Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Lyrae VI

System: Lyrae VI
Hex Location: 2027
Star Type: Single M9 V
Number of Worlds: 10
Gas Giants: 1
Planetoid Belt: None

Starport Type: A
World Size: Earth-sized
Atmosphere Type: Earth-like
Surface Water: 50%
Population: Tiny outpost 95,000
Political Affiliation: Bern Monarchy, Carrick Grand Marches
Notes: Sometimes we get interested results with random system generation; an A type starport with only a tiny population?  This is clearly a special situation, and I decided to make it Grand Duke Ander Gadriar's palace world.  While the "permanent" population is under 100,000, there could (and often are) upward of 200% of that population in terms of "temporary" population; visitors, soldiers, etc.

The Ducal Palace
A fairly large (although mostly only populated by robots) orbital space station maintains a planet-wide shield and strict control of who comes on or off of Lyrae VI.  There's often a relatively long "waiting room" in orbital of ships that are being vetted for passage—a process that can take hours for smaller ships, but can take weeks for larger ships with larger crew.  The Grand Duke knows that he has many enemies and takes his security very seriously.  Because he's fairly popular locally in his Grand Duchy, it's not hard to recruit Bernese citizens to maintain his palace world too.

The surface of the planet is itself quite Earth-like in most respects; there's less surface water, so there are, in general, larger and more frequent deserts, but there's plenty of everything else, and the small number of inhabitants usually spend their time in areas that are both temperate and filled with beautiful, garden-like dramatic scenery.

More of the palace complex
There are no natives, but a few people do not live in the palace complex itself; either by self-imposed exile, or because they are game rangers, or have other reasons for wandering farther afield, but they are very rare.  The interesting thing about this is, however, that there are a few political prisoners located deep in the hinterlands.  There are only a few of these, but they range from insurgents and revolutionaries that fought for independence or anarchy from the Bernese colonial government, Revanchist and Imperial spies, Dhangetan criminal overlords, and more.  Most of these prisoners are too valuable to be executed or remanded to standard prison or gaol—they know too much about something which makes holding them risky, but doing anything else is even more risky.

Prisoner transfer far from the palace

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