BARD PAPER: OPAL8643 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
BARD PAPER: OPAL8643 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
Fennec is an agricultural world dominated by a government that is also an economic monopoly. Fennec was first settled during the late 100s by colonists that were newly ennobled by the Imperial government as an incentive in moving to the frontier. Earlier settlement had not been possible because of the lack of economic resources in overcoming the blistering local climate and pernicious plant life that ruined imported agriculture. The difficulties of living on this world required that each noble and their estate was a self-contained entity independent of outside support. Each noble had his own police, banks, starport (usually just a landing pad), factories, farms and energy production facilities.
Despite the careful degree of control over the common people built into this arrangement, the nobles were able to deliver enough prosperity over the past thousand years to prevent major opposition from developing. Fennec became what is termed a "soft" police state where the population was made dependent upon their employment and standing within local communities, and therefore stood against any sort of innovation or dissension that might undermine their comfortable lives. Consensus was backed up by effective estate security and police backed up by legions of paid informers that provide instant notification of trouble. But for the most part the nobles were content to leave their people alone aside from this, and were consumed with either the local social scene or interestate politics in an effort to outdo each other. Some offworld megacorps attempted to exploit the situation to their advantage, but were less than skilled at playing the local political games.
But dissension still existed in the background of Fennec society, and it found an unlikely ally in the Vargr refugees and raiders of the late Civil War and early Collapse period. The new immigrants were mostly squatters or established on Regency owned territory around the downport or the scout base. They were therefore outside of the local established economic order, and in many cases either had their own businesses and offworld connections, or were full blown members of the Pack. This threatened the local monopolies, and has galvanised citizens fed up being property of an anachronistic feudal system. Attempts to organise a Represenative Referendum has been quelled with illegal action by police, and the noble's soft system has slowly been replaced with a hard system of coercion and punitive laws. Violence is growing in some parts of the world, and the Regency is keeping a close eye on the situation