Tenoh

Name of World: Tenoh

System: Uriel

Year Initially Settled: 2067

Affiliations: Coalition 

Governmental Style: Totalitarian 

Primary Languages: English, Japanese

Primary Industries: Crystal Mining

Current Leaders/Figures of Note: Administrator Yola Lafernier.

In-Play Characters from this Location: Charlie Ostrokov.

Human Mutations: Primarily, humans have mutated to survive the way the terraforming has gone wrong. Those not born on Tenoh are prone to fungal infections and will ‘choke’ on the native air within three days if they don’t wear proper protection. Even with that mutation, a large percentage of Tenohans are prone to cancerous growths and tumors, and living past the age of sixty is a rarity. Two percent of the population is born with conscious control of their enhanced adrenal gland, which allows them to dump a cocktail of adrenaline and other hormones into their system - giving them a surge of enhanced strength and speed for a limited time.

Geography/Biodiversity: Tenoh is a gas giant, third planet from its red sun, Uriel. The other planets are little more than asteroids, without enough mass or useful minerals to warrant human attention. Tenoh’ s fifth and largest moon had an electromagnetic field, but it wasn’t enough to shield human life from local radiation, so the Nakatomi Group sealed off its surface and terraformed the inner cavern systems. Tenoh-V’s caverns and man-made tunnels have been turned into lush glades and mushroom forests, lit by bioluminescent flora and populated by fauna that started out as earth-born mice, rabbits, and so on, but mutated and adapted to become part of their new home’s ecosystem. Now they are firmly creatures of Tenoh, and the ecosystem may well go on indefinitely if the human colony collapses.  

History: The Uriel system was discovered in 2067 in a scientific survey, but the Nakatomi Group didn’t consider it a serious option for terraforming until one of its lead scientists took a closer look at the natural crystal structures in Tenoh’s atmosphere. They were dubbed "Mercury crystals," and it was these crystals that made gate travel possible. 

When his theories were proven, they very quietly filed the paperwork to stake a claim in the planet, then began the terraforming process. At first, everything went smoothly. Tenoh-V developed a stable atmosphere and ecosystem. The first employees signed on and built the infrastructure while Nakatomi scientists developed the process for collecting and refining the crystal ore. Once production began in earnest, more Mercury crystals meant ordinary people had cheaper and better access to gate travel. It was good for the Coalition economy - and very, very good for Nakatomi shareholders’ pocketbooks. 

Two generations into the settlement, the first mutations started to arise, as complications of terraforming began to crop up. The atmosphere was constantly tainted with spores and microbes, putting undue strain on the air filtration systems. Humans born on Tenoh-V were unaffected, but the older generations were prone to fungal infections and worse if they breathed untreated air. The atmosphere itself carried a charge that defied explanation, but the current theory is that the process used to refine the Mercury crystals and the radiation from Tenoh has created repercussions on a quantum level. 

While Nakatomi Group’s scientists were interested in the answer and study it when they had the opportunity, the Civil War interrupted such efforts. In an attempt to reduce their taxes and government oversight, they gambled on secession… and lost. Tenoh rejoined the Coalition, chastened, and quickly destroyed any evidence that anything strange was happening at their most profitable colony. They installed an administrator to run the mining operations, to be replaced once every two years, whose decisions are enforced by a team of native-born employees and robot transplants.

Through trial and error, Tenoh’s administrators developed a system for its citizen-employees that keeps them on-world and under control, per the instructions of their parent company. Tenoh citizens are born and immediately contracted as employees via DNA signature. Their employee account begins in the red, with a debt that starts with their natal hospital bill and doesn’t start to accrue money until they get old enough to start earning. They use their subdermal chip to ‘buy’ food, clothing, entertainment, pay for shelter - all of it on credit against future work hours. No one can buy a ticket off-world unless they’re in the black, and it’s been 76 years since anyone did so much a break even on their accounts before they died.

The only way out is the Coalition military - and even then, a citizen-employee had to have something special to get “Auntie Cora” (as they called the Coalition) to buy out a contract. The only guarantee was to be one of the 2%, somebody with the adrenaline mutation, and then you didn’t get a choice. Every five years the recruiters came, and the ‘bots swept the corridors, rounding up the kids that had been earmarked for this day since their birth. The kids got shipped out, never to see home again, and the Coalition’s boot stayed light on Nakatomi Group’s neck. Thus Tenoh stayed on the Coalition’s good side, and the Coalition officers didn’t ask too many questions about what they saw when they were on-planet...