miner miracle
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: Flesh out the lore and history of Irvulix V and provide context for roleplaying
- Image Credit: Terraform Studios [x] - Edited by me
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: The Irvulix System, Andromeda Demir, Antares Demir
- Planet Name: Irvulix V
- Demonym: Irvulixi
- Region: Outer Rim Territories
- System Name: Irvulix
- System Features: Seven planets orbit Irvulix Prime, the sun in the Irvulix system. Irvulix V and Irvulix VI are the only planets with a survivable atmosphere. The first three planets in the system are so close to the sun that they have been baked and blasted beyond habitability. Irvulix IV is a gaseous planet without a breathable atmosphere or solid land for settlement. Irvulix VII is in an unstable orbit that gives it extreme temperatures depending on its proximity to Irvulix Prime. There are no notable asteroid belts or other features, other than a satellite in orbit around Irvulix V and various uninhabitable moons orbiting Irvulix II, Irvulix IV, and Irvulix V.
- Location: The hex directly south of Daxam IV's hex.
- Major Imports: N/A - the planet does not currently participate in trade
- Major Exports: N/A - the planet does not currently participate in trade
- Unexploited Resources: N/A
- Gravity: Standard
- Climate: Temperate
- Primary Terrain: Mostly rocky, with some patches of grasslands
- Atmosphere: Type II
- Capital City: The City
- Planetary Features:
- Villages: The planet is sparsely populated, with the vast majority of its inhabitants living in small rural villages dotted around communal farms, mines, forests, or other resources that the villagers work.
- The City: Irvulix's one major urban center, called simply The City, serves as the ceremonial and official capital, although most of the ruling elite live in fortified estates outside, but nearby, The City. A small professional caste of bureaucrats resides in the government district of The City.
- The Blight: Roughly sixty percent of Irvulix V's surface is covered by a cloud of sooty, toxic air resulting from the cataclysm caused by the simultaneous eruption of the planet's volcanoes two centuries ago. It is unsafe to be within the Blight, although the pollution caused by it is present across the planet to varying degrees.
- Major Locations: The City - Irvulix V's ceremonial and official capital, the city has fallen into disrepair.
POPULATION
- Native Species: Humans
- Immigrated Species: N/A
- Population: Sparse
- Demographics: 100% Humans.
- Primary Languages: Irvulixi Basic
- Culture: Life is hard on Irvulix if one has not been born into the handful of families that rule the planet with an iron fist. Most people live and die in the same village, doing the same thing their parents did. Professions vary, but all share in the hardscrabble nature of life on this rocky, bleak world. Harried by polluted rains and blighted crops and oppressed by their rulers, the peasantry of Irvulix tend to live lives that are brutish and short, crushed beneath heavy production quotas and harsh reprisals should those quotas be missed. Most of the population of Irvulix V are completely unaware of the existence of civilization outside their planet and of the means and methods of finding it. The oligarchy that rules Irvulix V keeps its population ignorant and isolated, reserving the rare right of space travel and advanced technology, discovered only a few decades ago, for themselves. There is no time for art or culture or sport except for the oligarchs and the few bureaucrats who implement their will, and even that is limited. There is no profit in frivolous pursuits like music or literature, and therefore there is no time for it, not when quotas must be met.
- Government: Feudal Oligarchy
- Affiliation: The City - the collective label for the oligarchs that rule Irvulix V
- Wealth: Poor - as an isolated world, Irvulix V cannot participate in galactic trade, and most of what is produced by the populace is hoarded by the ruling elites.
- Stability: Medium - Although The City keeps the people of Irvulix V ignorant, poor, and exhausted by work, lifetimes of tragedy and toil has taken its toll, and a small but fiery group are plotting drastic action in the wake of failed petitions for reform. Irvulix V could be accurately described as a powder keg, waiting for a spark.
- Freedom & Oppression: The peasants of Irvulix V have limited freedom. The City demands is quotas and is capable of dispatching armed forces to enforce them, but it is the bleak and blighted atmosphere of the plane that really keeps its people in line. Troublemakers and shirkers are often exiled to the Blight, not by The CIty but by village leadership, for fear of collective punishment. The City blames those 'cursed' -- in other words, Force-sensitive individuals -- for the cataclysm that led to the Blight and, as a consequence, The City mandates the immediate execution of anyone found to manifest Force sensitivity. The occurrence of Force-sensitive individuals on the planet is exceedingly rare, but there exists a network of village elders who have contact with the outside galaxy to smuggle these individuals off-world whenever possible. Movement on the planet is not controlled, per se, although heavy quotas imposed by The City function as a curfew, such that very few people travel beyond the nearest neighboring villages and usually it's for purposes of trading.
- Military: There is no interstellar (in other words, spacefaring) defensive capabilities, but there is a minor military presence on Irvulix V that reports to the oligarchy that rules from The City. This military is used to impose order, quell unrest, and enforce quotas. In addition to wheeled and treaded vehicles like automobiles and tanks, the military have access to repulsorlift vehicles (like landspeeders) and rudimentary flight (like airspeeders).
- Technology: Well below Galactic Standard (lower-tech computers, landspeeders, air speeders, and droids)
The history of Irvulix V has been lost to the ravages of time. The planet was initially settled as a penal colony from a planet in another system. Although this was not the most auspicious of starts for a settlement, it turned out to be lucky when the mother planet succumbed to the plague. When the transports stopped coming, the isolated penal colonists became even more isolated. Eventually, it had been so long since starships had been seen that their existence was lost to living memory. Legends persist on Irvulix V of large flying creatures that brought their ancestors to the planet from the heavens, but these days this is more of a quasi-religious creation myth remembered by few and believed by none.
Life on the penal colony was difficult and it became much more difficulty when the transports stopped. Without fresh supplies, the colonists had to make do with what could be created and grown on the rocky and unforgiving surface of Irvulix V. The hardship resulted in shortages and short tempers that culminated in a violent rebellion against the governor and guards, which was ruthlessly suppressed. This power-imbalance from time immemorial has evolved naturally into the oligarchy and peasantry existing on Irvulix V today.
More than two centuries before present day, the simultaneous eruption of all the volcanoes on the planet caused an ecological cataclysm that wreaked havoc on the planet. Life on the difficult planet became even more burdensome as the pollution that vented into the air and land and waters caused massive disruption. Crops failed and thousands died. The sheer volume of pollutants in the ecosystem overwhelmed the planet's ability to regulate air quality due to the devastation of what little old-growth forests existed on Irvulix V to recycle and cleanse the air. Thus, the pollutants remained in the air, called the Blight in the massive swaths of air so toxic that the people of Irvulix V can no longer reside there. The oligarchs who ruled the planet blamed the crisis on a family of rebellious guards who were Force-sensitive, slaughtering them publicly in The City and decreeing that any who showed a similar talent -- "the curse," they called it -- would suffer the same fate.
Things changed a little when, a few decades before current day, the Irvulix System was surveyed. Although nothing valuable was found, and in fact due to the ongoing ecological disaster neither was the population of Irvulix V noted, the system became a bolt-hole for a smuggler crew. Imagine their surprise when they discovered people living on the surface of Irvulix V. They struck a deal with the ruling oligarchs to provide transportation off the planet and to bring luxury goods from off-world. One smuggler who happened to hear about the executions of several Force-sensitive young people was so appalled by the practice that he cultivated a friendship with peasant village leaders to smuggle future Force-sensitives off-world by hijacking a signal to Irvulix V's sole satellite to summon them. The smuggler offered to bring larger groups off the planet, but fear of being caught and the reprisals that would surely follow prevented them taking the smuggler up on his offer, reasoning that individual disappearances could be explained away by accidents, mocked-up graves, and a shroud of secrecy, where large groups of people disappearing would be much more suspicious.
These relationships continued, with the smugglers over the decades being able to rescue almost two dozen Force-sensitive people from certain death.
In recent months, following the failure of petitions to the oligarchs to reform working conditions, armed skirmishes have broken out. These flare-ups have not been uncommon over Irvulix V's history, but these recent attacks seem more coordinated and targeted. Those in the know are aware that disparate rebel groups have come under the leadership of a young man driven mad with grief at the death of two of his siblings in mining accidents -- an older brother years ago, and a younger sister just recently. There is a reckoning coming, now, that has the capacity to shake the society on Irvulix to its very foundations.
