Gamemaster Third Orbital Zone: Terra (IF)

In modern usage, Terra refers to the orbital zone around Earth's orbit of the Sun, while Earth refers specifically to the planet.

Earth

Campanilismo — Italian for “attachment to one’s own campanile (bell tower),” indicating localist pride and rivalries.

More than anything else, Earth is rich. Rich in culture. Rich in people. Rich in heritage. Rich in variety. And thanks to Earthforce and its colonies, also rich in wealth. No place is as varied as Earth. There are still tribes living a stone-age life on isolated islands. There are people living virtual existences, almost never in the physical world. There are nations, peoples, and communes of infinite variety.

Earth holds a little over three billion people across a patchwork of blocs, city-states, climate authorities, and charter ports. This is three-quarters of humanity. By sheer weight of votes Earth controls Earthforce, but Earth is always divided except in issues about its own wealth. Votes can make Eartforce tax the colonies for Earth's benefit, but when the issue is to split the loot, there is more division than ever.

Not that Earth really needs support from the colonies. It certainly did need the cislunar economy to help it out of the depression and environmental collapse of the 21st and 22nd centuries, but Earth today has one-third of the population it had in 2000, with more advanced technology and economic models. There are more than enough resources, tough some are cheaper in space. Earth is leading in science, especially the humanities, and exports social models and cultural icons much in demand throughout Sol space.

Earth is more pristine than it has been in centuries. With global warming under control and people mostly living in cities or arcologies, most of the land is a nature reserve. During the climate crisis much land was abandoned, with farmland replaced with indoor hydroponic farms. Still, the nature preserves of Earth are parklike, tame, and only gradually is true wilderness allowed to return.

Polity Map

Earth has never been more heavily balkanized, but there are some large treaty organizations and two large nations remain; China and India. Earthforce effectively has oversight but works hard to remain out of the limelight.

American Commerce Accord — The Americas are dominated by this trade-first confederation that provides a legal framework for trade and ties elevator zones, river ports, and orbital services together. It specifically avoids politics and security. Politics has devolved to the state level, with the old national borders atrophied. Language and culture gradually shifts from French, to English, to Hispanic as you proceed south. Some places have reverted to being Amerindian in culture (but not language) as the former elites migrated into space.

European Union — Formally one of the most cohesive regions on Earth, but cultural diversity is larger than in most regions. In this the EU is a microcosm of Earth itself; united outwards, sundered inwards. Passed the crisis years almost untouched, but low population gives it a feel of abandonment, with shrunken cities. Europe's countryside is among the most populated in the world. Half of the land is now nature preserve, but half of this is dedicated to pastoralism and only the remaining half is genuine wilderness.

India Sphere — India has become a union of city-states. With much of the land made uninhabited by global warming, there was little population in the countryside and much restoration work has been done. Like Europe there is land reserved for pastoralism, but this is only about a quarter of the land, with another quarter as urban areas and the remaining half nature preserves in various stages of wilderness.

Sinosphere — China has contracted to the core Han lands of the two rivers, while Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Taiwan are fully independent. Yet Sinitic culture still knits the region together and links it to Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. Politically in retreat, China has advanced culturally, trading hard power for soft. People of this region have always been concentrated in cultivated belts with untamed land in between; the settled zones are smaller now, and the hinterlands more untamed than ever.

Sub-Saharan Africa — Global warming, famine, and limited nuclear war struck hard but unevenly. Some regions collapsed, others endured or were absorbed by stronger neighbors. Populist mismanagement deepened the crisis, yet in places local communities adapted and survived. Borders had always been artificial, and their fading has been more benefit than loss, with cultures and trade routes crossing old lines. The result is a patchwork of city-states, alliances, and recovering heartlands, alongside vast stretches of depopulated or contested land.

Middle East & North Africa — Made almost unlivable by 50 °C heat and hit by the only large nuclear exchange, euphemistically “the meltdown”, the region’s old borders collapsed. The meltdown hit city centers dominated by the majority population, leaving mostly rural minorities to flourish. The result is a mosaic of tribes, sects, and survivor enclaves bound loosely under a cultural Dar al-Islam. The Israeli, largely settled underground to escape the heat, escaped most of the war damage. They shared this survivalist technology, giving a new legitimacy as neighboring communities copied their methods. With ecological restoration a priority during the Golden Age, the land is now greener than it has been in a thousand years and temperatures are livable again, but many remain in underground habitats that have become synonymous with safety.

Archipelago Compacts — Freedom of navigation has been restored, but oceanic bulk trade isnot what it was; the various continent are self-sufficent or trade with space. Still, times are not bad, tourism is more vital than ever and there is a lot of oceanic environmental work. Island settlements get good representation in the Eartforce senate and are popular venues for diplomacy and entertainment.

Undersea settlements exist on Earth, but they remain rare and specialized. Built with technologies proven in Europa’s oceans and easily surviving the pressure of any earthly depths, they serve science, climate management, and data security more than habitation. Costly, and isolated, they never grew large — yet their secrecy, resilience, and unique perspective make them politically and strategically significant.

Switzerland, Bern, and Earthforce — Eartforce was founded in 2068 on a very different Earth. For legal reasons, it had to be registered on Earth, and seeking neutrality they went for Bern, in Switzerland. Earthforce was founded by rich cislunar interests and was an important power from the very beginning, and only rose in power an importance to the degree that Switzerland was under pressure to remain neutral and unallied just for the sake of Earthforce, not that they minded this forced isolation.

Earthforce does have an office in Bern, but today the actual capital of Earthforce is in the Bern Orbital, which legally is a part of the canton of Bern, but has many times its area and population. There Earthforce has grown to its full potential.

Access & Low Earth orbit

LEO remains a debris hazard. Flight insurance green-lines only the cleared cones from offshore fusion lifters. Passenger launch slots are rationed and political capital; backdoors run through Luna-bound rails and friendly tugs.

Economy

Earth is even more of an abundance economy than the rest of the solar system. With conditions so good, people no longer emigrate to space because they have to, they do so for the sense of adventure and to make career. An important function of Earth, in particular the European Union, is to wield soft power in setting safety standards and best practices that dominate the legal and economic spheres.

Energy — Energy scarcity is a thing of the past. Thorium breeders dominate grids. This was an advantage in the Fall, a thorium breeder is much easier to restart than a fusion power plant. Thorium is abundant on Earth itself. Fusion handles peaks, larger scientific installations such as hadron colliders, and industry.

Mass flows — Imports C–N–P volatiles from Belt and Jovians; exports cultural artifacts, art, entertainment, software, technology, science, and biotech. Biological samples and animals to form a base for natural preserve habitats and parks all over solar space.

Climate & Ecology

The biosphere almost collapsed in the 22nd century. Intense carbon capture and solar shades reduced the heat, which had already driven humanity away from the countryside and into cities and arcologies. This offered a blank slate for environmental reconstruction. It took most of the 23rd century, but Earth's ecology is now better than it has been in a thousand years. Outdoor farming is still done, but the ecological weight of feeding humanity is now carried by hydroponic farms in controlled environments.

Elevator & Launch Cities

Remaining kessler syndrome from the Fall hinders ballistic travel; vacuum trains carry the bulk with aircraft serving remote areas. Lifter archipelagos behave like charter ports — customs, escrow courts, bonded yards. Downcomer elites — long-lived, technically trained — mix with groundborn guilds. Earthforce police safety on shade arrays and mass-driver spurs.

Society & Culture

As noted before, Earth is almost infinitely diverse, and local culture is cherished or even invented to give each district its own identity. With an abundance economy, many people can do cultural work; performing art, artisanship, crafts, and visual arts. The human body is a canvas, fashion and personal styling is widely popular, cybernetics and gene tailoring are subcultures. Culture is a major export, with a constant influx of ideas from space flowering into new forms on Earth and re-exported back to space.

Security
Earthside forces are municipal and corporate. Earthforce deploys only around elevators, lifters, and orbital courts. Anti-Kessler treaties are brutally enforced — Kessler spread is a war crime since the Fall. Apocalyptic cults flare where shade schedules cut agriculture.

Earthforce

Interplanetary politics are dominated by Earthforce, a colonial administration based in terran space that claims stewardship of the solar system. Earthforce is not a government in the traditional sense, but a framework for interplanetary cooperation. Founded in 2086 as a neutral cislunar consortium, it grew into a three-chamber council with small executive arms. Its power rests on prestige, voluntary contributions, and the memory of having led humanity through the Icarus Fall.

Earthforce earned enormous prestige by helping end the climate crisis, which made it a concord between all governments — and subject to public oversight to maintain legitimacy. Over time, after hard bargaining, it became a pseudo-democratic interplanetary council.

Despite the name, Earthforce never answered to Earth; it began as a cislunar commercial combine and was formalized in 2086 in Bern, Switzerland — chosen for neutrality — but never run from there. Earthforce is governed by a three-chamber parliament, each highly independent. It is effectively three embryonic governments running in parallel. Formally the bodies are styled the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of Commons, and the Senate Chamber, though in everyday speech they are simply called the Chamber, the Commons, and the Senate.

Summed up in an adage: Commons says go, Senate says no, and the Chamber hires the lowest bidder.

Earthforce is not a government, it is a framework for interplanetary co-operation with emergency powers to intervene against human-rights and environmental abuse. Each chamber has its own executive branch. This mandate gradually grew as humanity expanded outward. Still, all branches are far smaller than one would expect for an authority claiming the whole solar system. In the Icarus Fall emergency, Earthforce briefly became a government of sorts: contributions hardened into taxes, and the Navy expanded greatly, though it remains mostly a civilian force. Earth tries to continue treating Earthforce as a government, while the colonies want to reduce it to its original framework role.

Chamber of Commerce

Governance: Corporate votes by Earthforce shareholdings; anchored in cislunar combines and port guilds. Many firms seek incorporation into the commercial Earthforce to gain influence.
Mandate & tools: Issues the Lunar Credit; oversees finance, registries, ports and lanes standards, and insurer–underwriter compacts.
Current push: Regain control of Earthforce finances by ending levies; expand salvage/retrofit financing; harmonize port safety to reopen marginal lanes.
Fault lines: Perceived “rule by ledger”; currency governance seen as Earth-leaning; accusations of underwriting tax drift via emergency levies.

Lunar Bank issues the Lunar Credit and is the central financial arm of the Chamber, as well as the system’s leading user of qters (quantum hardframes) and distributed ledgers. It runs the microtransaction grid that underpins everyday trade and culture: even in an abundance economy with universal basic income, people seek recognition and credit for work and achievement. Every click, view, or contract access is logged, and the Bank pays out fractional sums from its reserves rather than charging those granted access. This keeps participation free while making popular creators and service providers wealthy. The Bank clears vast volumes of these payments, keeps liquidity flowing, and sets the official interest rate. The Lunar Credit is guaranteed by the Chamber’s cislunar resource baskets; in practice, other resources are priced against their cislunar value. The Bank resists anything resembling a tax, preferring to finance Earthforce internally, and is pushing a name change through council protocols to ease colonial resentment.

Financial Integrity Directorate (FID, colloq. “Fides”) is the Senate's enforcement arm. It acts as a financial police service, investigates fraud and laundering, and conducts asset recovery (collateral seizure/repossession) through local courts under Senate-charter law. Fides has some direct enforcement capacity but usually relies on local authorities or other Earthforce agencies.

Stormwatch is Earthforce’s system-wide space-weather service, tracking solar storms and related hazards. Formally under the Chamber, it began centralized but is devolving into regional bureaus — at least one per orbital zone, with multiples in the Belt. Raw sensor feeds stay local; fused forecasts publish system-wide. Colonies press for control of their own bureaus, while Earth insists on a uniform alert code to keep insurers, ports, and accelerators aligned.

Registry Authority maintains registries of ships, habitats, mining claims, and transponder IDs. It issues certifications, manages liens and transfers, and collects modest fees that fund its operations. Disputes over registration are a frequent source of appeals to higher Earthforce bodies.

Standards Bureau sets and enforces interplanetary technical standards: docking rings, Q-time seals, hull alloys, EVA connectors, safety protocols. Though often resented as meddling, its specifications keep the system interoperable and prevent lethal incompatibilities. Colonies regularly lobby for exemptions, yet most still adhere out of necessity.

Commons

Governance: Proportional by population; an Earth-leaning plurality fractured by campanilismo — polities and NGOs pulling in rival directions.
Mandate & tools: Writes interplanetary statutes; allocates territorial and charter regimes; may call emergency contributions (now functionally taxes).
Current push: Keep Earthforce acting like a government — fund Navy rescue, debris remediation, climate nets; universal human-rights and habitat-safety baselines.
Fault lines: Legitimacy gap from Earth plurality; levies hardened into standing taxes; colonial bloc decries centralization-by-crisis and exploits Earth’s internal divisions.

Navy of Earthforce is the Commons’ most visible instrument, chartered to guarantee freedom of navigation, deliver rescue and relief, and intervene against gross abuses of human rights or environmental safety. Its backbone is small patrol carriers operating in dispersed flotillas; a marine corps trains for boarding rogue habitats or vessels. A wet squadron on Earth’s oceans maintains surface freedom-of-navigation. During the Icarus Fall the Navy’s hardened craft were the first to recover, executing rescues, debris clearance, and triage that saved entire populations. The surge in prestige was immense — but in many colonies it also fixed the Navy as Earth’s arm of coercion. Crews are largely cislunar-born, caught between Commons authority and colonial suspicion, even as most acknowledge the Navy’s role in keeping lanes open and habitats safe.

Earthforce Navy

Relief and Reconstruction Office (RRO) coordinates disaster response and rebuilding. It emerged from the Icarus Fall, when Earthforce had to triage and restore crippled habitats. The RRO works closely with the Navy’s logistics arm, but emphasizes civilian-led recovery and equitable allocation of emergency funds.

Earthforce Medical Service (EMS) monitors system-wide health risks—epidemics, radiation exposure, vaccination programs, and long-duration habitation standards. Smaller than planetary health authorities, it serves as a clearinghouse for data and issues advisories most polities voluntarily adopt. It also oversees genetic engineering and human enhancement, traditionally a restraining force; regulations were relaxed during the Fall.

Senate

Governance: One vote per polity; a leading Jovian caucus reinforced by Belt leagues and charter traditionalists.
Mandate & tools: Upper-house veto (qualified majority); adjudicates inter-polity disputes and treaty breaches.
Current push: Re-limit Earthforce to a framework — time-limit every levy, restore opt-in programs, strengthen local charters and exemptions.
Fault lines: Gridlock with Commons; forum-shopping of disputes; Jovian caucus signals conditional loyalty and explores legal paths to secession.

Tribunal of Accord is the Senate’s highest judicial arm, convened only for matters beyond local courts. There are no crimes automatically under its jurisdiction; polities may refer disputes upward, and the Tribunal may self-select cases where precedent, inter-polity conflict, or judicial abuse demand resolution. Anyone may petition, though very few are accepted — screening petitions is a major part of the docket and where junior operatives earn their stripes. Judgments blend law and diplomacy, setting norms for coexistence under the Earthforce charter. The Tribunal can issue writs to local authorities, override abusive rulings, and arbitrate sovereignty disputes. It maintains a small enforcement branch, but nothing like the Navy.

Emblem: a gold rim enclosing a light-blue field; at center, a silver bear rampant facing heraldic sinister, holding a golden balance aloft in its forepaw — strength tempered by justice.

Heraldic blazon: A roundel azure, a bear rampant argent facing sinister, sustaining in the forepaw a balance or; all within a bordure or.

Accords Mediation Service (AMS) attempts to resolve disputes before they reach the Tribunal. Its mediators and legal scholars broker settlements, draft charters, and shuttle between blocs. While often overlooked, their quiet diplomacy prevents many crises from escalating to formal litigation.

Adventure Hooks

Shade Ledger Heist — A city alleges Bern’s vane schedule stole two harvest weeks. Prove fraud or expose a local counterfeit.

Dead Boroughs Seat — A shell constituency swings a Board vote. Burn the paper trail in Bern Orbital or flip the proxy holder.

Weather Debt Riot — Mandated flood-release for a delta authority sparks unrest — and a sabotage campaign against sluice control.

Elevator Blackout — A debris forecast shutters an elevator cone; your client must smuggle a VIP via an offshore fusion lifter before a trade tribunal convenes.

Carbon Bounty War — Competing capture firms game measurements; a whistleblower vanishes between port arbitration and an ACA court.

GM Notes
Keep Earthforce powerful in orbit, negotiable on the ground. Use weather debt and launch slot politics as your pressure tools. When in doubt, make the fix a contract — and the opposition a registrar, insurer, or standards board.

Bern Orbital

Bern Orbital is a vast open-sky ring habitat, built at the Earth–Moon L1 NRHO. Its two counter-rotating graphene spines generate 0.9 g at a radius of 103 km, with a 10 km-wide living deck suspended between them. Rim speed is just under a kilometre per second, giving the apparent sky a twelve-minute revolution and a slow 0.5° drift of the stars. The sidewalls are cable-net membranes that trap a one-bar atmosphere; bay shutters and gas reserves can seal any section within seconds after a strike.

The Orbital was solar-powered before the Fall, its sky lit by a swarm of heliostats and day-night shades. During the Kessler years the mirrors were destroyed, and the station was reconfigured for fusion alone. Laser-based heat dumpers replaced radiators, venting waste energy as narrow beams aligned with tug plumes. Today the heliostat constellation is being rebuilt; sun-tracking panels on the ring remain in use as backup. The Shade Guild, a cross-chamber Earthforce bureau, manages lighting and seasons, a comfortable sinecure for the children of insiders and a valuable stepping-stone to higher office.

Legally, Bern Orbital is Swiss territory, a compromise that confers Earth residence and neutrality. In practice, Dexter ring—the “right bank”—is under Senate protocols. Here Earthforce maintains its headquarters, the three chambers, and an enclave of some fifteen million permanent residents plus millions of transients. Prestigious housing and tourist resorts occupy the surface, with infrastructure and agriculture buried below. Dexter is both resort and capital: its exaggerated mountains echo Switzerland, but unlike the original, these slopes are open to mass tourism.

Sinister, the “left bank,” is Earthforce’s logistics and training hub. A million crew live here, with surge capacity for several million more during exercises. It is effectively under continual operational law, though after two centuries of peace enforcement is lax. Visitors whisper of secret fleets and alien embassies; in practice, the districts are parade grounds, barracks, and ports.

Bern Orbital

Cislunar Space

Cislunar space is a cluttered, hazardous frontier shaped by decades of expansion, conflict, and the aftermath of Icarus Fall. The orbital environment around Earth and the Moon is choked with debris and derelict satellites, creating a dangerous “Kepler syndrome” that complicates navigation and transit. Most tiny objects have burned up by now, making previously inaccessible areas merely dangerous — still far from safe. Cylinder habitats and stations cluster around Earth, the Moon, and their Lagrange points, but many have fallen into disrepair or abandonment following the solar catastrophe.

The congested debris fields and damaged infrastructure of cislunar space create unique adventure zones. Smugglers and runners use risky passages through the junk fields to bypass patrols and cut time, but insurance companies aggressively deny claims tied to these routes. Salvage hunting remains profitable but lethal; most easy targets were stripped clean decades ago, leaving only hazardous, heavily contested wrecks. Intelligence on salvageable sites and hidden hazards is highly valuable — espionage, sabotage, and information warfare are staples of cislunar intrigue.

Luna

The Moon is politically and culturally fractured. Control is split between Earth-based powers, independent settlements, and external factions from the Belt and Jovian space. Still there is a Lunar culture, that is similar to Jovian culture in its strict work ethic and tolerance for cramped living. People travel between the different factions on Luna, cooperating to ignore the strict borders set by offworlders.

Early colonies began in lava tubes and expanded through excavation mining, controlled by large entities with heavy machinery. Moon gravity remains a constant health problem: some cities rely on rotating structures dug into lava tunnels to simulate Earth-like conditions; others use genetic engineering to adapt the human body, still others commute to habitats in space. These differing approaches have hardened into cultural divisions between habitats. Those adjusted to the low gravity form an underclass, with those commuting to space habitat as an upper class and the surface spin gravity habitats somewhere in the middle.

Luna’s main exports are metals, silicates (for electronics), oxygen (for air and propellant), water (for reaction mass), and and the fusion fuels deuterium and tritium. Tritium is skimmed of Luna's DD fusion plants, which is not effective but the loss is acceptable. What the Moon lacks is carbon. Biochemicals must be imported and meticulously recycled. It's considered rude to eat and not use the restroom.

Regolith mining on the surface is something else: dangerous, dirty, small scale, and mostly handled by independent crews — tough, low-gravity–adapted, and defiant. Derisively called “farmers,” they resist corporate, Jovian, and Earthforce control, making them central to black markets, sabotage ops, and free-Luna movements. They despise fixed-price contracts and prefer to deal with outsiders and smugglers.

The most heavily guarded sites on the surface are the magnetic accelerators that launch cargo and passengers offworld. In the boom before Icarus Fall, dozens of rails formed the backbone of the cislunar economy, shipping thousands of tons per day and making possible both Earth’s climate recovery and the colonization of the solar system. Today, only four major long-range accelerators remain in service with many more in ruins.

Silver Spoke – 50 km passenger-rated launcher to lunar orbit, marketed to tourism and prestige travel. Can only run at low Gs.
Blue Horizon – 50 km passenger-rated launcher to lunar orbit, handling most commercial passenger traffic. Can potentially ship cargo out of Luna's gravity well but is monitored to prevent this.
Esperance – 30 km Earthforce-controlled cargo rail capable of launching heavy loads past lunar orbit to Earth or interplanetary trajectories.
Iron Lance – 25 km launcher officially rated for cargo to orbit, but capable of high-G launches to Earth and used for passenger smuggling. Operated by “farmer” syndicates and small traders, it is a known hub for black-market dealings and could be weaponized.

Dozens of shorter and less secure 15 km rails remain in operation for bulk cargo to lunar orbit. These feed short-haul trade and local industry.

Near Earth Asteroids

Belters Guide to Asteroid Mining

A near-Earth asteroid is one whose orbit keeps it near Earth’s distance from the Sun for most of its path. They are not “close” in the sense the Moon is — early spacecraft took months to reach them, and even with modern ion drives, travel still takes days. The same applies to all asteroids inside the main belt, though those with more eccentric orbits are even harder to reach and harvest.

Resources from near-Earth asteroids were essential to kickstart the cislunar economy, and they remain the inner system’s most important source of carbon. This carbon is found in regolith asteroids — loose collections of space sand and dust. In microgravity, mining regolith directly is inefficient, even dangerous, as most of it drifts off to become dangerous debris. The standard method is to heat the regolith until it gasifies, then collect the released gases for processing.

Many of these asteroids were eventually mined out, leaving only their hollowed husks and abandoned mining equipment — valuable salvage for later ventures. Some installations may even harbor desperate survivors, overlooked or abandoned during evacuations or simply forgotten in the chaos of the Icarus Fall.