System: Alkalurops

Alkalurops is a warm and oppressive world, plagued by frequent hurricanes and tornadoes that are the result of a thick atmosphere, cursed further by greenhouse gases that amplify the heat of its white A-class sun. These conditions have prevented the evolution of any form of surface animal life, though native fish do thrive in the deeper parts of the planet's two large oceans.

Because of its inhospitable nature, colonization and development of Alkalurops proceeded slowly. Most settlements, founded on the northernmost continent of Vandika, were established close to pockets of natural gas and common metal veins, pumped and mined for export sale. To protect against the harsh weather and attain a degree of comfortable living, most of these early colonies were dug into the mountains and hills, and every structure was pressurized and outfitted with advanced air filters to make the interior air breathable.

Allabad, the planetary capital, was originally one such colony, nestled into the base of the north-south-running Bagadell Mountain Chain, and much of the city today still retains the look of a modernized Pueblo Indian village. Mainly due to these living conditions, the inhabitants of Alkalurops developed a curiously insular - almost xenophobic - culture, intensely distrustful of off-worlders.

Though more accepting overall of other citizens in the Lyran realm - particularly those from the Isle of Skye - Alkalurops's people showed little patience or hospitality to visitors from the Terran Hegemony. Even during the Star League era, when extra revenue resulting from trade with Nusakan, a key world in the Hegemony's computer industry, brought an influx of traders and entrepreneurs here, the natives of this world remained cold and aloof.

During the Amaris crisis, the Usurper's troops struck at Alkalurops despite its being outside Hegemony borders, hoping to deny any liberation force the use of the planet as a staging area to reclaim Nusakan. Instead, native resistance repelled Amaris's troops, a pattern repeated whenever raiders and invading neighbors struck the world during the Succession Wars. With few resources worth fighting over and an inhospitable climate, however, such raids were rare.

There are no functional factories located on this planet.