Surha

Like the dawn, the light of the Icons washes over the white plains of Surha. But in the night; through the darkest tempest, the promised land vanish. And in its place, a frozen inferno.

Excerpt from the fifth verse of the third chapter in the Ramshadra

Surha is one of the Horizon’s least hospitable planets. It is a world where ice storms beat down on endless tundra, a poisonous atmosphere that makes living here a nightmare, and extreme cold that forces the few settlements that actually exist to retreat behind thermal shields and armanite walls. The conditions make it one of the few planets in the Kua system that has never been colonized as the costs have been too high and the rewards too little.

Surha, the ash heap of the outer system. The only ones who spend their time there are smugglers and other lowlives.

Commandant Frahimad, intelligence officer and legionnaire stationed at base Thalus

ANIALAH’S PHILOSOPHER

It hasn’t always been like this, however. During the golden age of the Firstcome, a huge colonization vessel, the Anialah, was constructed and sent to bring the fruits of civilization to Surha. Colonists, thinkers and believers left Kua to turn the ice planet into a promised land. They never did. Contact with the Anialah was lost just after the ship arrived at Surha and it soon became clear that disaster had struck. For a long time, it was believed that the ship had broken apart during its entry into the atmosphere and crashed, leaving no survivors, but then, many years later, a strange signal reached Kua. A person named Adjhani, philosopher and survivor of the Anialah, sent a series of transmissions describing the crash and the time that followed. The story eventually became the “Ramshadra”, one of the most important books of the Firstcome reign. Adjhani spoke of an unforgiving world, but also of the rare moments when the storms subsided and Surha rose from the mists in all its majestic splendor.

THE PHILOSOPHER’S LANDS

The Ramshadra eventually spawned a religious community that worshipped the words of Adjhani as if they were a message from the Icons themselves. The Ramsha cult is still active today and recruits most of its followers from the Firstcome people. They regard Surha as a holy planet, and the cult’s most important mission is to find what they call the “Philosopher’s Lands”: the place from where Adjhani transmitted the Ramshadra and managed to survive against all odds. But the clues to its location are few and Surha is big and hostile.

THE SMUGGLERS’ HAVEN

Many cycles passed before humans visited Surha again, and this time the visitors had far from noble intentions. As the fleets were purging the asteroid belt, the smugglers had to move their bases farther and farther towards the Oort cloud. The inhospitable world on the brink of the big black was suddenly the smugglers only choice. When the Rimward Reach was discovered and colonized, Surha’s location suddenly became very favorable, and more smuggler gangs sought shelter under the icy clouds. Small asteroid stations were constructed in the rings of the planet and surface bases were hidden in remote ice deserts. It is in one such base that Abdul Shey, the Horizon’s most notorious smuggler sultan, is said to rest in a magnificent mausoleum designed by the great architect Lovhain.

THE FALLEN MOON

Surha is mostly covered in ice and snow, enormous wastes of tundra pierced by jagged glacial fangs around which the winds reach hurricane strength. The Harballa massif is the only real mountain range on the planet and its peaks reach tens of kilometers into the sky. The massif, measuring several thousand kilometers in length and a few degrees in width, is actually the remains of what used to be Surha’s moon. The ore-rich moon fell to the planet below hundreds of thousands of years ago, today forming the planet’s most visible landmark. The Harballa is ever so slowly sinking through the ice, and in a couple of thousand years it will have disappeared completely. The moon ore is the planet’s only valuable natural resource and the reason for the existence of a small outpost on the Harballa’s southern slopes. In the last few cycles, the workers’ snow crawlers and mining drills have gone deeper and deeper into the mountain in search of the precious minerals and there are rumors going around about a few curious discoveries in the darkness that have caused the most superstitious of the miners to lay down their tools.

LIFE ON SURHA

The extreme weather, the toxic atmosphere and the strong gravity make living on the frozen world hard and arduous, but with the right gear, knowledge, and protection, it is possible to lead a decent life. Settlements and bases are often dug into the ice or the rock around the Harballa, and powerful grav generators are installed, an absolute necessity to make the bases habitable. For transportation up on the surface, the inhabitants use snow crawlers, slow but reliable vehicles constructed to withstand everything but the worst storms. Reinforced exo shells are needed if one must be out in the open for a longer period of time, but a cheap air filter and warm clothes are enough for a short walk. Terrible ice storms, often thousands of kilometers wide, plague the planet regularly and anyone out in the open when they hit won’t live long in the extreme weather.

DIAMETER: 49 764 km (circa 3,9 times bigger than Kua)
CIRCUMFERENCE: 156 338 km (circa 3,9 times bigger than Kua)
AREA: 7,8 billions km2 (circa 15 ggr bigger than Kua)
GRAVITATION: 1,98 G
ROTATION TIME AROUND KUA: 165 years
SATELLITES: 15 smaller moons, among them Iya, Rhyon and Morji
CHARACTERISTICS: Ring system with 16 different ring formations split by the Gharilim rift
SURFACE TEMPERATURE: -50 degrees

The Rings of Surha

The planet is surrounded by a belt of gravel and small particles that form narrow rings. The rings are treacherous to navigate through but also provide perfect cover for those who need to hide since they’re almost entirely in sensorshadow. This is why several smaller smuggler stations and outposts have been built here, inaccessible and unknown to all but those who constructed them. They’re often located in connection to the Gharilim rift, the only known passage through the rings and a notorious haunt for pirates and smugglers on the run from the law.

Type

Planet

Location under

Kua Star system

Included Locations

• Surhani

Related Plots

• Scenario 3 - Where is Armand?
• Scene 3 - Landing on Surha

The Black Ships

Surha is surrounded by a couple of smaller moons and satellites. Perhaps the most interesting of those is the moon Morji. It has atmosphere, although a very weak one harmful to people, and water in the shape of ice. There are no known outposts here but there are rumours and speculations that the Syndicate keeps a presence on the moon. Several free traders have recently reported strange ships in the vicinity of Morji. Some say that it can’t be anything else than the black ships of the Syndicate. Few have seen them, but those who have tell of angular creations who look like no known ship shape. One thing that’s clear is that the organizations and groups who have previously gone against the Syndicate are now much more careful, especially since the free trader clan Haruzabar were obliterated in their home port in the asteroid belt.

THE DABARAN EXPEDITION The Harballa massif is huge, and largely unexplored, but there are those who try to unravel its secrets. A couple of cycles ago a Dabaran expedition arrived at the mountain range to set up a station camp half-way up the Serjana peak. What they’re really doing there no one knows, but some freighter pilots and miners have testified to seeing strange lights coming from the distant camp during Surha’s dark nights. The history takes another strange turn since the transport manifest states that most members of the expedition are distinguished theologians from the university on Dabaran. What are they looking for up there?