Galliard

Slipstream Links

Green Sun, Hammerhead, Old Terra

Stats

• +2 Technology (slipstream use)
• +2 Environment (one garden, several survivable)
• +2 Resources (one significant export)

Background

The two largest rival corporate-government alliances - Esten and Wogar - competed to exploit the local system. It looked like war was brewing, but the discovery of slipstream drive came in time to divert their energies outwards. Now they compete to exploit other systems!

It's a stratified society with the veneer of representative rule. The main garden planet is the exclusive domain of the super-rich; most industries, and their workers, are based off the survivable worlds. While technically against slavery of people, their laws do not define non-humans as people. That said, this and other laws do not seem to apply to the whims of the super-rich. The super-rich often contract "indents" - indentured workers - with the promise of possibly working on the system's garden world. Indents have "voluntarily agreed" to assert no rights, and grant their vote to their employer by proxy for a set period of time. This is often functionally indefinite as debt for holidays, luxuries, and other supplies accumulate and are unable to be repaid at the end of an indent's initial contracted term. Indents do not make up a large portion of the labor force. Galliards point out that this is not slavery, as children or others who cannot form binding contracts cannot become indents.

Major public debate has been growing regarding the "Topiary problem," with a general understanding that Galliard's significance in the cluster would be much greater if the entity were somehow better managed, paid off, destroyed, or some other hypothetical.

Aspects

• A house divided
• Don't threaten the revenue stream
• Lawful and orderly