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Category: Astrography

=The Tranquility System

Tranquility system lies to spinward of Earth, near the Muryani frontier. We do not have reliable data for early settlement of the system, but informed speculation is that the system was first settled by an unknown alien species as a mining outpost approximately 800,000BCE. Not long after a self-sustaining colony was operationally, the system was conquered by the White Knights and incorporated into their empire, where it stayed until the outbreak of the civil war.

With the sporadic outbreak of frontier wars in recent centuries, Tranquility System has gained importance as both a military supply depot and a fuel mining and refining station. The name ‘Tranquility’ can be used to refer to the star, the entire star system, or just the planet of Tranquility-4. The full Jotun bifurcated noun for the system is Tranquility-Growth, though this is rarely used by humans.

A Brief Tour through the Tranquility Star System

Tranquility (star) – A main sequence star with a very strong stellar wind of high energy particles, and an emission spectrum high in ultraviolet.

Tranquility-1, -2, and -3 – The inner three planets are small, rocky, and airless planets. Mining operations concentrated here in the early life of the system’s colonization, but ceased within the past 100,000 years.

Tranquility-4 – A habitable planet of approximately Earth size and atmosphere. The low concentration of metals in the planet’s core means the magnetosphere is weak. As a result, the sunlight reaching the planet’s surface is lethal without proper shielding. A human shielded by nothing more than a hat and light clothing made from conventional textiles will die in approximately 3-4 weeks.

There is some cultivation of Earth crops engineered to survive the conditions, and of Earth animals to graze on them. Whether these Earthly bio-enclaves would survive without careful husbandry is uncertain. Cultivation extends to several more crops and food animals that are part of the White Knight Universal Food System, meaning that service personnel had the enzymes and adaptive digestion programs to process these foods.

In human-centric terms, there are two main areas of settlement, centered on the two main Marine depot bases: Detroit in the Gjende Mountains on the continent of Baylshore, and Beta City in the middle of Lake Sarpedona on the other large continent of Serendine. However, there are also continental-scale underground settlements created by two delving species: the Hardits and Trogs.

Tranqulity-4 has two moons. On the larger one, Antilles, ore processing remained active until recently, using raw materials sent here from the outer system. The smaller moon, Metius, is more distant, and is extending its orbital radius by 20 meters per year for reasons unknown.

Tranquility-5: Klug – The planet of Klug is an unwelcoming world of high pressures and toxic acid clouds. Little is known of the planet other than that it features a native lifeform nicknamed the sludge-puddle, which in appearance resembles a greasy pool of mercury several meters in diameter.

Tranquility-6: (inner asteroid belt) – The sixth orbital path in the ecliptic plane is a mix of carboniferous, silicate, frozen volatiles, and high-metal content objects. The belt is mostly mined out.

Tranquility-7: Daiyna – A gas giant with several moons large enough to sustain significant populations. At the outbreak of the civil war, the Daiyna planetary system was colonized by the Hardits who maintained a fuel mining and processing station, dry dock, and ore processing plants.

Tranquility-8: (outer asteroid belt) – A region in the outer system between three and four times the orbital radius of Daiyna. Has a higher concentration of heavy metals than the inner asteroid belt, but distances between objects is greater. After extraction and pre-processing, most ore is sent down into the inner system for further processing on Daiyna or Antilles.

Tranquility-9: (Kuiper Belt) – On the outermost commercial edge of the system, this is a region that consists largely of frozen volatiles (especially methane, water, and ammonia) arranged in a series of low-density rings that ripple with the disruptive effect of a handful of rocky planetoids.

Tranquility-10 (Sensor array) – An artificial construct of rocky objects placed in a spherical array beyond the Kuiper Belt. The distances between individual nodes in this array is vast, but close enough to form a semi-sentient early warning system. It is speculated that the planetoids in the sphere also house missile batteries, cyber-war factories, and that the sphere is linked using FTL chbit entanglement with White Knight sector command.