Fenebruck

System: Fenebruck

Hex Location: 1634

Star Type: Single star, B1 V

Number of Worlds: 10

Gas Giants: 7

Planetoid Belt: Asteroid and Kuiper belt

Starport Type: X No official public starport

World Size: Mars-sized

Atmosphere Type: Earth-like

Surface Water: 70%, much of it frozen

Population: Medium-sized (~1 million)

Political Affiliation: Dhangetan Cartel, Desai Worlds

Tags: Forbidden technology, psionic knight academy, tomb world

Notes: Fenebruck is one of the Desai worlds, a small extension of the Dhangetan cartel by a Dhangetan capo who is in many ways at odds with the rest of the cartel. Dhangetan worlds in general tend to be a bit Galactic Third World, so to speak, because the Dhangetans are notoriously corrupt and put little effort or money into providing services or infrastructure for those who live in their worlds unless they believe that there is profit to be made by doing so. In the case of Fenebruck, it's a real backwater, even by Dhangetan standards, and Desai, the capo who rules here, has put little effort into developing it. The world is fairly dry in its habitable sections, but vast tracts of the surface are covered with gigantic continental glaciers. The tropical zone has warmer temperatures, with a few lakes and smaller seas, but much of it is very dry, green only where gallery forests or farmlands run like a small ribbon in the valleys of rivers, streams and canals.

Desai also made a deal with the leaders of Suly (2430) where a number of troublesome apes from that planet were moved to Fenebruck. I don't mean troublesome in the sense that they were criminals; more that they just didn't fit in, had a bit of wanderlust, needed a change of scenery, etc. And, of course, some of them were criminals, insurgents, dissidents, malcontents, heretics to the way of the ape tribes, etc. and the apes themselves were happy to offload them rather than have them disturb the peace on Suly any more. They were "bought" by Desai, and while technically slaves, none of them wear collars or any other kind of tracking device, and Desai allows them almost total freedom on the planet of Fenebruck itself as long as they operate farms to feed his cotorie of worlds. Fenebruck, therefore, on the surface appears to be little more than two gigantic polar glaciers around a desert band with gallery farms and forests run by a relatively peaceful collection of farms run by apes. Of course, what you see at first glance isn't everything that's there.

Fenebruck was inhabited during the Old Kingdoms era, although the planet was abandoned and left alone during the centuries of the Marian Empire and only relatively recently recolonized by Desai and his people. It appears to have been a fairly heavily populated world during the Old Kingdoms, although that population was devastated by the strange plagues that eventually led to the development of a genetic matrix that allowed people to access psionic powers. Desai has a few surreptitious researchers delving in the Old Kingdoms era tombs and ruins looking for hints of this, and even a few cells of highly illegal research stations that are attempting to use the clues that they find to relicate the structure of those plagues and possibly even recreate them.

Desai also has his own small order of psionic knights; one that's been pledged in feudal-style loyalty to him for close to fifty years now. This order, the Ancorta Order, is also based here in a secretive training facility and staging area.