The Eighteen Pacts

 

HQ : W15.I

Found on : W15.1, Duzara

 

The Pacts are loosely governed but well-organized consortiums of independent ice miners (known as "rock-hoppers") who extract and transport ice from the White. The ice is critical for everything from water and oxygen supplies to fuel refining.

 

Sixteen are still in existence.  All have a decentralized guild-like structure. Member crews retain independence but follow common trade and dispute protocols.  The ethos is solidarity and survival. Many members are former colonists, outcasts, or refugees—tough, fiercely independent, but bound by necessity.

The sixteen Pacts have an informal alliance commonly named "The Syndicate", whose purpose is to control ice pricing across the system, often undercutting corporate suppliers. 

 

A cultural quirk is that rock-hopper crew gives their ship and ice-hauls poetic names, rivaling in creativity.  Examples are The Frostward Bride or the Lament of the Hollow Sun.  This practice of "skill-naming" is reinforced by surprisingly dashing choices in ship colours, uniforms and accoutrements, which can become pretty extravagant !  A fruitful combination of these different aesthethic choices can bring considerable prestige to a captain and to his crew, although history has also been marked by "fashion failures" that have cast ridicule for generations.