"A Profile of the Significant Planets"
As Recorded by UTF Major Chronicler Sturluson, P.A. 553

Earth once drifted innocently about Sol, bearing the weight of humanity’s existence, its hope, its love, its evil. Her resources were always generously offered, mercilessly taken. Humankind soon descended into savagery, viciously fighting over the scarce scraps of what Earth had left.

The United Terran Forces was created under the leadership of High General Sheldon to drive back these savage terrorists and bring light to the barren hull of darkness that Earth had become. Slowly, we succeeded. But soon a major terrorist organization called the Terra Liberation Front rose to become the first major threat to the UTF’s glorious mission. These “Liberators” secretly constructed a weapon of mass destruction beyond the scope of anything seen before or since. The UTF fought a short, bloody war with the TLF.

When the war’s end finally sat tauntingly out of reach with only a single battle left the terrorists launched their wicked weapon at Mother Earth in a suicide maneuver, obliterating humankind’s only true home. What remains of a once proud planet is a heart-wrenching field of silent bones; a graveyard for humanity’s past.

Prior to terraforming, Mars was completely inhospitable: no atmosphere, no water, no magnetic field, and soil composed primarily of iron-oxide and perchlorates. While there were a few scattered settlements, living was harsh due to the lack of terraforming technology. Nevertheless, these harsh conditions led to several innovations that gradually brought to life the first partially terraformed planet. With the introduction of a fertile environment its population grew quickly.

However, after the destruction of Earth nearly all of Mars’ citizens migrated to Neo Terra with UTF High General Sheldon leaving most of the planet unoccupied. It now exists primarily as a convenient source of Argon, a vital component in modern engines.

Europa is unique in having very large deposits of water ice. Europa was the second “planet” to be terraformed; its vast water supply was heated to liquid using fusible elements in Jupiter's atmosphere. Despite having little surface area, it is home to 3 billion people.

Europa is 80% ocean and thick with algae from contaminated drones during the initial mapping of the surface. This algea is collected by many ships, both crewed and automated. The vast quantities of algae also make Europa's atmosphere and water high in oxygen. Algae and oxygen are exported in vast quantities, effectively making Europa the primary food source for the UTF.

Io is the only UTF “planet” that was never terraformed. It receives triple the lethal radiation dose and is extremely tectonically active, shooting sulphur up to 500km into the air from its many volcanoes. Underneath the hot crust, however, the moon is dense with fissile material.

The moon is only minimally occupied, and most mining is done by machines, but in vast quantities. Drones drill through hotspots into the core, and lift material from the core up towards filters which separate useful material, allowing waste to continue into orbit. As mining activity has escalated, this has caused an increasingly noticeable effect on the moon's orbit and Jupiter's magnetosphere, as more sulphur gets put into orbit, increasing the size of the surrounding cloud by double in the past 10 years alone, and 10-fold over the history of mining operations on the planet.

The rapid expansion of the cloud has affected the magnetosphere of the planet in ways still not fully understood. Storms in the cloud induce powerful currents through any ships that fly through, making it increasingly dangerous to navigate to the planet. Currently, the only safe entry areas are maintained by shield satellites, which allow ships to safely jump into a vacuum, avoiding the storms.

Neo Terra is the superlative capital planet of the UTF and the second home of humanity.

When Earth was destroyed all of humanity migrated to Neo’s shores with defeat in their hearts. No planet could replace Earth. This Neo Terra did not support the privilege of walking in open air without a filtration device as Earth did. Neo held no living, breathing organisms prior to its discovery. She was only slightly more habitable than Luna or Mars, having gravity relatively close to Earth’s and abundant mineral resources.

The facilities scattered across her surface were established to support small teams of astronautical engineers and scientists, not the population of an entire planet. And so when the fleet of bedraggled, former Earth citizens arrived after a trip that charged a fee of more than half the fleet’s passengers Neo Terra was hardly a happy sight. Many died in the early years of settlement, but gradually order and a strict line of command heaved the mortality rate back below the birth rate, almost where it had been during the Pax SCG, a time of no war and complete unity of Earth under a single meta-nation.

Now Neo Terra is a nearly worldwide metropolis; its most populated districts utilize a device that creates pseudo-ozone allowing unfiltered pedestrianism and non-housed agriculture much like Earth in her prime.

The barren planet Livia, or rather her moon, was the UTF’s first attempt at colonizing outside of the Sol or Alpha systems. She is tidally locked to the red dwarf Prox, meaning that one hemisphere is perpetually facing her sun. This scenario has created two distinct environments: a dry, hot side and another side covered in a cesium-rubidium ice. This combination makes for an extremely inhospitable planet.

However, her moon, Usus, is in turn tidally locked to her, nearly like Luna to Earth. Therefore Usus experiences a 34.6 hour day-night cycle which provides sufficient distribution of heat across the moon’s surface to make terraforming a feasible option. At present Usus sustains a population of 3.7 billion, not including the various large stations orbiting Livia alongside him.

Tiny Aduro is tidally locked, like Livia, and baked to the point that her dark side averages a relatively high 4.4 Celsius year round. She is not, however, completely wanting of use. Her atmosphere consists of a nitrogen oxide gas that is hospitable to organic life in the form of millions of bioluminescent single-celled organisms called Lux Lucius.

These scientifically astounding creatures float on the dark side of Aduro’s sky, feeding off of NOx and each other; the X gender produces oxygen while the Y gender produces carbon-dioxide. Both genders are entirely dependent on the other.

The famed luxury station Otium mirrors Aduro’s orbit plus 1.2 Megameters, placing it comfortably on the dark side of Aduro where the fiercely interdependent, brightly shining Lux Lucius swarms may be observed from behind a station wide woven-glass pane.

Hespera is a gas giant in close orbit about the star Hespera. Her atmosphere consists of ~84% hydrogen and ~11% helium. These gasses are siphoned off, filtered, and refined to be used across the galaxy.

Although Hespera is certainly not the only gas giant available for harvest, she has no moons and a relatively comfortable gravity of 1.8 Neo Terran Gravities, making the likelihood of the destruction of orbitting refineries discountable.

Boreas contains no opportunity for colonization due to the presence of the binary stars Boreas and Notos. Notos has continuously stripped Boreas’s envelope off, allowing him to expand to his present fearsome state verging on 120 solar masses, the upper limit a star can grow to before exploding in a violent Supernova.

The only interaction humankind has had with this chaotic system has been through the mechanical arm of the Didumo factory station, which is staffed entirely by robots and collects titanium from the nearest planet, Titanus.

Phoenis is a rocky planet with a particularly volatile atmosphere. She has a striking red-orange color, a product of a low hanging layer of sulfur clouds in her atmosphere, which nearly completely cover her green oceans (a result of a high salt content).

The inhabited parts of Pheonis are extremely industrialized. Composed mainly of factories, the major cities of the planet dot the surface, cloistered near the equator. Despite being a pretty planet from orbit with her red skies and green oceans, health and environmental problems have plagued the immature planet ever since it was colonized before terraforming was complete.

The light of Cerbera Major, Minor’s larger and absolutely uninhabitable sister system in the Cerbera constellation, is the only star visible in the sulfur polluted night sky other than Phoenis. It appears as a bright pinpoint of light which randomly flashes green due to refraction in the atmosphere.

The second of the two inhabited planets in Cerbera Minor, Bor contrasts herself sharply with Phoenis. She sports a hospitable surface, stable atmosphere, and vast oceans. Her complexion from space is a bland site, much like her sister’s. Agriculture has become the main industry of the planet, making the planet itself a valuable food commodity, as the second-largest food exporter next to Europa, and the largest exporter of land-crops.

Many other planets have no way of producing conventional food at all. Orbiting Bor is a former UTF outpost that the NGM has been illegally occupying since Cerbera Minor’s defection. Cerbera Major runs across Bor’s sky on a schedule nearly identical to Phoenis’, although stargazers prefer Bor for its relatively clear night sky.

When the first UTF explorers found Strali, they made first planet-fall on Aires. Finding Aires a planet wrought with lightning storms, they decide to name the system Strali, assuming that the other planets would act the same.

Aires was named for her crystalline skies, which delicately refract Strali’s light across her surface, leaving the surface with little sunlight, and consequently, little organic life. Despite these conditions, tiny multi-celled organisms do exist below her surface. This discovery excited early scientists, who then tested the soil and found high levels of nitrogen. Today this nitrogen rich soil is used in luxurious greenhouses around the system.

Known for its appeal to supporters of the faltering plate-tectonic theory, Elburne is a mass of rapidly forming and deforming “plates“. This mass of constantly colliding and diverging chunks of land creates many volcanoes and earthquakes. The planet is generally useless except as a scientific reference and nuclear waste dump site.

Terraforming was considered when the UTF counted her in its flock, but indecent NGM practices of waste management have made the planet a very unlikely candidate, even after the UTF reclaims her.

The surface of the large planet Aethra is a node network of major metropolises linked by suburban areas which circumnavigate her many tectonically active zones.

Velora, a moon in an erratic orbit around Aethra, is covered in plains and seas with only a few major settlements. Every four lunar cycles, Velora experiences a dark cycle, producing an abnormally long night. During the Aethran winter, this dark cycle can be rather inhospitable.

The Aethra System is conveniently situated between the Surrogate’s Vehera and the inner systems. In all likelihood she would not even be colonized if it were not for this location, as she provides an optimal trade hub. She served faithfully for many years as the UTF’s landing port after the long journey from the inner systems. However, recently her turncoat citizens have chosen the sad path towards annihilation by siding with the Neo Galactic Militia. Her fate has been decided by her people.

Vehera. The possessor of the brilliant Surrogate. The archetype of modern terraforming. The source of the DNA of thousands of species from lost Earth. And the epicenter of the NGM problem. This planet is of all the most important. She holds the key to overturning the renaissance bearing her name. She is the goal of every UTF crusade into NGM held space. She is worth more than every other system combined. And she rightly belongs to the UTF. We will reclaim. Turncoats always pay.