Neos Atlantis

Neos Atlantis is one of the UNSC's main industrial and military centers following the Human-Covenant War. Exhibiting a blue-green, icy surface, Neos Atlantis is a frigid, inhospitable world settled for scientific, industrial and military purposes.

History
First surveyed by the Arroway Mission of 2374-2379, the human colony on Neos Atlantis began as a Colonial Administration Authority science outpost in 2388. Terraforming was out of the question, being dismissed as too costly and time-consuming to be practical, coupled with the planet's unique properties making it worth both preservation and prolonged study. In addition to attracting interest from the scientific community, it was proposed that Neos Atlantis could serve as a tourist destination in the future due to its unique sights, but interstellar travel was still too expensive to be used for tourism purposes alone. As no slipspace pathways yet passed through the Alcides system, the idea was buried and forgotten about.

The Alcides system only started to garner importance as a secondary waystation for outward expansion in the second half of the 25th century, after new slipspace routes were established to the 14 Herculis system and beyond, linking to Outer Colonies across the Aquila-Sagittarius region and the Madara Fringe. The UNSC Navy established a base in the planet's orbit in 2495, along with an accompanying fusion fuel extraction operation in the nearby gas giant, Erytheia. The colony's strategic location at the edge of the Inner Colonies made it an ideal gateway for operations further out in FLEETCOM Sector 3. During the Insurrection, the base rapidly grew as it supported anti-piracy and anti-insurgency campaigns on Outer Colonies including Ford, Barugi, Gao and Talitsa. Now much more than a mere frontier outpost, Neos Atlantis came to house sizable garrisons and training facilities.

After a promising survey of the planet's titanium deposits, coupled with the moderate amounts of metals present in the system's circumstellar asteroids, the Tethys Shipyards were opened there in 2509. Production was modest at first, with Tethys serving as a secondary shipbuilder, largely constructing auxiliary vessels for the UNSC. Away from the frontlines of the Human-Covenant War, Neos Atlantis retained a small to moderate industrial output for the first half of the war. As the Covenant encroached on the Inner Colonies and even the outlying worlds of Sector 3 in the 2540s, the UNSC began to relocate its industry from high-risk sites such as Epsilon Eridani and Sol to spinward-side colonies, including Neos Atlantis, with plans to launch missions further into the Cygnus Verge. Benefiting from its existing materials extraction and shipyard infrastructure, the Tethys Shipyards expanded considerably in the last five years of the war. But it was only in the post-war years that Neos Atlantis' significance skyrocketed.

The colony survived the Human-Covenant War unscathed, and while its shipbuilding capacity still paled in comparison to the now-devastated juggernauts that were Mars and Tribute by 2553, by the mid-2560s it became the largest producer of naval craft outside of the Sol system. Because its local neighborhood had not been hit too badly by the Covenant, Neos Atlantis acted as one of the main staging areas for UNSC interests in the region, as well as for civilian reconstruction efforts. This necessitated a thorough expansion of the planetary resource-extraction operations and refineries, with the planet's heavy-lift capacity being augmented with a new superheavy orbital tether system. Around this time, Neos Atlantis was also proposed as a potential site for a planned orbital ring project.

Geography
"A place of terrible beauty."

- Journal entry by Captain Haylie Nomura of the CAA Arroway upon surveying the planet for the first time in 2377

A so-called cryoworld, Neos Atlantis has an icy surface rich in volatiles. The planet has subsurface oceans abundant in hydrocarbons, and a methane-rich atmosphere. Blue and turquoise clouds of methane coupled with ice flats colonized by blue-green bacteria and proto-fungi on the surface give the planet its highly distinct mottled blue-green appearance. Ionization in the upper atmosphere makes spectacular thunderstorms and high-altitude lightning frequent, and atmospheric scattering from the methane gives it a subtle fluorescent aura. Neos Atlantis also has a robust magnetic field and experiences periodic aurorae, further adding to the planet's peculiar appearance.

Primitive forms of native life, including various extremophilic bacteria as well as simple fungus-analogues, exist on the surface and in the atmosphere, largely concentrated around ocean vents and cryovolcanoes. Some of these life-forms are known to cause intense allergic reactions in humans, making direct exposure risky and necessitating thorough decontamination following surface excursions. While permanent researchers and mining workers are routinely inoculated against the native biota, the proliferation of certain microorganisms inside habitats has been known to become a particular nuisance necessitating complicated decontamination measures. As such, even refined mining products go through several layers of sterilization before being sent to orbit. A particular curiosity that has garnered attention among the scientific community is what appears to be a robust neural network equivalent existing within a particular type of native fungus. First documented by Dr. Abeque Lussmann in 2431, there has been debate whether these entities should be considered sentient, proto- or pseudosentient, or even a potential example of a cryptosapient life-form.

The planet's primary appeal to the UNSC are its rich titanium deposits, though various volatiles are extracted for largely local industrial use. Hydrogen and helium for fusion purposes are also sourced locally from the Alcides system's sole gas giant, Erytheia. The growth of the UNSC presence at the planet has attracted further high-end cryocomputing and -industry applications, and since the 2560s, it has come to house various AI research projects.

Due to the planet's cold climate and toxic atmosphere, the planetside habitats are fully sealed against the elements, with many sporting domes or subterranean warrens. These habitats support living quarters, recreation facilities, factories, and research centers. There is only a small civilian presence here due to security concerns, with most personnel being employed by the UNSC. Instead, most of the civilians live and work in orbital satellites, and it is here where the majority of Neos Atlantis' immense shipyards and naval bases are located. Since the war, the orbital communities have expanded more rapidly than the surface habitats, and most of the population never has reason to go planetside. Neos Atlantis' culture largely revolves around the UNSC presence, exhibiting a generic "military town" paradigm.