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The Helios System is the planetary system orbiting a titular yellow dwarf in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. It is the most politically and historically important system in Vangelia, containing the country’s executive-legislative capital and birthplace of humanity, Earth. It is also a major commerce hub, standing at the only intersection of the Spine and Savarian Arch, two starways linking the farthest corners of Vangelian space to one another.

The system is one of the most populous in Vangelia, containing 11 billion people. It supports such a figure through a multitude of neighboring stations, worlds, and systems, which constitute the Greater Helios astropolitan area. Alone, the Helios System accounts for 44% of the 25 billion people in Greater Helios and 30% of the 38 billion in the Helios Region.

History

Prehistory

Helios formed 4.6 billion years ago from an interstellar molecular cloud. 60 million years later, the first planet around the star came to be, Jupiter. Saturn, the ice giants, and the terrestrials were quick to follow it. The system had two more planets at the time, but one was destroyed in a collision while the other was ejected. Earth developed a biosphere some 3.5 billion years ago, the first one in the Helios System. A second biosphere appeared 60 million years ago in the small Saturnian moon of Enceladus.

The Polbbesh visited the Helios System 40 million years ago. Inspecting Earth, they were quite fascinated by their similarity to swifts, a clade of extremely aerial birds. Though they left the planet’s ecosystems practically untouched, they took a variety of animal, plant, and prokaryotic specimens, including swifts. The Polbbesh then seeded a distant planet, Cypselus, with their collection of Earthen organisms, kicking off ecological succession therein. After the Polbbesh went extinct, Cypselus was all that remained of their creations, as well as the only non-anthropogenic instance of Earth life in another world.

Humans evolved 300,000 years ago. Slowly but surely, they built a technologically advanced civilization.

Human Colonization

Humans sent probes to survey the Helios System in the 20th and early 21st centuries CE. From the 2,040s CE onwards, they began to establish permanent settlements on worlds like Selene, Mars, and Callisto. Over ten thousand lived beyond Earth by the 22nd century CE. They were citizens of different Earthen countries, mainly the Arab Coalition, China, Europe, Indo-Iran, Russia, South Africa, and the United States (US). For the most part, these countries invested in the living standards of their colonies, ensuring their space populations were healthy and dedicated to humanity’s spacefaring mission. Meanwhile, China and the US sought to militarize and, if need be, expand their colonies into areas belonging to other countries. Diplomacy prevented a majority of border disputes from escalating.

In the 2,190s CE, China and the US left a series of international space treaties. They ramped up the militarization of their colonies and threatened to invade neighboring ones, claiming their metropoles ran low on resources. They were offered aid, but turned down each time. Indo-Iran, Russia, and South Africa were thus prompted to arm their colonies as a deterrent against Sino-American aggression. The Arab Coalition and Europe tried to negotiate before realizing it was more practical to join the arms race.

In 2,200 CE, the US and its North American allies merged into the North American Union (NAU), an economic and military superpower. That same year, China and the NAU founded the Sino-American Axis (SAA), putting their arms competitors on high alert. In 2,224 CE, the SAA attacked European and South African colonies on Selene and Mars, which then responded by defending themselves. Appalled, other powers demanded that China and the NAU end their offensive. However, both countries refused, suggesting, to the international community, that only the deployment of nuclear warheads would stop the SAA. A wave of anti-war riots soon engulfed Earth, plunging entire regions into anarchy and forcing governments to move towards safer locations.

Great Armageddon

After a year of strife and uncertainty, the commanders-in-chief of the Arab Coalition, Europe, Indo-Iran, Russia, and South Africa openly declared war on the SAA. Missiles, troops, and vehicles moved across borders, killing hundreds of thousands in a matter of days. Nuclear weapons were made a last resort, but attritional fighting and millions of deaths precipitated their usage. Between 2,225 and 2,226 CE, hundreds of atomic missiles fell on the Earthen continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, further raising the death toll and contaminating vast swathes of land with radiation. Subsequent conflagrations filled the planet’s atmosphere with soot, beginning a long and devastating nuclear winter.

Reconstruction

Tristate Era

Vangelian Rule

Astrography

Composition

The Helios System has four terrestrial (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and four gaseous (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) planets. Between the two groups is an asteroid belt, and beyond Neptune is the system’s Kuiper belt, which hosts remarkably large dwarf planets.

Planets

Position	Name	Image	Diameter	Population	Description
1st	Mercury		4,879 km	62,193	Mercury is the smallest and second hottest planet in the Helios System. Its crust, over thousands of years, has been extensively mined for its high amount of metals and minerals, so much so that it is now partially hollow.
2nd	Venus		12,103 km	TBA	TBA
3rd	Earth	File:Earth (Lone Horizon).jpg	12,742 km	3 billion	Earth is the most important of the two Vangelian capital worlds as well as the system's seat of government. Its moon, Selene, is one of the primary agriworlds in the Helios Region.
4th	Mars		6,778 km	8.7 billion	Mars is the most populous world in the Helios System. It was terraformed by humans 4,500 years ago and served as Vangelia's executive capital prior to the resettling of Earth. It is the holiest world in Islam, being home to the Shifa Mushriq Mosque.
5th	Jupiter		139,822 km	584,372	Jupiter is the largest planet in the Helios System. Taking into account operations both within its atmosphere and over at its moons, it is the most heavily mined of the four local gas worlds; major Jovian extracts include hydrogen, helium, sulfur, and water. The former two are obtained from the planetary atmosphere and the latter two, respectively, from Io and the dozens of icy moons beyond its orbit.
6th	Saturn		116,460 km	2.69 million	Saturn is the second largest planet in the Helios System. It is a popular resort world, tourists and vacationers enjoying the view of its rings from floating cities and low-orbit space stations. Planetside, the mining industry is fairly weak, but around Saturn's moons, it thrives on their abundance of volatiles and other chemicals. The largest Saturnian moon, Titan, is the only one in the Helios System with a thick, naturally occurring atmosphere.
7th	Uranus		50,724 km	TBA	TBA
8th	Neptune		49,244 km	TBA

Other Bodies

Notable non-planetary and non-lunar bodies in the Helios System include:

Ceres – The innermost dwarf planet, located within the asteroid belt. It processes all of the raw materials extracted from the belt, possessing hundreds of facilities dedicated to that job. It has 8,205 inhabitants, most of them workers.
Pluto – The largest dwarf planet and Kuiper belt object. It has 11,854 inhabitants, who live off of the mining and exportation of local ice.

Stellar Neighborhood

Below is a list of notable stars within 30 light-years of the Helios System:

Alpha Centauri (4.2 lya) – The closest system, made up of a binary pair of a yellow and orange dwarf (Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman) as well as a singular red dwarf (Proxima). Proxima's second planet, Anglada, was the first extrasolar body stepped on by a human; the human was Karl Vangel, the posthumous namesake of Vangelia.
Ran (10.5 lya) – A yellow dwarf orbited by the gas giant Ægir.
Thallus (12 lya) – A yellow dwarf with ten planets. The sixth one, the gas dwarf Lamina, has primitive aerial life.
Gliese 667 (23.6 lya) – A trinary system like Alpha Centauri, but with its binary stars being both orange dwarfs. The third star features Abzu, an ocean world with a vibrant red color due to widespread native algae.

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 After a year of strife and uncertainty, the commanders-in-chief of the Arab Coalition, Europe, Indo-Iran, Russia, and South Africa openly declared war on the SAA. Missiles, troops, and vehicles moved across borders, killing hundreds of thousands in a matter of days. Nuclear weapons were made a last resort, but attritional fighting and millions of deaths precipitated their usage. Between 2,225 and 2,226 CE, hundreds of atomic missiles fell on the Earthen continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, further raising the death toll and contaminating vast swathes of land with radiation. Subsequent conflagrations filled the planet’s atmosphere with soot, beginning a long and devastating nuclear winter.
 ====Reconstruction====
-====Three States Era====
+====Tristate Era====
 ===Vangelian Rule===