worldbound

Trope-a-Day: Hidden Elf Planet

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Hidden Elf Village Planet: There are a decent number of these – people who have seen the greater Galaxy and decided that they’d prefer not to have anything to do with it – and they’re often appropriately hard to get to, since most of them exist in systems that don’t have stargates, meaning you have to go on a very long relativistic journey to meet the people who would prefer you stayed away.  And further, as you might expect, most of them have a fairly lousy reputation, due to the only people from them the greater Galaxy sees being the exiles and renegades.

By and large, said greater Galaxy is happy to leave them to rot til’ they decide they want to play well with others.

Use Them or Lose Them

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Written in honor of a news story I read today regarding the as-yet-not-fully-relevant Moon Treaty and the existing Outer Space Treaty.

”While this Court admires the ambition, chutzpah, and indeed hubris of the World Assembly of the ettreo of Sarine in asserting the right to control the entire circumcelestial sphere, even merely to deny the legitimacy of all volumetric claims sovereign or propertarian, the Assembly can hardly expect us to take such assertions from a civilization which, far from enjoying such a galactic span of control, remains itself worldbound and possesses no off-homeworld territorial claims, seriously.”

”For this reason, and under the principle that domestic law bears no weight in interstellar matters save where provided for by treaty or Accord law, the Celestial Resources Decree of the World Assembly of Sarine is dismissed from this Court’s consideration insofar as it applies to external entities.”

”While it is customary to refrain from asserting territorial claims in the systems of pre-space species, or in the systems of non-worldbound species engaged in active system development, neither the World Assembly of Sarine nor any other organizations of the Sarine system have attempted to colonize or otherwise utilize the secondary or tertiary bodies of their system in the 104 years since their contact with the Accord.”

”Under the Common Volumetric Accord, the principle is well-established that the secondary and tertiary bodies of the Sarine system would be open for colonization, resource extraction, or other use by any civilization capable of actively homesteading them in 40 further years.”

”However, in the light of the intent to specifically and explicitly renounce any and all sovereign claims of the Celestial Resources Decree, which the defendants argue is applicable as a matter of Sarine domestic law, this waiting period arguably is voided by intent.”

”This Court finds for the DEFENDANTS, whose sovereign claims in the Sarine system are UPHELD. The plaintiff’s request for injunctive relief and compensation is DENIED.”

 – World Assembly of Sarine v. Galactic Volumetric Registry, Calcic-Photonic Condominion and First Distributed Exclavine Republic, Central Conclave Court