[The Population Crisis] The Bezori have always had a high population for their size. The home system has had an overpopulation crisis for quite some time now, with a population of around 52 billion. Housing and land are scarce commodities, and burials are only feasible for the top one percent of Bezori society. Lately, it's been so bad that abandoned warehouses are often full of people, shoulder to shoulder. The moment that really shook officials in the Citadel was the discovery of Warehouse 2939. Over 500 huddled Bezori were found dead, most from disease, though some starved because they could not make it through the thick crowd to feed themselves. [Initiation] Following Warehouse 2939, Emperor Askal has ordered the rapid expansion of the Empire to delay this crisis. On his orders, colony ships set out for nearby systems. On board these ships are an assortment of officials, military, engineers, and plebs. The first settlements are established on permitting surfaces, building up the infrastructure to support a population. Plebs are in training on the colony ships of the colonist life and will be sent down to the surface once the settlements are ready. In space, orbitals and stations are under construction. These orbitals will only house small populations but will be vital for resource extraction. Dyson satellites and colony ship reactors make up most of the power supply for these budding colonies. These colonies are resource extractors, shipping materials back to regions with the infrastructure to process them, which is turned into manufactured goods that in turn go back to the colonies. This cycle is what fuels the growth of newly founded settlements, until they themselves gain a sufficient capacity to process materials for other settlements, and once the processing availability becomes abundant enough, some colonies may diverge into more specialized niches, like science or culture. Furthermore, Emperor Askal has issued the standardization to a bismuth-backed currency across the empire rather than numerous state-by-state fiat currencies.
