the Zoners

[Unseelie]

Got up to Baconsoda's post, and realized I should spit out my own ideas before getting all idoctrinated.

On Zoner Military:
Zoners are weak, in comparison to the houses (I'm counting the OC and sairs as houses). I've argued before, that even if they did have a military on house scale, it would be so spread out as to be very weak. Their main threat, the Juggernaughts, are old threats. They don't build many, and they keep their location rather secret, which keeps people from attacking them, in the large part, because they don't know where the dozen or so Juggernauts are...its possible that an invasion force would find itself facing six..and that would be an incredibly expensive battle. But if they were attacked, if they did lose a freeport, one of two things happens: A, their military forces are more concentrated, because they didn't fight much, or B: they're overall weaker, because they put up a great fight. In the case B, I think its likely that they would get attacked again and again, by overwhelming House fleets in every sector, reasonably quickly. The zoner fleet is very weak, because even if its the size of two house fleets, it has simply too much space to defend.


I don't think GC is secret. I think the idea of hiding a planet, for any duration, is ridiculous. I think the Zoners had moved away from that hope when they let in the Corsairs to pressure bretonia, and even farther away when they let in the BHG(or perhaps just saw the BHG enter) to fight off the corsairs. GC is safe, for the time being because Bretonia is busy, and again because of the threat of the Juggernaughts, and the rest of the distributed zoner fleet, because the corsairs are there, and the Mollies are in the way. If Bretonia had the energy, it would probably conquer the system. It needs the planets.

Economically, I don't expect the Freeports affect the 4 central Houses much. I do suspect they play a major role in the borderworld economies, and I will argue that they probably have a great many people. But not many if compared to a house. There are more zoners than Outcasts, less than Corsairs, and the number doesn't even compare to the Houses. Though some zoners are mightilly rich, I don't expect the zoner net worth to really be able to compare to that of a house interstellar corporation. They build warships, sure, but not on the scale that say, liberty does. I don't really believe the zoners could build warships at the rate that Bretonia nor Kusari have been losing them, but certiantly more warships than the Order, or the BHG can build, probably on par with the Hessian's(largest pirate nation, if I consider Crete a house, which I do.) military production.

As for their fingers, and their strings...well, certiantly. But no more so than say, Interspace Commerce.

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