Desolation

It was said that in the beginning, there was life. A whole planet full - a whole planet. But our kind got too ambitious; we reached for the sky, for the stars. They did not like this. Sent our celestials careening in a crash-course straight to out home. The planet was shattered, the atmosphere collapsed, life all but wiped out. But we survived, floating amongst the debris, in our airtight homes - clinging tight to the memories of what we had lost.

— The Dawn of Desolation

Desolation

A broken planet, people scattered in its ashes

Desolation was once a thriving planet, home to an ever-expanding planet. With three moons, two of stone and one of machine, the planet was just entering its space age when disaster struck.
One of its moons collided with another, sending both wildly off course. The first of these moons crashed into the planet below, splitting a third of the planet off, and disrupting all life across the planet.
The only sapient survivors were those in the satelites and stations orbiting the planet, who quickly had to learn to adjust to their strange new reality. Having lost their home, they were now fully reliant on what few minerals they could scrape from the debris, and the food that they were able to grow aboard their still primitive space stations.

Lives and Livelihoods: Space-bound Professions

Life among the planet's debris has caused the creation of a few professions that are key to or hinder the rest of the populace's life. Starpilots are the few who know how to operate the stations and ships in which people reside, and are held in high esteem. Navigators aid these pilots, charting paths through the debris and corresponding with other navigators to prevent collisions. For-hire resource miners will brave the dangerous landscapes of the broken planet, providing rare and difficult-to-obtain materials for those in the stars. However, all of these people need to remain vigilant for pirates, buccaneering scoundrels searching for easy riches and power.

Government

Desolation is ruled by a singular governing body, located in Prime Station, a station orbiting MOON-XV. This mysterious government consists of a council of people who remain nameless and faceless to the greater population, yet exert their will through the Spacekeepers patrolling the skies.

Technology of Desolation

Technology has greatly progressed since the original devastating event causing the current state of Desolation, allowing for life within the starcruisers drifting through the skies. Resource scrapers allow for harvesting of minerals and other rare resources from the rocky remnants of the planet, which provide materials for new construction. Lifedomes are a common technology that stimulates plant growth, providing food for many. Large hubs of civilisation, starstations, are adapted from the old times, when people were just reaching the stars; though the largest settlement among the stars is MOON-XV, now adapted for large-scale harboring of life and refugees.

State of the World

Greyscale Photography of Car Engine by Mike Bird

The Council does not accept responsibility for the living conditions of those who choose to live outside of established stations and territories.

Homes Adrift

Habitation in some of the central hubs of civilisation has become too expensive for most to afford. The majority of the population lives adrift, in stardrifters that provide little control over direction, and are known to be incredibly unsafe, with a high risk of collision either with other stardrifters, or with planetary debris. Some have resorted to shipjacking to maintain a safe and steady home - at the cost of others'.

Political Unrest

There are many who do not agree with how the Council of Stars is running things, and how distant they keep themselves from the general population. Some choose to act on these beliefs - the Planetbreakers are the largest such group. To the greater population, they are seen as pirates and terrorists, thanks to propoganda from the Spacekeepers. But to the Council themselves, the Planetbreakers have become quite a nuisance.

A Divided People

The Council has managed to stay in control over the decades, not controlling people outright, but instead by turning them against one another. The majority of the population live within a divided class system, with the different classes holding distain for one another for various reasons. The stationaires, the upper-class folk able to reside in the nicest parts of the stations, despise those in the lower classes for encroaching on their space. Lower classes, such as drifters and enginefolk, see the stationaires as stuck-up and ungrateful.

The Rise of Piracy

Due to the failings of the Council to perform duties promised, there has been a rise of space piracy in recent years. While they have generally been denounced as greedy individuals looking for a quick cash-grab, there are many who view this as their last resort before starvation.