Hillsboro

* **Population:**3207 (Permanent 2070)/~10,000-20,000 (Seasonal)
* **Government:**Urban Management Officer Sharon Comstock, employed by Crystal Ag
* **Territoriality:**While it is in the Red River Disputed Military Zone , exactly between Region 3 and Region 2, Hillsboro and associated fields and processing plant are extraterritorial possessions of North American Crystal Agricultural Industries , a single A-rated corporation. Sanssentia  also has a small extraterritorial possession in the Hillsboro ER and Clinic.
* **Law Enforcement:**Security needs for Hillsboro are provided by Sweetheart Fields Division of the Fargo Precinct of Knight Errant.
* **Transportation:**All transportation services are currently contracted out to the Transportation Division of Ares Agribusiness-Fargo , who recently took over the contract from ZATS.

The old joke, and it’s not really a joke, is that when Crystal Ag took control of Hillsboro outright in the 2030’s nobody in town noticed. Crystal Sugar/Crystal Ag had been the dominant factor in the life of the town for over a hundred years at that point and the Hillsboro has been a sugar beet town pretty as long as it’s been a place.

Really the only big thing in town worth talking about isn’t in town proper. But you can see it from there. Drek, you can see it from EVERYwhere, you can almost see it from freakin’ Argusville. It’s the big sugar beet refinery out north of town. It’s always been the real center of Hillsboro’s economy and it’s always been big. But this new refit? This thing is a slottin’ monster. Huge and powerful and shiny and very, very expensive. Its capacity is supposed to be, if you’re the sort of person who know anything about sugar beet processing, which I don’t, off the fragging charts. Which is why it’s probably hurt so much when the recent deal the Group cut with Ares gave the latter the sole right to use and operate it. Capitalism is a harsh mistress.

This is a company town on a grand scale. Everything here is Crystal Ag built, Crystal Ag maintained and, if you are a corporate citizen, Crystal Ag paid for. And that’s the catch. To really enjoy this little paradise you have to be the something like 25% of town that actually enjoys shareholder citizen status. Everybody else here, and that includes most of the service industry people, that works is here on contract, which isn’t unlike being on a work visa in Aztlan  or being an Anglo in the Sioux . That is to say, much is expected and as little as possible is given, all in the name of efficiency and maximizing shareholder profit. But, at least, it’s a safe town and even the contractors enjoy the protection of Knight Errant's finest (well, protection from everybody but Knight Errant's finest).

Which is more than can be said for the town’s non-permanent inhabitants. The area’s population tends to swell by a factor of four or five times during the sugar beet harvest. These people come from all over, professional itinerant ag workers, college students and indigents up from Fargo or down from Grand Forks, folks from surrounding farms looking to pick up some extra nuyen between their own harvests. All sorts.  However, the vast majority of the workforce is from the Roamer Families. The beet harvest is the center of the Roamers’ economic year. A lot of them use this money to sustain them through the winter, sometimes in bad years, until the next big harvest. They also have the numbers and organization to run the work camps.

Crystal Ag still uses the term ‘Workamping’ for the mobile and temporary housing used for the harvest workforce. These camps are largely policed internally, as Knight Errant is mostly concerned with keeping the temporaries from disturbing the Citizens or disrupting the all-important harvest, which leaves the workers to keep themselves safe from the sort of things that are drawn to prey on them (Jack  raiders, Winter Cartel ‘recruiters’, Tamanous  doing their own ‘harvest’). Which is generally where the Roamer Families come in. And the understanding is, in return for protecting the other workers, the Roamers put their own members in all the prime jobs during the harvest.

One thing that hasn’t changed, and probably should have, is the ongoing rivalry between Hillsboro and nearby Caledonia. Which has, against all odds, outlasted the existence of Caledonia itself. A couple of centuries ago, Caledonia was the first county seat for the former Traill County, and when the railroad came through and made Hillsboro more central than Caledonia’s more river-centric location, the seat moved to Hillsboro. Not that Caledonia didn’t fight it, down to forming armed militias that Hillsboro called ‘Tigers of the Jungle’ and ‘Irreconcilables’, but Hillsboro became the political and economic heart of the county and Caledonia was left to wither. By the turn of the twenty-first century, Caledonia was down to low double-digits for population, a ‘statistically designated place’ instead of an actual town. And that was before the Awakening, when the Red River ripped out of its banks and the Goose River surged to swallow it up.

These days, it’s just a wet spot with some old building foundations under mud and silt. But it serves as a gathering spot for Roamers, and during the harvest, a major campground for some of the larger Roamer Families. It’s also the headquarters of the militia the Roamers form to guard their own, the new “Irreconcilables”, especially the local Sorum Family. These Irreconcilables worry Crystal Ag, as any group of armed and organized workers would worry a company with as rocky a history of labor relations as Crystal does, and BSI always tries to catch and break up Irreconcilable gatherings and in response, Irreconcilables take a special joy in ‘taking justice’ on some of the more corrupt of the BSI guards. And the rivalry goes on…

Oh, and for those of us in the Shadows , a quick hint, if you want to know what’s going on OUR  side of the fence, stop by Hamm’s Bar down on Main and Caledonia and ask for Hitcher or Trapp. Yeah, that Hamm . There’s your free hint for the day.

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