HEAVY SKY - The United Gardens of Venus

When it became clear that Mars would not offer a viable colony world, plans for an artificial satellite colony in the orbit of Earth's other neighbor, Venus, emerged. Today, the Hanging Gardens of Seramis are home to roughly ten million inhabitants. Getting there is easy enough, but living there is expensive and requires good connections. The Venusian industries specialize in genetic alteration and modification. Many of the gene mods allowing humans to live on Mars long term originate from Seramis.

While Mars has an atmosphere that is easily terraformable but lacks gravity suitable for Earth-born life, Venus indeed has sufficient gravity, but its atmosphere is extremely inhospitable. Venus is hot, has high levels of atmospheric pressure at the surface, and if those two issues were not bad enough, its atmosphere is also corrosively acidic. But with Earth becoming less and less hospitable, more extreme solutions for an escape of humankind became increasingly viable, especially as Mars' colonial endeavor floundered due to the issues the human body developed from long term exposure to Martian gravity. Hundred and fifty years ago, the Seramis Project began to construct a beachhead at Venus' L1 point. The Seramis Project built refineries and factories around the station, which were fed from the heavy mineral extraction operations on Mercury.

The result was a "hanging garden" colony in Venus' upper atmosphere. The colony was close enough to the surface to benefit from the planet's Earth-like gravity, but high enough in the atmosphere to dodge the toxic, corrosive gases, extreme heat and pressure. Seramis Secundus, the hanging gardens in Venus' low orbit, are tethered to the massive counterweight of Seramis Primus in high orbit, which keeps the colony afloat. What really spurred the growth of the Seramis Project was the Bracer War, in which Earth's orbital habitats destroyed each other in a cataclysmic conflict that rendered Earth nigh inapproachable through space flight for decades. The hyper-rich survivors of the war first fled to the Lunar surface, regrouping and re-arranging. Deeming Mars' social atmosphere too volatile, most Old Bracers chose Seramis as their new home, unwilling to stay on Luna or returning to Earth. Many of these ultra wealthy people ordered new expansions of Seramis built, willing to wait patiently in hypersleep stasis until their new domiciles were completed.

Seramis today is more than just a single colony, but a collection of floating city states, home to some ten million biological humans. Collectively these city states call themselves The United Gardens of Venus. Each colony operates in the same way that Seramis Prime and Secundus pioneered: a massive space port with largely automated manufacturing facilities as a counterweight to an equally massive colony, suspended in Venus' upper atmosphere. The colonies are ruled by a council of leading families who each can lay claim to significant parts of the colonies' physical infrastructure. Most of the Venusian economy is based on human improvement technology, especially genetic engineering, as well as on constant expansion of the colonial project, renting out - and in some cases selling off - newly built habitat space to those Earthlings and their companies that can afford the steep prices.

The United Gardens collaborate on a long-term project that has several prongs: to turn Venus into a habitable planet for close-baseline biological humans. The Venusian Transformation Effort is the biggest source of employment on Seramis, and a gargantuan, collective project. The first steps are in progress: the cooling of the planet's surface and sequestration of greenhouse gases. Large space mirrors are created around the planet to divert sunlight - and generate electric energy. Many of those double as solar power plants for the Hanging Gardens. Meanwhile, the genetic engineering industry is hard at work, tinkering with Earthling organisms in order to adapt them to life in environments that are generally more hostile than Earth's.

In the inner system Seramis is regarded as a monument to human achievement and innovative spirit by most. Being affluent enough to leave Earth or Luna behind and live on a hanging garden is by many people regarded an end-goal in life. This does not mean that everybody views Seramis as unquestionably good. The Venusian colonies are after all an oppressive regime that does not abide opposition or dissent. Also, due to the colonies being the inner system's center of genetic engineering research, Seras tend to view themselves as the superiors to other biological humans, especially those who have not undergone genefixing therapies.

Like all wealth, that of the Venusians is built on the backs of others. The Ruling Families largely own the mining operations on Mercury, and large stakes in the corporations that govern Mars. Research done on the hanging gardens is known to disregard the sanctity of human life in the name of advancement. Many on Earth and Mars regard the Venusian Transformation Effort as one that, while collective, still is bound to only benefit a small amount of people.

Seramis and the Iovian Collectives exist in an uneasy peace. While the Collectives are in most ways far and beyond any technological advances of the inner system, their focus on purely synthetic technology means that Seramis' genetic technologies are in fact more advanced than those of the Nanosocialist Great Houses. The Venusians also begrudge the Iovians' post-human advancements, which they believe to be anathema to what actual flesh and blood human beings can and should strive for and achieve.

In order to keep Seramis expanding, the Ruling Families are in the process of staking out claims in the Belt, always hungry for more raw materials. This has put Seramis sponsored mining expeditions in territory claimed by the Iovians, who in most cases refuse to accept the Venusian claims. Seramis is also trying to advance deep solar system explorations beyond Jupiter. Seramis does allow Ava's to enter their society however, if they are able to afford it.