Pyroalchi wrote:
The Thoth System

The systems central star is called “Mawu” by its residents – referring to an ancient goddess of creation, sun and life. Being younger and about 50% bigger than sol, Mawu shines in a bright, white light and burns relatively steady. Flares and sun eruptions are less common and the solar winds are weaker than in the Terra system, yet the higher percentage of UV radiation in Mawus spectrum affords additional protection on the planets without a protecting ozone layer. The system is further composed of 3 rock planets, two gasgiants and a large asteroid belt. Due to the importance of its second planet, the system itself is commonly referred to as Thoth.

Thoth 1 – Bagwa
Classification: Industrial World (in construction)
Population: approximately 20.000 Adeptus Mechanicum personnel, 100.000 Servitors

Being a rock planet about 70% the size of Venus, Bagwas orbit around Mawu is tidally locked, separating the planet into one side of eternal night and one of neverending day. Its atmosphere is composed predominantly of nitrogen and carbondioxyde with only traces of water therefore lacking any presence of clouds. Together with its mineral composition being rich in silicium and rare earths the planet is incredibly suited for solar power generation. After the system was conquered by the Macharius Crusade, accompanying Adeptus Mechanicus forces established a small outpost on Bagwa, mostly consisting of Servitors and tasked with the construction of concentrated solar power plants and photovoltaic cells and facilities to produce those. Furthermore the infrastructure to support a yet to be founded industrial complex on the night side was planned to eventually turn Bagwa into another forgeworld. The refounded colony on Thoth was ordered to support this outpost to the best of their ability in anticipation to have a powergrid ready within one decade. Complying with this task everyone involved got to work even after the Segmentum Pacificus fell into the Macharian Heresy after the saints death. Being isolated again from the imperium, the Adeptus Mechanicum mission expected to make use of the finished power grid never arrived. Puzzled about what was expected from them and concerned about potentially being punished for not following imperial orders, the rulers of Thoth decided to just continue plastering Bagwa with power plants – and the Servitors did not contradict anyway. By the time contact to the Imperium was reestablished a century later, getting rid of the surplus power had already become a problem and the grid was on the brink of breaking down due to the enormous amount of created energy. The build-up was slowed down and the forgecomplex planned so long ago finally build, focusing on the production and charging of power cells and the armaments for Thoths regiment.
But as the established power resources still exceeded the demand manyfold, Nac1r - the Magos send to the Thoth system and given free hand to regulate the Adeptus Mechanicus affairs in the region decided to instead try his hand in an ambitious endevour to terraform the 3rd planet of the system, Oya. Even though most of the technology used in the dark age of technology to change planets in incredible ways to make them habitable for mankind was lost, leaving the Adeptus Mechanicus with such limited tools as century or even millenia spanning atmospheric changes to heat or cool them, Nac1rs calculations indicated that all the frozen world in the system needed was some “significantly hard punches”. This led to the construction of a series of giant Macrolasers on Bagwas night side, pointing towards the outer system, with the first being finished and starting firing only a couple of years before the night of the thousand rebellions. Should Nac1r succeed in his endeavor, the system might be completed by another fertile world, ready for colonization – not a small gift for a simple backwater system, but truth be told, the magos purely undergoes it for his own curiosity and ego, eager to count himself amongst the few that could claim to have achieved such a feat since the golden age of mankind.

Besides this rather glorious purpose of the machinery, it has not slipped the attention of Thoths rulers that the macrolasers could as well – with only slight modifications – could crack Thoths crust and devastate the systems capital planet, should they ever give the Adeptus Mechanicus reason to do so. Confronted about it, Nac1r pointed out that this is merely a possibility as a last act of defiance, should the system ever fall to the heretical forces of the arch enemy, but nonetheless it remains clear that Thoth is well advised to keep on their Forgeworlds good side…

[OT] Thinking about Thoths system I found the idea of a tidally locked planet with massive solar power plants appealing, yet I did not really have a good use for all the energy in mind. I collected some ideas in another thread and came up with the giant gellar field. A later edited it when I read a bit about terraforming and wanted to include a terraforming project instead, see Oya down below [OT]

Thoth2 – Thoth
Classification: Civilized world
992.M41 (before the Night of a Thousand Rebellions): ~ 500.000.000
993.M41: 400.000.000
50 M42: 1.000.000.000
100 M42: 2.000.000.000
(rapid growth due to significantly improved access to medicine, water purifiers and agricultural machinery since the reestablishment of closer ties to the Imperium of Man)

(described above)
[OT]Just out of “its something new” I want Thoth to have an uncommon (and maybe unjustified) very optimistic view of the imperium. Therefore I thought that for a system seriously lacking medical technology, the reestablished contact with the Imperium might have seemed like a miracle more than making up for the loss of people to the tithes [OT]

Thoth 2a – Sharu
Classification: Research Station/Mining Outpost
Population: ~ 3000

Thoth possesses a single, small moon, and is tidally locked to its orbit – instead of the other way around as Terra and Luna. This means that viewed from Thoth Sharu rotates but is always present over the same region, therefore never appearing on the other side of the planet. The gravitational influence is almost neglectible, yet the main space harbours on Thoth are on its “moon side”, since starting from there consumes a little bit less energy. Having no atmosphere to speak of, Sharu only houses some large telescopes and long range communication relays. After a recent discovery of a large tungsten deposit near the north pole, a small mining outpost is currently under construction to recover the valuable raw material.
[OT]I want Thoth to be a rather peaceful system, but if at some point I want to spice it up, I might turn the tungsten deposit into a small subterran Necron outpost in stasis. So no Tomb world, but enough to be a concern for a single system and fitting the classic “but the dwarfs dug too deep…” motive. [OT]

Thoth 3 – Oya
Classification: Dead world (before 900.M41), Ice world (~0.M42), Agriworld(~100.M42)
Population: ~ 1.000.000 (100. M41)
Originally being a dead, cold planet, covered in ice and frozen nitrogen and methane, what little atmosphere it ever had blown away by solar winds, Oya has been the target of an ambitious terraforming project by Magos Nac1r from the Forgeworld of Bagwa. Even though completely unsuited for colonization on first sight, it possessed a variety of qualities that made this process mostly a problem of energy redistribution – a feat discovered after decade long calculations by the Cogitor arrays of the systems Forgeworld. Even though it did not express a magnetic field originally, the Adeptus Mechanicus sensors detected a large iron core in its center that would be able to induce one, if the planet could be tectonically activated. Therefore the process was started by a decade long series of intense Macrolaserbursts that cracked Oyas surface into separate continental plates, heating up and liquefying the mantle underneath. With the metal core set into motion again, a magnetic field developed that was strong enough to keep the thin atmosphere of carbondioxide and other gases erupting from the new volcanos and tectonic rifts from being blown away into the void. While most of these gases rained down and froze soon, they – together with the ongoing input of termal energy from the macrolasers – were sufficient to heat the planet above the critical value were its giant deposits of frozen Nitrogen, oxygen and methane melted and evaporated in a shattering, year long blowout. This lead to the foundation of a “real” and above all else even stable atmosphere. The starting greenhouse effect by the methane was speed up by the Adeptus Mechanicus mission constructing plants on the surface of the now reclassified ice world that emitted hexafluoride and other substances highly potent in this regard to support the heating. In the first decades of the 42nd millennium, temperatures finally passed the important treshhold of 0°C. With the formation of large bodies of liquid water, algae and funghi were imported from Ulambo in larges quantities and cultivated to enrich the atmosphere in Oxygen and stockpile biomass to support the scheduled large scale colonization


[OT]I read a bit about terraforming and found the idea of a planet that technically only had to be punched hard enough to make habitable very [OT]


Thoth 4 - Kitakamba
Classification: Gasgiant
Population: < 500

A gasgiant 10 times the mass of Jupiter and surrounded by a large ringsystem, the deeply purple coloured Kitakamba can be seen by the naked eye from every other planet in the system. Due to its high mass and gravitation, Kitakamba is more of a protostar than a planet, only slightly short of being a brown dwarf and nuclear fusion has been detected within its inner core. Its resulting high temperature, intense radiation, massive tectonic and storm activity and gravitational pull made the construction of stations within its atmosphere so far impossible. Yet thanks to its warming effect, over a dozen of Kitakambas 40 moons are more or less habitable, even though far outside what is usually considered as habitable zone of a solar system. 4 of them are used as agriworlds and others harbore mining outposts for a variety of rare minerals and methane. Some noteworthy moons include:

Thoth 4a – Roawa
Classification: Mining world
Population: 50, ~1000 servitors
Extremely hot and bathed in deadly radiation due to its closeness to Kitakamba, Roawa would be of little interest where it not for a mineralogical oddity: its composition being dominated by aluminium but utterly devoid of silicium and oxygen it’s one of the rare places in the Segmentum were the light metal can be found in its pure elemental form – on top of that being molten on the side facing Kitakamba. Therefore an adeptus mechanicus orbital is positioned in a delicate position just in the shadow of the moon, where the equipment is protected from being melted by Kitakambas heat but the precius metal can be mined with incredible ease and speed. Nontheless the servitors manning the station are consumed within month – a price still deemed worthwile for the precious resource.

Thoth 4g – Ulambo
Classification: Agri-World
Population: ~ 250.000
About three quarters the size of Thoth, Ulambo is a paradise teeming with life – if you are a fungus or algae. Ulambo rotates fast in relation to its pseudo sun Kitakamba leading to a “daylenght” of only 6 hours, with even its night side lightened up by Thoths main sun. Being covered with a mix of warm, shallow oceans and nutrient rich wet lands, temperatures remain steady on a pleasant level between 10 and 30 degrees Celsius. Yet unfortunately Ulambos atmosphere contains different sulfurous and chloric gases and completely lacks an ozone layer, thus bathing the surface in Mawus and Kitakambas intense UV-radiation. The indigenous algeous and fungal species have adopted to use the UV light for efficient photosynthesis and seem to cover every inch of the surface. Luckily this thick biofilm can be converted into Prometium, high quality fertilizer or an edible, nutritious - if a bit weird tasting – paste and can be harvested in an enormous rate. Contrary to other developed systems Mawu is therefore more than capable of providing food for itself, even if Thoths population should raise to levels in the hundred of billions. For now this has also proven very valuable, as during the night of thousand rebellions Thoth – as one of few systems not revolting – was able to locally provide provisions for the remaining and arriving loyalist forces inspite of the loss of several Agri-Worlds.

Thoth 4p – Otampa
Classification: Ice World, Research station
Population: 100
The small moon Otampa houses a large, 100 mile deep low saline ocean making up almost half of its mass. It was calculated that if Otampa could be relocated into Thoths orbit and the water be transferred to the surface, Thoth could be terraformed into a significantly more habitable state almost resembling a paradise world. Yet it is unlike that the ressources for such an endeavor are accessible within the next decades at least.

Thoth 5 - Zaori
Classification: Gasgiant
Population: ~ 50.000 (on various space stations and docks, currently rapidly increasing)

Zaori is a relatively small gasgiant about half the size of Neptune. Being relatively close to the Mandeville point of Thoths system and having a large proportion of methane and other gases usable as fuel in its relatively calm atmosphere, about a dozen refueling stations and docks were build in its orbit an on 3 of its 8 moons. Prior to the night of a thousand rebellions, a small stationed fleet and some scores of defense batteries provided enough protection against occasional pirates or similar, yet being far under strength to push back should a serious threat to the system arise. During the uprising within the Segmentum Pacificus, Thoth became one of the staging areas of the remaining loyalist forces within the subsector. Since then the docks and refuel depots are working non stop at the brink of breaking down to supply the imperial ships arriving from the many battles in neighboring systems. To handle the demand, the existing stations are hastily expanded and new ones constructed, while high command has also ordered the forge complexes of Bagwa to bolster the local defenses.

Thoth 5b – Vanua
Classification: Agri-World
Population: ~ 10.000
While a small agri-moon with neglectible output compared to Ulambo, Vanua bears mentioning as having developed an unusual ecosystem. To far from the systems star for photosynthesis, the moons crust inherits large deposits of uranium and other radioactive materials leading to relatively moderate temperatures. The Ecosystem is therefore based on radiophagus funghi and “plants” using radiosynthesis instead of photosynthesis. While the resulting biomass is unsuitable for nutritional purposes, it can be used for the production of Acids and poisons needed for banewolfs and the like and – as kind of an off label use – can be cultivated on less radioactive planets to decontaminate those or at least lower the radiation on top of the biofilm to not immediately letal levels.