///From the author: dating back to the late 21st and early 22nd centuries, the settlements on Titan had long been a major hub for culture and commerce in the outer solar syst. By the time the Frontier Wars storyline begins in 2389, all of that cultural clout has bought this mysterious world a history of social strife. Here I will lay out some of the details of the struggles which have defined the Titanian identity for much of its history, and helped to shape the rise of the Zharan Collective during the years leading up to the Tycho Treaty in 2361.
Map of Titan circa 2389
Critical Stats:
First reached by humans: January 2005 (uncrewed); May 2086 (crewed)
Current government: partitioned - the Democratic Republic of Titan (est. August 2343) and the Commonwealth of Titan (est. October 2186)
2389 Population: approximately 186 million (estimated per the 2386 census)
Capital: Samarkand (2), Samarkand district (Grid Square X-7); population: approx. 5.7 million
Government type:
DRT: unitary socialist republic (since 2336); seat of power - the Old House, Jiuquan; current Premier - Hanno Itokawa (since 2374)
COT: multi-party parliamentary republic (since 2298); seat of power - Fort Redstone, New Heraklion; current Prime Minister - Rolff Garmin (since 2386)
Affiliation: officially administered jointly by the ICA and the Alliance of Free Worlds
Primary industries: cryo-computation (quantum processing power amplified by the extreme cold); heavy industry & manufacturing (Alliance regions are especially invested in weapons design & production; ICA regions are big plastics producers); shipping and mercantile commerce
Background, part 1:
With its dense atmosphere and a surface which offers a fascinating simulation of the primordial Earth, Saturn’s largest moon has always held a special place in humanity’s heart, even back to the earliest days of space travel. The Huygens landed in the Shangri-La region on a mission of discovery in 2005, and the Dragonfly probe arrived in the Selk Crater in 2034 on a dune-hopping mission of exploration. Both of these returned fascinating scientific results, and drove interest in crewed exploration and long-term settlement.
Over the years which followed this first settlement mission in 2086, human pioneers and their artificially=engineered workhorses set up more than a dozen settlements across the midlatitude regions of Titan, chief among them Samarkand (2), New Heraklion (3), and Jiuquan (4), as well as several in the polar regions around the edges of the great methane seas. Chief among these are Nishapur (5) and Khujand (6), which house Titan’s primary plastics processing facilities. Elsewhere, Liaoning (7), the sixth largest city on Titan, is home to the first space tether built beyond the asteroid belt (completed in 2221), and Shandong (8) is a major center for the production of artificial humans (better known as zharans as of 2389).
For much of Titan’s history of human habitation, the settlements there developed in peace. Beginning in the 2240s, as the Antares Insurrection embroiled the solar system in populist upheaval, and the population of Titan was swept up in the violence, a band of warlords called the Titan Cabal swept into power there. These would-be dictators rode a wave of public distrust of the ICA and leveraged the immense resource wealth of Titan to build up small armies to defend their interests on the smog-shrouded moon.
Then, in 2284, 500 million-year-old precursor artifacts were revealed in the Shikoku Facula, in a region later named the Ramayana Site (1). Within a few years of this revelation, the warlords of Titan came to conflict with the masters of the United Nations of Mars over control of outer system resources, including the highly coveted Ramayana artifacts. This led to the Mars-Titan War (2292-2297), which has shaped the politics of Solar Space for the past hundred years and ushered in an era of weak leadership on Titan. That lasted until 2334, when the new United People’s Party swept into power. The First Titan Civil War (2334-2342) soon followed.
In this conflict, which surpassed even the Jovian Civil War in terms of violence and moral complexity, the Draconis-backed UPP founded dozens of regional militias which mobilized an active guerrilla front against the ICA presence on Titan. In 2336, they rallied a sizable portion of western and northern Titan into the Democratic Republic of Titan, which would go on to be a client state of the Alliance of Free Worlds.
Major cities in the Core Regions of Titan
Map Key (listing the ten cities in this region over two million people):
(1) Samarkand:
District: Samarkand (Y-7)
Population: 5.7 million
Controlled by: jointly controlled (partitioned city)
(2) New Heraklion:
District: Urumqi (B-6)
Population: 4.6 million
Controlled by: COT
(3) Selk City:
District: Tashkent (X-6)
Population: 4.3 million
Controlled by: DRT
(4) Jiuquan:
District: Gansu (X-7)
Population: 3.7 million
Controlled by: DRT
(5) Falajs:
District: Bishkek (B-7)
Population: 3.1 million
Controlled by: COT
(6) Khorasan:
District: Taklamakan (C-6)
Population: 2.7 million
Controlled by: COT
(7) Dushanbe:
District: Ariana (A-8)
Population: 2.3 million
Controlled by: COT
(8) Janus:
District: Khwarazm (X-8)
Population: 1.9 million
Controlled by: DRT
(9) Kashgar:
District: Xinjiang (X-5)
Population: 1.5 million
Controlled by: DRT
(10) Bukhara:
District: Bukhara (V-7)
Population: 1.2 million
Controlled by: DRT
The Partition of Titan
Background, part 2:
Titan's troubles did not end with the Partition. If anything, they only intensified. For six years, everyone from colonial officials to local police constables were targeted by Draconist reprisals. Enforced disappearances, political killings, terrorist bombings, and general chaos reigned across Titan. Only the heavy hand of the Spacer Corps and its allies in the Colonial Security Force eventually restored peace, and even then only really by seeking out and eliminating as many Draconist militiamen as they could find.
When the First Titan Civil War ended in 2342, the Alliance of Free Worlds and the ICA carved up the massive, resource-rich moon between themselves. In 2343, the Samarkand Accords placed half of Titan under the control of the Alliance-backed Democratic Republic of Titan (“West Titan”), while the Commonwealth of Titan (“East Titan”), which remained closely aligned with the ICA, held onto the rest. This led to the Reconciliation (2343-2346), during which between 5 and 10 million people fled their homes and emigrated across the face of Titan, hoping to live under a more favorable ruling government or to escape reprisals from old enemies.
As of 2389, the population is split to 104 million for the DRT and 82 million for the Commonwealth. The twenty-five cities highlighted here represent more than a third of Titan’s population, with most of the rest spread across thousands of farmsteads in the hinterlands. During the Second Titan Civil War (2347-2361), longstanding rivalries between Titanian resource barons became entangled with everything from local sectarian grievances to the feud with Mars as the population of the giant moon tore into itself in brother-against-brother warfare.
These tensions lasted long after the era of the civil wars, with Titan becoming a major battleground of the Frontier War (2371-2381) that pitted the ICA against the Alliance for control of the outer system writ large. During this conflict, the two nations of the partitioned Titan faced off with one another as the puppet states of their patron organizations, leading to another ten years of bloodshed among the long-suffering population.
For most of the War, the Commonwealth and its ICA backers held the upper hand on Titan, a position only reversed when the Zharan Collective (a nation of artificial humans which staked a claim on the Ramayana Site, the location of half a billion-year-old precursor ruins first uncovered in the early 2280s) entered the conflict on the side of the Alliance. Although the Commonwealth controls less territory in 2389, it maintains a firm hold on the Ramayana Site, access to which is a major motivator in any Alliance war plans.
Major Factions on Titan
The Interplanetary Cooperative Administration (ICA)
Notes:
Officially founded in 2051 with the adoption of the Tyndall Accords by the UN, it was devised as a means to prevent interplanetary conflict in the vein of the Lunar War of October 2049, which pitted the major spacefaring powers aligned with NATO against those aligned with China and the Shanghai Pact for control of lunar resources.
With its the start of the ICA's first council session in early 2052, a standard was set that has lasted more than two centuries, despite the turbulence of the Long Fall and the recent turmoil of the Frontier Wars, wherein the organization legislates, mediates, and arbitrates all commercial and political affairs beyond Earth, at least in theory.
The Greater Saturn Federation
Notes:
Sometimes referred to as the “most successful rump state in history,” the GSF was founded in 2237 out of a union between the fourteen largest population centers in Saturnian space, only to be fractured twice over, first by the founding of the Titan Pact in 2284 and then again by the Draconist Wars of the 24th century.
As of 2389, it is mostly a relic of the past, with lingering influence on Titan only in the form of its ongoing support for the Commonwealth. The ICA props up the GSF government in order to legitimize their own support of the ICA-friendly powers in Saturnian space, meaning that it is essentially a figurehead federation.
The Mutual Security Pact (“Titan Pact”)
Notes:
After the discovery of half-a-billion-year-old precursor ruins buried on Titan was revealed in 2284, tensions between the ruling families of the Commonwealth of Titan and the One Mars Party heated up quickly. These had been on the rise for years already as Mars angled for greater control of outer system resources.
Two years later, the Commonwealth signed the Mutual Security Pact with fellow travelers Ganymede, Callisto, Tethys, Mimas, and Oberon, paving the way for the Mars-Titan War, when the Titan Pact fought for control of the outer system for five years before being banished to the dustbin of history by the victorious ICA.
The Commonwealth of Titan ("East Titan")
Notes:
The Commonwealth of Titan was reconstituted in the immediate aftermath of the Solar Civil War (2292-2297) to organize the reconstruction of the society there and to ensure it could pay the necessary postwar reparations, but was ultimately torn asunder by the long turmoil of the Draconist Crisis (2324-2361).
During this era of civil strife, Titan was just as swept up as was the rest of the outer system, and the ascent of the United People’s Party to power in the tumultuous elections of 2334 ultimately sparked a long and bloody civil war that, in many ways, was more destructive than the Jovian Civil War (2325-2342) which catalyzed it.
Divisão Revolucionário Armado de Callisto (DRAC)
Notes:
Draconism arose as part of the surge of nationalism which swept through the frontier following the passage of the Harrison Accords, which codified the status quo for the Solar Civil War in 2301. From there, it quickly infested the entire Jovian system, and later dozens of settlements across the outer solar system.
By the time it was stamped out, it had upended the political order of Solar Space, paving the way for the turmoil of the Frontier Wars, and spawned a half century of violence among the populace of the outer system, many of whom fought simply to defend their own local settlement from being swept up in the chaos.
The United People’s Party
Notes:
The United People's Party was a DRAC-sponsored affiliate which took power on Titan in 2334, kicking off a thirty-year era of civil war which pitted brother against brother in a vicious struggle for the soul of the the third most populous world in Solar space (behind Mars and Earth) and led to millions of deaths.
This long era of bloodshed finally ended with the Tycho Treaty of 2361, which also ended the Draconist Crisis as a whole and which split Titan three ways between the Interplanetary Cooperative Administration (ICA), the Alliance of Free Worlds, and the Zharan Collective, which still claims dominion over the whole.
The Alliance of Free Worlds
Notes:
Beginning with the outbreak of Draconist revolutions in the Jupiter and Saturn Sectors in the early 24th century, the chasm between the ICA and the citizens of the outer solar system quickly split into a vast gulf, especially as the ICA-led crackdown on dissent rapidly accelerated public resistance to their rule
As the Spacer Corps fought to crush the Draconist-backed insurrections, the Alliance emerged to answer the call of millions of frontier citizens for real representation. This new entity supported Draconist rebellions against the ICA and fought against them for control of Solar Space during the Frontier Wars.
The Democratic Republic of Titan ("West Titan")
Notes:
Much as the People's Republic of Callisto was created in 2342 to serve as the official public-facing government of Alliance-controlled Callisto, the DRT was born to oversee the Alliance portion of Titan, which was partitioned following the Samarkand Accords which officially ended the First Titan Civil War.
The DRT was based in West Samarkand, and governed Titan for the Alliance before, during, and after the Frontier Wars (2371-2381). As of 2389, there seems to be increasing tension between the DRT leadership and the Alliance Central Committee on Callisto, as the latter seeks more direct influence over its affiliate states.
Notes:
Formed in 2336 as a response to the Purges, during which the Draconists tried to eliminate the zharan population of the territory they controlled, the ZLA was the primary rebel movement during the Zharan Revolution, and the main driving force behind the planning and execution of the Uprising in 2356.
The ZLA was led by zharan spiritual and military leader V'Ran, who claimed to be the reincarnation of a precursor spirit and the fulfillment of a prophecy which declared that artificial life would throw off its shackles and rise up to become the dominant form of life in the galaxy after initiating a Righteous War against their creators.
Additional Maps and Historical Context
Turning Point - The First Titan War in 2339:
Notes:
Not long after the 13/7 terror attacks of 2331, the Jovian spore of Draconism spread to the Saturn system. In 2334, the DRAC installed the United People's Party in Samarkand, and the Interplanetary Defense Corps (IDC) moved in to lead local ICA-loyal Colonial Security Forces in a war to extricate them.
The First Titan Civil War faced a turning point in 2339 for two major reasons. For one, INTELCOM finally broke the codes used by the DRAC militias in the Shangri-La region, opening the door to a gradual decline in the Draconist movement on Titan. Secondly, the Alliance of Free Worlds was founded that year, a development which paved the way for the peace process on Titan. The fighting there still dragged on for another three years, with lingering action against DRAC and UPP militias continuing until 2342.
The Alliance opened negotiations to end the conflict in 2341, and eventually assumed control of half of Titan in 2343 following the partition. To many ICA veterans of the conflict, this development came like a slap in the face, as their long struggle to liberate Titan ended with one hostile faction being replaced by another. Titan would become a battlefield again in 2348 after the inception of Operation Lightning Dagger, with many veterans of the First Titan Civil War returning to fight in the Second.
Samarkand, capital of Titan circa 2357:
Notes:
Though not chronologically the first settlement established on Titan, Samarkand quickly became the most successful colony beyond the asteroid belt. following. Between the founding of Larsen Station (named for Peter Larsen, the first person to set foot on Titan in 2086) in 2109 and the Mars-Titan War almost two hundred years later, the settlement there grew like wildfire, and as of 2357 it is home to about 6.2 million people, most of whom live within only a few dozen kilometers of the famous Huygens Memorial Museum.
The city itself is different from what people in the 21st century would recognize in that, unlike most Terran or even Martian cities, it consists largely of domed or otherwise enclosed “arcologies,” each of which is much like a small cityscape in and of itself. These clustered living, working, and recreational spaces can house hundreds or even thousands of people in a single, linked environment, and appear to those on the outside like massively upscaled versions of the Mars habitats dreamt up by futurists in the first decades of the 21st century
But all of this is threatened by the ongoing Titan Civil War, itself a proxy conflict of the Draconist Crisis (2324-2361). The War on Draconism has been raging for more than thirty years, as the Divisão Revolucionária da Assembleia de Calisto (DRAC) battles the Interplanetary Cooperative Administration (ICA) for control of the outer solar system, and the city of Samarkand itself has changed hands at least a dozen times since war came to Titan in 2334.
Recently, however, a third party has thrown down its own gauntlet. This faction, made up of rebellious artificial humans originally created as disposable labor, now controls a sizable portion of the city, and plans on extending their control even further. They call themselves zharans, and since 2356, they have conducted a violent Uprising against both the ICA and the Alliance of Free Worlds, as well as the Draconists still vying for control of the frontier. This faction, headlined by the Zharan Liberation Army, which is led by the dangerous and charismatic V'Ran, controls part of Titan as part of their long-term plan of full sovereignty.
This should go well with our novel, "The Europa Goodbye!"