How We Got Here

Some time ago, the U.E.S. Unfettered Ambition went out on an interstellar exploration mission. Finding the Kaywell system first, and already low on supplies and morale due to budget cuts, they frantically searched for a place to set up shop.

Only problem was, well... The U.E.S. team had failed to account for just how big the universe really is.

All of their rocket designs had been designed for worlds 5-10 times smaller than what they are here! The Kerbin they knew was around 1,500 kilometers in size.

Shol and Tyepolbynar, gas giants, lacked a surface to live on. Neither had habitable moons.

Mesbin, the next planet out, was a dense, airless rock, and though one of its moons, Kerbmun, had a breathable atmosphere and comfortable gravity, it was just too big to reasonably inhabit!

Derbin, Mesbin's far-out binary partner, was also too large, and had uncomfortably high gravity.

On and on the UES team searched, hoping to find a world that was hospitable, but not huge.

They glossed over Egad for lacking water, Reander for being too far out, and the Gemmemma system, due to it possibly being a flare star.

In between Mesbin-Derbin and Egad, there was Valyr, a massive ocean world, where they found themselves orbiting.

With the windows closed for cleaning, the kerbals onboard discussed where they would end up staying.

One camp, for Kerbmun, had gathered in the aft section of the ship. The other camp, wanting to keep searching, was in the fore section.

Fatigued after several long months of searching, the crew had neglected to check where their orbit would take them.

The ground proximity alarms started going off, and they felt a sudden, strengthening atmospheric force upon their ship, before...

CRASH!!!

The lucky ones who survived took stock of what had happened. Smashing into the ice at 5 kilometers per second, most of the ship and more than half the crew were obliterated.

Propulsion was gone, habitation was damaged, power was barely salvageable. Much of the onboard data banks were able to be recovered, as well as a copy of the mainframe computer.

Looking out of the windows, some cracked, others bent out of place, these plucky voyagers found themselves on a foreign world.

Oshan was not the world they needed, but the one they deserved- I mean, could make work.

With 0.3 gees, and 0.03 atmospheres of pressure, its surface left a lot to be desired. The ice and oceans underneath, however, were protected from Kaywell's harsh rays. Doing their best to preserve the under-ice ecosystems, they built habitats, helped each other out, and slowly, surely, started to thrive once more.

It has been quite a few Kerbin years since that fateful crash, enough for generations to live and die, and for groups to form, split apart, and come together again.

With the kerbals of Oshan united under a coalition of trade unions, free associations, and cooperatives, the Union of Oshanian Syndicates has the green-light to look skyward once more.

An Anarcho-Syndicalist federation of sorts, the UOS maintains a decentralized, multi-level democratic system, bolstered by extensive safety nets and civil liberties. Menial labor is automated where it can be, and workers given the best equipment and conditions possible otherwise. Wage labor and scarcity have nearly been relegated to the past, along with nationalism and militarism - The UOS is cosmopolitan, multicultural, and open-minded, just like the international movement that birthed the Unfettered Ambition. We shall go to the stars again, for science, peace, prosperity, and hopefully making life better on this ice-ball.

The space centers of old Kerbin had a peculiar and particular shape, one which just felt natural. Thus, near the city of New Briztol, on Oshan's equator, the main planetary space center would be built, surface installations supported on algae-based concrete and supplied by the city inside of and below the thick icesheet.

Crafted by the best available minds and brought out by pressure-suited forklift drivers, the Vertibird is ready to make that first hop towards the stars above.

==> Part 2

Go check out Whirligig World, the mod where this story takes place.

OSHAN STATISTICS: 0.359 G | 0.0305 atm, 56% Nitrogen, 40.96% Oxygen, 2% Water, 1% Neon, 0.04% Carbon Dioxide | 2644km Radius

Description courtesy of the Whirligig World mod: "Oshan was the first satellite of Valyr to be discovered, and the only one to be discovered non-telescopically. Oshan is bright and reflective, but so close to Valyr that it is usually hard to tell one apart from the other. It was discovered by Chriswayan Kerman, famous fictional world-builder and eccentric amateur astronomer. After conclusively determining that Oshan was in fact a satellite of Valyr, he purchased a large telescope in an attempt to observe the satellite. What he--and many astronomers after him as well--found, was a white world with dark spots of a reddish-brown color. He supposed that these were oceans of some reddish volatile fluid floating on a bright icy moon. Other astronomers proposed that it might be huge continents drifting across a frozen ocean--giving rise to Oshan's name."