Vume - 2115 System

As far as Imperial authorities go, the Vume system is the most important of the three within the Theev Cluster. It is also the least anti-Imperial in outlook, but it is still not a welcoming place. Most of the traffic through the orbital starport is jump-3 ships out of Realgar or Salif, with some jump-2 traffic on an out-and-back basis from other worlds along the Imperial border. Internal trade within the cluster is fairly low in volume, though it was much higher before the rise in piracy of recent years.

The Vume System

Vume’s primary is a K7 II; an orange giant star. Its size and high luminosity make it a useful astronavigational reference point. It is prone to the occasional large solar flare, which throws out a great deal of radiation and other dangerous emissions. The star has expanded over the past few million years and is now many times its original size. It is likely the star destroyed its inner planets, making it impossible to tell whether there ever was a habitable world in the system. It is possible that some of the current terrestrial (rocky) planets in the system were once gas giants whose atmospheres were burned away leaving only a rocky core. Alternatively, some planets might have once been gas giant moons. Displaced by the changing gravitational balance in the system these moons became worlds, albeit uninviting ones. The system contains ten terrestrial planets, none of them life-bearing, three gas giants and two planetoid belts. Of these, only Vume is known to be inhabited – and then only after a fashion. The system’s rockball worlds and planetoids are sometimes picked over by prospectors and miners, but for the most part the only activity in the system is traffic in and out of the highport. Vume is considered to be a likely location for one or more pirate bases. Its many remote planetoids and rockball worlds could hide quite large settlements which would be unlikely to ever be discovered without a detailed and systematic search. Imperial patrol and scout vessels sometimes scan a few planetoids or rockballs for signs of habitation, but there are no records of anything ever being found, and resources are insufficient for a proper survey.

Type

Star System

Temperature
7°C (20°C high, -50°C)
Atmosphere
1,500 pascals (Earth: 102KPa)
Clouds
Mesopheric - 100 km altitude
Low Pressure
Thermal tides from solar heating
Dust Storms
61 km/h (gusts: 94 km/h)

Vume Station

Vume Station is a huge modular habitat, built by an unknown alien civilisation many thousands of years ago. Only a tiny fraction of the structure is inhabited by human scavengers and scrap merchants. 

The station was originally discovered and exploited by travellers from the Imperium, but they succumbed to a bacterial infection and many of them went insane. 

Today, the station is divided between four different factions, each of whom has a different strain of the alien sickness. Each strain has different effects on human thought processes, so the four factions are biologically incapable of understanding each other – or uninfected outsiders.