Human Sphere

A list of human colony worlds, habitats and colonized systems in Project: Daybreak.

Glassed colonies
Colonies that are beyond recovery, at least in the immediate future; restoration would take centuries of work with terraforming technology beyond humanity's current capabilities. As in canon, some may still become hotspots to silicate mining.

Pre-2010

 * Reach - Deemed virtually unrecoverable, the UNSC's crown jewel is now a mass grave. In the immediate post-war years, small communities of Covenant stragglers remain in its orbit and groundside facilities, and hundreds of salvagers pick apart the orbital debris field, including the husk of a refueling and refit platform left unfinished as the Covenant pushed on to Sol. Still, securing Reach's orbital space will be a priority project for the UNSC following the war, as the system continues to be a major slipstream node and Sol's gateway to the greater galaxy.
 * Eridanus II
 * Jericho VII

Post-2010

 * Actium - an Inner Colony world with a classical antiquity theme.
 * Bliss
 * Meridian - glassed beyond recovery, but remains home to a silicate mining operation and houses an orbital port that has become a confluence of newly-emerged slipspace lanes as well as a staging point for further expansion out into the Cygnus Verge.

Fanon additions

 * Bolder and Calvary - colony-moons of the anomalous Jovian gas giant Tiamat, Bolder and Calvary were glassed beyond recovery, and the Gliese 898 system is now home only to pirates, salvagers and a small group of ex-Covenant fanatics seemingly interested in Tiamat.
 * Pharos - a Venusian hothouse world that served as a UNSC materiel depot. While only the UNSC facilities and bunkers were turned to slag, the planet remains of little to no utility as most of the colonies beyond have been destroyed.
 * Parvati - a high-g Inner Colony world with most human habitation concentrated on a series of canyon systems and caverns due to the inhospitable weather conditions on the desert plains that covered most of the planet. While only the human settlements were glassed, this destabilized what little artificial ecosystem Parvati had, making short-term resettlement unlikely beyond domed habitats.
 * Roston - a key industrial world that supplied the war effort in Sectors 2 and 1, before its glassing in the late 2530s.

Reclaimable colonies
Colonies that were attacked by the Covenant, but for one reason or the other weren't fully glassed, or glassed at all; some had major population centers or industrial plants slagged, but may remain otherwise intact.

Pre-2010

 * Ariel - a barren world home to a research outpost; while invaded, it was seemingly never glassed, and may become more prominent as a settlement project in the post-war era.
 * Fumirole - invaded, but may have survived total glassing.
 * Tribute - a mainly industrial colony and Epsilon Eridani's lesser population center, Tribute was spared the brunt of the Covenant invasion as the Covenant focused all their might on Reach. Still, most of the planet's cities and industries were glassed, though a number of smaller settlements survive, and the glassing was not widespread enough to destroy the planet's ecosystem and climate. Post-war, it has become Epsilon Eridani's most notable resettlement project, with hundreds of thousands of refugees flowing in from across the human sphere.
 * Circumstance - a waterworld with several seastead-cities and aquatic farms; founded as a lesser agri-world to feed Reach and Tribute, but later became quite prestigious as a center of law and culture. Has expanded considerably in the post-war era as a dumping ground for refugees from Reach and Tribute, as well as migrants and refugees from elsewhere in the human sphere.

Post-2010

 * Carrow

Fanon additions

 * Fjord - suffered a minor Covenant attack which destabilized the already struggling local government, precipitating a CAA takeover in the post-war era. Fjord's home star, Mu Arae, has assumed some strategic importance as a waystation system in the post-war era.
 * Verne - a high-oxygen jungle-world mostly covered in an impenetrable tangle of plant life and hostile fauna, Verne was home to several dozen arcologies rising above the jungle canopy, most of which now lay in ruins. However, the ecosystem remains intact, and the planet is now home to numerous unsanctioned independent settlements within and above the canopy.

Intact colonies
Colonies that did not suffer appreciable attacks, though many would've still felt the second-hand effects of the war.

Pre-2010

 * Ballast - a fairly prominent Inner Colony.
 * Forseti
 * Gilgamesh - a colony originally established with lofty, ancient Mesopotamian-inspired trappings, Gilgamesh has since become notorious as a "pleasure world", popular as a furlough destination among UNSC personnel. While the planet has a loose coalition government, it is ineffectual and corrupt, and any rule of law is essentially enforced by private security firms in the hire of hotels, casinos, pleasure palaces, spas and vast duty-free shopping malls; outside the major spaceports, crime and squalor reign, an effect exacerbated by the growth of endless slums and tent cities around the major urban centers as a result of the ongoing refugee crisis. During the last two decades, Gilgamesh's orbital communities and select isolated planetside locations have also become hotspots for unsanctioned cybernetics and biological research, secure from the prying eyes of authorities as long as they pay the right people.
 * Luyten - an old, near-Earth Inner Colony; home to the Spartan-II candidate Caleb-095.

Post-2010

 * Cascade - fairly populous Inner Colony that experiences something of an economic boom in the post-war era, likely due to the growth of key industries there resulting from the loss of so many other industrial centers. May also grow in importance as a waystation.
 * Neos Atlantis - the UNSC's primary naval yard for the immediate future following the loss of Reach and Mars' industry.
 * Tanuab III - the site of an unspecified disaster in 2553, for which the reporter Spencer Hume blamed Spartans.


 * Isbanola Sector
 * Venezia
 * Gao
 * Aleria
 * Komoya and Talitsa (and potentially other colonies on Vitalyevna's moons)

Fanon additions

 * The Swarm - a habitat-conurbation orbiting the ice-ball η Cassiopeiae Secundus, better known as Josaphat's Folly, after its discoverer Josaphat Pirandello who spent his lifetime and fortune searching for alien ruins that weren't there. The Swarm itself was primarily established by Tanzanian and Kenyan conglomerates, though it has a prominent East Asian population, and some of its elements have since become fairly cosmopolitan. Founded as the headquarters for an asteroid-mining operation deeper in the system, the Swarm became a secondary waystation during the settlement of the Outer Colonies, and eventually gentrified into a high-technological hub. Having survived the war, the Swarm is now a gateway to the Via Serena trade route bound from Sol to the Pleiades Corridor, and has seen a fairly dramatic increase in population with transitory settlers and refugees, most of whom have been dumped by the local government on Josaphat's Folly in rapidly-erected dome-cities and habitats built in the old ice warrens dug by Pirandello's explorers.