Arkalest: Here you go:
Extropia (44 Nysa)
Habitat Type: Beehive
Allegiance: Extropia Now
Population: 1,000,000 (variable, depending on definitions of population and personhood)
There is one bit of advice that any visitor to Extropia should keep in mind, and that is this; the hypercorp presence on Extropia is made up of companies who found the regulation and law enforcement of the Planetary Consortium to be too onerous. They found the Planetary Consortium to be too obstructionist in stopping them from doing whatever they want. Extropia and its citizens proudly declare that if it had a single motto, it would be "anything goes"; those who do not buy into the axioms of that society have a rather different view on what that means.
Extropia is divisive. Those who support it call it a place of wondrous freedom, where RNArtists are not bound by the regulations and restrictions of the Inner System, where scientists can act to further human advancement, and where the progressives are not held back by those too small-minded to see what must be done to survive. They point to the advancements made by companies based there (even if the research was done elsewhere), to the new forms of art, to the advancements and the fact that it is a place where every man is free, his own man. Off the back of such freedom it has built a trade hub famed throughout the system, where everything and anything can be bought or sold.
Those less in love with it point out that on Extropia, even an infomorph must pay for their server space and if they cannot afford to do so (and so certainly can't afford to egocast off), they can be forced to sell themselves into indentureship. And if you can't afford a lawyer on Extropia, the terms you get for your indenture can be very unfavourable indeed. It bleeds criminality out into more restrictive jurisdictions, and is used for massive laundering of funds, Egos and IP. Research and experimentation which be beyond the pale in other habitats is perfectly legal and public here, and Titan, Jupiter, the Consortium and Firewall alike have all expressed concern about what is not admitted to.
Extropian society cannot be said to be on the edge of a civil war, because the singular was used for 'civil war'. The loose hand of the founders is slipping, and the invisible hand of the market has produced results they would not condone. Protostates are coalescing out of the private legal systems, and they have already begun to stake out their territories, areas where they maintain a monopoly on law enforcement. The underclasses of the poor are growing restless as the station's population has boomed, leaving those without capital - intellectual or otherwise - at the mercy of the better off. Low-grade warfare already exists between different corporations and factions, using deniable assets and the massive and casual availability of weapons on the hab to supply terrorist cells. There have been no fewer than three exsurgent outbreaks on the habitat in the past year, and there are growing suspicions among those in the know that they were the result of research gone amiss.
The land of the free is not a place to be poor. Or unlucky.
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Jupiter
Total population: 40,000,000
Moons & Habitats
Callisto
Nuevo Venice
Habitat Type: Bathyscaphe cluster
Allegiance: Jovian Republic
Population:
Nuevo Venice is a bathyscape habitat submerged in one of Callisto's underground seas. The underwater city was built before the Fall to study the Callistoan seas, and today it is the largest permanent underwater settlement on Calisto. The largest bathyscaphe is permanently anchored to the cave ceiling, and controls the only access to the habitat; a pair of subway trains that run through a pair of double-helix tunnels to a spaceport surface. A recent motion by the Parliament has called for the construction of a massive underground subway tunnel to connect Neuvo Venice to Gerðer and the greater Callistoan train network.
Nuevo Venice is the only military submarine base the Jovian Republic currently maintains. When the initial plans for the capture of Europa after the Fall fell through, the Navy (JSSDN) was massively downsized to cut on expenditures. The SSC provides much of the JSSDN's funding by supporting the Navy's expenses through "joint projects". A consistent but unverified conspiracy theory is that the SSC has stepped up the JSSDN's funding to prepare them for an invasion of Europa.
The marine research community in Nuevo Venice maintains strong, friendly ties with their counterparts on Europa.
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The Jovian Republic
According to the scattered members of the Autonomist Alliance, Jupiter is controlled with an iron hand by the 'Jovian Junta', a fascist two-bit dictatorship ruled by a fat Generalissimo and his imperialist war-mongering cronies. According to the ivory-tower intellectuals on Titan, the Junta is home to a death-cult of reactionary biochauvinists who can't even put on hearing aids without crossing themselves twice. The dominant meme is that the Jovian Junta is a reactionary throwback to the military dictatorships of Earth, who hold back the tide of a popular revolution with the crushing might of their bloated and fanatical military.
And if you really believe that, there's a bridge on Earth I'm interested in selling you.
Rome carved itself an empire through efficient use of manpower. The Dutch built their empire on windmills and sailboats. The British Empire ran on coal, and as it withered and died in the middle of the 20th Century, the United States rose from its ashes to the role of superpower on the fumes of petroleum, a title quickly lost to China and India with the advent of commercial fusion power. The Planetary Consortium seeks the power of the Sun, cluttered as they are near the hearth of the Solar System. The Jovian Republic seeks to harness powers much more fundamental than that; the very forces of gravity and electromagnetism themselves fuel the might of the Republic.
The interplanetary shipping routes that pass through Jupiter's gravity well are taxed. Immense tethers suspended from asteroids trail through the Jovian magnetosphere, draining the kinetic energy of entire moons and beaming it through space to the highest bidder. The Solar System's second-largest source of antimatter is found in the complex electromagnetic interactions of Io as it trails through Jupiter's magnetosphere.
The Jovian Republic is first and foremost an economic superpower, not a military one. If you would believe their diplomats, the armed forces exist to protect Republic economic interests and control the shipping lanes, not to project power onto the Consortium or the Commonwealth. Why should the Republic annex Europa or invade Hyoden and antagonize themselves? No, the Republic profits most from a stable Solar System; war, after all, is bad for business.
The Inner System is thirsty for water from the Kupier Belt, the Outer System needs heavy metals from Mercury and the Main Belt, and in the middle sits the Jovian Republic, netting a tidy profit from the proceedings.
Politics
The Semi-Presidential System
The Jovian Government, at the highest level, is divided into two distinct bodies; the Presidency and the parliament. The President is elected for 8-year terms by a majority-vote of the people. The President appoints ministers and the chairman of the parliament and has the supreme command of the Jovian Republic's armed forces.The Republic constitution allows the President to mobilize the Army and the Federal Police against any administrative area without consulting the parliament in the event of an emergency, such as a threat to that state's democracy or freedom. The parliament, meanwhile, is a democratically elected body of almost 300 representatives from all major political parties in the Republic, as well as one representative elected by the local government of each administrative area. The parliament is elected for four year terms.
Disorder in the Court of Zeus
Just as the democracies of the Greeks who worshiped Zeus were split over political issues, so are the states of the Jovian Republic. Much friction and antagonism exists between the conservative block and a loosely-knit electoral alliance of left-wing groups. The conservative block consists largely of the Republican Centralist Party, while the the left-wing alliance consists mainly of the Social-Democratic Party, the Liberal Party, and the Worker's Party.
Republican Centralist Party
The RCP seeks to consolidate power in the hands of the President and the reduce the powers of local governments. To the RCP, the greatest threat to the Republic is the growing independence of federal city-states. The Centralists seek a tighter, more unified Republic under the leadership of a strong President as a solution to the threat of the TITANs and rampart techno-socialism.
Social-Democratic Party
The Social-Democratic Party is the "checks-and-balances"-mirror image of the RCP; the SDP holds a policy of supporting federalism and representative social democracy. Its membership draws heavily from the Gallilean group, especially from the Original Colonists and the wealthier Fall Refugees. The SDP's membership often puts them at odds with the Worker's Party, who accuse them of being petite bourgeoise who are only concerned with furthering the interests of the middle class.
Liberal Party
The Liberal Party supports a policy of greater economic liberalism.
Worker's Party
The Worker's Party has the strongest socialist policies of the major parties. Considered by many to be the "core" Amalthean party, the Worker's Party was formed by leading members of the Amalthean power production labour union, and quickly gained support from Inner Satellite and Gallilean ice and mineral miners.
Civil Unrest
The Popular Front and the Jovian Anarchosocialist Progressive Party (IASPP) are the two most radical and militant political parties in the Jovian Republic. The Popular Front, formerly a branch of the Republican Centralist Party, is a radical populist party with strong nationalistic and biochauvinist streaks that is rumoured to be funded by several larger corporations. The IASPP, meanwhile, is a radical techno-progressive transhumanist anarchist party that is militantly opposed to the Jovian Republic as a political entity.
The Popular Front and the IASPP both maintain large paramilitary wings often consisting of disgruntled ex-soldiers, and the two parties frequently come to blows in the streets of Ganymede and Callisto, inciting violent riots, acts of domestic terrorism and savage street fights. Despite their small, almost non-existent representation in government, both parties are growing in membership every day as a dissatisfied worker-class population seeks more and more extreme measures to deal with the immense income inequality in the Jovian Republic.
A secret report from the military snatched up by a Firewall agent is telling; at the current projected growth rates for the Popular Front and IASPP, by AF 15 the police and military will not be able to contain both parties if full-scale fighting should break out between them - something which would effectively place the Jovian Republic in a state of disastrous civil war.
Genetic Self-Segregation
Splicers and other genefixed and augmented morphs are more suited to life in microgravity than flats. The claustrophobic environments of a beehive or cluster habitat puts significant stress on the mental health of transhuman Egos, and the basic biomods inherent in splicers allow them cope with the stresses better. Likewise, flats suffer muscle atrophy and a wide variety of other less severe medical issues when exposed to microgravity over long periods of time, problems that are not helped by the increased rates of infection and disease transmission in space habitats.
As a consequence, the microgravity habitats and industrial towns of the Inner Satellites have a disproportionate Splicer population, while the Galilean moons host the vast majority of the flats. The result of this demographic fact is that the Inner Satellite States tend to be more open to the morphological ideals of liberal transhumanism, when compared to the Galilean city-states. This tendency, called the Amalthean/Galilean split, is a significant feature of Republic politics. The Amaltheans have a noted tendency not only towards liberal transhumanism, but liberal policies in general, as well as trade-unionism among the many energy and mining sector labourers. The Galileans are more rooted in bioconservative and authoritarian policies, but due to their high population densities and increasing social unrest, radicalism and extremism of all flavours, especially anarchism, socialism and right-wing populism, are gaining traction.
The Armed Forces of the Republic
The Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Army (JSSDA) is a major supporter of the right-wing government and the sitting president. The Army is a paternalistic and moralistic institution which sees itself as the valiant guardians of the Republic's moral integrity and as a vanguard against transhumanism and progressivism. The Army, as an institution, encourages an isolationist policy with regards to Jovian Local Space
At the same time, the Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Space Forces (JSSDSF), which is dominated by the Strategic Space Command (SSC) are a major agent of change, constantly pushing the Parliament to approve legislation which will grant them access to more technologically advanced weapons, from neo-avian-based research into intuitive three-dimensional thinking and AGI-based problem-solving and fire control software, to genetic and cybernetic enhancements that will boost the combat capability of their spacecraft and troops, and even NaMiNBC weapons. The JSSDSF are staunchly expansionist, urging the annexation of Hyoden and Europa and even the Jovian Trojans in the name of the Republic's security.
The radical techno-militarism and war-mongering of the JSSDSF puts them at odds with both the Army, which views the JSSDSF as dangerous crypto-transhuman lunatics, and with the economic sector of the government, which views them as a threat to the stability of trade through Jupiter's gravity well. As the enforcers of the Republic's trade regulations, the JSSDSF are also one of the main avenues of the Republic's foreign relations - a task they are undoubtedly unsuited for due to their gung-ho and jingoistic attitude towards everyone who isn't of the Republic.
>>> NEW SIDEBAR("Structure of the Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Force")
Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Force (JSSDF)
- Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Army (JSSDA)
- Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Space Forces (JSSDSF)
- Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Navy (JSSDN)
- Taxes and Tariffs Collection Agency (TTCA)
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Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Army (JSSDA)
Federal Police
The Federal Police are the gendarme of the Jovian Republic, a military police unit with jurisdiction over crimes the federal state. Their duties include protection of federal rail and rocket services, antiterrorism, combating organized crime [...]
Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Space Force (JSSDSF)
Strategic Space Command (SSC)
The Strategic Space Command is the branch of the Space Forces tasked with management and deployment of the Jovian Republic's strategic missiles and NaMiNBC weapons.
Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Navy (JSSDN)
Taxes And Tariffs Collection Agency (TTCA)
The Taxes and Tariffs Collection Agency is the newest branch of the Jovian Strategic Self-Defence Force. It was created by the Parliament as an independent branch of the military, explicitly removed from SSC influences. It is tasked solely with toll collection and superficial guard duties in a small sector of Jovian space. The Parliament made no attempts to hide that the TTCA was created to eventually supplant the JSSDSF in collecting gravitational slingshot taxes, which had created much animosity between the nascent and inexperienced TTCA and the JSSDSF. The two often collide over matters of jurisdiction, and inter-service rivalry is high. Because the Parliament wanted to soften the public image of the Republic, the TTCA was made to have a culture of de-emphasizing jingoism in favour of cold professionalism. The TTCA are far removed from the SSC, and because much of the initial organization was recruited Army aerospace divisions and federal law-enforcement agencies, they do not share the JSSDSF's techno-fetishistic view of transhuman technologies. Among several smaller Outer System groups, there is concern that their closer ties to the dominant bio-conservatism of the Army will lead to harassment of their representatives, though as of yet there have been no major incidents.
The Police State
Censorship and Surveillance
It is not difficult for the Republic to enforce Mesh censorship. Noise from Jupiter's magnetic field and the need to bury habitats deep underground to shield them from ionizing radiation are both natural barriers to broadcasting. Nothing short of neutrinos can penetrate several meters of hard rock, let alone the kilometers of crust that cover the Jovian cities. Even inside a geofront, layers upon layers of walls, ceilings and floors will block even the strongest signals. Broadcasts through the magnetosphere are a nightmare, and narrowcasts don't fare much better. It's only natural that the Jovian 'Mesh' is not a mesh at all, but instead a fractal star topology, where local networks are connected to neighbouring networks by central high-speed fiberoptic cables.
Bioconservatism
Progressive Morph Tax
The Republic holds that having a body augmented beyond the baseline human is an unfair advantage over flats and splicers. A tax is levied upon the owner of an advanced transhuman body to pay for the extra living expenses incurred by Flats, and the more advanced the morph, the larger the tax. Egos sleeved in Splicers are not subject to this tax, while egos sleeved in morphs such as Olympians, Rusters or Sylphs pay a moderate tax. Owners of advanced combat or cognitive-boosting morphs such as Furies, Ghosts and Mentons are in the upper bracket for the progressive morph tax. Egoes sleeved in flats receive government subsidies to pay for their extra medical expenses.
Citizens of the Republic have the option to enter voluntary military or government service as a way of paying their progressive morph taxes. The Republic provides strong incentives for the owners of combat-grade morphs to sign up for a five-year stint in the military after their initial two years of conscription are up, and military and government research sectors actively headhunt egos with Mentons and other intelligence-enhancing morphs to supplement their think-tanks.
Brain Boxes and Head Transplants
"It's essentially pretentious to refer to such a thing as 'transhuman'. If it's transhuman to modify the inner ear to adapt to zero-g, it's transhuman to wear glasses to correct vision, and if that's transhuman, it's transhuman to pick up a sharp rock and beat another ape to death with it. Which means we were transhuman before we were even human, which just shows that the entire concept is nonsense if applied so broadly."
Professor [name]
Humanism in the post-Fall Decade: A Review
The radical transhumanists would have you believe that the mind - the self - is just software. The Republic rejects this as a naive conjecture. The mind is a property of the body, both as an emergent structure from the brain and as part of an ever-evolving self-image. To imagine that the intricate complexities of a human consciousness can be carried over from one brain architecture to another through a cursory scan with nanoscale sensors is foolishness; the human mind is made from stochastic processes that lead to a continuous sense of self-awareness. The body is not hardware; the human mind has no hardware/software divide, and thinking you can "sleeve" into a new body just as you might transfer a program from one computer to another is suicidal in its ignorance.
Still, the human body is not sacrosanct. Over half the population of the Jovian Republic were born with spliced genomes cleaned of hereditary diseases. The soft, conservative approach of Jovian humanism is to treat the baseline human body as a baseline that can be improved upon. Chimeric tissue splices, pharmaceutical and cybernetic augmentations, vat-grown limb-transplants and gene therapy are all tools in the hands of Republic bioengineers. At the extremes are head-transplants onto heavily augmented vat-grown bodies and isolated human brains in life-support machines plugged into robotic shells that provide protection against the ionizing radiation from Jupiter's magnetosphere.
Personal body-augmentation is predominantly medical in nature, fixing errors in the human body or more rarely actively boosting its physical capabilities. Outside of the poorest ghettoes, even people still wearing the flats they were born in are likely to have had basic biomods and basic mesh inserts installed, and gene therapy and organ transplantation is available to upgrade flats into splicers. People working close to powerful sources of radiation are often required for medical reasons to get rad-shielded brain cases and sometimes cybernetic shells, and zero-g workers sometimes alter their body-plan to become like bouncers. In the cases of full-body transplants and high-grade cybernetic shells, the body itself will often be owned by the government or a major business, while the Ego's original body is kept in suspended animation for the period of service. Non-medical and non-work augmentation is often viewed with distaste in Republic society, especially among lower and middle-class inhabitants of the Gallilean moons, and people with extensive cybernetic augmentation such as full-body cybershells are often treated as dangerous; the man-machine interfaces that connects the human brain to the sensory and somatic systems of the cybershell are vulnerable to TITAN subversion, after all.
Internal organ transplants are a major business in the Jovian Republic. Organ transplants can prolong life-expectancy and reduce the chance of death in case of a major accident. The businesses offer to grow organs based on a person's DNA inside a pig. The pig can then be harvested for the full-grown organs when they are necessary, or be sold off as second-grade emergency transplant organs to hospitals.
Death
It is the official policy of the Jovian Republic that an alpha fork is not meaningfully the continuation of a person in neither the legal nor philosophical sense. The use of backups and cortical stacks is therefore not considered an effective way to achieve immortality. Instead, the primal fear of death has forced Republic medicine to adapt by improving survival rates for physical trauma from accidents, physical violence and terrorist attacks. Suspended animation, organ transplants and other forms of advanced medicine help preserve lives and regrow crippled bodies, and some hospitals in major cities have access to restricted nanotechnological medical equipment that can revive brain functions up to several hours after clinical death has occured.
Because the creation of alpha and beta forks is illegal according to Republic Law, cortical stacks are technically illegal equipment. However, with over half the population having possessed cortical stacks since birth, it would be prohibitively expensive for the Republic to surgically remove the stacks for collection - in addition to the not trivial risk of damaging the brain or spine during the procedure. The Signal and Information Systems Intelligence Agency (the SISINT Agency, also known as "Big Sister") has been tasked with registering and collecting the cortical stacks of all morphs that suffer permanent clinical death in the Jovian Republic, under the mandate of controlling illegal communications technologies. The cortical stacks are stored in a large vault in the SISINT Agency's headquarters on Ganymede. The cortical stacks of foreign visitors are in the vast majority of cases returned to their owners or their owners' insurance agencies. Rumours and conspiracy theories on what the Egos on the cortical stacks are used for fly wild on the Mesh, ranging from being used as slave labour to monitor the Mesh, to post-mortem fork interrogation, to being used as human sacrifices in unethical seed-AI experiments. The official statement by the government is that the stacks collect dust in the underground vaults.
Forking and Infomorphs
The creation of alpha and beta forks of humans is highly illegal in the Jovian Republic; the creation of delta forks is merely highly restricted and requires a licence only granted to people deemed to have adequate cause by the Technology Regulation Agency's (TRA) infotech department. Alpha and beta forks are considered by the law to be illegal artificial intelligences. However, the parliament's Department of Bioethics recognizes that alpha forks have a human level of consciousness and a sense of self - even the experience of personhood and the belief they are a real person - which entitles them to a certain level of sapient recognition. If it can be proved that the alpha fork was created in a sterile environment with no tampering or modification, they can be offered entrance into the Fresh Start programme. The Fresh Start programme involves extended observation and psychosurgery to remove their long-term memories, a new vat-grown body, and placement with a foster family to help them forge their own identity. (And a permanent mark in their file.) This gives the unwittingly created fork a new chance at life as a real person rather than as a mockery of another. Beta forks, gamma forks, illegal delta forks, inert backups and the alpha forks of violent criminals who can be proven to have forked themselves with the intent to escape into the Fresh Start programme to avoid punishment are deleted or stored by Big Sister.
Economy
Shipping Tariffs
Jupiter's gravitational sphere of influence extends over a hundred million kilometers into space in all directions, which is comparable to the distance between the Sun and Venus. The Jovian Republic has claimed Jupiter's sphere of influence as its sovereign territory, and demands a toll from any spacecraft that uses the gas giant's gravity well for a slingshot or gravity assist maneuver.
The Republic does not accept the unsecured, unstable "Rep" of the new economies to pay its tolls. That alone may well produce some of the famed antipathy of various anarchist groups to it; Jupiter, like a lead weight on a rubber sheet, pulls lesser powers into its economic orbit. It only accepts payment in certain currencies judged to be stable - among these its own, that of the Consortium and of Titan - or in raw materials. Of course, for the ice trade from the Outer System to the Inner, the Republic will kindly accept payment secured against the cargo, and there are even convenient agreements with the Consortium which allows the tariff to be deducted immediately from the sale price so the inconvenience of having to remember to hand over the money does not burden the consciences of the traders.
Demographics
Original Colonists
The pre-Fall colonists of the Jovian Republic are on average more wealthy than the refugees and immigrants. The original colonists were selected by their respective governments for their above-average physical and mental aptitudes, as well as psychological stability; this gives the original colonists and their descendants an upper edge in the competitive aspects of Jovian society. The majority of Jovian industrial capital found itself in the hands of either the government or in the hands of oligarchs from among the pre-Fall colonists. Together with cronyism and disdain for the refugees and immigrants, this has served to stratify the original colonists as the upper class and upper-middle class elite of the Jovian Republic.
Fall Refugees
When the Fall came, Jupiter was hardly the ideal refuge; it was distant, inhospitable and dangerous, so the majority of the emigrants sought safety on Luna and Mars, which had sprawling, well-developed cities, infrastructure capable of supporting large populations, and in the case of Mars, an almost habitable atmosphere and a demand for labour.
Then the first reports came in that the TITANs were on Luna, and things stirred; Earth's moon was no longer safe. Then the TITANs hit Mars, and all hell broke loose. A wave of refugees from Luna and Mars, fleeing from the wars that ravaged the Inner System, washed up on Jupiter's shores. Today, the Fall refugees are the largest single group in the Jovian Republic. Demographically, they comprise both refugees from Earth and space colonists from Luna and Mars that fled when the TITANs spread out of Earth's gravity well. The latter include a somewhat prominent population of Rusters and Alpiners. These Martians tend to not be satisfied with the state of affairs with regards to discrimination and the morph tax levied upon their morphological capital.
Immigrants
A small but steady population of immigrants trickle into the Jovian Republic each year. There are as many motivations as there are people, but the majority are ideological immigrants who reject the self-mutilation and pie-in-the-sky techno-utopianism of the radical transhumanists. Others again immigrate to escape from slavery of the Planetary Consortium and the Extropians, as the Jovian Republic condemns slavery and offers political asylum and citizenship to escaped indentures. The Republic is cautious of autonomous AIs, and has a large demand for skilled labour in the industrial sectors, which causes many people who would be replaced by AIs and fall between the cracks in the Consortium to seek a safe, comfortable and prosperous life on Jupiter.
Officially, the Republic does not go digging into the morphological past of immigrants, and are perfectly willing to look through the fingers at infomorph refugees having been uploaded; who are they to judge the poor alpha-forks, who were forced into the life and memories of another person, who might even be dead? Infugees just receive a permanent mark in their file, are reinstated into a flesh-and-blood body resembling their birth-morph, and are barred from certain high-security positions in the government and military. The pragmatic need for labour and the value in projecting an open, democratic image is worth more to the Republic than dogma, it seems.
Unofficially, the truth is somewhat darker. In addition to the permanent mark all uploads have in their files, infomorph asylum seekers are all considered to be potential spies, infiltrators, terrorists or saboteurs. They are often harassed by the Federal Police, and will find it near-impossible to get a job at any level of federal or city-state government, police or the military. Instead of spending their mandatory military service in the military, they are often put to work on public works projects and low-risk mining operations. They cannot hold any job requiring a security clearance, and many major industries will not employ them. Big Sister keeps a constant eye on the Mesh activity of former infugees; any dissent or government criticism is investigated is treated as evidence the infugee may be an agent provocateur, leading to night-time arrests and hours of interrogation. Still, it is preferable to slavery and forced psychosurgery.
>>>NEW SIDEBAR
"Let me tell you why we treat infugees in this way. Because time and time again, the other powers of the Solar System have shown that they have no respect whatsoever for the laws of conventional war held on Earth. The Autonomist Alliance whines on and on about how we oppress refugees. You know why they do that? Because they send hundreds, even thousands of discardable, deniable assets as infiltrators every year, and no doubt even with our precautions, some get through the net. If they didn't send indoctrinated brainwashed assassins with hidden programmed directives, then we wouldn't have to treat every immigrant as a potential security threat!"
>>>END SIDEBAR
Jovian Greeks (Sun-Jupiter L4)
Total population: --Moir
Hang-gu Mogseong
Habitat Type:
Allegiance: Jayu Republic
Population:
Hang-gu Mogseong is one of the largest and most spinward habitats controlled by the Jayu Republic. The habitat was built before the Fall as the main receptacle for spacecraft arriving from Jupiter. Today, it is the largest shipyard in the Greeks and a major source of income for the Jayu Republic.
The Jayu Bureaucratic Republic
Posted by: Omobolanle Sowards, Firewall Proxy
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Info Msg Rep>
To me, the Jayu Republic means freedom. Before the Fall, the natural resources of the Greeks were gobbled up by South African and Korean corporations who had no scruples about throwing out the original Grecian settlers and homesteaders with underhanded legal means and illegal force. During the Fall, they abandoned over two hundred thousand indentured workers - slaves in all but name - to starvation, anarchy and chaos. And after the Fall, when we'd just fixed the sorry mess they'd left us in, our colonial masters came back expecting a savior's welcome, ready to work us until we bleed. We're having none of that; we want real freedom. Freedom from oppression. Freedom from slavery. Freedom from starvation. Freedom from imperialism and colonial exploitation.
To maintain this autonomy from the bioconservative imperialists from Jupiter and Mars, Jayu must prevent the hypocrites from the Jovian Republic and the sociopaths from the Planetary Consortrium from encroaching on the Greeks. Jayu seeks to create a sphere of economic prosperity and cooperation for the future among the Grecian autonomists. By becoming independent to the Consortium markets and bringing communities out of impoverishment, we can protect the Greeks from economic strong-arming by the hypercapitalists. We're stuck between two economic goliaths, and we shall secure the Greek's independence through market independence. We're not big enough to become a third goliath, but as the fastest growing economy in cis-Jupiter space, we have a more than fair chance of becoming David.
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The Titanian Commonwealth
Posted by: Kari Virtanen, Firewall Proxy
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Info Msg Rep>
Les Économistes Sans Frontières recently published their annual report on world freedom and democracy. For the fifth year in a row, Titan was on the top of the list for the categories 'democracy', 'civil freedom', 'political freedom' and 'quality of life'. The report praised the political commitment of the average citizen, the transparency of our government, and our efforts to give everyone a happy and fulfilling life through the One Mind One Body-policy. Both the Editorial and the chairperson's letter were dedicated to the political and economic aspects of the Titanian Commonwealth, and despite the criticism that our card-carrying regulated economy drew, they both concluded that in spite of our economic heresies, there was no denying that Titan is quite possibly the best place to live in the world.
Some might take this as an opportunity to rest on our laurels. I don't.
I've seen - and participated in - police raids on anarchist groups labelled dangerous. I've seen the functionaries of the State Institute of Health and Diversity force blond and blue-eyed Hazers upon ethnically Chinese immigrants. I've investigated over half a dozen cases of assault and hate crime against the hulder, and half a dozen more against ethnic slavs. I've heard hardcore socialist journalists keep quiet when I fired plastic bullets into a wave of communist demonstrators on Rhea. I've seen bioconservative demagogues and family autocrats wield the votes of an entire town while the Plurality turns a blind eye to the weaknesses of Mesh voting. When I was a marine in the merchant navy, I saw the accountant write off bribing foreign officials as a tax-deductible expense. Just bad apples? A bad apple spoils the whole barrel.
Maybe we are the best place to live in the Solar System, but that doesn't mean we can't strive to fix the problems we have. That some call this holding the Commonwealth to an impossibly high standard is what's wrong with the world.
Politics
Government Offices & Ministries
Ministry of Biodevelopment
State Institute of Genetic Health and Diversity
The State Institute of Genetic Health and Diversity is a government body with the legal authority to approve morph designs, genetic treatments and bioware, and the state organ in charge of the One Mind One Body initiative. Their official purpose is to support a high quality of life in the Titanian populace by setting standards for quality in morph designs, bioware and genetic treatments. Ostensibly, this is to remove harmful morph designs from circulation. Critics of the State Institute of Genetic Health and Diversity has noted that there is a strong correlation between whether a morph design was made by a Commonwealth microcorp and whether it is approved for the Titanian market.
Another controversial practice is that the State Institute of Genetic Health and Diversity holds the exclusive legal right to approve genetic templates for reproduction. This means that all new genomes, including those resulting from in-vitro fertilization (or, if you're old-fashioned, sexual reproduction), must be approved by a committee appointed by the State Institute of Genetic Health and Diversity before they are allowed to hold a transhuman Ego. Effectively, all transhuman sexual reproduction, even if it happens in a petri dish with extensive genetic engineering, is subject to the whims of the institute, a practice that some have condemned as "despotic".
Economy
Gas Mining & Volatile Export
>>> NEW SIDEBAR
I've always found it ironic that the Commonwealth is seen as "the peace state". The Commonwealth's two greatest exports are volatiles and weapons technology. Commonwealth volatiles are more profitable when a war in the Main Belt disrupts the Belt volatile market, and it's always profitable to sell weapons and ammunition when there's a war going on. So why, when the Commonwealth has every incentive there is for keeping the Main Belt in a constant state of looming war, do we pat them on the back for their half-measures at ostensible peacekeeping in the region?
>>> END SIDEBAR
Interstellar Shipping
The Jovian Republic may own the central shipping lane between the Inner and Outer System. The Titanian Commonwealth owns the ships.
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Uranus
Total population:
The Glitter Belt
While not as impressive as the rings of Saturn, Uranus has its own prominent ring system. The thirteen rings, each no more than a few kilometers wide, are almost exclusively made from bright, clear ices. Unlike Jupiter and Saturn's rings, the Uranian rings are free of dust, leaving the moonlets to shine in the weak sunlight. The rings share Uranus' orbital inclination, and with a good telescope can be seen head-on as a faint but clear halo surrounding the teal planet. Metals are scarce, so habitats and factories are mainly constructed from carbon nanotubes and diamondoid structures, which glitter like bright stars in the faint rings.
Because the steep inclination of Uranus and its ring system makes orbital insertion difficult and expensive, the majority of industrial processing and manufacturing is done locally in the ring system. Only once processed are gases extracted from the Uranian atmosphere, carbon-silicate rocks from the moons, and ices from the ring system launched into the orbital plane of the Sun. Likewise, raw materials from Mercury and Titan are inserted into the ring system, where local factories perform the secondary construction using local materials.
Before the Fall, Uranus was a target for venture capital investment that started building major industrial sites and habitats in anticipation of the exponentially increasing needs of the expanding transhumanity. When the Fall came, the market (and sometimes the investors) disappeared. The Uranian ring system was left with thousands of abandoned factories, half-finished habitats, and robot shuttles that continued to mindlessly assemble factories and chemical plants that will never be staffed. The largest of these still work tirelessly, strip-mining moonlets of water and organic compounds. Most have run out of fuel or feedstock, and orbit languidly waiting for supplies and orders that will never come. The half-finished habitats have been a target for squatting and upgrading by autonomists and brinkers, but Uranus and its rings were never a popular target of immigration after the Fall, and many still go uninhabited or untouched. Small businesses often salvage feedstock, fusion reactors, and industrial equipment from the dormant factories and robot shuttles - an enterprise that is persistently rumoured to suffer from unexplained and often mysterious personnel attrition.
Georgestar
The largest polity in the Glitter Belt, Georgestar has its roots in an overly ambitious hotel complex planned by its designers to be a hub for Uranian travel and tourism. Immediately post-Fall, a consortium largely composed of the on-site employees purchased the rights and facilities in a fire sale, hoping to take advantage of an immigration boom which failed to happen.
Instead, Georgestar has found a niche as a port of call for salvagers, a hub for specialists, a morph sales depot and a centre of argonaut research on the roboecosystems developing in the Glitter Belt. The original hotel is now swaddled in tethered modules and free-orbiting microhabs, and has been expanded several times. It maintains full and BrainSafe accredited egocasting facilities, and so is often the first port of call for newcomers to Uranus - even those who might be going on to the moons or other places around the ice giant. It has also purchased, "purchased", or just plain seized several abandoned stations in the Belt (depending on previous owners and their current status), and keeps an Ultimate mercenary force on full retainer, ostensibly for reasons of containment and security against the wild synths which roam the Uranian system.
Georgestar maintains armslength dealings with the Planetary Consortium, and has several fully-owned subsidiaries registered and operating in Consortium space. Allegations that the polity carries out contracts for PC hypercorps in the Glitter Belt have never been denied; in fact, they have been openly admitted, on the grounds that "hey, they're paying us". With these profits, Georgestar has recently purchased a resource inflow of heavy metal asteroids from the Consortium, to fuel the salvaged production facilities formerly owned by the Pepe Skunkworks they are bringing back online.
::SIDEBAR::
"Hey, listen. I've heard you have certain… opinions. Certain opinions vis a vis the way that the Georgies are basically working as a fully owned subsidiary of the Consortium. And now they're buying lots of heavy metal. They're building something big. So what I'm thinking is, let's help them get their hands on the metal. Going somewhat faster and with a slightly different course, Right at them.
We'll need a ship."
>>Max Hyanda
>>Fat! Cats! Out!
:: END SIDEBAR::
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Outer Fringe
>>NEW SIDEBAR
"Vortillery. That's the name of the game out here. It's a horrible portmanteau, but it works. Much like vortillery, void artillery, itself. Find a lump of rock and ice. Homogenise and reinforce it. Set up a launch mechanism with a bunch of fusion warheads. And set up a few Egos on standby, waiting for their signal. When 'fired', the lump of rock will get knocked into a nice elliptical orbit well out of the plane of the system, and begins its long loop that will take it towards the sun and then out towards the target - and when it comes back, it'll have used the feed stock onboard to build its anti-approach countermeasures. Everyone's building them, because in theory they're a perfect fire-and-forget MAD weapon. Attack someone who has vorts set up, and years, maybe even decades later one of these bad boys will be coming back to wreck your place. And since they have a crew and an onboard nanofac system, they can adjust their course. All you need is an ion drive when you're dealing with these kinds of distances.
"Oh, and we could also bomb the fuck out of the Inner System if we felt like it. Apparently they've built up some defences against these things. It'd be interesting to see if they could really stop us from crushing their cities."
>>END SIDEBAR
Autonomist Alliance
Posted by: Ja Hamad, Firewall Proxy
<
Info Msg Rep>
To hear the hardcore proponents of the Autonomist's Alliance talk about it, they are the future. They have the force of history behind them; they're smarter, more adaptable, and it's only a matter of time before they triumph. Quite unlike the Inner System powers, they're unified in pursuit of the goals they all signed up for, and are acting to further humanity's survival out of the goodness of their hearts. And hell, they've also mastered the arts of wizardry and have found a way to do D-D fusion aneutronically and ignore the hard physical limits on nanoreplication, possibly by chanting and tantric magic. But you know how it is with ideologues; they're always blinded by their own point of view and are too busy staring at the heavens to notice the potholes on the road. The truth is always messier and less pretty than the fancy propaganda.
If there was one way of describing the Alliance, it would be 'fractured'. It's a messy alliance of alliances of convenience and ideology, relying on necessity when doctrine is not enough and shared belief even when it's against the best interests of its members. You can find any government you care to mention in the Alliance, and though - in theory - there are rules setting minimum standards of rights and conduct, in practice with the distances and isolation common in the Outer System only egregious violations get caught. Even then, the Alliance prefers to try to reform using soft pressure and sanctions, rather than expulsion - as, after all, it's better to work on reforming them than kicking them out and losing all influence. To be blunt, the Four Clauses of the Autonomist Alliance Points of Unity are shown about as much regard as the Charter of Human Rights back on Earth; most habs broadly follow them, except when they don't, and the others only pretend to give a flying fuck.
Given all this, it's not really surprising that for all the talk of a unified front, most of the conflict initiated by members of the AA is directed against other signatories. Out beyond Saturn the Jovians and the Planetary Consortium is a distant threat; on the other hand the other bunch of autonomists eyeing up that nearby iceball just packed with volatiles are direct competition. More level-headed members try to bind together a broken coalition of resource-hungry hotheads, using it as a vehicle to stop the larger powers of the Solar System picking off lonely, isolated habs whenever they see fit.
But even then, within the Alliance there are its power blocks, nearly Solar System-level powers in their own right. Titan is the wolf in the corner, smiling as he blandly asserts his "sphere of economic interest" over the entire Saturn volume even as he preaches the 'right to self-determination'. In Jovian Greeks, the post-anarchist Jayu Republic gobbles up smaller habs and hunts down autonomist groups who act against it even as it makes speeches about how it's up to the Autonomists to stand together to keep the Jovians out of the Greeks. So far it's escaped more than mild censure; local groups are planning to make more explicit (and explosive) objections if the Alliance isn't going to do anything. The Voidrock Coalition and the AnCap Pact, two of the dominant blocks of Belter members, are at each other's throats, kept from war by the farcaster diplomacy of the Alliance and the threat of the hounds of the Planetary Consortium. And in the Far Outer System where survivalists, isolates and Ultimates all build weapons to guard against the threat of the TITANs and statists, vast clans and alliances dominate in the cold reaches of the darkness, laying claim to volumes light minutes across, fighting over iceballs and trade contracts with the sunward parts of the system alike.
Don't listen to the fanatics who tell you that the Autonomist Alliance is unquestionably the future of mankind. It may be! It certainly produces wonders and at its best it's a place where human creativity has left the confines of the cradle of Earth, where diversity is enabled and encouraged and where massively divergent factions live happily side by side without much of the systematic inequality of the Inner System. At its worst, it's cliquish, paranoid, has a vastly inflated sense of its own importance, hopelessly fractured and turns a blind eye to dangerous and horrific acts by its member habs. The question is, as always, whether it can separate the good and the bad, or whether the two are irrevocably tied.
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That's basically all of it, except for some passages that I think need cleaning up, and tons of topic headers and location/habitat headers with population/language figures without any descriptive text. This is a joint project between
ES and me, so if you go using this other places to the degree where you feel attribution is important, be so kind as to credit us both.
