Most BT planets seem to have gravities of about 1G, so I thought I'd do something different. I cranked out a couple of unusual worlds, one with very light gravity, and this one with very high gravity.
ARLINGTON: THE EARLY YEARS
The Draconis Combine system "Arlington" has a long history and was the subject of surveys even before the KF drive was invented. (Note: the system was later named "Arlington" by colonists, but pre-KF naming of planets remained in place. Unusual in the Inner Sphere, the name of the main inhabited planet, Herculean, does not match the name of the system, Arlington.)
Before the Magellan probes left the Solar System in the late 2020s and early 2030s, mankind had already spied planets orbiting other stars. The early detection methods had been limited, being more sensitive to giant planets than Earth-like worlds. Among those early discoveries (using "transit photometry") was a world later named "Herculean" for its obvious, dominant attribute. As far as rocky worlds went, it was frickin' huge.
The monstrous space telescopes built by the Western/Terran Alliance in the late 21st Century had done more than infer the existance of those worlds from wobbles or miniscule dimmings of their parent stars, they had roughly mapped the nearest worlds. And if they weren't able to map land features, then they were able to learn a great deal about the composition of the planets by spectrographic analysis.
With such technology, the Terran Alliance knew that there were many planets with oxygen-rich atmospheres near Sol even before the Deimos Project was initiated. This was of academic knowledge since the stars were, at the time, apparently unattainable except by slower-than-light probes. But despite that limitation, "Herculean" continued to fascinate planetologists, astronomers, and astrophysicists.
Herculean was by no means the largest planet to be found. Indeed, ancient man had known of larger planets (Jupiter and Saturn), and 20th Century astronomers had spotted far larger extra-solar planets. But Herculean defined the far end of the bell curve for planets with habitable environments. It had oxygen in breathable partial pressures, it had habitable temperatures (if at some extremes), it had vast land area, it had chlorophyll...it had life.
It was also 3.3 times Earth's diameter and 27.44 times Earth's mass, giving it a surface gravity 2.52 times Earth's.
HERCULEAN, THE PLANET
3.3 times Earth's diameter, 27.44 times Earth's mass, 10.9 times Earth's surface area (9 times Earth's land area), 2.52 times Earth's gravity, 3 times Earth's sea level air pressure, 8 billion years old, 12-hour days, common earthquakes, a series volcanic rifts churning out tens of cubic kilometers of magma per year - Herculean is a study in extremes. About the only thing it isn't extreme about is elevation; no mountain is more than 5km above sea level.
For all that, the planet is otherwise quite habitable and attractive. It is a water world with 84% water coverage, and deeper oceans than Earth (5km vs 3km average). There is plentiful freshwater sources in the continental interiors. Temperatures are rather warm overall (the temperate regions are currently subtropical due to out-of-control greenhouse emissions from erupting volcanoes), but there remain vast areas with plesant temperatures and weather. Plant and animal life tend to be a bit squat and thick by Terran standards, but are rarely unsightly. Local life is also compatible with human diets, though imported (and engineered) terrestrial life is used extensively by farmers.
Weather is another of Herculean's extremes. The fast rotation and thick atmosphere create a number of jet streams and circulation bands. Due to the fast rotation and large, warm oceans, hurricanes are compact, vicious storms with wind speeds often exceeding 200kph. (200kph in a 3-bar atmosphere is...bracing.) The current greenhouse effect has only stimulated the atmosphere furth, so most humans stay well in-land and all homes and commercial buildings have buried storm shelters. Axial tilt is a bit lower than Earth's (18 degrees), moderating seasons.
ARLINGTON: A STUDY IN EXTREMES
Herculean was abnormal by many standards, but not by those of its star system, Arlington. The whole system was a study in extreme features. The planets are widely spaced, which is the only reason the behemoths have survived so long without killing each other. Herculean is the second planet in the system with an orbit of roughly 0.75AU (and a 250-day year).
The innermost planet, Forge, was a class IV (Sudarsky scale) gas giant of about Saturn's mass stuck in a close "roaster" orbit, less than 0.1AU from the star Arlington. It is a dark gray world, tinged with a dull red glow (visible on its nightside) from its depths. The dark gray comes from the sodium clouds, with faint streaks of white where silicates (sand) have evaporated and formed clouds. Forge lacks moons and is studied by robust scientific satellites.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance ... ar_planets
Herculean's moon, Deianira, was a behemoth moon befitting such a large planet. It was a wet, warmer version of Mars, about half again larger than Sol IV. Human terraforming projects during the Star League era rendered Deianira habitable. Deianaria hosts about 20 million people, a fraction of its Star League-era population.
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The third planet in the system, Hephaestus, was the largest rocky world ever found, being some eighty-five times as massive as Earth. (Generally, rocky worlds a few times larger than Earth accumulate hydrogen/helium atmospheres more massive than the rocky core.) Due to its density, Hephaestus has a surface gravity of almost 6G. While Herculean had reached a degree of geological stability in 8 billion years (something like Earth of 2 billion years ago), Hephaestus continued to swelter in its own heat of formation and radioactive decay. Due to simple geometry, Hephaestus's radiating area (its surface) had not grown as rapidly as its volume (mass) compared to smaller worlds like Luna or Earth, and thus the behemoth retained a very hot and fluid interior with a thin crust after 8 billion years of cooling. From the nightside, one could easily see the vast lava lakes as the planet continually resurfaced itself. The dense (20-bar) hydrogen/helium/nitrogen atmosphere is often swathed in high-altitude water vapor clouds, higher altitude ammonia clouds, and lower volcanic ash clouds, but the surface still peeks through. Contrary to expectations, Hephaestus does have oceans and surface ice - surface temperatures away from open lava lakes are actually quite cool at 5AU from Arlington. Several dozen Herculean scientists inhabit special, water-filled habitats on the surface.
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Between Hesphaestus and Bullman (see below) is a broad asteroid belt ("Grinder") with approximately 2000 times the mass of Sol's asteroid belt - about as massive as Earth, in fact. The two behemoth planets conspire to prevent planetary formation in this region. With a broad orbit, the belt is not as dense as might be expected, but sunlight winking off this belt outshines the Milky Way on Herculean.
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30AU from Arlington is the fourth planet, Bullman, apparently sharing the nickname ("Bull Man") of a grossly obese 21st Century astronomer who studied the world. Bullman is barely planet; at about 10 Jovian masses, it fell just about 1 or 2 Jovian masses short of being able to ignite its deuterium at birth, which would've made it a brown dwarf rather than a planet. It is covered in a nearly-uniform shroud of white (water vapor) clouds that, up close, reveal incredible turbulence driven by internal heat. It is a rather ugly planet as streaks of yellowish and brownish phosphorus, sulfurous, and ammonia clouds breakthrough to stain the water clouds. (Bullman is often called "A snot ball," or said to be the color of "dirty white underwear," with implications this is in reference to Bull Man's undergarments.)
http://home.xtra.co.nz/hosts/Wingmakers/Planet124a.jpg
Among these exceptional planets, the star (Arlington) is decidely pedestrian. It is a K1V star, dimmer, cooler, and tamer than Sol, with many billions of years of good behavior left to it despite 8 billion years of life.
ARLINGTON IN THE KF ERA
After the first test ships made flights to the stars, exploration began. Herculean had to wait over a decade before it was finally visited by eager explorers. At almost 250 light-years from Earth, it was about 12 jumps away for the early jumpships.
In the 2120s, explorers came to the system, oggled at its excesses, landed probes on Herculean and Hesphaestus, set foot on Deianira, and left. Later explorers revisited to (remotely) study the high-gravity ecosystems of Herculean and Hesphaestus (which turned out to have quite a bit of anaerobic life, the most advanced ever found, reaching the sophistication of amphibians). These explorers also conducted mineral surveys of Grinder, which was predictably metal rich. However, there were more attractive resources being found on habitable planets, so the system was largely written off as a scientific curiousity. Settlement of Herculean was even out of the question - the high gravity would quickly result in heart failure among even healthy humans, and 22nd Century fusion rocketry was not up to the task of launching from a 2.5G world.
In the 2230s, a North American mining corporation reassessed old Terran Alliance surveys using new computer algorithms and found a characteristic signature of germanium ores not in Grinder, but on Deianira. An on-site survey found Deianira to be rich in germanium, so a mining camp followed. (Indeed, the germanium mining continues to this day.) The great distance from Terra and major colonies resulted in the mining firm establishing a complete colony on Deianira, bringing in miner's families and supporting industries.
The colony was named Arlington by the North American miners, which was later applied to the system as a whole and the star but, unlike most Inner Sphere systems, not to any of the planets. (The mining company also settled the nearby Combine system of Annapolis.)
The retreat of the Terran Alliance to within 1 jump of Terra did not impact the corporate colony, which was sustained by corporate jumpships rather Alliance vessels. The Exodus from Terra in the 23rd Century only fueled Arlington's profits as demand for jumpships soared.
There was perpetual interest by the miners (crammed into small habitats on uninhabitable Deianira) in inhabiting the green, endless real estate of Herculean. Their employer was also interested - Herculean was owned by the company, but was generating no profits, and it had lots of pleasant real estate if one could solve the gravity issue. Anti-gravity wasn't forthcoming, but genetic engineering was providing an endless stream of cures to age-old inherited diseases. Perhaps here, outside the scope of Terran Alliance ethics laws, humans could be engineered for Herculean...
In 2365AD, after a century of trying, Arlington had a battery of genetic modifications and exercise regimes that could be applied to adult humans, making them fit for Herculean. (Preliminary settlement had already started, using humans engineered at the fertilized egg stage with more primitive gengineering techniques.) High-thrust fusion shuttles could now regularly run between Herculean and Deianira, so limited groups of miners began settling the behemoth world. The option to settle Herculean proved less popular than hoped; few outsiders were convinced to settle the world and even many miners preferred to stay in the domed cities of Deianira.
In 2400AD, Arlington had about 1 million people (90% living on Deianira), and it was then that new Draconis Combine finally recognized the germanium "gold" mine on its borders. In short order, the mining company's assets were seized by the Draconis Combine and Arlington joined the Combine. The colonists on Herculean sank into isolationism to avoid the authoritarian new rulers of the system, who would not follow them onto the high-gravity world.
Combine development of Arlington stagnated for almost two centuries. Terran Hegemony citizens of North America (or elsewhere) were uninterested in immigrating to the Combine, not during the Age of War. When mine production needed expansion (or after a Federated Suns raid), the Combine would periodically ship new batches of workers or improved mining technology to Deianira, which altered the culture there into "Combine standard." Otherwise, the Combine viewed the system as an uninhabitable mining colony and thus not of great importance for anything but Germanium.
However, after joining the Star League, Arlington natives sought Terran Hegemony aid to improve mine productivity. Terran Hegemony investors found Deianira to be an easy target for terraforming, which would make the planet truly attractive to investment. The idea of turning a profit from real estate and gaining a lot of new taxpayers appealed to the Combine, too, and thus a 100-year effort to transform Deianira began in 2605AD.
The odd inhabitants of Herculean also drew attention during the Star League. Since the Combine seemed to be mellowing, Herculeans came out of their isolationism and encouraged tourism, investment, and even colonization. It was a rare sort who wanted to settle the huge world, but there were trillions of people in the Inner Sphere. Even "rare sorts" could be surprisingly numerous. Millions immigrated, though far more would settle terraformed Deianira in the 2700s. With joint Hegemony-Combine investment, Deianira received a shipyard to make direct use of its germanium. Grinder finally got its long-awaited mining operations, too.
The Succession Wars broke over Arlington in cruel fashion. This major germanium resource was a prime target for "economic warfare," and the Federated Suns spared no few nuclear and biological weapons on Deianira. Herculean's primary spaceport was nuked, but the Suns otherwise avoided the high gravity world. It had no exceptional industry and, frankly, the Suns couldn't figure out how to raid it other than to drop bombs from space.
The Draconis Combine again mostly ignored Arlington after the 2810 raids. There were now better sources of germanium to be had (Deianira was getting a bit low on the heavily-mined element) and the expense of rebuilding nuked mining facilities, let alone the nuked shipyard, was just too high. There was a Combine governor and ISF personnel on Deianira, but the Combine mostly left the system to its own devices.
The Combine certainly didn't help Arlington in 2825 when Herculean's thin crust gave way and spilled forth a thousands of cubic kilometers of lava (a "traps" or "flood" volcano), not to mention vast amounts of greenhouse gases and ash. (The eruption is continuing to this day.) This was a geologically common problem on Herculean, but geological time scales were such that centuries of human inhabitants had been spared this experience. The hard shifts between initial ash-induced ice age and then shift to ozone-depleted greenhouse environment drove the 25 million Herculeans to Deianira for most of a century. This exodus understandably cost Arlington greatly as all of its infrastructure had to be abandoned and all economic reserves focused on evacuation.
And then the Combine, or at least its local governor, did pay attention to Arlington. The governor of Deianira now had lots of subjects to play lord and master with. The petty authoritarianism of the governor and his successors irked the refugees to no end, who soon began to look forward to returning to the isolationism of Herculean. Efforts to do just that began in 2875, but new cities away from the rising sea and now-sweltering temperate regions were not available until the 2920s. A quiet coup removed the current governor and replaced him with a loyalist Herculean (who kept up all proper appearances to the Combine), which finally allowed the Herculeans to return home.
To avoid drawing excessive attention from the Combine, Herculean contributed plentiful infantry to the DCMS. This was exceptional infantry that could wear heavy armor and tote heavy weaponry (mostly within human norms). These soldiers served the Combine ably over the decades, though many Herculean infantry in the 30th Century only retained their heightened performance in low gravity for a couple of years before their muscles and bones atrophied to about human norms and low gravity health problems caught up with them.
Near the turn of the millennium, that changed as new genetic treatments better preserved the health of Herculeans in low-gravity environments. The Combine barely noticed the change; the Herculeans were only infantry, and they were only Caucasian, and they didn't particularly stand out in a crowd (more on that below). If infantry had been falling ill before, that was of little concern to the DCMS.
Largely left to itself, Herculean was able to develop without the drain of the Succession Wars. The Combine had a bare inkling of the growing industry on Herculean, nor any real means to seize it if it did know. It kept an eye on the vast "evacuation cities" on Deianira, which Herculeans continued to maintain in case their planet acted up again. (Indeed, periodically millions of Herculeans would be evacuated as ash bursts or climatic changes from the ongoing flood eruption endangered their cities.)
The Federated Suns hardly bothered with Arlington after the 1st Succession War. Arlington has two water worlds, Hercules and Deianira, which makes it attractive, but Arlington is rather deep in the Combine. Also, one of the water worlds is nigh untouchable in non-WMD conflicts. Further, it had long since established that Deianira had no exceptional industry to loot, not even stockpiles of germanium. Visitors were free to take some water if they wanted it. Deianira has plenty for everyone.
ARLINGTON TODAY
About 150 years of peace has allowed Arlington to reach 24th century technology (broadly speaking; it is more advanced in some areas, like medicine.) Its primary export to the Combine is no longer germanium, but rather fusion engines (and, to a lesser extent, dropships), energy weapons (though Herculean's L1 energy weapons are in less demand than they were, and it has had trouble producing L2 weaponry), and reasonably advanced electronics (again, 24th Century-ish - not useful for the military market, but in great demand by Combine industry and civilian markets.)
Today, Arlington's 200 million people (180 million on Herculean) have an enviable standard of living and often excessive amounts of real estate for their homes. Bountiful raw materials from Grinder, capable industrial and agricultural automation, and cheap fusion power has allowed Herculean to provide enviable tangible wealth for its people while supplying excellent social services at low tax rates.
HERCULEANS
Despite the name, Herculeans do not appear exceptionally different from normal humans. Indeed, they tend to fall well within human norms for appearance. Living in 2.5Gs certainly called for strong muscles, but many Terran humans have been able to function at 2.5x their healthy weight (e.g., a 400lb adult with a healthy weight of 160lbs). The wrong thing to do on Herculean was add unnecessary bulk, even excess muscle or skeletal bulk. Muscular strength went up with muscle cross sectional area (a square function), but muscle weight went up with muscle volume (a cube function). (Genetic engineers were able to somewhat improve the strength-to-weight ratio of Herculean muscles, giving them somewhat better strength than their muscle bulk might suggest to outsiders.)
With most changes being "under the hood" and few external changes, Herculeans thus tend to look like lean, relatively athletic humans, tending a bit toward the short side (160 to 170cm, 5'4"-5'8" is the norm). Certainly a Herculean who is muscular by Herculean standards is a daunting by human standards (and may impress an Elemental), but a Herculean taken off Herculean usually does not stand out in a crowd.
Those who know what to look for can spot Herculeans when they're offworld. Herculeans inexperienced in low-G tend to be clumsy, like a human on Mars or the moon - their movements are too swift and powerful for their balance. More experienced Herculeans appear simply swift and powerful, bounding up staircases 4 and 5 stairs at a time and prone to taking risky jumps (2 and 3m drops).
Other changes to Herculeans include a tolerance for Herculean's atmosphere. Herculean's atmosphere is thick (about 3 atmospheres at sea level) and relatively low in oxygen (about 11%), which works out to about half-again Earth's oxygen partial pressure at sea level (315mBar vs 210). To compensate for the quick drop in oxygen content with altitude, Herculeans have slightly improved lung volume (and definitely greater tidal volume) compared to baseline humans (they may appear a bit broadchested, but wouldn't compare with Andean or Nepalese natives). At Herculean sea level, this lung over-capacity allows impressive athletic performance. Recently (~100-150 years), most Herculeans received further lung modifications, including tolerance for high levels of carbon dioxide and sulfur compounds and robust lung-cleaning systems that can handle high levels of volcanic ash (or asbestos and cigarette smoke).
Sharp pressure changes with altitude have led to Herculeans having nitrogen-scavenging functions in their liver, which reduces their vulnerability to the bends from any source (diving, explosive decompression, etc.).
To function in their high gravity environment, Herculeans received extensive attention to their cardiovascular functions. Indeed, the resulting modifications were overkill. Though they have blood pressures that scare doctors unfamiliar with their physiology, Herculeans can depend on plaque-free arteries and freedom for heart attacks until entering their second century. The high-pressure aspect of their cardiovascular system is one of the most artificial features of their genetic modifications (many other Herculean genetic modifications are taken from exceptional but natural human genes.)
Naturally, Herculean bones and connective tissues have been tweaked, leading Herculean to literally look "big boned" (though, again, within human norms.) The most dramatic and artificial bits of gengineering in Herculeans are the reinforcements in their bones. The bone cells have been tweaked to create interweaving fibers through the denser regions of bone material. The fibers are supposed to grow parallel to the bone surface, but about 0.1% of the population is inflicted with an inherited malfunction of this gene, which causes the fibers to grow only parallel to the bones' long axis instead of wrapping over the ends. With age (around 50 to 70, depending on the severity), wear on the joints allows the hard fibers to poke into the softer joint material, causing something like arthritis. This defect is most common among Herculeans who have recent "normal human" ancestors. It only persists in the Herculeans who cannot afford genetherapy to fix it.
Finally, enhancements to connective tissues were meant to ward off arthritis, sprains, and stretch marks from the high gravity. However, a bonus effect is retention of youthful skin tone well into later decades. Wrinkles and drooping are rare before the 70s.
While not a genetic modification per se, Herculeans tend to be lean. They burn enormous amounts of calories just in day-to-day life, and the Herculean is not kind to excess weight gain. They are, however, prone to "ballooning" in lower gravity environments.
ARLINGTON GOVERNMENT & CULTURE
The government of Arlington is an odd mix of libertarian and authoritarian, with faint North American roots visible.
Most citizens believe in "being able to care of themselves and their own," which means the individual is expected to cover their own medical expenses, roads and mass transit are private projects, doctors and hospitals are not public-supported, and law enforcement is limited to violent crimes (with a fair bit of vigilantism). This ends up working tolerably well, but only because of the prosperity of the culture (or, from another perspective, the low cost of health care and infrastructure relative to incomes).
The authoritarian side of Arlington is in the government, which basically consists of two branches: the executive and the judicial. The legislative branch is non-existent most of the time (but for the Senate; see below) as Arlington's code of laws is arranged to be flexible in the areas where the government is allowed to intervene, and the founding laws specify trying to adapt existing laws to new situations rather than creating new legislation. With about a millennia of modern legal theory behind them, this works pretty well. New laws are rarely needed, and the Senate (a body composed of Arlington's Senior Mayors) convenes only after the judicial branch indicates new laws or legal code changes are required.
While the courts are limited in their scope, the executive branch is not. This branch consists of Mayors, Senior Mayors, and the President. Arlington Mayors evolved out of clan leaders and "good ole boy" power cliques. Mayors administer local governments (counties) for up to several million people. They serve as judge, jury, and executioner in civil disputes brought to them, and have control of most tax money collected. Their control of tax money and ability to disperse it as they see fit (within a narrow range of legal applications) is their primary source of authority.
The acceptable reasons for dispersing money tend to fall under "for the public good," and "to aid the hard of luck." Taxes thus mostly get spent on paying for health care for the hard working poor and investing in the Mayors' personal companies (like toll roads, toll bridges, mass transit, etc.) Mayors of more populous counties often use "selectmen" (basically, "sub mayors") who handle specific parts of the county using monies provided by the Mayor. Mayors are elected in any number of ways; they tend to be the heads of leading families in a county. Nepotism, thy name is Herculean.
Senior Mayors basically run states, which are collections of counties. Their primary job is keeping the peace between Mayors, but they also form the Senate when legislation is needed. Senior Mayors are elected by vote of a State's Mayors and tend to stay at the job until they get tired of it, die, or are run off. Senior Mayors are generally viewed as the weak links in the Executive branch as many states only grant Senior Mayors mediating powers over Mayors, not arbitration powers. Senior Mayors with arbitration powers can remove rotten Mayors from office.
The President is in charge of planetary defense, diplomacy, and interstate regulations. Diplomacy is a particularly tricky issue for Presidents, as this job entails interfacing with the Combine-appointed planetary governor. Presidents thus occasionally have the authority to seize private property, factories, and state militia groups to meet Combine demands. This sort of behavior is otherwise almost intolerable in Arlington. When a state has a weak Senior Mayor (mediator only), the President is able to intervene to remove Mayors from office if they are judged to be too rotten. Presidents can also remove Senior Mayors from office, if the Supreme Court concurs, while the Senate can remove the President from office.
The judicial system and police ("Marshals") mostly deal with violent crimes, leaving property disputes to individuals, family heads, and Mayors to sort out. This has all sorts of shortcomings, but the judicial system does have several things working for it. For one thing, the culture supports the idea of crimes being the criminal's fault, and thus no cause for shame - this is an enormous help for getting "silent crime" victims to come forward. For another, 24th Century forensics is powerful stuff and the Office of the President does maintain central biometrics databases (and access to major banks' transaction records), which makes it hard for suspects to elude the law. Finally, very effective "lie detectors" are usually able to tell when a suspect is knowingly lying or bending the truth, which makes solving some witnessless cases much easier.
The only tax in Arlington is a light sales tax, which is collected by the Office of the Mayor. A small portion is automatically forwarded to the Senior Mayors, and a more substantial portion to the Presidency. There are a multitude of "private taxes," though - many services are paid for by individuals rather than by the government.
There are dark sides to this culture.
For example, Arlington has a low tolerance for "slackers" who "don't carry their weight." These get kicked out of family homes and eventually community housing (which is only for temporary hard luck cases), won't receive public funds from the mayor, and may just get shot if someone gets tired of their begging. The ability to cure and eliminate many mental disorders (those with physical causes) helps minimize the homeless issue, but high automation in industry leaves a lot of people scrounging for work just to avoid looking like "slackers." There's a lot of makework and low-end service industry jobs in Arlington.
"Frontier justice" tends to result in the wrong people getting lynched; clever sociopaths have no trouble getting an angry crowd to lynch an innocent outsider before police forensics can clear up a matter. Many people will take justice into their own hands, particularly in cases where the courts can't clear up matters (e.g., "he said/she said" assault cases, tangled property disputes, etc.) This sort of thing obviously favors those able and willing to dispense violence. Domestic abuse is hard to deal with, since the police and judicial systems are poorly suited for dealing with long-term problems or providing shelter for the abused. (The problem is exacerbated when the abused has no family to just shoot the abuser and can't muster the will to do it him- or herself.) Though Arlington's culture views being a victim of a crime as shameless, some victims just can't come forward and when this happens, there is no extensive social services network to ferret out the problem. And the clannish system of families means "family feud" is anything but a game show.
Further, there are relatively few checks and balances on the government. "Rotten" Mayors, those who set up a political machine to keep themselves in office and gain control of their county's Marshals, can run their counties like personal fiefs. Reigns of terror by "rotten Mayors" are a staple of Herculean fiction and, unfortunately, daily news reports. The Mayors smart enough to keep their abuses below the attention of the President can maintain their holds for generations, with their clan and cronies running wild in that county.
For people with decent incomes (even a bit below the poverty line) living in decent neighborhoods, Arlington is a decent place to live. The government rarely bothers the people, most agreements are verbal or private contracts, and enormous personal freedoms are available. However, a few "bad seeds" with the wrong attitude and willingness to use violence can terrorize a town until someone shoots them or finds a way to bring in the Marshals (or President, if the Mayor is part of the problem.)
OTHER CULTURAL DETAILS
With a 12-hour day, Herculeans follow a standard calendar (lunch at a local noon, and their days starting and ending at local midnights). Herculean's year is about 250 days, so its seasons are often out-of-synch with the major holidays of the standard calendar.
Through a course of independent evolution, Arlington has arrived at something like a Kentucky-ish culture of extended families with a structure almost like an Americanized feudal system of family heads, autocratic mayors, and so forth.
The byword of these people is - in theory - keeping one's word, working hard to get ahead, living free, respect your elders, and that blood is thicker than water. In practice, it's not nearly that ideal, but obeying (and dodging, and paying lipservice to) those traditions shape the modern Arlington culture. (The ideal of Arlington is something like a 1950's Western movie; the reality is somewhere between that and HBO's Deadwood.)
Few Combine visitors have ever tried to force normal Combine culture on Herculeans. That would require a hands-on touch that, frankly, few O5P or ISF personnel can manage under 2.52Gs. This was not so on Deianira but with the gigadeath on Deianira at the hands of Federated Suns' war plagues, Deianira's "Combine Standard" culture was destroyed and Herculeans North American-derivative culture filled the vacuum. Since a minority of Arlingtonians live on Deianira (and those that do tend to be wealthy businessmen with clout in the Combine system), Combine efforts to introduce proper behavior continue to fail. Arlington pays its dues to the Combine and doesn't rock the boat, so this stand-out culture hasn't been a problem yet, not to the extent of the Azami.
While the Arlington culture has a fascination with guns, it does not obsessively defend that right. Some states on Herculean and Grinder strictly limit guns, which have a sword culture in compensation. As a result, the inevitable dueling culture has a mix of sword, knife and gun traditions. Duels tend to end when one opponent is seriously injured. Since 24th Century medicine can repair most trauma, duels are not discouraged (though people regularly seeking the death of their opponents tend to find medical services reaching them a little too late.)
Far away the largest cause of death amongst Herculeans between the ages of 3 and 65 is violence.
The national sports are baseball, American football, and hockey. The rules have been modified into "Herculean" and "Deianiran" versions, which primarily reflect different gravities and are not very compatible with those sports as practiced by the rest of the Inner Sphere. (The differences are more in rink/diamond/field size than anything else).
Arlington hockey is an exception (ice hockey is relatively insensitive to gravity) and Arlington teams regularly play offworld...with the few nearby worlds that play hockey (e.g., Annapolis.)
Finally, fixed-wing aircraft and VTOLs do poorly on Herculean. Herculean culture has thus developed a fetish for cars, but there are few highways between cities for lack of funding. (It is the mark of a wealthy clan that can build a road from the city to their estate.) Long-range travel is thus the province of railroads, which have the corporate backing needed to fund their (inexpensive, robot-built) rail lines. Airships also play a major role on Herculean, because lighter-than-air vehicles do well in the dense atmosphere and aren't susceptible to earthquakes splitting their roads.
VISITORS vs HERCULEAN
Visiting Herculean is not an easy task. First, for safe launch and landing, dropships (and other spacecraft) should have a thrust of 6 or higher. Dropships with an overthrust of 6 can launch and land, but require a +2 PSR check. There are regular flights to and from Deianira by dropships and shuttles built for Herculean operations.
Second, human visitors on Herculean are continually exposed to 2.52Gs. The primary problem is the human cardiovascular system, which has difficulty feeding the brain against that gravity when the visitor is standing or sitting upright. A healthy young visitor might be able to stand or sit upright for 10 or so minutes before fainting; many visitors will faint within moments of standing. Accordingly, most visitors trundle around on reclining, heavily padded electric wheelchairs.
The small tourist business also uses "immersion support" involving water-filled rooms and touring bubbles. (These were originally developed for Herculeans to explore Hesphaestus.) However, these have their own drawbacks like long-term health issues from being submerged for days, troublesome underwater toilets ("floaters" take on a whole new meaning), and a lack of respect. Senior Combine officials floating in bubbles just don't garner the respect due to their station.
http://images.scotsman.com/2006/05/08/2 ... BUBBLE.jpg
So, generally, most visitors stick to Deianira.
MILITARY
Arlington is an armed society. Not so much in the 2006AD American "armed society" sense, but rather in the "Hollywood 19th Century Old West dysfunctional culture" sense. This is not an issue that an invading military need be concerned with, but it is a problem for any occupation force that ever hopes to leave their mechs and bunkers. The profusion of swords and guns is a problem for lone (squads of) foreigners away from heavy military firepower. A little heavy firepower can quell Herculeans (which, incidentally, is how most despotic Mayors run their counties), but any hostile foreigner that ends up in a "locals can get away with manslaughter" situation is in trouble.
The standing Arlington militia is not built around infantry, contrary to what might be expected from their exports to the DCMS. Instead, it is built around 3 regiments of (relatively) swift armor forces of tracked and wheeled vehicles. (The wide, flat expanses of Herculean suits wheeled vehicles.) It also has a substantial navy (1 regiment of patrol boats), befitting a water world.
Arlington has a couple of companies of medium battlemechs on Deianira, but battlemechs are useless on Herculean. They tend to collapse under their own weight and, when they can walk, they move at about 40% of their normal pace.
With no small interest in space travel (accessing Grinder and not being stuck on the behemoth planet), Arlington has a rather large aerospace force of fighters built to suit Herculean space flight.
INDUSTRY & TECHNOLOGY
Gravity Adapted: This is only available to tracked, wheeled, surface ships (non-hydrofoil), and submarines, vehicles which do not need to fight gravity for most movement. This feature makes a vehicle's internal structure 50% heavier for tracked and wheeled vehicles, but only increases the price for aquatic vessels. Benefits are gravity-related movement modifiers being (cruise/sqrt[gravity]). This is not available to vehicle types not mentioned, which are more susceptible to the effects of gravity.
While Deianira currently produces some germanium for the Combine, Arlington's major exports are TL D products like standard fusion engines in military and civilian models; energy weapons; and computers. Civilian fusion engines are built in lightly guarded factory complexes on Herculean, but care has been taken to protect the military fusion engine factory. Due to delays in finding investors, this factory wasn't opened until after the Clan invasion and thus was built with orbital bombardment in mind. It is an underground complex located in - of all places - the Harwood Trap Fields, the vast plains being buried under floods of magma.
At any time, the factory is usually surrounded and submerged by a lava lake except for a narrow causeway. Protecting the factory from the lava is actually relatively easy. The factory is buried under several hundred meters of pre-eruption soil, then layers of tens of meters of insulating ash, and only in the past few decades has the lava reached the area (as a result of deliberate engineering). The soil surrounding the factory is not particularly hot, despite the overlying magma, and it is actively cooled. A pair of large, underground pipelines circulates water in an outer shell surrounding the factory with tens of meters of water (amounting to several hundred megatons of water). This serves as an enormous heat sink in case of insulation failure. Until the water boils off, the inner walls of the factory won't be much warmer than 100C (and they are normally about 10C, thanks to the icey lake water used). The real ongoing maintenance problem are volcanic fumes - surface structures and cargo vehicles are exposed to corrosive, sulfurous fumes, and factory air has to be carefully filtered. Understandably, the factory is mostly automated and the causeway is designed to be blown up in gaps too large for bridging units to cross. The lava lake is maintained by lava flows diverted from the traps (using water-hardened lava dikes) and is continuously refreshed, with old lava allowed to continue to the sea.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/of97-724/methods.html
DEIANIRA
Once uninhabitable but ripe for terraforming, Deianira was rendered habitable by a century-long Star League effort. This huge moon of Herculean is half again the diameter of Mars, or 80% of Earth's diameter (about half Earth's mass) with a surface gravity of 0.72G.
Through no small quantity of mega-engineering, Deianira now has a 24-hour rotation (formerly tidally locked with one face toward Herculean) and 60% water coverage (formerly just icecaps and permafrost). The geography couldn't be sculpted much, but careful seeding of ecologies produced a lot of enviable real estate. Moreso than Venus or Mars, Deianira was a man-made paradise. (Of course, it was much closer to habitable before terraforming than either Venus or Mars.)
Deianira thrived in the 28th Century, right up until Kerensky's Exodus. It attracted hundreds of millions of settlers from across the Combine and Hegemony, which reached a bit over 1 billion inhabitants by the time the Federated Suns released several nuclear weapons and bio-bombs across the world in the early 29th Century. (To add insult to injury, the mammoth shipyard orbiting Deianira was sent crashing into the moon after being nuked.)
Today, some 19 million people live on Deianira. About 4 million are descended from Star League-era Deianirans, another million are Kuritan immigrants, and the remainder are Herculeans (about 2-3 million are refugees from Herculean volcanism). Like many Inner Sphere planets, it is awash in abandoned ruins that have been looted of useful industrial goods. Many modern cities are clustered around space ports and interface with the rest of the Combine, and host the wealthy Herculeans who want exotic vacation homes. Around the fringes of these cities are mostly-idle centrifuge habitats up to 5km in diameter (similar to toroidal space stations, but with floors tilted to balance local gravity and centripetal forces). These are designed to hold refugees at 2.52Gs when Herculean misbehaves. The current capacity of about 350 million is at less than 1% usage.
GRINDER
1 million of Arlington's population calls Grinder home, with 90% split among four major asteroids and the others working on outlying asteroids particularly rich in some interesting resource. Similar to Deianira, most Herculeans live in spinning habitats mounted on the asteroids that provided 2.52G. Because of the frequency of foreign visitors, these habitats often have a 1G section closer to the hub.
Three of the four major asteroids are nickel-iron behemoths that could feed the Inner Sphere's industrial metal needs for millennia (in terms of quantity; there are cheaper sources of metals for most Inner Sphere systems). These three asteroids are being mined by different, competing companies.
The fourth asteroid, Lumpy, is one of the major asteroids of Grinder, though far from the largest. Lumpy is about 1000km in diameter, like Ceres, and has a surface gravity of 0.03G. Lumpy is the center of space industrial activity in Arlington, hosting varied smelting and chemical processing facilities that churn out all manner of products for other planets in the system (plus some exportable materials like germanium and platinum). Lumpy is also the recreational and agricultural center for Grinder, hosting varied centi-G farms and aquaculture tanks that produce varied foodstuffs for miners and colonists. Lumpy is unusual for experimenting with orbital tethers. These (small) orbital elevators reach to Lumpy's close synchronous orbit. Since orbital velocity around Lumpy is all of about 450m/s (1.5 fuel points), these aren't too economically useful, but they are an interesting convenience that eliminate some launch and landing concerns.
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