BARD PAPER: OPAL8627 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
BARD PAPER: OPAL8627 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
Barbary is a bleeding political scab. Its boorish government has long kept its population in a state of tranquil ignorance, and under the thumb of its brutal secret police and security services. Offworld travel by the populace is heavily restricted, and trade is confined to agents and brokers whose transactions favor the ancien regime. The death penalty is invoked for a number of offenses, and a general culture of fear and suspicion keeps people in line and eliminates effective opposition.
Unlike Lucifer/Gulf, the Regency has been more reluctant to directly confront the local government. Unlike that world, the populace here is dispersed across several smaller communities, each guarded by their respective nobles and their retinues to troops and police. Infiltration is therefore unlikely to succeed. Aside from a few offworld exiles, no effective opposition party exists anyway, and the local citizens are too isolated and controlled to develop any alternatives to their current system. Unfortunately for the Regency government and its policy of flexibility, radicals in both Barbary's regime and various private liberal reform groups have goaded each other into a confrontation that led to outbreaks of violence in 1170s and 80s, and the imposition of an Amber Zone. Merchants are cautioned against commercial contact with that world.