Scenic view of a summertime rocket launch from Arborage (officially named Sojourner), the first resettlement of Mars and the Solar System as a whole
ELEGY OF SOL | In the mid-26th century, humanity had colonized nearly the entire solar system, from the opulent polar cities of Mercury to the ice mining facilities around Pluto. Automated terraforming had already begun on Mars and Venus, and several colonies were founded around Barnard's Star and the Alpha Centauri trinary. Despite all that progress, the Earth was an ecological nightmare and the various powers-that-be were always at war. Some people could see the writing on the wall and wanted to get out as fast as possible.
Well! A massive generation ship enroute to start an Epsilon Eridani colonization effort suffered a catastrophic engine failure on the outermost fringes of the Oort Cloud. After weeks of searching and failed attempts at communicating with the solar system, they managed to find a large icy body to limp towards and "anchor" to. After months to years of failed repairs, collapsing societal order, and complete radio silence from the Solar System, the people switched operations to living on their makeshift space station and hoping to eventually build a working ship to return home.
Years turned to decades turned to centuries before they would ever make it back. A little over a millennium later, they would finally get a ship back to the Inner Solar System. They found a mass grave. Mercury was full of frozen corpses, Venus was an overgrown jungle, Earth was undergoing an ice age, Mars was covered in massive forests, and every single settlement beyond Mars was nothing but perfectly preserved, frozen carnage. Unbeknownst to the would-be colonists, following a total ecological collapse and several strategic attacks, humanity devolved into a panicked interplanetary war that ended society as they knew it.
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At the time of my setting, humanity has fully returned to the Solar System. In the nearly 300 years since, they've established resettlements on Venus and Mars, some small colonies in the Outer System, and are working on cleaning out the dead on Mercury and the Moon. Earth's orbit is being cleaned up, but they decided to leave it alone while it heals. >!They also discovered that some people survived (somehow) and are living in Iron Age (at best)-esque societies around the mostly ice-free equator and lower latitudes. !<Despite all the negativity of the past, they have learned their lessons and are living their best post-scarcity semi-utopian life, rediscovering long-lost history and culture.
This picture in particular is a postcard style image of a scenic view overlooking the first ever resettlement on Mars (and in the Solar System). It started as a crummy pen doodle, then was made entirely on paint dot net with a mouse and keyboard.
I'm currently working on Venus, with plans for Mercury and Earth afterwards.
(absolutely no AI was used at any point in this process)