The World That Never Sleeps
(LORE) HYPERION: The most populated planet in the Coalition of Congressional Republics.
“I’ve lived my entire life in the shadow of concrete titans; of metallic spires, of neons unending.
“My constellations are the adverts that tower kilometers up into that ever-starless night; my sun is the glare of a forgotten star against windows by the billions.
“The sirens that blare into the sunrise are my alarms; the rainfall that pounds my roof is the portal to my sleep.
“I will never have it another way.”
—My Love, This World; a famous anonymous text posted digitally sometime in the 2500s
Hyperion, astrocartographically catalogued as Hathor III or 18 Scorpii c, is a temperate terra planet that orbits the G2-type main sequence star of Hathor. It constitutes the Planetary Republic of Hyperion alongside its orbiting partners: its sole moon of Icarus, the LEO-bound space station of Paradise, and the thousand of space stations and orbital shipyards that are spread across the planet’s orbit and first two Lagrange points.
It is the most populated world in the Coalition of Congressional Republics, with a population of over 670 billion as of 2698—and growing. Many within the Coalition anticipate that Hyperion will beat Earth in becoming the first true “ecumenopolis” with no end in sight for the meteoric ascent of the world.
History
Hyperion, (merely 18 Scorpii c in the years before) was identified as a potential terraforming candidate as early as 2049 through the Combined Solar Telescope Array (CSTA) of the United Nations SpaceSight Initiative, possessing a primitive oxygen atmosphere within the habitable zone of its parent star, and was subsequently included in an ever-increasing list of potential colonial worlds for the overgrowing human population. Humanity did not venture beyond the Solar System until 2078 with the start of the Tomorrow Initiative under the first Secretary General of the Coalition of Congressional Republics, Edoardo Colombera, leaving it only as a tantalizing prospect in the minds of many.
Civilian survey vessels reached the 18 Scorpii system in 2079, two years after the end of the Second Martian-Terran War, using the first iterations of the Tepiltzin-Csanád Drive. While closer star systems to Sol such as Alpha Centauri were already in the midst of having their planets colonized by plucky corporations and mining consortiums, it was decided that the planet of Hyperion would be subjected to a decade-long terraforming operation with minimal human interruption that would yield a world with an extremely high Earth Similarity Index (ESI) value. This was due to the plan of Colombera’s visionary Tomorrow Initiative, which placed extreme importance on Hyperion relative to the Coalition at large as being one of the "essential gateways of Mankind [to the rest of the galaxy]". His vision would aid in the planet eventually becoming one of the most influential in all the Coalition for centuries to come, rivaling Tellus, Mars, and Earth in influence and population alike.
Initial colonization
Space colonization was permitted for 18 Scorpii c and the wider star system in 2090 by the Coalition Settlement and Colony Office (CSCO), with the world falling under the purview of the 18 Scorpii Colonization Authority. 18 Scorpii c and its moon subsequently underwent terraforming procedures that ended in 2115 with specific colonization clearance and the renaming of the bodies within the system. Hyperion, as it would now be called, dominated colonial immigration all across the Coalition even amidst the rise of other colonies such as Tellus.
Officially, Hyperion served as the chief crossover point between core Coalition space and all future colonial ventures to the galactic south, and had also been selected by the Coalition Forces Authority to host both the first orbital construction yards beyond the Solar System. These designations shifted an immense amount of governmental and corporate attention to the Hathor star system, flooding Hyperion with new colonists and also complementing the rise of colonization in other bodies in the Hathor system for the purposes of mining resources for the orbital infrastructure's construction.
Secretly, the government had become aware of xenoarchaeological ruins belonging to the Forefather Civilization deep within the oceans of Hyperion as early as 2080 from previous hydrological surveys. Two sets of these ruins lied within the Trench of Kings region and the the Arasibo seafloor, and direct orders from the high command of the Coalition Forces Authority designated these regions as no-go zones for any civilian, corporate, and other non-cleared traffic. To the present day, the military has maintained both of these titanic-scale complexes as off-limits, and the government of the Coalition and Hyperion alike have covered their existence through feeding false rumors of "military black sites" and "weapons testing zones".
Industrial centralization and the Hegira
By 2170, it was clear to the Coalition government that Hyperion was going to dominate a significant chunk of the economy; such was clear through the rapid urbanization and nonstop expansion of the planet's population. The Coalition Forces Authority brokered a major deal with the several nascent continental sub-republics that flooded the surface of the planet, in addition to private organizations such as the Chen Wu Corporation, which entailed designating Hyperion as a chief shipbreaking and shipbuilding center for both civilian and military spacecraft. This was due to the threat of any significant spatial shipbreaking or shipbuilding activity resulting in the possible formation of Kessler Syndrome around the orbit of Earth. To avoid this issue with Hyperion, all shipbroken-designated craft were expected to be landed on Hyperion's surface and be properly deconstructed thereafter. This lead to the explosion in population of new shipbreaking centers, such as the metrozone of Maogang, and the further empowerment of megacorporations over the planet's economy.
The anthrocidal Machine War, which began in 2164, halted all growth on the planet for several years as the Coalition almost collapsed in the face of synthetic rebellion. By the war’s end in 2178, Hyperion suffered millions of deaths and significant setbacks in the destruction of much of its industrial infrastructure; yet, the dream of its glory never died.
The Dark Years that followed the war’s end would see the start of humanity’s great Hegira across human-settled space, where billions would migrate across the Coalition to fill in jobs left in a new, AI-restricted economy. Hyperion would be a major migration target during the Hegira thanks to the restarting industries of shipbuilding and shipbreaking alike, with orbital facilities beginning mass construction by the 2190s to rekindle the flame of interstellar commerce.
In 2199, the Stellar Republic of Hathor was officially declared, with all continental republics on Hyperion being voluntarily dissolved following the proclamation of the Planetary Republic of Hyperion. The world now existed as one, cogent political unit, with its rapidly urbanizing surface interlinking population centers of billions.
Corporate Revolution and the Hyperian Miracle
The Coalition would see massive internal unrest begin as factions within humanity began their plots to assume great indirect power in what would be called the Corporate Revolution. In the 2230s, the megacorporations that rose to prominence in the wake of the Machine War now began to exert great pressure on the Coalition’s interstellar economy, leading to Secretary-General Theodoric Cyrille Marin instituting the controversial Corporate Audit Act in 2235.
The Shadow War between the nations and corporations of man began, with Hyperion being one of the major theaters of this “underground battle”. This war would eventually culminate in the Civil War of the Coalition in 2240, which would last for five years and see Hyperion’s surface further marred by violence. The war saw Hyperion as one of the largest fronts in the war, sans Sol, with the navies of the Coalition and insurrectionist Outer Colonial Combine fighting over its essential shipyards in orbit. The end of the Civil War of the Coalition in 2245 saw the formal signing of the Tellus Protocol between the rebelling factions and the Coalition government, with its stipulations allowing greater degrees of power to the megacorporations. In time, this would be integral to the meteoric ascent of Hyperion.
The Coalition Reconstruction, a period of mass infrastructural repair and development across the hundreds of settled worlds of man from 2245 to 2254, would see Hyperion’s wartorn cities torn down and rebuilt to an even grander scale. Numerous space elevators and aerospaceports would link the surface of the world with the growing web of orbital shipyards and space stations around it. Metrozones began to intertwine en masse to form megasprawls, stretching across the breadth of entire continents.
The Second Renaissance
The Second Renaissance of Humanity, starting in 2254 from the unfettered explosion of Coalition economic, technological, and demographic growth of the Reconstruction, placed Hyperion in the crosshairs of its own boons. The sheer development and power that the world would accrue from the Second Renaissance is often referred to as the Hyperian Miracle.
The planet reached a population of two hundred billion, now nearly on par with that of Earth, and kept on growing with no end in sight. Hyperion, along with the growing worlds of the Core, demanded more food to sustain its growing populations. This would spark the “Second Planet Rush” of mankind in 2260, in which Hyperion would benefit through the manufacturing of countless spaceships and terraforming or colonizing instruments. The return of synthetics to society from liberalizing views on technology placed Hyperion at the forefront of synth manufacturing, and the expansion of its shipbuilding and shipbreaking capabilities lead to the construction of hundreds of space stations and shipyards in its L1 and L2 points to accommodate more construction orders.
With a colossal spike in manufacturing came a similar growth in its services capabilities. Hyperion quickly became the entertainment capital of the Coalition, with millions of artists finding their origins or best results on its quickly urbanizing surface. The planet reached a population of 300 billion by 2300, and as the Second Renaissance marched on to bring bounties to new worlds, Hyperion remained an industrial giant in fueling the expansion of the Coalition to now over a thousand worlds. The Paradise station was constructed in the 2300s below the Van Allen belts of the world to accommodate the ultra-rich of the Coalition who sought to live above the titan, spectating as its city lights grew brighter decade by decade. This was followed by the completion of the Hyperian International Spaceport in geostationary orbit,
By 2390, however, the optimism of the century began to decline with the onset of the Great Stellar Depression. This depression was caused by a multitude of issues across human space, but the most pressing was the rubber-banding of the stock markets from hundreds of settled worlds against the rapid post-civil war expansion of megacorporations and nations alike. This sent the Coalition careening towards what many anticipated to be economic catastrophe.
The Hyperion Stock Exchange crashed much like other core worlds’ exchanges, leading to a successful campaign of nationalization and a return of government stakes in ventures such as transportation, energy, and essential resource manufacturing. The slump of imports to fuel the forges of Hyperion left billions without full-time jobs, and sowed the seeds of Hyperion’s new criminal ecosystem for centuries to come.
The economy of Hyperion and the wider Coalition gradually recovered as markets stabilized, reopening the hundreds of light years of previously dormant trade lanes that ran from the farthest edges of the Frontier to the Core. Hyperion’s demographic boom resumed by 2420, officially surpassing the population of Earth with 400 billion people as registered citizens.
“Great Plateau” and the present day
From the start of the Great Stellar Depression over three hundred years ago, the Coalition eventually fell into what sociologists now refer to as the Great Plateau. Despite there being a steady trickle of innovations in physics, engineering, and biology over the centuries, the heyday of rapid research and development has declined significantly. Hyperion has been affected by the grand-scale effects of the Plateau, with little in the way of any significant developments in its civil engineering or megastructural projects. Even so, it has continued to be one of the three “shining jewels” of the Core, serving as the Coalition’s chief industrial and manufacturing center, in addition to having over six hundred and seventy billion souls.
Converse to this interstellar reputation, however, lies the fact that Hyperion is also one of the most dangerous planets to live on—depending on which metrozone you visit. Centuries of constant, unfettered economic and demographic growth has only accelerated the crime rate on the planet. If one has their finger to the pulse of the rain-slicked streets, news of the latest bloodbath from gang warfare or serial killer rampaging through the underbelly of cities runs like a crimson river.
As of 2698, the wider Hathor star system is “firmly” under the grip of metaconservative President Alexander Foulke, a charismatic man who maneuvered his way into being one of the most influential men in the Coalition through the money of his eponymous megacorporation and a message that resonates with billions: to fight the plutocrats and the crime, no matter the cost. This has led to mixed results; Foulke was able to bring an end the utterly destructive and deadly Southern Albion Gang War of 2689 in a decisive government victory, preventing the Albish continent from descending into unabated anarchy. However, his executive power has been developed to the extreme following the Shotatsu Plot in 2691 and the Hathor Senate’s attempted coup d’etat against him years ago, leading to what many call the “Iron Presidency”.
Economy
“You always, always, go to Hyperion for the money. Doesn’t matter if your business is squeaky clean or dirty as all hell; there’s always a buyer or a vendor for whatever the fuck you’re doing.
If the walls of those spaceports could talk, they’d scream bloody murder forever.”
—Alberto Corradetti, patriarch of the Corradetti crime family and capo dei capi of the Hyperion Commission
Hyperion is, and has been for centuries, the Coalition’s industrial heart. Any surface of the planet not spared by ecological reservation or choked by megabuildings is host to colossal chemical refineries that burn day and night, processing hundreds of millions of tons of raw resources hauled down by space elevators or shuttles before being shipped into monstrous foundries that pump out every device imaginable.
The main enterprise of the planet lies in its orbital and Lagrange point shipyards, which have easily manufactured over a third of all spacecraft in human history. It is home to the largest shipyard in the Coalition, the Binhai Heavy Assembly Complex, where leviathans such as the Anthem-class megacarrier see manufacture to the tune of trillions of Coalition Congressional notes.
The world is the Coalition’s golden goose, and it shows in every conflict that has happened after the Machine War: manufacturing entire droid armies and battlefleets for the Coalition Forces Authority, or its corporate-owned shipyards pumping out the private navies for entire megacorporations. Of course, it is not the only industrial world in the Coalition—but with a GDP nearly reaching the quintillions of notes, it will never leave its throne for the foreseeable future. Just don’t ask about its GDP per capita; it’s supposed to be high, but the bulk of the money lies within the corporate elite.
Money is not only made by manufacturing of goods and ships, even if that is the world’s main enterprise. With such a massive population, it also leverages a huge services workforce to maintain both its own digital or physical infrastructure and to provide it to other worlds; this is mainly accomplished through the wider courier-ship1 served hyper-network of the Coalition, although communications with other Hathorian worlds is still done by light-speed broadcasts due to cost efficiency.
Entertainment, as a subset of service, is perhaps the largest moneymaker within the category. Hyperion creates the most multimedia out of any planet in the Coalition (even if some can be sub-par). The world is one of the capitals of gambling, with entire metrozones such as the Grand 38 and the informal Sin Gates having laxed municipal laws to encourage such an industry; the latter metrozone also being one of the capitals of legal prostitution.
Although many Hyperians don’t want (or care) to admit it, crime is another major money-maker for the planet. Quadrillions of notes run through the Hyperian criminal world, ranging from drugs and guns to trafficked people, restricted vehicles, and historical or xenoarchaeological artifacts. The sheer amount of corruption in government, in addition to the utter scale of everything going on commercially, allows for a shadowy overhead of crime to easily rake in enough money to eclipse some smaller Coalition member states in size.
Transportation and logistics
Hyperion is bristling with connections to the wider galaxy. It has multiple equatorial space elevators dating back to the earliest days of colonization (with modernizations over the centuries), in addition to newer, slanted and non-equatorial space elevators in profit centers such as Jade City or Port Bremerton; their spacebound stations working around the clock with docked freighters or spaceliners to bring down goods and people to the surface termini. Aerospaceports also exist following the rise of cost-efficient interatmospheric shuttle travel, with most flights coming in from the colossal Hyperion International Spaceport in near-geosynchronous orbit. The planet also sees interplanetary flights, most commonly from its space stations in its L1 and L2 points, but also the other settled planemos in the system.
Hyperion ushers in passenger flights and shipping lanes from across settled space, rivaling only other Core termini such as Tellus or Earth. It serves as the central node for all interstellar travel from the Core heading southward in the galactic plane. Due to how busy the world’s orbit is, it falls to the Hyperian Orbital Authority and its super-turing AI systems to manage the constant inflow and outflow of traffic, which can be as many as hundreds of thousands of ships a day, with sizes ranging from merely 25 meters for personal craft to an upwards of 10 kilometers for the largest of megacorporate superfreighters.
The planet doesn’t spare even for its own sake; massive bridges with dozens of lanes span across entire oceans to link continents together into one endless city. Trains run nonstop, with some able to complete circuits around continents such as Albion in less than seven hours. Some cities drown in the amount of roads and highways they have, running up to several hundred meters into the air. The chaos of millions of aerodynes flying in aerial lanes is somewhat controlled by automation and police direction, but there’s always someone flying out of bounds and crashing into things.
“I don’t give a fuck about the Senate. You know what? Throw a dart into a group of senators and see how many clean men you hit. Go on, do it.
“News flash, pal: you’ll never see soap bleed from them. Just rot and mold.”
— President Alexander Foulke to his Speaker before the Shotatsu Plot and his attempted assassination, c. 2691
Government
Although Hyperion is officially a part of the devolved governorship known as the Planetary Republic of Hyperion, there is little distinction in laws passed for that of the Stellar Republic of Hathor and Hyperion by the national government of the star system. This is due to the sheer disparity of population between Hyperion and its sister worlds; the next largest planet by size, the agri-world of Archangel, only has a population of seven billion.
Officially, the planet is administrated by the Planetary Governor of Hyperion, with Foulkist Holden Harcrow holding office. In ironic recognition of the imbalance of power, Hyperion’s planetary governor is the only governor in the system to be elected at the same time and on the same ticket as the President and Vice President of Hathor. The governor essentially acts as a rubber stamp for the executive decisions that the Office of the President wishes to enact specifically on the world; for example, during the Southern Albion Gang War, it was the Planetary Governor at the time who followed Foulke’s directives to the letter in enacting continental martial law that affected hundreds of billions of lives, acting as a mere proxy.
The planet also lacks its own legislature and judiciary, defaulting to the Senate and Supreme Court of Hathor, respectively.
Politics
Hyperion is the most politically diverse planet of the Coalition as a mere byproduct of its cosmopolitan nature. Historically, the planet has always voted metaliberal in elections, favoring often the New Democratic Party or the even more progressive Human Progress Party. However, President Foulke swooned many metrozones of the planet to his populist and conservative rhetoric in the light of the NDP’s failures to stop the flood of blood and terror across Hyperion, winning a historic victory in the 2689 presidential election under the metaconservative Congressional Republic Party.
The world is home to quite the eclectic political scene—from anarchists and communists to fascists and corporatists, one can find any ideology, no matter how radical.
Most controversially, the planet’s government is subject to ungodly amounts of corruption; not just from criminal syndicates puppeting local leaders, but even senators or presidents being ultimately subject to the whims of megacorporations. This was most famously broken by Foulke, who as a result was almost killed and sparked a seven-day “civil war lite” between his supporters and the senatorial factions of government. Even with his victory and the institution of the Iron Presidency, there is still more corruption than anyone would like to admit.
Law enforcement and military
The responsibility of enforcing law on such a titan, in addition to its moon and space stations, falls to the largest police force in the Coalition: the Hyperion Police Department. Formed in 2099 as a for-profit corporation known as the Hyperion Rangers (before the planet was even bestowed the name by the Coalition), the Rangers utilized their contract with the 18 Scorpii Colonization Authority to enforce law and order across the quickly colonizing continents. However, the HYPD would officially form in 2131, when the Rangers merged with the Hyperion Security Troopers corporation and were in turn purchased and incorporated by the Colonization Authority as a government force.
As of 2698, there are over 1.5 billion sworn officers attempting to tame the wildness of the planet’s underbelly, with a complement of nearly double as many droids.
Sometimes, the situation on the ground gets so volatile that the Planetary Guard of Hyperion are required to mobilize in order to keep the peace with a broader array of weaponry. The Hyperian Guard is the official military entity of the Planetary Republic and a subordinate unit of the wider Stellar Guard of Hathor. Over 900 million guardsmen are garrisoned across the surface in military complexes and act often in times of martial law as directed by the national executive. The Hathorian Guard exert naval control over the planet in times of crisis, with one of the largest fleets for a member nation of the Coalition; they often exercise orbital and interplanetary patrols.
“We were told [by the Coalition] that we couldn’t spoil the seas; so we went into the ground. Then, we were told we couldn’t go into the crust anymore than a certain depth; so we went into the air. Now, they give us the permission that we never needed from them to go back in the ocean! Are we a nation, or are we a vassal?”
—President Cal Pinchas of the Stellar Republic of Hathor, c. 2307
Geography and climate
The world of Hyperion, as a temperate terra, was originally host to a wide variety of climates and biomes that ranged from mountainous terrains to rolling plains and savanna. However, due to the amount of ocean that exists on Hyperion relative to land—more than that of Earth—the urbanization of the planet has led to most of its continents being subsumed by kilometers of concrete and steel.
Landmasses
There are eight continents and differing subcontinents tectonically identified:
Albion
Fusōdō
Arcadia
Seaward Islands
Destino
Khopari
La Granja
Bernard and Zenith Islands
Gemenis
Novodon
Puerto Estelar
Eleziatta
Sacrosancto
Steinmeer
In political practice, differing landmasses have been grouped with one another in what are referred to titularly as continental subdivisions. These divisions serve no purpose other than geographic utility and organization.
Atlantis Underwater Megasprawl
Due to a series of “short-lived” regulations (in other words, a century) enforced on the planet after the Civil War of the Coalition, in addition to a recommendation for developing areas that would be safe in the event of orbital bombardment, most real-estate development on the world in the late 2200s and early 2300s shifted from the surface to under the waters of the Hyperian Ocean. Initially building off of the coasts of Albion and Arcadia, what would be born would ultimately become the largest underwater urban area in the Coalition.
The Atlantic Underwater Megasprawl has a population of over forty billion and extends over a colossal area of the seafloor. Ranging from caves drilled in the sea crust to spires of glass extending off of the sea floor, the AUM was initially intended to be a tourist trap. However, like with many megaprojects on the planet, it eventually became covered with the grime and blood of reality. Many of Atlantis’s rings have become subject to extreme violence and gang activity; due to the difficulty of reaching them conventionally, these often are disconnected from government services and have become criminal fiefdoms in their own right. The HYPD has tried on numerous occasions to storm these areas, often to horrible results from deliberate flooding or vicious close-quarters combat.
Still, the superhighways that run beneath the ocean still run strong, spanning a distance that even bridges fail to do in linking distant continents together, such as Albion to Arcadia, the Seaward Islands, and Khopari. In addition to this, some metrozones in the AUM are of a quality suitable to the standards of the rich, offering aquatic vistas to sea-penthouses and spires.
Weather and temperature
The weather on Hyperion generally exists in three modes: sunny, rainy, foggy. Most people prefer the sun; that is, until the endless concrete and steel begin to make the air like a planet-sized air fryer.
Due to the heat of the planet’s atmosphere from the amount of industry and traffic, one would expect Hyperion to be overall hotter - however, thanks to its distance from Hathor relative to other settled worlds like Archangel, in addition to its larger oceans as compared to Earth, things have mostly equalized.
Mostly.
Rain is often the normal due to how much storm formation happens on the planet. Hurricanes are also relatively common, birthed from the large churning oceans to batter the continents with endless rain. Fog often rolls in to surface levels when it gets colder, with smog contributing in heavily polluted areas. These “smogstorms”, as Hyperians call them, can often tint the skies red or orange for days at a time; this is especially true when entire networks of air purification towers fail.
Biosphere
Hyperion had, in fact, alien life prior to its colonization—this was only in the form of primordial microbes and colonial agglomerations reminiscent of siphonophores. The bulk of the native ecosystem was obliterated in humanity’s fervor to colonize as many earth-like worlds as possible, with much of the biological history only remaining as digital data in preservation archives.
During terraformation in the late 21st century and early 22nd century, the planet was initially flooded with Terran flora and fauna in rapid and unstable seeding missions. The monocultural bioscapes that followed led to frequent collapse and a lack of utility to human colonists, who at that time only cared about subsistence farming at best due to agricultural imports from other nascent colonies. As the planet shifted towards mass manufacturing and industrialization, little care was placed in the maintenance of the biosphere, leading to a collapse that never recovered after the Machine War.
Still, wild animals are not something of legend. The megasprawls have hundreds to thousands of different animals that have adapted to the harsh, human-shaped environment. The Great Sand Bowl and Kozlov National EcoZone, two areas mostly untouched by man, also harbor various animal and plant species. Metrozones also try to construct surface or skyparks when they can, mainly as a psychological outlet for humans rather than for anything environmentally impactful.
Pollution
At a glance, one would expect Hyperion to be a smog-choked hell. That is actually true for quite a large amount of its city surface, but not all; this is thanks to the initiatives of corporations that, at the behest of the government, poured quadrillions into combating as much pollution as possible in the air, the water, and even in space (see the Transport and logistics section).
It is a common sight to see utilitarian, kilometer-tall air purification towers across the non-luxurious metrozones of the planet, working day and night in a constant blare of suction to clean the air from toxins. Kilometers from the coasts of almost every continent lie massive interlinked networks of sea-cleaning stations that cycle through millions of cubic meters of seawater to clean it of the trash and refuse from nearly seven hundred billion people. It is an endless battle with no end, and some don’t even see the fruits of such labor. Metrozones such as Maogang, Ningzhou, and dozens of others suffer from smogstorms from their sheer industrial output and lack of sanitation.
“You can pause time itself and roam this planet for a thousand years; you’ll know only a fraction of a single day. It is both beautiful and frightening.”
—Reginald Gehlhausen, author and self-ascribed “Hyperianist”, c. 2680
Society
Hyperion is home to nearly seven hundred billion people, with even more synths and droids to augment the workforce and serve the upper echelon of society. It is the definition of a sociocultural melting pot, where those from every culture of mankind conceivable has migrated to live alongside one another and beget a Hyperian “super-cultural” identity. Most cities have varying mixtures of Earth-descendant races, with ethnic ancestries abound across all of settled human space.
Even so, it is not a utopia. Millions have fought and died in the streets along social, political, or cultural lines—both against each other and against the government.
As the Coalition’s main center of manufacturing and industry, Hyperion has the largest concentration of laborers in human space. Many of these people live in colossal arcologies and mega-buildings built to house hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of humans at a time. Others are homeless and jobless, roaming the countless miles of streets that cocoon the land of the planet. Some opt to even live in the Hyperian underworld—miles of forgotten sub-levels that were built upon carelessly in the dream of a grander Hyperion.
Those who seek a modicum of “privacy” and anonymity in such a crowded world live in the settlements that dot the world’s few non-urbanized terrains, with the best example being Albion’s Great Sand Bowl and its numerous isolated desert communities and nomad camps. Others live in regions abandoned by the government due to radiological disasters, such as the Mont Pennet Exclusion Zone in Albion or the Fallen City in Destino; both of which being metrozones once home to billions before being evacuated from disasters caused by centuries-past wars or industrial accidents.
The lucky few with the wealth to live in the penthouses and upper levels of innumerable Hyperian stratoscrapers2 are given a sight of nearly endless urban sprawl and constantly shifting city skylines. Others live in the rare suburban metrozones such as Empire Ramparts, which feigns normalcy away from the chaos of the cities through emulating the white-picket-fence dream. Those with even more money and power live in the space station of Paradise, whose shape can be visibly seen in the sky.
Religion
Hyperion is home to the largest amount of the religious… and irreligious, at the same time, even when discounting turing-grade synths. Christianity is the largest religion on the planet, but only by a slim margin—Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism all have tens to hundreds of billions of adherents alike. The irreligious almost outnumber the religious on the planet at 300 billion, ranging from agnostics and unaffiliated persons to atheists.
The “classical religions” are not the only ones that exist after nearly seven centuries of human space civilization. New religions, such as the atheistic and humanocentric Anthropocenism or the eco-spiritualist Unifaith see membership in the billions.
Crime
Crime and Hyperion might as well be synonymous. Unlike Earth, whose nations acknowledge the crime waves that come with megasprawls, or unlike Hyperion’s more refined sister core world of Tellus, whose nations have exterminated crime through pandering wholly to the upper class, Hyperion simply ignores the unending violence and misery in its streets… until it becomes an issue in making money.
Every fringe ideology, every racial or cultural identity, and everything in-between has a gang or criminal organization representing it in the endless sprawl. Every trade in the criminal industry, from drug and weapons trafficking to kidnapping, murder, and rape, has Hyperion as its number-one location. Feeble attempts by past administrations to stop the chaos resulted only in failure, either due to megacorporate meddling due to the profits involved or merely due to bureaucratic incompetence in the face of tens of billions of criminals. Foulke has been the only President in recent history to even make a dent in the problem, and that involved invoking martial law and initiating controversial “wars against crime” that costed quadrillions in notes and millions of lives.
Prisons in Hyperion are flooding to the point of the Stellar Republic of Hathor needing to export prisoners to other nations of the Coalition to cope with the overload. Plans are in the works to construct a series of prisons in the farthest reaches of the Hathor system, in orbit of distant worlds such as Ajax or Boreas, to stem the tide.
Courier ships, or data couriers, are the foundational element of the Coalition’s interstellar communications network. Since faster-than-light travel is possible, but faster-than-light communication is not, the Coalition has utilized ships to carry data between star systems for centuries. These ships, ran by various transport and communication corporations, run around-the-clock to pick up and transmit relevant data in as many planets as possible across their journeys. Unsurprisingly, they run the most throughout the Core, and are responsible for cross-exchange financial reporting and mass information dispersal.
Stratoscraper is an erroneous, colloquial term used to refer to buildings that exceed more than 800 meters in height. True stratoscrapers exceeding 6 kilometers in height do exist, although uncommon; the MesoSpire in Hyperion’s capital metrozone of Port Bremerton itself is the tallest example, being 12 kilometers in height and just about piercing the lower mesosphere.