Lunefreya

Orbiting the gas giant Tritoch, in the Trappist-1 System, located in the far east of the Selenia Galaxy, are three moons, the smallest of which is named Lunefreya. Initially commissioned as a mining colony for rare elements such as scandium and ytterbium, by the interstellar tech conglomerate SPRock Corp, the city of Neon Quarry grew on Lunefreya over the decades into a booming trade center and a metropolitan urban center for information and technology business professionals. Made into a liveable space using a process called Tectonic Atmosphering by which the trapped liquids and gases in a space rock are sampled and studied, surveyed for compounds toxic to human and human-adjacent life as well as for necessary elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc. If the samples are determined to be of sufficiently low toxicity, any deficiencies in atmospheric elements are then pumped deep into and beneath the crust, spurring widespread and violent seismic activity, breaking the crust into tectonic plates, and, with any luck, surrounding the rock with a breathable atmosphere. Certainly, this process is not as reliable or organic as terraforming for making a planetary body into a liveable space, but it does have the advantages of being much, much faster and having the ability to almost immediately gain access to valuable natural resources such as crude oil, methane gases, and water.

As miners moved in, and rare mineral ores were mined and sold in abundance, those able to get in early soon enjoyed lives of wealth and decadence. Neon Quarry and its surrounding suburbs grew around these lucrative mines and it didn't take long for these settlements to develop from barracks and mess halls and into taverns then restaurants, apartment complexes then gated communities, and libraries and colleges. Neon Quarry enjoyed regular contact with and the protection of the Farwynd Federation, one of many intergalactic colonial military fleets and the one in the strongest position within the Selenia Galaxy. The Farwynd Federation, especially those stations and vessels in the Trappist-1 System, relied extensively on SPRock Corp's mineral mining to maintain and manufacture their information and communications infrastructure throughout the entire galaxy and they had invested considerable resources and manpower to keeping a close eye on the Neon Quarry mines to keep them protected from foreign powers and interstellar pirates and smaller bands of raiders or thieves. By now, though, most of the mines have been dried out, the only few active ones turning up little in the way of valuable materials, and the presence of the Farwynd Federation has gone with them. On the west side of Neon Quarry, across a bridge over the Cinnabar River, lies Cratertown, named for the stony, pockmarked terrain that had once been the site of several small meteorite impacts. The area is low-income and looked down upon by the residents of Neon Quarry, but it is the only area where any active mining is still being conducted. The Farwynd Federation had been making quarterly visits and inspections, bringing much needed medical and food supplies to the town and buying up whatever minerals they could get, but that all changed in the wake of the Big One. Rocked by a huge moonquake, Lunefreya herself was left decimated. Little is known about exactly what happened, but the residents of Cratertown seem to be the only civilized folks left on the rock. Across the bridge lies a gaping, treacherous chasm as far as the eye can see and not only have the Federation not come around, communications with their space stations have gone dark too. The local sheriff finds himself at wit's end as resources are growing scarce and his once quiet little community has suddenly begun to go more than a little stir-crazy. Arrests are up, tempers are flared, and morale is decidedly down. Soon, someone's going to have to get out there and take a good look at things themselves. But can any good come from the discoveries such an expedition could dig up, or will the answers only make everything worse?

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