Characters / Overheaven Exonesia

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Exonesia

Exonesia is a collective name for the extensive network of space stations and habitats in the Earth-Luna sphere. It includes low, medium and high Earth orbit as well as the Lagrange points.

• Broad Strokes: Ryzov states in E!2150 that what's shown on the map is only an overview of the most noteworthy stations - there are many others out there.
• Doomed by Canon: Most of the habitats in Exonesia are destroyed in Hell Day, producing a lot of Dangerous Orbital Debris.
• Meaningful Name: "Exonesia" means "the outer islands," which is a good description of the space habitats' nature as islands of life and civilization between Earth and Luna. It also has a metaphorical meaning - Luna is referred to In-Universe as the "Eighth Continent," so by that analogy, naturally Exonesia is the archipelago in between the continents.
• Space Station: Comprised of hundreds, if not thousands of them.

The Space Elevators

Not technically part of Exonesia, but intimately connected to it, as by 2150 they serve as the main artery linking Earth to its space colonies. There are twelve of them, spread out along the equator: The Beanstalk, Pinaculo, Apice, Null Island, Makoua, Obama, Great Palm, Harapan, Tangga Bintang, Sukarno, Umbilicus and Neo-Nauru.

• City on the Water: Nine of them are built on artificial islands so as to be better connected to global shipping. (The ones that aren't are Makoua, Obama and Harapan.)
• Fictional Province: Most are these to various countries.
  • The Beanstalk plays it straightest, being its own US state.
  • Pinaculo, located on the Green Islands, and Apice, off the Brazilian coast, are exceptions, being operated by the South American Union rather than belonging to any one nation.
  • Null Island is the other exception - it's an independent country.
  • Makoua belongs to the Republic of the Congo.
  • Obama was built by the East African Federation.
  • Great Palm is owned by the Neo-Maldives.
  • Harapan, Tangga Bintang and Sukarno, all located in Indonesia, belong to Federal ASEAN.
  • Umbilicus and Neo-Nauru are states of Australia.
• Merchant City: The elevator-islands have developed into cosmopolitan cities in their own right, servicing an international clientele and facilitating trade between Earth and space. The Zodiac Ring, which connects the space elevators at their upper ends, is even more of one.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Barack Obama was a famous president of East Africa ITTL, so they named their space elevator after him.
  • Likewise, Indonesia named one of their space elevators after Sukarno.
• Space Elevator

Earth Orbit

Most of Exonesia is directly orbiting Earth at various altitudes. There are low, medium and high orbits, all of them heavily populated with stations.

• Centrifugal Gravity: Every Space Station needs it, since Artificial Gravity doesn't seem to exist in the setting.
• Start My Own: "Exo-nationalism" - stateless peoples building their own countries in space - is quite common.

Columbia, Skybase and Elysia

• Eagleland: America's Exonesian colonies were among the first of their kind.
• Fictional Province: The USA's orbital colonies constitute three states of their own: Columbia for all stations in low Earth orbit, Skybase for the station by that name in medium orbit, and Elysia for all stations in high orbit.

Republic of Free KurdiStar

• Airstrip One: A non-malicious example. Each of the KurdiStar stations is simply called that, followed by a number - KurdiStar-1, KurdiStar-2, and so forth.
• Culture Chop Suey: The 24 stations that comprise the Republic are home to not just Kurds, but also Arabs, Turkmens, Armenians and Chechens, as well as those Assyrians and Yazidis that didn't move to Assur Station or Peacock Station (respectively).
• The Republic: And the most successful one in Exonesia, at that.
• Start My Own: Turkey's solution to the issue of Kurdish nationalism was to encourage the Kurds to build their own nation in low Earth orbit.
• We Will Use WikiWords in the Future: KurdiStar.

Peacock Station

• Last of His Kind: Downplayed, but the Mandeans (about 100,000 of them) on Peacock are apparently the last ones.
• Start My Own: Founded by the Yazidis, a subgroup of the Kurds. Interestingly, Peacock is in fact a nested case: they broke off from KurdiStar.

Republic of Mahal

• History Repeats: All that remained of Pakistan after the Punjab War, and by 2150, all that remains of independent Pakistan.
• The Remnant: The Mahal Stations were almost all that remained of the Pakistani government during the chaos after the Punjab War. They managed to come Back from the Brink and reunite the country, but by 2150, Pakistan-on-Earth has willingly been annexed by India and Afghanistan, leaving Mahal as The Remnant again.

Confederation of Catalan Stations

• Commie Land: The E!2150 map describes them as socialists.
• Start My Own: Catalonian separatists in a trio of stations in high orbit.

Neuschwabenland

• Oktoberfest: Somewhat stereotypically German.
• New Neo City: Their name is German for "New Swabia" and their demonym is apparently "Neo Bavarian."
• The Theme Park Version: Of Bavaria, as despite their aesthetic (they have a scale replica of Neuschwanstein) there aren't many actual Bavarians on the station - it's mostly "German Tradcaths, white separatists and distributist catboys."

New Damot

• New Neo City: Named by its Tigray separatist founders after the medieval kingdom that once existed in that part of Ethiopia.

Axum Station

• Interfaith Smoothie: Coptic Christians and Ethiopian Jews in a more or less harmonious relationship. There's not much room for religious prejudice in high orbit.

Neo-Biafra

• Afrofuturism: Their aesthetic of choice - which they mix with Art Deco, somehow.
• Merchant City: Very libertarian.
• Start My Own: Founded by Igbo chauvinists who disapproved of the direction Nigeria was taking.

Hutu Republic of Icyubahiro

• People's Republic of Tyranny: They call themselves a republic, but they also require all immigrants to be 100% Hutu, implying they're not exactly liberals.

Zion

• Fantastic Racism: The Rastafarians on Zion have no time for "ordinary" racism, but they don't care one bit for genetic modification.
• Fantastic Religious Weirdness: Rastafarians IN SPACE!
• God-Emperor: A theocratic monarchy ruled by a clone of Haile Selassie.
• The Stoner: The only gene-modding they tolerate is the kind they apply to their ganja.

Alliance of First Peoples

• The Alliance: Between ten nations (and thus, ten stations) of Native Americans.
• Start My Own: In this case, it was a group of Native American tribes who wanted to start over, away from the USA.

Overbeek Station

• Civil War: A product of one. During the South African Wars, Overbeek - then South Africa's orbital colony - decided to secede. After the wars ended, rather than rejoin Mzansi or the Cape Republic, they decided they'd rather stay independent.
• Start My Own: Overbeek was the original exo-nation, founded by Afrikaners.

ArkGenesis

• Black Sheep: Regarded, somewhat unjustly, as this for Exonesia by Earth. (The "sheep" pun may or may not be intentional.)
• Canine Companion: The uplifted dogs are among the most pro-human of the Arkgenian zoans.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Green.
• Crazy-Prepared: The zoans of ArkGenesis constantly run drills in case they ever need to evacuate in a hurry. This allows them to become probably the only Exonesians to survive Hell Day in significant numbers, and in many cases it's they who subsequently inherit the Earth.
• Fantastic Racism: Zoans were horribly discriminated against on 21st-century Earth, prompting many of them to establish their own homeland in orbit. By 2150, some of them (though by no means all) have come to resent humans in turn.
• Fatherly Scientist: Dr. Francis Cuvier, inventor of much of the necessary tech for creating zoans, came to feel responsible for the suffering so many of them experienced on Earth. He spent the rest of his life doing everything he could to help them and fight for their rights, up to and including founding ArkGenesis in 2033 to give them a safe haven.
• Little Bit Beastly: Chimeras, as they're called, comprise a sizable portion of the zoan population...
• Uplifted Animal: ...with uplifts comprising most of the rest.
• Virtuous Vegetarianism: ArkGen zoans who have a choice usually choose to be vegetarians, for the sake of not offending their fellow beings. Even the zoans who are obligate carnivores restrict their diets to insect-derived proteins and fish.
• We Will Use WikiWords in the Future: ArkGenesis is an example of the trope, and three of the other stations that comprise it are named ArkEden, ArkAdam and ArkLazarus.

ArkEden

• Planimal: Most of the animals on ArkEden are these.
• Plant Person: Populated by intelligent plants (the largest population of such beings in Exonesia) as well as photosynthetic humans.

ArkAdam

• Fossil Revival: Home to various human ancestor species resurrected via such procedures over the years.
• Human Subspecies: Neanderthals and similar proto-human members of genus Homo.
• Odd Friendship: One wouldn't have expected them to ally with the zoans, but the "paleohumans" are paranoid about going extinct again, and many of them are suspicious of Homo sapiens.

ArkLazarus

• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The dinosaur chimeras on ArkLazarus have developed a strange spiritual belief that, since dinosaur fossils were once mistaken for dragons, human cultural memory of dragons thus informed their own creation, making them the "heirs" to dragon myths as an extension of their being part dinosaur. Even the dinosaur uplifts think this is weird.
• Fossil Revival: The zoans on ArkLazarus are all "lazurogens" - extinct species resurrected via this trope.

The Lagrange Points

Points in the Earth-Luna system with gravitational stability - you can put something there and keep it there without it orbiting anything. They thus make good places to put a Space Station. L1 is between Earth and Luna, while L2 is past the far side of Luna. L3 is on the opposite side of Earth from Luna. L4 trails Luna in its orbit, while L5 leads it.

• Shown Their Work: Lagrange points are real and work exactly like Ryzov says they do. In OTL, the James Webb Space Telescope is stationed at L2.
• The War of Earthly Aggression: There were a number of separatist movements on the Lagrangian stations during the Geo-Martian Conflicts. Some of them were backed by Mars, but that had to stop after one of them went too far by threatening a Colony Drop.

L4

• Commie Land: Colonized by the Soviets during the Cold War. Unlike Venus, the L4 stations went democratic when the communist bloc did.
• Fictional Province: Notably, all the stations at the L4 point (that we see on the map) are these to Earthen countries, without any exo-nations mixed in.

L5

• Fictional Province: As L5 was colonized by the US and its allies during the Cold War, there's enough American stations there to form another state, the state of Liberty.
• Start My Own: NeoShanghai, founded by Shanghaiese nationalists.

L3 - The Republic of the Zero Nation

• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Zero Nation is orange.
• The Republic: The entire L3 point is controlled by the Republic of the Zero Nation.
• Start My Own: The Zero Nation is an exo-nation built by and for the volari...
• Space People: ...a Human Subspecies adapted for zero-gravity.

L1 - The Lunar Gateway

• Anachronism Stew: The Lunar Gateway is constantly being expanded, with each new addition tending to become a time capsule of the year it was added.
• The City: The Lunar Gateway has a permanent population of 2.6 million, and 10 million more pass through it on their way to Luna every year. It's one of the most diverse and vibrant places in Exonesia.
• City of Spies: A lot of Cold War intrigue went on there in the 1980s.
• The Neutral Zone: An international territory jointly administered by the UN and the Lunar Union. It was built in the 1970s as a joint US-USSR project.

L2 - The Tannhauser Gate

• Cool Old Guy: With a side of Eccentric Millionaire for good measure. Reinhold von Lowitz, the oldest man in Sol and the man behind the Tannhauser Gate. A German nobleman who lost his family to WWII, von Lowitz found himself Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life in the 70s, and he found it in space. A tourist flight around the moon in 1976 renewed his spirit and gave him the inspiration to build the Tannhauser Gate, a massive Space Station on the far side of the moon which would serve as a spaceport linking Luna and Earth to the solar system beyond. von Lowitz liquidates his fortune to fund the construction, and by 1995, he finally succeeds in completing the station. It soon becomes a major trade hub as well as an independent state in its own right, and Reinhold von Lowitz remains in charge of it to this day.
• Foil: To the Lunar Gateway. The L-Gate orbits above the near side of the moon, was an international project to connect Luna to Earth, and is an international condominium closely tied to interplanetary politics. The T-Gate, on the other hand, is on the far side of the moon, connects Luna and Earth to the rest of the solar system, is an independent state and was the product of one man with a lot of money and a dream.
• Merchant City: Tannhauser Gate is where interplanetary travelers typically come into the Earth-Luna system, and as such it's a thriving spaceport and economic hub - not to mention a City of Adventure.
• Tannhäuser Gate: OVRHVN's own incarnation.

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