Gossamer

## Overview

The rings of gas giant Halcyrii 5 are home to the city-state of Gossamer.

**Gossamer** is a city-state located within the ring system of Halcyrii 5, a gas giant in the Halcyrii star system. Initially designed as a modular city, the many buildings, roadways, and plazas of Gossamer exist upon, within, and suspended between the large chunks of rock which make up the rings. The city is home to Gossamer College of Agriculture and Metallurgy, a higher study institution specializing in the fields on which Gossamer subsists. Fashion and music play a large role in the culture of Gossamer, and many citizens choose to divide themselves into informal factions based on their subcultural identity.

## History

### Shipwreck

The ring system of Halcyrii 5 was initially settled in 288NT when the MCC *Serenity Unfounded* was shipwrecked by a band of Hellhound Rising pirates after a chase across several star systems. Luckily, the rings of Halcyrii 5 were found to be rich with metals, which the passengers of MCC *Serenity Unfounded* were able to refine and process using the ship's facilities. A matter of weeks passed before a rescue party found them, though by that time, the passengers had already allocated the ship's colonization resources (such as seeds and soil) in the development of their primitive town among the rings. The rescue party requested assistance from their fleet in retrieving the materials along with the settlers, but when word spread of a town built within the rings of a gas giant, many settlers became interested in the scientific and economic opportunities such a settlement could pose, attracting more settlers to the then-unnamed town of Gossamer.

### Economic growth & Gossamirian politics

Many of the original settlers of MCC *Serenity Unfounded* chose not to remain in Gossamer, but to return to an IMM fleet and be reassigned to other colonization and exploratory voyages. Despite this, Gossamer continued to grow, with mining operations within the rings proving to be tremendously economically viable. Sensing that the dramatic influx of money to the owners of mining operations would create an oppressive socioeconomic system for the lower class (composed primarily of farmers, store owners, engineers, and researchers), the people of Gossamer began to form a governmental system designed to support majority representation. The town was quickly divided into two political parties, the Individualist Party, which favored a "winners and losers" societal system reminiscent of Mecaen life, and the Gossamirian Welfare Party, which favored a socialistic approach to mining profits and a largely lassiez-faire attitude towards everything else. On November 7th, 289NT, the first Mayor of Gossamer, Walsh Goddeson of the Gossamirian Welfare Party, was elected.

Immediately following his election, the major mining companies operating in Gossamer, Mav & Boddecker, Odema Corp. Mining, and Amician Endeavors Inc, announced their intentions to withdraw their operations from Gossamer unless Walsh Goddeson stepped down. The following day, the owners of these operations were found dead in their offices after failing to respond to messages from Goddeson. Following an extensive investigation lasting from that same day until February 3rd, 291NT, their deaths were ruled as murder, but no suspects could be identified. The people of Gossamer seized the derelict mining vessels and resumed their operations quietly, for fear that their actions would draw the ire of their parent nation, Mecaost. However, the government of Mecaost would not receive word of the deaths until over a century later, in 401NT, by which time the statute of limitations had long since expired and the seized mining operations no longer saw use, sold off in favor of bigger and better Gossamer-built vessels.