Shawshank
Shawshank is a prison planet located in the Starweb core regions, notable for housing the most dangerous and egregious criminals convicted by the Truth and Reconciliation Directorate and International Court. For inmates, contact with the outside cosmos is limited and escape all but impossible.
The planet itself is rocky, with a composition made up of almost entirely iron. It orbits extremely close to its sun and as consequence is tidelocked, one hemisphere experiencing temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees Celsius, sufficient to create lava seas, while the other remains at cryogenic temperatures. A tenuous atmosphere of vaporized rock forms over the sunward region and condenses on the night side.
Shawshank is notable for being one of the few locations in the Starweb where a wormhole has been placed on a planetary surface. Ordinarily, this is never done as a wormhole's collapse will liberate most of its mass as energy, which even for a relatively small one will still result in an explosion powerful enough to devastate everything within hundreds if not thousands of kilometers, followed by planetwide repercussions. In Shawshank's case there is nothing else on it besides the prison. Still, the stargate is located in a cavern on the dark side, with people and supplies being transferred by ballistic hoppers specially designed to withstand extreme temperatures. In usual operation its wormhole masses about 100 tons, a far cry from the kilotons to megatons of an average space gate, but still sufficient to carve out a huge crater were it to fail. The other end is located in a nearby inhabited system, aboard a space station guarded by the Star Patrol, making it also one of the few cases where a space-based wormhole connects to a ground-based one.
The prison facilities are located on the sunlit side, in underground voids excavated with fusion explosions, deep enough to remain at habitable temperatures. Conditions are austere, and while Stellar Compact law mandates attempts at reformation, prisoners are not sent to Shawshank if there's signs they're willing to change. Thus, its role has become that of a containment vessel for the very worst interstellar civilization has to offer: dictators who ruled nations with iron fists and secret police, military officers who ordered the bombardment of entire worlds during the Great Patriotic Wars, rogue bioengineers who tried to cook up super-plagues, and other such (attempted) perpetrators of existential catastrophe.
As many of these people are thought to command adulation and influence among criminal elements and ultranationalist political cults, both of which the Stellar Compact suppressed in the course of its mission to unite civilization, they are considered extreme threats and not allowed free communication with the outside world. Many of the guards are recruited from the victims of the inmates' atrocities, to reduce the possibility of collusion, and the prison is overseen in conjunction with the Existential Risks Directorate.
Escaping from Shawshank is considered virtually impossible. Like many International Penitentiary facilities, its designers made a baroque art out of trying to locate it in one of the most hostile places known to science. It is isolated in a solar system all by itself, with the only wormhole in and out located far from the prison proper, and under heavy guard at both ends. Even if another stargate was opened elsewhere, approaching the planet would require a specialized ship. An inmate trying to break out on his own would face the task of acquiring equipment to survive the infernal heat and scattered lava seas, and then a daunting overland trek across the terminator and into the dark side.
The planet itself is rocky, with a composition made up of almost entirely iron. It orbits extremely close to its sun and as consequence is tidelocked, one hemisphere experiencing temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees Celsius, sufficient to create lava seas, while the other remains at cryogenic temperatures. A tenuous atmosphere of vaporized rock forms over the sunward region and condenses on the night side.
Shawshank is notable for being one of the few locations in the Starweb where a wormhole has been placed on a planetary surface. Ordinarily, this is never done as a wormhole's collapse will liberate most of its mass as energy, which even for a relatively small one will still result in an explosion powerful enough to devastate everything within hundreds if not thousands of kilometers, followed by planetwide repercussions. In Shawshank's case there is nothing else on it besides the prison. Still, the stargate is located in a cavern on the dark side, with people and supplies being transferred by ballistic hoppers specially designed to withstand extreme temperatures. In usual operation its wormhole masses about 100 tons, a far cry from the kilotons to megatons of an average space gate, but still sufficient to carve out a huge crater were it to fail. The other end is located in a nearby inhabited system, aboard a space station guarded by the Star Patrol, making it also one of the few cases where a space-based wormhole connects to a ground-based one.
The prison facilities are located on the sunlit side, in underground voids excavated with fusion explosions, deep enough to remain at habitable temperatures. Conditions are austere, and while Stellar Compact law mandates attempts at reformation, prisoners are not sent to Shawshank if there's signs they're willing to change. Thus, its role has become that of a containment vessel for the very worst interstellar civilization has to offer: dictators who ruled nations with iron fists and secret police, military officers who ordered the bombardment of entire worlds during the Great Patriotic Wars, rogue bioengineers who tried to cook up super-plagues, and other such (attempted) perpetrators of existential catastrophe.
As many of these people are thought to command adulation and influence among criminal elements and ultranationalist political cults, both of which the Stellar Compact suppressed in the course of its mission to unite civilization, they are considered extreme threats and not allowed free communication with the outside world. Many of the guards are recruited from the victims of the inmates' atrocities, to reduce the possibility of collusion, and the prison is overseen in conjunction with the Existential Risks Directorate.
Escaping from Shawshank is considered virtually impossible. Like many International Penitentiary facilities, its designers made a baroque art out of trying to locate it in one of the most hostile places known to science. It is isolated in a solar system all by itself, with the only wormhole in and out located far from the prison proper, and under heavy guard at both ends. Even if another stargate was opened elsewhere, approaching the planet would require a specialized ship. An inmate trying to break out on his own would face the task of acquiring equipment to survive the infernal heat and scattered lava seas, and then a daunting overland trek across the terminator and into the dark side.
Shawshank
PIA22069 by NASA/JPL-Caltech
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