in the meantime, some planets...
The Zeta Tucanae system was first charted in 2015 by the Artemis Foundation, at the behest of their primary shareholder Stellvia Corporation. The survey discovered ten planets and sixteen dwarf planets, the innermost four being rocky planets in similar configuration to Sol. One of these worlds was naturally habitable, with another being suitable for terraforming in the long term.
Zeta Tucanae IV was the only habitable planet discovered during the survey. It has an orbital period of 456.9 standard Earth days and a local day of 19.59 hours. The surface gravity is .993 Gs, close enough to Earth-normal as to be undetectable by humans. Sea-level air pressure is 97% of terrestrial pressure. The planet has an axial tilt of 30 degrees and the orbital eccentricity is enough to cause noticable seasonable variation. (Or would, save for the environmental issues discussed below.) Zet Tuc IV has one moon, a body roughly 150% Luna-sized orbiting at a distance of 240,000 km; tidal forces are comparatively much stronger than on Earth.
Zet Tuc IV was named Thule by the discoverers for the very impressive extent of its polar caps. While not completely frozen over like New Alaska or similar iceworlds discovered around red and brown dwarf stars, Thule is covered with ice all the way down to the tropical latitudes. Based on core samples taken during the first and second Zeta Tucanae expeditions, the Thulian ice age has been underway for the last six million years. Radar and ice-penetrating lidar surveys indicated that the planet has two supercontinents situated over the poles with Thule's ocean Okeanos lying between them. The fact that Okeanos has uninterrupted currents running through the equator is likely key to the planet's habitability--the heat transfer keeps the ice at bay and allows the tropical coastlines a reasonably temperate climate.
Life on Thule is somewhat primitive, a consequence of the extended ice age. With much of the planet's water locked up in ice, there is little cloud cover and less precipitation--the skies of Thule are cloudless more often than not, and much of the temperate inland is desert. Only in places where glacial runoff collects into rivers is there much in the way of surface life, mostly consisting of hardy plants with some animals adapted to the constant cold. The largest land animal discovered by explorers is the Thulian ice-weasel, a quadraped dinosauroid that lives in and around the glacial rivers.
Thule's sea life is far better developed. While explorers have not yet seen the full picture, the first expedition noted several groups of ceteacianoid animals in coastal waters, along with surprisingly large schools of fish and underwater plantlife resembling kelp forests in the shallows. The wide and comparatively warm channel of Okeanos, combined with sediment transfer from the glacial plains, keeps the ocean quite well-stocked with life.
The initial Artemis Foundation survey noted much of this, then departed the system in 2016. Followup expeditions--the United Federation of Planets in 2017, then Artemis again in 2018 and 2020--continued with further in-depth surveys of the system. As an M-class world with a functional and (reasonably) human-supporting ecosystem the Thule system was put on the long list of colonization prospects, though its near-permanent ice age meant it was further down the list than others. In the 2025 UN-Convention conference on exosolar colonization, Stellvia Corporation made a surprising announcement: they not only intended to colonize Thule, they had already sent a ship out to do it.
The Chartered Thule Company, a Stellvia subsidiary with a charter from the kingdom of Monaco of all places, set out on the colony ship Eyrie (an Island-class ship developed by Greenwood) with 2,500 colonists the week before the conference began. The corporation's motive for colonizing Thule was and remains unclear, but Stellvia and the CTC seem to be adamant on making the project work. "This is not another Darien Scheme," was the constant (and sometimes heated) refrain from upper management during the conference and long afterwards. Indeed, Stellvia continues to accept new colonists for transfer to Eyrie and the surface settlement of Mandeville on a regular basis.
"Oh give me a home
Where the ice weasels roam..."
~ Unofficial Chartered Thule Company anthem
![[Image: pfLc3Kh.png]](http://i.imgur.com/pfLc3Kh.png)
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Yushan is the third planet in the Sigma Draconis system. It has an orbital period of 188 Earth days and a local day of 28 hours. Surface gravity is slightly higher than Earth's (1.12 Gs) and sea-level air pressure is also slightly higher (1.21 times terrestrial pressure). Yushan's axial tilt is 18 degrees and the orbit is highly circular, making it a world with milder seasons than Earth. It has two moons, one roughly the size of Ceres and one a little larger than Luna.
At the current stage of the planet's evolution, Yushan has a number of small continental rafts floating on a ocean slightly smaller than Earth's, all of which are surprisingly flat compared to other known M-class planets. This lack of high mountains (no peak on Yushan reaches higher than 3,000 meters) allows warm air to circulate freely around the entire planet, keeping it pleasantly tropical even at the poles and making Yushan a truly great rarity among the explored worlds: a living cliche, the "jungle planet."
Yushan's biosphere is dominated by a rainforest ecosystem, punctuated here and there by the occasional grassland. Much of the forest is dominated by trees similar to sequoia or Gallifreyan silverleafs, forming dense canopies under which a vertical ecosystem flourishes. Some large life has been spotted, though so far only at a distance. Most animals have been varities of avianoid like the jade pterodactyl, a parrot-sized insectivore that seems ubiquitous whereever explorers travel on Yushan.
The Sigma Draconis system was first surveyed in 2010 by the Empire of Jurai, an early-adopter otaku group. The Juraians noted the presence of life in the system, then moved on from there. The initial explorers made no move to colonize the system, preferring instead to develop in glorious isolation at the Earth-Luna L5 cluster. While the Sigma Draconis system was known to be life-bearing from 2010 onward, pressures on the Solar nations in general and the Juraians extreme lack of interest in releasing the expedition logs pushed the planets out of the general mainstream until 2025.
The People's Republic of China had for the longest time ignored the handwavium age to the best of their ability. Officially the Chinese government ignored the Convention and its antics when they didn't impact the Chinese mainland, or decried them when they did (such as the infamous Last Train Ride of 2009). In the background however, the PRC undertook an ambitious plan to not only research handwavium, but to master it on levels even the Fen hadn't managed. This particular end proved a failure; the Chinese researchers gained no deeper insights into handwavium's mysteries than anyone else. The spin-offs of this program however promoted the use of home-grown handwavium products in Chinese society. Of particular interest was expanding Chinese presence offworld. The Chinese had embassies at Luna, Phobos and Callisto as well as several Fen-built stations in low orbit, but these were considered tokens at best by the outside world.
The 2025 exosolar conference is where much of this changed. The Chinese delegation announced their intentions to settle the Sigma Draconis system using the original Juraian survey as a guide--having gotten their hands on it by agreeing to help fund the expansion of Tsunami Station--and were going to do it with home-grown handwavium technology...
![[Image: yMWUBHW.png]](http://i.imgur.com/yMWUBHW.png)
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
robkelk Wrote:more interesting localesCHALLENGE ACCEPTED
The Zeta Tucanae system was first charted in 2015 by the Artemis Foundation, at the behest of their primary shareholder Stellvia Corporation. The survey discovered ten planets and sixteen dwarf planets, the innermost four being rocky planets in similar configuration to Sol. One of these worlds was naturally habitable, with another being suitable for terraforming in the long term.
Zeta Tucanae IV was the only habitable planet discovered during the survey. It has an orbital period of 456.9 standard Earth days and a local day of 19.59 hours. The surface gravity is .993 Gs, close enough to Earth-normal as to be undetectable by humans. Sea-level air pressure is 97% of terrestrial pressure. The planet has an axial tilt of 30 degrees and the orbital eccentricity is enough to cause noticable seasonable variation. (Or would, save for the environmental issues discussed below.) Zet Tuc IV has one moon, a body roughly 150% Luna-sized orbiting at a distance of 240,000 km; tidal forces are comparatively much stronger than on Earth.
Zet Tuc IV was named Thule by the discoverers for the very impressive extent of its polar caps. While not completely frozen over like New Alaska or similar iceworlds discovered around red and brown dwarf stars, Thule is covered with ice all the way down to the tropical latitudes. Based on core samples taken during the first and second Zeta Tucanae expeditions, the Thulian ice age has been underway for the last six million years. Radar and ice-penetrating lidar surveys indicated that the planet has two supercontinents situated over the poles with Thule's ocean Okeanos lying between them. The fact that Okeanos has uninterrupted currents running through the equator is likely key to the planet's habitability--the heat transfer keeps the ice at bay and allows the tropical coastlines a reasonably temperate climate.
Life on Thule is somewhat primitive, a consequence of the extended ice age. With much of the planet's water locked up in ice, there is little cloud cover and less precipitation--the skies of Thule are cloudless more often than not, and much of the temperate inland is desert. Only in places where glacial runoff collects into rivers is there much in the way of surface life, mostly consisting of hardy plants with some animals adapted to the constant cold. The largest land animal discovered by explorers is the Thulian ice-weasel, a quadraped dinosauroid that lives in and around the glacial rivers.
Thule's sea life is far better developed. While explorers have not yet seen the full picture, the first expedition noted several groups of ceteacianoid animals in coastal waters, along with surprisingly large schools of fish and underwater plantlife resembling kelp forests in the shallows. The wide and comparatively warm channel of Okeanos, combined with sediment transfer from the glacial plains, keeps the ocean quite well-stocked with life.
The initial Artemis Foundation survey noted much of this, then departed the system in 2016. Followup expeditions--the United Federation of Planets in 2017, then Artemis again in 2018 and 2020--continued with further in-depth surveys of the system. As an M-class world with a functional and (reasonably) human-supporting ecosystem the Thule system was put on the long list of colonization prospects, though its near-permanent ice age meant it was further down the list than others. In the 2025 UN-Convention conference on exosolar colonization, Stellvia Corporation made a surprising announcement: they not only intended to colonize Thule, they had already sent a ship out to do it.
The Chartered Thule Company, a Stellvia subsidiary with a charter from the kingdom of Monaco of all places, set out on the colony ship Eyrie (an Island-class ship developed by Greenwood) with 2,500 colonists the week before the conference began. The corporation's motive for colonizing Thule was and remains unclear, but Stellvia and the CTC seem to be adamant on making the project work. "This is not another Darien Scheme," was the constant (and sometimes heated) refrain from upper management during the conference and long afterwards. Indeed, Stellvia continues to accept new colonists for transfer to Eyrie and the surface settlement of Mandeville on a regular basis.
"Oh give me a home
Where the ice weasels roam..."
~ Unofficial Chartered Thule Company anthem
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yushan is the third planet in the Sigma Draconis system. It has an orbital period of 188 Earth days and a local day of 28 hours. Surface gravity is slightly higher than Earth's (1.12 Gs) and sea-level air pressure is also slightly higher (1.21 times terrestrial pressure). Yushan's axial tilt is 18 degrees and the orbit is highly circular, making it a world with milder seasons than Earth. It has two moons, one roughly the size of Ceres and one a little larger than Luna.
At the current stage of the planet's evolution, Yushan has a number of small continental rafts floating on a ocean slightly smaller than Earth's, all of which are surprisingly flat compared to other known M-class planets. This lack of high mountains (no peak on Yushan reaches higher than 3,000 meters) allows warm air to circulate freely around the entire planet, keeping it pleasantly tropical even at the poles and making Yushan a truly great rarity among the explored worlds: a living cliche, the "jungle planet."
Yushan's biosphere is dominated by a rainforest ecosystem, punctuated here and there by the occasional grassland. Much of the forest is dominated by trees similar to sequoia or Gallifreyan silverleafs, forming dense canopies under which a vertical ecosystem flourishes. Some large life has been spotted, though so far only at a distance. Most animals have been varities of avianoid like the jade pterodactyl, a parrot-sized insectivore that seems ubiquitous whereever explorers travel on Yushan.
The Sigma Draconis system was first surveyed in 2010 by the Empire of Jurai, an early-adopter otaku group. The Juraians noted the presence of life in the system, then moved on from there. The initial explorers made no move to colonize the system, preferring instead to develop in glorious isolation at the Earth-Luna L5 cluster. While the Sigma Draconis system was known to be life-bearing from 2010 onward, pressures on the Solar nations in general and the Juraians extreme lack of interest in releasing the expedition logs pushed the planets out of the general mainstream until 2025.
The People's Republic of China had for the longest time ignored the handwavium age to the best of their ability. Officially the Chinese government ignored the Convention and its antics when they didn't impact the Chinese mainland, or decried them when they did (such as the infamous Last Train Ride of 2009). In the background however, the PRC undertook an ambitious plan to not only research handwavium, but to master it on levels even the Fen hadn't managed. This particular end proved a failure; the Chinese researchers gained no deeper insights into handwavium's mysteries than anyone else. The spin-offs of this program however promoted the use of home-grown handwavium products in Chinese society. Of particular interest was expanding Chinese presence offworld. The Chinese had embassies at Luna, Phobos and Callisto as well as several Fen-built stations in low orbit, but these were considered tokens at best by the outside world.
The 2025 exosolar conference is where much of this changed. The Chinese delegation announced their intentions to settle the Sigma Draconis system using the original Juraian survey as a guide--having gotten their hands on it by agreeing to help fund the expansion of Tsunami Station--and were going to do it with home-grown handwavium technology...
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"