Chrates

Chrates is part of the Bergunn system in Hex #0911.

The planet is populated mostly by scions of the original settlers and ruled by an oligarchy of the Frostnax, people who claim to be descendants of old Fornax nobility.

These oligarchs begrudgingly accept the Empire as sovereign but still harbour animosities towards it for historical reasons and often present themselves as autonomous government.

Human relations to the primal alien civilization on Chrates are frosty at best.

## Human Bubble Cities on Chrates

*Bubble Cities: Whether due to a lack of atmosphere or an uninhabitable climate, the world's cities exist within domes or pressurized buildings. In such sealed environments, techniques of surveillance and control can grow baroque and extreme.*

There are three major human cities on Chrates, all planned and constructed by settlers of the Empire. In their original structure they all copied the Majan cities, but as relations between House Fornax and the population of Chrates froze, all three cities were remodelled in the same way to be very different from those in the sector's core.

One of the few things the ‘Frostnax’ always kept from their Fornax origins is their disapproval of alien life. Yet they still share the planet with alien cultures and so a little trade does happen and in extremely rare occasions alien visitors are even allowed into the three bubble cities.

### Saltborg - 'The Salty Castle' (pop.: 250,000)

Saltborg is the oldest bubble city founded by humans on Chrates.

When the Fornax settlers came to the planet they stumbled upon the perfect location to start their new lives in the frozen wastelands of Chrates; in a large depression surrounded by mountains they built their first accommodations. Quickly they learnt about the earth beneath the permafrost grounds and found it rich in minerals, predominantly the salt after which they named their city.

After the fashion of those on Maja, the cities on Chrates were originally planned to have a stacked, high center of housings and grow flatter the further one travelled out of the city, resulting in industry and hothouses to be at the very outer edges of the bubble cities.

As time went on and the people named themselves Frostnax, they deliberately restructured their cities to be different. Instead of high rising city centers, they flattened them, moving the housing areas towards the edge of the cities.

Almost shaped like old Terran greek theatres, a half circle of apartments surrounded the city center of artificial greenery, where the richest live in mansions.

On the side the half circle leaves open lie the small industry and the food production, while the heavy industry moved out of the bubble cities proper, just outside of the production lines of the smaller industry, the workshops and depots.
Today the nobles of House Fornax still speak of the inhabitants of the bubble city of Saltborg and often enough all of Frostnax as "the Salten", although the nickname is seldom meant lovingly.

### Syraborg - ‘The Acid Castle’ (pop.: 200,000)

One of the biggest challenges to the settlers was to overcome the harsh grounds to get to the precious minerals and resources they needed for building and trading.

Quickly procedures were invented that helped melt the permafrost grounds and even the thick layers of rock below it. To produce a steady supply of the acids used for these chemical reactions, mostly carbonic and sulfuric acids, a settlement was founded on a giant wasteland, icy white and rock brown as far as the eye can see.

The Frostnax legends speak of the factories for transportable acid as homes for their workers too at first. Only later houses were built and the bubble city planned and constructed after Saltborg’s example.

The city always has a sour smell to it, almost like a mix of sweat and sulfur and its citizens have eyeballs that look more yellow than white. The fumes are everywhere and even though the bubble city’s filters are constantly working and cleaning the air, the smells never really leave and visitors have told stories of losing their sense of smell, some claim for months and months before it recovered, others said they lost it forever.
Those who call Syraborg their home though say they don’t even notice it and their noses and heads start to ache when they have been away from their city for too long, no matter if it is outside of the city bubble in the freezing cold or in other cities.

For a few decades now an odd trend took root in Syraborg and nobody knows where it originates from: Children are baptized in the name of the High Church with a few sprinkles of acid on the babe’s foreheads.

Even the other Frostnax do raise their eyebrows at that, since the High Church of Emperox-as-messiah is not truly beloved on Chrates - mostly due to their close ties to the Empire, which the self-proclaimed Frostnax nobility dislikes, even if they don’t openly stand against it.

### Kopparborg - ‘The Copper Castle’ (pop.: 125,000)

Kopparborg is often called the ‘Penny Castle’, its citizens are poor and its rulers turn each penny around in their hands a few times before spending it, or so the other folk on Chrates say.
Yet if you ask the citizens of Kopparborg itself, they soon turn out to be the most content with their place on the frozen planet - and a lot of that stems from the hot springs that settlers dug out and built intricate systems around to feed the whole town with warmth and water, even before the city was fully constructed to be a bubble city like its sisters Syraborg and Saltborg.

While Kopparborg is the smallest of the major human cities on Chrates, it is also the one with the most visitors. Tourists from nearby systems sometimes visit the famous hot springs, sleep in transparent ice igloos, eat stews and soups of the unique Snow Beets the ‘Pennies’ (as they are oft called) cultivate and enjoy the scenery:

The city is built atop the steep cliffs of a humble mountain and a lot of hotels and vacation homes offer a spectacular

view over the flat plane below the cliffs, the white ice stretching incredibly far right up until the sudden rise of the highest mountain range of the planet, jagged rocks striking up into the sky, higher than human eyes can follow.

There are mines too in Kopparborg from which the city derives its name. But the copper that was found in masses alongside and buried deep into the mountainside proved to be of worse quality than the first settlers thought and soon the plans for the originally planned experimental copper insulation techniques of the first settlers were abandoned and the copper that was mined used more for arts and crafts than on a large industrial scale.

Throughout the city center and even in the housing areas but especially in the hotels are copper statues, busts, artworks and installations of all kinds.

Every year auctions are held in the city’s ‘Penny Hall’, a big building with walls completely encased in copper and some of the artists of Kopparborg gained sector-wide fame for their works. Each year these auctions gain more visitors from other systems and rumors have it that even nobles of House Fornax bought a few pieces for themselves - albeit if they did, it was incognito.

## Major Spaceyard

Most worlds of tech level 4 or greater have the necessary tech and orbital facilities to build spike drives and starships. This world is blessed with a major spaceyard facility, either inherited from before the Silence or painstakingly constructed in more recent decades. It can build even capital-class hulls, and do so more quickly and cheaply than its neighbors.

### History

As all over Acheron Rho the settlers spread like ants to build their colonies on as many planets as possible, the Bergunn system was but a jump away from the first planet colonized, Imperial Prime.

Early history has not survived the calamities of the last thousand or so years, but what is known today is that while the rest of the system knew human settlers way earlier, on Chrates it was House Fornax that settled the frozen planet and built the bubble cities after the image of those on Maja, so humans could survive and even thrive in the deadly temperatures.
With the establishment of House Fornax’s spaceyard on Maja and their prime position as the number one shipbuilders of the sector, the nobles expanded towards other planets, to increase profits and to spread the name and glory of House Fornax.
One of the planets that Fornax deemed in a position to function as a nodal point for travellers of the sector was Chrates, in system and close to the alien pleasure planet Al-Dost.

A major spaceyard was constructed but shortly after completion and before the spaceyard was even opened officially, The Scream occurred - and the ways to get to the Bergunn system in general and Chrates in particular were suddenly very limited, the core worlds suddenly far, far away.
The House Fornax nobles and engineers on Chrates waited and hoped for signs and messages. Clearly their families and fellow nobles from Maja would do all they could to find ways to communicate and travel to Chrates, to save their brethren and unite the family. Even with the new spaceyard right there they couldn’t search for Maja themselves, as they lacked the resources to build the necessary ships.
Yet nobody came for decades.

Disillusioned, the nobles on the frozen planet gave up on their wait and formed their own government. If House Fornax did not care for them, why should they care for their cousins on the fiery hearth called Maja?
No, these nobles weren’t of House Fornax, the house that betrays their own kin and lets them suffer in the dark and silence, with alien threats ever so close.
So to honor their new home and their departure from House Fornax these rulers of Chrates now called themselves the Frostnax Fellowship. To this day they still see themselves as nobles, but not of the Empire that let them down when they needed it most, but of Chrates, a beast deadly and cold, but tamed by Frostnax’s ingenuity and perseverance.
When House Fornax and House Vela finally succeeded and found a way to reach the Bergunn system, Frostnax greeted them icily and refused to cooperate in the search for other systems and planets.

House Fornax continued their advances, to try and bring back Frostnax into the Fornax nobility and to gain control of the major spaceyard for decades and now centuries, but the Chratians refuse and on two occasions even threatened to actively fight against it.
Today, the major shipyard is in use, even if the resources are spare and only few people come and order ships there. House Fornax placed spies and saboteurs on Chrates and the space stations, until now to no avail.

Fornax does not give up however - even if they don’t care about the people on Chrates, they want their spaceyard back.
But neither do the Frostnax give in and they continue to fight for their independence, all the while hoping that the shame of losing their own cousins and their spaceyard prevents Fornax from calling upon the Empire to strike down on them.

## Space Stations

### Eil 7

**Occupation:** Eccentric oligarch and minions

**Situation:** Foreign sabotage attempt

#### History

Mad with the knowledge about House Fornax’s Aeternus’ Chain around Maja, this Frostnax leader built his own space station to rival theirs. After realizing what an immense undertaking it would be to build a space station large enough to cover the whole planet as in the Imperial Prime system, this Frostnax “noble” instead built a space station looking like an old Terran castle, entertains hundreds of lackeys on this station and enacts what they perceive as a royal court, complete with minor nobles, knights and even jesters and fools.

House Fornax repeatedly sent delegates to Eil 7 in attempts to buy off the spaceyard, yet the Frostnax “nobles” always refused.

A few decades ago, in the midst of the War Against The Artificials, Fornax sent a Dullahan and a corps of engineers to get rid of the problem. The Dullahan was discovered before being able to assassinate the Frostnax leader, most of the Fornax engineers were thrown out of the space station’s airlocks. Yet a few managed to survive and to integrate into the court society of Eil 7, a very small number of them even feeds information back to Maja whenever possible.

### Spry 1

**Occupation:** Deranged but brilliant scientist

**Situation:** Black market for the elite

#### History

Shortly before the War Against The Artificials a tinkerer and his companion settled in on Spry 1, which was and still is used as a supply station for Eli 7.

Soon after they opened shop on the station, the Frostnax noble of Eli 7 received intel that the two were former employees of the Trilliant Ring. While highly esteemed, their research crossed even the Trilliant’s boundaries in ethics and with improving relations to the High Church of Emperox-As-Messiah the two feared they would need to stop their projects on Trillia IX. To get away from these unreasonable limitations they fled to the edge of the sector - and leaving the crimes committed behind them on the Trilliant Ring’s homeworld, so they wouldn’t be held responsible for them, didn’t hurt either.

For decades now nobles both from Chrates and the rich of the Bergunn system came to seek these unsanctioned Trilliant tinkerers, to buy illegal artificial body parts, attempts of copied Trill tech and the like.