Hesperus - The Old Sector Capital

I've been giving this some though. My first impression is that the original capital might have been one of the client worlds that turned on the Age of Strife Era Culure in the Sargassos Subsector to support the great Cursade.

The world name that I have been working with is Telos or Talaur. It was the main trading partner with the Age of Strife Era Culture and served as a choke point for their dealings with other cultures. For this reason it became a major cultural center as well as center of trade.

I'm still working on the Age of Strife Era Culture, so I have not fully fleshed out the relationship between it and its client worlds. Any thoughts?

This is the system I was considering for the Previous capital. I was thinking of calling it Hesperus.


30,43,45 - M-V - A63468D-9 N 324 Im 355

Stellar Coordinates: 30 (x) 43 (y) 45 (z)
Star Type: (M-V) Red Dwarf
Starport: (A) Class A – Tech Level 10
Planetary Diameter: (6) Medium (min) 8,800 km (max) 10,399 km
Atmosphere: (3) Vacuum (Very Thin) (min pressure) 0.10 atm (max pressure) 0.42 atm
Hydrographics: (4) Wet World (35% - 44% water)
Population: (6) Moderate (millions) 1,000,000 – 9,999,999
Law Level: (9) High (weapons possession outside home prohibited)
Government: (D) Religious Dictatorship

Planetary Tech Level: (9) Early Stellar (fusion power; ca. 2010)
Bases: (N) Naval
Trade Codes: None

Population Multiplier: 3
Planetoid Belts: 2
Gas Giants: 4

Allegiance: Imperial

Life Value: (3) Multi-Cellular Life
Resource Value: (5) Moderate
Exports: (5) Pharmaceuticals
0

Part of the reason behind my selection was because of the thin atmosphere. It was not always as thin as it is currently. A good portion of it boiled of during the orbital bombardments that pretty much decimated the capital. It may be coming back slowly over time, but at the time of the last survey, the world was pretty much screwed up by the wars that had ravaged it.

The planet is currently held in the firm grip of the eccliesiarchy and serves as the base of operations a public face (at least the visible face) of the inquisition within the Sargassos Subsector.

I am currently working on a history of the Mezzan, which was the major pocket empire within this area of space. Hesperus was not part of the Mezzan, but it was the first world that they contacted and acted as their intermidiary to the rest of the the Mezzan's client worlds.

Hesperus having only moderate resources needed some other source of business in order to generate capital ($). They turned to trade and became rich off of the commerce between the Mezzan and the other client worlds. To imagine Hesperus at its height, think of the merchant princes of the Italien city states during the rennaisance.

Other than trade, the planet did have a good Pharmaceuticals Industry. Its tech level has drop substantially since its near destruction during the Age of Apostasy, but at one time it was a source of Anagathics (Anti-aging drugs). It also did a lucrative business in other types of pharmaceuticals and illicit drugs.

After the fall of the Mezzan (whom they betrayed) Hesperus was in a position to flex the political clout and vast fortune they had accumulated over the centuries. They used it to buy and manipulate their way to being not only the capital of the Subsector, but of the entire Anargo Sector. Eventually that power wained...leaving the world as it is today (but that is a longer story indeed).

Don't worry about not having read something about the fall of the Mezzan and Hesperus. Most of it is fragmented...nothing more than small posts in other threads. I'm currently trying to pull it all together.

Hesperus was one of the worlds with which the Mezzan traded. They had the distinction of being the first world that the Mezzan had contact with outside of their pocket empire.

Their planet had moderated resourse value, but they had alot of small trading vessels. The Mezzan were very private. They did not allow other ships to enter their space. Instead they set up their initial consolate on Hesperus. This served as the major pipeline for all goods and technologies coming out of the pocket empire.

Although the Mezzan setup other contacts and trade alliances with worlds such as Theta Corionis, the bulk of their trade still went through Hesperus. during the Great Crusade, Alpharius (at the time still loyal to the Emperor) pumped Hesperus for information about the Mezzan (since they had the most direct contact).

They proved more than willing to sell these secrets to the Imperium. They also agreed to assist them in assaulting the closest Mezan world. Over the centuries of contact, trade between the Mezzan and their client worlds had grwon to a point that their fleet alone could not support.

They allowed limited access to their worlds for ships of Hesperus registration. The ships were not allowed to make planet fall, but they could pick up the cargo in system. As such, the Hesperides had basic maps of several Mezzan systems as well as access to them.
This would allow Alpharius to infiltrate forces for his assault.

Not all Hesperides were as disloyal to their business partner and ally. The most vocal opponents to the policy change quietly disappeared or died suddenly in the night. Although no direct blame could be place on Alpharius or his forces, the message was quite clear.

Hesperus also could not survive a protracted war or embargo. Their economy was too reliant on trade. They chose self preservation over sticking by their ally. Several families did not need any form of persuasion. They quickly jumped into bed with the Alpha Legion and the Imperium.

Several of these families still had ties tothe Alpha Legion even after they turned against the Imperium (during the Horus Heresy). Their family fortunes were tied to the aid they had given the Alpha Legion and the booty they had carried away from the Mezzan worlds as payment for their services.

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The fall of Hesperus did not occur till the time of the Age of Apostasy. Forces loyal to Vandire were trying to impose the increase tithes and taxes levied to pay for upkeep of Vandire's armies and the building of more cathedrls and monuments n his honor.

Hesperus as the capital of the Sector stood in opposition to them. They went about using their political clout and vast fortunes to raise up armies against vandires forces. Of course some of these forces were allied or directly loyal to the Alpha Marines and chaos.

While the war was engaged, some of these units sent to reinforce the defense forces of worlds throughout the Sargassos Subsector openly declared their loyalty to chaos and took over the planets. Hesperus itself was on of these worlds...(these events occured in the waining years of the age of apostasy).

While there are several worlds that were wiped clean, there are others that suffeed greatly, but still survived. Other were not even touched by the war and now are the population centers in the Subsector.
An example of this is Theta corionis, currently under construction by Dazo.

Hesperus itself suffered greatly during the cleansing. There is very little life on the surface, beyond the ecclisiarchical and Inquisitorial compounds. Much of the remaining inhabitants live in the habitats in orbit or in one of the previously mentioned compunds.

The way I envision Hesperus as existing is almost like Berlin after the end of World War II. It is divided into sectors with different powers controlling each sector.
Another reason why there is still a significant pressence in the system is due to the large Naval Base that sits at the lagrange point with the planets satelite.

Before its destruction, Hesperus had served as the home for one of the sectors largest merchant fleets it supported large ship yards and drydock facilities. during the war with the Mezzan, they made alot of money servicing and repairing Imperial warships.

After the Mezzan War (due to the threat of further hosilities) it becamethe lynch pin for fleet operations in the subsector. This prestige waned as no new threats came from the Mezzan and the bulk of the fleet was moved to other operation theaters.

During the troubles during the Age of Apostasy, the base fell to the forces of chaos. When the final push was made on Hesperus, recapturing the ship facilities was a high priority (this may have fallen to the Frost Bringers and the Imperial Navy). Though heavily damaged, the base was eventually retaken.

So the system is divided into several spheres of influence

1. The Imperial Navy governs the naval base and the habitats around it.

2. The Ecclisiarchy governs the planet and habitats in orbit.

3. The Inquisition maintains a small enclave on the planet.

4. The Adeptus Mechanicus...After the initial stages of the war the AM had a significant presence in the system. This was mostly to recover any technology possible from the remains of the world and to salvage the numerous wrecks in orbit from the fleet battle.

At this time, their pressence is mostly in the Ladon belts (planetoid belts) where they are overseeing the extraction of the rich ores contained within. The minig operations are not directly under the AM's control, but they do hold significant influence over the mining companies.

This in turn gives them power in the system, because the orbital habitats are dependant on the technical experties of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the resources extracted from the belts.



The other worlds would have become fat off of their dealings with the Mezzan and probably with the Imperium afterwords, but the idea behind the former capital world was to have a planet completely descimated by war.

Since there is still a rather significant population, the best way to explain this was to have it either survive the war or be brought in afterwords. If it were to surviv the destruction of the planet, then it would need to be in orbit or somehow protected on the planet.

If it survivied then there had to be a reason why it was allowed to survive. The other worlds do offer higher resources and this may be one of the reasons why the Imperium descided to take them intact rather than destroying them completely.

With Hesperus, the destruction of the planet was only in part to get rid of the chaos corruption. It was also to serve as an object lesson for other worlds about what happens to those that stand against the Imperium.

This also brings up the question about how the war progressed during the Age of Apostasy. It may be that rather than striking at outlying systems, the Imperium started the battle by attacking Hesperus.

They would have wanted to knock out the naval base as quickly as possible. Also if you cut off the head of the snake, other systems may capitualte rather than suffer a similar fate.



Orbital bombardment with asteroids from the planetoid belts would have a large effect on the planet and the atmosphere (not to mention the population).

As to the systems involvement in Subsector politics....It serves as the base for fleet operations in the Sargassos Subsector. It also is the home of the ecclisiarchical and inquisitorial presence within the subsector.

There is also the fact that they are still a large producer of Pharmaceuticals. Although they no longer have the technical skill or the facilities to manufacture anagathic drugs, they still eek out a tidy profit on other drugs.

I wonder...the government is listed as a religious dictatorship. Rather than having this be held under the sway of the ecclisiarchy, could the system be governed by the Inquisition as the overseer of all operations...with the other powers mentioned above holding sway over their sections (as long as their governance does not stand in direct violation of Inquisitorial edicts)?

In the second edition Imperial Guard codex it describes Lord Solar Machariu's campaign out to the Halo Worlds. Part of the fluff mentions how they destroyed a high tech world which stood up to to years of war by redirecting a comet at the planet.

Mass drivers should not be beyond the Adeptus Mechanicus. The maynot be able to create them small enough for personal weaponry, but these would be enormous mass drivers, which would also be useful in mining operations.

Virus Bombing would indeed have a serious impact on an atmosphere. If the plants, algae and bacteria were killed off, the atmosphere would not be able to replenish its oxygen supply. While this would make it unbreathable, it would do little to remove the CO₂ or other heavier gasses.

Orbital bombardment by objects that could generate sufficient heat and pressure waves to throw such elements out of the atmosphere could account for the thinning.

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The Jupiter-like planet HD 209458b, nicknamed Osiris by the research team is rapidly losing its atmosphere. It orbits a Sun-like star 150 light-years from Earth. A previous study by the researchers led them to beleive that the planet losing at least 10,000 tons of material each second.

The venting process has been attributed to a pair of reasons, namely the intense gravitational forces between the planet and its parent star, as well as the super-hot temperature of the planet's atmosphere.

Osiris circles the stellar primary at a distance of just 4.4 million miles (7 million kilometers). This is closer than Mercury's orbit around the Sun.

The close orbit causes intense gravitational tiding that stretches the planet's atmosphere into an oval shape.
The upper atmosphere itself is baked up to 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit (10,000 degrees Celsius), which forces hydrogen atoms to expand outward at supersonic speeds. The hydrogen wind erupts away from the planet like a geyser and is powerful enough to sweep up carbon and oxygen with it.

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An asteroid hitting the the ground would strike with the energy release of a nuclear bomb. If we use the heat gereated by the Hiroshima blast, We are talking about temperatures of about 300,000 degrees C. Taking this as the average sized object to strike the planet, and estimating between 30-40 (rough estimate) to hit the high population centers, the rise in temperature and pressure wave of the explosions might be sufficient to outgas enough of the atmosphere to cause the thinning.

The subsiquent "nuclear winter" brought on by this destruction would kill off any remaining plant life, thus eliminating the vehicle for restoring oxygen to the planet's atmosphere.



So should the planet be under the control of the ecclisiarch then?

1. Basic World Type: Planet
2a. Planet Diameter: 5,600 miles (8,960 km)
2b. Planet Density: Molten Core, 0.98 terra
5. World Mass: 0.413 terra
6. World Gravity: 0.735 terra
7. Planet Orbit Period:
7a. Stellar Mass: 0.49 sol
7b. Orbital Distance: 0.2 AU
7c. Orbital Period: 46.67 standard days
9. Rotation Period: 23.45 standard hours
10. Axial Tilt: 26 degrees
11. Orbital Eccentricity: 0.01
12. Seismic Stress Factor: 0.45

ATMOSPHERIC RELATED DETAILS

1. Atmospheric Composition: Standard oxygen-nitrogen mix
2. Surface Atmospheric Pressure: 0.4 atm
3. Surface Temperature:
3a. Stellar Luminosity: 0.45
3b. Orbit Factor: 836.345
3c. Energy Absorption: 0.782
3d. Greenhouse Effect: 1.0
3e. Base Temperature: 21.31 degrees C
4. Orbital Eccentricity Effects: Tc=0.3 degrees C, Tf=-0.3 degrees C
5. Latitude Temperature Effects: (Hex Row=Degrees C)
1=+18, 2=+12, 3=+6, 4=0, 5=-6, 6=-12, 7=-18, 8=-24, 9=-30, 10=-36, 11=-42 degrees C
6a. Axial Tilt Base Increase: 15.6 degrees C
6b. Axial Tilt Base Decrease: -26 degrees C
6c. Axial Tilt Latitude Effects: (Hex Row=Degrees)
1=0, 2=0, 3=0.25, 4=0.5, 5=0.75, 6=1, 7=1, 8=1, 9=1, 10=1, 11=1 degrees
7a. Length of day and Night: 11.725 standard hours
7b. Rotation-Luminosity Effects: 0.45
7c. Daytime Rotation Effects: 0.36 +per hour of daylight, 105.952 absolute maximum plus temperature
7d. Nighttime Rotation Effects: 8.0 -per hour of darkness, 147.155 absolute maximum minus temperature
11. Temperature Worksheet: See separate section
12. Native Life: Exists
13. Atmospheric Terraforming: Has not occurred
14. Greenhouse Effect Terraforming: Has not occurred
15. Albedo Terraforming: Has not occurred

HYDROSPHERE RELATED DETAILS

1. Hydrographic Percentage: 38%
2. Hydrographic Composition: Liquid water
3. Tectonic Plates: 3
4. Hydrographic Terraforming: Has not occurred
5. Terrain Terraforming: Has occurred
6. Continents and Oceans: 1 major oceans, 8 minor oceans, 8 small seas, 6 scattered lakes
7. Volcanoes: 2
8. Resources and Goods:
Natural Resources: Agriculture
Processed Resources: Agroproducts, Metals, Non-Metals
Information Resources: Documents
9. Weather Control: Is not practiced

POPULATION RELATED DETAILS

1. Total World Population: 3,000,000
3. Cities:
3e. Medium-Large Cities (UWP Pop-2): Cities=24, Population/City=50,000
3g. Moderate-Size Cities (UWP Pop-3): Cities=36, Population/City=5,000
3i. Small Cities (UWP Pop-4): Cities=1,944, Population/City=500
3k. Very Small Cities (UWP Pop-5): Cities=12,960, Population/City=50
4. Primary Cities: 10
5. Starports and Spaceports: A/A/A/A/D/D/D/A/A/A
6. Orbital Cities: Present
7. Social Outlook:
7a. Progressiveness: Progressive, Enterprising
7b. Aggressiveness: Unaggressive, Neutral
7c. Extensiveness: Monolithic, Xenophilic
8a. Number of Customs: 3
8b-g. Local Customs/Practicing Group:
Unusual training prohibited for.../All population.
Live under special conditions/All population.
Unusual clothes/Scientific figures.

GOVERNMENT RELATED DETAILS

1. Representative Authority Guide: Civil Service Bureaucracy, Several Councils

LATITUDE BASE
HEX BASE TEMPERATURE TEMPERATURE
ROW TEMPERATURE EFFECTS FOR HEX ROW
1 21 18 39
2 21 12 33
3 21 6 27
4 21 0 21
5 21 -6 15
6 21 -12 9
7 21 -18 3
8 21 -24 -3
9 21 -30 -9
10 21 -36 -15
11 21 -42 -21

AXIAL TILT HIGHEST
HEX SUMMER AXIAL TILT TEMP PLUS DAYTIME ORBIT ECC TEMP FOR
ROW PLUS FACTOR IN SUMMER PLUS PLUS HEX ROW
1 16 0 0 4 0.0 44
2 16 0 0 4 0.0 38
3 16 0.25 4 4 0.0 35
4 16 0.5 8 4 0.0 33
5 16 0.75 12 4 0.0 31
6 16 1 16 4 0.0 29
7 16 1 16 4 0.0 23
8 16 1 16 4 0.0 17
9 16 1 16 4 0.0 11
10 16 1 16 4 0.0 5
11 16 1 16 4 0.0 -1

AXIAL TILT LOWEST
HEX WINTER AXIAL TILT TEMP MINUS NIGHTTIME ORBIT ECC TEMP FOR
ROW MINUS FACTOR IN WINTER MINUS MINUS HEX ROW
1 -26 0 0 94 0.0 -55
2 -26 0 0 94 0.0 -61
3 -26 0.25 -7 94 0.0 -73
4 -26 0.5 -13 94 0.0 -86
5 -26 0.75 -20 94 0.0 -98
6 -26 1 -26 94 0.0 -111
7 -26 1 -26 94 0.0 -117
8 -26 1 -26 94 0.0 -123
9 -26 1 -26 94 0.0 -129
10 -26 1 -26 94 0.0 -135
11 -26 1 -26 94 0.0 -141