Tars Dhangeta

This slimy swamp is the home world to the Dhangeti.  They keep it as a kind of preserve, though, and have strict immigration controls.  Much of the planet remains in a state of greenish-yellow swamp, overcast and undeveloped.  A few cities still dot the landscape and it remains the capital of the Dhangetan Cartels.  

However, following the fall of the Dhangeti—albeit not for long—to a former Shadow Knight Kar Tanus, the Dhangeti have diversified to protect themselves.  While many Dhangeti warlords maintain palaces on Tars Dhangeta, few stay there permanently, and many have spread throughout much of Dhangeti space, to make the Dhangetan Cartel as a whole less vulnerable to potential attack.  The Dhangeti, when on Tars Dhangeta, maintain a strong presence of mercenary bodyguards and militia, including—if they can get them—Cilindan supercommandos and fallen or independent knights. 

Tars Dhangeta landscape

Other than in the heavily armed warlord palaces, however, Tars Dhangeta remains a relatively lawless place, with little in the way of government oversight.  Because of this, it prospers, but gangsters and organized crime remain a significant deterrent to ever truly expanding its trade and commerce base beyond items that are otherwise illicit or illegal throughout much of the galaxy.  Slave trading cartels, spice trading cartels and more make up much of Tars Dhangeta's import/export business.

Tars Bruttium remains much as it ever was; a kind of Monte Carlo, Las Vegas, Bangkok and Tortuga of the galaxy, all rolled up into one and under the control of the Dhangeti.  Tars Bruttium is a hotbed of political intrigue.  While it's in Dhangeti Space and is loyal to that polity, it plays no favorites, and the Dhangeti's famous general trend of neutrality between the three superpowers means that embassies and espionage from all three are commonplace in the dark streets of Tars Bruttium.  It still has the same reputation as a wildly dangerous place that it’s always had, but now one with a particular partisan bent, as shadow wars rage in the streets between proxies.  All parties are careful to keep this activity at least marginally discrete, however, as the Dhangeti are only laid-back hosts to the degree that their own interests are not threatened. 

System: Tars Dhangeta
Hex Location: 2119
Star Type: Single star, G7 V
Number of Worlds: 6
Gas Giants: 4
Planetoid Belt: Comet belt

Tars Dhangeta
Starport Type: B
World Size: Earth-sized
Atmosphere Type: Hazardous.  Earth-like, but with thick upper atmosphere clouds of sulferic acid that occasionally rains down on the surface
Surface Water: 60%, although usually quite shallow
Population: Large (3.4 billion)
Political Affiliation: Dhangetan Cartel
Notes: Tars Dhangeti and Tars Bruttium are both Earth-sized moons of a terrestrial zone gas giant, which looms overhead in the sky of both planets.  Tars Dhangeti is the most important world of the Dhangeti Cartel, although it is not the original world of the Dhangeti.  The Dhangeti are a large, alien species.  They were originally a form of hulk, from a high gravity world, but few of them have lived on high gravity worlds now for many generations, so their robust morphological features have largely gone to seed and turned to genetic obesity.  To humans from earth, they are sometimes described as fat, furry frogs with wide, toothy maws, four spider-like eyes and limbs that split into two paws halfway down their length.  But even in their strongholds, the Dhangeti are themselves relatively rare.  They reproduce asexually, usually by some form of budding, but they often eat their own larval offspring, and generally fear competition from the rising generations.

Tars Dhangeti is covered with thick upper atmospheric clouds of sulfuric acid vapor.  Luckily, the clouds tend to stay in the upper atmosphere, but for the unprepared the rare sulfuric acid rainstorm can be extremely dangerous.  Most native life-forms are sufficiently immune to its effects that it doesn't overly hurt them, but off-worlders usually wear protective suits of some kind, or stay indoors.

The surface of the planet is treated rather casually by the Dhangetans.  Large areas of relatively low-lying marshland, overgrown with trees, vines, and other plants, and teeming with nearly dinosaur-sized reptilian life-forms that are a hazard to all, is dotted in many places with wreckage and ruins of one industrial or agricultural project or another that's been attempted over the years and then abandoned.  Haphazardly built and maintained cities dot the landscape, each with its capo or warlord, jockeying for power.  The real nature of Tars Dhangeti is a place to get stuff that is difficult, or even highly illegal elsewhere: drugs, smuggled arms, mercenaries, slaves—you name it, the Dhangeti probably deal in it and this is the system in which to get it.

Tars Dhangeta swampies

There are few laws, and the only "law" that really matters the most is "don't mess with the Dhangeti warlords or their favored proxies."  Murder happening in the streets: not a big deal.  Slave trading openly: nobody cares.  Walking around with pirated Imperial military tech: well, everyone will give you a wary eye.  If someone else has a problem with what you're doing and interferes; again—nobody official will say anything to you.  Tars Dhangeta is a place for the strong, who can intimidate those who would bother them into leaving them alone, or at least if you're not sufficiently strong, it's best to make strong friends quickly.

Swamp-lizard riding escaped slaves, runaway debtors, or anyone who's otherwise hiding from anything resembling civilized society live in the swamps.  Even these are tolerated, although they often interfere more with the Dhangeti, so are more likely to be hunted down and made examples of.

Tars Bruttium
Starport Type: A
World Size: Earth-sized
Atmosphere Type: Earth-like
Surface Water: 35%
Population: Super-populated (25 billion)
Political Affiliation: Dhangetan Cartel
Notes: Similar in culture to Tars Dhangeti, the other moon, Tars Bruttium, which orbits closer to the gas giant (so that it looms in the sky even larger) has become super-populated, whereas Tars Dhangeti remains somewhat lightly so.  Whatever native life-forms may have once lived here, they are almost certainly either extinct, or adapted to the urban life by necessity; there is little or no habitat here that isn't artificial.  If Tars Bruttium is the Las Vegas of known space, that doesn't mean that the whole planet is the Strip, though—much of it is in fact abandoned and feral, although who knows what has moved in and occupied the crumbling ruins can be anyone's guess, and travelers who wander into these regions often never return.

Tars Bruttium at night

Tars Bruttium is also a hotbed of political intrigue.  Embassies from all of the other Great Powers are entertained, yet the lawless nature of the system means that they often engage in extremely shady maneuvering.  As long as they don't bring open warfare or economic harm to the Dhangeti, this is more or less tolerated.