Fear wasn't always the common denominator among the population of the newly-founded towns of Antarras. Maybe it was always something of a factor; maybe it could never have been totally absent from consideration. But when people talk about the early settlers these days, they focus too much on fear. The story is that they were scared, desperate people willing to try their hand at anything to escape the lives they were fleeing back on Earth. But those of us descended from them, or raised by them, or in community with those of them that still remain, know that fear was never the thing that drove them—it couldn't have been. It never would have driven them so far.

That fear is the legacy of the planet, that desperation is the afterlife of that initial wave of settlement, is a story it benefits some people to tell. The Company, the Buzzards, the Church, or anyone who makes it their business to protect the frightened and guide the desperate. What that story downplays, though, is the determination, and just how much those settlers could get done when they set their mind to it, when they came together to make something better for themselves.

This week, on Ruin's Gate: A meeting and a standoff.

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