The world of Tensan is a dwarf planet that sits within the outer most regions of its star system. The planet, despite being far from any star, supports an abundance of life on its surface, most of which is known for being incredibly toxic. The planet also has a wide, and fast orbital pattern around its star system that makes it very difficult to find.
Geography and Landscape
Tensan is a world of hills and forest with several large mountain ranges dividing up its central landmass. Tensan has no seas, instead a large network of neon green rivers which run off of the high mountains and down into lakes which through a vein like network have been pulled by gravity down into the planets crust where it gets so hot that the liquid condenses and forces its way back to the surface through steam vents. These steam pockets often accumulate over months or even years until the pressure pocket grows so strong the ground itself erupts and vents the gasses, the evaporation of said gasses causes the common rainfall that goes on to feed the lakes and rivers.
The geography is defined by this phenomena, with large craters and areas of sundered land being a common sight. Fallen trees also make up a large part of the landscape for this reason, with many species of flora having evolved specifically to grow from the carcasses of fallen trees pushed over by an explosive gas venting.
Orbital Path
The world of Tensan is considered an Exoplanet, a name given to planets that exist without a solar system. Despite this, Tensan does orbit around a violet dwarf star known as Karn, a star which outputs so much heat all the planets within its system have long since been vaporized. However Tensan still remains too far away from Karn that it can benefit from its heat, but still recieves enough light to keep the planet in a state of perpetual twilight for most of its existence. The star is also incredibly volatile, shooting out hundreds of solar flares on a daily basis. It is these solar flares which travel close to Tensan every day that provide the planet with its heat and its daylight. As a result, day and night cycles on Tensan are sporadic, as are the seasons. The world sometimes being gripped by multiple year long winters followed by an almost never ending summer.
Flora and Fauna
Tensan also has an abundance of unique rare earth minerals beneath its surface, many of which are highly toxic. Due to the constant presence of the gas pockets, much of the gasses and vapour contained within inherit the properties from these toxic metals, as such, this often bleeds to the surface where trees and other plants take root. Over millions of years, the plants that were able to absorb this toxicity were able to survive over the ones which could not, meaning every plant and tree is riddled with these toxins.
The fauna of Tensan has also had to evolve to counter the toxicity in the plant life of the world, with the animals eating it having to evolve to become immune to the toxic leaves and stems. Despite this, there are even still some plants on Tensan that not even the most hardened animals can consume. The animal life on Tensan is mostly carnivores, hunting and feasting on each other to bypass the toxic plants.
Despite the toxic plants, gasses and rivers, the air itself on Tensan is breathable by most species, the plants still producing an abundance of oxygen as a result of photosynthesis.
History
Tensan is most known for its toxic flora, that is deadly enough on its own, however some have figured out how to refine the plants that grow in its forests into some of the most universally toxic poisons in the galaxy. The highest profile assassins get their toxic dart payloads from poisons that came from Tensan.
The planet is located within Necrophyte territories and its flora has been experimented on by them in the past. However they have generally left the world alone due to many of its resources being unfit for construction and the world unsuitable for habitation. As such they almost forgot about the world, letting it drift away on its long orbital path. The world and system were initially discovered and named during the Necrophytes reign thousands of years ago, but were rediscovered during the Dynasty's second rise to power during the Extinction war. The system was discovered by Archon Tensa'karn who had the rediscovered, previously un-named system named after him.
While the Dynasty showed little continued interest in Tensan or the star of Karn, others were keen to exploit its unique flora.
Korax
Korax, named for the first person, a Sirasion battlemaster, to be killed by it, is a poisonous substance created from a cocktail of Tensan's most toxic plant matter. The distillation process is complex and takes time, but while completed and perfected only a micro-droplet of it is enough to kill hundreds of individuals. It has even been shown to kill Rada just as quickly, despite any adaptations they may have acquired. Sirasion nanites have also shown to be totally ineffective against the toxin. The most deadly strain of this substance is Korax-317 which can be refined into a gas and put to even deadlier effect, being so deadly and corrosive it can rot away most natural and man made objects very quickly, eating its way through breathing apparatus.
Korax strains are commonly used by assassins all around the galaxy, but this deadly substance does not come cheap. Who expecting to gain a single millilitre of the stuff can expect to pay a hefty, six figure sum.
A Troublesome Location
Policing the export of Korax materials is not easy due to the planets location and its wide and unpredictable orbit. Coordinates for its location may only be valid for a couple of months before it is lost within the void of space, having to be discovered through blind jumps once more. The Necrophytes overcame this by placing beacon satellites in the planet's orbit which gave ships something to lock on to. These beacons were also exploited by the smugglers as well, thus it became a constant battle to change the satellites broadcast frequency. However due to the lack of investment the Dynasty had in the world, eventually they opted to remove the satellites and scour the world for any trace of beacons set up by the smugglers, thus the planet became lost once more.
Following this, many knew of the existence of the world, and other poisons were used to fill the gap now the Korax production had dried up. However no one knew where to find it, the area of space being large enough it would be difficult to locate without committing to blind jumps and encounters with Necrophyte ships which continue to patrol systems around the star of Karn.
However, the necrophytes had overlooked one thing when they had cast the planet into the void
[classified until further progress in the Aces High Campaign is achieved]
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