IS Atlas / System / Detail

Description:

Though it lacks significant natural resources or major industries, and the locals appear to concern themselves with little more than fishing and moisture farming, Zaniah is a world that has forever gone into the annals of history for being the host world of the St. Marinus House. Long overlooked through the ages, St. Marinus, founded in the early days of the Succession Wars, is one of only a handful of such sanctuaries throughout the Inner Sphere - a retreat for MechWarriors, weary of fighting and eager to devote the remainder of their lives to spiritual discovery.

Located deep within one of Zaniah's many desert regions - the locals never reveal where, for the benefit of those who seek such solitude - St. Marinus is said to be surrounded by kilometers of trackless canyons and long-dead lava flows. Amazingly enough, St. Marinus is known to favor no affiliation, whether Great House or mercenary, and throughout its centuries of operation, many warriors from the Inner Sphere, Periphery, and even the Clans, have been known to retire forever from the horrors of war at this retreat.

Though some of history's most prominent figures - such as Morgan Kell and Peter Steiner-Davion - have resumed their lives of warfare after supposedly retiring to this hallowed sanctuary, the vast majority of MechWarriors who have come to Zaniah have never returned to the firing lines.

The sanctity of St. Marinus is well respected. So much so, in fact, that in the centuries since its founding and despite the ferocity of the Succession Wars, even mercenary raiders have taken pains to avoid locating and attacking this site, focusing their energies instead on the more populous regions in and around the planetary capital of Starboro.

Zaniah is mostly land, its surface water divided mostly among its four major seas - Beowulf and Lambard in the northern hemisphere, Vaclav and Wendall in the southern. Rivers, reservoirs, and artificial channels have made the coastlines of these seas quite arable for many kilometers inland, where water purifiers render it safe for drinking and bathing, but Zaniah nevertheless relies to some degree on imported water to supplement its people's basic needs. In exchange, this world exports basic machinery, including commercial vehicles and private aircraft, though the bulk of the heavy industries supporting this trade are limited to the region surrounding Starboro (south of the Lambard Sea).

Interestingly enough, Starboro does not boast a major spaceport, but Hartzborg, an otherwise unremarkable metropolis near the Wendall Sea, features enough facilities to support modest DropShip traffic. Some have taken the presence of the spaceport there as a sign that St. Marinus indeed lies close by, a theory supported by the thriving tourist trade in Hartzborg, built around the historical significance of the monastery, but little other evidence exists to support these theories.