The most ambitious terraforming project in history. When the Venus operation began, the parties involved already had lessons learned from Mars to fall back on, as well as centuries of scientific advancement beyond that point, but they were dealing with a vastly more challenging planet. The absurdly high temperatures, lack of a magnetic field and terribly slow rotational speed were all problems that had been declared insurmountable by Martian scientists during their own terraforming operation. Now, they posed the first in a series of challenges to overcome, and a public demonstration of just how monstrously powerful science had become. When the rotational accelerators were put into orbit around the world and began casting their magnetic webs around its axis, slowly speeding up its spin inch by painful inch in a cascading effect of little nudges, it became apparent that the Vector race possessed the means to do drastically more frightening things than they had previously realized. During the course of the Venus terraform, the planet’s rotational speed would accelerate from one turn every 238 Earth days to an almost perfect 24 hour spin, in the opposite direction. Its core would be liquefied, its magnetic field restored, and its atmosphere stabilized. When all was finally said and done, Venus emerged as a beautiful new, habitable world, and the odd realization that technology had advanced to a point of Godhood took root in the Vector mind and never really let go.
Venus possesses a vastly more “alien” landscape than Mars. The caustic rains and intense heat of its past have blasted and scoured eerie and beautiful molds into its landscape that share no parallels with anything else in the solar system. Compared to Mars, it’s also enormous and less densely populated. That leaves many areas of the planet rather solitary, almost frontier-like, and has given rise to all sorts of curious new corporate practices. Perhaps most curious was the subsequent lack of massive immigration that was originally expected. Oh, plenty of people moved in, sure, but between the myriad of space stations and the relatively low initial population of the Vector race, no one was really feeling the need to clear out of their home in a hurry. Add the fact that Venus is enormous by comparison, and you end up with a very new, very large, and rather empty world. Despite its now substantial local populous, many parts of Venus still feel like they were dressed up and made ready for a party that never arrived.
— HSD 2.0 Core Rulebook, page 35
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.
