Manticore Plague Years

Given how the Manticoran plague seriously reduced the population and remained uncontrolled, how did the rest of the galaxy react?

Was a quarantine imposed on Manticore?

Was their a ban on immigrants or refugees from Manticore?

Was there a ban on imports from Manticore?

Was there a prohibition on using Manticoran ships for transporting goods to or from certain systems?

Were Manticorans pariah who were stigmatized as "unclean?"

You're too wrapped in thinking of Manticore as it is now, instead of how it was then. Manticore had no merchant vessels, no extra-system population, no exports. Manticore at the time of settlement was just one of many frontier Verge planets completely irrelevant to the League. Very few Manticorans would have left the system, and even fewer Solarians would have reason to go there (until the Plague was over and the system started recruiting colonists again, that is).

Given the relative earliness of the colony, it's doubtful the galaxy had to do anything at all. Manticore was not producing anything except subsistence goods, it barely had a system defense presence, and it's doubtful any traders would have bothered with a colony barely established a relative handful of years earlier.

As well, hyperdrive, useful hyperdrive, was in relative infancy, and Manticore was a bit far out from usual routes. Wormhole Junctions hadn't even been theorized at this point, and it was unlikely that Manticore was going to be anything but another Verge colony.

It's very likely that the galaxy at large didn't know or care what was going on at Manticore, for the most part.

I was under the impression that Nanticoke as founded was more organised than that.

Remember that the investments made by MCZ allowed the purchase of 4 hyper-capable frigates when hyper technology was developed. It also allowed the recruitment of teachers to instruct on the new technology developed during the slow-boat's transit.

As such, I'd suggest they got set up a lot faster than other Verge planets. I doubt that they would have been at subsistence levels for very long. At the same time, I acknowledge they wouldn't have been an economic powerhouse though.

I still don't understand how the MCT managed to continue for hundreds of years without getting wiped by some sort of stock market upset/sovereign debt default etc. OR getting embezzled by the fund managers.

BobfromSydney wrote:I still don't understand how the MCT managed to continue for hundreds of years without getting wiped by some sort of stock market upset/sovereign debt default etc. OR getting embezzled by the fund managers.

May be the fund managers were from the House of Winton (perhaps the parents who had their children genetically engineered?) who used cold sleep technology to stay around to manage the funds over centuries? They also might have been granted interest in "lands" whose value would be dependant on the colony's success.

Duckk wrote:You're too wrapped in thinking of Manticore as it is now, instead of how it was then. Manticore had no merchant vessels, no extra-system population, no exports. Manticore at the time of settlement was just one of many frontier Verge planets completely irrelevant to the League. Very few Manticorans would have left the system, and even fewer Solarians would have reason to go there (until the Plague was over and the system started recruiting colonists again, that is).

Once the plague started, lots of Manticorans would have tried to flee the system. If this occurred soon after Earth's final war, the SL would have cared very much.

namelessfly wrote:Once the plague started, lots of Manticorans would have tried to flee the system. If this occurred soon after Earth's final war, the SL would have cared very much.

According to The Universe of Honor Harrington in More Than Honor, there were four "Earth-Built Frigates" and 40 T-years expansion of roughly 50,000 colonists. The Plague lasted from 1471 PD to 1481 PD, some 500 T-years after the end of the "Final War" in ~943 PD

With only 40 years development and very limited space-travel capability, I don't see how very many Manticorans could have successfully fled. There's no hint of an attempted exodus in textev.

The Plague also ended roughly 100 years before the Manticore Wormhole Junction was discovered, which also limited the practicality of escaping the Plague.

namelessfly wrote:

BobfromSydney wrote:I still don't understand how the MCT managed to continue for hundreds of years without getting wiped by some sort of stock market upset/sovereign debt default etc. OR getting embezzled by the fund managers.

May be the fund managers were from the House of Winton (perhaps the parents who had their children genetically engineered?) who used cold sleep technology to stay around to manage the funds over centuries? They also might have been granted interest in "lands" whose value would be dependant on the colony's success.

Interesting speculation, although keep in mind that originally the colonists were not planning on having an monarchy/aristocratic government system. That system only came into being after the plague.

Your cold sleep suggestion might be workable, although it seems more likely that a lottery or vote system would have been used to select which colonists had that responsibility. Since this all occurred pre-prolong, it would have been a multi-generational endeavour to keep the trust profitable (without cold sleep). Even with cold sleep the people who were chosen to stay on Earth would have been quite old by the time the ship made it to Manticore. The MCT was also a big gamble that safe FTL travel would be available by the time the colony ship landed.

To me it seems that however it was structured, the MCT involved giving unsupervised authority over other peoples' money to some group of individuals. There seems to be too much temptation over to long a period.


As for the entire sum being left to the supervision of Roger Winton's parents (who then used cold sleep to stretch themselves out for centuries) this would be workable, except it would seem like a case of nepotism to the other colonists who would have very little guarantees that such a significant sum of money would be prudently managed for their benefit while they slept on the ship.

BobfromSydney wrote:Interesting speculation, although keep in mind that originally the colonists were not planning on having an monarchy/aristocratic government system. That system only came into being after the plague.

Your cold sleep suggestion might be workable, although it seems more likely that a lottery or vote system would have been used to select which colonists had that responsibility. Since this all occurred pre-prolong, it would have been a multi-generational endeavour to keep the trust profitable (without cold sleep). Even with cold sleep the people who were chosen to stay on Earth would have been quite old by the time the ship made it to Manticore. The MCT was also a big gamble that safe FTL travel would be available by the time the colony ship landed.

To me it seems that however it was structured, the MCT involved giving unsupervised authority over other peoples' money to some group of individuals. There seems to be too much temptation over to long a period.


As for the entire sum being left to the supervision of Roger Winton's parents (who then used cold sleep to stretch themselves out for centuries) this would be workable, except it would seem like a case of nepotism to the other colonists who would have very little guarantees that such a significant sum of money would be prudently managed for their benefit while they slept on the ship.

The biggest problem would be that eventually, those people are going to wake up and wonder where their money went. While 500 years seems like a really long time, medical technology was probably already stretching people's lives well into the triple digits without prolong. It probably was not as many generations as you think, really.

As well, all you really have to do to ensure that the people handling your money have a big enough slice of the pie that they keep wanting to increase it, rather than just take the whole pot. Add a dash of oversight, and viola! Given that much capital, I'm certain that at least some of it was siphoned off, but it was probably a very tiny percentage of the total.

I am also certain that given the amount of colony ships departing from the system, a lot of these kinds of trusts were about, and they had a lot of rules, laws and regulations surrounding their creation and management.