E-12 Beta Rhoi

The remnant of an ancient supernova, Beta Rhoi as it is classified is a massive nebulae. Within its heart is a binary central star. It contains a failed planetoid cluster, a failed planetary nebulae turned gas-giant and a protoplanetary nebula formed into a small high density planetoid which follow an unusual figure 8 orbit. It is thought the system once supported a wide variety of different planets due to the composition of the nebulae.

Of particular note the system is well known for being foreboding to travellers as not only are the environments within the system deadly, but the traits prevent rapid travel into and out of the system, with even a fast trip taking nearly a year both directions.

The system itself is named after Rhoi Haka'hn, a famous Lorath military leader known for her innovation and ruthlessness, rumored to have eaten her three children.

E-12 is something of a mystery: Theoretical models suggest the system must have at some point been composed of around 8 to 12 solar masses. Given stars lower than 8 thought to be too small to make a supernovae, ending in a planetary nebulae with a composition differing to E-12 - and that E-12's mass adds up to considerably less than this progenitor star, this inconsistency leaves the big question:

Where did all that mass go?

Radiation assessment suggests E-12 was once a hypergiant and at some point broke down into a twin pulsar system which it is today. Theoretical models suggest it should be a blackhole given the mass of the system but research suggests this is not the first time the system has undergone super-nova. These inconsistencies contradict scientific prediction of the way the progenitor star should have behaved.

Light from the binary stars filters and diffuse through the nebulae, making it blindingly bright in all directions – and yet due to its composition, a large amount of this light is not diffused back. As a result, from the outside, the center of E-12's clockwork is fogged and hidden. Clockwork being the operative word here, the unusual layout of worlds, stars and the neulae itself make E-12 a giant natural dynamo with immense plasma arcs billions of miles long striking objects like FTL engines, common shields and reactor systems making the system a dead end for most modern ships.

The suns trade mass periodically depending on their specific location, earning the nickname “the egg-timer”, usually shifting classification very frequently. Their orbit around one another can be thought of as similar to an electrical motor, making the nebulae electrically volatile.

As a result, Rhoi has a reputation as something of a stellar navigational hazard: Popular culture has attributed various disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraspacial beings. In a YE 32 a, the international bureau of trade identified known spaces 10 most dangerous routes for shipping at which Rhoi came first.

FTL travel within the system or around it is especially difficult due to the intense magnetic disruptions within the nebula, intense lightning strikes of magnitudes dwarfing those of even gas giants attracted to any positive electromagnetic source, meaning anything entering or leaving the system has to be especially built to do so.

Experiments in trying to create a corridor have failed, with the nebulae the channel rubbing hotly together, leaving plasma in its path. Almost all equipment entering or leaving is unmanned.

An additional caveat of the unique traits of the nebula shrouded system is the crippling of travel amid a civilization used to the rapid traversal of the stars. Even the fastest sub-light ships take a year to travel into and out of the system, making interaction with anything inside of it an incredibly expensive affair not only in materials, but also time.

Type: Illipsing Binaries Class: O Radiation Output: High

Type: Gas Giant Size: Super Massive Primary Composition: Mollecular hydrogen, metallic hydrogen, iron, mercury core. Moons: 2 Climate: Super Heated Information: Fury is a gas giant which is inhospitable to live. The upper atmosphere almost constantly rains razor sharp iron allotropes at 2000 kph, horizontally, caused by the electromagnetic behaviors of the core stars. Similar to E8's 5th planet, with additional mass it could have been a third sun. Molecular stability is provided by the mercury/iron ferrofluid core. Visible from orbit are the massive plasma arc discharges which race through the planet's iron clouds in complex geometric patterns periodically, resembling polygons or fish-nets as the nebulae orbit the world in a vast torus.

Colonization: Publically, Fury is far too dangerous to inhabit: Its radiation output alone incredibly hostile to all organic life and its high speed upper atmosphere preventing deep penetration. Privately, Fury is studied by the Lazarus Consortium. Large gas mining vessels are specially outfitted to survive the harsh conditions, diving into its core to harvest magnetic monopoles, a complex electromagnetic phenomena essential for the operation of Lorath aetheric technology. Due to its smaller size and high concentrations of metalloids, it is being considered for a test project to build a mock dyson sphere using procedural nano-construction techniques for research into future prospects.

Type: Planetoid Size: Small Primary Composition: Iron, silica, copper, zinc, tin, iron Atmosphere: Carbon monoxide, nitrogen, helium, hydrogen Moons: 0 Climate: Hot, crushing Information: Incredibly dense, Sheol has oceans of carbon dioxide but no atmosphere of any kind. While too compressed and hot for the existence of conventional life to form, what is thought to be a primative ancestor of structol has been found in the form of an eco-system of crystals and alloys which behave like plants or micillium. There is no colonization.

Colonization: Radiation on Sheol makes it unsuitable for conventional colonization efforts.

Type: Spherical Asteroid cluster Size: Various Primary Composition: Various Atmosphere: Liquid carbon dioxide Moons: 57 Climate: Varied Information: A collection of rocks, joined by a large liquid body of carbon dioxide. Much of Tsaba is volcanically active. Interestingly, it is split into pockets of sulfuric acid, liquid methane and glass with methanesulfonic acid forming at the pocket boundries, with trihydridoboron and its resulting organic compounds occurring naturally.

Colonization: Rhoi 128, a Tsubasa object has been relocated beneath the rain-wall of Fury. Otherwise, none.

Type: Terrestrial (hostile) Primary Composition: Iron, carbon, nitrogen, copper Atmosphere: Oxygen/Nitrogen (breathable) Moons: One Climate: Desert-like: white sand, red irradiated oceans rich in iron and copper solute. Information: Entropy is considered by the Consortium to be something of a mystery. Battered by intermittent storms, Entropy when discovered has an intense electrical interference effect: frying capacitors, warping magnets and destroying complex circuitry. The world is rich in deposits of hydrocarbons, thorium, uranium, sulphur and beneath its surface are vast irradiated primordial oceans. Most interestingly, the contents of these oceans are incredibly hardy, far surpassing tardigrade and the like: surviving high extremes of temperature, radiation, pressure and atmospheric changes and are believed to be a kind of super-primitive ancestor of structol. The world's surface and interior has regions packed with crash-landed scrap of ships which drew too close to Entropy, hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

History: In YE 28, the first visitors to Entropy purely accidental (this effect reaching out to orbiting craft), the crew survived only by burying their craft deep beneath the ground and eventually converting it into a conventional hydrogen/oxygen rocket after four years planetside (kept alive by their bacterial gel packs)– fusion drives, plasma engines, FTL, gravity manipulation and even pocket-dimensional technology equipment useless: acting as antennae that cause the world to lash out and cook the systems with arcs of lightning nearly an AU across through the nebulae due to the unusual relationship it has in orbit with its sun as a kind of massive natural chaotic electromagnet.

During their time on Entropy, the “first visitors” discovered they were not alone: amongst the wreckage, entropy as far as they could tell was a world ruled by horsepower. This came in the form of big beefy thorium salt reactors, used as car engines given that electricity was all but unable to exist: its use calling lightning down from above. What little computing power the world had was buried underground or hidden behind tons of metal shielding, grounded. The people who walked Entropy were cult-like, cut-throat and survivalist: pushed to the brink with religious tales of the worlds they came from - formed of families separated from surrounding nations centuries ago with no way off-world.

The decision was made to write off the world within weeks of escape, crack it and mine it with extreme prejudice as a mercy-killing for those left hind. Glassing its surface, the effect for reasons unknown backfired: the atmosphere baked and washed away exploding, destroying the military vessel which had made the attack. Natural geographical processes replaced what little lost atmosphere there was within weeks. Next, a 50 GT Antimatter payload interstellar cruise missile was fired. The missile's containment failed due to the intense electrical interference, detonating it in the upper atmosphere. Entropy's surface was reduced in mass by 0.0004% by antimatter annihilation creating mile deep chasms. Once more, within a week, Entropy once more had an atmosphere.

This system takes the better part of a year to travel into, and out of. Meaning that any ship that travels to visit a location in this system can not reach its destination and return before an equivalent period has passed. What this means is that travelling to a planet and then leaving to go somewhere else will take just under 2 years OOC at fastest according the present rate of time progression.

To this end it is advised that GMs and players who may wish to visit this system do so with the full knowledge that their characters will be limited to operating within the system for two years.