The
Hestian Rush was a key era of
Tau Elpis history, marked by rapid expansion by the
Hiderid Coalition of Stars , the
Boshaari Council , the
Mewei Domain and the
Hhrot Dominion into the system's outer regions. The Rush started when
Frex Whxxr established a hydroponics colony and refueling station in orbit of the gas giant
Hestia, enabling other colonies to be setup.
Context
Following the
Great Jump , the Ark species faced a looming crisis. Althrough the Ark carried
Programmable Matter to spearhead the initial development of colonies and some amount of
Thaumium for interstellar travel and fusion power, the colonies of various nascent polities quickly began to run out of essential supplies. Severe shortages of thaumium threatened to bring interstellar travel to a halt, and cripple Tau Elpis's fledging economy.
As early as the
10th Cycle, the faraway gas giant
Zindra was confirmed to contain immense quantities of
Thaumium. The Council and the Coalition briefly
skirmished over an automated explorationary site, before the Mewei intervened and brokered a peace treaty known as the
Compromise of Frost. However, Zindra was too far for ageing ships running damaged thaumium cores to reach it reliably. There was not enough thaumium to build new ships and set up supply lines, and what remained was needed for power generation. Worse, any amount of metallurgy required strip-mining colony worlds for ore, damaging biospheres whilst using up precious manpower.
As planetside colonial development was at the forefront of everyone's priorities, for decades, any thaumium mining was executed by slow, automated scout ships, bringing back abysmal amounts of ore back to the inner worlds.
The Rush proper
In the 80th Cycle,
Frex Whxxr , visionary Hiderid polymer magnate and CEO of Coalition conglomerate
PetrOil, founded a moonbase on an asteroid orbiting the gas giant
Hestia . The moonbase sunk into profits for years and threatened to send Whxxr into debt, and much manouvering was necessary to prevent his boards from turning against him. His fortunes changed after his engineers completed a hydroponics wing. Initially, this was merely to cut supply costs by allowing sentient workers to live permanently onsite: the moon's unique magnetosphere enabled astonishing crop yields whilst protecting the station and its occupants from radiation. Pivoting from oil to agronomy, Whxxr converted the moonbase into
Luminex Facility : a full-scale agricultural operation, and a refueling point for other ships operating in the Belt. Its success provided a bridgehead into the Outer Systems and brought
PetrOil much profit.
Other polities, corporations and minor factions soon followed, using Luminex as a transit hub. Soon, mining stations became commonplace around Hestia. Ore from asteroids was directly processed in brand-new orbital foundries before being shipped back to the Inner Worlds. In addition,
Zindra and its thaumium were now within reach as new ships were constructed, and eased the ecological strain on inner colonies. The Coalition was the first to open a proper mine, as their reliance on thaumium for power generation was lessened by uranium ore deposits on
Hakaria. In just over a decade, the Hestian Rush for ore and rare minerals had reached its peak, and over a hundred stations sprang up around Hestia and elsewhere in the system, sometimes using disused chunks of the then-dormant
Embassy Ark.
Ironically, the influx of previously-rare resources like
Mithral , Thaumium, and Helium-3 destabilized markets, culimating in the Coalition's first recession. Whilst the Coalition recovered quickly, laid-off workers were pushed outwards and fueled a new Belter culture around Hestia. Attempts to convert alien ruins in the
Wayward Belt into a prison colony failed, instead creating one of the first independent Belter communities in Tau Elpis.
As the Rush ended, the pioneering spirit shown by the peoples of the Belt endured and many colonies continued to function, soon becoming a key part of the Elpis economic cycle. When colonies around Hestia started to be mothballed by their corporate overlords, many rebelled, unionized or otherwise banded together. This furthered an already quickly growing Belter culture. The first signs of what would become the rogue
Hodeth Alliance started to emerge as unions and abandonned workers banded together against the perceived hegemony of inner worlds. However, besides abandonned mining stations and pernicious labour movements, the legacy of the Rush is nothing short of the survival of Tau Elpis as a spacefaring and ecologically sustainable civilizaton.
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