Places of the Solar System

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Earth and the Ring

Earth itself is a patchwork. Some regions are torn by endless war between rival warlords. Others are quiet nations simply getting by. Vast stretches are wasteland, while others have returned to verdant, beautiful wilderness, where many people live simple lives much like the Amish of old.

For the most part, everyone ignores Earth. It is old news. People of the solar system, and especially the Ring, may visit now and then, and they will intervene if one warlord grows too powerful; control of space means control of the high ground. Any warlord who sends something into orbit is dealt with harshly and fast. Otherwise Earth is left to itself. It is not a constant wartorn apocalypse, only a faded world whose population is far lower than Earth's in our own time. Most people stuck in unsafe regions would rather live in space if they could.

Above it all turns the great Ring, the biggest city that has ever existed, a vast orbital band of O'Neill cylinders encircling the planet and home to billions. A train system runs its whole circumference. Elevators carry goods down to Earth; few Ring folk want to go themselves, because life on the Ring is so good. Most cylinders belong to families descended from the first people who left Earth and built their own habitats attached to the Ring. They live in semi-quiet farming paradises of crops and livestock: boring, safe and happy for the most part. The food they produce feeds much of the solar system.

The Ring governs itself as a democracy grown from an older wartime council. Several parties compete for power, but NOVA holds enormous sway through its party, which tends to dominate Congress (see What NOVA is). Many of the Ring's restless young join the NOVA navy to escape those comfortable lives.

Jupiter

Jupiter's great moons are home to some of the most quarrelsome nations in the solar system. Io, Ganymede and Europa are locked in near-constant war for control of Jupiter and the right to call themselves its greatest power. Further out, aloof and apart from the fighting, lies Callisto.

Saturn

The crater-cathedral of Sinlap, Titan

The crater-cathedral of the Kingdom of Saturn. See The Kingdom of Saturn.

The Fortress of Tartarus, Titan

A large fortress city built above the sea of Tartarus which is an under ice body of water and the point where the queen’s parents first landed.

Rhea

Site of the Battle of Rhea, the opening of the Solar War. See History and Kingdom of Saturn.

Uranus, the forbidden world

Why Sovereign forbade Uranus to mankind, nobody knows but everyone knows to steer clear of Uranus. Long before Sovereign appeared, humanity tried again and again to settle the ice giant and its moons, and every attempt ended in disaster or in the colonists simply vanishing. Since Sovereign's law was given, the few who have dared to try again have met with even worse fates. Like the Bermuda Triangle of old Earth, ships that stray too close to Uranus sometimes disappear without a trace. The nations give the planet and all its moons a wide berth, and few captains will even plot a course nearby.

Neptune and the station-states

Neptune is an ice giant with no solid surface, wracked by the fastest winds in the solar system. Nobody lives on Neptune itself. Instead, the planet and its moons are home to around a hundred station-states: space stations and station clusters in orbit, some built onto or anchored to its moons. Each station-state is independent, much like the city-states of ancient Greece, and each has its own form of government. Out there, sunlight is some nine hundred times weaker than on Earth, and every station is an island of light in the cold and dark.

The station-states were founded, at least in part, by the Solar Supremacy. To the Supremacy, Neptune was an experiment: it wanted to find out which systems of government worked best on a small scale, and so what humanity's future might look like. It was also a buffer. The Kuiper belt beyond was far too vast to control, and it was filling with brigands, pirates, splinter fleets and others who wanted no part of the Supremacy, the beginnings of the Plutocracy. The Supremacy meant to hold Neptune before they could grow strong enough to take it. Groups it found tolerable but who wanted more autonomy were helped to settle on Neptune instead of fleeing to the belt. That turned would-be enemies into colonies that relied on the Supremacy.

When the Kingdom of Saturn rose in rebellion and the Solar War began, the station-states were still young and fragile. None was in a position to help the Supremacy or to join the rebels. In the century of peace since, they have grown into powers in their own right. The Neptunians argue constantly and sometimes fight one another, but in war or a crisis every station-state sends its delegates to the Council of Neptune, which meets at Triton Station, to face the common enemy. So they're only partly united as a people. The Neptunians don't count themselves among the victorious rebels, since the Supremacy made them. But they feel no loyalty to it either, or to the remnants of the Solar Navy, wherever those may be.

The great station-states

The great station-states take their names from Neptune's moons. Three stand above the rest:

• Triton Station: the great station-state that encircles Triton. It is the oldest and most respected, hosts the Council, and is the one every station looks to first. Its people are said to descend from Supremacy officials who kept quiet and stayed out of the war. It handles Neptune's administration and works to win Neptune a place among the powers of the solar system.
• Proteus Station: Neptune's military power. It has developed its own class of warship and sells it to the other station-states.
• Nereid Station: Neptune's great merchant power. Its freighters are sold and flown across the solar system.

With a hundred or so station-states, each with its own people and its own way of governing, there is room for many more to make their mark.