Cluster: The Shrike Abyssal

System: Urla Rast

Bovis Tor

World Type: Desert

Richness: Rich

Element Zero: None

Iridium: Moderate

Platinum: Moderate

Palladium: Rich

Orbital Distance: 0.7 AU; Orbital Period: 0.6 Earth Years; Radius: 7,307 Km; Day Length: 33.5 Earth Hours; Atmospheric Pressure: 8.39 Earth Atmospheres; Surface Temperature: 253 Celsius; Surface Gravity: 1.6 G.

Description: Named “the shining sea” in an old volus language, Bovis Tor is so named for its boiling surface rich in glowing-hot alumina flecked with dark ridges of carbon.

Its thick atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen is no indicator of life since the temperatures are simply too high.

Doz Atab

World Type: Giant Ice

Richness: Moderate

Element Zero: None

Iridium: Poor

Platinum: Moderate

Palladium: Poor

Orbital Distance: 3.1 AU; Orbital Period: 5.5 Earth Years; Radius: 47,428 Km; Day Length: 10.3 Earth Hours.

Description: An ice giant, Doz Atab (“sky warden”) has a bluish tinge from its hydrogen-methane atmosphere. Its axial tilt causes its seasons to vary wildly in temperature.

Rosh

World Type: Rock

Richness: Rich

Element Zero: None

Iridium: Moderate

Platinum: Rich

Palladium: Moderate

Colony Founded: 2175 CE; Population: 2250; Capital: Suu Piz; Orbital Distance: 6.9 AU; Orbital Period: 18.2 Earth Years; Radius: 1,360 Km; Day Length: 67.4 Earth Hours; Atmospheric Pressure: Trace; Surface Temperature: -147 Celsius; Surface Gravity: 0.3 G.

Description: A recently colonized asteroid large enough to be considered a dwarf planet, Rosh is mined for its platinum deposits for use in hydrogen fuel cells.

With wide open spaces and few restrictions on construction or immigration, Rosh is like much of the Terminus Systems—a good place to build a habitat and get lost for a few decades.

Talis Fia

World Type: Garden

Richness: Good

Element Zero: Moderate

Iridium: Poor

Platinum: Rich

Palladium: Moderate

Colony Founded: 385 CE; Population: 3,800,000,000; Capital: Usra Dao; Orbital Distance: 1.6 AU; Orbital Period: 2.0 Earth Years; Radius: 7,550 Km; Day Length: 33.8 Earth Hours; Atmospheric Pressure: 6.15 Earth Atmospheres; Surface Temperature: -25 Celsius; Surface Gravity: 1.7 G.

Description: Talis Fia is a planet capable of supporting life—if that life happens to breathe ammonia.

Discovered by asari explorers, the planet was used as a bargaining chip by the Citadel Council, who quickly drafted a colonization agreement with its wealthy client race, the volus.

The Council would fund the volus colonization effort in return for massive trade benefits.

With uncharacteristic enthusiasm, an enormous volus influx ensued, and the Council reaped the economic benefits for a dozen years before the colonization bubble burst.

Today the economic good times on Talis Fia are long gone, and modern volus businesses are cutthroat operations. Piracy is a grave threat to shipping, as well-armed criminals see the volus as easy prey.

System: Xe Cha †

Aphras

World Type: Post-Garden

Richness: Moderate

Element Zero: None

Iridium: Moderate

Platinum: Moderate

Palladium: Moderate

Orbital Distance: 1.4 AU; Orbital Period: 2.0 Earth Years; Radius: 4,530 Km; Day Length: 31.3 Earth Hours; Atmospheric Pressure: 2.32 Earth Atmospheres; Surface Temperature: 33 Celsius; Surface Gravity: 0.7 G.

Description: A unique discovery, Aphras is a “heavenly twin”—a planet in a star system that has not one but two worlds of sufficient mass to retain an nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere within the habitable life zone of its parent star.

Fossil evidence shows abundant vertebrates and evidence of a sapient terrestrial avian species in its Bronze Age. However, the only trace of contemporary life on the planet is that of single-celled organisms in its seas.

All else has suffered from an extinction event—a series of massive impacts that vaporized vast quantities of water and lofted dust into its atmosphere.

Early theories that this event was a collision with a fragmenting asteroid have now been discounted—the impact craters were aimed directly at habitation centers.

Tosal Nym

World Type: Rock

Richness: Rich

Element Zero: Rich

Iridium: Rich

Platinum: Poor

Palladium: Moderate

Orbital Distance: 2.1 AU; Orbital Period: 3.0 Earth Years; Radius: 6,930 Km; Day Length: 19.8 Earth Hours; Atmospheric Pressure: 1.86 Earth Atmospheres; Surface Temperature: 18 Celsius; Surface Gravity: 1.3 G.

Description: The sister tragedy to the extinction event on Aphras, Tosal Nym was the rarest of jewels; a second garden planet within the same life zone as Aphras.

Not as old as its sister planet, its fossil evidence indicates it was home to abundant invertebrate sea life. However, similar craters to those on Aphras created a dust shroud that killed 99 percent of biota on the planet.

The even spacing of the craters indicates a coordinated simultaneous attack from points around the globe rather than an asteroid collision or supervolcanic scenario.

Vem Osca

World Type: Giant Jovian

Richness: Moderate

Element Zero: None

Iridium: Poor

Platinum: Moderate

Palladium: Poor

Orbital Distance: 4.6 AU; Orbital Period: 9.9 Earth Years; Radius: 64,826 Km; Day Length: 11.9 Earth Hours.

Description: A Jovian gas giant, Vem Osca (“weeping witness” in Iperian Volus) is a low-density hydrogen-helium planet with 35 moons.

Later this year, 33 of the moons will be visible from the planet’s surface, an event that will be recorded by space probes from all over the galaxy.

Zada Ban

World Type: Desert

Richness: Rich

Element Zero: Rich

Iridium: Moderate

Platinum: Moderate

Palladium: Rich

Colony Founded: 2154; Population: 22,500 (in orbital stations); Capital: None (largest station is Dolo Station); Orbital Distance: 0.7 AU; Orbital Period: 0.9 Earth Years; Radius: 7,594 Km; Day Length: 70.0 Earth Hours; Atmospheric Pressure: 0.0 Earth Atmospheres; Surface Temperature: 94 Celsius; Surface Gravity: 1.5 G.

Description: Zada Ban is a large dense planet named for a volus god of punishment. Its crust is rich in uranium, eroded by winds to create large radioactive dust storms across its surface.

The volus of Talis Fia have explored the planet thoroughly with space probes and telepresent robo-mining machines and discovered they are not the first to exploit the planet.

Plastics from a mining station approximately 50,000 years old can be found near the planet’s equator. Curiously, the mines nearby were not tapped out of uranium ore; they were instead abandoned at the height of their operation.