Dachia

Dachia
Government	Tahora Whai/under lease
System	0809 Cacho
Tech Level	3
Population	Uncolonised
Atmosphere	Thick
Biosphere	Immiscible
Temperature	Frozen
Planet Tag 1	Exchange Consulate
Planet Tag 2	Pilgrimage Site

The planet Dachia in 0809 Cacho can charitably be called an iceball. The world was named Dachia (/da’t͡ʃiː.ə/) after the mineral Dachiardite, which is found in significant quantities below the frozen crust. The Tahora Whai are the current custodians of the world under a lease from the Starlit Court, who have a storied past with the location; notably the Dachia Crisis.

Astrogeography

The first visitors to Beacon Space thought little of the Cacho System. Most forms of advanced life found the planet Dachia too cold and inhospitable. Its surface is coated in a rime of frost.

Far from the warmth of the Cacho star, Dachia receives very little solar radiation. What solar energy does arrive is typically reflected off of the thick and high-albedo atmosphere. These heavy cloud layers also carry rolling blizzards of dry ice and massive hailstones. A few pockets of the world are comparatively balmy though, but temperatures never exceed 0° C even on the hottest days of summer.

Microclimates capable of sustaining basic life forms can be found in underground cave systems. Although these fungi and bacteria are toxic to most people. Onset of symptoms vary, but exposure for more than a few minutes is typically fatal

Settlements & Locations

City of Hurion

The power-city of Hurion is the beating heart of the planet and only reliably warm spot. Heat from an ancient fission generator is pumped through the town and provides habitable temperatures year round for the few hundred residents. It was founded during the beacon Wars by the Dachai Group or one of their ilk, and was expanded upon during the restoration of Sihi. Up to five thousand people are able to live in the climate controlled buildings, but less than a thousand choose to live here.

Notably buildings of Hurion include:

SCHEME
Temple of the Unforgotten Path
Fort Memory

Starlit Court’s Dachia Proving Grounds

Dachias' harsh conditions provide a unique testbed for new mech designs and can serve as training grounds for extreme climate conditioning for ground forces. Far-below a practical temperature to conduct military operations, the Proving Grounds of Dachia form a critical test for the absolute limits of Starlit Courts martial equipment and soldiery. The camps are little more than global waypoints designated for live fires and cleared landing areas suitable for dropping temporary research facilities. The publically known camps are:

Camp Nadir
Camp Kelvin
Camp Tempesta
Camp Aquilo

Arclight Association Research Facility

A research facility ran by the Arclight Association researching combat drones and robots in extreme low temperature environments

Debtor's Pantry

This frozen network of tunnels around the planet's southern pole is a well known location for prisoners to be put "on Ice" when they cannot pay their debts to the Cacho Guild. The Cacho Guild operates and maintains many of the pilgramage sites and tour providors in the Cacho system, and this frozen spot in Dachia is where they like to deposit any "tourists" who cannot pay the fees they owe. Most often occupied by people who run up unpaid bar tabs or gambling debt on board one of the memorial stations, you're only getting out of here with your fines to the Guild being paid.

The Mausoleum

A wrecked ship, the SCS Zweihander was lost during the Dachia Crisis. Sunk into the ice and snow, it was rediscovered by Dominionist forces and fortified into a base of operations and development. During this process it gained the code name The Mausoleum as it was a symbol of the losses the Free Dominion incurred promoting their ideology. Ironically to some, it was ultimately the site of the Second Battle of Dachia, After the battle, the Startlit Task Force bombarded it from orbit, leaving little more than a crater to mark its position.

Government

The Tahora Whai are the active custodians of the world under lease from the Starlit Court. Whai patrols keep the skies free of illegal pirates and protect the vital shiping lanes used by the Space Truckers. Planetary laws and customs, that which existed in any measure to begin with, has remain unchanged. Although enforcement of those laws remains lax. As an outpost, the presence of Whai and cthe civil practices of the Rangi are far from totalizing.

Project FaeSong, aimed at protectecting Dachia and its trade from ne'er do wells, is a joint task force between the Whai and the court. The flagship of the operation is Dreki o te Ao Wera, a lance of Grail-built Mechs operated by the Whai. Additional forces from both east and west halves of the sector, provide operational and logistical support to the Project.

Culture

Few folk actually live here at present. Most souls are traders and part of a transient population that stop for only as long as they need to. It can seem like a liminal space as a result: like a transit terminal or port lounge.

Of the handful that really live on Dachia most, if not all, in Hurion. Innkeeps, bartenders, fuel merchants, exchange brokers, and the like, provide the raw essentials for passers-by. A few of the locals claim to trace themselves back to the ill-fated days of the mines, when their progenitors proverbially decided to sell shovels during the gold rush by establishing the powerplant of Hurion. But these claims aren't forced for anything other than bragging rights.

Crews from the Rangi and the Court are commonly found on and around Dachia too. Many are engaged in trade business with the exchanges and space truckers or task themselves with patrolling the area against threats to the peace.

Whai Radio Stations

Pirate Radio is, like with other planets and systems in the Rangi, a fact of life. Here however on Dachia it is turned up to 11. As part of the leading edge of the Whai’s constellation, a diverse set of ad hoc radio stations show the diversity and variation of the Whai patrolled space. Some stations go a step further and incorporate melodies and media from other major cultures of beacon space into fusion genres.

WAKA - A classical Dynaean station focused on rhythmic beasts and star-shanties.
KCHW ‘Kachow!’ - Playing “all your island beats, the Kanisthaou Sound, and the hits of sector-west.” A whai-pop station.
KNGT ‘Knight Core’ - A frequency dedicated to recounting ballads of heroism and glory from across the sector. Remixed Sihian epics set to Whai drums and blues.

History

Ancient Dachia

Over its history, various governments and movements established temporary waystations and outposts, but few remain even as ruins. Pre-glitch, the system was out-of-the-way and held little strategic or material value to those early peoples. That would change during the event known as the Glitch. The loss of many warp gates and the scrambling of the surviving ones left Cacho in a central location.

Consortium and Conflict

Centuries after the Glitch, in the year (786 ABA|98 Teuthemi |320 AoQ) or 250 before the modern age, a group of miners and surveyors joined forces into a new venture to establish a new company to uncover valuable and rare minerals below Dachia’s ice. They formed a consortium of small businesses and contractors with a common goal of making profit from the ostensibly barren iceball. With their close ties to the shipping unions, the group founded several exchange consulates to facilitate the expedition. They financed their missions through various bonds and investment schemes sold to the public. Despite their advertising, funding was intermittent and never quite able to get a large enough cash injection to fully develop the veins of ore beneath the surface. The company went through several names, and passed through several hands as new efforts staggered along. A non-exhaustive list includes: Cacho Consortium, DC Mining, Excelsior Investment, Associated Companies of Dachia and Cacho, Achievement Derivatives, and The Dachia Group.

By the time of the Beacon Wars–starting 226 years before the modern age–demand for material and resources critical for grand battleplans skyrocketed. The Cacho system was seen as the next big source for these resources. The Dachia Group, as it was then known, saw an influx of interest and made several preliminary gains. Potential riches, alleged to be found on Dachia, were said to be the turning point for either this war or the next. A fight was brewing over the fate of Dachia.

Meanwhile to the sector-west, the Tahora Whai eyed their neighboring system not for the exploitable resources expected to be harvested from the world, but for the traffic and immense support a mining colony would require on the hostile world. Ships laden with foodstuffs and equipment were a prize more useful and proven than any hypothetical gold field. In the void of Cacho system, the Whai set up several smuggler’s havens and pirate coves, often using ship husks and deep space asteroids as foundations.

Whai piracy in Cacho was a plague on the mining group. Investments in The Dachia Group’s missions were often lost to the pirates and Dachia's surveyors lacked the equipment and time to establish permanent bases. Funds were short enough that they couldn’t supply escorts to their freighters. As outside forces rallied their ships to seize the Ice World of its resources for themselves, the Mining Corp and the Whai reached a tentative agreement: The Whai who witnessed the treaty agreed to halt all piracy in the system in exchange for salvage rights to the remnants of a suspected upcoming battle between great powers. Whai havens would remain in system, but instead as launch points further into the heart of beacon space. The Dachia Group also provided formal access to the consortium’s Exchange Consulates, often as a means to buy-back lost mining equipment.

Critics of the treaty note that due to the structure of the Whai at the time, only the signatories and crews loyal to them were beholden to the agreement rather than every Dynaean pirate. Thus, piracy still challenged Cacho, although reduced to a manageable degree. A single surface way-station over a proven uranium mine developed in the lull. The small city of Hurion carved a pocket of heat out of the ice and provided a jumping off point for further expansion. Mining efforts as a whole still flagged despite the settlement, but now, greater investments as attention was drawn to the world by the machinations of great powers. The astro-political heavyweights would indeed duke it out to decide who would reap the rewards of that investment.

On Startdate 122 BP, two coalitions formed up in lines above Dachia. Far as the sensor could see, warships of all makes and models faced up against each other, waiting for the other to flinch. Delegates met in a blustery cold outpost on the surface. Behind closed tent-flaps, heated words were exchanged, hot cocoa was tossed in faces, and battle would commence. Who knows why they attacked each other in such formal ways. Some historians say the commanders were arrogant snobs who thought themselves already rightful owners, others framed it as a duel blown way beyond proportion. For both sides ownership of Dachia was seen as denial of the other’s claim more so than desire for the iceball itself. All in all, far too many crews would lose their lives in the ensuing commotion.

And my, what a show it would have been! Rockets and lasers. Clouds of fighter craft swarming conning towers. Bridge crew wrestling with armored marines. Cascading core engine failures daisy chaining with neighborning vessels, going critical in a domino of explosions. Accounts from the day are horrifying in the scale of destruction wrought by ego and avarice.

Beyond the edge of the fight, the Whai watched on in dismay. The inability for understanding caused the indescribable terror. When the smoke cleared, both capital ships were gone, their commanders facing the music. Losses incurred in the fight were irreconcilable–some say a whole faction was lost in the scrum–and the coalitions disbanded. Neither fleet could call the engagement a victory, some say that their own ships were the last to retreat but no corroborated accounts survive of a fleet holding the field of battle. No one won Dachia, the mining group soon lost all its outside funding and abandoned the doomed mission to squeeze rocks from an ice cube.

In the aftermath of the battle, the Tahora Whai maintained a modest presence over Dachia. The only entity with any formal rights to the salvage, they picked the wrecks and space hulks clean of the most useful goods. Wrecks from the battle survived a century, through to the arrival of the Starlit Court into the system. Remnants were finally cleared from the skies during the demanding restoration of Sihi.

Arrival of Sihi in Cacho

The Starlit Court, and their worldship Sihi, arrived in Beacon-Space during a period of comparative peace in the wake of the turbulence of the Beacon Wars. The questing knights spent several years in various systems and empty hexes searching for their mythical grail world. Internal tensions over how to pursue this goal were at a fever-pitch when Sihi berthed in the then empty Cacho system, anchoring itself in Dachia’s L1 Lagrange point. This internal strife boiled over into the disastrous Dachia Crisis.

Dachia Crisis

The event widely known as The Dachia Crisis, or the Dominionist Civil War, was a violent conflict between the Free Dominion and the loyalists of the Starlit Court. Tensions flared over the inability to find the mythical grail, and the minority’s desire to utilize the Court’s martial prowess for conquest. During the armed insurrection, the rebel forces seized control of the worldship Sihi and nearly destroyed it on a collision course with the planet below. The plot was ultimately unsuccessful, but critically damaged the home vessel. The trauma of betrayal affected generations of Sihians and rocked the Starlit Court to its core.

Post Crisis

Extensive repairs of Sihi, initially projected at fifteen years, ultimately ran behind schedule and over-budget. Sihi would be ‘stranded’ for over 20 years during the recovery efforts.

This period saw expansion and restoration of the polar powerstation Hurion and several communication stations. Memorials to those lost during the Dominionist Civil War and the Crisis were also established around the world. The most prestigious is the Starlit Court Historical Events Museum Exhibit (SCHEME). Exhibits survive to this day despite the rocky transition of power between governors. It is a place of memory to recount the atrocities of the Free Dominion and also honor those lost defending their home and way of life.

Lessons’ learned from the crisis brought more attention to the world as well. Military installations, known as the Dachia Proving Grounds, provided a testing site for Starlit tech and units. Four main camps, Nadir, Kelvin, Tempesta, and Aquilo, were established in the crisis’ wake.

Modern Court Activities

With Sihi restored, the Court moved its home out of the Cacho system in 570 AoQ, but maintained a nominal presence at their temporary home system. The Starlit Court notably rallied to the aid of the Tahora Whai and the White Whale when it was under threat on Dachia and used caches in system to support the effort.

During the modern era, the Starlit Court sent several expeditions against Dominionist hideouts and cells on and around Dachia. With Sihi mobile once again, the traitors grew bolder and operated outside of the shadow. Isolated raids against fiends such as the escaped convict Farain and notable ne'er-do-well Elenore von Bathory maintained the Courts interest in the region.

Second Battle of Dachia

In AoQ 572, Task Fleet Dachia, brought to bear a massed assault on the Dominion’s seat of power. The Dominionist presence on Dachia faced a crisis point. Initial fleet battles in the skies above the world swung heavily in favor of the attacking knights. The small dominionist fleet could not hold back landing craft and drop pods, but kept the overmatched ships busy by retreating into the void. Only a modest orbital bombardment was allocated to the invasion as tracking down the fleeing traitorous craft was considered a priority for the Court’s warships.

Landing forces only faced limited contest on the short trip to the surface, but met with stiff resistance once they set boots onto the ice. The Dark Triad had set up shop in the wreck of the starship SCS Zweihander, a craft that fell during the first Dachia Crisis. They entrenched themselves in the ship and dug tunnels into the surrounding rock. From the sky the facility was hidden below a blanket of ice and snow. With defensive structures and trenches formed a fortified hedgehog around what they now called The Mausoleum, the Dominonists would challenge the attackers with all their might. Armed for their last stand the traitors threw every ounce of metal and flesh at their foe.

Lances of rebel and loyalist mechs clashed, but the superior quality of Task Fleet Dachia made a slow and inexorable advance through the blinding sleet. Seeing their momentum fading, the Dominion maintained a fighting defense, biding time to sap and booby-trap their forward trenches for when the Starlit Court entered them. The loyal knights fell face first into the gambit, but the defenders failed to capitalize on the chaos they had caused. The assault force, outnumbered and outwitted, kept driving forward with superior arms and teamwork slaying more than they lost. Even the great bioforms of the Dark Triad, monstrous creatures bred for war, could not halt the Court’s progress into the base. The defending commander, Syr Duradel Crypt, held a last stand on the bridge of the buried ship, but fell with his lance in the final skirmish. After recovering intel and hostages, the Court returned to orbit and blasted the arctic base with ordinance until it was naught but a scar on the planet’s surface.

99-Year Lease

In order to better manage the ranches of Megafauna and to secure advantageous trading relationships with the Shipping unions, the Tahora Whai entered into a contract with the Starlit Court to co-govern the Cacho system. Under the lease a joint task force, known as Project FaeSong, was formed to protect Cacho and the sector-west from dissidents and extremists like the Dominion and Discordant.

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