[118 / 22 / 31]
Quoted By:
How to explain Barter to an outsider?
A nomadic trade station skirting the edges of civilized space, onboard which anything and everything is for sale - is a description you've both heard and used. But that doesn't even begin to do justice to the sheer enormity and insanity of that station's construction: a thousand voidcraft lashed and welded together in a haphazard manner, just barely coordinated enough to move and maneuver. And tells nothing about the 50,000+ sapients inhabiting it: the clash between the principles of independence, ownership and the right to seek profit, and the necessities of leadership, law, and authority required to keep this moloch of a space station powered, airtight, and functional. About wealth disparity, the daily struggle to stay ahead of expenses in a place where even the air itself has a price tag, and a society stratified by where they live, and what role they play in the station's function. But also about a sense of community fostered by that very struggle and hardship, and a strangely non-violent culture that coalesced around the fact that sapient life does indeed have value - calculated down to the last cred.
You loathe this place. The greed and short-sighted self-interest that threaten to choke the life out of it on a daily basis. All the corruption and evil that takes root in sapient hearts whenever there's money to be made. The wasteful politicking of petty property tyrants who'll fight to their dying breath to block something that would make everyone's life easier just because they can't find a way to squeeze a few extra cred out of it for themselves.
But, in your own way, you also love it. This tiny mote of order and harmony moving through the infinite dark, maintaining a unique equilibrium between the rule of law and personal freedom, day by day continuing to avoid the seemingly inevitable descent into either the violent, might-makes-right anarchy of the Rim, or the crushing Dragonblood hegemony over the Core Worlds.
You like to think that you've played your own part in helping maintain that equilibrium over the years, insignificant as your actions may be in the grand scheme of things. Right here and now you're only Elne Blavis, Senior Field Technician with Energy Management, after all. A fancy way to say: electrician.
But now a genuine Dragonblood Noble has arrived on Barter and she has taken an unwarranted interest in you over a name from your past. And from experience you know that just her simple presence threatens that precious equilibrium Barter tries to maintain. For it is the nature of Nobles to warp anything they touch, and to remake it in a way that it better serves them.
And so you're on your way to meet her. Both because you have hope, however faint, that she can be convinced to simply leave. And also because you've had a vision of the future in which the two of you meet.
Oh yeah, you do have an unusual ability or two, you suppose.
(cont)
A nomadic trade station skirting the edges of civilized space, onboard which anything and everything is for sale - is a description you've both heard and used. But that doesn't even begin to do justice to the sheer enormity and insanity of that station's construction: a thousand voidcraft lashed and welded together in a haphazard manner, just barely coordinated enough to move and maneuver. And tells nothing about the 50,000+ sapients inhabiting it: the clash between the principles of independence, ownership and the right to seek profit, and the necessities of leadership, law, and authority required to keep this moloch of a space station powered, airtight, and functional. About wealth disparity, the daily struggle to stay ahead of expenses in a place where even the air itself has a price tag, and a society stratified by where they live, and what role they play in the station's function. But also about a sense of community fostered by that very struggle and hardship, and a strangely non-violent culture that coalesced around the fact that sapient life does indeed have value - calculated down to the last cred.
You loathe this place. The greed and short-sighted self-interest that threaten to choke the life out of it on a daily basis. All the corruption and evil that takes root in sapient hearts whenever there's money to be made. The wasteful politicking of petty property tyrants who'll fight to their dying breath to block something that would make everyone's life easier just because they can't find a way to squeeze a few extra cred out of it for themselves.
But, in your own way, you also love it. This tiny mote of order and harmony moving through the infinite dark, maintaining a unique equilibrium between the rule of law and personal freedom, day by day continuing to avoid the seemingly inevitable descent into either the violent, might-makes-right anarchy of the Rim, or the crushing Dragonblood hegemony over the Core Worlds.
You like to think that you've played your own part in helping maintain that equilibrium over the years, insignificant as your actions may be in the grand scheme of things. Right here and now you're only Elne Blavis, Senior Field Technician with Energy Management, after all. A fancy way to say: electrician.
But now a genuine Dragonblood Noble has arrived on Barter and she has taken an unwarranted interest in you over a name from your past. And from experience you know that just her simple presence threatens that precious equilibrium Barter tries to maintain. For it is the nature of Nobles to warp anything they touch, and to remake it in a way that it better serves them.
And so you're on your way to meet her. Both because you have hope, however faint, that she can be convinced to simply leave. And also because you've had a vision of the future in which the two of you meet.
Oh yeah, you do have an unusual ability or two, you suppose.
(cont)
