Medved's Introduction

''A document from the world of Forgotten Colony. This is meant to give new players a view into life on Rukast.''

I usually got called Polkovnik, least to my face. Medved some of them called me when I wasn't hearing. First was my rank. Second came from two things. One, I'm a large man. Second, this large claw-hand I had installed when my real one got shot up. Looks like a bear claw. Military wasn't willing to pay for a real looking one. Those things are still damned expensive.

Don't have much better to do, and I'm being offered good money to narrate, and I'm just as qualified as anyone. So back to the beginning, I suppose.

=History 101=

Origins
Mid 21st century small research outposts and colonies became popular. Mostly governments, but some private types tried to do mineral research. One guy, Solokov or something like that, got an idea. Some egghead astronomers theorized they found an Earth like planet. Solokov got to thinking he'd build a colony ship, sell the tickets, send 'em off and make a fortune.

So first he went to the Russians for reactor technology. Fission at its finest. Sold them a stake in the plan for those, way the story goes. Problem is, trip was 30 light years or so. Even a fast ship wouldn't get people there in one piece. So he negotiated for some metabolic stifling tech. Problem is, the Americans kept blocking it. Solokov got his way when he allowed the Americans oversight and a share of the tickets.

Solokov's brainchild became a Russo-American project, with a few others thrown in. By 2156, the ship was done, ready to go, and getting loaded.

Trip took seventy-five years or so, well, that's what I hear, time dilation and all, so it didn't feel like that long. Most of the people were kept on the drugs so they'd live through the trip and not eat up resources. The trip to the system didn't go bad.

Approach
Once in the system, things started going bad. Most of the bridge was Russian, but the security team was American. Some Earth-mandate or something like that. Anyway, way I hear it, a couple thrusters went bad, the Americans, fresh off being stifled, weren't thinkin' so clear, and marched right on up to the bridge to confront the Russians. Words turned into threats, and threats turned into everyone pulling the guns. Cooler heads were about to prevail when people heard a loud noise. Some say it was a meteor, thruster burn, or a gunshot, anyway, some jackass started shooting, everyone woke up their people, and started securing and launching pods.

The ship worked like a charm, everyone did what it was supposed to, barring a couple minor errors. Landfall was a success.

Things got worse because of that.

The Early Years
See, instead of thinking about 'how do we get by', that was already solved. You had who knows how many pods on the ground and a half million people fired up over the slights. Only upside to all of it is no one had much in the way of producing weapons. It became clear quickly no one'd win easily. Add into that a couple pods held by a wishful warlord of the week and you had a recipe for trouble. So everyone dug in.

Soon, though, it turned from old slights to resources and land rights, and no one was thinking much of peace. Shifting alliances, skirmishes, and expanding populations kept fanning the fire.

97 AP (After Planetfall) Earth managed to remember about us, but it wasn't in a good way. Evidently the Chinese back on Earth figured out we were successful enough and decided to try and come in. Few of 'em managed to settle on one of the poles, but most of them got shot down when we figured out 'preparing for impact' for them meant eliminating or subjugating us first. You saw a bit of unity here, when that happened.

Last time we heard anything from Earth, and to be honest, I think we like it better that way.

It's now 159 AP, but that's the short version of how we ended up here.

=The Grand Tour= They call this rock Rukast. Don't ask me, I didn't come up with it. Far as I know, it doesn't mean anything, but everyone seems to have their own theories on that one. Could just be some old scientist giving his name to it. Temperate zones, tropics, poles, we have it all. We classify six major landmasses, but they're still all connected via strips of land, depending on tides. I'll see if I can't least get something of a map added.

The Arctic Circle region is dominated by that Chinese expedition I talked about. They managed to make landfall there, if you ask me, only because no one else wanted it. Land's mostly frozen over, harsh summers followed by winters that are even worse, winds, supposedly even the air freezes at points. I hear the early years for 'em came with mass graves, not that it breaks my heart. Here's the kicker, I hear most of them were male. Overwhelming majority. Colonization? I still think it was a conquest attempt. My real hand's probably preserved in the snow somewhere, too.

Can't say I know much about their habits. Use domes, mostly, to try and get by with food. Hear they have to get most of what they eat from other sources, probably one of the lesser powers. Last I heard, their government was launching some propaganda campaign about 'procreation with pride.'

Next you have the American pods. Quite a few of 'em, and evidently they got some decent mining equipment too, since their major settlements are mostly underground. Hear merchants pay quite a bit for the privilege of using the tunnels for travel within their borders. Probably safest traveling on planet I know about.

As for us? We build above ground and tend to spread out now. Temperate climate and the like. Advantage of being one of the first, we chose a nice spot.

Plenty of lesser powers, too. Don't have time to detail them all. Offshoots of the early settlements, warlords, cults, later colonization attempts. Lesser powers don't mean they're pushovers, though. They maintained their independence for some reason or other. One I always think of everyone calls Atlantis (think someone named it after some old legend or somesort). Anyway, big underwater dome at the bottom, have to use a sub to get there, too. They set up shop in the ocean right between the three of us major powers, and they don't hesitate to enforce their 200 mile radius of claimed territory. Great place to go if you don't want people to ask questions. Just don't go blowing the place up, don't piss the wrong people off, pay up to the right people and it's not likely anyone'll care. Cosa Nostra, Mafia, something like that's the group that runs the place, and they make good money charging fees for the privilege of doing business there. Wish I knew how they got the place built.

=Life on Rukast= So just what do people do on this rock? Quite a bit. Plenty of soldiers, the smaller places just use mercs, but pretty much the same thing. People ship goods, people who loot goods, the people who run things. As the first generation would say: It's life.

Power
Energy needs for large areas are met by fission, usually. Some got lucky and got a hold of a fission reactor when they landed. Others figured out how to do it later. Unofficially the amount of power generated is a decent measure of who the big guys are.

I hear the Chinese ran out of things to do with the power they can generate, and their dome defenses from what I know seem to agree.

Smaller reactors exist, but they're mostly military or the big vehicles.

Everyone else sticks to more basic stuff, solar, wind, fossil. I think, anyway. The big thing to work on now is fusion, which is the opposite of fission, but that's not something I was privy to.

Travel
A four wheeled vehicle is your best bet for moving things on the ground if you don't have a load of cash on you. Bigger vehicles exist if you're the shipping type. Here's a hint: If you're going through some of the not so civilized places, fix up your ride. You'll thank me later.

If you're traveling alone, hovercycles are good. Use a lot of power, but they're fast and can outrun most of the bad things you'd fine.

Air travel? Yeah, it exists, and going through civilized areas it isn't bad, otherwise, find something else.

Space
I don't know much about this. I've heard there's a couple transports that do low-space travel to avoid trouble spots. I don't have enough money to find out if it's for real or any good.

The major powers work on space programs, but that's to catch up to the Chinese who're decades ahead.

The FTL Issue
I'm asked about this a lot, so I'll just say no one has faster than light travel capability that's known. It's the current holy grail for those studying space travel. Problem is, I think someone figuring it out'd do more harm than good.

For better or worse, Rukast is at least stable. Say someone is able to get to Earth and back inside of a month with some new drive. Whoever got it first could phone home, come back with reinforcements. Once that starts happening a world war would start up. It'd be worse than someone deciding to detonate a nuke.