Pioneer System

## Pioneer

A map of the Pioneer System

The **Pioneer System**, formally catalogued as **GM 216** in the Gustavo Mello Catalogue, is a system in the Tantalus Cluster that was the first system outside of Centrum to be visited and colonised by Humans.

## Description

Pioneer was the very first system reached by humanity after the creation of Drift Gates. The system is home to the first planet to be colonised by humanity outside of the Centrum System, the rocky world of Storm, so named for its extreme weather. By modern standards of colonisation, Storm is barely habitable, with settlements being built into rocky mountain ranges and battered by raging storms. However, the Great Famine has forced many to accept the sparse and unpleasant system as their home.

Other than Storm itself, the rest of the Pioneer System has little to recommend it to humans, with only the other object of any interest in the system being the local yellow star of Pioneer.

## History

With the discovery of Drift and subsequent dramatic advances in starship technology, the system of Pioneer would be the first system Humans would travel to via Drift Gates outside of the Centrum system. Colonised in 0017 PCU by vessels of the fledgling CDF Discovery Service, the third planet of Storm is the primary settlement of the system.

Despite its significance as humanity's first colony outside the Centrum System, the Pioneer System proved to have little in the way of useful resources, and a plan to use it as a stepping-stone for the colonisation of other systems was rendered obsolete by advances in Drift Gate technology. While the Pioneer System would enable the colonisation of the more-distant Axius System, traffic passing through the system would be largely transitory. As a result of this, the Pioneer System became the birthplace of interstellar piracy: disaffected asteroid miners and corrupt officials on Storm colluded to establish a sophisticated pirate network, capturing vessels, ransoming their crews, and selling the ships under new papers and transponder codes. The Crownskull Buccaneers were the earliest and most significant pirate band. Dilatory efforts by the Centran Defence Force, such as the Battle of the Wainwright Gateforge in 0107 PCU, would occasionally suppress piracy in the system, though never to any permanent effect.

The Pioneer System was sparsely populated for a long period, until the overpopulation crisis that provoked the Great Famine took hold throughout the Tantalus Cluster, forcing many to accept Storm as their home.

## Layout

### Planetary Bodies

* Vermillion - Lava Planet

* Amalus - Greenhouse Acidic Planet
	+ Amalus Minor - Rocky Moon

* Aaberg Spread - Asteroid belt

* Storm - Terraformed rocky semi-habitable planet
	+ Tormenta - Rocky Moon
		- Tormenta Spacedock - Orbital Spaceport

* Yashoda - Ice Giant
	+ Yashoda Secundus - Ammonia moon
	+ Yashoda-Wainwright Gateforge - Disused Gateforge

### Drift Gates

* Pioneer-Axius Drift Gate - Amalus-Pioneer Lagrange 4
* Pioneer-Centrum Drift Gate - Storm-Pioneer Lagrange 4

## Reference

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 The Sojourn: Worlds of Tantalus - The Centrum Assembly
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Pioneer | Worlds of Tantalus | The Sojourn
3. ↑ Gabriel Fonseca, *The Science of Drift*

Template created by XBrain130