History
-------

Centuries of hard living has shaped both the culture and the lifestyles
of Tirem.  Always overshadowed by Glisten, Tirem is where the hard-luck
miners who can't afford Glisten anymore eventually migrate to.  Despite
Tirem's evident natural wealth, the good times never seemed to stick
around, and the only thing that was built for future generations was bad
debts and old hatreds.

The Tirema have an extremely strong family system, which long made the real
dicisions on what happened here.  The Families divided up Tirem - and the
rest of the system - to over 32,200 tiny, seperate, fiercely independent
nations.  During good times - say, between 350 and 475, or from 1000 to
1116 - this system provided a support system for all Tirema, providing an
outlet for pride and mutual help.  When times were bad, the situation
deteriorated to a war of All againast All, with truly ugly consequences
(between 580 and 610, about 1/4 of the entire population died via warfare
and its consequences).

Unfortunately, these cycles tended to coincide with the wealth of Tirem.
When desperately poor, violence was pratically nonexistant, with
everyone desperately engaged in simply keeping the heaters operating and
the air purifiers working for one more day.  As wealth grew, so did envy,
eventually resulting in a cataclysmic civil war between every Family and
every other Family - and impoverishing all in a very short period of time.

Tirem was still recovering from it's last nadir (at 1085) when the
Rebellion swept over it in the late 1110's.  After the fall of Glisten,
the Domain began to mass it's forces at Crout, just a parsec away.  The
Aslan ihatel warships desired Tirem as a staging area to further press
back the Regency, and fought a host of shirmishing actions and sharp,
short battles here.  Crout faced a full scale assault three times - in
1119, 1123 and 1125 - and each time the fighting spilled over to Tirem,
ruining much of it's industrial base.  Ownership of Tirem itself changed
hands 11 times (three times in 1120 alone) with the usual exorborant level
of damage and tragedy as the price for being a battlefield.

When the Domain returned to stay in 1130, Tirem was in ruins, without a
government and it's peoples largely in despair, helpless to prevent the
destruction.  The Domain's arrival initally just worsened things, as
billions of poor Aslan immigrants, fleeing Glisten and other occupied
worlds, but unable to afford the pumped-up fares needed to return home,
were just dumped on Tirem by the Domain.  Eventually, aid and repair
funds arrived, and a government was installed by the newborn Regency,
but not before several riots and urban battles were fought.  By the
time another massive wave of immigrants arrived - over 4 billion from Trin, at
1139 - the Regency was able to quickly provide housing and food, while
stifling the local hotheads easily (via both political and militarily means).

By 1200, Tirem has rebuilt itself well, becoming definitely more richer and
more stable than before the Rebellion.  The provisional All-Tiren
government has become pernament, and, wonders of wonders, is even
respected by the citizens.  Several new ports have been built, with the
main port at CorkRock upgraded to "B" level.  Traditional freedoms are
maintained, but the Tirema are no longer willing to permit the Families to
destroy their hard-won semiprosperity for the sake of pretty promises.