System: Dubhe

Dubhe's home system, once known as Alpha Ursae Majoris, is another rare binary system blessed by an inhabitable world. Dubhe itself revolves around the outer star, a pale yellow main sequence sun that, at a distance of twenty-three astronomical unit, orbits a cooler orange giant once every forty-four Terran years. The close relationship between these stars has affected the orbit of Dubhe, elongating it as the world passes between them. The effect during these periods produces warmer-than-average summers for a world that is overall quite cool.

Indeed, every two decades Dubhe's polar caps begin a period of rapid melting that routinely floods the interior latitudes, a process the initial colonists took several generations adapting to. Though the winters on Dubhe are brutally harsh, the melting during this period is enough to gradually raise ocean levels worldwide by as much as one or two meters. Drawn here for the planet's abundance of minerals and arable land, the first colonists placed many of their settlements on the coastal regions of Holidius, the planet's single, equatorial landmass, only to lose them to the flooding damage during these so-called "super-summer" seasons.

Since then, most of Dubhe's large population centers have been moved to higher elevations well inland, but, while safe for the time being, experts have noticed the increasing intensity of the "super-summer" seasons and the melting of the polar caps. They attribute this more to the effects of centuries of mining and industrialization than to the planet's subtly growing distance from its primary in favor of the secondary.

During the Star League era, Dubhe was a border world with the Free Worlds League, jointly administered by the Terran Hegemony and House Marik, and was easily absorbed after the collapse of the Star League before the Lyran Commonwealth could stake a claim. As a border world throughout the Succession Wars, however, Dubhe suffered from heavy raiding and the occasional planetary invasion, which demolished much of its local industry.

The planetary capital of Dubhe, is Greenwich.

There are no functional factories located on this planet.