ECS: nice. 'splain the turtle reference, please?
Griever: to be fair, your initial description of the sail *was* partial inspiration. You need feel no debt.
Main body: Thoughts about Other Folks In Space...
- anti-handwavium legislation: one of the major reasons that this would go through, once the folks up top figured out what was going on, is that handwavium is *entirely unpredictable*. Every other kind of tech, you can establish at least a decent baseline for what sort of resources the potential enemy/infiltrator/whatever might bring to bear. Handwavium could be *anything*. This, combined with its inherent unreliability makes it more fundamentally inimical to the entire *concept* of established power structures than any other tech anywhere ever. Whatever else you may have heard, *this* is why the law was passed - so they could take obvious use of the stuff as a crime in and of itself, and deal with people before they started really *exploiting* it.
I'd imagine, incidentally, that the hardtech types downstairs may well have come up with a radarlike way of detecting grav effects. This won't help them catch you if all they ping is the initial liftoff, but if you're intending to land and take off again in a restricted area, they can scramble (if they care to) in time to intercept you on the way up at least, and quite possibly on the ground. This helps give a bit more teeth to the Danelaw on the surface, which, I think, makes stronger the whole.
Australia is becoming *rich*. It's likely a bit more dangerous than it had been, too, but that's Australia for you. It is also likely that there are a few other relatively small countries here and there that have decided to take the risk vs reward gamble and throw wide their arms to the Fen. None as big, and none as famous, but they're out there. I would expect Japan, for example, might pick one of the smaller islands as its Fennish Hong Kong. Taiwan would look to the skies, look to the mainland, decide that the fen were the lesser of two evils, and invite them in. Things like that.
Incidentally, the thought of Danelaw brought something else up. Specifically, that fenspace isn't in it - which means that there are going tobe people who put their faith and trust in the Goop because it's better than what they have to face downstairs. The political escapees, ex-cons trying to go straight, and antiestablishment freaks of all stripes will fit in reasonably well, but there's bound to be a few criminal orgnizations who decide to set themselves up with the Galaxy's Most Perfect Non-Extradition-Treaty, and commute to work. That's bad. The ones who turn around and try to start preying on the fen? That's worse. The singleton psychos who head to the stars to try to indulge their tast in theft, murder, and rape? That's worse still.
Of course... that's not something to worry about just yet. After all, handwavium is largely inluenced by thought/emotion/auras/whatever (seems a little off to *me*, but it's canon now, so I'll run with it.) Currently, there *aren't* any flavors of 'wavium that react well to "psycho killer" (the closest they come are the varieties that react well to "mad scientist" - and those tend to do so at least partially by giving them adversaries to be maniacal at and thwarting them when they get too far out of hand. Personally, I'm figuring that the Professor's Lovely Assistants are partial expressions of that - Mad scientists *should* have people trying to kill them, but *shouldn't* die, and so they dance this dance of continual failure to kill, all unknowing that that really *is* their true purpose/desire/meaning/existence truth.)
Eventually, though, once we need an Ugly Dramatic Threat to play around with, someone wrong *will* wind up with some Villain-Grade Handwavium.
Oh... and we *do* occasionally have problems with old-fashioned scumbag-variety pirates, but not all that often. The Village of Hidden Asteroid offers half price on them, after all, and occasionally takes them out as simple sacred duties. The fact that they tend to then drop off trophies of said sacred duties at SSX Base, along with beautifully constructed poetry about how the dishonor of even a single member stainins the honor of the entire clan does its part to help ensure that there are at least *two* groups out there protecting shipping.... which is as it should be.
(incidentally, my thanks for tossing in the Pirate/Ninja dynamic. It is a thing of beauty.)
Griever: to be fair, your initial description of the sail *was* partial inspiration. You need feel no debt.
Main body: Thoughts about Other Folks In Space...
- anti-handwavium legislation: one of the major reasons that this would go through, once the folks up top figured out what was going on, is that handwavium is *entirely unpredictable*. Every other kind of tech, you can establish at least a decent baseline for what sort of resources the potential enemy/infiltrator/whatever might bring to bear. Handwavium could be *anything*. This, combined with its inherent unreliability makes it more fundamentally inimical to the entire *concept* of established power structures than any other tech anywhere ever. Whatever else you may have heard, *this* is why the law was passed - so they could take obvious use of the stuff as a crime in and of itself, and deal with people before they started really *exploiting* it.
I'd imagine, incidentally, that the hardtech types downstairs may well have come up with a radarlike way of detecting grav effects. This won't help them catch you if all they ping is the initial liftoff, but if you're intending to land and take off again in a restricted area, they can scramble (if they care to) in time to intercept you on the way up at least, and quite possibly on the ground. This helps give a bit more teeth to the Danelaw on the surface, which, I think, makes stronger the whole.
Australia is becoming *rich*. It's likely a bit more dangerous than it had been, too, but that's Australia for you. It is also likely that there are a few other relatively small countries here and there that have decided to take the risk vs reward gamble and throw wide their arms to the Fen. None as big, and none as famous, but they're out there. I would expect Japan, for example, might pick one of the smaller islands as its Fennish Hong Kong. Taiwan would look to the skies, look to the mainland, decide that the fen were the lesser of two evils, and invite them in. Things like that.
Incidentally, the thought of Danelaw brought something else up. Specifically, that fenspace isn't in it - which means that there are going tobe people who put their faith and trust in the Goop because it's better than what they have to face downstairs. The political escapees, ex-cons trying to go straight, and antiestablishment freaks of all stripes will fit in reasonably well, but there's bound to be a few criminal orgnizations who decide to set themselves up with the Galaxy's Most Perfect Non-Extradition-Treaty, and commute to work. That's bad. The ones who turn around and try to start preying on the fen? That's worse. The singleton psychos who head to the stars to try to indulge their tast in theft, murder, and rape? That's worse still.
Of course... that's not something to worry about just yet. After all, handwavium is largely inluenced by thought/emotion/auras/whatever (seems a little off to *me*, but it's canon now, so I'll run with it.) Currently, there *aren't* any flavors of 'wavium that react well to "psycho killer" (the closest they come are the varieties that react well to "mad scientist" - and those tend to do so at least partially by giving them adversaries to be maniacal at and thwarting them when they get too far out of hand. Personally, I'm figuring that the Professor's Lovely Assistants are partial expressions of that - Mad scientists *should* have people trying to kill them, but *shouldn't* die, and so they dance this dance of continual failure to kill, all unknowing that that really *is* their true purpose/desire/meaning/existence truth.)
Eventually, though, once we need an Ugly Dramatic Threat to play around with, someone wrong *will* wind up with some Villain-Grade Handwavium.
Oh... and we *do* occasionally have problems with old-fashioned scumbag-variety pirates, but not all that often. The Village of Hidden Asteroid offers half price on them, after all, and occasionally takes them out as simple sacred duties. The fact that they tend to then drop off trophies of said sacred duties at SSX Base, along with beautifully constructed poetry about how the dishonor of even a single member stainins the honor of the entire clan does its part to help ensure that there are at least *two* groups out there protecting shipping.... which is as it should be.
(incidentally, my thanks for tossing in the Pirate/Ninja dynamic. It is a thing of beauty.)