Firetown is an ExoHuman settlement in the Ralar Region of VOI 700 D. Established on February 17, 2627 under the Human Settlement Plan (HSP), it became the planet’s sole Dark Side outpost. Powered by the nearby Geothermal Power Plant and anchored by the Copper Mine, Firetown grew as an industrial hub. After the Great War (Mar 2629–Jan 2631) and the subsequent Peace Treaty, the town’s expansion was curtailed, restricting new industrial ventures beyond its existing facilities.

Set under perpetual night, the air here stings with frost and copper dust; steam seeps from vents as if the town itself were breathing, and in the thin dark every clang and laugh carries beyond the basalt walls. In the early Beta Age, Firetown felt improvised and unstable—torchlight and barrel fires licking at snow-wet stone while ship-relic neon buzzed above doors; black-market stalls pressed right up against official signs, making survival and sin hard to tell apart.

• Population (2635 census): 5 000
• Founding Date: February 17, 2627
• Primary Industries: Geothermal energy, copper extraction, convict labor operations (Gamma Age only)

Perched at the base of the Ralar Volcano at 500 m elevation, Firetown endures perpetual darkness and frigid temperatures (~–25 °C). Volcanic vents supply steam to the Geothermal Power Plant, enabling limited habitation. The settlement is linked to New Kourou via the Trade Route traversing volcanic plains and ice fields.

Firetown functioned as a work camp rather than a town. Population fluctuated by project phase and ore yield; most residents were short-term adult workers on rotating contracts.

• Households & Children: Not designed for families. Only a handful of children lived here at any time (<2% of residents). No public school existed; tutoring and ad-hoc lessons were arranged privately.
• Gender & Tenure: Male-skewed workforce (≈70–80% men). Typical stays ran 6-12 months before rotation back to New Kourou, Hope, Morningstar or Arla Town.
• Workforce Mix: Dominated by industrial & energy workers (mine, copper plant, geothermal). A small cadre handled security, with a thin administrative core and a modest layer of logistics and services (hostels, saloons, market stalls). Alongside them lived gamblers, fortune-seekers, artists, and black-market traders drawn by Firetown’s lawless glow — the first to turn the settlement’s night into a business of chance, song, and survival.
• Automation footprint: Service Bots were ubiquitous and often outnumbered humans on shift; many “residents” were actually docked bots in charging bays.

By policy, Firetown is a child-free reservation. Workers arrive alone; GAIA preferentially assigns posts to citizens without dependents. Residence permits for minors are not issued (emergency transit only).

• Population Pattern: High turnover; typical assignments last months rather than years.
• Workforce Mix: Still centered on industrial & energy roles (Federal Copper Plant, mine, geothermal), with a larger security & corrections presence (Local Sheriff inside town and mine; Federal Security Guards at the prison). Logistics, civic/admin, and tightly regulated services (canteen, hostel & saloon, sewing, funeral, permitted venues) round out the remainder.
• Risk Factors: Split jurisdiction and rapid staff churn sustain a shadow economy and persistent corruption exposure.

In the Beta Age, formal parties hadn’t arrived yet. Firetown’s public life played out in crowded assembly rooms where survivors of the Last Frontier argued their way toward tomorrow. People carried two memories at once: the sleek comfort of shipboard high-tech life and the horror of the crash that stole families and futures. That mix bred a frontier temperament — grim, grateful, and fiercely optimistic. Decisions were hammered out by who showed up, who could fix the next problem, and who could keep the furnaces running. Votes often followed the loudest case and the most convincing plan. It felt less like politics and more like staking a claim on a hostile world — improvised, pragmatic, and driven by the belief that, despite the darkness, Firetown could be built.

Firetown is a bastion of the Individualist Party, consistently electing Individualist mayors since the Federal Confederation’s founding. Communard candidates receive negligible support.

• Local government: Annually elected Contact Person of Firetown
• Local law enforcement: Guarding Troopers garrison

The Contact Person mediated disputes and spoke for Firetown before New Kourou’s Settler’s Council. Guarding Troopers patrolled the rings and manned the watchtowers.

• Local government: Office of the Mayor of Firetown (Individualist Party)
• Local law enforcement: Local Sheriff’s Office of Firetown

Firetown is a crucible of heat and motion beneath eternal night. The air stings with frost and copper dust, while steam seeps from vents as if the town itself were breathing. Across the settlement, torchlight and neon merge into one restless glow, spilling from doors, vents, and barrel fires blazing at nearly every corner. Power lines and Courier Drones hum overhead, roofs sag under frost, and ship-relic neon tubes buzz above workshops, saloons, and hostels alike — a constant shimmer of artificial life holding back the cold, accentuated by the torch-lit ramparts of the so-called “Burning Wall,” Firetown’s colloquial Town Wall.

Even the industrial quarters — the Copper Plant, the Relay Station, and the Copper Mine gates — shine with scattered color: red, blue, and green reflections cast from the saloons and hotels of the Public Services Ring. The scent of oil, sweat, and spiced liquor drifts through every street — a mixture of survival and sin that defines the town’s pulse.

The Entertainment District forms Firetown’s beating heart — a more feverish echo of what the whole town already is. Barrel fires burn hotter, neon shines brighter, and voices rise rougher. Tumbling dice, pulsing music, and the burn of Red Dwarf Firewater promise escape from duty and cold alike. What happens here, stays here — an unspoken pact sealed in smoke-filled backrooms and torch-lit booths.

But every bright glow casts a deeper shadow. Beneath the carnival flicker wait pickpockets at the tables, crooked dealers in the card parlors, and bar fights that erupt faster than the Ralar Volcano. Shows play beside whispered deals; camaraderie and betrayal share the same table, and love and vice mix in the shimmer of fire and neon. In Firetown, the hardest work may be simply staying human.

Firetown feels like a fire that has burned down to embers. The town that once roared with light and laughter now flickers in fragments — a stray torch here, a broken neon tube there, struggling against the ice that has claimed its streets. The air still carries the metallic tang of copper dust, but it’s muted now, softened by frost and time. Steam no longer roars from the vents; it sighs, curling through alleys where the wind moans louder than the people.

The torch-and-neon shimmer that once defined the town has dimmed to patches of color trembling in the cold. The red ghost of Saloon Gloria, the faint blue trace of Fire Bill, and the pale green glimmer of the Dark Side Hotel still mark the Entertainment Ring, but the glow feels nostalgic — a heartbeat slowed, not extinguished. Barrel fires burn low, fed by habit rather than celebration; their smoke smells less of spiced liquor and more of rust and exhaustion.

Inside the martial embrace of the Town Wall, order has replaced chaos, but not life. Hand-cranked spotlights atop the watchtowers sweep the streets like tired eyes, casting long, cold shadows across shuttered doors and empty squares. Where music and laughter once spilled into the night, there is the clank of patrol boots, the murmur of ration queues, and the distant hum of the Federal Copper Plant — steady, unfeeling, and eternal.

Beneath this layer of regulation, Firetown’s old defiance still smolders. In hidden corners behind Saloon Gloria or under the storage decks of the Federal Hostel and Saloon, whispers persist — trades, bribes, secret gatherings. The black market glows faintly like coals in ash, proof that the town’s spirit never fully yielded to ice or authority.

Walking Firetown’s streets in the Gamma Age is to feel the echo of warmth that’s no longer there — the laughter, the music, the danger, all reduced to memory. The embers still glow, but they no longer burn. The ice has won, yet the fire remembers.

Firetown is laid out in a six-ring, concentric pattern established by the Human Settlement Plan. Two principal axes — Solidarity Street (formerly West–East Road) and Equality Avenue (formerly North–South Road) — transect the rings, forming four quadrants. Each outer ring (all except the Central Core) is circled by a continuous Ring Road bearing that ring’s name, all linked via Solidarity Street and Equality Avenue to ensure efficient movement even in the deep cold.

Under the Federal Settlement Plan (Gamma Age), Firetown’s ring scheme was formalized and standardized:

• Main Axes Renamed: Solidarity Street and Equality Avenue were officially adopted to express communal unity.
• Material Continuity Mandate: New and replacement structures continue to use locally quarried volcanic stone with insulated interiors; no mycelium composites are employed given the harsh Dark Side conditions.

Firetown’s addresses use a quadrant–street–number format:

• Quadrant Prefixes: SW, SE, NW, NE.
• Main Axes: Solidarity Street and Equality Avenue begin at 1 in the Central Core (e.g., Solidarity St 1, Equality Ave 1). Numbers increase outward along each axis (e.g., West Solidarity St 2, North Equality Ave 2).
• Ring Roads: Each outer ring’s road is named for its zone (e.g., Residential Ring Rd 3) and numbered sequentially along its circumference.
• Sequential Numbers: Properties along any street or ring road are numbered ascending in the direction of the quadrant, ensuring each address is unique and straightforward to navigate—even under perpetual darkness.

A warehouse on the northern arc of the Industrial Ring in the northeast quadrant would bear the address NE Industrial Ring Rd 5.

Firetown’s architecture was built to trap heat and defy the cold. The buildings are carved from dark volcanic rock, their surfaces scarred by decades of frost and corrosion. Copper veins and welded seams trace the facades.

Windows are no more than narrow slits, built to retain heat and conceal light, and the insulated interiors draw warmth from the network of recycled geothermal piping that threads along the streets.

Most roofs have been patched with salvaged tin and fractured composite plates, bowed under layers of rime and soot. Between the buildings, barrels with open fires stand as part of the architecture itself — improvised furnaces where settlers gather to warm their hands, trade stories, or watch the steam rise into the night.

Heavy metal doors and copper-reinforced gates guard entrances against the cold and whatever still moves in the dark.

• Beta Age: Local Community Center of Firetown
• Gamma Age: Office of the Mayor of Firetown

• Beta Age: Local Station of the Guarding Troopers Firetown
• Gamma Age: Office of the Local Sheriff of Firetown, Federal Library of Firetown

• Beta Age: Firetown Market, Firetown Courier Station, Pharmacy of Firetown, Medical Station of Firetown, Kittens from Space, Nebula Fight Arena, The Red Wheel, Saloon Gloria, Firetown Billiards Saloon (Fire Bill), Firetown Darts Club, Dark Side Hotel, German Imbiss, Rabbit`s Hole

• Gamma Age: Federal General Practitioner Practice of Firetown, Federal Canteen of Firetown, Funeral Home of Firetown, Federal Hostel and Saloon of Firetown, Federal Allotment Center of Firetown, Federal Courier Station of Firetown, Federal Sewing Shop of Firetown, Federal Library of Firetown, Firetown Bowling Alley, Firetown Darts Club, Saloon Gloria, Firetown Billard Saloon (Fire Bill), Firetown Post Headquarters (+ HQ of Individualist Party),

• Beta Age: Containers built close together without windows, connected to the geothermal system.
• Gamma Age: Same as in Beta Age

• Beta Age: Firetown Relay Station, Firetown Copper Plant Inc., Firetown Tool and Machine Works, Plant of the Firetown Garbage Collection Coop, Vasquez Forge, Bernado Metalworks, Santoro Forge, Ortega Smithy
• Gamma Age: Firetown Relay Station, Federal Copper Plant, Federal Garbage Collection Center, Federal Organic Waste Recycling Plant

• Beta Age: Copper Mine, Geothermal Power Plant, Firetown Tier 1 Energy Redistribution Node, Firetown Quantum Fusion Recalibration Station
• Gamma Age: Federal Prison, Federal Copper Mine, Federal Geothermal Power Plant, Firetown Tier 1 Energy Redistribution Node, Firetown Quantum Fusion Recalibration Station

Constructed for defense, the wall was later repurposed after the Peace Treaty to control movement and trade. Built from dense volcanic rock, it stands as both a physical and symbolic boundary — the line where fire met ice.

During the Beta Age, hundreds of torches and barrel fires lined the ramparts, fed day and night by workers and guards. Seen from afar, the wall blazed with orange and gold reflections, earning its enduring nickname: “The Burning Wall.” Travelers approaching from the Trade Route could see its glow long before reaching the gates — a beacon of warmth and civilization in the frozen wilderness, a lighthouse of flame against the eternal night.

In the Gamma Age, most of those flames have been replaced by hand-cranked spotlights mounted on the four corner watchtowers, their cold beams sweeping the darkness where torches once danced. Yet even now, isolated braziers and makeshift fires burn along the battlements — faint reminders of the heat and noise that once marked Firetown’s frontier spirit.

• Construction: Made of volcanic rock
• Height: 5 m high with metal spikes
• Main Gate: West, facing the Trade Route to New Kourou
• Secondary Gates: East, rail gate admits Hoos-drawn ore carts from the Copper Plant
• Watchtowers: Four, one per corner, in the Gamma Age, each is equipped with hand-crank spotlights

The Entertainment District of Firetown, located in the Western Public Services Ring, has a complex history shaped by the settlement’s unique challenges and socio-political transformations. Initially established before the Great War, it served as a recreational hub for workers of the Copper Plant, Copper Mine, and the Geothermal Power Plant.

In the Beta Age, the district blazed like the heart of a furnace in the frozen dark. Torchlight and ship-relic neon bathed the basalt streets in restless color. Barrel fires roared at every corner, their smoke curling into the steam that seeped from the geothermal vents above the cobbles.

The air smelled of spiced liquor, hot oil, and frost, thick enough to taste. Improvised wiring dangled between facades, buzzing with stolen current, while music and laughter spilled from every doorway. Roofs shimmered under rime and melting snow, dripping into puddles that reflected the glow of dice tables and dance lights.

Here, alcohol, gambling, and legal prostitution were not vices but rituals of survival — the exohuman answer to endless cold. Dealers and fortune-seekers worked side by side with miners, engineers, and guards; artists and wanderers performed for a few tokens or a hot drink. The district pulsed with risk and desire, its lights visible even from the outside of town — a promise that Firetown still lived, still burned, no matter how deep the ice.

After the Great War and the rise of the Communards in the Federal Council, the Entertainment District underwent significant reform. While acknowledging the need for recreational opportunities for workers assigned to Firetown's harsh conditions on the Dark Side, the Communards sought to align these offerings with the socio-economic principles of Communardism and the restrictive resource-management policies of the Peace Treaty.

Activities like prostitution, considered a “waste of valuable labor resources,” and monetary gambling, incompatible with the Allotment system, were officially banned. In their place, the Communards aimed to create a “positive recreational environment” emphasizing social gathering and workforce restoration.

With guidance from GAIA, the Entertainment District was redesigned to include:

• Federal Hostel and Saloon: The communal centerpiece for socializing and cultural activities - based on the regulations of the Federal Hostel and Saloon-System,
• Specially Permitted Venues: Saloon Gloria, Firetown Billiard (also known as “Fire Bill”), and the Firetown Darts Club were granted special permissions after successful advocacy by former Mayor James Mc Antie. These venues cater to the unique needs of Firetown's workforce and do not require advance booking like other Federal Saloons.
• Additional Facilities: A European-style bowling alley was established to promote social and recreational engagement.

Workers assigned to the Ralar Region by GAIA receive special Allotment Cards that allow weekly visits to the billiards, darts, or bowling facilities and entitle them to two drinks per day (only one of which may be alcoholic) at any of the permitted bars.

Cultural programming is mandatory for all establishments, with daily events such as music, readings, or performances selected and approved by GAIA to align with communal values.

Despite the official reforms, Firetown’s pervasive corruption has allowed a parallel, unofficial Entertainment District to thrive. Corruption within the local administration and the Local Sheriff’s office has created loopholes, enabling the continuation of illegal activities that defy Federal Confederation regulations.

This “shadow district” includes:

• Backrooms in Bars: Secret spaces within Saloon Gloria and other establishments are used for illegal gambling (primarily the card game Twenty One) and drug consumption, supplied by the Jane Mendoza Gang.
• Temporary Clubs and Strip Bars: Illicit venues occasionally appear, operating for brief periods before closing to avoid detection by the Federal Sheriff in New Kourou.
• Prostitution and Black Market Trade: These services persist, fueled by the settlement's isolation and the high demand among workers. Black market currency, Kourou, is the primary means of exchange in these underground transactions.

As one of the three officially sanctioned venues, Saloon Gloria has become a cornerstone of both the official and unofficial Entertainment Districts. While maintaining its formal obligations under Communard regulations — such as limited drink consumption and cultural programming — it also serves as a hub for the Jane Mendoza Gang's operations. Through bribes and intimidation, the gang has ensured that their activities, including drug distribution and recruitment, are tolerated by the corrupt local authorities.

The dual existence of an official and shadow Entertainment District highlights the challenges the Federal Confederation faces in asserting control over Firetown. While the official district strives to embody Communard values, the persistence of illegal activities underscores the settlement's rebellious and resourceful spirit, reflecting the struggles and complexities of life on the Dark Side.

Beneath the surface of the industrial city, there is a kind of shadow world in Firetown. Because unlike New Kourou, Morningstar, or Hope, Federal Confederation laws never really took hold on the only reservation on the Dark Side.

This can be seen, firstly, in the fact that the political orientation in Firetown is mainly “Individualist”. On the other hand, there is not only a large black market in Firetown, but also a high level of corruption and secret alliances with Outlaw-Gangs like the Jane Mendoza Gang.

The reasons for this are complex. It can be observed that loyalty to the Federal Council decreases abruptly for many citizens when they are transferred from GAIA to Firetown, e.g. to work in the mine, in the power plant or as a Deputy for the Local Sheriff. This makes them susceptible to populists who reject the system of Communardism as well as Outlaws and the lure of illegal activity.In addition, Firetown is also more difficult to control by the official bodies of the Federal Confederation. This is because New Kourou is far away and many official institutions in Firetown are riddled with corruption.

However, this problem is only really visible at second glance or when you know where to look and what to look out for.

It takes place beneath the surface.

• Longevity’s Shadow – In the early Beta Age, a deadly new drug called “Longevity” sweeps through Firetown’s Entertainment District, promising endless stamina for all-night revelry. After two Copper Mine workers, a Saloon Gloria courtesan, and a Firetown Courier Service rider all die under mysterious circumstances, the local Guarding Troopers are stumped. They discreetly enlist the PCs to infiltrate taverns, interrogate dealers, and trace the drug’s tainted supply chain — before more victims fall prey to Longevity’s fatal promise …

• Timber, Talons & Trade: The notorious Jane Mendoza Gang, masters of the Firetown black market in the neighbouring Ralar Region, has begun smuggling contraband into Morningstar. After two anonymous threats and a sabotaged mycelium vat, the Local Sheriff requests backup; the Federal Sheriff deputises the PCs to slip in under cover as forestry auditors. Their mission: trace the supply chain, identify the gang’s front-operator, and shut the operation — while avoiding Mendoza’s armed fixers and the political fallout of exposing Communard officials who may be on the take. Succeed, and Morningstar’s fragile economy stays clean; fail, and the settlement becomes the gang’s newest black-market outpost, undermining federal control over the Atrana frontier.

• VOI 700 D
• Dark Side
• Ralar Region

Gamma Age

• The Gamma Age
• The Federal Confederation
• Communardism
• The Federal Settlement Plan
• Exohuman Settlements in the Gamma Age
• Exohuman Settlement and Housing Conditions in the Gamma Age

Beta Age

• Beta Age
• Free State of Settlers
• Human Settlement Plan
• Exohuman Settlements in the Beta Age
• Exohuman Settlement and Housing Conditions in the Beta Age

Exohuman settlements:

• Arla Town (Asari Region | Beta Age only)
• New Kourou (Asari Region)
• Firetown
• Hope (Asari Region)
• Morningstar (Asari Region)