Mirriam (SM 0333) (world)
| Mirriam/Five Sisters (Spinward Marches 0333) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Classic Era (1116) | B9998A6-A
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| New Era (1200) | A9999A6-C
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| See also | UWP | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Overview:
The J-2 Route known variously as the Gold Road or the Mortal Coil starts at this Regency Terminus. Consequently, the world is the Five Sisters, and perhaps the entire Spinward Hinters in microcosm. While the world has benefited from the increase in trade and immigration of the post-Collapse period, its "traditional" culture has been upset by new waves of social misfits and opportunists, new age idealists and military necessity.
Background
Mirriam is a young world. It appears as a stormy, blue ball from space, almost a water world. Though technically 90 percent water only; epeiric seas, shallow bodies of fresh or estaurine water created by volcanic rifting, obscure about half to two-thirds of the planets continental crust. Earthquakes and volcanoes are common on the seafloor, which discourages deep oceanic colonization, but sustains the worlds large mining industry.
What remains of dry land are mostly volcanic mountain arcs and a few raised plateaus created from marine terrains (submarine volcanos or seafloor dredged up and uplifted by the moving continents). Most of the worlds terrestrial life was imported from offworld, and the mountain arcs support verdant forests of conifers and mediterranean brushtrees. Unfortunately, some of the imported plantlife took an extreme liking to the world, and the atmospheric taint is a result of heavy spore and pollen clouds produced as a side effect of unforeseen evolutionary development in several species.
The oceans are a different matter, with the first signs of multi-cellular life beginning to appear within its still young ecology. Mirriam's diffcult ecology discouraged most attempts at early colonization. Coupled with the planets plant spore tainted atmosphere and frequent tremors associated with Mirriam’s large moon, Pam, what colonists that did come to Mirriam remained within close proximity to the starport.
History
Mirriam is one of five worlds named by Ignaz Ruffleran after one of his five daughters. Ruffleran explored the area between 142 and 161 Imperial, eventually settling on Karin/Five Sisters. Interestingly enough, only one of his daughters, Ucella, actually took advantage of his claims, and she settled on Karin to be near her aging father.
The first serious colonization came with the establishment of the Imperial Naval Base in 474, attracting a small community. A steady trickle of people, mostly traders and vagabonds coming down the Spinward Main, settled here over the next three hundred years. Its proximity to untapped markets in neighboring sectors, and its location along the Spinward Main attracted trade, and the combination of commercial and naval traffic created enough demand for a B class starport to be built to cater to local needs.
In the 740s, the naval administration began to set aside large tracts of the world's seafloor for settlement, and a sizeable amount of investment funds for aquacultural and infrastructure development. By 800, Mirriam was home to a community of four million people, a X-Boat Way Station, the headquarters of the 208th Fleet, and there was talk of making it the permanent subsector capital. All of this progress was stillborn in the wake of the Psionic Suppressions.
The heightened threat of war with the Zhodani in their wake froze most development. The Ministry of Colonization's benign administration on Mirriam was replaced with an appointed Naval Legate, who was usually either the local base commander, or the CO of 208th Fleet. Mirriam's recieved an Amber Zone rating, as did many other worlds in District 267/Five Sisters, in the decades that followed. Ostensibly, the local Amber rating was for Mirriam's dangerous tidal conditions, but really it was to serve notice to the universe that the Third Imperium meant to defend the world and her sisters against aggression by all means possible.
The navy remains to this day the world's main administration. Because of the imposition of military rule, much of the civilian population became semi-militarized. Military police and hired mercs became the source of law and order. The flow of time and events, and the boundaries of communities and their activities became regulated by military base timetables and perimeters. The population continued to grow, because of its existing amenities and remoteness from the Imperial mainstream.
The Imperial Navy's investment into Five Sisters was quite heavy, and most of it was centered on Mirriam. In addition to the 208s HQ, a demi-depot was placed on Mirriam to serve both the Navy and IISS operations into neighboring sectors. Trade became even more important, as an alternative source of income for the subsector, to alleviate isolation, and to skirt both the onerous local military regulations and narrow official policies of armed neutrality that limited outside contact with the Spinward Hinters. The aftermath of the Fifth Frontier War brought renewed investment and interest in Mirriam, as victory increased Imperial clout within the Hinters. The generous infrastructure built by the Imperial Navy was attractive to many outside and local investors as a foundation for increased economic trade and industry. A number of development banks and investment funds were centered here, and there was an upsurge in colonization.
The breakout of the Imperial Civil War had the paradoxical effect of intensifying this interest. The loss of Imperial markets had little negative effect upon Five Sisters, as did the Aslan advances. Instead it caused a massive upswing in commercial and military investment as the Domain of Deneb reached out into Forevenand Beyond Sectors, looking for new allies and seeking to make up for lost markets. This investment created a mountain of wealth on Mirriam, and the beginnings of a new class of wealthy families known simply as "Hortalez".
On the eve of the Collapse, Mirriam had all the required attributes for an economic takeoff: an accumulation of money, a skilled workforce, stable markets, well developed infrastructure and extensive trade and logistical networks. The Quarantine dampened the world's prospects for about five years, until Norris passed the edict that relaxed Quarantine regulations into Five Sisters. After that, Mirriam blossomed into a major trade and political center.
Quarantine
Travellers into the Mirriam system come out of jump space at the trailing trojan of Tiffany, the systems second largest gas giant. All incoming vessels are hailed by RQS immediately, and are directed to one of five nearby inspection bases. At these bases ships are swarmed over by legions of inspectors, who search the ships stem to stern. But because of the unusually large numbers of inspectors, inspections and certification usually takes only about two or three hours.
Regency ships that have inspection certificates from other inspection stations in Five Sisters are even luckier: inspectors only check the vessels freight and navigation logs, do a cursory inspection of cargo, and usually let a ship go after only forty five minutes to an hour, sometimes less. Despite the cursoriness of these inspections, they are probably closer to the Regency's current reality than the excessive (and eroding) scrutiny back safeside.
This relaxation of inspection standards is political, economic and pragmatic. Because Mirriam isn't an interface port, most of this activity is primarily done to log incoming cargoes from the Hinters, and to deter smuggling around the Quarantine, rather than any pretension of anti-Virus deterrence.
Geography
Most of Mirriams settlements are underwater, or at least semi-submerged. The scarcity of land and the violent seismic activity of the planets volcanic arcs limit terrestrial habitation. Most of its islands are preserved as nature parks, or for limited dry land farming. Most of the worlds communities are located in the Bermuda Sea, a large epieric sea the size of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean combined. The worlds original industries were in seafloor mining, aquaculture and support of the naval base, but has expanded in heavy and light manufacturing, thanks to money from the Industrial Development Program. In addition to Bermuda, there are large concentrations of settlements in the Glomar Deep, Casbah Sea and the Breathless Lagoon. Most mining is done in the northern Helmuth Basin, and the naval base is located on Compass Island within the Casbah Sea. These areas are divided from each other by the Panthalassan Sea, a deep, still mostly un-surveyed body of water. Most underwater cities are specially sheltered and reinforced for protection against the planet's deadly tidal bores.
The sprawling downport of Diriishigan City is the exception. Located on an old marine terrain that is seismically stable. Diriishigan is also the world’s main business center, the core of "Hortalez" and the pivot of the Rand and its trade routes.
The city is an outgrowth of the extrality zone, and it and the port covers an area of almost seven hundred square kilometers. It is a crazy quilt of offices, cavernous warehouses, and a skyline that rivals Mora. Construction is frequent and furious, a reflection of its transient population and oscillating fortunes. It is fairly lawless, and is filled with minor fortune seekers, opportunists and predators. Self-described as the City that Never Sleeps, which is an accurate assessment of its frenetic night life. When offworlders think of the Rand, it is Diriishigan that comes to their minds.
Everything and anything that can be sold, can be found in its sprawling markets and trade yards. Compared to the rest of the world, the city is a lawless island in of itself. Organized crime, prostitution and contraband peddling are endemic, as are the throngs of mercenaries, parasites and "gutter-tourists" attracted to its seedy bars, casinos and red-light district. Displaced minor nobles often come here looking for either one last binge of pleasure, or looking to find a niche for survival.
At the top of the food chain, populating no niche other than its own, are the worlds upper class, the Hortalez. The group originated in the former megacorps subsector administrative branch, using purloined corporate assets, and the old money associations of many upper managers, as seed capital for successful business ventures. This group is a cloud island held aloft by its snobbish elevation above the other feuding groups, and the mere entrepreneurs populating the streets below. Most Hortalez are second or third generation, old money by local standards. They're rather unimpressive by safeside comparisons, but they dominate the subsectors markets, even holding their own against the former megacorps. Most of them live in the city, though many have estates in the countryside, or in a tony suburb known as Shining Hill, about 50 kms outside the city.
But the city is physically and culturally distanced from Mirriam's mainstream society. Its underwater culture is still heavily impressed with military discipline, and naturally disdains the Hortalez crowd. The "Reals" as they call themselves, would have you believe that they are a sober, hardworking lot. But in fact these people are the descendants of earlier waves of colonists who came to Mirriam seeking much the same kind of easy fortune, only to be displaced by later post-Collapse waves of immigrants. Most of the social tension is a mixture of jealousy at both the upstarts who make it big, and the self-interested old money that seeds the planets conversion into a slum.
Between these two groups are various eco-groups, offshoots of the NEO (Navigators of the Endless Ocean) that colonized Lothorien (140), Galadriel (239) and Prince Edward (734). These groups keep to themselves, and sustain their communities on alternative agriculture, aquaculture and quite a bit of their ethereal romantic ideology.
Features
Mirriam is the business center of Five Sisters. Despite the seedier elements that populate storefront offices, its dominant business class is powerful, sober and controlling. Most of the worlds upscale business is done in the Mosaic district of Diriishigan, a huge self-contained city within the city sheltered in a huge cathedral-like arcology about 10 km from the starport. Only the business elite live and work here, and it is a mark of hard-earned success and prestige to be invited by the worlds Senior Commercial Council, the buildings owner and manager, to live here. Visitation into the Mosaic are by invitation only, subject to the SCCs approval.
Mirriam's naval base remains an oversized transitional facility. Too big to be a mere base, and too small to be a depot, with no announced plans to alter the status quo. The base is tightly secured against outside intrusion, and base security is buttressed by private security patrols and police in local communities. Despite this, the navy's need for intelligence and private operators in the subsector and the Spinward Approaches (Reidain and Urnian/Foreven L and P; Menorial subsector in Trojan Reach) makes it a heavy employer of private military contractors. Most hiring is done at a subsidiary facility in the Diriishigan downport, but most are stationed out of the base. The mix of private merc and Regency mil personnel is a volatile one, and local mps are especially vindictive towards the former.
- ↑ "Jump Map API" and map location from Travellermap.com