Hasdrubal
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Hasdrubal has a rough, frontier environment in the Romulan Star Empire, populated by Romulan mining personnel. Much of the colony's population is made of outcasts and malcontents from Romulan society, who chose Hasdrubal rather than face difficulties or criminal charges back home.
Climate
Hasdrubal's atmosphere is thin and composed of a nitrogen-oxygen-carbon dioxide mix; most humanoids require breathing equipment for long periods of exposure (an hour or more), otherwise carbon dioxide poisoning sets in. The weather is hot and damp, with rapid and frequent changes in climatic conditions. Violent storms and strong winds are common.
Culture
The colony is relatively peaceful, though more violent than Romulan society. Romulan military personnel enforce order and a military governor oversees the colony, ensuring that it remains productive and law-abiding. The rest is not a concern and the colonists are allowed to handle their own internal affairs.
During the excavation of a new mine in the northern hemisphere, an unusual artifact was uncovered by Romulan miners. It is a metallic obelisk, some three meters high, covered in alien writing that does not match anything on record with the Romulan military. The obelisk appears to be made of refined talantium, using advanced technology. Its composition is resistant to sensor scans, possibly indicating a core or inner layer of a denser material. Its origin is a complete mystery. There are no other signs that Hasdrubal ever supported any kind of sentient life, and the miners estimate that the obelisk was buried by a volcanic eruption more than 250,000 years ago.
The governor has ordered the obelisk shipped to the mining station for evaluation, and has alerted the Romulan Star Navy of the discovery. The next cargo ship to dock at the station will take the obelisk and transport it to a Romulan scientific facility where it can be studied. Rumors already circulate among the miners of the colony that the obelisk is some kind of remnant of advanced alien technology, or that it indicates some kind of ill omen for the colony.
Economy
Hasdrubal holds rich deposits of talantium, a metal used in the construction of warbird hulls and other military construction projects. There are also rich deposits of aluminum, titanium, and various other metals and ores. The Romulans use advanced strip-mining techniques, literally tearing away and pulverizing the planet's crust to extract the needed materials. The ores are shot into orbit using mass-driver systems located near the planet's equator, aided by Hasdrubal's own rapid spin. An orbital mining station processes the ore and ships the refined metals out of the system.
Apart from its mineral resources, Hasdrubal contains little of value. Once the planet's resource are exhausted, it will be abandoned, leaving only a planetary slag behind.
Places of Interest
Hasdrubal features some high mountains and deep valleys created by ancient seismic activity (the planet is seismically stable currently). These features are often the sites of mining operations, since they expose the largest veins of usable mineral nearest to the surface.
The planet is ruled from Hasdrubal City, a midsized settlement near the equator, which oversees the operation of the mass-driver facilities and the planet's sole spaceport. This spaceport has facilities only for shuttles and cargo-loaders, not for larger ships. All interstellar ships dock at the mining station in orbit above the planet, never landing on the surface. Mass-driver systems are used to ship materials into orbit, where they are retrieved by the orbital facility for processing. The orbital station has facilities for the maintenance and refueling of starships, but very limited repair and construction resources.
Reference(s)
- Estes, James, et al. The Way of D'era: The Romulan Star Empire, Last Unicorn Games, 1999.