Ares Prime

== Planetary Data ==
Diameter: ~11700 km
Gravimetry: 0.96
Rotation: 22.8 h
Government: Octavius
Colony: Octavian Core
The original throne world of the ancient Octavius and still its present capital, Ares Prime harbors a majority of the surviving Octavian people in a nearly globe-spanning urban environment. The planet’s largest designated city, Trivera, is home to the Senate and Imperial Seat and the center of the extensive imperial bureaucracy. Ares Prime was largely supported by food shipments from other worlds at the time of the Shift. When these shipments were suddenly cut off, famines erupted across Ares Prime. Swift action and strict rationing averted a major disaster, preventing all but a few hundred thousand fatalities.
A warm, dry world, Ares Prime possesses a sparse and barren ecosystem. Mild levels of radiation are present in areas that experienced fission detonations centuries ago, during the pre-Shift Succession Wars. The huge city complexes and arcologies that cover nearly the entire surface usually possess a significant subterranean component. A number of archaeologically interesting ruined cities also survive on the planetary surface. Though heavily looted and mined for easy-access building materials and resources in previous dark ages, all surface ruin sites are now preserved as memorial heritage parks.
The expansion of imperial power has allowed some manufacturing to move to orbital and deep-space facilities, yet Ares Prime still remains Octavius' major industrial center. Mineral resources are largely depleted due to the planet’s extremely long history of habitation, though some deep-core mining still takes place. Nova Martius, a rocky companion world acquired during the Shift, has been heavily exploited in the last hundred years to satisfy the need for metals and minerals.
Source: Imperial Archives, entry updated 100.6.20