The Definitive Country Almanac: The Cinderbelt Coalition — Part 2#

Kethra Almanac • Approved 19 September 2026 • drafted 18 September 2026 • Sections 5–8 (Sections 1–4 are in Part 1)

Status: approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision). Where this file calls something a proposal, read it as approved, except the open points that decision lists.

Status before approval: proposal throughout, except what Part 1 lists as established in earlier files.

Section 5: Government, Law & Politics#

Constitutional Framework#

The Two Chambers#

The Hollow Board. Seven members, four from the Council and three from the Assembly, run the Coalition between sittings. It can act in an emergency; it cannot make labour law.

How it really works. The register's line is the whole of Coalition politics: "Owners negotiate contracts; workers demand protection and enforceable limits." Every contract the Council signs goes to the Assembly to see whether it can be worked without killing anyone. The chambers "rarely agree" (Chapter II), and when they do, it holds.

Joss Tenner's seat. The Council keeps a seat for Hearthport, and its holder, the last Warden, votes in every sitting. The Imperium protests every year. The Council minutes the protest and moves on.

The Rocks (administrative divisions)#

The Coalition is governed rock by rock. Each yard-company runs its own rock under Coalition law; each rock elects its crews' delegates.

Institutions at Cinder Hollow: the Council of Yards · the Assembly of Crews · the Low-G Institute · and, as a guest, the Crown Assay House.

The Judiciary#

• Coalition and yard law (Chapter II): each rock's yard court for everyday cases; the Hollow Court for appeals.
• "The 7-hour light delay makes appeals to the capital theoretical" (Chapter II). Nobody on Kethra has ever overturned a Coalition judgment.
• The worst sentence is being put off the rock: shipped to the next yard with nothing, and barred from your own. The Coalition abolished execution in 2204, with transportation.
• Seal law: anyone who endangers a rock's air or hull is tried by the whole shift that was put at risk.

Foreign Relations & Defence#

Standing#

• An associate seat at the Homeworld Assembly (Chapter II): it can speak, and vote only on space affairs. The Coalition wants a full seat, which the planets have never granted.
• It keeps the Frame Accord and the Quiet Sky Accord.

Relations#

Defence#

Defence spending: about Cr 8.6 billion a year, 4.8% of output.

Doctrine. Never again Hearthport. The Coalition cannot match the Imperium's navy. It means to make every rock too expensive to take, and too valuable to break: a yard is worth nothing to a conqueror if its crews will not work it.

The Seam. "Frame skirmishes happen here every season. The 7-hour delay means Kethra hears of each clash the day after it's over." (chapter 11)

Section 6: Economy, Infrastructure & Industry#

Macroeconomics#

"Extraction and yards. Mining, refining, shipbuilding. Wages are high, and so are prices and danger." (Chapter VI)

Working. 1.5 million × Cr 120,000 = Cr 180 billion. Cr 8.6 billion ÷ Cr 180 billion = 4.8%.

Finance & Banking#

• The chit, Coalition scrip: about Cr 0.59. Contracts with the planets are written in crowns.
• The Hollow Exchange trades metal forward, a season ahead: a season is how long a freighter takes.
• Cordale's banks insure the haulers (the Lesser Crowns almanac).

Infrastructure#

Communications#

• The Shift Sheet: the Hollow's news, read at every shift change.
• Seven hours each way. A question to Aletheia is answered, at best, fourteen hours later. The belt has learned to decide first and explain afterwards.

Section 7: Culture, Arts & Daily Life#

Holidays & Celebrations#

Culinary Traditions#

• Lamp-garden greens, beans and algae cakes.
• Vat protein in a hundred disguises.
• Rock bread: dense, long-keeping, baked for shifts.
• Kethra food is a luxury at nine times the price. A bottle of Stair wine is a wedding present.
• Hearth tea: the Hearthport brew, drunk in the belt as a promise.

Arts & Literature#

• Hull-song: work songs in the rhythm of rivet guns; Shift's End is one.
• Plate-art: patterns cut into hull plate offcuts, hung in every warren.
• The Taking Wall at Cinder Hollow: the 276 names of Hearthport's dead.
• Literature:
  • Chains to the Cinders, the transportees' memoirs (collected 2210);
  • The Long Shift, a novel of the 2297 strike;
  • Eleven Hours, the Hearthport guard's account, smuggled out in 2285.

Sports & Recreation#

The Assembly Games. Cinderborn athletes cannot compete on Kethra's surface. The Coalition has asked for low-gravity events in orbit since 2152, and been refused every time.

Social Norms & Etiquette#

• Seal first, talk later. Every hatch is closed behind you, always.
• Never call a Cinderborn a "shell". It is "a notorious insult" (Chapter I), and it is answered.
• Ask whose shift it is before you ask anyone for anything.
• Transportee descent is spoken of with pride. Do not pity it.
• The lamp is sacred. Never blow out a Hearth-lamp.
• Greeting: "Air and light." Reply: "And a hull between."

Section 8: Appendices & Reference Materials#

Statistical Tables#

Gazetteer#

Every place below is on the interactive Atlas. The generated Register of the Cinderbelt Coalition lists them.

Bibliography#

In-world sources#

• The Articles of the Outer Works (2091) and the Crews' Charter (2204)
• Chains to the Cinders (collected 2210)
• Eleven Hours (Hearthport, 2285)
• The Shift Sheet (daily)
• Minutes of the Council of Yards, including every year's Imperial protest over the Hearthport seat

Development sources#

• 00 - Spine and Status · Chapter I · Chapter II · Chapter III · Chapter VI
• 11 - Kronos and the Cinderbelt and 15 - The Kronos colony
• The Caldren Crown almanac (transportation, the Belt Indenture scandal) and the Vardane Imperium almanac (Castellan Rock, the concessions)
• 10 - Who's Who
• The faction roster and the relationship register: the Coalition's objective, fear, leverage and split, and its positions towards the Homeworld Assembly and Homeguard Command. The register's entries about the Zhorak (removed from canon) and the Crossgate Exchange (a later, interstellar era) are not used.
• Almanac structure supplied by Briana.

Guidance for AI actors#

• A Cinderborn character cannot simply go to Kethra. Any trip downwell is a medical emergency waiting to happen (Chapter I).
• Owner or crew? Every Coalition character is one or the other, and knows which chamber speaks for them.
• Hearthport is personal. Everyone knows someone who was there in 2284, or is still there under "protection".
• Seven hours. Nothing said on Kethra reaches the belt in time to change what happens there.
• This almanac is approved. Briana approved the whole almanac on 19 September 2026 (the Almanac Approval Decision).