Every planet has some wilderness out there. Even Earth has her fair share of them. It’s where I grew up, and I still own a plot of land there. No house, but one day I’ll rest there in my family’s field of stones. In the meantime, I really love going to new wildernesses on new worlds and seeing new views. There’s so much beauty out there in the worlds, so much we’ve never imagined could be. It’s amazing.
Despite rigorous controls, pregnancies happened. And though they were healthy and fit, the colonists lost five mothers and their children to Novaya Rodina. So their leaders initiated draconian policies to save the colony, including forced abortions. Those deaths haunt Novaya Rodina to this day, and they have more hospitals and doctors per capita now than any other planet. Children are precious to them, no matter the nationality, and all who need it will find help.
Before we arrived, the Five Nations of the Iroquois fought a massive war from the modern New York State to the Illinois Federation, against other Indians and the French. The Iroquois won. When we colonized Pennsylvania, the Iroquois were the preeminent power in North America. We were eager to secure another ally against the French, and so we traded with them. The alliance we forged changed the future of the world.
I love the Indian colonies. American Indian, not Indian Indian. Not that I don’t like the Indian Indians, but I’m rambling now. Point is, I like visiting the Indian worlds. They were involved in a lot of the early colonies, but didn’t start doing their own worlds until after Contact. That made them younger, less industrial, and the Shang rarely targeted them. They survived all but unscathed, and I love just taking time to watch the suns rise in the wilderness.
Novaya Rodina was so inhospitable to human life, though still technically capable of supporting it, the Russians could only send their most physically fit, hardiest citizens on the colony mission. They didn’t pick simply healthy people like other nations. They sent paragons of physical hardiness that could survive in even the harshest environments imaginable. Of course imagination fell short of reality on Novaya Rodina.