Jeff Zeitlin and others write:
> ::>via the Jump-5 route across the Great Rift). Either the Regency
> ::>still fears Zhodani betrayal or a war with the Aslan colonies while
> ::>its' efforts are concentrated on rebuilding its trailing worlds or
> ::>it still believes there to be a strong threat from the Virus.
>
> No, it seems to be a little more complicated than that. It seems
> that there was one ship that got through the cordon, and as a
> result, the planet of Gram suffered. Badly. The fallout from
> that was that the _public_ perception (though not necessarily at
> the highest levels of government) was that it was too dangerous,
> from a Virus standpoint. Also remember that they have to guard
> the entire Vargr border. Expansion into Corridor lengthens that
> border, and it may not be feasible to maintain "adequate" border
> controls.
>
That was my impression as well from reading Survival Margin and the
TNE book on the Regency. It was primarily public opinion resulting
from the Trin incident that holds the Regency behind its lines, at
least officially. There may be factions in the government that are
in fact operating in virus space, but of course the public can never
know about that. I can see a lot of potential there for campaign
ideas.
A related issue is the economy of the Spinward States. In Survival
Margin, they say that "there are no limitless resources or 11,000
worlds" and in the TNE book "The Regency's economy has become
overheated, and without access to new markets and new sources of
raw materials, say the economists, it is bound to falter".
In 1196, the Regency held the referrendum about expanding into the
wilds, which the public overwhelmingly rejected.
I suspect that the current statements of economists may also be a
manipulation of public opinion by factions within the
government/academia/intelligentsia to convince the general public to
accept the idea that expansion in _inevitable_ or that stagnation and
decline will be the result. That is, afterall, the same tatic used
by our own governments to try and manipulate opinion regarding NAFTA,
GATT, etc, even when the assertions are often suspect. If you can
get "in" economists with sufficient access to the media saying
something long enough, it can become an accepted "fact" in
time.
>
> T::>The next big plot development we can expect to see concerns the
> ::>Black Curtain. Path of Tears mentions the "Vampire Highway" that
The Vampire highway? Vampire Imperial Highway? Ahh.. the Vampire
Information Highway! They are computer life forms, afterall.
GDW combines the information hypeway and the vampire craze :-)
Does this highway pass through "alternate pocket empire setting" in the
TNE book? Kaggushus is pretty close to the Black Curtain.
- - Ron Dawson