The Twelve Colonies: Canceron
Canceron
canceron.png
The flag of Canceron.
Important Notice about Canon Material
Material from the television program Caprica is NOT automatically considered canon, although players may adopt individual bits and pieces from what's depicted on Caprica into the regional cultural background of their character(s). When in doubt, please ask.

To avoid contradictions in established RP, a policy of "localization" has been adopted. Apart from the Staff-written Overview and items firmly established in the main BSG series, there should be no all-encompassing tidbits for any of the Twelve Colonies. Players are wholeheartedly encouraged to create regional write-ups. Those seeking to deviate from the general "flavor" of the Overview should first consult with Staff.

Overview

The closest planet to the system's central star, much of Canceron is inhospitably warm — even unlivable. For this reason, its major cities are either coastal or polar. The former are famous for their blazing summers, sunny beaches, and yacht-owning Capricans with popped collars and spray-on tans; the latter, for housing sprawling complexes of underground tylium mines staffed by convicted felons until the human rights lobby forced the Quorum of 12 to intervene some twenty-four years ago. Their proximity to Cyrannus gives Cancerans a somewhat darker complexion than their Colonial compatriots. They have no particular affinity or aversion to military service, and are represented to the extent their population supports.

Regions

Players are encouraged to add their own write-ups. If you'd like to add to something already listed, please speak with the player who created the region.

Nakah Valley

Created in the wake of abolishment of the indentured servitude of felons serving their time at Canceron, Nakah Valley is a constructed welfare community designed for the families of first and second generation slave-miners. Located in the subarctic belt of Canceron's northern pole, the valley was originally meant to be a carefully-organized and monitored low-income housing project, full of cheap double-wide trailers and the occasional cinderblock high-rise apartment building. The latter came to be true, and due to politics and other funding issues, the projects quickly became a slum and ghetto.

Nakah Valley is located near Nakah City, which was founded to be a major industrial center for tylium processing. It is mostly a dirty, bleak place with neon lights that cut through the dust and snow, giving it an unearthly, multicolored halo at night.

Contact: Khloe

Kirtland City

Built around one of the larger Tylium mines on Canceron, this is a sprawling city of nearly fifty thousand people where almost the entirety of the local business is dedicated towards mining directly or the support of the families involved. Much of the town is considered to be low income housing in either trailers or small, decrepit apartment blocks. The western edge of town is where most of the well-off families lived. Separated by a small commercial area, this section was populated by the people who handled management positions at the mine or were directly involved with the corporation that owned the mine - Helios Mining Consortium.

Kirtland City is located on roughly the same latitudes as the Nakah Valley but is located about ninety miles west. This high altitude town (Elevation: 7200 ft.) is built at the base of a small mountain ridgeline that the mine digs deep into and has snaked all over the area. Its a generally nice area with thick forests in the surrounding lands and lakes dotting the base of the mountains from snowmelt in the summer months.

Contact: Vandenberg

Hades

The largest population center on the most populous planet in the Twelve Colonies, the capital city was named with the most optimistic of intentions. In addition to being the God of the underworld, Hades was also the God of wealth, and the abundance of Canceron's mines (especially the seemingly bottomless tylium reserves) was thought to herald a new golden age for the world. Hades was constructed to be the metropolitan capital of a forward looking colony, with large blocks of low income housing aimed at improving the standard of living among the tightly packed masses.

But as the saying goes: the road to downtown Hades is paved with good intentions. The vast majority of the wealth became concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority- or else was transferred off world into the pockets of Caprican and Libran investors. The government sponsored free housing devolved into slums where vice took ready root.

Hades is among the most densely populated places in all the Twelve Colonies, where wages are low, jobs are hotly contested, and the only reason for many to remain is that few can afford to leave the public housing. Education- while provided for free, is often left incomplete, as children commonly enter the workforce as soon as they are old enough to do an adult's work. At the last census, less than 25 percent of Hades' population had graduated from secondary school (with a slightly higher percentage of girls graduating than boys). In recent years, families have become increasingly divided as a family's primary breadwinner will leave the city to pursue higher wages, sending their pay back to the rest of the family who remains in Hades.

Despite the financial depression in the capital, it was seen as a mark of tremendous shame to draw welfare or unemployment pay.

Contact: Constin

Cultural Details & RP Hooks

  • Some of the people from the northern hemisphere of Canceron are known for their fiery dispositions and propensity to argue or fight. A lot of the former forced labor camps and mines were located in this region and some of the people decided to stay. It has developed its own hardy culture where people are expected to stick through almost anything with nary a grunt to get past it. Recent movie and television productions have tried to exploit this with some heavy bruisers and scrappy fellows representing this area. The locals don't necessarily resent the representations, either. They are generally a proud people who value hard work and dedication though the overly poor areas are known for splintered families. One scene on PHD #433 captured the feeling of the area that Vandenberg and Constin are from (Kirtland City, etc mining towns) and is available for reading here.
  • While Colonial Standard is the official language of Canceron, many of the mining communities speak an accented slang laced with quite a few colorful turns of phrase. It developed with the miners and spread through quite a few of the smaller towns. Many have their own variants or specific phrasing. The accent is most closely related to that of New Zealand ('Kiwi' accent) but is a mash-up of Kiwi and Australian. For those unfamiliar with it, D'Anna Biers (Number Three) from the BSG TV Series carries the accent as her actress (Lucy Lawless) is from New Zealand. Major Kendra Shaw (played by Aussie actress Stephanie Jacobsen in BSG: Razor) also has an accent to match. Many of the slang terms can be referenced here. It would not be improper to use Australian terms or phrasing, either. Players should feel free to use this to their heart's content or ignore it or somewhere in between.
  • Many of the mining towns around the northern poles, in addition to carrying external reputations, have their own internal reputations. With splintered families, many broken homes saw the children seek out others and their families for the support they needed. Therefore its not uncommon for persons from these areas to refer to each other as 'brother' or 'sister', which is distinct in its colloquial use from the address for religious leaders due to inflections of respect for religion. For someone from these areas to use this form of address for another that is not from northern Canceron is often considered high praise and a sign of very hard-won respect.
  • Some of the mining communities around Canceron (certainly not all) that depended on indentured servitude and/or prisoner labor were located in isolated areas closer to the poles - Kirtland City is one example of this. These towns were created as loose camps and prisons (lightly guarded due to the unlikelihood of successful escape for prisoners) where-by those living there would work the mines for extremely short wages and still be provided some semblance of a life. With the natural urge for most to have a family, these workers would unwittingly also marry themselves to the land and their jobs. With their service at an end, most of the people in these towns could not afford to leave and it created a cycle that trapped many families there and thus shifted the burden of crimes onto generations of descendants.
  • Not all indentured servants were sent to work mines. For those who had something like a less-substantial debt paydown (or other non-violent requirements) there were options that could be provided. Contract agencies on Canceron, sanctioned by the colony government, would provide servants work, with wages, to those who needed it. These jobs were usually menial tasks such as custodial work but could vary widely depending on the skills of the servant and the work requirements. This work could be done almost anywhere on Canceron - from the coastal cities to the harshest mining towns. Where an indentured servant was sent was outside their control once the contracts were signed, though.

Canceran PCs

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License