Akiton

At a glance, the rocky surface, grisly impact scars, and forbidding ice caps of Akiton seem uninhabitable. Even so, life has clung to the surface for untold eons, even as the planet slowly dies. In a process that has been occurring for millions of years, Akiton’s core has cooled, its atmosphere has thinned, and its liquid water has frozen, killing off all but the hardiest plant life as much of the arable soil has simply blown away. What might have once been a lush paradise is now a desert world on which truly tenacious creatures have evolved to survive.

Government

Akiton has no central government. Most of the planet is lawless, except for a few city-states. Since most of the oligarchs in charge of their governments prefer to fight over resources and hire mercenaries to perform covert operations against each other, instead of spending money to fight crime and enforce regulations, Akiton is a hotbed for organised crime and smuggling. Although slavery is openly legal in few cities, a vibrant slave market for gladiators and workers exist. Most governments offer a bounty on slavers' heads, while also accepting bribes from them to look the other way.

Geography

Akiton’s famous red hue is a result of its rocky, iron-rich surface, which is marred by craters and is virtually absent of visible plants or liquid water. Like many other rocky planets, Akiton has a molten core, though that has cooled considerably over the past tens of millions of years. Not only has this process slowed tectonic activity, but it has also allowed solar winds to gradually erode the atmosphere, leaving it barely suitable for most humanoid respiratory systems. As the planet cooled, its weather systems gradually precipitated the world's liquid water into static ice caps, leaving behind immense trenches, virtually lifeless plains, and swaths of salinized soil where oceans once reigned—at least so the leading theory insists. Ancient myths speak of a time of great floods, though geological studies of the sundry trenches and channels suggest a variety of origins, with some pointing to a distant past of raging rivers and others indicating an ongoing divergence of tectonic plates. The greatest of these canyons is the extraordinary Edaio Rift, which nearly circumnavigates the planet like a jagged belt.
The largest “ocean” is the utterly dry Irkonian Sea, created by the collision of a prehistoric meteor that slammed into Akiton at a shallow angle and left an oblong scar. This impact corresponds to a mass-extinction event that killed off virtually all of the planet’s larger fauna and, as paleontologists believe, paved the way for the evolution of intelligent humanoids such as the ikeshtis and ysoki. Force waves from this explosive event are evident in the surface for thousands of miles, and even the Arlkari Plateau appears to be a geological percussion bulb uplifted by the strike.
Immense ice caps known as the Winterlands cover both of Akiton’s poles in a crystalline shell several miles deep. Descending winds blow with withering speeds across the frozen landscape, sometimes colliding to create extremely powerful twisters that blast the ice and sublimate water directly into short-lived clouds.

Ecosystem

The planet’s surface appears barren but sustains a wide variety of hardy cacti, grasses, and shrubs whose roots burrow as deep as 100 feet in search of Akiton’s anemic groundwater. Dust storms maraud across the rocky plains, practically circumnavigating the planet unless interrupted by a mountain chain. During the thasteron boom, engineers began an intensive terraforming operation dubbed the Bounty. Its goal was to stabilize the soil, restore Akiton to its prehistoric levels of flora, and kick-start a new agricultural industry. When funds dried up, many of the experimental sites withered, though the heart of the Bounty north of the Hivemarket has remained a fairly stable, albeit increasingly dangerous region of lush greenery unseen elsewhere on Akiton.
In the north, beyond the hardy Ice Clans that still eke out a living here, the only signs of life are the abandoned Progenitor Cities that scholars now know the mysterious witchwyrds built long ago. To the south, different ruins peek up from the glaciers, but all creatures avoid these purportedly haunted sites that tend to scramble electronic devices brought nearby.

Diameter	x1/2
Mass	x1/2
Gravity	x1/3
Atmosphere	Thin
Day	24 hrs, 40 min
Year	2 yr

Alternative Name(s)

The Battlefield

Type

Planet

Location under

Pact Worlds System

Owning Organization

Pact Worlds Government