This morning I was pondering a particularly stupid paradox of my views about good worldbuilding. I think most long running series of anything decay over time because the progression of the story increasingly chips away at the worldbuilding elements that made the setting interesting in the first place. Particularly when it comes to campaign settings for roleplaying games, moving the timeline forward a few years or decades always seems like a really bad development. I’ve long been thinking that my disinterest in any new Star Wars story for almost 20 years now is precisely because the Clone Wars era and the Feloniverse are set in a world that is very different from Classic Star Wars in the 80s and 90s. (Though that’s actually going back in time rather than moving ahead, but it’s still a case of being a very different setting.) When you have a story that is about dealing with a particular situation in the world, and you continue the story after that situation has been resolves, it’s not really set in the same world anymore. Which is why for example Mass Effect has nowhere to move forward after three games that establish a conflict in the first game and resolve it in the third game. The Mass Effect setting doesn’t actually have anything interesting going on in it other than the Reapers situation.
Yet how this becomes a stupid paradox is because my whole core concept about Iridium Moons as a setting to have many different stories take place in, is all about a struggle of regular people fighting back against a kleptocratic elite. It’s a setting based on a specific situation, made for stories about resolving that situation. Players are meant to contribute to a greater struggle to break the power of the oligarchy, but as I established above, I also don’t want the situation to change in any meaningful way.
“But tonight I say: We must move forward, not backward! Upward, not forward! And always twirling! Twirling! Twirling!”
But this conflict in priorities is not actually that bad, and the solution to it is really not that difficult. Instead of asking at the end of a particular story “And what happens next?”, the question should be “And what has happened somewhere else, at the same time?”
The issue with movies in particular is that the faces of the main actors are a huge part of the marketing and advertising campaign for any follow up movies. But also in videogames, stories are often written specifically to get the players attached to specific main characters. (Mostly happens in games that try to emulate blockbuster movies the most. Who would have thunk?) But it does not have to be that way. The Dragon Age games, even though they are all set one after the other with a kind of ongoing metaplot continuing through all of them, each mostly have a completely different cast of characters. As do the Fallout games or Elder Scrolls games. (Which also always advance the timeline. Why?!)
Many popular long running series are set up from the start to be about a small group of characters first, and the setting build around them to accommodate their story. Since the stories of specific characters are linear, and the characters are the main selling point of these stories, there are difficulties in adding more stories that aren’t added to the end of the latest installment. (Or in front of the earliest installment.) But when designing a world from the ground up to instead accommodate several stories of different characters happening in different places during roughly the same time period, this is a situation that is very easy to avoid. It’s a corner I really don’t have to paint myself into. I know I want to use this world in two or three campaigns over the coming years, and maybe manage to make a little Godot game or two also taking place in it. Each story can be about toppling one villainous oligarch on one of the three planet, making one big step towards the ultimate goal that I have no intention to ever see playing out.
Of course, I have the luxury of not being beholden to corporate suits who’s main priority is to monetize the face of some world famous movie stars. But then again, Fallout has been a huge success even with the continuity between stories being just fan service and not being relevant to each story. If you want to have a world that can be reused for many stories and does not change with each story, and your vision does not revolve around finishing that ultimate battle where evil is destroyed for good, then there really isn’t anything that would force you into that situation in the first place.
Magic is probably the biggest challenge with worldbuilding I’ve always had. I do like supernatural and mystic stuff, but I just really don’t care for magic spells. I always knew that I wanted to have a mystical element in Iridium Moons, but always kept that off for later. Early on in the development of the setting, when I wanted to stick to realistic physics, demographics, and economy unless necessary for a Space Opera, I had the idea that people could be trained to have a greatly heightened sense of intuition by subconsciously processing information in parallel to logical reasoning. That seems physically and biologically possible. That idea was very much inspired by the mentats from Dune.
I’ve been diving into Traveller for the last three weeks, and that game does come with a default optional system for psionic powers. It’s very generic (like everything in Traveller) and basic, and from what I’ve been reading across the internet, most people never use it in their campaigns. Even though they does exist in the official setting, psionics are super illegal in the main empire as it is very strongly associated with their main rivals as their signature power. So illegal and hidden underground, that it could just as well not exist in most campaigns, and just way more trouble than it’s worth by painting a big target on your back. I can understand that. It’s not really interesting or inspiring as written, and the most popular setting makes it even more unattractive to characters.
But last week, James Maliszewski wrote about the big impact that spiritism and Theosophy had on Pulp Fantasy. Which reminded me of the very similar story of how psychic powers became a default element of sci-fi in the 50s to 70s. Some very prominent writers and a very influential magazine editor had really high hopes in the big breakthrough in parapsychology research being just around the corner and gave it a big presence in many of the popular stories of the time. I made the deliberate choice to step away from realism and tilt fully over to straight up space fantasy and to go for a very retro-futuristic aesthetic. I think classic psychic powers are pretty much a must for that.
My still early idea for Iridium Moons is that the psionic field is a regular element of the physics of the universe and always has been, but it is usually only interacting very weakly with the electromagnetic field that controls electricity, magnetism, radiation, and atomic bonds. So weakly that it’s an almost invisible phenomenon in everyday life, and that almost no creatures have ever naturally evolved to gain any traces of psionic powers.
However, a rare mineral called midorin, that only forms naturally on planets inhospitable to life, does significantly amplify interactions between the electromagnetic and psionic fields. Midorin is a soft and brittle, pale green mineral similar to soapstone or asbestos. Many reports of mines on remote planets being haunted and miners having uncannily accurate dreams and hallucinations were traced back to traces of midorin in the rock. Near high concentrations of midorin, the mere presence of people can cause anomalous physical changes in the environment as their brain activity disturbs the psionic field, which amplified by the midorin affects electromagnetic phenomenons.
Miners working in midorin-rich rock were the first people to display signs of real telepathic abilities, that only had been considered as archaic superstition and fraud for centuries. These abilities were connected to particles of midorin dust they had breathed in and made their way into their brain. This led to the development of the synthetic drug midorinol that can be injected into a person’s brain and then be subjected to radiation that causes it to form networks of microscopic midorin crystals inside the the brain’s neural pathways. These midorin filaments then serve as an amplifying antenna between the brain’s neurons and the psionic field. Disturbances in the psionic field can stimulate reactions in neurons, making it possible to sense psionic phenomenons and activity. And in reverse, electrical activity in the brain can produce psionic waves.
Over time it became clear that only a limited number of people possess specific brain structures that make it possible to learn to use this psionic sense to manifest useful powers. And of course, with a procedure as this, there is always a considerable risk of causing significant brain damage to the subject. While midorinol is quite expensive, psionic researchers are always looking for volunteers (or other subjects) who are physiologically suited to attempt the procedure, to study the process of developing psionic powers. They will often cover the entire costs, and in some cases even pay people for agreeing to undergoing the procedure, as long as the subject agrees to be studied while undergoing training, typically for a four year period.
Psionic powers in Iridium Moons cover the aspects of telepathy, clairvoyance, and awareness (which is actually body control). Teleportation is definitely out, and I am currently leaning strongly towards excluding telekinesis as well. That still leaves quite a broad range of potential powers that characters can learn. Psionic characters are quite rare in society, but many organization manage to recruit small numbers of them into their ranks. Compared to many other magic systems, telepathic powers in Traveller are quite limited in what they can do, and psions can only use them for a few short moments before they become too exhausted to continue. Midorin compounds mixed into building materials make them opaque to psionic powers like a Faraday Cage interrupts electromagnetic signals. This makes it fairly easy to shield small spaces from psionic intrusion. Shielding individual people is also possible, but carrying psionic disrupting objects on the body for prolonged periods is disorienting and uncomfortable, as it scrambles the natural very subtle influence the psionic field has on all brains at all times. Alternatively, midorin-based drugs can suppress any psionic abilities in a person for several hours, and it is widely accepted that certain high security areas can only be entered by known psions if they take an injection. This is also commonly done for the apprehending and arresting of psions, but keeping them drugged long term without holding them in a shielded area instead is widely seen as abusive treatment of prisoners.
Aside from the elaborate character creation mini-game, one of the main thing Traveller is famous for is its setting creation system. From what I remember, the system for making a map and populating it with planets is almost identical in Stars Without Number, and that was what I used for the Esekar sector map for the first version of Iridium Moons.
I now made a map for the new Foross (Sub)sector using the system from Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition. In previous posts, I already described the six primary planets of the Foross Sector. The first thing that I did was to translate these into Traveller game terms. For each trait, like planet size, atmosphere type, population scale, and so on, there is a table listing the different possible options and each of them is identified by a single character. These can then be strung together in a fixed order to create the world’s UWP code. It’s a summary of a planet’s statistic in just one 8 to 10 digit code. The first character for the size of the spaceport facilities, the next three characters for the planet’s physical traits, and the last four for the society of its inhabitants. And if you’ve been using them for long enough, you’re supposedly able to read quite a lot of information from them before even looking up the respective tables. That’s exactly the kind of RPG nerdery I can absolutely get behind.
For those Traveller nerds who are interested (I assume there might be one or two), here’s the UWPs for the six planets:
Sarhat C862733A
Kion C765734A
Palan B763695B
Meruna C8686469
Halon E9703008-A
Ataris D6A0416B
And for those Traveller players who have not read my previous planet descriptions: Yes, Iridium Moons is a pretty low-tech and low population.
The default subsector map is an 8 by 10 hex map, but since I’m not working on photocopied sheets, I went with a 10 by 8 arrangement resulting in a square map. It doesn’t affect hexagonal movement.
Each hex has a 50% chance of having stars in them, and after four attempts, I settled on this arrangement, which I quite like, and hand selected six of the stars for my planets.
Click to embiggen.
Unlike Traveller’s default Third Imperium setting, there is no such thing as scooping up raw fuel from gas planets and ocean worlds in Iridium Moons. Instead, ships must refuel at starports. It is possible to take on additional fuel as cargo to make multiple jumps without refueling stops, but this does significantly reduce a ship’s capacity to carry goods, and commercial cargo ships avoid doing this whenever possible. For this reason, new trade routes require an infrastructure of dedicated fuel stations every two parsecs to be commercially viable for cargo ships. There are currently six such station in operation in the Foross subsector.
With these stations being literally centuries old, and the subsector being heavily shaped by industrial decay, I had the idea that most of these stations would not be refining their own fuel, but instead get it delivered by giant tankers carrying thousands of tons. And at the scale of a subsector, that still has considerable local industry going on, it really would make sense to have one central refinery that is supplying all the starports and fuel stations in the area. Station 54 would be perfect for that, resulting in the addition of the seventh main planet to the setting.
Station 54 (B3305179)
This small planet (size 3) has sufficiently strong gravity to run fractional distillation and a non-toxic atmosphere dense enough to breath with regular respirators (atm 3), making it perfect for refining ship fuel. The planet typically houses over 100,000 people (pop 5), who are almost exclusively employees of the refinery (gov 1) on six months assignments. The refinerie’s starport has the capacity to service several of its giant tankers simultaneously (starport B), but lacks the equipment and staff to make major repairs (TL 9). The refinery and the starport are owned by one of the Sarantal Oligarchs from Palan.
The ancient tankers being out of commission sometimes for months has been causing huge disruptions to trade in the Foross over the last decades. Many traders and cargo captains have grown extremely concerned about the reliance on a single refinery for the subsector, and the economic damage that would result from it going out of service for more than a week or two.
Having such an obvious weak point in the aging infrastructure of the decrepit sector is just too interesting to not use, so this remains the only fuel source in the whole Foross subsector.
I also had a plan for a space station near Sarhat, and hex 62 seems like a great place to put it.
Station 62 (C000412A-A)
This old station (C000) is one of the oldest in the sector, going back to the first mining operations on Halon. Back in the early days of the Foross subsector, it served as a central trade hub where smaller mining camps from the surrounding systems would sell their ores and buy new equipment or food coming from Kion. With the closure of the mines on Halon and the depletion of many smaller mines, large scale ore and food trade has ceased on the station over a century ago. The station is now home to some 20,000 people (pop 4), and while technically being run by one of the Tauros Oligarchs from Sarhat (gov 1), it is largely under the control of several gangs (law 2). Most ships coming through the systems only make a quick stop to take on new fuel and have their crew stay close to the ship (travel code A).
The other four stations are simply fuel stations with nothing of interest going on there.
For the rest of the systems, I decided to see what the random generation rules can produce. I generated another 35 worlds (which with the help of spreadsheets and random number generation sites was fairly painless), and oddly enough, it started with giving me 7 really awesome planets that basically wrote their own descriptions, followed by 27 really boring ones and just one quirky oddity.
E3113797
A large moon (size 3) with almost no atmosphere (atm 1) or water (hydro 1). This gives it the Ice-Capped trade code to determine resource availability, so I’m making it like one of the main moons of Jupiter. It’s home to a few thousand miners (pop 3) who have split into rival factions (gov 7), but lack of access to weapons (law 9) has kept things civil so far. Unfortunately, they don’t have the technology to maintain a space habitat (TL 7) and they will probably have to leave the planet. Getting passage for several thousand people might be difficult, which is probably the reason for the hostile factionalism.
B420575E-A
A small planet (size 4) with thin and toxic air (atm 2) below freezing and no water (hydro 0). It is home to over a hundred thousand people (pop 5) who have split into competing factions (gov 7). Military weapons are banned but there’s plenty of smaller stuff around (law 5). It gets interesting with this being a an very high-tech world (TL 14) for the subsector, with a small shipyard (starport B). Not sure what’s going on here, but this has potential.
D0(2)02527-R
A space station (size 0) occupied by a few hundred people (pop 2) living under Technocratic Feudalism (gov 5) with free possession of almost all weapons (law 2), and their technology is incapable of maintaining a space station (TL 7). It was immediately clear that this is a derelict space station where everyone is under the thumb of the last engineer who maintains and controls what is left of the life support systems. Being the third world I generated, I made a mistake and rolled for an atmosphere, even though size 0 and 1 worlds don’t have any and everyone has to live in artificial habitats. However, since the low tech level indicates the station can not be properly maintained, and the atmosphere I rolled (atm 2) is “thin and toxic”, this is just way too good not to use it! Not only is the station going to shit, it’s already so shit that you can’t leave the living quarters without respirators. Given the circumstances, I also gave the place Travel Code Red. This is all one big nightmare.
XA645374
A large planet (size 10) with a hot but normal atmosphere (atm 6) and some small seas (hydro 4). Home to several hundred thousand people (pop 5) ruled by an hereditary elite (gov 3), allowing no guns (law 7). It has no ship landing facilities at all (starport X) and the original Tech Level I rolled was stone age (TL 0). Though it’s hot and has little water, it does qualify for the Agricultural trade code, which means visitors can pick up wood, textiles, live animals, biochemicals, uncommon raw materials, and luxury consumables. I like the idea of crops being grown in underground caves where it’s cooler and moist.
Option A is to take this as it is, and make it a new alien species native to this planet. Option B is to raise their Tech Level up to 4 and make them something like Fremen, because this is already totally Dune! With the crazy plants being grown underground and the outside being a desert, nobody might know about them except the locals. And with the way space travel works, you can’t just follow the one trader that is selling these new exotic plants to learn where he gets them. Great potential.
E8432008
Earth-sized planet (size 8) with a thin, hot, and slightly toxic atmosphere (atm 3) and little water (hydro 4). It is home to a few hundred people with very basic starport facilities (starport E, TL 8). Since they are so few and the planet has no special resources, I default to them being a small independent mine. With the air being thin, hot, and slightly toxic, I had the idea that their settlement is high up in the mountains, where the temperature is not as deadly and the toxic gases are low enough to be okay with just a respirator. Not sure what interesting things might happen here, but the environment is neat.
E6601006
Mid-sized planet (size 6) with a standard atmosphere (atm 6), very hot temperatures, and no water (hydro 0). On it there are a dozen or so people (pop 1) with no government (gov 0) or weapon restrictions (law 0), and they have no digital technology (TL 6) or the means to survive for long, but a basic landing site (starport E). Must have crashed their ship here. Is this Pitch Black?
D7C156A7
Mid-sized planet (size 7) with highly corrosive atmosphere (atm C), a brutal heat (17 on a scale from 2 to 12+) and very little water (hydro 1). Under these conditions, we get large lakes of petrochemicals and precious metals. There are hundreds of thousands of people living on this planet (pop 5), but they are being controlled by a hostile outside power (gov 6). They have no weapons (law 10) and their Tech Level (TL 7) is three levels to low to survive in this environment. This is obviously some kind of brutal prison world like Chronicles of Riddick.
X7880000-A
A mid-sized planet (size 7) with a dense atmosphere (atm 8), temperate climate, and a lot of water (hydro 8). Other than Meruna, it’s the only planet in the subsector that qualifies for being a Garden World. And it is completely uninhabited. Why is that? Certainly should have Travel Code Amber.
The other worlds are all very nondescriptive and don’t bring up any inspirations. Since 16 worlds is way more than I would think I’d ever need, with the three largest being home to several colonies and stations each, I decided to just erase some of the stars from the map that were particularly densely packed. Maybe I leave the remaining 25 stars blank until I have need of them. There is already so much here to work with.
Halon was the first planet in the Foross sector to gain a permanent settlement after the discovery of three meteor impact sites rich in rhodium, palladium, and iridium by prospectors from Turik. The Turikans began mining on Halon in 478, bringing in large numbers of chosa miners from the other side of enkai space to work in the planet’s harsh conditions. Most chosa in the Foross sector claim to be descendants of those first miners, but statistically most of their ancestry comes from later generations of chosa migrating to the sector.
Halon is a very old planet, orbiting an old star in the early phases of its red giant stage. It is also believed to be mostly dead.
The planet’s atmosphere covers the skies in an almost permanent brown haze that reflects a large portion of the star’s light and is the only reason it is still possible to walk on its surface without protective suits. The air’s oxygen content is high enough for all humanoid species to survive, but considerably lower than what most people would consider comfortable to breath. New arrivals to the planet often suffer from headaches and fatigue and typically wear oxygen masks until their bodies get used to it, which can take several weeks. Enkai born in the somewhat thin atmosphere of Turik or chosa were the only people able to perform hard physical labor under these conditions.
There is no animal or plant life on Halon, but it is quite possible that microbial life could still exist underground in some parts of the planet that keeps releasing oxygen into the air. Geologists from the mining companies reported finding some fossils in the debris from the mines that could indicate that Halon once had an abundance of small shrubs, but no paleontologic studies have ever been conducted on the planet.
After the discovery of new precious metal sources on Sarhat and the founding of the Tauros colony in 547, the mining companies started to move all personnel and movable equipment from Halon, and by 564 the last Turikan mine on the planet ceased operations. Today, there are less than 20,000 people believed to still be on Halon. Most of them pirates and smugglers using the abandoned mine shafts as hideouts, or scavengers looking for abandoned mining equipment that hasn’t been picked clean of valuable components a century ago.
Ataris
Ataris is a small rocky planet largely covered in ice that orbits close to a hot brown dwarf. The planet has a fairly dense atmosphere of nitrogen and carbon dioxide that traps enough heat from the brown dwarf’s dim glow to make it possible to go out on its surface without heated environment suits, but its complete lack of oxygen in the air makes it impossible to survive without breathing masks and oxygen tanks.
The planet is home to several science stations dug into the black rock of its jagged mountains by Takkusat Research from Usomi on Palan over the last 50 years. There are some 17,000 people mahir on Ataris at any given time, but it has no permanent residents and is considered by Takkusat Research to be part of Usomi territory.
Palan is a mostly barren planet, but has sufficient microbial life in its numerous small seas to maintain an atmosphere dense enough and sufficiently high in oxygen to be fully breathable for most species. However, the radiation from its sun is dangerously high across most of the planet, and all settlements are located near the south pole, where due to the planet’s low axial tilt, the sun always stays low above the horizon all year. Creating the impression that each day consists of only a very long morning and equally long evening. The most striking feature of Palan’s sky are the planet’s large rings that are visible over the northern horizon during the day and most of the night. What plant life exist on the mostly barren rocks that make up most of the land surface consists mostly of lichens and a few simple shrubs. No animals are raised on Palan, and there are no native land animals larger than 1 cm in size.
Palan is home to two main settlements. Sarantal was founded in 497 by a the Askal Directorate from the neighboring Askal sector to serve as workers’ housing for the construction of a large fuel and repair station in orbit around Palan’s moon. As commerce in the Foross sector greatly increased in the mid-500s, both the station and the settlement were greatly expanded, and gained a large new population of genya workers. At 9 million people, Sarantal is now the single largest city in the entire sector.
A consortium of mahir corporations established the Usomi colony in 579, some 200 km from Sarantal. Over the following century, it gained a population of 4 million mahir and genya.
Meruna
Meruna was the last planet in the Foross Sector to be settled. Even though it is one of the most habitable planet in the entire sector, second only to Kion, its lack of valuable mineral resources had made it completely irrelevant to any of the mining companies that originally drove the development of the sector. The Keritika colony was founded by firax in 631, after most of the large colonial companies had already ceased operations in the sector and sold off most of their remaining assets. The purpose of Keritika had never been to become economically profitable, but to primarily to serve as a self-sustaining embassy of the firax states closer to the regions of space inhabited by the vhen, mahir, and tubaki. The only direct neighbors of firax space are the enkai and chosa, and they considered it in their collective best interest to have direct contact and establish relationships with other peoples as well.
Meruna is a largely oceanic planet, but home to several groups of large islands that cover about 8% of its surface. Most land is relatively flat and covered in a wide variety of grasses, though there are many types of native shrubs and scattered clusters of small trees as well. This makes the planet very suitable for raising introduced farm animals. While animal life in the sea is extremely abundant and diverse, land animals consists mostly of small birds and burrowing animals, with no large predators that could pose a threat even to firax children.
Though the planet’s 5 million population consists mostly of equal numbers of firax and genya, various enkai and vhen oligarchs from other planets in the sector have been trying to take control over the major private businesses on Meruna for years, and have recently been pressuring the government in Keritika to privatize several state-owned companies to take over.
The Foross Sector is located near the edge of Known Space, at the outermost point where the regions of vhen and enkai colonial influence meet, and give way to unexplored space, and only a bit more than a week from the genya homeworld Upara by cargo freighter. It saw some very extensive mining in the 5th and 6th century, but was abandoned by government-owned mining corporation in the early 600s.
Since then, the sector’s population has dropped from more than 100 million people to less than 60 million due to emigration. The local economies were fully privatized, and economic output declined down to 20% of its peak levels in the late 6th century. The greatly scaled down mining operations are used to fund the import of advanced electronics and medical supplies, but almost all the local infrastructure and industry relies on 200 year old heavy machinery parts salvaged from abandoned mines, and almost half the sector’s population is working in food production, often for mostly personal consumption.
Sarhat
Sarhat is an arid planet dominated by rocky deserts and a number of enclosed salty seas that are home to oxygen-producing bacteria, and whose continuous evaporation provides the scarce rain that fills the planets rivers. While the salt seas are highly alkaline and covered in thick layers of pink bacterial sludge, the seasonal rivers are regularly replenishing underground caverns in porous rocks, which create numerous oases that have become the main sites for settlements on the planet. Though vegetation on Sarhat is sparse, the planet is home to many species of native animals. Most are fairly small and of little threat to people, but some are large enough to be worthwhile to hunt for food. Agriculture of hardy crops in the soil of Sarhat is possible, but the import of fruit and vegetables from Kion is the main source of cargo traffic within the sector.
Sarhat was first settled in 523 by enkai from the Parakarit colony, who established a small survey station as an outpost of their settlement on Kion. Discoveries of numerous small, but still highly concentrated sources of Iridium and Palladium on Sarhat in 547, and decreasing outputs from the mines of the Turik colony on Halon, led to nearly all the Turik mining operations being moved to the much less hostile and inhospitable planet. The Turikan cities and settlements of the Tauros colony are now home to 15 million people ruled by eight oligarch families. The older Parakarian colony of Partenas is home to 5 million people, and are ruled by 4 oligarch families. Another estimated 2 million people live scattered throughout the hills or the ruins of settlements abandoned after the Turik and Parakarit governments cut all infrastructure funding on the planet.
Counted together, Turikan and Parakarian enkai make up the largest population on Sarhat, and all the oligarch families on the planet are enkai. But they are outnumbered by the large populations descended from alien migrant workers, mostly chosa and tubaki who deal well with the hot and dry climate of the planet. The Turikan and Parakarian oligarchs often prefer to have dealings among themselves, but at the end of the day, business interests go above cultural animosities.
Kion
Kion is one of the two most hospitable planets in the Foross Sector. Its surface is covered in several large continents, separated by a global network of winding narrow seas. Except for the polar regions and the higher mountain ranges, much of the planet’s land is covered in dense vegetation. As expected from a planet like this, Kion is home to millions of species of native animals, only a tiny fraction of which has ever been scientifically described or named over the past two centuries.
While the first settlers from Turik immediately went to full scale mining on Halon, the Parakarit government decided to first focus on setting up sustainable food production in the sector to greatly reduce the costs of supplying later mining operations. The Solanika was established in Kion in 503 and some mining was begun in Lerinas in 514, but it never reached the scale of the Turikan mining operations on Halon and later Sarhat.
The mines on Halon ended up buying large quantities of food from Kion, as even with the enormous prices paid to the rival Parakarians, this was still cheaper than relying entirely on shipping food in from Turik. Correspondingly, the vhen colony on Palan established the Arkon outpost on Kion in 558 to compete with Solanika, though this was exclusively a food production facility with no plans to do any mining on Kion.
Today, the Solanika colony numbers 12 million people ruled by five enkai oligarchs. Arkon is home to 5 million people, ruled over by three oligarchs. Two vhen, and one Turikan enkai.
