Reach

Reach was the former military and government center of the Inner Colonies, and was by far the most prominent world in the Epsilon Eridani system. Reach's largest industry was titanium mining and refining.

Inner Colony Wars
Reach was initially colonized by an East European settler group with a Hungarian majority in 2319, the region having been prioritized for the First Wave of colonies due to its crowding and various economic issues at the time. A large world, Reach has an above-standard gravity, but its minimal terraforming requirement compared to the neighboring Tribute (combined with Reach's natural riches) made Reach more attractive to settlers.

Additional waves of colonists in the 2360s displaced the Hungarians and paved the way for Reach to become the UNSC's headquarters. At the time, there were two major factions among the Hungarian settlers. The first group welcomed the new colonists as a way of invigorating their struggling communities with further, more substantial investments. As a downside, in many cases the pioneers were cheated out of their claims to the local titanium deposits by off-world investors. The second group were hardliner pioneers, who detested the newcomers and their own brethren who collaborated with them. This led to various incidences of violence between various groups over the course of two decades and even one significant conflict known locally as the Settlement War; this was one of many similar conflicts later dubbed the Inner Colony Wars. As new settlers arrived, largely from North America and Central Europe, the majority of the initial pioneer communities assimilated into the newer population, who would go on to adopt some of the cultural characteristics of the Hungarian settlers. While the burgeoning colonies developed into large urban centers, the hardline pioneers withdrew to small farming communities across Reach's harsh wilderness, choosing to eke out a fiercely independent living on their own terms. Despite sporadic attempts at reconciliation, by and large, the relationship between these farming communities and the UNSC remained frosty at best.

In the 2390s, Reach became the UNSC's first major base of operations outside Sol, a development that would continue over the next century as the UNSC spread further on the CMA's former territory in the colonies. A particular characteristic of Reacher culture is the local militia, notable for its exceedingly high participation rate; most of the locals (particularly in the non-urban communities) are part of or involved with the militia in some way.

Operation: FORTRESS SIEGE
Since the Human-Covenant War and the Epsilon Eridani system's recapture in Operation: FORTRESS SIEGE, Reach was prioritized for reclamation. However, even despite the cleanup of the orbital debris field in the decade after the war, damage from the glassing remained extensive. Barring considerable technological leaps, post-war projections put the full recovery of Reach's ecosystem at between 180 and 220 years. In the decades since the war, Reach's surviving population scattered. Most of the urban population resettled on other worlds, especially Earth. A number remained in the Epsilon Eridani system, either on Reach's moons, Tribute, or Circumstance's orbital communities. Most of the urban population settled on worlds with a UNSC presence. Despite its name, New Reach did not attract a particular Reacher majority; instead, it was so named by the UNSC to symbolize its status as a new military hub in its region of space. In the years after the war, various small settler groups, near-exclusively indigenous Reavians, sought to recolonize the planet, stubbornly braving the inhospitable glasslands.

Topography and climate
Reach's ecology is anomalous. The planet is relatively young for one hosting such a fully-developed ecosystem, and its crater-pocked surface indicates Reach's atmosphere must have recently been much more tenuous than it is today. The land and air flora and fauna share a distant genetic relation to terrestrial life, making Reach (alongside its sister planet Tribute) one of the first documented cases of the out-of-place biota phenomenon. The sea life, on the other hand, is entirely alien and has no relation to the surface biota. Since the flora and fauna in the oceans is also far more primitive than that on land, corresponding roughly to that found on Earth during the Proterozoic eon, it is commonly theorized that the life in the oceans is the only life truly native to Reach. The land life and atmosphere, however, must have been artificially transplanted to the planet in ancient times, yet fairly recently in galactic timescales.

Economy
Reach and Tribute both competed with each other for the title of wealthiest colony in the system, thanks to its diverse economy that was evenly divided between its primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. Reach proudly boasted a strong mining industry: it was the single-largest exporter of titanium in the Human Sphere, with other metals such as tungsten also being found in abundance. Manufacturing was also found, most famously in its shipyards that could produce both the largest and smallest ships in the UNSC Navy in record time, largely thanks to the nearly supply of raw materials. Trade and service-based income was quite large. While not quite as large as that of its neighbor, Reach was home to the regional headquarters of prestigious corporations such as BXR Mining and SinoViet Heavy Machinery, leaving many to be employed in the vast towers in its major cities. Agriculture was present, but it did not usually export enough to warrant consideration.

Culture
"It has become a cliche for politicians to say that the first wave of settlers have been left behind, and we must do more to help them. This is preposterous. The first Reavians chose to go their own way, and they made that choice decades ago when they chose to leave the modernization and anomie of Earth for a brand new world.''
 * So of course they resent the second and third waves that brought that hustle and that modernity and taxed the first wave to pay for it. Most of them gave up their farms and moved to the highlands, but you followed them when you smelled titanium.
 * ''I'm not telling you how to heal the divide. Honestly, I don't think it can be healed, and peacefully ignoring each other might be the best we can hope for. I am saying that trying to get the First Wave to come down from their mountain farms and be more like you is only going to make the divide even worse."

- Anonymous comment from an EnderNet politics messageboard

Although the terms 'Reavian' and 'Reacher' are widely used interchangeably to describe the people of Reach, both of these describe two different segments of the planet's colonists. 'Reachers' referred to the vast majority of the population, and were founded during the second third colonization waves. In the past, their better-prepared settlement gave them a much higher standard of living than their predecessors, and they had no issue with using modern techniques to make things easier for themselves. While they were drawn from settlers who were more ethnically diverse than their mountain neighbors, Reachers did not have a truly multicultural society, but a patriotic martial culture encouraged by over 150 years as the center of the UNSC's military might; this was also known as the Urban Reach culture. They were supportive to the UEG and especially the UNSC to a near-fanatical level, with frequent parades that celebrated the military and government. The presence of so many servicemen here caused a cultural shift, where families were segregated by branch and rank and children were expected to attend some sort of military academy. This also meant that most were willing to move for work if needed. Religion was rare for them, and those that practiced it privately in their homes rather than in public churches. This only grew worse once it was revealed that the Covenant was unified by it, and it was not uncommon to see some individuals persecuted and bullied for this reason.

Reavians instead descended from the first Hungarian, and some Pole and Czech, colonists who arrived before the Odyssey expedition in 2363, and consisted of the hardliners who chose not to give up the lifestyle of their ancestors. Most fluent in Hungarian, they lived in farming communities called kivas within the mountains. Their disregard of most modern agricultural advances has seen them compared to the Amish of Earth, although they do not shun technology altogether and sometimes adopt advances that increase their crop yields. Most of their culture celebrated the struggles of harsh colonial living. Moas were routinely farmed and some were even successful in taming gutas. However, Reavians were distrustful of their Reacher neighbors due to historical disagreements, and to this day were upset that their role in settling the planet has been ignored. While the majority were wiped out during the Fall of Reach, in the years since more and more Reavians returned to try and repair their glassed homeworld.

Satellites
Reach's largest moon, Csodaszarvas has a frigid, methane-rich atmosphere similar to that of Titan, as well as a peculiar ring system, which is suspected to have been formed as recently as 100,000 years ago. Its unusual traits make the moon the object of considerable scientific interest, as well as a hub of various specialized industries that benefit from readily-available cooling, including AI research and hosting as well as other computation-related functions. For this reason, Csodaszarvas is also the physical location of the UNSC Navy's Reach super-AI network.
 * Csodaszarvas

The smaller of Reach's moons, Turul was captured into Reach's orbit only recently. Early on into Reach's colonization, it was mined extensively to construct Reach's orbital infrastructure. As most of this process was automated and temporary, permanent human presence was minimal outside various outposts and research stations. After the Fall of Reach, groups of refugees from Reach successfully hid in Turul's elaborate mining tunnels, with some surviving until the retake of the system in Operation: FORTRESS SIEGE months later. Since the war, Turul's population has grown considerably as the refugee settlements on the moon became more established, along with stations used as a base of operations for the orbital clearing and eventual deglassing of Reach.
 * Turul

An industrial sector comprised of hundreds of microgravity factories and refineries, the first of which were established by the industrialist Harry Stine.
 * Stine's Archipelago