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Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip
This is beginning to sound like the Spacer Guild from Dune. But without the whole Melange thang, and then mixed with something that sounds akin to the Tessier-Ashpools from Neuromancer.
Petulant hyperspace navigators, what could go wrong?
EDIT: If their livelihood is space based, why are they interested in planetary based resources or industries? Surely they'd be more interested in controlling the hubs of interstellar trade, along with any associated Zero-G related industrial complexes. Their relationship with the populations on the planets which they orbit could be akin to that of the various business interests which inhabited the Bund of pre WWII Shanghai, and the polities and societies which made up Thirties China. Vaguely predatory, possibly.
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Perhaps the effect on navigators is something similar to profound autism; those born with the Gift can fly through FTL space, but they wind up interested only in flying spaceships from planet to planet. The rest of their Houses are those in whom the Gift is milder - they can't fly ships through FTL, but they're pretty good at negotiating trade deals. And since the Gift is genetically related, after a couple of centuries most if not all of those with it will be born to one of the existing Navigator Houses. (And of course if someone is born with a mutation giving them the gene, the Houses might well be very interested in either recruiting this mutant or killing them before they can be used to break the monopoly. Story hook: there are, of course, those who want to
help such a mutant, with the specific intent of opening up interstellar travel to those outside the Noble Houses...)