User:Niennab/Sandbox

The harsh system of Burzsia is located in the Weeping Stars region of the Alliance Neutral Zone and contains the brutal, tidally locked world of Burzsia I and an asteroid belt colloquially known as Burzsia II, also known as the Obsidian Belt. The system, a red dwarf star, is dense with precious minerals and heavy metals, and serves as a resource hub of Hephaestus Industries.

History

Prior to Hephaestus Industries purchasing the system, it was known the rest of the galaxy as a ship graveyard and dumping area, due to the asteroid belt being too dense for safe travel. Within that time, small numbers of Alliance and Coalition settlers began utilizing the scrapyards and mineral abundance in the asteroid belt to establish a fledgling colony.

Ownership of the system was purchased by Hepheastus in 2411 CE for a pittance, dabbling into small mining operations as well as employing the local off-worlder population in exchange for providing supplies to continue their way of life in an agreement known as the Accord of Burzsia. Starting in 2446 CE, thanks to advancements in various different fields, the company’s investment in the system increased exponentially, rapidly increasing the size and scale of its many mining operations.

Today, the Burzsia System exists as an ambitious project, testament to Hephaestus' industrial might, with large scale mining operations all over the system as well as plans to turn Burzsia I into an energy and production supercenter.

Environment

The conditions on Burzsia I are completely inhospitable to organic life, being composed of 64% ammonia, 28% Co2, 6% N2O, and 2% other gasses. The average surface pressure is 13,000kPa (128 times that of Earth), and being tidally locked, contains a bright and dark side. The side facing the star averages around 820 kelvin (546C), whilst the dark side averages at 160 kelvin (-113C); The intermediate sections of the planet average at 520 kelvin (247C).

The planet’s surface is covered in geological activity and is stained with red, blue, and grey from metallic compounds and oxides. It remains very active, with volcanos constantly spewing alongside bubbling pools of metal not dissimilar to Venus. The dark side of the planet is covered in ammonia as a result of these emissions being dispersed as rain and snow.

The sun-facing part of the planet features a blindingly white opaque atmosphere while the cold side is perpetually overcast, with never-ending electrical storms being visible. The intermediate zones are a brilliant red color. When viewed from space, the entire planet is a solid, milky white color.

To outside observers, the constant wind, radiation, and lightning storms have earned the planet the moniker of “The Tesla Ball of Burzsia”.

Burzsia II is a typical asteroid belt interspaced with ancient scrap and shipwrecks. Danger is constant owing to the dense accretion of debris and rocks, as well as microscopic shards of metal from constant impacts of wreckage. Navigation is dangerous, requiring the assistance of an AI as well as shielding to survive the journey. The same dangers have rendered it incredibly valuable as the asteroid belt contains both precious metals and ancient, and at times, still functional technology.

Life on Xanu Prime

Populated areas of Xanu Prime are recognizable by tremendously large walls, sometimes towering over a hundred meters in height and casting a great shadow across large portions of the cities they surround. Few actual rural areas exist, and much of the population is semi-densely packed into metropolitan areas. The clashing aesthetic of towering, inactive war engines and serene cityscapes fill Xanu’s urban scenery. On the ground, things resemble sprawling markets, filling the crowded streets with pedestrians of all origins doing business at ease. Skyscrapers and buildings are usually new constructions, but still fill out a good portion of the city view.

Living conditions on Xanu Prime are quite high quality for a Coalition world, due to its central nature to the colonies that rely on it. The common Xanusii finds themselves making their daily commute on foot, with residences and workplaces generally condensed into short walking distance universally across cities. This permits almost total free airspace above cities seeing as hovermotive traffic is nonexistent. Aircraft and space-faring vessels dot the sky and loom mere hundreds of meters over the city streets, as the prime spaceports are integrated into lower space elevator complexes that utilize mag-lift technology to support extreme weight loads.

Robotics and salvaging is a booming industry on Xanu Prime due to the sheer amount of leftover materials from the Interstellar War. Many robots used on the planet date back to the war itself and even before, their chassis found and repurposed over time. Other, monumentally large robots and abandoned vehicles lay inactive and litter the open fields across the planet’s surface.

The Xanusean Underbelly

Beneath the surface of the sprawling cities lay the Xanusean Underbelly, a labyrinthian maze of wartime bunkers, hideouts, safehouses and built-over fortresses or military installations that now serve as the foundation for the very streets the common Xanusii treads upon. The overall layout of the Underbelly has long since been lost to the test of time, due to cave-ins and unmarked construction, thus turning it into a rather dangerous place. Some marked and charted areas of the Underbelly are utilized as storage facilities.

Environment

The environment of Xanu Prime is projected to be irreversibly damaged by the Siege. However, much to its population’s surprise, life found a way and to this day many of the animals first brought on the original colony ships have survived to this day. The once-wastelands have regrown their grass, though the planet is remarkable in that there is little to no tree coverage anywhere. With no canopy to hide under or forest to reside within, birds of prey and scavengers flourish most. Larger beasts peacefully graze on the endless plains with little to no natural predators. After the Siege, much of the landscape of Xanu Prime was altered, and where there were once mountains now reside gargantuan craters. These craters often interfere with one another geographically forming deep valleys.

Many of the shallower valleys are safe to travel through without atmospheric protection, however deeper valleys and craters still contain clouds or trace signatures of the same atmospheric weaponry used during the Siege. This often presents itself in long-standing, highly poisonous fog completely and utterly covering the deepest points of many craters for kilometers at a time. Thousands of craters are similar to this, and efforts have been made to siphon out the poisonous gas to little avail for the monumental task. Within this “death fog” are many species immune to it, some having taken advantage of the low visibility such as large carnivorous insects waiting for prey to wander in.

The seas and rivers of Xanu are among the most remarkable features of the planet. Due to specialized means of filtrating and curing the seas post-war, the totality of its water sources have taken on an incredibly bright, glowing cyan shimmer. In darkness, these shine a brilliant blue, illuminating the horizon wherever water may lie. From orbit, the “veins” of the planet can be seen through the huge rivers flowing across its landmass.

The swift recovery of Xanu’s biosphere is pinned on a major contract signed to Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals and Hephaestus Industries to incite a massive terraforming shift and upkeep countermeasures to the fallout of the weapons used during the war. Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals has, since 2301, continued to stabilize the biosphere for a sixty-trillion credit contract being paid off to this day. Hephaestus Industries works on upkeeping countermeasure machinery, used to scrub the soil of residual radiation and toxic materials leftover.

Population and Major Locations

Population : 13,650,000,000+

Argia sa Mar

The center of the Coalition’s power, Argia sa Mar is a bustling metropolis that consumes most of the open non-memorial territory on Xanu Prime with full walls surrounding it. Built at the base of the southern hemisphere’s “Defiance” space elevator, the city grows in density and height as one looks closer to the center. Freighters pass over the urban landscape, landing and departing, descending and raising from the base of the elevator’s grav lifts routinely. These move in large lines before moving elsewhere within the planet’s atmosphere, or back into orbit. Skyscrapers and buildings protruding from the landscape spread out across these airspace lanes, giving a wonderful view of passing ships up close on the upper stories.

Argia sa Mar’s inner cityscape would seem normal from an aerial view, but the interior tells a different story, with its architecture seemingly upside down. To provide more space for the tradeways inside the city, the skyscrapers are built like flipped pyramids with pillars interconnecting for support. This upper “canopy” of the city casts the trading posts below in darkness for most of the day, and during the night the sky turns a deep blue because of the ocean’s presence just outside the city.

Kuenoi

In the northern hemisphere of Xanu Prime is Kuenoi, the secondary city of importance on the planet. This is a much smaller city than Argia sa Mar, though megacorporate presence dominates it with an iron fist. All megacorporations, excluding Einstein Engines possess points of interest in Kuenoi, mostly headquarters for operations in the Coalition as a whole. Kuenoi is known for being built inside of a large impact crater from the war, and remains isolated from any sort of negative weather effects due to the large ridges of the crater. This, unfortunately, makes the surrounding land quite arid and barren of any life outside of its walls. NanoTrasen dominates the scene in Kuenoi completely, owning more property in the city than their rivals combined.

Xansan

Xansan is the fabled victim of the Siege of Xansan, a horrible battle which ultimately ended in its own favor due to the strategic location of the city. Built along the opposing side of a rushing river whose flow was controlled by a Coalition-held dam for the duration of the war, Xansan managed to sustain its own source of power through the conflict and repel the attackers by controlling the ebb of the river that separated them and the Solarians. Shields protected the dam from artillery fire, but little could be done to protect the city itself which was reduced to rubble in its entirety in defense of the capital, Argia sa Mar.

In modern times, Xansan has been partly rebuilt and the turbines within the dam spin to this day.

Greentree

Yearly, the totality (or at least, those who can show up) of the Coalition’s active representatives reach to one another on the artificial island of Greentree in the Freedom’s Deep. This is a sparsely populated and rather small island, its population never exceeding the thousand or so groundskeepers, maintainers and garrisoned troops. This changes when the annual Summit is called, of which the representative of Xanu Prime - Chief Reilly Sianne - decides when and how this occurs. Traditionally, this occurs on the first of May each year, though Sianne has been known to have erratic schedules.