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BACKSTORY:

The 2040s bore witness to a much-changed world from the one we know.  Political boundaries were reshaped as the US pulled itself out of the United Nations and became the last superpower to crumble.  No new superpower rose to replace it, and most nations are determined that no new superpower ever will.  Physical boundaries were washed away by the Greenhouse Flood as fair-sized segments of Antarctica's ice sheets slid off into the oceans, raising sea levels by 30 meters, flooding large areas of coastline and arable land, slowly drowning many major cities worldwide.  Technological boundaries were pushed to new limits as nanotechnology and muon-catalysed fusion became the building blocks of a changing civilization.  Space travel and colonization went from one crippled space station in 2002 to a far flung sphere of influence as muon-fusion engines made it possible to reach the planets in days and weeks instead of months and years. 

In 2045, the UN commissioned the largest engineering project in the history of humanity by authorizing the terraforming of Mars.  Exploration of the Red Planet had proven while Mars had water and carbon enough to start the terraforming process, it didn't have enough to see the effort through.  A source of water ice and hydrocarbons enough to transform a planet was needed... and so the terraforming project looked to Saturn and its icy moons.  A base of operations will be needed there - one capable of supporting the hundreds of workers and tens of thousands of robots that will be needed to mine and transport the needed resources.  Being so far from the center of human civilization, it would need to be self-sufficient, not merely a space station, but a space city.  Construction corporations from around the globe jostled like excited children for the opportunity. 

In 2047, the Crown Corporation SIDCC (Solar Infrastructure Development Corporation of Canada) was awarded the contract.  By 2050, Cassini Habitat was completed and the colonists started to arrive, first a small trickle, then a flood. 

It is now the year 2066.  Cassini Habitat is now a thriving community of fifty thousand and has expanded beyond the original functions assigned to it.  A center of research, industry, and even tourism, it is the new frontier, and beckons many of Earth's best and brightest to find new lives and new opportunities.  It is a community that is reaching a stage of political awareness as well, and its citizenry begins to see itself as more than just a glorified space station as the Canadian Government and the UN still sees it.  There is a sense of growing change in the air, though few will realize that the present undercurrent of unrest will foreshadow changes that will make the past fifty years of progress seem tame...

(This is not the whole backstory, but this is all that will be released for now.  As each chapter is finished, more will be added to this page to give new readers a quick summary.  In the meantime, feel free to browse the detailed pages below:)

 
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