Transcript For Strip 1097

From the beginning the idea was to start with a solar-system-spanning, human civilization which had not yet developed a practical interstellar drive. For gameplay purposes I wanted seven ‘factions’ which I determined early on would be grouped into ‘mercantile corporations’ which I originally called ‘Mercans’ before I learned about the word ‘merkin’ and what that means. After that I changed the term to ‘Mercorps.’
It took me a bit to work out the factions, their characteristics, and where they came from. Here’s an early graphic outline:

[graphic]

‘Elfive,’ which later became ‘L-5 City,’ was an early player, as I had long been fascinated by the idea of an anarcho-capitalist space-city. ‘The Sisters’ and ‘Titan’ were aligned, and Pluto and Triton were aligned with the Jovian Moons.
I spent several weeks of my unemployment fiddling with these concepts, adding aspects, and dropping others. The seats of power shifted to the inner planets, with the outer worlds (as well as Mercury) being mere colonial outposts. The Belt was a bit Rougher in my original conception than it was to become, owing in part to my work with Sandy Sandfort on Escape From Terra.
Along with the scene-setting came a back-story to the back-story. I’d worked out a 500-year history from the 1990s into the 2500s with important events sprinkled throughout. This timeline chart is too small to read here but you should be able to get the general idea:

[graphic]

The details don’t matter now because I have since added, removed, and repositioned most of the events. (I didn’t come up with ‘The calamities’ until I was already drawing volume 1. I need a reason for Seamus to be hiding his true identity and a world-rending disaster seemed to fill the bill.)
As this fictional universe was coming together I knew I needed to populate it with interesting characters, and a plot that would take them through this universe. The plot came fairly easily, but the characters took a bit more work.

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