PENSACOLA / LETHE

Pensacole

PENSACOLA/LETHE

2936 Delphi/Breda

Pensacola:  X655736-5 (former: B655936-B)
Lethe:   B7C0636-B

Primary: G3 yellow dwarf

Other Inhabited Worlds:
Various mining bases in Murielle Asteroid Belt.

PENSACOLA

Pensacola was once the main world in the system, but since a major Black War attack that shattered its moons and devastated the planet, the colonies on Lethe have since become the main focus of travel in and out of the system.

In 3585, the Solomani unleashed what many called 'weaponized planetology', and made its then-frontine Black War attacks on the Breda subsector one of the major testing grounds for it.  They used advanced and detailed knowledge of a target world's planetology, combined with meson guns and other devastating weapons, to not just knock out installations and factories, but to devastate the world so thoroughly that it could never recover.

In Pensacola's case, a fleet of Solomani capital ships, after neutralizing most of the world's orbital and ground defenses, used sustained, concentrated meson gun fire to smash the world's four small moons along their known internal fault lines.  The gigatons of debris choked over the orbital space above the world.  To add insult to injury, the Solomani peppered many of the larger clusters of debris with cobalt-60 bombs, making the new rocky ring around the world radioactive.

The moon debris began raining down on the world, many hundreds of millions of tons massive, causing apocalyptic destruction. Heroic efforts by surviving ship crews in-system, as well as some eventual out-system help from Willow and other worlds, managed to stabilize in orbit the most massive planet-killing chunks, at least for now, preventing the planet from being rendered completely lifeless.

Still, the damage was extensive.  Pensacola's population dropped from about 4 billion to now what is estimated to be only about 80 million survivors.  Almost all industry on the planet is in ruins, its former biosphere is devastated, and most survivors live by scavenging. Continuous bombardment by moon debris large and small has not let up for over twenty years, and a radioactive taint has seeped into the atmosphere from radioactive dust these meteors bring to the world.

Pensacola now also has what's called the Kessler Syndrome, where its orbital space is so choked with debris that interface travel to and from the world is quite hazardous.  Only heavily armored ships can make it through the chaotic debris rings to the surface and back again.

LETHE

Lethe is the closest major body to the system's primary, and in many ways resembles Venus of the Terran system.  It is a hothouse world with a surface temperature of over 700 degrees and with an insidious, poisonous, crushing atmosphere.

Archaeological evidence has shown it was not always like that, however.  A billion and more years ago, it was a temperate life-bearing world.  But the system's sun slowly warmed as it aged, causing the planet to slowly heat up as well into a runaway greenhouse effect that turned it into its current state some 800 million years ago.

Some hearty organisms do survive, exotic anaerobic microbes in the planet's upper atmosphere with many commercial applications.  These are harvested by a large planet-wide community of floating habitats fifty kilometers above the surface, above most of the atmosphere's pressure and acidic properties.

Orbiting Lethe is also two dozen water-bearing asteroid colonies, brought to the world  by artificial means to supply its atmsophere-harvestors with raw consumable.  Over the centuries, though, the community around Lethe has become heavily populated by disaffected people driven from elsewhere, and they vehemently guard their outsider status, even as they find themselves being drawn to help their fellows on Pensacola and the rest of the devastated Imperium.

Lethe's Surface

BREDA

Breda circa 3580

Breda circa 3605

Breda Political boundaries (click to enlarge)

BREDA

3035 Delphi/Breda

D669974-6 (former: B665984-B)

Primary: K1 Orange dwarf

Other Inhabited Worlds:
Taupe (Breda's Moon): D000674-8

Ruined Worlds:
Wer (GG Moon, wrecked naval base): X101000-D


Breda has a surface of gravity of 0.79 standard.

It is a world undergoing an immense environmental and humanitarian disaster in slow motion: its surface is being flooded by an underground ocean, and it remaining population of 1.2 billion (out of an original 7.5 billion) billion struggles to hold on.  Its hydrographic percentage has change from 50% to 90% in just 20 years, and in another twenty experts estimate there will be little if any dry land left.

Breda was once the subsector capital, and was arguable the richest and most industrialized planet in the sector.  It also boasted a large and well-maintained naval base in its nearer gas giant neighbor.  Unfortunately, all that made it a prime target for the Solomani in their major Black War offensive.

The navy base and the planetary base was wrecked by invading fleets, leaving the planet itself vulnerable to the Solomani's recently developed 'weaponized planetology' techniques.  This combined detailed planetological knowledge of a target world with combined meson gun fire and other weapons in order to permanently wreck worlds and prevent them from ever recovering.

On other worlds, this 'weaponized planetology' had done things like crack apart moons and induce super volcano eruptions.  On Breda they tried something extremely ambitious, thanks to unique circumstances there.

Many terrestial worlds have a lot of water locked in their mantles, water vapor saturated into the rock there at high pressure.  Breda happened to have a very large such deposit for its modest size, a veritable underground ocean three times the mass of its surface oceans, and it was located right under a birthing ridge between two spreading tectonic plates.

The invading Solomani used their fleets' combined meson gun bombardment first to produce numerous magma hotspots under the water-saturated mantle, then used those same weapons to cut channels from it up into the magma layer under the spreading tectonic faults.

It worked better than they hoped.  The megatons of steam followed the path of least resistance, and burst out through the fault into the ocean basin above, and the process eroded out ever wider and wider channels for the underground 'ocean' to flood out.

At first, Bredans thought the Solomani had left their world with only the expected damage to factories and military assets.  They almost breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, satellites showed that one of their oceans was literally bubbling along a thousand-mile stretch of the fault line.  The sea level rose three meters in the following year, and the levels have been actually accelerating since.

Sea level rise in the last 20 years has been over a thousand meters.  Breda, an older world, had not that many highlands and mountains to begin with.  What little industrial infrastructure remained after the Solomani bombardment was soon swamped by both the rising sea levels and the sheer horrified panic and riots that swept through the population as news of what was happening spread.

With the rest of the Imperium in ruins, there was little hope for any kind of outside help.  Billions suffered through famine and disease as the world's agriculture faltered under rising seas and severely altered climates.  The former unified world broke into balkanized factions as they fought for ever diminishing resources.

Breda today is ruled by five dictatorships (having by necessity or desire declared martial law in what remains of their territory), each concentrated in a former highland or mountain range.  Much of their resources is not spent in trying to find a solution, but in attacking each other for supplies, slave labor, or just in retribution for past attacks.

The current tech level has collapsed down to 6, and is not expected to survive even at that level for long as the oceans keep rising.  Many have taken to nomadic oceanic life where they could, but many are unsure how long they can sustain that once all the land is flooded and they have no more means by which to build new boats.

The Willow Accord currently claims Breda as a 'client' world, and helps in what limited way that it can with relief efforts and evacuating who they can.  Some in the Accord claim that they should take military action, using force to conquer the balkanized dictatorships and bring order to the world to save what they can.  Unfortunately, after decades of war, many in the Accord have no stomach for such actions, and the polity is already strained just maintaining the peace in the cluster.

There has been one ray of hope.  In the last few years, Biotechnika, a Willow-based company, has developed self-replicating seaweed 'mats' that can feed off of Breda's oceanic microbes and which can offer humans a stable floating surface, much like green, ropey, living barges. Some can reach sizes of 100 meters in diameter.  Its in trials on Breda but shows great promise.

WILLOW

WILLOW

3134 Breda/Delphi

A751844-C

Primary (pair): M3 Red Dwarf
         Neutron Star

Other Inhabited Worlds:

Boise: (hollowed asteroid/GG moon): A001614-C
Carlton: (GG Moon) Y2C5514-C Naval base
+ Various inhabited bases on smaller bodies


Willow has a number of unusual features for a life bearing world, most notably the unusual star system which it calls home.

The system's primary is a binary pair: a dim M3 red Dwarf and a Class 5 neutron star, which closely orbit each other.

The neutron star is not native to the system, and seems to have been 'captured' by it some 300 million years ago.  The neutron star (called Tsun, while the red dwarf is called Dere, from a play on the japanese word tsundere.)   It shifted some orbits of the planets, and is thought to be the reason why Willow's ecosystem is now in severe decline.

'Hyperspace Fortress'

Tsun gravitationally acts like much larger star, pushing the 'safe' envelope for jump drives out to about 18 million miles from the star.  Willow is well within this radius, at a distance of about 7 million miles from the primaries, and Oyster, the gas giant that Boise and Carlton orbit, is right on its very edge.  A second gas giant called Gibbet orbits at a distance of about 25 million miles.

Because of this, Willow cannot be surprise-attacked via hyperspace, a favorite tactic of space navies.  Ships must usually enter the system well over 11 million miles distant from it, giving it plenty of warning of any incoming attacks.  Ships can try to jump in closer, but run a high risk of misjumps (especially in the post-Cascade era.)

Even if a ship gets in close to Willow, the planet has two additional natural defenses: Willow is very close to its primaries, and receives a great deal of radiation from them.  It has a powerful magnetic field, which traps a lot of that in strong 'radiation belts' surrounding the planet, which help to skew sensors within 100,000 miles of the planet.

Willow is also so close to its parents stars that it has a much higher relative orbital velocity compared to other inhabited worlds.  Its 'year' is only three standard days long.  More than one 'surprise attack' on the world failed in part because the ships were unable to properly match its orbital velocity in time to coordinate the attack properly.

While Willow has a fully functioning A-class starport, including extensive ship yards, Boise (originally a moon of the jupiter-sized gas giant Oyster) is the system's official commercial starport.  Boise is a hollowed asteroid O'Neill colony with a population of 300,000.  It has also been made fully mobile with gigantic plasma rockets, and was moved around the system several times during the height of the Black War to help protect it from attacks.  Its is currently in Oyster's L4 asteroid cluster.

Carlton is site of the system's major naval base.  It was also the site of the only successful major attack on the system by the Solomani.  It is still in the process of rebuilding.

WILLOW

Willow has a gravity of 0.9 standard and rotates on its axis once every 18 hours or so.  Its atmospheric 'taint' is actually the relatively high background radiation.  Not immediately life-threatening, but prolonged exposure without protection can lead to health problems.

Willow is a 'post-garden' world.  Its water has been drying up for millions of years, being lost to chemical processes in a way similar to Mars.  Its hydrographic percentage is now only 10% (down from 60%), concentrated in several dozen small 'seas' (actually large lakes) around which its last remaining vestiges of life cling.  Its close orbit around the stars causes these small 'seas' to have periodic and sometimes spectacular tides and surges, however.

The inhabitants of Willow have set about trying to restore the biosphere to its former glory through long and careful planetary engineering, but the process will likely take many centuries yet.  Willow citizens culturally tend to be very dedicated environmentalists, especially toward their own world but to a lesser extent toward others as well.

Its close distance to its parent stars has kept the planet's core churned up, and as a result it has a very strong magnetic field, which also helps to protect its biosphere from said radiation.  Its still somewhat high for humans and non-Willow life, however, so most of the population lives in shielded shelters and domed cities and dress in radiation-proof suits if they need to be out on the surface for long periods of time.  Still, melanoma and other cancers are fairly high among the population, but at TL 12 they can usually be readily dealt with.

The skies at night, and sometimes during the day, are filled with bright and colorful auroras.

Willow has a population of about 200 million.  An extensive cluster of O'Neill colonies, hollowed asteroids, and stations orbit the planet housing about 10 million of those people.

Willow is the capital of the Willow Accord.  Even before that polity's founding ten years ago, it had become a major 'safe haven' for those fleeing from the Rebellion-Era chaos.  Its major cities, especially around its Downport City of New Brooklyn, have become choked with new residents, human and non, from all around known space.

While the refugees have at times been a source of new skills, labor, ideas, and wealth, they have also at times proven to be quite a burden.  Debate rages about the issue.