Neptune

"Neptunian society fared fairly well in the Cozine Disaster. Half the colonies have cloaks, they all have defenses, and every man, woman, and child in them is armed. Even today, a lot of them sort of miss the piracy." ~Gabriel Tremblay, Speaker for Mankind

Ice Piracy

Neptune was settled in the First Empire Era, by refugees fleeing the Gobi Horror. They were eventually unsuccessful, and the virus came for them anyway, but the Terraforming had begun to bring up the temperatures and made the atmosphere livable on four moons; Larissa, Nereid, Proteus, and Triton. The survivors became adapted to the cold, with the vast majority of their body fats becoming brown adipose, metabolic drivers that actively keep their temperatures high and insulate their organs without adding much bulk. These cold-adapted people still had a major problem: resources are difficult to come by on frozen moons. When they had managed to establish something in the way of industry, they began raiding deeper into the Sol System, becoming a pain for the Great Timocracy in particular. While they were eventually brought to heel after the Fall of the Commonwealth, this was relatively recently and only after they attained self sufficiency as a planetary system. Even up to the Age of Convergence, most piracy in the system is due to rogue elements. The Blue Privateer Fleet serves as a remnant of this tradition harnessed for the common good.

Sovereign Nations

Each moon, colony, fleet, and ship are a nation unto themselves. Even the captain of a light corvette junk frieghter is a king. Kings are, however, subject to revolutions should they become tyrants, and rare is the Neptunian who would consent to join a crew that doesn't allow them at least a holdout pistol, just in case a captain should require a keel-hauling. Unless the mutinous crew becomes a problem for others, the authorities of Neptune are generally going to call it fair play.

Space Colonies

The majority of Neptunian citizens live in 'space colonies,' space stations in the Teetch Belt, a vast cloud of colonies in orbit between Larissa and Proteus. They migrate freely between them, maintaining a cohesive culture even if their polity is fractuous. The sizes vary tremendously, some have a few families while the largest have a thousand extended families or more. These colonies are independently armed, with shields, armor, turrets, some have torpedo bays and cloaking devices, some are a ten minute retrofit to converting their orbital stabilizers to ion engines. An unknown number of these colonies are abandoned or defunct, running on autopilot. So called "ghost colonies" offer opportunity for quick wealth and adventure.