The Long Belt
The Long Belt has a tragic history tied up in the trade wars, corpo-conflicts, and general disregard for human life taken by both the Colonial Earth Empire and the Musura Federation.
It is littered with the remains of destroyed ships, a cracked planet, the remnants of paracausal weapon experiementation, and other astral debris that makes traversing the belt, even with the assistance of the gates and current Navbox routes, a difficult and costly process. The problem lies in the fact that the long belt is situated in a rich cosmic nebula, that makes calculating safe routes through tricky. To solve this issue, there are instead two gates in this system (in lieu of the normal one gate per system), one on either "end" of what is called the Long Belt. Ships must exit one gate, engage their fusion drive and traverse to the other gate, which leaves them much more vulnerable than if they could jump using a gate.
This is all compounded by the fact that the Long Belt is governed not by a central polity, but instead a collection of pirate fleets, asteroid warlords, and all manner of independent oligarchs. These various different factions are collectively referred to as the "Enterprises", citing a document drawn up thousands of years ago establishing the Long Belt as a "space truly free from the stranglehold of governments and states".
There are no longer any habitable worlds in the Belt; if you live within its bounds, you either live on a free-floating station or in a habitat built into a directed asteroid. With the borders of one’s home defined by the thickness of its walls, people here are manifestly aware of the pressures that define their lives.
Many ships that must pass through the Long Belt, usually sign up with one faction in the system to garuntee them safe passage, which is costly. Those that do not, run the risk of getting caught in a Jump Net (a piece of tech used to confuse Navbox tech into dropping out of jump speed before arriving at the gate), and having their cargo taken by force.
Pacification of the Long Belt has been attempted by both the Empire and the Musurans, but due to the countless number of extra-legal and hard to track stations that exist here, it has proven costly, and ineffective. To the outsider, the denizens of the long-belt and the pirates that operate here are hard to distinguish between. There is also a great number of Sardania Nomads who call the long belt home, complicating matters further.
Life in the Belt
By and large, life in the Long Belt is precarious. Breathable air is recycled, processed, extracted, filtered, and piped in by oxygen miners or sold to the elite by O2 artisans. Sunlight and potable water are distributed to local populations by utility barons who sit on piles of credits and local scrip. Landlords hold titles to stations, extracting rent from the civilian populations marooned there. What limited green spaces exist are confined to greenhouse stations, tenuous neutral grounds monitored by local powers aware of how vital fresh food is. The Belt’s population – both indigenous and migratory – are resourceful, canny, and share a cultural impulse to prepare for the worst. In an environment where a loose bolt or a water leak could spell death for you, your family, and your neighbors, people are inclined toward rigor, awareness, and triple-checking their seals, tools, and selves. Far from how intergalactic media often depicts them, the people of the Rim are generally cooperative and collaborative; out in the dark, there’s no one but you and the people on your ship, station, or skiff. It’s better that folks work together and live than stand alone and die. While a majority of the population is scattered amongst the belt in various cobbled together mega-stations, there is a hub centered directly around the interstellar gate itself. This gate has been codified as a de-militarized zone by both the Empire and the Federation, who both maintain a permenant presence on-board.A Pirate's Life for Me
Piracy in the Long Belt is complicated and has a long history. Contrary to the popular notion of the various action movies and dramas that exist on the Omni-Net, depicting pirates as bloodthirsty mauraders, most commercial raiding in the Belt is undertaken by part-time “pirates” coming together for specific ventures, not permanent organizations or long-standing crews. These single ventures range from families banding together to attack a passing ship for supplies, to station-side gangs boosting a docked freighter for ransom, to disgruntled charter captains launching a raid on their stationmaster’s private yacht. Most "pirates" in the Long Belt maintain regular work on their respective stations as engineers, farmers, service workers and more. When the call goes out for a raiding venture, it is often coupled with the promise of scrip, credits, and fame. Belters sign on for a cut of the profits made, hoping to improve their lives for the better once the venture is complete, and they can return back to their normal day-to-day lives. The more permenant pirate crews are essentially unregistered mercenary companies; trained professionals working at the behest of the Belt's enterprises or a particularly wealthy oligarch. By and large, professional piracy groups in the Long Belt are used to collect Enterprise “taxes” (both from local populations and a percentage off the top of all cargo or credits passing through the Rim), settle grudges, and operate as hired muscle. Exorbitant as these “taxes” may be – and though they often end in violence – they ultimately fund the survival of the masses who call the Belt their home. Of course, the spoils only trickle down, and their distribution is far from even. More vicious acts of piracy – kidnapping, trafficking, and the wholesale looting and resale of captured ships – are not unheard of; even “professional” pirates are willing to get dirty to get what they want. Generally speaking, however, professional pirate groups and the Enterprises that employ them seek to avoid too much savagery, lest they draw the attention of one (or more) of the galaxy’s major powers.History
The Long Belt used to contain a large habitable planet, known as Marianna. This was home to the landfall of the Mercandol people, who spread throughout the Great Expanse before the arrival of the Empire.
During the long Age of Silence, Marianna was destroyed by Agri-Star, after they flung an asteroid the size of a continent at the planet, threatening the holdings there of a Red Sun Syndicate congolmerate. They were trying to merely threaten the conglomerate, and intended to re-direct the asteroid once the rival corp surrendered.
However, Agri-Star lost control of the asteroid, and all attempts to re-divert it failed. It destroyed the entire planet, scattering its debris all throughout the system.
Alternative Name(s)
The Long Way
Type
Asteroid belt
Location under
Contested By
Yes (Two)
Security Rating
Low Security
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