Setting Overview

The Solar System is dark.

The Earth was once a beacon of mass media and telephone calls. Now the only transmitters are abandoned distress beacons; cries for help left on loop. Around it are belts of abandoned habitats and debris, guarded by networks of killsats that vaporize indiscriminately. Out of the eight billion transhumans prior to the fall, fewer than five hundred million still survive across all known space.

Inner System

Most survivors stayed in the inner system, expanding the established colonies on Mars and rebuilding Luna to support the hundreds of thousands of refugees that escaped there. Most of these orbital and inner-system habitats continue the pre-Fall traditions of capitalism and liberal democracies, but adapted to a hyper-connected reality. The hypercorps wield immense power here, enforcing ideal business conditions at the expense of the general population. The real power, however, lies in the hands of ancient and immensely rich oligarchs who exert their influence behind the curtain. While inner-system governments do provide basics needs for their citizens, the masses of freelancers must hustle from one gig to the next, while bereft infugees and indentures work thankless jobs for an opportunity at a new morph and a new life. Only the wealthy enjoy the full liberty available from advanced technologies.

The Planetary Consortium is the dominant faction here, working hard to establish Mars as transhumanity’s new homeworld. They engage in espionage and propaganda against their economic rivals, the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance that retains power over Earth’s orbit and moon, and the Morningstar Constellation, a recent breakaway faction that seeks Venusian sovereignty.

Main Belt

The demarcation line between the inner and outer systems is a melting pot of cultures and factions. A number of independent habitats thrive here, providing a forum for autonomists and hypercapitalists to mingle and deal. Various criminal cartels maintain a presence as well, far from legal interference. The major habitat Extropia is known as an independent “anarcho-capitalist” stronghold, where mutual contracts and freelance courts are the only law.

Jovian Space

During the fear and uncertainty of the Fall, US and allied South American military units in Jovian orbit attacked their Chinese and Russian rivals, seizing control of civilian centers. The result of this martial law is the Jovian Republic. It is democratic in name, but realistically the population is managed under a military rule, referred to as the Junta in most non-Jovian media outlets.

The Republic is known as a bastion of religion and bioconservatism. They decry the resleeved and forks as soulless copies, and therefore nonhuman. To them, uplifts and AGIs are abominations of nature, and both AI and nanotech are dangerous tools, likely to lead to another Fall. They enforce their hegemony through a powerful secret police and by holding the majority of the pre-Fall’s remaining warships. The Republic’s resistance to modern technologies also means they are quickly becoming obsolete and outnumbered, a fear that has only made Republic leadership more aggressive.

Outer System

It’s difficult to appreciate how empty space is. Traveling at light speed, a message from Mars to Luna takes about twelve minutes on average. To Jupiter, almost an hour. To Uranus, two to three hours. To Pluto, six hours. The fastest ships, sparing no expense, take weeks or months to reach places in the outer system. Outside of their immediate neighborhoods — the moons of the gas giants or “clusters” of trojan asteroids — the outer system stations are isolated and remote from each other.

Saturn’s moons provide the most dense and diverse region, home to a number of research facilities, independent colonies, and the domed metropolises of Titan. They are the most established faction of the Autonomous Alliance, with the largest intelligence and military services.

Other habitats throughout the outer system operate as anarchist communes, privately-owned corporate states, hierarchical research facilities, or more unusual structures. Best known are the nomadic scum swarms, cycling through the system to bring their experimental art and black and red markets to all. While isolated, most habitats participate as members of the Autonomist Alliance, to share information, collaborate on matters of common interest, and provide mutual aid and defence. These habitats thrive on their independence, which can also hamstring their ability to cooperate. As a whole, their best defense is their remoteness. Historically, however, when a common threat has arisen, such as the brief Locus conflict, they are able to muster a defense with navies, missiles, hackers, and connections to resistance forces embedded within their enemies.

The Fringe

The fringe encompasses all of the less-traveled areas of the Solar System, from the odd asteroid families and lone remote stations of the inner system to the Kuiper Belt and eccentric orbits of various outer system objects. These are home to brinkers, Ultimates, and factions too extreme for even the Autonomous Alliance. Here both hypercorps and criminal cartels pursue secret projects. Exhumans also lurk on the fringe, cutting away anything they see as weakness, be it their fleshy body or their empathy. They haunt the outer reaches, capturing and consuming any transhuman ships foolish enough to come within range.

Exoplanets

Explorers have discovered pandora gates, enigmatic structures of unknown origin. These can be used to create wormholes and connect to other gates scattered through the galaxy. Gatecrashers enter the gate on one side to appear on the other instantaneously. The other side, however, is not necessarily friendly. Gatecrashers have appeared in pools of magma, in deadly rat mazes of alien construction, and in wild jungles under a strange blue sun.

The five known gates within the Solar System are contested and tightly controlled. Factions that control gates have access to thousands of known exoplanets, and hundreds of thousands yet undiscovered. Transhumans have established hundreds of exoplanet colonies and outposts on a wide variety of worlds. Gatecrashers trawl the gate network for untapped resources, lost alien civilizations, and locked-away secrets. Many do not return.

Habitat Primer

Transhumans carve out safety from the dangers of space with these common habitat types (Habitats).

• Aerostats float like balloons in dense atmospheres; they are common on Venus and Uranus.
• Bathyscaphes are underwater habitats tethered to the ground or ice surface. These are used on Europa, Ceres, and other subterranean seas.
• Beehives are warrens of tunnels cut into an asteroid or small moon. They are rarely spun for simulated gravity.
• Clusters are interconnected modules existing in microgravity.
• Cylinders are massive, hollow, kilometers-long cans spun for gravity, with terraformed interiors. Hamilton cylinders are partly organic and rely on advanced nanotechnology to self-construct. Reagan cylinders are older, inefficient designs using hollowed asteroids in the Jovian Republic.
• Domes are temporary inflatable or permanent pressurized structures built on the surface of an asteroid, moon, or planetary body.
• Processor Loci are just protected servers floating in orbit, for use by infomorph communities.
• Shells are cluster habitats built within a protective outer layer or covered framework of rings and spars.
• Spheres are hollow bubbles, usually hollowed-out asteroids with terraformed interiors, spun for low gravity.
• Subsurface habs are simply structures built underground, usually on moons or planets with little atmosphere; the ground above protects from solar radiation.
• Swarms are flotillas of nomadic spacecraft, sometimes interlinked or towing habitats. They are favored by the scum.
• Tin Cans are small, cramped modules, frequently little more than a pressure shell and life support. They are cheap and common, especially among brinkers.
• Toruses are ring-shaped and spun for gravity, sometimes with multiple tori spinning in opposite directions, sometimes linked to microgravity structures.

The Mesh

The mesh has changed how people live. Deep conspiracies leave digital crumbs that can be teased apart, if the investigator knows where to look. Hackers can manipulate AR feeds and news casts, altering a target’s understanding of reality. Entire habitats have migrated to a purely digital existence, with tens of thousands of infomorph citizens carrying on their business in accelerated time. Most consider the mesh another life enhancement; a faster way to deliver content, to interact with products. For others, virtual living is transhumanity’s greatest frontier.