Did the MBS corner the market on trade?

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:There are also other Mesan worlds where the trail could lead.

Are you sure that is not a hint about the Renaissance Factor worlds, which he had not yet introduced in 2005?

there were also manpower outposts, like the ones on Congo, that have been mentioned - not to mention dozens to hundreds of abandoned stations and mining colonies that server as transfer sites and staging bases. (think Parmally station).

And the oldest, and most protected - 2 ships in the vast of space meet in the middle of nowhere.

cthia wrote:There are also other Mesan worlds where the trail could lead.

tlb wrote:Are you sure that is not a hint about the Renaissance Factor worlds, which he had not yet introduced in 2005?

Theemile wrote:there were also manpower outposts, like the ones on Congo, that have been mentioned - not to mention dozens to hundreds of abandoned stations and mining colonies that server as transfer sites and staging bases. (think Parmally station).

And the oldest, and most protected - 2 ships in the vast of space meet in the middle of nowhere.

Granting most of that, only other outposts like Congo rise to the level of a "world"; but places like Congo do not add much to the strength of the Mesan Alignment. Anyway Congo was already known and conquered in 2005; so RFC would have been hinting about something else.

So was the Renaissance Factor known in 2005?

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:There are also other Mesan worlds where the trail could lead.

tlb wrote:Are you sure that is not a hint about the Renaissance Factor worlds, which he had not yet introduced in 2005?

Theemile wrote:there were also manpower outposts, like the ones on Congo, that have been mentioned - not to mention dozens to hundreds of abandoned stations and mining colonies that server as transfer sites and staging bases. (think Parmally station).

And the oldest, and most protected - 2 ships in the vast of space meet in the middle of nowhere.

Granting most of that, only other outposts like Congo rise to the level of a "world"; but places like Congo do not add much to the strength of the Mesan Alignment. Anyway Congo was already known and conquered in 2005; so RFC would have been hinting about something else.

So was the Renaissance Factor known in 2005?

Not so much strength, but cutouts and dead ends to move people/stuff to Darius. When you "own" the transship points, it's easy to lose the data in the shuffle

There is an awful lot of traffic to and from Darius. Not the least of that is (or was) the Mannerheim cruiser squadron to put a killing zone on the Twins side of the Torch wormhole.

All that movement of information (and people even excluding Houdini) including equipment.

Where were the Cataphracts delivered to Filerta come from? As in where were they manufactured and transhiped through?

Mesa had been a focal point of traffic, covered - if you will- by all that slaver and transtellar traffic with isn't going to be filling out truthful ship itinerary forms even at Mesa.

The Alignment as gobs of money- oceans even. Buy 10 @ 4megaton "commercial freighters" and have 10 crews of Alignment people. 5 of them are based out of "?somewhere" (Darius) and 5 go to where they are assigned to pick stuff up. You make sure you have pairs of ships matching each other's emissions and they will have a remote deep space meet and swap crews. The Darius based crew takes's their standalone data modual for navigation and swaps it with the one on the other ship when they do a full exchange swap....or they just take all those massive shipping containers and packed for transport in vacum moduals and do a non-station transfer and nothing but the merchandise changes ships.

Need a prefab manufacturing orbital facility- buy it and ship it to .....whatever it says on the invoice and the manufacturer really doesn't care as long as they get paid. The Alignment will add it's own bells and whistles plus special Alignment required modifications until such time as they have expanded both the capasity and workforce to do it without ordering in stuff.

And they will need building capasity though they can buy "stock" ships for commercial level movement of goods while keeping most building and repair areas for their own warships and specialty stuff like Streak Drive ships.

Not a lot of people leaving Darius compaired to the size of the population and most that are comming in- like the Houdini people- are probably never going to leave.

Brigade XO wrote:There is an awful lot of traffic to and from Darius. Not the least of that is (or was) the Mannerheim cruiser squadron to put a killing zone on the Twins side of the Torch wormhole.

Why on earth would those have gone to Darius? Mannerheim is close to the Felix system and they can transit directly to The Twins from the Felix junction. It'd be out of their way to go to Darius; even ignoring the security risk as those ships have plenty of people not cleared to know about the existence of Darius.

Some of the Mesan Alignment Navy plants within the Mannerheim SDF might know another remote terminus of the Felix wormhole goes to the MAlign's system of Darius- but I'm pretty sure the Mannerheim folks who even know about the wormhole have no idea about the existence of that terminus.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:There are also other Mesan worlds where the trail could lead.

Are you sure that is not a hint about the Renaissance Factor worlds, which he had not yet introduced in 2005?

I guess it certainly could be. I never would have come up with that. Brilliant. However, I'd think that increases the chances that all Ghosthunter roads will eventually lead there. It's one big happy family who are sensitive to the Alignment's cause.

What is interesting is that saying this community of worlds would be more than partial to the Alignment and it's cause would be a crime of an understatement. I'd also think it would be a region of intense bias that would stick out like a sore thumb. They are racist against humanity. This kind of reality usually becomes common news. It is contained in all travel brochures and advisories. It should be the first place the Ghosthunters bring under scrutiny.

Why does Mesa still exist?

Mesa is not alone. I don't want to go into too much detail, since this is something Eric and I are going to be developing in the CoS stories, but Mesa has been around for a long time and has made a lot of friends in its immediate area. Mesa was originally founded by renegade Beowulfans who disagreed with the Beowulf Code and who gradually worked their way from rejection of the Code into the active creation of genetic slavery. They (the ruling class of Mesa) have also been practicing genetic modification on themselves almost from the beginning. Anisimovna & Friends are the result of multi-generational improvement programs, and many of them (on a purely physical level) are at least as "advanced" as Honor herself, although I doubt many of them would want to meet either Honor or Thandi in a dark room. From the viewpoint of "natural" (as in, even without prolong) lifespan, physical health, resistance to disease, etc., etc., the Mesans are considerably superior (in the purely physical sense, at least) to "pure strain" humans. Because of this, they have a certain "master race" mentality. Genetic slaves are sub-human, in their view of the universe, pure-strain humans are merely-human, and they themselves are super-human. This is bad enough, but, aware of the need to protect themselves, they have made their services available to the populations and ruling elites of other SL planets in their vicinity. In short, there are quite a few (exact numbers deponent saith not) of "joined-at-the-hip" SL star systems in the area immediately around Mesa who see themselves as part of the "Mesan community," tend to follow the Mesan lead, and would use their veto in the SL legislature to stop any military movement against Mesa in a heartbeat.

That sounds as if it would be a highly segmented, controversial, confrontational and racist segment of worlds whose toxic mentality should be readily known throughout the galaxy. When traveling through that region of space most civilized people exit on the offramp to avoid it like the plague.

cthia wrote:That sounds as if it would be a highly segmented, controversial, confrontational and racist segment of worlds whose toxic mentality should be readily known throughout the galaxy. When traveling through that region of space most civilized people exit on the offramp to avoid it like the plague.

However, as you keep saying, they are also very smart; which means that they can easily keep this hidden from the hoi polloi and only express themselves to their equals in the privacy of their own exclusive equivalents to the Skull and Bones Club. Remember that they are persuasive political leaders, so most people know them based on their public pronouncements.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:There is an awful lot of traffic to and from Darius. Not the least of that is (or was) the Mannerheim cruiser squadron to put a killing zone on the Twins side of the Torch wormhole.

Why on earth would those have gone to Darius? Mannerheim is close to the Felix system and they can transit directly to The Twins from the Felix junction. It'd be out of their way to go to Darius; even ignoring the security risk as those ships have plenty of people not cleared to know about the existence of Darius.

Some of the Mesan Alignment Navy plants within the Mannerheim SDF might know another remote terminus of the Felix wormhole goes to the MAlign's system of Darius- but I'm pretty sure the Mannerheim folks who even know about the wormhole have no idea about the existence of that terminus.

As the Felix Junction is the primary (as far as we know) means of access to both Darius and the other termini, all traffic to and from Darius using the wormhole has to pass though it. As far as we know, nobody is now using the Torch wormhole from the Twins end. There has been NO information provided about either any other of the termini being used nor about any ships leaving or entering the Darius system via hyperspace.
It is entirely possible that the Alignment navy excercises and trains it's crews in hyperspace and gravity wave operations in an area a "few" lightyears around Darius which is sufficently distant from any inhabited or otherwise used system to not have inconvenient Normals show up, even doing steller reserach and exploration. In fact, that would be the only practical way to do it and keep people outside the Onion from knowing anything.

We don't know- yet.

tlb wrote:However, as you keep saying, they are also very smart; which means that they can easily keep this hidden from the hoi polloi and only express themselves to their equals in the privacy of their own exclusive equivalents to the Skull and Bones Club. Remember that they are persuasive political leaders, so most people know them based on their public pronouncements.

They do. The majority of Alignment (benign and malignant) members have no idea that they were being led by Albrecht Detweiler. His existence wasn't common knowledge even within the Onion.

Which begs the question: did Herlander Simões know? I don't think he did, but Jack McBryde did.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:That sounds as if it would be a highly segmented, controversial, confrontational and racist segment of worlds whose toxic mentality should be readily known throughout the galaxy. When traveling through that region of space most civilized people exit on the offramp to avoid it like the plague.

However, as you keep saying, they are also very smart; which means that they can easily keep this hidden from the hoi polloi and only express themselves to their equals in the privacy of their own exclusive equivalents to the Skull and Bones Club. Remember that they are persuasive political leaders, so most people know them based on their public pronouncements.

That is true tlb. But in my experience, common sense does not always scale up with intelligence. The Skull and Crossbones club may practice it religiously. But the fact that the club is exclusive means the practice may be as well. Common sense seems to skip every other Tom or Dick or Harry. Even within families. See the MA for a total lack of common sense. Albeit TBH, the MA's handicap could be emotion induced. The same vehicle which governs bias in the RF worlds.