ABBOT

ABBOT

3236 Breda/Delphi

B577834-A

Primary: G2 Yellow Dwarf

Other Inhabited Worlds:

Ortos, moon of gas giant Duncan (Y10A463-A); Willow Accord Naval Base under construction

T4, T5; Outpost at Duncan Trojan points (240 million kilometers spinward and trailing in Duncan's orbit) called simply T4 and T5.  Currently supervising the herding of Kuiper Belt comets to the points for undisclosed purposes.  Size and number of personnel undisclosed and the bases are considered a naval secret (military clearance required to approach or land.)

ABBOT

Abbot is a life-bearing world with an unusual atmospheric taint: it has an oxygen percentage of 37%, nearly twice that of Earth.  This oxygen can be quite dangerous in a number of ways.  Humans can breathe it unprotected, but prolonged exposure to it (days) can lead to conditions such as hyperoxia.  Most inhabitants outside of the pressurized habitats with more human-friendly gas mixtures usually wear filter masks.

Fires are also a near-constant hazard.  Open flame, burning embers and even heating coils are strictly prohibited anywhere on the planet by any human inhabitant.  Even in pressurized habitats their use is heavily restricted, and microwaves and pulse ovens are preferred for cooking.  Smoking, even in 'safe' habitats, is punishable by extensive jail time.

Even so, fires are a frequent occurrence on the planet from natural sources, and can rage hot and fast across a landscape.  The spread of especially large fires have been known to pace or even outrun wheeled land vehicles.

The local wildlife has actually adapted to the frequent occurrence of fires.  Forests and grasslands grow back quickly, and there are entire classes of animals that specialize in post-fire environments such as burnt out forests.

The wildlife is considered extremely dangerous.  The animal life consists mostly of colony-mat type creatures which fill various niches.  Some are grazers, some are predators, some even fly on air currents like flat stringless kites.

However, when they feed they gorge themselves voraciously, the high oxygen allowing a tremendous metabolic spurt of digestion and nutrient processing.  Some of the larger mat-creatures can completely devour a man-sized creature in a matter of minutes.  Not swallow him into the stomach like in an Earth life form, but completely break him down into component nutrients in that time like flesh-eating bacteria on speed.  Though humans are non-nutritious to the native animals, they will still feed on Earth lifeforms if an opportunity presents itself, driven by pure instinct.  After a large enough meal, many animals will also reproduce immediately afterward, which most lifeforms do by fissioning.

Because of the high oxygen content, the oceans are highly acidic with a comparatively large percentage of hydrochloric acid and other corrosives.  Though not immediately fatal, anyone in Abbot's seas for more than a few minutes unprotected will develop very painful acid burns on exposed areas.  Just being splashed with Abbot ocean water can cause temporary blindness if it lands on the eyes.

Because of its oceans, many of its clouds and precipitation are also acidic, though to a lesser degree than its oceans.  Its plants and animals have long since adapted to these conditions, but the acidic rain, water, soil and so on has made agriculture on the world by humans very difficult, and is not helped by the fact that the lifeforms on Abbot use right-handed amino acids, making them inedible by left-handed amino acid lifeforms such as humans.  Most farms are domed located in underground chambers, and cultivation of yeasts, fungi, and other microbes as foodstuffs is a major industry.

HUMAN HABITATION

Abbot is home to some 850 million inhabitants, mostly human.  Though there are a variety of ethnicities on the planet, by far the largest (85%) are descended from the original colonies established by China and the nations of Southeast Asia early in the Second Empire (~2400 AD.)  Many place names have been translated into standard, but retain the poetic flavor of their original designations--Cold Mountain, Joyful Harbor, Palace of Dancing Stars, etc.

The world is ruled by an oligarchal committee of 33 Administrators, representing the 33 administrative districts of the world, with one rep for each.  These Administrators are themselves chosen by committees of 'prominent citizens' within each province.  These committees chose their own members when a vacancy pops up and there is no participation by the general population.

Yet, surprisingly, the government is fairly efficient with low levels of corruption.  This comes from strong cultural influences of personal responsibility and community consciousness inherited from the social norms of China's last Golden Age, which the colonists originally fled to Abbot to preserve in the wake of global government consolidation in the wake of the conquest of the Vilani.

Abbottans are extremely proud of their heritage and of being a fiercely independent and competent people for surviving and eventually thriving on such a hostile world.  To the natives, community is always a consideration in most of their decisions, but maximizing an individual means of contributing to that community is at the heart of their work and family ethic.  In other words, they believe in maximizing individual potential, but for the primary purpose of that potential serving their families, communities, districts, and planet.

Abbotans are considered mildly conservative (in the general as opposed to political sense) and somewhat xenophobic to those outside the Accord.  The planet is the major opponent of Willow's more expansionist policies.  Abbotans want to build up and consolidate resources in the existing Accord worlds as the polity's major priority, whereas Willow wants to expand into the rest of the Accord's cluster as quickly as possible to prevent further decay and lawlessness in those systems.  Since Abbot has the largest population of any Accord world, it dominates the Accord's House of Representatives, while Willow's bloc dominates the Accord's Senate, creating a bit of a stalemate on the issue.

Because of the planet's toxic environment, most habitats are underground or domed, and uses filters and at least partial pressurization to make the atmosphere within them comfortable to humans.  The capital city and starport, Cold Mountain, is located on a high plateau three miles square in area where the high altitude (3000 meters) helps to mitigate the toxic oxygen concentration of the atmosphere.  The city has a population of 22 million, and is composed of over a hundred major domes and an extensive series of underground chambers and tunnels.

Like most Accord worlds, Abbot has had its Starport upgraded, in this case from C to B.

ORTOS

The naval base on the gas giant moon Ortos has been under construction for a decade and is only a year away form full completion.  It has already been in use for four years, and is home to over 10,000 personnel and the second largest fleet in the Accord.