"The world we are creating is going to sound weird and impossible. But our ideas of what's normal and possible are going to wither away within the next few decades. And good riddance! We need to think of the impossible - and then do it!"
Mictlan is the sole habitable world in the Asben star system, sharing with the barren worlds of Oralen and Coya. It has a complex and varied geography and ecosystem. It has two primary continents called Adria and Favida. The equator holds two dominant tropical rain forests on either of the two main continents where it is hot and humid. This gives way to dry, sweeping mountains, temperate forests and grasslands, barren deserts, and any other equivalent environment on Earth - and some unique to Mictlan.
Environment & Geography
Mictlan is also home to a breathtaking biodiversity that has since been lost on Earth. Early on in the terraforming efforts many terran species threatened by climate change were transplanted onto Mictlan. Many transplants failed to thrive, but others rebounded. While this has been a celebratory victory for conservationists, the tension between environmental sanctity and the realities of Mictlan society remain heavy.
One of the most unique environmental features of Mictlan is the Everstorm - a calamitous electrically-charged hurricane that remains geographically fixed in the ocean between the two continents until, marking the start of the Mictlan New Year, it circles the equator and destroys everything in its path with winds over three hundred miles per hour. The local inhabitants have learned to live in tandem with the cyclones’ rhythm.
The second most notable feature of Mictlan are the Fire Crown Volcanoes. Unconventional terraforming efforts in the past became irreversible, and now hundreds of volcanoes are perpetually erupting. The volcanic ash is extremely rich with magnesium and potassium and makes the soil around the volcanoes some of the richest in the galaxy. Mictlan farmers have adapted their crops and farming styles to suit different types of ash.
Civics
A wide variety of nations and city-states can be found on Mictlan, the most famous of which are noted further down the page. All of the nations are broadly part of the Mictlan Commonwealth which lives in tension with UNIP. UNIP law requires that it treats the Commonwealth as a unitary world government. This draws the ire of the local governments who have a variety on-again/off-again relationships with the Commonwealth.
The most controversial aspect is UNIP’s environmental regulations. Mictlan’s extremely rich biodiversity and abundant natural resources have naturally made it a compelling target for mega-corporations. UNIP authorities and regulators moved swiftly to make vast swathes of the planet into protected national parks - this includes areas where people had already been living for decades, if not more than a century, such as the entire continent of Adria.
The campaign to keep Mictlan’s ecosystems protected and pristine has kept open raw wounds on who’s community deserves to be rewilded, and whose is preserved.
Society
Humanity on Mictlan may often be reduced to the homogeneous label of “Mictlanian” by those from beyond its star system, but there is a wide diversity to human expression and culture in the world. This section can only touch on a few - your character can be from a part of the tapestry not shown in this section.
Mictlan and its people, its places, its flora, fauna, and land are largely not new. People have thrived on this world before your character existed and will do so after your character stops. What is new to us outside the game has been an integral part of humanity in the setting. This world is home to its inhabitants - treat their home well, even if your character makes it their own. What is exotic to you is just someone else’s existence.
The Storm Nomads
The Everstorms path of destruction was much more random in the past, leaving many ruins of past civilizations in its wake. In these places and even in the heart of the Everstorms path live the Storm Nomads. These communities are semi-nomadic, taking residence in and around the ruins during the calm months, and migrating north or south when the Everstorm begins its yearly procession across the globe.
Their lifestyle is imposed on them by coercion as much as it’s chosen willingly. The rewilding laws prohibit their permanent settling in their former lands, and they, for a variety of reasons, refused to migrate to the cities.
These communities are hardy and resourceful in making alternate ways of life. They hand out free textbooks, have holistic programs to school their children, build cheap but quality housing that can be quickly disassembled and relocated. They have DIY power systems, water treatment systems - and generally adapt infrastructure that outsiders would consider outdated or even beyond salvaging.
Storm nomads don’t live an idyllic life; their DIY developments and lifestyles are solutions to the problems their communities face.
Storm Nomads player characters might use their ingenuity with mechanical systems to become Engineers. They may also use their skills honed to help their communities by becoming Botanists or Doctors. Or perhaps they bucked trends and joined the ranks of another department, or even Command.
The Jatrophas
The rewilding campaign of Mictlan was a shot aimed at the mega-corporations, but the consequences have been felt by the communities it disrupted. When it became illegal to live in vast swathes of the countryside, many communities were forced to uproot themselves and relocate by the thousands to the city-states or urban centers outside the new “national parks”. These people were not always welcome in the cities and they were kept on the outskirts, creating shantytowns given limited or no assistance from the governments. With no outside help coming, the people were forced to become squatters and create sprawling shantytowns, also called favelas in some regions.
Buildings in the shantytowns are typically assembled from wood, scrap, and bricks. They usually have DIY wiring and plumbing. In the past these communities were dominated by criminal enterprises that overpowered the lackluster power of the local governments, but in recent years various initiatives have made some shantytowns more or less safe places to live and work.
The Jatrophas is the homogeneous label placed on people that live in these shanty-towns. They come from an extremely broad set of cultures which were all uprooted, thrown together, and abandoned. They’ve had to create their own new communities and identities. Businesses, religious services, and social programs created and run by the inhabitants service their needs. The communities are also filled with an eclectic mix of culture and technology. Advanced PDAs, fax machines, type-writers, robot chassis' that were old when Mictlan was new, and holographic projectors can all be found in them - sometimes all on the same street.
Jatrophas live in hundreds of different communities with a hundred different relationships with their parent city. Your Jatropha may come from a community given regular policing and access to more services. Or they may come from one still unwanted by its parent city, left to the wolves and rule of the local or regional criminal enterprise. Your character may seek different opportunities as a member of the Service Department, or maybe your character achieved greatness and is a proud Doctor, member of Command, or any other role.
The Volcanic Communities
The Fire Crown Volcanoes evoke a strong sense of place. The communities around, on, or within the volcanoes have a strong bond with their volcano and in many places anthropomorphize it. A volcano is given a name by the community and an important - and in some cases, reverential - figure. Of course for others the volcano is simply a home - a fickle and dangerous one!
Some communities revolve around their volcano's gimmick. It may be a perpetual river of lava released by it, a series of rumbles that sound like songs, the grandeur of its eruptions, or how its activity affects the community. Some towns cater to thrill-seeking tourists and have hovercraft protected by shields over the vent. These hovercraft are then catapulted at incredible speeds when the volcano erupts. Slower paced thrillseekers use the protection of shields to ride specialty gondolas down rivers of lava. Larger, exposed lava-pools may even have shielded cruise vessels.
Whatever the case, if you make a character from a Mictlan volcanic community, you should also consider making your patron volcano a character of its own. Consider how it impacted your character and their community. Volcanic communities come in a wide variety of cultures and wealth, though they tend to be more well-off than not, so there are no particular departments to consider a player-character to gravitate towards.
The Cities of Favida
The only continent where urban settlement is unrestricted, Favida holds the majority of the city-states and nations that make up the Mictlan Commonwealth. The cities have an alternatively hostile and co-existent relationship with nature depending on where you look, and they have a similar diversity in cultures.
East Favida
On one end of the scale are the Favidan cities that work to live in tandem with their natural environment irrespective of the dictates of UNIP and the Commonwealth. These cities, which on average but aren’t always on the eastern half of Favida, strive for collective, harmonious relationships with their surroundings and each other. Sprawling canals cut through the cities with clear water and visible fish and dolphins - a sight unknown to most Earth waterways. While the volcanic communities of the north have their fertile ash soil, these Favidan cities have towering hydroponic farms that create an abundant variety of food. Player characters from the eastern Favidan cities may be thoughtful about the impact they’re having on their surroundings, go out of their way to help keep the place clean, focus on eating natural foods, and generally be equitable individuals.
West Favida
The western Favidan cities have in recent years flirted with mega-corporations and strive to bring the conglomerates into their communities. This isn’t a malicious act - the UNIP environmental regulations, despite their good intentions, come off as draconian and devastated many cities which relied on “dirty” industries and which saw joblessness skyrocket while being inundated with refugees seeking help. Every metric of human well-being tanked, and in some communities collapsed completely. The raw economic power of mega-corporations is seen as a way to keep people employed, fed, and happy. These cities, while still diverse, are slowly being subsumed into the ‘Astro-Culture’ - the homogenized ‘default’ of human space. Local brands have been replaced with corporate logos. Local bands struggle to compete with Idris-sponsored music. Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals have bought out most of the failing mom-and-pop pharmacies. Postal services have been privatized in many western cities and handed over to Charon Shipping Services (which famously accidentally dropped a package into the same volcano three times in the span of two weeks). Hephaestus has taken over many construction firms, creating an explosion of development and expansion that is constantly straining against the legal limits of UNIP and Commonwealth laws.
Player characters from the western Favidan cities may have been given a second chance and uplifted by the jobs mega-corporations brought to their communities. They might have been given a sense of purpose that having a job brings, and the sense of connection to the wider galactic humanity. Or perhaps your character could resent the surrender of their community to these faceless conglomerates, but struggle to exist in an alternate lifestyle. In either case, they may have found themselves leaving Mictlan behind, however that made them feel, and end up in one of the many departments available on the New Horizon.
History
The history of Mictlan began with the “To the stars, America!” campaign. It was an effort from various NGOs with the backing of many terrestrial governments of the Northern, Central, and South Americas to pool their resources and get a presence in space. The initiative saw the colonization of Mictlan in the early 2200’s. It was a very different world then, primarily temperate with an active tectonic system and nasty storms.
Terraforming efforts from the campaign were successful and the world was quickly inhabited, with settlers spreading out across the world's burgeoning ecosystems. As part of the campaign's fundraising efforts courting conservationist movements, many endangered plants and animals being lost to Earth's collapsing climate had breeding pairs moved to Mictlan and introduced. The next few centuries saw many species fail in this alien environment while others flourished. The campaign was considered a massive success and further investments were created to send settlers, flora, and fauna to this distant world.
By the early 2300’s the “To the stars, America!” campaign was bought out by the Michael & Daniel Eco-Solutions Consortium; an upstart venture capital firm trying to break out as a new mega-corporation. It kicked the terraforming gear into overdrive, wanting to stress the systems to market them as able to tame the harshest worlds, while also possibly being part of weapons contracts.
The terraforming efforts worked far too well and created the modern day Everstorm - its arrival heralded catastrophe. In a panic and while trying to re-calibrate the ecosystem, over-stressed geologic manipulation meant to alter the climate triggered the Northern Mictlan Traps, prompting the volcanic eruptions that continue to the modern day. The first months saw whole communities wiped clean off the map.
In those early centuries news was slow to travel, but when news of the unfolding ecological cataclysm reached Earth via haggard, exhausted refugees a furious UNIP immediately dispatched couriers with lawyers and law enforcement to dissolve the Consortium and arrest its leaders. At the same time Mictlan’s surviving communities had formed the Mictlan Commonwealth which nationalized the Consortium, with ad-hoc science teams working to tame the runaway world. At this time almost a billion people lived on Mictlan, and they narrowly escaped a runaway ecological meltdown that would have turned Mictlan into another Venus.
By the 2400’s most of the damage had been mitigated, but terraforming efforts continue to be confounded by the Everstorm, and the northern Fire Crown Volcanoes remain stubbornly active. At this time UNIP took in Mictlan as a member of the UNIP, granting it the rights and privileges of a member world. With the emergency over it considered allowing corporate investment into the world, but political and environmental interests pressured UNIP to protect Mictlan’s natural resources and ecosystems; many species that were rendered extinct on Earth exist on Mictlan, but the terraforming disasters rendered them once again critically endangered. It was this time, in the mid-2400’s, that UNIP enacted and enforced its sweeping environmental laws that affect Mictlan to this day.