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I don't know if I'll ever end up writing anything for this, but a tweet put this idea into my head and now it's stuck. Over on twitter someone commented that Comstar was basically the, "Future Of The 80s!" Bell monopoly writ large. Which had me thinking, the breakup of Bell had its seeds all the way back in the 70s and took place in the 80s, so why not a more Bell-like Comstar breakup. Not a clean and simple two way civil war between Word of Blakists and "But we just want to be phone company monopolists." This post isn't yet a plan but rather me thinking in written form.

With no Star League (unless the breakup is pushed late, but not too late into the setting) they're obviously not getting broken up by the Federal Government Of The Future Of The 80s. I'd also like to see something more like the real life Bell + Seven Baby Bells. That said, if Comstar breaks cleanly on the political boundaries of the successor states what's stopping them from just swallowing up the Baby Comstars? I'll have to dig into what history we have for them and look for some late 2800s early 2900s crisis points where a nice firm push could screw things up.

My biggest thoughts so far:
  • I want more than two factions
  • I am terribly amused by the idea of the Federated Suns network and Taurian Concordat network being run largely by the same splinter faction just for the ulcers that will give the Taurians, said faction, and those in the Suns who wonder if things are about to go boom.
  • A chunk of the courier service and explorer corp go independent doing a combination of continuing exploration, serving as a go-between shipping stuff between other factions, and trying to cozy up with the Sol belters after having broken away from Earth control.
  • Earth based Comstar has largely turtled up having realized it has little chance of re-controlling the rest any time soon. Ground and orbital defenses are being rebuilt to ward off outside attack -- while the long sidelined non-Comstar powers of Earth are starting to get ideas.
  • Whatever Comstar faction controls the most 'west' end of the map gets to play the role of US West of the Future Of The 80s.*


And now I'm wanting to play around with the other AU ideas I've had.

*For those who don't know, US West was so bad it was the only newborn Baby Bell to have it's own consumer rights group facing it (a national telephone consumers group formed a splinter group when they realized roughly a third of the complaints they were handling came from US West territory). Hey, I live here, I got to laugh when reading a business column about Qwest buying up US West that had a line about hoping Qwest didn't ruin US West (closest I've ever come from falling out of a chair due to laughing). Sadly post merger Qwest management kept hold of the US West management instead of cleaning house.
(04-03-2020, 12:21 PM)LilFluff Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know if I'll ever end up writing anything for this, but a tweet put this idea into my head and now it's stuck. Over on twitter someone commented that Comstar was basically the, "Future Of The 80s!" Bell monopoly writ large. Which had me thinking, the breakup of Bell had its seeds all the way back in the 70s and took place in the 80s, so why not a more Bell-like Comstar breakup. Not a clean and simple two way civil war between Word of Blakists and "But we just want to be phone company monopolists." This post isn't yet a plan but rather me thinking in written form.

With no Star League (unless the breakup is pushed late, but not too late into the setting) they're obviously not getting broken up by the Federal Government Of The Future Of The 80s. I'd also like to see something more like the real life Bell + Seven Baby Bells. That said, if Comstar breaks cleanly on the political boundaries of the successor states what's stopping them from just swallowing up the Baby Comstars? I'll have to dig into what history we have for them and look for some late 2800s early 2900s crisis points where a nice firm push could screw things up.

My biggest thoughts so far:
  • I want more than two factions
  • I am terribly amused by the idea of the Federated Suns network and Taurian Concordat network being run largely by the same splinter faction just for the ulcers that will give the Taurians, said faction, and those in the Suns who wonder if things are about to go boom.
  • A chunk of the courier service and explorer corp go independent doing a combination of continuing exploration, serving as a go-between shipping stuff between other factions, and trying to cozy up with the Sol belters after having broken away from Earth control.
  • Earth based Comstar has largely turtled up having realized it has little chance of re-controlling the rest any time soon. Ground and orbital defenses are being rebuilt to ward off outside attack -- while the long sidelined non-Comstar powers of Earth are starting to get ideas.
  • Whatever Comstar faction controls the most 'west' end of the map gets to play the role of US West of the Future Of The 80s.*


And now I'm wanting to play around with the other AU ideas I've had.

*For those who don't know, US West was so bad it was the only newborn Baby Bell to have it's own consumer rights group facing it (a national telephone consumers group formed a splinter group when they realized roughly a third of the complaints they were handling came from US West territory). Hey, I live here, I got to laugh when reading a business column about Qwest buying up US West that had a line about hoping Qwest didn't ruin US West (closest I've ever come from falling out of a chair due to laughing). Sadly post merger Qwest management kept hold of the US West management instead of cleaning house.
Kick it off with Kentares and ComStar spreading the word of the massacre so Jinjiro Kurita concludes they are 'enemies of the Dragon' and seizes the Combine HPGs. This would be before Toyama's religious reform and the massive loss of scientists so running their own HPGs is within their capacity.

This can then follow up with a spat between the Capellan and Free Worlds League networks over which branch should control the HPGs on worlds that changed hands. An elderly Blake fails to rein this in effectively and Precentor Andurien breaks away, establishing his own network with support from the FWL (particularly the resurgent Duchy of Andurien) and extending their service into the Magistracy of Canopus. The core regions of the FWL stay under Terran ComStar due to Andurien's limited reach.

The strain of this kills Jerome Blake about a year before canon and before he's solidified Toyama as his successor. As a result ComStar schisms between Toyama 'political' faction and Schwepps more 'corporate' faction. House Steiner had never been comfortable with ComStar (particularly their tax exempt status) and this region's HPGs (except in the old RWR) flips directly to Schwepps, although he loses control over Terra to Toyama. While the remaining FWL, RWR, Capellan and FedSuns HPGs remain aligned with Toyama, Schweppes gets support from Taurus who want their HPGs back and are happy to give influence to an anti-Terran faction.

Toyama is eager to rebuild his influence, particularly with the FWL as an avenue to getting 'Andurien ComStar' (still the smallest of the four factions) under his thumb. Thus events play out much as the ComStar War did in canon, with Charles Marik getting played by his sister (a ComStar adept) before finally realising he was being pawned. Rather than destroying Oriente HPG (a First Circuit HPG station in his era) he captures it and sets up a new FWL-managed HPG network for everything outside of Andurien ComStar's region and outlying regions like Tamarind.

The latter regions, along with the old RWR, are now cut off from Terra and have to sort themselves out, operating as a loose network of semi-autonomous Precentor fiefs, making the region mildly hellish for communications. Still, its a backwater so no one really cares.

This leaves the only real 'old ComStar' regions being the diminished Capellan Confederation and the Federated Suns - who are not happy to be sharing an HPG network, particularly as the now resource-short ComStar starts stinting outlying regions - which leads to the 'Schwepps-Taurian' network expanding into the FedSuns outback and the Aurigan region (which is breaking off from the Confederation at this time). House Davion and House Liao are mostly holding off on a break since they hope to extort concessions from Terra for their loyalty. When Toyama's successor makes it clear that this isn't going to happen, Michael Davion opens the rest of the Suns to the Schwepps-Taurians.

House Liao make a play for Terran control at this time, which backfires when the Terran government takes over the ComGuards forces and the rebuilt SDS network, obliterating the Capellan's last warships. The Capellan HPG network claims to henceforth be the 'true' successors to the SLDF Ministry of Communications, with the Terran rump (still active only on worlds within direct HPG range of Terra) firmly under the control of the Terran Planetary Government but still acting as a neutral clearinghouse between nations and the other HPG networks - if only as a last resort.

The factions would be:

ComStar (controls HPGs within the Capellan Confederation's current borders, whatever they may be)
Terran Ministry of Communications (has HPGs on worlds within 50 light years of Terra, sometimes alongside those of other networks)
Schwepps-Taurus (controls HPGs in the Taurian Concordat, Federated Suns and nearby periphery areas)
Voice of the Dragon (controls the HPGs of the Draconis Combine, controlled by ISF)
Schwepps-Steiner (controls HPGs in the Skye, Tamar and adjacent provinces of Donegal regions of the Lyran Commonwealth)
HPG Free League (controls HPGs in the major/central provinces of the FWL)
Anduri-Comm (centred in Andurien but also has HPGs in Canopus and along the FWL rim)
Anti-Spinward Precentors (dozens of small networks loosely aligned but with exact influence shifting periodically as worlds sign direct contracts with local Precentors), covering the anti-spinward regions of the FWL and Lyran Commonwealth, as well as such as remains of the old RWR).