Welcome to Brünnhildeberg! The mineral stakes office is one rail stop south of the arrivals concourse. Funerals for victims of jump accidents are held every Oðinsdagr at local noon. Finally, a friendly reminder to prospectors heading upsystem: Any attempt to approach Loge voids all shipping insurance and exploration claims.
– Planetside starport announcement to new arrivals
The Walküren system is impressively dense in planets, moons, and asteroids, and rich in resources – yet it’s unusually sparse in population, more than in part because of its high rate of horrible space disasters. Only the capital (Brünnhilde) has a permanent population, although there’s a standing navy off Grimgerde. Everybody else is a “temp” who works in resource extraction, feeds miners, repairs prospecting craft, or keeps the machines running for the many local industries that refine bulky raw materials into high-value commodities.
Early Exploration
The first human visit to the Walküren system took place in EY117, when a long-range exploration mission led by Kapitän Professor Doktor Manfred Dieter Kromm of the Siegmund, accompanied by the vessels Sieglinde and Siegfried, reached the seventh plant (now Grimgerde) via an experimental blind jump. A collision with a small asteroid seriously damaged the Sieglinde on arrival. Despite this setback, the Kromm expedition moved down the gravity well to survey the inner planets. Outer-system analysis was conducted by sensor, revealing Walküren-8 through Walküren-13 . . . and some entirely unnatural object out in the 14th orbit.
After completing the first pass, Kromm named the system and planets, launched all of his small fleet’s unmanned marker beacons, and then dispatched the speedy Siegfried and limping Sieglinde to bring home news of the system. He intended to remain behind to take the Siegmund on a high-speed run for the outermost orbit, theorizing that the object there might well be a discovery of equal importance to the Device.
Details are sketchy on what happened next. On returning to Walküren-7, the Siegfried could not raise the Siegmund. When the Sieglinde arrived after repairs, her better sensors found debris in the 14th orbit, its velocity perfectly matched to the strange object there. Remote analysis suggested that this was all that remained of the Siegmund, and found the debris to be irradiated in a manner consistent with nuclear fusion. Kromm was never heard from again.
Sieglinde and Siegfried are in permanent orbit around Brünnhilde as a kind of space museum.
Current Status
The Walküren system is seen almost exclusively as a source of exploitable resources. The only permanent human habitation is on Brünnhilde – the administrative capital. Even there, population is low owing to the world’s harsh conditions. However, there are extensive gas-extraction facilities orbiting Fasolt, Grimgerde, Ortlinde, and Roßweisse; water runs out of Gerhilde and Waltraute; ice runs out of Fafner, Helmwige, and Schwertleite; and profitable mining operations on Mime, Siegrune, and the moons of Fasolt, Fafner, Grimgerde, Ortlinde, Roßweisse, and Schwertleite.
Industry is absent in two places. The innermost planet, Alberich, is a molten, corrosive hell, and the alien object at the system’s edge – Loge (Loki) – has destroyed all spacecraft that have approached it (37 to date, including the Siegmund).
The system’s jump point is around Grimgerde, which isn’t the capital for two reasons. First, it’s a gas giant with rocks for moons; the cruise to Brünnhilde is the very picture of efficiency next to supplying a permanent settlement on or around Grimgerde. Second, the jump point wobbles around among the moons, moonlets, and asteroids, making every visit a game of roulette (outbound vessels can see trouble coming). Thus, there isn’t a strong culture of out-of-system settlers and tourists, and therefore little incentive to park the administrative centre near the jump point.
Culture
Despite the Walküren system’s plentiful worlds and industrial facilities, its culture is relatively monolithic. It simply isn’t populous enough to have much in the way of native cultural depth. Well, that’s not entirely true. Strictly speaking, there are two cultures in tension here . . .
Brünnhilde has been settled since shortly after Kromm’s time. Being both the oldest settlement and the only permanent one, it has a genuine cultural identity: that of precise, systematic, almost mathematical efficiency. Then there’s “everybody else,” out in the rest of the system: Rough-and-ready prospectors, fatalistic technicians, scummy crooks, and so on.
Walküren
Walküren isn’t particularly interesting as stars go. There have been solar expeditions, but they haven’t found anything worth strapping on solar shields to go exploit. You can be certain that if scientists had found a valuable asset in closer than Alberich, then somebody would be exploiting it already.
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Alberich (Walküren-1)
Nobody sane wants to visit this planet. Let’s see: It’s almost inside Walküren, so it’s molten. Scorching heat and next-to-no gravity mean that it has no atmosphere, but pedants are quick to point out that outgassing has given it a trace atmosphere – if you’re inclined to view random miasmas of corrosive, superheated poison as “atmosphere.” Oh, and the place doesn’t even have moons to mine . . . next planet, please.
Type: Dwarf.
Atmosphere: Corrosive.
Moons: None.
Rings: None.
Gravity: 0.08.
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Fasolt (Walküren-2)
Fasolt’s claim to fame is that it has orbital gas-extraction facilities, plus a whizzing cloud of moons and rocks that are mined for heavy metals (everything from gold to uranium). All habitation here is temporary and completely reliant on supply runs from further out; nobody stays here long enough to become political, run crime syndicates, or even set up a good pub.
Type: Gas Giant.
Atmosphere: Incapable of supporting life.
Moons: 7 moonlets, 5 moons, 3 captured asteroids.
Rings: Faint ring system.
Gravity: 1.4.
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Mime (Walküren-3)
Mime is like one of Fasolt’s moons writ large: a mining colony, too proximate to Walküren to be entirely fun to visit, but too rich in heavy metals to pass up – and like Fasolt’s facilities, Mime’s are temporary, sparsely populated, and socially irrelevant.The world has a very thin atmosphere because of deposits of primordial oxides, which release oxygen when baked in the sun. This is an entirely manmade situation; the original surface deposits had long since outgassed, but extensive blasting with atomics uncovered previously sealed-away oxides . . . which won’t last forever. Early mining techniques used to find deeply-hidden ores used nuclear devices which, when added to the lack of any real atmosphere to give protection from the sun's rays, leads to frightening amounts of radiation on the surface.
Type: Dwarf.
Atmosphere: Breathable.
Moons: None.
Rings: None.
Gravity: 0.1.
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Gerhilde (Walküren-4)
Gerhilde is the innermost nominally habitable planet of the Walküren system. It has gravity 1.0, a magnetic field and an atmosphere to stop radiation, and plenty of water. The problems with living here are twofold. First, there’s too much water – the whole place is one big ocean. Second, the ocean is teeming with a complex soup of things not totally unlike archaea, bacteria, fungi, and protists, which load the atmosphere above with a mixture of deadly neurotoxins: a few seconds means numbness, and nobody has lasted a full minute.
Nevertheless, there are several hulking, semi-automated water-processing stations here sucking up water, filtering out the cooties, and tanking it for shipment offworld. These are served by four orbital spaceports. Landings planetside are splashdowns.
Type: Terrestrial.
Primary Terrain: Water (100% coverage).
Atmosphere: Toxic.
Moons: None.
Rings: None.
Gravity: 1.
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Fafner (Walküren-5)
And Fafner restores the norm, being yet another world where nobody sane wants to live. Ice runs do provide even more water to the system’s thirsty – and with 100% less mind-control toxin than Gerhilde water. The moons, like Fasolt’s, do yield valuable minerals. Even the rings are exploited, albeit at some risk to miners. But the place isn’t exactly homey.
Fafner does have two major things going for it, though. The rings are beautiful – arguably the nicest anywhere. They’re one of the few things in the Walküren system that actually draws tourists. Coupled with this is the fact that Fafner is Brünnhilde’s nearest neighbor down the solar well. The upshot is that Fafner actually feels like a bustling frontier area during a mineral rush.
Type: Ice Giant.
Atmosphere: Incapable of supporting life.
Moons: 10 moonlets, 5 moons, 3 captured asteroids.
Rings: Full ring system.
Gravity: 1.4.
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Brünnhilde (Walküren-6)
Brünnhilde is the Walküren capital, and the only world in the system whose economy revolves around government, trade, research, and other white-collar endeavors instead of resource extraction and refining. It has some 5,000,000 citizens: 1,000,000 of them in the metropolis of Brünnhildeberg; about 750,000 apiece in each of Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Floßhilde; and the rest scattered about in over 1,000 smaller locations.
This isn’t to say that Brünnhilde is cheery and wonderful. While the planet is in the habitable zone, it’s at the outer edge and therefore cold. And gravity is high – at 1.2, only the strong thrive. In other words, the place is a chilly land of stocky, practical people, not a paradise of tall, tanned idealists.
And it shows. Brünnhilde is home to the famously cold, impersonal civil service of the system.
Type: Terrestrial.
Primary Terrain: Mixed (40% water coverage).
Atmosphere: Breathable.
Moons: 1 moonlet.
Rings: None.
Gravity: 1.2.
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Grimgerde (Walküren-7)
Grimgerde isn’t much different in character from Fafner – just replace ice-mining with gas-extraction, but leave in the moon-mines and the proximity to Brünnhilde. Where Fafner’s attraction is the scenic rings, Grimgerde’s is the jump point. Unlike most jump gates, which are stable, this gate's link to the actual jump point jerks it chaotically around the planet, a problem that has never been solved. Thanks to this and the world’s four major and many dozens of minor captured asteroids, though, this jump point -- named Zephyra -- is dangerous, with several inbound craft being totalled annually. The salvage business is good.
Most important, perhaps, is that the Walküren navy is stationed around Grimgerde. It’s really more a largish fleet of patrol vessels than a capital navy, but it is large and – thanks to the system’s resource wealth – modern. Do not mess with it. You. Will. Die.
Between the gas-miners, moon-miners, port personnel, and naval personnel, there might be 1,000,000 people around Grimgerde (none of them on it, of course).
Vokova comes from the moon of Gunnar.
The moon of Wellgunde hides a top secret xenotechnology research centre where the really good stuff comes. It's supposed to be top-secret, though the academics from Aiscapo University keep blabbing about it. It drives the uptight naval types up the wall.
Type: Gas Giant.
Atmosphere: Incapable of supporting life.
Moons: 5 moonlets, 3 moons, 4 captured asteroids.
Rings: None.
Gravity: 1.2.
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Helmwige (Walküren-8)
And back to boredom. Helmwige is small and thoroughly uninhabitable. A few brave souls run ice out of the place, but that’s about it. Anything Helmwige can do, Fafner can do bigger and better. There are several regular shuttle runs up the solar gravity well from Brünnhilde. Most of them don’t stop here.
Type: Ice Dwarf.
Atmosphere: Incapable of supporting life.
Moons: 1 moonlet.
Rings: None.
Gravity: 0.12.
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Ortlinde (Walküren-9)
Ortlinde is the outer system’s answer to Fasolt. It, too, has gas-extraction facilities and mining – albeit of much lighter metals, notably aluminum. Like Fasolt, the world is really more of a stopping place; nobody stays here long, and there’s no meaningful social sophistication.
Type: Gas Giant.
Atmosphere: Incapable of supporting life.
Moons: 7 moonlets, 5 moons, 3 captured asteroids.
Rings: Faint ring system.
Gravity: 1.1.
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Roßweisse (Walküren-10)
No, wait, Roßweisse is the outer system’s answer to Fasolt. Ortlinde is just full of itself! Really, it’s bloody hard to tell them apart. If you woke up from a coma on one, and somebody told you it was the other, you’d be stumped.
Type: Gas Giant.
Atmosphere: Incapable of supporting life.
Moons: 9 moonlets, 3 moons, 6 captured asteroids.
Rings: Faint ring system.
Gravity: 1.8.
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Schwertleite (Walküren-11)
And Schwertleite is the outer system’s answer to Fafner – an undisputed (and largely irrelevant) claim. Like the good folks on Fafner, the workers here ship out ice and mine metals. And like the good folks of Ortlinde and Roßweisse, the mining focuses primarily on light metals.
Type: Ice Giant.
Atmosphere: Incapable of supporting life.
Moons: 9 moonlets, 4 moons, 5 captured asteroids.
Rings: Faint ring system.
Gravity: 1.2.
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Siegrune (Walküren-12)
Siegrune is, like Mime, somewhere you go to mine stuff, get rich, and leave. This is made extra-fun by the fact that the place is about 60% under boiling water, heated by complex tide-driven tectonics.
Type: Terrestrial.
Primary Terrain: Mixed (60% water coverage).
Atmosphere: Incapable of supporting life.
Moons: 1 moonlet.
Rings: None.
Gravity: 1.4.
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Waltraute (Walküren-13)
Waltraute is, like Gerhilde, primarily a water source. With 90% liquid water coverage and a breathable atmosphere, it is . . . well, it’s theoretically impossible for its orbit. The fact that its aquatic microbial soup appears friendly to rather than inimical to human life, releasing oxygen instead of toxins, is outright weird. All eyes look to Loge, because Walküren is far too puny a sun to explain any of this.
Type: Terrestrial.
Primary Terrain: Mixed (90% water coverage).
Atmosphere: Breathable.
Moons: None.
Rings: None.
Gravity: 1.2.
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Loge
Loge is to weapons and defenses as the original Device was to travel. If its mysteries are ever solved, then those who solve them stand to become a military superpower. So why does everybody else let the Walküren system keep its secret – and good riddance, by the way? Because visiting Loge is a losing proposition. The official casualty count is 37 vessels vaporized. Unofficially the number is more like 100. Loge won’t let people exploit it.
For those interested in what it looks like: “That’s no moon! It’s a space station!” As far as anybody knows, it’s ridiculously old and nobody could be alive on it.
Type: Artificial (Alien Artifact).
Atmosphere: None.
Moons: None.
Rings: None.
Gravity: 0.06.