Mercury is primarily a live-in testing location for devices and technologies whose malfunction (or even proper function) might be a tad risky for attempting on populated worlds. Weapons systems that operate on mass-destruction levels, or materials research that needs to withstand the rigors of extreme temperature fluctuation, or just businesses whose need for secrecy is so high that they want to travel to a place that’s largely out of sight and out of mind to most of Sol’s population, can all find their homes here.
While it’s possible to live one’s whole life on Mercury, it’s a detached existance. Your social circle will consist almost entirely of the people who live in your roving vehicle, and your chances of ever leaving are slim. Industries that hire for Mercury pay well, but it’s specialized work on proprietary systems. Even if you score a ticket off the rock it’s possible none of your skills will translate to markets on Venus or Mars. As a result, many spacers sunward of Venus are actually retired Mercury workers who built (or bought) themselves a little chunk of heaven to cloister in.
— HSD Core Rulebook, page 50
Mercury is a rather inhospitable place, hitting 430 degrees Celsius during the day and -180 at night. There are structures dotting the surface designed to handle the fluctuation, but they’re few and far between. The most populated areas on the entire planet are the Dawn and Dusk Marches: Enormous lines of interlocking, always moving vehicles with structures the size of office buildings attached to their backs and wheels large enough to handle the intervening terrain. They crawl Mercury’s surface in four-to-six strong convoy groups in the twilight zone, with the Dusk vehicles chasing the night with the sun at their backs, and the Dawn vehicles chasing the day with night behind them. The planet’s slow rotation allows both sets to stay in a narrow temperate zone by maintaining a speed of roughly 10-15 mph, depending on the hill they need to climb. It’s an arrangement most of Sol thinks of as madness, but it works, and all the vehicles together make for a rather expansive bit of real-estate. If your business deals in building things for extreme environments and you need a planet you can get on and off of easily, with access to extreme heat and cold, no real need for foot traffic, and almost zero oversight from Sol’s larger corps, Mercury is a dream destination. And for people who just want more money to do the same thing they’re already doing, it’s one of the better options. Being a mechanic on Mercury pays three times what it does on Mars. Often more. Of course, that means you have to live on Mercury.— Cold Glass
HC SVNT DRACONES and the Staggered Scale check system are registered trademarks of Weapons Grade Funk. References herein are sourced to purchased rulebooks, no infringement is intended by the author of this group of articles.
