[TML] Off The Books In A Lawless Startown

[Richard Aiken]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 11:30 PM, Jerry W Barrington
<jerry.barrington at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm still not sure how much they'd want to neglect it though.  They probably
> *like* the income from the port, and if bandits and gangs in the startown
> hurt that, it hurts them.  :)

Sure.  But all the locals would need to maintain their uninterrupted
revenue stream is two or three secure routes in and out of the port
itself.  An Imperial downport of any real (read "seriously
income-producing") size is gonna have all it's warehousing and such on
the starport grounds, not out in the startown.  As far as the rest of
the startown is concerned, it can just go hang.  Like Stuart pointed
out, it's a noisy, low-rent district (even without any prejudice
toward off-worlders).

> I could see the local port authority establishing a few idiosyncratic regs
> based on local conditions...

Yes, but they'd be fairly minor.  IMTU, local variations would mostly
concern entry and exit procedures.  On worlds with oppressive
governments, the local starport might have very lax entry procedures
for it's ground-side entry . . . except for officers of the local
government, especially those in "hot pursuit."  This tends to make
recruiting a snap.  :-)

> Sorry, by locals in the sentence I meant the onsite Imperial
> representatives.  I figure a lot of little ports aren't going to be worth a
> company of Marines.  The port admin would have a fund, either from the
> Imperium or taken out of trade taxes & service charges.  From that fund, he
> could hire whatever security was needed.

Agreed.  Most of my smaller Imperial ports are protected by chartered
mercenaries (never hired from the concerned system, though).  It's
usually only the Class A(V) and B (IV) ports, plus the occassional
important Class C (III) ports that get Marines.  Also - at least in my
campaign area - most of the smaller ports don't belong to the Empire .
. . yet.

> I suspect the Imperium won't *care* much about the sorts of places it can't
> economically coerce.  :)

Depends on the other factors involved.  In my campaign area, the
slightly-psychotic independent world of Trexalon is doing it's
absolute fanatic best to keep the Empire from absorbing District 268.
Right next door to this system is the rather marginal Motmos.  Motmos
has an Imperial naval base, which is supposedly a forward listening
post against Reavers from the Outrim.

But the "2357th Scouting Force" that's based there has an *awful* lot
of Civil-War-era jump-1 assault dropships (with double-sized fuel
tanks) on it's TO&E.  The official story is that these obsolete craft
- collected from mothball yards in Lunion, Glisten and Mora subsectors
- are all the Imperium can afford in the way of system defense for
poor, pitiful little Motmos.  Every month, a few more (crewed by
"mercenaries") trickle along the Spinward Main and into Motmos . . .
passing through Trexalon without fanfare but without secrecy, either.

Methinks the Marquis of Mertactor probably also likes poking anthills
with sticks.  :-P

-- 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein