Its location a jump away from Kua made the Hamura system
an important transit system up until the Ghazali incident.
After the collapse of the portal to Taoan, it becomes almost
forgotten.
The Hamurabi station is still visited now and then by traders, but the luxury cruises from
Coriolis to Dabaran stop, and so does the business they brought with them. The system instead
becomes a highly militarized no-man’s land, where the fleets of the Order and the Legion
go to flex their muscles.
PLANETS
The system contains only three planets, one of which – Nestero – is a massive gas giant.
Nestero has a strange, close orbit around the Hamura star, with the smaller planets Hamura
and Yublai on longer orbits farther out. The system is known for its violent ion storms and
for its infamous corsair captain, Samina. The Hamurabi portal station orbits the star between
the two portals at about ½ AD from both the star and the portals.
NESTERO
The Foundation have been studying Nestero for many years to try to explain how the mysterious
gas giant can have such a close orbit around its star – gas giants are otherwise found far from
the center of their home systems. It is believed that some form of portal-related phenomenon
might explain its orbit, and research teams arrive regularly on Hamurabi to undertake dangerous
survey expeditions. Nestero has thirteen moons, of which the Abui ice moon is the most widely
known. The Colonial Agency runs a mine on Abui where hired hands work long, dangerous shifts mining ice.
HAMURA
The planet with the same name as the system is mostly covered in vast oceans. A string of
hundreds of thousands of tiny islands can be found along the equator. The gravity effects
produced by the relationship between Hamura and her three moons create gigantic tides every
four days, with ebb and flow differences of up to a hundred meters. Terrifying storms are
common. Hamura is a popular cruise destination thanks to its rich marine fauna and the
high concentration of minerals in its water. Its oceans are marketed as “the Horizon’s most
natural spa experience,” and well-off people from near and far come here to rest up or calm
down. The planet’s only large settlement, Dome Isolda, owes much of its economy to tourism,
with underwater cruises departing weekly for distant paradise islands and reefs inhabited by
extraordinarily beautiful marine life.
YUBLAI
Yublai is a dark reflection of its sister planet Hamura – covered in boiling lava. Peculiar activity
in the planet’s core constantly transports lava to the surface. The volcanic activity also produces a valuable gas, named Bwalya after
the discovering prospector. The Agency have made repeated attempts to mine the gas, most recently using ED technology to funnel the gas
through the atmosphere up to low-orbit space stations. Technical difficulties have forced them to shut down four of the project’s six stations,
and the remaining two are only used for data gathering. The most remote installation, station Gupta, has been claimed as home base by
Samina’s dreaded corsairs.
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