When mankind swept out from the Core-worlds to the Rim, there was a land rush the likes of which had never been seen. More than two-dozen wildcat terraforming companies plied their trade in the world-rich reaches of the Rim. Every system that had a moon or planet that was enough like the Earth That Was was attacked by a small army of men and machines who toiled endlessly to transform barren, skyless chunks of rock into green, green hills – or as close as they could get. It took anywhere from twenty-five to seventy years or more to work their magic, using the titanic forces of the systems themselves to bring air, water, and heat to those small spinning rocks.

After throwing comets and asteroids around, trying to slow down or speed up rotation, heating or cooling to a comfortable range, introducing atmo and aqua, introducing flora and fauna, and then spending a decade tweaking the details, a new world would come that a man might stand under its sky without a helmet or protective suit – naked, under the sun, as he once did on Earth That Was.

Once a man could live on the surface of a world naked, for one year, then the world was deemed ready for Colonial Inspection. After a ten-year independent survey period, during which the world was measured and scrutinized in detail, from astral mechanics to genetic minutiae, and it was found to be a sound habitat for humanity for at least five thousand years, it was eligible for Certification. That meant that the Terraforming company could turn into a Colonization company and start selling real estate. Lots of real estate. Usually, that initial rush of sales to speculators and investors was enough or more to pay for the immense costs of terraforming. But it didn’t end there. According to individual charter and applicable Colonial law, the Colonial company got to charge a 1% fee on the land, every time it changed hands. In perpetuity.

That means Forever.

That made the Terraforming companies among the richest of all corporations, in a ‘verse dominated by rich