Huge WIP post cause I gotta go to sleep. Mentions a lot about how the star Eperu is exotic, there'll be an explanation for what that means in the final version. [hider=Eperu] [center] [color=00aeef]Nation Name[/color]: Frontier Commission, Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, The Regulate [color=00aeef]Government Form[/color]: There are three distinct entities in the Eperu system with enough power to be considered their own forms of government; the Frontier Commission, the Zixuang-Akaka Energistics Corporation, and The Regulate. The Frontier Commission, an offshoot of the original authorities of the colonization effort from the Solar System, is the most recognizable government in the system. It is a federalized republic, representing the 1.8 billion people across the system. The planets of Epinnu and Tuadeasc make up a bulk of its constituents, with small numbers of people spread along the Alaktu Inclusion Zone and long-term space habitats. The second major power in the system is the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, a merger between Zixuang Trade & Contracting and Akako High-Energy Research Labs. Zixuang brought extensive Commission insider knowledge and the skills required to transport bulk goods across the system, while Akako brought the experimental research and skill in subversive activities. Together, they were able to place the system in an economic stranglehold. A majority of the Frontier Commission’s citizens are employed by the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation, and the megacorp is at the cutting edge of technology. The third and final group is not so much a government or corporation as it is a loose association of disaffected humans; executives and scientists bankrupted by Zixuang-Akako, terrorists opposed to the Frontier Commission, exiled revolutionaries, and so forth. Its presence in the main system is virtually unknown, with their headquarters secreted away on Katmu, hidden from prying eyes by the deleterious effects of Eperu on astronomy. While Zixuang-Akako is formally the leading expert on the eccentricities of Eperu, the Regulate (An informal name given by those in the know – there is no formal name amongst its members) represents absolute authority. They hold an excellent understanding of the technologies enabled by Eperu. They are loosely ruled by a council made up of the largest groups present in their coalition, organized into cells. [color=00aeef]Demographics[/color]: In the entire system, there exists 1.8 billion humans. While ancient intelligent life has definitely once lived on the two habitable planets, no living specimen nor any fossils have ever been found. Of the 1.8 billion people, approximately 950 million of them are directly employed by Zixuang-Akako or its subsidiaries. The Regulate, meanwhile, never numbers more than approximately ten thousand. [color=00aeef]Population[/color]: 1.8 billion souls. --- [sub] The Frontier Commission [img]https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/db8777f7-9745-4951-a2cd-ec5f61fd6cfa/debepxp-7d9e6f03-9120-458d-bb4a-c4217f8d9b64.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2RiODc3N2Y3LTk3NDUtNDk1MS1hMmNkLWVjNWY2MWZkNmNmYVwvZGViZXB4cC03ZDllNmYwMy05MTIwLTQ1OGQtYmI0YS1jNDIxN2Y4ZDliNjQucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.44d55RSGKQupd_z-2brIVi8F2mO-_x5jXce6rNbQuVs[/img] [url=https://www.deviantart.com/jebediahkerman001/art/United-Nations-Flag-of-the-solar-system-865689037]Deviant Art, Jebediahkerman001[/url][/sub] --- [/center] [color=39b54a]Planet Name and Description[/color]: There are two principle colonies in the Eperu system; Epinnu and Tuadeasc. Both are in the habitable zone of the anomalous star, and contain liquid water and relatively human-livable temperatures. Epinnu is the largest and oldest of the two colonies, being relatively similar to earth with an average temperature of 11C. It has a gravity of only 1.2 times that of Earth, making it close to the home planet. Humanity lives across its surface, generally bunched into large cities surrounded by large stretches of rural land. It is about 1.3 times the size of earth, with slightly more landmass. The primary difference is in the lighting; the planet has never seen a bright day. It is only barely lit by Eperu, a dull purple tinge providing little to work with. Artificial lighting is rampant, and farming is done primarily by hydroponics. Of the 1.8 billion people in the system, approximately 1.1 billion of them live on Epinnu. Tuadeasc, while also human-habitable, is far harsher. Its average temperature in the places inhabited by humans is roughly 30C. Its gravity is 1.1 times that of Earth, and it is only 1.1 times larger than Earth, but it garners even less light than Epinnu and it is divided into an intensely hot equatorial zone. It has a frozen north pole and a south pole dominated by cryogenic ice flats reaching near absolute zero at their worst temperatures. Land dominates its surface, making up 75 percent of the planet. The human population, about 700 million, is primarily rural and small settlements dot the planet. There is a third, secret colony, far outside of the system. A rocky planet named Katmu, it is a frozen landscape with a gravity 1.4 times that of Earth, while it is 1.3 times larger than Earth. It is in a highly eccentric orbit, at its farthest 9AU from Eperu, while at its closest it is only 1.5AU away. It has only been discovered by The Regulate, who use it as a weapons stockpile and the headquarters for its ruling council. Its population varies year to year, but it has never held more than 7,000 people at once. It is perpetually dark, as no light reaches it from Eperu. The final planet, while not formally a colony, is in a unique position. Alaktu, a small gas giant about 4 times the size of Earth, sits within the Eperu Exclusion Zone. It is highly ionized and radioactive, and is notable for the Gate Flux Tube, named for the positioning of the stellar gate inside of it. The space inside of the Gate Flux Tube is comparable to baseline space as seen in the Solar System and many other star systems. The Gate Flux Tube, however, is not an entirely innocent affair; it is essentially a planet-sized particle accelerator, collecting particles from mass ejections by Eperu, and highly charging them in a giant loop that leads, eventually, into the north pole of Alaktu. The rest of the system is reachable through an obscure and largely unresearchable process involving the Gate Flux Tube, whereupon joining into the acceleration stream you can, in what has been theorized to be a violation of causality, eject yourself from the Exclusion Zone without ever coming in contact with the lethal anomalistic radiation that makes the Exclusion Zone deadly. Failures to join with the stream are not unheard of, and are lethal – once the failure is known, it is too late to avoid crashing into the north pole of Alaktu and being lost amongst the gas giant. One can return to the Gate Flux Tube by way of a naturally-generated exit just outside the Exclusion Zone, a station built around it to facilitate such travel. It takes approximately a day to travel to the exit once you have ejected, and the space between – nicknamed The Channel – is incredibly hostile to life. Long-term exposure to The Channel is guaranteed to drive a man into psychosis, with no shielding system known except to The Regulate. Finally, the star of Eperu itself. It is an anomalous dwarf star, made up of exotic materials that resist analysis and whose origins are a mystery. The star is only 17 times the size of Earth, and the entire system could fit in the space between Earth and the Sun. Around it is a wide exclusion zone, where the radiation from Hev is so strong and dense that no shielding exists capable of preventing it from being instantly lethal, except to the Regulate. The radiation itself is not identifiable as any form of previously-discovered radiation, and requires special shielding to prevent exposure not provided by traditional radiation shielding methods. It is well known to interfere with electronics and causes ghosts to occur both in sensors and on electromagnetic frequencies used for transmissions. Due to an effect that has yet to be adequately explained, it grows whiter the closer you get to it, and darker the further away you are. By the time you are at the edge of the system, it provides absolutely no light and cannot be seen, while at Alaktu, the closest most people can safely get to it, it is a mixture of white and purple. It is principally made up of a volatile material called HEV-P, short for High Energy Volatile Particulate, and it is nicknamed Hev in casual conversation. The second known material is called HEDC, short for High Energy Disruptive Crystal. It is nicknamed Hedic in casual conversation. This material is rare, and was only discovered when collected from mass eruptions. [color=39b54a]History[/color]: In the Eperu dating system, the human presence begins in 0 After Arrival, or 0AA. In an effort to keep par with the Solar System’s dating period, the year is split into twelve chunks, roughly correlating to one year on Tuadeasc, which equals about 29 Earth days. Each year on Tuadeasc symbolizes a month in the Eperu dating system. The exotic nature of Eperu threw off the Solar System’s astrological surveys, and what the colonists discovered on the other side of the gate was far from what they expected. The gate malfunctioned and closed behind them, however. They were stuck in the Eperu System, with all venturing beyond the Gate Flux Tube dying near-instantly to the exotic radiations blanketing the Exclusion Zone. The colonists would have died in orbit of Alaktu, if it weren’t for a daredevil pilot who rode the exclusion zone in their survey ship and discovered the existence of the Channel. The pilot, who survived both the trip out and the trip back in, reported to the colony ship the existence of two habitable worlds beyond the lethal wall of radiation, and explained to them how to enter the Channel. Votes were taken, and it was decided to take the risk. The colony ship plunged into the stream of the Flux Tube, and successfully made the transition into the Channel. A day later, when they emerged, they discovered what the pilot had seen. Not only had they escaped the most lethal of the exotic radiation, they had found a veritable cornucopia of choice. Though the light was dim and unprotected exposure to Eperu was still dangerous, Epinnu could support earth life almost by default. Colonization was easy and the population rapidly boomed. On Epinnu, they rapidly discovered the ruins of previous intelligent life on the planet; though, curiously, they never found so much as a single fossil of them. Cultural relics were few and far between, and never enough to paint a picture. The ruins are largely unexplored, with scientists incapable of cracking into the structures, who resist all conventional attempts at entry. Throughout the centuries, precious few discoveries have been made from ruins that could be accessed, primarily around the use of Eperu’s exotic materials. Travel throughout the system remained dangerous; no amount of hardening could save computers from Eperu. Telescopes unfocused and radar systems returned only ghosts. In the early days, the violent mass ejections from Eperu killed hundreds in space. The colonists claimed the system was haunted, ghost transmissions endlessly bouncing about and being picked up on intercoms, radios, even televisions and music players. The first corporation to create a ship capable of withstanding the mass ejections, flares, and solar storms was Helius Shipping Solutions; whose research and development department was far ahead of all its competitors. Before it could capitalize on this, however, its research was stolen and seemingly destroyed by the Akako High-Energy Research Labs, who entirely avoided implication in the matter. Akako could not push their newfound advantage alone, devoid of Frontier Commission contracts and a steady base of business by which to fund massive expansions. In response, they turned to the Zixuang Trade & Contracting, a minor company who nonetheless had extensive government contracts and had built a reputation as a reliable bulk goods shipper despite the violence of Eperu. The benefits to both were obvious, and the merger came quickly. Soon enough, the new Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation was receiving massive Frontier Commission contracts in the shipbuilding industry, alongside the shipping and resource extraction industries. Catapulted to a sudden position of dominance, the corporation moved to secure its holdings; embarking on a campaign of government lobbying and hostile takeovers of competing corporations. Year by year, their growth outpaced all expectations, and any hope of the Frontier Commission stepping in to prevent a monopoly were dashed with every new contract farmed out to the corporation. When growth finally slowed, the damage was done. In less than a century, a new megacorporation was born, employing half the population of the system. It was too late for the Frontier Commission to break them up, as the resultant economic collapse would have destroyed the colonies. Helius Shipping Solutions, meanwhile, had not been idle. In the years after the theft of their research, they had been driven bankrupt by the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation. Their employees did not fold into other corporations, however, and they retained the genius staff that first led to the breakthrough. Paid under the table and operating in secret, using criminal activity to fund their research, they were able to outpace the vast bulk of the Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation. Their first major discovery was the planet of Katmu; though in comparison to the distances in the Solar System it flew close to Eperu and should have been simple to discover, the havoc wreaked on sensor systems by Eperu rendered it entirely invisible to the colony at large. With vast leaps and bounds made in protecting sensors from the exotic radiation, they could slowly move equipment to Katmu reliably. Though they maintained their criminal empire, the headquarters of the organization, never formally given a name by the former Helius employees, remained in total secrecy upon Katmu. Research only bloomed further upon Katmu, and the informally-named Regulate grew centuries ahead of the rest of the system in technology. Over the years humanity spread out among the system, forming colonies on Tuadeasc and in space. The dominance of Zixuang-Akako was maintained, and the Regulate grew in the shadows, commissioning acts of terror and running the criminal underworld across the system. In the modern day, the space around Alaktu is primarily occupied by automated mining rigs and channel observatories. [color=39b54a]Culture and Society[/color]: The society of the Eperu System is remarkably fatalistic, having been built from the ground up around a star hostile to all life. Caught in the claws of megacorporations, the system is split between collectivist sympathies and individualistic sentiments. Conflict between the two visions for the future of Eperu are not uncommon. Poverty is rampant and grapples with the existence of a massive specialist middle class. Thanks to the Regulate, crime is rampant and policing is heavy. There exist slums and upper-class neighborhoods, and everything between. Drugs are common on the streets and in the poorest places, gangs practically run the show. Meanwhile, above, the spacers face death daily as the star does its best to kill them. Debris fields are common and endless sensor ghosts and lost transmissions interrupt daily life constantly. The corporations are cold and disconnected from humanity. Though the system at large has grown used to it, the ways corporations communicate and operate can be best described as unnerving. [center] --- [/center] [color=f7941d]Governance and Politics[/color]: While in theory the Frontier Commission ensures a regulated capitalist market and democracy, in practice Zixuang-Akako has made use of regulatory capture for centuries. Election districts are gerrymandered and lobbyists hold immense power in the Frontier Congress. The dominant party is kept in power by Zixuang-Akako money, while the opposition fails to catch up purely on grassroots organization. There are 1,224 representatives in the Frontier Congress, from across the populated space stations and colonies. The tiebreaker is held by the Governor of the Frontier Commission, a for-life position of executive power put into place by a vote of the Frontier Congress. The primary political party is called the Shadow Coalition. Despite the sinister name, it is a moderate party whose primary contribution to politics is supporting corporate power. It holds 60 percent of the Frontier Congress, a firm lead over their opponents. The next largest party is the Eperu Labor Party, which makes up 25 percent of the Frontier Congress. The rest of the Frontier Congress is made up of a patchwork of minor parties who tend to form coalitions with the Eperu Labor Party. [color=f7941d]Technology Overview[/color]: Technology as a whole has gotten significantly more primitive, but also significantly more reliable. What fails regularly in Eperu is virtually indestructible outside of Eperu. Computer systems are blocky beasts utilizing analog circuits and magnetic tapes, but are hardened against interference both environmental and man-made to a degree which renders electronic warfare virtually obsolete. Sensors are similar; they are extremely short-range compared to the sensors used by any other nation, but within their range they are by far the best-in-class, capable of detecting anything when not struggling to fight the interference of Eperu. Shields are minimal and relegated to navigational only, but ships carry thick and extensive armor, strengthened considerably by the introduction of Eperu’s exotic materials to the alloying process. Heavy and unwieldy, they nonetheless represent extremely powerful armor. Outside of experimental weapons, armament is dead-simple to minimize interference; machine guns and large-bore cannons are common. There are a great number of experimental technologies based on exotic materials gathered from Eperu: The first discovered is the neural interface. By using a carefully processed and liquified version of Hev, it is possible to sustain a simple brain outside of the body and moreover connect it to computer networks. The most frequent use of this technology is extracting livestock brains to be reprogrammed into simplistic AIs to run automated platforms. Due to the fact they are not electronic, they are significantly more capable of weathering Eperu unharmed, and thus are used and prized for their reliability. The second discovered use is short-range teleportation. Among the materials gathered from Eperu are exotic crystals of an even further unknown material nicknamed Hedic. When properly carved with sigils, it is possible to reroute matter through them and launch that matter to a different location instantly. The process is incredibly difficult and dangerous; improper machining of the crystal can cause a variety of terrible effects, and improper calculations can teleport people into solid rock, far in the air, in distant space, or cause them to flat out vanish. The Regulate has mastered this technology on the small scale, but large-scale efforts elude them and Zixuang-Akako’s use of teleportation remains entirely experimental. The third discovered use is from the alien ruins dotting the planets of the system. Within these ruins incredibly dense crystals have been discovered, theorized to come from the core of Eperu, which when agitated can produce endless volatiles for use in power reactors and thrusters. Once agitated, it is impossible to stop the reaction, though it can be moderated with cooling. Should cooling fail, the crystal will catastrophically delaminate and cause an explosion equivalent to 400 megatons of TNT. However, the most deadly is the wave of exotic radiation, resembling that which bombards the Exclusion Zone. This wave can kill for hundreds of miles before dying out. These reactors are rare and generally installed into isolated research stations. Hev has also made a great number of minor advancements in dozens of different fields. There are also a great number of potential side effects. The first and most important thing to note is Hev is incredibly volatile in its natural state, and in some processed states. It burns hotter and longer than any other material known, and is far too unstable to rely on. Processes that rely on using the volatility of Hev are powerful but incredibly dangerous, and it is not unheard of for these processes to result in casualties. Hev is also deeply toxic, too much exposure leading to painful and irrecoverable breakdowns of the body. Long-term exposure has a similar deleterious mental effect to lead. A particularly famous disease from Hedic is called “The Whiskers”, where attempting to teleport with improperly machined crystals or handling them unprotected in any form can cause thin metallic whiskers to begin growing throughout the body. These whiskers spread like cancer, and slowly and painfully slice the person apart. There is no cure, and touching the whiskers can cause another person to contract the disease as well. The most obvious indicator is when they sprout from the body, causing bleeding and making the victim appear as though they have been stabbed by millions of tiny needles. Another disease can be contracted by Hev, though relatively unknown to the public. Certain levels and methods of exposure can cause a person to endlessly grow, for lack of a better term. They begin to sprout cancerous tumors that quickly begin expanding. Sustained by the toxins in their blood, they are kept alive as these tumors rupture their old body and they can spread miles before the growth stops. Deep in space, covered up by Zixuang-Akako, are research stations entirely overtaken by these cancerous growths. Attempts to kill them have largely failed, as they are capable of rapid healing. Channel Sickness is the name given to overexposure to the Channel. The victim undergoes a complete and total violent psychosis, suffering delusions they take out on anybody or anything in sight. They babble the entire time, though no particular meaning has ever been extracted from what a victim says. Food and water is refused, and so without deep medical care for the rest of their lives they are doomed to starve or dehydrate to death, if they are not killed more violently first. [color=f7941d]Military Overview[/color]: Military forces are largely limited to garrison forces and small naval patrols. With little outright need for military power, there are no capital ships nor is Eperu prepared to fight a proper military. The Zixuang-Akako Energistics Corporation maintains an above-the-board Asset Protection Division, which acts as private security for their operations and maintains its own naval patrols independent of the Frontier Commission. Below-the-board, Zixuang-Akako has the Asset Defense Team, a division that acts essentially as a deathsquad alongside espionage duties. They maintain a number of black sites across the system, and are used whenever Zixuang-Akako needs to make a problem disappear silently and with extreme violence. [/hider]