Peleres

System: Peleres

Hex Location: 1723

Star Type: G1 VI

Number of Worlds: 12

Gas Giants: 3 (1 hot Jupiter)

Planetoid Belt: 2 asteroid belts, 1 kuiper belt

Starport Type: C

World Size: Earth sized

Atmosphere Type: Earth like

Surface Water: 62%

Population: Medium ~500 million

Political Affiliation: Cilindarean Arm

Tags: Hostile solar system, pilgrimage world, alien ruins

Notes: Peleres is an unusual world in many ways. First off is the unusual environment. The system has several gas giants, including two in relatively near-sun orbits, one of which qualifies as a true hot Jupiter. It orbits in near enough orbit that the magnetic lines are often tangled, and irregularly but at least monthly, massive solar flares blast through the system, causing dangerous levels of radiation and electromagnetism. There is some warning that this is about to happen. Ships that are in the system when this happens can have their equipment or their crew fried by this surge in electromagnetic radiation and flares, but they do have time to seek shelter or leave the system. Most basic ship's sensors can give a roughly 48 hour warning that a flare is imminent, but the exact timing is impossible to predict, so cutting that close is a very dangerous gamble. This is somewhat less true further out in the solar system, past the first asteroid belt or so, where the radiation is weaker and sensors can see it coming hours or even days before it gets there. For safety, most ships that jump into the system arrive in the outer system, and often then have to travel with subspace engines to Peleres, sometimes for several days.

The planet Peleres itself is protected by a stronger than normal magnetosphere, making it a safe place to be during these flares and solar storms, and in fact the interaction of these with the magnetosphere is almost a tourist attraction in its own right, as "northern" and "southern" lights happen all year round, and can appear almost down to the equator. They are especially spectacular during solar flares.

The environment on the planet is also unique. Peleres itself isn't a planet, it's a planet-sized moon of a reddish gas giant. This giant salmon colored disk (so it appears from the surface; it's more brightly red outside of the atmospheric haze) dominates the sky, but isn't even the most unusual feature of it. This gas giant is synchronized in its orbit with the hot Jupiter in such a way that the light from the sun is always obscured exactly as if it were a full solar eclipse on Earth. The sun, therefore, is a black disk with a bright corona, and the daylight on the planet is always a somewhat dim twilight. Anthocyanin is common in the leaves of the plants, whether developed naturally as a response to the environment or engineered as such by ancient terraformers is unknown, but it gives the vegetation an unusual red color as well, rather than the more common chlorophyll-dominated green vegetation of most other planets. The planet isn't overly tilted, so there isn't a lot of seasonality; weather is dominated mostly by latitude, being warm and pleasant near the equator and progressively colder until its frozen solid year round up above the 50th parallel or so. The ice caps are rather large at both poles, similar to how they would have been during the height of our own glacial maximum. This combined with the 12-15% or so less water compared to earth anyway means that the unfrozen area of the planet is more arid, but hardly all one big desert.

Most Cilindarean worlds are best characterized as under benevolent martial law in normal circumstances since the distinction between citizen, soldier, and nobility is all rather blurred in their society. The stereotypical Cilindarean world has a population of about 10-20% citizens to 50% helots and 30-40% other, often mothakes or other forms of perioeci or sciritae; free-men who are not, however, part the Cilindareate elite. On Peleres, this ratio is thoroughly different; roughly 80-85% of the population are mothakes, another 10-12% are helots, and only a tiny handful make up the elite. While technically the same martial law principles apply on Peleres as they do elsewhere, the king and his council of ephors on Peleres have never had a tradition of hands-on or intrusive government. Indeed, they are very caught up in their own affairs on their own estates, and largely ignore what the mothakes are doing entirely, and entire cities, towns, villages and even provinces are left to govern and manage themselves as they will. This peaceful, almost anti-government approach to government has always worked well for the men of Peleres. In fact, it has led to their rather notable economic prosperity, and fairly wealthy gentlemen farmers, tradesmen and artisans of various stripes make up much of the population. Most of the helots are not generational helots, but rather debtors or other non-violent criminals serving sentences. All in all, Peleres is seen by many, even among the more radical of the Cilindareans, but also by many neighbors of other cultures, as a model society. The lack of strong government has not given way to anarchy and criminal gangsterism, as happens on nearby Dhangetan worlds, but in a well-ordered and peaceful place. Mostly.

Because of its freedom and economic opportunity, people of other than Cilindarean ethnicity have been tempted to move to Peleres, but strict control of immigration is one of the few things that the hands-off Cilindareate government insists on, and the ratio of ethnic Cilindareans to those who are not is strictly maintained. Some ethnicities that have historically been trouble-makers when not in their own societies are absent entirely, or nearly so (like Sereans and Idacharians). Janissaries are not terribly uncommon on this world, but the remainder of the non-Cilindareans are often Bernese (many of whom arrived shortly after the Revanchist takeover of the Grand Marches worlds that became the Carthen Colony). Some Altairans from the Galaide Worlds, or other people of indeterminate ethnic origin—anciently mixed race Dhangetan humans, essentially—have also settled here for generations, and a more recent source of some immigration is Republic peoples from the nearby Rhyne Colony. Almost all of these peoples are humans or xenohumans, though—true aliens are so uncommon as to be almost unheard of on Peleres.

In spite of these idyllic conditions, Peleres is poised to be part of the greater regional conflict. Dhangetan and Galaide worlds make up most of its neighbors, although several Revanchist colonial worlds are also nearby, as well as not being very far from the northernmost of the Bernese Grand Marches worlds. All of them are sources simmering conflict; the Carthen Colony belongs to the Republic, but much of the populace is ethnic Bernese who now mostly deeply regret and resent the decision made to throw their lot in with the Revanchists. The Rhyne colony has a more traditional Republic settlement pattern, but a zeitgeist of freedom from the Republic is sweeping that area. The Galaide Worlds have never been very happy under the heel of the Dhangetans. And even the nearby Cilindarean worlds have enough envy for the political and popular appeal of Peleres that its unsure how they will react to any threats to Peleres; they may even cheer on the aggressors against their own people!

In addition to settlement, numerous traders, tourists, pilgrims and others come to Peleres on a regular basis, even though the route to it is potentially difficult depending on your starting point. Not only is there profitable business to be done on Peleres without settling here permanently, but Peleres is also famously home to mysterious ruins. Nobody knows who built them, as they were here when the Cilindareans arrived many generations ago, although nobody was living on Peleres at the time. They clearly date to about the early era of the Marian Empire, but they are not Marian in style, and nobody knows for sure who they belong to. Popular belief among many of the locals of the region generally is that their own ancestors may have been a high culture of non-Marians, and the ruins on Peleres represent the bests example of their legacy. Indeed, fragmentary and poor ruins here and there across the sector seem to show some similarities to the Peleres ruins, and offer some support of sorts for this theory, but the ruins on Peleres itself have the appeal of the pyramids; even if you have no connection to them, you want to see them sometime in your lifetime because they're something truly spectacular.