Penelope's Star
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Up to date for latest version, 0.97a.
Penelope's Star is a large, uninhabited system in the Core Worlds; it was apparently in the process of being developed by the Domain prior to the Collapse. The planetary conditions of its worlds are procedurally generated according to their respective planet types. It is claimed by the Luddic Church.
Penelope's Star, Red Giant
| A low-to-medium mass star in a late phase of stellar evolution, a red giant has exhausted the supply of hydrogen in its core and switched to hydrogen fusion a shell around the now helium core instead. While the star itself is huge, the outer envelope has a lower temperature, giving the star its characteristic hue. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
- Center of the Penelope's Star System
Asteroid Belt I
- Orbits Penelope's Star
Thrinakia (Penelope's Star I), Volcanic World
| A geologically unstable planet without a permanently formed crust. Glowing fissures and active volcanoes litter the surface, the magma they spew forth combining to form flows that travel hundreds of kilometers across the charred surface. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
- Orbits Penelope's Star
- Commonly houses Rich/Ultrarich deposits of ore and transplutonics (Unconfirmed)
Ithaca (Penelope's Star II), Desert World
| An old, dry world with little magnetic field to speak of, Ithaca was nonetheless judged a good candidate by the Eridani-Utopia Terraforming Corporation. Quiet for billions of years, Penelope's Star became a hive of activity to fuel the transformation of Ithaca and its sibling world Ogygia, only to be thrown into complete chaos by the Collapse. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
| A surface scan reveals a smattering of temporary emplacements, presumably planetology labs, geological survey sites, and a few strip mines. Tiny robotic weather stations occasionally emit a feeble, useless radio blip; the instruments have been degraded to uselessness by dust storms. | ||
–Secondary Description | ||
- Orbits Penelope's Star
- Notable as being the only guaranteed and uncolonized habitable world in the core worlds.
Ogygia (Penelope's Star III), Barren-Bombarded World
| A smallish, barren world whose surface bears the mark of a truly catastrophic and relatively recent impact event, Ogygia was nonetheless considered a worthwhile secondary terraforming candidate due to the system-wide infrastructure being assembled for its sibling-world of Ithaca. The Collapse put an end to these plans. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
| A major impact event has left much of an entire hemisphere of Ogygia a cold lava-sea sunken some tens of kilometers below the mean elevation. Little remains of human visitation except stripped foundations and, oddly, half of a rad-hot Onslaught-class battleship hull at the bottom of a fracture-canyon. | ||
–Secondary Description | ||
- Orbits Penelope's Star
Calypso (Penelope's Star III-A), Barren Bombarded World
| A lifeless rocky world, the battered surface tells an aeons-long story of intermittent meteor bombardment. What atmosphere there is clings to the scarred crust in near-vacuum. There is no significant magnetic field or tectonic activity. Deep regolith prevails, crossed by lava channels and spotted by ancient seas formed by especially large impacts. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
- Orbits Ogygia
Penelope's Inner Jump-point
- Orbits Penelope's Star as Ogygia's L4 trojan
Aeolus (Penelope's Star IV), Gas Giant
| Primarily composed of hydrogen and helium gasses. The temperature and pressure at the core are extreme, but not enough to sustain the deuterium fusion that would turn the planet into a brown dwarf star. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
- Orbits Penelope's Star
Dorus (Penelope's Star IV-A), Barren World
| Radiation from the nearby star ravages the surface of this world due to the lack of an atmospheric ozone layer. No significant geological activity. No indigenous lifeforms. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
- Orbits Aeolus
Xuthus (Penelope's Star IV-B), Toxic World
| A frozen world enveloped by a thick nitrogen smog dappled with ethane and methane clouds. The surface is formed of eroded water-ice, wind-swept dunes of organic compounds, and hydrocarbon seas. Liquid water erupts bubbling with methane from cryovolcanos driven by tidal heating and decaying radioactive elements deep within the mantle. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
- Orbits Aeolus
Telepylus (Penelope's Star V), Gas Giant
| Primarily composed of hydrogen and helium gasses. The temperature and pressure at the core are extreme, but not enough to sustain the deuterium fusion that would turn the planet into a brown dwarf star. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
- Orbits Penelope's Star
Telepylus Station (Derelict Sporeship Station)
| A vast orbital station built around the core of an old Expansion-era Sporeship buried under a forest of modular hangars, industrial pods, and hab rings. This station was once the staging area for asteroid-tenders and mobile refineries trawling the outer system. It is now completely dead. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
| The primary reactors and all valuable industrial components have been stripped - and hastily, judging by the extensive secondary damage. Passive back-up systems were crippled by the process and the station too far from the primary to receive enough energy to maintain life support. A minor warning blip on your nav computer informs you that the orbit of the station is decaying and that it will burn up in the atmosphere of Telepylus within five hundred cycles.
Docking with the station is not advisable. |
||
–Secondary Description | ||
- Orbits Telepylus
Penelope's Outer Jump-point
- Orbits Penelope's Star as Telepylus' L5 trojan
The Cyclopeans (Asteroid Belt II)
- Orbits Penelope's Star between Telepylus and Ismara
Ismara (Penelope's Star VI), Cryovolcanic World
| A cold ice-ball of a world, Ismara was the perfect location to install mines and mass-driver facilities to launch mega-tonne slabs of graphene-encased water and nitrogen packages toward the inner system to nurture the terrestrial worlds of Penelope's Star. | ||
–In-Game Description | ||
| From orbit, the scars of linear mass-driver tracks are easily visible, though a closer scan reveals that all that remains are marching lines of warped support columns sprouting from regocrete; the superconducting coils and other valuable hardware have long been looted. Likewise the domes of fusion plants and factories have been broken open to the thin atmosphere and the sprawl of dead habitat grids grow obscured each passing cycle by methane drifts. | ||
–Secondary Description | ||
- Orbits Penelope's Star
Notes
The planet composition of Penelope's Star all but guarantees every commodity except for Food and Organics. The former has a decent chance to spawn on Ithaca, the desert planet; the latter has a small chance to spawn on the toxic Xuthus. Therefore it is unlikely, but possible, for Penelope's Star to provide every commodity in a single system right next to the core worlds.
Trivia
- Penelope is the wife of Odysseus in the Odyssey.
- Thrinakia is an island where the cattle of the sun god Helios are kept in Greek mythology.
- Ithaca is an island in western Greece and the home of Odysseus.
- Calypso is a nymph in the Odyssey who captures Odysseus in the island of Ogygia.
- Aeolus is the keeper of the winds in the Odyssey who gives Odysseus a bag of winds in order to return home.
- Dorus and Xuthus are the brothers of Aeolus.
- Telepylus is a city of man-eating giants in the Odyssey.
- Ismara is the city of the Ciconians in the Odyssey.
| The Core Worlds | |
|---|---|
| Star Systems | |
| Uninhabited | |
| Hegemony | Ancyra • Chicomoztoc • Citadel Arcadia • Coatl • Eventide • Jangala • Nachiketa • Raesvelg • Ragnar Complex • Sphinx • Tigra City • Yama |
| Luddic Church | |
| Luddic Path | |
| Persean League | |
| Sindrian Diktat | |
| Tri-Tachyon | |
| Independent | |
| Pirates | Donn • Garnir • Kanta's Den • Kanni • Kapteyn Starworks • Lost Astropolis • Qaras • Thulian Raider Base • Umbra |
