New Horizons Lunar Colony
The first off-world colony to be formed was the New Horizons lunar colony in 2045. Originally the site of a strip mining operation, it soon became a staging area for missions to neighboring planets. As the space exploration era hit its stride, the Moon colony ballooned in size. Anyone with prospects in space were moving to New Horizons.
Initially, with so many governments trying to get a piece of the Moon, very little was properly regulated. Communities sprang up and sprawled without rhyme or reason, spilling around the strip mining sites and shipyards, up and down craters, and eventually stacked top to bottom as it became easier to build up than out. This led to poorly planned neighborhoods and improper or, in most cases, nonexistent zoning considerations.
For hundreds of years, people migrated to the Moon in droves. When distant space travel became less expensive and local resources were exhausted, New Horizons’ industries began drying up. While once it was the place to be, it had become a slum populated by struggling businesses and an increasingly destitute population.
While major corporations still maintain offices and work sites on the Moon, no one seriously views the Moon as a money-making opportunity anymore. It’s the sad place you layover while waiting for a flight out to a proper colony like Mars or Venus.
The Lost Flotilla
All Sovereign Colonies military ships use the prefix CMS, which stands for Colonial Military Ship. The ship type describes the ship’s purpose while the classification indicates what version and hull type the ship uses. The class is the model of the ship as determined by the criteria listed in the chart below. The UIC is the Unit Identification Code, which serves as a permanent identification of the ship. lore_ce.csv
CMS Roanoke
Type: Orbital Command Platform
Classification: Command Ship (LCC 24)
Class: UD-24
UIC: 11267
Alias: Overlord
The Roanoke is an orbital station with limited propulsion capabilities. It acted as the operational hub for the ships in orbit. It has external carriages to allow shuttles to dock. It is from here that planetside researchers arrived and departed. The facilities include the command center, shuttle maintenance/refueling bays, and facilities and sleeping quarters for the command staff and visiting researchers. In the center of the ship is a saucer-shaped tactical bridge that was used to strategically mastermind the mission. The Roanoke is for space only—no planetary travel.
CMS Terra Nova
Type: Mass Driver
Classification: Auxiliary Deep-Space Transport (ADT 60)
Class: CL-13
UIC: 30692
Alias: The Luv Boat
The Terra Nova was responsible for ferrying cargo and ships long distances through deep space. It has a somewhat cramped bridge up front with limited crew accommodations for the flight crew upstairs. The cargo docking area has a manned control room used to guide docking ships and operate the cargo loading mechanisms. Running along the top of the ship’s spine is a conning tower that also functions as a second bridge and lookout area with accommodations underneath for the cargo and engineering crew. Mass drivers are for space only—no planetary travel.
CMS Brusilov
Type: Heavy Cruiser
Classification: Mine Countermeasures (MCM 397)
Class: M-422
UIC: 50172
Alias: The Comeback Kid
To keep the research operation safe, the Brusilov was deployed to watch over the other ships. It isn’t a massive warship like the USM Valor from DS1. Instead it is focused on long-range detection of incoming ships. It is equipped with long-range missile defenses as its primary deterrent with short-range reactionless mass cannons for close-range combat. It also has a mine-deployment bay that it used to deploy space mines across the entire armada when the government sent the kill order to mission control. Aside from the weaponry, the Brusilov has crew accommodations that are significantly less comfortable than those found on the other ships. The ship is for space only—no planetary travel.
CMS Greely
Type: Modified Light Frigate
Classification: Experimental Auxiliary Research Ship (AGXR 1)
Class: XC-1
UIC: 10012
Alias: Think Tank
The Greely was used for researching the alien artifacts and planet samples brought up via the cargo shuttles. It has a cargo bay for artifacts and a docking area for cargo shuttles. Aside from the analysis areas, the ship has crew quarters and standard facilities for long-term accommodations. Clearance aboard the research vessels was highly restricted. The Greely was a short-range ship capable of planet to planet flights but was not meant for extra-solar travel. The ship was meant for space operations only—no planetary travel.
CMS Crozier
Type: Personnel Carrier
Classification: Auxiliary Troop Transport (JHSV 792)
Class: CTS-OTSL-13
UIC: 74014
Alias: The Hellivator
One of the smallest ships, the Crozier was for transporting researchers and soldiers to and from the facilities on Tau Volantis’s planet’s surface. It was built to withstand the heat of entering the atmosphere and has refillable booster jets to escape the planet’s atmosphere as well as smaller maneuver jets for space operations. It was meant for short-range travel to and from the planet.
Tau Volantis
Tau Volantis is a planet roughly three-quarters the size of Earth in the HR 8799 system. It is an Earth-like planet apparently undergoing a long ice age. The planet is covered with ice and is ravaged constantly by storms. The roiling storms are easily visible from orbit ,where they can be seen constantly changing the appearance of the planet as they collide, merge, and split. The atmosphere is breathable but the air is so cold it would freeze an unprotected human in less than a minute.
Orbiting Tau Volantis is an unusual moon. It is an irregular spheroid with craggy, jagged and somewhat organic-looking formations on the surface. Roughly a third of the moon appears to be “eaten” away revealing a ragged, unsettling maw on one side.
The Sovereign Colonies first visited the planet 200 years ago when they tracked the signal from the Marker on Aegis VII to this spot. They set up a base on the planet after detecting unusual readings below the planet’s surface. A number of bases were built on the surface to facilitate an excavation operation.
Below the ice and miles below the planet’s surface, they discovered a vast, underground, alien city. The excavations revealed massive, Marker-like objects everywhere. It was surmised that the planet must be the home of the aliens responsible for creating the Markers.
What they didn’t realize was that this alien race suffered the fate that awaits all Marker-infested human colonies. The Markers activated, Converged, and began forming a massive creature that went into orbit around the planet. The process was interrupted and the creature never completed. Over time, the creature fossilized and eventually went dead, becoming the moon now in orbit around Tau Volantis.
As the excavation crews dug through the ice and earth of Tau Volantis, they discovered fossilized remains of ancient beings, the original inhabitants of the planet. As it turned out, the planet was once almost entirely covered in oceans. The aliens were infected by the Markers and began building them everywhere. To stop the spread of the Markers, the aliens constructed a Machine to flash-freeze the planet, thus stopping Convergence from finishing and trapping everything within the ice.
When the government discovered this, they realized they should never have come to the planet and decided to hide their Marker research from the rest of the world to keep the Markers from spreading further and wiping out mankind.
Information about the planet and the excavations was stricken from government records about the same time the Red Marker project was covered up. It was a last-ditch attempt of the now-failing government to hide these projects from the new government regime, EarthGov, who they feared would try to harvest the technologies of the Markers, and in doing so, wipe out mankind.
Now these long-frozen bases sit dormant. The humans have all frozen and mummified.