IS Atlas / System / Detail

Description:

From orbit, Alphecca is an unremarkable world of blue-green oceans, with a scattering of six island continents and a multitude of smaller chains that are covered half the time by mist and clouds. On the surface, the world's lands are equally plain, mostly consisting of rolling hills, the odd rocky mountain peak, and grassy plains.

Though the climate varies from artic tundra to tropical equatorial reaches, on close inspection nothing about Alphecca stands out from the hundreds of swirling worlds that mankind calls home. Lacking in significant, readily accessible natural resources, Alphecca proved suitable only for settlement as a quiet farming world, its primary exports being native grains and meat from the gillarg, a large, relatively dumb amphibian that many locals describe as "a cross between a cow and a cowardly, toothless alligator."

The people of Alphecca gradually became inured to their sustenance-level existence, to the point where visitors often scoffed at their laid-back attitude toward even the most divisive political and religious matters. For centuries, the world's mediocrity and the lethargy of its inhabitants were its shield. Regarded as little more than a staging area for raids, or a quiet place for R&R, only a few odd roving bandits paid this world a visit after its first colonization, and it only changed hands between the Lyran Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine twice in its history. Alphecca was thus spared the worst of the Succession Wars and the FedCom Civil War.

Alphecca's capital city, Galanette Rainbow, is located on the northernmost island continent of Gataka. The other northern continent, Rubekka, is home to the planet's largest seaport city, Fescher's Dock. Of the other four island continents, Greim, Korinthas, Mursank, and Shario, only the southern polar continent of Greim is unpopulated, due to its inhospitable climate.