Cradle

The Heart of Union

Cradle and the system in which it can be found (Sol, or the Andes Core) are highly developed, densely populated, and dedicated to the daily maintenance, planning, and operations of Union. Humanity's ancestral homeworld is the beating heart of the galactic hegemon: part memorial, part privileged residence, part central hub.
Cradle is the administrative and cultural heart of Union, humanity’s birthplace – once called “Earth” – and the capital of the populated galaxy. It has a permanent population of two billion, mostly made up of administrative and support staff for the Central Committee, numerous Union bureaus, many archives and research campuses, and Cradle’s indigenous populations. The people of Cradle refer to themselves primarily as humans, Terrans, or – less commonly – Solars or Gaians. When speaking of their home, they refer simply to Cradle, or to the planet, station, or moon they call home. The Sol system – often interchangeably called Cradle as well – is also home to a massive transient population of Cosmopolitans and Diasporans engaged in trade, diplomatic, scientific, and religious missions to and from the rest of the galaxy.

Life on Cradle

Cradle is a world healing from the cataclysms of the Anthropocene. Before The Fall, Old Humanity ravaged the world: even as those who came before cracked the wonders of the universe, they grew a cancer in the heart of the world that nearly scoured all life from its surface. Thousands of years later, in 5016u, Cradle still bears the markings of that epochal trauma, but the waters have lowered, the fires have quieted, and the seasons have calmed; in the wake of these shifts, humanity has slowly, carefully repopulated the world. These people have explored the ruins of their ancient cities, reopened old vaults of wonders, and built a new society – one that is strict in its stewardship, rejects the consumptive myth of permanent growth, and broadly eschews the excesses promised by capital.
To that end, Cradle is a calm world. Outside of population centers, it does not look like what one would imagine the galactic capital to look like. In contrast to the glittering metroswathes of Karrakis or built-up population bands of Ras Shamra, the vast bulk of Cradle’s landmass is given over to the natural world. The communities that exist in these spaces are connected by minimal-impact high-speed rail lines and ground-to-orbit flights restricted to polarity cities along the equator. Off the clock, life is generally slow and peaceful, marked by an aversion to the conspicuous consumption of the galaxy’s wonders. Great parks preserve the remains of the pre-Fall world – reminders to those who live now of the dangers of hubris, of consumption, of rapidity – and Cradle’s many museums display the recovered histories of Old Humanity. The world is either a sober memorial or a nostalgic trap, depending on who you ask.
There are still wonders tucked away in the lost corners of our ancient homeworld, and some terrors locked even deeper. Union may have seen turbulent times as regimes are dissolved and cobbled together, but its bureaucracy has a long memory. Nothing is more important to remember than which depths should be explored – and with the greatest care.

Other Planets of Sol

Mars

Mars functions as a satellite campus of Cradle’s administrative apparatus. It is the home of GALSIM, and the UN’s Fleet Command (FleetComm). Partially terraformed, Mars is an artifact of pre-Fall humanity left to grow wild for thousands of years, and life flourishes in the deep canyons of the Valles Marineris. Under massive, winding skylights, millions of people live in dramatic, vertical cities; outside these deep, umbral oases, Mars remains a windswept desert with barely a gasp of air to be found on the vast, terribly cold planes of ice and sand. The red planet's surface population is concentrated around Tharsis Civica – Mars’s capital city – and other population centers atop the Tharsis plateau.

Venus

Venus is an archive world. Its surface is scattered with populated Stations meant for rotational work and field research rather than long-term occupation. The planet hasn’t been terraformed and remains hostile to human life outside of its vast, subterranean archives. Union’s prime NHPs are kept on Venus, entombed beneath the massive pressure of the world’s inhospitable atmosphere for study since the Deimos Event. Its population centers, Morningstar and Venera Final, are kept suspended in the world's upper atmosphere by a combination of downwell anchors, massive balloons, and orbital ballast.

Mercury

SECTION 6 // Setting Guide Mercury, meanwhile, is largely given over to capturing the incredible amount of solar power emitted by the Sun and transmitting it to Venus, Cradle, and Mars. It is the anchor point for solar nets hundreds of thousands of kilometers long that expand, weblike, into space. It was humanity’s first Dyson web, and Union continues to improve and grow its massive, ancient engineering. Like Venus, Mercury is less of a habitation center, but unlike Venus, it is more oriented toward industry. Its small population is primarily concerned with the operation and maintenance of the Dyson web. The main population hub is Bombardier, located in the little world’s Caloris Montes region.

Jovian Worlds

Suspended above the Jovian worlds – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune – hang habitations similar to those found on Venus, but the vast majority of people live on the many moons orbiting these gaseous worlds. Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are all heavily populated, with permanent terrestrial populations spread between a number of well-developed cities. Ganymede is the most heavily populated of the four, with a large terrestrial and orbital naval population.
Of Saturn's moons, Titan has the largest population and a notably nitrogen-rich atmosphere thick with azotosomic life, surface cryovolcanic activity, and shimmering hydrocarbon lakes and rivers. Rhea and Enceladus are likewise populated by hearty, stationbound populations.

The Edge of Sol

Finally, the edge of the Sol system is marked by small permanent populations on Oberon and Titania. Beyond the Kuiper belt, there are no major population centers.

Type

Planet