F) Saturn

Saturn is home to about fifty-five million people living in the solar system's greatest industrial power, called the Saturn Federation. Inheritors to GEA and the Exodus Fleet, the Saturnians see themselves as the rightful masters of the solar system of 2500. Saturnian history starts shortly after the departure of the Exodus Fleets. As a result of some unknown accident, three of the Arks (IAV Garba, IAV Udovenko, and IAV Choudry) suffered nearly catastrophic drive failures and were forced to make a desperate trek back to the Sol system. They arrived in-system in the 2160's, where they were immediately attacked by unknown forces as they crossed the icy outer edges of the Solar System. Finding themselves relatively safe near Saturn, the inhabitants of the Arks opted to make new homes there rather than risk death elsewhere in the surprisingly inhabited and very hostile Solar System. With dozens of moons, and much less radiation than Jupiter, it was a good choice for a new start. The settlers chose to settle on Titan, mining it and other moons for resources and scooping Saturn’s atmosphere for fuel. The refugee population quickly expanded in size, living under highly regimented circumstances under a relatively draconian high-tech police state. The wrecked condition of Earth, the continued irregularity of Sol, and the perceived hostility of Mars and the Belters kept the population of Titan on a constant war footing for decades.

Ethnically speaking, the original settlers of Titan were made of the same mix of humans as the rest of the fleet, but with about 20% Russians and Eastern Europeans from the IAV Udovenko. Modern Saturnians speak a dialect of English heavily mixed with Russian and Polish, using a modified Cyrillic script instead of Latin script. It is further blended with bits of other human languages into something that would be only barely comprehensible to people from the 'Verse.

Modern Saturnian society remains a regimented command economy, even centuries after the establishment of the Titan Colony. After a period of domination by the original crews of the Arks, the modern system of meritocratic rankings, bureaucratic assignments, and a pseudo-military feel remain a part of Saturnian society. The descendants of the Ark officers retain a certain level of control of the highest echelons of society, and are still known as the "First Families". Below that, civilians are divided into various grades of "Citizens", from Level 1 at the high end to Level 4 for the felons, welfare recipients, and social rejects that do not threaten the political order. The vast majority of people are Level-3's. Promotion in grade is one of the primary motivators for success in the system. Police presence is heavy in the Saturn Federation, and conformity is encouraged. As a result, there are always a number of people who do not fit in, dissidents and criminals. many of these simply choose to flee. The Saturnian economy is heavily government controlled, a natural outgrowth and holdover of the crisis years. In recent decades, some governments have attempted economically liberal policies, but this has proven to be cyclical. There is only one accepted political party, the SUS (Saturnian Unity and Survival ); all other political organizations are banned outright.

Titan is the oldest and largest colony, with about twenty-five million people scattered across dozens of cities. These cities are a mix of subsurface tunnels and surface domes of various sizes. The largest, Novy Spaseniye, has a population of about three million. Saturn's other large moons are all settled as well; Iapetus, Dione, Rhea, Tethys, Enceladus, and Mimas all have smaller populations than Titan. The usual pattern is a single large city and a cluster of smaller settlements, but all of these moons have two or three million each. The irregular outer moons of Saturn, though great in number, are little more than asteroids and are treated as such by Saturnians. There are many orbiting stations, space habitats, and industrial facilities, making Saturnian space quite crowded and busy with human activity. Roughly five million people in total reside among various skyplexes and stations, most of which are in orbit among the various clusters of small moons. Each cluster of moons, factories, and habitats is regarded as a separate province. Each province is represented in various levels of legislatures.

Despite possessing the "nanocompression" technology necessary to ignite a gas giant into a star, Saturn is much too small for this to be successful. As a result, the settlers of Saturn’s many moons have continued to expand their habitats across the icy surfaces, growing slowly but steadily in numbers. All Saturnian habitats are linked by an extensive communication network which would be the envy of even the Alliance. This dense web of lasers and microwaves allows for the efficient allocation of resources throughout the Saturn Federation. Saturn fields the largest navy in the Sol system, though not the most technologically advanced - it is decades behind the best technology of the Belters. Relations between Mars and Saturn are tense and occasionally strained, but there is no real threat of war between the two.