Author's description:
A game about social hierarchy told through the life of a penal colony, using the tools of savagery, desperation, and servility.
Far beyond the edge of civilization lies an indifferent planet orbiting a dying K-spectrum star. A hurried initial survey pronounced it habitable. This evidence, plus its great distance from anything of worth or note, made it an ideal candidate for a penal colony.
There would, certain politicians reasoned, be no need for walls. Escape would be impossible. Convicts would, in building their new home, rebuild themselves. They would thrive or they would perish, and either outcome was equally satisfying. And if this furthest outpost of empire was a place where convicts could be safely forgotten, what of their jailers? The sort of men drawn to such an assignment by inclination or circumstance were best forgotten as well.
1500 convicts and 300 officials, civilians, Marines and hangers-on comprised the first colonists. The journey took 250 days.
The survey was wrong.