The Sol Consortium’s solar system-spanning society has finally started to thrive in the post-war boom economy. Infrastructure has nearly finished its rapid rebuild thanks to the leaps in energy, construction, and travel technology brought on by the war. Colonies find supply chains returning after years or even decades of struggling self-survival. Humanity is recovering—flourishing, but in the haste to recover corners have been cut and morals have been set aside. Humanity owes its survival to the Big Four, but in that desperation to persevere has humanity sacrificed to much too the machine of capitalism?
Corporations prop up the post-war government, filling its positions with executives and CEOs. Mega-Conglomerates run the media and fund the military. Humanity survives because capitalism needs a consumer base.
Earth and her brother Mars are called the Heart Worlds of the Consortium. Life on these worlds is cutting edge and comfortable. The first places in Sol to recover in the post war era, they’ve flourished from resources poured in from the outer system. With only 30% of humanity on Mars and 20% percent on Earth, these two worlds have become almost paradise like.
Wartime mass exodus combined with post-war immigration restrictions has left Earth as a wealthy corporate protectorate reserved almost exclusively for the upper middle class or higher. Much of the planet has crumbled back into the wilderness with only pockets of cutting edge cities dotting key locations, rebuilt in the aftermath of the war.
Mars expands daily, its people and governing council of construction corporations characterized by their love of industry and growth. The planet is nearly 40% terraformed and there is an ongoing citizenry program open to any aspiring frontiersmen or women.
Venus, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus are considered reclaimed worlds in Sol. In the pre-war era the Sol Federation was said to extend even past Pluto, but during the Phage Invasion large chunks of human knowledge about the true edges of humanity have been lost. The Consortium is still rediscovering lost or dead colonies and outposts near the dangerous Kuiper Belt Perimeter.
Much of the populations of these Reclaimed worlds exist on moon colonies or asteroid outposts. Life in these places has been extremely rugged and even deadly for the last century. Many have only recently reestablished regular and trusted supply chains or contact with the heart worlds. Many empty husks, struck down by the Phage Invasion itself or the slow starvation of destroyed shipping and supply lines around Sol during the war.
If a Reclaimed World community isn’t an established military base outpost but instead perhaps a left over supply chain stop, they are often harsh and a touch lawless. The only Astral Section enforcement being drones or the rare patrolling Dispatcher and Enforcer pair there to mediate disputes or enforce rules.
The first hope for humanity turned last bastion of survival. The LaGrange colonies make up 40% of humanity in the Sol Consortium. Each LaGrange point hosts a large cluster of space colonies within equilibrium with Earth’s Orbit. Humanities oldest forays into space, these colonies range from ancient derelict Bernal Spheres so over built and under maintained that only the poorest of worker or richest of criminal remains on them, to beautiful post-war era Standford Torus rings full of lush vegetation and bread belt like farming.
Born during the war-effort and preserved through the necessity of post-war survival, Corporate Manufactories are massive ‘Company Towns’ created at various resource rich locations within the Sol Consortium. These manufactories exist entirely as closed societies where you are an employee to the corporation first and a human only as an after thought. All manpower rigidly regulated and controlled, often stripped of names or personal identity beyond job and skills.
These company assets are fed, clothed, and lodged and allowed to exist in a world where they need not think, act, or worry for themselves, so long as they continue to preform as expected at the tasks assigned. Corporate manufactories are responsible for almost all refineries, smelteries, gas giant farming, and large outfit ore mining. Manufactories are a respected, well regulated, and seen as a backbone to the survival of the Sol Consortium as far as Government interest is concerned.
Public opinion ranges from jealousy to pity and everything between for the ‘company assets’ that work inside these manufactories.