Resettlement

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Initial Phase

After a couple of centuries of self-rule under the temporary governments established on Juneau and Rimini, the latent disagreements and divergent interests which had originally brought all the settlers to those planets eventually began to resurface. With a mortal population that now far outnumbered those who were ageless and an extensive clan/family structure which defined the political landscape, the religious idealists, outcasts, outlaws and drifters who survived the Plague found it increasingly unpleasant to live under the democratic constitutions they originally agreed to. Many individuals chose instead to set off on their own again and find a planet where they could live as they liked with their clan. In general, the exodus of Juneau was composed of religious leaders who wanted to establish theocratic states and political dissidents and demagogues who wanted to absolute rule over their planets. Meanwhile Rimini actively encouraged ongoing mortal colonization of the planets in the Perseus Arm in order to maintain a workable ratio of mortals to immortals. However, the internal political bifurcation lead an entire group of immortals to resettle the nearby planet of Sassori, rather than plunge Rimini into a civil war.

Resettlement Patterns

Resettlement occurs in reverse, from the edges inward. Immortals and their kin are not so inclined to go to places that were never useful for settlement and the ICRCT decommissioned many locations during its years of operation. So, the region around Earth is actually not very populated. Eventually, the Order of Mercury uses a number of installations, but many have been eliminated or simply left fallow under the articles of the Treaty of Origins.

For the rest of Orion's Arm, because of the desire to settle kin groups and the incapacity to manufacture on the scale from before, the priorities governing resettlement radically altered the profile and purpose of locations. Places that were previously chosen by separatists are now more likely to be centers of population and authority and the areas created by industry for economic purposes are likely to be used by people who want to remain separate from the aristocrat structure that dominates interstellar society.

The special purpose locations (previously created by governments, telecoms and academics during the Great Expansion) and mining operations tend therefore to form the backbone of the interstellar trade network and resist the will governments. This has lead to a lot of repurposing of the physical infrastructure and a hodge-podge ad hoc approach to architecture and infrastructure.

Political Dynasties

For hundreds of years, those who wanted to leave the surviving planets did so and the planets in Orion’s Arm were resettled. As individual units of geopolitical influence, all the habitable planets of Orion’s Arm inevitably became property of their lords with an emphasis on economic self-sufficiency. It is in the wake of these emerging political and economic considerations that both the Republic of Juneau and the Most Serene Republics of Rimini and Sassori. Those who had no affinity for absolute power codified a set of governing mechanism which they thought would preserve a fair and representative way of life. But once all the planets which could support life were resettled, the de facto policies of separation of people with different political commitments turned onto itself and conflicts started to arise between the various political factions. Eventually, the conflicts erupted into a series of wars which started the Warring Lords period.