Blue

Uncolonised by sophonts until the arrival of the Burdikeer's wormholes, Blue is placed well within the Triangulum Expanse. Connected first to Alpha Star in 5184, the planet Blue was quickly declared a protectorate by Mallard of Blue, who announced the planet and the xenoecology thriving there was protected by the Burdikeer and not to be exploited. Since then, two other lifebearing worlds residing in this volume of the Seams have been protected in the same way by the Burdikeer. It is believed that the protection of these worlds was included somewhere in the original Seams treaty as a result of an agreement with the Caretaker gods affected by the formation of the Seams.

Still colonists moved into the system from Alpha Star (back then called Harkington's Star), and prepared to mine the systems resources which had been ignored by the Burdikeer. The innermost rockballs had enough heavy metals and low enough a gravity to warrant planetside mining, and the belt provided first grade water. Except for a brief flux in the population when a wormhole to Manifold arrived in 5340 and was opened in 5361, the population held a steady level of a few hundred thousand. Though the small, culturally isolationistic polity that developed eyed the growing Harkington Zenocracy with wary eyes, their doom came from another direction.

In 5839 a wormhole arrived from Traction and was opened shortly after. In the classic pattern of early Traction expansion, the system was first overrun by mercenaries. The planetside habitats quickly surrendered to the attackers, having the choice between giving up their property or trying to survive planetary bombardment. The inhabitants of the belt proved more difficult to get rid of, and the fighting was still going on, when a group of corps of Traction entered the system, and started to divide the territory amongst themselves, buying the newly acquired territories from the mercenaries which had secured them. However, though the inner planets were safe enough, the belters proved a danger to water mining for the next twenty years, using hit and run guerrilla attacks. Even after the main belter concentrations had been destroyed, the last stubborn dissidents remained a nuisance for centuries.

In 6157 the region had just begun to quiet down, when refugee warships from Starlift Enterprises and the Resourcelift Corporation escaped into the system from the takeover of their homes in Traction. While a good part of the refugees continued on to other parts of the seams, at least 25 modern cruisers, including a transavant controlled "propaganda cruiser", hid in the belt, and began a propaganda campaign to rally the now integrated Blue-belters against the "exploitations of the despotic capitalists of Traction". That Starlift Enterprises and the Resourcelift Corporation had been the main movers in Blue was forgotten, and some Blue-belters defected with mining vehicles and other material to join the resistance. It is believed that the volunteers were subjected to crude, but extensive memgineering, given that the resistance continued for three hundred years, despite the reforms of Emperor Greyman I. The last known member of the resistance died in the terror bombing attack against the Clydia Habitat in 6444, taking with him several thousand descendants of integrated Blue-belters.

The last 4000 years has been mostly uneventful, except for a brief time as in 9063 when the system served as a staging post for an attack on Manifold. Reddish and Brownish, the two metal holding planets are subject to heavy mining, though they are beginning to run dry after such a long time of mining, evident by the growing unemployment in the system. The water belt is still promising a few thousand years more of yield, and the mostly vec workforce labour happily under their supervisors. Still the fact that the vecs has been programmed to like their job is backlashing on the two planets. There is a rising amount of mental problems amongst the unemployed vecs and mass depressions, emptylabour, and even occasional psychopathic incidents are becoming more common. After the revelation in 10432 of a vec terrorist group, working from the point of view that the government is artificially lowering employment, the police force in the system has been greatly increased and foreigners has been advised to avoid the planetside habs.

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