Shoa-Shanian

System: Shoa-Shanian

Hex Location: 1933

Star Type: Single K5 V

Number of Worlds: 12

Gas Giants: 7

Planetoid Belt: Kuiper belt and two asteroid belts

Starport Type: D Poor quality port

World Size: Artificial

Atmosphere Type: N/A

Surface Water: N/A

Population: Super-populated 10 billion, including some smaller settlements in airless rocky worlds

Political Affiliation: Independent ally of the Republic

Tags: Warlock Academy, Feral World, Alien Ruins

Notes: Shoa-Shanian is a low-light and relatively low-heat orange dwarf star, in a system that is littered with debris; a gas and dust nebula thickly colors space around it, like a miniature, solar system-sized Eagle Nebula, complete with dark pillars of gas, and brightly lit and colorful fans of dusty gas. When the system was very first scouted during the now ancient days of the Old Kingdoms, the actual worlds of the system weren't very inviting for settlement. There are a large number of gas giants, which provide the raw materials for bulk drive fuel, and there are a number of rocky and metallic or icy airless worlds as well (including satellite moons of the gas giants) as well as lots of asteroids and comets and centaurs. In fact, the system is positively littered with debris, possibly due to the weak solar winds from the Shoa-Shanian star, which haven't cleared the system nearly as thoroughly as most.

But the colonists stayed anyway, because what they discovered was a massive, nearly moon-sized craft floating in the thickest part of the gaseous nebula. The architecture of the ship is alien and unknown—many scientists in the past have remarked on possible links to Ancient gray ruins found throughout Known Space, both in terms of trying to draw parallels and others who find them lacking. This artificial world is partly metallic, but surprisingly mostly made of stone, as if it were itself a gigantic asteroid converted into a craft. Artificial gravity and Earth-like atmosphere pervade the ship, left presumably by whatever passed for alien thaumaturges or warlocks, and even an ecosystem with water, runaway weeds-life, and alien rat-like creatures thrive here.

Colonists have been here for a long time, but following the Wars of the Last Emperors, they lost track of their connections to the rest of Known Space, and slipped into a technological Dark Age. Today, they present the odd conundrum of a savage and even feral artificial world, with politics that are tribal, and technology that is—mostly—barely better than Medieval—albeit curiously stacked into massive urban areas. Second Wave colonials make up less than 1% of the population, and tend to hold themselves mostly apart from the "natives" of the first wave of colonization. The farms are probably supernaturally productive, though—the degree to which the population has been able to grow and support itself is remarkable. There aren't any "wild" parts of Shoa-Shanian, and the entirety of the surface is either crawling with people, or supports farms that the people live off of.

In spite of the loss of the system during the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Marian Empire, rumors and old records of the strange world and its mystery remained in the rump states that succeeded that Marian Empire, and various New Wave colonials, as they swept in to rediscover what was lurking in the Rubicon sector, were keen to find Shoa-Shanian, even though its exact location was lost and forgotten. Jase Hompson, an earth-descent young warlock, and his crew of adventurous explorers was the one who eventually found the world. Although he comes from the part of space that belongs to the Republic (only recently Revanchist, at this point) their crew was extremely independent and skeptical of the Revanchist bureaucracy. Those who followed in his wake, or were descended from him and his original crew, maintain that skepticism—although they dislike the Bernese and see them as ethnic rivals and hate the Heathens, their relationship with the Republic itself is somewhat... complicated. Hompson and his crew were Earth-descent as well, and were as skeptical of the cultural influence of the Jaffans and Psarians on the Republic as they were of the increasingly parasitical bureaucracy. So today, Shoa-Shanian remains an independent ally of the Republic, unlikely and unwilling to join officially, and able to fend off less than peaceful integration by nature of the warlocks that Hompson started training.

Today, the Shoa-Shanian warlocks, almost all natives (or colonists) of the world, are among the most feared in the neighborhood—which is saying something, considering their general proximity to the Voormellei Confederation and the Vorgan Than Viceroyalty.