Briareos

“We're leaving again. Sun's got too far over the horizon, so we're heading East to get into the next citadel. Helen says that there looks to be some scratching on some of the original Gasbag designs in the old city ruins. So, if you get back here before we do I've attached maps for how to find them. Best of luck to you both, and wish Julio fortune on their implanting tests.”
— From Leane, Briarean archivist before the War.

• Briareos is a single blasted planet, even from before the War, that turns slowly on its axis. Nothing else in the system is inhabited, barring small stations.
• The people get by using bio-technology adapted to the toxic environment, and constantly move along the line between night and day.
• Following a brief yet bloody civil war, Briareos was split into ‘Dusk’ and ‘Dawn’ factions.
• The two sides were forced to work together following an infestation of walking corpses.

Briareos is no stranger to war; even before the conflict that desolated the Seven Systems, the planet was a harsh and barren place to live. Previous civil conflicts destroyed vast swathes of the planet and slowed the rotation of the planet to a crawl. The long days and nights, approaching the length of years of more reasonable planets, and the vast pollution left by the war, meant that agriculture became mostly unfeasible. Still, Briareos was able to rebuild, using bio-technology to provided much-needed stability. The most obvious example is the floating farm known colloquially as the Gasbag. By using reverse engineered plant matter, the people of Briareos could pilot a portable farm to areas of promising environment, while the very method of transport was growing and ripening. When ripe it can be eaten, or used as a framework for growing more meat-like calorie-dense foods. This quickly became the staple of Briarean diet and employment, and most inhabitants had worked as a farmer at one point in their lives. People also moved along the dusk-lines, between certain safe cities to prevent drying out in the day, or freezing at night.

Politically, Briareos had been a strict gerontocracy¹⁾ for as long as anyone could remember. The logistics involving itinerant populations, and the intricacies of a vast range of supporting biological machines, required a lot of experience and left no room for error. Thus it was necessary to follow those who had had the longest time to prepare. That was the official line, at least. At the time of the Ananke Conference, it was clear that generational tensions had grown more than anyone could have expected. The passing of the previous gerontocrat, Oscar Letts, in his sleep was seen as an opportunity to foster meaningful change in Briareos.

A rough proposal for political reform was hammered out at the Ananke conference. The presence of some of the generation’s most politically active young people, along with many of the planet’s oldest, meant that the discussion stuck once the delegates returned home, resulting in the creation of a series of small local authorities, run by gerontocrats but where the young were also able to have a say.

This unhappy compromise was thrown off course after five years. The previously barren ground of the planet had been made somewhat more habitable through the application of advanced farming technology. Foilowing an attempt by a group of gerontocrats to reassert their power, a number of their opponents fled to the planet’s surface, making it their base and attempting to make lives outside of gerontocratic rule. The following years were tense and characterised by a number of scuffles, before a brief civil war broke out in 1775.

The civil war was won in 1778 by the young people, due to their strong supply lines and the more stable food supply now found on the surface of Briareos. They were able to force a number of significant concessions including barriers to suffrage and political participation, effectively forcing a total rewrite of their government system.

After many centuries, the surface of Briareos is slowly becoming more habitable thanks to the successful development of a variety of advanced strains of crops. What was once a blasted wasteland now harbours large, carefully regulated plant beds growing varieties of hardly plant life, even as the gasbags still fly above. The slow turn of the planet still forces a migratory lifestyle, but more people now inhabit the ground, and perennial plants are seeded within the ground to be ready for harvesting as the long day turns to dusk.

The people of Briareos are, and have been for the past few years, in a state of political limbo, trying to settle on how they are going to run their planet now. Despite the end of the war, those who fought on either side of it have settled into different factions and remain hostile, but a new political dimension has emerged, with the question of whether, in the light of the newly inhabitable-surface, power should be centralised and the Briareons work as a whole people government by one central body, or whether greater power should be given to individual settlements, whether they be in gasbags or on the surface.

The cessation of hostilities means that the people of Briareos are back to intermingling, from having had a very sharp divide between surface dwellers and gasbag dwellers before. However, there is still some mistrust between the two groups, as everyone rmemebers how easily things kicked off the last time they attempted diplomacy. However, Briareons all still share some traits. Briareans tend to be knowledgeable about technology, as even the youngest have some knowledge of how to produce and maintain it.

Briareons dedicate much of their time to farming and survival, whether on the ground or the gasbags. Following the calming of hostilities, the world is less dangerous and Briareon citizens have had more time to relax and work on scientific developments.

In addition to great strides in farming technology, Briareons have also made significant progress in biomodification. This has notably included the creation of the so-called ‘foodless’ technology. Once installed, the bearer grows a series of nodules that look like miniature Gasbags - these can be eaten as a steady food supply, but also leaves the bearer without the need to eat to survive. The technology does not, however, remove hunger.