Nu Earth

"I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth: for the first Heaven and the first Earth were passed away; and there was no more sea... there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."

The ironically-named Nu Earth was presumably quite a nice planet once. After all, it was named after a passage in the Bible about the coming of Paradise at the end of the world. Unfortunately, it then got caught up in the galaxy-wide war between the Norts and the Southers, rival human factions who both wanted to control the unlucky orb because it was a stone's throw away from a black hole which would provide the winning side with access to the rest of the universe. Years of conflict (savage and primitive passions expressed with ultra-sophisticated weaponry) turned Nu Earth into a poisoned wasteland that humans could only tolerate if they were kitted out from head to toe in full-body chem suits. Despite this, the war raged on, with Genetic Infantry such as the Rogue Trooper being created by Souther high command with DNA that could survive Nu Earth's newly-toxic atmosphere.

All of the Genetic Infantry except Rogue were killed. He, in a sense the only true citizen of Nu Earth because he was the only man who could and did live there unaided, ended up wandering the planet like its genius loci, seeking revenge. The line in the Bible about there being "no more sea" turned out to be true: the planet's oceans had been turned vast expanses of fœtid chemical sludge known as the 'Scum Seas'. In a sense there was "no more death" too, because three of Rogue's dead comrades had had their consciousnesses preserved in 'biochips' which he affixed to his equipment. However, this extremely utilitarian mode of post-mortem existence ("trapped on a piece of silicon with you ordering me around," as one of the 'biochip buddies' put it), was probably not quite what the Bible had in mind. God proposes but man disposes, and there's no species better at turning Paradise into Hell.

The Nort-Souther war eventually burnt itself out. Nu Earth was subsequently transformed into a planet-sized war memorial covered in blue poppies.

Notable features

 * Fort Neuropa, where an isolated group of Southers have degenerated into mental instability and re-enact ancient Earth wars in fancy dress.
 * The Quartz Zone, an area warped by heat-intensive weaponry into a translucent landscape of glass and crystal. It was here that most of the Genetic Infantry were massacred.