Elixabeth (world)/Version 2

History of Elixabeth (Version 2)

With its low gravity (0.3G), unbreathably thin atmosphere, and average surface temperature -of 2°C) Elixabeth remained empty for most of the history of District 268. But in 953, the habitat construction company Firmaments Unlimited, LIC, heavily subsidized by the District 268 Development Project, set about building a showcase colony on Elixabeth, precisely because it was so unattractive. The company built a huge dome that covered a suitable valley and terraformed the area under the dome into a pastoral landscape of rolling, grass-covered hills and rich agricultural fields, interspersed with bits of forest and clumps of cliffs to break the monotony and provide the colonists with facilities for recreative activities such as hiking and rockclimbing. In the middle, it built a model town, named Elixabeth after the daughter of the CEO, suitable for 16,000 inhabitants.

In 956 the dome stood ready to recieve inhabitants. The company charged Crimp500,000 per colonist, a steep price that would nevertheless only cover a fraction of the cost of the dome. About 80% of the shares were sold to Forinians, the rest mostly to Glistenites.

In 960 the Imperium closed down the development project and in the aftermath Firmaments Unlimited went bankrupt. A small group of major investors managed to escape from the wreck with a holding company registered in Glisten whose assets consisted more or less of the Elixabeth dome and its sister dome on Talchek. Forine made claim to the world based on the nationality of the majority of inhabitants, but the Imperium disallowed the claim.

In 989, Forine's dictator Chomi Norep announced plans to relocate some of Forine’s surplus population to Elixabeth. When she followed up by founding the Forine Assembly in early 990, the Elixabethan colonists, horrified that the delicate ecological balance of their Eden was going to be disrupted by a major increase of the population (Norep talked of installing life support machinery to take over the job from the dome's vegetation and of covering the "useless" space with tenement buildings), appealed to the Imperium, which promptly intervened.

In 1088, the Imperial corporation McClellan Factors, LIC bought up the holding company and set about making Elixabeth and Talchek show a real profit. A big electronics factory was built on Elixabeth and Talchek's mines were expanded to provide raw material. The population of Elixabeth, which until then had been kept at 16,000 by a strict zero-growth policy, has grown by over 6,000, mostly McClellan employees and factory workers.