Secret - For referee's eyes only!!!
Habitable Planets: Unnamed (Xagyg X1-2)
| Moons: None | Diameter: 10 204 km |
| Climate Range: Warm equatorial to frigid polar | Length of day: 20 h 1m |
| Atmosphere: 62% N2, 27% O2, 8% Ar, 2% CO2, 1% trace | Average Surface Temperature: 21°C |
| Gravity: 0.89g |
Geology:
59% of Xagyg X1-2 is covered with water. The land is diverse, with large, lush plains, rolling hills, towering mountains, and many rivers and lakes. Vulcanism exists but is not widespread, being confined to plate boundaries and a few hot spots. The planet is rich in minerals, with large deposits of silica, aluminum, uranium, nickel, cobalt, iron, gold, petroleum, and coal.
Climate:
The planet would be called chilly by most Frontiersmen. The tropics are warm but not unbearably hot. Temperate zone summers are warm, and winters are cold to frigid. The (Ant)arctic zones are bitterly cold three quarters of the year. In the summer, the cold temporarily loses its grip and life abounds in the short time of warmer weather. Permanent ice caps vary in size with the seasons.
The weather is a bit wild and unpredictable, with massive storms commonplace.
Life (see also Creatures below):
Most parts of the planet are covered with vegetation, except for the deserts, ice caps, and high mountain peaks. Vast grasslands and forests of towering trees (many over 350 meters) cover much of the temperate zones. Lush, swampy grasslands and dry deserts dominate the tropics, and the polar regions and high mountains are covered with grasses and short, hardy trees.
Animal life is very rich and diverse. The seas are filled with fish from tiny to huge. Many varieties of dangerous, predatory fish exist. Tropical swamps and marshes are populated by fish, reptiles, and small mammals. The largest and most dangerous predators of the swamps are the dragons.
Temperate grasslands are inhabited by large herds of mammalian herbivores, enormous flocks of birds, and various predators. The three main types of plains predators are plains gators, wolves, and raptors.
Forests are home to herbivores of various sizes, from tiny mouselike creatures to large, foliage-eating mammals. The enormous trees are inhabited by gliding mammals and hundreds of varieties of birds, several of which are predatory (although none large enough to be a threat to any creature as large as a person). Predatory mammals include a subspecies of the plains wolves and the large, bear-like selenarctos (a Latin genus for Earth bear).
Polar regions do not have large predators.
History:
The planet was originally settled by the Tetrarchs in PF 10,800, about the same time the rest of their society began collapsing. The colony was founded by thirty thousand environmental and political radicals/idealists determined to find a planet where they could establish a utopian society without being disturbed. They shunned space travel, and within 300 years had forgotten its secrets and technology. Over the same interval, the rest of Tetrarchian society had collapsed in civil war and environmental disaster. Reduced to stone-age technology, the last Tetrarchs died out in FY 9930, except for the colony on Xagyg X1-2.
The Tetrarch colonists by this time had largely forgotten their origins. The early settlers, seeing their old society collapsing, had no good reason for their descendants to have any knowledge of it.
The Tetrarchs survived, though barely, over the next ten thousand years. Starting with only thirty thousand was a shallow gene pool from which to draw (though their situation was not nearly as severe as the Eorna). Genetic disease took its toll, preventing the Tetrarchs from ever truly flourishing. However, by PF 3 they had managed to grow to about fifty million in number, with a dozen or so cities. After the rapid decay of technology from PF 10,500 to PF 9000, they had relearned the sciences, and were actually quite developed in electronics, robotics, and medicine (genetic therapy in particular). Tetrarch art never truly left them, with their painting, sculpture, music, and poetry still closely related to the ancient society. Space travel still eluded them, however. Because the system is surrounded by the Xagyg Dust Nebula, the night sky was totally black; no stars were visible at all. The only celestial objects were the sun, other planets, and the occasional meteor. With no overcrowding problem, and no moon or stars to which they could aspire, there simply was no motivation. War was also largely foreign to them, and their weapons and tactics were quite backward.
Then the Sathar appeared.
The Sathar stumbled across the system in PF 3 while on their way to assault the Truane system. Not wanting to take the time for a ground assault, they launched a vicious nuclear attack on the defenseless Tetrarchs. All the large cities were each hit by several warheads, killing most of the population. The Sathar, satisfied that the Tetrarchs no longer posed a threat, moved on. They intended to come back after the Frontier was conquered. They abandoned their plan after their defeat at Morgaine's World, and would not return to the planet until FY 35.
The remaining Tetrarchs used the time to their advantage. They did not have space travel, but they were far from technologically backward. They used their expertise in gene therapy to minimize the effects of the nuclear attack on the survivors. They dug in, building a new city embedded under 1 km of solid bedrock, safe from any nuclear attack. They relearned what their ancestors had tried so hard to forget; they relearned how to make war.
When the Sathar returned in FY 35 to establish a secret base of operations from which to strike at the Frontier, the Tetrarchs were ready for them. They had devised a ground-based laser system which destroyed most of the Sathar ships before the Sathar even realized what was going on. A few Sathar ships got through, and several hundred Sathar troops made planetfall. They were quickly surrounded and mercilessly destroyed by Tetrarch robots. The Sathar realized too late that the Tetrarchs had constructed a massive network of underground tunnels, allowing them to rapidly respond to any attempted landing within one hundred kilometers of the Tetrarch underground city.
Over the years since then, several more Sathar ships have managed to land and deposit troops on the surface outside the range of the Tetrarch city. They have established a small ground base on the planet in the mountains north of the Tetrarch city. Skirmishes and battles between Sathar troops and Tetrarch robots are commonplace. The Tetrarchs themselves never fight unless cornered, and they seldom venture out onto the surface. The two races have reached a bloody stalemate. The Sathar have greater resources available to them, but the one-two punch of the Tetrarch tunnels and anti-air/spacecraft lasers are holding them off (any vehicle flying within 5000 km of the Tetrarch city stands roughly a 90% chance of being shot down). However, the Tetrarchs know they cannot hold out much longer; they must hope that the Sathar soon lose interest and go home. They cannot imagine that the UPF might assist them; they have no knowledge whatsoever of the UPF, and they still haven't quite figured out where the Sathar came from. However, they can be persuaded to trust anyone who they observe killing Sathar.
In FY 110, two CDC exploration vessels were destroyed by the automated Tetrarch defense system. Only two people survived; they crashed in their lifeboat on the planet.
Food and Water on Xagyg X1-2:
Food and water is always available in forests and grasslands. Any character with Survival or Making Items/Structures can build traps for small animals. There is a 30% chance that any food or water obtained from the planet will contain poison (100% chance in the Poison Grass areas). The poison is detectable with a chemical, flora, or fauna CAS. A food purifier and water filter will make the food edible. Characters lose 10 STA points per day that poison food sustains them.
In barren mountains, food is not available. There is neither food nor water in the desert. Condensing dew at night can provide some water (1d5 liters plus survival skill level). Two liters of water are required per day, or characters lose STA points (5 points per day per liter they are short of water).
PC's need at least 6 hours of sleep every night or they suffer a -1 CS on all actions per hour less than 6.
Weather:
Daily weather probabilities (roll d100 each morning)
1-40, Clear and sunny, 20% chance of evening thunderstorms
41-60, Cloudy, +10 on tomorrow's roll
61-90, Cloudy, scattered showers, 20% chance of thunderstorms, +10 on tomorrow's roll
91-100, Steady rain, 10% flash flood (25% in hills or mountains), 20% chance thunderstorms, +10 on tomorrow's weather roll
Desert only:
1-90, Clear and sunny
91-100 Thunderstorms, 10% flash flood (25% in hills or mountains)
Day 1 is automatically clear and sunny.
On day 6 after the crash landing, a cold front moves through the area, turning the temperature from a chilly 10 C to a cold -5 C. There is automatically a blizzard/steady snow north of the blizzard line, and roll normally for elsewhere. After this occurrence, all thunderstorms are blizzards, and tornadoes and flash floods do not occur. Read "rain" as "snow". Blizzards reduce visibility and hinder movement (hourly movement rates halved, visibility restricted to occupied hex only).
From now on, north of the blizzard line, and everywhere else after a "steady snow" roll, all hourly movement is cut by 30%, and all ranged combat actions have a -1CS on sunny days (unless the character wears sungoggles or the characters are in forest) due to glare from the snow. Once the cold weather starts, characters need to eat hot rations every day, or suffer 4 points of damage per day. They also need to sleep in warm shelter. The characters might come up with improvised warm shelter, but the explorer, the Discovery, and insulated infla-tents qualify as well. Any character sleeping out in the cold night (temperatures drop to around -20 C) suffers 10 points of damage per night.
Also: -1 CS to ranged combat actions in the desert on clear days, unless the character wears sungoggles. Use your good referee's judgment for other effects of snow.
Map Legend