The Second Decade

New Kanem, the youngest named colony, was founded on a charter its idealists called unbreakable: rotating leadership, no inherited stakes, energy shared before profit. Ten years in, the founders are older, the compromises are mounting, and a faction wants to amend the charter to attract the investment the colony needs to survive its second decade. The Charter Court may be asked whether a founding generation can bind its successors — or whether a charter that cannot bend must break. It is the test case for whether idealism scales, watched by every settlement that wrote promises it now finds inconvenient.