Golden Seed
Attributes
T-2: Industrialization
E1: One garden world and some barren worlds
R4: All you could want
Aspects
The Pulsar Only Cooks One Hemisphere.
“They Think That Nothing Bad Can Happen To Them!”
Description
Only recently discovered, Golden Seed orbits a distant pulsar. Its pulsar is its guardian. It is almost impossible to approach in force of numbers: It is protected from fleet invasion or occupation by extremes of gravity, dense asteroid fields and nebulae, and lancings of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.
Golden Seed shows extreme, conspicuous luck in supporting life at all. In fact, though, life is relatively comfortable. Even non-native species tolerate its high gravity fairly well, though they tire more quickly.
Tidally-locked, its proximal, pulsar-facing-side is scorched in x-rays and high-energy particles, but its distal, outward-facing side experiences nearly no harmful effects. The soil is naturally enriched; minerals rare elsewhere are incorporated into basic architecture. Golden Seed awaits only the right genius or entrepreneur to rapidly accelerate past its pre-atomic technological level and become a dominant force in the cluster.
Arriving in Golden Seed
Starships that arrive in Golden Seed must wend their way through the 2 dense asteroid belts towards the glare of the pulsar that sits at the center of the system. They will need to crank up the radiation shields as they near the orbit of the single habitable planet Seed, and orbit once around the planet through the blistering radiation that bathes the starward side before following the beacon down to the primitive landing field in the main city Alodon.
Slipstream Straits To
Places
Asteroid Belts
There are two separate asteroid belts in the Golden Seed system, known simply as Asteroid Belt Alpha and Asteroid Belt Beta.
Seed
Main habitable planet of the Golden Seed system, almost exclusively populated by humans.
Other than the signal of the beacon that guides starships down to the planet, there is very little radio traffic, and it might take a few minutes for a ship new to the system to determine that it the signal is analog voice signals, speaking the local language with mixed in Galacomon words.
The local language is a dialect of one of the more common human languages, sapients familiar with humans should have no trouble understanding it after a few minutes getting used to the accent. There are no public local tatternet nodes away from the area near the planet’s single landing field, and only if there is a ship there with a communication system that is acting as a relay.
Alodon
Capitol and largest city on Seed.
Maps of the city are downloadable from the tatternet. It is about 20 kilometers across with a river cutting across the eastern third of the city. Alodon is a chaotic mass of wood, brick, and stone buildings in a maze of narrow roads, mostly obscured from the sky by layers of fog and smoke.
The tatternet indicates that off-planet visitors should go subtly armed in the city, as public security forces are almost non-existent, and private security are only for those wealthy enough to afford them. Most of the local humans use steel blades and small ranged weapons that are mechanically launched with some sort of spring mechanism. Primitive ballistic chemical ballistic firearms are occasionally used by wealthier individuals. The really well equipped security forces of the high houses have been able to import modern weapons (blasters, plasma rifles) and have been trained in using them.
The streets are cobblestones set deep into the clay earth, and between 4 and 6 meters wide. The only lights are occasional gas lights on high poles or the lights of occasional businesses that make circles of light in the street.
Occasionally a narrow wooden bridge will arc over a small creek that makes it way across the street, about 15 feet across; the smell of sewage invariably rises from the creek.
Maze of Narrow Streets ; Perpetually Dark and Damp ; Distant Sounds of Coughing ; Smell of Mold and Burning… Wood?
Landing field
Alodon’s starship landing field is literally that, a muddy field of some local grass, surrounded by brick and steel warehouses, with small buildings tucked in between. The field is often empty except for the 15 meter tall wooden tower in the center that holds the ancient automatic beacon that provides the signal that guides starships here.
The Slums
East of the Landing field is the slums, where the warehouses and small business turn into dilapidated tenement buildings, 3-4 stories high and made of wood. Some of them house small bodegas on the ground floor.
The number of people on the street increases, many of them skinny, all of them desperate. Most of them quickly move out of your way.
How could the smell get worse? ; Streets lined by the poor and desperate
Entertainment District
Walking east through the slums, approaching the eastern edge, the sound of music, laughter, and shouts can be heard, and the sky glows with light from buildings further ahead. The dilapidated wood buildings of the slums turn into dilapidated brick buildings. The number of pedestrians increase, mostly making their way in the same direction you are. You cross another narrow bridge over a fragrant creek and enter a neighborhood that consists entirely of bars, music halls, pawn shops, and bordellos.
Sonada Jani’s Import/Export Emporium
A small high end shop that sells off-planet fashions to the wealthy denizens of the city. It is located on the west bank of the river that cuts through the eastern third of the city.