Liminal Void Phipps 23 Worldbuilding, Part 2b

December 2, 2022

Origin, 1+2a

2b: Icons for "The farther out a station or colony is from any of the centers of corporate power, the more exploited and extracted they are, but the easier it is to achieve some kind of independence."

• Event: The first corporation to set up a headquarters in a colony. It's how you know a colony is about to become a proper hub, and that everyone living there is about to have their lives permanently changed.
• Landmark: A few decades ago, the first Martian worker housing unit was a deeply inhumane honeycomb-like structure with awful conditions. It's long since been demolished, and only a tiny museum exists in its place. Mars is now a thriving center for commerce, and anything that reminds people of its roots isn't suitable.
• Person: Joe Reyes, an organizer who was the public face of victories for workers in Callisto Station. He now lives in Ganymede and works as a fundraiser for similar efforts, but he's frequently accused of enjoying his relative fame and the comforts of the city while other stations and colonies languish.
• Peril: Diseases don't often hit colonies, but when they do, they spread like wildfire due to cramped, awful conditions. If it's something that's a serious risk, it's very common for the founding corp to quarantine the colony entirely to prevent spread, regardless of how well the colony can withstand that.
• Treasure: If you've got a ship and want to make salvage money, what you need to do is head to Earth and dig up old records of existing colonies and compare them to known ones. If you see one that doesn't show up on current records, head that way. There's a chance it's been completely abandoned and there's something worth salvaging there. Who knows what condition it's in, though.
• Secret: The destruction of the Enceladus commune. By official records, no colony could possibly exist without corporate sanction, and yet one did, for a surprisingly long time, exist. They were destroyed outright by Jovian corporate navies, and all official records were scrubbed. But some people remember.

(Read the original on cohost here!)