Sinophia

"Cursed? No, not cursed. Who can say that amongst all these riches?”
— Sire Morcar Del Sheen, The Sanctum Cells, Sinophia Magna
Sinophia was once a world of pivotal destiny and economic power on the very edge of the Calixis Sector but is now little more than forlorn and forgotten relic of the past, an ancient and moldering world of deserted cities and faded grandeur. Robbed of its population and trapped in an economic downward spiral that has lasted centuries, the planet is rife with petty corruption, apathy and slow decay. Its remaining inhabited areas are a wasteland of neglect and partial abandonment, ruled by a bickering, jaded aristocracy headed by a near-powerless figurehead governor, while its people labor under the heavy burden of the taxes imposed on them by their dissolute masters. Shorn of hope and empty of purpose, Sinophia is a world slowly dying.
Founded in elder days as the personal fief of the Rogue Trader, the world would, a millennium later, serve as a primary staging post for the Angevin Crusade that carved the Calixis Sector into being. But as the centuries passed and Calixis coalesced into its own sovereignty and self-sufficiency, Sinophia’s prominence began to wane as its purpose faded. Increasingly sidelined and marginalized, much of its population, sickened by the excesses of the nobility, began to flee. Many took passage as colonists, lured by the perceived freedoms of life on new worlds, while their embittered rulers attempted to fight back with spiteful intrigues and secret plots, but only succeeded in further bankrupting their world and dooming Sinophia to its blighted fate.
Sinophia, today, is a world suffering the final throws of a long drawn-out death by economic starvation and slow civil collapse. Criminality and corruption are utterly ingrained and what little off-world contact it has is with smugglers, independent cartels (themselves skirting the fringes of the law) and a few hardy pilgrims. Whole cities lie deserted, and where Imperial civilization does exist, it does so in twilight, clinging desperately to the faded glories of the past amidst the crumbling decay of the present.