Statistics:
Star System: Invictus
Astronomical Designation: Invictus d
Astronomical Name: Etrusca
Class: Class-E
Radius: 5612.6 km
Mass: 5524.3×1024 kg
Satellites: 2
Atmosphere: Oxygen-nitrogen
Population: 3.4 billion
Political Information:
Polity: Compact of Humanity in Assembly
Status: Core world
Government: Republic
Capital: Nova Roma (also called Nuvo Roma)
Etrusca is one of the Big Five core worlds in the Compact. Founded around 100 IE, humans first reached it during Marcus Dazar’s pioneering projection-drive flight to Invictus c. He then made a burn for the fourth planet, a classic Earthlike world, and claimed the entire planet for himself. There, he and his business partner, Jermaine Tolbert, founded Etrusca, after a pre-Roman civilization upon which the later republic and empire was modeled. A huge fan of all things Roman, he designed his new colony to be a modern, more democratic version of the Roman Republic, making Latin its official language. Dazar changed his name to Marcus Dasarius while Tolbert adopted the Latinized “Tol Germanicus.” They also founded Dasarius Interstellar on the new world. As the Roman god of the sun was “Sol Invictus,” and Earth’s sun already had the name Sol, Dasarius called Etrusca’s star “Invictus.”
Because Etrusca could only be reached by projection drive or, later, hypergate (another Dasarius technology), Etrusca had been independent of Earth from the start. As a result, it emerged untouched by the Earth-Mars War, but readily joined the new Compact that rose as a result.
Dasarius also laid out five sections of the planet to pattern themselves after successors to the Republic: Byzantia, which would initially adopt customs derived from the post-Roman Eastern Empire; Abyssinia, in honor of Moorish claims to Roman succession; Novaya Rossiya, after Zosimus’s assertion Moscow was the third Rome; and Europa, which locally followed the pre-Interstellar Era European Union, which Dasarius considered, along with America, Rome’s last successor.
Etrusca has large ship-building facilities and counts FTL manufacturing, research, and supply as its largest industries. Citizens speak Neo-Latin, a modern version of the vulgar Latin Dasarius adopted for his new colony in 107. Humanic is spoken as a major second language. The Etruscan Orthodox Church, essentially a transplanted Roman Catholic Church, serves as the major religion among non-seculars, though Byzantians favor the Athenian Orthodox faith, as do the Rus, while Abysinians practice a form of Islam now dominant on The Caliphate. About seventy percent of the population considers itself secular.
Etruscan housed Dasarius headquarters until 342, when CEO Claudius Dasarius bought the city of Tacoma on Earth and converted it. His daughter, Tessa, kept the headquarters there as late as 435, but the elder Dasarius returned in disgrace to Etrusca.
Etrusca’s star system has two asteroid belts, one prone to piracy incidents. It also, until 430, had the only known stable wormhole, the Yaphit Pass, between the Compact and Thule, which effectively ceded the latter world from the Compact when the Pass collapsed.