Skip to main content

Saturn

Posted by: Isabella Dandolo, Firewall Proxy

The smaller of our system’s two gas giants.  Jupiter’s cool sibling.  Everyone here is free: there’s no oppressive political bloc telling you how to run your life every minute of every day.  There’s room to spare for its more than 80 million transhuman inhabitants, all of whom can express themselves as they see fit.  There are major centers of learning for those who want to expand their mind, pharmaceuticals for the same, employment opportunities, space to hide, space to party, and space to live and love.  Saturn’s famous wide, thin rings stretch from 7,000 km above the clouds, to nearly 80,000 km. More than 60 moons and moonlets orbit Saturn, including Titan, the only satellite in the Solar System with a thick natural atmosphere.

Ringers​

Saturn’s rings are the primary source of water in the system and a great place to go to be alone and contemplate the beauty of the universe.  Ringers forego habs and use vacuum-tolerant morphs to live here, going months without seeing anyone else.  Some ringers are here to hide, but most are just solitary; they look out for each other and protect each other’s privacy.

Gas Mining​

Mining the clouds is also a major business.  Contractors operate automated skimmers or navigate harvester aerostats to extract methane and ammonia from the top of the atmosphere.  Deeper operations dip into Saturn’s depths to return with volatiles and helium-3.  Orbital refineries run by hypercorps like Volkov process the gases and ship them to habitats around the system.

Saturnian Settlements​

Kronos Cluster​

  • Habitat Type: Cluster
  • Allegiance: Independent (Anarchist/Criminal/Ultimate)

Kronos started as an Extropian and anarchist settlement made of tin-can modules and grew to the bursting point after the Fall, when it accepted hundreds of thousands of refugees from Earth. The original settlers found themselves at odds with newly-formed criminal syndicates, and Kronos became a hotbed of the quasi-legal and morally questionable.

Things deteriorated, and the Extropians formed the Kronos Port Authority (KPA), which brought in Ultimate mercenaries to enforce their rules. The Ultimates took over the KPA, and have now forces a detente across the station.

Kronos is now a patchwork of armed neighborhoods. Tourists are drawn to the vices offered, and the KPA makes bank on offering them protective services. The KPA runs a business license protection racket to keep the gangs from getting out of hand. The anarchists keep to themselves, but sometimes conflicts flare up with neighboring groups.

Pandora​

  • Habitat Type: Beehive
  • Allegiance: Independent (Gatekeeper)

Saturn’s outermost shepherd moon is also one of the most studied and trafficked places in the Solar System. The site of the first discovered pandora gate, Pandora has a single major settlement: Gateway. Run by the Gatekeeper Corporation, once a subsidiary of the Commonwealth of Titan but now autonomous, Gateway is the major hub between here and there. Almost every hypercorp and government with any influence has representation here. This mix makes the station a steaming cauldron of cultures, ideologies, hopes, dreams, and ruthless ambitions.

The scum barge Lost in Neverwhere is an excellent supply point for sentinels who need to acquire discrete items. It maintains a semi-permanent orbit around the moonlet, moving only when station security gets sick of their antics.

Meathab​

  • Habitat Type: Biological
  • Allegiance: Independent

When post-Fall postmodernism is no longer enough, artists create projects like Turn Yourself Into a Giant Mass of Space Meat for Art! MeatHab is a living habitat made primarily of vat-grown bacon. Originally intended to be temporary, it attracted a following of anarchists, scum, researchers, and weirdos that squatted the station to bask in the oddness of its veinous, skin-covered corridors. It has even spawned its own religious cult, the Acolytes of Living Meat. By all indications, the mysterious original designer is still present, occasionally playing pranks on its inhabitants.

Bright (Tethys)​

  • Habitat Type: Hamilton Cylinder
  • Allegiance: Independent (Acumenic)

What happens when you stick genius-level egos together in a single hab, provide for their basic needs, and turn them loose on whatever strikes their fancy? You get Bright, a joint hypercorp experiment in commodifying intelligence. Well, it was a joint project until Acumenic pulled a hostile takeover, even pushing Cognite's project lead out an airlock. Now Acumenic is struggling to assert control over the station. At least one part of the habitat has been seized by a group of self-made sociopaths and closed off to outsiders. Bright is housed on a work-in-progress Hamilton cylinder constructed from Tethys’ moon Telesto.

Phelan's Recourse​

  • Habitat Types: Swarm
  • Allegiance: Scum

Known colloquially as Phelan's, this scum flotilla is a waystation between Saturnian civilization and the wilderness beyond; a constant, free-wheeling party where you're just as likely to find yourself blasted out an airlock as you are chasing a high with some of the finest Fall refugees you'll ever meet. While Phelan's is a fine place to pick up some of the greatest mind-altering substances you can ingest, its best export is Phelan's Ma, hands-down the best whiskey in the galaxy unless you happen to have a bottle of 21-year-old PortWood Balvenie. Phelan's swarm cycles between Saturn's moons, making it an excellent place to score intel and make connections.

Salah​

  • Habitat Types: Hamilton Cylinder
  • Allegiance: Independent (Contested)

Salah was conceived by the Al Thani family of Qatar, who heavily financed various efforts to expand into space. Originally intended as a grandiose display of wealth and power, Salah is now seen by many Muslims as an opportunity to bring the ummah together again and give them a place of their own to call home. However, the Al Thani family is working hard to open Salah to Consortium hypercorps, offering them a foothold in the outer system. Already their designs have run counter to the community's wishes.

Salah is a place of faith and tolerance. While many of them follow the teachings of the Prophet, a great many Hindus, some Christians, and some Jewish refugees have been given quarter here. Salah was designed to inspire. Vast parks and green spaces combine with architecture meant to emulate everything from the Hagia Sophia to the Al Haram to Canterbury Cathedral. It is hard not to stand within Salah and feel awe.

Twelve Commons (Epimetheus and Janus)​

  • Habitat Types: Beehive/Cluster/Spheroid/Torus
  • Allegiance: Anarchist

Twelve Commons is a neighborhood of habitats that reside on or near the co-orbital path of the moonlets Epimetheus and Janus. There are now many more than twelve of the original anarchist collectives that formed Twelve Commons. The entire settlements occupies a cloud spread out over 20,000 kilometers. It’s a refuge for scientists, artists, engineers, and writers.

Notable communities include the Do-It-Yourself Shipyards, where the technicians and automated construction facilities delight in taking your ship design from plans to reality; Janus Commons, a 900,000-person habitat full of research labs and experimental theater productions; Long Haul, a collective devoted to liberating infugees and indentures and giving them new morphs; and Small Majesties, a collective of nano-artists.

Profunda (Enceladus)​

  • Habitat Type: Beehive
  • Allegiance: Extropian

Profunda is the largest settlement on Enceladus and famous across the system. On-station government is nearly nonexistent; business is conducted with Extropian legal contracts. The Profunda Corporation is the key interest in mining and refining operations, but it is not the only game in town. Profunda, however, is best known for their premier genetic designers and morph artists. They create everything from custom morphs to neogenetic and chimeric creatures like the winged smart cats popular around the Saturn system. Profunda's Glitter Bloc dominates the market in luxury morph models, providing sleeves to some of the most notorious metacelebrities and socialites.