Venus

Chapter 1. Why Venus?

Venus is the Earth's nearest planetary neighbor. It's about the same size. If you were able to walk around you might notice you could jump a little higher. However, it is hot, very hot, 700 degrees F and the wind blows around at over 200 miles per hour. It is claimed that a runaway greenhouse effect destroyed any hope of life ever existing there. The atmosphere has almost no oxygen and there's no evidence of water. The surface is covered with active volcanos that belch toxic vapors into the sky and the early surface has wiped away evidence of most of its geological past. Except for a couple of high mountain ranges the topography looks like a parking lot paved with lava.

So why would anyone want to homestead such a desolate and inhospitable place? Only a group of colonizers who were completely without any other choice. We'll call them Pilgrims or The Homesteaders, for want of a better term. The Pilgrims claim they like a warm and arid climate... Venus certainly has that, in abundance. They intend to make some changes that will make the planet more inhabitable. Like they really have any real choice. The word is that they hopped around several star systems for a long while, checking out the possibilities, and ended up here, out of gas. They had to take Venus which by any stretch is a poor candidate for a "Fixer-Upper." Then again we shouldn't judge other galactic races by earthly standards.

The Pilgrims are a carbon based life form which breaths carbon dioxide. That is a plus... plenty of that on Venus. They came here because the neighborhood they were living in was becoming too hostile. Their mission is to terraform a new planet out in the backwater, beyond the territorial ambitions of their galactic competitors.