====== The Outer Belt ======

At the time leading up to the War of Dissolution, the Outer Belt was a place of stark contrasts. Much like Newhome before it, the Outer Belt was an attractive place for misfits and ideologues, being as it was at the edge of yinrih civilization. Among these ideologues were militant secularists.



The Outer Belt was also the dumping ground for elements that the hierarchy deemed undesirable, including incompetent engineers and aging infrastructure, but also the missionaries, who, along with Hearthside, were a hotbed of movements and ideas that would later coalesce into the Pious Dissolutionists. The Outer Belt suited the missionaries just fine, though, as it was that much closer to interstellar space.



The hierarchy didn't exactly help their case by giving the Outer Belt the short end of the stick. Power delivery was sporadic, interplanetary communication was unreliable, and ferry service might as well not have existed at all.



So you have two groups who are ill-disposed to the "corporate" side of the Bright Way already, living in an area underserved by the Bright Way's services while still being expected to pay the same tithes as someone from the inner planets where things ran much smoother. It's not hard to see why the war began here.



The militant secularists were a disorganized lot of terrorists staging sporadic attacks against Bright Way infrastructure. Missionaries and other pious Wayfarers themselves were merely attacked rhetorically rather than physically... at first. The secularists got a lot more organized and a lot less tolerant after a strong leader rose to unite them. More about that guy in an upcoming post.



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