ORO's money. This prevented ORO from discovering Bartyn's real activities: He was obtaining the deeds to key planetary locations, creating a fishing city known as Bartyn's Landing, and taking control of the budget of Security and Law Enforcement to pay the Security Chief, or constable, of the city and the Security Chief's Seconds, as well as providing the Chief with advanced gear, and interfering little in the Chief's work. As such, the Chief used an ORO insignia.

Only too late to react did ORO discover that Bartyn had taken control of the whole planet, and still not all of the ORO leaders wanted to go against Bartyn—after all, Lamaredd was still profitable. Nonetheless, ORO sent a security force and a flight controller to take over the spaceport. Bartyn agreed, as long as these ORO employees would answer to the ORO Administrator, which allowed him to export seafood without telling ORO. This also allowed the Administrator to reassign these guards to other duties outside the port. The customs check performed by this unpopular staff was brief but rough.

During the five following centuries, the Administration of the fully automated mine went to Bartyn's descendants, and ORO still received money from the mines. Officially the planet still belonged to ORO while the contracts were kept. As such, ORO prevented Bartyn's Landing town council from having any influence in interplanetary trade or the fully automated mines, theoretically operated by ORO droids. No one knew that the mines were also inhabited by the Menahuun, who had survived Hugo Bartyn's attacks by migrating northwest, but centuries later they migrated southeast again because they were too close to ORO's waste pipeline, which they assumed was some form of attack. The Menahuun were learning about ORO technology and indeed used stolen ORO insignias as a token of respect.

At that time, although ORO increased its security under Administrator Guther Bartyn, it was not enough; instead, part of the ORO staff was busy with a smuggling ring that was eventually discovered by the local Miss Mylla.

Eventually, the Menahuun revealed their existence and, after diplomatic talks, joined the community of Bartyn's Landing. This was a problem for ORO, as the mere presence of living, sentient Menahuun was proof of Hugo Bartyn's genocidal activities. To avoid a potential scandal, ORO abandoned Lamaredd, leaving the mine behind. Administrator Guther Bartyn lost all of his political and economic power, and an election was held to name a new Administrator.

A notable scout of the exploratory branch was Hugo Bartyn, working in the fifth century BBY. Over the course of his career, Bartyn located several Outer Rim planets that were then settled and exploited for gas and mineral resources, including some of the most productive assets of ORO in the Corporate Sector. ORO knew that Bartyn was a speciesist who hunted the primitive sentient species of the planets he explored, but Bartyn was also a good employee who filled ORO's pockets, and, due to this, ORO turned a deaf ear to Bartyn's extracurricular activities—for as long as that was possible.

Gall was a miner for ORO in Engebo V's the Landing, but he lost an eye in an accident. ORO gave him a large compensatory payment and named him security chief for the station. When ORO left Engebo V ten years later, Gall remained there, losing his job.

Outer Rim Oreworks was first mentioned in the roleplaying-game adventure Death, Dirt, and the Nerf Rancher's Daughter, written by Cory Herndon.

The article assumes that the player characters of Reckonings achieve the best possible ending, but, should they fail, the adventure offers an alternative path that takes place during an open war between the Menahuun and the citizens of Bartyn's Landing. In this situation, Administrator Guther Bartyn gains control of the people and wages several battles against the Menahuun. He eventually asks ORO to send shock troops to clear the mines of the Menahuun threat; these ORO soldiers would then be permanently assigned to Lamaredd to stop any possible new infestation of Menahuun.

• "Bartyn's Landing" — Star Wars Gamer 7
• Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force
• The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia