$W{ SOL
From the Encyclopedia Galactica (Ising University of Antares ed., January 2399) $}

STELLAR CLASS: G2V
MASS: 1 Solar mass
PLANETS: 8
INHABITED: 4 inhabited planets (Earth, Mars, Venus, Mercury)
OTHER MAJOR SETTLEMENTS: 8 (Luna, Ceres, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Enceladus, Triton)
NODE CONNECTIONS (2398): Delta Serpentis (via Ishtar Portal)

GOVERNMENT TYPE: Semi-presidential, hybrid regime
HEAD OF GOVERNMENT (2399): Premier Chan Wing-Dek
CAPITAL: Singapore (Earth)
POPULATION: 25,920,000,000 (2399 est.)
LANGUAGES: English (official), Mandarin Chinese, Hindi-Urdu, Swahili, Spanish, Standard Arabic, over 200 others

SETTLED: 2119-4-24 (Mars), 2150-7-4 (Jovian system), 2159-2-28 (Saturnian system), 2190-3-1 (Neptunian system), 2351-5-10 (Mercury mining facilities), 2380-10-10 (Venus atmo-colonies)

Sol is the home system of Humanity.  The cultural and historical influence of Sol over Terrans remains enormous, even as two generations have grown up since the Lucifer catastrophe and the end of the First Great War.

Culturally, Sol is divided into three major groups: Earthers, Martians, and Jovians. The governance of each world is treated separately in individual planetary articles.  Earth and Luna are made up of a dizzying array of ethnicities, languages, religions and cultures, the product of millennia of organic cultural development.  As the old joke goes, "three Earthers, four opinions".  The relatively small Mercury and Venus outposts, settled by Earthers in the 2300s, are still under Earthgov administration and remain part of Earth's cultural sphere.

Martians exhibit a strong Latin American and collectivist influence.  The original settlers were recruited from the Andes Mountains in South America, due to acclimation to living in lower-oxygen environments.  Even 200 years after initial colonization, oxygen levels in major Martian settlements remain equivalent to 2000 meters elevation on Earth.  The Martian tendency towards collectivism reflects the hardships of the early years, where often a habitat would live or die together in the event of a breach.  Martian stoicism in the face of adversity is legendary, as is their laconic wit.

Jovians, on the other hand, are friendly to outsiders but slow to trust.  Unlike Earthers and Martians, Jovians are far more likely to rely on close personal connections than to put faith in institutions, governmental or otherwise.  The saying that "a Jovian will give you directions to anywhere but their home", has a very strong basis in truth.  EA sociologists' consensus is that these traits are derived from the Jovian socioeconomic system, which is controlled by a tight-knit web of intermarried oligarchs. Unsurprisingly, individuals and patronage networks dominate Jovian politics, not parties and ideologies.

Each of the three major population clusters is tied to an individual planetary government. The illiberal democracy of Earthgov, the neo-socialist Martian Hegemony, and the oligarchic Transjovian Despotate are theoretically bound together in one body politic known as the Earth Alliance. To outsiders, the Earth Alliance is a finely-oiled machine, with each of its component parts operating in lockstep.  The EA central government goes to great lengths to project a united front.  But deep ideological and political rifts still exist within the EA, even if such disagreements rarely see the light of day. A common Solar maxim is that the absence of elections is not the absence of politics. 