Quote:Actually, I could see it the opposite way. If they're being very careful of the kids, the population might not be as great as you'd think. If you had a large population of kids in Hidden Asteroid, they'd probably be asserting more influence and the age would be less. I'd guess that the population breakdown would be a few older adults that liked Naruto, a large number of young adults (20s, 30s or so), and a small population of children - some runaways, the rest being the children of the young adults. That sort of breakdown would be more inclined to the 'milkruns until they hit 16' mentality that a group with a large population of children, if for no other reason than if the number of children in the overall population were that great, they couldn't AFFORD to have them doing milkruns until 16. They'd need the kids contributing to the welfare of the group.
Oh, and given the timelines, the existence of 16-year-old ninja implies that either entire families are heading into space to settle in Hidden Asteroid, or there are kids running away from home and being accepted in (or both). The fact that there are *enough* of them that there are general rules as to what age, exactly, the ninja let their kids start doing more than milk runs means that there is a sizeable population of these kids.
That's an interesting thought, though. So far, pretty much all of the people that we've seen are the individuals, or groups of individuals. There are fannish families. I wonder how many of them head for space? And with handwavium being so easy to manipulate - how many kids run away to space, and what happens to them? Could be some interesting stories there. Are there any fen groups that pick up strays, or individuals? I know my character would probably take in a kid if one showed up on my doorst....um...airlock. At least long enough to feed him up and make him contact home, unless there's a good reason he ran away. Anybody else?