Magnitka

Magnitka is an independent, authoritarian planet in the Ursa system. Formerly a vital industrial and mining colony for the Terran Commonwealth, Magnitka is one of several planets that declared independence after the Commonwealth's dissolution, and has since modernized to a service and entrepreneurial economy. It adapts quickly to changes in larger neighboring economies and aids in developing younger independent factions in order to exert its influence.

Culture

Planetary flag of Magnitka

• Magnitkan culture is a particular mix of Spacer austerity and authoritarian subservience, and as a result has a unique relationship between citizen and state. Citizens are beholden to the state’s demands, but the state is entirely responsible for the Magnitkan citizen, from providing sustenance, legal aid, housing, and a wide ranging battery of other services and protections. Given the challenging position of managing an independent state on a lifeless planet between two major galactic powers, a common philosophy (and core tenet of its propaganda) in Magnitka is that the state does what is necessary for the continuation of the people - and that the protections offered by the state could not be traded for dangerous freedoms that allow for its subversion.
• As in many Spacer cultures, Magnitkan society is strict and tightly-knit within social classes. Many communities often share a culture and internal histories, with uniquely Magnitkan qualities unifying them. With the dependence on life support on the planet itself, waste is often seen as criminal, and corruption that goes beyond ‘acceptable’ norms is punished harshly. Standards of living can differ depending if one is born in extraterritorial communities or on the planet itself, and also depending on their family’s status both in wealth and education. Families with better means and opportunities are often less stifled by state controls through purchasing their own amenities and luxuries, though these smaller freedoms are bought by adherence to Magnitkan law and taxes, no matter their location.
• Individual Magnitkans vary greatly, either due to their original ancestries, due to immigration, or due to social class. While the official state language is Pan-Slavic, many Magnitkans - especially those in a lower class - speak Spacer to better interact with other independents. While the state and society cares little for suppressing malcontents as a whole, preferring to drown them out, most Magnitkans in a privileged position or living abroad will usually be loyalists, opportunists, or pragmatists, people who are supportive of the state or smart enough to not voice disapproval openly. For them, the system may work for them - it may work very well, and it’s much easier for them to justify such allegiances. For many others - the Magnitkans in the lowest conditions on the planet, or forming part of the mass-contracted labor forces under the government’s eye, outright friction is much more common.

Politics

• Magnitka is classified as an authoritarian oligarchy by third party observers, though it self-classifies as a hybrid democracy organized with three distinct branches; an executive council, a legislative council, and a judicial court. In theory, each citizen has a right to vote on local policy and for all government positions. However, with only one ruling party, the Independence Coalition, entrance into politics through the party is limited to either those with prior military service or to those with significant capital. The military has a heavy influence upon the government, with current politicians often being freshly retired service members receiving policy guidelines from former commanding officers. This lends Magnitkan policy a rather naval outlook; you may disagree or debate the method, but if required, a course will be set by the state and citizens must fall in line.
• Magnitka is a surveillance state and a command economy. Various controls are exerted upon state-dependent citizens, often individually controlling housing, sustenance, employment, and even enforcing population controls. A majority of Magnitkan citizens require state assistance, making it impossible to evade these mandates without personal capital or steady personal employment. This makes more prestigious and higher-paying work such as in the military or in foreign-facing work highly desirable, and also stratifies the economic classes.
• Domestically, matters are heavily influenced by the military, with the lines between government and rank and file often being indistinguishable. This is true even in their expatriate communities, where the self-policing local militias are often ‘temporarily discharged’ guardsmen. In foreign policy, Magnitka paints itself as the antithesis to the far-reaching superpowers of the decadent Sol Central Government and warmongering Gilgamesh Colonial Confederation. It expends significantly to subsidize other independent colonies, and to spread propaganda and influence public opinion in its favor with its significant state media apparatus.

Economy

• Magnitka has an efficient and tightly-controlled domestic economy, with most industries or businesses being state-owned. The state itself acts as a single actor in the galactic market, reacting opportunistically to market changes, shortages or inefficiencies to best leverage its smaller workforce and production.
• Among its superpower neighbors, Magnitka attempts to tie itself to influential financial institutions to avoid direct economic competition with the ICCG and SCG. Utilizing its control to quickly adapt labor and industry, it takes advantage of foreign labor and good shortages, crises, and other market fluctuations to earn revenue. The state will often take short term losses in providing services for a long term benefit, either getting corporations or institutions dependent on their services and workforce or otherwise financially locked with the Magnitkan state in the form of bonds or stocks, giving the state some influence over foreign affairs and protection from retaliation.
• With smaller, independent neighbors, Magnitka throws its weight around with a long-established industrial base, skilled workforce, and life support experience. They provide colonial development, labor, support, and even military protection in the form of mercenaries in exchange for financial influence in the colonies. Many spacer flotillas or small colonies use Magnitkan equipment and labor, and most brush wars are fought with Magnitkan arms - sometimes with state mercenaries on either side.
• For individuals, Magnitka is often a cost-effective provider for otherwise unattainable or unaffordable services, such as medical tourism, entrepreneurial endeavors, or acquiring goods and services that may be otherwise illegal in a home country. With the disparity in living conditions, foreign currencies stretch far in Magnitka and allow even middle-class tourists a taste of temporary luxury in one of its highly decorated, opulent dome cities made specifically for the purpose. Affluent foreigners or dignitaries are often catered to, and Magnitka often sources personal guards, small private armies, and even provides political or economic asylum in exchange for the proper considerations.

Military

• Magnitka’s military occupies a disproportionate amount of the planetary budget despite its relative small size. However, it is also a significant state revenue stream due to subcontracting its own military units for use in paramilitary organizations, often in corporate conflicts or contracted at exorbitant prices for disaster relief. Compared to the SCG or ICCG, Magnitkan guardsmen are trained in smaller cohorts or units, forming strong bonds that often bleed into factionalism when applied to later political careers. Their military is comprised of:
  • The Army Guards, with their architects and guardsmen, turn Magnitka into a heavily-armed fortress. They are the largest branch, for they serve as the majority of the planet’s contracted mercenaries and also conduct most defensive (or offensive) operations, either through boarding or long range missile launches. It includes the Army Cohort of Intelligence, who officially only monitor local matters and perform counterespionage, though the reality is far more invasive and wide-reaching.
  • The Aerospace Fleet, the smallest branch, consists entirely of small, speedy corvettes, patrolcraft, and fighter tenders. They serve primarily as a screening force, spotting for planet or station-launched munitions and transporting the Guards from location to location.
  • The Logistics Guards, which was formerly a paramilitary organization of labor unions brought under state control. It controls munitions procurement and development and provides most of the planet’s own policing, customs management, and oversight of state-owned production and labor. Unlike the other branches, the Logistics Guards make heavy use of both active military personnel and unofficial, non-military citizens through the state industries they manage. Their paramilitary militias often serve as policing forces for foreign Magnitkan communities.

Geography

• “The Second Red Planet”, Magnitka is a metallic planet with little atmosphere and a gravitational pull of 0.84G. It was given the moniker of the second red planet primarily due to its method of colonization, utilizing many of the same plans and infrastructure used for Martian habitation, in addition to its reddish brown appearance. Despite some accretion in the recent millennia, Magnitka has a metallic core of lead, iron, and nickel, with smaller amounts of precious metals similar in composition to the planetary core of Earth. This suggests that Magnitka is the once-molten core of a terrestrial planet not unlike Earth or Gaia before impacts or solar radiation burnt away the planet’s crust.
• The planet currently consists of former quarries forming the walls of deeply-dug dome cities and arcologies, as well as smaller communities situated in now abandoned mining tunnels, some of which form a robust underground network of transportation.
• The largest cities are Neueifel, the first established city located on the south pole and home to government and military seats, and Alizarin, a previous industrial site now serving as a medical research hub - and often the site of medical tourism.
• Despite short-lived terraforming efforts, Magnitka is not naturally habitable for any typical flora or fauna save for those that can already survive in vacuum. As a result it requires dome cities or sealed environments, many of which vary greatly from industrial, spare dwellings of steel and concrete for lower class citizens to lush, green environments meant for the wealthy, the influential, or foreign dignitaries and tourists.
• On the galactic map, Magnitka was a Terran Commonwealth gateway to a number of vibrant stars and other since-abandoned colonies. This allows it to police trade between independents and the larger superpowers of the SCG and ICCG, and makes it a defensible location for these other colonies. Without bluespace drives, human vessels are forced to go through the Ursa system (and deal with the Magnitkan government) in order to access stars behind it.

History

• Following a joint-corporate colonization effort from Earth, Magnitka quickly became a valuable producer of resources and material for the Terran Commonwealth’s war against the Ares Confederation. Insufficient life support investments and harmful experimental gene tailoring experiments intended to increase productivity resulted in disorder and unrest among the workforce, with harsh reprisals by corporate PMC forces in order to retain control over their investments.
• Following the disastrous war and subsequent dissolution of the Terran Commonwealth, corporate investment for the planet all but evaporated, stranding local corporate branch offices and PMC garrisons with an aggrieved populace sitting upon unused weapons caches.
• The civil conflict that followed was brief and brutal, ending in colonist control of the planet and their seizure of remaining functioning infrastructure. Bombardments and attempts to retake the planet from PMCs were ineffective, leading the Solar corporations to blockade the inhospitable planet, starving it out as a message.
• Magnitka did not have the resources or infrastructure to properly support its own population, and with a slow death by starvation on the horizon, rebel and defecting corporate elements either willingly banded together or were quickly and brutally subjugated under a ruling party of warlords and managers, forming the first Independence Coalition. They petitioned the newly forming ICCG for membership and support - even declaring their official language to be Pan-Slavic. But after months of delays and a steadily worsening situation, it became clear that both growing superpowers were fine with allowing Magnitka to flounder. Despite increasingly strict and drastic measures, Magnitka was on the brink of starvation a decade, with these formational years of hardship and neglect giving rise to a new, uniquely Magnitkan identity; severe, pragmatic, and unified in their newfound independence.