#mars poster | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

corvidist · 9 days ago

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Originally written on Discord so apologies for any poor grammar/formatting:

This is an alternate ending of First Home, or maybe will be the ending, who knows, where things go differently enough to the point that response to first contact ends up handled by the UN instead of just NATO. It still doesn't go swimmingly but it is orders of magnitude than other possible scenarios. A lot of Directors still have a lot of beef with a lot of Humans and vice versa, but a series of agreements are able to be worked out in which some Director tech is provided, especially in terms of reversing climate change, medical, food production, etc. with a billion caveats. In exchange all UN member states are required to allow Directors equal citizenship, halt certain practices toward regular Corvids (Hunting outside of last resort conservation measures, pet trade, etc.), and recognize Director "sovereignty" over Mars with the understanding that Humans will be allowed to live there in a similar manner to Directors being allowed to live on Earth, in exchange for providing Human computer/internet/broader IT tech. The Moon/Luna is split up between various Director territories and Human companies/governments, while Venus is not covered by any documents though is broadly speaking largely inhabited by Directors living in airship cities.

The side doodle is of a Space liner arriving at a Fourth Home/Martian "lightship", essentially a border checkpoint. The Directors and other Humans on board are understandably excited to be so close to reaching Mars after two weeks in space, though Amy here is dreading the notoriously convoluted and contradictory paperwork and staff, run through a system of dozens of jostling collectives. Her company is vying for faster arrival times too. The North Star Line, founded in Belfast in the late 21st century, is one of several major space-based transport companies that popped up around the world during and in the aftermath of the chaos of the 2050s-2090s. Its name and logo are in direct though never stated reference to the White Star Line of old, though in a major difference from its namesake, it is a Republic of Ireland state-owned company. Surprisingly, it has been wildly successful as a multinational across Europe as many of the more unstable governments such as Germany fell apart. It primarily competes with China National Aerospace Transport (and CNAT international), and JL (Originally Japan Airlines, changed to Japan Lines after they began large scale space travel operations), on top of several other major companies, co-ops, and state-owned enterprises out of India, Nigeria, Indonesia, Canada, England, France, Brazil, the US, etc.

Many of these places, still in the middle of their own recovery or experiencing a rise in the Collective movement (based directly off Director collective organization, meant to be a Human version of it), many new religious movements, etc., are not as focused on space transport as the "big three" that are in constant competition as a matter of both national pride and broader rapport. Director space transport on the other hand is fairly similar to how it's always been, in that it's run by collectives, families, or unitary groups that live on their own ships and often treat them as self-sustaining cities.

The events of the past decades have shaken them to their core, though. As many who were on the generation ship were already spacers, spacer culture has increasingly amalgamated more and more Director cultures as society is plagued with the constant question of "Will it happen again?". To that end, it is customary for many long-range transport ships to been made essentially self-sustaining, with minimum crew requirements of several hundred. Though there is noone enforcing this officially, it is not entirely unusual for mobs, both from new religious/spiritualist movements, or more often just terrified people, to forcibly attempt to stop or sabotage transport ships that aren't built to essentially be their own generation ship, at least to some capacity.

This means many Director ships focus on size as opposed to number, even in cases where this makes no sense otherwise, like between Twentieth Home (Now Second Home) and Fourth Home (Mars), which it is currently in the hundreds of years long process of terraforming. Directors still bicker over the collective, unitary, and other systems, though in many places both have entered into a kind of coexistence where the collectives exist but people kinda swap in and out of them a lot of the time.

Some Director-controlled locations have begun manufacturing weapons. Concerns around this first emerged as agreements and massive distrust toward Humanity were being worked out. Directors still don't have standing armies, although they do have ships dedicated to hurtling asteroids, more standard munitions (some of which you can see on the lightship in the doodle) and biological/chemical weapons now. These are largely overseen by unitary groups, as it is deemed too dangerous for one collective or multiple collectives to control.

Many Directors have also chosen to return to First Home, though their reception varies quite a bit, ranging from religious worship to violence. With how big the physical differences are between the species and the chaos both societies are trying to navigate, immigration between them isn't very common outside of Luna/Third Home, where rules in place and new construction make cohabitation actually somewhat standard albeit a little convoluted thanks to jurisdictional issues. You walk down one hallway and you're at the border of New Zealand, another hallway and you're in a Director community where there is no official governance. For this reason movement is pretty heavily regulated between them.

Meanwhile, Humans in the places they can manage to live on Mars/Fourth Home often find themselves feeling like they can't get into director communities, both literally and figuratively. Human communities on Mars/Fourth Home are fairly compact. Its hard for a Human to make friends with one or a few Directors but it can certainly be done and is extremely common online, something which has increasingly helped bring both species together. Still, it’s near impossible for Humans to fit in with large groups of Directors, especially in states of collective psychology they can’t understand, making it much harder for Humans to live in Director society, where they can barely communicate, vs Directors trying to live in human society where they will probably get depressed from the limited socialization but will generally be able to get by for a bit.

These Human communities on Mars/Fourth Home are often run by governments as embassies (to a country that has never existed or claimed to exist) or as purpose built communities to attract Humans, whether that's to try and get them to expand resource/tech trade, for cultural exchange, for religious reasons, etc.

Directors don't engage in capitalist-style economies really unless they live on Earth (even then it’s very loose and doesn't exist much in their more established communities), or a couple moon factions, but they will definitely take your money and use it to buy random Human stuff when they visit. There are tourist resorts on Mars designed for Humans and run by communities/collectives, which have grown more popular as Directors have become more established online and more interspecies friendships are developing. Naturally, these people wanna visit. Conveniently, there are also tourist resorts for Directors on Earth where those communities go and spend all of that otherwise useless money. The two keep one another in operation and know it full well. One final note on the image, the spaceliners of the NSL are often modeled with similar color schemes to old ocean liners where possible. This is a gimmick that people actually seem to like. Funnily enough, the voyage times are quite similar too.

The ships that go to Mars/Fourth Home especially are designed to be comfortable interspecies spaces where both Directors and Humans can live in their own versions of luxury while engaging with one another's various cultures and ways of life. Many space lines do this.

Though, there are some things that make the North Star Line especially unique.

An example of this, a species of fungus created by Directors that essentially induces lucid dreaming for lack of a better description, now has a variant that works for Humans, though it is very illegal in many Human countries.

None of these laws govern neutral space.

Additionally, due to stigma being less in much of its North American market, the NSL is the only "big three" line that officially advertises and dedicates its stock of fungus, though only to Human travelers departing out of Canada, the US, and Mexico, and Directors globally.

In terms of luxury, size, speed, and renown, the ships shown on the poster are the 22nd century versions of the Olympic, Mauretania, etc. They can carry thousands of humans and Directors, though these numbers are often vaguely advertised as a single number of occupants to make the ships seem larger (more Directors can fit in a smaller space). The Galway however is new, for it is the first Centrifugal Force Ship (CFS) to serve as a space liner, providing the luxury of artificial gravity to its entire complement of passengers and crew when they are inside of the ship’s living quarters.

A fun fact is that these are the only Human-run ships that can truly be claimed to be able to loosely function as generation ships (along with several CNAT, JL, etc. ships) at the insistence of online demands and groups that showed up when they first arrived for test flights by the moon/Third Home. Life aboard them would be utterly miserable and it would take thousands of years, but technically they could maintain life long enough to possibly make it.

All ships crossing over to Mars/Fourth Home must go through chaotic processes at lightships and other checkpoints. One group might have already received the passenger manifest, one might be using a different homegrown software that you don't have yet, one might not request one, etc. Director staff are critical for these, as even trained, experienced Humans can struggle to navigate them. Go through dozens of rooms full of shouting birds to make sure you aren't misidentified as an attack ship and detained or blown up, thus becoming the next Lusitania.

Thankfully this whole process becomes more streamlined with time and expanded internet access, but not before some unfortunate misunderstandings occur. Still, this is by far the safest and most comfortable way for people to travel throughout the solar system.

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