Arsenal

Currently inhabited by 10,000 organics and 45,000 automata, Arsenal is the sole planet within the turbulent Blue Rift area of space, and a rare fixed stronghold for the Freespacer species. In recent years it has come to serve as both a symbol of continuing Deoradh independence, as well as being the new home of the operational and maintenance infrastructure of the star cluster-spanning leyline system.

Since the resident gestalt AI 'Cinereal' and an insular organisation known as the Astral Locksmiths came to power here, it has also become both an intelligence hub and a major center for military coordination. The people and machines of Arsenal do not have a hostile stance towards foreign nations, but being extremely wary of spies and efforts of subterfuge, only Freespacers are permitted to travel freely upon its surface without special permission and direct armed supervision. Since FTL travel is impossible in this area of space, all travel to and from Arsenal must be made through the gateway system only, which is tightly monitored and regulated by these forces.

In civilian matters, it is frequently used as a training ground for newly cloned Freespacers to become accustomed to gravity. This is useful for those travelling to other nations, working aboard foreign ships, preparing for terrestrial military exercises, or those transferring from a fleet with no artificial gravity to one that does use it. The trade hub is somewhat niche in that it lacks either the clout or variety of free market trade goods, but is sizable enough to give most isolated spacers all they need to survive.

• Rock Planet
• Gravity 16.68 m/s² (1.71 x earth)

A captured rogue planet which, due a significant degree of luck and its high mass, had not yet been torn apart permanently by the rift. It has no actual orbit orbital radius or period since it is locked in place by an array of anchoring satellites and rift generators. There is also no sun, although lighting systems are located in most habitable areas. No significant atmosphere.

This planet also has a rather large debris field as a result of waste from the massive construction effort as well as the anchoring satellites pulling in nearby stray objects.

As of YE 38, vast sprawling gate systems continue to pour in resources from mining vessels outside the rift daily, and the grey cratered surface has increasingly become a vast network of machine megacities and interconnected pipelines hundreds of kilometers long.

Plans are in motion to cover the entire surface with such a network of structures, but their completion is still some decades away.

The relative protection offered by the surrounding spacial distortions lead to it being heavily colonized during the Freespacer refugee crisis. During this period, it was largely controlled by the Independent Worlds League, and was named ‘Arsenal’ after the massive continent-sized ‘Arsenal Hypermanufactory’ which was constructed to support their war efforts.

An overall effort to make peace with the Yamatai Star Empire lead to the the IWL slowly loosing support and funding, however, which eventually caused them to degenerate back into their consistent mercenary groups and piratical organisations. Regardless of this, some factions within the splintered Free State continued to have conniptions about their lack of security, and the price of handing all of their technological secrets over to the Democratic Imperium Of Nepleslia on a silver platter as part of their pact of allegiance.

The Astral Locksmith’s status as what some would call a de-facto police, as well as the concept of Freespacers even settling down in any one location, continues to make the fortress-planet a political minefield to this day.

Primitive Polygon created this article on 2016/05/23 15:19…

But it also uses a few small snippets of information from an uncredited pre-2015 article.