Planets
The Alliance encompasses hundreds of planets, however just five have contributed to the AES Ardent’s mission so far. Player characters must all originate from one of these five planets, or from smaller spacecrafts registered to one.
Earth
This planet is a bright light that casts a long shadow. While its diplomatic corps smooth the edges of the Alliance, historians and analysts scour the history of Earth and its allies for pertinent lessons: learning from the mistakes of the past as they build the future. Earth celebrates difference, but disagreement and division are tempered before they pose a risk to the community as a whole: too much is at stake for pride to outweigh stability.
Geostation Kessler
Kessler is an immense mobile installation, able to move between star systems with remarkable ease for a space station with a wingspan measured in the hundreds of kilometres. It is a cleaning station: it travels through regions of space plagued by debris, preferably the orbital zones of planets, and sweeps the area clean. Whatever Kessler finds, it keeps.
Marzion IX
Marzion IX is the characteristically direct name for the ninth planet settled by the Marz Union. As has become routine for MU, they have taken a resource-rich world at the edge of Alliance space and invested heavily in mining and production, transforming the anonymous terrain into an immense network of quarries and refineries.
Viront Z85
The lights of Viront rival its own star. Though the planet only supports life along its equator, that life is all the keener, all the brighter – as though it were spurred on by the precarious conditions in which it developed. It was this striving that drew the Vironti syndicates to flout Alliance advisories in settling here, carving a band of crystalline wealth from the planet’s dross.
Sultonia
Sultonia is a young planet in an old solar system. When the star Cassiter evolved into a red giant, six planets – Sultonia’s siblings – were destroyed. Material released by that cataclysm accreted in the system’s existing asteroid belt until it formed a new planet, fortuitously located in the star’s habitable zone. In many ways, the very existence of Sultonia is something of a miracle.
