Places of Interest on Clarion
Clarion has 12 great cities with populations in the tens of millions
Valentina is the throne city. The Royal Palace sprawls over square kilometers and the Royal Guard is headquartered here.
Landing-
major petroleum refining center and site of Landing Park, the location
of the first landing by colonist on Clarion. AIPS's Clarion headquarters
is located here as the mega corp dominates the petroleum industry.
Several home grown corporations via for market share as well.
Port Royal is
The
Royal Marine base on the surface of Clarion, the site of the Osprey
museum, the RM Historical Center, as well as the Royal Marine Academy.
Port Royal is a major star port in its own right with high volumes of
commerce passing through.
The Marine base has officer and enlisted
clubs but the truly popular off duty locations are the Raptor's Roost
(bar and dance club) and Gimpy's (run by a retired RM NCO, Gimpy's
maintains a quiet neighborhood style bar & grill atmosphere catering
to RM NCO's).
Moline is the largest city and headquarters of Eversafe Enterprises.
Lapin
is an anachronism being a resort community dedicated to the ancient art
of snow skiing even in this day and age of grav skiing. Princess
Vallencia is major patron of the sport and a frequent visitor in Lapin.
Roskov
Mountains are the low range of mountains with rich quantities of
uranium that made Clarion rich. Large portions have been set aside as
Crown Reserve but much is controlled by AIPS mega corp via a subsidiary
corporation: Roskov Development Corporation. RDC has been turning out
huge profits producing fuel for atomic drives.
Gun Control in the White Light System
The original banning of Streel from doing business on Clarion came about
from the government's order to all mega corps to demilitarize their
operations. Streel’s violation of this resulted in the original 20 year
ban.
Clarion has further instituted gun licensing and bans on
certain weapons that are considered military in nature. All defensive
suits and screens are allowed but weapons with a rate of fire of 3 or
higher, heavy weapons, high damage, or explosive ordinance are
considered military. Military, police and paramilitary personnel can
purchase much of this with their ID card though most organizations allow
their personnel to requisition what they want or need within limits.
The availability of weapons varies greatly depending on where you are in the system.
On Clarion
“tame” weapons like semi automatics, needlers, and stun weapons are
readily available as well as tangler and smoke grenades. Lasers can be
purchased that will only discharge 1 or 2 SEU per shot though it’s a
simple procedure for technicians and beam weapons specialist to remove
the power governor and allow it to shoot at the full power setting.
Explosives are very tightly controlled and tracked. There is of course a
black market but that can be difficult to access and markups of 50-100%
are not unusual.
On Clarion Station
in orbit the situation is a bit looser with many ships coming and
going. The same laws apply but the Royal Marines don’t confiscate banned
weapons if they’re declared and locked in a weapons locker. Permits
for carrying “ship safe weapons” are fairly easy to obtain providing no criminal record (record check is only Clarion’s data base). Ammunition
that could endanger the safety of the station cost more and is harder to
buy but most legal weapons are freely available. The black market is a
little more open as deals can go down on ship and transfers of goods can
happen in a number of ways. The black market here runs generally at 25-45% mark up.
On Planaron Ore Processing Stations (POPS)
things are quite different as none of the licensing laws apply. The
station was built on the gutted Planaron asteroid after Space Mines Inc
purchased it from the Crown. Over time it has developed into a rough
community of wildcat prospectors, low-life and less savory spacers. It
is often referred to as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Here the
black market is the open market.
Most traders will keep certain wares
out of site if Royal Marines have entered the station preferring to
avoid drawing too much attention to them. It is often possible to buy
weapons here that are vastly marked down but these either have seen
heavy use and abuse or they may be flagged in a police data base
somewhere.