- Gale Nenawa: What’s the problem?
- Marton: The problem is that you’re hoarding food while the people in Velis are starving!
- Gale Nenawa: We--
- Scarlet: You oughta thank God, or whoever’s responsible for this mess of a planet, every day that the mines exist! Because they’re the sole reason why you’re still alive!
- Scarlet: Do you think Avernum would send Kirelia all those soldiers and food if we didn’t even hand over the meager yields of our energy crystal mines?
- Scarlet: Don’t think for a second that you’ll be safe from the Grondan soldiers here in Velis if Avernum withdraws its peacekeepers! They’ll shoot you, just like they shot my parents!
- Marton: …
- Marton: You’re hoarding food!
- Scarlet: Of course we are!
A Sky Full of Stars 075
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28 thoughts on “A Sky Full of Stars 075”
SomethingSomething
Is Scarlet… a Republican???
MaxArt
Republicans make feeble to ludicrous connections to what’s really important. On the contrary, she makes a solid point. She’s pragmatic. The village has a way to provide protection, and that chain must be preserved.
That doesn’t mean she can tell *how much* action should be taken, though…
Arthur
She’s a pragmatist. Simple fact: If they split the food with everyone then everyone starves to death. If they stockpile food, more people survive.
Crystalgate
In this case, there is not even that much of a moral dilemma to begin with. If they don’t hoard the food for the benefit of the miners, the miners will not be able to do their work and they will not be able to trade the yield for food. This means that if they shared the food evenly, the food packets would stop coming and everyone would end up with less food that way.
Hegel-Marx
Novil is German. The political categories in Germany are different. We know from “Sandra and Woo” that he has some sympathy for the radical left. We’ll see how this part of the story unfolds.
Vicious Sand
The explanations of what a political left and right have collapsed in the last decade or two.
Going by the listing of the radical left as the freedom chasing, slightly crazy, authority-bucking type, then the main characters in Gaia are also left-stance.
Hegel-Marx
910 / 5.000
I’ve been having these policy discussions for decades. I wouldn’t here. Let’s not take a SF/F story too seriously, and let the author speak! I was just pointing out that the American categories of “Democrat” and “Republican” are not universal.
Lavarel is faced with a drastic crisis, the lack of a basic resource for survival. Our political divisions are not applicable here. Hundreds of millions of people in the world are starving, but the global problem is not that there is a lack of food, but distribution.
Let’s leave the floor to the author who designed this world, “mess of the planet”. All the people on Lavarel face dramatic ethical and political dilemmas. I suppose even the Grondan leaders are not simply cruel imperialists; they conquer other people’s territories to feed their own population.
I am interested in how Novil will resolve this confrontation between Scarlet and Marton, and how Scarlet will continue to develop as a person in the coming years.
Crystalgate
Yes, we can conclude that Grondan attacks to feed their people by the fact that they kill the farmers. This is a sure sign that they want the farmlands without also getting extra mouths to feed. If it was simple abut expanding, they would have been more inclined towards leaving the already existing infra structure relative intact and just benefit from the resources it can generate.
xellos
“I assume that’s someone who supports uh… what’s a republica? Anyway, I laid out my reasoning here.”
Zarylo
@Novil, typo in the last panel: hording.
Novil
Fixed.
Kitsune
That… was… unexpected. I love it!
ToBeFree
Hah! Very well done! I didn’t expect Scarlet to react like this, but it’s the best reaction one could have thought of for her.
MegaJar
@Novil: Minor grammar correction in the last panel. Since Marton’s line to Scarlet is “You are hoarding food”, her reply should be “Of course we are“, not “Of course we do“.
Vicious Sand
Mega is right. But then, they’ve almost switched to “Are to!” “Are not!” by then.
Novil
Fixed.
Hegel-Marx
I refrain from commenting for now. I await with great interest the outcome of this confrontation! 😮
Owen Smith
One solution is for cogs to be priced in food.
Graybeard
Probably neither Scarlet nor Gale have the authority to do that, but they both have the sense to realize that they could get in BIG trouble just winging it. Which doesn’t invalidate the point that it might well be a good idea./
Crystalgate
Doing so will probably lead to intervention. In order for Velis to receive more food packages from Avernum, the miners need to be well fed enough to work. If the dealers start to demand food for services the mine or miners need, then that may compromise the mine owner*s ability to keep his miners fed. This can in turn lead to food packets and peace keeping soldiers to cease coming. Kirelian government will probably enforce an accept money policy if needed.
Vicious Sand
Wow. She just destroys him before he can get any more words out. Marton can’t even salvage his position. The whole “famine” storyline is “The Grasshopper and the Ant”, done very low-key. If you wanted more food, you should have grown more food. Don’t blame the people who still have food over the fact that you don’t have food. You’re complaining that they have what you want, while trying to make it sound bad that they have what you don’t have. And that’s a very common, and childish, argument to put forth. The mining camp isn’t ‘hoarding’ food- they have a supply of food. It will likely be insufficient. I hope that Scarlet can figure out how to windowbox more beets, or grow them in the mines or something. Despite all the other flora on Lavarel, they’re at a monocrop problem.
So, we finally know what they mine there. Energy crystals that are naturally found instead of created in a laboratory workshop. Whatever sort of impure quartz, charged naquadah, or dilithium, they’re mining, at least it brings protection- and with it more people to feed. Mining is a high-energy cost even with automation. There will always be a point where people have to move and lift things themselves.
Crystalgate
In the “The Grasshopper and the Ant” story, the grasshopper had the opportunity to gather food, but choose to play music instead. In this world, they simple cannot grow more food than they already do. The starvation that’s happening is the best they could do and there was no way to prevent it.
Tadrix
And then you have people like Mirknings who could’ve stocked up on food when there was the opportunity, but didn’t. It’s quite possible that the window of opportunity was there (while there was still relatively free flow of goods and trade with other regions) — those with the foresight and means to act on it would be ok, while the others would blame them for being “better off”.
Food on Lavarel isn’t abundant, but, given that normally you can stock up on it and it is part of free trade normally (instead of being controlled and distributed by government in the person of armed soldiers), there’s some wiggle room between the crises.
Crystalgate
The Mirknings could have stocked up yes, but that would have come at the expense of other people who would have been left with less food. People like Tibor, Scarlet and the mine owner could by foreseeing the starvation prepare and be better off. However, if everyone was as smart, then it’s the same as if nobody was smart since now everyone tries to be ahead of the others.
Crystalgate
I think this is one of my favorite pages. It gets a lot of information out to us readers in a natural way while still doing a great job of characterizing Scarlet.
Anyway, the answers do led to more questions. The food comes from Avernum, it’s not something Kirelia managed to store. We also now knows why Avernum bothered to aid Kirelia with soldiers. This leads to the question of why Avernum seems so much better of (also to some extent why Grondar is even worse of). Maybe Avernum is closer to the equator and not as affected by the longer winter than Kirelia is?
Is the food packets distributed evenly throughout Kirelia or concentrated to the mining towns? If it’s the latter then that does not Bode well for Julius’ chances of survival as Scarlet made it clear the food packages are what’s keeping them alive.
The energy crystals are mined. This implies that they can not be produced. This places Lavael in a predicament if they run out of those crystals. In our world, we have multiple different energy sources and if one runs out, we can adapt to use a different source, albeit with some difficulty and considerable economical ramification. The magitec in Lavael does not seem to have this flexibility though, it’s unlikely for example that the guns they use could be operated by anything that exists in our world.
Pappenheimer
“they want the farmlands without also getting extra mouths to feed. ”
In other words, or just one word: Lebensraum
Not the best connotations in our world.
Tadrix
More like the Grondans are commies with less-than-effective food production. Their markings are red, too. During the last centuries, Russia/Soviets have been really fond of ethnic cleansing and mass deportations, usually to Siberia — except on a planet that is like Siberia already, there’s only one place left to go.
Arthur
And when noone in the new governmet has the genrational knowledge that is passed down by farmers, turns out that no one is able to produce more food and everyone starves. Holodomor and its concequences.
Poll
Characters
Ariana Carolus Athamas Bolin Evelina Ferrus Gale Nenawa Gavin Carolus Jehona Shardyk Julius Mirkning Lauro Levon Goldwood Luitpold Marik Marton Princess Elodie Raymond Reto Mirkning Reva Scarlet Carolus Silvana Mirkning Tibor Frey Viola Yerim Zach Ilkin