Arzanal

System: Arzanal

Hex Location: 1334

Star Type: Single M8 VI

Number of Worlds: 12

Gas Giants: 8

Planetoid Belt: 2 asteroid belts 1 Kuiper belt

Starport Type: D

World Size: Earth-sized

Atmosphere Type: Earth-like

Surface Water: 3%

Population: Medium (~8 million)

Political Affiliation: Bernese; Emerus Marches

Tags: Ghost town, tyranny, thaumatophobia

Notes: Arzanal is a Bernese world by culture, and while nominally under the direction of Hugh Longonz, the Margrave of the Emerus Marches, the reality is that most of the world is a lawless frontier that no officials of any authority honor. The original settlers of Arzanal, while Bernese in ethnicity and culture, left the Bernese Main because they belonged to a strange religions sect that was not very welcome within Bernese Main space, because of it's opposition to the mainstream Christianity of the Bernese people. They have become, if anything, even more strange and ungovernable over the years, and Margrave Longonz mostly leaves them to their own devices deep in the cold deserts of Arzanal, while his own settlements and towns operate much like any other frontier Bernese town would in any of the other colonies, if a bit seedier and more desperate and degenerate than most, perhaps. The deep desert religious communities are under the iron law of the cult leaders, who micromanage the details of cultists life, and have a fierce aversion to the psionic powers of the knights and wizards. This has become so extreme that they even see the bulk drives and artificial gravity of starships as an abomination, so they do not travel, and only rarely interact with the city people at all. They have, in fact, become barbaric societies that hate much of the modern world, including its technology and conveniences.

Because the surface is so vast and so empty, it's also become commonplace for the various counts, dukes, margraves and others of the Bernese colonies (and some other worlds too) to use it as a dumping ground for political or criminal undesirables; a kind of cold desert gulag almost, if you will, although the fact that the Bernese world is nothing like the communist one means that it doesn't have otherwise good and innocent people languishing in isolated camps or colonies, but rather honest-to-goodness criminals and dangerous dissidents who threaten the stability of society. Some of these have joined forces with the cultists, or been converted to their cause, but some of them are at odds with the cultists. Most of them are too far away from anyone else to be anything other than dumping grounds, however—they don't know how to find or travel to any other settlement, and that's somewhat by design.

The reality, of course, is that Arzanal wasn't really settled first by the Bernese, but it seems to have served a similar isolationist colony slash prison function to the old Marian Empire, and old settlements and ruins and other bizarre leftovers from the time of the Marians dot the landscape here and there too. These bizarre, ghostly remains of towns, settlements, forts and more whistle eerily in the wind most of the time, but occasionally there are hints and rumors that they aren't quite as empty as they seem.

Arzanal is a weird place, and one that's a bit out of character for a Bernese world, one that feels a bit desperate and melancholy, and nobody can quite put their finger on why that is so. But it is profitable for the Margrave, as there are ore deposits of exquisite value that he mines in modest efforts, including deposits of spice. There is a legitimate population here; in fact, the majority of the population belong to legitimate cities and towns that are a bit more integrated into normal Bernese activity, either non-native Bernese who are associated with the Margrave's colonial culture, or natives who have abandoned the wilder life of the Deep Wilderness and live in proximity to the offworlder Bernese. Because of its strange vibe, few people are comfortable staying here for long, and they stop mostly to resupply, or otherwise do some kind of business here, and are usually only too happy to move on as soon as their business is concluded.