The first permanent Belt settlements were established by Terran and Martian corporations seeking metals, water, fuel, and industrial resources. Early workers signed contracts promising high wages and eventual passage home.
For many, that journey home never came.
Transport costs, company debt, medical dependence, and increasingly restrictive labor agreements kept workers in @The Belt. Temporary mining camps became permanent stations. Families were raised in low gravity, and new generations were born who had never lived beneath a planetary sky.
The corporations expanded deeper into the Belt, bringing laborers from every region of @Terra and from the growing settlements of @Mars. Languages and traditions mixed within cramped habitats where cooperation was essential to survival.
Over time, these scattered communities developed identities distinct from both @Terran Humans and @Martian Humans. Their inhabitants no longer considered themselves expatriate workers.
They were @Belters.