”Paradise” Whoever named this rock had a terrible sense of humor. A dustball world on the edge of the frontier, Paradise is as close to what the Humans call "hell" as I've ever seen. The infernal dust which blankets the world is jagged, sharp and clingy. Paradise was a young world, and her soil was that of a young world, fresh and new, untouched by wind and water and time. The Humans, so hasty to explore, conquer and terraform, didn't bother to plant vegetation, or fix the soil, thinking they could rely on their technology to replace nature. And when it turned out that combining an atmosphere with young soil and almost no plant life to hold it down created a world choked in abrasive dust storms by day, and freezing, sucking mud at night, they left. But the Humans can't stand to lose, not arguments, not wars, and especially not money. So they took their failure, and bent it to a new purpose. Paradise, once intended to be the desert jewel of the Frontier, became a penal colony for dissidents, subversives, and unruly xenos. The dust, the damn dust that once foiled Humanity where none of us could, was now their greatest ally. It destroys machines, slipping into the cracks and grinding the works away to nothing. Vehicles, power armor, weapons, electronics, all but the most simple and the toughest devices rendered useless by mere dust. Paradise needs no guards, no orbital defense platforms, no patrol fleet. The dust will keep anyone from ever building the means to get off this world. There is only one way off Paradise: the maintaince crews who come to service the oxygen and ozone generators. Their ships are built off-world, specially designed to resist the dust. If a clever man could get his hands on one of those ships, why he might just get off Paradise. But it wouldn't be easy. I've been telling this tale for 40 years, and I've never seen the man that could do it. But who knows... maybe YOU could..."

The year is 2778, and Humanity rules the known Galaxy with an iron fist under the not-so-tender auspices of the Unified Systems Protectorate, a meta-corporate entity which controls almost all trade within known space. For more than 500 years, the Protectorate has been an unstoppable juggernaut, crushing all who oppose it, subjugating alien races, dismantling governments, and rooting out dissidence and subversion. But the Protectorate is a victim of its own success. With no external enemies to fight, and economic competition replaced by corporate warfare and assigned monopolies, the Protectorate has been culturally and technologically stagnant for nearly 300 years. Crippled by lack of progress, wracked with infighting between its smaller corporations, and rotted to the core by byzantine politics, nepotism and petty aristocratic rivalries, the mighty Systems Protectorate is a slowly dying behemoth.

Sensing the beast’s impending doom, numerous groups have risen to pick at the corpse. Chief among them in notoriety and numbers is the Galactic Liberation Front. Terrorists, freedom fighters or thugs, depending on who’s telling the tale, the GLF is composed of people from every race and every world in known space. Rag-tag, disorganized, and varying widely in equipment and training, GLF fighters are united by their fanatical devotion to the GLF’s ideology, and their hatred for the Protectorate. Still, they have proven highly successful in their campaign against the Protectorate, with a wide swath of the Galaxy under their black and red banner. While many believe that the GLF is the last, best hope for freedom in the Milky Way, others fear that their brutal tactics and fanaticism are little better than the Protectorate they would replace.

As the GLF and other rebel groups have risen, the Protectorate has entered a state approaching panic. Desperate to crush the subversion, they have cracked down on dissidence and disloyalty, sending millions from across their empire to penal colonies like Paradise. Where once these death worlds were reserved for the worst, now even those guilty of minor crimes and rebellions are eligible for a one-way ticket to the frontier. These newcomers have found themselves at the mercy of the hardened criminal population which has inhabited these worlds for generations, and face increasingly worse conditions as the factions of various warlords battle for control. With the situation on Paradise and other colonies worsening, combined with the increasing likelihood of being caught in the crossfire between GLF and Protectorate forces, the urgency of escape has risen exponentially.

Your characters are prisoners on Paradise. Guilty as sin or wrongfully convicted, born on Paradise or fresh off the boat, rebels, criminals or merely caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, you must band together and fight to survive and escape this hell. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Welcome to Paradise.