Taiyuan
The solitary terrestrial planet in the Taiyuan System. Its surface is generally rocky with light vegetation, and around 30% of the surface is covered in ocean. Very little of this is visible however, as Taiyuan's lower atmosphere consists of a thick, nearly opaque gas that conceals the surface. Modern inhabitants live on large floating pre-tech structures that skirt the edge of the lower atmosphere.
The gas is largely artificial, though its origin has been lost to the scream. Despite this mystery, its effects are well known to the inhabitants of Taiyuan. While technically breathable, the gas has a psychotropic affect on any organism that breathes it. Short exposure can cause severe irritability, while longer exposure will eventually break down the affected organism's higher functions, rendering them feral and aggressive. The gas is known to be the key ingredient in some performance enhancing drugs.
The society of Taiyuan has managed to avoid total collapse by taking up residence in the large floating platforms that have skirted the planet's atmosphere since before the scream. While the majority of their functions remain deactivated, scavenged, and generally useless, their floatation mechanisms are well understood and maintained by the populace of each individual airborne settlement.
From what few records remain from before the scream and directly after, the scream knocked out most of these colonies' systems, and in the ensuing chaos, anywhere from half to three quarters of all the structures fell to the planet's surface. While the surviving structures managed to slowly claw themselves back to sustainability, those scattered down to the surface faced a gruesome fate.
As might be expected, very little is known about the history of those on the surface. Expeditions to the surface require advanced, vacuum sealed suits, and even then, there is very little to be found. After several centuries of isolation, it seems those humans living on the surface have grown to fit a niche of an apex predator - capable of forming small groups and crafting weapons, but interested in little else that hunting for their next meal among the fauna of Taiyuan. While extraction from the toxic environment is possible for these surface dwelling people, a lifetime of suffusion in the mind-altering gas has muddled their minds in such a way that it can be very difficult, though not impossible, for them to integrate into modern society. While difficult to measure, it's estimated that up to 200,000 of these humans could be living on the surface.
As for those living on the drifting structures, their limited access to resources and even methods of transportation between settlements has meant they have only recently begun to form global networks of communication and trade, and have largely been living off of subsistence farming for centuries. Only about 10,000 people live in the nearly 50 floating structures scattered across the planet.
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