Nob -- Border

A Firefly world

Note: After you starting thinking in Firefly terms, you start talking in Firefly terms. Thus the "western twang" in this piece. It is intentional, rather than "just is" here. It captures the mood of the setting.

Nob was a might developed colony world. It had a few cities, some manufacturing, and something that passed as a space port. Sure it was only a couple of walled sandpits with walkways and a central office and traffic control, but that sure is a heck lot more than your average rim planet.

Nob has the good fortune of having a large rocky planet in its system to dissolve and become an asteroid/ rubble belt about two years ago. The system had two planets in its lifeband. Nob and Taurine. The Survey Teams started terraforming processes on Taurine, but it was found to be a bit too unstable. Guess they were right. Now Taurine is nothing but a bunch of rocks spreading around its orbit.

Now there had been some mining on Taurine. That was Nob's main claim to wealth and fame. They supported the prospectors in their pressure suits and rover buggies. Now that the planet been dusted, the minerals and metals are easier to get to. Really the only thing that changed was the type of prospector.

Nob has some serious banking connections and had some might fancy rules about currency, credit exchange, and tariffs. This is how they held on to things before Taurine became a belt. The short of it is, "only so much money you can take off world per year". Thus it behooves a company or individual to develop on Nob, rather than import or export stuff.

Sure the Taurine Belt goods are mostly exported directly, as a matter of contract, but a lot of that wealth, in the form of tariffs, equipment, and fuel costs, gets siphoned off back to Nob.

Banking is a big thing here on Nob. While much is transacted via Wave, most of it is done the old fashion way. Part of that is available technology and part of that is security (after all, hard to do a dataslip on a double entry ledger). Besides, most currency here is hard currency, gold or platinum. The paperwork makes it all easier.

Additional notes and geography
Hill, the main city on Nob, looks like quite the bustling metropolis, for 1910. The city is lit up with gas light and some electricity. The cable cars run on time. Puttering carriage like cars and carriages fill in the rest of the traffic.

Other cities are taking after Hill, much like everyone follows the trendsetters. Sure they look a bit behind, but they are building fast. In fact each city's leading citizens are in a crazed competition. Each one is trying to make their city, The City. This means things are building fast and change is occurring. Each city is getting gardens, museums, public works, mass transit, more power production, and so on. What one has, another is trying to build. There is always construction here.

Hill and the other cities on the Great Crater Ocean (which was made when one of the hydroletic comets used in terraforming hit the planet) are might prosperous. There is quite a bit of sail and steam crossing it. There are newly made railways lines connecting Hill (Union Crater) and Crocker (Central Fey) to the Outlands and the cities of the Lesser Crater Ocean. There are plans to run a rail line all around the Lesser Crater Ocean.

Menlo, a city on the Lesser Crater Ocean, has its own space port. The ships are landed on the water, where most will float. It makes for a different kind of experience for most, but pilots love it.

Strangely enough there may be minerals of worth on Nob. The Outland Mountains may have near surface silver. So while there is a "gold rush" in the Taurine Belt, they may be a Silver Rush on Nob.

Shorthands for this world: Hubris, 1890 High Mech, Banking.

Plots
The Silver Rush. Here you have claim jumping, defending claims, investigation, and a wide variety of things.

Urban Espionage

: One city father might be paying someone to sabotage the projects of another. This will let them stop the other projects until they can get their own in place.

Industrial Espionage

: It continues on with the field of business. Union Crater and Central Fey railways are quite "intense" in there competition. In addition, there is that contract to run the rails around the Lesser Crater Sea.

The Rail Road murder mystery

: The train takes 9 days to get between cities. If you don't solve the murder before you get there, you will all be held for days while the local police investigate. Since you have a "pressing engagement" (or a wanted poster),

The Bank Robbery

: Someone needs you to "liberate" some gold.

The Bank Job

: You need to get in and change some paperwork in a few bank ledgers. Not as easy as you might think. All the security in place to stop a bank robber interferes with your bank job.