Hi there,
since I want to get my players off the hive world they are in (they have even more trouble to imagine a hive then I do) I looked through the new world description in "Enemy within" and decided to give them a tour to Temperance (fits the current happenings in my game).
I was rather suprised about the distance mentioned between the two cities of the world, Beacon & Bastion. They are said to be more then 1000 Kilometers away, I guess it even said "several". I wonder how this should allow for any significant interaction between the two cities.
Little me is living in Germany. 1.000km alone is a distance that would make me start at one end of my home Country and make me reaching it´s border (or even crossing it) by the farest point of the other side. In my daily life, everything that happens in such a distance is something I just "take note of", and I am having access to the internet, television, etc. and I am not a farmer who has to go through a backbreaking choirs of works most of the hours of my day but somebody working in an office, 9-to-5,so to speak.
Thereby, I assume that all the populace of Bastion knows about Beacon is "hear-say" from merchants or perhaps news broadcasts via Vox (if they have such!) while the Arbites will have to rely on "gathered intelligence" by their local agents and deputies (again, likely to be Vox or personal Rapport/ messengers being send).
On the other Hand, it seems like everything Beacon is knowning about Bastion will be likewise hearsay, and of course the picture they get from the deputy caders Bastion sends there. And with the distance between the town, I imagine that the deputies will have literal garrisons with barracks there, as it is unfeaseable to transport the caders back and forth between Bastion and Beacon between assignments, as long as we are not talking "reinforcements for special duty", that is.
All of this assumes, of course, that the deputy forces of beacon aren´t recruited from the local populace. This is just me guessing again, as I guess their would be much less troubles between deputies and populace if the deputy forces would actually be PART of the populace instead of "strangers from outside". One is much less likely to rough up his neighbor then he is likely to rough up a stranger, after all.
Somehow, I guess the overall feel of it (the deputy Situation in Beacon) might be akin to Irland a few decades back, especially with those (spore) bombings going on.
What do you think?