Siberia Prime

Siberia Prime, formerly Vozmozhnosti (Russian: Opportunity) was a former UEG colony.

Terraforming civil war
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 * Cool. I didn't know that this was a feature.
 * Origin of the colony and seeds of the conflict:
 * Trouble began with Belter government structures called Design Bureaus. Commonly misunderstood as corporate entities, these are in fact self-contained contained governments that build and manage space stations. Design Bureaus are run by experts, often with an appointed executive, and promotion within the DB is given by accreditation and political influence. Self-representation for the station inhabitants is minimal, as the political structure is predicated on the idea that self-determination and liberty are corrosive to long-term survival in space.
 * Design Bureaus form a cartel that runs the Asteroid Belt and Jovians after the IPW. When the stars are opened up, this signals the end. The Design Bureaus are no longer the only game in town, and they lose power as the brain drain wrecks the economy in the asteroid belt.
 * Surviving Design Bureaus hold a summit, decide to purchase colonization rights and run a planet. Due to the loss of personnel, they need to recruit populations from Earth. Vozmozhnosti is selected due to cheap investment and terraforming prospects. Planet appears to be locked in an ice age by a cataclysmic series of asteroid strikes 800,000 years ago.
 * At the same time, Eastern Europe is going through an economic decline for different reasons. People staying in place, and labor unions as strong as ever, but industry is moving off-world, driven by market forces and government regulation.
 * Design Bureaus recruit millions of citizens in the territories of Ukraine and Russia, drawn by relatively low wages and 'socio-political congruence'. First major project is to convert four large starship pens into colony ships.
 * First decade of colonization is regarded in hindsight as a golden age in spite of political strife. Habitats and terraforming equipment are erected at a blinding pace, and there is work and shelter for everybody.
 * Government is bicameral and representative, but only a body of bureaucrats (Theoretically unconnected to the DBs) has the ability to propose legislation. Much political power is also held at the municipal level, where the design bureaus have great influence.
 * Labor unions are going through a populist revolution. Old union reps, who are indistinguishable from the managerial class that they are supposed to do battle with, get voted down and replaced by "Grease monkeys and ice truckers". Union bosses and functionaries do their best to limit the power of freshmen representatives.
 * After the "Golden Decade" comes the "Decade of Hell". Design Bureaus that mastered the construction of space habitats turn out to be less-than-competent at designing terrestrial arcologies. Several well-publicized collapses stir up calls for independent reviews of arcology construction, a deadly insult to the DB expert class. Worse, the intricate subway, sewer, and power systems that the eleven cities were built upon turn out to be ideal breeding grounds for rats.
 * In year fifteen, stagflation hits. Wages for the working class remain stagnant, but the cost of consumer goods steadily increases. Off-world luxuries like meat and fruit disappear from the dinner table. Many cities respond to the crisis with price controls.
 * Labor unions agitate for change. They organize donation drives and rallies to boost membership, promising to fight for the worker. Union organizations make loud calls for change, and then deal down at the bargaining table. The unrest is used as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from the Design Bureaus, which are institutionally hostile toward populist movements, but the workers are unhappy with the results. Some of the policies that do pass only make the economic conditions worse, forming a definitive anti-union faction in the electorate.
 * The unrest steadily escalates into strikes and clashes with municipal security forces. The new generation of union reps draws censure from the union bosses with calls for further import of colonists to be halted until progress in terraforming and arcology construction can be achieved.
 * The Meyer Documents are leaked in 2412. Internal communications indicated that the Design Bureaus, at least in the third quarter of 2401, had boosted the transport of new colonists from Eastern Europe in order to suppress wage growth.
 * A number of other documents and taped candid conversations are leaked or hacked in the span of three weeks. Some have the context cut out, others are fabricated entirely, but the biggest bombshell is proven to be legitimate. Certain union bosses knew that the Vozmozhnosti government boosted colonial recruitment in order to manipulate the labor market, but stayed silent because the low wages and influx of new workers would be ideal for recruitment. A new epithet for the unions, "The beast that fucks itself", was coined. Many of the young union reps walk out of the union halls in protest. Violence breaks out between unionized and non-unionized workers.
 * Shit hits the fan:
 * The governor of the colony calls an emergency meeting of the parliament. Many reforms are proposed, but there is too much disagreement for any one voice to dominate. Ultimately, the parliament passes a motion for a referendum to be presented to the people, who themselves would make key decisions on the restructuring of the colony.
 * As the referendum is being drafted, Timofey Belorov, an atmospheric scientist working for the Design Bureaus, leaks a seven-gigabyte document. Contained in that document is reams of test data proving that the solar radiation from Yatsya, the local star, was 8% lower than it had been a million years ago when Vozmozhnosti was a temperate planet. Complex modeling proved that the planet could not be restored without nearly two orders of magnitude more effort put into terraforming, including the construction of orbital mirrors. Yet more documents showed that the key discoveries were made in 2399, and suppressed for fourteen years, as the results would have reflected badly on the design bureaus.
 * The Vozmozhnosti Parliament, already on the cusp of releasing the referendum, pauses and takes three more days to re-draft it. Riots break out, and eight million citizens apply for transportation off the planet.
 * A fight breaks out behind closed doors. The measure that many parliamentarians ask for, and tens of millions of citizens demand, is an end to the terraforming process. Instead, all that capital should go toward securing another colony and evacuating the population. A few brave voices point out that there is not nearly enough capital to secure a temperate colony and transportation for sixty million colonists, not on top of the debt that the Vozmozhnosti project has already incurred.
 * The design bureaus get the final say, quashing any possibility of mass resettlement. When the Referendum finally lands on September 10th, 2414, all of the radical reforms anticipated by the people were replaced by banal adjustments to the existing government. The evacuation was merely a proposed moratorium on further colonists, as well as a resettlement of vulnerable persons. The biggest change came in the first question, which proposed renaming the colony. Of the seven million who bothered to vote, the majority wrote in a vote for Siberia Prime, a name which would stick through the coming civil wars.
 * Riots spill out into the streets. Each of the eleven cities sees street fighting between unionist, anti-unionist, and municipal security forces. The situation only continues to escalate.
 * Over the next few weeks, violence will continue to escalate. Several parliamentarians and union bosses are assassinated, while many Design Bureau officials retreat to Zelenyygorod. Pochvennaya Gavan, Metrograd, and New Petersburg, three of the major cities in relative proximity to each other, organize a provisional government.
 * Colonists win, government leaders either killed, forced into exile, or quietly retired.
 * Metrograd, Petrol Basin, Stalnoye Razrastaniye-->

Topography and Climate
In spite of its current snowball status, Siberia Prime was once a temperate planet. Beneath its ice sheets lie layers of ash and plant residue, and primitive life still swims in its seas. The cause for the glaciation is not well-understood. Ice cores taken from Siberia Prime and Siberia Secundus hint that the local star, Yaytsa, once shone more brightly. The ash layers, on the other hand, are rich with meteorite fragments, even though there are few large asteroids left in the Yaytsa system. A sustained cataclysmic impact event, theorized to have happened 800,000 years ago, could have darkened Siberia Prime's skies long enough to settle into a permanent nuclear winter.

Prior to colonization, Siberia Prime's climate was cold but placid. The Siberians undertook an ambitious geoforming project with orbital mirrors and upwelling warm water from lower levels of the oceans. Though the project was expected to take only three generations to produce shirtsleeve weather, the planet warmed an average of only two degrees Celsius over the course of 150 years. Instead, wild storm systems formed throughout the middle latitudes, rising and waning in sync with the day-night cycle.

Strengths

 * 1) Ingrained Resilience: Siberians are no strangers to expensive struggles that span generations. Struggles against the Covenant, against their homeworld's climate, even against each other. Their culture prizes adaptability and long-term dedication.
 * 2) Friends In Low Places the Siberian government has always had connections with the criminal underworld, connections that only got stronger after the fall of Siberia Prime. Many soldiers and state security personnel left the service of their government to work as mercenaries and criminal enforcers, though few cut ties completely. Siberia Prime's relationship with ONI is similarly complicated.
 * 3) Gunsmiths Its bloody history and proximity to the Outer Colonies meant that Siberia Prime developed the largest arms industry outside of SolCore. Although some designs were licensed or copied from Earth and Martian corporations, many more were homegrown. Siberia Prime's relative independence from Earth meant that its arsenal was perfect to export to one or both sides of the UNSC/CMA's proxy wars.

Weaknesses

 * 1) Cat's In The Cradle: Siberia Prime had the most comprehensive, successful evacuation plan of any major colony. The particulars of this evacuation plan meant that the vast majority of the evacuees were minors unaccompanied by their parents. The demographics of the Siberian survivors skews younger, and a generation is coming to age that is disaffected with their government and disconnected from the culture that produced them.
 * 2) Tarnished Legitimacy: The government of Siberia Prime staked its future on successfully repelling a Covenant invasion, an act that was supposed to turn the tide of the war. After the failure and exile, the GIE has lost the loyalty of its military and its citizenry, and is struggling to reassert its power.
 * 3) Bad Reputation Siberia Prime called in all its favors early in the war, and its behavior throughout the war burned through whatever goodwill was left over. As far as the UNSC is concerned, Siberians are only looking out for number one, and cannot be expected to honor the spirit of a contract. The Covenant, on the other hand, are not happy about being on the receiving end of chemical weapons.