History of Titan:
Revised - Saturday, December 17th, 2005
Titan is the largest of the 18 named moons of Saturn, the sixth planet in the Sol System, and is the home of a colony of Eternals, an advanced offshoot of humanity. The entire colony lives beneath the surface of the world, employing artificial life support systems.
The Titan colony was founded at about 23,000 B.C.* in the aftermath of a devastating civil war among the first generation of Eternals. The two opposing factions, one led by by Chronos and the other by his brother, Uranos, clashed in a conflict of ideologies over their people's destiny. Chronos' forces eventually prevailed and Uranos and his surviving band of followers were exiled into outer space. Surrounded in a nimbus of energy, the followers of Uranos were dispatched to the outer reaches of the Solar System where they used their powers to to alter their course toward the seventh planet Uranus. Upon landing, they soon discovered a supply depot left by the alien Kree and overpowered the robotic sentry. They cannibalized the supplies to construct a crude spaceship to take them back to Earth, and except for the four who chose to remain behind, they set forth for Earth. However, their destruction of the sentry had not gone unnoticed, and an investigating Kree armada discovered the makeshift ship and attacked it. The destruction of the starship destroyed killed about half of the hardy Eternals. One of the casualties was taken captive by the Kree, and his vivisection eventually led the Kree to attempt their own genetic experiments upon humanity (experiments which resulted in the Inhumans).
The survivors of the Kree attack made their way to the nearest planetary body, Titan, and hid from the Kree fleet. Having no technology to work with, they were forced to devise their own. The followers of Uranos sought refuge beneath the moon's surface, apparently fearful of alien detection. Applying their nascent energy-manipulating powers to the task, the Eternals converted the rock of the planet's interior into various useable metals and other materials. Within several hundred years, a vast underground civilization was built.
Eventually the decendants of the original settlers fell prey to the warlike tendencies which initially got the followers of Uranos exiled from Earth. Civil War once again broke out and claimed the lives of every member of the colony except a young woman named Sui-San, a third-generation Titanian Eternal. She lived in isolation, believeing herself to be the last of her race. Then came A'Lars, nephew of Uranos, who had gone into voluntary exile when his brother Zuras was elected as the new leader of the Earth Eternals. A'Lars, who was endowed with the self-regenerating cosmic life-force that all Earth Eternals had gained as a side-effect of an experiment performed by his father Chronos, found Sui-San and the two soon mated to repopulate the Eternals of the Titan colony. Because of their parental heritage, the newer generation of Titan was partially endowed with the self-regenerating cosmic life-force, making them stronger and longer-lived then their Titanian predecessors, but not as powerful as their earthly counterparts. Within a few generations, the civilization beneath Titan was restored, and the splendors of the past surpassed.
Among the grandest achivements of the new Titanians was the building of ISSAC, an immense computer system that could monitor and maintain all of the life support functions of the inner world. Once space-travel was developed, the Titanians were able to aquire seed-samples could grow and breed vegetation. Their crowning botanical achivement was the so-called Eternity Tree, a huge ash tree in the center of their nature preserve.
Under A'Lars leadership, Titan became a haven of peace, and all of its deziens dedicated themselves to meditation, art, and the pursuit of knowledge. A'Lars soon changed his name to Mentor, in order to reflect the Titanian mindset. At its peak, Titan boasted a population of about 35,000. However, one of Mentor's children, Thanos, became a stark exception to the peaceful nature of the Titans. Thanos, for reasons not yet known, was born a mutant, and grew up fostering visions of conquest and destruction. Thanos eventually was exiled from Titan, recruited an army of alien mercenaries, and attacked his birthplace. The conflagaration left a mere 100 survivors, and even claimed Thanos' mother, Sui-San. Now that Thanos has been defeated, Mentor has been engaged in the restoration of Titanian civilization. Mentor has been hindered in his efforts by a few eccentric survivors of the war with Thanos, who have loosely styled themselves after certain figures in the pantheon of Olympian Gods of Earth, and who have indulgently ignored Mentor's vision of peace and harmony. In recent years, however, their actions aginst Mentor have been stymied.
* The HBOTMU article on Titan states that the colony was founded 750,000 years ago. However, Robert Wicks, of the Unofficial Chronology to the Marvel Universe site, believes this number to be in error. Here's why:
"... it is commonly believed that the Kree created the Inhumans twenty-five thousand years ago. But the OHOTMU lists the Eternal colony on Titan as being founded almost seven hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Since the two events are closely related, there is obviously some error here. Since the date of the Inhumans creation is regarded as more factual and standard more so than that of the date of Titan's founding, I ignored the seven hundred and fifty thousand date as being erroneous."
I agree with his reasoning, and therefore have altered the date accordingly.
Click to enlarge Map
Titan Facts:
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Titan, as seen from the Cassini probe in November 2004. Image courtesy of Space Daily
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orbit: 1,221,830 km from Saturn
diameter: 5150 km
mass: 1.35e23 kg
Discovered by Huygens in 1655.
It was long thought that Titan was the largest satellite in the solar system but recent observations have shown that Titan's atmosphere is so thick that its solid surface is slightly smaller than Ganymede's (Jovian satellite). Titan is nevertheless larger in diameter than Mercury and larger and more massive than Pluto, which easily makes it the size of a small planet.
On October the 15th, 1997, the Cassini-Huygens space-probe was launched via a Titan IV-B/Centaur rocket, and began its long journey to Titan. The massive probe used several gravity-assist maneuvers along the way in order to speed it on its way. The probe reached Saturn in July of 2004, and later that year, on Christmas Day, the Huygens probe was released from the Cassini orbiter, and descended to Titan's surface, where it beamed back information and images for the duration of its short life. The Cassini craft remains in orbit around Saturn, and will do so for the next few years, gathing more information on Saturn and its moons.
To learn more about the Cassini-Huygens mission, and Titan itself, please visit the ESA's Cassini-Huygens mission site. You can also visit JPL's Cassini-Huygens mission site.
For even more on Titan, visit the 9-Planets Site.
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