White Star Trading

Founded by Paul Van Zandt, White
Star is the original interworld trading
company – and probably the largest.
Van Zandt financed most of his origi-
nal development by trading back and
forth with a single world.
Today, White Star has offices in
hundreds of dimensions, always dis-
guised as ordinary businesses. Some
are small, handling a few hundred
pounds of rare commodities a day; for
example, a crate of new-release CDs
from Holly, or a breeding pair of pas-
senger pigeons. Others ship hundreds
of tons of grain or ore daily, loading
the cargo onto barges that go out of
sight of land and then jump between
worlds.
White Star was formerly part of
Infinity, but antitrust considerations
(and competitors’ objections) led to its
becoming legally and financially dis-
tinct. It still has a “cozy” relationship
with Infinity, which makes many of its
smaller competitors unhappy.