Images of Jupiter Dancing in My Head

[Nick the Nevermet]

I'm writing in the hope of getting something out of my head.  You see, as soon as I read through Nine Worlds, an image started shaping in my head.  The really irritating thing is it isn't going away; its just getting more and more defined.   *smirk* Damn you Matt, for making an RPG good enough to make me go insane.  Anyways, the image is Jupiter.  The description in the book suggests its like Earth, only more so.  Everything is bigger.  Tons of resources, tons of industry, tons of war.

So, my brain ran with it.  I see Jupiter as being either terribly rural, or oppressively urban.  A city on Jupiter is a tightly knit mass of metal, stone, and military installations.  Cities have a Purpose, be it strategic value, near a vein of ore that needs to be mined, or it was a good spot to build a port.  The average city is a bustling metropolis, vibrantly preparing for war.  Around cities, you don't have suburbs.  Thats not defendable.  You have the Polis, and then you have the tilled earth.  Sometimes its tilled for agriculture, sometimes for minerals, sometimes its just a 'buffer zone' of more defenses.

The Wilds, though, are not uninhabited.  Man would spread everywhere, quicker than Zeus' rule could effectively govern.  The sprinkled communities about Jupiter's forests and hills are a darkened folk: they know how to hide from the bigger armies, rebuild after they're caught in a crossfire, and know what they can kill by any means necessary.  They are homesteaders, squatters, and collateral damage of the War.  I've got an image of the rural communities being very 'old western' in a way.  Giant, green plains with huge graxing animals, tended to by farmers who live in houses of sod and stone. (This is not an image of the old west as dessert.  That is, if anything, Saturn)

The armies and navies of Zeus defend the cities and use them as launching points as they go hunting to Titanic forces that roam the wilds.  Sometimes, the Sons of Saturn come in large military forces.  When this happens, the wilds away from cities become playgrounds for destruction.  Only rumors exist of destroyed cities.  Jupiter is a big place, and Zeus won't allow enough freedom of travel to let military defeats become common knowledge to the common folk.  The Red Spot is the place most of the marines from Saturn land, their thinking is that its the weakest spot, so they might as well keep attacking there, hoping the defenses break.  Of course, they could be setting up Zeus' forces...  I think of war on Jupiter as extreme (everything on Jupiter is big): around cities, its bleak trench warfare with gigantic defenses that make the Maginot Line look like a wire fence.  In the wilds, legions of cavalry constantly dance to out-maneuver each other.

Other times, however, lone monsters are scuttle in the dark, disrupting life and spreading fear.  Some lurk under the cities, some along the roads between cities, and some wait in the wilds, corrupting the natural landscape of Jupiter.

Gah.  Sorry for the ramble.  As I said, this needed to get out of my head.  I'm not sure why Jupiter really struck me.  I like drawing the contrast of extremes though, between urban & rural.  I think I want to draw that one because its a contrast not scene on a lot of the other worlds.  Mercury & the Sun are urban, Venus is a plantation, the Moon is either a garden or a forest, Saturn is a wasteland.  The tension between the City, as a place of Order as proclaimed by Zeus, and the Wilds, a place where there is an organically emergent order is something I want to explore there.  I can think of several PCs from my view of Jupiter, especially from the wild countryside.

[Matt Snyder]

Far out, Nick! You've done a fine job of 'visualizing' Jupiter. That's exactly it -- everything is writ large. Hyper-urban, or hyper-rural, no in betweens.

When I was creating the setting, I really had this fuzzy notion of Jupiter as the Soviet Empire. Everything hard and angular -- the land, the people, the cities. There's something strong and sturdy in that vision. Of course, Jupiter is no communist state. It's probably the exact opposite -- more like a fascist state. But, that Soviet imagery filled my brain when writing.

No apologies needed. I'm glad you posted this!

[Nick the Nevermet]

The Soviet Union gets very quickly at the same point I see with Jupiter, involving as much top down-order as Zeus can create.  Be it communist or fascist, the rule of Zeus on Jupiter is about the imposition of His Rule and His Order, and the consumption/destruction of freedom.

I see Zeus as much more of classically Gnostic demiurge than the demiurge of Nine Worlds.  Zeus is the man in charge, is trying to enforce HIS rule, is a little too rigid for his own good (or humanity's), but at the same time not truly evil (that's the Titans' job).  The flawed ruler of a flawed universe, the hope for humanity lies not with him but with those who can see past him: Prometheus & the Archons.  The world of Jupiter exemplifies this flawed rulership by being a world in agony: the war against the Titans isn't really a threat (yet), but Zeus cannot win it.  Zeus' power is immense, but even he cannot control the whole of Jupiter.  And the more he seeks to control, the more ambivalence and contingency he creates.