Known Space

Setting & Backstory

Sol System

Mercury

Mercury is unremarkable,

Venus

Venus is still a deadly world, though the dense clouds have been mostly resigned to history through posthuman intervention. The world still broils in a toxic atmosphere and a atmospheric pressure three times that of earth.

Earth

Earth is the most populous collection of polities in known space, although the collapse wrought terrible hardship and though much of it’s once great cities lie in ruins, humanity still clings on in various forms. Some area’s of the surfare are highly radioactive, Earth had a incredible density of T-gates and A-gates, many of a quite trivial nature, without the careful hand of the trinity AIs they interacted in unexpected ways, often exploding in fissile and fusion explosions or worse. The majority of cities on Earth tend to be overcrowded metropolises, it's still burgeoning population it's only common advantage in galactic affairs.

Earth Orbital Domain

The Earth Orbital Domain is an aging pocket of power, corporate spacestations, asteroid colonies tugged into orbit and abandoned wrecks litter the orbit of the planets. Due to the number of T-gates in orbit, they are often a trade hub for Luna and Earth shipping.

Luna

The moon is the Sol System’s centre of industry, creativity and military force. It has one of the largest collections of working posthuman technology in known space, orbiting T-gates linking it to Mars, Jupiter and the Pluto Interstellar Gate.

Mars

The posthumans showed a unusual degree of interest in mars and several domains were located there. They cooperated with the Demarchists to gradually terraform the world and this was almost complete when the collapse occured. Since then Mars has regressed considerably, though it maintains a tenously breathable atmosphere, bioengineered plantlife survives only in pockets and most inhabitants prefer to reside within domed cities.

The Asteroid Belt

The asteroid belt is a diverse collection of polities, many of them heavily involved in mining the heavy metals easily obtained in the vast fields of rock, metal and ice. Considerable tension remains within the belt, between megacorpate sponsered colonies and the emerging Ceres Union, a supranational organisation of Belt colonies.

Jupiter Moons

Europa

The oceans of Europa were home to some of the most powerful demarchies in known space. The oceans of Europa were found to contain primitive extraterrestrial life, mostly bacteria, various forms of marine flora and emerging marine fauna. This was augmented, some say ruined vastly by the introduction of genetically engineered lifeforms for exploration, sport and food. Some of these cities have survived in various forms, while others sucuumbed to the environment. Among the stranger communities are those entirely adapted to the europan freshwater ocean and it's highly oxygenated waters.

The Pluto T-Gate

The Pluto Gate is the former body of Pluto entirely converted into a structure resembling a giant snowflake, one of the most staggering examples of posthuman engineering, the Pluto Interstellar Gate links to Alpha Centuri and Epsilon Eridani. A host of other smaller T-gates surround it, linking it to worlds further insystem.

Deep Space Colonies

Deep Space colonies include those not in orbit of a major planet or moon, though they may be located at lagrange points. They are extremely varied and their only collective feature is isolation from major trade lanes.

Zeta Reticuli 2 System

Almost twenty years ago, datahunters discovered the codes to the Zeta Reticuli Portal of the Pluto gate, allowing transfer to the system. The system has one notable gas giant quite close to the second star of the system. The presense of such a close Jovian type planet has discouraged the formation of any rocky terrestrial planets though the jovian has several large moons. The outer system is dominated by several successive belts of asteroids that form an unusually close kupier belt.

Olympus

This gas giant is a swirling dark mass similiar to Neptune, though it exceeds Jupiter in size. The priciple worlds of the Zeta system are located in orbit, with one only world existing in the inner system.

Hades

The world of Hades is a galactic perculiarity. At some early point in the planet's formation, it appears huge deposits of expanding gas became trapped under a hot plastic crust, resulting a network of huge bubbles shaped caverns under the surface. It appears the world cooled significantly soon after, preserving them to this day. The mist surface of this world tends to percolate down, resulting in huge stalagmites forming in the cave systems. Terraforming the caverns was relatively simple and they remain to this day, one of the largest open air breathable spaces.

Prometheus

This world displays not only extra-terrestrial life, but also one of the most deadly environments in known space. Prometheus has a atmosphere that is some 45% oxygen and a significant amount of carbon, which has clouded this world in a thick greenhouse effect. Life here clings on in suprising abundence, thick fast growing plantlife adapted to a often random cycle of wild fires and mysterious insectoid life. Much like the tale of Prometheus, life here is brought to the brink of death continually, before being restored anew. Colonies were established on Prometheus, mostly on high mountain peaks or in the oceans, where the threat of the atmosphere was significantly less. The study and use of the exotic biota of the planet was the primary economic driver, though the collapse brought much turmoil...

Hephaestus

This is highly volcanic world and contains unusually significant deposits of uranium, radium and thorium. The unusual amounts of radioactive material present throughout the crust contribute to a staggering level of surface background radiation and several sites of naturally occurring nuclear reactors that complicated exploitation.

During the collapse, the mining colonies on the surface endured varying fates, some suffering containment failures, exposing them to a toxic atmosphere of radioactive decay elements, others suffered over a long period, while others still endured and adapted themselves to an increasingly fraught environment.

Asteroid Belts
The Zeta Belt is dominated by icey dwarf planets, comets and typical rocky asteroid.

Minor Systems

Other systems have been discovered, that were purely the purview of posthumanity. Their discovery is entirely random and demonstrate that posthuman activity was occuring across great swaths of the galaxy.

BPM_37093

BPM 37093 is a variable white dwarf star of the DAV, or ZZ Ceti, type, with a hydrogen atmosphere and an unusually high mass of approximately 1.1 times the Sun's. It is about 50 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Centaurus next to the Southern Cross, and has been found to have a 3000-kilometre-wide core of crystallised carbon, or diamond. Recently discovered after Zeft Brannigan discovered the transit codes in a posthuman complex located bizzarely under the old New York subway system.

PSR B1257+12

PSR is a millisecond pulsar located 980 light years from Sol, with three carbon type (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_planet) planets in orbit. The planet's contain significant amounts of hydrocarbons and useful metals and are the subject of a exploitation race in order to develop these resources.