Lore

Prelude
In 2246, a pioneering group of several thousand set off from Earth on the Arvad, a generational ship, bound for a system 14 light years away with an identified, habitable planet waiting for them. A dying Earth, and the only slightly more palatable prospect of a difficult life on an overcrowded Mars, had left their journey as one of the only remaining options.

On the way out of the Solar System, while passing through the extreme outer reaches of the Oort Cloud, and in an incredibly poor stroke of luck, their ship passed within 100,000 kilometers of a previously unidentified dark and icy exoplanet. The significant gravitational perturbation pushed them well off-course, and with limited excess fuel to re-adjust, eliminated their prospects of reaching their initial destination.

An emergency meeting was called, and the decision made to target a new system within their reduced range. It had five planets, and although there was no certainty any of them were habitable, it was their only chance to avoid effectively drifting until their reactors gave out.

Arrival
Nearly 150 years later, the pioneers' grandchildren completed their long deceleration burn and arrived in their system of refuge, Adalia. However, initial jubilation was rapidly tempered as each of their five scan probes returned from surveying the planets, Adalia A through E, reporting hostile, uninhabitable environments on each.

As a last resort, they turned towards the asteroid belt situated between Adalia B and C. After a quick scan there appeared to be roughly a quarter million asteroids over 1km in diameter. The pioneers placed themselves in orbit around a large asteroid, TG-29980 "Adalia Prime", and decided to allow the pioneers to purchase mineral rights to the individual asteroids.

Additionally, to encourage rapid development and exploitation, all scan probes on-board were to be made available to the new prospectors.

Exploitation
With a better understanding of the resource abundance across the belt, the prospectors moved out to begin extraction. Mines were established, metals, volatiles, and organic materials were pulled from the ground, and burgeoning supply chains started.

Before long, certain asteroids were developing into specialized manufacturing centers. The entire surface of some were covered in factories receiving regular shipments from across the system.

Market hubs also sprung up along major trade routes facilitating a stabilization in the economy and making more than one fortune.

Discovery
Earth was 150 years behind them, but technological progress had largely halted during the journey with no impetus for advancement within their self-contained vessel.

With the pioneers' future now increasingly secure, as settlements began maturing, they looked towards a higher quality of life. Increased automation was allowing for more and more time to be set aside to the pursuit of higher learning, and with it, the potential for scientific and technological breakthroughs.

New ship designs, novel propulsion methods taking advantage of the asteroid's near zero-G environments, and more efficient processing and manufacturing methods became their primary focus. They would establish Adalia as a home, and not just a refuge.

Coronado - Merchant


Coronado had set out on his own after the Arrival in hopes of discovering riches within the outer belt. However, after some years of trying to strike it rich, he had found that he was more successful at the facilitation of trade. He now concentrated his business near the inner circle where most commerce happened and had set up a small shop of rare antiquities on DL-19320.

Coronado’s family had been part of the crew on the ship that brought all of the original pioneers to Adalia in the hope of a better future. Although he was the last living member of his family, the benefits of some of the old relationships from the Arvad crew still had their perks. Over the years, many of the Arvad had been dismantled and its parts scattered as the pioneers had expanded their reach throughout the belt. Coronado had his connections and was able to get his hands on some of the fuel reactor materials and communications components. This was not strictly legal, but with influential friends in high places and some bribes here and there, he operated without much issue. However, on trade expeditions, it was not uncommon to be boarded by some of the unsavory pirates that make their living preying on ships moving in some of the less protected parts of the belt.

It was better to strike a deal with them and pay them off than it was to die, so he paid his “taxes” and was typically left unscathed.

Tatiana Keil - Citizen (By Matthew A DeBarth)
Titania stood on the starboard observation deck of the generational ship Arvad, watching the slowly growing curve of their new home slide into view from behind them as they finished their deceleration burn.

She hadn’t even been born when her grandparents had set out from a dying Earth and an already overcrowded Solar System on this long voyage; hadn’t been born yet when it had all gone so very wrong, before they had even reached the relative safety of the vast emptiness of interstellar space.

Her family had been on this ship, on this voyage, for 150 years now. All four of her pioneering grandparents and her born-aboard mother had not lived long enough to see it through to its end.

And now they were finally here—not where they had originally set out for, certainly, but just as certainly where they would all remain. Remain until they and their children and their children’s children had all died of old age in turn. They couldn’t go any further, and they certainly couldn’t go back. They were here in Adalia, and they were alone.

And as she looked out onto her new home, she was feeling like just about the most useless person in the whole Adalia star system. In this unforgiving survival economy, everyone needed a job, and she had dutifully trained for hers her whole adult life.

She was the Arvad’s Chief Hydrologist—an expert on rivers, lakes, and oceans—and she was watching the Arvad pull into orbit around the dry and barren asteroid called Adalia Prime. Out of the five completely uninhabitable planets in the system, only one had an ocean. Not an ocean of water, no: a boiling, acidic ocean comprised of a poisonous slurry of chemicals.

She frowned. It would be a new way of life for her. For all of them. Not a ship life, nor a planet life. A life on thousands of separate tiny asteroids, spinning and tumbling beneath the eternal, endless night sky.

She could be anything in this new world. Well, anything but what she already was, at least...

Scott Allen - Miner (By Matthew A DeBarth)
Scott sat in his chair at the big circular table in the Arvad’s Prime Council chambers, still working on his notes long after the meeting had been adjourned and everyone else had left.

Well, he thought of it as his chair, but the name plaque in front of him still had “Titania Keil, Chief Hydrologist” written on it, whoever that was. Scott, a pragmatist, didn’t know and he didn’t care. She was off the Prime Council; he was on it. As soon as the planetary scans had come back, everyone stopped caring about liquid water overnight, and his knowledge had gone from being of only minor importance to vital for their survival.

Scott Allen was a fourth generation asteroid miner, great-grandson of the man who had dedicated his life to turning the asteroid belt of the Solar System into the vast generational ships that had fled out into interstellar space in every direction. His name had also been Scott Allen, and Scott had been named after him. It had been Allen-mined ore, ice, and fissiles that had built the Arvad herself, from her massive hull all the way down to the very chair that Scott Allen the Younger now sat in. His mandate had been expanded from the minor orbital infrastructure needed to build the occasional satellite to...well, everything, really.

All they had were asteroids, and that was what they were going to have to use.

Teams of volunteers had been pouring over the data coming in from teams manning the Arvad’s scanners in shifts around the clock. Out of the roughly quarter million asteroids in the belt between the orbits of planets B and C, plus the two Trojan groups orbiting in lockstep with C itself, the teams had identified between ten and twelve thousand of the most promising asteroids. They wouldn’t know for sure what they had until they had scanned them fully, but at least it was a start.

Scott had been intensely training his crew mates and advising them on which asteroids to target. It was vital to have as many asteroid miners ready to start work on as many asteroids as possible. They were in a race against time, a race for survival.

Orbital mechanics was a fine art, and even the Arvad’s navigators would struggle to assess the swirling mass of thousands of individual orbits. It had more in common with a whirlpool than the Arvad’s orderly flight plan.

But Scott had been raised to this by his father and his grandfather, and his grandfather had learned it following the original Scott Allen in the days when the art of asteroid mining had first been perfected.

He’d turn this crew into a workforce of hardworking miners.

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A New Alliance