“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.
• Even more destroyed in the War, and most of the population live on floating farms called Gasbags. The rest of the planet is covered in factories.
• Ruled under the thumb of the Kedalion war machine, under which Tyrant Maribelle Johns sits as a puppet ruler.

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, the oldest human in Briareos²⁾ was Oscar Letts. He led the delegation to the conference, hoping to use the vast supplies of food that Briareos created and exported as leverage to gain explicit promises of protection from the other systems.

This went less well than expected. While Selas forged an alliance with Briareos in the wake of Letts’ demands, the planet’s near-immediate destruction meant they were unable to come to Briareos’s aid. Briareos soon broke out in revolution, as many people saw Letts’ ill-conceived ultimatum as a symptom of all that was wrong with Briareos. While initially idealistic, the revolution quickly turned into a brutal civil war that ended with the rise of Maribelle Johns and the purge of her enemies from the planet’s surface.

Although they had remained on the periphery of the war up until that point, once the revolution was over Eunomia immediately demanded tithe and the handing over of all Selasi scientists who had taken refuge on the planet. Although Johns initially refused, having faith in Briareos’s strength, years of full-scale planetary bombardment wore her down and she eventually handed the planet over to Kedalion in exchange for a comfortable position as an executor in Kedalion’s name.

As revolution raged Briareos came under the rule of Tyrant Maribelle Johns. She, and a core of die-hard supporters, executed nearly every gerontocrat, and most who spoke up against her in the first days of her rule. In order to “combat the instability of the food supply” she instigated a reform by whereby Briareans would be tied to a specific Gasbag, and required to farm it. These Gasbags would be owned by Managers, who took responsibility for ensuring food is gathered and passed up to higher Managers who owned fleets of Gasbags, all the way up to the Tyrant herself. However, before her reforms could really take root, Kedalion officially took over the planet, mechanising the gasbags and covering the blasted surface in factories.

There is some resistance to Johns and to Kedalion rule, but as the choice is between a gasbag and the factories on the planet’s surface, there is effectively nowhere for people to go. The weapons levelled at the planet disrupted even further what little environmental balance had been found by the old-guard of Briareos. Almost all of the planet's surface is desert, either sweltering in the sun of the day, or freezing to ice under the night sky of a blasted atmosphere. The cities have been taken over by Kedalion machines, old power now ruthlessly exploited to run factories. While some people manage to survive in corners of old buildings and underground networks, what little power the Tyrant still wields is dedicated to weeding the remains of resistance out.

One tiny spot of light is that the majority of Briareon residents no longer need food to survive. The collaboration between Briareon understanding of biotechnology and advanced engineering skills brought over by Selasi refugees has led to the development of personal gasbags which work efficiently to provide their bearers with a steady supply of energy and nutrients, removing the need to eat. However, faced with the choice between being killed by a Kedalion guard on the surface or one of the Tyrant’s soldier in the underground, many people choose to work the gasbags anyway.

The people who live on Briareos now can be split into two groups: those who submitted to the Tyrant and to Kedalion and who now eke out a meagre existence aboard a Gasbag, and those who rebelled, and eke out a meagre and short existence upon the ground. Regardless of their current state, however, this is a new state for most Briareans, and the memory of their previous lives means that they 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.

Those who live aboard a Gasbag have lives comparable to those of serfs under medieval feudalism. They are technically free to do whatever they want, so long as the food is grown and they do not leave the Gasbag; and if their manager decides to come up with brutal ways of ensuring the first two, what is going to stop them? People from all stripes of the Briareos that was work on one of these, so the expected talents of even a single farm are hugely variant.

Those who have rebelled and live on the ground move around in tight-knit units, trying to avoid the many threats to them both natural and human-made. Out of necessity these people have taken to wearing an increasing number of bio-technological implants and enhancements; this allows them to bring the tools of survival anywhere, on their person. The most notable of these is the advanced foodless technology used by most Briareons, but in particular those on the surface. These take the form of 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. It does not, however, remove hunger.