Drossworlds

DROSSWORLDS (Cyberpunk) In the wake of the ever expanding human frontier are the Drossworlds; planets depleted of any resource that can aid in space travel, and very often in ecological collapse from the associated industries. Drossworlds are hopeless places; whatever resources are left are controlled by corporate governments, and the people who get left behind are undesirables; convicts, radicals, or sometimes the plain old unlucky. Just as the Age of Infinity doesn’t end, neither do the Drossworlds; individually they grow more uninhabitable, and the oldest worlds are now little more than scraped-clean rocks, but as long as humanity expands, it leaves entire planets behind in its wake.

1)      Old Shem: The oldest of the known Drossworlds, Old Shem is more a museum piece than a habitable planet. Historians and archaeologists patrol the streets, piecing together what remains of Old Shem’s significance. Old Shem is thought to be the original homeworld for humanity; it’s certainly old enough, and the architecture that withstands its bleak atmosphere is reminiscent of early Human Colonial era design. The only part of the planet still accessible without a hazmat suit is the moon; once a spaceport, but now renovated into an Archivist outpost, tasked with collating and organising Old Shem’s history.

2)      Centrum: Planetary Head Office of the Gladius Corporation, the galaxy’s best organisers. ‘We organise everything!’ is their slogan, which is equal parts promise and threat. Their planet is divided into subsections; each worker is given a code and sent to a particular city based on genetic factors and pre-approved alphabetised names. In order to attain proper balance and symmetry to their world, Gladius spent trillions on reshaping their world’s continents. Centrum is technically a Drossworld, as the Corporation lacks the permissions to relocate off-world. To its workers and advertising departments, however, Centrum is paradise.

3)      The Blacklist: In a world run by interplanetary corporations, the worst thing to be is in your boss’s bad books. The Blacklist are a sinister group who’ve taken ownership of their social exile, and work to disrupt the world monopoly whenever they can. The disillusioned, anarchic or those with nowhere else to turn, the Blacklist are touted as an organised criminal syndicate by media outlets; while they are involved in illegal activity, the majority are trying to survive against a government that hates and vilifies them.

4)      The investigation so far, had more questions than answers. What was a Void-Skipper ship doing so far into Drossworld territory? How has it traversed five systems, over six-thousand light years of Council space, undetected and unchallenged? If the crew had all abandoned as the retrieved log said, where had they gone? They’d crashed into a Former-M planet, barely missing a hydrochloric sea; nothing could survive on that planet’s surface, yet the satellite station didn’t monitor any unusual take-offs. And, perhaps the biggest question of all; why was a V.S. Ship carrying fifty frozen clones of a prominent Council senator?