Cutting Room Floor: Cashew system

Originally published September 9, 2013

GURPS Handbook of the Planets Inputs: Personal user number 314; System number 413

Space is filled with untold number of small dim stars. Cashew, as it has been designated by bored members of the scientific team tasked here, is just such a star. Its nine worlds are unremarkable chunks of stone and ice.

Except for Cashew VI. This large frozen world still harbors liquid water under hundreds of kilometers of ice, warmed by an unknown source. An energy signature has been detected deep beneath the surface of the northern hemisphere. A huge research station has been established here by the Sojourner Collective, an interstellar alliance of worlds, to discover what it is and what life it may harbor.

For the past 42 years they have been drilling into the ice, melting through kilometer by kilometer, cataloging all they find along the way. Over 10,000 souls now work, research, and live 52 kilometers beneath the surface at the Gamma Center. Here buried beneath the ice, an entire generation has grown up not knowing another world or way of life. Monthly supply ships keep them tied to the larger community but for many inhabitants this is their life's work.

The materials they have dug up so far have been astounding. They have found signs of ancient indigenous life frozen in the ice. While only the most primitive forms have been revived work continues on their study. From their research they have determined this world is an interloper from interstellar space which was somehow captured by Cashew. What its home system was and how long ago it left it are as of yet unknown.

Perhaps they will know more once they breach the final layers of ice.

Besides their focal work, the society is divided by three main divisions referred to as the Docs, the Techs, and the Students. Since the founding of the research station, there has been a friendly rivalry between the Docs, or scientific teams, and the Techs, the engineers who maintain the colony. A more serious threat to social stability are their children and grandchildren, affectionately called the Students, many of whom resent living in an icy hole far from the center of the the Sojourner Collective society. While many join in the outposts work, many other leave with each trading or resupply vessel. The population is slowly declining and it is unclear if the research mission will reach its goal before the population gets too low.

Game Aspects (using the Fate system):

Cashew VI: Life Finds A Way, Ivory Tower Under the Ice, Declining Population

System Details:

• Cashew: a M1V class star, roughly 8.8 billion years old.
• Cashew VI: an ice world with an ocean covered by hundreds of kilometers of ice. Something is warming the seas. It has a very thin atmosphere thick in nitrogen and carbon dioxide.