Soriel Daryaei
turning tides
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
POPULATION
GOVERNMENT & ECONOMY
Nahris was first discovered by explorers charting the Tiradan system's commercial potential, in the early 500s ABY. Its breathable atmosphere, abundant marine life, and accessible island anchorages attracted adventure-minded settlers. Subsequent surveys identified valuable mineral deposits beneath the ocean surface. Early communities established themselves on volcanic islands and coastal platforms, developing fishing, shipping, and seabed extraction efforts. The permanent settlements that would become Thalassar, Pelagra, and Neramar grew around sheltered harbors with access to geothermal energy.
The planet's exceptionally slow day/night cycle was understood from the beginning, and settlers built their infrastructure to accommodate prolonged light and darkness, drawing on the ocean's stored warmth and an atmosphere capable of retaining sufficient heat through the long night. Over time, residents developed an environmental-control network to moderate conditions and expand settlement potential. Its operation became an ordinary part of public infrastructure, maintained and improved by successive governments and specialists.
Around the middle of the sixth century after the Battle of Yavin, a catastrophe changed everything. During a program intended to modernize the environmental-control network, an upgrade increased the capacity of installations that removed greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. However, faults in the system allowed collection of greenhouse gases beyond the level previously designated. The ocean's stored warmth initially concealed the extent of the damage, but as cooling became more pronounced, officials disputed its causes and discounted warnings. They delayed intervention while successive long nights brought more extensive ice and increasingly severe conditions. By the time the malfunctioning network was shut down, harbors had frozen, food production had been significantly disrupted, and settlements had become isolated in the cold dark. Infrastructure designed for the previous climate could not reliably withstand the colder nights. Stopping extraction prevented further atmospheric depletion, but it couldn't release the gases already captured and stored. Nahris entered a lasting colder climate, with expanding surface ice during the long nights and substantial open waters returning under prolonged sunlight.
Evacuation from stationary settlements was uneven, with some resisting the change on the argument that it was just weather. Eventually it became indisputable, when unheated settlements became untenable because of how cold it became, and how scarce and expensive heating fuel became. As conditions worsened, only the cities built on and around geothermal activity could remain permanently populated through the long nights, but they could not absorb all of the world's population, lacking the space, the infrastructure, and the ability to adequately feed larger populations. Some few communities reached geothermal harbors, where heating and accessible water offered the best prospects for remaining in place. Others took advantage of the existing maritime culture and took to their ships. Ships capable of traveling began following favorable daylight conditions, carrying people who largely expected to return home once the crisis passed. This period was characterized by cramped accommodations, food and resource shortages, mechanical failures, and competition for supplies -- but also a kind of esprit de corps and recognition that they were all in it together that eventually led to stronger ties among and between communities.
The catastrophe led to a massive overhaul of the planetary government; the existing authority, vested in the corporate charters of those who sponsored early scouting and settlement, was overthrown in a largely bloodless revolution. As it became apparent that the colder conditions would not be resolved in short order -- or perhaps at all -- arrangements previously thought temporary developed into lasting communities. Evacuation vessels acquired schools and clinics and workshops. They elected councils or otherwise organized leadership. Smaller ships banded together for protection and mutual support, while geothermal harbors became centers for repairs, provisioning, and reconstruction. With the corporate authorities ejected, democratic institutions were implemented, eventually evolving into the present parliamentary system in which city-ships and permanent settlements send population-based delegations to Thalassar.
Purpose-built city-ships gradually replaced the most unsuitable evacuation-era vessels. Some of these vessels are maintained as tourist destinations; schools routinely organize field trips for school children to these museums to give them insight into what life was like during Nahris' most difficult hour. Construction of new, large, advanced ships designed to follow the sun drew on the maritime and industrial expertise that survived the catastrophe, with greater emphasis on reliable propulsion, fuel efficiency, heating, water treatment, and emergency reserves. Underwater mining resumed and expanded, supplying materials for continued construction and, later, valuable exports. Fisheries and aquaculture adapted to the changed conditions and improved forecasting allowed migrating convoys more dependable routes between productive waters and harbor cities.
In the centuries since, Nahris recovered from crisis to subsistence, from subsistence to reconstruction, and from reconstruction to prosperity as a trading world. Refined metals, marine foods, maritime equipment, and specialist services supported its growth. Gold, silver, sapphires and other gemstones sustained a jewelry industry whose workshops became known outside the system. The migrating city-ships developed distinct civic identities and their routes became familiar patterns of ordinary life. Twilight Towns emerged as accessible entertainment destinations.
The incident -- typically referred to by locals only as The Catastrophe -- continues to shape public expectations of government and industry. Environmental engineering attracts particular scrutiny, and failures to maintain essential infrastructure carry very serious political consequences. The most damaging political scandals on Nahris are not corruption or sex scandals, they're exposing corners being cut in ways that could damage the environment further.
Today Nahris maintains prosperous ports, extensive seabed industries, and a population accustomed to living aboard large, moving city-ships. Restoring its former climate is something of a national dream, although it is spoken of in tones of equal parts wistfulness and fear given how badly wrong it went the last time they tried to play God. Practically, resources are spent not on attempts to reinstate the environmental-control network, but on ships, harbor facilities, and institutions that allow the Nahrisi to function and thrive under the conditions they inherited.
- Intent: To create the world of Nahris, the homeworld of
Soriel Daryaei
, and provide a unique roleplay setting. - Image Credit: N/A - No Image
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: Soriel Daryaei
- Planet Name: Nahris
- Demonym: Nahrisi
- Region: Mid Rim
- System Name: Tiradan
- System Features: The Tiradan System is home to four principal planets, an asteroid belt, and six named moons. Nahris is the second world from the sun. In order of distance from the sun, Tiradan includes:
- Iskar, a hot and airless rocky world, populated by automated mining installations.
- Nahris, an ocean world where most of the population live on constantly-migrating city-ships or in one of the few small harbor cities heated by geothermal activity beneath dormant volcanic formations.
- Orvesh, the larger and paler of Nahris' moons.
- Irvanesh, the smaller and darker of Nahris' moons.
- The Tessar Belt, an asteroid belt supporting mining concessions, prospectors, and freight depots.
- Vardesh, a gas giant with orbital processing facilities and several resource-producing moons.
- Taldrin, where most of the population of Vardesh and its moons lives.
- Olyth, a frozen research outpost.
- Kesra, a rocky, resource-rich mining outpost.
- Nevral, smaller, with a harder crust than Kesra, and with a smaller mining population.
- Ostran, an ice world with tiny enclosed settlements and research facilities.
Nahris has a solar cycle of approximately 300 standard days. At a fixed location near the equator, daylight and darkness each last approximately 150 standard days. Most city-ships follow migration routes in the hemisphere currently lit by daylight. These vast city-ships must carefully chart courses to accommodate currents, weather systems, productive fishing grounds, and the seasonal ice edge. Maintaining a constant position relative to the sun near the equator requires an average speed of about three knots, with lower speeds required the closer one gets to the poles. Nahris sits on a three-degree axial tilt. - Location: Here -- the hex bordering Zhar, Secundus Ando, Mon Gazza, Ryloth, and Zaadja
- Major Imports: Agricultural produce, medicines, reactor fuel, specialist electronics, starship components, manufacturing materials not available locally.
- Major Exports: Fish and other seafood, refined industrial metals, gold, silver, gemstones (particularly sapphires and diamonds), fine jewelry, maritime machinery, oceanographic instruments and surveying equipment and services.
- Unexploited Resources: Extensive seabed regions remain incompletely surveyed, including potential metal deposits and gemstone-bearing gravels around ancient submerged island chains. Some identified deposits remain undeveloped by choice because doing so would be either uneconomical or would threaten valuable fishing grounds.
- Gravity: About 90% of Standard.
- Climate: The long day and night cycle of Nahris produces a slow cycle of warming and cooling across its surface, which is upwards of 99% ocean. The daylight hemisphere supports extensive open water and comparatively mild conditions along the principal equatorial migration routes. During the long night, surface temperatures fall, sea ice expands, and exposed infrastructure requires heating and protection. Conditions remain just barely habitable with suitable clothing, equipment, and shelter, but it is not a comfortable living, and immobilization and power failure provide a serious and potentially deadly risk to isolated communities. The deep ocean remains liquid throughout the cycle, and geothermal activity maintains several small island-based harbor cities that remain ice-free even while on the nighttime hemisphere. Warming and freezing lag behind the passage of sunrise and sunset, so water approaching dusk retain heat accumulated during the daylight, while ice can persist into the early daylight period. These differences influence shipping routes, fishing activities, and the operation of settlements on city-ships near the daylight boundaries.
- Primary Terrain: Deep oceans, with some shallow marine banks, submerged mountain ranges and volcanic ridges. In the nighttime hemisphere, ice
- Atmosphere: Type I
- Capital City: Thalassar
- Planetary Features: The world is almost entirely covered by water -- over 99% -- with the exception of few small volcanic islands, near them, artificial elevated platforms used in connection with space travel. To date, there have been no discoveries indicating that the world Nahris ever had more habitable land. The vast majority of the planet's population live aboard ever-moving city-ships, which maintain routes through the warmer daylight hemisphere, keeping ahead of the advancing sunset. These vessels, of varying sizes, contain residential districts, businesses, public institutions, as well as areas to keep livestock, farm fisheries, smaller outriding vessels, workshops. Larger ships may have landing platforms for spacecraft. About half the planet -- that facing away from the systems sun, Tiradan -- is covered in unstable ice sheeting. The deep sea, even on the night side of the world, is habitable with the appropriate equipment, and plays host to various undersea mining facilities. There is a burgeoning movement to settle in areas of the under sea where the sea bed is at a survivable depth in terms of crush pressure.
- Major Locations:
- Thalassar: Nahris' capital occupies the sheltered inner slopes of a volcanic ridgeline which forms approximately three-quarters of a caldera. The caldera serves as a safe harbor. Due to latent geothermal energy from the volcano beneath the waters, the water in the harbor and the surrounding area doesn't freeze. The city is built in successive tiered terraces, connected by climbing tramway routes that follow the contours of the slope, alongside enclosed pedestrian passages. There is spaceport built on reinforced pylons in the shallows near the city.
- Pelagra & Neramar: Two other, smaller cities build on similar volcanic islands like Thalassar.
- City-Ships: Permanent communities reside aboard immense purpose-built vessels. Their inhabitants live and work aboard these large ships. Most of these ships travel within the favorable daylight conditions rather than following a single prescribed course. Fishing grounds, trading opportunities, maintenance requirements, and planned meetings with other cities influence their courses.
- Twilight Towns: Entertainment vessels and connected flotillas that maintain positions near the moving dawn and dusk boundaries, within convenient traveling distance of principal migration routes. These Twilight Towns offer hospitality in the form of hotels, restaurants, theaters, casinos, clubs, shopping districts, and other attractions for holidays and celebrations. Their published itineraries and attractions make these Twilight Towns recognized destinations, although individual towns vary considerably by reputation.
- Deep-Night Settlements: Smaller communities set aboard icebreaker ships -- either purpose-built or improvised -- operate further into the night hemisphere. Many of these ship settlements developed from mining tenders, salvage vessels, and industrial ships expanded with accommodation and workshops. Some of these ships support mining operations, freight transfers, and repairs. Others are home to less-regulated activities, like smuggling, undeclared minerals, and illicit cargo. These settlements also have ordinary residents and businesses. Reliable heating and propulsion are essential to their survival, but their distance from the principal migrant lanes makes government oversight inconsistent at best.
- Undersea Mines: Deep beneath the surfaces of the ocean, fixed seabed installations extract industrial and precious metals and gemstones. Mining droids and remotely-operated machinery perform most of the exposed work. Enclosed stations provide power, maintenance facilities, and accommodations. These facilities are serviced by cargo submersibles which connect them to processing centers and freight networks. Well-equipped installations can maintain their operations during the long night.
POPULATION
- Native Species: Various fish.
- Immigrated Species: Humans and various other emigrated species.
- Population: Moderate
- Demographics: Primarily human, though there is no institutional prejudice against aliens.
- Primary Languages: Basic
- Culture:
- Nahrisi society is organized around maritime communities, whether aboard migrating city-ships or within the permanent volcanic harbor cities. City-ships have their own governments, their own cultures, different neighborhoods, schools, businesses, and civic traditions. Residents tend to identify strongly with their home vessel or the vessel upon which they grew up, but it is not unusual for Nahrisi individuals or families to move from one ship to another for new opportunities, a more desirable annual route, or just for a change of scenery. Published itineraries and planned rendezvouses between the city-ships and their flotillas help families to arrange visits and businesses arrange trade. Most inhabitants observe a conventional daily schedule regardless of the sun's position, using shutters and controlled interior lighting during the prolonged daylight to simulate regular day and night rhythms.
- Life at sea places considerable importance on proper planning, competent engineering, and strong communication. Maintenance, navigation, and rescue services are highly respected occupations. Children learn basic shipboard safety from a very early age. Assistance to vessels in distress is an almost-universally observed regulation. The climate catastrophe that rendered their planet comfortably habitable only on the daylight side. is taught prominently in public education and collective memory, focusing particularly on the failures of oversight that allowed the environmental-control system to fail as a result of a botched upgrade. Proposals impacting the atmosphere or ocean consequently attract close scrutiny and play a particularly important role in local and national politics.
- Fishing, mining, shipping, manufacturing, and aquaculture support a varied professional and mercantile society. Shipboard markets trade in fresh seafood alongside smoked, dried, and preserved products suited to long voyages. Wealthy trading families possess substantial influence, although shipboard workers, independent captains, cooperative city-ships, and public institutions all play important roles in community affairs as well. Dependence on shared waters make fishing rights, pollution, and access to harbor resources and drydock slots persistent subjects of public and political debate.
- Nahris itself has a reputation for its jewelry, particularly pieces incorporating locally mined gemstones. Particularly sought-after are sea-green sapphires and blue-violet sapphires, though diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and other precious stones are also mined there. Workshops maintain distinctive approaches to cutting, polishing, and setting these stones, and distinctive styles identified with different city-ships. In some communities, jewelry plays an important cultural role; for instance on some city-ships, a small septum ring marks an individual's coming of age.
- Recreation includes sailing, swimming, boat racing, and organized shipboard sports. Theaters, music venues, and public celebrations form part of shipboard life on larger city-ships and in the harbor cities. Twilight Towns are popular destinations for holidays, weddings, and other celebrations; they offer entertainment beyond what individual resident vessels usually accommodate. The permanent ports receive an influx of visitors whenever a city-ship arrives, creating busy periods for local shops, restaurants, and cultural institutions.
- Religious practice varies between communities and families. There is no single faith that defines Nahrisi identity, and there is no religious practice that is favored or forbidden.
GOVERNMENT & ECONOMY
- Government: The government of Nahris is a democracy, with clearly delineated levels of authority -- local city-ship legislatures, judiciaries, and executives can be organized in almost any way the city-ship determines, while each city-ship and harbor city sends a delegation based on population to Thalassar to sit in a parliamentary assembly. The Assembly chooses a First Minister -- often based on who can command a majority in the assembly, usually in a coalition -- who in turn chooses a Cabinet. The First Minister, Cabinet, and Assembly are responsible for broad planetary-impacting affairs.
- Affiliation: Currently, the High Republic.
- Wealth: High - Centuries on from its hardscrabble sustenance phase, Nahris now has a broad surplus, not just of precious metals and gemstones, but also refined manufacturing-grade materials, foodstuffs, and consultancy services.
- Stability: High - Thanks in large part to both its democratic heritage and the widespread nature of population centers, unrest and civil disturbances are generally local and can be redressed locally. Most city-ships provide dependable public services and civic government. Disputes around fishing rights, mining concessions, labor conditions, and harbor access are generally addressed through negotiation and civic institutions. Enforcement becomes less consistent among remote, deep-night city-ships, where informal authorities and commercial interests can exercise considerable influence. Visitors are typically safe in the harbor cities and most day-side city-ships, although conditions will vary aboard less-regulated vessels.
- Freedom & Oppression: Nahris' constitution protects freedom of speech and expression, freedom of association and petition, freedom of movement and religious practice. There is no institutional discrimination against non-humans. Local governments are empowered with latitude to regulate businesses and entertainment, which contributes to the permissive reputations of some Twilight Towns. Maritime safety and environmental regulations are comparatively strict because failures can endanger entire communities and damage shared food supplies and air quality. These protections have not prevented abuses, of course. Harbor officials have previously used emergency powers to restrict travel, suppress demonstrations, and detain demonstrators, prompting reform movements and greater scrutiny of the methods of employing these authorities. Wealth and commercial influence can still affect access to legal assistance and political decision-making. Residents of unregistered vessels may struggle to obtain public services or challenge mistreatment, particularly when doing so risks exposing their own activities.
- Military: Nahris maintains a professional military in the form of a planetary defense force responsible for orbital security, protection of interplanetary shipping, and the defense of major population centers. Its space forces concentrate on maintaining patrols, intercepting pirates and other threats, and escorting import/export and other traffic. It also deploys extensive maritime services including search and rescue, icebreaking, surface patrols, and protection of critical infrastructure. Personnel and equipment are distributed between the harbor cities and base-ship support vessels, allowing the service to operate across the migrating population's usual routes. Underwater capabilities support inspections, rescue operations, and security for seabed installations. Individual city-ships maintain local police forces, emergency response personnel, and in some cases defensive weapons and shields.
- Technology: Generally Galactic Standard, although maritime engineering, oceanography, and cold-weather habitability is probably a notch or so above Galactic Standard as a result of the uniquely challenging climate demands.
Nahris was first discovered by explorers charting the Tiradan system's commercial potential, in the early 500s ABY. Its breathable atmosphere, abundant marine life, and accessible island anchorages attracted adventure-minded settlers. Subsequent surveys identified valuable mineral deposits beneath the ocean surface. Early communities established themselves on volcanic islands and coastal platforms, developing fishing, shipping, and seabed extraction efforts. The permanent settlements that would become Thalassar, Pelagra, and Neramar grew around sheltered harbors with access to geothermal energy.
The planet's exceptionally slow day/night cycle was understood from the beginning, and settlers built their infrastructure to accommodate prolonged light and darkness, drawing on the ocean's stored warmth and an atmosphere capable of retaining sufficient heat through the long night. Over time, residents developed an environmental-control network to moderate conditions and expand settlement potential. Its operation became an ordinary part of public infrastructure, maintained and improved by successive governments and specialists.
Around the middle of the sixth century after the Battle of Yavin, a catastrophe changed everything. During a program intended to modernize the environmental-control network, an upgrade increased the capacity of installations that removed greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. However, faults in the system allowed collection of greenhouse gases beyond the level previously designated. The ocean's stored warmth initially concealed the extent of the damage, but as cooling became more pronounced, officials disputed its causes and discounted warnings. They delayed intervention while successive long nights brought more extensive ice and increasingly severe conditions. By the time the malfunctioning network was shut down, harbors had frozen, food production had been significantly disrupted, and settlements had become isolated in the cold dark. Infrastructure designed for the previous climate could not reliably withstand the colder nights. Stopping extraction prevented further atmospheric depletion, but it couldn't release the gases already captured and stored. Nahris entered a lasting colder climate, with expanding surface ice during the long nights and substantial open waters returning under prolonged sunlight.
Evacuation from stationary settlements was uneven, with some resisting the change on the argument that it was just weather. Eventually it became indisputable, when unheated settlements became untenable because of how cold it became, and how scarce and expensive heating fuel became. As conditions worsened, only the cities built on and around geothermal activity could remain permanently populated through the long nights, but they could not absorb all of the world's population, lacking the space, the infrastructure, and the ability to adequately feed larger populations. Some few communities reached geothermal harbors, where heating and accessible water offered the best prospects for remaining in place. Others took advantage of the existing maritime culture and took to their ships. Ships capable of traveling began following favorable daylight conditions, carrying people who largely expected to return home once the crisis passed. This period was characterized by cramped accommodations, food and resource shortages, mechanical failures, and competition for supplies -- but also a kind of esprit de corps and recognition that they were all in it together that eventually led to stronger ties among and between communities.
The catastrophe led to a massive overhaul of the planetary government; the existing authority, vested in the corporate charters of those who sponsored early scouting and settlement, was overthrown in a largely bloodless revolution. As it became apparent that the colder conditions would not be resolved in short order -- or perhaps at all -- arrangements previously thought temporary developed into lasting communities. Evacuation vessels acquired schools and clinics and workshops. They elected councils or otherwise organized leadership. Smaller ships banded together for protection and mutual support, while geothermal harbors became centers for repairs, provisioning, and reconstruction. With the corporate authorities ejected, democratic institutions were implemented, eventually evolving into the present parliamentary system in which city-ships and permanent settlements send population-based delegations to Thalassar.
Purpose-built city-ships gradually replaced the most unsuitable evacuation-era vessels. Some of these vessels are maintained as tourist destinations; schools routinely organize field trips for school children to these museums to give them insight into what life was like during Nahris' most difficult hour. Construction of new, large, advanced ships designed to follow the sun drew on the maritime and industrial expertise that survived the catastrophe, with greater emphasis on reliable propulsion, fuel efficiency, heating, water treatment, and emergency reserves. Underwater mining resumed and expanded, supplying materials for continued construction and, later, valuable exports. Fisheries and aquaculture adapted to the changed conditions and improved forecasting allowed migrating convoys more dependable routes between productive waters and harbor cities.
In the centuries since, Nahris recovered from crisis to subsistence, from subsistence to reconstruction, and from reconstruction to prosperity as a trading world. Refined metals, marine foods, maritime equipment, and specialist services supported its growth. Gold, silver, sapphires and other gemstones sustained a jewelry industry whose workshops became known outside the system. The migrating city-ships developed distinct civic identities and their routes became familiar patterns of ordinary life. Twilight Towns emerged as accessible entertainment destinations.
The incident -- typically referred to by locals only as The Catastrophe -- continues to shape public expectations of government and industry. Environmental engineering attracts particular scrutiny, and failures to maintain essential infrastructure carry very serious political consequences. The most damaging political scandals on Nahris are not corruption or sex scandals, they're exposing corners being cut in ways that could damage the environment further.
Today Nahris maintains prosperous ports, extensive seabed industries, and a population accustomed to living aboard large, moving city-ships. Restoring its former climate is something of a national dream, although it is spoken of in tones of equal parts wistfulness and fear given how badly wrong it went the last time they tried to play God. Practically, resources are spent not on attempts to reinstate the environmental-control network, but on ships, harbor facilities, and institutions that allow the Nahrisi to function and thrive under the conditions they inherited.