Notes on planet terms
"Crush Pressure" indicates that the pressure on a world is enough to crush an unarmored human without a pressurized suit.
"Thick toxic" indicates that the atmosphere is utterly hostile to biological life unless stated and an exosuit is required
"Thin Toxic" indicates that the atmosphere contains imbalences of toxic chemicals but pores are unaffected and only a breath mask is required
Bold, Italicized Underlined Text indicates a sector
Bold underlined text indicates a star system
Bold Text indicates a planet within the star system currently being described
THE COLONIAL BELT
The largest overall ‘area’ in the galaxy, the Colonial Belt refers to a massive area of the galaxy, a strip of worlds mostly circling the core that have been colonized by various major powers. These places, colloquially known as “The Colonies” make a near-circle –only stopping in the Uncharted Regions between the Vendradex Protectorate and the Techno-Confederacy. While core systems for each government are usually wealthy, prideful, pay taxes, are generally well represented in whatever system the government uses to placate it’s people and are of course regulated by sector security –professional police officers, The Colonies are a byword for shifting boundry lines, piracy, trade wars, a lack of centralized administration and of course, The Patrol.
The Colonial Belt makes up the great majority of known worlds, and the history of the Belt is long and storied, though not altogether accurate. What is known is that most areas of the Belt, bar a few worlds, were either at prespaceflight or only late industrial levels of technology, and as such were subsumed by the larger entities of conglomerated worlds.
The Long Patrol, or just The Patrol, is a multinational, multispecies law enforcement unit beyond the boundries of core regions. Their sign, chevrons reversed against one another, is recognized everywhere, and they have outposts in nearly all systems. In the Colonies, most important worlds are protected only by cut-off garrisons of soldiers who it is difficult and not always economical to supply. These soldiers vary from sworn troops to a step above colonial militia. Usually with miniscule fleets, they are generally only equipped to handle either full on combat or guard duties, and when large fleets make their presence known –even fleets formed to keep the colonies in line, they are invariably either stretched thin or scattered too far. Thus, to maintain a semblance of law and order beyond pirate hunters and bounty takers, the Patrol was formed.
Unlike regular troops, they do not fall under the jurisdiction of a planetary government. Instead, Patrol agents and officers maintain their own bases. When a being joins the Patrol they discard their former life, occupation, debts and duties and become part of an intergalactic peacekeeping force. They crew the Patrol’s traditional bloodred-painted ships or regulate the spaceports. Patrol officers are as close as one can come to a unifying force in the galaxy. Every government respects them and is grateful for their help.
While not Vargards, the Patrol is arguably more effective out in the Colonies. Rather than cramming squads worth of effectiveness into one soldier, the Patrol is an irregular army. They have jurisdiction in all space in regards to ‘criminal matters.’ However their numbers are small, and the colonies are still more wild than not. Patrol troops do not take part in the struggles of the wider galaxy.
COLONIES OF THE ASCENDANCY
The colonies of the Ascendancy are regulated into three sectors. In the galactic north is the Cormin Sector, only charachterized by one important system, Cormin’s Gate, the way into the ascendancy from the north, and the ascendancy’s prison sector. The largest colonial sector is the Devon Sector, containing 4 important systems, Selkar, Eegomar, Doomglore and Devon’s Gate, the route into the Union. The final colonial sector is the War Sector, containing Carrion, Asalax and Vortex. It’s name is derived from the fact that it was the site of fierce fighting between the Ascendancy and the Union, finally ending with the annexation of Vortex, and now charachterized as a rebel-heavy sector, particularly on technology-poor Carrion, where eluding observation is easy.
CORMIN SECTOR
Capital: Cormin's Gate
CORMIN SYSTEM
Sun: Hellsphere, white dwarf
Purgatoria
Barley administrated by the soldier-fanatics in the Purge who are assigned to guard it, Purgatoria is a hellish concentration planet for criminals, ‘unworthies’ and POWs, and close to Hellsphere. Like most worlds of the Cormin System, it is shot through with veins of lava. It has slow orbit of 500 standard days to each local day. The logic is that the world’s 400 degree day side temperature will not only vaporize any biological without heavy shielding, but the proximity to the sun would also prevent vessels from coming in on the day side. As such, when prisoners are incarcerated, shortly before the prison complex begins it’s slow dawn, they are thrown into an unsupervised system of armored underground passageways and chambers, some that are little more than caves, with a supply of water and rations to supplement the large tanks of water at the center of the complex. The complex then experiences dawn and the surface turns into a firestorm. There they linger in their underground prison for 250 days, where unless they carefully ration their supplies of food, they will starve. There have been times when the complex has resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. The prisoners are equipped with crude pickaxes, and those that amass the most of the valuable Ferrium within the planet’s crust will be rewarded with rations, privelages and perhaps freedom. (This reward system has led to “The Rat Court” that is basically a protection racket or prisoner-crime-lords, that distributes the ferrerium evenly to personal stockpiles to ensure that the entire group gets rewarded at the end.) The dangers of pickaxe mining are myriad, from lava veins to pressure vents to cave-ins. When the 250-day period of confinement is over, the guards, a company of the Ascendancy Concentration and Incaceration Purge (CCO 8 Purge “Korrections” brigade) will storm the complex, make a search, mark the most useful workers and the most useless, divide them, then police the complex. Over this 245-day period, they will often commit horrifying atrocities upon prisoners, particularly the ‘usless’ including torture, rape, forcing them into death matches, setting slice hounds and Stavas on them, force-feeding them their own excreta, making them attack war mechs with picks, dangling them over pits of magma, methodically vivisecting alien prisoners ‘for knowledge’ and casual executions. At the climax of this nightmare, they will gather prisoners in their respective blocks and begin a systematic execution period, where they massacre usually 1/3 of the prison’s population, usually via a shot to the head, then get rid of the bodies by dumping them in magma runs. 30 days later, once they have finally completed their purge, the guards proceed to induct new prisoners in for a 10-day period, then lock the doors, weld-seal them shut then leave the complex. 2 days later, the 8-day dawn begins and it becomes impossible to leave for 250 days.
Population of 900,000 prisoners on average
Underworld Contaiment and Concentration Complex
Orbiting between Cormin’s Gate and Purgatoria, Underworld is a heavily shielded station and a halfway point for prisoners bound for Purgatoria. It is also the permenant station of the CCO 8 Purge “Korrections” Brigade. Korrectors have total say over everything that happens in the complex. It is a small sphere, and houses a small fleet.
Cormin’s Gate
Cormin’s Gate is a planet farther out than Purgatoria, with heavy volcanism and air-scrubbed spaceports, it’s only habitations are atmosphereically shielded cities. These cities are generally filled with prisoners bound for concentration planets and prisons all over the Ascendancy. The majority of travel insystem is slaves from the Protectorate and Hegemony, who are sent on to a slave-mart worlds, but many others are captured pirates, smugglers, POWs and political prisoners. The guards, CCO 8 Purge “Korrections” Brigade oversee the transfer of prisoners. They often divide them into 6 groups, form most valuable to least, as evidenced by the list.
Attractive females of various species, who they keep for their own use,
Useful aliens and ‘subhumans’ who they keep to keep their equipment functioning,
Prisoners for other facilities for planetside ‘standard’ prisions.
Prisoners bound for the Masser’s Moons Facilities.
Prisoners bound for Purgatoria
POWs and recidivists bound for a variety of prisons.
Helhall
Helhall is the third world in the Cormin System. This world is where the corpses from Cormin’s Gate go. The daily number of prisoners executed in Cormin’s Gate is nearly 10,00, thus, there are frequent cargo ships loaded with nothing but corpses, who simply fly them to Helhall where they literally just dump them on the world. They are not spaced, as the bodies are kept for documentation. Every prisoner’s corpse must be marked down for the records. Only on Purgatoria is immediate disposal permitted. The boneyards on Helhall can be dozens of feet deep.
Masser
A gas giant, with 6 moons, each of which is regulated as a minor prison policed by MPs from the GGA. Living conditions here are as they would be in any prison, and imprisonment on the Masser’s Moons facilities is vastly preferable to being sent to a concentration planet. Hov, Tov and Sov are all regulated for regular prisoners and equitable with prisons in the Union, Bodak Minor is an Asylum for the criminally insane, and built like a planet-wide comb of padded cells, Valdan as a military recruitment prison, for minor offenders who can join Penitent Units and finally Novana, a planetwide POW camp. Most POWs are sent here, unless they are unlucky enough to be sent to Purgatoria. It is policed by MPs of the GGA, and the prisoners who are exchanged mention that they are treated well and are routinely offered transference to Valdan if they wish to join the Ascendancy military, and once they serve their allotted ‘term’ humans are allowed the option to become an Ascendancy civilian. It’s not all wonderful however. Alien POWs are mostly sent to Purgatoria.
DEVON SECTOR
Capital: Devon's Gate
DEVON’S GATE SYSTEM
With only 2 planets orbiting a red dwarf, Enschein and Devon’s Gate, the system is mostly unremarkable.
Enschein
An airless rocky world used as a fleet base
Devon’s Gate
A primarily temperate world with large cities. It is currently famous for beign unremarkable. It has a population of 5 billion.
SELKAR SYSTEM
Star: Selkar: g-type main sequence
Selkar I
chemical crust, chemical winds, lashing toxic rain
Selkar II
red crust, red mountains, rocky, thin toxic atmosphere
Selkar III
brown crust, mud plains and chemical seas, volcanoes, thick toxic atmosphere.
Selkar IV
Grey with black cloud stripes, mountains, marshes, thin toxic, acid rain, alien plant life, microbes
Selkar V
Blue-green, woodland, freshwater oceans, livable atmosphere.
In the roiling heart of the core, there’s not many people who would expect to find intelligent life. Particularly not intelligent life that’s looking up at you reproachfully over a pair of massive incisors at three feet off the ground. Apparently space beavers are a thing too.
The resemblance is uncanny, that is true, but Karkwiki, despite their lovable appearance are not related to beavers at all. In fact, it is theorized that they may have been genetically engineered rats left during the Pre-Darkness era or simply evolved themselves. Their homeworld is quite beautiful both from space and on the surface. From space it appears a blue-green and brown orb, shot with seas and rivers. On the ground, it is covered in a sort of perpetual northern wetland, with frequent snows every winter during its 30-hour days. The locals build burrows in the drier areas and tend to furnish them well, with tasteful furniture, paneling and carpeting, giving rise to the saying “In a hole in a ground, there lived a Karkwik. Not a nasty damp hole with an unpleasant smell and the ends of worms, nor yet a dry sandy hole with nothing to sit down on or to eat. This was a karkwiki hole, and that meant comfort.” The Karkwiki live in family units with one mother and her young. Every mating season, female karkwiki mate with every nonrelated male in sight, so most Karkwiki don’t know who their fathers are. This has led to a rather matriarchical society, though most Karkwiki who go offworld are male, as they are possessed of an innate urge to forage and explore, from Selkar V’s prespaceflight days, when the females, would often give birth to litters of pups in the fall and would be tied up nursing and cleaning them while her adult sons went out and scavenged for food. The adult sons because the daughters, upon reaching puberty, only breed at home for one year, after which they have grown sons to take care of them and are ousted from the den to go dig their own. Male Karkwiki generally prosper better in the overall galaxy because they are more used to hardships as foragers and hunters while the females are unused to such activity.
Karkwiki culture can seem jolly and fun from the outside, particularly given their propesniety for their den to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible, but when cornered they are vicious fighters. There’s a saying “Let the Karkwik win this round. The Shenn might bite your throat out, the Silure might eat you alive, the Kaorin might snip you in half…but the Karkwik’s got tree-chopping teeth at groin height.”
Selkar Station
a stopover for traders passing through the core. The standard wheel-and-spoke design, it’s bar, the Selkar Speakeezy is the most disreputable bar in ascendancy space.
DOOMGLORE SYSTEM
Tomis: Rock, asteroid field, no atmosphere
Doomglore: Dead Grasslands. A parched world now, Doomglore was, unfortunately hit by mass defoliants during the Great Galactic War, and its spaceport is now largley abandoned to decay. The population of 800 million now lives in 1 of 10 orbiting cities, but the world itself has become a housing and training ground for the Ascendant Purge.
Hondaz Staging Station: military space station, appears to look like a giant upright T floating between Doomglore and Belvol.
Belvol: Toxic alien marshes and unlivable air. No signs of life
Hyrol: dust plains and heavy volcanism. Thin toxic atmosphere. No signs of life.
Pormuro: A gas supergiant frequently pelted with asteroids. It has a harvesting facility dedicated to drawing in Hibernium gas known as Pormuro City and a population of 2 million. There is a massive telescope on its only moon dedicated to observing other galaxies.
EEGOMAR SYSTEM
Sun: G-type main sequence
Heigar: Rocky, ice water, thin atmosphere, bacterial life
Mornen: Gas giant, no use. 3 moons, Relephon, Dorephon and Zenephon. Dorephon is icey and has unintelligent animal life but no recorded population.
Eegomar
The third planet, Eegomar, is the primary world of the Eegomar system. It isn’t so close in that it is overly hot, but not so far out that it is cool. Instead, it is muggy. Eegomar’s equator and much of its north and south are covered in marshes and swamp flats filled with crawling insects and mudworms, often with thousands, or even millions of small streams making up each bogplain. This has created a landscape of slimy rivers, eroded, muddy embankments filled with snakeholes, swamp-lizard burrows, and all kinds of nasty stinging insects flitting about over stagnant pools. The major plant life is rather unhealthy looking Blorfa-hydrus plants, each the size of a small freighter, and each filled with gaseous methane and water vapour. These sickly looking brown and green plants rise up into the sky, filling with methane and vapor until the massive main bladders of the plants detach and rise into the planet’s atmosphere, eventually exploding due to a lack of pressure, after having been blown about by the wind. The seeds fall with its remains, and germinate where they land.
The world’s skies are almost always grey and rainy, and the locals have a similarly grim personality.
The locals in question are Eegons, large reptomamallian creatures with warm blood and a penchant for dour personalities and blunt conversation. Eegons each stand at around seven or so feet tall and nearly half as wide, but are not a naturally violent race. They are however a source of galactic contention. The Eegons have a very specific diet. This isn’t to say that they can’t eat certain food, it’s just that they’re picky. They prefer their food to not only be either amphibious or insectile, but also to be fully alive when they eat it. Of course some other species share this preference, and usually congregate with the Eegons in “alien” bars made for the less humanoid with rather odder tastes, that cater to such choosy beings as Eegons, Raks, Pyrathi and Kaorin.
Eegons live in swampland communities, in the deeper areas of the swamp on crannog homes, floating cities built of wood and earth. This isn’t to say that they’re primitive, they just seem to prefer traditional building methods over modern ones.
Major imports: Technology
Major exports: Eegon machines, Eegomaran wildlife for offworld Eegons.
Thayn
4th planet, gas giant, no use, servicing station on its 6th (out of 8) moon
WAR SECTOR
Sector Capital: Vortex
CARRION SYSTEM
Sun: G-type main sequence
Carrion is a world covered heavily in forests, particularly carboniferous trees with deep green landmasses and hardly any plainlands, it’s mountains suggest heavy volcanism in its past, with most of its forested mountain ranges terminating at a truncated cone with ringlakes in the inactive calderas. Its seas are mostly deep and roiling and the world is frequently rained upon. The planet’s main agriculture comes from manually axe-chopped and plow-leveled fields, as it was only discovered around 100 years ago, and only opened to the public by its primitive human population for the last 40 years.
The world is poor, that much is clear. The planet is locked in a feudal middle age culturally. The King of Carrion only became so when he and his men were discovered by pirates who tried to enslave some of them. When word was brought back to Carrin, the local lord, of devils from the sky enslaving his people, he rallied his retainers and accurately predicted by the pirate’s predation patterns, where they would land next. He proceeded to lie in wait and then, when the pirates landed and began pillaging, summarily rode out to butcher them, then storm their vessel, leaving a few alive to tell them how to operate the ship and it’s weapons. Eventually it was discovered how to use blasters, and the nobility of the vessel discovered a stock of energy swords and personal shields, and divided them among themselves. They proceeded to conquer the rest of their world. Soon after the fact, they were contacted, though resisted integration for half a century.
Now however, some are going abroad, and have earned a reputation as fearless fighters, who fight with knives and energy swords just as much as blasters. Carrionites are a short people, with olive skin and dark hair who place great stock in the feudal ladder. Many of them are recruited into the Ascendant Purges for their natural ‘savagery’
Carrion Minor: Carrion Minor is the second planet, a dwarf world, but close enough to Carrion to also be within the life zone. A warm planet, it has no polar icecaps and no moon to contribute to tides. It has a population of around 2 billion, primarily woodworkers and farmers, more developed than Carrion prime.
VORTEX SYSTEM
Sun: A red giant, RG-7684.
No other planets insystem. Heavy asteroid belt past Vortex.
A hub of the Hypori Trade Spine, Vortex is one of the many planets in reconquest space to live up to the dark tales that abound about the Colonies. A blue-black and grey orb from space and surrounded by a massive asteroid ring system, Vortex is constantly pelted with driving rain and howling, gale-force winds, Vortex is a hydroplanet, a waterworld where trillions of different animals dwell beneath the waves. The planet’s landmasses are very few in abundance. Rain-lashed jungle islands with broad-leafed plants grope for what sunlight they can find in the warmer, less stormy regions, though they are still rained on twice out of every three days. Elsewhere, like in the north, the islands are strands of sand with rocks, flotsam and perhaps a few small trees, with beaches covered in nets of seaweed.
The few spaceport-cities- all 6 of them, that dot Vortex’s surface are built into the volcanic cones that thrust up out of the choppy seas. These volcanoes are all dead, and their interior calderas are flooded, and open to the sea in some cases. The cities are built on the slopes. Austere, white-halled fluidly designed with protection in mind. The cities have outer and inner views, as well as interior zones. The outer views look out over the open sea, the inner views look out over the choppy caldera-cirlce and the interior zones are within the volcanos themselves. Ships land inside the caldera-view pads. The primary spaceport-city is Nimp City, widely renowned as the most corrupt and poorly policed of any city in the Ascendancy and thus the primary spot of rogues of all types. It is also renowned for it’s bionics labs and machine-foundries. They say no prosthetic in the galaxy is as good as a Nimo Medical Replacements one, wich can often have extra gadgets packed into them on the sly.
The natives are oft seen trading at the spaceports, though in the planet’s capital, Nimo City, they are must enter the city via lift, as their preferred method- walking out of the surf, is impossible.
The Vortazi are aquatic predators who have also adapted to life above water. They are able to submerge themselves to almost abyssal levels and have osmotic gills in two their three throats, allowing them to sift oxygen from the water. Their three throats also makes their voices clear and booming, and if they so desire, they can bellow from all three at once, causing a sonic concussion, a defense system that originally evolved underwater.
Vortex is notably a hotspot of recidivisim for the Ascendancy, and this has been growing. The Vortazi, irritated by their statuses as less than human, are suspected of harboring recidivists and supplying them with weapons and equipment, but nothing has been proven yet.
Vortex has 2 moons, 1 of which is a small fleet base, the other of which is a starfighter base
ASALAX SYSTEM
Star: Red Giant
Belothican
With no natives, no moons, no water, no atmosphere and no pressure, Belothican is possibly the least remarkable place ever.
Asalax
Asalax is the homeworld of the Ryur Trees. Its biomes vary, primarily arboreal rainforest, swampy jungle and highland plains, Asalax is connected only by a massive network of Ryur trees. These trees –each one over 800 feet tall at the smallest, appear to be like anchored jellyfish with a thousand, man-width sticky tentacles, each tentacle lightly twitching independently. The trunks of the trees glow, as do their umbrella hoods and the tentacles. The natives lived in these trees, using their curtains of tentacles to keep out predators and pests. The trees feed on small flitnats in the air and other small creatures.
Now, some of these trees grace other worlds where they have been transplanted to whole, but no new ones grow anywhere but Asalax. It seems that Asalax is the only place that new seedlings can take root. In fact, Asalax is home to over 500,000,000,000 different species of bioluminescient flora. The fauna is likewise odd, with most major life forms being bipedal and, with 8 long thin fingers on each hand and 8 toes on each hand and 4 eyes –one set, spaced further out like a prey animal’s, to detect movement, another, spaced closer together like a predators to see shapes. The Yo’gand are no exception to this rule, a repto-amphibious race standing at around 3 meters tall with long arms dangling down past their knees, long, spindly fingers, a wide mouth and a long tongue with a 2-meter reach.
Exports: valuable biochemicals
Asalax has one spaceport, Rothor Port, built in the southern hemisphere.
Kathol
Thick toxic atmosphere, high winds and high metal content makes it almost impossible to locate ships or instillations on the planet’s surface. No natives
Skunna-tor: 1 million beings living in tiny shielded mobile barracks, digging up Ferrium on a world with a thick toxic atmosphere and meteor showers.
-END REPORT: COLONIES OF THE ASCENDANCY
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