Re: Terra and the Long Night

> That's where you're going wrong. Check HT page 19:
>
> "Note the worlds in areas that have not been affected by the Rebellion (Safe
> areas were not in a War Zone) do not experience UWP changes; for them, life
> continues much as it did before the Rebellion."

  I missed that one before. It is much more visible when it is pointed out:)

> Bertil:
> >  There is no need to go in the hard way with blazing lasers and all that.
> >All that is needed is that the threat of piracy is so big that merchants
> >fear to travel,
>
> But that is a contradiction in terms. Think about the history of seafaring on
> Earth. You can't have pirates without merchants to prey on, and you don't
> have merchants unless trade is profitable. You only have pirates where trade
> is profitable _in spite_ of the pirates.

  The piracy of Hard Times, or the Long Night, isn't a stable situation. It is
a dynamic story. A high number of 'loose cannons' turn to piracy, leading to a
decline in commerce, leading to more loose cannons and less prey to feed them,
leading to more desperate pirates attacking a larger percentage of shipping,
leading to a decline in commerce and so on in an ever depressing spiral until
trade is gone and the pirates starve or get their own planets.

> Held out where? The pirate ships needs maintenance as much as any. Judging
> from Hard Times they would be history in 5 to 10 years. Unless they based
> themselves on a world with the technology to support them. But now they are
> no longer just agents of destruction. However much they plague their sur-
> roundings, they must at least help maintain their base planet.

  I totally agree with you that piracy will be gone pretty soon after a
Night has fallen unless there is some commerce to feed it. This state will
probably be reached in a few years with Hard Times unless the pirates can
locate suitable bases where they can get maintainance. The importance of
fences and yards to pirates were analyzed rather nicely in "The Ecology of
Piracy on the Spinward Main" in an early JTAS. I think it was one of the
Keiths that wrote that one.

  The Strephonian Imperium had reached a balance between merchants, navy and
pirates. Now that balance is gone and rampant piracy and such things are
signs of an ecology that is looking for a new balance. There are however
'waterholes in the desert of ruined planets' where pirates can survive on
the fringes and that is the small interstellar states. They will be much more
scarce because of the relatively low volume of shipping compared with the
old Imperium.

  That is what I think happened during the Long Night. The outer areas of
ROM *and* the ex-Confederation were organized enough to provide maintainance
to pirates that pirated on other polities (aka letters of marque) to enable
the pirates to live through the dusk. Since the fall in Hard Times were so
much faster, the pirates will be gone faster too.

> Predators that outnumber the prey makes no sort of sense whatsoever (Which
> makes me wonder where in h... all those 50.000 T vargr corsairs that overran
> Corridor came from).

  Probably ex-navy ships from some of the Vargr states bordering the Imperium
with crews that got bored running routine patrols:)

> I'd really like to know how much of your paraphrase is your interpretation and
> how much is GDW revisions.
>     When the Rule of Man collapsed, The Terran Mercantile Community had a
> space fleet to patrol it's systems and to replace the now gone Second
> Empire fleets. The TMC's merchant fleet cushioned the blow of the Long
> Night and made it possible for Terra to survive in relative comfort.
>     Well into the Long Night, the Terran Mercantile Community took over
> political responsibilities and became an interstellar government  -  the
> Old Earth Union.

  Direct quote:
  "In time even the TMC faltered, with Terra falling back into a local trading
community of worlds and reorganizing as the Old Earth Union."

>       Hans Rancke

>         "Come all brother spacemen that travel along.
>          Oh, pray come and tell me where the trade is all gone.
>          Long time have I travelled, and I cannot find none."
>          Ch: "And sing: All the hard times of the Empire.
>               In the Empire are very hard times."
>                                 Traditional song.
  Hope you'll sing it on Gothcon:)

- -bertil-
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