History
The Algasienan system was first explored in 22,789 AD by the Gallente expedition that went on to encounter the Intaki five years later in the their nearby homeworld.
Pelion was colonised in 22,834 by a group of families from the small, socially conservative and agrarian state of Namvaran. The Namvari had been reluctant vassals of Morthane and suffered terribly in the conflicts of Gallentia’s industrial age. They had long resented what they saw as the dominance of Garouni values that followed and were further disturbed by the growing cosmopolitanism of Gallentia as it embraced space-age contact with other civilisations. As soon as independent colonies by private organisations became a reality for the Gallente, a significant portion of Namvari jumped at the chance to establish an independent, self-sufficient society, which in some ways sought to recreate a historical idyll that never existed.
The descendants of the first settlers are known as the Founders. Their settlement (Argalasti) sits on the banks of a tidal estuary (the Oviro) with its mouth on the northern coast of a continent (Magnesia) in Pelion’s southern hemisphere.
In 22,906, the people of Argalasti reached an agreement with the Intaki Assembly restricting wholesale development of Pelion in return for ceding the northern continent of Antaram to settlement by a group of Intaki who in many ways shared the Founders’ conservative and isolationist outlook. The new Intaki population (who the Founders referred to as the Neighbours) spread out over Antaram in thinly spaced towns and villages, only coming together in significant numbers for quarterly trade fairs at a natural harbour on the southern coast named Shoharu.
Contact between Argalasti and Shoharu during this period was limited to occasional trading fleets that would meet at a large equatorial island midway across the ocean that separates Magnesia and Antaram. This arrangement suited both communities They took to calling the island Synkretos and lived in relatively harmonious isolation for the next 220 years.
In 23,124, prompted by the establishment of the Federation, Argalasti accepted a second wave of migrants from old Namvaran, who became known as the Followers. The Followers were seeking independence from the nascent Federal Government and the Founders welcomed the opportunity for an injection of fresh blood and new skills from a group with a common cultural background and similar political inclination. The Followers originally had a strictly subordinate status in Argalasti but the distinction has been eroded, although not entirely washed away, in the 230 years since the Followers’ arrival. This is in part due to organic social change and in part to the enforcement of Federal anti-discrimination laws. However, it was the War of Caldari Secession that really changed life on Pelion, rather than the arrival of the Followers.
In 23,159, amid rising concerns about wartime insecurity, the peoples of Magnesia and Antaram reluctantly approved the accession of Pelion to the Federal Charter. Unsurprisingly, the Federation imposed a number of conditions on Pelion’s accession. The Federal Administration established a presence. Reforms to local politics were implemented and a representative body was founded to interact with the Federal Administration on behalf of the whole population. The Combined Harvest corporation was granted franchises to operate several commercial concerns. Lastly, a group of refugees fleeing the instability of Luminaire were granted settlement rights, and promptly became known as the Stragglers.
Pelion’s first orbital elevator was anchored on Synkretos, which also became home to the Federal Administration’s facilities and the Straggler population as well as other elements that were not particularly welcome by either the Founders or the Neighbours, including the employees of Combined Harvest and other enterprises that began to take an interest in Pelion for the first time. In contrast to Argalasti and Shoharu, in the last 200 years, Synkretos has become became a cosmopolitan place that is relatively well integrated with wider Gallente society. Just as the island used to connect the communities of Magnesia and Shoharu, now the city that has grown up there serves as the only gateway between the more isolated communities of Pelion and the rest of the New Eden.
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Topic: [World Building] Pelion (Read 1657 times)