System: Kansu

During the latter half of the 24th century, the frozen wasteland of Kansu was finally colonized. The planet's continents were covered with vast fields of blue-grey foliage. These plants were volatile when exposed to high heat, a side effect of storing energy as methane rather than fat.

Colonists learned this by accident when they tried using the plants in their hearths after drying them out, a process that made them more volatile. Many early colonists lost limbs clearing the land. The colonists learned to carefully and remotely harvest the ice plants as a renewable energy source. Similar metabolisms in the plant and microbial organisms of Kansu's ice-shrouded oceans left its sea floor covered in methane-hydrate ices.

Kansu is a rather small world with three continents. Kantuene is the largest continent, located at the equator and extending into the northern and southern hemispheres. The majority of the population lives in the capital, Raijianstad, the largest of Kansu's domed cities, built in and around a large crevasse. It was underground that the settlers discovered rich fields of radioactive and precious metals. The continents of Matawan and Fetid remained largely unpopulated. Matawan is where the radioactive ores were refined. Fetid was turned over to the Federated Suns military, which built a base there after the Fourth Succession War.

There are no functional factories located on this planet.