Ashin Varanin
Professional Enabler
Name: The Spires of Hell
Region: Unknown Regions
System: N/A located within the Atollis Nebula
Suns: None. The Spires of Hell are built on a Strigari Nomad, a planet without a sun.
Orbital Position: N/A
Moons: Athelvai
Coordinates: G-18
Rotational Period: 245 hours
Orbital Period: N/A
Class: Terrestrial
Diameter: Dark One: 48,812km (Athelvai: 12,500km)
Atmosphere: Type IV: Virtually Nonexistent
Climate: N/A
Gravity: Dark One: 10.2G (Athelvai: 1.1G)
Primary Terrain: Bare rock and dust; spires (Celestial artifacts)
Native species: None
Immigrated species: Aaroun, standard milieu of Lords of the Fringe
Primary languages: None
Government: Familial/matriarchal (acephalous)
Population: 120,000 (estimated)
Demonym: Athelvar
Major cities: Bluespire, the largest spire on the moon, Athelvai. Bluespire is over 20,000km long, subdivided into habitable levels and spaces. An ancient transparisteel equivalent allows in light from the sunspires on the planet below, known as the Dark One. The lighted portions contain primitive hydroponics bays and gardens grown in detritus. Bluespire is the only inhabited spire, and its familiar tribes and villages are spread out through the spire, in rare contact with each other. These tribes are Aaroun, feline exiles.
Major imports: N/A
Major exports: N/A
Affiliation: Eventually, Lords of the Fringe.
Culture: The inhabitants of the Spires of Hell have a variety of subdivided, acephalous cultures, from irredentism to cannibalism to democracy to pacifism.
Technology: Although ancient hydroponics bays and bedjie spores provide food, most of the local Aaroun tribes have nothing more complex than tools and weapons made from scrap metal and bits of the spires. Although gravity remains unidirectional at roughly 1.1G throughout the length of the spires on Athelvai, there is no possible way to determine the source of this effect, let alone understand it or reverse-engineer it. The same is true of the glowing spires on the Dark One, which are uninhabitable but provide full-spectrum light for the inhabitants of the moon's spires.
History: The Aaroun are the perennial exiles of the Unknown Regions, first as slaves of the Viis Empire, then as escapees from Mnggal-Mnggal. At some point in that process, centuries or millennia ago, a fleeing bulk transport of Aaroun stumbled out of hyperspace in interstellar space, when their hyperdrive cutoffs detected a mass shadow. They found a planet and its moon, overgrown with spires of Celestial manufacture. The hyperdrive proved irreparable, and they were forced to take shelter within the largest of the moon's spires, where they found uniform gravity, air and ancient tanks of water. Their ship was ultimately cannibalized for tools and so forth, over the course of centuries.
Before that, hundreds of thousands of years before, the Spires of Hell were comparable to the Ciratu Spheres, the Aur Diamonds, the Quintarad, the Diatian Clockwork, the Ianane Ring and the Penegelen Shards -- immense works of Celestial architecture or art, without discernible purpose or possibility of benefiting researchers. They are an enigma.
Notable PC's: None yet
Intent:
- To represent the Unknown Regions' diversity and potential
- To create a potential expansion route for Lords of the Fringe (and thus reduce the potential for war with OP)
- To create a potential route for a Republic-commissioned hyperlane into the Unknown Regions
- To create a largely-uninhabited location for a Force training center