In YE 34, Origin Industries set out to terraform the planet Ake, over which their corporate headquarters of Dawn Station is moored. The first team that ventured onto the surface of the inhospitible ammonia-world disappeared without a trace during one of the planet's massive storms. The second team, understandably better-armed, was sent down to figure out what happened to the first while starting the terraforming process over again.

The second team's roster is as follows:

The management and deployment of the terraforming teams has been a constant fear and worry for every member of upper-management involved in the process. Whoever came up with the idea originally, whether it to have been Aerin Tatst herself or some suck-up executive with no consideration for those below him– their name has been silently cursed every step of the way. The first issue is finding people willing to suffer the indignity of possible death on a world of deserts, rainstorms, and ammonia skies. The second issue is finding which of those people are sane and competent.

By the time the second crew was formed, the Human Resources magicians responsible had worked up a system which put both an art and a science to it. A select few were given special training that addressed living in a hostile environment. The best candidates were dredged up from a pool of agricultural specialists and former city-planners. These individuals numbered less than twenty-five and were branded the title of 'OTT', or 'One True Terraformer'. In one case, an entire family joined together and were all given the prestigious, if un-explanatory title.

OTTs are assigned to terraforming teams one-at-a-time or in pairs depending on the size of the outpost. Their duty is to give context to the team of specialists who may not be used to operating in harsh environments. Toss on a surveyor, a doctor, a few misfits, and an unfortunate manager– and a Terraforming Team is built. With this philosophy in mind, those aforementioned Human Resources miracle-workers enjoyed brief back-patting session before going through the procedures to form another fifteen teams which would follow the second team down once their initial work was completed. Soon, they told themselves, Ake would be terraformed and it would be all thanks to their dazzling work as excellent recruiters.

And so it was that one terraforming team left Dawn Station for the surface below, with many others waiting in the wings behind it– a sense of promise in the wastes of Ake.

The Atmospheric Purification System is the tool which makes terraforming Ake possible. It's a combination air-scrubber/oxygen pump. It looks like a great spire of sorts, with a series of wide vents at its base. Using the power plants of small freighters, a volumetric field is erected in a dome around a chosen landing site. Once this powerful and massive machine is set up, the air is purified within seconds in the encampment. The animals can be let out of their holds, the team members can remove their masks. Now, while everyone goes about their business on the surface; this machine is still running. It's cleaning and compressing massive amounts of air, as in millions of cubic tons worth of it. Every ten hours, unless the emergency shut-down is triggered, it initiates what is called an 'ozone-dump'. The pressurized air stored within is released with a burst of super-heated ozone powerful enough to penetrate the volumetric bubble around the camp. This takes about six minutes, and any one outside at the time will be brutally and painfully incinerated. However; on the plus side, the air will be a few parts-per-million more breathable outside once it's done.

In time, that machine and others which will be deployed later will slowly make the entire planet's atmosphere into something which is probably slightly safer than Funky City air; which is quite breathable if a little cancerous. Once you've achieved that breathability, the terraforming process is as simple and boring as planting more trees than people until your planet is populated. Of course, deep valleys of frozen ammonia will still litter northern parts of the planet– and traveling beyond the equatorial regions will be quite dangerous.

This page was originally created on 2014/10/16 04:24 by Lamb.

This whole terraforming endeavor is to be RP'd out as a four-chapter mini-plot. The characters involved are mostly NPCs from one user or another, and the notion is to flesh out these NPCs while giving Origin something to be proud of.