The new Aleae Iaciens has an Atom feed; please feel free to use it. At the end of the month, when I cancel the TypePad site, I'll look into migrating the existing Livejournal feed if nobody's done so.
]]>An Icon's Arche provides not only his perspective on the world but the abilities granted to him by his Relic - and the limitations on those abilities. Each Icon can manipulate the world based on the way his Arche interprets it; for example, an Icon with the Arche "everything is constantly in flux" might be able to sprout wings to allow himself to fly, or to transform the gun in an opponent's hand into a banana. In exchange, however, the Icon must not use his Arche to prevent something from changing, or to maintain the status quo (or status quo ante); acting against his Arche is not only difficult but dangerous. This does not mean that the Icon cannot use his Arche in this way - but if he does, there will be consequences.
While an Arche is often an Icon's best effort to impose order on the universe, it is almost always imperfect, due to limitations of perspective. Frontier's philosophers call these imperfections ἁμάρτημαι (ἁμάρτημα in the singular, pronounced "haMARteima"/"-meye"), but most who know about them simply refer to them as Flaws. Each Icon's Arche has a Flaw that manifests when the Icon successfully uses his powers in a way that contradicts his Arche. The penalties to the Icon range from mild to devastating depending on how badly his actions violate his First Principle, but each violation always causes the loss of the Icon's supernatural abilities, at least briefly. (In game terms, the Icon's powers should be unavailable until the end of the scene.) In addition, the Relic will backfire on the Icon, which generally involves the Icon's own powers being directed at himself, to negative effect. In nearly every case, the effects of an Icon's Flaw is temporary, lasting until his abilities return, but more catastrophic Flaws can impose permanent disadvantages on the character. (If the Icon has used his power to counter his Arche, and received a critical success, the Flaw always imposes a permanent disadvantage!)
For example, the "Flux" Icon above has used his powers to give himself wings, but while he's in flight, he feels the wings begin to disappear. He quickly tries to maintain the wings, and in doing so, invokes his Arche's Flaw - by maintaining the status quo, he is denying that all things constantly change. He is successful, so the wings remain; but he is suddenly cut off from his power, and until he re-establishes his ability to use them, he will be flighty and mercurial (even more so than usual!). Alternately, the Flaw might have manifested physically, as a constantly-shifting appearance, or as the Icon losing control of his emotional state - or as simple unluckiness, as the Icon loses his ability to accurately predict the consequences of his actions.
]]>When I have this stuff ready, I assure you, you'll be the first to know...
]]>Frontier is not, and has never been, a religious society. Only one colony charter was for a religious group, and they have since composed a minority of the population of FFC1079; the rest may be religious to themselves, but as a rule they do not bring religion to bear in public.
The religious group was made up of about 400 members of a sect of the henotheistic Sutukarin religion, named after Tanja Sutukaro, who founded the religion nearly a thousand years before FFC1079 was discovered. As henotheists, orthodox Sutukarins believe in a pantheon governing all aspects of existence, but each Sutukarin dedicates herself to the worship of a single god. The sect whose members came to FFC1079, by contrast, were more syncretic in their beliefs, viewing each god of the pantheon as a manifestation of a single divine power, which they called Providence. Called Universalist Sutukarins - or Universalists - by the orthodox religion, the sect came to FFC1079 because their leader, Henry Cedd, felt a calling to the new colony; the stated goals of the group were to use the isolation of a Federal colony to further their understanding of Providence and existence.
One of the significant differences between the orthodox Sutukarins and the Universalists is that while the orthodoxy prefers small, specific shrines, the Universalists use churches that border on being cathedrals as places of worship. This has impacted the civic landscape of FFC1079; in every major city, one or two Universalist churches can be found, and they are relatively common in smaller towns as well. A Universalist church is still a place of personal devotion and meditation; there is no mandated day of attendance, and there are no general services. Each church has twelve shrines lining its walls, one to each of the twelve major "manifestations" of the pantheon, and an altar in the center at the rear, at which the Universalists devote themselves to Providence. This is done as often as the adherent feels it necessary, but the average attendance rate is about once per week. It should be noted that the Universalists do not sacrifice or offer gifts to Providence, although the pantheon still receive small offerings from many Universalists.
A major feature of both orthodox and Universalist Sutukarin is that neither is an evangelical religion. Sutukarins are expected to draw others to the faith not through spreading the word but by setting an example. They are not forbidden to tell others about the god - or Providence - to whom they have devoted their lives; it is simply neither encouraged nor required. The upshot of this is that while Sutukarin has a relatively low growth rate, it also has a relatively high rate of retaining those who convert to the religion - and its footprint in the community, aside from the Universalists' churches, is so small that they rarely run into public criticism.
Universalist Sutukarin is the largest religion on FFC1079, but it still encompasses no more than ten percent of the population. The other 90% are largely agnostic, although smatterings of the other religions known in Federal space can be found on the colony. These religions include Larthwid (a polytheistic religion based on the relationship between self and nature; its practitioners are Larthwids), Setiwa (a monotheistic, salvation-centered religion, whose adherents are Setiyan, sing. Setiye), and Gilgre Benthyd (which is not a religion so much as a belief system focused on self-deprivation and the path to Truth; those who follow it are Gilgrens).
]]>The upshot is that this post might be a little more scattered than usual, since I'm going to be prone to thinking that I've already written something in the post's first incarnation. (I've switched over to Writely in order to write the rest of this, since I like its behavior better. It seemed silly to do so the first time, because I didn't think I was going to be writing so much.)
]]> I have a dilemma as regards Frontier; the trick is, you see, that the problem of Icons is still bothering me, and with the timeline as I have it now, they have to start showing up during Tyrone King's presidency. This is because - sneak preview - King's administration is the one that authorizes coal and iron mining in the eastern mountains, and since the icons are mixed in with the coal, they'll start showing up shortly after the coal mining begins in earnest.(Speaking of Icons and icons, I really need a better name for the latter, since - as has been mentioned - they're confusing. But what? Relics? Fetishes? I'm kind of at a loss. Please feel free to suggest something.)
So at this point I have a few options.
Any thoughts? Perhaps during this break (a week, for Thanksgiving) I'll sit down and just figure out what place Icons have in Frontier. They are pretty rare, after all (which means, of course, that every party will have at least one); I can, at least, probably handwave their influence on history until after the Federales leave, at least.
]]>Of course, the flip side of this argument is that I've been doing a hell of a lot of social setting-down, but I've barely touched the technology! So all of you are reading this and thinking "what's he talking about? For all we know, technology is powered by little fairies in boxes!" (I assure you that it's not.)
On the gripping hand, I could take Icons and turn them into a sort of soi-disant psionics, especially if -- as I've been positing -- the icons (man, I really do need some more vocabulary) are actually the remnants of an ancient race who inhabited FFC1079 eons ago and were wiped out.
Hm. I really could run with this. Psionics are a time-honored tradition of science fiction, after all, and they provide me with a way to get "magic" into the setting without it tracking fantasy all over my nice clean carpet.
Any thoughts?
]]>The snow was to be Underwood's downfall; just after he had been sworn in, an assassin hiding in a nearby snowbank shot the new President through the head. At roughly the same time, the Federal Police came across several men who were preparing to destroy the new Senate with explosives. The assassin and saboteurs, all of them councillors who had not been re-elected, were jailed, brought before the newly-created Colonial Supreme Court, and summarily executed for treason. This served as a deterrent to the remainder of the ex-councillors, who refrained from taking further action against a government which they viewed as usurpers for the rest of their lives.
With the death of President Underwood, his Lieutenant President, Thomas Webster, stepped into the position. President Webster's agenda was similar to Underwood's; now that the population had equal representation, the next step was to continue expanding. In his first term as President, Underwood saw two new cities formed within existing states, as well as an additional state to the far southwest, where the grain fields began to turn to desert.
Webster's policies did not end with expansion, however. Where Underwood had taken a laissez-faire approach to economic growth, Webster was taking great pains to better the economy, including granting tax breaks for small producers and retailers and increasing the government subsidy of certain imported products (notably paper goods). To balance this, however, he convinced the Senate to increase the existing tax rate slightly across the board, which allowed the government to operate without going into the red.
One area in which Webster had a particular interest was the arts. Webster's mother had been an artisan, and he wanted to stimulate the production not only of crafted goods for export but of art and beauty in general. In order to accomplish this he set aside half of his salary as President and used it to establish the Webster Endowment for the Arts in LY44, a private charity which supported artists both financially and administratively, helping them to set up exhibits and to sell their work. He also worked to encourage government support of local artists and artisans, in addition to the generous assistance which the Federal government already provided on a much more diffuse scale.
Webster was re-elected to the Presidency at the end of LY44, but he merely continued on the same course and offered no new policies or changes in his second term. In LY49 he was succeeded by Patricia Hatfield, a former Senator from Madera who continued much as Webster had; when she retired after a single term and Gustav Schluter was elected, he continued the trend. It was not, in fact, until LY61, with Schluter's retirement and the election of Tyrone King, that the politics of FFC1079 changed significantly.
]]>(I note that I've made the change for purely selfish reasons - with a full-text RSS feed, people don't have to click through to the article itself unless they want to comment, so I don't get as accurate a view of who's actually seeing the articles. So I'm not horribly averse to changing back.)
]]>Council President Marratt was the youngest member of the council when he was elected. He had arrived on Frontier as a child, and had inherited his position on the council after the death of his father, so many of the councillors had distrusted him at first. However, his natural charisma and progressive attitudes had won him friends among the council, and when he was elected to the position of council president, his primary aim was to expand the colony beyond Dodge City and Madera, the only official cities on FFC1079's map.
]]> Marratt's first act toward this goal was, unsurprisingly, to authorize the colonization of Duligne, the Separatist town south of Dodge City. To that end he also authorized the construction of a railroad between Dodge City and Duligne, and convinced the council to agree to sell parcels of the land around Duligne to anyone willing to move to the area and farm the land. Marratt's aim was to get colonists to move to the area being settled, and so the sale was actually slightly more complicated than that; it was actually a lease for four years' tenancy of the land, paid in advance, with the requirement that the lessee reside primarily on the leased property for the duration of the lease. If the lessee satisfied this condition for the full four years, the land was transferred into his or her name with no further fees paid, and the colonist assumed full ownership. (Property in Duligne itself, by contrast, was sold outright.)By the middle of FY614, Duligne had a population of about 3,000 people, with another 1,500 in the surrounding land, and Marratt began turning his eye to further colonization. He continued to push bills through the council to encourage emigration, and by the end of his term, at the end of FY617, two new cities had been incorporated west of Dodge City, and the capital's population had dwindled to half of the population it had possessed at the end of James Dodge's life. Although Marratt wanted to continue his expansionist policies, this was enough for the people of FFC1079, and in FY617 Peter Marratt failed in his re-election bid and was replaced by Langford Keats. The presidency of Keats was remarkably uneventfull; the four major cities of FFC1079 prospered under his administration, and another - a fishing town on the southwestern coast - was established by Peter Marratt and some of his followers, but for the most part there was no notable growth or activity of any sort during Keats' tenure. In FY621 he was re-elected by a complacent populace, and followed roughly the same pattern. His primary contribution to the history of the colony was to sign the bill, passed in FY625, that changed the council president's term from four Federal years to four local years. (It was, in the grand scheme of things, incidental that this extended his term by nearly three months; the last day of FY625 came around in the beginning of the tenth month of Local Year 35, but Keats did nothing with his extra time but prepare to leave office.)
The first day of LY36 saw the inauguration of the first council president born on FFC1079: Jonathan James Underwood. Underwood was the 32-year-old son of colonists who had purchased land around Duligne during Peter Marratt's administration, and followed in Marratt's expansionist footsteps. Underwood was more moderate about his goals than Marratt had been; he intended to establish only one city in his time in office. He also maintained an aim of reforming the government of FFC1079. He was distinguished from his predecessors also by being the first council president to have not been a councillor before his presidency; he had been a dark horse in the election race, but his platform of reforms and expansion caught the attention of the public, who were beginning to feel crowded and under-represented.
Underwood met significant resistance to his ideas about restructuring the government from the more conservative councillors, but he had support from the general populace of FFC1079, particularly those from the smaller cities. The people felt that the council had become too entrenched, and that Dodge City should not be the only city to have a council - or, at least, that the council members should not all come from Dodge City. They viewed Underwood's election as a good first step, but by and large, they wanted more.
While Underwood hadn't anticipated the council's resistance, he knew that he could exercise influence in other ways. For the time being he abandoned his goal of founding another northern city, and spent much of his first term as council president traveling to the various cities of FFC1079, giving speeches, and talking with representatives of the people. In LY39, the council was just about ready to get rid of Underwood, but he was beloved by the people, and was overwhelmingly re-elected to the presidency. This election was notable not only in that Underwood garnered such a vast majority of the vote - over 85% of the votes cast - but for the political aftermath of the scandal that accompanied it. The Federal Police revealed, shortly after the election, that two of the council-members had tried to fix the vote against Underwood. The councillors were summarily removed from their positions, and before the people whom the two councillors had represented convened to vote in new representatives, Underwood spoke to them and managed to convince them to elect one councillor each from Duligne and Madera. This infuriated most of the rest of the council, who accused Underwood of having bribed the populace to get the result that he wanted. These charges were never proven, although it was the first time since Spader that a council president had come under such scrutiny.
With councillors from outside Dodge City in place, Underwood's position was suddenly much more tenable, and within months he and the councillors from Madera and Duligne, along with three other councillors sympathetic to their cause, had written the first draft of a new colonial constitution. Instead of visiting the cities individually, Underwood called representatives of the outlying cities - and of the Federal Police - to Seaside, Peter Marratt's fishing town, and asked them to look at the document; after several drafts, the convention had what they felt was a working and valid constitution. With the support of the Federal Police, Underwood called for a colony-wide vote to ratify the new constitution after a two-week examination period; when the constitution went up for ratification, more than two thirds of the voters weighed in favorably.
]]>By contrast, FFC1079's year is, using Federal units, 356 days, 6 hours, 43 minutes, and 12 seconds long; by its own units, it is exactly 372 days long. The colonists used the Federal system to determine their hours, minutes, and seconds, so each day has 24 hours, each hour 60 minutes, and each minute 60 seconds; the 12 months, however, are 31 days each. Unlike the Federal system, whose official measurements were in multiples of the second, the Frontier system uses fractions of the year - such that a day is officially 1/372 of the year, an hour is 1/8928 of the year, and so on. (It is an interesting bit of trivia that by chance, the difference between the orthodox year and the FFC1079 year as measured in orthodox days - 3.72 days - is exactly 1/100 of the FFC1079 year as measured in local days.)
A side effect of this difference is that the Frontier hour is slightly shorter than its Federal counterpart; one Federal hour is 1.044 local hours, or 1 hour, 2 minutes, and a little under 39 seconds. (A Federal second is likewise 1.033 local seconds.) As a rule, people on FFC1079 use local time measurements; however, the Federal supply ships ran on orthodox time, and anyone who interacted with the ships needed to keep the differential in mind. Because of this, most people on FFC1079 used digital calendars and clocks that display both orthodox and local measures, although these have recently fallen out of favor - largely because without the supply ships, the clock manufacturers have had no reliable way to synchronize their clocks with the orthodox time.
One important detail of FFC1079's calendar is that it begins on the winter solstice; this is done for largely traditional reasons. It also starts with the year that Dodge and his colonists arrived on FFC1079; the winter solstice before they arrived was the first day of FFC Year 1. Because of the 3.72-day difference between the FFC1079 year and the official year, the local year goes farther out of sync with the orthodox year with every revolution. Specifically, the Federal year begins 3.88 local days earlier with each year that goes by; the two measures return to rough synchronization once every 96 years. (This first occurred in FY602/LY13.)
This can lead to confusion when discussing dates; for example, the day on which Council president Peter Marratt was inaugurated, the first day of FY614, was actually in the middle of the eleventh month of LY24. By FY625 - LY35 - the Federal year had fallen out of favor as a record-keeping tool, since those actually recording events preferred to use a dating system that was consistent with the actual years that they were experiencing. (LY35 is commonly chosen by historians as the turning point because it was during that year that the FFC Council passed a bill changing the council president's term to four local years.)
]]>So I have a couple of questions for you guys, since you all seem to be relatively on top of things.
First, what is a "gamist"? Ever since selentic linked to a few gaming weblogs, I've been seeing this word pop up; I assume it arises from The Forge, but I can't figure out what it means. Brian tells me that it's someone who falls between pure simulationist and pure narrativist, which terms I actually do understand, but I keep feeling like there are connotations to gamist that I'm just not getting.
Second, what do you all want to see me talk about? I honestly want answers here; I'm not just asking because I'm blocked. I think I have ten readers now (!!), and it behooves me to talk about the things that people want to read about. Should I work on the system more? (The more I think about it, the more I wonder if I shouldn't actually work out two systems for the game - one with cards, and one with dice. I like the card-based system, but it's not easy to get until you've played it through once or twice.) Should I keep talking about the history of Frontier, or should I talk more about where it is "today"?
Seriously - tell me what you want to see in this space, even if it's just "keep doing what you're doing" or "I don't have any suggestions, I'm just enjoying the ride" (or "you really should give up on Frontier and work on something else", although I'd like to hear why). And, as a reminder, if you're reading this from an RSS feed (like the Livejournal feed), I only see comments that are posted here, so please click through before you leave a note.
Okay, enough chatter for now. Barring overwhelming response as to what I should talk about, I'm working on a side piece about the geography of Frontier which should settle some questions that have been asked. With any luck I'll be posting that early this week, although with a midterm to study for and a paper to write, it probably won't be before Tuesday... (Some of you may also notice that the setting is changing as I nail more of it down; obviously, the more that gets nailed down, the less will be retconned. But if you have questions about that, or concerns that I've forgotten something I wrote earlier - hey, it happens - feel free to let me know.)
]]>This is not to say that there was not semi-public and private opposition. A coalition of colonists who wanted to see Spader removed from office and the militia disbanded began organizing late-night meetings, both to bolster their sentiments and to consider methods of opposing Spader without being seditious. Eventually this included almost a tenth of the remaining citizens of Dodge City - many more stayed away out of fear of discovery - including quite a few members of Spader's militia, who resented having been drafted. For several years this group attempted to change Spader's ways through protests - pseudonymous pamphlets, ransacking the shops of those who publically supported Spader, giving aid and comfort to Separatists, and similar acts, though never anything by which individual members of the coalition could be recognized - but when these failed to work, the coalition began considering more serious opposition.
In the beginning of FY613, coalition leaders began drawing up a plan to use the weapons at their disposal - which consisted largely of handguns and rifles - and the training of those coalitionists who were in the militia to stage a siege on the council chambers until Spader agreed to relinquish power or the council voted him out of the presidency. These plans were in their final stages when the Federal Police arrived and removed Spader from power, neatly abolishing the reason for the coalition's existence, and the oppositionists faded back into Dodge City's general population. (The ringleaders of the coalition, however, remained close throughout their days, and their children after them. It was not until two generations later that an ideological rift - between expansionism and consolidationism - tore that circle apart.)
It is worth noting that Spader was aware, through spies in the coalition, of the plans to lay siege to the council chambers, and was planning to have the remaining members of the militia corner and force the surrender of the oppositionists when they attempted to bring their plans to fruition. He was, say the memoirs of one of his confidantes, looking forward to the first executions on FFC1079 in the twenty-five-year history of the colony.
]]>It is worth noting that the Separation War is not merely significant in that it is the only real war ever fought on Frontier; it is also a turning point for the colonists. FFC1079 had, before this point, operated largely under the benign neglect of the Federal government. With the arrival and intervention of the Federal Police, however, the colonists began losing more and more autonomy to the Federal government, and a century later the Federales were pretty much running everything - which made it even harder to make the transition back to self-government when the Federal government disappeared in FY722.
]]> The Separation WarDodge City, the primary colony on Frontier, was relatively stable through its first twenty years, under the capable leadership of the charismatic James Dodge. Dodge was neither an elected leader nor an appointed one; he became the guiding voice of the colony largely through momentum. He was already the man to whom the colonists on his ship looked for guidance when they arrived at FFC1079, and as his was the first ship to arrive, by the time other colonists set foot on the planet, Dodge had already established the foundations of what would become Dodge City, and none of the other colonial leaders, such as they were, wanted the fundamental divide among colonists that they saw as inevitable if Dodge were removed from power. Dodge was, however, astute enough to not claim leadership over all colonists openly; he met with the other colonial leaders and formed a central council, of which he was selected to be president by all but one of the new councillors.
All of this came to an untimely end in FY609, however, when James Dodge suffered a fatal heart attack. Since Dodge had been largely a de facto leader, and each of the colonist groups had its own methods for choosing successors, there was no real machinery in place to determine who would be the next president. After two weeks of nearly constant debate - the councillors returning home only to eat and sleep - a new leader was chosen from their ranks: Michael Spader. Spader had served in the Federal Navy, and rose to the rank of Leftenant before his tour of duty ended; it was thought that his military background would be an asset to his presidency. (That he was the councillor for the largest group of colonists after Dodge's - who did not send another councillor until after Spader was elected - was undoubtedly also on the minds of those who elected him.)
Spader, however, turned out to be a better officer than he was a statesman. It soon became apparent that he saw the council presidency as a dictatorship, with the other councillors as mere advisors, and that he expected those under his ersatz "command" to obey his mandates without question. One of his least popular decisions was to establish a standing militia for FFC1079, including a mandatory draft and an income tax to support the cost of maintaining such a militia. Spader explicitly intended this to be a supplement to the Federal military, and his stated goal was "to provide for the Defense of our Colony in such case as a Threat arises to which the Military of our Father Government cannot respond in a timely Manner". Many of the colonists, however, saw the establishment of this militia as Spader's attempt to assert his independence from the Federal government.
Spader also continued some of the less-popular economic policies that had been established during Dodge's presidency. These policies included a tax on income and on property held outside the confines of Dodge City, in order to help maintain the everyday operation of the colony and later to build the northwest railroad through Madera, and a tax on the sale of any item produced using colony property; the colonists generally agreed that these were fair and necessary taxes, but disliked them anyway. Spader added not only the aforementioned militia tax, but a tariff on any goods imported specially by individual colonists, and a low property tax on property within Dodge City itself. These new policies, along with the establishment of a colonial militia and the mandatory draft that accompanied it, were enough to cause colonists to begin actively protesting, and near the end of FY609, two councillors - Teresa Ligne and Cyrus Clark - submitted a declaration of secession and left the city, along with three thousand colonists.
The Separatists, as Spader and, eventually, the rest of the colonists called them, established the town of Duligne as a base south of the city, and claimed twenty thousand square miles surrounding the base as a separate colony, which they called Clark County. Spader's immediate response was to send the new colonial militia into Clark County to round up or kill the Separatists, but the militia was too new and untrained - and had too many reservations about firing on their friends and former neighbors - to make much difference, and in the first month of FY610 they were driven from Clark County. In the meantime, scouts from Duligne snuck into Dodge City and appropriated food and supplies - some by stealing, some by purchasing from sympathetic Dodge colonists - and returned to Clark County. This pattern was repeated every few months for the next three years, with the militia not making much headway against the Separatists, until the Federal Police arrived. The Federal Police were much better armed and trained than the colonial militia, and within months - that it took so long was a credit to the tenacity of the Separatists - they had taken Duligne and killed or driven away the Separatists in Clark County.
The Federal Police took this opportunity to establish their first permanent base on FFC1079, in the terraforming plant itself, which they called Precinct Zero. They also forced the removal of Michael Spader from power, seeing his dictatorial approach to the colonial presidency and his establishment of a militia answerable to him - as had many of the colonists, including the Separatists - as an act of treason against the Federal government. Spader was removed from FFC1079 and imprisoned for life, and the Federal Police assisted the colonists at large - not just the councillors - in choosing a more suitable council president. On the first day of FY614, councillor Peter Marratt became council president, under the watchful eye of the Federal Police.
]]>The first ship to arrive, in the first quarter of FY588, was Good King Henry, carrying five hundred colonists under the de facto leadership of one James Valentine Dodge. By the time other colony ships arrived weeks or months later, Dodge's colonists had established a small town near the main terraforming plant, which sat on the eastern coast of the main continent, in a break in the mountain range running the length of the land mass. While a few other colonists set up camp in other places - and were, by and large, never heard from again - the majority began to settle with Dodge's colonists, and within a year the town was known as Dodge City.
For twenty years, the colony prospered under a local council, consisting of the leaders of the various colonist groups and headed by James Dodge, and the general governance of the Federal Interior Commission. By FY600, Dodge City's population had exceeded twenty thousand people, a second town, Madera, had been founded a few days' ride away, and the first rails were being laid for a new railroad meant to stretch from Dodge City through Madera and out into the forests to the far northwest. In addition, coal and metal mines were being sunk in the mountains north and south of Dodge City, providing Federal Frontier Colony 1079 with resources that the quarter-annual Federal ships had been bringing to that point.
In FY609 the colony's peace was shattered when James Dodge suffered a fatal cardiac arrest. Dodge and his group, it turned out, had been a major factor in keeping the other groups of colonists working together, and when Dodge died, and was replaced by a less apt leader, two members of the council became belligerent within a month and seceded, along with about one in ten citizens of Dodge City. The Separatists, as they became known, left the city and founded Clark County to the south, and began staging raids on Dodge City for the supplies that they needed. This continued for several years - according to some, with the help, or at least the conscious neglect, of Dodge City colonists sympathetic to their old friends - until the spring of FY613, when the Federal supply ship was accompanied by a military transport bearing the first Federal Police to set foot on FFC1079. Six months later, at the end of local summer and the end of the Federal year, the Separatists had been driven from Clark County, and the Federal Police had established a permanent post in Dodge City. The extended battle between the Separatists and the Federal Police is commonly acknowledged as being the only true war in the colony's history, and is referred to - when it is referred to at all - as the Separation War.
]]>