Mars¶

Mars in 2375 is on the verge of transformation. After centuries as a destination for robotic exploration and a handful of small research outposts, the planet is suddenly at the center of a colonial land rush. The UEF, Luna, and various corporate interests are jockeying over charter rights and territorial claims, and the University of Mare Serenitatis has positioned itself at the forefront with both Phobos Station and the Carl Sagan's archaeological survey.

Phobos Station¶

Phobos Station represents Luna's first major claim on a non-Lunar celestial body of significance. Officially a UMS research installation, everyone understands the political implications: Luna is staking territory.

The Moon¶

Phobos is tiny — an irregular, potato-shaped rock roughly 27 by 22 by 18 kilometers. Its surface gravity is effectively zero: 0.006% of Earth's. You could reach escape velocity at a jog. The moon is tidally locked to Mars, completing an orbit every seven hours and thirty-nine minutes — faster than Mars rotates, so from the Martian surface Phobos rises in the west and crosses the sky in about four hours.

Phobos orbits just 6,000 kilometers above the Martian surface. For comparison, that's closer than London to New York. Mars doesn't just hang in the sky from Phobos — it dominates it.

The View¶

This is what the crew sees when they first arrive, and it should take their breath away.

Mars fills nearly a quarter of the sky — not a distant red dot, but a world, close enough to see weather happening. Dust storms crawl across the surface in real time. The terminator line — the boundary between day and night — creeps visibly as Phobos races around the planet. You can trace the canyon systems, pick out the volcanic shields, watch the polar caps catch the light.

Because Phobos orbits so fast, Mars moves. The landscape below shifts noticeably over the course of a conversation. Stand at an observation window for an hour and you'll watch continents drift past. The planet rotates beneath you, but you're also overtaking it — the combination creates a slow, stately parade of Martian geography.

At dawn — when Phobos emerges from Mars's shadow — the planet's limb ignites. A thin bright arc appears first, salmon-pink deepening to orange, and then sunlight floods across the surface below and the red world blazes to life. This happens roughly three times per Martian day. The crew will see it often. It never gets old.

At night, the dark side of Mars is truly dark — no city lights, no sign of habitation. Just the black silhouette of a world against the stars, occasionally lit by the faint glow of atmospheric phenomena. The reminder that Mars is still empty — still waiting — is stark from up here.

The observation lounge is Phobos Station's one genuinely good social space. Not because anyone planned it that way, but because someone put windows in the right place and people kept coming back. Off-duty crew drift there (sometimes literally — the microgravity makes "drifting" more than metaphor) to watch Mars turn below them. It's the closest thing the station has to a soul.

The Station¶

Phobos Station is a surface installation — anchored to and partially excavated into the moon's regolith. Prefabricated habitat modules sit on the surface, connected by pressurized tunnels and covered with loose regolith for radiation shielding. Deeper sections are carved directly into the rock, using Phobos itself as structure and protection.

The entire station is microgravity. Phobos's negligible surface gravity provides just enough pull to give a sense of "down" — objects placed on a surface will stay there, eventually — but not enough to walk normally. Movement is by handholds, push-off, and magnetic boots. The boots give you a floor but the gait is unnatural: a deliberate, clomping walk that newcomers find exhausting and veterans perform without thinking.

Station Layout:

The station is organized into five levels — the surface and four excavated sublevels, each dug deeper into Phobos's rock. Deeper means more protected, more critical, more permanent.

Level	Function	Description
Surface	Docking, Labs, Conferences	The interface level. External docking pylons with capacity for several ships. Research laboratories (some science is easier in microgravity). Conference rooms for mission planning. The observation lounge with its view of Mars. Magnetic boot racks at every airlock and junction.
B1	Administration, Medical	Station Command — Yenni's office, administrative functions, communications array operations. Dr. Onisegun's medical bay, well-equipped for a frontier posting.
B2	Habitation, Recreation, Mess	Where people live. Comfortable but not luxurious hab modules. Cafeteria (straps at the tables, lids on everything). Rec room. A small commerce section — more vending and requisition than shops. The closest thing the station has to social spaces.
B3	Storage, Supply, Fabrication	Logistics. Bulk storage, supply management, and the station's fabrication printers — capable of producing replacement parts, tools, and components on demand.
B4	Engineering, Power, Computation	The guts. Power generation and distribution, environmental systems (CO2 scrubbers, atmospheric processing, water recycling), computing infrastructure, automated systems. The hum of life support is loudest here, amplified by the rock.

What's Missing:

Gravity. The station has no rotating section — it isn't large or permanent enough to justify one. This is the single biggest quality-of-life issue and the thing everyone complains about.
Social spaces with character — the observation lounge happened by accident, not design
Established traditions, in-jokes, local culture
Some sections still under construction or not yet fitted out
The station has more capacity than current population

The Feel:

The smell of new construction and outgassing
The constant background hum of life support, louder in the excavated sections where rock amplifies it
Everything works, but nothing has history yet
The odd sensation of weight that isn't quite weight — you can feel Phobos pulling, faintly, but it's more suggestion than force
Sparse population; you notice new faces
A sense of potential — this place will matter soon, but doesn't quite yet

Population¶

Phobos Station's baseline complement is roughly 75 people — enough to run the station, conduct research, and support the Sagan's mission, but small enough that everyone knows everyone and new faces are immediately noticed.

The actual population fluctuates by 25 or more depending on logistics cycles. Supply ships from Luna add 10-15 crew who eat in the mess and use the gym for a few days. Research teams rotate — some scientists are on fixed postings, others come for specific projects and leave when the work is done. A Consortium logistics vessel docking might briefly push the count toward 100; a quiet period between rotations might drop it to 60.

Staffing breakdown (approximate):

Function	Personnel	Notes
Station Operations	15-20	Engineering, life support, power, communications. Several mechanics but short on full-fledged engineers — Kai's skills are valuable here.
Science	20-25	Researchers, lab technicians, data analysts. A mix of fixed and rotating postings.
Medical	4-5	Dr. Onisegun, two nurses, and a handful of certified first responders. Thin for 75+ people.
Security	5-8	Kamaka and a small team. Enough for a research station; stretched if things get complicated.
Administration	5-8	Yenni's staff. Station scheduling, supply management, communications with Luna.
Logistics & Support	10-15	Fabrication, supply handling, food service, maintenance. The people who keep everything running.
Observers	2-4	Vance, Yaw, and their small support staffs. Diplomatic missions in all but name.

The Sagan Effect: The Sagan crew (~15 people) arriving represented a 20% population increase — significant enough to strain environmental systems (hence the scrubber crisis) and shift the social dynamics of a small station. More importantly, Phobos Station exists at this stage primarily to support the Sagan's mission. The next phase — colony support — hasn't started because there's no colony yet. This means the station's resources, logistics capability, and personnel are substantially at the Sagan crew's disposal.

Daily Life in Microgravity:

Sleeping in tethered bags or enclosed bunks with gentle restraints
Eating requires lids, squeeze containers, and careful aim — crumbs are an enemy, drifting into air vents and equipment
Exercise is mandatory — muscle and bone loss in microgravity is a solved problem, but only if you do the work. The gym has resistance machines and elastic bands, all bolted down.
Showers are enclosed chambers with vacuum-assisted water recovery — functional, not pleasant
Moving through the station has a rhythm: push, glide, grab, redirect. Veterans flow through corridors like swimmers; newcomers pinball off walls and apologize a lot
Coffee exists but is consumed through squeeze bulbs. Yenni is rumored to have smuggled aboard a zero-g french press. Nobody has confirmed this. Nobody has denied it.

Phase 2 (Planned)¶

Everyone at Phobos Station knows this is Phase 1. The current installation is a beachhead, not a destination — proof that Luna can maintain a permanent presence at Mars, while the political question of whether they'll be allowed to remains unresolved.

Planning documents for Phase 2 exist in several competing versions:

Orbital station: A conventional rotating station in Phobos orbit, providing real gravity for long-term habitation. The most conservative option — proven technology, no dependency on Phobos itself.
Deep excavation: Hollow out a section of Phobos and build a rotating drum inside the moon. More ambitious, but uses the rock as shielding and anchoring. Some engineers argue Phobos's rubble-pile structure makes this dangerous; others argue it's the whole point.
Both: Build the orbital station first for immediate quality-of-life improvement, then begin the deep excavation as a longer-term project.

None of these have been funded. The Mars charter hasn't been decided, and Luna isn't going to invest in permanent infrastructure that the UEF might claim jurisdiction over. This limbo is part of what makes Phobos Station feel provisional — everyone is building something temporary while dreaming about what comes next.

Yenni has opinions about Phase 2. Strong ones. She's been compiling environmental data that would inform the deep excavation option — not because anyone asked her to, but because she's a scientist stuck doing administration and this is how she copes.

Political Observers¶

The UEF and major corporations maintain representatives at Phobos Station. These are diplomatic missions in all but name — they have no authority over station operations, but everyone knows they're reporting back to their principals.

The observers are unfailingly polite, professionally curious, and exhausting to manage. They attend briefings, request data access, and ask questions that are never quite inappropriate but always feel like probing. Their presence is a constant reminder that Mars is contested territory.

Key Personnel¶

For full NPC profiles, see the NPC Index.

Elias Vance — Mars Consortium representative and CEO of Vance Lift Systems. Built the Consortium to outmaneuver megacorps through cooperation. Corporate idealist who subverts expectations of villainy. Natural rapport with Noor.

Director Absalom Yaw — UEF Colonial Affairs observer. Lunar War veteran sent to ensure Mars doesn't become another Luna. Formal, politically sharp, uses procedure as a weapon.

Dr. Yenni — Station Commander. Atmospheric scientist stuck in administration. Specter with an avian build. Frazzled, coffee-dependent, and drowning in logistics she wasn't trained for. Thinks Leonidas is a quack.

Dr. Amaria Onisegun — Chief Medical Officer and the only physician on Phobos. Former Venn Life Sciences researcher turned frontier doctor. Pragmatic, unflappable, dry bedside manner.

Surface Presence¶

Mars has been explored robotically for over four centuries. The surface is littered with the detritus of that history.

Robotic Infrastructure¶

Generations of rovers, landers, and automated systems dot the Martian landscape:

Most are long-dead, preserved by the thin atmosphere and cold
Some newer systems remain operational: weather stations, communication relays, sample caches
Historic sites are technically protected, though enforcement is theoretical
The Perseverance rover (landed 2021) is a registered historical landmark

Research Outposts¶

One or two small crewed installations exist, staffed by skeleton crews:

Limited budget, limited scope — dead-end postings for the very dedicated or the unlucky
These scientists have toiled in obscurity for years; now Mars is suddenly important
Their futures are uncertain: absorbed into colonial efforts? Shut down? Elevated?
They know the terrain, have opinions about Leonidas's claims, and are watching their quiet domain become a political battleground

Jezero Crater¶

The Carl Sagan's primary destination is Jezero Crater, an ancient river delta that has drawn scientific interest for centuries.

Why Jezero¶

The 2024 Discovery: The Perseverance rover found biosignatures in Jezero's sediments — possible evidence of ancient microbial life. The findings were celebrated, debated, and eventually filed as "interesting but inconclusive." Scientific consensus settled on "possible but unconfirmed."

The Expansion Era Finding: A later mission (mid-2100s) recovered metallic samples with anomalous compositions — isotope ratios that matched neither Martian geology nor Earth contamination. The data was published, debated, and ultimately dismissed as instrument error. The scientists moved on; the archives gathered dust.

Colonial Assessment¶

Jezero is also being evaluated as a potential colony site. The ancient river delta offers:

Water accessibility: Subsurface ice deposits, potentially tappable
Terrain: Flat areas suitable for dome construction, stable geology
Artificial waterways: The crater's natural drainage patterns could be leveraged; ancient river channels might be re-excavated under domes
Resources: Regolith composition suitable for construction materials; atmospheric processing viable for oxygen and fuel production

The poetry of it: they're evaluating whether to build a colony on top of what might be evidence of someone else's colony. Leonidas has opinions about this.

The Martian Environment¶

Light and Sky¶

Sunlight 40% as intense as Earth, but sharp — no atmospheric scattering softens it
Shadows are absolute black; step out of the sun and temperature plummets
Dawn and dusk paint the dust pink, orange, butterscotch
The sky is salmon-pink by day, deep blue near the sun at sunset
At night, stars don't twinkle — steady points, more stars than any Earth sky
Phobos crosses the sky in about four hours, rising in the west

Dust¶

Fine as talcum powder, clings to everything, works into seals
Oxidized iron — literally rust. Smells metallic if it gets inside
Dust devils appear without warning, red columns spinning across the plain
After a storm, everything is coated; rovers look like they're rusting in real-time
Perchlorates in the dust are mildly toxic — decontamination protocols matter

Sound and Silence¶

Atmosphere too thin to carry sound well; everything feels muffled outside
Inside the suit: your own breathing, your heartbeat, the hum of life support
Wind registers as pressure, not sound
Radio chatter becomes a lifeline — the only voices in the world

Scale¶

Horizon closer than Earth (smaller planet), but the landscape feels bigger
Olympus Mons visible from enormous distances, a wall on the horizon
The Jezero crater rim is a constant presence, ancient walls circling the delta
You can see the curvature of the planet from high ground

Cold¶

Average temperature -60°C; drops to -100°C at night
Suits handle it, but you know the cold is there, waiting
Breath fogs inside the helmet if climate control hiccups
Metal left outside becomes dangerous to touch, even through gloves

Mission Operations¶

The Shuttle¶

The Carl Sagan carries two shuttlecraft for surface-to-orbit operations:

Tycho Brahe — configured for personnel and scientific instruments
Annie Jump Cannon — configured for cargo and logistics

Both seat six to eight with cargo space and serve as the primary transport between ship, station, and surface. Primary pilots are Azure Armstrong and Splishy-Splashy.

Transit Patterns¶

Standard operations involve the Sagan remaining in Mars orbit (or docked at Phobos) while the shuttle runs between ship, station, and surface base. This creates a triangle of locations, each with different character:

The Sagan: Home, but transient — they can leave anytime
Phobos Station: New but finished — institutional, political observers, Dr. Yenni
Surface Base: New and raw — improvised, growing, intimate

Which location the crew gravitates toward as their primary hub will shape their relationship with Mars and the mission.

Ground Base¶

Setting up a surface base in 2375:

Initial Setup (Week 1-2):

Pre-fab habitat modules shipped from Phobos or the Sagan
Inflatable pressure domes with rigid internal structure
Regolith piled over domes for radiation shielding
Power: compact fusion reactor or solar array with battery backup
Life support: closed-loop air and water recycling

Expansion (Weeks 3+):

Additional modules connected via pressurized tunnels
Dedicated lab space, equipment storage, vehicle garage
Local resource processing (water from ice, oxygen from regolith)
The base grows organically based on mission needs