Core Worlds

Overview
Listed below are the 21 Core Systems of The Akosian Empire. These worlds are the equivalent of states in their terms of government, as each has been developed to a level that warrants self-sufficiency and autonomy. Akos Prime is not included below, but it is considered a Core System regardless.

Kirsine
Kirsine is the first solar system to be colonized by the Akosian Empire, heralding in a golden age of development, mass migration, and social progression. The terrestial world in the system, Kirsine I, and known as New Ruma outside of research circles, is one of the most densely populated regions in the entire empire. New Ruma is a hub for trade and transportation between the Core Systems and the capital of Akos Prime.

New Ruma is a standard terrestial world with green vegetation and dark, grey-blue seas with many muted geographic features, such as light mountains and flat plains. Rivers are numerous, but short in length, and vegetation is extremely simple where new life has not been introduced by the Akosian Empire.

The planet of New Ruma is far cooler and more predictable in climate than the homeworld, with almost a third of its ice trapped in polar glaciers. The planet's biosphere is budding, with the development of prokaryotes in the world's large oceans. However, the planet was jumpstarted with the introduction of hardy animal and plant life, extensively planned from the first discovery of the world's ability to support life. The capital of the planet is accepted as Hersef, and notable for its heavy population of Explorer-class and Builder-class. Both of their natural abilities to weather unfamiliar surroundings, the new frontier was easier to adjust and prepare for the rest of the Empire's mass migration.

New Ruma is extensively developed, with intelligent design creating a fluid-moving and unobtrusive infrastructure of transportation networks. A teleportation nexus is located in Hersef for the use of the nobility, like other worlds. Most cities are densely populated, focusing on swaths of land only tenss of kilometers wide but reaching up in massive skyscrapers and terraced apartment complexes. Agricultural cultivation is entirely vertically staged by now, and animal products are carefully located to reduce their impact on the biosphere. All power is generated from massive-scale complexes located underneath cities, providing both heating and energy and eliminating the need for extensive insulation.

The planet has no Constructs in orbit, but does have a set of large, luminescent rings that harbor a multitude of trading depots and immigration nexuses. Security stations hover almost hundreds of thousands of kilometers outside of the planet, with extremely advanced communication links with New Ruma's military and transportation details, as well as a direct link with the capital planet.

Kirsine II and IV have no noteworthy population, but do contain a multitude of research and mining operations to extract materials and fuel from the planets' interiors, and are also a regular stop for ferries and freight vessels to vent their engines in the case of technological malfunction. These worlds also include the relay system possessed by New Ruma, but far less complicated and grand in stature. It is a region of space carefully monitored by manned patrol corvettes, frigates, and occasionally destroyer-class vessels.

Kirsine V, VI, and VII are entirely uninhabited by Akosian personnel, but automated relays orbit each of the planets, passing along data and communications through the solar system until it reaches the main relays on New Ruma. Several navigation beacons orbit as well, ensuring travellers and traders follow the correct path to more populated areas of space.

Argosa
The second system to be colonized beyond the home system of the Akosian Empire, Argosa is hailed as one of the many industrial hubs in the Core Systems. Explored around the same era as the Kirsine system, the movement to send colonists and other envoys was far slower to progress due to the dramatic difference in the natural habitability between both solar systems' terrestial planets. However, once the initial rush to Kirsine ended a few decades after its discovery, the frst parties were deployed to Argosa I, commonly known as Regal.

Regal was a decayed and dying world by the time the first probes returned data from their passes through the planet's atmosphere. Bleached and pinkish in colour, it was thought to be completely inhospitable to Akosian peoples, until a project to terraform it was put underway. With a trace amount of an atmosphere still remaining above the world, the motion to 'resuscitate' Regal was far ahead of schedule, filling the planet with breathable oxygen and nitrogen within a few years of the first air scrubbers' installations.

With progress being unexpectedly rapid, colonists were overjoyed, and carried on the next stage. Liquid water was synthesized from water vapor in the air, released from ice frozen over in the past, or created from the atmosphere itself. Shallow oceans and lakes burgeoned forth, creating continents from the once husk-like world. As the process of atmosphere adjustment finally came to a close, the introduction of plant life was a quick and rapid process. In later stages, seeds were practically dropped from space and onto the soil saturated with ancient and dead remains, and fresh nitrogen from the new atmosphere.

Deemed habitable and ready for a permanent population, Regal was colonized by waves of avid and eager colonists looking to strike it rich on the planet's high mineral and metal content. After even larger deposits were discovered, a decade of colonial enthusiasm ensured residents were permanent. Cities dotted across the surface, planned for the most efficient use of space that wasn't dedicated to mining and food cultivation. Most of them circled around housing workers and funneling raw materials to the capital city of Iau, where they are converted into manuafactured products and shipped to the rest of the empire.

The planet has a heavy industrial base after six hundred years in the empire. Most cities have a heavy saturation of factories and refineries. Bases for the transportation of materials, finished products, and crewmembers for mining parties follow the infrastructure between cities and settled zones, with multiple rest stops, trade depots, and service businesses.

Considering the obsession with the harvest of raw materials, it was a short time before interests shifted off the main planet in the system, Argosa II and Argosa V were quickly taken by ambitious survey crews looking to diversify the exports from the system to fuel the development of other colonies and the home regions. Argosa has a very light settlement of technicians operating a fully unmanned fleet of drones that harvest atmospheric gases and strip mine the rock world's surface. Space stations also house research bases for studying the planet and its surroundings, in addition to the standard communication relay sets that orbit nearly all Akosian planets.

Argosa IV is considered one of the largest interstellar foundaries in the Akosian Empire. The Jovian planet's gravity is so weak that it is capable of supporting massive ships without fear of them falling into the gas planet's interior. Massive-scale stations construct a huge number of civilian and military craft that is able to quickly be shipped into the interior of the solar system or elsewhere in the Empire.

Both asteroid belts are used as more targets for mining and research, but the second asteroid belt has an extensive communications system used to connect distant areas of the country, and give a very effective early warning system in the case of possible enemy invasion of this valuable system.

Autera
The third system to be colonized in the first Akosian colony rush, Autera might have been a backwater system. With yet another red dwarf star providing little energy, and many barren planets according to the first probes' reports, it was expected to be a far less successful version of the Argosa System's mining and industry economy. However, when the first shore party arrived to the system, it was discovered to be a figurative gold mine: almost half of the planets present had old god technology on the surface, or in orbit. With this advent of the discovery of old god technology beyond Akos Prime, the shock set hundreds of thousands of settlers loose on the system.

Auteria I, also known as Amat, is the most habitable planet in the Auteria system. Its surface is covered in a large number of rift-style valleys, and canyons that stretch for large expanses of land. Evidence of recent, advanced life exists in certain regions, but it seems the planet has been reduced to simple life forms in a mass extinction event. Smaller than Akos Prime, land development was forced to be extremely conservative and well-planned. Some of the empire's tallest structures are located on Amatan cities in order to compensate for reduced space to build. Many structures are arcologies, and many architects and engineers look to the planet's construction for inspiration on new projects.

Auteria I has over three hundred known old god sites, ranging from ruined and half-buried cities to the wreckage of Constructs. Much of the technology has been salvaged, and reverse-engineering devices and other examples of tech single-handedly catapaulted the Akosian Empire the equivalent of 200 years of natural progression. The implimentation of alien technologies dramatically increased the fanatacism related to them, and triggered a rise in immigration rates. Much of the population works for the effort to procure and protect old god artifacts and tech.

Galvanized by using a powerful old god reactor, the planet has a massive station in orbit used to facilitate the transfer of secure materials and protect most of the planet with shields and highly-powered and reactive defensive installations. It also contains one of the most advanced teleportation nexuses, capable of moving targets slightly larger than standard at a faster rate. It is only reserved for use in moving extremely rare cargo directly to Akos Prime.

Autera III, IV and V are prime examples of the results of terraforming technology salvaged from old god tech. Even more neglected than Amat/Autera I in its first discovery, the stance towards the three planets changed significantly once scientists found use for data downloaded from a Construct wreckage on Amat. The techniques learned from recovered archives taught engineers and chemists easier methods to transforming these three planets into habitable zones for archaelogists to inhabit and harvest the planets' artifacts without the use of extensive habitats or exosuits. Their population is supplemented by farmers and low-class citizens looking to eke out an existance on such low-cost land. Much of the crops feed Amat's citizens, and excess land is used for military testfires due to its lack of serious repurcussions and isolation.

Autera IV, the only world possessing a Construct in the Autera system, has a higher population than its less-developed cousins due to the presence of such a groundbreaking discovery. Believing the Akos Prime Construct to be the only one of its kind, this left the research community aghast, and a declaration from the Emperor at the time protected the Auteran Construct from any non-government interaction.

Autera VII, a strange pressure-freezer world, was looked over until a collection of derelict alien ships was discovered in an obscure part of the planet's orbit. Quickly investigated, the alloy of the ships included were a near perfect match to the same material as the Constructs almost a few decades after the first settlement of Amat. Quickly, space stations dotted the sky above Autera VII to study and scan the wreckages, and in modern times, drones piloted from the same crews of the stations harvest fuel from the ice planet to support the efforts in orbit.

Mire
Named for one of the earliest kingdoms on Akos Prime, the Mire system is the fourth system to be colonized by the Akosian Empire in its Fifth Era. Mire is one of the most 'dense' solar systems in the Empire, with 5 worlds situated within barely 6 astronimical units (6 AU) and with two stars fueling local planets' ancient growth, it was predicted from probe and satellite readings that the two terrestial worlds in the system would take far less effort to terraform and develop into population centers. As the colonies on Argosa and Autera progressed, the first colonists arrived on the surface of Mire I, commonly referred to as Lesser Mire, and Mire II, Greater Mire.

The process for the colonization of Twin Mires (as the two terrestial worlds are often referred to as a group) seemed to be as regular as those preceeding them. A swarm of satellites were left in orbit by a passing expeditionary fleet in order to plot, map, and explore the planets below them. Data was handled by a powerful 'processor' satellite and filed back to the expeditionary fleet that would land colonists on the planet below. However, the process was immediately taken off-guard by the discovery of not one, or two, but three Constructs in the system. Images of these structures were immediately filed away and sent to the Imperial palace on Akos Prime.

Under the Edict of Mire Space, the entire system was locked down and the few residents (scientists, engineers, and their security detail) were detained. The entire system was guarded by the quickly-assembled Delissean Sceptre, the task force assigned to the Emperor or Empress's personal will. No vessels were permitted entry, or departure, unless personally sanctioned by the government. For almost 4 years, the system was combed over, analyzed thoroughly, and each planet specifically mapped. The rewards given off by this extensive research came in the form of the first Akosian artificial intelligence. The AI, named Virgin, was developed from computer systems salvaged from old god ruins on Mire I.

The Edict of Mire Space was lifted shortly after Virgin was installed into the old processor satellite, given the official sanction as colonization adviser and assistant to all future colonization efforts. Wth the wealth of knowledge given about the planets in Mire, it was a seamless adjustment considering the past years of inactivity towards development. Many sites were still locked down to the public, but freed zones were quickly filled with colonists looking to strike it rich. Much of the industry was focused on communication and information technology, and also had focus on media. The Akosian Empire's most popular broadcast stations are located on or above Mire I & 2.

Industrialization did not carry very far on the planet.

[To be Continued]