Akana Ris

Geography, Prime

"Stay out of my business and I’ll stay out of yours."

A planet on the border between the Chatcaavan Empire and the Alliance, known for its lawlessness. Has (at least one?) major orbital station. Lots of criminals, thieves, pirates and outlaws stage through this world.

Vital Statistics (At a Glance)

Pronounced ah kah nah rees. Possessive is Risian. Demonym is Risians. [Chatcaavan NickName Here]

• Major Populations: Mixed Pelted, humans, some Chatcaava
• Type: Unaffiliated World
• Population: [some small number]
• Gravity: Mediger 4
• Native Language: Universal
• Settled: Prior to the Rapprochement, by the Chatcaava
• Current Allegiances: Unaffiliated

History

Chatcaavan Rule

The planet Akana Ris was colonized by the Chatcaava during their second coreward expeditionary period (during what is known to them as their Second Updraft Scouting Mission) because of the richness of its solar system’s resources. The system has two asteroid belts dense with mineable materials, two gas giants suitable for siphoning, and a world that, while somewhat heavier in gravity than the Chatcaava prefer, was a pristine, inhabitable planet, with interesting fauna to hunt and flora to examine for scientific uses. Further investigation turned up many on-world mining opportunities, and the planet was christened Akana Ris (‘metal/steel planet’) and placed in the Second Updraft Curve on their astropolitical maps. A worldlord was appointed, and the Chatcaava moved in to begin taking advantage of the solar system while their scouts moved onward. This fiefdom was passed on in the usual way from male to male, each proving better or worse at stewardship, while the scouting mission continued. There were few solar systems worth claiming in the Second Updraft Curve, however, which led to estrangement from the Empire. The worldlords of Akana Ris, seeing their contact with the Empire wane, began managing the planet with an eye to increasing their wealth, rather than conserving the renewable resources of the solar system, and the last of those lords decamped for more palatable homes nearer the border, or inside the Empire, using his wealth to secure himself advantage.

Akana Ris ceased to be a Chatcaavan holding, and became a depot for occasional layovers on new scouting missions, and inevitably—now and then—a useful place for smuggling and meetings between criminals, or lords planning violence on other lords. Population on the world itself dwindled, and activity was more common on the orbital station, or the installations in the asteroid belts, than on its surface.

Interregnum

In 159 BA, the Pelted met the Chatcaava in the neutral space coreward of the Alliance border during one of their missions to watch their backtrail for human encroachment. The Rapprochement had happened some twenty years previously, but the Pelted fear of humanity was so entrenched that for nearly a century afterwards, they remained vigilant against the possibility that the newest members of the Alliance would launch an initiative against them. This first contact between Alliance and Empire occurred in Sector Ecose Epto, where Akana Ris’s solar system was sited. The treaty itself was negotiated elsewhere, but to express their peaceful intentions, and to ‘celebrate’ their first contact, the Chatcaava offered the Alliance Akana Ris and its solar system to the Alliance. This symbolic gesture was considered an act of great generosity, since it included all the existing infrastructure, and the Alliance accepted. They wanted to set up forward listening posts along the possible paths to the Alliance from Earth, and Akana Ris was well-situated to serve that purpose.

Humans, still new to the Alliance, and suffering greatly from their status as impoverished and backwards parents to their technologically rich offspring, made a few noises during this period, suggesting that more investigation of the Chatcaava might not be a bad thing, that accepting gifts without examination wasn’t a good thing, and expressing, carefully, their frustration that they were still considered threatening enough to require supervision while this entirely new alien species was welcomed with open arms. The more apologetic among the Pelted assured them that a listening post in that sector would serve just as well to keep an eye on any new aliens that might come along that vector (or even on the Chatcaava themselves), but it was a fractious issue; so soon after humanity’s rediscovery, it stressed the already deep rifts between the cultures and would lead, eventually, to some of the same attitudes and historical precedents that would cause the Alliance to consider the human attitude toward the Chatcaava alarmist, even in response to the Empire’s constant depredations.

Alliance Control

Akana Ris, moving into Alliance control, began first as a military establishment (such as Fleet could be called a military; at that time, it was even more loosely organized and run than it is presently). Its post was manned by a Fleet Intelligence Agency hold supported by Special Forces units. The Alliance was still riding the waves of the Technology Explosion period; the colonization waves made possible by the Well drive were still rushing outward, and the Reproduction Crisis that would follow didn’t catch up with the civilian colonists of Akana Ris before they arrived and discovered just how far from the Alliance’s usual traffic they were. Most of them didn’t think through the fact that a forward listening post would necessarily be very far from anyplace important. A stubborn core of colonists remained for various reasons, but the world never prospered… and its low population numbers, and its distance from the Alliance, made it for the Alliance what it had become for the Chatcaava: an excellent place to hold clandestine meetings. The Fleet presence there was never large enough to police the solar system, and the Alliance didn’t have the resources to assign ships to keep it safe; with the colonization waves sweeping spinward, they had their hands full patrolling the planets within their borders without spending precious ships to planets in what was, negotiated by treaty, neutral space.

Akana Ris was left to itself. The Fleet personnel assigned there considered it a hardship assignment, and were compensated accordingly, and used their time on their duty—watching for threats. Any attempt at helping locals enforce law and order within their solar system, they left to the local government, such as it was.

In 203 BA, Fleet quietly shut down their operations on Akana Ris and withdrew their assets. Within twenty years of that date, traffic in and out of the system was decidedly questionable. By the mid-late 200s, BA, the planetary population of Akana Ris had become so accustomed to their abandonment that they no longer considered themselves part of the Alliance. The arrival of a criminal element also brought enough ship traffic to the system that they had access to the resources other Alliance colonies took for granted, and those smugglers, pirates, and crimelords made sure that they carried enough legitimate cargo to inspire the locals to look the other way. Everyone knows what’s going on, but the overwhelming attitude is ‘not my business.’

Geography and Landmarks

Prime

Prime is the location of the original Chatcaavan worldlord's settlement, a mansion at the tip of an unusual rock formation amid a forest of quartzite-sandstone pillars. A cliff that leads upward into the mountains forms a hemispherical cut, with a centered "tongue" that juts out in the center, down which a river flows. The palace is built over the river just before where it becomes a waterfall. The town, small and existing mostly to support the lord's needs, stretched back toward the cliff. Vassals of sufficient status were allowed to make their homes in the cliff walls; flying and hunting were both good among the pillars, and down in the forest at their feet. The Chatcaava liked this area particularly because the semicircular cliff with its outstretched tongue, looked like a flying Chatcaavan; the pillars facing the bowl formed by that cut were called 'The Enemies' and it was considered fine sport to fly dangerously on the complex winds funneled between them.

After the Chatcaavan departure, Prime became the site of Akana Ris's first city. The cliff dwellings used by the vassals were abandoned, but the cliff edges filled in with homesteads. While it grew to respectable size it was never as large a city as the one that replaced it as Akana Ris's unofficial capital, because of the variability of the landscape; it was difficult to site a spaceport large enough to serve the world from Prime (which was, in fact, one of the reasons the original worldlord chose it: not only good hunting, and good flying, but hard to attack.) A small spaceport was eventually built there, but it was never up to the task.

The modern city of Prime is subdivided into the following areas:

• The Lookout (what was once the Chatcaavan Worldlord's palace and estate grounds) - no longer used as a seat of governance, this has now become the location of the hospital, university, and in the main house itself, situated over the river, a large hall used for gatherings, most of them unplanned.
• Old Town (what was once the area where Chatcaavan workers lived) - this area was previous and is still home to the lowest order of housing.
• Sunbank and Fallbank (the areas along the river on the tongue, closer to the cliffs; the names are remnants of the original Chatcaavan nomenclature, which characterized each side of the river based on navigational cues seen from the sky. Sunbank caught the light during morning flights, the ones deemed most enjoyable, and Fallbank was good because the cliff is nearly vertical, and safer to dive past).
• Uptown (the area around the lip of the cliff) - this area was intended as a fancy part of town, but never realized that intention.

"Sec" (Secundus)

Secundus, further east of Prime, became the de facto capital of Akana Ris when the planetary spaceport was built there years after the planet passed into Alliance possession. It is located on a plateau, in a very arid location, amid the same mountain range that rumples into the pillars around Prime, though higher in altitude. Secundus was built by the Pelted after they took possession of the planet and it became obvious that Prime wouldn't grow... but not long after the spaceport was built (in advance of much of the housing), it became clear that Akana Ris was headed for abandonment. The majority of the planet's residents did move to Secundus, eventually, but it was a half-hearted immigration at best, and the city is less lovingly designed, and nowhere near as well maintained, as the typical Alliance city.

The location did, however, allow the city to grow: which it did, to accommodate its increasingly criminal activities. Secundus now houses the single most concentrated number of residents on Akana Ris.

The nickname was used first by disaffected Pelted who were cynical about the planet's importance, and spread until it's now the most common name used by residents of the planet.

• there's apparently a cafe with the best hot chocolate

FIA Oversight

• Hold 9 - Mirror's hold was the Akana Ris oversight in 175 BA.
• Hold 11 - Replaced Hold 9 when Mirror's group retired from their watch around Akana Ris in 200 BA. Hold 11 was a rare "revolving door" Hold, and remained as Akana Ris's oversight until 283 BA, when it was replaced by Hold 12.
• Hold 12 - Was oversight for the quadrant containing Akana Ris (not just the planet) from 283 BA until 317 BA, when the posting was retired completely.

Visits

• Akana Ris is the site of first contact between the Alliance and the Faulfenza, when pirates shot down Zafiil's exploratory vessel in the outer system in (roughly?) 175 BA.
• Laniis and Hold 22 are hunting for clues on Akana Ris at the beginning of Amulet Rampant, where Laniis is masquerading as "Carol," a down-on-her-luck woman looking for a new job. The city she's in is Sec.

Quotes

• "No. I could die out here and eventually someone would think about investigating in the hopes of claiming salvage rights on what’s presumably left of my broken ship. They’ll enforce airspace around the outpost just to keep people from ramming one another, but they couldn’t care less once you’re out of their ambit."