Core, Border, and Rim

The Central Planets are a wonderland of peace and technology. All citizens have enough to eat. They work in glistening skyscrapers and live in high-rise apartment buildings. The grass is green and the skies are clear and no one wants for anything. That's if you believe the Alliance propaganda. To be fair, the propaganda is mostly true. Even the poor who live on the Core worlds rarely want for shelter or food. Still, contrary to what the Alliance might want everyone to think, not everyone on the Core worlds is well-to-do. Those who aren't wealthy don't find life much better than those living out on the Rim. They may be better schooled, and their work might not involve dirt collecting under their fingernails, but there are plenty of people who don't much like their lot in life.Trapped in repetitive, unimaginative jobs, viewing nothing but the four low walls of a cube all day, they have the watchful eye of the Alliance on them at every turn. There is so much surveillance on a Core world 'to prevent crime and ensure the safety of citizens' that almost everything a person does is recorded on a monitor somewhere. The authorities will tell you that crime is almost non-existent on the Central Planets, since their scanners are almost everywhere. Still, there are some who manage to find a way to poke the Alliance in its electronic eye now and then. Most people on the Core worlds are content. They lead comfortable lives, with time and leisure to spend with their families. Their children all have access to the best quality education and health care. They have found the peaceful, prosperous existence that mankind has been seeking since he left the Garden of Eden. If they have to trade away some of their freedom to get this, they would tell you it was worth it. These are the same people who can't understand why other people on the outer worlds fought so hard against it.

The Border Planets are near enough to the central planets that they have business dealings with those on the Core. However, the Border planets are far enough away from the Core that the eyes of the Alliance can't always make out what's going on. Thus, these planets are excellent locales for certain unscrupulous folk from the Core to conduct business dealings "in private." They don't have to move to these planets. (Though there are those eccentrics who travel here from the Core to 'get away from it all' - the kind of people who build strong fortresses to keep out the riffraff and would never dream of socializing with the local yokels.) The irony is that these same folk are all in favor of the rules and regulations that govern business dealings throughout the systems - just as long as those rules and regulations don't affect them.To give the folk on these planets credit where credits are due, there are plenty on the Border worlds who are eager to do business with those on the Core. And there are always countless numbers without a silver in their pocket here looking for work. Landing on Beaumonde and Persephone is supposedly regulated, but the traffic is so heavy that the harried Alliance officials who try to police it have mostly thrown up their hands in frustration and sometimes don't even bother to ask what your business is. (Perhaps they figure it's best they don't know!) Landing on Bellerophon is more difficult, since the world is basically off limits to all who don't own one of its elegant estates. Still, there are ways... The Border planets are the best and worst of all possible worlds. Tall, elegant skyscrapers and magnificent mansions stare down their steel noses at cardboard hovels and crowded slums. You can buy anything on the Border planets, from someone to pick off your worst enemy to a pink ruffled dress that looks like a layer cake. (Just don't buy the 'Good Dogs' from the vendor in the Eavestown Docks. Not if you care that the sausage inside the bun was once actually a good little dog.)

The Rim Worlds are the latest results of terraforming technology, only recently settled, and raw and untamed. Out on the farthest edges of the system, life can be quite challenging, as the comforts of civilization common to the Core Worlds just aren't so here. Technology and power are far more expensive out on the outer worlds and moons, so folk have to make do without. People ride horseback, farm with handmade tools, and resort to entertainment that doesn't require electricity or batteries to operate. While some folk dream of the luxuries available on the central planets, others enjoy the freedom of open air and hard toil. In their own way, they're as stuck-up as the Core-Worlders, looking down their noses at soft folk who've never dug a ditch or mucked a horse stall.While the Alliance government has a presence on the Rim, its grip is more than a mite looser here than elsewhere. Folk can't count on help coming right away (or at all), so they are accustomed to taking care of themselves and their own. Frontier-folk are usually armed, ready to draw at a moment's notice. Children learn to aim by shooting cans off a fence post. The lack of government interference and monitoring has made the Rim a haven for outlaws, outcasts, and shady business folk, as well as a middle class who started to feel like their own planets were getting too crowded for comfort. There is money to be made on the outer worlds, something plenty are just now figuring out. Each world has a Governor, each moon a magistrate. As long as the general peace is kept and the proper reports are filed, such powerful figures may pretty much do as they please, least as far as the Alliance is concerned. Some government officials are good. Some not. Same here as most everywhere else in the 'Verse. A citizen of the central planets who wakes up on a Rim world might think he's traveled backwards in time: people riding horses and shooting six guns. Yet, here and there, you can still find the technology of the 26th century, from Cortex access terminals to high-security bank vaults.