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Yah...the forlorn hope is keep the people working in chain activities that feed back on each other(miner mines metal, driver sends the ore to the foundry, foundry worker makes metal, metal goes to the factory that makes trucks, assembly line worker makes trucks, drivers drive trucks that carry workers to the fields and carry food back to feed the miners, and so on, with a minimum of outside interference, and hopefully it will become self-sustaining, and somebody will eventually realize that nobody's being beaten for the occasional infraction and will wake up to the fact that the Chukta are no longer in charge and oppressing everybody . Hopefully the situation will not degenerate into violence.

So yeah, the Zyganian social workers are hoping their home offices come up with something, like recruit a helpful god or something....

Next up I seem to working my way out along the Chuktan conquests in order of their happening, which means eventually I get to Mazzerhine and that takes me full circle to Chernitz and we see if I can convincingly portray the world that made the monsters responsible, even if they aren't all that physically imposing once you get past their technology.

Well, first step is to get a few million people - be it zyganians, Dominian allies or some other 3rd party - in the planet to actually start an effective management of the place, for whatever direction, sympathetic, ruthless or just mundanely pragmatic, one can think of. Preferably with a large portion of psychic sensitives or people with any sort of convenient mental/spiritual healing skills to support on the matter.



Let's see how things turn out, definitely curious.

Maybe the Abelonians can do a rush-order cloning and crash-training of a few million new citizens and wrangle some heavy transport to Alebia and settle in.

Hey, constantly seeing the same face in different places hundreds of times a day can't be any more traumatic than what the average Alebian has already gone through, right?

Unless they developed some major psychic variant strain recently while nobody was looking, i see nobody but the Abelonians getting any actual benefit out of this sort of endeavour.

Maybe the Afra could set up some colony-clinics in Alebia poles as some kind of starting point for getting a public treatment network running.
The zyganian religious orders with their connection to psychic training might be of some help in this area too, possibly.

Savgetti----(Anvil Galaxy)
(aka ‘The Forgotten Colony’)
“We might have made that planet something if we were able to throw enough blood into it.”
---Anonymous Chuktan Ministry of Development official

“It’s telling how quickly the Chukta adapted to being a slaver culture by how they utterly failed in developing Savgetti. Give the world to a bunch of Belters or plow-pounders, and they’d make a world like Savgee a right nice home, after beating back the strangleweed and the chomp-runners. The Chukta? Without locals to exploit, they just seemed unable to get their act together. How far the mighty have fallen from the species that clawed their way to the stars on their own...then got technological superiority handed to them on a plate.”
---Anonymous Sendeshallan survey official

“Actually, having barely escaped from a pack of scizzor-shields, I can’t blame the Chuktan colonists for having problems with this place.”
---Anonymous Zyganian planetary ranger-scout.

Savgetti was a former Chuktan possesion and colony. A harsh word with an aggressive ecosystem, it daunted Chuktan efforts to develop it and ruined so many of those who sought to tame it that of all the Chukta Star Empire’s worlds, Savgetti became synonymous with ‘failure’, and so few Chukta deigned to even speak of it by name that it became obliquely known as the ‘forgotten colony’.
Savgetti was discovered after the conquest of Alebia. Unlike the Chuktans’ previous planetary annexations, Savgetti was an easy addition because there were no native sophonts to put up resistance.
That was the problem; the best positions in the empire were overlordships of slave worlds. Without natives to exploit, development of Savgetti would have to be by the Chukta themselves, unless the assigned lord was willing to bring in slave labor at expense. While Savgetti might appeal to landless bulls, if they had to work the land themselves, they might get ideas that ther labor entitled them, and they might challenge any colonial leadership, especially if things weren’t going well with the colony.
Savgetti’s environment proved savage beyond expectations and losses were heavy among the first waves of colonists. Subsequent arrivals hardly had it any easier, but at least managed to gain a foothold in the hostile land. Developing Savgetti would be far different from the heady ‘landrush’ of Alebia, a few decades past but still fresh in Chuktan memories.
Savgetti never lived up to the examples of the other Chukta worlds, and it was an unpopular posting for ambitious bulls. Never able to make the material qoutas demanded of it by the Chuktan military and the industrial barons back home, Savgetti became the blemish on the Star Empire’s map. It earned a reputation for being a ‘graveyard of ambitions’, ruining several political lordship appointees in quick succession, and the position was never highly regarded in the Conclave. In fact, it was considered a punishment assignment for overly-ambitious senior bulls. By the time the latest lord-governor decided to bite the bullet and ship in slave labor to quell a homesteaders’ revolt., the Empire was already focusing on a new prize: Mazzerhine, with a premium on workers to prepare the conquest fleets. The amount of forced labor conscriptees the Savgetti leadership was able to wrangle from other interests was nothing compared to the minimal number the settlers felt they needed to make headway.
As such(no restless natives or large slave populations to whip into shape), Savgetti never received much military attention aside from a refueling and supply waystation. Without anybody local to oppress, there was never a large garrison assigned to it.
Savgetti’s largest military role came when imperial forces, fleeing the debacle at Mazzerhine, stopped to grab fuel and supplies before they could be overrun by pursuing forces. The fleeing military ships also offered the Savgetti colonists a lift out. Panicked, most of the colonists took the offered ride or followed the example of the retreating military, commandeered colonial transporst, and evacuated before they could be overrun. This is exactly what happened with the tail end of the retreat and the Chukta were forced to put up a last-ditch rearguard action. Allied forces overwhelmed the last defenders; few Chukta and Coltoff were taken as POWs, and almost all of them were lower rank personnel, the Chukta officers committed suicide rather than be taken alive(ironically, of those who managed to make it back to Chernitz, the survivors were decimated by Conclave decree).
Since Savgetti represents the only wholly Chuktan territory taken from the Star Empire so far, the Zyganians and the Semeten Dominia are loath to give it up. Both groups have decided to share custodianship of the planet. A joint operations military base has been established, and private developers from the ZE and SD have been invited to set up shop. With more advanced technology and less ambition, the new owners have had a somewhat easier time of making a profit off the ‘Chuktan Sinkhole’.
As with so many other Zyganian outposts, the base on Savgetti has been negatively affected by the Zyganian conflict with the Golgan Republik, forcing a reshuffling of available forces to cover other fronts. To cover, the Semeten Dominia has had to move up more of its own forces, and bring in mercenaries as well.

Solar System(Varn-831)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 4
-Terrestrial(Savgetti)----System lifeworld

-Gas Giant(Calnel)---Jupiter-sized gas giant with a retinue of seven sizable moons. The Chukta never developed much of a ‘Belter’ culture, so these moons have gone largely unsurveyed(aside from a cursory survey for important metals and ‘ancient’ Golgan tech), and they’ve gone unexploited. Besides, a dense radiation belt complicates matters.

-Gas Giant(Saybor)----Large gas giant with three large moons. The Chukta Star Empire set up a refueling depot on one of the moons.

-Exotic(Somay)---- A ‘rocheworld’, two large (Mars-sized) egg-shaped bodies revolving around a common center of gravity(at their narrow ends). ‘Somay’ in Chuktan roughly translates as ‘whirly’, though some Chuktan observers compared the couplet to two large Chuktan bulls facing off against each other, constantly circling each other looking for an advantage. They share a thin atmosphere and regularly swap ice-laden dust.

Planet(Savgetti)
Type:Terrestrial
Diameter: 11,300 km
Gravity: 0.5 g
Temperature: Cool; average temperature is 48 degrees F.
Though cool, Savgetti receives a higher level of ionizing solar radiation due to the thin atmsphere and blue giant sun.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moons(3)---Three Deimos-sized moonlets orbit Savgetti. One of them gained a spacestation that handled interstellar communications and the satellite communications/survey/global positioning system around the planet. This was captured by the Semeten Dominia in the opening stages of their invasion, before the Chuktan staff could destroy the facility.
Atmosphere: Thin, but breathable, terrestrial nitrox mixture. High ozone content; many visitors complain of stinging eyes and irritated mucus membranes breathing the unfiltered air.
Terrain:
Three terrains; mountains, highlands, and broad river valleys.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Tin
- Copper
- Wolframite
- Sapphire
- Samarskite
- Calcite
- Emerald
- Platinum
Hydrosphere:
Roughly 51% of the planet is covered in open water.
Biosphere:
Verdant, and deadly. Heavy jungle. powered by the blue dwarf’s radiant energy, covers much of the landmasses, and the Chukta had to resort to using FAE airbursts to clear the land and keep the vegetation in check(the governors eventually wanted to use nukes or asteroids). Savgetti lifeforms developed natural radiation armor against the same powerful solar output of Varn-831, so the plants and animals tend to be rather tough.
Some of the more noteworthy local lifeforms include:
Razah-stalk---Tall, prolific, and tough plant akin to elephant grass. Very difficult to move through and even more difficult to control.
Murderpuff---A shrub-like plan that grows pod-like bodies in its salks. Disturbing the plant results in the pods spraying poisonous spores that if inhaled have a good chance of killing the victim, who subsequently provides fertilzer for the shrub.
Scizzor-Shields are large arthropods that look like rhinoceros beetles with large heavy carapaces that fit together like overlapping armor. Several flanges on the head and forebody are especially sharp edged and joined to act like large cutting implements and are used in hunting and defense.
Moleworgs---Ambush predators who hide in excavated burrows durig the day, and emerge at night to hunt.
Mivomites---Small parasitic insectoids that seek to avoid the harsh radiation of Varn-831 by burrowing under the carapace-shells of native Savgetti life. To the local shell-bearers, these mites are just irritating, but for soft-skinned offworlders, having them drill through flesh is excruiatingly painful and requiring surgical removal.
Civilization:
Colony
Population:
At its height as a Chuktan colony, colonial population numbered 180,000.
The Zyganian-Semeten Dominia operation is currently small, with only some 24,000 civilian personnel. Only a handful of Chuktan ‘runts’ and Coltoff deserters or POWs remain behind of the original colonists.
Technology:
Low Galactic---The later ZE/SD is slightly more advanced than the Chuktan efforts, but also a lot less ambitious.
Economy:
Was to be Mining, but problems with establishing self-sufficiency forced focus to be on Agriculture to feed the colony.
The ZE/SD have brought in automated farm equipment and are able to concentrate on mining and biologicals research/harvesting.
Wealth:
Chuktan Savgetti never rose above Poor.
As a Zyganian-Semeten Dominia possession, it currently stands at Depressed, but rising in profitability,
Government:
(Chuktan) Colonial Lord-Governor(Headman)
(ZE/SD) Military-Corporate; civilians run the industry and colony side, but the military has final word on matters of security.
Law Level:
Authoritarian under the Chukta, what with martial law to keep down angry colonists, Lawful under the ZE/SD.
Popularity:
Savgetti was an unpopular and unhappy colony under the Chukta, despite some Chukta giving a respectable go at developing the colony. Most Chukta, however, saw a colonial government shortchanging on supplies, shortages of requested equipment, and a lack of action of promised changes.
Under ZE/SD management, the new development crews are much better informed and equipped, and regard their very obvious and in-force military protectors, who aren't trying to tax them for working Savgetti or demand production quotas of them, in a rather more positive light.
Stability:
(Chuktan) Arguably Unrest; there was a lot of growing resentment against the Colonial Lord-Governor. One particularly unpopular Lord-bull was poisoned by a local pathogen; it was NOT presumed to be an accident. Another was challenged to a supremacy duel by an upset homesteader(the governor had the challenger arrested instead).
(ZE/SD) Stable; the alliance is still feeling out Savgetti for further development. Some of the civilian and military crews are discovering why the Chukta considered the place a deadly hellhole, but danger was expected, even after the old Chuktan settlements were cleared of booby-traps.

Hard labor on one's own?! That's anathema for a culture of profiteering!!


Anyway, definitely a hardscrabble world based on the samples of flora & fauna, but a different mindset can do wonders for certain. Though truth be told, the Zyganians and Semeten Dominia need to bring something closer to their A game on this one: sending merely 15% of the number of settlers of the (failed) colony and counting on just attitude & better tech & for bringing you results is begging for headaches.

(Incidentally, no info in the popularity of the local government/joint military junta that took the place of the Chuktan colonial authority)

All of that said, Zoestes V war crimes notwithstanding, it speaks of a certain gentleness or usual lack of ruthlessness that the Zyganians' reaction with their current Golgan troubles is to somewhat diminish their local presence, instead of doubling down efforts and strip mine the heck of the whole system to recoup and cover for recent losses. Same for Alebia in fact.

Hmmm, mercenaries? I think i have the right group of roughnecks for the job, just need a few NON newsflashes to set up things first....

Yeah, well, the ZE/SD let any contractors know that Savgetti was a lite-hellworld, so the groups that went in knew damn well what they might be putting up with. So popularity ain't an issue. The ZE/SD ain't taxing the current crew or demanding a quota of material, so they could be considered pretty popular with the civie crews.
There is, however, a bigger military presence because the Zygs and the SDs don't want the Chukta coming back. That builds confidence. And they have a greater diversity of tech and species...Heck, even more if they advertise outside the SD and immediate Zyganian tents. A Central Alliance crew of cyborgs would LAUGH at the local environment of Savgetti.

And yeah, the Zyganians are conscious that alienating possible allies is NOT a good idea, so they're trying to play nice and at least put on a. good PR face. After all, that Cosmoknight managed to knock out a planetary GARRISON on Alebia. Even with the general suckiness of Chuktan wartech, that's still pretty impressive. The Zyganians do NOT want to be paid that sort of special attention.

Oh yeah, no doubt about that - the Coltoffs themselves being an Orc variant sept with their propensity for valuing personal strength and ruggedness might have a hell of a time with testing their mettle against the planet without the Chukta breathing down their necks.



Oh yeah, guess that they have been learning the value of playing cool when it comes to diplomacy and keeping the external trade & support running (unlike their golgan past oppressors, might be said).
That Cosmo Knight does make a pretty good veiled extra incentive too, considering no one knows how close by or not it is and that one's thoughts on current matters at that.

Vascard---------Homeworld of the Vascari (Anvil Galaxy)

“They may not have the kisenite-working industry of other kisent elsewhere in the Three Galaxies, but the Vascard-Kisent are still exceptional craftsmen. A lot of their pre-invasion art was destroyed or looted by the Chukta, but the Vascari are already showing signs of a renaissance of the arts, especially in glass, crystal, and metallurgy, to celebrate their liberation. It’s starting out small, but it’s definitely there.”

Vascard was the third of the interstellar conquests of the Chukta Star Empire.
Interestingly, Vascard is inhabited by Kisent(see Aliens Unlimited), a population of which seems to have been d-stranded, possibly from a very early period of their baseline homeworld’s history, or possibly abducted by aliens who in turn brought them cross-dimensions to Vascard and abandoned them there. The Vascari-Kisent have no knowledge of other Kisent populations in the Three Galaxies and indeed little historical knowledge of their orginal homeworld(including kisenite-working skills). Instead, they’ve become expert craftsmen in working metal, glass, and crystals(including gemstones). They had developed an early Industrial Age level of technology and quite advanced optical astronomy(observations of their twin suns orbiting each other cued them in early to the concept of a heliocentric model of solar systems). when the universe came calling on them in the form of the Chukta Star Empire(though this was not the Vascaris’ actual first contact with extraterrestrials).
Vascard had the misfortunate of being in the direction of denser matter concentrations(and star systems) that the Chukta Star Empire was following in its expansion across Rodan Sector. The technologically superior Chukta rolled over the scant Vascari resistance and set to work to efficiently incorporate the planet and its inhabitants into the Empire’s conquest machine. The local population was terrorized and enslaved, anything not of use or interest to the Chukta was razed, and resources were stripmined. A garrison of Coltoff conscripts was set in place to oversee and enforce the occupation, lorded over by an installed aristocracy of Chuktan high-bulls and their families.
A particularly effective coercion technique, and one introduced previously on Alebia, was the establishment of ‘factory-holes’; enclosed and underground prison compounds where technically skilled natives were sequestered and forced to work on mining resources or producing war material for the Chukta. This was particularly arduous for the plant-evolved Vascari, who needed regular sunlight to remain healthy; the overseers could very effectively control their charges’ health and coerce their cooperation by punishing or rewarding them with surface time to sun themselves.
Yet, despite this, the conquest of Vascard wasn’t as easy or complete as the Chukta might have thought. Though technologically more primitive than the Alebians, the Vascari were able to elude their new overlords more easily and in larger numbers. Vascari were tough, did not register pain easily, and were resistant to many forms of damage. They did not show up well on thermal imaging scans and could, by divesting themselves of any obviously made coverings and equipment, disguise themselves among the many large cacti-like growths dotting the landscape. Vascari could also communicate by a very basic olfactory system of secreted pheromone-like chemicals borne on the wind, an invisible means of communication that didn’t register on Chuktan sensors. Though they still lacked the means to truly harm their alien oppressors, the Vascari were able to preserve more of their leadership and culture from discovery and destruction.
It was a tramp spacer who had stopped to make repairs previously and had established covert trade with an isolated group of Vascardi natives, who, during one of his returned visits, managed to observe the Chuktan invasion. The tramper manged to elude and escape the Chuktan orbital forces, and became the first to break the news to the rest of the galaxy of the Chukta Star Empire and its depredations in the Rodan Sector.
The easy conquest of Vascard, coming on the heels of the subjugation of Orevv and the steamrolling of Alebia, emboldened the Chukta into thinking they were on the glory road of destiny. This led to the decision to invade Mazzerhine, where destiny took a surprise turn for the Empire.
Vascard’s fairly late induction into the Chukta Star Empire meant that the Chukta didn’t have the time to sink their claws into the planet as deeply as they had with Orevv and Alebia, the occupation being only about nine T-years. When Semeten Dominia forces arrived to liberate the planet, they found a still significant resistance movement operating in the planet’s wilds, and the basics of a secret government that was able to begin administering affairs once the Chukta and their minions had been removed from power.
Currently Vascard is a Semeten Dominia protectorate, guarded by the alliance while the native Vascari sort themselves out from the ordeal of the occupation.

Solar System(Trovlan)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-Blue Sub-Giant(Trovlan-A/Trovlan)
-Red Dwarf (Trovlan-B/Nikla)
Number of Planets: 8
-Terrestrial(Dusyayron)----A small rocky world burnt dry and without atmosphere by the withering solar energy poured on it by twin suns.

-Terrestrial(Vascard)----System lifeworld

-Gas Giant(Faylith)----Huge gas giant with eight moons. Observation of these moons confrmed to Vascari astronomers the basic principles of orbital mechanics.

-Asteroid(Hezorg)----Small planetissimal noted for its ‘yin-yang’ appearance of equal proportions of dark rock and bright ice covering its surface.

-Asteroid(Raltomaze)----A planetoid describing a cometary orbit that takes it out beyond Jalalan’s orbit before swinging around Faylith.

-Terrestrial(Jalalan)----Earth-sized ice and ammonia-covered ‘superTitan’(after the moon of Saturn).

-Exotic(Goh)----An unusual object, a large purple and black moon-sized sphere crisscrossed with glowing purple fracture cracks, and emitting jets of luminous gas that briefly form halos before raining back to the surface, Goh was detected in the infrared by Vascari scientists who were puzzled by it amd named it ‘Goh’ in one of tehri native tongues(‘Goh’ roughly translates as ‘enigma’, ‘puzzle’ or ‘What-?!’). The material of Goh has defied conventional spectrographic analysis, and scientific probes are destroyed by the object’s radiation when they get too close. Later Galactic cosmologists have speculated Goh may be a coiled or nodular mass of ‘cosmic string’ or ‘strange matter’. The Chukta, unable to do anything with it, ignored it. The Semeten Dominia have invited outsider scientists to study Goh, as long as they share their finders with the Dominia and the local Vascari.

-Gas Giant(Cemli)----Enormous gas giant on the edge of the Trovlan system. Vascari astronomers were able to discern a thick dark ring around it; Cemli has a thick ring of pulverized rock and chemical ice around it.

Planet(Vascard)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 11,930 km
Gravity: 0.97 g
Temperature: Warm; average temperature is 176 degrees F. Chukta and Coltoff troops needed thermal suits just to function on the surface. Human slaves had it even worse and didn’t last long on Vascard.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Odd Orbit---Vascard has an eighteen month year, but the orbital periods of Trovlan and Nikla follow an eight month cycle. In general, Vascard gets two ‘hot seasons’ where it gets light from BOTH stars, a ‘blue season’ where Trovlan eclipes Nikla and is Bascard’s sole light source, and a ‘cool season’ where Nikla partially shields Vascard from Trovlan’s full output.
- Craters--One side of Vascard is noticeably pockmarked by ancient craters, suggesting a fierce and sudden meteoric bombardment some time in the distant past.
Atmosphere: Breathable terrestrial nitrox mix, with a higher concentration of oxygen(fires are a real problem on Vascari).
Terrain: Varied
Also has substantial deposits of crystalline Colal( Rifter #0-1). The little the Vascari have mined so far has allowed them to manufacture extremely effective optics and some quite beautiful crystal art. Sendeshallans with the arriving Semeten Dominia liberation forces are interested in how the Vascard deposit crystals stack up quality-wise to the Colal found on Sendeshal.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Mercury
- Cobalt
- Sapphire
- Gold/Silver
- Salt
- Nickel
- Asbestos
- Fluorite
- Colal
Hydrosphere:
Arid/Badlands-----Open water is exceedingly scarce on Vascard, limited to some deep valleys and oasis springs. Where it does bubble to the surface, dense vegetation springs up.
The Chukta were considering bombarding Vascard with ice asteroids snitched from Faylith’s moons to both raise the available water and bomb aras of resistance, but only got as far as a handful of ice drops before concerns that they might kill more usable slaves that way put at least a temporary halt to the project.
Biosphere:
Dense----- Vascard supports a dense and diverse, including reptile and mammal analogues. Life on Vascard has adapted well to living on scant water. Opportunistic plants and animals may wait in dessicated hibernation until rare rains fall, or they roll into wetness. Or they may tunnel down to underground water. A few crack air and rock to produce their own. And there are predators and parasites that steal water from other organisms. The occupation has led to some pollution issues, but the Vascari have been, with assistance, cleaning up the worst of the problem areas(the offworlders lending chemical filtration and soil cleansing equipment and spacelifting the worst wastes offworld for disposal).
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
5 billion Vascari-Kisent.
Technology:
Industrial Age---- At the time of the Chuktan invasion, the Vascari-Kisent had developed firearms, large-scale steel production, a low-loss steam engine system and early internal combustion systems, rail lines, semaphore networks, and were experimenting with electricity, hot air and hydrogen balloons, and chemical rocketry. Industrial chemistry was getting established.
The Vascari-Kisent had thoroughly telescopically surveyed their solar system with surprisngly powerful telescopes made possible with the use of colal crystals. They had also discovered infrared astronomy using modified crystals and electrified chemical filters.
Economy:
Agriculture---Most Vascari-Kisent activity was in cultivating mulch-stock, breeding water-retaining vegetation, and collecting nutrient minerals. Under the occupation, manufacturing was the main focus of activity, Now that the Chukta are out, the Vascari are deciding whether to return to a subsistance economy or take up more advanced industry.
Wealth:
Effectively Impoverished by the occupation.
Government:
Effectively a technocracy; the Vascari favor cleverness, craftsmanship, and innovation. If the Chukta had openly approached the Vascari and offered to teach them engineering and sciences, it’s possible that the Vascari might have become willing vassals of the CSE.
Post-L

Mazzerhine---(Anvil Galaxy)

‘To the Chukta, Mazzerhine must have looked very attractive; a whole solar system full of valuable minerals, a population of a species they already knew how to break into slaves, and good location from the old Golgan starcharts from which to access hyperlanes. You can bet the senior Chuktan bulls in the fleet must have been salivating at the prospect of becoming lord-bull over the system, They must have gone into the system already plotting which of their colleagues they were going to backstab to get the Conclave’s endorsement.
I wonder how many of them got to see their expected rivals for power get smoked before the Reaper turned its attention on them. ”
---Captain Niles Adroop

Mazzerhine actually lies outside the Rodan Sector, but events there have had a profound effect on it.
Mazos is a binary star, but rather than orbiting close together, the smaller Mazos-B/Bjah orbits far out on the fringes of Mazos-A/Alhe’s orbital plane. Bjah is far out enough that it has its own small retinue of planets, rather than lose them to its larger companion star.This has led to speculation that Mazos-B may be a captured wanderer, and that the Mezos system is actually a merger of two solar systems. The configuration hasn’t yet stabilized, and the gravitational influence of Bjah has pulled many planets in Alhe’s orbital lane into distorted or high-inclination orbits. Bjah has also engendered a ‘Nemesis effect’(after an old Earth theory that Sol had a ‘dark companion star’), periodically disturbing the ssytem’s keiper and ort regions and unleashing period ‘storms’ of comets plummeting into the inner solar system.

Mazzerhine was settled by humans from some long ago disaspora from the regions of the Human Alliance. The original colonists quickly settled in and established a technological civilization with a spacefaring capability, the latter of which was aimed heavily at managing the numerous wandering asteroids and cometary bodies. A local Belter culture quickly developed, shepherding space rocks and iceballs to avoid castastrophic collisions with the planetary real estate or, in some cases, herding the bodies INTO collisions with other planets to provide water and metals for local colonial development. The main focus of activity and settlement was around Mazos-A and the planet Mazzerhine, but there’s also a minority population of Belters who have settled the asteroids and moons around Mazos-B. Though these hardy settlers on the ‘edge’ of the system freely trade with the communities around the -A star, and are steadfastly loyal to the idea of the ‘Union of Mazos’, they regard themselves much as a group apart culturally. This is attributed largely to Belter difefrences with the oligarchs of Mazzerhine, but also due to the majority of Bjahans following the Trivestist faith. On many of the -B star habitats, Trivestist religious cusoms trump Mazzerhine-originated policies and the more esoteric laws and regulations, but never the Belter survival codes. These differences of opinion and the Bjahans’ protectiveness of the ort cloud resources around Mazos-B have led to some occasional friction between the Bjahans and the Mazzerites.
For many centuries, the Mazzerhinites were content to work at this, having occasional contacts with outsiders, keeping them apprized of the general events in the Three Galaxies and giving them some small technologica updates. By and large, though, Mazzerhine remained aloof from the rest of the Anvil, like many worlds in the region, Times change however.
Unlike other Chuktan targets, Mazzerhine had warning of what was coming. The alarm raised by freespacers witnessing the conquest and subjugation of Vascard, though initially slow to be believed, managed to finally convince outsiders of the imperialistic threat looming in Rodan Sector. The Mazzerhinites had thought that their biggest problem was fending off the overtures of the Zyganian Empire(tainted by the still visible bloodstains of the Zoestes Suppression), but reports out of the Rodan began to concern them more. Though prepared to defend their world(s) with expertise born of blasting rocks, the Mazzerhine High Council had its doubts about how well it would fare against a dedicated galactic warmachine intent on invasion.

Fortunately, the same reports of the Chukta had reached the Zyganians and a new group out of the Rodan Sector, the Semeten Dominia, which had formed to resistt threats to the civilized worlds in the region. The two groups met at Mazzerhine, rightly guessing that the Mazos system wpuld be the most likely target of Chuktan aggression. Their meeting was barely in time; the Chuktan warmachine was already in motion to invade.

The Chuktan conquest fleets were the biggest yet assembled; the Chukta had some inkling that Mazzerhine might be more technologically advanced than their previous conquests and they planned accordingly, bringing up a massive(for them) force to overwhelm any foreseeable resistance. Arrogance and ignorance, however, crept into their planning, and they still managed to grossly underestimate what lay beyond Mazzerhine. The Chuktan advance scouts had seen very little FTL traffic and assumed it was native Mazzerhine exploration missions...not interstellar traders and couriers travelling to larger polities elsewhere.

Thus, when the Chuktan conquest fleets came out of overdrive, they were shocked to find themselves confronted by several forces of warships of unfamiliar design, technological levels previously unsuspected, and some of a size and power that rivaled the Chuktas’ own dreadnaughts. The Zyganian Imperial Space Navy had sent several Zortax-class battle carriers with full escort groups, the Sendeshallans had buffed up the old battlecruiser Lupus Rao and brought it out of semi-retirement, the Rustollans had sent a force of arsenal ships packed with nuclear ordance, and the Afrans contributed a force of fast corsair-class attackers. In addition, a sizable force of freespacer mercenaries and volunteers had gathered to protect their Mazzerhinite trade partners. Though the assembled defenders had had little time to coordinate their commands and shake down their combined forces, they were still able to operate effectively together, helped by the shock of the invaders at being faced with a multi-species/polity coalition.

The Battle of Mazzerhine took three weeks of hard maneuvering and a series of clashes that showed the Chukta fleet, as numerous as it was, to be badly outgunned and outclassed. The allied forces took brutal advantage of the local environment, camouflaged Mazzerhinite asteroid miners tight-beaming the whereabouts of the Chukta ships while their own scouts blundered about, asteroids seeded with mines and radio jammers, and cometary halos providing cover for fast strike ships. Asteroid-based light-sail propulsion lasers blasted Chuktan vessels attemptng runs on the rock-habs and planets. Early on, a group of Afra-Aluta psi-commandos managed to isolate, board, and capture a Chuktan communiations support vessel. Psychically prying the communications codes and protocols from the crew’s minds, the alliance began tapping Chuktan fleet communications and even sending out falsified orders.
Particularly hardhitting were the alliance’s starfighters. The Chukta had based their own small attackers on older Golgan designs found in the fleet depot; those they faced in the Mazzerhine system were smaller, more agile, and more powerful. Even light fighters like the Sendeshallans’ Falx Supinas proved devastating to the Chukta and their Coltoff auxiliaries, outmaneuvering their clumsier Taklas, and drawing them off while Gladius and SkyRivver squadrons assaulted the capital ships. By the time the ships of the line drew into range of each other, the Chuktan forces were already bleeding from a thousand cuts.
Alliance gunnery proved both longer-ranged and more accurate than the Chuktans’. Grazer fire savaged the Chuktan line of battle even before they could achieve target lock. on alliance ships . PacSlash drone missiles reamed an entire element of Chuktan heavies. Troop transports intended to land troops to seize Mazzerhine’s dome stations and communities were sliced open, killing hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Other Chuktan ships ran into what seemed sunbursting walls of nuclear explosives and x-ray-pumped lasers as Rustollan and Mazzerite ships dumped out massive salvoes of ordnance. Then the vaunted forceshields of the Chuktan dreadnaughts glowed, flared, and went out, and the command vessels of the Imperial fleet, ships that had been invincible over Orevv and Alebia, were hammered directly from what seemed everywhere. One by one the mighty giants were destroyed.

This proved too much for the Chukta; the survivors broke and ran, hypering as soon as they cleared the gravitic inhibiting zone. Alliance forces began a pursuit that would lead them to the Chukta-held worlds of Savgetti and Alebia(a separate taskforce would head for Vascard to liberate it).

The aftermath of the Battle of Mazzerhine saw the system gratefully join the Zyganian Empire and cement trade treaties wih the Semeten Dominia. The nearly-incorporated ‘state’of Mazzerhine would assume new importance to the Zyganian Empire as it managed to avoid being included in the retribution-raids launched by the resurgent Golgan Republik. Mazzerhine minerals are feeding Zyganian industry and the urgently rebuilding ZISF.

As a recent addition to the Zyganian Empire adn one with substanial resources to offer, Mazzerhine is one outpost system the Zyganians are NOT reshuffling forces from in their war with the Golgan Republik. Recent times have seen a Zyganian military build-up and increased tech-exchanges. Though some in the pro-Semeten Dominia parties hope that this increased Zyganian military presence could potentially be used to resolve the Chukta problem once and for all, the ZR has not signalled any intention to use the miltary force deployments for anything other than defending Mazzerhine against outside aggression, especially the Republik.

Mazzerhinite/Mazzites are, like the Zyganians, Human, but exhibit some signs of divergence from baseline; they possess dark orange eyes, bluish skin(sometimes mistaken for cyanosis), and their ears are more angular that baseline humans’. They are less effected by bright light, having adapted to Mazos-A’s brighter output.

Solar System(Mazos)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-Blue Dwarf(Mazos-A/Alheb)
-Orange Dwarf(Mazos-B/Bjah)
Number of Planets: 12
(Mazos-A/Alheb)
-Terrestrial(Mazzerhine)----System lifeworld

-Delfas Belt-
A dense belt of rocky bodies, many of which have been ‘coralled’ into safer orbits by deliberate action of the Mazzerhinites. Mazzite industry is working out schedules to carve up these asteroids into smaller, safer, sizes and usable materials. Initial estimates forecast a thousand-year job list, but increasing interstellar trade and a greater demand for Mazzerhine mineral exports has been accelerating the timetable, with more crews being hired and trained.

-Asteroid(Golwin)---- This planetoid serves as a local headquarters for Delfas Belt operations.

-Terrestrial(Taliff)----An enormous planet shrouded in thick cold ammonia-methane fog, Taliff’s crushing gravity prevent it from being visied and exploited. Its largest moon(of 3) Havos, however, is home to Cuida Kelson(Kelson City), a community of some 300,000. Shipments of cometary ice and metal, crashed on Havos, supply the city’s industries and large garden domes that in turn supply the Belters with fresh terrestrial/gravity-grown food. The Zygamians have recent;y exprssed a interest in establishing a naval base on Taliff, citing its position between the Delfas and Scarden Belts. A decision is still pending on the permission. Kelsonites are fairly evenly divided on having a military base as a neighbor.

-Scarden Belt-
More extent in size than the Delfas Belt, the Scarden Belt is less frantically active, as the Belters have more time to alter their rocks’ courses before they can cross into the inner system.

-Asteroid(Geron)----Settled like Folwin and serving a similar ‘local capital’ or ‘city hall’ function for the Belters in the Scarden Belt

-Terrestrial(Alderev)----Huge rocky world, Alderev surprisingly has only an average 1.08 g gravitational field. meaning that its surface can be safely visited. Several small communities have been established on Alderev, clustered around thermal vents and subcrustal ‘seas’ of liquid water on the planet’s surface.
Alderev’s value just went way up recently after the colonists got hold of more advanced geosurvey technology(third-hand from the Zyganian Empire) and discovered substantial deposits of Nekirite( Rifter #0-1). Interest in Alderev has gone up and there are local worries about a land rush by other Belters to stake out newly-discovered ore fields.

-Gas Giant(Haflen)----Tiny Haflen is occasionally scooped for gases, but without any sizable satellites to build habs on, has been largely ignored.

-Gas Giant(Donsay)----Near-microscopic for a gas giant, it’s a local joke that this barely-there wisp of gas would evaporate if anybody stared at it too hard so Mazzerhinites politely leave it alone. Like Haflen, Donsay is largely ignored by Belters except as a gravity-slingshot point when flying to the outer system.

-Terrestrial(Ranold)----Tiny Ranold has the advantage of being covered heavily in ice; it is thus used as a stopover for kuiper belt rock hunters and deep spacers. The planet has been settled by the Talqo Family, a mixed-marriage clan of Mazzerites and Bjahans who, despite their religious and cultural differences, are fiercely loyal to each other. They run the ‘Slush Bar’ where comet-hunting Belters can eat, drink, exchange gossip in person, arrange romantic liaisons, and listen to the entertaining bickering between the owners while their ships are refueled.

(Mazos-B/Bjah)
-Asteroid(Deskin)----Deskin is home to a small community of Belters who maintain and support a set of light-sail propulsion lasers supporting low-cost, if slow, cargo transit about the mini-system and down into the deeper Mazos-A system. During the Battle of Mazzerhine, the lasers were also used to fend off a Chuktan probe attack.

-Terrestrial(Halthod)----Huge and possessing massive gravity, Halthod still manages to provide the local Belters with a source of atmospheric gases

-Gas Giant(Gabberith)----Gargantuan Gabberith is the local center of activity for the Belters of Bjah. One of Gabberith’s moons, Elgin, has been colonized and is home to some 190,000 Belters.

-Asteroid(Schalen)---- This metal-rich asteroid caused a near-fight when discovered; the chunk of near-pure Kihvite crystals could make its Bjahan discoverers richer than many of the Mazzerhine oligarchs. Indeed, several of the mining consortium oligarchs tried to have Schalen seized as a ‘national asset’, and the Bjahnite reaction nearly kicked off a Bleter civil war. Ultimately a compromise was worked out that saw the asteroid’s discoverers, the Otavo Family, extended provisional oligarchship, provided they quietly stayed out of Mazzerhinite politics. The Otavos have accepted the compromise, but have not used their position or wealth(they ultimately signed a very lucrative contract selling the kihvite to a Zyganian concern) to influence their other Bjahan neighbors, but instead have generously endowed a number of resources centers serving the Trivestist community.

Planet(Mazzerhine)
Type:Terrestrial
Diameter: 10,000 km
Gravity: 0.95 g
Temperature: Temperate and Tropical
Unusual/Special Features:
-Craters---Mazzerhine shows ample evidence of past meteoric bombardments
Atmosphere: Dense, but breathable terrestrial nitrox mixture. Density is 1.39 terrestrial pressure at sea level.
Terrain:
Hostile; even with atnospheric weathering, Mazzerhine’s surface is spotted with craggy craters and hidden sinkholes.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Zinc
- Magnesium
- Sapphire
- Aluminum
- Diamond
- Fluorite
- Emerald
- Titanium
- Iridium
Hydrosphere:
Roughly 43% of Mazzerhine’s surface is covered in open water.
Biosphere:
Sparse; evolution on Mazzerhine was difficult, with periodic meteor bombardments and finally alien terraforming organisms brought in. Still, a few native species of plants and animals hang on, showing a dogged persistance in spite of the odds.
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
6 billion Humans
Technology:
Low Galactic---The Mazzerhinites have nuclear power, megadamage materials, and can build their own local spacecraft and low-power CG propulsion systems, but not high-end FTL.
Economy:
Mining/Industrial---Mazzerhine collects, refines, and packages metals and minerals for sale.
Wealth:
Average, shading towards Prosperous as demand for Mazzerhine metals goes up.
Government:
Oligarchy----Mazzerhine is ruled by wealthy plutocrats who effectively bought up their positions through comtroling trade and waxing wealthy from mineral sales.
Law Level:
Overbearing on Mazzerhine. Laws are somewhat looser in the Bjah habitats, where the Belters there tend to give lipservice to the oligarchs of the Alheb worlds.
Popularity:
Largely Popular, but there are many who want a fairer distribution of wealth from the oligarchs. There’s always some disputes between the dirtside oligarchs and the Belters about price-fixing and trade in asteroid materials, and whether the miners can sell direct to outsiders or have to go through a Mazzerite trade group/union. And while everybody’s grateful to the Zyganians for saving them from the Chukta, not everybody sees tying themselves to the ZE long term as economically smart; the Zyganians’ current entanglement with a war with the Golgan Republik means that the income stream coming in from the ZE might hiccup or even cease, depending on the fortunes of war. Some feel that a friendship treaty and conditional prefered trade partner deal might have served Mazzerhine better in the long run.
The Belters of Bjah regard themselves as a culture apart and are fairly evenly split between those who listen to the oligarchs on Mazzerhine and those who pay lipservice to anything decided by Alhebans.
Stability:
Solid; the attempted Chukan invasion settled some old feuds in favor of unity in the face of a common enemy, and joining the Zyganian Empire and benefitting from the increase in galactic trade, though it’s led to more disputes over control of profits, has also given everybody more opportunities to make money. While not everybody’s happy, oligarchs and Belters alike, in crisis they held together and are best off sticking together.

Must admit i'm somewhat confused over the fact Alheb/Alhebans get occasionally cited as what appears to be a population center/state of sorts separate from the lifeworld Mazzerhine within the binary system, even though it's given as the name of the star Mazzerhine revolves around.

All of that said, the impression i get is that the belters are still a few steps away of being the culture apart they claim to be, being more of a border community with its own priorities, but still mostly reacting and riffing from the other regional centers. That said, it could change anytime if "belter oligarchs" like the Talqo and Otavo, among others less renowned, start playing their hands at reinforcing belter ties, making super-habitats to support their economical and survival needs or making some deals of their own with the Zyganians (or the Dominia).

Lots of room for opportunities & growth but also for complications & conflict.

Well, we're Terrans from Terra, more often than being Solarians from Sol.
Though give us time to expand as a clade, and maybe that will change.


Yeah, I'll go farther in a future Cultural Note about the perception of Belters, Lunies, and Dirtsiders in starfaring settings like the Three Galaxies. I first encountered the term 'Belter' in Larry Niven's Known Space series, though the idea was bandied about much earlier.

And I wanted to present a solar-system-wide civilization as not entirely all on one page(and avoid the 'Planet of Hats' cliche).

Fair point, but what gets my attention is that, from those fragments i pointed out, one gets the impression of Alhebans as a cultural pole apart of Mazzerhine and the belters, who are described as influenced, economically and culturally by both parts, while Bjah, technically a sub-system of its own, is cited as more of an extension of local belter community than a power bloc or community its own. Overall it seems murky, outright confusing even.



Oh, i'm quite familiar with the idea of Belters - have played a Jovian Chronicles campaign or two where they ended up figuring quite prominently (among other things due to my character's personal arc from teenage space pirate jailed in a venusian prison to test pilot in high-risk prototype corporate mechs, eventual escape - due more to internal management intrigues involving execs using pilots & machines as black ops team for its own private interests than any initiative of his own and later eventual colaborator in the establishment of his home asteroid as the first "belter state" with legitimacy among solar nations of the setting and one of the architects of its official army - with local knockoffs of the prototypes) in fact.



I'm perfectly fine with it, worlds and systems can definitely have varied themes of their own, i'm totally in favor of your doing so, it's just that i felt like some parts need a bit of a kitbashing and fine-tuning, at least in Mazzos' binary system case.

Cultural Notes: Belters, Lunies, and Dirtsiders (oh my!)

“A good many of the nomadic societies of the galaxies started out as spaceworkers who got tired of working for uappreciative planet-walkers, or they w ere the only ones left alive when the dirtsiders finally poisoned their environments and offed themselves. The spacers eventually got up and moved out, and never stopped.”

“Planets are the nurseries of life. We send our children out into the universe to seek theri fortunes and make new lives for themselves. Sometimes they fail, many times they do us proud, other times they are ungrateful; but that’s children for you.”

“Dirtsuckers spend remass like they have an unlimited supply of it concealed in a hollow leg or two...which is about the only thig those legs are good for in microgravity. A Belter, on the other hand, would get that course correction done with a shifting of gyros and not a wasted whiff of gas.”

“Forgetting that they’re still gravity-well-evolved and skipping their exercise is a big problem for a lot of second- and third-generation Lunies. They feel a little gravity and they think they’re good when their DNA craves something stronger. Pretty soon all the nifty tricks newcomers to microgravity can do, like super-leaps? Late-generation lunies can’t do that stuff, thanks to progressive muscle atrophy. And they can no longer stand a homeworld gravity field either. Or hard acceleration for that matter. So it may sound tiresome, but moonwalkers of the galaxy, I cannot emphasize it enough; exercise, exercise, EXERCISE!”

“Want to have some fun? Drop a Belter off in a gravity well in a forest during a thunderstorm and watch them freak. Those shaved heads and fancy equipment harnesses may make them look badass, but a good breeze? Makes them start grabbing for a vacsuit and looking for the blowout. Change in temperature outdoors and they start looking for the thermostat on nature. And don’t get me started on their immune systems....”

Belters, Lunies, and Dirtsiders are general social concepts that keep popping up in most spacefaring cultures, whether or not that achieve FTL capabilities.The egenral terms(or their equivalent) have entered general usage amongst the starfaring cultures of the Three Galaxies(and elsewhere)
Dirtsiders traditionally are dwellers on planets; sizable terrestrial worlds that more or less approximate one or more of the qualites(gravity, atmosphere, temperature, biosphere, etc.) of the worlds the species evolved on.
Lunies are colonists of (sizable) moons of planets. Most ‘lunies’ occupy bodies close to their homeworld or other settled terrestrial planets.
Belters are inhabitants of smaller asteroid bodies, spending much of their time in microgravity. They generall evolve out of deep space resource harvesters and asteroid belt miners, hence their ‘Belter’ name.
Such distinctions are hisrorically often cause for tension between factions in a spacefaring species, typically following a colonialism model where outpost colonies eventually revolt against their originating mother-culture, especially over matters of control and economics. In such cases, terms like dirtsider, lunie, and belter become derogatory.
In time, differing conditions may lead to substantial -physiological- and profound -psychological- differences between the three groups. In general, microgravity conditions lead to more attenuated and weaker builds, frugality with resources leads to more sparing use of air and water, while greater exposure to higher levels fo solar and cosmic radiation leads to higher rates of cell mutation. These differences become even greater if the species develops generic engineering capabilites, in which case space-adaptation can become so pronounced that entirely new -species- are created along Belter, Lunie, and Dirtsider lines.

As technology advances, however, the opposite may become true; distinctions become less important when members of a species can move freely between the disparate environments. Inexpensive artificial gravity generation, especially of the gravitonic varieties, can allow dirtsiders to experience and practice living in microgravity well before leaving their planets, or allow them to carry their gravity with them, while Belters and Lunies can experience terrestrial gravity conditions anywhere they go. Faster and more efficient space travel allow quicker and more convenient movement over the distances between the realms, and synthesis technologies close the resource gap. Under such conditions, it becomes harder and harder to tell dirtsiders, lunies, and belters apart, and the distinctions harder to clearly define.
For some societies then, the concepts of Belters, Lunies, and Dirtsiders as separate cultures become merely passing fads in their development into starfarers. For others, having established distinctive Belter cultures, technology-assisted homogenization and assimilation becomes such a threat to ways of life that it is cause for a disaspora of groups, the Belters often taking off for distant stars rather than be re-absorbed. A few cultures manage to reach agreement and accommodation, achieving an equilibrium of sorts between the groups, with the distinctions taking on more of an ethnic flavor, rather than a political or physiological difference.


Belters
“We’re just naturally mentally more resilient. A lot of the disorders that fflict others just don’t happen to us. Claustrophobia? We can spent weeks, months, eve in our suits. Agoraphibia? We got the whol damn universe all around us. Death? Treat it with healthy caution and be ready to fight it at every turn, but it’s our constant companion out in the void.”

Belters are frequently depicted(especially by themselves) as independent(fiercely so in many cases), resilient, adapative, and efficient, able to handle the stresss of living in an environment(deep space) utterly hostile to them. Technical expertise, innovative thinking, and excellent deep space piloting skills are all attributed to Belters.
Stereotypes: Boastful, Arrogant, Frugal/Miserly. Cold and emotionless from spending so much time alone in small ships in the depths of space. ‘Will eat anything’ is a common accusation of Dirtsiders critical of Belter culture, with teh implication that Belters lack any sense of taste from eating heavily processed and synthetic foods. On the mild side, many Lunies and Dirtsiders regard Belters as loud, obnoxious, chest-beating blowhards.

Lunies
“First in, first down. We’re usually the first to break rock in a system and test the ground as it is. We make our worlds to order from the soil on up, not try to adapt to them. Every drink of water, every bite of food, every breath of air we take is made by our own efforts.”

Lunies share many Belter attributes, and in fact originated many of them in adapting to harsh conditions. Technical expertise, nerves of steel, and dogged dertermination are bred in living in an environment where every breath of air and drop of water has to wrested from the rock and/or carefully husbanded. Economy of action and frugality are seen as positive Lunie traits.
Stereotypes: Planet-huggers afraid to go out into open space. Fence-sitters who try to fit into Dirtsider or Belter cultures without the chops to carry either off.
Lunies are often (unfairly) characterized as failed Belters, especially if they inhabit moons of settled worlds, and thus can draw upon planetary resources. More ascerbic Belter critics may denigrate Lunies as being on the leash of the ‘dirtsuckers’. This, despite the fact that lunar colonies are often the first o revolt and seek independence from their mother-cultures.

Dirtsiders
“Life breeds on planets. It’s where the spark begins. We’re proud to live so close to the source of life, if not to be direct children of such, then to be witnesses and wardens of it. Life in all its unimaginable diversity is there for us to see and partake of. And if life doesn’t exist on a planet, then we get to introduce it. We get to be the seeders of a whole new chapter of evolution in life’s spread across the universe. You can’t get any closer to divinity than that.”

Planet-Dwellers are generally characterized as being sophisticated and (unknowlngly)wealthy(in the case of established mother-world cultures) or insanely courageous pioneers, especially on planets with already-established(and potentially hazardous) ecoystems. Terraformers are even more profound, creating new ecosystems on massive scales over what may be multi-generational timescapes.
Stereotypes: Pushy, Commanding, Domineering. Largely clueless about how the universe REALLY works. Wasteful of resources. Resource hogs who are free-spending of valuable materials and energy. ‘Dirtsucker’ is a common epithet hurled at Planet-Dwellers by antagonistic Belters, as is ‘dirt-eater’(the ‘Will eat anything’ accusation is used by both groups against each other).

Now there's a little something bubbling in my mind: "Riftsiders", deep space resource harvesters with a focus in tracking down Void ley lines and the rifts or nexi that form in them as venues of exploration, mining and more.

A little curious group with qualities blending traits of belter and dirtsider both in a peculiar manner, probably budding off from belters clans & communes within the UWW, though possible to spawn independently in any other place where expressive controlled use of rifts and TW develops to a certain degree. Children of a thousand worlds and none at the same time, with their rings, pyramids and other formations located in out of way places in uninhabitated celestial bodies, asteroids and hard vacuum serving as waypoints between many worlds and dimensions.

There's probably cliques of people who live in both Newtonian and hyperspace...or consider being able to flip between dimensions as easily as people commute between their townhouse and their beachside place to be the true definition of 'megacosmopolitan'. Most of them are shifters, but others are effective mad scientists or super beings(I don't know if there's a superpower yet that allows the character to zip between universe...).

That can actually be.... very complicated, not to say insanely dangerous in the 3Gs setting on the long run, if memory tricks me not - remember how Phase Demons are generated? Damn, now i have to reread that part on Dimensional Outbreak, some Event Horizon-style flashes of nasty ideas poping up in the mind.

Ok, decided to bring up the nasty essentials here for people to maybe cook up some creepy hooks of their own:



Yeah, i guess that pretty much sums it up. 33% chance of just dying is rough but honestly kind of tame compared to some random unlucky SoB getting caught near a departing airship and its vacuum. Now the roughly 13% of slowly going mad and turning into a phase demon ..... i can see that phenomenon put a serious crimp in pirate groups practice of making people "walk the plank", depending on how well that little bit of trivia is known or not in most 3Gs spacefaring societies.

Also, lots of "ghost" stories across the 3 Galaxies, is a pretty good guess. That said, the larger text partly gives me impression that isolation/sensory deprivation caused by the "4D stranding" is a major part of what leads to the insanity and transformation, so i'm sort of tempted to ask myself how might a group of people being stranded in those circunstances at the same time change or not the dynamics of the process on some level and to what degree.

Hey, living on the edge has its risks, right? You don't get badass cred for skipping valet parking of your grav-car on Terra Prime.
But running the regular risk of turning into a soul-sucking monster of the void? There are people who find that an incredible turn-on(the same sort who carry on prison romances with convicted ax-murderers).

Revert Worlds---Anachronistic Tech-Levels in the Three Galaxies
“..I always thought I’d buy it by a blaster bolt in some seedy Rim saloon....not skewered by an obsidian-tipped arrow...So much for uplifting my primitive relations....godsdamn that ###er was a good shot!....”
---Last words of Captain Elsen Railth, Elven owner of the starfreighter Lolath’s Gift

“I can’t blame some of the Rimmers for seeking a simpler way of life for themselves; I tried living on Thrant for several years and found the sheer daily hassle of trying to keep up with the constant bombardment of up-to-date social media and forced-pressure performance goals on the job to be overwhelming. A few years later my ship had to make a forced stay on Nerst while awaiting spare parts to be brought in. Nerst’s an agro-culture; they work iron and can make steel and they got semaphores uniting their communities, but life moves at a much slower and quieter pace. While there were some things like the constant animal traffic that didn’t recommend the place, once I got used to the smells and gained the confidence of the locals, I found myself enjoying my three months on Nerst a lot more than I did eight on Thrant.”

“‘Respect the locals’, hah! Why should I respect these Revert primitives?! They’ve given up and thrown away high culture in favor of superstition! They doubtlessly think lightning is the anger of their gods! I can’t get through a day without being approached by some party of local priests complaining about how our contragravity overflights are ‘erding the threads of land and sky’ or some similar rubbish! We’re here to PROTECT these people at the expense of the people back home and these backwater -bufkos- don’t appreciate it! My rotation off this world and back to proper civilization can’t come soon enough!”

‘Reverts’ are societies of species normally associated with high levls of (generally spacefaring) technology that have either deliberately or involuntarily ‘reverted’ to a lower level of technology.
The reasons are many; in the case of voluntary technological reversion, societal experiments in creating ‘ideal’ societies often lead to the deliberate shedding and shunning of certain technologies, such as robotics, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and nuclear power, Such technologies may be demonized in the new social canon. In other cases, especially colonies and post-Industrial Revolution planets, the inhabitants of a plant may simply find that a high-tech level is locally unsustainable without constant outside help. Looking at the long term, these worlds have elected not to pursue further technological development.
Forced Reversion is easier to explain; local conditions, catastrophes, and war have destroyed a culture’s technological infrastructure and killed those who could maintain and rebuild it. Colonies often lose vital pieces of equipment and cannot replace them, the loser in interplanetary conflict might be ‘bombed back to the stone age’ by a spiteful victor. Depletion of planetary resources is another cause of Reversion; locall-raised species may attain a high level of technology and are unable to sustain it and collapse back to a lower level befre they can find the means of acquiring more resources or escape offworld.
Many Reverts slowly regain technological progress; revolution overthrows restrictive regimes to allow technological innovation or outside interference helps ‘uplift’ a world back on the tech-track. Changing local conditions may allow or force a culture to dust off the old engineering books and dig up the buried tool caches.
Some Revert societies stubbornly resist the temptation of technology. These cultures generally not do take outsider interference well; at best contact with offworlders may be severely restricted, and in extreme cases they may be killed on sight. Mere possession of an electronic wristwatch may be grounds for burning at the stake.
In many cases, Revert cultures may find substitutes for the ttechnology they lost/shun. Magic, psionics, or local chemistry often offer alternatives. ‘Steampunk’ cultures are good examples of alternate paths of technological evolution, though they may approach electronic cultures in sophistication and thus arguably lose ‘Revert’ status.
The Denlech are the best-known of the Revert cultures, but there are thousands of others scattered across the Three Galaxies. Some species in particular seem to have a proclivity for seeking out ‘simpler lives’ in their expansion across space/alternate dimensions; the Kankoran for example, who rarely exhibit starfaring societies that instead seem to implode into Revert cultures upon establishing themselves on suitable planets. Similarly, many Coyle and Elf enclaves chose simplier lifestyles and cast off the trappings of more sophisticated starfaring society.

For people who want to recycle Robotech books or are just a casual Gundam enjoyer, I humbly offer you this playground.

Yg’velnand Integrated Principality ----------(Corkscrew Galaxy)

” The recent revelations made by the Foghakle Divulge confirms that the leadership and powerful of the Human Alliance holds a deep persecution complex against all synthetic life, be they grown or manufactured. Untreated it spread throughout humanity and seeped into the Civilized World’s policy, rejecting aid to the Machine People and erasing any attempt to improve lives no matter how many fill the grave. The underhanded sabotage, funded despots and fueled paranoia across our history are all the proof we need.
Today, we separate ourselves from this mindset and the Human Alliance proper. Perhaps we could rejoin in a future where humanity sees itself as an equal member of the cosmos rather than the heavy, bloody axe of civilization. Until then, the Yg’velnand Integrated Principality stands apart!”
---Declaration of Apostasy, Livestreamed across the core of the Human Alliance.

“I’ve seen too much archived anime to think this whole polity is just random chance. Some abstract higher power must be a mecha fan.”
----Anonymous USA delegate

“I admit our history of robots are hit or miss. The classic Erectus was a textbook bipedal that has no frills but was not great for combat. Bashtrusst was always a favorite for being based on an animal and very marketable. Do not talk to me about Maxoliumpus, a pointy cannon with bloody skyscrapers for legs. Legs inhabited by your own citizens, including families. Honestly, our headstone would be underfunded one pillar to make a dozen adornments”

The handful of systems that would become the Y.I.P. rested at the border between the CCW Biosphere Zone and the Inner Systems. Founded during the Pre-Network Human Alliance expansion, the zone became a scientific enclave to study and limited exploration of Inner Systems. So important and distant from the Human Core Worlds they had their own node of the soon to be infamous Network. In fact, when the Automaton Wars broke out the erratic code was caught early and deleted by troubleshooters before any damage was done. As communications were cut off and the decades passed, the enclave made strides in robotics and research into the Inner Systems under the grace of the uncorrupted Network Node. Then the Resistance came in a retreating fleet, informing the bewildered masses of the war for survival.

Fearing for their own survival and not wanting to endanger the population, the Node withdrew from the public with a few human loyalists as the fight was joined. After the fall of the Network, the surviving Node naming themselves Princeps, hid deep and away in hibernation emerging several decades at a time to keep alert of current events and return to slumber, under the watch of several trusted families.

As the Human Alliance rebuilt, the descendants of the enclave joined the CAF as the forerunners for power armor and robot piloting. However, a series of wars across the centuries turned system against system, habitat against habitat and division abroad. The New Stoics Conflict, Regit’s Recoil, The Collapse of the Crisis Command and more took place, stamping out AI development, ravaging habs and lives lost. All these conflicts were fought with manned robots and power armor due to familiarity with the machines, limited military resources for other machines and personal pride. As wars raged on, standardization of parts and models became rarer forcing mechanics to kitbash what worked into something functional, resulting in the informal and crude naming of the Frankenmech Wars.
The latest stabilizing authority was the Yg’velnand Trust, named after the best known colony ship of the first founding, a dedicated government representing the collective habitats, with aid from an Indivisible Algorithm for streamlining efficiency. The I.A. was Princeps wanting to take a lasting and cooperative role in the wellbeing of their people.

After the Kotus Point disaster, the Demon assault upon the Human Alliance Core Worlds, and the release of the Foghakle Divulge, everything started to click into place. Records showed HA upper crust and people of power funding extremist forces, suppling material and clout in exchange for halting AI development and keeping people fighting. With this, the Trust along with Princeps revealed the truth of the Algorithm along with the crimes the HA elite has put their people through. In swift succession, legislation was written up to separate from the Human Alliance proper to become its own star nation. Another surprise was a vote to have Princeps be the recognized head of state and with a 76% vote of yes. Vowing to make this territory a haven for all sophont life, Princeps worked with the Trust in reorganizing the government into the Y.I.P.
Once the Minion War dies down, the Yipti can get to work making an official state line of piloted robots to sell and offer asylum to fleeing refuges. Another problem is remnants of funded tyrant cells working to plunge the systems back into war or surviving HA elites with more money and hate against the fledgling nation. So if you seek piloting robots across the stars, the Y.I.P is a good place to start.

A. Size
Modest: Six Star Systems
B. History
Recent Splinter of Human Alliance
C. Level of Technological Sophistication
Advanced Space Age, with specializations in Robotics and Space Station/Space Habitat Megastructures
D. General Attitude/Culture
Peaceful Expansionists
E. Racial Composition
60% Human and Human Variant, 30% Synthetic Citizens(Encompassing Androids, Ais and other.) 10% Assorted Other
F. Government
---Constitutional Mechocracy
G. Administrative Control
Tight
H. External Trade
Trade---- Now trading but two major hyperlanes overlap in Bretona-Victoria Imperium space and things have not gone smooth.
H1. Commodities
Exports: Trained PA and Robot Pilots, Megastructure prefabs for space habitats, and recently their lines of home-built robots and power armor.
Imports: Other species technology, Luxury items and rare materials for their works.
I. Status
Boom

Chernitz--- Chuktan Homeworld(Anvil Galaxy)
“Chernitz is going to be a tough nut to crack if and when we ever go in. Right now, indications are that the Chukta are stewing in their own court intrigues, and lots of little factions and individual office-seekers, all with their own agendas, but none of them sympathetic to outsiders. They’re busy eyeballing each other for the knife from what we can tell, but the moment we attack, they’re all going to unite against a common foe; us.“
---Kathar Zal, Dedeg(Commander), Military Analysis Desk, Afran Stellar Reconnaisance, attached to the Semeten Dominia

Chernitz is the homeworld of the Chukta and heart of their Star Empire.
The Chukta evolved in the oceans and coastlines of Chernitz fighting for mates, feeding grounds, choice breeding grounds, and patrimony. They also competed with a number of other related Chuktoid lines, evolutionary cousins, some of who survived into historic times, albeit as slaves, before they were rendered extinct(the Chukta discovering conservation a bit too late to save their evolutionary cousins). Even after they began to adapt to new environments on land and reshape their world, the Chukta continued to be fiercely competitive for resources and power. Industrialization brought cooperative behavior out of necessity, but political warfare continued.
Interstellar conquest again brought out the competition between individual bulls. The discovery of other species, at an inferior level of technological achievement, also renewed the ancient slavery practices, Pleased again to have inferiors to labor for them, the Chukta saw a destiny of conquest ahead for them. Young bulls, eager to pioneer new territories and establish patriarchies fr themselves, signed up with the expanded interstellar military conquest fleets.

Once a center of industry, Chernitz began to move towards a service economy, processing the tribute input of their farflung colonies and conquerd territories. The oligarchal senior bulls could begin the business of carving vast open estates, worthy of the capital world of an interstellar empire, out of Chernitz’ hostile and rugged landscape, their efforts fueled by offworld resources and imported slave labor. When the fortunes of empire reversed, and a floof of refugees came fleeing the legions of alien usurpers(though the latter would call themselves liberators), the cultivated society of Chernitz was thrown into turmoil. Factories had to be reopenned and rebuilt and farmlands replanted to service, house, and feed the multitudes of displaced Chukta, and to build the weaponry to defend them. Then, too, there were the returning bulls who had held high office in the conquered territories, and were now forced to eat the bitter bread of exile. Many demanded action and satisfaction of the homeworld’s established oligarchies to regain their places of power, and a place among them to see it done. Dissatisfaction with the lack of action and in many cases the ignoring of the returnees’ demands has led to tension in the courts, more than a few duels for position, and even more behind the scenes conniving and jockeying for power.

Currently the Bestah system is under blockade. While they can still communicate with their outposts on Orevv, and the occasional blockade runner does get through, the Chukta in the home system are pretty much bottled up. The Chukta have been forting up, building up their orbital defenses against an attack they realistically expect to come one day. That their enemies haven’t yet come hot on the heels of their victories over the other worlds of the Chuktan Empire is seen as a sign of weakness on the part of the outsiders, and gives the Chuktas hope that they can rise again and turn the tables on their destiny-deniers.

Solar System(Bestah)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
Yellow Dwarf
Number of Planets: 6
-Gas Giant(Lavow)-----Tiny for a gas giant, and evaporating under the solar wind and radiation of Bestah, Lavow(th) in Chukta mythology is depicted as a covetous rival of the sun-goddess Besta. When Lavowth failed and was caught by Besta, the rival was sentenced to be chained at the foot of the sun-goddess, serving as her slave, while being burned in the process by her proximity.

-Asteroid(Gawthre)----This rocky body serves as a solar observatory and sensor station. With a population of several hundred scientific and military personnel, there is some tension between the scientists(who tend to be Chukta of milder personalities, assigned to an out-of-the-way post that is effectively exile for them) and the military(who rightfully regard the station as a punishment detail). With no obvious military significance, Gawthre has been left alone by the blockading and raiding forces and is still able to regular supplies.

-Gas Giant(Kaloth)----Jupiter-sized world with eight moons of note. Explored in desultory fashion by the Chukta early in their space age, the Kaloth lunar system saw cosniderable development with the flood of Galactic technologies ushered in by the discoveries on Homdon. Sveral million Chukta and their servants work in the Kaloth colonies.
One of Kaloth’s moons, Gara, is home to several large facilities, including an experimental slave-breeding center. Here slave-stock, mainly humans, but also a few orcs and Vascari seedlings, are raised. The bull-lord presiding over this facility has had his political status rise what with the regular sources of slaves being cut off, the servant-stock bred in the farm domes have become much in demand.
Roo deeo in the Bestah system to be subject to major raids by the Semeten Dominia, traffic to and from Kaloth’s moons is still occasionally hit by deep raiders.

-Terrestrial(Chernitz)----System lifeworld and home of the Chukta

-Gas Giant(Dresa)----Small gas giant. Its ring system is occasionally prospected for ice and metals.

-Terrestrial(Homdon)----Small
Hidden on Homdon is the remains of a large Golgan Republik fleet depot/boneyard, where dozens of stripped, but mothballed, capital ships and derelicts were abandoned, along with megatonnes of defective or obsolete spare parts, ammunition, and toxic waste. Still, when the Chukta discovered the facility, it allowed them to bootstrap themselves into FTL starfaring status, and what they believed to be galactic domination. Why the Republik built such a facility so near an emergent species’ homeworld remains unknown; Golgan records of the time and the region are scant and difficult to access.
Holgrra’Viathan( or “The SkyPit’) remains an important military research facility for the Chukta, even though the boneyard has been stripped of anything usable and of value. The base is heavily defended and has come under attack several times, suffering some damage with each strike, but not enough tofice its abandonment.

Planet(Chernitz )
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 30,000 km
Gravity: 1.08 g
Temperature: Temperate, but on the warm side. Humans would find the planet tropical in climate.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Moons( 5)--These satellites have since been heavily developed. More recently, they’ve been hastily fortified against the anticipated Semeten Dominia attackm and harbor the remains of the Chuktan Imperial Navy.
- Energy Field---Chernitz posssesses an atmospheric ‘heat envelope’ that keeps the planet warm and livable despite its distance from its sun. The Chukta regard this late discovery(compared to other terrestrial models) as another sign that they are a ‘blessed’ species.
Atmosphere: Breathable terrestrial nitrox mix
Terrain:
Hostile; most of Chernitz’s land surface is too rugged or mountainous to be easily habitable by the amphibian Chukta.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Molybdenite
- Mercury
- Sapphire
- Tin
- Arsenic
- Graphite
- Titanium
- Platinum
Hydrosphere:
62% of Chukta’s surface is covered in open water. Thee have been many efforts over centuries of Chuktan history to expand the swamps and mudflats that the Chukta favor for their breeding grounds inland.
Biosphere:
Moderate, down from Verdant; the local ecology has suffered from Chuktan efforts to industrialize and reshape the land surface. Early on, the Chukta tried using atomics to level moutains and dig new waterways to flood low-lying desert. The result was significant amounts of radiation, mine tailings, industrial pollution, and sediments contaminating the ecosystem.
Civilization:
Settled(Species Homeworld)
Population:
9 billion Chukta
Technology:
Low Galactic. The Chukta have fusion power, computers, M-factor materials and weaponry, antigravity, and FTL spacetravel. They can produce forcefields, but variable forcefield etchnology is still difficult for them. Their Artificial Intelligence systems are crude and virtually nonexistant beyond the basic robotic drone stage.
Much of their planetside industry is being repurposed to producing food and life necessitities. The orbital shipyards are still operational, but have been damaged by several SD/Zyganian fire-raids, diminishing their capability. While still receiving some shipments from their nearest colonies, Chuktan industry is running short, thanks to the blockade, of several materials vital to high-tech and their war effort.
Economy:
Was Industrial, moving towards Service as the administrative gub of an interstellar empire. It’s been forced to resort back to an Industrial/Agricultural economy to feed its population and arm its military.
Wealth:
Poor. Currently Chernitz is in a bit of a crisis; the loss of two of its profitable slave worlds, interdiction of its deep space mining efforts, and a flood of refugees from aforementioned lost worlds has caused overcrowding, strain on infrastructure, and growing political turmoil.
Government:
Oligarchy----The Chukta are ruled by bulls who have managed to gain control of various resources, accumulate wealth and harems, and shoulder aside their opponents. Large endeavors, such the re-landscaping of Chernitz and the building of their space program have necessitated and fostered cooperation between the bulls(and the harem matriarchs behind them), but most such cooperation is done with the expctation that more influential bulls will extend patronage to those under them, and give them a hand up to build networks of allies. The Conclave is made up of powerful bulls and recogized matriarches who have reached a level and realization that no one personality can stand(for long) above all others, and that their cooperation is necessary. However, there is a lot of backroom power-brokering and no small amount of skullduggery even at the highest levels as councilmembers seek to better their positions and fend off the schemes of younger more avaricious iffice-seekers.
While there’s a nominal ‘emperor’, this is more of a chairman than a hereditary title(Chuktan bullls dream of having a succession of emperors of direct descent from them), with the understanding that they rule only by consent and cooperation of the rest of the Conclave. A smart emperor is one who can moderate the forces of the Conclave senior Houses and play them off against each other while advancing his own agendas.
Law Level:
Totalitarian----The homeworld oligarch-bulls are increasingly turning to draconian measures outside the usual challenge-rituals to retain their power, especially since many of the high rank refugees have been turnin to underhanded tactics to get what THEY want. This in turn fuels the homeworlders’ paranoia and gives them cause to cite self-defence as reason enough to crack down on the refugee communities.
Popularity:
Ambivalent, shading towards Unpopular. The homeworlders don’t like playing host to rivals they thought had gone away to the colonies, but are now competition for dwinding resources. The exiles feel that the central gvernment isn’t doing enough to protect them and reclaim the colonies. Unscrupulous bulls and matriarchs in both camps are whipping up allies in either side to advance their own agendas. And there’s the understanding that there are aliens out there who might decide to destroy them all.
Stability:
Long-Standing(with reservations)
While there may be a lot of dissatisfaction with the current oligarchs, there’s not much call for the removel and replacement of the SYSTEM. Frankly, those Chukta with the means are too busy conniving to get into power to contemplate revolutionizing the whole system of governance and replacing it with something better.

Sidebar: The United SystemsAlliance Office of Relocation(USAOR)----
“New Columbia’s open to accepting more refugees this year, Styx is still happy to have more people, if they can stand the red sun...likewise for Kaxxion. Mestos is still looking for fieldhands, if only temporarily for the harvest season...we usually place people there for a year or so before they move on to someplace with more gravity. There’s some concern on Kendelson about lingering radiation damage from the nukes to their genes so they’re open to undamaged blood even if it means welcoming in new ethnicities and social groups. Cenax is still in the mid stages of terraforming, so if folks don’t mind living under domes, we can shift some immigrants over there. They still have reservations about Tennison‘s overall security, but let any candidates know the full story and see they want to take the risk. Gremar’s got some openings, and the elves will take non-elves. TemsenSkoya likewise, if folks don’t mind the bugs. And Silkra announced they’re open to increasing their immigrant intake if we can send them more skilled, or at least willing to learn, people. EVERYBODY wants skilled workers if we have them; see about increasing the number of tech-schoolers in the transit camps and get some education terminals on the transports.
Now, let’s see what we got for transport---”

“USAOR’s the Big Show for the GNE’s Human Resources and Avatar Registration officers; tens of thousands of applicants and refugees every day, round the clock, to be interviewed, evaluated, weighed and placed. Hundreds of locations stretching over galaxies and dimensions, thousands of slots to fill, all those choices and options to juggle. Making the decisions that could affect millions of lives. Transport, provisioning, and housing logistics. Moon-masses of paperwork. You either go mad or you Ascend---with a capital ‘A’--- to a whole new level of organizational nerdery.”

“I was plucked off a death-trapeze, my life literally hanging by a chain, waiting in line for execution when a group of Usan wandering heroes busted open my hated homeworld‘s corrupt-as-hell penal system and liberated who they could. They didn’t have enough ready transport on hand for some twenty thousand cons as passengers, so they quickly hired some Elnik----not that any of us knew who or what the Elnik were, Forisma being a pretty backwater world---cattle-boats and put us in torpor tanks for what I later learned was an eighteen month trip to one of the Usans’ worlds. There a few thousand of us were decanted wet and naked as the day we were born into a strange new world. Appropriate, because we were effectively reborn into new lives.
Oh, there were a few hardcases who genuinely deserved to be executed who saw this as getting off the hanging line with none the wiser, but the local police straightened them out right quick and that was the end of that, but the rest of us fell into our new lives with relief and gratitude. Working in an orchard, dodging fist-sized flies, under a sky with ten moons and rings took some getting used to, but it’s a far sight better than being dipped in boiling hot oil until my skin peeled off for the crime of not spreading my legs for some spoiled-rich toff. And if I ever again meet the guy in green who punched out the court-torturer pushing me to the death-vats, and who got me on the rescue carrier, I intend to express some very personal thanks.“

The United Systems Alliance Office of Relocation is a subdivision of the United Systems Planetary Protection Council(USPPC) and acts as a bridging organization and coordinating office between USPPC, the United Systems Interworld Health Organization, USAJC Spacelift Command, and various other offices and organizations(such as the FreeBeings Bureau) involved with dealing with colonization issues and the disposition of refugees. USAOR coordinates the evacuation, transport, and resettling of refugees from shatterworlds, warzones, and sophont crisis zones, and sees to their resettlement, if only temporarily, in safer sanctuaries. The Office of Relocation also handles immigration into the USA worlds, so they work in hand with local immigration and naturalization organizational bodies. With many USA member worlds and colonial territories looking to increase their populations or facing manpower shortages, the USAOR sometimes had the problem of choosing which worlds to send people to, leading to the office sometimes called the ‘Either-ORs’.
USAOR also works with the United Systems University on developing rehabilitation and reeducation programs for refugees. Training immigrants in advance to handle what they’ll be facing on their new worlds is a major part of USAOR/USU initiatives. USU seniors on advanced study programs can often get credit for helping refugee education classes.
Critics of the USA often lambast the USAOR as running a ‘meatmarket’ for cheap/slave labor for Usan territories looking for a free workforce, one often ill-prepared for the hard working conditions of colonial worlds and rehabilitating shatterworlds. Misinterpreted(and willingly so) reports of refugees being augmented to survive in new environments has led to talk of Usan medical experimentation and mass conversions with mind control measures. USAOR freely admits that it offers prospective colonists and relocatees various forms of augmentation, but on a purely voluntary basis, or else operates in similar fashion to the d-bee a civil works programs(where d-bees in need of immediate drastic medical treatment may receive cyborg or bioborg conversion and repay the work in community service).
Others have treated the USAOR initiatives differently. Less scrupulous governments have used USAOR refugee lifts as an opportunity to empty their prisons of more violent offenders, convicted felons, and even capital criminals, mixing them in with economical refugees, and washing their hands of the whole matter afterwards. Though this has caused some problems for the USAOR and local colonial authorities, However, the spreading word that the USAn police organizations can be downright and frighteningly strict in their own bailiwicks helps quash a lot of would-be rogues and troublemakers.
Besides arranging transport and passage, the USAOR also arranges for the feeding and clothing of refugees. USAOR has recently signed several contracts with well-known ‘fastmaker’ micro-fac vendor manufacturers such as Reddiware and VendoPlex to produce low-cost refugee ‘kits’ of basic necessities such as toiletries and clothing until they can acquire more durable and individualistic outfits (ideally) from local sources on the worlds they are relocated to.

Game Hooks:
While USAOR favors large ships with the ability to transport hundreds or thousands of people, PCs with their own ships could still be hired to do taxi service, and provide security and escort for the larger transports(the USAJC isn’t always available in numbers, so USAOR regularly employs Irregulars and PMCs to cover). Of course, there’s also working groundside, rescuing sophonts from planetary catastrophe or fighting their way out of hot warzones and into ever-diminishing safe-zones around the landing and loading areas.
If the PCs are less lucky, they might have the bright idea of getting offworld by sneaking aboard a refugee lift. This can entail hiding their hardware, running into USAOR security, and possibly being taken to some other world not on their itinerary.


Sidebar: The Salvation Fleet----
“I used to work on my planet’s nuclear sub fleet, until the atomic mushrooms went up and pretty much smoked my world, but the Alliance swooped down and plucked us from the fallout. Mind you, a lot of us didn’t want to go, wanted to die with our homes, but the Alliance applied tough love and yanked up young and old alike, and a fair amount of the environment as well, packed us into their transports and off to new worlds.
I never thought I’d find another reason to live, or work for ANY navy, let alone a SPACE navy. Yet, here I am, gainfully employed in the Troni Anchorage yards, prepping starships for refugee transport duty.
Like this one; and it’s familiar to me. This is the old Tantor Tractor, the ship that carried me away from my old homeworld. It’s just got off duty rescuing another group of refugees off their dying world. people who’d given up hope and were more than a little frightened when hope swooped down on them. When a ship like this comes in, we go over it and give it the spic and span treatment, mop out the vomit and crap, flush life support and sanitize everything, and prepare it for its next round of duty. Yeah, I’m swobbing decks again, but as a section chief.
Now, if you don’t mind, I gotta supervise some ‘bots in UV-sterilizing the serviceways.”

“Damn....the rimmies came through for us! Look at all those starliners and haulers! And shuttlecarriers, oh boy! That’s some serious spacelift coming our way! Looks like we may just be able to pull this evac off without having to leave anybody behind!”

“Decontaminating the Salvation Ships can be an adventure in itself; it’s not only sophonts, their domestic animals, and conservation wildlife that manage to get aboard. Alot of vermin, species, some of them intelligent, have self-preservation instincts too, and they manage to get aboard the lifeboats. Worst case scenario is when a place has to be evacuated because of an infestation, and some of the specific infesters get aboard the escape ships in the chaos. That’s why we pull full ship decons in desert systems; less chance of infecting a lifeworld or habitat that way if we have to flush the environmentals. Occasionally, though, we’ve had to scuttle entire ships bcause the infestation’s gotten too advanced. Hate to lose a ship on the line, but better than losing another world to some biohazard.”

The Salvation Fleet is the United Systems Alliance’s Office of Relocation’s ace up its sleeve. It’s a sign of the humanitarian efforts of the USA that they have set aside a substantial amount of resources to maintain a reserve of transports for the purpose of evacuating imperiled colonies and shatterworlds. Though taking large numbers of heavy transport starships out of profitable service to act as a ready-to-go reserve against planetary catasttophe would seem a recipe for financial disaster, especially for a star nation already running on a thin margin, the Salvation Fleet has served the Alliance well, not just in dealing with domestic disasters and diasporas, but also in responding to crisises in other territories as well.
The USA maintains several ‘motorpool’ anchorage-shipyards spotted about its star systems where heavy transports, mainly Bradfords and Webb Hayes, wait, maintained by caretaker crews under the Spacelift Command, in readiness for call-up. Generally, ships chosen for Salvation duty are cycled through a three-stage usage scheme; generally spending 4 years on transport duty, then refit for refugee transport and subsequent on-call station-keeping for 2 years, then after duty, being decontaminated and refit/refurbishment and back on anchorage intil called back up for geneal trasport work.
The Salvation Fleet also accepts cooperate dnations; companies with surplus heavy transport can volunteer ships for call-up duty for set periods of time or until the company needs their shups again, and Spacelift Command will cover half the cost of refurbishment and all of any repair costs fro damage incurred on Salvation Fleet business.

Tatifka---- (USA member)(Thundercloud Galaxy)

“One of the more picturesque systems in the USA; tourism could be a major draw to Acknor if the Hamilites woudl allow it. As it is, it looks like they’re favoring select quality of visitors over paying volume. Still, Acknor looks to become one of the Alliance’s exotic spiritual centers.”

“The Hamilites may be very picky about who they let on their world near the ancient sites, but they do let some rather odd and unpexpected groups in. The Walkers especially; individuals and small groups that come to physically walk the lengths of the massive patterns left behind by the Ancients. Strange as it may seem, I’ve had occasion to see some of what gets the Walkers so excited...a good cool sunny morning perfect for a hike, you can get a spectacular vista of the Patterns, the Atlantean pyramids rising from the plains, giant Hebrasis looming to one side, Tioch or another moon reflecting the light of Acknor, and the air just humming with good vibes. If you’re not careful, it can make a believer in the higher powers out of you.”

Tatifka is a habitable moon of the gas giant Hebrasis in the Acknor system. It has a hospitable environment and a humah-compatible ecosystem.
Tatifka was clearly visited by the Atlanteans at some point, as evidenced by several clusters of large pyramids on the moon-world, and sites of what were Atlantean commuities, though what clan(s) they were and why they abandoned Tatifka are unknown. However, Tatifka shows signs of being terraformed even earlier, possibly by the Mu-Ram, an ancient starfaring culture thought to have been made extinct at the hands of the Dominators.
The most spectacular and compelling evidence of the presence of the Mu-Ram is that the soil of Tatifka is infused with a variety of nanites, of the sort that the Mu-Ram were known to produce. These micromachines have apparently only one purpose; to generate patterns, usually of a spiral type and usually miles wide, in soft earth and sand, often accentuated by plants or water that accumulate in the depressions. Some of these patterns change annually, while others appear static(or at least only change at a pace not discernable by normal humanoid temporal perception scales). It is unknown what the patterns signify; the Mu-Ram were rumored to be both deeply spiritual and artistic, and known to create symbolic art on a continental, even global, scale.
Tatifka has been most recently settled by the Hamilites, a religious group from the Human Alliance. The Hamilites, who have been described as having aspects of neo-Buddhism among other influences in their canon, respect both the Atlantean pyramid complexes and Mu-Ram patterns as spiritual sites and have appointed themselves the guardians of them.
It was to protect these sites that the Hamilites contacted the United Systems Alliance. Several attempts by aggressive artifact-hunters to pillage suspected Mu-Ram and Atlantean sites had been repelled, albeit at considerable cost to the normally peaceful Hamilites. Fearing future raids, the Hamilites asked for protection from the USA, in return for provisional membership and access to the same sites(under the supervision of the Hamilites).
The United Systems University maintains a small campus on Tatifka, specializing in religious studies, archaeology, and Atlantean studies. The USA also maintains, under agreement with the Hamilites, several industrial sites on other moons around Hebrasis, and at least one military base to defend against pirates..

Hamilites have a higher incidence of natural psionics in their population; 01-15% Major Psionics, 16-55% Minor Psionics, 56-00% no psionic abilities. Some accredit Hamilite marriage practices and bloodlines for the concentration of psionic abilities, while others claim that Tatifka’s environment is responsible.

Solar System(Acknor)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Yellow Dwarf
Number of Planets: 5
-Gas Giant(Umaci) ---Huge gas giant. Solar flux regularly blows off swaths of gas from the planet’s upper atmosphere, the gas masses subsequently falling back into the atmosphere, creating great glowing arcs in the process. Umaci’s single moon, Hadah, is being surveyed as a possible resort site(with Hamilite permission) to take advantage of the moon’s position observing this arc-phenomena.

-Gas Giant(Hebrasis) ---Gargantuan gas giant with 18 moons, some of them planet-sized. Tatifka is the largest, Tioch the next largest(and shares Tatifka’s exotic atmosphere). Under the agreement signed with the Hamilites, the USA has development rights to the other moons, as long as the ‘serenity’, as determined by Hamilite psychic scrying, is not interrupted or infringed upon, and any additional artifact sites in the system are turned over to Hamilite administration, to be opened or closed to access by their decision.
Moons of note:
*Tatifka---System lifeworld.
*Tioch--- 9,010 km diameter, temperate climate, 0.9 g gravity field. Possesses deposits of Kardinium, a mineral known to be of interest to the ancient Atlanteans. It is speculated that the Atlanteans on Tatifka may have detected the kardinium of Tioch and either visited the moon to mine it, or were planning to visit it. Currently Tioch hosts a USA industrial complex/mining operation and military base.
*Nalcha---This moon looks deceptively asymmetrical due to the ‘Nalcha Notch’, a massive cleft carved in its surface by some long-ago collision. The canyon/pit, which has not collapsed or closed, has exposed multiple geological strata to a great depth, making the moon of interest to geologists. The United Systems University has begun making field trips to the moon for this purpose.
*Alegan---The ‘Painted Moon’. Alegan is crisscrossed with cracked chemical plains such that it was mistaken for having artificial geoline patterns similar to Tatifka’s. Closer study showed the lines and patterns to be natural, the result of successive layers of ash deposition, periodic flooding, and drought occasioned by Alegan’s elliptical path, that causes seasons of volcanic activity to spew chemical-rich ash and steam, and causing fluctuations in the moon’s tainted atmosphere. Algan’s surface water is scant, and heavily tainted with chemical poisons, though from the air the lakes and ponds are strikingly colorful. Alegan plays host to a small USU geoscience station.

-Terrestrial(Sotan) ---Miniscule rocky planet with the thinnest of atmospheres.. It has yet to be surveyed in depth for valuable resources.

-Gas Giant(Garshalan) ---Miniscule gas ‘giant’. It possesses a set of thin rings.

-Terrestrial(Dorton) ---Large rocky ice world. It has two small moons, a set of rings, and exhibits a strong magnetic field, suggesting a still active core.

Planet/Moon(Tatifka)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 9,600 km
Gravity: 0.8 g
Temperature: Temperate, but cool
Unusual/Special Features:
Atmosphere:
Exotic; breathable, but it contains some unusual element, possibly molecular machines, that cause brief illuminated expanding ‘halos’ in response to modulated acoustic vibrations, such as speech. This effect is more prevalent in some areas than in others
Terrain:
Three terranes
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Magnesium
- Iron
- Manganese
- Tin
- Arsenic
- Nickel
- Platinum
- Borax
Hydrosphere:
Balanced; about 52% of the planet/moon is covered in open water
Biosphere:
Verdant; Tatifka supports a diverse ecology of plant and animal life. Recent studies have discovered significant concentrations of nanites in several animal species, especially herd beasts, with the hints that the nanites may be influencing the behavior of the herbivores to assist in maintaining peripheral patterns. Other species under investigation include spireed, a plant that grows in spiral columns, and floraqua, a family of freefloating water plants that grow in spiraling patterns reminiscent of Mendelbrot Sets. The largest animal on Tatifka is the sohtie, a dog-sized catlike predator that hunts in prides but avoids contact with humans.
Civilization:
Colonial
Population:
11 million
(71% Human, 29% other)
Technology:
Galactic, but the Hamilites prefer to live at a simpler Information Age level. They acquired Galactic weaponry to fight off the archaeo-pirates, but do not have a native M-factor weapons industry and only a small M-factor vehicle manufacturing capability, mainly devoted to building the airships and glide-cars that are the principle means of transportation on Taifka.
Economy:
Agriculture. The Hamilites have allowed a limited amount of tourism as well.
Wealth:
Average, shading out of Depressed. Fighting archaeo-raiders took a lot out of the Hamilites, and they’ve been struggling to regain economic stability, which is why they turned to the United Systems Alliance for help.
Government:
Theocracy with shades of Psiocracy---The Hamilites hew to a belief in the perfection of mind and psychic ability is seen as both a sign of advanced mental evolution and simultaneously a challenge to be overcome in using psionic powers wisely.
Law Level: Lawful, shading towards Overbearing, especially in the ‘holy’ site zones. The Hamilites are very strict about who they let into the Atlantean and the more built-up Mu-Ram sites.
Popularity:
Beloved. The Hamilites are steadfastly loyal to their beliefs and united in their purpose.
Stability:
Solid; the Hamilites are united by their religion, philosophy, and self-assigned duty in protecting the various artifacts on their world.

Other Notable Locations:
Besides the Mu-Ram geo-lines and Atlantean pyramids, Tatifka also sports the Wells of Light....located in a large shallow archipelago in one of Tatifka’s oceans are several sites where groups of wells or pits, barely breaking the lagoons’ surfaces, sit. The wells occur in groups of five, spaced about 30-40 ft apart in very shallow water. Low stone casings cap shafts that drop some 100-200 ft down underground. Spiral staircases allow descending access to chambers at the bottom. Each well in a group is lit by colored light streaming from underground; yellow, orange/red, green, blue, and violet, and each has a magic or psychotropic effect. While the stonework is identifiable as Atlantean masonry and Stone Master work, the wells are built atop underground spurs of ley-energy-conducting crystal strata that may have been deliberately shaped by the Mu-Ram.
While the Hamilites have not permitted any serious and invasive study of the Wells of Light, they have permitted a limited number of guests and tourists to come to the archipelago. Visitors may descend into the wells for a session of meditation, either alone or in small groups(no more than four people) in the lights of magic. A typical session lasts 1-8 hours.
The nearby atolls have the remains of what was once Atlantean small communities, most likely associated with the Wells of Light. Several of the sites have been reclaimed and rebuilt by the Hamilites for their own use.

-Yellow(Citrine)---Those who meditate in this well claim to have astrally projected(this has been proven out by several tests). Others claim to have spoken with spirits, usually of their own acquaintance, but a rare few have claimed to have made fleeting contact with much older presences that they further assert were Atlantean or even Mu-Ram.(GM’s discretion: participants can come away with 1d4 free uses of a Summon & Control animals/entities spell....possibly a gift of the spirits of the well)

-Orange/Red(Ruby)---- This well exhibits healing properties, but those who have entered it have also reported feeling sauna-like heat, great passion, and a sense of great self-confidence in their dealings with others. (GM’s discretion: those who meditate in the well come away with a saving throw, +1d4, against heat-based attack spells and/or +1d4 to M.E. and M.A.)

-Green(Emerald/Jade)---Those meditating in the green light of this well report the feeling of fading into underground lines of power and flowing about the lines of spiritual energy of the planet before returning back to corporeal form. Regardless of whether they really sublimed into some sort of leyline system, however briefly, participants all exhibit a marked increase in their health and well-being. (GM’s discretion: pilgrims meditating in this well can gain a free Familiar Link...especially if they come into the well with the animal, or can gain 1d4 Ley Line spells)

-Blue(Turquoise)----Some who meditate in this well are subjected to phantasmagoric delusions and a sense of confusion that they feel is a test of their will. Others come away with a supernatural sense of weather or, if they are magically inclined, will discover they can intuit how to perform a Summon Weather spell(GM’s discretion).

-Violet(Sapphire)----Meditation in this well is known to inspire great self-confidence and courage in the participant, and an ability (or sense thereof) to beat seemingly insurmountable odds(at the GM’s discretion, those who meditate here can come away with 1d4 free Beat Insurmountable Odds spells).

Gerundi----United Systems Alliance Colony/Prison Planet(Thundercloud Galaxy)
(aka ‘Wet”)

“Gerundi’s possibly the only prison system where you can learn gemstone cutting in the prison shop. That’s because the island has several kimberlite pipes that have yielded jewel-quality stones. It’s become a hobby mining for stones and cutting them to taste. Platinum too; we’re arguably some of the richest cons in the galaxy. Of course, occasionally some newbie figures on using a diamond to cut through the barrack walls...until the senior inmates point out that the cell block doors are open all the time, and where they going to run to anyway? The only starships are way on the other side of the planet across the Boiling Seas.”

“Ah, welcome to Camp Sola Vista, young ladies! Like its Paradise Federation namesake, Sola Vista’s sunny beauty and warm sand beaches will draw you in and not let you go! So, what have you three done to merit the attentions of our wonderful hosts in the United Systems Alliance? Piracy? Tech-theft? Nothng so bad that they would have sentenced you to death, but not so mild as to allow you to be released back into the wild? Ah, you’re from THAT little war front? I haven’t heard of any POWs being taken from that conflict. No offense intended, but what I’ve heard, few of your soldiers are worth taking prisoner. So, you must tell us how you came to our blessed shores here, at camp dinner tonight! Oh, my mistake! I have not introduced myself! I am Malon Chatrue, former colonel in the by now all-but-extinct Velosian Proactive Defense Council, though our hosts dare to call us -pirates-. ”

Gerundi would normally be considered a hot property of a colonizable planet, even with 99% of its surface covered in water, because it possesses a breathable atmosphere, temperate climate, and a non-hostile ecosystem....at least at the poles. Currently, though, Gerundi plays host to a few floating and submarine habitats in its seas and a penal colony on its single small landmass.
The Gerundi penal colony is considered to be a minimum security facility for those the USA simply wants out of the way, but not anywhere close to the Alliance’s interstellar transit system. The incarcerated include POWs, thieves, and ‘brigands’(pirates not guilty of murder/rapine). Gerundi is considered a ‘country club prison’ with inmates encouraged to better themselves through education and self-reform. It seems to be working. A number of ex-prisoners have elected to stay on after sentence being served, having learned to like the planet’s conditions over what they might have returned home to. These ex-cons help the trustees and missionary teachers rehabilitate other prisoners.

Gerundi also plays host to a sizable enclave of Quimbek. The piscine aliens tend to stick to the polar ocean depths and avoid the brighter-lit shallow water near the surface, so they have very little chance of contact with the penal colony. The Quimbek colonists have found Gerundi a treasure-box of riches, both mineral and biological.
Gerundi is orbited by a satellite network and by Gerus Station, an Extended Plymouth-class space station that serves as an orbital annex. Most two-way travel between the surface and space is by Quimbek transports. Though these ships have to use more energy to carry their life support loads of oxygenated water, it is seen as an extra security precaution; terrestrial land-dweller stowaways would either have to be able to handle great pressure and breath water, or be suited up in waterproof environmental armor to survive the trip.

Solar System(Takoi 43)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 6
-Terrestrial (Gerundi)---System lifeworld. Home to multiple underwater Quimbek settlements and the Gerundi Penitentiary Colony.

-Gas Giant (Mulden) ---Small gas giant. Its single moon, Haldorn, is home to a USAJC naval base that watches activity in the system very closely.

-Gas Giant (Sevak) ---Huge gas giant. Its ten moons are not yet prospected or developed.

-Exotic ---The Duans are a pair of comet-like objects that orbit a common center.
The two bodies orbit some eighty thousand miles apart, but their enormous vapor tails actually each other’s heads, so little mass is lost to the void. The Duans seem to be made of some sort of exotic matter ice with unusual electromagnetic properties; their mutual attraction/repulsion seems more electromagnetic in nature than gravitic. There is some speculation that they may originate in another universe.

-Asteroid(Soidan)--This icy planetoid is home to an eccentric Quimbek scientist, Rq’lk-garsis, who, after being hailed as a prodigy in his youth and publishing several award-winning papers on cosmology, seemed to spiral into eccentricity as he got older. Although some of his earlier theories were proven wrong(at least with regards to the universe of the Three Galaxies), Rq’lk-garsis was able to readjust his thinking and issue several revised and more airtight postulates that again aroused considerable excitement in scientific circles. Later, though, the Quimbek scientist grew increasingly combative with his colleagues, withdrew from the spotlight, and finally withdrew from public life altogether, before quietly slipping away to establish a hermitage habitat on Soidan. The USU keeps tabs on Rq’lk-garsis, and seems to be able to visit him in his self-imposed exile, but has placed privacy classifications on the nature of these communications and visits. Rumors are circulating in the scientific community that the reclusive Rq’lk-garsis is working on a top secret project, pursuing a study of exotic phenomena(possibly related to the Duans), or dappling in magic. Another rumor is that the brilliant Rq’lk-garsis is suffering from a degenerative neural disorder, and has retreated to the remote asteroid outpost to live out his remaining time in peace. All that anybody outside certain USA offices knows is that Soidan is off-limits to the casual visitor.

Planet (Gerundi)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 21,000 km
Gravity: 1.3 g
Temperature: Temperate, shading towards Warm; the equatorial regions feature boiling seas and a perpetual bank of steam-fog and violent thunderstorms.
Unusual/Special Features:----
Atmosphere: Breathable terrestrial nitrox mix
Terrain:
Limited to volcanic archipelagoes
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Tin
- Antimony
- Zinc
- Molybdenite
- Ruby
- Diamond
- Quartz
- Platinum
Hydrosphere:
Waterworld---99% of the surface is covered in open water. The penal colony occupies the largest parcel of land in the southern hemisphere, but smaller archipelagoes dot the rest of the planet. Some of these have been settled by rehabilitated convicts who have chosen to stay on as colonists, other islands are used by the Quimbek for those purposes that require open air and dry conditions.
Biosphere:
Dense; Gerundi has a vibrant and diverse marine ecosystem.
Despite the natural barrier created by the equatorial steam-zone, there ARE some creatures that not only can tolerate the boiling waters, but THRIVE in them. Vast belts of extremophile bacteria and algae border the Boiling Belt. Vast schools of Asbestafins, an extremely heat-tolerant family of local fishes, gather to feed on the bacteria. Fernalsharcs make quick forays into the hot waters to feed on the asbestafins. The fast whale-like lecruder is a large fish that migrates across the equatorial zone on a regular basis., and it’s been discovered to carry the spawn, eggs, seeds, spores, and small fry of smaller species across to the other hemisphere.
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
Quimbek(colonists) 1.4 million
(penal colony inmates) 80,000
An additional 10,000 others inhabit islands and floating communities around the planet.
Technology:
Galactic for the colonists.
The penal colony can be considered Information Age
Economy:
Agriculture/Aquaculture, some seabottom mining.
Wealth:
The Quimbek communities can be considered to be Rich, and owning a sub-dome on Gerundi is quickly becoming a sign of affluence in Quimbek society(akin to owning a place on the French Riviera or a private island in the Pacific).
The penal colony can be considered Average; the inmates get enough to eat and have the resources to make handicrafts, and have their own improvised monetary system that’s proven successful enough that it’s re-ignited interest from the convicted conmen and scamsters in the population. This in turn has led to many of those selfsame conmen and scamsters ending up in the colony’s hospital wards(they may be well-behaved criminals, but they’re still criminals).
Government:
The Quimbek colonies are governed as an extension of the main homeworld’s authority, with a locally elected council representing the various submarine habitats.
The penal colony is governed by a inmate council, but is ultimately overseen by USA authorities of the United Systems Alliance Marshals’ Service(USAMS) and the Alliance Joint Command (AJC), the latter handling prisoners of war. The inmates have developed a local tradition of appointing an autocratic figure, with no real power, whose title(Czar, Queen, Emperor, Domimistress, First Citizen, Dark Lord, High Potentate, El Supremo, etc.) changes with each new electee chosen for the office. The One has only to appear to the Wardens and present the prisoners’ concerns, and is otherwise mockingly kowtowed to by the inmate population the rest of the time, until they lose interest, overthrow the One, and select a new and more entertaining ‘autocrat’. The few electees who have tried to abuse their position have been quickly overthrown and tossed into isolation...or else had ‘accidents’, sometimes of the fatal variety.
Law Level:
Lawful
The penal colony is surprisingly Lawful. One of the Ones chose to emphasize that by walking around nude all the time and never once was attacked or challenged(her reign lasted surpassingly long, until she caught a cold and, during her convalescence, was ‘overthrown’ by a Wolfen who continued the practice, although with better results thanks to his warmer all-body fur covering).
Popularity:
The Quimbek colonies are Beloved by the settlers; the colonists are prosperous and their colony is a success.
The penal colony can be considered Ambiguous; most of the prisoners don’t want to be there(especially the newer ones), but most also realize their circumstances could be much more worse. A few feel that being sent to Gerundi was the best thing that ever happened to them; these are the ones who almost inevitably stay on as true colonists once their sentence is served.
Stability:
Quimbek Colonies: Solid
Penal Islands: Stable


Reene Penal Facility
(the Gerundi penal colony formatted as a prison using my Prison Tables)

A. Type of Prison: Minimum Security Facility(Special)---This is a facility for low-risk misdemeanor criminals, mostly prisoners of the brush wars and police actions the USA engages in, who cannot be safely farmed out to facilities in more populated or sensitive areas, and some white-collar crimes. Most inmates serve sentences of 5-20 years.

B. Management Military---The military runs the prison, typically for holding prisoners of ‘police actions’and POWs.

C. Outside Supervision State Commission Inspectors---The Reene PF is regularly monitored by USA judiciary inspectors.

D. Size of Facility Massive---This is a prison the size of a city or larger. Current population is shy of 80,000.

E. Location Isolated---Reene PF is located on a landmass roughly twice the size of Newfoundland(or 81,000 square miles), so there’s a fair amount of space for the inmates to wander and develop. Besides the main compound, there are several satellite camps, either deliberately segregated or voluntarily moved out to afford some of the convicts space to unwind.

F. Alignment of Staff Principled---The staff are idealistic and by the book.

G. Philosophy of the Penal System Rehabilitation--- The hope is that when their respective wars/police actions end, the inmates of Reene will be able to be released to be peaceful productive citizens.

H. Rehabilitation Programs: Labor ----The inmates are mostly engaged in farming and fishing to supplement the packaged/synthesized rations. Craftsmanship courses are also available, with the older inmates setting up an apprenticeship system. There’s also political reeducation and some religious education(started by several of the inmates with the Wardens’ approval)
Most inmates wind up passing their time making stuff for the local prison economy or gathering food to supplement the rations dropped in. Renee’s farms and fishing fleet are considered among the best in the USA penal system and indeed are considered better than some of the hardscrabble colonial efforts many of the inmates came from.

I. Criminal Activities in the Prison ---- Gangs---Some of the inmates have organized themselves into factions for general control, generally along ethnic or previous organization lines.
A black market in contraband(usually made in the shops and kitchens) exists, as well as a ring in stolen personal items, and there’s even informal prostitution rings, much as the Wardens would like to avoid having such activities. However, the stolen goods rungs have taken on an almost comedic aspect, in that victims of a theft will often enlist the services of a ring to identify the thieves and steal some of THEIR personal possessions to hold for ransom(usually the return of the original stolen merchandise).
Attempts to establish more violent activities such as extortion rings and protection rackets have wound up with the perpetrators being transferred to the isolation wards or offworld to less hospitable facilities...or, if the crime has been bad enough, like sexual assault, the parties responsible have had ‘accidents’. The trustees, most of who hailed from military organizations or idealist activist groups, tend to look at violent crime in the prison with a jaundiced eye.

J. Internal Security---Most prison wards have basic locked cellblocks and monitored public areas. Isolation wards are more heavily secured, with multiple layers of controlled access, more intense monitoring, and armed guards.
Outside the isolation wards, the prisoners generally police themselves. A trustee force of inmates handles most misdemeanor infractions and hands out punishments(more work details, cut privileges, etc.).

K. External Security---The situation on Reene is monitored by both an orbital Warden complex and by Quimbek Wardens operating from submarine bases deep offshore.

L. Medical--- There’s a well-stocked and equipped central hospital staffed by offworld volunteers(or telepresence medical specialists) and several aid stations manned by inmate volunteers(some of who came with medical skills, others who trained at Reene). Narcotics and similar drugs are strictly rationed and controlled by the Wardens. Very serious injuries and illnesses are put in stasis and taken offworld for treatment. There’s still a few annual deaths to accidents and encounters with local wildlife, and the occasional assault/murder, but to Reene’s credit, the rate is not significantly more than in an equivalent community outside the prison.

M. Conditions ---Good; the barracks are clean, the food is good(if a little monotonous, unless supplemented with locally grown/caught foodstuffs), and there’s a level of security enforced by an informal corps of inmate trustees.

N. Stability ---Most of the prisoners came from disciplined military or shipboard organizations and their discipline has remained. Many also acknowledge that they could have been sent to far WORSE places.

(Optional)Prison Population---Mostly humans and humanoids.

(Optional) Special Security Features---
*Magic/Psychic Marking---Inmates are aura-scanned as they are inducted, and their aura patterns are logged. Among other monitoring/search means, the Wardens can use magic and psionics to sniff out/scry inmates.

(Optional) Alternate Ways Out---
Agreeing to help the USAJC out with vital information is one way to get preferential treatment, and declaring a desire to become a USAn citizen is another(though bear in mind that the USA has various ways of discerning whether you’re serious about it). For most inmates, however, being sentenced to Gerundi-Renee IS their reward for good behavior.

Claster---United Systems Alliance Protectorate(Corkscrew Galaxy)

“I had some contact with the United Systems Alliance because my gang the NeonGyrls was involved in smuggling stuff in and out of the pit-ports and we sometimes did business with usan-flagged spacers.
But the Authority started cracking down on the tubeland gangs and what they couldn’t outright arrest, they locked out of legit employment on suspicion of malfeasance. Being part of a runner gang suddenly wasn’t a good place, and a lot of them wound up forced to take their chances in the municipal body-tanks. Technically the cops couldn’t touch anybody in the tanks and employers would knowingly take the chance refrosting and hiring a suspected mal, whereas being awake meant it was only a matter of time before we had to resort to some desperate measure that would get us arrested clean and simple. We heard the rumors of the ‘banks being harvested, of course, but things were so bad we took the chance. I went down nude on a coldslab and went to sleep hoping for a break.
I was lucky; turned out I was just days away from being part of a mass organ-harvesting cull of the holding banks when the Usans kicked out the previous management. When the new management started parsing the ‘tanks for work-talent, my name seems to have come up in some Usan file report because I got pulled out of stas and handed over to Human Resouces. They found me a job offworld as a maid-nanny of all things...me, Fumiko Destu, former ganggyrl smuggler and transtube-surfer, now responsible housekeeper. Who’d have thought somebody would record my babysitting my gang-elders’ kids and that somebody in authority would see that as signiicant enough to put me in an advanced training and placement program?
So, can I meet the little tykes?”

“We were just looking to secure our borders and deny the Condoms a forward operating base...we weren’t expecting to gain our own stenthamine mine in the bargain.”

Claster is a former outpost world of the Deneva Comdomate. It became a part of the United Systems Alliance as a prize of war, unusal for an USAn territory.
Claster is a ‘hab-world’; its natural environment is deadly to most lifeforms, so the colonists must live in controlled environment dome-cities, ‘tubevilles’ and warren-towns. LIfe on Claster is dependent on artificial life support, and that meant that the controlling agency of the municipal life support and utilities controlled the life of the colonies.
LIke most of the worlds in the Comdomate, Claster was run as a for-profit venture by a sub-syndicate or corporation. From the beginning, Claster was run as a ‘company town’: the Chlaseton-Gowler Group(later referred to as the ‘Chiselton-Gouger Gropers’) ran everything; the mines, the factories, the farms, the hospitals, life support, entertainment, etc..
Virtually everything came with a price; colonists had to support, through annual taxes and regular fees, everything from housing to water and air. Beyond the essentials, the CGC charged additional for transport or luxuries. While meant to motivate the colonists to work harder to afford desired lifestyles, it really amounted to wage-slavery. A black market soon sprang up among the colonists and gangs(typically of younger people) organized, finding they could make a good living working for the smuggling rings.
Because resources were limited, Claster instituted a ‘bio-pool’ arrangement in which the unemployed could elect to go into biostasis ‘on the shelf’ until job positions opened up and prospective employers could select warm bodies from the stasis banks to fill positions as needed. Of course, this set-up came with risks; a revived bodybankee could wake up as part of a labor gang shoveling toxic mine tailings or harvesting dangerous fungal spores. Because committing oneself to the body-banks carried an explicit forfeiture of the ability to pick, choose, and refuse jobs, more extreme uses of those in the bio-pools were rumored; medical experimentation and organ harvesting among them. Regardless of these risks, however, there was no shortage of Clasterites who decided to risk ‘bio-pool roulette’ rather than struggle to try to make a living in a downturned economy.
And the local economy would take a downturn after the Comdomate began to butt heads with several neighbors. Competition, most notably from the United Systems Alliance, in supplying both raw materials and finished products to other worlds in the sector, favored the USA. Without exceptional mineral finds or special technology product output, Claster’s industries and refineries couldn’t compete with the Usan worlds, supported as the were by an ever-growing interstellar and interdimensional transport and trade system that the Comdomate couldn’t match and for grudge reasons, wasn’t about to join. An already strained colonial economy became even more shoestring.
The Comdomate lost Claster to the United Systems Alliance after the Pounce War, when the Comdomate attempted to seize Usan territory in the aftermath of the Minion War. Instead of an overstretched and weak USA, however, the Denevans found a battle-hardened and better-armed USAJC waiting for them. In addition to losing a good chunk of their space forces(both planetary guards and hired PMCs), the Denevans lost some territory.
Claster, as one of the closest worlds to the USA, had served as a convenient assembly and support point for the invasion forces. Small enough to be interdicted with a modest force, but strategic enough to make a viable target, the Taigard 317 star system was visited by a USAJC battleship taskforce who gave the corporate governors a choice; get out or be taken out. The Comdomate officials took the hint and vamoosed, along with anybody else who wanted to go. However, a surprising number of Clasterites elected to stay(or couldn’t afford to leave) and welcomed the invaders.
The USA has done what it can to empty the bio-pools and find gainful employment for those who were ‘put on ice’. Under new management, the local economy has been slowly making a recovery. The discovery of a rich lode of rare minerals in the outer system has aided the recovery greatly.

Solar System(Taigard 317)
Number of Stars: 2
Types of Stars:
-Blue Sub-Giant(Taigard-A)
-Red Dwarf(Taigard-B)
Number of Planets: 6-
-Gas Giant(Trepis)70---Huge ‘hot ’ gas giant. It lost its moons due to the gravitational tug of war between Taigard A- and B-. It also possesses thick radiation belts that make approaching the planet hazardous.

-Asteroid(Dinkum-490)--- The largest of the Dinkum-surveyed asteroids in the Taigard system, -490 has the singular distinction of having caught the interest of CGG enough to set up an asteroid mine to extract titanium from it. When the USAJC fleet entered the system to deliver its ultimatum, Dinkum-490 was the site of the only real military violence when a Comdomate transport-frigate that was collecting a partial shipment of processed titanium exchanged shots with a USAJC destroyer. The frigate came out second-best and had to be abandoned(it was later salvaged, repaired and pressed back into service as an intersystem hauler). The Dinkum mine continues to operate under new management.

-Gas Giant(Largenten)---Miniscule gas giant. It has been considered as a gas mining site, due to the relative ease of skimming its atmosphere.

-Terrestrial(Claster)---Earth-sized coldworld and the site of the system’s colonial settlement.

-Asteroid(Slokum-32)----This far-orbiting asteroid/planetoid proved an ironic counterpoint to Claster’s economic problems; USA military scouts, scanning the system in preparation for their invasion of the system discovered large quantities of Stenthamine in the asteroid and initially mistook them for armored military facilities. Had the Comdomate discovered this, the mining and processing of the mineral would have put Claster in the black fiscally for at least decades. Now, with the USA in charge, stenthamine processing is providing a major boost to the Claster economy.

-Terrestrial(Phost)--- This miniscule planetoid was named for a Chlaseton-Gowler Group ‘employee of the year’ (it’s rumored the honor was bestowed in lieu of a more meaningful raise). There’s little to recommend this rocky snowball except its solitude(and interestingly enough, the employee for who it is named was one of the first to take advantage of the USA’s offworld transport offers to get off Claster and away from the Taigard 317 system).

Planet(Claster)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 11,220 km
Gravity: 0.8 g. Claster’s cities included gravity plates to maintain a more comfortable 0.95 g.
Temperature: Frigid; average is -325 F. It’s possible to get killed in a poorly insulated excursion suit by stepping near frozen gas banks and causing flash evaporation blooms. Excursions on the surface sometimes involve using directed heat beams to flash-evaporate an area of dangerous unstable gas deposits, temporarily causing blinding fogs, but also effectively preemptively vaporizing potential hazards.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Odd Orbit --Claster has a decidedly high angle orbit, being tilted nearly 80 degrees relative to Taigard 317’s ecliptic. The reason for this high degree of deviance is unknown, and it does make plotting transfer orbits between planets insystem rather more difficult.
-Moon(s)--Claster has 10 small moons that are more akin to asteroids. These have been converted into communications and sensor stations.
Atmosphere:
Trace; mainly argon and nitrogen, with some methane and carbon monoxide.
Terrain:
Unusual Seismology--Claster has limited crustal plate zones where there is any seismic activity; the rest of the crust seems to have cooled and fused into a uniform shell. The tectonically-active ‘zones’ or ‘pits’ are where Claster’s geothermal heat can be tapped and thus are centers of industrial and residential activity, but also where earthquake activity is most likely to occur.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Aluminum
- Mercury
- Manganese
- Scheelite
- Ruby
- Diamond
- Nickel
- Platinum

Hydrosphere:
Balanced; roughly 48% of Claster’s surface is covered in water ice.
Biosphere:
Sparse; at some point in the distant past the Taigard system was apparently seeded with exolife, and Claster currently has a thin covering of exolife lichenoids and extremophile fungoids, several species of which can be commercially harvested for chemicals used as industrial feedstocks. Drudgon fungal spores, for example, though toxic and prone to dissolving exposed flesh when germinated, yield several chemicals that are selective oxidizing agents useful for processing minerals and cleaning industrial machinery. Felk-lichen can be processed into a carbohydrate base for rations.
Civilization:
Colonial
Population:
159 million(97% Human, 3% other)
Technology:
Low Galactic
Economy:
Mining and Exolife Farming. Stenthamine processing has added a boost to the economy.
Wealth:
Average; Claster has recovered quite quickly under USA managment, though there is still a substantial amount of immigration offworld thanks to USA advanced employment placement programs
Government:
Currently under a USA-appointed military governor while a local democratic governnment is formed.
Law Level:
Moderate; even though a more fair USA-charter legal system has been put in place, it hasn’t had time to fully sink in, and there are still problems. There has been a rise in gang activity and smuggling, partially because without the jackbooted authority of the Comdomate corporate security goons repressing the colonists, many of them feel that they’re entitled to ‘taking back’ what had been effectively extorted from them under the ‘company store’ policies of the old regime. Unfortunately, this has been extended to include resources brought in by the USA.

Popularity:
Ambivalent---Even with the recent economic boom, not everybody likes living on Claster, and a fair number of Clasterites(especially those who have spent time in the bio-pools) are taking advantage of the USA’s trade and travel network to seek greener pastures elsewhere. This is being balanced by a number of new immigrants coming in to modernize the industry and introduce new ones.

Stability:
The fair-minded USA government promises to be Long-Standing in comparison to the Chlaseton-Gowler Group

The Pounce War
“The Condoms played it anything BUT safe when they went ahead with what we later learned they called ‘Operation Lien’...like they were collecting on old debts. Instead of using the plausible deniability of using proxies, they committed their own military forces directly in action against our territory. Guess they couldn’t trust their mercs to give back anything their seized from us....”

“Besides their own navy, the Comdoms deployed a number of mercenary units...i.e. ‘security subcontractors’...basically their own Irregular forces....to slip into our space and cause trouble. To their credit, they actually did nearly more damage than their fleet forces. Our own Irregulars, though, bless them, were up to the task of catching the leakers and neutralizing them. Otherwise we might have won the battles, but lost the war, if the privateers had managed to savage our rear lines.”

The Pounce War was a brief and violent escalation in the tensions between the United Systems Alliance and the Deneva Comdomate. So-called because the Comdomate attempted to use the USA’s distraction with the Minion War to pounce and seize several USA systems, in retaliation for USA support of the Tmelain in taking back worlds the Comdomate had claim-jumped from the Tme in the first place.
The ‘pounce’ did not work out as planned for the Comdomate. Delays in assembling the necessary forces allowed the USA time to detect the trouble brewing along their borders and reinforce the sectors most likely to come under attack. The United Systems Alliance Joint Command also recovered from their Minion War campaigning faster than expected by the Comdomate. Instead of threadbare security forces and war-worn reserves, the Comdomate fleets found freshly supplied frontline units waiting for them.
In three separate clashes, the USAJC struck the Comdomate invasion fleets, using weaponry and tactics developed during the MInion War conflicts. The Comdomate came off badly, though ratio-wise, their hired mercenaries fared somewhat better, having struck a number of softer targets around and in USA territory.

The Comdomate lost nearly a third of its military spacefleet and a good percentage of its subcontracted PMCs in invading USA space.
In response, the USA seized several Comdomate border sysems(including another former Tmelain-claimstaked system), including the corporate colony of Claster. The war also cost the Comdomate the only known deposits of stenthamine discovered in Comdomate territory.
The Pounce War was ended by a ceasefire; the Comdomate reeling from its large losses and the Alliance not wanting to overextend itself and its admittedly stretched resources into Denevan territory. Currently the USAJC is securing and patrolling the new borders, while the Comdomate nervously watches from outposts on their newly shrunken frontier zone.
The CCW and TGE consider the Pounce War as ‘just another Fringe brush war’.

Maldahan--- USA Intervention Zone(Anvil Galaxy)

“The UNcivil war on Maldahan’s disrupted trade and economies across the sector and several adjacent ones. Small wonder the Consorty wants somebody to put the kibosh on the troubles there, and why a half-dozen other organizations are hiring ‘advanced security associates’ to protect their interests in the system.”

“It’s no secret on Maldahan that there are execution airlocks, no matter how hard the Seven try to hide the fact that they had death squads terroriizng each other and the populace with spot airlockings. Brutal thugs who styled themselves soldiers...in the organized crime sense of the word. We sealed the deathlocks, often by harddocking a lander to them, then started sweeping the habitats for the deathsquads. They might have fooled the police in the days when there was police authority worth a damn, but martial law operates under different constraints. ”

Maldahan is a large airless world in the Anvil Galaxy, on the edge of CCW territory. For centuries, Maldahan has kept industry in several neighboring sectors fed with fuel substances and refined metals, as well as fueling the Vosoth and Traymore Ways, minor, but still important, trade passages.
Maldahan was actually quite prosperorous as a resource and refinery world with an economic index that was actually mid-range respectable for a Rim world. That’s the problem; the wealth was being generated by the businesses of several dynastic Families, known as the Seven, who controlled most of the industry and revenue production on Maldahan.
For over four centuries, the Seven quietly built their empires, playing intrigues with or against the other Families in turn. Though each Family had started with a specialty in business, as their empires grew, they expanded their interests, When and where a new Family began taking over a business another Family considered its own, such as Helium-3 mining or taranium refining, rivalry and conflict arose. For the most part, however, such conflicts were peacefully resolved, ultimately through the courts if nothing else.
That has all changed recently. For some reason, tensions on Maldahan have grown to brinksmanship levels and, instead of the Seven blinking and standing down, open armed conflict has erupted.
Nobody is quite sure what was the spark that ignited this firestorm; some say it’s the result of centuries’ worth of growing grudges and dirty tricks that were never made public coming to a head. Others claim . Other rumors tell of some great treasure found under Maldahan’s crust that has the Seven fighting for control of it, mysterious outsiders seen in the courts of the Seven, or hardware running rogue in the sancturaries of the Family strongholds.
In any case, the Seven have started fighting each other with few, if any, reservations. about restricting their warfare.
Alarmed that the situation on Maldahan shows no signs of cooling down, the CCW has decided that an intervention is in order. However, being shorthanded in the sector, they’ve asked the USAJC to do what they can. The result has been a peacekeeper occupation of Maldahan. Besides the USAJC army squatting on Maldahan, a number of private military corporations have established presences protecting individual communities or facilities at the behest of offworld owners or local groups.

Solar System(Savoi)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Yellow Dwarf
Number of Planets: 9
-Terrestrial(Kalmere)---- Gargantuan ‘super-Earth’. Under its steam clouds, there’s indications of rich extremophile microlife, even in its boiling seas. However, Kalmere’s punishing gravity makes efforts to explore or exploit it problematic.

-Terrestrial(Maldahan)---- Though small, this airless planet is rich in minerals and Helium-3 deposits. It is the population and cultural center of the Savoi system.

-Gas Giant (Duston)---- Jupiter-sized Duston’s thick radiation belt poses problems for anybody trying to settle or exploit its moon system, so it’s been left largely alone in favor of Griannon.

-Terrestrial (Hayloc)----Heavy gravity and a deadly corrosive atmosphere make huge Hayloc a poor prospect for colonization/exploitation.

-Gas Giant (Griannon) ----Jupiter-sizedGriannon’s moon system is the main home of the Belter community in the Savoi system. It is also where the Dromari have moved their base of operations off Maldahan

-Terrestrial ----(Poseman) Earth-sized, cold, rocky, ice-covered and methane-atmosphered, Poseman is sometimes called Maldahan’s ‘larger, poorer brother’.
it is rumored that there was once an Eighth Family in the social order of Maldahan, but the machinations of one or more the current Seven squeezed them out, on the basis that there was enough room for Seven, but not Eight. So contends the leadership of the dome colony of Salascadominae on ice-locked Poseman. The Salasca family claims that they were once larger and more important and had more than a small hand in establishing the major industries of Maldahan. Now there’s only a dozen Salascans left(most of the clan left the system to seek their fortunes elsewhere), running a mercury-cracking plant and selling water ice boosted into orbit by hydrox chemical rockets. The Salascans claim their day will come again, though nobody takes them seriously, not even the 16,000 residents of Salascadominae. The Salascans may be joking or not about their claims and ambitions. Generally, though, their management of Salascadominae has been regarded as fair and benign, so the Salascans are cut considerable slack for their eccentricities.

-Gas Giant ----(Delthyn) ---The Dromari have a small space station/trading post orbiting Jovian-scaled Delthyn. Though it’s of little importance, the station still does business with Belters in the area and effectively announces the presence, however small, of the Dromari clan in the outer system.

-Gas Giant(Corbin)----Enormous Corbin sports equally enormous rings, all that’s left of what appears to have been a massive moon system, judging by the differing distinctive rocks found in the belt. What caused all the moons to engage in a gravitational smash-up puzzles astronomers, but it must have been spectacular. It’s still uncertain if the rings will ultimately re-coalesce into new moons, or if Corbin will absorb the rock and dust into itself. A number of Belters have established small homesteads in the rings to prospect them.

-Gas Giant(Dalos)----This almost microscopic gas giant still managed to acquire a moon, Molnak. Not much to interest the casual visitor, though local rumor has it that long ago the Addamski family established a private habitat on Molnak as an extreme retreat, and that the then-patriarch of the Addamskis, Rycardo Addamski, retired(after stepping down under suspect circumstances) to enjoy the solitude of the distant outpost.

Planet(Maldahan)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 9,500 km
Gravity: 1.1 g
Temperature: Cold; average temeperature is -300 F. It’s claimed that some of the victims of the (un)civil war who were thrown out airlocks were so quickly flash-frozen that later USA recovery teams were able to resurrect-revive them from corpsicle form.
Unusual/Special Features:
-Heavily Cratered Surface
Atmosphere: Thin, mainly carbon dioxide ‘fog’ from dry ice banks.
Terrain:
Varied. Maldahan has a denser core than predicted for a world of its diameter, and unusual seismology in that it has ‘lateral earthquakes’ below its surface that have little effect on the thick outer crust. It’s speculated that at one time the planet was much warmer, but has cooled down to such an extent that its outer crust has cooled faster and thicker. Geothermal heat is still possible, but requires very deep bore-holes to reach warmer strata down below.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Antimony
- Tin
- Sapphire
- Zinc
- Emerald
- Thorium
- Barite
- Platinum
-Stenthamine----Impact-resistant metal
-Taranium----A tan-yellow compound oxide that can be refined into a red liquid additive for enhancing laser crystals and megadamage synthetic crystal lattices. All of the Seven Families have mines(of varying quality and output) for this material. In at least one incident, byproducts of the highly volatile and lethally toxic refined taranium have been used in assassination attempts.
Hydrosphere:
Scant---There’s some fossil ice trapped in the crust that is valued, but many hab-cities treat it like strategic oil reserves to be tapped only in emergencies. Belters have been dropping ice from orbit to supply fresh water, and recycling technology is advanced.
Biosphere:
Nonexistent
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
1.1 billion Humans
The USA has brought in three divisions’ worth of peacekeepers to guard vital facilities and patrol residential areas. A number of Irregular units have also been brought in(many in disguise) to conduct special operations. The CCW also has a token force(a company of marines) that is its own separate command, but tends to take its cues on most things from the USAJC presence.
Technology:
Galactic, but local conditions limit some forms of available technology. Heavy M-factor weapnry, for instance, is forbidden inside the enclosed communities, though that hasn’t stopped the Seven from using such weaponry outside the domes or on outposts out of sight of the main media-nets.
Economy:
Mining/Industrial----Mainly industrial feedstock metals and power substrates.
Wealth:
Was Prosperous, but the Family feuds have caused the economy to tank. Most habitats are fairly self-sufficient, but not on top of the rising costs of repairing war damage and arming for self-defense.
Government:
Was a Oligarchal Syndicracy, with local business dominated by the Seven Families, and a sprinkling of smaller organizations ranging from free-marketeers to communist communes.
Currently a CCW protectorate team working with local non-aligned public officials, and backed by USAn peacekeepers runs things, or at least keeps the essential services running.
Law Level:
Authoritarian---This is the martial law imposed by the peacekeepers, and is seen as an improvement from the Anarchy that raged when the Seven Families were waging war on each other.
Popularity:
Unpopular----This is a step up from the Angry state that dominated things previously. Not everybody is pleased at what amounts to foreign mercenaries(the USAJC and various PMCs) occupying the planet, but they’re even less happy with the way the formerly respected Seven Families have tuppled the cart for everybody.
Stability:
Unrest, which is a positive step up from the state of open civil war that was wreaking the planet before the USAJC peacekeepers stepped in

The Seven Families of Maldahan:

- Cythlene----The Cythlenes run much of Maldahan’s power grid and utilities, having acquired control over the centuries through various quiet mergers, permanent municipal contracts, and front companies. This has allowed them to leverage their relative neutrality by threatening to shut off the power to anybody giving them trouble. The other Famllies have all accused them of playing favorites at one time or another in ‘interrupted service’ to their respective holdings, in an apparent effort to war-profit or gouge favors out of the Famllies. At other times, the Cythlenes have been accused of playing dangerous games with vital services, such as cutting off power to life support, or cutting water allotment flow. The only Family NOT intimidated by the Cythiene are the Dromari, who can potentially undermine the Cythlenes’ influence because of the Dromari relationship with the offworld ice-miners who supply water and minerals, especially to their Dromari associates.

- Kinpatrics---The Kinpatrics have long had a grudge match with the Tasconsins, mainly over control of the stenthamine trade, though the Kinpatrics’ original strength was in heavy construction, espcially the spaceports.. The Kinpatrics have one of the more obvious large formal military forces, drawn largely from their large pool of laborers. The Kinpatric appeal to the population of Maldahan is that they’ll offer just about ANYBODY a job with their crews, but this is countered by accuations that they underpay, abuse, and draft their workers into high-risk activities not covered or compensated by their original contracts, such as impressing them into combat service.

- Addamski----- Producers of mining automata, it’s been claimed that the Addamski family has been illlegally producing war robots. They’ve also been regularly accused of launching cyber-attacks on the other Families. Recent reports of stenthamine-armored warbots have suggested an undeclared alliance with either the Kinpatrics or the Tasconsin. It’s rumored that the upper echelons of the Addamski are cybernetically mentally linked in a group mind.

- Zaln-Hesis--- The House of Zaln-Hesis was once more powerful in the Helium-3 trade, but blame an ill-fated move to consolidate assets with the Chatterdorns(an alliance by marriage was also involved) for their decline. Their current strength is pharmaceutical production, though it’s been rumored that they are using their drug-labs to produce narcotics, combat drugs, or poisons. At the very least, they were supplying the Kinpatrics with amphetamines and other performance-enhancing drugs to feed the Kinpatrics’ labor force.

- Chatterdorn---- The Chatterdorns have taken over much of the Helium-3 trade, having previousy been big in mining and power metals(fissionables) processing. According to the Chatterdorns, they acquired most of the Zaln-Hesis business because of the latter’s increasing mismanagement, which led them to seek help from Chatterdorn. The Chatterdorns claim that their assuming stewardship saved the Zaln-Hesis from collapsing entirely and causing a massive recession on Maldahan. The alliance-by-marriage was, according to Chatterdorn lore, a byzantine attempt by the Zaln-Hesis to merge the two clans and assume control of Chatterdorn Heliomos.

- Tasconsin---- Big in mining and manufacturing. The House of Tasconsin has long fought with the Kinpatric clan over the best stenthamine deposits. The Tasconsi have invested heavily in teleoperation systems for many of their mining and transport activities, so naturally there’s been rumors that they’re allies of, or heavily influenced, by, the Addamski robotics clan.

- Dromari---The Dromari, who are focused on spacecraft manufacture and assembly, have managed to stay out of most of the fighting on Maldahan, mainly because most of their business is with the Belter ice-miners offworld. When the fighting started, the Dromari evacuated most of their holdings on Maldahan and retreated to their offworld holdings. This has saved them from getting caught in the fighting, but also left them blind to what’s going on on Maldahan. Their perceived cowardice has also cost them much influence and leverage to affect events. Several of the Families have accused the Dromari of smuggling Galactic weaponry to their enemies, or using Belter mercenaries to attack from orbit; accusations the Dromari are poorly positioned to refute.

*Adventure Hooks/Possible Causes of the Troubles on Maldahan
-The Puppetmaster---The Seven Families have tended to be cagey about their less noble members, but have been wealthy enough to buy off consequences of the activities of those more darkly ‘colorful’ black sheep, and keep them cozened away and pampered wtj hobbies to keep them busy and out of trouble. One such black sheep with a history of mental problems was provided with the means to indulge in a hobby of collecting curios from the Rim. One of those curios, brought in by a Rimspacer from an unknown world, turned out to be a powerful Ancient mental amplifier. The new owner has discovered the artifact’s properties and has taken to using it to toy with the various Family leaderships, aggravating and ramping up their ambitions, insecurities, and secret fears.

-The Discovery: ---One or more of the Families came across a discovery buried in Maldahan’s crust that is so important that the imvolved Families started fighting over control of it. The rest of the Families just got sucked in as old tensions resurfaced and finally found expression.

-The Provocateur---Similar to the Puppetmaster scenario, only the responsible party is an alien; an Infernal , Alien Intelligence, or a high-caste Mechanoid working behind the scenes.

-The Stenthamine Trade----The mining and sale of this valuable mineral is a keystone of the Maldahan economy. Recent finds of the mineral in other systems in adjacent sectors however, threaten to undermine the Sevens’ trade in stenthamine, especially with the political instabilitty gripping Maldahan. However, some of the Families might just take time from their inflighting to seek to sabotage the stenthamine operations in those other sectors.

That situation in Maldahan has a potential to become very problematic indeed, considering the system is somewhat connected with the CCW if not quite a member - if some of the leaders among the Seven Families stop to rethink their strategies things could turn into a neverending rigmarole of legal, spionage, terrorist maneuvers and more, where loyalties and alliances can change at the drop of a hat, with some groups making deals, separately or in tandem to pressure the USAns through allies in the CCW or other polities, other factions seeking out the USA or other off-system interests' help in "cleaning up the troublemakers", so on and more.

And as aside, the puppetmaster and provocateur scenarios can blend into one easily enough, through a Tarnow Crystal style "evil sealed within object of power" setup, for example.

Yeah, it's basically your 'warring Italian states' grabbag of loyalties and personalities. With the UN trying to straighten things out.

Everything is fun with cloak & dagger games, until some underdog with rabble and guns decides to play a Garibaldi into all those annoying aristos and burgeoise....



Reading this i decided to do a little bit of backtracking and it has dawned on me that the Deneva Comdomate never got a full write-up of its own apparently.

And curiously, some of the older entries, on Lakye and Anduv respectively, refer to it as Devar Comdomate instead. Plus, Anduv is supposed to be in Thundercloud? Is that a continuity hiccup or does it mean the Condomate is in conflict with USA member polities in multiple galactic fronts/holdings? Certainly something worth adressing i think.

Argh...good catch...I have to check that myself. I may have been trying to consolidate polities but wound up only making the problem worse....
And soon as I'm able, I'll repost the Deneva description.

It happens - this little corner of ours of the 3 Galaxies is at 16 pages, that are on themselves a consolidation effort of hundreds of pages of Paladin Steel, NoN flashpoints, Eshemarr and a bunch of other big threads, no wonder getting confused at times.

Man, when I blow it, I blow it….

Okay, I thoroughly crossed my own wires here….There’s the Devar Comdomate and the Delian Consortium….what I was referring to as the Deneva Comdomate in regards to the troubles with the United Systems Alliance was really the Delian Consortium…
The two actually couldn’t be more different; the Comdomate’s a paranoid communistic society that makes Orwell’s 1984 look like the Betty Ford Clinic, while the Delian are corporate opportunity-grabbers. .

Now I got two choices, I can go back and correct all past references and be sure to use the proper references in the future, or I can spin off the Deneva Comdomate as an organizational clone of the Delian Consortium but with a confusingly similar name to the Comdomate, that just happened to like picking fights with groups like the United Systems Alliance. .

See, this is what getting old gets you….

Oh yeah, that has become a very entangled ball of yarn indeed. I had completely missed the Delian Consortium connection amidst the confusion.

All of that said, i kind of like the idea of giving a nod to the confusion at least. Having some splinter group for either (or both) exploiting similarities and their (bad) reputations while doing its own thing for self-interest could be fun - at least until they are caught red-handed and exposed, gaining both groups (and their adversaries) as rivals, that is.

Just a silly idea of the moment.

Okay, well, in order to deal with teh situation, it's going to require yanking the Tme from the Corkscrew to the Anvil...that actually helps because it shows the TGE making an aggressive expansion in BOTH galaxies, with the annexation of the Tmelain Republic being a 'lesser tragedy' overlooked in the attention paid to the Wolfen getting plowed under in the Corkscrew...

The Tme and the USA in turn have just acquired three new enemies on their borders...the Devar Comdomate, the Delian Consortium, and a flake-off of the Delians (and it is mentioned in the original description of the Delians that several corporatiions spun off) confusingly called the Deneva Comdomate that has a foot in both the Anvil and the Corkscrew(thanks to corporate control of a wormhole link). And all three of these clustered polities are in trouble....
The Devar are getting a helping of OPO sabotage. The Delians lost a prison planet to the Splugorth and then the Shemarrians encroaching on their borders....Both the Delians and the Denevans picked fights with the USA and landed themselves both in hot water...
Esesentially the three of ;em oughta name themselves the 'Idiota Cluster'.

Confused yet? I sure am....

And while I correct that in a not-so-elegant way. I'll keep posting all new material("Hey, look, a distraction!")

Wish you luck in working out the kinks of all these retcon/updates.



Well, the other posters in the thread can always bring their own helpings with that particular aspect.

Okay, here's a possible patch....


Deneva Comdomate(Corkscrew-Anvil-Thundercloud)
(aka ‘TriLinko Empire’, ‘DenCom’ )
“Virtually a carbon-copy of the Delians and inarguably their missing half. If they’d stuck together, they may have been a serious rival to the USA. Instead, they became feuding twins who look to be going down the same black hole together.”

“Old Man Nebbie may have been a great cosmoprospector and sponsor of cosmprospectors in his day, but success and prosperity with the discovery of the TriLink arguably ruined him. His partner Alden’s death, though ultimately ruled natural causes, was awfully convenient for Devarian, and there’s plenty of evidence that Nebrascus put so much pressure on Mori Alden prior to his final decline, that it could be said Nebbie drove the man to an early grave. Nebrascus ran his business and his worlds the same way; he had the final say on everything, even when he said otherwise.”

“The Denevans are in a spot of trouble and facing some hard decisions; if they ask the CCW for help and intervention, they might keep their remaining worlds from being picked off by the usans, but the CCW will likely demand control over the TriLink wormhole junction. If they go to Naruni for help, they’ll get all the weapons they could possibly want, but they’ll lose their independence AND ultimately the TriLink as well.”

Often confused with the Devar Comdomate(to the point that the Denevans have sometimes been called ‘corporate Devars’), the Deneva Comdomate is actually more closely related to the Delian Consortium, sharing so many similarities as to be effectively considered a clone of that polity.
The similarities are not coincidental. The Deneva Comdomate was founded by Nebrascus Devarian(no relation to anybody in the Devar Comdomate), a high-rank CEO on the board of corporate leaders and political organizers who founded the Delian Consortium. Devarian brought territories in his own transportation network(Deneval TriLinko) in all Three Galaxies to the Delian Consortium, greatly expanding the latter’s extent, but infighting over how much influence Devarian could exercise in the merger led to Devarian eventually splitting off his holdings(now organized as an independent polity) into its own star nation, rather than merge back with the polities from which Devarian had wrested control. Though still nominally allied with the CCW and Human Alliance, Nebrascus pretty much ran things without outside interference on his corporate holdings.
Devarian, however, still believed that the Delian model of authority was still the best, and he organized his new star nation along the same lines(it has been opined that Devarian saw a similar and parallel corporate nation mirroring the Delian Consortium would, in its success, throw it in the face of his Delian board enemies that he was right all along in demanding more influence). This attitude would be inherited by Nebrascus’s own heirs. It helped attract other corporates who also grew disenchanted with how the Delian Consortium was run. The two would exist cheek-to-jowl, competing for the same markets as each other, and sharing the same connections and relations in a sort of ‘corporate cold war’. Their relationship with nominal ally the CCW, was so alike that CCW diplomats often confused the two, but that the wilier Consortium of Civilized World politicos and contractors learned to exploit, playing off Delians and Denevans against each other to get the best deals.
Lije the Delian Consortium, the Denevar Condomate is something of a free corporate zone, with ultimate authority resting in the corporate boardrooms of the corporations ruling over each planet, though most worlds in the DenevaCom are beholding to the original DenevaCorp/TriLinko network that supplies them with raw materials and ships their goods at discount. A good many multi-planetaries have stablished corporate headquarters, or at least branches, to take advantage of the lax regulations and incentives offered by the Denevans. Planetary security is handled by well-armed professional corporate security, while extraterritorial actions and ‘special operations’ are handled by subcontracted private military companies. The Denevans are thus seen as something of a mercenary sanctuary and ‘easy hirer’ for jobs such as colony-jumping(as they did with some claimstaked worlds of the Tmelain Republic as it was being steamrolled by the TransGalactic Empire) and harassing rivals(the use of PMCs also allows for a degree of plausible deniability. Though not everybody in the Deneva Comdomate is a corrupt corporate weasel, the overall culture tends to excuse heavyhanded business plays, especially in the absence of anybody able to say ‘no’ to them and enforce it.
Unfortunately, despite a promising start, the Deneva Comdomate would seem to be mirroring the Delians’ disasterous policies as well. Perhaps subsconsciously hoping to show up the Delians, the Denevans picked many of the same enemies, including the then-nascent United Systems Alliance, which the Denevans thought they could bully more successfully than the Delians had been doing. Then, too, the Deneva went to war on the USA for most of the same reasons as the Delians; the USA was undercutting the Denevans as suppliers of inexpensive materials and facilitating easy transport(specially once the USA’s wormhole department began creating new links through the Three Galaxies.
The recent troubles of the Delians and the Denevans have led to some in both polities to raise the idea of burying the hatchet and reuniting to pool resources. With the Denevans, there’s even been talk of rubbing elbows and making nice with their cosmological neighbors, the Devar Comdomate, and making an alliance with the xenophobic authoritarians to oppose their mutual border enemies in the United Systems Alliance. Both potential alliances carry their own problems, and not everybody in the Denevan and Delian corporations would be onboard with them.

A. Size
Modest---20 systems. 2 in the Corkscrew, 13 in the Anvil, and 5 in the Thundercloud, clustered around the nodes of the Nebrascus-Alden TriLink.
B. History
Spinoff of the Delian Consortium, Splinter of the Human Alliance
C. Level of Technological Sophistication
Low Galactic/Advanced Space Age---About on a par with the average CCW member, or the core Golgan Republik.
D. General Attitude/Culture
Enlightened Imperialists/Corporate, with expansionist tendencies executed by contract employees(mercenaries)
E. Racial Composition
57% Human, 43% other
F. Government
Syndicracy; corporations act as political blocs and goverbment departments within the society.Deneval TriLinko remains the biggest bloc, however,
G. Administrative Control
Tight, but has lapsed to Loose as things get desperate.
H. External Trade
--- Trade---The Deneva Comdomate still controls the Nebrascus-Alden TriLink, a wormhole linking the Corkscrew, Anvil and Thundercloud Galaxies, making it a major trade hub and revenue power.
H1. Commodities
Exports: Raw Materials--The Deneva Comdomate moves raw materials, especially to the Corkscrew Galaxy to meet the many booming industrial metroworlds there.
Imports: Finished Goods----The industries of the Deneva Comdomate would ship finished consumer goods to the Anvil and Thundercloud, after buying andassembling parts in the Corkscrew.
-Weapons---The Deneva Comdomate as of late has been buying weapons to make up their losses to the better-armed United Systems Alliance. This has made the Denevans rather attractive to the likes of Naruni Enterprises.
I. Status
Imperiled----The ill-fortuned Pounce War cost the Denevans an unhealthy chunk of their security forces, professional navy, and loyalist PMCs. The heirs of Nebrascus have considered appealing for aide from their contacts in the CCW or turning to Naruni Enterprises for help, but the possible asking price for that help may threaten the Denevan independence.

Nebrascus-Alden TriLink Wormhole
Lauded as a wonder when Nebrascus Deneva and Mori Alden discovered it, the wormhole junction linking the Three Galaxies made the fortunes of both men, though only one would live long enough to enjoy it.
The TriLink allowed Nebrascus Deneva to build a corporate empire on shipping raw materials(albeit in small- to medium-sized hulls) from the Thundercloud and Anvil Galaxies to the big factory-worlds of the Corkscrew, and to collect development and services fees from those settling the worlds nearest the junction-nodes, through a network of subfirms and shell companies set up by Deneva.He also bought enough CCW politicians to keep the government from simply taking over the TriLink. Ultimately, this allowed Deneva to rule semi-independentally over those systems closest to the TriLink nodes. Deneval TriLinko remains the most visible and profitable part of the Deneva corporate empire.
Despite the only monthly openings of the TriLink, vessels line up for weeks and even months to go through, and Deneval TriLinko reaps great profit from transit fees and service charges.

A.) Location:(Corkscrew)Free Space, usually on the far edge of the Aldenmere system
(Anvil) Near a Star---Nebrasca Gamma
(Thundercloud) Near a Planet--- Kikov IV
B.) Size:
Modest----Vessels up to frigate size can travel through the ‘hole. Small freighters to medium freighters can make the transit easily.
C.) Frequency:
Periodic---Roughly 4 times a month, and remains open for roughly 36 hours.
D.) Direction:
Two-Way---Traffic may proceed freely in both directions, at the same time
E.) Range:
Intergalactic; links the Corkscrew, Anvil and Thundercloud Galaxies.
F.) Transit Initiation
FTL Drive---The starship has to have an existing FTL contragravity drive, which must be adjusted to special settings, and engaged as the ship enters the wormhole. A different setting allows the ship to choose which of the two possible galaxies it can travel to. Deneval TriLinko provides updated setting codes, depending on the scanned ‘mood’ of the wormhole when it opens. Deneval TriLinko claims that a new setting is required every time the TriLink opens, and that transiting with an old code is potentially dangerous; so far nobody has tried disproving that by jumping the line.
G.) Duration: Instantaneous
H.) Special
*Branches---The wormhole services all Three Galaxies.
*Radiation----The TriLink does subject vessels transiting it to high levels of radiation. However, this is easily countered/buffered by an adjustment to the ships’ shields(provided by Deneval TriLinko for a small service charge) or by special shield pods provided(again, for an extra charge) by Deneval TriLinko to those ships without adequate shields.

Savanis(Georgia Protectorate)(Corkscrew Galaxy)
“Savanis, as you might expect for a port world, is well-protected. The Georgian Royal Navy has several heavy units stationed there, there’s several orbital fortresses, and they have a disturbing number of well-armed private ships homebased there that have formed a ‘solar militia’. So gunboat diplomacy is not going to work with these folks.”

“There’s going to be some serious awkward moments when a local hero comes cruising home, three or four prizes in tow, to find a CAF squadron squatting in neutral space right next to the Savanis approaches or on a ‘port of call’ diplomatic visit at Savanis itself.”

Savanis is a borderworld of the Georgia Protectorate. Lying as it does near several galactic tradelanes, Savanis is well-positioned as a trade gateway and portworld between the Protectorate and the rest of the Corkscrew Galaxy,and thus its prosperity would seem assured.
The problem is that, during the recent time of tensions between the Georgia Protectorate and the Consortium of Civilized Worlds, the overzealous governor, Kavin Starragard, of Savanis, anticipating imminent all-out war, began issuing letters of marque to privateers, to interdict CCW shipping on the trade lanes. Though currently the CCW and GP have backed down from open warfare. word didn’t reach Savanis fast enough, and many licensed privateers had already dispersed and gone dark/incommunicado in anticpation of action.
The higher authorities of the Georgia Protectorate, upon learning of the governor of Savanis’s move, immediately acted to recall and replace him. The governor died, however, under mysterious circumstances before he could be detained and questioned at length and his records were scrambled, making determining exactly what he did difficult to ascertain.
While some privateers have surfaced, checked in, gotten the word of the ceasefire between the GP and CCW, and come home, others haven’t. Merchant ships have started dsappearing. And it’s unclear just how many letters of marque the governor issued.
Despite the current ceasefire between the CCW and the GP, and emerging revelations of the role of the Infernals in stirring up tensions between the two polities, Savanis remains a potential flashpoint of hostilities. Though the upper government echelons urge calm, more local groups are less convinced; CCW shipping interests in the region are decrying an increase in piracy and shipping losses, while Savanis is complaining about CAF warships and spyships nosing into their space and violating the rights of their spacers with illegal interdictions, searches, and in some cases outright seizures of property.
The CCW is demanding the Georgia Protectorate take action to hunt down what they’re calling pirates. The Georgians, on the other hand, are in a bit of a bind, because the letters of marque were issued in good faith(albeit by an authority not fully authorized to do so at the time) to patriots supporting the Protectorate’s cause. Declaring the still-roaming privateers outlaws and prosecuting them as pirates would be a unpopular move with the Protectorate’s citizenry(especially on Savanis, where many of the privateer crews are regarded as good local people, patriots and almost heroes for their bravery), but issuing them a general amnesty would only further anger the CCW.

Solar System(Carolyii CS-1431A)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars: Blue Dwarf
Number of Planets: 9
-Gas Giant(Rudwin)---Huge Rudwin is a ‘hot gas giant’ and orbits close enough to the system’s primary that the intense solar winds excite the upper reaches of the gas giant’s atmosphere and blow it into space, creating a massive tail of exotic plasma. Collected and filtered, this gas tail yields profitable amounts of various exotic gases created by the interaction of planetary atmosphere and solar particles. Harvest ships of ‘Rudwinners’ make regular runs from Savanis to gather the plasma gases for refining and sale.

-Terrestrial(Savanis)---System lifeworld

-Gas Giant(Pasingala)---Large gas giant w/ rings. Several of Pasingala’s moons are currently being mined for valuable minerals. Despite the risks attendant with passing through the planet’s radiation belt, Pasingala also yields some high-quality atmospheric gases, making the extra effort very profitable for the scoopships operating there.

-Gas Giant(Huton)---Jupiter-sized gas giant. Huton is believed to have lost any retinue of moons to larger Pasingala in an ancient close encounter that set Huton rotating opposite relative the other planets in the system.

-Asteroid(Lighton Bay)---This fair-sized planetoid has long played host to a space station serving as a waystation and trading post, and the Lighton Family has always run it. With fresh food coming from Savanis and metals coming from Angahella, it’s a good place to do business if one doesn’t want to deal with the shipping factors down-system. The current manager of the station, Karlos Ledd-Lighton VI, doesn’t care who you are, as long as you pay promptly and don’t leave any dead bodies on the floor.

-Gas Giant(Mansal)---Miniscule gas giant. Mansal is easily gas-skimmed, so there’s a few scoop companies operating off orbiter platforms. The quality of the gases isn’t as good as those skimmed from Pasingala and Rudwin, though in order to attarct customers, the Mansal companies sell at lower cost.

-Terrestrial(Angahella)---For those unable to tolerate Savanis’s heavy gravity, life in a dome city on Earth-sized Angahella is an alternative. But the rocky and cold world is dependent on water shipments from offworld, and the living is hard on the planet. Still, though, the factories and mines on Angahella keep some 6 million people employed. A good many private spacers keep very private habitats (and hangars) on the planet, and Angahella is a known haven for rogues, smugglers, and pirates.

-Asteroid(Dorsen)---Dorsen is a far orbit outer system asteroid that is home to Durkle’s Rest, a small space station established by retired explorer-adventurer Golen Durkle. Durkle’s a Felias(see Aliens Unlimited) well into an unprecedented 400s and kept alive by extensive cybernetics and magic to the point that he’s more machine than organic. Dyrkle lost his psionic abilities long ago in misadventures, but bounced back to survive using his wits, contacts, and more than a little good luck, before finally deciding to concede the field to younger beings. Durkle has withdrawn for the most part from social life, doesn’t care for either the CCW’s or the Georgia Protectorate’s politics, and even less for Savanis’s involvement in privateering. Every four years, however, he invites a number of his shrinking circle of old friends and a seemingly random number of fresh faces from the academic and ‘wanderer’ communities to a month-long seminar of sorts of discussions of a range of subjects from esoteric philosophy to exploring new worlds. Being invited to one of these powwows is considered an honor and an opportunity to make contacts in some rarified social circles. Durkle’s also been known to bestow favor on those he likes with contacts to various outfitters, potential employers, and places of interest.

-Gas Giant(Lamont)---Large gas giant. Aside from a few probes dropped in its atmosphere, there’s been little interest in the singleton planet.


Planet(Savanis)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 18,000 km
Gravity: High; 1.8 g
Native-born Savanisians have generally adapted to their planet’s heavy gravity by genetic pressure to acquire stocky, muscular builds(+1d8 to P.S., P.E, and Hit Points for Humans), although their life spans are generally 25% less, and heart disease, bone disorders, and cardiovascular problems plague the population. Those who can afford life-extending medical treatment or gene-modification are a wealthy(or lucky) minority.
Temperature: Temperate
Unusual/Special Features:
-Craters; despite the large number of gas gainst in the system, Savanis still took a substantial cosmic beating sometime in the past, and its surface is dotted with large craters.
Atmosphere: Breathable terrestrial nitrox mixture
Terrain:
Varied, but with Unusual Seismology---Savanis seems to release its tectonic pressures in the forms of ‘geyserlands’, regions where water shoots from the ground under tremendous pressure to incredible heights; some as far up as two and a half miles! These giant geysers are a tourist attraction, and have even been ‘surfed’ by dardevils in specially shielded and contragravitically-buffered pods. During especially active periods, some geyserlands can have as many as thirty giant geyers roaring into the heavens simultaneously, spewing vast clouds of steam into the air and generating massive rain and thunderstorms that can travel over the land for hundreds of miles.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Cobalt
- Colombite
- Antimony
- Iron
- Diamond
- Graphite
- Ruby
- Talc
Hydrosphere:
Roughly 28% of the planet’s surface is covered in open water
Biosphere:
Moderate; Savanis has developed sauroids roughly equivalent to Earth’s Permian Period (but generally smaller and broader thanks to the heavier gravity).Some of these species are commercially farmed for meat and hides, and ‘Savasaur Scale’-leather boots and gloves are a common sight on(and sign of) native-born Savanisians .
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
318 million(62% human, 38% other)
Technology:
Galactic
Economy:
Trade---- Savanis has served as a trade and communications hub for over a century. Though the heavy gravity is a deterrent to most immigration, orbital stations and grav-shielding make short stays attractive, and the Carolyii system’s location near several hyperlanes attracts travel through the system for repairs, supplies, and cargo transfers.
Besides trade, Savanis has in the past made a good chunk of money hiring out soldiers of fortune; strong, hardworking, and tough, heavy gravity-adapted Savanisians have been much in demand.
Wealth:
Savanis was one of the better-off worlds of the Georgia Protectorate, thanks to the aforementioned trade routes nearby. It rated as Prosperous, but has since fallen to Depressed with the disruption of local trade.
Government:
Democracy, with a good dollop of invested business interests.
Law Level:
Loose----There’s a lot of liberal wiggle-room in the Savanisian constitution. Though it very clearly and definitely lays out the rights of sophonts and outright bans such ‘’crimes against sophoncy’ as slavery, the laws o

Now that's some quite creative bit of administrative foul-play indeed. Seems like someone is smarter than the av-er-age infernal, so to speak.

As an aside, while previously referenced, i found myself unable to find any full write-up of the Georgia Protectorate proper.

The Georgia Protectorate is actually canon; it appears in RDB 12: Dimensional Outbreak, pg. 94...even there, there's not a whole lot about them except that they're a bunch of worlds that are unhappy with the CCW, decided to secede, and raided several CCW depots(If one of them was named 'Sumter', I'll ) to 'take back' what they felt was owed them, so the CAF is NOT happy with them. Oh, and their de-facto leadership is a monarchy....

Oh, sorry, my bad but and thanks for clearing that up.

S'right. Can't expect everybody to have ALL the books.
But the rather short canon description leaves enough leeway for GMs/world-spinners to create a Protectorate that's apparently powerful enough to keep the CCW cops from just coming in and steamrolling them...or at least loud enough that to do so would be politically ugly.

Wouldn't be surprised if the TGE wasn't considering covertly stirring things up("Let;s see how -you- like a nice little civil war/rebellion in YOUR yard!")

I do have the book, just haven't paid it sufficient attention it seems. But now that i know what to look for, as an aside....



No offense, but it totally is.

Wow! Good work there!

Oh yeah..United Systems Alliance would -not- feel threatened by them unless they had a navy of a hundred battleships.

And Happy New Year(or close enough)!!!

Node-worlds of the Nebrascus-Alden TriLink Wormhole(Deneva Comdomate)
The Nebrascis-Alden Trilink wormhole system connects all Three Galaxies and is considered to be the organizational and finanical spine of the Deneva Comdomate, providing it with a steady flow of revenue, even when its other exonomic parts are tanking. The TriLink also provides the DenCom with a ready and rapid means of shuffling assets about its widely-dispersed territories.


Nebrascus-Alden TriLink Wormhole
Lauded as a wonder when Nebrascus Deneva and Mori Alden discovered it, the wormhole junction linking the Three Galaxies made the fortunes of both men, though only one would live long enough to enjoy it.
The TriLink allowed Nebrascus Deneva to build a corporate empire on shipping raw materials(albeit in small- to medium-sized hulls) from the Thundercloud and Anvil Galaxies to the big factory-worlds of the Corkscrew, and to collect development and services fees from those settling the worlds nearest the junction-nodes, through a network of subfirms and shell companies set up by Deneva.He also bought enough CCW politicians to keep the government from simply taking over the TriLink. Ultimately, this allowed Deneva to rule semi-independentally over those systems closest to the TriLink nodes. Deneval TriLinko remains the most visible and profitable part of the Deneva corporate empire.
Despite the only monthly openings of the TriLink, vessels line up for weeks and even months to go through, and Deneval TriLinko reaps great profit from transit fees and service charges.

A.) Location:(Corkscrew)Free Space, usually on the far edge of the Aldenmere system
(Anvil) Near a Star---Nebrasca Gamma
(Thundercloud) Near a Planet--- Kikov IV
B.) Size:
Modest----Vessels up to frigate size can travel through the ‘hole. Small freighters to medium freighters can make the transit easily.
C.) Frequency:
Periodic---Roughly 4 times a month, and remains open for roughly 36 hours.
D.) Direction:
Two-Way---Traffic may proceed freely in both directions, at the same time
E.) Range:
Intergalactic; links the Corkscrew, Anvil and Thundercloud Galaxies.
F.) Transit Initiation
FTL Drive---The starship has to have an existing FTL contragravity drive, which must be adjusted to special settings, and engaged as the ship enters the wormhole. A different setting allows the ship to choose which of the two possible galaxies it can travel to. Deneval TriLinko provides updated setting codes, depending on the scanned ‘mood’ of the wormhole when it opens. Deneval TriLinko claims that a new setting is required every time the TriLink opens, and that transiting with an old code is potentially dangerous; so far nobody has tried disproving that by jumping the line.
G.) Duration: Instantaneous
H.) Special
*Branches---The wormhole services all Three Galaxies.
*Radiation----The TriLink does subject vessels transiting it to high levels of radiation. However, this is easily countered/buffered by an adjustment to the ships’ shields(provided by Deneval TriLinko for a small service charge) or by special shield pods provided(again, for an extra charge) by Deneval TriLinko to those ships without adequate shields.


(Corkscrew) Aldenmere
“Mori Alden may have been the one to figure out the math and find the anomaly that turned out to be the Corkscrew node of the TriLink, but Devarian was the one who got credit for the first transit. Some say that ever since that, Mori had to be satisfied with second-best in everything in their business relationship afterwards. His descendents still have a few stakeholds in the system that bears his name, but they don’t see a centi-credit of the revenues raked in by his partner’s pet star nation.”

The Corkscrew node of the TriLink sits on the edge of the Aldenmere system, in the cold dark of the system’s Ort zone. The Aldenmere system was named for the co-discoverer of the TriLink, Mori Alden. Though not the most promising system to anchor a major trade route, the Aldenmere system has become one by default, being the nearest system to the wormhole.
Recently, citing the TriLink’s strategic importance, Deneval TriLinko has asked the CCW/Human Alliance for CAF assistance in guarding the Aldenmere node against piracy and other threats. Though some in the CCW have worried that this is a ploy on the part of the Deneva Comdomate to draw the CCW into the DenCom’s conflict with the United Systems Alliance, the request came from DenevaCorp/TriLinko and not official DenCom government channels. However, the move HAS allowed the Denevans to withdraw security forces from their Corkscrew Galaxy operations and redeploy them elsewhere, more specifically to the Anvil Galaxy to cover recent losses of forces fighting the USA.

Solar System(Aldenmere)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Blue Giant
Number of Planets: 8
-Asteroid(Kolden)----Aside from an automated solar observatory on this rock, there’s little of interest.

-Gas Giant(Ardale)----Jupiter-sized gas giant. Ardale’s eight moons have been prospected for minerals, but strng solar flux from Aldenmere makes mining difficut without beefed-up radiation shields.

-Gas Giant(Logus)----Large gas giant. Solar flux is still strong enough to generate some spectacular aurora activity at Logus’s magnetic poles.

-Gas Giant(Omus)----Huge gas giant. Omus’s moons have seen colonization; Bracna City is home to some 7.2 million Belters, most of whom work in DenevaCorp-related industries producing spare parts and fuel for the ‘shuttle fleet’ freighters transiting the wormhole. Neighboring Fort Omus is basing for DenevaCorp security.

-Gas Giant(Cruslig)----Mid-sized gas giant with rings. Ancient technological debris has been found in the rings, with at least three separate material combinations discovered, suggesting that at last three different spacecraft came to grif in the tings. Given Aldenmere’s remote location, the discovery has been taken as evidence that the TriLink may have been in use much earlier. However, others dispute this theory, and the origins of the wreckahe remains a mystery.

-Gas Giant(Loten)----Small gas giant. It is used as a gas source for skimming operations.

-Gas Giant(Darf)----Tiny gas giant. It is used as a gas source for skimming operations.

-Terrestrial(DeLantis)---Miniscule rocky world. It is currently too distant from the TriLink wormhole to be of much use(try in another 350 years), but is still home to a CAF sensor station.

Capis Station
Capis Station(named for the late Mori Alden’s wife) is the closest large facility to the Corkscrew end of the Nebrascis-Alden TriLink. Like similar staions along the TriLink, it is built around a large asteroid that has been moved to orbit near the wormhole. Capis Station hosts some 10 million residents, mainly travelers and workers for DenevaCorp. Its docks have stations for up to 60 capital ships, or 2-5 times that number of smaller ships. Its docks see a lot of transfer of cargo from larger freighters to smaller frigate-sized craft able to transit the wormhole.
Capis Station is heavily defended against attack from the Corkscrew Galaxy; besides station-mounted batteries, DenevaCorp Security maintains three Warshield-conversion monitors and several squadrons of fighters.



(Anvil) ----Nebrasca Gamma
“Emerging from the ‘hole at Neb-Gam can be jarring for a lot of folks; you go from diving out of open space to suddenly having this great big sun taking up nearly half the visible sky. You keep your shields up and you follow traffic control to veer away nice and neat, though really nobody’s yet done a sundive.”

The Nebrasca Gamma system represents the ‘middle’ of the Nebrascis-Alden TriLink, and some feel that it is appropriate that the wormhole node sits close to a star. The Nebrasca Gamma system was the sixth star system ‘discovered’ by Nebrascus Devarian, who decided to name it using his first name (‘for variety’ he claimed) rather than Devarian.
The Nebrasca Gamma system turned out to be more promising than the Aldenmere system; though the wormhole is located very close to the system’s sun, it is also much closer to two terrestrial planets, one of which could be modified with light terraforming.
Nebrasca Gamma is heavily defended by both Comdomate militia and PMC units.
It is suspected that Nebrasca Gamma may be the source of much of the radiation contamination in the TriLink.

Solar System(Nebrasca Gamma)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Orange Dwarf
Number of Planets: 9
-Terrestrial(Gilroy)----Gilroy is a miniscule Mercury-like rocky world. It is airless, tidally-locked(so one side always faces the sun) and lacking in life, except for the tunnel-cities bored into its shadowside. It hosts Glenhalsey City, a 3 million(out of 10 million overall) population industrial community.

-Terrestrial(Alicen)----System lifeworld and arguably the capitol of the Deneva Comdomate

-Gas Giant(Anasett)----Miniscule Anasett is used as a gas source

-Gas Giant(Lolen)----Large gas giant with exceptionally large rings

-Gas Giant(Buscal)----Large gas giant possessing lighter rings

-Gas Giant(Doriant’s Prize)----Enormous gas planet with 7 substantial moons. Doriant’s Prize was so-named because title to the planet and its moon was awarded to Dhel Doriant, a DemCom sub-executive, for landing several corporate alliances important to the development of the system and Nebrascus Devarian’s megacorp. Doriant’s descendants still own majority stakeholds and property spreads on six of the seven moons colonized/developed.

-Gas Giant(Odel)----Jovian-sized gas giant with 4 large moons, two of which are mined profitably.

-Terrestrial(Chessyesset)----Small rock and ice planet. It hasn’t yet been developed, but for two small habitat-communes.

-Asteroid(Toln)---- This planetoid is unremarkable except for one thing; it sports the mausoleum of Nebrascus Devarian who, upon his death, wanted to be buried ‘with a full view of the stars’. The planetoid attracts(with the permission of DenevaCorp) the occasional pilgrim who comes to view the large tomb(from a distance) and take in the spectacular view of the Three Galaxies. Some critics of the DeCom claim, however, that Devarian’s body was really buried elsewhere, after attempted vandalism.

Planet(Alicen)
Named for Nebrascus Devarian’s granddaughter, the planet Alicen is considered by many to be the Deneva Comdomate’s effective capitol world. The planet is slowly being terraformed into a more suitable environment. A number of sub-corporate syndicates have established a presence here under the aegis of DenevaCorp. Manufacturing is a primary focus of the local economy, with bolstering the Comdomate and selling surplus to outside clients.
Alicen is ringed by spacestations and platforms, including a number of defense platforms. While the Comdomate military on Alicen maintains over thirty Scimitar-type star frigates that can safety transit the TriLink, they have also recently acquired NSF-1003 Espandon Gun Frigates from Naruni Enterprises.

Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 12,858 km
Gravity: 0.8 g
Temperature: Temperate
Unusual/Special Features:
-Odd Rotation----Alicen has a 96-hour day, making for rather eccentric sleep/work schedules for those more acclimated to a shorter terrestrial day-cycle. Only those with superhuman/nonhuman constitutions or biorhythm biomods can work the whole day straight and sleep through the long nights .
Atmosphere:
Terraforming has been successful enough to give Alicen a breathable terrestrial nitrox mix.
Terrain:
Alicen is seismically unusually quiet. Its volcanos and earthquake zones are well-defined and well-behaved, and, in fact, in order to release more greenhourse gases into the atmosphere, the terraformers had to deep-drill and detonate subcrustal nuclear charges to get magma and gases flowing.
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Iron
- Gold/Silver
- Cobalt
- Mercury
- Borax
- Diamond
- Calcite
- Graphite
Hydrosphere:
Badlands, but slowly rising due to directed cometary icefalls.
Biosphere:
None native. but imported terraforming organisms have raised the level to Dense, if somewhat artificial. The local enviroforming works constantly have to pump out fresh aero-conversion plants to sustain breathable atmospheric levels.
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
420 million(80% human, 20% other)
Technology:
Galactic
Economy:
Industrial; Alicen’s industries turn out goods mainly for sale to Thundercloud colonists, but also ammunition for sale locally.
Wealth:
Can be considered to be Rich, but has recently taken some serious hits due to the ill-advised Pounce War. DenevaCorp remains solvent on paper, but has been calling in debts to rebuild its military. This has led to some cutbacks in other parts of the government.
Government:
Syndicracy; DenevaCorp runs the government.
Law Level:
Lawful--- DenevaCorp has adopted the CCW’s legal code for the most part, though the law tends to favor corporate interests over individual rights.
Popularity:
Ambivalent; though most citizens support their government, the Board of Directors of DenevaCorp have not been entirely transparent about recent events. The Pounce War and its outcome, for example, have been downplayed and portrayed as a recent and ‘temporary downturn’ in predicted profits. However, it’s been impossible to hide the military losses and the sceding of several planets to a foreign governnment. This has led to growing discontent with the government’s handling of things. Odds are, though, that for the average Alicen citizen, the problems of the Comdomate are ascribed to ‘offworld problems’ and ‘rogue elements’ on other member worlds of the DenCom.
Stability:
Dynastic; despite recent setbacks, it doesn’t seem likely that the Deneva Comdomate(or at least the local Alicen government) will see any radical changes in government any time soon, barring some sort of serious upheaval or deliberate decisive action by its opponents.

Lavis Junction(TriLinko Station)
Though DenevaCorp/TriLinko’s flag campus is on Alicen, most consider the real operating hub of the corporation’s wormhole operations to be Lavis Junction, a large asteroid/spacestation orbiting in close proximity to the wormhole. Like Capis Station, much of Lavis Junction’s dockside activity is transfering cargo between large transports and the smaller ships able to safely transit the wormhole. Lavis Junction’s design includes a massive sunshade and solar collector that shields the station from Nebrasca Gamma’s solar flux and collects energy to power an anti-radiation shield. It supports a population of some 9 million

(Thundercloud) Kikov-Soleni
“Pretty much an exit-ramp system if you’re traveling to the Thundercloitd. Not much to see or do once you leave the wormhole. You can take a breather and maybe buzz by teh third planet to take a gander at the pretty thunderstorm cells, but most people only linger around Forr long enoug to refuel, maybe get some spare parts and directions, then head out for a system with more to offer. The Denevans don’t like folks who hover around the system not spending money, as the rather obvious security forces in the system will indicate to you.”

Solar System(Kikov-Soleni)
The Kikov-Soleni system represents the Thundercloud end of the Nebrascis-Alden TriLink. It emerges within the moon system of a gas giant. Like the Aldenmere system, Kikov-Soleni lacks any habitable planets, so the system has been colonized Belter-style. Most of the system’s economy and industry revolves around servicing the wormhole trade. As the ‘wild end’ of the TriLink, Kikov-Soleni is well-defended by DenCom security forces.
Number of Stars: 3
Types of Stars:
-Blue Dwarf(K-Soleni A)
-Yellow Dwarf(K-Soleni B)
-Red Dwarf(K-Soleni C)
Number of Planets: 7
-Gas Giant(Jof)----An enormous gas giant, Jof is nearly unapproachable both because of its eccentric orbit and its strong magnetic field which has trapped solar particles from all three K-Soleni stars. Occasionally, DenevaCorp sends daredevil crews in heavily-shielded ships through Jof’s radiation belts to harvest exotic particles, which nets the corporation great profit on every load that returns safely, but not all the scoopships come back so.

-Terrestrial(Mindas)----A tiny rocky world. It is used as a base for missions to Jof. Depending on who one asks, the outpost on Mindas is either a camp for spacers desperate for a job(ncluding ‘Thundercloud Rushers’ down on their luck), a holding pen for convicts who are risking death for a chance at reduced sentences, or an insane asylum for the suicidal or just plain crasy.

-Terrestrial(Charpol)----A large ‘superEarth’ with a superdense electrically supercharged atmosphere.

-Gas Giant(Kikov IV/Forr)----Jupiter-sized gas giant and the center of activity in the system. The TriLink wormhole orbits just outside the planet’s radiation belts. Besides Kirken Station, several of Forr’s moons have been colonized Belter-style. Several asteroid-moons have been converted into the base facilities for various Private Military Companis in the employ of the Denevan Comdomate and used for various exploration and dark ops missions.

-Terrestrial(Kikov V/’Fi’)----Huge methane-ammonia-shrouded planet.

-Terrestrial(Kikov VI/’Big Cinda’)---Enormous outer planet. Internal heating keeps massive gas volcanos going spewing poisonous gas into the atmoosphere almost as fast as it freezes into a thick sooty precipitate.

-Terrestrial(Kikov VII)----Tiny iceworld. The Comdomate has a sensor/communication station on it, but otherwise the planet’s pretty empty.


Kirken Station
Kirken Station is a large asteroid-station that oversees the Thundercloud end of the Nebrascis-Alden TriLink. It has provision for servicing up to 50 capital ships at a time and three times that number of smaller ships, like the other stations in the TriLink chain, mainly works to transfer cargoes between larger carriers and the smaller ‘shuttles’ able to transit the wormhole. The station houses some 3.4 million residents, but can use neighboring colony moons for any overflow transients.

Felson---USA/Rebliss Colony World(Anvil Galaxy)
“Felson’s going to be big; it’s the intersection of two, three if you count the Saphians as a separate power, prominent magic-using interstellar cultures, and they’re definitely going to be swapping notes. There’s industry and research going on. It’s also prime real estate...one of the easier-reached previously unclaimed waterworlds in the Anvil. If nobody else, the Golgans would love to have Felson as an outpost. If the powers that colonized it haven’t realized it yet and taken steps to protect it, Felson’s going to be an attractive target for the wrong sorts of people.”

“-we’ve already had incidents of Ultrovians trying to enter the system on free merchanter visas, but have Golgan state bureaus of intelligence stamped all over them. While they aren’t a Dark Coven-level threat, the fact that they’re snooping around is reason to step up our security. W’ve already strengthened and extended the existing anti-scrying wards and are putting up new ones around areas that might interest them...and a few that wouldn’t, just for decoys. ”

“The Saphians and the Rebliss are two utterly different species and yet their cooperation in developing Felson is almost seamless, and nowhere else is this more readily apparent than in their floating island communities. The structures don’t have the look of colonial ranchackle, but of planned elegance you would expect to see only on a metro-paradise world. Felson’s going to draw tourists, if for the archotecture above and below the water alone.”

Felson is a recently opened up joint Saphian-Rebliss colony, established with United Systems Alliance help, on a planet-sized moon of a gas giant, Leemeth in the Leegath system. Leegath is arguably a binary star system; the primary is orbited by a particularly energetic brown dwarf that provides the planets with an additional source of warmth and energy,
Felson would seem tailor-made for aquatics; the planet’s shallow seas cover almost all of the planet, the climate is agreeable, the atmosphere breathable, and the local resources compatible. In fact, the Rebliss have found indications that Felson was terraformed in the distant past by a species known only as the Gerra, who disappeared around the time of the Dominator Wars in the Thundercloud. It’s hypothesized that the Gerra might have been developing Felson and the Leegath system as a distant refuge from the Dominator-led carnage sweeping the Thundercloud, but were wiped out before they could start evacuating to their outpost. Today, only a few deeply submerged or buried ruins are all that remain materially of the Gerra on Felson. The presence of a higher-than-normmal ambient PPE field around Felson, and the lack of evidence of any extensive Gerran space infrastructure has led to speculation that the Gerra may have traveled by magically-indued dimensional gates rather than spacecraft, though there’s even less hard evidence to back up this theory.
Though Felson’s colonial development was supposedly funded in part with revenues from the Rebliss’ profitable aerospace industry, one of Felson’s secrets is that the oceans and bottom sediments sit atop substantial deposits of Tyridium. Because of this, and because of the close ties berween the Saphians and the United Worlds of Warlock, and the Rebliss and the United Systems Alliance, Felson is considered to be an -interface colony- between the USA and the UWW. Taking advantage of the Rebliss propensity for spacecraft production, the Leegath system also plays host to the very experimental Venos Yards where UWW and USA engineeers experiment with various new ways of constructing ships, mxing magic and technological means.
Felson also boasts some of the largest concentrations of mage-Rebliss and associated Rebliss schools for magic.

Solar System (Leegath)
Number of Stars: 1
Types of Stars:
-Red Dwarf
Number of Planets: 7
-Terrestrial(Vycal) --Small Vycal is a ‘sun-grazer’, orbiting perilously close to Leegath. A few scientific stations have been established on the planet, supplied by ships approaching in the planet’s shadow cone, with remote onservation outposts hugging the shadowline and sticking sensor pylons up into the light.

-Asteroid(Mici)--Mici is the central mining hub for exploiting the fairly dense Lelalus Shoals astroid belt. Some 10,000 Belters of various species call Mici homebase.

-Gas Giant( Leemeth)-- Jupiter-sized Leemeth has several sizable moons, Felson being the most prominent and habitable, but at least three other moons, Tadell, Aisen(site of Venos Yards), and Jalen, play host to sizable colonies and industrial outposts in their own right. The USA and UWW both have naval bases on the moons.

-Asteroid(Enric)--The planetoid Enric is home to a naval base and sensor station jointly operated by the USA and UWW. It’s not unusual to see CAF ships make ports of call here, emphasizing the attention paid Felson.

-Terrestrial(Dersal)---Miniscule Dersal has an unusually dense and violent atmosphere, including riproaring atmospheric storms, suggesting that there are energetic processes taking place deep under the cloud cover. Probes have determined that there is a strong magical field on Dersal, but whether it is responsible for the violent atmospheric activity remains unknown, but of interest to USA and UWW scientists.

-Terrestrial(Hyrun)--Miniscule Hyrun possesses a thinner, but still considerably dense for its size, atmosphere. It, too, exhibits a strong ambient PPE field, but none of Dersal’s atmospheric excitement. It is being observed by scientists as well.

-Exotic(Shidren)---Brown Dwarf. This large protostar radiates energy in the infrared and is surrounded by a halo of comets pulled in from Leegath’s Ort regions. There are several research stations orbiting Shidren, and regular sampling missions are taken of the protostar’s atmosphere and plasma fields.

Planet(Felson)
Type: Terrestrial
Diameter: 11,050 km
Gravity: 0.92 g
Temperature: Temperate
Unusual/Special Features:
-High Ambient PPE Levels---Though not as great as Rifts Earth, Felson’s local PPE levels are greater than the average worlds’(and more akin to the Palladium World’s). Some have wondered if Felson is a ‘water Element world’; if so, it would complement the Fire-strong world of Pikta, and the Earth-permeated planet of Kalipsis, both USA territories.
Atmosphere:
Thin, but breathable, nitrox mix.
Terrain: Unusual Mineralogy---Felson possesses large natural deposits of the mystically-charged form of silver known as Tyridium
Notable Mineral Concentrations:
- Amethyst
- Manganese
- Zinc
- Wolframite
- Talc
- Fluorite
- Graphite
- Nickel
-Tyridium
Hydrosphere:
Waterworld; aside from a few small island chains, Felson is almost entirely covered by relatively shallow water. Most habitation on Felson is in the form of artificial islands, platforms and floater cities or underwater domes.
Biosphere:
Moderate; Felson evolution-wise hasn’t moved far beyond the worm stage. The shallow world-ocean is well-stocked by algaes and seaweeds, but the lack of any real land has prevented the evolution of land plants and animals, such as insects. Ocean animal biota is various mollusks and marine worms.
Civilization:
Settled
Population:
Roughly 9 million(4.1 million Saphians, 3.8 million Rebliss, 1.1 million others, including humans and over 21,000 Hollomorphs)
Technology:
Galactic, with a growing amount of technowizardry
Economy:
Aquaculture and Services, but it also has a less well-known income from mining Tyridium
Wealth:
Wealthy; with few hazards to threaten development, Felson has made back its colonization costs quite readily and has been showing a surplus in its balance of trade.
Government:
Technocracy----Though governments run by engineers and technicians generally run into trouble, in the case of Felson it seems to be working so far. Possibly because the growing number of magic-users in the population is balancing out the pure technocrats.
Law Level:
Lawful; both the Rebliss and the Saphians have robust comprehensive legal systems, and Felson has benefitted from both.
Popularity:
Fanatical---Or at least as fanatic as the reasonable Saphians and the almost legendarily level-headed Rebliss get. Felson is a paradise world, everybody knows it, and nobody wants to ruin it.
Stability:
Stable, shading to Solid, thanks to the governments involved being so level-headed. There is the occasional blip as the technocrafts stumble over a problem or field a solution that isn’t exactly right, but so far the arrangement on Felson seems to be holding.

(This grew out of a brief passage in my Space Pirates Random Roll Tables and I just went with the flow of ideas that came to me)

Ultravorians(Religious Order)
“Nice people with a sunny outlook, if you can stand folks who can find something deep to say about even desert systems with little to recommend them.”

“The Call is a call to indulge wanderlust, to seek out wonder, and to experience the voices of the cosmos. It is not an inconvenience, it is a living truth.”

Not to be confused with the Golgan-affiliated Ultrovians, the Ultravorians are a largely Human culture/religious society, though they are open to everyone. They are a nomadic religion, traveling a circuit of sacred sites and sanctum worlds known as the Hajan Path Network, in the Thundercloud Galaxy’s Gaelra Arm. Pilgrimage is an integral part of Ultravorian belief, and the truly devout count status by how many circuits of the Network they have completed. Pilgrims lead a gypsy-like life traveling on church-commissioned and crewed starships that make their way around the network, stopping at the various stations. Pilgrims typically stay for three or four months before taking ship again to take to the next station, though some may stay longer, switching ships, or take up permanent residence settling in on a world or spacestation. Some spend the rest of their lives traveling, never losing the urge to wander the Hajan and finding something new to contemplate on every world they visit, even ones they’ve visited before.

The Hajan Path Network itself comprises some 42 star systems, including 14 habitable worlds. On inhabited worlds, the Ultravorians establish enclaves for pilgrims staying over and facilitating the transition of new arrivals who decide to stay over into the local workforces and economies. On larger stations, the Ultravorians will similarly try to work places into the local station workforce, or, if the station is wholly owned and operated by the Ultravorians, find places in helping maintain and expand the stations. Ultravorians of necessity become seasoned space travellers with a flexible range of skills to facilitate their travels.

Not all worlds of the Hajan Path are exclusive to the Ultravorians; most are already settled and have substantial non-Ultravorian populations, though the Ultravorians draw most of their membership from these worlds.

Ultravorians tend to be a peaceful industrious people who take joy in their traveling communities and in sharing their observations and experiences along the Hajan Path. They are friendly and helpful for the most part towards others, and recognize that not everybody hears the Call. Many run businesses along the Hajan Path, serving both their church and others who also travel the Path star systems.

The Hajan Path is not without peril. The Baljini Corsairs are infamous for attacking Ultravorian religious pilgrimage vessels along the Hajan Path Network. Many Ultravorian ships have fallen victim to bandits and slavers, forcing the normally peaceful religionists to arm themselves or seek protection, hiring outsiders as security escorts or rescheduling flights to travel in convoy with other travelers. And not all the Path worlds are friendly. Many of them are habitable only within closed environments and many of the best ‘holy’ sites are accessible only by pressurized vehicles or spacesuited EVA jaunts. Many experienced Ultravorians become skilled in spacesuit operations, emergency suit repair, and shipboard damage control.

A typical Ultravorian pilgrimage starship is a converted large transport or starliner, with a capacity of around 2,000-4,000 passengers. They tend not to be particularly fast, and thus have large cargo/supply capacities and extensive onboard life support facilities such as life-gardens, so that the pilgrims may enjoy their travels. Faster ships are available for special pilgrimages and conducting church business.

a)Size:
*Massive---At given time there are some 3 million followers on the move, and an estimated additional 15 million in residence on the various planets and stations of the Hajan Path.

b)Alignment:
* Principled---- Highly moral defenders of Light and Order. Ultravorians extend charity where they can and will help other travelers in need.

c)Origin:
*Ancient----Nobody knows how the religion got started; it appears to have a continuous history dating back centuries or more(or so it claims). The worlds and the systems of the Hajan Path have been discovered to host signs of previous visitors and even colonial presences, stretching back millions of years.
There have been several distinct and different recorded historical liturgies of Ultravorianism, depending on who were the dominant pilgrim-culture/species at the time, and a notably large gap in the recorded hostiry of the organization following the Dominator War, until human explorers came across the systems that would become known as the Hajan Path.

d)Type:
*Animism----The systems of the Hajan Path are supposedly rife with the spirits of ancient wisdoms, waiting to impart their knowledge to the observant faithful.

e)Organization:
* Strict Hierarchy----The Ultravorian Church maintains a strict ship-style hierarchy aboard its pilgrimage vessels, with everybody organized to fill duty stations aboard the ship. In matters of travel and shipboard operation, the ultimate authority is the Captain, but on non-critical matters, the Captain defers to a shipboard council that tends to the pilgrim-passengers’ more spiritual or civil matters. The top authority of the Church is a senior council, many of the members retired Captains or active Station members, who make policy decisions on maintaining the Hajan Path Network, overseeing the scheduling of pilgrimage vessels, and the provisioning of the waystation communities.
(Gender of Priesthood)
Both males and females can serve as officers of the church.

f)Degree of Activity
*Passive---The church has taken on a ‘come what may’ attitude to growth; if their divinity wants them to expand, it will show signs, and they will deal with it as they may. Their efforts to publicize themselves tend to be low-key and their participation in worldly affairs tends to be at the local level. either one gets the Call or one doesn’t, and nobody is pressured to join.

g)Membership:
*Open---The religion preaches to EVERYBODY who hears the Call.

h)Recruitment:
* Mystical Selection----Ultravorians are convinced that they have all received a mystic sending that has informed them of their special status. This usually takes the form of a dream with certain unique occurrences/symbolism that the Ultravorian priesthood see as the divine sign that the individual is selected to travel the Hajan Path . The more intense signs are known as the Call, and are seen as impetus to take to the Path.

i)Membership Duties
*Pilgrimage---- All Ultravorians must be prepared to take pilgrimage, especially if they have gotten the Call.

j)Observances
*Fasting----Besides useful for extending supplies on their vessels(Oxygen Conservation training is also a common part of Ultravorian religious practice), periods of going without food also facilitates the instigation of dreamlike visions, typically of past events in the systems of the Hajan Path Network

k)Taboos
*Medical Procedures----Ultravorians refuse the use of medical nanotechnology that introduces robots into their bodies. They’re even suspicious of the larger RMKits.

l)Security:
*Warders of the Faith---Aboard ship, these include ship security officers and point defense gunnery crew. In the enclaves, wardens keep the peace among the Ultravorians.

m)Available Funds:
*Well-Off---The church is well-funded as much as they have the means to maintain their facilities, pay off workers, and support a few modest programs like maintaining their ships and stations, and providing for their enclaves.

n)Special Features:
*Holy Tomes----Ultravorianism relies on a set of ancient texts that look, to spacers’ eyes, suspiciously like ancient navigational guides and ship logs.

o)Outside Relations
*Tolerated----Ultravorians are generally tolerated by the worlds that they visit, especially if they bring in revenue. Like tourists, the pilgrims bring in much-needed currency and business to many out of the way places.
Besides transporting pilgrims, Ultravorian starships also carry paying cargo and some passengers, and have reputations for being well-run(if boring for non-religionists). Their experience in operating spacestations in remote areas has gven them no small expertise in space habitat operations, and many outsiders hire Ultravorian technicians (with the clause that the tech may leave at a reasonable time to pursue the Hajan) or organizations to set up their own space-habs and outposts.

p) Divine Backing
*Alien Intelligence(secret)---The secret of the Ultravorians is that they are being used as hosts for a distributed Alien Intelligence. Physically weak, the energy lifeform uses the pilgrims to carry ‘cells’ of itself across the void to share information with its other nodes, the pilgrims acting like red blood cells. The intelligence also seems to gain mental sustenance from the perceived experiences of others.
The alien intelligence is extremely subtle and has been doing this sort of thing for millennia. In the very distant past, the alien intelligence was once a species of many individuals, who eventually formed a vast mental gestalt. However, the gestalt intelligence discovered, too late, that it had transcended physical form too quickly. Without physical biological anchors for its intelligence, the gestalt’s psionic mass would lose cohesion and eventually die. Fortunately other races, especially humans, emerged on the scene and proved viable hosts to carry packet-cells of the Ultravorian intelligence and the metabeing has been gently manipulating other beings to travel to the many worlds the intelligence has settled and keep the various parts of itself energized and in touch with itself .
The Ultravorian intelligence can be considered to be benign, but it generally does not concern itself with worldly affairs nor does it manifest any great powers. It rarely exhibits any curiosity in anything outside the Hajan Path Network or desire to expand beyond it, and in fact could considered to be stuck reliving old times in the comfort of familiar surroundings. It does not force beings to become its hosts, but chooses those already inclined to travel.

The Ultravorian intelligence’s presence is very difficult to detect, and even Master Psychic-class sensitives would be hardpressed to detect the spore of it, even if they knew what to look for. Even then, the slightly elevated PPE/ISP levels in a person could be mistaken for psychic latency in the iindividual.
Other alien intelligences like gods and the Splugorth can sense the Ultravorian intelligence, but would regard it as very weak and of little concern, or interest. Most regard it as less of a comprehensive thinking being and more of a glorified ‘echo’ of a bygone civilization.

For their part, aside from a compulsive desire to travel, Ultravorians have the following attributes: +1d6 to M.E., +1 PPE/+1d4 ISP, +1 to save vs psionics and insanity, and immune to possession(by anything other than the Ultravorian intelligence). Those with spacecraft skills will find that their navigation skills have a +10% to find and travel the Hajan Path Network. Those carrying parts of the Ultravorian intelligence, however, will become increasingly more anxious, like acute homesickness, the longer they stay away from the stations of the Hajan Path. Not all Ultravorians carry a rider within them all the time; at any given time 46% of Ultravorians are just going along on their own, satisfying their own natural wanderlust or on assignments for the church.

The Ultravorian intelligence had a notably bad time following the aftermath of the Dominator War, when most intelligent(and especially starfaring) species in the Thundercould Galaxy were wiped out by the radiation shock of the black hole bomb. The intelligence almost collapsed into non-sentience before suitable starfarers came again within range to play host to the metabeing. The Ultravorian intelligence has discovered that the newly-arrived Humans make very good hosts, and they have become its prefered host-mediums. Though the intelligence’s thought-processes are quite abstract, its near-death during the ‘drought’ of host-capable spacefarers has concerned it, and it has begun to consider means of strengthening and securing its connections to prepare itself against any future disasters.
It is unknown how the Ultravorian intelligence would react to the possibility of it being cut off from itself; it likely would fish around for other hosts with an inclination to travel to continue its ‘circulation’. If its worlds or stations were threatened, it is possible it might reach out and somehow empower the residents to act like white blood cells to defend their homes(and incidentally the intelligence’s places of power).

Besides the Ultravorians, the Hajan Path Network has begun attracting tourists as well. The Ultravorians are happy to accept these companions, even though few if any are Called, as long as they are respectful of the hosts and sites, and pay their way.


The Hajan Path Network
The Thundercloud Galaxy’s Gaelra Arm Hajan Path Network comprises some 42 star systems, including 9 habitable terrestrial worlds. The remaining 33 systems contain either uninhabitable desert/iceworlds or asteroids, requiring closed habitats to sustain life. Most Hajan Path systems are old red dwarf stars, though four are yellow dwarves, six are orange dwarves, three orbit white dwarves and one Path world sits inside a planetary nebula.
The choicer worlds of the Hajan Path have predictably been snapped up by other starfaring cultures seeking territory in the Thundercloud Galaxy. Fortunately none are the TGE, and most of the Hajan Path Network lies in or near CCW-claimed space.
The Ultravorian intelligence can maintain a tenuous psychic contact with its dispersed parts, but requires the physical transport and exchange of psionic ‘blood cells’ to remain healthy.

Even before humans became the predominant species of the Ultravorian Church, other races played host to the Ultravorian intelligence and left their mark on the Hajan Path worlds, and their works have become part of the pilgrimage trail. Among such sites are:

-The humanoid Minoth built the Halls of Faces beneath the airless surface of Cowth IV; the galleries of stone lined with masks that, when touched, recite the Minoth Liturgies of Haja.

-The ruins on Borna VII have yielded accounts, painstakingly etched in stone and metal, of an unfortunate encounter between a little-known people calling themselves the Littele and a Dominator, while the former were exploring the Hajan. The ruins have been dated to just before the end of the Dominator War.

- The enigmatic Wanth built vast celestial calendar gardens on Mars-like Pascel to assist their resident monks in what appear to be yearlong staged tiers of prayer ceremony. Though the gardens require regular replanting thanks to Pascel’s wide orbit that causes hard winter die-offs and summer explosive overgrowth, the astronomical observatory structures remain accurate.

-Large artificial satellites made from heated and reshaped asteroids record in engraved hieroglyphs the visits of the starfaring Reel to the desert system of Ponzar III. The tradition has been restarted by Ultravorian pilgrims, with new signage asteroid-satellites being fabricated to join the older ones. Each visiting ship of travelers either inscribes their names and comments on an existing waystone or makes a new one and launches it into a long orbit.

- Before they perished in the Dominator War, the orc-descent Hike paused in their ritual tribal wars long enough to travel at least some of the Hajan Path and establish the self-repairing Hikeeth Fountains on habitable Neeshis. It is a testimony to the artistry and ingenuity of the normally warlike Hike that their constructs are still functioning perfectly in the modern day and serve as the centerpiece of the largest CCW city on Neeshis.

- Several of the outer ice worlds of the Polyus Gamma system show signs of ancient mining and industrial activity, attributed to the Stinnex. The remains of a Stinnex Von Neumann probeship, stripped of any most anything usable, but still recognizable, lie next to what was very likely an automated replication yard. Though off the beaten path of the Hajan pilgrimage, which stops off at Polyus V, many Ultravorians detour and trek out to the Stinnex sites to contemplate the footprints of the ancient robot explorers who came through the system long ago.

-Gylar Station in the DiRipedes system is an ancient spacestation of the giant-statured Ponth culture. The station, much repaired, but still recognizable under centuries of add-ons by later pilgrims, remains in operation today.

-Massive enigmatic towers of alien clockwork found on Orvus VII continue to puzzle investigators. Though the structures are partially complete and functional, it is not clear what function the complete towers were supposed to carry out. More intriguing is hints that the towers may have been built by the Machinists, a culture thought both exclusive to the Anvil Galaxy AND extinct. If the Machinists (or a splinter of them) did survive and escaped to the Thundercloud, what became of them? Did they play host to the Ultravorian intelligence and travel the Hajan, or were they just passing through? And what is or was the purpose of the clockworks?

-Pava, the planet sitting inside a planetary nebula, seems to have survived the breakup of its star system thanks to the remains of a ancient massive, still-partially functional planetary shield. Nobody quite knows how the field works, but few are willing to tamper with what obviously does work, as long as it continues to shield the planet from being irradiated or smothered by the surrounding gas and dust. Similarly, nobody can tell if the shield predates the formation of the nebula, or if it was set up by later visitors to the planet. The current ‘owners’ of the planet, Diergon Mineralogy, have found the shield has conveniently made the planet a useful base for highly profitable nebula-mining operations and they have reached accommodation with the Ultravorians to share Pava, especially since the religionists have far less trouble navigating safe paths of low-density through the nebula to reach the planet. Many spacer Ultravorians serve a stint with Diergon Mineralogy’s scoop crews, increasing the symbiotic relationship between the two organizations.

-Similar to the Pascel calendar-gardens, the giant sundial-like Cylene Wheel on Arol II seems to be a celestial alignment device, though cosmic drift has rendered it inaccurate. The degree of inaccuracy and the age of the stars depicted on the construct’s surface have helped date it to being nearly 1.2 million years old. It is arguably the oldest major site yet discovered in the Hajan Path Network and is a major religious site for the Ultravorians, who have established a large dome community nearby and conduct regular visits to the Wheel. The material of the Wheel itself, though suffering some visible deterioration, is of a type that defies analysis; some psychics believe it is a partially psychic wave form, somehow frozen in place.

-The Chamber of Henhoth in the deep Crypts of Kadell is a short meditation gallery filled with ectoplasm. It is one of the few places where anybody can become aware of the Ultravorian intelligence’s presence within them and even communicate with it in limited fashion. The experience is regarded as touching an ancient cosmic and ancestoral spirit by most, but the Church Senior Council controls access to this holiest of holies and limits the number of Ultravorians allowed to experience it, or even be aware of it. Through interaction with the metabeing, the Church has been able to find and recover artifacts from previous generations of Ultravorian culture and uncover other sites in the Hajan Path Network.