System - Cassandra
The Cassandra Belt
Description
Cassandra – Periphery Colony World
The Cassandra Belt is often listed on ancient star charts as Fando, and was formerly a “Trailing” colony world of the Taurian Concordat.
Cassandra is a border system in the Periphery, along the trailing edge of the Hyades Rim. The belt is located between the innermost planet Masaron, and the innermost gas giant, Geddes. It confirms to the general characteristics of most belts, being the residual material remaining from the creation of the planetary system some 4 billion years before the present day. The Belt has a variety of “clusters” – dense concentrations of asteroid material – around its circumference that are classified as either Controlled or Free Radical.
Controlled Clusters are the defined territory of the Excalibur Minerals corporation, Cassandra’s chief system mining company. These clusters tend to yield a mix of resources, that are used primarily in construction industries, such as starship hull production, fuel exploitation, and astrochemicals. Excalibur Minerals has exclusive rights to all material within Controlled Clusters, secured through the Cassandra Decleration, the peace treaty signed over twenty-four years ago.
Free Radicals are clusters that have been declared free to independent prospecting and exploitation under the Cassandra Declaration. These clusters are therefore the province of numerous Free Companies, a small number of corporations operating from Rockport, as well as numerous independent operations.
Political Ruler : The “Council of Ten”
Star Type : FoV (-) – (183 Hours)
Position in System : Asteroid Belt
Time to Jump Point : 21.93 days
Number of Satellites : None
Surface Gravity : None
Atmo Pressure : None (N/A)
Avr Mean Temp : None (N/A)
Surface Water : None
Recharge Station : None
HPG Class Type : None
Highest Native Life : None
Socio-Industrial Level : Non-Industrial, Asteroid Belt.
Population : (3025) Approx. 1,590,000.
The Cassandra Belt is a solid source of mineral resources, though it has never attracted an enormous influx of greedy outsiders, and no particular rumors of rich strikes or bonanzas have been in circulation thus far. The Belt is a steady, but unspectacular producer.
The Cassandra system consists of no inhabited planets, one inner-system planetary body, three outer-system major Jovian bodies, and one large planetoid belt. Cassandra Prime is a white main-sequence star, that provides a harsh bright light across the system. The star’s life zone is traditionally around 1.0 AU, though no planet within that region has evolved independent life. The existence of the Cassandra Belt within this zone makes for the possibility of the planet having once existed possible.
Cassandra – FoV, Mass : 1.70 Sol, Luminosity : 8.10 Sol, Radius : 1.70 Sol.
I – Masaron – Orbital Radius : 0.1 AU, Orbital Period : 0.39 years, Mass : 0.8 (5000 kms), Gravity : 0.66 Gs. Hot Rockball.
II – Empty.
III – The Cassandra Belt – Belt Fringe (Inner Edge), 128 million kms (0.86 AU). Belt Verge (Outer Edge),157 million kms (1.05 AU). Rockport – (Starport and main government facility), 782.34 Days.
IV – Geddes – Orbital Radius : 1.32 AU, Orbital Period : 2.86 years, Mass : 2.74 (50,000 kms). Jovian.
V – Empty.
VI – Empty.
VII – Forlneaux – Orbital Radius : 1.12 AU, Orbital Period : 3.46 years, Mass : 2.43 (45,000 kms). Jovian..
VIII – Chasaeus – Orbital Radius : 2.36 AU, Orbital Period : 5.73 years, Mass : 2.45 (60,000 kms). Jovian.
Asteroids of The Cassandra Belt are generally less than 1500kms in diameter, with negligible mass and gravity. Settlement across the Belt is light, with the largest single population concentrated at Rockport, and a large migratory population of Belters and other asteroid miners and workers. The population does not reflect the transitory residents who may work the Belt for only a few months before moving on.
The Cassandra Belt is a vast ring of stellar debris, and divided into roughly six clusters, three of which are contracted to Excalibur Minerals and three of which are declared Free Radicals. These Clusters and Radicals are listed below :
Golden Shores Cluster : The main center of the Excalibur operation, Golden Shores contains the Golden Shores Habitat, an industrial arcology, port, base of operations, research center, and living space.
Majestic Cluster : Larger of the controlled clusters, but second to be actively exploited, Majestic includes several very large asteroids that Excalibur has spent decades mining, using a mix of mining shuttles and industrial platforms.
Paradise Cluster : Also known as the Diamond Cluster, due to the discovery of the fabled Diamond Asteroid – the largest single concentration of diamonds ever found in the system.
Clear Radical : As large as the Majestic Cluster, and the Free Radical Excalibur has always desperately sought to control, Clear Radical contains valuable iron and exotic deposits.
Spindrift Radical : Heavily mined by numerous independent Belters and Free Companies, Spindrift includes the marvelously shaped and eccentrically orbiting Rockport asteroid – a triple-spiked mountain composed of dense rock with a thick cluster of banded iron ore. Rockport is the center of system government.
Vineyard Radical : The most dispersed of all the clusters, but considered potentially as rich as the Clear Radical. Vineyard Radical contains the Vineyard Habitat, built by independent investment in the system and is a free community.
With no single world capable of providing habitation in the system, the majority of the population live in populated asteroids known as “Habitats”. Essentially each asteroid has been hollowed-out and smoothed, to create an internal, habitable surface, and then spun to impart gravity. The essential commodity, water, is either imported or drawn from natural occurring deposits of water-bearing minerals and hydrocarbons (supported by careful water-rationing and recycling measures). The habitats of note (larger than 10,000 population) are listed below :
Aviada (Pop – 132,000) : Aviada was Excalibur’s attempt to create an artist’s haven and cultural center. Located in the Golden Shores Cluster, the planetoid itself is an attractive, lop-sided sphere with strangely regular craters and fissures along its surface. The Aviada settlement is within the hollowed-out core, a collection of geodesic domes known as “Counties” that favour specific artistic pursuits (music, painting, performance, and such). Excalibur is known to sponsor frequent exhibitions, galas, festivals and celebrations. Scala County is the home of a thriving holo industry that dominates the local system’s airwaves.
Cursed (Pop – 32,000): So-called because the members of the first expedition to the asteroid died mysterious deaths all within a few short years of each other. Cursed is now an asteroid providing cheap, block accommodation for miners, Belters, spacers and zero-g specialists and their families. Its facilities are basic and its industries center on ore and mineral processing. Despite the bad luck associated with its origins, no one has died from the (now legendary) curse said to plague the rock. The inhabitants of Cursed have come up with countless conspiracies, urban myths and fanciful explanations for the demise of the original Belters, but common understanding is that it was simply a series of unfortunate coincidences. The habitat is located in the Clear Radical.
Golden Shores (Pop – 374,000) : An immense, jagged, roughly-tetrahedral, freefall mountain, Golden Shores was fully exploited decades ago and left with a vast, hollow core which Excalibur Corp rapidly converted into the Golden Shores Habitat. Now home to over a quarter of a million people, with a considerable number directly employed by Excalibur Corp, it has established itself as the industrial hub of the system.
Golden Shores is a popular living destination, because its accommodations are cheap when compared to other habitats in the system. For Excalibur employees, there is little option, but for those with a taste for the exotic or simply seeking somewhere safe and secure in the Reaver’s Rift, it proves to be an ideal living environment, offering plenty of employment and excellent leisure activities.
Golden Shores is very much a working asteroid. Its two starports { “Narrows” and “Excalibur Port”) are constant hives of activity. Golden Shores is a major trading post for belt commodities, starship parts, mining equipment serving and all types of good and service in between. Many independent Belters use Golden Shores as their home base when not actively in the field and the habitat is an eclectic mix of corporate worker, freelance companies, and indebted solo prospectors.
Golden Shores is not without its problems, however : despite Excalibur’s considerable presence, crime is rampant, debt out of control, illicit drugs easily obtainable, and alcoholism a consequence of hard living. Excalibur sponsors numerous rehab clinics and detox programs within the habitat, but this does not deal with the root of the problems. Furthermore, Excalibur is only concerned with its own employees, who are not immune to the underbelly of Golden Shores existence, but receive better treatment than the general non-corporate populace who need far more support than corporate casualties. Golden Shores is therefore a habitat in crisis, with many of its inhabitants trapped by addiction, debt (or usually both), or committed to a corporate lifestyle, that imposes its own unique problems and pressures.
Grail (Pop – 77,000) : A thriving bubble habitat in the Clear Radical, Grail’s community includes Belters, miners, those working in cargo and haulage, and a burgeoning leisure industry. The habitat – a single, huge, geodesic dome covering the enormous central crater of the asteroid – is a place of contrasts. The wealthy live along the rim, occupying many-roomed apartment complexes, whereas the less well-off live along the crater floor in a massive tenement complex built on a grid pattern. Grail’s port is one of the busiest in Clear Radical, and the asteroid supports one of the vast system communications networks hub central to in-system and out-system message co-ordination. The middle section of the habitat is home to a series of high-tech industry complexes requiring low-gravity development work, including the manufacture of communications and other electronic equipment and parts. ComStar is known to have plants and an interest in this habitat.
Keystone (Pop – 157,000) : Capital of the Paradise Cluster and a secondary base for Excalibur Minerals mining efforts in the system, Keystone supports heavy industry including the construction of important station parts, fusion engine parts, and shuttle hulls. The hollowed-out habitat is shared between Excalibur Corporation and a local corporate entity, Cassandra Construction and Utilities (or CCU). The habitat’s shuttle construction plant occupies a vast portion of the planetoid’s exterior surface, whilst the inner hosts the living space, administration facilities and training centers for both Excalibur and CCU employees. Keystone’s R&D credentials are first-rate in the system, with extensive research, testing and development labs across a wide range of disciplines.
The current “buzz” project, is the development of a viable Maneuver Drive and one-million-ton asteroid monitor to become the first system “warship”…
Rockport (Pop – 63,000) : A a triple-spiked mountain composed of dense rock with a thick cluster of banded iron ore, this planetoid was the first of the Free Radical habitats and was built by independents without any backing by industrial investors, such as Excalibur Corporation. It is still rich in water-bearing minerals and organic compounds in its core. Rockport is located in the Clear Radical.
The settlement is a “fissure-city”: a domed city built into the vast Axis Fissure that slices neatly down through the center of Rockport. The settlement is carved into tiers carved from the rock and built onto it, with large, fast elevator platforms running the full length of the fissure along both sides, and a network of high-speed tube trains running laterally and around the outside of the fissure.
Rockport is linked with many of the ancient settler families, and has links with much of the “old money” in the system. It is also the center of system government (such as it is), and has a substantial starport to house and maintain its fleet of DropShips, GunShips and AeroFighters. Its small, though highly-trained police force, is also based from this habitat, and its “Star Marshals” are irregularly armed, but highly skilled. All Marshals are the lawmen that keep the peace in the system, and have nearly heroic status in the system, with the veterans dating their combat experience to the conflicts with Excalibur Corp and the system’s independence.
With the system’s government controlled from this smaller community, most traditional habitat matters take secondary importance next to its traditional mining efforts, and in many cases, the habitat remains both an armed camp and a political hotbed of anti-corporate interests, with the majority of the population employed by one or the other. The place is peaceful, however, and though old by habitat standards, has a pleasant and “old-world” feel to the entire habitat.
Vineyard (Pop – 275,000) : The only habitat of the Vineyard Radical, Vineyard is fully independent of the industrial concerns in the system, and although it supports a large, diverse population, it suffers few of the issues experienced by Golden Shores. Vineyard has its disreputable areas in its long, tube-like internal habitat, but crime remains low and low-key. The independent Vineyard Habitat Authority (VHA) mixes independent and corporate government principles to reach an innovative approach to administration which results in individual accountability supported by entrepreneurial incentives and rewards.
As a consequence, the Free Companies and solo enterprises tend to thrive on Vineyard. Debt is managed and supported by credit unions and banking collectives. Taxes and trade levies are reviewed regularly to ensure parity with external markets, and are not set in stone like those markets found on Golden Shores and Keystone.
Habitation on Vineyard is controlled through a point’s system, which safeguards jobs and allows the Vineyard Habitat Authority to recruit essential skills for key areas. Visits to Vineyard for trade or leisure are encouraged; long-term stays are difficult unless accompanied by essential work visas and trade permits.
The center of the Vineyard Habitat is the area known as The Lung, a long ribbon of parkland and botanical garden that stretches the length of the habitat, protected by a transparent plexiglass dome. Creatively placed platforms above the trees allows for zero-g sports to be easily mixed with traditional pursuits requiring gravity for enjoyment. The huge array of plants, flowers, fruit trees and root crops represents the best botanicals from nearby systems, and the Vineyard Garden Gild controls this vast and important spread of greenery; everything from cool, forested glades, to complex, high-tech hydroponic and anaerobic cultivation techniques.
Backstory
Originally settled about 300 years ago, it was typical of the usual settlements in the Periphery, with only scattered prospectors and the eventual corporate interests pursuing valuable minerals for its own gain leading the way. The lack of a habitable world greatly reduced interest in the system, though its belt proved enough inducement to maintain population levels and a basic economy.
Unlike many belts, which quickly degenerate into lawless “boom colonies”, similar to the nearby Tortuga Dominions, the Cassandra Belt has a firmly established government which tightly regulates law and order in settled parts of the Belt, and even makes a fair attempt at enforcement throughout much of the rest of the system. This was not always the case – The Belt was originally a colony established by Excalibur Minerals, the mining arm of the large Excalibur Corporation. Twenty-four years ago, intolerable working conditions and an unsympathetic corporate management prompted the Cassandra Strike, a system-wide shutdown of production and shipping facilities. This was followed by a brief workers’ rebellion, which ended when Excalibur Minerals found that waging war in an asteroid belt against migratory workers was expensive and virtually useless.
The new government, the Council of Ten was left over from the leadership of the original workers’ protests, and has done a credible job of turning the rebellious colony into a solidly prosperous independent state. Though there is little input from the scattered miners (for any kind of democracy would be impractical, given the incredibly diversified population density, and other limitations of time and distance), the Council is generally considered to be doing a good job… though most Belters tend to prefer no government at all.
Under the Council, an excellent law enforcement agency is maintained for starport and settlement security at Rockport, enforcement of claims, and the investigation of various infractions against system laws. This paramilitary police force is known as Star Law and maintains watch stations throughout the Belt, ready to respond to distress signals and other problems. They are particularly on guard against attempts by Excalibur Minerals to exploit the Belt Radicals without government permission, though it occurs still occurs sometimes in isolated portions.
Rockport itself, has a fairly substantial starport facility. In addition to ordinary commercial traffic and mineral shipments, the port handles a fair amount of Davion military traffic travelling to and from their base on Outpost. Indeed, it was through shrewd negotiation (ending in guarantees to provide service and fill various military resource contracts) that the workers were able to secure Davion neutrality – and covert support – in the rebellion, a vital aspect of their success.
Central to the system, is the main governing body to the system, the Council of Ten. Each of the Ten control an aspect of system government, such as System Defense, Belter Affairs, System Commerce and Industrial Liaison. These individuals are appointed by the remaining council members when a vacancy is created through the death or retirement of an individual, and they are invariably independents with no ties to the local system megacorps. The two primary industrial combines; Excalibur Corp and the Cassandra Construction and Utilities, both of whom have representatives appointed to attend meetings of the Council, though they do not have an official voice. Recently, ComStar has sent an envoy to the meetings, and has increased its presence in Keystone and the communications hub there.
Military Forces : The primary defensive force in the system, are the system’s Star Marshals, collectively known as Star Law. The Star Marshals have the responsibility for maintaining law & order across the system, and employ a pair of Avenger-Class assault DropShips (the “Arcturan” and “Remora” ), a dozen Gunships, and perhaps a dozen or so AeroFighters used for point-defense of Rockport. The Star Law also has a JumpShip, the Merchant-Class “Solidarity” (formerly “Guarantor” of Excalibur Corp ) that is often away acquiring munitions and supplies from most any market. It’s GunShips tend to be surplus TIG-15 “Tigress” Close Patrol Craft (Gunship), imported from the Taurian Concordat. They also have more than forty (40) LR Shuttles of various types, used as customs cutters and system couriers.
In addition, Star Law maintains five battalions of rifle infantry for customs and security work across the system, and has three elite battalions of laser-armed infantry; “The Light Guard”, “The Aero-Dragoons”, and “The Cuirassiers” who are specialized star marines used in boarding actions and anti-piracy assaults. Many of the senior officers of Star Law were present for the Excalibur-Cassandra conflict, and know all their tricks. Star Law maintains order even in Excalibur’s own Clusters, but defer to their corporate security personnel on Excalibur property.
Excalibur Corp maintains its own security forces on all its own holdings, amounting to several battalions of security troops, and six (6) assault Drop-Shuttles each refitted to haul a company of star marines each, and based from Golden Shores Habitat. In addition, each facility under Excalibur control has its own AeroFighters, security troopers and assorted assets present. It should be noted that Excalibur Corp’s HQ is only one jump away from Cassandra, in System – Tarsus.
It should also be noted, that there are many independents operating across the system, amounting to more than a hundred armed shuttles, GunShips and other vessels or irregular forces, that could go either direction in an open conflict.
