Editing Stellar Hero (section)

===Sol system===

Eight planets and a substantial asteroid belt.  Original home of the Terran race.

*'''Mercury''' - Rumor has it that the Mandate had a couple of bases on Mercury, deep in the bottom of craters at the poles so as not to be exposed to direct sunlight.  The research was supposedly into fusion-based weaponry, harnessing the power of Sol.  No one knows if the bases are still operational, post-Scream.
*'''Venus''' - Home to a couple thousand scientists and atmo-miners in orbital bases, Venus' atmosphere is too hostile for colonization.  Note: Atmo-miners collect rare chemicals from the upper atmosphere of the planet.
*'''Terra''' - Earth is a shadow of her former self.  Global warming, due both to the effects of 19th-22nd Century industry and a series of nuclear exchanges right after the discovery of the spike drive, has caused the complete meltdown of the polar ice caps.  Flooding, subsequent loss of arable land, warfare, and a mass exodus of colonists off-planet has left the global population at about one billion.  Once you leave Terra, the Mandate rules, but on Terra, there are five major political entities.
**Pan-African Confederacy - Main language is Bantu, multiple political parties dominated by Nigerians and Egyptians, control all of Africa.
**America, Inc. - Main language is Spanglish (formal combination of English and Spanish), corporations ''are'' the government, control all of North, Central, and South America
**Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere - Main language is Mandarin Chinese, government is a bureaucracy with Emperor at its head, control all of China and eastern Russia, plus the remnants of Japan and Asian island chains.
**Holy Roman Union - Main language is German, government is a theocracy with the Pope at its head, controls eastern and western Europe, including European Russia.
**United Council of India - Main language is Hindi, government is a democratic republic, controls south Asia from Thailand to the Middle East, and north to Kazakhstan.
**'''Luna (aka the Moon)''' - Home to roughly 20 million colonists.  Most of the civilian cities are at the poles, where lunar ice deposits make permanent colonies possible.  The Mandate has a number of military bases on the dark side of Luna.
*'''Mars''' - Home to about 50 million colonists.  Pre-Scream terraforming (and before that, atmosphere-forming) enabled Martian colonists to live on the surface of Mars without vacc suits and actually grow food in Martian soil.  The massive engines, powered by heat captured from rising magma, are mostly self-healing, which is good since they are of a pre-Scream tech level and no one really understands how they work or how to build more.  Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos
**Phobos has a couple hundred miners.  
**Deimos has a Mandate military base and is off-limits to civilians.
*'''Jupiter''' - Being a gas giant, there are no colonists on the planet itself.  
**Each of its Galilean moons, however, have small settlements with populations numbering in the low thousands.  
**Europa, in particular, seems the most promising due to its extensive ice layer.
*'''Saturn''' - Like Jupiter, there are no colonists on Saturn itself.  
**There is a sizable atmo-miner community on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and rumor has it that the Mandate is conducting experiments on creating life in Titan's methane lakes.
*'''Uranus''' - The coldest planet in the system, there are no known settlements on Uranus, although it's suspected that the Mandate has some sort of early warning system installed on one or more of its 27 moons.
*'''Neptune''' - An ice giant like Uranus, Neptune is also barren of human colonization. 
**Triton, Neptune's largest moon, has a Mandate military base where civilians are forbidden.