| “ | Crey; bringing the future to life. | „ |
| ~ Crey Industries's company slogan. |
Crey Industries, sometimes known as Crey Corporation, is a huge multi-billion dollar company and an antagonistic group in the video-game City of Heroes. The company is ruled with an iron-fist by Countess Crey and despite it's many amoral, criminal and on occasion, treasonous, behaviors it remains untouchable either for lack of hard-evidence to bring into the authorities or through acts of bribery, intimidation, "witness silencing" and even brainwashing.
Crey Industries' Illicit Activities[]
Crey industries with humble beginnings in Switzerland as the pharmaceutical company Crey Biotech in 1989, used to be a modest conglomerate under Alphonse "Count Crey" but after the Count fell ill his wife Clarissa van Dorn AKA Countess Crey took over the company and with the investments of a mysterious sponsor turned it into a corporate giant. One of Crey's most notable crimes was the experimentation on Steven Berry who would later be known as Synapse. Steven was abducted by a Crey scientist named Dr. Rudy Bein and used as a guinea-pig for Crey's first set of experiments in inducing super-powers in normal people. In addition to using Steven as a guinea-pig, Bein was ordered to get all the information he could out of him on his friend, Ray Keyes A.K.A. Positron, Steven would either give Crey his secrets or at the very least provide helpful test data. Steven was tortured for days with elector-shock treatment and painful injections. Luckily Steven's powers matured faster and more potentially than Crey anticipated and he was able to escape his restraints before he was either putdown or brainwashed. Bein was never caught and Crey denied any knowledge of the incident, claiming Bein was either a rogue agent acting on his own or that Steven was suffering from some sort of delirium from the experience with a compromised memory. Steven took up the title "Synapse" and joined the fight against the criminals of Paragon with an eye kept on Crey in particular.
Crey has abducted many other people, from heroes, to villains to civilians, to experiment on them. In some cases Crey's experiments have been to test gene-splicing, others have been to trace and replicate superpowers of the various meta-humans roaming around Paragon City. Other experiments Crey have engaged in have to do with testing out controversial products not approved for human testing by the FDA. Crey often sends it's agents out to scare or close down competitors. A very large practice for Crey is to brainwash it's own employees in high security areas, whether said employees are scientists, security enforcers or just non-combatant paper pushers; Most of the brainwashed employees with families are simply given false memories that they have orders not to talk about when they get home, employees in high places of security with no families to worry about just disappear from public life altogether, becoming literally consumed by their careers.
Crey sells many super-science products on the black-market to super-villains willing to pay, everything from mutagens, to doomsday devices, to high-tech droids. Crey was hooked up to the Rikti by their mysterious sponsor. The Rikti are a group of aliens set on conquering the planet, their first attempted invasion was foiled by the heroes of Paragon but the remaining troops on Earth have shut themselves off in a part of the city now dubbed "The Rikti War Zone". Crey frequently fixes and mass produces various Rikti tech for them in exchange for being allowed to reproduce it for themselves or keeping new bits of the Rikti's advanced technology themselves to use for their own research purposes when they are done. Crey sells many parts to the group of cybernetic hedonists known as the Freakshow, Freakshow are thugs who commit many crimes often just for chaos sake but steal money in the process most of the time to pay Crey for further enhancements to their bodies. Crey has sold weapons and bought drugs from The Family on many occasions, though such dealing are kept secret by both parties for obvious legal reasons since Crey is a public company and the Family are a crime syndicate.
Crey once tried to operate in the Rogue Isles too but were quickly put down by Arachnos, unlike Paragon City, the Rogue Isles are not the sort of place one gets away with crime through manipulations of the law or good public relations. Because Arachnos runs the Rogue Isles and they are ruled by Lord Recluse, the smartest being on the face of the planet, Crey's business in the Rogue Isles is both simpler and more difficult. Arachnos suffers no pretenses or legal loopholes so any attempts Crey tries to make without Arachnos's permission within their territory are not countered with lawsuits or legal hearings but rather with death-troops knocking down their doors, as a result Crey has a very open alliance with Arachnos and operates much more openly in the Rogue Isles but with far more restrictions on the types of things they can do. Some of Crey's leeway within the Rogue Isles are their ability to abduct super-villains with no ties to Arachnos in broad-daylight and funnel profits into non-federally regulated accounts but restrictions for Crey included civilians and Arachnos assets as being completely off-limits within the Isles and of course Crey needs to pay Arachnos either in great sums of money or shared research to take advantage of the lax laws in the Rogue Isles.
A Necessary Evil[]
Crey' Poster.
Crey's reputation might catch up to them in the public eye, even with their ties to the media and mass brainwashing techniques to pacify the public but one of the biggest reasons Crey still operates openly as a "legitimate" business is that they employ a good 50% of the city. Crey's products are sold overseas and a strong pillar of the national economy. Crey donates to many charities and public works and whether for insurance scams or just public relations the money Crey spends on improving Paragon City is quite substantial. As a result of the value of Crey many heroes who are fully aware of the truth about the company have no choice but let the legal system sort things out with Crey's illicit activities while trying their best to disrupt individual Crey crimes even if afterwords Crey severs ties with the overseers of the operations and covers-up any connections with them.
Sub Categories[]
Crey has many employees who are more than mere office workers trying to make a living. These are those that heroes and villains will fight in the field and called in for the "messier" side of working for Crey.
The Agents: Agents are security personnel for Crey they blend into most crowds wearing simple sharp suits and darkened sunglasses. More than just so-called 'suits' though the Agents are trained in martial-arts and sharp shooting armed with silenced pistols.
The Crey Tanks: Crey Tanks are enforcers in full body battle-suits whose armor grants them various elemental traits such as electric, cryonics or thermal projections and auras.
Scientists: Crey scientists and doctors use advanced medical devices to heal troops in the field or use various mutagens to buff their allies and weaken their foes. The Crey scientists and doctors are also armed with ray-guns that either shoot freeze rays or sonic blasts.
Crey Protectors: One of the most formidable troops in Crey's arsenal are the Protectors. The Protectors claim to be a group of super-powered mercenaries simply working for Crey as a security force, in truth the Protectors are clones of various meta-humans the Crey have abducted grown in laboratories as completely loyal super-powered servants of Countess Crey with various genetic enhancements improving upon the originals. One of the universal enhancements given to all Protectors in addition to the powers of the original meta-humans is the ability to regenerate tissue damage even to the point of being able to come back to life once if they are killed.