Indentures End
Indentures End is the moon that the Meridian Exchange uses as a holding pen between audit and ship-out: the place where people who have been 'realised as assets' on Meridian Balance spend the last quiet days of one life before they are sold into the next.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | outpost |
| Anchor System | meridian-balance |
| Controlling Faction | The Meridian Exchange |
| Fold Bleed | low |
| Habitat | urban, surface |
| Population | 740000 |
| Role | satellite |
| Zone | Core |
Notes
Dangers: Re-realisation: an 'asset' whose contract is sold again mid-transit is no longer anyone's legal problem, and the law is not interested until they are someone else's., Kadiss gaps on the bonded-housing blocks: the Exchange claims they are for the privacy of the indentured families; the indentured families claim they are for the privacy of the people who come to take them.
Hooks: A batch of freshly-indentured 'assets' from a Core hive's Auditorium are due to ship out to a Helios foundry work-line; one of them was sold under a forged contract and the original owner wants her back., A Meridian clerk is found dead in the bonded-housing block; her Kadiss unit has logged her last hour as 'sleep'; the housing block's quiet hours are not the kind that keep people out, but the kind that get them out alive., A Day One cell on the moon has been printing counterfeit 'paid-in-full' receipts for indenture contracts; the receipts work, briefly, until the next quarterly audit, and the cell wants them to keep working.
Lore: Indentures End is the moon that the Meridian Exchange uses as a holding pen between audit and ship-out: the place where people who have been 'realised as assets' on Meridian Balance spend the last quiet days of one life before they are sold into the next. Seven hundred and forty thousand people live on the moon -- half of them Meridian staff, the other half bonded-housing populations, transit crews, and the small hereditary caste of priests and clerks who run the place. The Long Barracks are the bonded-housing blocks; the Gilded Steps are the Meridian-only commercial strip where the staff spend their shore leave. The two halves of the moon do not meet, and the Kadiss gaps on the bonded-housing blocks -- officially 'for the privacy of the bonded families' -- are where the moon's quieter trades happen. A Day One prayer-house has been tolerated on the moon for almost a century, officially for the spiritual welfare of the bonded, in practice because the Exchange learned the hard way what happens when you deny a hive-floor millenarian movement its only temple on the eve of an indenture ship-out. Indentures End is the cleanest expression of Asset Realisation doctrine in the verse, and the doctrine has not aged well.
Notable: The Long Barracks: the bonded-housing blocks where the indentured wait between sale and ship-out, under close watch and quiet hours., The Gilded Steps: the Meridian-only commercial strip where clerks and auditors spend their shore leave; nothing on the strip is priced for the people who live one block over., A small but persistent Day One prayer-house -- tolerated, officially, for the spiritual welfare of the bonded.