Kanaloa

Kanaloa

007 Aquila B789896B Rich

Total population 116 000 000 Colonies: Free Kanaloa State - 1 Austro-Zealandia - 9 HappiCorp - 4 Disneyland - 10 Pleasantville - 6 New Lundy - 3 Akatonian Islands - 6 Oceanic Union - 6 New Taiwan - 7

Kanaloa is a resort planet predominately owned and operated by an interstellar travel and entertainment conglomerates, most notably the Disney corporation. With almost no land bar a few pleasant but tiny coral islands, tourism and fishing are the major industries. The different states send 1 representative per 2 million citizen district to a world board, with the world board currently numbering 51 delegates and led by a chairman of the tourist board, almost always a Disney exec.

Most natives of Disneyland choose to work for the company directly, as the company has a vested interest in seeing the planet is a pleasant and peaceful place for it's wealthy clients to visit, with a high tech level and pervasive sense of honesty and honour among the natives. The original colonists/employees mostly hailed from the south pacific on Earth, though there has been some discontent over the fact that Disney pretty much Disneyfied their native cultures in order to bring in the tourist creds. The planet's most recent colony, Free Kanaloa State, is inhabited by rebels who are militantly reviving a mish-mash of polynesian, micronesian and maori traditions and heritage, and grabbing some of the better educated tourists with their more 'authentic' visitor attractions.

Rumours of a training camp, dubbed 'Mouse-schwitz' by the scurrilous Austro-Zealandian media, educating staff/citizens in the truth of the Disney version of South Pacific history and implanting them with artificial 'Goofy glands' dispensing constant low level endorphins persist.

Austro-Zealandia, the second biggest state, also relies heavily on tourism, but public paranoia about huge corporations dominating, or even becoming the government means they have a plethora of small entertainment firms and no one big one. Ironically this view is promoted by the largest media and brewing company on the planet, Castlemaine News. The Campaign for Real Ale is far more than just a bunch of beer-bellied old farts in this country.

HappiCorp are based on this world, and their cheery, jolly island hosts the biggest and happiest starport, and the biggest and most hilarious marijuana plantation (It's legal on most worlds folks! Forget what them miserable sods over in Disneyland have to say! Have a HappiBurger... or three...).

Pleasantville is an EU allied nation that seems to have been taken over by retirement home companies and has the oldest and wealthiest population, the Akatonian Islands hail from a different part of the EU and is mainly Greek, Italian and Croat speaking (and has a few separatists on the loose), the Oceanic Union are Fillipino, Indonesian and other east asian Moslems, some of whom have a bit of a chip on their shoulders about being expelled by their home nations. New Taiwan resolutely rejects the tourism route and is trying to replicate the industries of old Taiwan back home, leading to increasing pollution. The other nations are getting pissed off, but the New Taiwianese reckon they could fight off a bunch of beer swilling, burger scoffing security oafs in Mickey Mouse ears pretty easily.

Finally the most idiosyncratic state is New Lundy, originally founded as Ned Kelly Land by criminals on the run from Austro-Zealandia, now inhabited by a motley collection of English, Caribbean, Irish, Breton and Danish 'pirates'. This does appear to be bit of a schtick to get the tourists in, but it all seems a wee bit too authentic for comfort. Rumour has it they banned antibiotics in the Port Royal red light district just so they could revive the Pox to see what it was like, and now can't eradicate it. And there have been a few hijackings on the high seas of late, fishing ships taken and cruise liners despoiled. There has even been a hijacking in orbit, a shipload of old codgers on their way to a life of weak tea and warm slippers in Pleasantville kidnapped and held for ransom. Fingers point in New Lundy's direction, after all, who else would be bonkers enough to get the captain to walk the plank in zero G?