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| - The Rubycon II System resides beyond the far edges of the Drusus Marches, rimward at the very limits of the Calixis Sector in the Segmentum Obscurus. While nearby Rubycon I is a dim, white-dwarf star, alone and slowly radiating away its energy into the void, Rubycon II or Rubycon Majoris is a huge red supergiant with a small cluster of planets surrounding it. The star is nearly a thousand times larger than Blessed Sol and burns a deep crimson colour; many who dwell under its light refer to it as The Ruby or simply Ruby. The Rogue Trader who first officially charted the system, Vivaldi Jontur, regarded it as inconsequential and moved on after a cursory inspection found nothing of interest. With no signs of alien life to exploit or mineral riches to mine, there was little in the dead system
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| abstract
| - The Rubycon II System resides beyond the far edges of the Drusus Marches, rimward at the very limits of the Calixis Sector in the Segmentum Obscurus. While nearby Rubycon I is a dim, white-dwarf star, alone and slowly radiating away its energy into the void, Rubycon II or Rubycon Majoris is a huge red supergiant with a small cluster of planets surrounding it. The star is nearly a thousand times larger than Blessed Sol and burns a deep crimson colour; many who dwell under its light refer to it as The Ruby or simply Ruby. The Rogue Trader who first officially charted the system, Vivaldi Jontur, regarded it as inconsequential and moved on after a cursory inspection found nothing of interest. With no signs of alien life to exploit or mineral riches to mine, there was little in the dead system to warrant further expense. It would remain deserted until Port Wander was established, centuries later. The most notable features of the system are the two large gas giants orbiting slowly far away from the star. They were easily detected by Jontur's two sons, who were travelling with their father to learn from his travels. He named the planets in their honour, the nearest to the star becoming Carlon and the farther Thamos. Both planets are composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, but Thamos has a larger percentage of ice, in the form of water, ammonia, and methane. Neither has any moons and only a smattering of attendant asteroids in stable co-orbital positions, as if a strong wind had swept away most of the normal formations which surround such planets. Vast merchant scoopships mine both planets for their volatile gases, selling them at Port Wander for processing into fuel and organic base matter. Far closer to Rubycon II is a single small, rocky, and tide-locked planet, scorched clean of any atmosphere or life. It is barely discernible through the red giant’s glare, brown and slag streaked, and was only discovered when the system was carefully mapped, years after Vivaldi Jontur's visit. Dubbed Rustrock, it contains many valuable ores such as iron and adamantium, and today the dark side of the world is covered with mining facilities and refineries, sheltered from the star’s heat. A steady stream of cargo ships carries the purified extracts to the station's foundries and shipyards. Farther beyond Thamos in highly elliptical orbits are three small planets of frozen gas and ice. Kaiki, Apeli, and Skiri slowly travel along orbital paths that take hundreds of standard years to complete a single revolution. These orbits carry them far beyond Ruby's light and into the system's Ort Cloud. This makes them difficult to reach, though several expeditions have been mounted to chart and explore Kaiki and Apeli. Cursory examinations revealed nothing of interest, yet legends and myths abound in the port about buried treasures and secret xenos cities below the planets' icy exteriors. The furthest planet, Skiri, has been more thoroughly explored by the Priesthood of the Adeptus Mechanicus. For unknown reasons, the Tech-priests decided to establish a research facility there: Altar-Templum-Calixis-Est-3, which keeps a constant gaze on the Maw, the difficult passage to the Koronus Expanse, to detect signs of instability. Through that dark portal it communes with its younger brother station at Footfall, Altar-Templum-Calixis-Ext-17, and only their Tech-priest masters are privy to the secrets they share. Non-Mechanicus starships that stray too close to the dark and icy world are warned to stand clear, and several ships have vanished after disregarding the warnings.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)