Amondiage: History

4550-4750AD Early Colonial History

Once colonisation was underway, the Strategy Committee began to direct the cattle cloning and settlement efforts. It was renamed the Steering Council, and came to be recognised as the de facto world government. The work of the Steering Council was centred first around the Voyageur, and then around the early lakeside settlements.

Once a newly awakened band of colonists had been supplied with their herds, and with the primitive wagons and tents they were to live in, there was little that the Steering Council could do. Often the early nomads would go for months or years without hearing from the Council.

In theory, the Council would provide emergency supplies and medical evacuation, should the need arise. However, as the years passed the number of nomads increased, and the condition of the Council’s few spacecraft deteriorated. As the Nomads increasingly came to see the Council as a distant irrelevance, the Council came to be more and more identified with the permanent settlements where they were based.

Once all of the frozen colonists had been awoken, and hostility between the lakesiders and Nomads had begun to develop, the Steering Council came more and more to side with the lakesiders. Eventually, in 4598AD the Steering Council abandoned its link with the Nomads, and renamed itself the “World Council”.

The World Council undertook to defend the lakesiders from the “criminal” activities of the Nomads. The Council’s aging spacecraft were fitted with weapons and used in abortive “policing actions” against Nomad bands. Initially the Council had the upper hand. Their superior technology allowed them to terrorise the Nomads with impunity. As the years passed however, time began to take its toll on the weapons and spacecraft left by the Voyageur. One by one they broke down, and eventually the Council found itself without the ability to project force against its enemies.

Towards the end of the early colonial period (c.4700AD) the Nomads had become the clear winners in their contest with the Council. The lakeside settlements were reduced to fending off the regular Nomad raids without any outside aid. The World Council remained as an impotent talking shop for the leaders of the increasingly isolated settlements.