Baron of the North Sea
Apr. 17th, 2009 02:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI think last year I said something about taking April 15th off this year... I was marginally better prepared for it this year, so I didn't, but it still would've been a good idea to avoid having anything else to do that day. I'd already been falling farther and farther out of sync with the cycle of day and night and now I'm not quite sure what day I'm putting up stories for... but when the week's over there should still be the right number of updates.
Tomorrow we're supposed to have contractors in here to finish up the unfinished spots left in the bathroom from when they put the new tub in. After that, it's *supposed* to be done completely. Yay.
Random "Inside The Writer's Studio" tidbit, since some of the people I've talked to in real life who are also readers have said I should share this stuff more often: the character of Baron Von Stahl, who has been alluded to a few times in Star Harbor Nights, is... as is probably transparently obvious... meant to be in the same general mold as Marvel's Victor Von Doom. I'd been avoiding using him more directly because I wasn't sure how he fit into the universe, literally.
For the uninitiated, Dr. Doom (note: not an actual doctor) is traditionally depicted as the ruler of Latveria, a Ruritanian nation-state somewhere in Europe. I wasn't sure I wanted to wedge a whole country (even a small one) into the map like that, though... and I also felt that in the modern age of pre-emptive wars and regime changes and such that I needed better reasons for a nation run by a supervillain to not be wiped out by a coalition of the willing than things like "it's a sovereign nation" (that should actually make it easier to deal with him than most evil organizations, as you can declare war on a nation) and "he has supertech" (so do other people.)
Then I remembered how the Ultimate Marvel universe had initially tried to handle Doctor Doom's sovereignity... by making him the ruler of a bunch of squatters and bums in a Denmark shantytown. Yeah. They gave up on that pretty quickly and gave him Latveria. But his "Keep", as it was called, has been described as a micronation, so I decided to explore that a little bit. One of the best known real-life micronations was Sealand, which consisted of an abandoned radar tower just outside of British territorial waters.
Putting Von Stahl's domain in internatioal waters solved the map-crowding problem, though since actual nations are usually not too respectful of self-declared micronations, it only seemed to exacerbate the whole "somebody would just wipe the bastard off the face the map" problem. (Note that rickety towers in the middle of the ocean are also easier to wipe off of maps than mountainous eastern European states).
But then I started thinking about larger structures than a radar tower... and hit upon the idea of an oil platform. An enormous oil platform. Why not? They already house people. And steadily flowing oil == money and political clout. It also makes a sort of hostage, since you couldn't bomb the place without wasting a lot of petroleum and causing untold environmental damage. Other people would want to take it over if they could, not just destroy it.
The North Sea had the right kind of image in my mind, it's got oil and gas reserves, and the countries that border it give me all sorts of more interesting options for the Baron's heritage and history than GenericNotQuiteTransylvania would.
So that's why the Baron rules the North Sea from an island of steel, as revealed in a recent SHN update... now that I've solved some of the background details, I wanted to throw that in to "canonize" it so I have him available for use in the future.
Tomorrow we're supposed to have contractors in here to finish up the unfinished spots left in the bathroom from when they put the new tub in. After that, it's *supposed* to be done completely. Yay.
Random "Inside The Writer's Studio" tidbit, since some of the people I've talked to in real life who are also readers have said I should share this stuff more often: the character of Baron Von Stahl, who has been alluded to a few times in Star Harbor Nights, is... as is probably transparently obvious... meant to be in the same general mold as Marvel's Victor Von Doom. I'd been avoiding using him more directly because I wasn't sure how he fit into the universe, literally.
For the uninitiated, Dr. Doom (note: not an actual doctor) is traditionally depicted as the ruler of Latveria, a Ruritanian nation-state somewhere in Europe. I wasn't sure I wanted to wedge a whole country (even a small one) into the map like that, though... and I also felt that in the modern age of pre-emptive wars and regime changes and such that I needed better reasons for a nation run by a supervillain to not be wiped out by a coalition of the willing than things like "it's a sovereign nation" (that should actually make it easier to deal with him than most evil organizations, as you can declare war on a nation) and "he has supertech" (so do other people.)
Then I remembered how the Ultimate Marvel universe had initially tried to handle Doctor Doom's sovereignity... by making him the ruler of a bunch of squatters and bums in a Denmark shantytown. Yeah. They gave up on that pretty quickly and gave him Latveria. But his "Keep", as it was called, has been described as a micronation, so I decided to explore that a little bit. One of the best known real-life micronations was Sealand, which consisted of an abandoned radar tower just outside of British territorial waters.
Putting Von Stahl's domain in internatioal waters solved the map-crowding problem, though since actual nations are usually not too respectful of self-declared micronations, it only seemed to exacerbate the whole "somebody would just wipe the bastard off the face the map" problem. (Note that rickety towers in the middle of the ocean are also easier to wipe off of maps than mountainous eastern European states).
But then I started thinking about larger structures than a radar tower... and hit upon the idea of an oil platform. An enormous oil platform. Why not? They already house people. And steadily flowing oil == money and political clout. It also makes a sort of hostage, since you couldn't bomb the place without wasting a lot of petroleum and causing untold environmental damage. Other people would want to take it over if they could, not just destroy it.
The North Sea had the right kind of image in my mind, it's got oil and gas reserves, and the countries that border it give me all sorts of more interesting options for the Baron's heritage and history than GenericNotQuiteTransylvania would.
So that's why the Baron rules the North Sea from an island of steel, as revealed in a recent SHN update... now that I've solved some of the background details, I wanted to throw that in to "canonize" it so I have him available for use in the future.