Sepres VI

The sixth planet from the binary star system Sepres is a lush, thriving world with an ancient history, and it is the only planet in the 16-planet system to sustain life. Yet, its proud and superstitious sentient inhabitants, the Seprevoi, lost both their home world and their culture during or prior to The Gap. As a result, the entire species has lived in orbit of their planet for as long as anyone can remember, estranged from an inviting but forbidden home in view but forever out of reach. The true reason for the seprevois’ exile has been lost to time, but the people’s legends tell that they were punished for poisoning the world and could not safely return even if they wanted to.
Millennia have elapsed since the seprevois last held dominion over Sepres VI, and the world has since succumbed to natural forces. The planet’s surface is 60 percent land, most of which is tropical rainforests, temperate plains, and expansive subtropical woodlands. Even the planet’s scarce deserts and mountains teem with life, with only the desolate poles devoid of complex ecosystems. The planet’s seas support a stunning variety of life of all sizes, from incredibly fast-growing colonies of psychic bacteria to highly social, mercury-blooded cetaceans. The planet’s atmosphere is free of contaminants and contagions save for one, a deadly virus engineered thousands of years ago to target only seprevois. It was this biological weapon, called derendenol, that precipitated the seprevois’ exodus into space and proved their most deep-seated superstitions about returning to the planet correct.
At its height, seprevoi society covered the entire planet, and the ancient remnants of this civilization remain even after the passage of countless centuries. Nature has worn away the massive works of engineering that supported the thriving population in its heyday, and it is a testament to seprevoi ingenuity that so many of them have withstood the ravages of time as well as they have. Entire cities remain frozen in time, their inhabitants hurriedly rushed to ark ships or long dead and gone, with statuaries, streets, and structures still intact. Other settlements or manufactured works, however, have not fared so well. What may at first appear to be an oddly shaped mountain range is in fact the crumbling ruins of once-sprawling towers, long ago collapsed in upon themselves and overrun by wildlife and unhampered flora; a swamp or river may have been a harbor or canal; a verdant wood may have been a well-tended botanical garden or isolated nature preserve. In rare instances, destruction is caused by creations of the seprevois that have run amok over the ages; military and scientific facilities have given way to strange corruptions of the natural order, including foul aberrations, mutant flora and fauna, and magical research gone awry.

Tourism

The following locations are points of particular interest on Sepres VI or (more often) in orbit around it.
FORT NEIROX The epicenter of biological-weapons research during the conflict that necessitated the evacuation of the planet millennia ago, Fort Neirox is a sprawling complex of festering diseases and choking chemicals that have kept much of the encroaching natural reclamation at bay. In place of overgrown trees and untamed wildlife, mutated strains of flesh-eating microbes, virulent plagues, and other biological terrors now permeate the miles-wide facility at the center of the planet’s southernmost continent. Vast stockpiles of archaic weaponry fill the base, and some of the automated defenses—rudimentary as they are—have somehow withstood the ages.
THE SANCTILORIUM Seprevois were never particularly attuned to magic, and it played next to no role in their society until after the planetary evacuation, when the desperate exiles tried every available avenue to establish a new, permanent life for themselves orbiting their abandoned home. Among the new methods attempted was magical research. Members of the Sanctilorium, a small space station and the world’s only sanctioned magical institution, have spent millennia exploring the mysteries of magic, but under the suspicious eye of the zealously cultish Exilytes, they were forbidden from pursuing any avenue that might lead to a return to the planet’s surface. As other races began interacting with the seprevois, the exiles soon discovered just how much they had yet to learn in the ways of magic.
SEPRES PRIME Of the hundreds of ark ships, space stations, and cobbledtogether megastructures orbiting Sepres VI, the largest and most important is Sepres Prime. Originally the ark ship launched from the planet’s most powerful nation, Neirox (which, incidentally, was responsible for the release of derendenol), what was then called Neirox Prime quickly grew into the center of surviving seprevoi culture as similar craft from myriad societies joined up with it to form a massive conglomeration of vessels. Here the Seprevoi Council rules the consolidated global government, its representatives commanding all seprevoi vessels orbiting the planet. Traders and representatives from other systems near and far are expected to deal primarily with council diplomats and administrators here, rather than with other vessels or stations, though the more travelers from beyond the Sepres system arrive, the harder this guideline is to enforce.
SEPRES PRIME LN space station Population 521,237 (98% seprevoi, 2% other) Government council (Seprevois Council) Qualities bureaucratic, devout, insular, technologically underdeveloped Maximum Item Level 8th
THEILOS This orbital space station was originally a scientific-research facility launched as a joint effort between Neirox and its then allies as a sign of peace and global unity. In the millennia since the planetary evacuation, the orbital facilities were repurposed to manufacture replacement parts for the aging fleet and to research new technologies. In the wake of first contact with explorers from other systems, Theilos again adapted to a new purpose: understanding and adapting new technology to better the seprevois’ quality of life.

Abandoned but Fertile Plague Planet; Diameter: ×1; Mass: ×1; Gravity: ×1; Atmosphere: Normal (see below Day: 32 hours; Year: 3-3/4 years

Type

Planet