Tau Ceti

Tau Ceti is a star system with a single sun-like star in it. Tau Ceti has the dubious honor of having been settled by Samra Solutions LLC, the company that made Heavy Exotic Matter for HECS-style FTL prior to its ban under the rules of the Protectorate.   Originally, Tau Ceti was supposed to be a joint colony mission and infrastructure project for the company, to build a massive zero-gravity particle acellerator array in the Tau Ceti system for the purposes of producing Heavy Exotic Matter locally in the outer colonies, essentially utilizing the system as a gas station in what they imagined would be a very lucrative FTL network. Their plans were dashed after the arrival of the Intercessors, and production of Heavy Exotic Matter became listed under Forbiddon Sciences.  

Samra TC

  Samra TC was the site of the first Tau Ceti colonization effort, funded by Samra Solutions. Much of the planet is covered by an arid desert, with only two large bodies of water on the southern hemisphere. Terraforming efforts have produced an artifical sea in the northern hemisphere, and irrigration efforts have transformed large sections of desert into forest or steppe, but the ecosystem is still largely incomplete. While full vacsuits are not required for travel on the surface of TC, rebreathers are mandatory. At the current rate of atmospheric generation, TC could have a breathable atmosphere within the next 20 years.   TC is the site of the Samran Technical Enclave, all that remains of the once mighty Samra Solutions post-Succession. Life on TC is strange, as culturally its origins as a coportate-owned research outpost has lead to strange political and social norms. Nowhere else could one imagine a project like the Grid ever working, though other planets are considering making their own given the runaway success of the Tau Ceti Grid.   The Tau Ceti Grid   The Tau Ceti Grid is the largest wetware neural network ever developed. Citizens of TC volunteer to wear spinal bridges when they sleep, or have them surgically implanted, in return for compensation. While they sleep, their brains are linked with other sleepers and together they form the Tau Ceit Grid, managed by a computer network that makes use of this collaborative processing network. While extremely unconventional, the Grid has proven to be the most powerful computer mankind has ever developed, and as a tool it has been instrumental to a new frontier of technologies that put TC miles ahead of the other colonies in terms of technological advancement. The Grid is responsbile for the development of cheap and easy to use Third Lobe technologies, Smartdogs/Smartcats, and rudimentary gravity control systems known as Gravitational Lenses, as well as countless smaller acheivements.   Officially, the UCH condemns the Tau Ceti Grid for being a violation of Anti-Transhumanism policies. But in practice the benefits of the Grid have proven too great to ignore, and the UCH has shifted to instead be 'closely monitoring' the Grid for review, while also using analytical powers of the Grid for their own purposes.  

El Dorado

  Named after a mythological city of gold on the North American continent of Earth, El Dorado is a planet with a very unusual crust composition: much of the planet is covered in a desert with sand made of eroded aluminium and gold. While both of these metals are more easily gathered through asteroid mining (the cost of lifting these resources out of EL Dorado's gravity well makes it less cost effective) the planet still represents a geological oddity that is undergoing study. A limited number of habitats exist on El Dorado, both for scientific study as well as novelty homes for the rich and powerful. The UCH has declared El Dorado exempt from terraforming to preserve its uniqueness.