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The Kuiper Belt & Oort Cloud

Posted by: Jarvis Tryscuz, Firewall Sentinel

The K-Belt and Oort Cloud are leftovers from the formation of the Solar System: pieces of debris that never bumbled together to form a proper planet. Out here all you'll find are iceteroids that haven't been convinced to become comets yet and the occasional frozen dwarf planet. Life this far out is either a brinker's paradise or a punishment posting.

The Kuiper Belt extends from 30, 50, 55 AU. There are a few scattered settlements in the K-Belt; it's a combination of Old West homesteading and living like some filthy medieval hermit. The even less-dense Oort Cloud starts around 2,000 AU and extends to interstellar space. No one really lives there. The furthest we've gotten a probe so far is around 30,000 AU.

Eris​

  • Habitat Type: Beehive
  • Allegiance: Go-nin Group/Ultimates

Eris lies 55 AU beyond the sun, and this speck has seen a disproportionate amount of action for a body barely able to maintain hydrostatic equilibrium. It's made of rock, water, and methane ice. Its tiny moon, Dysnomia, is an unremarkable captured chunk of rock. What Eris does have is the Discord Gate, and the battles for control of the gate have turned the surface of this tiny shithole into a war-scarred wasteland.

The Go-nin Group controls Eris and its only settlement, Torii, home to approximately 20,000 transhumans. Torii is a beehive carved deep into Erir, in part because the gate location physically sunk when Go-nin somehow destroyed it, before later rebuilding itself. Torii is Eris's only spaceport; unauthorized ships coming within 500 km are terminated.

Dysnomia houses Pharos, an Ultimate base armed to the teeth with combat morphs, ships, weapons batteries, and even nuclear and antimatter weapons. The Ultimates guard over Torii and help defend against anarchists and exhumans.

Markov​

  • Habitat Type: Beehive
  • Allegiance: Argonauts

Markov is one of the best-kept secrets in the Solar System. It's somewhere on the outer fringe or Kuiper Belt, but the argonauts do their best to keep its location hidden. Markov is a lab for cutting-edge Argonaut research: experiments in propulsion, quantum mechanics, biomechanics, cognitive science, and Lorentzian manifolds.

Pluto and Charon​

  • Habitat Type: Cluster
  • Allegiance: Brinker

The largest and best-known Kuiper-Belt object (KBO), currently about 48 AU from the sun, the first of its kind explored by humanity prior to the Fall. Its rocky core is surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of water and methane ice. Liquid occasionally seeps to the surface as the gravitational tug of its sister binary object, Charon, reshapes Pluto.

There are no major settlements on Pluto or Charon except for tiny mining outfits and brinker communities. The Tulihand station, a cluster hab balanced between the two bodies, oversees the largest mining operation in the remote rim. Tulihand runs comet-capture operations and manufactures and controls the massive crawlers that strip smaller KBOs; materials harvested are returned to Tulihand's refineries before they're flung back to the inner-system buyers.

Tulihand itself is a fortress. Shipments in and out are popular targets for pirates, so information about mining and refining operations are closely guarded secrets.

Haumea​

  • Habitat Type: Tin Can
  • Allegiance: Mafeng Pirates

Haumea tumbles through an eccentric orbit anywhere from 35 to 50 AU. Haumea's surface is marred by a gigantic red crater from an impact early in its life; the only settlement on the mineral-and-volatile-poor rock is a mining camp on the crater's rim. This camp is the major base for the Mafeng gang, the largest and best-equipped band of pirates and thugs in the K-Belt.

Makemake​

Makemake orbits between 38 and 51 AU, and its composition suggests it is a captured piece of interstellar debris. It's about two-thirds the size of Pluto and has at least one moonlet. Official records say Makemake is uninhabited except for a few prospectors. Unconfirmed reports suggest that ships destined for Makemake are far better armed and equipped than any prospecting vessel should be.

Tyche​

Tyche is a cold Jupiter in a highly eccentric, slightly inclined orbit with a perihelion of about 220 AU and an aphelion of 1200 AU. Discovered by analyzing mathematical anomalies, Tyche's existence was confirmed in the early 21st century. It's about ten times the mass of Earth but only four times the diameter, making it incredibly dense. That's all we known about the ninth planet. The Argonauts have sent probes to Tyche, but they won't arrive for another 20 years.