Lundalur

The planet was anything but friendly. Just large enough for gravity to be a burden, just close enough to its K-class sun for the warmth to be suffocating, its surface evenly divided between rolling black hills and sickly green oceans. Somewhere in that desolate landscape, there was a valley covered in clouds, in no way different from its neighbors.

It was a sea of flickering lights that covered the valley floor and climbed the slopes around it. The cloud cover hung like a ceiling over it all, swarms of luminous insects standing in for the unseen stars. A few metres away, children played around a jumble of bricks like a giant mushroom cross-bred with a house. A woman in rustic attire came out to yell at them, only to gasp and run away as she noticed the intruders. The kids merely froze and stared at the trio.

She led them across the stream on a stone bridge, then past a water wheel and up a windy path lit by gaslamps and bordered by shops. More than one sported steam engines in adjacent yards. Into a small grotto they went, then out into a smaller depression, bordered by cliffs on all sides. The artificial cloud cover was much thinner here, or rather the sunlight passing through it was stronger and whiter than the three visitors would have thought possible with the local sun. Row after row of vegetable plots took up the middle, surrounded by a ring of fruit trees.

— Arrow in the Sky

Founded long ago by refugees from an interstellar war, Lundalur remained hidden from the rest of humanity for centuries before being located and helped to rejoin galactic civilization. An inhospitable planet, not really amenable to terraforming, it's nevertheless home to a couple of factions.

• The Keepers, as the original colonists, are wizards by tradition and skilled farmers. In time, they have perfected magical techniques not known anywhere else, ingenious low-tech engineering and unique crops. Nowadays they are interested in catching up with the goings on during their isolation, but lack of a fleet hampers their ability to travel. The Keepers are all baseline human, having fled before augments were commonplace, so they're curious and wary about transhumans.
• The Finders, on the other hand, are former pirates trying to break up with their past, though their old habits resurface sometimes. They're mostly looking for ways to make their world more livable. The Finders are acquainted with modern technology, but they also tend to stay on the low-tech side, building life support systems out of seemingly nothing.

If you happen to visit Lundalur, you will first encounter their ancient, primitive space station. It's out of warranty, but still spaceworthy, and likely the best place in the star system to dock a ship. Orbital space is policed by little armed scouts, that can deal with freighters just fine. Should you visit dirtside, you'll find vast domes covering a mix of pastoral landscape and modern facilities. Large scale or powerful spells won't work on the ground, due to an overuse of mana in the past.
There's a degree of rivalry between the Keepers and the Finders, but if attacked they'll all defend each other fiercely.

Type

Planet

Location under

The Midway Stars

Included Organizations

• The Finders
• The Keepers