Gamemaster Second Orbital Zone: Venus (IF)

Hard Science-Fiction Setting

Venus is a world of extremes, locked in a slow, strange dance with the Sun. Its day lasts longer than its year, creating long periods of relentless sunlight followed by equally long darkness. The atmosphere grows denser and hotter closer to the surface, crushing and toxic, dominated by thick clouds of sulfuric acid. This hostile environment shapes every aspect of life and technology, forcing colonies to cling to the high-altitude cloud layer where pressure and temperature become more forgiving, and where survival depends on constant adaptation to a volatile, alien sky.

Venus colonization pre-Fall consisted mainly of floating cities high in the atmosphere (50–60 km), where pressure and temperature are Earth-like. These cities hosted advanced biotech research and limited bio-industry, exploiting Venus’ extreme environment as a natural lab. You can survive outdoors here with just a breathing mask.

The dense atmosphere below provides strong shielding from radiation, allowing radio and other electromagnetic signals to travel downwards from cloud cities to the surface and lower layers. This makes Venus one of the few places in the inner system where exploration drones can work. However, storm ionization layers scatter up-looking sensors; orbital-to-cloud links must be optical through weather windows or tether relays. Ships orbiting above the atmosphere can not reliably use electronic sensors to look down, nor can the cities effectively scan or communicate upward into space. This creates a natural electromagnetic “blind spot” between space and the cloud layer.

After Icarus Fall, many surface and lower atmosphere installations were lost or abandoned. When Earth ordered colonies to devolve after the Fall, Venus was one of the few places that did move back to Earth as available transport permitted, but some stayed behind. Surface and lower atmosphere bases largely failed or were abandoned, with colonists forced back to Earth due to unsustainable conditions. Venus today features only a few surviving high-altitude cloud cities, isolated and fragile amid ongoing solar storms and atmospheric turbulence. People are re-entered abandoned cloud cities and reactivating deep atmosphere infrastructure, a process that is slow and still ongoing.

Adventure locations include drifting, possibly derelict cloud bases — some frozen in place by persistent storm eyes — offering exploration into lost biotech research and remnants of the Solar Alchemy exotic material efforts.

A unique bioengineered membrane layer exists below the cloud cities, stabilized by a sharp thermal inversion and specialized plants or biotech. This layer creates a unique environment, hot, acidic, and toxic beneath but have an Earth-like atmosphere on top, forming a semi-solid floating platform strong enough to walk on or support light structures. It’s an exotic ecosystem and an intriguing frontier for research, survival, and conflict.

Venus Descent Ops

Treat the surface like deep ocean. Keep mass and people at 55–60 km. Send down tethered work-pods or balloon-return pods; reel or float them back. Tether pod: winched from a cloud city; power/comms over the line; hours on task. Balloon return: drop a rugged pod; after work, inflate hot H₂ to ascend for pickup. CO₂ thermal lifter (rare): ingests CO₂, heats it indirectly, and jets it for VTOL — heavy, maintenance-hungry, hard to insure. Rules: Radio works below the clouds; use drones and a relay aerostat. No crews below; short sorties, redundant ascent, preplanned windows. If it can be done at 50–60 km, do it there.