Luna

Source: Inner System Précis

Luna more closely embodies the values of pre-Fall transhumanity than any other community. This is unsurprising given its status as the first planetary body to be permanently inhabited. At present, Luna is home to forty million transhumans, many of whom live in cramped conditions and economic deprivation. Luna’s original settlements were never viewed as economically viable colonies and were constructed for a fraction of their current population. During the Fall, Earth’s moon became the primary destination for refugees fleeing certain death. While the majority of these displaced people ultimately moved on to more hospitable locales, Luna’s permanent population swelled.

The pressures of overpopulation on Luna are further complicated by an enormous disparity of wealth distribution, cultural traditionalism, and insularity among communities. Many cities and habitats retain strong ethnocentric values. While open bigotry is rare and widely frowned upon, tensions undeniably exist different cultural enclaves and between biological residents and the clanking masses.

Lunar Living

By the standards of most other settled moons and planets in the system, Luna is an inhospitable place with extraordinarily low gravity, bereft of both atmosphere and magnetosphere. Consequently, the majority of habitats are constructed using extinct lava tubes and cave systems as their foundational excavations. A few surface settlements do exist (partly buried under regolith for protection from cosmic rays), but these are inhabited almost exclusively by impoverished synthmorph communities.

The real measure of wealth on Luna is in its scarcest commodity: living space. The truly rich live in enormous cavern-villas, hewn from Luna’s regolith or rock, afforded with panoramic views of space or Earth via bay windows. But these dwellings are rare, unthinkably expensive, and even more infuriating to the underprivileged than might be expected elsewhere in the system. The average Lunar can afford only a few cubic meters of personal living space, and many choose to cohabitate in small groups to save on expenses. Luna’s settlements are only slowly expanding, and the vast number of refugees from the Fall leave them still brutally overcrowded. Most of the Lunar poor were sleeved in cheap case synthmorphs in the aftermath of the Fall and remain heavily indebted. Tens of thousands have nowhere else to live but roughly finished tunnel complexes that are equipped with light and electricity but not yet vacuum sealed.

Lunar Travel

Travel between settlements is primarily made by rocket-powered vehicles, or even personal rocket packs. The lack of air resistance makes rockets extremely efficient modes of transportation. A network of maglev-tracked, high-speed, subsurface shuttle lines is currently being expanded. At present, subshuttles service all of the major cities and adjacent settlements but they have not yet been networked between major hubs. Connecting lines are expected to be fully integrated within two years.

Luna’s surface is dominated by one of the most impressive feats of engineering to be found anywhere — the skyhook. This tether comprised of four bundled carbon-nanotube cables dangles down to the Lunar surface from Selene, its primary orbital station. The skyhook’s base is a tracked platform that circumnavigates Luna’s surface. Loading stations along the track facilitate the on- and off-loading of cargo and passengers between Luna and orbit.

Lunar Attitudes

Generalizations of Lunars as paranoid and insular are rooted in some truth. These attitudes are perhaps understandable in light of the tremendous damage inflicted upon Luna during the Fall. The infection of the New Mumbai colony by an exsurgent virus, its immediate prophylactic neutralization via two fusion bombs, and the subsequent establishment of the New Mumbai Containment Zone left deep scars in the collective psyche of the Lunar people. Furthermore, the inhabitants of Luna need merely look up from the surface to see the smoldering remains of transhumanity’s home.

It is arguably a result of these traumas that Luna remains one of the most politically and economically powerful places in the Solar System. While Luna has no central government, the majority of its population live in settlements governed by the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance. The remainder are controlled by the Planetary Consortium or live in a few independent settlements. By and large, Lunars live in relatively traditional governmental systems such as democracies, republics, or under corporate rule. The LLA Council’s primary governmental concern beyond the base necessities of habitation maintenance and sustenance is in regards to the restriction of potentially dangerous technology. These restrictions make Luna a less-than-welcoming location for many hypercorps and contribute to its increasing stagnation despite its wealth.

Lunar Crime

Luna's prevalent economic hardship has made criminal activity particularly attractive. Numerous criminal syndicates maintain a presence on Luna, relying on local organized gangs for their operations. The manufacture and smuggling of proscribed nanotechnology is alarmingly common in hidden cavern systems, and Luna’s low escape velocity makes smuggling both easy and lucrative. It is also believed that a number of reclaimer groups utilize Luna’s proximity to Earth and have established bases of operation in secluded regions of the Lunar landscape with the aid of disgruntled surfacedwelling synths. Affluent Lunars point to these activities as further evidence of the undesirable ethics of the synthmorph population.

Lunar Habitats

Luna is host to dozens of settlements and orbital habitats, but five major locales dominate its economy and politics.

Erato

Erato is Luna’s oldest and largest mining settlement, but the smallest of its three cities. Its population of approximately five million live in what is widely considered the most beautiful and expansive spaces on Luna. Erato’s central hub is a vast cavern excavated before the Fall and is the largest open space anywhere beneath the Lunar surface. The city features numerous open parks and glider facilities for aerial sports taking advantage of the low Lunar gravity. Mirrors direct sunlight down from the surface to the city's verdant parks and bamboo groves. Erato is the most affluent of the large Lunar settlements and few synthmorphs can afford to live here.

Mitre

Mitre, a cluster station in Lunar orbit operated by Argonauts, is principally used for their independent and open-source research projects. Its archives are renowned as the premier repository of public information on Luna, TITAN activities, genetics, and astrophysics. Mitre is also home to Radio Argosy, the Argonauts’ non-stop neutrino transmission broadcast, which freely provides open-source nanofab blueprints, uncensored news, and technoprogressive propaganda. Mitre's archives and broadcasts are often filtered, censored, and hacked over intellectual property violations.

Nectar

As the largest city on Luna, Nectar is also its most cosmopolitan. As a Consortium holding, more off-worlders make their homes in Nectar than in all other Lunar cities combined. Nectar actually consists of two cities. Old Nectar is a traditional Lunar settlement of tunnels and caves. New Nectar, located approximately three kilometers from the old city, is a feat of incredible engineering. It is built in the kilometer-wide crater of a fully controlled plasma explosion beneath the surface. The new city was completed only eleven months ago, and in that time almost a third of the inhabitants of the old city have moved into the new city, now referred to simply as Nectar. It is a beautiful city with lush gardens, but it has done little to ameliorate overpopulation as was intended, and tensions between economic classes are growing by the day. Due to its proximity to the equator, Nectar lies on the skyhook's pickup path.

Selene

Selene is a vast torus station centered around a massive sphere that provides the orbital anchor of Luna’s skyhook. Home to over three million transhumans, Selene is controlled by the Planetary Consortium, a fact that rankles the LLA, who feel it gives the Consortium a stranglehold over Lunar affairs. Selene is an important hub of business and diplomacy for the entire inner system. Titan, Extropia, and the Jovian Republic all maintain diplomatic enclaves and facilities here. They have recently been joined by a small delegation from the Morningstar Constellation.

Shackle

Built beside the small but critical ice deposits of the south pole, Shackle is the most important city on Luna. The city was established in a series of relatively small caverns connected by tunnels. One of these tunnels contains a series of eight heavily guarded and monitored caverns, which contain the Lunar ice reserves. Enough water is stored here to offset thirty-five years of recycling losses for all of Luna and a surfeit to cover any catastrophic loss of water to any Lunar city. Founded by a consortium of hypercorps with heavy involvement from the pre-Fall Indian government, Shackle remains the largest center of Indian culture in the Solar System. The canals of the cavern of New Varanasi hold as much importance to the Hindu faith as the River Ganges did on Earth.