Erasmus and the Threat of Dante
Name: Erasmus
System: Tycho
66789ES
Gravity: normal (1.09 gees)
Dominant Terrain: Desert
(83 F)
Atmosphere: Normal
Population Density: Sparse
– roughly 1.5 million on Erasmus and 300K in Tycho System
Dominant Government: Theocracy – The Court of Man
Dominant Law: Average
– personal defense acceptable
Customs/Groups:
Military -
significant clothing, never cut hair; the Soldiers of Man are stoic protectors of their people, rangers of Erasmus
Scholars/theologians – children named
after significant events/individuals; the enlightened seek to preserve the past through the memory of names.
Spaceport: Basic – minimal FTL
resources in-system
Tech Level: Renaissance earth (Erasmus);
Slightly Below Average (Tycho System)
Erasmsus was
a colony world settled in the early years of the generational STL ships that
left earth prior to the discovery of skip (and transitional) drive. The planet
was named Erasmus after the theologian and scholar Desiderius Erasmus. The name was befitting of the many tempered
and pacifist religious expatriates onboard who had agreed to the journey to
start a new life of religious freedom and introspection away from Earth.
At first
Erasmus looked to be an idyllic world, and efforts to deconstruct and
cannibalize the generational ship GCS Descartes went well. It was not long in
to the colonization process that the colonists realized there was a problem:
Erasmus contained a dearth of requisite rare materials and useful fuels that
were readily available on other worlds. This slowed the development of the colony
as solar power and other resources became more relevant for speedy development.
There was only one other concern that the colonists could not account for: when
the journey began, long rang study of Erasmus and the rest of the Tcho 66789ES
system showed that Erasmus had two moons; on arrival, the colony ship found no
moons at all, nor any evidence of what had happened to them…
A century in
to habitation the colony was doing well, if somewhat behind the curve due to
the need to find alternate fuels and resources. The rich arboreal life of the
planet was more than sufficient to make up for the hardships. That was when the
first local astronomers spotted what came to be known as Dante. A white dwarf,
Dante was so named by the religious people of Erasmus in recognition of its
sudden and inevitable role as the bard that would lead them all into the
inferno. Though it never passed especially close, it became clear that the
white dwarf was on a highly eccentric orbit, the first half of which had pulled
it through the system two centuries earlier, creating an effect on the local
stellar bodies not unlike pool. The consequences of Dante’s trajectory was
unmistakable: the white dwarf was not a stellar native to this system, but had
become trapped gravitationally to Tycho’s main star. As it spiraled back and
forth it became apparent that every two to three centuries the white dwarf
would migrate through the star system creating an potential extinction level event
to all who lived on Erasmus.
The colony
made great haste to recover the remaining , carefully preserved shuttles to the
orbital remains of the GCS Descartes, and a plan was hatched to preserve the
best and brightest in space while the main colony, which had grown immense,
prepared for the possibility of destruction.
The first
pass of Dante was destructive, and enough for scholars of Erasmus to realize
that the white dwarf most likely had stripped Erasmus of its moons two
centuries ago. Erasmus was hit by a cluster of comets disgorged from the
disrupted Kuiper Belt of the system, pummeling the planets of Tycho. Despite
the bombardment no single comet was more than a quarter kilometer across; the
devastation was vast, but the survivors of Erasmus dwelled in carefully stocked
subterranean cities and managed to live on. The death toll was less than it
might have been had no one been forewarned, and the survivors on the colony
ship’s skeleton observed the entire event. Afterwards, the colony picked itself
up and resume life, though this time on a world where deserts ruled supreme as
the explosive effects of the bombardment had devastated the ecosystem and wiped
out the planet’s protective ozone layer.
With two
centuries to consider the prospect of a future bombardment, the colonists on
the generational ship considered carefully the survival of their people, and
decided to stay in space, working to colonize or extract resources from the
rest of the system to aid their planet-bound bretheren. In time this colony of
spacers took on deep religious significance, and were to become the
quasi-mystical rulers of Erasmus called the Court of Man.
There would
be two more visits to Dante before the system was rediscovered by the
FTL-powered ships of the Commonwealth. Each visit was devastating, and the
second event bombarded Erasmus back to the stone age. But for the efforts of
the Court of Man humanity would not have recovered. Today, the system lives in
a fierce détente. A research station sponsored by the Stellar Academy rests on
the fringes of Tycho’s space, for direct contact with the people of Erasmus has
led to trouble, as the locals refuse to recognize Commonwealth rule, or aid.
The Academy scientists have instead taken to studying the path of Dante, to
determine if there is any way to prevent the star from causing its two-hundred
year cycle of destruction as it spirals toward Tycho Prime to become a new
binary star locked in relativistic destruction. Some “heretics” of the Court of
Man have taken to fraternizing with the foreigners that they call Outsiders,
but most feel that there is a divine providence to their situation and that
they must remain in-system as stoic observers and protectors of man to see it
out, that it is a test of the divine.
Either way,
the first event happened when the colony ship arrived in 2217. The second was
in 2423, and the third was in 2629. It is now 2820 (CT) Commonwealth time, and
the next visit is due to arrive in a mere 13 years, give or take. A number of
proposals are on the table for how to stop Dante from destroying Erasmus…again….but
there is one other hidden faction in the system, the so-called Naturalists who
believe that Dante is a necessary destiny, and they will stop at nothing
including sabotage to prevent the Commonwealth from attempting to help…
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