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- Osseinium -
Thread Prefix -
Fanon.
Name - Osseinium.
Coordinates - O-13.
Hyperlane - N/A.
Climate - The entirety of the planet exists in a sub-arctic climate, harsh but marginally habitable. Osseinium's lowlands are subject to intensely radioactive fallout storms, a legacy of the fiery destruction visited upon the world's former tenants. At other times, the mountain valleys and lowlands are lashed by high winds, icy rain and blizzards.
Terrain - Osseinium's terrain consists primarily of tundra steppes, ice caps and mountain ranges, with a few scattered liquid water seas. There is little vegetation aside from hearty, low-growing grasses and scrub; the mountains shelter the occasional forest valley, however.
Rotation - Ossein days are approximately 30 standard hours in length. The local year is 400 local days.
Inhabitants - Osseinium has few surviving local species, these primarily consisting of hearty vegetation and a handful of fauna, including herds of feral nerf and predatory rancors. There are small remnant colonies of the planet's ancient human inhabitants, inbred and radiation-scarred, living deep in the mountains and worshiping the ruins of their once mighty civilization.
Resources - Osseinium has few resources to speak of; though several thousand years have passed since the layers were deposited, the planet has large reserves of irradiated material, which can be mined and refined into extremely low grade fuel elements. There are ancient iron mines in some of the mountain ranges, although most of these were long ago tapped out and sealed; it is believed that a few were converted into fallout shelters toward the end, and may still be inhabited to some degree.
Government - With the first and last of the great Ossein Khans many thousands of years dead, Osseinium is not currently host to any central government of note. Smugglers and pirates have long used parts of the planet as a hideout, and their law is the closest there is to the real thing anywhere on-world.
Culture - Osseinium was once home to a fearsome warrior culture, believed to be long extinct after a great war with the fledgling Old Republic wiped them out. Though a nomadic culture, these people settled Osseinium as a kind of central supply depot and trading location; they built grand cities, palaces and other works on the surface, in addition to orbital constructs such as shipyards and defense platforms. Little evidence of either exists today.
Technology - Though once a technologically advanced world in the fledgling days of the Old Republic and the golden age of the Ossein Khanate, Osseinium's remnant native population - aside from a few religiously maintained examples of pre-fall technology - has dropped back to the level of primitives, employing beasts of burden and only the simplest mechanical conveyances, and unsophisticated weapons such as spears, swords and slugthrowers.
Only off-worlders who come to Osseinium have anything approaching Galactic baseline technology.
Satellites -Only off-worlders who come to Osseinium have anything approaching Galactic baseline technology.
Osseinium is orbited by single moon, known as Temujin. It is a barren, airless ball of rock and dust, with only the blasted ruins of a few Khanate-era outposts on its surface. The planet is also orbited by a respectable debris field, the wreckage of ancient defense platforms, ships and shipyards destroyed when the Grand Navy of the Republic crushed the Ossein Khanate.
History - "In salute to Ibon, Khan of Khans, master of all beings and ruler of all worlds."
_Inscription found on a chunk of Ossein masonry.
_Inscription found on a chunk of Ossein masonry.
A long, long time ago, in the days before the Old Republic, there existed the Ossein culture.
The Ossein came from humble beginnings. Descended from prehistoric human spacefarers, they were a nomadic people, living and dying aboard their ships, traveling from planet to planet as merchants, tradesmen, or more frequently, pirates and mercenaries. The Ossein were disparate, roaming the ancient Galaxy in fleets composed of the ships of their tribes.
The common thread which held them together was their ancestral home, the remote, temperate world of Osseinium.
The ancient city-palace of Ibon Khan, as it appeared before its destruction.
Osseinium was less a home to the Ossein people, more a central meeting place. It served as a repair yard, supply depot and trade-port for the Ossein fleets, the hub of their culture and a birthright to every member of their kind.
The planet was sacred to the Ossein. It figured heavily in their myths and legends, believed by them to be the birthplace of space travel and the hyperdrive, major parts of their way of life. The Ossein themselves worshiped hyperspace, believing it to be the home of the gods and the realm of the afterlife.
Osseinium in those days was temperate, and boasted many great cities and palaces built by the Ossein for their tribal "admirals." Ossein mines produced great quantities of fuel ore, and its orbital shipyards churned out ships of all kinds in huge numbers.
In its later years under the Ossein tribes, Osseinium became the seat of the Ossein Khanate, a powerful, interstellar empire which embraced a thalassocratic form of rule. Osseinium was but one world in the vast Khanate, but as the preferred home of its ruler, the Khan, it occupied an important place.
This fact would eventually be its undoing.
The Ossein Khanate was short-lived. It was built and ruled by a single man, the pirate warlord-turned-emperor Ibon Khan, who managed to unite the disparate Ossein fleets under his command and, according to legend, "conquered a thousand worlds and slew a thousand thousand enemies." Ibon was the first and last Khan of the Ossein Khanate, and his reign was characterized by a mix of unimaginable brutality and enlightened self-interest. Many planets with records of the period during which Ibon Khan was supposed to have ruled them record a golden age of easy trade and prosperity. Other planets considered to have been part of the Khanate tend to be blasted, barren rocks, bearing the scars of ancient nuclear bombardment on a scale not seen again until the dark days of the Sith Empire.
The Ossein Khanate is a long vanished empire, with Osseinium itself standing as a monument to its destruction. Historical details are sketchy, but it is believed that the Khanate may have provoked a more powerful rival, possibly the much larger Old Republic, which was much more militant in those days. Many records of the period were lost during the Hundred-Year Darkness, so it is difficult to say anything with certainty.
What is known, with absolute certainty, is the fate of Osseinium.
Based on the state of the planet, it is believed that the same sterilization tactics employed by the Khanate's fleets against rebellious worlds were repaid on Osseinium. The planet bears the scars of nuclear carpet bombing, and it is orbited by a vast debris belt, all that remains of the once-proud Ossein fleets, which came home to defend their most sacred world.
An ancient starship observes the final destruction of Osseinium.
After it was bombed back into the pre-atomic age, the relevance of Osseinium on the galactic stage rapidly faded. The Ossein had been utterly wiped out, having returned en masse to fight for their Khan in the final days of the Khanate, and subsequently receding in the memory of their former subjects to near mythic status. Some populations in the Expansion Region and Mid Rim bear genetic testimony to their existence, but the culture is all but extinct, its last practitioners being the handfuls of Ossein whose ancestors weathered Osseinium's destruction in deep fallout shelters, naught but primitive savages in the present, forever severed from their star-faring roots. The planet's great cities and palaces are long gone, merely a scattering of irradiated ruins; the deep crater where Ibon Khan's own golden throne-city once stood still faintly glows at night.
Though once the center of a thriving trade network, the markets of Osseinium are long silent. The entire region is now a backwater, with few other planets of note in the sector.
A more recent fortress, built by one of the pirate clans or smuggler groups which utilize the planet. Note the radiation storm on the horizon.
In more recent times, Osseinium's relative obscurity has ironically put it back on the map, for a certain demographic of the Galactic population.
Since at least the time of the Hundred-Year Darkness, pirates, smugglers and other criminals have used Osseinium as a hideout and meeting place. Osseinium is, to most other groups, a nothing planet; despite its illustrious history, its golden age was a very, very long time ago, and if it is mentioned at all on mainstream Galactic star-charts, it is as a small dot with a name in small print, surrounded by a sector worth of similarly unremarkable dots and names. Few would ever think to visit it, for any reason.
Which is exactly the point.
Unlike traditional outlaw hideouts, remote planets deep in impenetrable nebulae or the far reaches of the Outer Rim, Osseinium actually sits in the Expansion Region, relatively convenient to the Inner Rim, the Colonies and the Core; aside from this, it is not within the current borders of the Republic, or any other major power, putting it outside the jurisdiction of most law enforcement agencies.
These facts make Osseinium an important link in the Galactic black market, serving as a stopping point for many smugglers wishing to move illicit goods from the Outer Rim to the lucrative markets of the inner Galaxy. Though still relatively obscure even among those in the business - such places are closely-guarded secrets for many outlaws - the planet is host to a number of bases set up by pirates and smugglers as hideouts and transfer points.
In the present, Osseinium has little to recommend it. It is a hive of scum, villainy, and tribal primitives as likely to snipe you with a long slug-rifle as look at you. That said, for those with the right connections, its shadow-ports can be a good place to find work and adventure.
Osseinium is intended as the home-world of an ancient culture which I intend to be a major inspiration for Triter Zonne's actions going forward. Aside from that, it is an outlaw planet, albeit one with a difference; whereas most such worlds crust the Outer Rim like a scum ring, this one is relatively convenient to the Core, and may act as a good stopping place for characters either coming from or going into that region on underworld business.
Location, location, location, as they say.
Location, location, location, as they say.
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