the Zoners

[Derkylos]

I think the Zoner "fleet" is more hearsay, phantoms and threats than anything else. Look at where freeports are stationed; it's reasonable to assume a self-sufficient fleet could be hidden in a nearby asteroid/gas cloud/nebula etc, but is there really one there? or not? do you feel lucky? well, do you?

I feel the Zoners have become similar to the BHG in organization, ie: a "core" that runs all the bigger ships, pulls the various strings, fosters the interfactional disputes, and generally makes sure the Zoners are safe.

The rest of the population lives on the Freeports, or in their ships (I can concieve a large number of Zoners not putting into dock for extended periods of time), not taking any interest in interfactional disputes, save to check who owns the space they're in, and thus which set of laws they're following today.

An individual Zoner could be practically anyone from practically anywhere, I could imagine ex-military pilots "joining" (perhaps not the right word for such a lose organization), as well as people that haven't the first clue what to do in combat.

As such, when threatening/interacting with a Zoner, one would not know what one was dealing with, unlike dealing with an Outcast or a Libertonian.



Zoners and pirates or Zoners and lawfuls? Well, in my opinion, Zoners should be more well recieved by unlawful elements than lawful elements. Sure, Freeports provide a staging area for Bounty Hunters, but, without them, many criminal groups would cease to exist (cf: Xenos, Unioners, Corsairs (food)).

On the other hand, lawfuls would not be too friendly towards them, as they harbour criminals (check the vanilla news on Freeport 2-Liberty wants to arrest any Zoners found to be harbouring criminals). The only real reason any lawful house would permit them within their borders is to supply Deuterium.

But we have "Zoners" running diamond-niobium or VIPs-xeno organisms or any number of other routes, so they have to be pirated (I think they should be called out for being OORP), increasing the distrust felt by many unlawfuls towards them.

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