Gamemaster History (IF)

Icarus Fall is a science fiction setting, the solar system in 2330, two decades after the collapse of Dedalus, the solar mining project. Named Icarus Fall, this catastrophic event ruined much infrastructure in the inner system and broke the spirit of progress and optimism that had been dominant for two centuries. What will happen now, can humanity progress peacefully or will we let conflicts destroy what we have built?

Timeline of the Icarus Fall Setting

2036 — Balkanization of Russia into multiple separate states. Nuclear material coming onto the market leads to nuclear proliferation.

2040 — USA weaponizes its debt, destabilizing China by refusing to service the debt. Global recession follows.

ca 2040 — Thorium breeder reactors spread worldwide, fossil fuels never recover in price.

2045 — Collapse of the dollar as a reserve currency. States leave USA to avoid having to assume a share of the federal debt. Other currencies try to replace the dollar but fail. Global financial crisis; recession deepens.

2046 — The start of "nuclear populism". China puts pressure on smaller indebted states that try to follow the the example of the USA. These smaller states uses nuclear blackmail to enforce their interests.

2050 — Nuclear populism gradually expands to provinces exerting nuclear blackmail on their central government. China loses control of peripheral areas and client states.

2050-2100 — Global warming causes repeated ecological and economic disasters.

2055 — Middle East meltdown, a nuclear war in the Middle East halves the population. The total number of strikes is still limited, this is not a full-scale nuclear apocalypse.

2056 — — Life extension practical on a large scale, earth population decrease slows. Money even more focused in a few hands as rich people live longer.

2058 — Nuclear populism breaks down as threats have to be put into action or lose credibility. Small number of nuclear attacks on what is essentially random small and medium cities. Rebuilding stricken cities proves faster than expected, just over a decade in most cases.

2060-2070 — Global trade collapse due to lack of a reserve currency and no-one enforcing freedom of navigation. Each area needs to be as self-sufficent as possible. Widespread famine. Collapse of trade traps refugees in disaster areas.

2061 — First successful Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) mining missions. Initial operations target water and carbonaceous materials.

2060-2090 — Most of Earth is heavily balkanized, with the European Union, China, and India as the strongest powers, but none of them dominant. The economies of many countries with populist or repressive governments collapses and are either reformed under more moderate government or absorbed by neighbors.

2070-2080 — Boom for cislunar economy. The Moon dominates resource extraction, but reliance on NEAs continues, especially for carbon. Power in space is mostly solar.

2078 — American Commerce Accord (ACA) established, a lose trade framework to regulate conflicts between states and enable trade. Gradually spreads to cover both the Americas over the next 50 years.

2086 — Formation of Eartforce, a union of interests in cislunar space focused on combatting famine and preserve the Earth. Bounties for carbon capture. New currency introduced, the Lunar Credit, secured by cislunar resources. Emigration from Earth becomes significant.

2102-2310 — Golden Age of rapid advancement and peaceful expansion. Establishment of a mature cislunar economy. Lunar industry expands significantly. Start of the

2130 — First operational space elevator completed on Waigeo in Indonesia, spearheaded by international cooperation led by Japan. Enables vastly cheaper and more efficient access to cislunar space but soon proves too small and too remote.

2138 — Invention of the first practical long-duration ion drive. Drastically increases potential for slow but efficient interplanetary travel. Risks, mainly from radiation, makes adaptation slow.

2143 — Commercially viable large-scale fusion power. Thorium fission breeders remain dominant for many decades on Earth.

2145 — American Commerce Accord completes its own space elevator on Jarvis Island, focusing on bulk transport to and from orbit.

2155 — China and European Union finish space elevators on Hainan and São Tomé and Príncipe respectively, expanding global access to orbit and solidifying their roles in the emerging cislunar economy. China begins slow, large scale colonization by ion ship, others strive to catch up.

2170 — Chaotic wave of exploration and early colonization across the solar system. Many ventures fail or are absorbed by larger players.

2187 — Chinese colonies off-world show a strong bent for independence. Other nations on Earth step in as sponsors for Chinese colonies, and China supports non-Chinese colonial independence.

2210 — Launch of the Mars Terraforming Initiative. Massive investment from Earth. A symbolic vanity project, but clearly affordable and doable on a long time scale.

2214 — Second-generation colonization begins when cislunar habitat Usagi builds a copy of itself and sends one-third of the population on a multi-year trip to Jupiter. These are launched from successful early colonies rather than from Earth.

2225 — Mercury Industrial Boom begins. Night-side and twilight-zone settlements extract rare metals and lift them using magnetic accelerators. Heavy investment from solar power harvesting firms.

2245 — Solar Alchemy Project officially launched and named Dedalus. Ambitious attempt to manipulate solar fusion processes and harvest exotic particles and elements from the solar corona using mega-mirrors and orbital infrastructure. Also promises to extend the sun's lifetime.

2265 — First small-scale practical fusion reactors come online. These installations require exotic materials, including those produced by the Solar Alchemy Project.

2270 — Climate stabilization efforts on Earth complete. Massive orbital mirrors and solar shades contribute, in coordination with carbon capture. Emigration from Earth slows down.

2285 — Solar Alchemy Project achieves breakthrough in exotic matter synthesis. These are strategic materials for fusion power and other specialized uses.

2290 — Fusion reactor designs now small enough to fit personal vehicles. Batteries still dominate, but small-scale, high-performance, long duration fusion power is now possible.

2310 — Icarus Fall: Catastrophic failure of the Solar Alchemy Project ends the Golden Age. Solar instability increases dramatically. Solar storms wreak havoc from Mercury to the Asteroid Belt. Massive losses in orbital infrastructure across the inner system, including the loss of all except the small Japanese space elevator. Earthforce prestige plummets.

2310–2315 — Disaster years - all energies focused on saving lives and rebuilding things that have been lost.

2315–2330 — Widespread fragmentation of political and economic control. Colonies become de facto independent. Earth remains population center but loses coercive power. Apocalyptic cults and radical ideologies common.

2430 — "Now" (Setting Present Day) — Earth is very heavily balkanized but still holds about three billion people, with one billion in space, 400 million each in Cislunar space and in the Jovian system, 100 million in the Belt, and about 25 million each on Mercury, Venus, Mars, and in deep space.

Adventure Seeds

• Abandoned mining base at an NEA. Small, rapidly rotating cylinder with high gravity gradient. Survivors abandoned in evacuation, xenophobic and radiation-scarred.

• Old base on Mercury’s dark side. Searching for data on surviving parts of Solar Alchemy project. Hazards: static electric charges in metals, seismic fissures, over-pressured living quarters holding plasma from Icarus Fall.

• Using telemetry from previous mission to chase down a part of Solar Alchemy harvesting array and its exotic matter.

• Various space habitats governed by exotic dogma.

• Linear accelerator launching post-human pilots at very high velocities.

• The Ghost That Burns — Long-range telescopes detect a faint gamma-ray source on a hyperbolic path through the system. Spectral anomalies suggest the object may be composed entirely of antimatter, annihilating in flashes when struck by cosmic dust. It will pass through the Belt in weeks before vanishing into deep space. Multiple factions want a sample, proof, or its destruction. Interception is extraordinarily dangerous: any dust from a ship could trigger surface explosions, altering its trajectory unpredictably — or shattering it into a lethal cloud of antimatter particles. Even more perilous, a ship’s own engine plume could cause annihilation on contact, making direct braking approaches suicidal. To match trajectories without disaster, the crew must execute a long, fuel-hungry offset approach, coasting in on minimal thrust while expert systems track its erratic motion.