the new colossus
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To submit a start point for the Vector Null hyper lane and a location for future ORC storylines.
- Image Credit: The Expanse
- Canon: /
- Links: Launch Gate
- Star System Name: Caliban System
- Region: Kathol Rift (Outer Rim Territories)
- Affiliation: Outer Rim Coalition
- Accessibility: All hyperspace travel to the Caliban system is extraordinarily difficult. Located in one of the densest regions of the Rift, until recently its surrounding accretion of dense nebulaic material was so severe that to even attempt to jump through it would most likely be catastrophic for any ship and its crew who attempted to do so. Over thousands of years however the Rift is slowly beginning to break down, and just recently explorers discovered it was possible to reliably survive a turbulent trip from the nearby Kathol system.
- Description: Caliban and its lone habitable world was until recently a lost system, long forgotten in the annals of even the most ancient recorded histories of the Kathol region. Some ancient catastrophe shattered most of the system's planetoids save for a lone unsettled rock that orbits in between the system's twin binary stars. It is known simply as Null, and the moon which in turn orbits it is named after the one occupied structure in the entire system, Farwatch.
SYSTEM INFORMATION
- Size: Medium
- Wealth: Poor. There is no civilization in the Caliban system save for the stranded denizens of Farwatch, and although some of their ancestral relics may fetch a fair price on the antiquities market the Jensaarai sect have no use for systems of material wealth.
- Major Imports: N/A
- Major Exports: N/A
- Unexploited Resources: Common Asteroid Minerals
- Hyperlanes: Vector Null
- Population: Insignificant
- System Traffic: Insignificant
- Demographics: N/A
- Native Species: Unknown
- Immigrated Species:
Humans - Aing-Tii
- Vongforms
- Chazrach
- Silentium
- Abominor
- Exogorth
- Mynocks
- Miscellaneous Unidentified Fauna
SYSTEM FEATURES
Prospero and Sycorax
Originally Caliban Aurek and Besh, like the system's other features the binary stars Prospero and Sycorax were named by the Jensaarai of Farwatch after ancient myths of their order. Their orbital patterns are erratic, most likely a product of whatever solar catastrophe destroyed much of the system.
Null
Null is in essence a death world. With enough marginal atmosphere to allow for a craggy, nearly arctic environment across much of the planet, over thousands of years enough lifeforms have made it through the gauntlet of Vector Null to colonize the surface a dozen times over with highly adaptable and extremely vicious extragalactic fauna.
Farwatch
A mostly barren moon, Farwatch's atmosphere is slightly thicker so in thin bands around its equatorial region life is hard but survivable. Due to its locked orbital pattern with Null the moon suffers from long winters than can last years by the galactic standard. Only when Null passes between Prospero and Sycorax does a brief harvest season begin.
The only known structure on Farwatch is a stone fortress temple constructed by a splinter sect of Jensaarai warriors whose ancestors flew off course in the Rift and crash landed in system centuries ago. Since then their culture has deviated, driven by the belief that they were brought here for a greater purpose, to guard the threshold of the Great Gate.
Asteroid Necropolis
Some extreme cataclysm destroyed every other planetoid in the system, leaving behind a grand debris trail that links together at the edges to become one massive asteroid cluster. Many of the asteroids are also inhabited by exogorths, mynocks, and even more exotic space creatures.
The Great Gate
An ancient Kathol launch gate unlike any previously discovered, the Great Gate's scale is truly massive. Although the gate appears long defunct, erratic energy readings still emanating from within the semi-organic structure would suggest that the construct is not as broken down as it appears.
Aing-Tii Monitor Station
Normally hidden at all times via the White Current, occasionally solar flares from each of the binary stars will interact with the Rift's background radiation, illuminating the Aing-Tii outpost temporarily even on conventional sensors. The Rift's reclusive overlords have been here at least as long as the Jensaarai of Farwatch, but in all that time no one has successfully made contact or breached the station's internal structure.
SECURITY
Rating: Low
Although the Jensaarai settlers believe themselves to be guardians of the system, in truth they have practically zero resources with which they could thwart a determined invasion of of Caliban. With only an outdated shield generator protecting Farwatch and a few sublight only capable attack craft salvaged from the wreck of their colony ship, even their semi-regular cullings of Null are considered extraordinarily dangerous.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Whatever history the Caliban system had is now mostly forgotten. Ruins on the surface of Null hint at the possibility of an ancient precursor species, but if so then any record or other trace of their presence has been eroded by the relentless march of time. The only thing that can be said for certain about Caliban's ancient history is that at some point a system wide catastrophe destroyed all but two planetoids, Null and its orbiting moon Farwatch.
Surrounded by some of the most difficult to navigate space within the dense Kathol Rift, hyperspace travel to Caliban has been all but impossible until quite recently. Coalition explorers discovered a turbulent but stable route from Kathol, making contact for the first time with the only large group to have survived a jump to Caliban before, a splinter sect of Jensaarai that had been stranded on Farwatch for centuries.
To the explorers' surprise however, the Jensaarai refused any overtures toward rescue. Over hundreds of years these knights had come to believe that they were a chosen people, their ancestors' delivered to Caliban so that they could defend the galaxy against whatever lies beyond the massive Kathol launch gate that orbits near the edge of the system.
Long before the Jensaarai came, Aing-Tii researchers also built a cloaked outpost to monitor the gate's activity and conduct research on the greater Rift phenomenon.
