Guidebook to Installations of The Jovian Confederation - Chapter 1

These articles from the old EXO webzine are, without a doubt, some of the best pieces of fan work I've seen for JC. Especially considering that these were published before the Jovian planetbook (or much of anything else) came out. I've decided to keep them in the original format because it just looked so good. I'll be posting a chapter every day or two until it's complete

by Jason M Robertson

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Circling Ganymede, and nestled amongst the Jovian Trojan asteroids, are some of the greatest concentrations of human engineering in history. This is both a blessing, and a logistical curse. On one hand, virtually all of the colonies in a given Jovian state are within a matter of hours of each other, even using shuttles with inexpensive remass and low delta-vee. It also means that these areas of space are very crowded. Jovian traffic control needs continue to be a driving influence on the requirements of computer science. More troubling are the difficulties the JAF perceives in defending these tight clusters. There is simply nowhere to retreat to, no ground to be given. If an enemy takes the Clusters, the colonies are easy targets. Still, most Jovians accept these risks readily. At one time these clusters may have swarmed together for fear, but now they do so out of camaraderie and defiance of the fears of a new solar system. Vanguard Mountain, Olympus and Newhome no longer huddle in the night, but stand tall beside the glory of their works.

Jovian life make certain that the net flow of goods is out of Olympus. The real answer is that the factories might as well be anywhere, but space construction is still largely a human activity. Once in place near population centers there is rarely any incentive to move them. Space is large, but Olympian industry is immense and self-sustaining. The wild abandon with which new factories are set loose into the vicinity of the cluster is a constant headache for traffic controllers. Certain members of the Agora continue to push for stronger space zoning regulations, but as of this time commercial interests have succeeded in defeating these initiatives. Inter-colony transportation is a constant concern. While it is rare for the average citizen to need, or want, to travel between colonies, the sheer size of the population assures a robust need for transport. Unlike the Orbitals, very few stations in Olympus use any sort of ‘free-ride' transportation. The varied nature of early colony construction, and the ever cautious Jovian mind has led to the near universal adoption of powered shuttles as the inter-colony transport method of choice. This system is well developed. It is possible to reach any of the major Olympian colonies within thirty-six hours notice, the majority of which is waiting for a scheduled departure. If a ship is chartered the trip can be as short as an hour or as long as five. Being the largest of the Jovian states, and sitting astride the core of the Hanson Circuit, Olympus has by far the largest cargo-handling capacity of the Confederation states. Some of the largest cargo yards rival small vivariums in size.

Where the traffic problems of Olympus are artificial, Vanguard Mountain shares the natural asteroid hazards of the Jovian Lagrange points with Newhome. Vanguard Mountain tackled the problems of this unique environment with gusto, creating a colonization scheme that is every bit the equal of the Olympian endeavor, yet under harsher circumstances. Despite the challenges this scheme was successful, not even the most arrogant Olympian can scoff at the works of Vanguard Mountain. Vanguard Mountain is something of a contradiction. Only slightly behind Olympus in constructing its first cylinder, the native population did not experience the same dramatic boom as Olympus. As a result cylinder construction was delayed until the arrival of refugees from in-system. Instead of building full-fledged cylinders, the planners of Vanguard Mountain intended a more even population mix between those living in other sorts of habitats and the vivarium cylinders so popular amongst the Olympians. Once the refugees began to arrive the issue was decided forcibly in favor of vivariums. The sheer number of refugees, and the high proportion of them who had little to no experience in microgravity, made the terrestrial conditions of vivariums imperative. Several colony cylinder frames were taken out of mothballs when the refugees arrived and completed with only minor logistical problems.

Between the construction of Vanguard Mountain itself, and the arrival of the refugees from Earth, many experimental habitation systems were built. Given the environment of the Trojans most of these revolved around asteroids. There were a number of partially successful attempts to hollow out asteroids, pressurize them, and spin them up. Most of these experiments produced habitable stations, but accelerations approaching one gee could not be maintained. Most of the Trojan asteroids proved to be too weak to sustain the rate of rotation needed to produce normal gravity. Many of these colonies are still used and the inhabitants suffer from Lightworlder limitations. The existence of this population makes Vanguard Mountain one of the premiere locations for treating low-gravity syndromes, and several treatments have found application to other illnesses.

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Vanguard Mountain is littered with the remains of experiments that failed more thoroughly than the asteroid colonies. More than a dozen exotic experiments, Bernal spheres and even more speculative constructs, can be found about the cluster and make great tactical or role-playing sets.

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Now that Vanguard Mountain is committed to the vivarium path, it is taking a route very different from Olympus. The first wave of stations are indeed very similar to Elysèe. After that, everything changes. Nearly all of the second-generation stations in Vanguard Mountain are of a hybrid agricultural/industrial design. Instead of using a factory spine, most of these stations have a tethered asteroid which serves as both anchor and factory complex. While very convenient for most heavy industrial applications, this system has several drawbacks. The tethering system is almost always very complex, and effectively renders one end of the station useless for normal docking. Furthermore, the mass of an asteroid large enough to be worth anchoring to is likely to be large enough so that the microgravity environment is much less than perfect. Consequently Vanguard Mountain is not known as a major exporter of high-grade microgravity products.Life in Vanguard Mountain comes from the asteroids, and is governed by them. The Lagrange point is much like a tumbler full of rocks. Nothing is ever quite at rest with respect to its neighbors, and this can create some complicated navigational issues. Like the Olympians, the citizens of Vanguard Mountain are strongly committed to using only powered means of inter-colony transit. Unlike them the schedules and frequency of such runs are much less predictable. While a map of Olympus would show a neat and ordered line of cylinders in a single stable orbit, no map of Vanguard Mountain can last for long. The residents of this state tend to spend that much more time in their own cylinder, and travel much less frequently. Another consequence of this chaos is the near complete lack of free-floating autofacs. Olympus has the luxury of placing them where they will, but Vanguard Mountain must carefully plan physically linked factory platforms to keep the number of objects that need tracking and course adjustment to a minimum. Even with these measures the operable lifespan of an autofac in Vanguard Mountain is much shorter than one in Olympus. Micro meteor impacts degrade performance, and in some cases output quality. This is a strong contributing factor to the popularity of asteroid factories.

Aside from these peripheral concerns, asteroids also pose a very real collision danger. Even Jovian computer science cannot solve the complex gravitational puzzle that is the Trojan asteroid group, and sometimes objects have to be moved. As a result Vanguard Mountain possesses an unusually large number of craft with reinforced bows for pushing asteroids. Additionally, JAF forces are occasionally asked to destroy mid-sized targets. For the largest of offending asteroids it is not uncommon for a group of Nomads to be subcontracted to install massdrivers or ion engines on the object, and propel it out of the cluster. These Nomads will often colonize the asteroid, using Jovian equipment to make larger, better facilities faster than their own equipment could. Intermarriage, and simple friendship, sometimes result in Jovian coworkers joining these clans. This is a rare, but recognized mode of immigration into Nomad society.

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Reports of some sort of combat activity in the upper Belt abound, and the JAF is mounting an expedition to investigate. The cruiser JSS Durandal will lead a three ship exploratory division. On arrival the Player Characters will find themselves in the midst of a small war. A long retired JAF officer has joined a Nomad clan, one which has become entangled with CEGA over mining claims. The brilliant and charismatic officer will ask for the PCs' help. Without them he will inevitably loose to the superior CEGA force. The PCs must decide if they will jeopardize the peace to assist him. If they choose not to they must still decide if they will leave the clan to be killed, or evacuate them forcibly.

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The people of Newhome are grateful to Olympus, and were among the most enthusiastic proponents of confederation. Nevertheless, it has too long been their lot to scrape by, to survive on the charity of others. Now that Newhome is a secure and prosperous state its citizens hope to make up for lost time. Working from homes even more cramped than the average Jovian's, architects, engineers and ecological designers are planning an entire new generation of breathtakingly ambitious colony cylinders. Newhome feels that its day has come. While not all Jovians share this analysis, few are willing to discount it, if only because of the vast determination and goodwill the Newhomers have manifested. The future is a whole new world. No one knows the importance of logistics better than a Newhomer. Along with stories of the arrival of Alfred Decker, tales of heroic efforts to tap new resources, reduce overhead, and streamline operations hold a legendary stature in the youngest of the Jovian states. Each and every citizen is constantly aware of his duty to preserve and conserve. This tendency shows throughout the society of Newhome. When faced with housing a growing native population and a flood of refugees, Newhome met the challenge with the best that its limited resources to muster. Still, the results were disappointingly spartan, and Newhome would teeter on the brink of disaster for decades. While construction teams furiously opened up temporary living space inside asteroids, occasionally resorting to the desperate measure of nuclear mining charges, other teams struggled to construct the first vivariums. There were no giant leaps like Elysèe; Newhome could not afford elaborate plans. Once the manual factories making vivarium elements produced enough material to enclose a viable ecosystem, the colony was sealed and populated as fast as possible. The first of these colonies were barely habitable. The gravity was low, the Coriolis force strong, and the internal ecology constantly on the brink of breakdown. By the time Alfred Decker arrived, more than a dozen of these miserable hovels in space had been built, barely matching population growth. Within three years the first Jovian autofacs arrived, and Newhome began building Elysèe-style cylinders. The hard times were not yet over, but the edge of danger had gone out of the colonists' lives. As Newhome breathed a collective sigh of relief, it clung to the tried and true Elysèe design. Over the span of decades, as the crisis eased, it began to import other variations, the agricultural stations of the Olympian second-generation, and the smaller variations of the asteroid-tethered cylinders from Vanguard Mountain. Many Newhome citizens now live in comfort comparable to the citizens of the other states. Unfortunately it has not been possible to abandon the first cylinders. More than twenty million Newhomers live in these cylinders, where conditions have been only slightly better. The Newhome government hopes that the two-pronged third-generation colonization program will finally allow the evacuation of these near-slums. For the first time Newhome is designing its own cylinders, and they look like nothing else the Confederation has ever seen. The more conventional of the two new cylinder types is a massive vivarium, pushing the envelope of materials science. It will be nearly sixty kilometers long when finished, and the habitable surface will have a radius of five and a half kilometers. Many experts in the Confederation doubt that Newhome can succeed in this endeavor. Less controversial is the H-Class project, a much smaller pair of cylinders serving a civilian shipyard. (This design will be covered in more detail in the chapter on High Syracuse.) Newhome faces many of the same challenges of infrastructure as Vanguard Mountain. What is different is how the colony chose to face these issues. Newhome was forced to take a less proactive role, distancing outposts from danger for the simple lack of the resources to divert the dangers. This response has the serious drawback of placing those very resources farther from the people who can use them. As a result many of the new cylinders have adopted approaches modeled on the example of Vanguard Mountain, and are returning to the thick of things. Colonies with a less industrial bent may prefer to associate themselves more with the first wave of vivariums.

Of all the Jovian states, Newhome is the only one with a clear physical distribution of cylinders according to role. Stations from the original outpost operate close to large asteroids, as do the most recent industrial stations. Older stations and agricultural stations skirt the periphery of the Lagrange point's stable area. While travel costs between cylinders are technically set by the government, most merchants choose to reduce passenger space and amenities dramatically on flights between ‘neighborhoods.' The result is a divided community that continues to worry the civic leaders of Newhome. Autofacs are still relatively rare in Newhome, and over ninety percent of them are dedicated to the production of new colony cylinders. Many of these installations are attached to a particular asteroid from which they draw resources. This niche is comparable to that filled by the colony-tethered asteroids in Vanguard Mountain. Many Newhome workers will spend considerable time assigned to one of these autofacs.