Bastion in 2600
Bastion was discovered barely a month before the first contact with the Principality. A navigation accident took a scout cutter sideways through a portion of space long believed impossible to navigate. By the time the accident was reversed and recreated, Starfleet was losing the war, and it was recognized that an area of space nearly inaccessible to any ship would be an excellent place to create a refuge.
The navigation data required to enter the Albion Rifts was carefully sequestered from all but the important systems, and, when the last courier ship of refugees was sent through, the data, and the systems on which they resided, were destroyed. Even as Earth burned, the a small, dedicated team of starfleet officers ensured their own deaths rather than allow humanity’s last refuge to fall.
Bastion:
Of the four hundred billions sophonts living within the Solar Confederation’s space at the beginning of the war, only thirty thousand were saved.
The planet of Bastion is the second out from its star, Phoenix, and was the first habitable planet discovered within the Albion Rifts. It is slightly smaller than Earth, drier and colder. The equatorial region fluctuates between a range of 20C - 30C, while the poles dip to a frigid - 80C. As such, most of the inhabitants of the planet inhabit the equator, with density dropping off towards the poles. Three land masses define the planet, and the flora of the planet resembles that of Earth, as did that of many of the planets in the local stellar regions. The city of Starfall is the first of the planet, and still the largest, though the Bastion Refuge Authority has long since moved to the Orbital space station and keelyard Rampart.
Vast automated agricultural and resource extraction facilities dot the temperate regions, and countless smaller farms and homesteads lie in between, and ecological preserves meant to grow what earth fauna was saved back to viable populations through judicious husbanding and cloning fill much of the rest of the planet.
The People of Bastion tend towards fierce loyalty (at least according to the official line,) and much of the Defense Fleet comes from the planet and the orbitals. Also of note in Bastion’s Orbit is the BRAS Cauldron, the vast cloning facility, where the genelines of some of Bastion’s best and brightest are distilled and trained and brought to serve in the Defense fleet.
The Phoenix system has eight planets, and two asteroid belts with asteroids large enough to support belter settlements and homesteads. The first planet closest the sun is a tidally locked ball of toxicity. Some exploitation has occurred, but there are usually easier places to acquire resources than dealing with the surface of Setesh. The first asteroid belt is between it and the second planet, which, as mentioned, is Bastion. The third, just outside the asteroid belt, is cold and windswept, but with a thin, breathable atmosphere. An active terraforming project has been begun, though it’s only in its initial stages, and a small, but significant population lives on its surface. A second asteroid belt lies between the third and fourth planet. The remaining planets are all gas giants of various sizes. They are named, in order, Garibaldi, Hacket, Nnamani, and Cheong. Colonies exist on some of the moons, and there are orbitals that house small populations.
In the centuries since Bastion was colonized, the BRA and various corporate authorities have cautiously explored some of the Rifts, finding a small number of colonizable planets. The two largest, though by no means the only ones, are Chrysanthemum, in orbit of the star Amaterasu and Atlantis in orbit of Utopia.
Factions within BRA space
Though the BRA is nominally the first and final authority on all matters in human space, in actuality, they often butt heads with various Corporate Interests, especially in the deep reaches of space. Both groups also are finding that the threat of alien intrusion is less and less effective to curb the various independence movements that are springing up amongst the belters, and on some of the colony worlds.
The BRA:
The BRA is a military authority headed up by a cabal of admirals and technocrats who officially make every decision regarding humanity. Based on the space station Rampart, the BRA has full control of the largest Keelyards, the Cauldron cloning facilities, and of the agricultural product that feeds much of humanity. They BRA fields, bar none, the largest human fleet, and defend its power jealously. They dutifully patrol the edges of the rifts, as well the edges of the Quarantined systems, places deemed too dangerous for civilians to roam. The BRA itself rarely interferes in the day-to-day life of civilians, instead making decrees that are expected to be enforced by BRA ship-captains. Power of administration is generally devolved to local corporations, though the BRA can take direct control in time of crisis.
The Corporations:
Not a unified power, various corporations view for control of both production and markets in the depths of space. Originally arms of the BRA, most of the corporations officially still pay lip service to BRA authority, but defacto rule their own employees as they wish. Many of the colonies in the belts were established by corporate authorities, populations of indentured servants brought out to exploit the dark, and then left alone once they no longer produced.
The Big Four
Raumfahrzeugfabrik Gesellschaft
[RFFG Voidcraft]
“First Flight, Every Flight”
HQ: Albertberg, Neu Kronstadt Federal Subject, Bastion Planetary Authority, Phoenix System
Fields: Spaceships & components, heavy industry
The necessity of selecting only the best for survival allowed certain Old Earth specialist groups to dominate specific economic sectors in early Bastion, and most of the Confederation’s greatest starship designers had been German. As a result, the early Authority’s ship designers were dominated by the descendants of that coterie of privileged survivors, initially as a state-controlled industrial foundry. With the enactment of the mass-cloning and gene-hybridization programs of the early Phoenix Initiative, the Germanic orientation of RFFG ceased being relevant, but the name remained. Originally a state-owned subsidiary of the BRA, RFFG was eventually privatized in the mid-25th century with the growing demand for private spacecraft and increased volume of civilian intercolonial trade. Nonetheless, it retains tight links with the BRA and is seen as a titan of the military-industrial complex.
While smaller firms compete in the markets for mercenary, survey, and luxury ships, among others, RFFG continues to dominate, as it has for centuries, the mass transit of both goods and people, constructing behemoth haulers purchased by everyone from independents to big names like Ferrous, Truffaut, and Star Partners. Their ships have a reputation for being utterly no-frills, cheap, and impressively reliable over quadrillions of km logged. In particular, their engines and components are prized among exo-colonists and explorers for whom broken equipment would be catastrophic. Two subsidiaries manage high-speed maglev planetbound mass transit solutions, and the ever-popular railgun division. Publicly listed.
Truffaut Hyperluminal, Incorporated
[Truffaut]
“The Logically Derived Exotic Systems Provider”
HQ: Truffaut Corporate Headquarters, Susano’o, Amaterasu System
Fields: FTL, Gravity control, Exotic matter, electronics, robotics, & cloud computing
Truffaut is a rarity among the major corporations in that an AI governing board of directors controls over 50% of the privately-held company. This is seen as a necessity as Truffaut’s core business is the exotic, complex, and delicate work of designing gravity control fields and hyperdrives, which they supply to RFFG, BRA warships, and many other operators. The time-consuming, delicate plasma collection activities and anti-photonic resonant constructors necessary for this are zero-g, high-risk environments in which AI workers are typically far more effective (and radiation-resistant) than humans. The degree of high math involved is not incomprehensible for a human physicist, but AI can be programmed to do the same calculations in a day that would take a human 20 years to learn, and with a substantially lower risk of failure.
Truffaut provides drive components and designs and builds stations and installations, calibrating gravity fields and providing AI technicians specialized in system maintenance. They have a profitable side business in electronics, displays and semiconductor chips for thousands of purposes, from drones to VR and holographics. The corporation’s hyper-computers also allow it to be the largest civilian cloud computing and storage provider, storing and backing up countless exobytes of data for private citizens, corporations, and even the Authority. It is notoriously apolitical despite the constant drama on Chrysanthemum which it orbits, ironically allowing it to gain significant influence. Privately held.
Golden Lotus Commercial-Financial Concern
[Golden Lotus]
“Happy Prosperity Family”
HQ: Kinren Special Planetary Ward, Chrysanthemum Planetary Authority, Amaterasu System
Fields: Banking, financial derivatives, insurance, reinsurance, & high-end real estate
Despite rumored links to the Chrysanthemum yakuza, Golden Lotus’ careful expansion strategy was rewarded in the wake of the 2589 financial crisis, when it was able to acquire several struggling but more prestigious Phoenix banks, becoming the largest commercial entity in both market cap and assets throughout human space. The bank maintains its own state within a state, including a private security force with a fleet stronger than most colonial militaries, and several private cities with every possible amenity, from food to culture to entertainment, for its citizen-employees. Despite suspicion of Golden Lotus’ questionable past and its ruthless tactics against any perceived rivals, the Bastion Refuge Authority has avoided acting against the bank thus-far. This is because it is one of the only financial entities powerful enough to finance and insure Authority-critical megaprojects, such as space elevators, major civilian stations, and new colony foundations. Golden Lotus notably insured and wrote off the entire loss of Athens at no cost to the Authority, which won it major influence in the corridors of power.
The bank is not exactly “popular,” especially among belters who often fail to get loans or have their entire stations foreclosed on by a Golden Lotus warship bristling with weapons due to missing their repayments. Consequently, the bank often operates through a web of re-branded subsidiaries in smaller outposts who are nonetheless ultimately owned by Golden Lotus through a labyrinthine network of shell companies. Golden Lotus recently helped finance the data infrastructure for the Ether-Bourse, a remarkable achievement which uses FTL communication along quantum entanglement principles to update market data simultaneously in the major stock exchanges of Bastion, Chrysanthemum and Atlantis, with future links planned. Privately held.
Ashkenazi, Canticle, Torres & Liu LLP
[Star Partners]
“Your Partners in the Stars!”
HQ: None
Fields: Colonial planning & management, terraforming, surveying, legal and security services
While the BRA tightly regulates certain aspects of civilian life, it is relatively hands-off regarding property ownership and civil disputes if there is no compelling public or military interest. Nonetheless, there was a vast need to both survey and stake claims, as well as manage property transfers and inheritances, civil suits and boundary disputes. The early days of the 2400s land rush resulted in often-violent conflicts as various settler-clone groups sought to stake the best claims on both rich mining regions and the biosphere planets, by force if necessary. An enterprising AI, Tenebrous Canticle, and its partner Lev Ashkenazi ultimately provided a popular open-source database that sent out drones to auto-survey unclaimed land and appropriately parcel it out according to BRA regulations, for a small fee. This ended up ballooning into a full-scale colony administration operation, with Ashkenazi & Canticle (Torres and Liu bought in later) handling all the legal, administrative, and planning operations, their customizable “colony in a box” allowing you, yes you, to design, plan, and pay for your very own colony with just a few clicks.
Star Partners is an independent legal partnership that does not “own” any of the colonies it surveys and builds, thus absolving it of legal responsibility if (when) terrible things happen, and franchises most of its colony ships, but it provides an easy, safer way for people to start a new life while taking care of the thousands of logistical hassles that go into starting a colonial operation. This has also made it one of the largest landowners of unoccupied colonial land outside of the BRA, although they don’t do anything with the land beyond holding it and marketing it to future customers. Ultimately the operation realized it needed to create more attractive land than it had, so it began investing in terraforming services at scale. For a small additional fee, Star Partners also offers its security contractors to protect new colonies from natural and unnatural hazards of all types.
The glossy informational brochures and “big-box” approach to colonization used by Star Partners are often derided by independent colonists and wildcatters, but their services are immensely popular among middle-class people without specialist skills, as colonization is often subtly promoted by the BRA as a “patriotic” alternative to military and public service. Middle-aged humans in their 60s to 80s beginning to grow tired of Bastion and Chrysanthemum’s crowded cities are the typical target demographic. Publicly listed.
The "Medium 15":
This somewhat derogatory name refers to corporations that, while lacking the truly massive scope and ubiquitous presence of the Big Four, are still highly relevant leaders in the interstellar economy of human space. Each of the 15 are often in competition with (or allied to) one of the Big Four, as well as a vast array of hundreds of smaller ankle-biting rivals. Unlike the Big Four, the list of companies in the Medium 15 (and the number) changes every few decades with mergers, acquisitions, and occasionally violent corp-wars. All have at minimum a multi-stellar presence with small to medium-sized private fleets at their disposal. They cannot flaunt BFA regulations with as much impunity as the Big Four do, either, so they typically try to curry favor by toeing the party line and keeping their more illegal activities private.
Ferrous Corp.: Mining and extraction
Home Bao: Agribusiness, agricultural bioengineering, food production, genetics
Cantilever Incorporated: Engineering, architecture, and construction
Kovacs-Klein: Luxury transport (personal vehicles, planetary and space yachts), hotels
Cormorant: High-end combat and stealth spacecraft, precision and exotic weaponry
Wakizashi: Private military contractor, security services (high-end)
Söze: Private military contractor, security services, information security (mid-range)
Aldrin Enterprises: Surveying, exploration, and security services (budget-range), ship/station maintenance and repair
Elysian Entertainment: VR gaming, casinos, live entertainment venues, pornography & prostitution
Cachet: Fashion, design, landscaping and aesthetics
Asclepius, Ltd.: Hospitals, emergency medical services, personal cloning and anti-aging
Zetian: Industrial cloning, bioengineering, genetics, anti-aging and pharmaceuticals
Bastion Federal Credit Union: Banking & credit services, insurance, investment strategies
Alhambra: Real estate, construction, network services, media
Placeholder: Civilian and personal AI design, construction, and customization, drones and robotics
The Belters and the Independence Movements:
The independence movements are not an official power, and are not a unified one. The Belters Union of Bastion is the only central authority that the BRA recognizes, though not as a rival power, but as an interface with the often rambunctious belters. Belter colonies are each as different from each other as the next, and, though they occasional come together to present petitions or to save each other, most are wary of swearing any kind of fealty or subservience to anything but their own self-sufficiency, and, for the most part, the BRA is content to let the belters organize and rule themselves. More concerning for the BRA and for the various corporations are the rumblings of discontent from the colonies. Chrysanthemum, in particular, has slowly become the breadbasket of the BRA, and the rumors of discontent are being heeded.
The Races of Man:
The word “humanity” in BRA space has come to mean more than simply Homo Sapiens. Advances in genetic technology and computer science meant that, in the 22nd century, humanity’s definition grew to include both sapient AIs and a number of uplifted species.
Uplifted Species:
Bonobos:
The first species uplifted were chimpanzees in the late 21st century in a series of unethical experiments by a group of scientists sponsored by a transhumanist terrorist organization. By the time the Federal Authorities shut down the labs and broken up the terrorist networks, the cat was out of the bag, and Bonobos took their place alongside humanity, quickly joining all walks of life, from ship’s captains to scientist to artists. A Bonobo is not human, though they are the closest of the uplifts, and their mindset is slightly different.
Otters:
Otters were uplifted by the Dromedary Group, a resource extraction mega-conglomerate on old earth, as a workforce to help build and work in underwater areas not easily reachable by human employees (and, some rumors at the time stated, a vanity project for the CEO of the company, who liked the idea of playing God - something he achieved, since Otters tend towards religious fanaticism and have since diefied him.) Otters tend towards sociability and obedience, though, of course, there are exceptions to every rule. Otter colonies tend to be cramped, tight quarters with a high level of humidity. Otters are all named after one of the fifty first uplifts, named holy names by the humans that named them. These names include Picklepaws, Tiddlywinks, and Furrybottom. Most otters take a nickname to distinguish them from their peers.
Raptors:
Raptors were a true Vanity project in the waning days of the Earth, a pet project by one of the biologists chosen to save earthlife in the exodus. Raptors were an attempt to recreate by way of birds dinosaurs, a project to preserve both earth’s biological past as well as it’s present. The result was an intelligent predatory species, and, though very few in number, most often found in the BRA’s Security force and space command.
Geckos:
In the years before first contact a series of anti-human pseudo-cults arose throughout human space, arguing that our failure as stewards of the planet (pointing to the ravaging of the amazon in the 21st centuryand the melting of the icecaps in the 22nd) meant that it was time for other species to step up to the plate. While many of their experimental uplifts failed, some sympathizers did manage to sneak a few hundred promising frozen fertilized eggs onto the exodus fleet. Their caretaker was found and executed while plotting to destroy one of the ships and his samples wound up preserved for future study after Bastion was established. There they wound up lost in the bueacratic nightmare that was the early colonial years, got mixed into the samples of earthlife, and eventually got sent to the Biology department of the newly-established University of Atlantis. There they were grown and, to the surprise of the entire department, proved to not be some geckos modified to thrive in low temperature environments like the official paperwork said, but rather fully sapient gecko-folk with extensive modifications to make them capable of using human technology. The rest of the eggs were hatched and a small colony of geckofolk were established as part of the University, being viewed as something of pets or mascots by the faculty.
Corvids:
Scientists generally found it easiest to uplift species that already had an ingrained social structure. As such, Crows were one of the first sanctioned uplifts by Solar Confederation Scientists, and one of those that required the most modification from their parent species. Corvidae Sapiens, or Corvids, as they are called, stand at 4 feet tall, have small, dextrous hands mid-way down their wings, and, though they are not able to fly more than fifty yards, they can use their large wings to glide long distances. Many Corvids long for the skies, finding themselves in the BRA as pilots, navigators, and starfighter aces.
Maren
Of the species that were uplifted, some were done for art, others as projects of vanity and pique, playthings of a society drunk with its own power over life. But pound-for-pound, the majority of the species that were modified were done for banal purposes of service.
Hymenopteran insects were a point of particular interest, as understanding of the nature of swarm intelligence came to be better understood throughout the 21st and 22nd centuries. In light of both this knowledge and a revolution in genetic modification, the idea of directing swarms of hiving insects became too much to resist.
There were many independent origins for uplifted ants (with 'serve-ant' puns aplenty), though the modern term 'Maren' is regarded to have emerged as a loanword from Mandarin 'Mǎyǐ rén'. Many of these organisms were designed with with cybernetic interfaces, to allow for their control and direction by human masters. They were engineered in myriad shapes and sizes, for different purposes: maintenance, cleaning, construction and the like. While each individual is seemingly mindless, swarm intelligence interfaces allow for subtle hormonal and behavioural controls which allow for the enaction of complex orders and directions. Feedback systems allow for the emergence of a shared will of the colony, which approximates an alien kind of collective sentience. Those who communicate with these systems often refer to the entity as the 'queen', although this is a misnomer: the actual queen of the colony is a birthing machine no more intelligent than any one of the drones.
Naturally, biohackers also found great interest in insect engineering, creating races of saboteurs, vandals, or fearsome roving bands. Bioengineering arms races saw most Maren equipped with countermeasures, which generally keep such rogue hives suppressed.
Other Uplifts
Old Earth had dozens of other uplifted species, but either not enough of them survived to escape to Bastion, or their population on Bastion were too small, and are now considered extinct. There are always rumors of dolphin populations in the seas of Bastion, but those only that, rumors.
