richardson Wrote:The status quo is even more shook up. The post-war complacency falters as there is suddenly Competition. Kandor, Helium, the Crystal Cities, the Browncoats and Belters, Stelliva, the Rockhounss, everybosy is suddenly feeling the pressure as a flood of danes slowly crests the dike of weird and dangerous the fen built up. It would be the big reason the fen are exploding outwards in S2. We already have things like the housing crisis on Mars and the new stations popping up like weeds in the Jupiter Trojans, and stuff like the argentian rancher with the Island station.I suppose this explains why StellviaCorp headquarters is staying exactly where it's been since the station was built in L5, and expanding operations to triple their physical presence in interplanetary space, and starting to make partnerships with small businesses on Earth that really need the money... Oh, wait - StellviaCorp is doing all of this, but not because they're feeling any heat from competition. They don't have any major competition in their core businesses. They're becoming a big company, is all.
Some Fen - not all, just some - are "exploding outwards in S2" because they're getting away from the reminders of the Boskone War, or because There's Stuff Out There Nobody's Seen Before And They Can Be The First, or because their friends are going and they don't want to be left behind. (Nobody ever said the reasons all had to be good ones.) There's still a metric shitload of empty space in the Sol system for people who want freedom from the governance and protection of the 'Danelaw or the Convention.
As for that Argentinian rancher, he fits nicely into a hole that's been in the setting for years. Somebody's been supplying the Renfaire Fen in the Main Belt with red meat since before the Boskone War - now we know who that "somebody" is. This is an example of a story element that fits into the setting: it adds to the setting as a whole and works within the boundaries of the setting, instead of trying to push those boundaries in a direction that most of the writers don't want. (An example of something that didn't work was the "Kemwer" stories from a few years ago. The stories were entertaining as standalone stories, but they weren't Fenspace stories.)
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012