Henleaze Avenue
13-11-2003, 22:24
Albion
The world of Albion is a small planetoid in the Senecas IV system approximately 140 light years from the Terran System. The star of this system - Senecas - has been slowly dying for the past million years, and is larger and cooler than Sol of the Terran System. Albion orbits Senecas at a distance roughly equal to that of Mercury from Sol but due to Senecas' relative coolness, the ambient temperature rarely rises above 12 degrees Celsius. Two hundred years before the present, the Senecas IV system passed through an asteroid belt - the remains of a planet destroyed in some interstellar war aeons before. The gravity of Senecas sucked thousands of asteroids into the heart of the star...and because it orbited Senecas so closely, many struck Albion itself. They pulverised the landscape, creating the flat, stony plains that exist today, but they also delivered a precious cargo: ores.
The rare metal ores contained in many of the meteorites were forced into Albion's surface by the impacts, creating a blanket layer of metal ores covering most of the planetoid's surface area. Over the millennia the dust released into the atmosphere by the collisions has settled and compacted, covering the ores in a layer of rock approximately 50 feet deep, dropping to 120 feet in certain areas. The presence of such a large amount of metal ore added considerably to the mass of Albion and thus to its gravitational field - Albion is currently rated as a 1.75G planet (the gravitational field is 75% stronger than that of Earth). This high gravity also means that Albion has a dense atmosphere, made up of oxygen and nitrogen with a lesser amount of hydrogen that was forced into the atmosophere when incoming meteorites boiled water from the planetoid's surface. Archaeological digs by colonists have discovered some evidence of life on Albion prior to the meteorite impacts but what form this life took is unclear, as it appears to have been erased in the first wave of meteorites. As a result there is no native life on Albion today aside from single-celled organisms and bacteria. The geography of Albion is fairly unremarkable - as has been said, the terrain was levelled out by meteorite impacts. The surface of Albion is dotted with shallow pools of water ranging in width from 10 feet to 2 kilometres - these are the remnants of the craters left by the meteorites. There is also a lone sea resting on the equator, known as the Sea of Agnomon after the ship that delivered the first colonists to Albion. It has irregular tides influenced by the two small moons - Conchobor and Labraid - orbiting the planetoid in eccentric orbits, pieces of Albion itself thrown into space by gigantic meteorite impacts. The weather is generally calm and predictable, but the proximity of the planetoid to Senecas means that it is highly vulnerable to solar flares thrown out by the star's death throes. While the surface of the planetoid is largely unaffected, due to the strong magnetic field created by the metal ores, these flares make space flights in the vicinity somewhat risky.
Albion as a colony was only very recently established - the first and only ship landed one hundred years ago. The ship, the 'Agnomon', had been launched from a dying planet a millennia before, with five thousand people aboard and all the tools the people of that world thought necessary to begin a new civilisation elsewhere. But they drifted for too long, and time took its toll as equipment intended for nation-building began to degrade and malfunction. The passengers lived a self-contained existence aboard the ship, drifting through space, watching their equipment fail piece by piece, and praying for a habitable planet. Finally, a thousand years after they took their leave of the home planet, they reached Albion, led to it by the incongruously strong gravity field radiating from the planet. Upon inspection the ores were discovered, and the passengers realised their potential - both as trade items should there be any other civilisations nearby, but also as raw material with which to rebuild their machines and their hopes of a nation.
The colony's orginal purpose was to concentrate on rebuilding their machines and mine the ore for this purpose alone. But as the difficulties of repairing such technology became apparent, they began to concentrate more and more on mining and stockpiling the ore, while researching technology in different directions. Thirty years after planetfall, merchant ships discovered the small world. Eager to acquire the rare ores that the citizens of Albion possessed, they set up a 'conveyor belt' of ships, running between Albion and their trading posts, exchanging technology and luxuries for the precious metals.
Today, the original colony has spread out over the planetoid's surface, and there are now four major cities, thirty towns and innumerable smaller outposts, each centred around a mining complex. There are approximately 8 million souls on Albion, although this is a rough count since the newly-created government has not yet undertaken a census. Originally, each small outpost was run by the senior miners and technicians, reporting back to the processing plants in Cuchulainn, the first colony (and now the major city). But as the populace grew and production increased, Albion became less like a mining outpost and more like a world in its own right, with shops, a media and residential areas springing up. For a time there was no real government and people lived their lives as they pleased - the mining committees being more interested in production than people. But as a state of anarchy began to take hold, these committees realised the need to face up to the increasing responsibility they bore, and so ten years ago a government was set up, chosen from within these committees. This government has continued unelected to the present day, but the general populace seem content with it. The nation is run like a company - the populace are perfectly content to work for the government and leave them to thir own devices so long as their standard of living is acceptable. It is in the interests of the government to keep things bearable, since the general population are capable of bringing ore extraction operations to a standstill, removing the only method of making money the government has. However, the government is still mainly concerned with meeting ore extraction targets rather than social reform or quality of life. Material for garments is generally made from waste plastics drawn into thin strands and then woven into a thin, tough cloth, although offworld clothes brought in by merchants are increasingly taking over. The merchant ships arrive every two hundred days to collect extracted ore and trade with the government, and the period before, during and immediately after this arrival is one of great excitement over what the offworlders will bring. The arrival is a tense time, as the merchant ships must time their approach and landing to avoid the flares from Senecas.
The Albions are a stocky, heavily-muscled people, due to several generations of life in 1.75G, and the oxygen-rich atmosphere has allowed rapid development of body and mind. Albions are intelligent and quickwitted, but somewhat lacking in the animal cunning possessed by most nations with any interest in politics - their naivety has been a problem on the few occasion any of them have travelled offworld. They have limited contact with other planets, although they are working to rectify this with a series of ambassadorial missions, the most recent of which has been to Pilon Territory.
The technology onworld is sophisticated but mainly centred around the mining industry, with little innovation in the retail, social or luxury sectors, though this is changing. There has recently been a drive to acquire interplanetary-capable spaceships, aside from the Agnomon, and several have been bought or traded from the merchants. However, most interplanetary travel still depends on being given a ride in a merchant ship, for which the merchants naturally charge exorbitant prices.
Militarily, Albion has no standing army, but weapons carried on the Agnomon to Albion are stored in each outpost and city, and all citizens are given basic military training. Should they ever be given more intensive training and more advanced equipment, the citizens of Albion could constitute a frighteningly effective infanty force, with their 1.75G-adapted bodies and impressive physique. Planetary defences consist of the Agnomon - currently grounded but still launch-capable and equipped with weaponry - and a laser defence system in satellites and ground-based sites, currently used to destroy any new meteorites that enter the system, but able to be turned on invading ships as well.
The world of Albion is a small planetoid in the Senecas IV system approximately 140 light years from the Terran System. The star of this system - Senecas - has been slowly dying for the past million years, and is larger and cooler than Sol of the Terran System. Albion orbits Senecas at a distance roughly equal to that of Mercury from Sol but due to Senecas' relative coolness, the ambient temperature rarely rises above 12 degrees Celsius. Two hundred years before the present, the Senecas IV system passed through an asteroid belt - the remains of a planet destroyed in some interstellar war aeons before. The gravity of Senecas sucked thousands of asteroids into the heart of the star...and because it orbited Senecas so closely, many struck Albion itself. They pulverised the landscape, creating the flat, stony plains that exist today, but they also delivered a precious cargo: ores.
The rare metal ores contained in many of the meteorites were forced into Albion's surface by the impacts, creating a blanket layer of metal ores covering most of the planetoid's surface area. Over the millennia the dust released into the atmosphere by the collisions has settled and compacted, covering the ores in a layer of rock approximately 50 feet deep, dropping to 120 feet in certain areas. The presence of such a large amount of metal ore added considerably to the mass of Albion and thus to its gravitational field - Albion is currently rated as a 1.75G planet (the gravitational field is 75% stronger than that of Earth). This high gravity also means that Albion has a dense atmosphere, made up of oxygen and nitrogen with a lesser amount of hydrogen that was forced into the atmosophere when incoming meteorites boiled water from the planetoid's surface. Archaeological digs by colonists have discovered some evidence of life on Albion prior to the meteorite impacts but what form this life took is unclear, as it appears to have been erased in the first wave of meteorites. As a result there is no native life on Albion today aside from single-celled organisms and bacteria. The geography of Albion is fairly unremarkable - as has been said, the terrain was levelled out by meteorite impacts. The surface of Albion is dotted with shallow pools of water ranging in width from 10 feet to 2 kilometres - these are the remnants of the craters left by the meteorites. There is also a lone sea resting on the equator, known as the Sea of Agnomon after the ship that delivered the first colonists to Albion. It has irregular tides influenced by the two small moons - Conchobor and Labraid - orbiting the planetoid in eccentric orbits, pieces of Albion itself thrown into space by gigantic meteorite impacts. The weather is generally calm and predictable, but the proximity of the planetoid to Senecas means that it is highly vulnerable to solar flares thrown out by the star's death throes. While the surface of the planetoid is largely unaffected, due to the strong magnetic field created by the metal ores, these flares make space flights in the vicinity somewhat risky.
Albion as a colony was only very recently established - the first and only ship landed one hundred years ago. The ship, the 'Agnomon', had been launched from a dying planet a millennia before, with five thousand people aboard and all the tools the people of that world thought necessary to begin a new civilisation elsewhere. But they drifted for too long, and time took its toll as equipment intended for nation-building began to degrade and malfunction. The passengers lived a self-contained existence aboard the ship, drifting through space, watching their equipment fail piece by piece, and praying for a habitable planet. Finally, a thousand years after they took their leave of the home planet, they reached Albion, led to it by the incongruously strong gravity field radiating from the planet. Upon inspection the ores were discovered, and the passengers realised their potential - both as trade items should there be any other civilisations nearby, but also as raw material with which to rebuild their machines and their hopes of a nation.
The colony's orginal purpose was to concentrate on rebuilding their machines and mine the ore for this purpose alone. But as the difficulties of repairing such technology became apparent, they began to concentrate more and more on mining and stockpiling the ore, while researching technology in different directions. Thirty years after planetfall, merchant ships discovered the small world. Eager to acquire the rare ores that the citizens of Albion possessed, they set up a 'conveyor belt' of ships, running between Albion and their trading posts, exchanging technology and luxuries for the precious metals.
Today, the original colony has spread out over the planetoid's surface, and there are now four major cities, thirty towns and innumerable smaller outposts, each centred around a mining complex. There are approximately 8 million souls on Albion, although this is a rough count since the newly-created government has not yet undertaken a census. Originally, each small outpost was run by the senior miners and technicians, reporting back to the processing plants in Cuchulainn, the first colony (and now the major city). But as the populace grew and production increased, Albion became less like a mining outpost and more like a world in its own right, with shops, a media and residential areas springing up. For a time there was no real government and people lived their lives as they pleased - the mining committees being more interested in production than people. But as a state of anarchy began to take hold, these committees realised the need to face up to the increasing responsibility they bore, and so ten years ago a government was set up, chosen from within these committees. This government has continued unelected to the present day, but the general populace seem content with it. The nation is run like a company - the populace are perfectly content to work for the government and leave them to thir own devices so long as their standard of living is acceptable. It is in the interests of the government to keep things bearable, since the general population are capable of bringing ore extraction operations to a standstill, removing the only method of making money the government has. However, the government is still mainly concerned with meeting ore extraction targets rather than social reform or quality of life. Material for garments is generally made from waste plastics drawn into thin strands and then woven into a thin, tough cloth, although offworld clothes brought in by merchants are increasingly taking over. The merchant ships arrive every two hundred days to collect extracted ore and trade with the government, and the period before, during and immediately after this arrival is one of great excitement over what the offworlders will bring. The arrival is a tense time, as the merchant ships must time their approach and landing to avoid the flares from Senecas.
The Albions are a stocky, heavily-muscled people, due to several generations of life in 1.75G, and the oxygen-rich atmosphere has allowed rapid development of body and mind. Albions are intelligent and quickwitted, but somewhat lacking in the animal cunning possessed by most nations with any interest in politics - their naivety has been a problem on the few occasion any of them have travelled offworld. They have limited contact with other planets, although they are working to rectify this with a series of ambassadorial missions, the most recent of which has been to Pilon Territory.
The technology onworld is sophisticated but mainly centred around the mining industry, with little innovation in the retail, social or luxury sectors, though this is changing. There has recently been a drive to acquire interplanetary-capable spaceships, aside from the Agnomon, and several have been bought or traded from the merchants. However, most interplanetary travel still depends on being given a ride in a merchant ship, for which the merchants naturally charge exorbitant prices.
Militarily, Albion has no standing army, but weapons carried on the Agnomon to Albion are stored in each outpost and city, and all citizens are given basic military training. Should they ever be given more intensive training and more advanced equipment, the citizens of Albion could constitute a frighteningly effective infanty force, with their 1.75G-adapted bodies and impressive physique. Planetary defences consist of the Agnomon - currently grounded but still launch-capable and equipped with weaponry - and a laser defence system in satellites and ground-based sites, currently used to destroy any new meteorites that enter the system, but able to be turned on invading ships as well.