The Desert

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jayphailey
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The Desert

Post by jayphailey » Mon Dec 02, 2019 9:34 pm

The Desert

The Desert is an area of space in the far western frontier of the Federation. It is a blob with Darnara on the eastern side and Carnod on the western side. On its northern (rimward) side it extends into the Bendarri frontier. To the south, it reaches about 1/3rd of the way to the Zhodani Consulate border.

Near the center is Oron.

Archaeology and scouting missions show that the area was once built up comparably to Federation core, or the Qo'onoS Sector. It was the home of billions and billions of Great Orion people.

Almost nothing lives there now. Every class M world in the desert was either destroyed or ruined. Debris fields, now widely scattered speak of titanic battles, fought to the point of ruin.

Starships can scavenge raw materials there. Even the Great Orion Empire couldn't beat up a gas giant enough for it to notice. Although all easy ore and metals sources were mined thoroughly, even a gargantuan empire can't strip mine something the size of Mercury to slag in a thousand years. The Great Orions had plenty of metal-rich rocks.

Let alone, scavenging ruins, which provide plenty of easily available materials.

The Federation, The Lefyt, Allied Orions and even not-so-Allied Orions find greater treasure in the ruins. Knowledge. A dim picture is emerging of an empire that stretched across much of known space and had a very complex history.

It seems to have balkanized and reformed several times. The Great Orions had very good Dilithium technology but never moved past it. Artifacts show their technology ebbed and flowed for reasons not clear.

People steeped in Orion Culture find the archaeology of the area spooky. Names from Ancient myths, legends, and fairy tales are found. As if Earth found a Great Olympian Empire that incorporated elements from all other mythologies, echoing the ancient stories and myths. Like that but in Orion.

The Great Houses of Botchok angrily deny the validity or accuracy of any of this and dismiss the whole thing as Federation Propaganda and Disinformation. This is even while a very intense market has sprung up on Botchok for artifacts from the area. The official story is one thing. Under the table, the Orions are very curious.

The Federation, the Damyip and the Lefyt are trying to control the area to manage how information is developed and distributed. The Vulcan Science Council and other academic organizations in the Federation are spending a lot of resources there, too.

But freelance treasure hunters, looters, and artifact hunters plague the area. Some have become allies of the archaeology and history, recovering information and scans before stealing artifacts and heading back to Orion space.

Oron itself is now the home of Federation Station Deep Space 30, which supports archaeology missions all over the area and on Oron itself.

There is a rise of a strange flavor Orion Religion Fundamentalists who are *very* angry at a Federation Base at Oron. They see it as a foreign invasion and desecration of holy ground.

The Archaeology and science effort has a LOT of Orion people from Federation Member worlds of Orion descent, and Allied worlds working there, as well as Lefyt Scholars. But that matters not to the Fundamentalists, as there are a lot of Human and Vulcan scientists working there as well, not to mention Starfleet and contractors supporting and protecting the mission.

Federation Hostile (Or Ambivalent) travelers are finding a friendly base at Mullura, which has improved facilities to refuel and resupply their new Orion Friends.

The Lefyt world of Oponeji has rejected the Federation and the Damyip (But not the other Lefyt worlds, leading to awkward Diplomacy) They are also a welcoming port for Orion missions. They are also a thriving black market for looted and counterfeit Great Orion Artifacts. The Quality of counterfeits ranges from exceptional to extremely poor, and muddles the true story of The Desert, making archaeologists who normally don't reach for handguns and bullwhips.

The story teased out of the wreckage, debris and the dead of the Desert point to a strange mix of religion and power lust. Seemingly the Late Great Orion Empire factionalized into religious-based factions. During a crisis, the Leadership of each faction felt it could conquer the area and become dominant over rival factions, so a civil war started. The people fighting this war were motivated by religious propaganda, narratives, and imagery. The Last Civil War became much worse than expected and lasted much longer than expected. Subsequent faction leaders who came up through the ranks were true believers, motivated by true faith in their religion and cause. While the first generation of civil war leaders seemed to see the civil war as a short-lived power grab, it became a desperate struggle for survival itself. The different factions began massacring civilian populations who followed the wrong religion.

This hardened subsequent fighters and leaders into an even more radical frame of mind.

The Great Orion Last Civil War became a war of extermination and extinction. Oron itself was declared neutral territory, the home of all the gods. Ownership of it would grant ownership of the Empire. The system was scoured by frequent battles. War plagues loosed among enemy populations came to Oron and decimated the population over and over. Assassinations and raids further damaged the social structure.

The primary star of Oron has begun to die. Its heat output has been rising year by year as it slowly begins its evolution into a red giant. This process, at some point, passed turning point for Oron itself and it too began to die.

The planet is inhabitable now, barely. But there is no free water to be found. The ecosystem has collapsed to the point where barely fungus and single-celled organisms survive. The air becomes thinner and less oxygenated day by day.

The Starfleet mission there welcomes visitors but seeks to manage them to prevent damage or loss of knowledge. All archaeological information discovered there is being shared freely. This has encouraged some of the curious but unfriendly Orions to share their own information into the pool since they can make copies of everything else.

This effort has revealed a great deal of pre Federation knowledge about known space and added a lot of context to previously random and curious findings.

Darnara
On the Federation side of the Desert is Darnara, an Orion world recovering from having gotten smeared by the Damyip. There is a Federation Station there as well, but attention is focused on helping the Darnarans recover from their apocalyptic disaster. A few Darnarans have traveled with Federation, independent and Orion missions into the Desert, but very few. The Damyip are putting resources into helping the Darnarans by way of making reparations for their previous attack.

Carnod
On the far side Carnod, also the subject of Archaeology. 45 years ago it was a class M world with an insectoid race, the Carnod were allied with the Damyip and ran a dilithium refinery there for them. Lefyt refugees fleeing from the Damyip came to Carnod, and after a peaceful arrival and landing, discovered that the Carnod were allies of the Damyip. Things went south and in the fighting, the Dilithium refinery exploded, with a force similar to the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs on Earth. Worse, the explosion was channeled through the pure dilithium veins of the planet, so every mine exploded as well. No surviving Carnod people have been found.

This raises a serious question about how to deal with the Lefyt survivors who were involved in the disaster and the Damyip who participated. Both parties, now at peace agree that they were extraordinarily careless in the fighting and bear mutual responsibility for the disaster.

The Federation is struggling to cope with how to deal with this and what to do about it.

The Damyip have units scouring Carnod in the hopes of finding any survivors. So far, they've had no luck.

Overall the story of the region is one of tragedy, death, and destruction. The Federation, The Bendarri the Lefyt and the Damyip hope to strongly reverse this course and learn from this terrible history.

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jayphailey
Posts: 442
Joined: Tue May 29, 2018 7:50 pm

Re: The Desert

Post by jayphailey » Mon Dec 02, 2019 9:36 pm

Okay, this post has two purposes. One to let me spell check it using my Grammarly extension of my Google Chrome.

Also, this is a first draft for the Wiki write up for The Desert, which has a link, but no page there.

So tell me here what you'd like me to change to make it work and I'll edit it to suit and then publish it there

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