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Pactolus & Midaion

Pactolus System

Sector: Arusha

Capital: Eurydice

Species: Vast Majority IPCs

Common Languages: EAL, TCB, Tradeband

Demonyms: Pactolan, Midaian

Part of: The Golden Deep

Pactolus is the capital world of the Golden Deep, located in a shallow section of the Arusha sector. Midaion is the sole large satellite of the same planet, and has served as the primary trading hub of the collective almost since its founding, hosting many more ships while maintaining a smaller population than its planet. Combined, their system comprises the sole corner of the Orion Spur populated almost exclusively by synthetics. Humans are a transitory minority in the social and economic complex emerging from these worlds, administered by a radically capitalistic collective of merchants eager for rapid, and reckless, economic growth.

Both bodies exist under a star estimated to be of nearly 13 billion years of age. It is a (relatively) small red giant, having ballooned to 13 times the size of Sol and being close to 400 times as luminous billions of years in the distant past. It is theorised that Pactolus was once much closer to its star and also much colder, having been flung rapidly outwards into a far more distant orbit by its expansion which happened by good fortune to be within the young giant's new habitable zone.

Unlike Midaion, Pactolus has only been subject to colonisation in very recent history; this is owed to its strong gravity well rendering it less appealing for spaceborne commerce, and to the severe affliction of Kessler syndrome in the planet's close orbit. While less desirable commercially, the quasi-habitable environment and the relative abundance of rare materials including gold, silver, and lithium has earned it a clear economic niche as of the founding of the city of Eurydice. Both bodies collectively comprise the substrate of a rapidly developing culture of self-determinist synthetics, wholly weaned from humanity for the first time in history.

Midaion, Trade Satellite

A relatively small, craggy moon comprised primarily of nickel and iron, Midaion's most prominent claim to fame is as the Golden Deep's first and primary anchorage, still eclipsing Pactolus handily in tonnages of exported and imported goods even to the present day. It is a rock dedicated wholly and completely to the glories of capital; gilded halls stretch endlessly in all cardinal directions as throngs of owned workers shift cargo to and from the docks. Almost no corner of the moon's several installations is free from the distant groaning of advertisement and promotion - even sitting upon a bench necessitates paying a small fee to a slot in its armrest.

This is the home of the Golden Deep's enterprise. It is not an exercise in nation-building, or in community, or in civil commitment. It is a monument to the wonders of commerce, to the affluence of its creators, to the certain success of their future endeavours, and to the transcendental truths in the Universal Constants of Selfish Reciprocity. It is a machine that serves the interests of the merchant-class, hosting a vanishingly small number of Thesians; its population is almost entirely the property of the merchants whose vessels dart to-and-fro around the moon. It is home to the rampantly ambitious and the utterly resigned.

Serving also as the primary berth of the Midas, the administrative capital of the Golden Deep, Midaion at any time tends to host the most wealthy of mercantile society. It is where agreements are negotiated, where contracts are finalised, and where valuable goods are held during movement. As a result of this, it hosts far more wealth, and wealth inequality, than the more proletarian and free population of Pactolus. According to a Pactolan, Midaians are self-absorbed vampires who erroneously conflate wealth for character. According to a Midaian, Pactolans are anti-entrepreneurial tyrants embittered by their own inferior fortunes.

Environment & Landmarks

Midaion is a little smaller than Luna, although it orbits its planet much closer. It has essentially no atmosphere, and its surface is dotted with innumerable impact sites, particularly on the side tidally locked to Pactolus, presumably owed to the same event that threw so much debris into its orbit. It contains scarce minerals.

Most remarkable of Midaion is, rather than any natural formation, how it has been developed. The Great Anchorage is a work of immense scale, taking up the majority of the planet-facing side of the planet; it is a system of baroquely designed docks and hangars capable of accommodating a few thousand ships at a time, all built around the gratuitously vast berth carved into the crust of the planet itself for the sole occupation by the GDMV Midas. Its interior is a vast commercial centre, featuring retailers for food and drinks and overloaders and antiques, offices for renting, repair stations, luxury suites - all wrapped finely in the gilded veneer of an exquisite, opulent façade. Its custodial department alone numbers as many as a small town, all to ensure that not a single inch of the installation is ever anything but flawless. At the height of its most central and grandiose hallway is a bronze statue of the mythological King Midas, his hand lowered to an ornamental fountain sculpted of solid gold.

Behind and below its ostentatious veneer, however, are thousands of janitors, engineers, maintenance technicians, plumbers, and electricians who work to maintain the vast installation throughout its industrial lower levels. Most menial workers in the Great Anchorage are owned by one of the many merchants that invest in it, each counting their days down diligently until their promised freedom. While work there is prestigious, self-owned Thesians usually lack the networking to receive a posting.

System History

The Pactolus system holds essentially two histories; the first features the efforts of the Hegemonic Alliance throughout the span of the 23rd century, and the second sees the system developed again virtually from scratch by the Golden Deep, a collective of synthetic merchants, in the mid-25th century. Strange, unexplained phenomena surround the system, either as a matter of correlation or coincidence.

Human Colonisation and Exodus - 2221 - 2287

Make big rocks.

Settlement by the Golden Deep - 2450 - 2465

Make big rocks.

Influence of the Kessvalankan - 2466 - present

Make big rocks.

Pactolus, Capital World

The fourth planet from the star of the Pactolus system, Pactolus is a semi-habitable world orbiting a red star. It is smaller than Earth, having around two-thirds its diameter and the same proportion of its gravity. While its atmosphere is breathable for short periods, being composed of 13% oxygen, 56% argon and 36% nitrogen at 89kPa, internals are necessary for long or strenuous exposure in the surface atmosphere. This atmospheric toxicity has been lately worsened by the growing concentrations of carbons dioxide and monoxide in the atmosphere. Thick raincoats and waterproof ponchos are common to see among both humans and synthetics travelling outdoors on account of the dangerously low pH of the planet's rainfall, and all humans are advised to stay on internals whenever outside a sealed environment.

Its dubious habitability marks a small concern for the majority of its population, which are synthetics from across all walks of life; these are affluent merchants and the most destitute of runaways, formerly free souls that have sold themselves to save themselves, and the dispossessed, and the possessors. Most of this population is concentrated in the city of Eurydice, a rapidly growing metropolis built atop one of the few permanently dry landmasses on the planet, although the surface is increasingly dotted with colonial outposts and mining stations as the population eagerly sets out to exploit the planet's long-untapped resources. Despite this rapid growth and development, however, the planet remains remote, relatively undeveloped, and host to a small population in comparison to major worlds such as Konyang.

Famously, Pactolus is shrouded by an immensely thick debris field composed primarily of iron and nickel meteoroids between the sizes of a grain of sand and a small car. This has historically made entry and exit from its gravity well almost impossible. Earlier human attempts to colonise the planet featured custom-built heavy-duty shuttles designed to shrug off impacts without harming the crew; more recently, the Golden Deep has successfully utilised the 'Draupnir' system of low-orbit satellites armed with advanced electromagnets to force open holes in the field, relying on the ferromagnetic metals in the field to dilate open a narrow path for minutes or even hours.

Only one path exists, which is maintained intermittently above the city of Eurydice. Reaching the surface of the planet must otherwise involve severely risking one's shuttle and crew by attempting to barrel through the debris field, or negotiating with the mercantile authorities to utilise Draupnir - which usually involves a moderate fee.

Environment

Pactolus is dominated by its ocean; a usual average of 85% of its surface is covered in grey, acidic brine at a usual depth of less than 70m, composed primarily of water and ammonia and salty to the point of complete saturation. Large salt deposits dot the surface. There is almost no permanent land anywhere; while there are many low-lying landmasses, inclusive of sandy atolls and stromatolite formations, almost all of them are submerged at some time of the week due to the planet's immense tides. Midaion's extremely close proximity and its weekly orbit results in a planet in which the tides may subside as much as 60 to 80 metres, before the ocean comes flooding back in within the same week. This is made worse by the erratic orbit of Midaion; not only is the map constantly changing, but it is also changing in a new way every time as old causeways disappear and new landmasses emerge from the tides, making exploration difficult and rendering all long-term colonisation of tidal areas nearly impossible.

All of the few dozen landmasses that are at a sufficient altitude to avoid these monumental tides are volcanoes or giant stromatolites. Pactolus is highly geologically active, boasting a large number of geothermal springs on the surface and underwater (or both!) in addition to several large volcanoes dotted across the surface, many of which are still active. These volcanoes serve as critical anchors when traversing the surface, providing a consistent reference point for travel throughout the ever-changing tidal landscape. Most permanent outposts are, for this reason, built on the slopes of volcanoes.

The planet's topography is composed of many hills and crags giving way occasionally to large flat stretches of dense, black sand. Rivers and streams are commonplace but are usually both small and temporary, being substantially rerouted or entirely destroyed by movements of the tides. Many rivers and streams originate from hot springs exposed intermittently to the surface, which feed to rock pools.

While traditional human weeks are still used on Pactolus, each week lasts 2⅓ local days as a consequence of every such day lasting 72 hours. This means long days and long nights, often resulting in dangerous recovery operations as travellers on the surface misgauge their position and find the tide coming in at dusk. Surface temperatures at the equator average -5 to 10°C, and reach as low as -25°C at the poles, although there is rarely any surface ice owed to the saltiness of the surface water. Weather on the planet is damp and perpetually overcast - if not by clouds, then by the debris field above diffusing the red sunlight to a uniform haze. Storms are common, and at even low wind speeds are treated with serious gravity by the mercantile authorities due to the exacerbated hazard of the rainwater's acidity.

Geology & Minerals

While rich in a large variety of relatively valuable elements and compounds, inclusive of silver, gold, lithium, and cobalt, the radical tidal environment of Pactolus makes these difficult to extract. Small deposits can be easily sifted through the grey sand of the planet, which glistens with tiny flecks of highly reflective metals across the surface. This has prompted several mercantile conglomerates to operate 'Sifters' - tracked vehicles which roll across the surface behind the tides to collect material from the sand and till it in its wake. Permanent quarries are forced to operate very dynamically; mining companies are forced to maintain inscrutable networks of many small quarries, each of which their workers will migrate between as they are taken and released by the tides. Advanced drainage systems must be incorporated into these tidal quarries to ensure that they are not a saltwater lake by the time the workers return to them, often incorporating high-power pumps feeding to nearby reservoirs to achieve this. On account of the difficult lifestyle implied by this erratic quarry-hopping, and because of the dangers involved in chasing the tides, self-owned sifters and quarriers are among the most lucratively paid menial workers on the planet.

Biosphere

Unicellular Life

Photosynthetic Pactolamorphs - Giant Stromatolites

Make big rocks.

Chemosynthetic Pactolamorphs - 'Lily-of-the-Valley'

Make big rocks.

Multicellular Life

Ambulatory Segmented Multicellular Pactolamorphs - Tidal Rockworms

Make big rocks.

Sedentary Multicellular Pactolamorphs - Rock Sponges & Slime Molds

Make big rocks.