Chapter Text
Please enjoy this station plan that has almost no impact on the story, but was what I had in mind while writing.
The overall layout is basically a U shape with the hab modules at the bottom of the U. The main house is on one side of the hab, the guest house is on the other. The bunk house is next to the guest house. The cow barn is on one leg of the U, with the old barn and chicken coop. The beef barn is on the other next to the tractor barn. The sale barn is at the very end along with the hopper storage. Both make use of the open area at the end for landing/takeoff. The yard in the middle of the U is gravel, packed dirt, and very low-growing ground cover (think Bermuda grass, but they don't have Bermuda grass on Plestead because Plestead is a nice place with a proper sod ecology and I hate Bermuda grass).
Human habitation (in order of age):
The Hab Module – This was the original settlement structure. It's a seven-module prefabricated unit that was delivered and assembled on site, made by the same branch of the company that makes survey modules. Murderbot (and the PresAux team) would recognize the layout, although the inside has been stripped out and rearranged extensively. It originally slept 8 in two sets of cramped quarters for four each. Now it sleeps two – Gefford in one module and Chama in the other. The main dome of the hab was used as a school for many years. The HubSystem gave out shortly after Brig's youngest daughter finished learning basics (think third grade level). After that, they relied on tutors and converted the space into a human-based classroom. Since then, Gefford has used it as a workroom. Other than the living areas, at the time Skulk took down the Nundan Gang, the entire thing was cluttered, full of outdated or non-functional equipment (there's a broken MedSystem in there), and the environmental controls were poor. In the months between that and Ratthi's visit, Skulk and Gefford have fixed the environmental controls and cleared several rooms of junk.
The Guest House – This was the second building on the station. It's four hotel rooms made into one structure, with a single bathroom for all four. There are two rooms on the ground with the small bathroom (no shower or bath, toilet and sink only) under the stairs, two rooms on a second floor with a bathtub in a compartment between the rooms. It was originally long term housing for additional workers/early ranch hands. It was built very stoutly out of local materials with a surprisingly high degree of craftsmanship. It's still standing and in good shape, kind of quaint and picturesque, if you're into early Plestead station architecture. The cattle master lives here (Smit at the time of the Nundan Gang attack, Sang after Skulk kills them). At least two rooms (and usually three) are always kept open and ready for station guests.
The Main House – This was the third building on the station and over the years, has been the most lived in. It is in very good shape, though. It has four bedrooms (three upstairs, one down) any of which is large enough to sleep four if they put in bunks. Usually they have two beds each. It has a large living area for socializing, a dining area big enough for twenty, and a kitchen sufficient to feed them. There is also a porch front and back, an armory, the main food storage, and a garage for small land vehicles. Think a large, rambling, two-story American residential home, the sort that would be on several acres in a lower upper class neighborhood. However, it's built very sturdily. Brig was raised in this house. He raised his kids in it. His father was raised in it. His grandmother had it built and lived in it. It's mostly empty now. There had been the expectation that one of the kids or grandkids would inherit and move in, but then the Nundans attacked and disrupted things. Now Skulk lives in the house with Brig.
The Bunk House – This is next to the guest house. It's a large, low, thickly built structure that has a single large open area for most of the floor space. Bunks are against the walls. The middle has tables for eating, playing cards, or hanging out. There are bathrooms on the left end of the building and a recycler/laundry facility on the other end. The recycler is usually operational, but has a limited range of products it can make. Ranch hands live here. There is little privacy, but the environmental controls work fine.
Animal buildings:
The Cow Barn – this is where the milk cattle are processed. One end is fully enclosed with limited environmental controls. This houses the veterinarian MedSystem and the large-animal cleaning/maintenance station (it has brushes like a car wash, along with a weight scale, sensors/scanners, and some robotic arms for injections). There is a milking station, pasteurization equipment, refrigerator, and other dairy processing and storage for butter, cheese, yogurt, and related products. The other end of the building is open (the doors can close, but it's usually open) for the animals to gather in during poor weather or while they wait their turn at the milking station.
The Old Barn – This used to house horses back when they kept some for pleasure riding and getting around the spread. Now it's a garage/equipment shed. The dog beds are here. The dogs are free range at all times.
Chicken Coop – This is a building, not a coop, and has three areas for poultry plus a couple enclosed runs where they can get some time outside. Normally, chickens are let out to free range daily. One of the dogs' "jobs" is to make sure nothing eats them (the dogs' main job is related: to make sure no small mammals get into or stay on the station premises). The fourth area of the building is for poultry sick room and feed storage.
The Beef Barn – This is a large loafing shed, built to shelter the large-animal cleaning/maintenance station that's devoted to and accessible to the beef cattle (if they're in the right pastures). It also provides some weather protection to the beef cattle, but they only need it in the winter.
The Sale Barn – This is an elevated, roofed structure next to a complex of chutes, fences, and paddocks used to sort and stage cattle or bison before loading on a ship. It's at the edge of the station yard next to a large flat, clear area used for landing the big animal-moving ships. These are owned and operated by the meat processing plants and arrive per scheduled agreement.
Equipment storage:
Tractor barn – Land equipment is stored here. They don't have a lot of it that's up and running at any given time, but that's the nature of a working farm. The water well pumps and desalinization units are in an enclosed portion of this building. Underground pipes convey fresh/purified water to all other buildings and some hydrants from this location.
Hopper storage – A hangar sufficient to cover and protect the two hoppers.
Meat processing – Directly attached to the hopper storage is a bay used to process beef whenever they slaughter them, which is maybe one animal a month.
Other notes:
Garden and orchard - Behind the bottom of the U is a vegetable garden. Past that is a mixed orchard. The fence past that which keeps the cattle out of everything has vines on it (grapes, probably). This puts the garden close to the old hab and main house. This is mainly a truck garden for supplementation. They do not grow enough food to feed the station. Cereal products, in particular, are all imported. Garden/orchard maintenance is all manual (no bots), although they have a small mechanical tiller that's usually functional.
Bravara is in the habitable climate band of Plestead, but it still sees severe storms, especially in spring. Structures higher than two story are inadvisable. Two story buildings are reinforced and oriented to minimize the prevailing winds. Winter snows are usually light, but the cold can be brutal. Summer temperatures are moderate, but there is a long dry season after the spring storms and before fall rains set in.
Plestead is 75% land, 25% brine sea. Most of the habitable range of the planet is grassland/perennial prairie. There are trees along water courses and in the few places that get enough rainfall to support them. There are also deserts where there's not enough rain to support even the grasses. Land management is important to avoid overgrazing and requires constant monitoring of pasture quality and weather patterns to judge when to move grazing animals from one area to another. Bad overgrazing can blight a station for decades as it takes a long time for the sod grasses to recover. Bravara has been well-managed for the hundred or so years it has been there. Well water (and some surface water) is heavily salinized and needs treatment before it can be consumed.
Brig has three daughters, all of whom are women and married (two to men on stations, one to non-binary in the agricultural zone). He has nine grandchildren. He saw them frequently before Bekka died, as family members would rotate through the station regularly. After the attack, he discouraged their visits, saying it wasn't safe. After Skulk joined and the Nundan Gang was wiped out, social engagement with them slowly resumed. Skulk knows Brig's family and has no/little opinion on them.
Chama is the station cook. She prepares meals for everyone on site. She was present during the Nundan Gang attack, but sealed up the old hab and was left alone. It looked too old and run down to be worth breaking into to rob. She was the first to deal with the bodies. She is almost as grateful as Brig for what Skulk did by wiping them out. Skulk likes her. She has gone out of her way to be nice to it.
Gefford is the station mechanic and odd-jobber. He also maintains the gardens and orchard. He was with Brig at the time of the Nundan Gang attack. He and Skulk have collaborated extensively on repairs, with Skulk sharing the information it has gleaned from Parts' educational modules. They hope to restore the hab's HubSystem, but this is a slow project. They've had good luck stabilizing the environmental controls.
There were four ranch hands who survived the attack, by virtue of being out in the field or running off when the shooting started. Three of these promptly quit, citing an unfounded concern that the Nundan Gang would come back for the breeding stock. (Unfounded because the Nundan Gang would have to round up the breeding stock to collect them and that's more work than the Nundans were interested in doing. On the other hand, the ranch hands were concerned they would be dragooned into doing it for the Nundans and then shot afterward.) Yinny was the one who stayed.
Plestead history:
The planet was discovered roughly 800 years ago. Initial settlement was clustered along the shores of the briny sea with the intention of extracting local resources. These were several thousand people. Although no terraforming was needed, they found the environment hostile due to weather and limited fresh water access. They also failed to find economically viable local resources. After nearly two centuries of decreasing support from off-world, the colony was abandoned. Most of the population remained and dispersed into a nomadic subsistence lifestyle. They'd been headed that direction anyway and it worked well with the environment. But it involved a low standard of living and virtually no economic/commercial opportunities, which was why the colony was abandoned.
About 500 years ago (100 years post-abandonment), a second colonization effort was made. This one was better funded up front, arriving with an army of agricultural bots. They targeted a specific band of geography that had sufficient rainfall to make it productive. This long valley was turned into a breadbasket with enough excess production to support a few small cities and export food.
However, the nomads from the first settlement disputed ownership of the agricultural band (and actually, of the entire planet). The lush grasslands they'd used seasonally were now entirely cut off from them and the herds they followed. Fencing and hunting of native animals to keep them out of the area of high natural rainfall caused a population drop in the herds, which impacted the nomads. Violent skirmishes broke out and continue to break out to the present day. The nomads call the people who live in the farmed area invaders. They strongly resist any attempts to farm the rest of the planet. There have been a few efforts to wipe out the nomads entirely. It has yet to work.
The commodity prices for exported food plant materials dipped over the years, leaving the agricultural band without a good off-world market for products. Population grew slowly and industrial/commercial growth stagnated.
About 100-150 years ago, a new settlement effort began, spawned by a confederation of wealthy persons on more settled worlds who felt marginalized by mainstream society. They were religious zealots, bigots, or isolationists who found common cause in desiring a place where they could live their lives in peace, away from the distractions of technology, politics, and lifestyles they disapproved of for one reason or another. Settlements were set up as isolated "stations" where each group could live the life they wanted, far away from interference, oversight, or the rule of law. There are a few hundred of these enclaves scattered across the plains of Plestead. Bravara is one of them. A century or more out from settlement, few retain the original extreme points of view they were founded with, but in most it remains enough of an influence to be noted. (Visitors should take caution, follow local customs, and at all times stay with a local guide.) As these stations are isolated and generally weak, the nomads have not hated them in principle. In some cases they're allies. In others, the isolationists pay tribute to the nomads to be left in peace. (Bravara pays in dairy products and has an amicable relationship with the nomad bands that operate in their area.) Those stations that were actively hostile to the nomads were promptly wiped out and don't factor into anything except as a cautionary tale.
Plestead culture:
People on Plestead who live in the cities of the agricultural band tend to be similar to the galaxy as a whole, though on the poorer end of the spectrum (insofar as height, weight, health, educational opportunities, social justice, etc. go; they enjoy higher than CR-normal liberties, there are no labor camps, law enforcement is not corrupt). They may not have cutting edge technology, but most things found elsewhere in the galaxy can be found here somewhere, if you look.
Those in the stations are significantly worse than galactic normal, getting into the tail end of the distribution. Their access to proper nutrition, health care, and education is spotty. Some have no access at all to galactic news, culture, or entertainment. They are very in-group/out-group focused. Justice tends to be warlordism, feudal, or cultish. Inbreeding is a looming problem. The ones who have developed an exportable product do better than those who haven't. Most stations have minimal technology and ships or vehicles that allow them a measure of contact with other settlements. (Although use of technology and vehicles might be sharply limited to the people in charge.)
The nomads are genetically diverse and culturally rich. They have subsistence lifestyles under sometimes brutal conditions. They often have short, difficult lives and no interest in whatever happens off-world. They have very little technology, no industry, and no ships. There are a few "nomad stations" centered around ancient desalinization plants. These are their only permanent settlements, taking the form of religious communes that disperse fresh water to the penitents who they serve.
Land ownership is a tricky thing on Plestead. The nomads, descendants of the first colonists, claim the entire planet is theirs. They pre-date the official formation of the Corporation Rim, so technically they have a sound legal case, assuming said case were to be determined in a court other than those of the Corporation Rim. As far as the Corporation Rim is concerned, ownership of the planet might have belonged to the original colony company, but it ceded that claim when it disbanded and formally abandoned the colony. So legal ownership passed to the next corporation to stake a claim, which was the one that funded the agricultural zone expansion. That corporation sold the title to the planet (and the corp they sold it to also sold it and so on for a while). Each isolationist settlement came with title to 'land as far as you can see', but not to the planet itself. Since then, ownership of the planet has transferred a few more times.
Each settlement is entitled to all visible land to the horizon, as seen from 30 meters above the ground (back when every settlement was supposed to have a central watch tower 30 meters high). This varies a lot due to topography, but on average means about 20 km or 12 miles in every direction. As there is no one but nomads and other settlements out there, in practice settlements claim all territory until a mid-point between it and the next settlement.