A Cargo Discussion

[Timerover51]

A week of recreational gunplay for retired Imperial Marines?

Recreational gunplay is not exactly favored. However, if someone does start something, a large number of the local citizens will enthusiastically join in. Read up on the Northfield Minnesota Raid or the affair at Coffeyville, Kansas. Most towns in the Old West had mandatory gun checkin for visiting cattle crews. A retired Imperial Marine, assuming one somehow makes it this far out to the Rim, Piper sector is three sectors to Rimward of the Solomani Sphere, who thinks that he is going to walk downtown with his submachine gun, will not make of off of the Starport property.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Puh-leeze!

Have you ever read any of H. Beam Piper? Specifically, have you read any of the following: Lone Star Planet, a.k.a A Planet for Texans, or 4-Day World, and even Little Fuzzy to a degree?

Own and have read all of Piper's works, in fact I have a collected and illustrated copy of it all. I dig the works, but much like the cyberpunk novels I read, nice place to visit but sure wouldn't want to live there.

They are Tech Level 4 by choice, and in certain areas, they are considerably higher than Tech Level 4. Thumb print locks with keypads are not Tech Level 4, neither are veridicators for checking on the fidelity of Civil Servants, government officials in general, and those charge with serious crimes. The school in the capital, El Paso, does use computers in teaching and students may go to universities off-world for study. Off-world visitors, who are not starship crew, are not bothered and are welcome, as long as they behave. If they get overly obnoxious about how primitive things are, they probably will have problems. Medical care, including antibiotics imported from New Texas, is also higher than Tech Level 4, especially prenatal and postnatal care. With a population of circa 76,000, a 10% death rate in pregnancy cannot be tolerated.

There is also a Space and Planet monitoring station on the closer of the two moons, in a 15-hour orbit.

Then they're really aren't TL-4, which doesn't surprise me since this seems to be a planet of people who can't hack the modern world and so run away to play cowboys. These people lie about what they are and what they have. That makes them very dangerous because they already show a predispotion to lying when they find it convenient. Creepy.

This comment I do not understand at all. Perhaps some more explanation?

They sentence males to some crazy island but ship the females off to a regular prison on another world. Pretty self explanatory.

The legal system is based on that of the Old West, circa 1880, as understood by the populace.

Which seems to be not that well. That is the one understandable thing about them, they know next to nothing about the history they are playing at. The wild west wasn't actually all that wild. Or lawless.

The city of El Paso has been hit a couple of times by Space Vikings, with considerable casualties among women and children, including the principal school being shot-up twice. Things like that get remembered.

Yeah, and it seems to have made them extremely xenophobic. What with their you have to dress like us.

There is a monthly cargo and passenger ship from New Texas. El Paso is metal-rich, with considerable quantities of gold, silver, platinum, and native copper, among other metals. The planet uses a gold and silver-based currency system, with gold at $20 per ounce, and silver at $1.00 per ounce of sterling silver, 0.900 fine, and payment for imported goods is made in gold and silver, with platinum one of the exports, along with copper. The planet pays based on how they value the goods in terms of planetary currency. If you go with the value of an ounce of gold in interstellar commerce being 200 Credits per ounce, see Research Station Gamma (Adventure 2), being paid in gold is not a bad thing at all. Aside from the hunting and fishing, the hides of El Paso oxen are highly sought after for final razor and knife sharpening, while New Texas has a strong interest in the vari-colored hides of the Longhorns along with genuine buffalo meat. Some of the native fruits are valuable commodities in interstellar commerce, while the pemmican made from El Paso buffalo is a component of the New Texas variant of Extraterrestrial Ration Three (a.k.a. Ex-Tee Three).

Gold, how quaint. Radioactives now there is a metal with actual use and value. I mean yeah gold has some nice industrial uses but otherwise is not that useful.

Why hides to sharpen blades when all you need is a rock and some oil? And how? That is a method I've not heard of before.

I always had the impression that XT3 rats were mostly synthetic and nutrient paste. But okay.

The head of an armor-plated chomper fish is especially sought after by off-world fishermen. (The fish is the local version of the Dunkleosteus. Catching a full-sized one is just about impossible, but the smaller ones are doable.)

Okay, not my bag but I can see the appeal for some.

Net gain of population from immigration over emigration is about 500 per year as a minimum, with several small colonies of Old Order Mennonites and Amish present. Their draft animals are particularly prized, especially by wealthy New Texans with hobby farms.

I suspect the religious orders are probably the only people who actual are truly a TL-4 society. The rest of the population sure isn't, not with all those truth detectors and teaching computers and thumbprint locks and the watch stations.

On a somewhat related matter, is the site in your sig your site? Because I think I have it bookmarked from way back. Makes a nice resource.

 

[pendragonman]

Recreational gunplay is not exactly favored. However, if someone does start something, a large number of the local citizens will enthusiastically join in. Read up on the Northfield Minnesota Raid or the affair at Coffeyville, Kansas. Most towns in the Old West had mandatory gun checkin for visiting cattle crews. A retired Imperial Marine, assuming one somehow makes it this far out to the Rim, Piper sector is three sectors to Rimward of the Solomani Sphere, who thinks that he is going to walk downtown with his submachine gun, will not make of off of the Starport property.

Who uses an smg? MY Marines tend to autopistols. And from what you have posted thus far, and your pointing to Minnesota and Coffeyville, there is still likely the straight up dueling.

Take a look at Wally under Mag's PBP. T5 skills give me fighting 6 so autopistol 6 and an ok dex. Wally is better at hand to hand...

 

[whartung]

So what if these folks want to live on their theme park world?

You need a high TL infrastructure to support a low TL "garden planet", if for no other reason than to help ensure that everyone plays by the rules.

Because that's the entire point of this place -- these people are here because they choose to live by these rules, and if someone is a bad actor, then it can be readily perverted. For example, they may well audit the gold used in currency to make sure that someone isn't smuggling gold in, cheaply mined gold from, say, an asteroid with robots smelted in fusion powered furnaces. Rather than the local stuff dug up with a pick and shovel, with wood fired steam boilers.

What do they have to prevent a ship touching down someplace else on planet, for example. But in the end, the people are there voluntarily, and can probably leave voluntarily. If someone breaks a cultural law (i.e. wearing a baseball cap instead of a Stetson), they shouldn't be going to the hoosegow, they suffer a Cr3000 fine which includes a small administrative fee and a one way low berth ticket off world. For a higher fine, you can get a stateroom.

You can consider it similar to an Amish community, even if it's not religiously based. (I don't know anything about the Amish and how they interface with the outside world beyond buggies and barn raisings).

But by the same notion, there's no reason to smuggle in advanced weapons, or much anything else, as it doesn't really gain you anything. What are you going to do? Start a revolution? Demand changes? "We want COLD beer on draft, damnit!" Smuggle in an Imperial Encyclopedia on an E-Reader? I don't think these people are trapped here.

It's simply an exclusive country club.

 

[Timerover51]

What do they have to prevent a ship touching down someplace else on planet, for example.

Re-read the post.

There is also a Space and Planet monitoring station on the closer of the two moons, in a 15-hour orbit.

Also, this sector is to be located to the Rimward of the Ahriman sector on the Traveller Map. There are a large number of splinter groups in the sector, with low population planets.

El Paso is 90+ parsecs to the Rimward of the Solomani Sphere.

 

[Timerover51]

I found the following quote in a book on Turkey written by an American in 1857 extolling the virtues of trading with Turkey rather than the Far East of China and Japan. While it would not occur in the Imperium, I could readily see something like it happening with a strongly nationalistic member of the Sword Worlds who speaks only Icelandic, someone trading with the Vargr or Aslan, or happening in my Piper Sector, with splinter groups from Earth seeking to preserve the old ways and speaking the old languages, as my Sword Worlds speak a blend I call Scandinavian, being a mixture of Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, or the world settled by Finns, who speak Finnish, or the far Rimward World inhabited by people from the Bermuda Triangle, speaking a ancient form of English.

A French merchant, Mons. B., who had enjoyed the advantages of commerce in the East for twenty-five years, may be quoted as an example. Either considering his own superior civilization compromised by such a condescension to barbarism, or unable to train his exclusively French organs to any other guise of speech, Mons. B.’s ideas and expressions were always in his mother tongue. When, therefore, on a certain occasion, his Turkish porter excited his displeasure, he poured out his indignation in pure Gallic, which lost much of its intended effect upon his employé, who could not imagine the cause of his master’s agitation and vehemence, and ventured to ask an explanation of a bystander. “What?” said the irritated Frenchman, “does the stupid fellow mean to say that having been with me for the past five-and-twenty years, he does not yet understand French?” “Mashallah!” responded the astonished Turk, “My master, who has been here so long a time, why can he not scold me in Turkish?”

 

[Hyphen]

It did occur in Lucan's Imperium, where he expelled an envoy for not speaking in High Sylean (142-1121).

 

[Timerover51]

It did occur in Lucan's Imperium, where he expelled an envoy for not speaking in High Sylean (142-1121).

I was not aware of that. Thanks for pointing it out.