New Denali

Summary
The prime world in the New Denali system, McKinley, sits at the inner edge of its star’s habitable zone, orbiting an enormous gas giant. The intense tidal forces triggered by the giant and the star have folded McKinley into a landscape of towering peaks and deep, warm valleys, where most of the populace live. The giant’s inward migration swept away most of the outer planets, but its many terrestrial moons contain enough resources to sustain the exploration of McKinley’s people, although only small mining colonies inhabit most of them, with the technology to sustain them borrowed from other systems. Nevertheless, the system’s rugged residents aim for better things, and visitors best guard their technological secrets well.

Politics & Trade
Sandwiched between the wizards of Yggdrasil and the strivers of Loki, New Denali bills itself as a safe haven for commerce of all sorts, a peaceful link welding the cluster’s second power center together. But in reality that haven comes at a price, for the government here permits trade only at three carefully regulated space stations orbiting McKinley. The Denali Inspection Service – better known as the “Alaskan Mafia” – conducts inspections and collects exorbitant taxes…though the latter’s collection can be forgotten for just a small favor to the Inspector, a few small tokens of gratitude, and the answers to just a few questions. The fact that the Mafia ostensibly acts on behalf of the government leads most to believe the latter broken – but somehow those answers make their way to the government’s research laboratories remarkably quickly.

McKinley’s masters are turning more and more toward their ambitious allies on Loki and Tigris as a counterweight to the technological and resource dominance of Yggdrasil. They know that such a move would not have been tolerated in the past, but Yggdrasil’s recent apathy has allowed them more freedom. It is not clear how much influence the quiet but unsettling words of the “lowly” Hermod traders have triggered this move.

Aspects

 * Standing on the shoulders of giants


 * Intellectual piracy


 * Quid pro quo