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< Trinculo | TiLDeR Cluster | Dauphine >

• T: +2 (Commericalized slipstream technology, expensive)
• E: 0 (Single world, comfy human habitation w/o special tools, other barren worlds)
• R: -2 (Pressure for conflict, needs imports!)

Aspects:

• Ring of Scrap
• Letters of Marque
• Your Resources, Our Ships, No Questions Asked!

Desc:

In terms of both technology and the ‘geography’ of the cluster, Caliban is a Hub; its slip knots allow access to an unmatched number of other systems, and it sells (or, more accurately, indentures ownership under a letter of marque) the large majority of slipships throughout the cluster.

It’s fair to say that Caliban has taken advantage of their position. Most spacers think of Caliban and piracy interchangeably; the system runs slippoint stations at great cost, recouping that cost by gouging its customers for refuel, repair, and ’safe escort’. Resource poor (the ruling families long since stripped any and all valuable metals from the system, leaving a powdered ring of detritus circling its home world), Caliban ’sells’ its tech by requiring several years of ‘resource acquisition’ from any new slipship owner. Some pay this debt through legitimate trade and courier work, but most do so by mining illegally in other systems (often the rich-but-largely-indefensible Dauphine) or through acts of licensed piracy, hauling their annual stipend back to the giant tortuga that is Caliban.

It is very little surprise that, by the time a captain’s ship is paid off, it is simply easier for the now-independant crew to continue the same practices that brought them to that point; many of the bullet-shaped ships scouring the cluster do so at Caliban’s command, but just as many do so simply because the pirate-kings have taught them that that is the best way to do business.