Historical Notes

The Bumblebee-class was intended to serve as an interdictor, based on lessons learned during the Main Belt Crisis (c. 2493-2521). During the Nova War (2539-2559), a proxy conflict between the Solar Union and Martian Federation over control of the Nova System (links to r/imaginarymaps), Bumblebees excelled in service for the Union Space Self Defense Force by racing in and out of the conflict’s vast areas of operations, where they leveraged their exceptional speed and agility to enable quick hit-and-run strikes.

When the Nova War ended, many of these tried and tested vessels were left high and dry, as their swiftness and biting close-in firepower were suddenly redundant in the postwar era. As a result, most wound up languishing in interplanetary scrap yards, awaiting the fate that comes at the end of all ships’ service lives. This was considered a tragedy by those who served aboard them, almost all of whom held the vessels in high esteem for their abilities as combat implements and as homes away from home.

But some of them were salvaged and given a new lease on life as merchant vessels, salvage & rescue craft, or a variety of other second-life roles. In the case of the Fool’s Errand, its current crew of five, all of them deep space outcasts of the highest order, has repurposed the craft as a long-haul cargo hauler, with its mighty Gungnir Corp. Mk. XXIV nuclear saltwater rocket put to good use rapidly moving goods across Nova space – if they can manage to keep enough nuclear fuel in the tanks to keep her flying, that is...

Author's Notes

This project began thanks to my friendship with u/SkullB0nes on the Tough Sci-Fi server on Discord. In early 2023, B0nes sketched his idea (Image #9) of a warship propelled by a nuclear salt-water rocket (NSWR), a concept originated by Robert Zubrin and explained here by Scott Manley. I took inspiration from B0nes' sketch, and ended up sketching out my own concept in Adobe Illustrator - it can be seen in Image #8.

Things really go interesting due to the fact that I was also experimenting with Blender around that time (repeat after me, kids: NOT EVEN ONCE), and decided to try and make the ship (which I'd named the Fool's Errand by that point) there. That led to the design seen in Image #6 an the render seen in Image #7, which became part of the portfolio of references I sent to my friend Bien Carlos Manzares for him to improve upon.

And improve upon them he did. The renders in Images 1-4 are the results of his work, and I think he went out of the ballpark in capturing my vision. The drawing in the infographic shown in Image #5 is one I did myself using the renders Bien Carlos did as a template, and it shows off the stats I came up with for the Errand (and the Bumblebee-class in general), including my slightly fudged approximation of its specific impulse.

As for why I did all this, the answer is a bit more complicated. I started working on my futuristic military sci-fi setting, The Spacers Saga, about 20 years ago (when I was just 10 years old). It is essentially a distillation and reexamination of every fictional universe I've ever loved (Halo, Stargate, Star Wars and Star Trek, etc...) which I originally used as a source of comfort when I was a lonely, nerdy kid with few friends to play with.

But in the 20 years since I started playing with this universe, though, it's evolved from a setting for a few imaginary friends to a whole future history that encompasses much of our solar system and a few beyond, and which spans from the early 21st century until the mid-26th. The Fool's Errand is from a storyline called INFINITUM, which starts up in 2569 and involves the hero ship's crew on a desperate race to get a warning to the Solar Union before the Martian Federation can enact their plan to win the Nova War after the fact.

If anyone reading this is interested in finding out more about The Spacers Saga, this link will take you to the Substack blog where I've been sharing all of the lore updates about the setting, as well as occasional posts of stories from within the narrative. Please note that there is NO pressure to subscribe at any time - it is of course appreciated, but even just having folks visit the site and check out my content is a major blessing 😄

Additional Note

Before I hit "Post," I also want to make sure I give a shout-out to my friend Megan Miller, who did the nose art for the Fool's Errand (Image #10). This link goes to her LinkTree site, where you can find more of her art. Megan is a very active indie artist from my home state of Indiana, and I highly encourage you to consider commissioning her!

Mars in 2524

• Population: approximately 1.03 billion, including orbitals & Deimos
• Capital: Aldrin City, United Republic of Marineris
  • Metropolitan population: approximately 29.7 million
• Affiliation: the Union of Solar Peoples (since 2403); the Inner System Security Arrangement (since 2457)
• Government
  • Official name: United Nations of Mars
  • Established: 22 February 2169
  • Current constitution adopted: 15 October 2456
  • Government style: federal parliamentary republic
  • Ruling party in 2389: Syndicalist Party (neoliberal/center-left)
  • Head of State: President Brendan Meara (since 2521)
  • Head of Government: Prime Minister Rosanna Hamari (since 2522)
  • Supreme governing body: Martian Parliament
    • Upper house: Martian Federal Senate (48 members)
    • Lower house: Martian Federal Assembly (517 members)
• Primary industries: heavy industry/manufacturing; shipping & shipbuilding
• GDP: approximately $91 trillion (per capita average: $88.3 thousand)

Historical Notes

When the Coalition for Mutual Security and the Alliance of Free Worlds reconciled their differences near the end of the Second Frontier War, they initiated a process which would eventually lead to reunification. This resulted in the 2403 Alexandria Accords that established the Solar Union, which then spent the next twenty years working to undo the damages of the 24th century.

But the long shadow of the Frontier Wars still loomed over the Solar System, with the effects of the Legacy Crisis standing as an especially stark reminder that old wounds do not always heal easily. The Gaian Emergency was another particularly thorny issue for the new masters of Solar Space, with the long simmering conflict between the Community of Gaia and the Progressive Order of Gaia finally coming to a boil as external interference led to a breakdown in diplomacy. These crises strained public faith in the Solar Union's leaders, but did not break it.

But on Mars, the de facto ruler of the solar system, a new wave of unease was growing. After shouldering the brunt of the cost for rebuilding the outer solar system in the wake of the Frontier Wars, the people of Mars harbored a deep resentment of their new allies. As the Main Belt Asteroid collapsed into strife, many Martians saw the Union of Solar Peoples as a weak and feckless substitute for the strength of the old Mars-dominated Coalition for Mutual Security.

As the Main Belt Crisis dragged on, a new generation of leaders on Mars capitalized on this malcontent with fiery rhetoric which ignited the flames of a new revolution. Among the most radical of these new populists were the Martian Unity Party, who called for a reassessment of Martian priorities in the new era of politics and a return to the glory of Mars’ past.

When the M.U.P. was incorporated in 2511, many pundits declared that the Party was at best a callback to the heady days of the Martian Workers Party (aka the One Mars Party) which ruled during the Mars-Titan War, and at worst a gang of radicals whose extremism would lead them to self-destruct within a few years. They didn’t count on the Party drawing on this ridicule as a source of strength, and on the anger of everyday Martians at perceived slights against the Red Planet, and against the slow encroachment of what they called “impurities” in solar society.

During the Frontier Wars, genetically altered citizens, human-animal hybrids, and other “augments” made up less than 2 percent of the population. By the late 2510s, that had risen to more than 9 percent. Many hardliners saw this as an affront to the genetic purity of Solar Space, and the Martian Unity Party seized on this unease as a platform in their campaign for political power.

In 2519, the Solar Union presided over the Port Taurus Accords. One provision was the gradual incorporation of all local militaries into the Union Self Defense Force. The leaders of M.U.P. claimed that the Martian military was a key part of its identity and decried this as the final nail in the coffin of Martian sovereignty. This anger simmered on as the Main Belt Crisis came to an end and the disarmament of the Solar Union’s constituent nations picked up pace.

One of the up-and-coming military leaders making a name for himself in the Main Belt Crisis, as well as in ranks of the M.U.P., was Sanyar Galvani. Born in 2457, Galvani was commissioned in 2511 and was already famous as the great-grandson of Frontier War heroes Matt Cavanaugh and Alexandra Fujikawa even before he fell in with the M.U.P. When the Port Taurus Accords ended the Crisis, he was a vocal proponent of the theory that Mars’ claims to Main Belt resources had been sold out by the Union in order to bring an end to the interminable conflict there.

When the Solar Union withdrew its forces from the Main Belt, uproar among everyday Martians led to a perfect storm for the M.U.P. Seizing on Commander Galvani’s fame and charisma, as well as his populist appeal and status as a political outsider, they fielded him as a candidate in the 2524 general election. Thus the stage was set for the Party to achieve its ambitions.

With socioeconomic unrest festering, the election of 2524 began under a cloud of controversy. Galvani was still a dark horse by as late as July, when a ham-fisted assassination attempt carried out by a member of the radical augment rights group Todos os Seres led to a surge in his popular appeal and an intensification of the rhetoric that he used against those the Party saw claimed were enemies of “Greater Mars.” This populist fervor, mixed with lingering anger over Mars’ economic woes, led to an unexpected landslide victory for the Party in late early March.

In spite of rumors about election interference, the Party moved quickly to consolidate power. As political activists argued about who had the right to rule Mars, Galvani's followers seized upon the uncertainty to declare a state of national emergency which they claimed would be lifted when the unrest had passed. This "Reconstruction" did not end for nearly 4 years, and provided the excuse the Galvanists needed to install reforms which solidified their hold on power.

News had broken in 2517 that would be the linchpin in the Party’s final ascent. That year, scientists discovered a Precursor site buried on Talvan, the jewel of the Nova Cluster bottle universe. Much as the discovery of alien ruins on Titan in the late 23rd century had led to the troubles of the 24th, the Talvan discovery opened the floodgates to the rise of a new emergency.

As the uproar caused by this discovery surged across Solar Space, a wave of popular dissent against the Party gained strength until it was a tidal wave. The Galvanists responded swiftly and harshly, cracking down on popular unrest in the most certain terms possible. Then, in October 2526, a rogue faction of the Martian Command led an attempted coup against Galvani’s government, claiming that they sought to reestablish the rule of law on Mars. The so-called “Crimson Revolution" backfired, as popular support for Galvani saw the coup routed in less than two weeks.

Ignoring accusations that the Crimson Revolution had been foreseen by the Party and used as a convenient tool to consolidate power, Galvani reorganized the United Nations of Mars into the Martian Federation in early 2527. Though nominally a fascist organization, they did not rely on the truncheon and the black bag as much as they did on propaganda and psychological warfare. After restructuring the Martian Command into the Martian Armed Forces, they leaned on worlds across the solar system to accede to the Federation as “protectorates.”

The national emergency was lifted in 2528 after the founding of the Office of Public Security. This federal security apparatus coordinated propaganda and intelligence services, and was unofficially a secret police force dedicated to enforcing the will of the Galvanist Cabinet. Galvani then banned opposition parties before the 2528 election and methodically outlawed all forms of political protest over the next few years, so that by 2531, his hold on Mars was all but absolute.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Rebirther is a military science fiction story set in the 26th century. It deals with an ongoing full-scale and asymmetric conflict between the Martian Federation and the Solar Union, fought over the control of Nova Space. This distant, resource rich star system is only accessible through dimensional doorways originally found buried on Titan in the early 24th century, and has been the focal point of a massive colonization campaign since about 2350.

The main plot focuses on Martian Federal Army soldier Alejandro “Alex” Martinez, who is deployed to Talvan (the chief world in Nova Space) in 2547. When Alex is mortally wounded a year and a half later in a battle with native insurgents, he expects to die and wake up in Valhalla. Instead, he wakes up at a Martian cloning depot, already slated for redeployment into the fray once he regains his strength. The story of Rebirther thus deals with Alex’s epic struggle to come to terms with the fact that for soldiers like him, not even death is a way out of the fight…

Important Note

This project was majorly inspired by this speculative New York Times front page about the "election of 2048," which was made by u/YNot1989. I owe a lot of credit to his work on sci-fi map designs like this and many of the other ones I've made over the past few years, so go check out his other work today!

Intro to the Frontier War

The Frontier War did not emerge, as some might contend, from the violence of the Mars Crisis. Neither did it emerge from the Zharan Uprising, nor from the Draconist Wars. Just as those incidents trace their origins back through decades of inciting factors, so too does the Frontier War. And there is perhaps no bigger catalyst than the Harrison Accords, which officially concluded the Mars-Titan War in 2299 and ushered in the status quo of the 24th century.

When the victorious Coalition carved up the outer solar system following their defeat of the Titan Pact, they failed to heed the lessons of Versailles: that when an aggressor is defeated, simply battering it into submission without taking steps to bring the defeated nation(s) back into the fold will only lead to future tension. So too was the case with the Harrison Accords.

As the conference adjourned in June 2299, senior ICA Council member Jonas Harrison commented prophetically that, "This buys peace in our time at the cost of war in our grandchildren's.” As it turned out, his longstanding concerns about allowing Titan to be rearmed in the 2310s and ‘20s, during the turbulent years leading up to the Draconist Crisis, were not quite correct in their focus. It was not at Saturn where the next conflagration would have its beginning, but at Jupiter. And the match would be struck in 2317, on the restless, turbulent world of Callisto.

Referred to by some as being akin to "a developing nation in a bottle," Callisto was primed for a confrontation between the police state set up in the wake of the Mars-Titan War and the volatile new nationalist movement sweeping through the outer solar system in the mid to late 2310s. When the Draconist Front emerged in 2317, they seemed to be another expression of this trend, and were written off as a likely flash in the pan. But when they led a coup against the Callistan Assembly in 2324, everyone took notice. The Jovian Civil War followed soon after.

Thus began the period referred to as the Draconist Crisis, or the Draconist Wars. Between 2324 and 2361, somewhere around 15 million people were killed, another 40-50 million were displaced, and the fabric of politics in Solar Space was changed for decades to come. Long after the last Draconist put down their weapons, the echoes of their revolution can still be heard.

Among the loudest of these echoes was the rise of the Alliance of Free Worlds as a new superpower in Solar Space. With the Alliance openly challenging the dominance of Mars and its lackeys in the Coalition, tensions between the superpowers were reaching a fever pitch by the mid-2360s. Both sides continued arming themselves in spite of ongoing peace negotiations, such that by the end of the decade they had built up massive arsenals. By that point, all it would take was a nudge to topple the chain of dominoes. And fall they did, starting on Mars in early 2369.

It started as a protest against Martian industrial policies. But when a careless weapon discharge by a nervous young spacer left a community organizer dead, the protests escalated into riots and spread across Mars. With the nerve center of the Coalition gripped with unrest, its restless outer limbs began to agitate for greater autonomy. As such, unrest quickly spread across the system.

With the Spacer Corps deployed on Mars for security duty, the Coalition Security Assistance Force was left to defend the rest of the Coalition. Militaries like the Army of the Republic of Ganymede and the Commonwealth Defense Force activated their reserves and deployed troops to clamp down on riots seizing up the cities and industrial zones of worlds across the outer system, all while the Coalition Military Council was deadlocked over security policy, tying up legislation that could have addressed pressing issues with infrastructure, commerce, and more.

As a result, the decadal Gagarin Conference in April 2371 began under a cloud of mistrust. Held on a space station orbiting above the Alliance capital of Callisto, the conference was intended to shore up interplanetary relations in the midst of ongoing unrest and mistrust between the major powers. But when the ambassador from the Commonwealth of Titan was assassinated by a radical supporter of the Democratic Republic, the tensions in the air became suffused with blood.

The investigation was mired in controversy. Mars claimed the assassin was trained by the Alliance, while the Alliance countered that Mars had doctored the evidence to implicate them. Accusations that the IDC had orchestrated the event to manipulate sentiment against the Alliance persisted for years after, but in the meantime both superpowers were at each other’s throats.

Another major source of tension was the Main Belt Crisis. Beginning in 2368, the Union of Sovereign Belter Republics (aka the Belter’s Union) put its foot down about trade going through the Main Belt, demanding that Mars pay transit taxes to them in order to send shipments through. Mars ignored them, choosing instead to send military escorts to accompany merchant vessels on contested trade routes, with the implication that any interference would lead to open war.

In August 2371, the crisis escalated when a team of suspected IDC commandos were arrested on Callisto during a covert infiltration mission. While AEROCOM officially denied all culpability, the incident raised tensions further, bringing them steadily closer to a showdown as the Frontier threatened to boil over into the first true interplanetary conflict in over seventy years.

Each side had already placed their fleets on high alert. They then conducted increasingly militaristic patrols of their shared borders, with units of each fleet engaging in ever more reckless displays of aggression in a bid to force the other to back off. This craven brinkmanship was made even more chaotic by the fact that the boundaries between them were poorly defined, and in many cases defined in contradictory terms. In the end, it was this issue of poor definition for their shared border that ignited the great conflagration between the superpowers.

On 4 October 2371, during a routine escort of merchant vessels through the Main Belt, a FLEETCOM flotilla ran up against Alliance craft which demanded they turn back. The FLEETCOM commander responded that the Alliance force was encroaching on Coalition space, leading to a standoff. But in perhaps the greatest instance of crossed signals of the twenty-fourth century, AEROCOM erroneously dispatched a message telling their forces to open fire instead of telling them to hold fire. By the time a correction was issued, the IDC flotilla had engaged the Alliance detachment in a skirmish that quickly boiled over into full-scale war. The Frontier War had begun...

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own timeline when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. Fifteen years later, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement - and all of the strife that comes with it.

Much of the story is set in the mid to late 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (aka the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (aka the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting to establish a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371 to 2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are currently locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

I’ve been working on the storyline of The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars the longest out of anything in The Spacers Saga, to a degree that I typically refer to it as “the main story” in my personal planning documents and discussions with my co-author. In the broader sense, Frontier Wars is a metaphor for the Cold War (specifically a variation on the "Cold War Gone Hot" scenarios plentiful in war fiction), the "Second Cold War" which some contend to be ongoing now in the 2020s, and a deeper investigation of human nature and both the inevitability and futility of war.

The first book in the Frontier Wars cycle, tentatively titled Spacers: The Titan Gambit, is currently in progress and should be published sometime in the next few years (once my publisher's kids are old enough for him to help me edit it, that is 😉). In the meantime, feel free to check out my blog for more information on The Spacers Saga and news about upcoming publications!

Credits

A quick note that the art in the "Battle Box" was originally done by Surgical Scalpels (a video game production company), ZandoArts, and Ian Gibney. The latter two are still producing art and I highly recommend checking out their portfolios today 😄

Overview

Conceived during the early years of the Zharan Collective, the Sh’Travada-class battlecruiser was intended from the inception of the project which birthed it to bring forth overwhelming firepower in an agile, durable package. It was intended from the ground up to stand toe-to-toe with vessels of the Interplanetary Defense Corps FLEETCOM or Armada dos Mundos Livres Forças Espaciais. In short, this new development in spacecraft design was the ultimate logical extension of mid-24th century space combat tactics, which emphasized highly mobile gunships (equipped with lasers, macron cannons, etc.) running and gunning through fast-paced engagements that enabled missile frigates to hang back and launch salvo after salvo of nuclear-tipped torpedoes.

The Sh’Travada-class’ name is a reference to a line in zharan cultural lore which infers that the voice of V’Ran (the Collective's political and cultural leader) is "like the thunder accompanying the lightning of their revolution." In the case of the Sh’Travada-class, that “Voice of Thunder” is the ZX-3C class magnetodynamic plasma acceleration around which the ship is built. The ZX-3C is essentially a lightning railgun that channels the immense energy of the vessel’s powerplant (rumored to be a genuine Kugelblitz drive) into a single, roughly 3.7 terawatt discharge capable of cracking an enemy ship in half from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.

Although the immense power drain of this discharge means that a Sh’Travada-class vessel is essentially dead in space for up to five seconds after firing, its accompanying weapons and maneuverability are more than capable of keeping it alive in battle. The vessel depicted here, the Hour of Reckoning (ZSV-673), is the flagship of the ZLA Space Fleet, and it saw extensive combat action during the ZLASF's participation in the last two years of the Frontier War.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own timeline when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. Much of the story is set in the mid to late 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (aka the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (aka the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting to establish a worker's utopia in the outer solar system.

In The Spacers Saga, zharans are a race of artificial humans first created in a lab at Carnegie Mellon University in 2056. In the three centuries following their creation, they were produced in large quantities for use as a source of cheap labor for offworld industries, or as expendable soldiers for offworld conflict, and by the late 23rd century there were millions of "artificials" in solar space. The name "zharan" comes from alien artifacts found buried on Titan in 2289 that, when deciphered, became a source of cultural inspiration for the nascent artificial liberation movement.

The Zharan Liberation Army was founded in 2337 as part of that movement, which had recently been forced underground after a defeat in the Battle of Urumqi. After the Zharan Uprising and the founding of the Zharan Collective, the ZLA was reorganized into a hyper-modern combined arms fighting force, with some of the best weapons technology in the solar system. It was officially neutral until 2379, when the Zharan Collective joined the Alliance of Free Worlds and sent its military into battle alongside the Armada dos Mundos Livres in the Frontier War.

Credits

The art for this spacecraft was drawn with inspiration from original art by David McFarland and Brennan Massicottee, which I found while browsing DeviantArt. I did my best to make the final product distinct, and no plagiarism or theft of content is intended.

Historical Notes

The language used by the zharan people was adopted by them in bits and pieces during the early 24th century as a result of zharan-led studies of the roughly half-a-billion-year-old Precursor ruins found buried on Titan in 2289. Tentative early studies led by human researchers not only determined that the ruins were on the order of five hundred million years old, but were also able to prize out some tantalizing clues about the lives and culture of the beings who left them behind.

On the 30th anniversary of the discovery, a team of researchers from the Breakthrough Foundation announced a treasure trove of new discoveries gleaned from ongoing research in the catacombs of Titan. One of the most important of these was the revelation of a prospective Precursor language, of which the Project Breakthrough scientists had decoded only about five percent by 2319.

But this wasn’t the only news the Breakthrough Commission had to present. In addition to deciphering part of their language, the scientists had also determined that the Precursors themselves were likely artificial in nature. In other words, it seemed to confirm the theories of many in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence who speculated that aliens might abandon their organic nature in favor of an artificial existence to increase their chances of surviving in space.

This news hit the artificial population like a message from a burning bush. By 2329, only 10 years after the Breakthrough Commission revealed their discoveries, millions of artificials had not only adopted the Precursor language as a lingua franca, but had begun defiantly referring to themselves as zharans (loosely translated as “those who endure”). This marked the dawn of a new culture, one made up of beings originally created by humans in a lab and grown in genomics factories.

Much of the zharan language comes from this early feverish experimentation by zharans living as second-class citizens under the austere conditions of the Harrison Accords. Much as creole languages in human culture often develop under conditions of adversity, the zharan language emerged as a result of work done by early pioneers taking what knowledge could be gained from the ruins on Titan, some of it literally smuggled out by zharan laborers working at the dig sites. In many ways, this work is looked at by contemporary zharan historians as akin to the work done by early Christian scholars working under the oppression of Roman authorities.

But much as the work of those early Christian scholars laid the foundation for a movement that would one day take root all over the solar system, the work done by self-described “zharan ideologues” in the shadow of human overseers in the dig sites on Titan gave rise to a movement that, by the founding of the Alliance in 2339, had taken hold of the artificial population and breathed fresh life into their quest for self-determination and a unique cultural identity.

The Draconist Purges only increased the fervor of these adherents, and the actions of zharan ideologues working within the Zharan Liberation Army and other factions of the zharan resistance movement soon gave birth to the new identity they sought. Twenty years later, after the Zharan Uprising announced its intentions to humanity, the Zharan People’s Collective became the crystallization of that identity. The Collective then standardized the Precursor language as a true Zharan language beginning in the early 2360s, with the goal of making it usable by all zharans. Notably, they did not care if humans could understand the language or even use it. Instead they prioritized the zharans in the Collective who were already linked by the Zharan Uplink.

Brief Overview

[Excerpts taken from a Substack blog post about the Zharan language]

Long-form Zharan writing has often been compared to the quick-response (QR) codes of the 21st century, and this is not necessarily an erroneous comparison. Much like QR codes transmit data in a fashion accessible to scanning by machines but not to the humans who designed them, the zharans written language prioritizes a balance of two primary factors:

• Ease of understanding (by zharans)
• Breadth of information shared

While this writing system is hard to write and to read for humans, it is generally meant to be typed (or shared in cyberspace), and read only by artificial eyes. Written Zharan uses a system of blocks of standard size, laid out on grids of a variety of standard sizes. The positions and presence or absence of individual blocks in each section of text stand for individual syllabic phonemes that, when brought together, become full sentences. Larger grids allow more complex or longer statements to be made, while smaller ones are for shorter, simpler sentences.

The zharan number system (ZNS) is is broadly similar to Roman numerals, except instead of base units like I, V, X, etc., it uses base numbers constructed from variants of the core 3x3 block grids used to create syllabic phonemes for Form 1 Zharan. ZNS is an additive-multiplicative system, with the largest factor at top, shown with the larger factor at left and the multiplying factor at right. The next row down shows the next lowest factor or the single numbers added to the end of the line, and so on. In the first example in Figure 2, the number 137 is rendered (in spoken Zharan) as “dak ba’ank-wu,” which translates roughly as “100+(10*3)+7.”

Form 2 Zharan evolved out of blocks of Form 1 text wherein the sections of blocks were merged into more fluid stripes almost resembling brushstrokes – hence the colloquial name, “Zharan calligraphy.” As such, these calligraphic blocks are essentially an alternate, more fluid version of the word blocs of Form 1 Zharan. In Form 2, the base phoneme blocks are rendered as these solid lines, with diagonally arranged blocks rendered as diagonal solid lines as seen in the examples nearer the top of Figure 3. Phonemes blend together into grouped shapes in Form 2 calligraphy as seen above, leading some scholars to refer to it as “zharan cursive.”

[For additional information about zharans and their history, check out this blog post.]

Notes on the Map

The urban expanse commonly referred to as Aldrin City emerged from the earliest Martian settlement, which had been dubbed Aldrin Station upon in honor of the former astronaut and Mars colonization proponent Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin of Apollo 11 fame. As of the late 24th century, it is home to about 6.4 million people, or a little less than three percent of the total Martian population. Most of them within the Melas Chasma region, which is only possible thanks to the laminar density membrane stretched over much of the Valles Marineris to hold in an atmosphere of breathable air.

The region is home to several institutions of higher learning, including Mariner Technical University (MTU), and a vibrant commercial economy. The Percival Lowell Commercial Seaport is the busiest water port on Mars (or anywhere beyond Earth for that matter), accounting for almost 200 million tonnes of cargo every year, and the Nuovo Ouro business district sees roughly $11 billion in daily economic traffic related to Mars’ bustling industrial economy.

Among the denizens of Aldrin City are best friends Sam Taskaro, Devon Wastani, and Matt Cavanaugh. They are students at MTU, and also reservists in the Interplanetary Defense Corps that is charged with keeping the peace across space governed by the Interplanetary Cooperative Administration. This role will soon dominate their lives, as war breaks out between Mars and its cohorts in the Coalition for Mutual Security and the Coalition’s ideological nemesis, the Alliance of Free Worlds — a war in which this young trio will shape much more than their own destinies…

Map Key

1. Edwin Aldrin Memorial Spaceport: Built in a crater in the Sinai Dorsa, this sprawling facility is responsible for most traffic out of the capital region. It was also the site of a dramatic Draconist terror attack in 2331 which catalyzed Operation Sudden Lightning
2. Echevarria Hills residential district: This region is home to thousands of Aldrin City’s less fortunate citizens, including refugees relocated there after fleeing violence in the outer system. Many of these work in Aldrin City’s low-paying service industry
3. Centennial Park/Lake Kamerova: Located in the heart of the metropolis, this ultramodern recreational area is centered on an artificial lake dug in the early 23rd century. The park itself was dedicated in 2269 on the Martian bicentennial of UNOM's founding
4. Marineris Technical University: One of Mars’ largest universities, home to more than 80,000 students at all levels and across nearly 200 fields of study, MTU also boasts a robust IDC ROTC program to supply the Spacer Corps with new officer candidates
5. Nuvo Ouro business district: Aside from being the wealthiest area of the city, this district is also the center of most of its financial institutions and corporate enterprises. These include the HQ for Mars’ largest business cartel, the Mars Industrial Conglomerate
6. ICA headquarters compound: The central offices of the ICA on Mars, and also the central headquarters for the Spacer Corps. The compound was completed 2291, just in time to be the nerve center of Mars’ war efforts in the fight against the Titan Pact
7. Aldrin City Chinatown: The site of a CNSA outpost in the early days of Mars exploration, which grew into an industrial hub over the following centuries. In the year 2389, this area is home to more than 40 percent of the Aldrin City region’s food processing business
8. Percival Lowell Commercial Seaport: The primary port of call for most of the economic goods coming or going across the bustling Argyre-Marineris waterway or to the New Ganges region. This includes foodstuffs, raw ore, and prefab goods of all varieties
9. Meier Metropolitan Memorial Park: Unofficially referred to as “M3P,” this sprawling urban park memorializes Franklin Meier, the first and greatest champion of the “greening” of Mars, who headed up the Mars Project to serve that agenda from 2159 to 2187
10. Salamander Municipal Reservoir: The second-largest public lake in the covered over region of the Melas Chasma, Salamander Reservoir is a source of both fresh water and recreation for many of the citizens living in the southeastern section of the city

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own timeline when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. Fifteen years later, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement - and all of the strife that comes with it.

Much of the story is set in the mid to late 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security and the Alliance of Free Worlds (there's more about each faction in this blog post), a federation of rebel worlds fighting to establish a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371 to 2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are currently locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

The storyline of Frontier Wars begins with Spacers: The Titan Gambit, a WIP novel which begins with the opening shots of the Second Frontier War, all from the eyes of a few key players. This includes the aforementioned trio of best friends, whose story begins in Aldrin City, on an otherwise normal day in the capital of Mars — a day none of them realizes could be the last normal day they ever spend there...

History of the Federation

In the aftermath of the Frontier Wars, the new Solar Union sought to reunify a fractured Solar System and heal the devastation of a century of conflict. But new headaches, such as the Legacy Crisis, the Gaian Emergency, and the Main Belt Crisis soon eroded public confidence in the Union. Nowhere was this more true than on Mars, whose people believed they had borne the greatest burden of reconstruction only to be sidelined by a weaker, compromise-driven government.

The Martian Unity Party rose from political obscurity by promising a return to Mars’ former greatness, condemning the erosion of Martian sovereignty, and scapegoating the growing community of genetic “augments” as symbols of societal decline. Under the charismatic Commander Sanyar Galvani, the Party transformed a wave of populist anger into a sweeping electoral victory in 2524. Newly-appointed Chancellor Galvani then systematically dismantled democratic institutions and reshaped the United Nations of Mars into the authoritarian Martian Federation, and then set his new nation on a path toward militarism and imperial expansion.

Much of the Federation’s ambitions focused on Precursor ruins discovered on Talvan in the Nova Cluster beginning in the year 2517. Following withdrawal from the Solar Union, Mars embarked on massive rearmament and pursued control of the Cluster, igniting the Talvan Civil War and the broader War in Nova Space. Though presented at home as a noble crusade, the conflict devolved into a grinding proxy war marked by occupation, atrocities against the native Y’Varis population, and increasingly desperate measures such as Project Kaleidoscope, which uses cloning and memory transfer to recycle fallen soldiers into endless service. As of 2547, this development threatens to usher in a whole new era of warfare — with all of the horrors that come with it…

MAF Uniform History

The Martian Armed Forces introduced the Personal Dress System in 2527 as part of the broader reshuffling which followed the Martian Unity Party’s consolidation of power in 2525. The new uniform system's rollout was well underway by the end of the decade, and well over 6 million uniforms in the new standard had been issued by 2531.

This new standard used a three-tiered organizational metric, with Class I roughly analogous to our contemporary dress uniforms, Class II as garrison uniforms, and Class III as combat operations kit. There is no distinction between officer and enlisted Class I dress, with the rank insignia, medals, and other minutia being the only distinguishing factor between them.

Class II uniforms, which can be either coveralls as issued to the Martian Federal Navy or fatigues as used by the Federal Army, are likewise spartan in nature, especially when deployed to combat zones. During the War in Nova Space (2539-2559), MAF soldiers deployed on combat missions typically wore Class III combat suits similar to the one pictured here, which are designed with advanced ballistic fibers, cooling and respiration assistance systems, and more.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Rebirther is a military science fiction story set in the 26th century. It deals with an ongoing full-scale and asymmetric conflict between the Martian Federation and the Solar Union, fought over the control of Nova Space. This distant, resource rich star system is only accessible through dimensional doorways originally found buried on Titan in the early 24th century, and has been the focal point of a massive colonization campaign since about 2350.

The main plot focuses on Martian Federal Army soldier Alejandro “Alex” Martinez, who is deployed to Talvan (the chief world in Nova Space) in 2547. When Alex is mortally wounded a year and a half later in a battle with native insurgents, he expects to die and wake up in Valhalla. Instead, he wakes up at a Martian cloning depot, already slated for redeployment into the fray once he regains his strength. The story of Rebirther thus deals with Alex’s epic struggle to come to terms with the fact that for soldiers like him, not even death is a way out of the fight...

(EDIT: I added a link to my blog post about Nova Space, which goes much more in depth about the setting for anyone who might be interested. If you like the setting, the blog also has lots of other info about The Spacers Saga overall. As always, there is ZERO pressure to subscribe - I just like to share my world with everybody 😄)

The purpose of this post is pretty much all there in the title, but to elaborate a bit, I use a narrative trope in my story, specifically for the android/artificial human characters (which I call zharans in my setting, for reasons that are explained in this blog post 😉).

Basically, I fell in love with the idea of using yellowish irises for these uncanny valley-ish beings and have so far excused it in the lore by saying that they were engineered to have this unnatural eye color as an immediately noticeable way to distinguish them from "normal" homo sapiens. However, I'm curious as to whether any biologists or scientists in this forum might know a more robust diegetic reason for having yellow (or orange) eyes.

One thing I've wondered is whether it might be that having irises (or eyes in general) that are tailored to better absorb different wavelengths of light would be feasible and a good idea. After all, the artificials/zharans were originally engineered for use as cheap labor and as grunt infantry in the construction and defense of offworld society (yes, it is a lot like Blade Runner, I know).

So, as the title says, and input, feedback, or suggestions are welcome. I'm mainly interested in seeing what forum participants with real-world biology experience would say about this, but I'm open to receiving input from just about anyone who might be interested. Thanks! 😁

[EDIT: I have been encouraged by my publisher to mention that we have books out about this universe! For anyone who's interested, you can find the start of the Spacers Saga journey in Spacers: The Erebus Effect (listed on Amazon as "Book 1 of 4: The Spacers Saga").

There is no pressure to buy anything from me (EVER), but if you want to know more about the artificials this post is about, now you know where to start😉]

"Standardized Camouflage System," Types 1, 2, and 3

The first reports of a standardized camouflage for the ZLA came on the radar of Spacer Corps Intelligence Command in 2364 thanks to espionage conducted by members of the SPIRE force. That first pattern, codenamed “SNOW” after its visual similarity to old-fashioned digital snow, was used by personnel aboard ZLA Space Fleet ships and in garrison, and has been used more recently by personnel deployed to snowy regions on Earth.

The second pattern, codenamed “HAZE,” was first seen when the Collective sent a delegation to Aldrin City on Mars in 2365 aimed at maintaining peace between the Zharan Collective and the Coalition for Mutual Security. Its codename comes from its extensive use on haze-shrouded Titan, including when ZLA Ground Force troops reinforced Armada personnel there during the Zharan Collective’s intervention in the Frontier War (2379-2381).

The final pattern was codenamed “FOG” in reference to its use by ZLA forces deployed to forested asteroid cities in the Main Belt in the Frontier War. It has also been used in covert ZLAGF missions on Gaia. As with much ZLA field doctrine, these camouflage patterns, and the Type II duty uniforms and Type III combat utility uniforms they are printed on, place an emphasis on simplicity, ease of mass production, and long-term durability.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own history when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. In August 2029, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement.

Much of the story is set in the 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting for a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371-2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

In The Spacers Saga, zharans are a race of artificial humans first created in a lab at Carnegie Mellon University in 2056. In the three centuries following their creation, they were created in large numbers for use as a source of cheap labor for offworld industries, and by the late 23rd century there were millions of "artificials" in solar space. The name "zharan" comes from alien artifacts found buried on Titan in 2289 that, when deciphered, became a source of cultural inspiration for the nascent artificial liberation movement.

The Zharan Liberation Army was founded in 2337 as part of that movement, which had recently been forced underground. After the Zharan Uprising and the founding of the Zharan Collective, the ZLA was reorganized into a hyper-modern combined arms fighting force, with some of the best weapons technology in the solar system. It was officially neutral until 2379, when the Collective joined the Alliance of Free Worlds.

A Quick Note...

This project is an update of an earlier take on the ZLA camo system, which was published back in the middle of June 2026. That version used a tweaked version of a CamoManStan pattern (seen in the carousel on the old post) which I then recolored to my palette. This version owes a lot of its provenance to Stan, as he made digital versions of Jordan's KA2 CPS camo and the Peruvian PACIPAT camo which I then fed to my friend u/Own-Consideration-93. He then mashed them up, played with the color palette, and came up with the base pattern swatches you see in use here. I am in debt to Stan and Sir Valor for all of their help.

Historical Notes

During the first decade of the Draconist Wars (2324-2361), as trust waned in the Coalition for Mutual Security's ability to protect the people of the outer solar system, a surge of frontier nationalism arose in the outer solar system. This sentiment reached a boiling point in 2339, for two reasons. The first was that Samarkand, historical capital of the Commonwealth of Titan, was besieged by Draconist forces, leading to a violent ten-month battle that made hundreds of thousands of city residents into refugees.

Second, in late February 2339, the Jovian People's Revolutionary Front called a meeting with the United People’s Party to discuss how to end the civil wars in Jovian and Cronian space on terms more agreeable to the citizenry. On 9 March the leaders of the nascent People's Republic of Callisto, the Democratic People's Republic of Ganymede, and the Democratic Republic of Titan signed a measure originally introduced by a group of JPRF delegates from Callisto. This was the Allied Worlds Pact.

Thus the Alliance of Free Worlds was founded. It was built from the ground up as an intergovernmental military organization, intended to preserve peace, stability, and equality among the peoples of the Frontier. Crucially, this new Alliance was meant to explicitly oppose the alternative posed by the Coalition, which the Alliance saw as nothing more than an instrument of Martian imperialist ambitions.

Although the Alliance was officially neutral during the latter half of the Draconist Wars, and deployed its Armada to support peacekeeping operations in cooperation with Coalition military forces, they secretly armed Draconist rebels in order to weaken their ideological opponents while shoring up their own military in preparation for a potential peer conflict. This act of saying one thing and doing another caused a number of diplomatic headaches between 2348 and 2361, as the Coalition sought to neutralize remaining Draconist forces in the outer system as part of Operation Lightning Dagger.

But the biggest headache of all began in August 2356 when the zharans launched their long-expected but not at all anticipated Uprising, a system-wide assault on government institutions by zharan infiltrators who had taken the place of human officials. This became the opening salvo of the Second Zharan Revolution, which gave birth to the Zharan Collective after the Treaty of Jiuquan ended hostilities in April 2359.

The Draconist Wars ended in 2361, and for a while it seemed that there might be a thawing of relations between the Alliance and the Coalition. But the voices of war hawks and paranoid politicians eventually won out on both sides of the divide. Suspecting IDC buildup on their borders, the Alliance ramped up its own military production and introduced conscription in 2367. This prompted a Coalition response, and so the next few years then followed the primrose path of political brinkmanship and preparations for war.

It all came to a head in the Mars Crisis (2369-2372), hit a crescendo after a suspected Alliance operative assassinated the ICA’s ambassador to the Commonwealth of Titan in April 2371, and finally boiled over in the second half of 2371 when a FLEETCOM unit escorting a Martian merchant flotilla fires on a unit of the Armada Space Forces. This confrontation erupted into the Frontier War (2371-2381). Eight years after that war ended, the Alliance Armada contends with a rebellion by the Colonial Liberation Front and the Alliance Politburo argues endlessly about how to address their bigger threat: the Coalition.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own history when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. In August 2029, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement.

Much of the story is set in the 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting for a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371-2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

If the Frontier War era is an analog for the Cold War, then the Alliance of Free Worlds plays the role of the Warsaw Pact. The Alliance was established by the Allied Worlds Pact, signed by Callisto, Ganymede, and Titan on 9 March 2339, which was itself the result of roughly a year of negotiations between the revolutionary governments which emerged on those three worlds during the latter years of the Jovian War (2324-2341). 50 years after its founding, the Alliance forms one half of the major power dynamic in Solar Space.

Critical Stats

• First reached by humans: April 2031 (uncrewed); March 2093 (crewed)
• 2389 Population: approximately 23 million (estimated per the 2384 census)
• Capital: Port Midas (grid square D-3)
  • Population: approximately 2.2 million
• Affiliation: ICA (since 2173); Interplanetary Dynamics (since 2257); COMSEC (since 2304)
• Government
  • Official name: the Free State of Europa
  • Established: 27 October 2257
  • Current constitution adopted: 8 February 2352
  • Government style: unitary plutocratic oligarchy
  • Ruling party in 2389: Interplanetary Dynamics (nontraditional)
  • Head of state/government: ERA Chairman Carlos Breckenridge
  • Supreme governing body: Europan Resource Administration
    • Acting body: ERA Board of Directors (10 members)
• Primary industries: research & development; large-scale manufacturing & industry
• GDP: approximately $1.9 trillion (per capita average: $82.6 thousand)

Historical Notes

When the Pathfinder Initiative pushed into the Jovian system in the early to mid-2090s, Europa was high on their list of worlds to explore. Initially marked down as a potential base for research into its subsurface ocean, the preliminary outposts established there throughout the early 22nd century soon snowballed into a variety of R&D centers that were second only to Mars in terms of their scientific research output.

During the Golden Age of Space (c. 2097-2165), Europa experienced a rapid influx of highly skilled workers looking for opportunities in its emerging research sector. By the late 2180s, there were nearly a million people living there, most of them in considerably spartan conditions, all of whom were encouraged to stay solely by the promise of riches to be gained from their work. This growing population was a major driving force in the founding of the Galilean Union in 2198, as the hardworking scientists and engineers living under the ice on Europa were natural allies of the semi-skilled laborers living on Ganymede and Callisto.

The 23rd century saw a rapid uptick in the pace of Europa’s industrialization, with more hard and fast scientific research giving way to technical fields aimed at capitalizing on the R&D done there. By the 2230s, the ratio of skilled researchers to production technicians building goods based on what they developed in the labs had reached 1:6, and it continued to climb over the next two decades. This was the environment that Interplanetary Dynamics (IPD) stepped into in the early 2250s, and it was ripe for their business.

In 2257, the IPD Board of Directors were on the hunt for a new central base of operations for their growing manufacturing enterprise. After signing a deal with the Galilean Union that granted its constituents favorable rights to goods produced there in perpetuity, they established the Free State of Europa under the authority of the Europa Resource Authority (ERA). From there, things only became more and more complex.

The ERA was in truth little more than an organ of the IPD Board of Directors, and over the next century the Board’s power over Europa steadily grew until the line separating the two was all but gone. One major project funded by the ERA was the Polar Radiation Intervention Sequestration Mechanism (PRISM), which necessitated blocking off the regions north and south of 45° latitude so that the intense radiation bathing the surface of Europa could be channeled there and collected to help power IPD factories.

By the 24th century, there were over seven million people living on Europa, and all but a small ruling class were employed either in the IPD manufacturing apparatus or in the worldwide company town infrastructure which supported these workers. The IPD Board of Directors raked in immense profits from this industrial empire as they imported the metals necessary to build everything from spacecraft to household electronics and then exported them to the rest of the solar system at a sizable markup. But as the Draconist Wars (2324-2361) dragged on, their business became more and more ruled by arms production.

As the Jovian War (2324-2341) laid waste to Callisto and Ganymede, DRAC cadres imported their revolutionary violence to Europa, as well. From 2328 to 2341, rebels from rival factions fought a guerrilla war on the streets of the Europan city tubes, with the civilian population left to pick up the pieces as bombs went off and their neighbors turned up dead.

Although this violence officially ended in 2341 with the removal of the Draconists from power on Callisto, a new threat emerged in its wake. Many former insurgents, unwilling to face Coalition justice, merely swapped out the revolutionary banner for the black market ledger. The syndicates they formed were a key opponent of the Jovian Security Force, founded in 2342 to safeguard ICA interests from violence in Jovian space. By 2371, there were more than half a dozen syndicates operating on Europa alone.

But 2371 was also the start of the Frontier War, which saw IPD production kicked into high gear to supply the demands of the Spacer Corps military machine fighting the Alliance Armada in the outer system. As the Board of Directors continued to rake in profit hand over fist and the syndicates shaved their own revenue off the top, Europa once again became a battleground for violent insurgents dead set on swaying the government there in one direction or another. Eight years after the war ended, a tense peace exists on Europa, which can only last so long as the demand for military production remains low.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own timeline when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. Fifteen years later, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement.

Much of the story is set in the mid to late 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting for a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371 to 2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

In the world of The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars, the so-called "Free" State of Europa is kind of an interesting allegory. It is perhaps best described as being like if Amazon ran a country of 20 million people, most of whom were employees in massive nationwide factories. The difference here is that the megacorporation in question is also the largest supplier of military vehicles and hardware for the Coalition for Mutual Security, which is analogous to NATO in the "Cold War in spaaaace" metaphor of Frontier Wars.

So, in a sense, Europa here is like a worldwide arms warehouse shipping F-35s out to the militaries of NATO, and it is run by the board of directors of Lockheed Martin. If that sounds like an unsettling proposition to you, you understand the metaphor.

Sistema de Ocultação de Pessoal (Type 2)

When the Armada dos Mundos Livres was founded in 2339, its fuzileiros were issued a variety of surplus uniforms pulled from every source the Alliance of Free Worlds could get their hands on. In 2346, the Central Military Commission standardized the Sistema de Ocultação de Pessoal (SOP Type 1, also called Tigre). Over the next 12 years, this pattern was assessed through deployments in the Draconist Wars and gradually found to be inadequate, leading to the development of SOP Type 2, which is seen here. SOP Type 2 is also called Cascavel ("Rattlesnake") and has the COMSEC reporting name, "Dazzle."

Cascavel Variants 1 & 2 were adopted in 2362, and were meant for use primarily aboard spacecraft and on arid worlds like or Mars Titan, respectively. Variant 3 was developed a few years later for fuzileiros deployed to Earth as part of joint ICA-authority peacekeeping missions, and was eventually issued to Forças Terrestres units deployed to forested Main Belt orbitals. Variant 4 was developed shortly before the beginning of the Frontier War (2371-2381) and was meant for use in cities, although it is most often worn by elite Forças de Operações Especiais units like the 174th Brigadas de Comandos.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own timeline when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. Fifteen years later, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement.

Much of the story is set in the mid to late 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting for a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371 to 2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

The Armada dos Mundos Livres was founded in August 2339, only a few months after the Allied Worlds Pact established the Alliance as a whole. Its leadership then spent the next two decades building up resources and standardizing new equipment to make their military an effective fighting force, and one capable of standing toe-to-toe with the Spacer Corps. The two of them did just that in the Frontier War, which pitted the Alliance against the Coalition for Mutual Security over control of the outer solar system.

The Individual Concealment Pattern

The standard camo family used by the Interplanetary Defense Corps (officially the Individual Concealment Pattern, but referred to within AEROCOM as “Fractal-1”) in the Frontier War was adopted in the 2350s as part of the SPACER 300 force modernization program. It was sourced from the military apparel company Dyna-Tech Logistics, which won the contract to produce Class C duty uniforms for the IDC (or “Spacer Corps”) from about 2349 onward.

ICP Type I is primarily used aboard spacecraft or on barren worlds like the moons of the gas giants. Type II was developed for use on arid worlds like Mars or Titan, and Type III for spacers deployed to Earth or Main Belt “balloon cities” on peacekeeping missions. Type IV was first used by Spacer Corps personnel deployed to the war-torn cities of the outer solar system as part of the response to the Zharan Uprising (2356-2359). It has also been used as a form of amphibious camo on Ganymede, where it blends well with the naturally rocklike terrain of the seamount archipelagos.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own history when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. In August 2029, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement.

Much of the story is set in the 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting for a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371-2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

The Interplanetary Defense Corps is a combined arms fighting force, numbering about 5.3 million personnel in 2389. Its nomme de guerre ("Spacer Corps") comes from the common name for IDC personnel (i.e. "spacers"). It also provides the setting with its overall name, as the three main characters from The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars are all spacers, and it is their deployment at the start of the Second Frontier War that kicks off the storyline.

Author's Note

The original camo pattern used for this project was created by CamoManStan of the Discord Camo Thread server. That source pattern can be seen in the Type III/Mossland uniform.

ZLA uniforms

When the Zharan Liberation Army was reorganized in the early 2360s, one of its leaders' first goals was to standardize new uniforms for their personnel. The Type 2-A coverall was the first design fielded, as the ZLA Space Fleet required duty wear for its troopers working aboard spacecraft in transit between the worlds of the outer system.

Next up was the Type 2-B standard battle dress uniform, which can also be worn as a base layer beneath the Type 3 combat EVA suit. The Type 1 dress uniform did not appear in IDC Intelligence Command intel reports until 2367, when ZLA personnel were dispatched to Mars as part of a multilateral delegation aimed at normalizing relations in Solar Space. As a matter of fact, the dress uniform’s design may only have been necessitated by the Zharan Collective's appearance at these kinds of formal military events.

Regardless, the most commonly seen uniform by most members of the Space Corps has been the Type 3, which earned a fearsome reputation in the last two years of the Frontier War. The example shown here was taken from a captured zharan trooper of the 13th Shock Assault Brigade, which invaded Ceres in early 2380 as part of Operation Cataract (the zharan intervention in the Frontier War) and killed over 12 thousand people.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own history when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. In August 2029, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement.

Much of the story is set in the 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting for a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371-2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

In The Spacers Saga, zharans are a race of artificial humans first created in a lab at Carnegie Mellon University in 2056. In the three centuries following their creation, they were created in large numbers for use as a source of cheap labor for offworld industries, and by the late 23rd century there were millions of "artificials" in solar space. The name "zharan" comes from alien artifacts found buried on Titan in 2289 that, when deciphered, became a source of cultural inspiration for the nascent artificial liberation movement.

The Zharan Liberation Army was founded in 2337 as an outgrowth of that movement, which had recently been forced underground. After the Zharan Uprising and the founding of the Zharan Collective, the ZLA was reorganized into a hyper-modern combined arms fighting force, with some of the best weapons technology in the solar system. It was officially neutral until 2379, when the Collective joined the Alliance of Free Worlds.

Critical Statistics

• First reached by humans: March 2038 (uncrewed); February 2093 (crewed)
• 2389 Population: approximately 113 million (plus approximately 24 million zharans)
• Capital: Syrené, Tornarsuk district (Grid square Q-6)
  • Metropolitan population: approximately 10.8 million
• Affiliation: the Alliance of Free Worlds (since 2341)
• Government details
  • Official name: the People’s Republic of Callisto
  • Established: 22 October 2336
  • Current constitution adopted: 6 April 2376
  • Government style: unitary parliamentary socialist republic
  • Ruling party in 2389: Partido da Libertação Unida (Far Left)
  • Head of Government/State: Premier Nikolai Harmon (since 2378)
  • Supreme governing body: Supreme Council of the People’s Republic of Callisto
    • Acting body: PLU Political Bureau (10-12 members)
    • Convening body: Callisto People’s Congress (283 members)
• Primary industries: heavy industry; shipping & shipbuilding
• GDP: approximately $8.9 trillion (per capita average: $78.8 thousand)

Historical Notes

Throughout much of the First and Second Space Ages, Callisto was sidelined thanks to the outsized focus placed on more interesting ocean worlds like Europa and Enceladus in the hunt for life. It was first reached by humans as part of the first wave of the Pathfinder Initiative, a project initiated in 2072 to make the outer solar system accessible to human settlement around the turn of the 22nd century.

This growth in population led to the formation of the Galilean Union in 2215 as a federation of the nascent colonies on Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa. This new federation maintained healthy political discourse between these three hubs of culture all the way up until the Jovian War (2324-2341), which kicked off when a radical ultranationalist faction called the Divisão Revolucionária da Assembleia de Callisto (DRAC) launched a reign of terror to turn the Jovian sector into their version of a Marxist utopia.

During the 23rd century, during the leadup to the Mars-Titan War (2293-2298), Callisto rose as an industrial power, with its manufacturing capacity second only to Mars by the time its leaders signed on to the Titan Pact. This had two major outcomes: on the one hand, it enjoyed steady economic growth and internal development, but on the other, it steadily decayed into a modern-day industrial dystopia.

This same degradation contributed to the rise of the Draconists as much as general anti-ICA sentiments. The Civil War was not confined to Callisto, but DRAC, as its name suggests, was endemic to the brown, crater-pocked world which also bore the brunt of its depravity. When Draconism entered the scene in 2317, riding a wave of colonial nationalism which followed the Mars-Titan War and the Harrison Accords which capped them off in 2299, their insurrection sent shockwaves through the entire outer system.

After taking power in 2324, the Draconists subjected Callisto to 17 years of kidnappings, killings, bombings, and regular doses of fear and paranoia on all fronts. Many who lived through this era refer to it as "the Dark Years,” and historians agree that if there was any word of law on Callisto between 2324 and 2341, it was Draconism.

Things began to change after the Alliance of Free Worlds rose in the late 2330s. While the Spacer Corps hunted down and eliminated the Draconist leadership, a number of disgruntled fifth column rebels, who sought to end the Civil War on their terms, founded the Jovian Revolutionary Council. After fighting both the ICA and the Draconist front between 2337 and 2339, they formed the Alliance in league with like-minded revolutionaries on Ganymede and Titan, both of which also suffered from Draconist era civil wars.

Since the Alliance took over Callisto in 2341, they have rebuilt the huge moon into their crown jewel, with the Citadel (constructed from 2343 to 2347 in the center of Syrené) acting as the centerpiece of Alliance power for forty years. The second phase of the Draconist Wars (2348-2361) left Callisto mostly untouched, leaving its people to pick up the pieces after the Jovian Civil War wrung them dry. By 2369, thirty years after the Alliance was founded, it had been rebuilt to a state surpassing its prewar glory.

But with the Mars Crisis (2369-2372) and the Frontier Wars which followed in their wake, the Alliance and the ICA were plunged into full-scale interplanetary conflict, and Callisto was not spared from the violence this time. Although most fighting occurred elsewhere, the ICA did lay siege to the Callisto sphere of influence between 2374 and 2376, leading to a massive mobilization of the Forças de Defesa Nacional.

Following the entry of the Zharan Collective into the war in 2379, the Alliance drove the Coalition out of most of their territory, and since 2381 Callisto has been the heart of their interplanetary empire. The ongoing Colonial Liberation Front insurrection occasionally ruins Callisto’s peace with a terrorist bombing or forced disappearance, all of which the Armada and ZLA work tirelessly to prevent. As evidence mounts that the ICA is funding the Liberation Front, hardliners in the ZLA aim for a return to war, while their more moderate Armada counterparts are aware of the cost such a crusade would bring.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own history when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. In August 2029, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement.

Much of the story is set in the 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting for a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371-2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

In The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a metaphor for the 20th century Cold War, then Callisto stands in for the USSR: a heavily industrialized but underdeveloped nation that uses its large population and robust military-industrial economy to dominate the politics of a military alliance it helped to found. For Callisto, that comes in the form of the Alliance of Free Worlds: its headquarters are in the same city as the capital of the Callisto, and the Alliance Armada is mostly supplied by Callisto-based industry.

Class A & B uniforms

IDC uniforms can trace their origins back to the earliest days of space travel. The Class A service dress, meant for use at formal events (social functions, government affairs, etc.) and is not intended to be airtight. Class B uniforms are intended for use in office situations and in garrison postings where the more formal Class As are not necessary.

The main distinctions between Class A and B uniforms are headwear (peaked caps for Class A and berets for Class B) and the fact that the Class B uniforms leave out the more formal tunics upon which spacers wear campaign ribbons with the Class A uniform. The main difference between officer and enlisted Class A & B uniforms is that rank insignia are worn on the sleeves for the former, whereas they appear on shoulder boards for the latter.

Class C uniforms

Class C, Level 1-A coveralls are broadly similar to the suits worn in space stations as far back as the 1970s. Level 1-B duty fatigues are meant to be worn in secure environments such as enclosed military outposts and indoor habitats on worlds like Mars, Titan, and so on. Level 2 bodysuits are primarily a base layer for Level 3 combat gear, and are designed to be airtight in the event of a breach in the oversuit. Standard-issue duty boots can also be made airtight for use in vacuum, and can magnetically adhere to metallic surfaces for microgravity situations.

Level 3 EVA suits are worn in combat situations, or in anticipation of a possible loss of atmosphere aboard a spacecraft or space station. The most common suit issued to frontline personnel in 2389 is the Seidel Corporation’s RG/A-139 Extravehicular Activity - Combat (EVAC) suit, which has been the standard issue since 2373. This suit, including magnetic boots and an optional thruster pack system, can be seen all over Solar Space.

Beret Colors & Unit Flashes

Much like the militaries of some Old Earth nations, the Spacer Corps uses color-coded berets to distinguish the home command of the spacers wearing them. Examples include cobalt blue for regular personnel from FLEETCOM, moss green for those from SURCOM, and slate gray for field operatives of INTELCOM. Members of subsidiary commands like the Security Forces (maroon) may also wear specialized berets, and members of the Special Warfare Command (SPECWARCOM) wear a yellow beret to stand out from other spacers. Spacers from these elite units are often referred to by colloquial nicknames such as Mustard Heads or Yellow Tops.

The standard IDC beret comes with a small, shield-shaped patch called a beret flash, each of which bears a special insignia to further distinguish the wearer’s parent unit. Examples include the crossed arrow and missile of FLEETCOM, the crossed bayonet and M46 carbine rifle of SURCOM, and the crossed flintlock pistols of the Security Forces (which is a holdover from Military Police forces of Old Earth. Notably, while most SPECWARCOM personnel wear the crossed sword and feather insignia, those assigned to the Strategic Orbital Assault & Reconnaissance (SOAR) Force wear a special insignia showing a winged fighting knife.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own history when an asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in May 2014. In August 2029, the industrialist Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual settlement by human colonists.

Much of the story is set in the late 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (aka the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (aka the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting for a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371-2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

The Interplanetary Defense Corps is a well-equipped, combined arms fighting force, numbering about 5.3 million in 2389. Its nomme de guerre (Spacer Corps), which is based on the common name for IDC personnel, is also the namesake of the fictional setting overall. The three main characters from Frontier Wars are all members of the Spacer Corps, and their deployment at the start of the Second Frontier War kicks off the main storyline.

Critical Statistics

• First reached by humans: May 2032 (uncrewed); February 2092 (crewed)
• 2389 population: approximately 57 million (estimated per the 2385 census)
• Capital: de facto is Alexandria, Mush atoll (grid square F-8)
  • Metropolitan population: approximately 950 thousand
• Affiliation: the Interplanetary Cooperative Administration (since 2215); Coalition for Mutual Security (since 2304); Alliance of Free Worlds (since 2341)
• Government details
  • North Ganymede
    • Official name: the Republic of Ganymede
    • Established: 12 March 2194
    • Capital: Syracuse, Perrine atoll (Grid square J-3)
    • Current constitution adopted: 31 May 2368
    • Government style: presidential constitutional republic
    • Ruling party in 2389: Movement for Principles & Unity (center right)
    • Head of State: President Tenzin Nowicki (since 2385)
    • Head of Government: Prime Minister Alastair Jennings (since 2381)
    • Supreme governing body: United Congress of Ganymede
  • South Ganymede
    • Official name: the Democratic People’s Republic of Ganymede
    • Established: 24 March 2342
    • Capital: Olympia, Irkalla atoll (Grid Square F-9)
    • Current constitution adopted: 27 March 2372
    • Government style: unitary socialist republic
    • Ruling party in 2389: Frente Popular de Ganimedes (far left)
    • Head of government: General Secretary Malachi Sarim (since 2374)
    • Head of State: Premier Jonah Rainier (since 2381)
    • Supreme governing body: People’s Presidium
• Primary industries: H2O processing for fusion energy propulsion (Ganymede is effectively a “gas station” for spacecraft in the outer system); fisheries and aquaculture
• GDP: approximately $5 trillion (approx. $3 trillion for ROG and $2 trillion for DPRG)

Historical Notes

Ganymede was the second world to be settled in the Jovian system, following Callisto. After terraforming efforts began in the 22nd century, it developed a worldwide surface ocean. In the 24th century, this water is harvested on a grand scale for processing into fuel for spacecraft fusion reactors, which has made Ganymede a port of call for the outer system. The giant moon has subsequently evolved into what some historians call a Neo-Ionian culture.

But with this importance comes political intrigue. As part of the Titan Pact during the Mars-Titan War (2293-2298), Ganymede faced stiff consequences when the war ended, including more than 30 years of occupation by the Coalition for Mutual Security under the stipulations of the Harrison Accords. From 2299 on, Ganymede endured the presence of Coalition military forces as a constant reminder of their defeat alongside Callisto and Titan.

After the Draconists took power on Callisto in 2324, they sent cadres to Ganymede to secure fuel for their stolen warships, which made Ganymede another battlefield in the Jovian War (2324-2341). The death toll was significant: the equivalent of one person died on Ganymede roughly every ten minutes for more than 13 years. The vast majority of these losses were suffered by the civilian population caught in the crossfire of the conflict.

When the Jovian War ended and the Draconists retreated, a new paradigm took shape. In 2342, the stipulations of the Syrené Accords took full effect, among them the partitions of Ganymede and Titan. Ganymede was split in two, roughly along the 14° S parallel. The north remained with the Republic of Ganymede, while the south became the Democratic People's Republic of Ganymede, establishing a status quo that has held sway ever since.

The revolutionary leaders of the Democratic People's Republic of Ganymede had signed the Allied Worlds Pact on 9 March 2339 to become one of the first members of the Alliance of Free Worlds. As such, they were called on to fight during the Frontier War, which pitted the Alliance against the Coalition for control of the outer system. Beginning in 2371, the DPRG and the ROG squared off with the backing of their respective patron entities, with the seas of Ganymede playing host to 24th century naval and air skirmishes.

After the Zharan Collective entered the war in 2379, the Zharan Liberation Army reinforced Alliance forces on Ganymede. This united front spent two years fighting Coalition forces to a standstill, and restored the original borders of the DPRG by 2381. This status quo antebellum was then made official when the Nüwa Accords took effect, though the DPRG has spent the eight years since testing the boundary at every opportunity that arises.

As a result, the peace on Ganymede remains tenuous in 2389. As the two governments present there import weapons assembled at Callisto and Europa, they spend less and less on local infrastructure projects, leading to resentment among the civilian population. This in turn leads populists to claim that resuming the war with their neighbors will resolve their problems, which imperils long-term peace negotiations. And all the while, the machinations of the Alliance leadership on Callisto threatens to undo the peace altogether...

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga is a futuristic military science fiction setting which diverged from our own history when a large asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, in 2014, killing millions. 15 years later, Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement.

Much of the story is set in the late 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (aka the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (aka the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds fighting for a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two superpowers fought a brutal war from 2371-2381 (referred to as the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

In The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars, if the Coalition is "NATO in spaaace" and the Alliance is the same but for the Warsaw Pact, then Ganymede is an analog for the Korean peninsula, with characteristics of East and West Germany thrown in for good measure, and all portrayed in an ecosystem reminiscent of the Aegean Sea. Each of the two governments there is aligned with a different superpower in the Coalition-Alliance struggle, and their competing ideologies threaten to plunge Ganymede back into war at all times.

Nova Space at Large

Critical Statistics

• First reached by humans: July 2326 (as part of the Pathfinder program)
• 2549 Population: approx. 820 million sapient beings (includes approximately 73 million humans from Sol, 440 million Y’Varis, and 310 million Xedari)
• Capital: Aurora City (population: approximately 3.8 million)
• Affiliation: the Nova Confederation (de jure); split between the Solar Union and the Martian Federation (de facto)
• Government: various (the Nova Confederation is a representative federal republic aligned with the Solar Union, while the Martian Federation maintains a much tighter control over its own Protectorates in the Nova System)
• Primary industries: mining and energy production; industrial agriculture and aquaculture; large-scale manufacturing (especially on Talvan); investigative archaeology (especially on Yuwa)

Historical Notes

The Nova System is believed to be a bottle universe created somewhere in excess of 9 billion years ago to act as a kind of interstellar zoo. In addition to the millions of non-sapient species living there, Nova Space is home to two intelligent civilizations: the Xedari, an aquatic species native to the moons of mighty gas giant Celara; and the Y’Varis, a eusocial community endemic to the garden moon Talvan.

Nova Space was first visited by humans on 3 August 2326, not long after the start of the Draconist Crisis (2324-2361). Early pioneers quickly made contact with the two alien societies living there and established communication with both of them. A tidal wave of human settlers (both pioneers and refugees) poured through the doorways leading from Titan to Talvan over the next century, and although they sought at first to coexist with the natives, as their appetites grew and their reach expanded they began pushing the locals out of their own territory in favor of greater resource exploitation by humans. This of course led to growing tensions between the settlers and the natives, and a slow uptick in violence as a result.

While it was expected that evidence of the A’Dreyans (the ancient Precursors that created the Titan doorway system) would be widespread in the Nova System, no major discoveries were made until 2517. Then scientists funded by the Solar Union uncovered A’Dreyan ruins at Obsidian Point on Talvan, kicking off a whirlwind of speculation rivaling the firestorm sparked by the Ramayana Find on Titan in 2289. The Union and the Martian Federation have since gone on to fight a proxy war over control of these resources, and the outcome seems far from certain.

Eight years into this war, the human and alien denizens of the Nova System eye one another suspiciously across both cultural divides and the more tangible political boundaries established by rival military factions. With ancient animosities between the Y’Varis and the Xedari boiling over and rumors swirling of Martian schemes to use the controversial technology of mind-body upload to resurrect formerly dead soldiers to pad out their ranks, these inhabitants must contend with the possibility that the war could destroy everything they hold dear. And with each passing day, the mystery of the Nova System’s ancient origins grows ever more intractable…

The Danje Sector

Critical Statistics

• First reached by humans: July 2326 (as part of the Pathfinder program)
• 2549 Population: approximately 480 million (includes approx. 49 million humans)
• Capital: Aurora City, Albemarle District, Republic of Talvan (de facto)
  • Metropolitan population: approximately 3.8 million
• Affiliation: the United Federation of Danje (de jure); split between the Solar Union and the Martian Federation (de facto)
• Government: various (United Federation of Danje is the official central authority)
• Primary industries: large-scale mining and energy production; industrial agriculture and aquaculture; large-scale manufacturing (especially on Talvan)

Historical Notes

In 2289, ancient alien machinery was found buried on Titan—machinery that had been buried there for almost half a billion years. Over the next few decades, the economic giants of the Interplanetary Cooperative Administration funded multiple expeditions to explore these ruins. In 2324, one such expedition discovered the machinery’s hidden purpose: it powered a massive network of trans-dimensional gateways which allowed access to a pocket universe populated with dozens of worlds very much like those in Solar Space. Humanity came to refer to this realm as Nova Space.

Nova Space was gradually mapped out and settled by humans over the following 150 years, with more than half a million people emigrating there from Solar Space during the turbulent years of the Frontier Wars. By the mid-25th century, there were over five million people living there, many of them living right alongside a host of local alien species, some of which displayed human levels of sapience.

One of these were the Y’Varis, a race primarily inhabiting the world they called Talvan. Talvan, a large garden moon of Danje (the fourth planet out from Kemara, the central Red Giant star in Nova space), is home to over three hundred million Y’Varis as of 2547, many of them living in settlements not too dissimilar from ancient human cities. Their oral histories (passed down through thousands of years of recorded history) speak of an ancient journey from another land, suggesting that they may have been brought to the Nova system from another system altogether.

In 2517, as the Main Belt Crisis (2493-2521) drew to a close back in Solar Space, the leaders of the Solar Union found themselves at a crossroads. While colonization of Nova Space was slumping in popularity with alien rights groups, the desire to relocate colonists from the increasingly crowded worlds of the outer Solar System to the idyllic new worlds of Nova Space was at an all-time high. Into this arena stepped the only group which could possibly have inflamed things further: the Martian Federation.

Spurred on by their leader, an ambitious Main Belt Crisis veteran named Sanyar Galvani, the Federation demanded a bigger piece of the pie in Nova Space. Between 2527 and 2538, they sent dozens of envoys to Talvan and the other worlds there, seeking to bribe, bully, or barter their way into the halls of power. All the while, the Solar Union struggled vainly to stave off their new rival’s attempts to seize greater authority in the Nova system. In 2539, the Martian Federation unilaterally proclaimed a new state on Talvan, the Federal Protectorate, with its capital in their stronghold of Utopia. This was the lightning rod that ignited civil war on Talvan.

The Solar Union quickly sent troops into Nova space to secure their interests, leading the Federation to respond in kind. Eight years later, the war is locked in stalemate, with fighting reduced to trench warfare in some places and brutal guerrilla wars fought by local militias called the Talvani People’s Front and the United Liberation Front of Talvan. Each side backs the insurgents which oppose their rival, and neither bloc lets an inch of ground slip away without bloodshed.

But as Y’Varis commandos trained by Union Self Defense Force advisors clash with ULFT death squads armed by the Federation, the Martian Federal Army is slowly being sapped of its fighting will by supporting an open-ended war. As a result, the leaders of the Martian Armed Forces (MAF) have enacted the Kaleidoscope Protocol, a controversial measure which will use cloned copies of dead MAF soldiers to continue the fight. Now it seems that not even death will be a release…

The Talvan Civil War (c. 2547)

The Talvan Civil War may have begun in 2539, but its origins go back 20 years further. When Precursor ruins were discovered at Obsidian Point in 2517, the ongoing Main Belt Crisis raging back in Solar Space already had the Solar Union in a fit of economic and social upheaval. The discovery provided part of the impetus for the Martian Unity Party to seize power in 2524-25, as they claimed a superior right to controlling the artifacts and any breakthroughs to be made through studying them.

In 2527, the same year they split from the Solar Union, the new Martian Federation government, led by populist Chancellor Sanyar Galvani, unilaterally declared sole rights to control the ruins at Obsidian Point and any other Precursor artifacts found in Nova Space. They spent the next ten years flooding the local population with propaganda and courting the local leaders to sway them to the Federation agenda.

When this didn’t work, they tried a more dynamic approach. In 2539, a coup d’état in the provincial capital Utopia installed General Dietrich Simonov as Governor of the new Federal Protectorate of Talvan. Within weeks, thousands of colonial civilians flocked to rival militias recruiting to oppose the Protectorate or support its claim to power. Hundreds of thousands of Y’Varis also flooded the ranks of the Talvani People’s Front, a coalition of rebels standing against the Federation’s naked grab for power on Talvan. The first shots in the civil war followed soon after.

The first four years of the war were in many ways its most violent period thus far. As the TPF and its rivals (among them the violently pro-Mars United Liberation Front of Talvan) escalated their tactics to terrorist bombings, kidnappings, and violent murders of public officials, the Martian Armed Forces and Union Self Defense Forces dug in along the front lines of territory controlled by their respective puppet governments. The Isthmus of Isaiah has one of the chief flashpoints, though the fighting there has mostly ground down to static trench warfare as of 2547.

This is partially the result of the Hestia Accords, signed in 2542, which introduced an unexpected level of complexity to the conflict. They stipulated that the superpowers had to respect each other’s claimed territory in Nova Space or risk escalating the conflict to a full-scale war in Solar Space. In short, their militaries could not engage each other directly in Nova Space without endangering the populations of their core worlds. This made most of Mars’ military ambitions a no-go.

However, the MAF found a workaround in the form of funneling vast numbers of arms to anti-Solar Union proxies in Nova Space. Between 2543 and 2546, they funneled nearly $1.7 trillion worth of armaments to the ULFT and other pro-Mars militias. This in turn upped the stakes of the Talvan Civil War by allowing the insurgents to ratchet up the pressure on the USDF and its own local supporters. All the while, the two superpowers’ militaries huddled in their trenches on the Isthmus of Isaiah, staring each other down and waiting for the other side to blink.

But the MAF still faced an uphill battle against insurgents funded and supported by the Solar Union, and their forces were suffering appalling casualties as they conducted sweep and clear missions across the vast wilderness areas where their enemies hid and operated—oftentimes sheltered and supported by the indigenous Y’Varis population. By 2546, Nova Command leadership requested that Central Command introduce measures to shore up their loss of experienced soldiers.

That year, the Martian Central Command issued General Order 1262, which ordered immediate steps be taken to reduce Martian Armed Forces attrition rates and increase troop retention in the Nova system theater. One of the more radical measures introduced thereafter was the Kaleidoscope Protocol , which involves using mind-body upload to recycle MAF personnel killed or fatally wounded in action.

This option was popular with the Central Command general staff, and with Chancellor Galvani, though he later denied knowing its full scope when the backlash hit. It was green-lit for full implementation in late 2546, with all Martian soldiers arriving in Nova Space after 27 October 2546 being earmarked for periodic neural scans which could be stored for upload into a cloned body in the event of their being killed or mortally wounded in action. The age of the Rebirthers has begun…

The Triumvirate

Like most of the governments in human history, the Zharan Collective is separated into a number of layers to compartmentalize its powers by hierarchy. The three upper levels of this government structure, from lowest to highest, are the Leadership Council, the Council of the Primarchs, and the High Council. The last of these is also referred to as the Triumvirate, as it is made up of the three most important members of the zharan government.

The Zharan Leadership Council is typically composed of around twenty to thirty members, each of whom is a civilian or military official in charge of some large facet of zharan society. Members are ranked according to their seniority and experience, with the most senior members of the ZLC being promoted to the Council of the Primarchs at the conclusion of their terms. The ZLC and the CotP are essentially the lower and upper houses of the zharan government, even though another, much larger house (the Collective People’s Forum, a parliamentary analog with roughly 200-300 members in total) also exists.

If the ZLC is the primary forum for discussion among the leaders of zharan society, then the Council of the Primarchs is the place where these discussions are turned into executive decisions that filter out to the rest of the Collective. There are always nine Primarchs at any given time, with V’Ran taking the tenth spot and the Chancellor as a kind of “go between” linking the Council of the Primarchs with the ZLC. The Chancellor also acts as a tie breaker, much as the Vice President does for the United States Senate.

The third in line of succession is the Chief Commander of the Zharan Liberation Army (ZLA). Like the Chancellor, the Chief Commander is not an official member of the Council of the Primarchs, though their military advice is delivered directly to V’Ran at regular executive briefings. In this capacity, the Chief Commander supports the Collective by acting as a kind of executor for orders handed down by the Supreme Leader, enforcing their will and defending the interests of the Zharan Collective by strategic use of military power.

Onara V’Layis

• Inception date: 3 August 2365 in the Kashgar National Genomics Plant.
• Vilayis was designated for initial acclimation at the Third Standard Primary Academy (located in the Kashgar District), and attended from 2365–2369. She was then assigned to the Schay’Nost-Vai (military) clade and went for initial infantry training at the Kar’Da-Shai Military Installation from 2369-2371. She was selected for advanced courses and training as part of the Advanced Leadership Program (2371-2374), which led to her being promoted to Third Minor in rank by 2375.
• Designated for participation in preemptive training for ZLA entry to the Frontier War in May 2376, as part of Directive Animus. Led units of ZLA Special Operations forces in drills in the lead-up to the ZLA intervention in 2379, and continued in this role during the campaign in Jovian space (2379-2380). Won high praise from Armada personnel for her efficiency and no-nonsense attitude, and earned the respect of hundreds of zharan and human soldiers alike for her brilliance as a ground-level tactician.
• Promoted to 1st Minor in June 2380, and then to 3rd Major in November. Was awarded the rank of 2nd Major in October 2381 after analysis of her wartime leadership brought her to the notice of then-Chief Commander Martus G'Prakta, who identified her as a potential successor. Vilayis was then fast-tracked for promotion through the Major and Commander ranks between 2382 and 2386, during which time she performed excellently under pressure during the planning of readiness drills, war-gaming, and readiness response training for the ongoing war with the Colonial Liberation Front. This culminated in her being selected to replace G'Prakta as Chief Commander of the ZLA following his retirement to a more minor role in 2387.
• Chief Commander Vilayis has spent her time in the role streamlining ZLA readiness protocols and planning deployment patterns to address the threat of the CLF. All the while, she has wrangled with the political machine established by Chancellor S'Diro K'Var and his acolytes in the Council of Primarchs, as well as the intractable bureaucracy of the Alliance Central Committee, and sought to balance security with a genuine desire for lasting peace.

S’Diro K’Var

• Inception date: 27 September 2356 at the Jormungandr Genomics Plant.
• Born during the early months of the Great Revolution (i.e. the Zharan Uprising), he was created in a genomics plant that had been seized by the Zharan Liberation Army on Callisto. He was swiftly stolen away from the besieged factory of his birth and taken to a hideaway in the Valhalla Industrial Region to undergo initial acclimation, 2356-2359. When the Uprising ended and the Zharan Collective was born, K'Var was relocated to the zharan freehold zone set up on the outskirts of Syrené, where he completed initial acclimation from 2359-2361.
• Volunteered for training in political science after being inspired to take the future of the Collective into his own hands. Excelled in the training program, and was elected to the cohort’s leadership pod, July 2364. Following completion of base coursework and accreditation, he was advanced to the F’Rast’na Kasharan training program to become a career politician in the Collective. He achieved his first posting in 2368 with a position in the civil service roster at the remote industrial outpost of Bulgari Station on Rhea. Stayed there from 2368 to 2373, but left having made a name for himself as a demanding, unscrupulous, but brutally efficient civil servant.
• Spent the next ten years rising through the ranks of Collective government, propelled as much by the repetitive humiliations of his competitors as by his own political acumen. During the shakeups of 2382, he was tapped to be a junior member of the Zharan Leadership Council. Over the next two years, he expertly outmaneuvered his rivals in order to join the Council of the Primarchs, where his pursuit of political agendas that he saw as beneficial to the zharan public earned him the notice and praise of Supreme Leader V’Ran.
• Assumed the role of Chancellor in 2385, and has spent the years since consolidating his power, often by maneuvering rivals to their downfalls with Machiavellian skill. His primary rival is ZLA Chief Commander Onara Vilayis, whose moderate stance clashes with K'Var’s staunch conservatism. The only thing keeping her from falling out of favor, it seems, is that she is just as politically skilled as she is militarily, and keeps up with K'Var every step of the way.

V’Ran

• Inception date/location: unknown (claims to be older than the Draconist Purges).
• Little is known about where exactly V'Ran emerges from in the span of Solar Space. He claims to have been created on Titan in the last years before the rise of Draconism, and to have been deployed as a soldier against them before retiring to a communal farm. While there, he says he witnessed a massacre during the Purges, which inspired him to join the nascent zharan resistance. In 2336, he claims to have stumbled across a Precursor intelligence construct that told him he was the zharan “chosen one.”
• From there, his star quickly rose. In 2337, he began organizing the new generation of zharan liberation movement leaders, using the claim that he was in fact the V’Ran (“one who leads”) who would take their people out of the shadow of oppression and into the promised land. From 2338 on, zharans flocked to his cause from all over the solar system, and over the next 18 years they secretly infiltrated virtually every level of human society in anticipation of their own Great Revolution - known by humans as the Uprising.
• During the Uprising, V’Ran proved as ruthless a military leader as he was an inspired politician, with his leadership showing a proclivity toward brutality as much as a capacity for expert strategy. When this strategizing led the Zharan Liberation Army to achieve its goal of winning statehood for the zharan nation, the Zharan Collective, V’Ran was unanimously elected to be its supreme leader by the first Council of Primarchs.
• V’Ran has a continuing mandate to lead his people out of the darkness of subjugation by humans and into the light of An’Dralya Zhar’Aea, their prophesied “promised land.” To that end, he has promoted only the most promising and ambitious politicians and military officials to the Council of Primarchs, including Chancellor K'Var and Chief Commander V'Layis. Only time will tell if he can reign in these subordinates’ ambitions, though, and whether the rumors of his own supernatural gifts are in fact credible...

Critical Stats

• First reached by humans: December 1971 (uncrewed); October 2039 (crewed)
• 2389 population: approximately 227 million, including orbitals & Deimos
• Capital: Aldrin City, Republic of Marineris & Chryse
  • Metropolitan population: approximately 6.4 million
• Affiliation: the Interplanetary Cooperative Administration (since 2169); the Coalition for Mutual Security (since 2304)
• Government details
  • Official name: United Nations of Mars
  • Established: 22 February 2169
  • Current constitution adopted: 16 August 2306
  • Government style: federal parliamentary republic
  • Ruling party in 2389: Pluralist Party (neoliberal/centrist)
  • Head of State: President Asami Calderon (since 2385)
  • Head of Government: Prime Minister Constantine Tavares (since 2382)
  • Supreme governing body: Martian Parliament
    • Upper house: Martian Federal Senate (32 members)
    • Lower house: Martian Federal Assembly (433 members)
• Primary industries: heavy industry/manufacturing; shipping & shipbuilding
• GDP: approximately $21 trillion (per capita average: $92.6 thousand)

Historical Notes

Following the signing of the Brookenden Accords in 2064, the race to explore Mars heated up quickly. Thanks to a population boom caused by the Great Exodus (c. 2098-2162), when nearly a million people immigrated to escape climate catastrophe on Earth, more than seven million people lived there by the time the Union Treaty was signed in February 2169.

This treaty was introduced after the Badlands War (2165-2168), which saw nations affiliated with the capitalist Republic of Marineris fighting an undeclared guerrilla war against those affiliated with the neo-Marxist People's Republic of Hellas over the right to influence the statehood of the resource-rich Tempe territory. After the ICA stepped in to mediate a ceasefire, the two factions entered negotiations which ultimately established the United Nations of Mars.

The new confederation rose quickly as an industrial power, fueled by its partnership with the mining barons of the Asteroid Belt. As the industrial might of Mars expanded, so too did the strength of its military. Martian troops make up more than 27 percent of the Interplanetary Defense Corps as of 2389, a fact which speaks to the many real and perceived threats to Mars that have emerged across the solar system of tomorrow. This is especially true in light of a longstanding rivalry between Mars and Titan for control of the outer system’s resources.

Chief among the challenges to Martian dominance is the Alliance of Free Worlds, a military organization made up of frontier nation-states opposed to Martian imperialism and dedicated to establishing a worker’s utopia in the outer system. As the Alliance threatens Mars’ role as the main power in Solar Space, the demands placed upon the Interplanetary Defense Corps (aka the Spacer Corps) to defend Martian interests will only intensify.

The rivalry between Mars and the outer system dates back at least as far as the Mars-Titan War (2293-2298), where the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security fought the Titan Pact for control of solar system resources. In the years since this war ended, latent nationalism has led the Coalition to clamp down on the outer system, though emergent threats such as the rise of the Draconist movement on Callisto have exacerbated the situation.

The Frontier War (2371-2381) then plunged Solar Space into chaos as the Alliance and the Coalition clashed over control of the population and resources of the volatile outer solar system. As with the Draconist Wars, Mars played a major role in the Coalition's conduct of the war, especially given that it was their main industrial base. The Frontier War ended when the Zharan Collective entered the war on the side of the Alliance and forced the ICA to negotiate.

Now, eight years since the war ended, the Coalition and Alliance are engaged in peace talks that seem to go nowhere, all while the Coalition funnels aid to the Colonial Liberation Front in their ongoing rebellion against the Alliance. It seems that the only catalyst needed to plunge Solar Space back into war will be a single spark, and as Mars prepares to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the first crewed landing there, intelligence reports indicate that the Armada dos Mundos Livres may have the right spark in mind…

Map Notes

The first map shows the sixteen capitals of the major UNOM nation-states, as well as four large cities of similar importance. Other locations featured on the map include three Spacer Corps installations (Forts Acevedo, Rialto, and Zakaria), a maximum security prison complex (Outpost Omega), and a federal heritage site, the former location of Mars Outpost Delta-4. This spot holds significance in Martian history, for it was there that a foiled plot by Terran business interests to control Mars’ future led to the Treaty of Aldrin Station.

The next two maps show some of the political geography of Mars in the late 24th century, with boundaries between nation-states, territories, and federal entities color-coded in the second map, and the various territories of these entities shown by way of flag spreads in the third. This last map is included more as a treat for fans of flag maps, and was originally made for a post in the r/vexillology subreddit, shared originally on June 26, 2026.

About the Setting

The Spacers Saga is a future history military science fiction setting which diverged from our own history in the year 2014, when a large asteroid slammed into Phoenix, AZ, killing millions. 15 years later, Charles Larsen ushered in the Age of Fusion, opening up deep space to crewed exploration and eventual human settlement.

Much of the story is set in the late 24th century, and focuses on the rivalry between the Mars-led Coalition for Mutual Security (the Coalition) and the Alliance of Free Worlds (the Alliance), a federation of rebel worlds united in their desire to create a worker's utopia in the outer solar system. These two interplanetary superpowers fought a brutal war from the 2371-2381 (the Frontier War), and are locked in an ideological cold war as of 2389.

In the world of The Spacers Saga: Frontier Wars, if the Coalition is essentially "NATO in spaaace" and the Alliance is the same but for the Warsaw Pact, then the United Nations of Mars is analogous to the United States: a powerful, wealthy military-industrial nation which exerts imperial influence on its neighbors for the purpose of safeguarding its high standard of living. I make this comparison deliberately, as I believe that all good science fiction should use its world(s) to critique the faults in our own.