Upper Drymoore

## Upper Drymore

A city on Upper Drymore, circa 2267(By Textman at Dutch Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3511568)

## A failure in colonisation

Upper Drymore is a failure in colonisation through no fault of its own. The original foundation of the colony was done by a firm of Terran investors after a geological survey found important mineral wealth on the planet, with significant amounts of tungsten and titanium that would be easy to mine. At that time the planet was Class-N at best, with minimal water and with an ecosystem which was barely able to sustain life, so the investors decided to go with the simplest, most cost-effective solution at the time: call upon the genies shaitan and marid to accelerate the terraforming process and make the planet livable quickly. Importing large amounts of vegetation and core animal species while the genies literally worked their magic, Upper Drymore was fully terraformed in a matter of a few years, rather then decades like it normally would take with traditional, more scientific methods.

The early settling of the planet was simple enough, with the investors paying a premium for settlers to come to their world and with mining industry booming, Upper Drymore was seen as a potential new jewel in the Confederate crown.

Then the Div showed up.

## The thrill of the hunt

Ahriman's puppets had been attracted to Upper Drymore due to the intense genie activity that had marked its creation. At first, nothing major was happening and it was more of a game for these Underworld creatures. A few shira, consumate hunters, began stalking the countryside and picking off lone settlers. Things degenerated when more and more div started appearing throughout the colony, with pairaka infiltrating cities and causing outbreaks of various disease and ghawwas destroying some of the water supply for out of the way homesteads. The biggest issue came as the Hunter's Guild Association offered their service to the investment firm who owned the colony, but they were declined as the investors would rather call upon the Confederate military to provide protection for their colonists, leading to the deployment of the 2nd Donegal Guard on Upper Drymore.

## Prince Garshap and the destruction of the first colony

The div had taken their pleasure tormenting the burgeoning colony, but when the military started getting involved, they saw that it was time for them to pack up and leave. This was not, however, in the plans for the demifiend Nimrod, who saw this as a great opportunity to claim a victory over the mortals, once and for all. All of the local div were recalled to a single location, where the might Prince Garshap, an akvan warlord, was summoned. At that point, all pretence of scheming or plotting the demise of the colony went out the window as the gigantic warrior began his walk towards the colonial capital of Donegal. Various other div were sent out to kill the colonists outside of the capital and wipe out all traces of Terran population on the wolrd.

Contact with the Terran military was as one would expect when fighting a creature of the power of Prince Garshap. The 1st rifleman corp was tasked with intercepting the creature, and they were promptly destroyed as they had no weapons that could overcome the supernatural defense of the akvan. The second line of defense, composed of the 2nd and 3rd motorized rifles, fared a bit better, slowing down the Prince for a few hours before they were also exterminated as more and more div forces started converging on their position, their original task completed. The last two corp, the 4th rifle and 5th artillery, of the regiment barricaded themselves in the city of Donegal, where they put up quite a bit of a fight, their heavy artillery causing severe damage to the amassed Div forces but finally, they were unable to destroy Prince Garshap. The remainder of the city was levelled in a matter of a few days, all colonists on the world effectively having been killed.

## A second try

20 years passed before anyone else even landed on Upper Drymoore, and it took another 10 years before the Terran Colonial Board passed a resolution to attempt a second colonisation of the terraformed planet. Constant protection from the Hunter's Guild Association was signed by the Confederation, who also permanently stationed a new regiment, the 3rd Louisianan Guards (now 1st Drymoore Champions), on the planet. People were not too keen to go live on a world that had already been levelled once, but grants, bonuses and exploitation rights being given out practically for free led a few adventurous souls to tempt faith.

While the population of this world is not exploding like other Confederate settlements, especially as foreign immigration is still extremely limited, Upper Drymoore might become a productive member of the Confederation in times to come.