Plastin-0

Overview

Plastin-0 is a member world of the Emissariate of Bolusca.

Planetary Characteristics

Plastin-0 is a class B planet, the third planet of a G1 star system approximately 3000 parsecs coreward of Bolusca. Its orbital distance from its star is 1.1 Boluscanomical Units (BU), giving it a year of 1.15 cycles. The climate is temperate, with polar ice caps and equatorial tropics. Oceans cover 60% of the surface.

The extremely benign climate should make Plastin-0 a highly desirable destination for vacationers and migrants, but the atmosphere contains a toxic, air borne pathogen that makes prolonged exposure to the environment lethal for visitors. An antibody has been developed that will give immunity to visiting Boluscans, but the immunity is short-lived (generally five days or less) and repeated treatments in a short period are very dangerous.

The population of Plastin-0 is a mere 16 million, mainly found on the smaller of the two main northern continents and clustered around the capital city, Smalltown. These are descendants of the early Boluscan settlers who developed a genetic resistance to the pathogens.

There are several other worlds in the Plastin-0 system, but none are inhabited.

History

Plastin-0 was colonized in Cy 247, early in Bolusca's second wave of expansion, immediately following the First Krai War. When the initial survey teams reported a Bolusca-like paradise, the Emissariate saw it as an ideal solution to the growing problem of what to do with millions of refugees from planets that had been devastated by the war. Without wasting time on further surveys, every possible transport was pressed into service, and an initial cohort of 50,000 people was moved out of refugee camps and onto the fertile plains of Plastin-0.

Approximately 1% of Boluscans possess a genetic immunity to the Plastin-0 pathogen. By a random quirk of fate, this included the entire initial survey team, which is why it was not initially flagged as dangerous. Had the Emissariate taken more time over the colonization process, the pathogen may still have been discovered before thousands of lives were lost. But the fledgling Emissariate was in turmoil in the immediate aftermath of the war, and mistakes were made.

When the first colonists fell sick, further migration was stopped immediately. Still, 45,000 Boluscans died. The few thousand survivors with genetic immunity elected to remain, and founded a colony much smaller than initially envisaged. Two side effects of living with the pathogen are a long lifespan (1.5 times the Boluscan average) and a low incidence of childbirth. With almost no new immigration, the population growth rate has been stable at 0.6% for several centuries, resulting in the current population being far smaller than similar worlds throughout the Emissariate.

Early in the colony's history, the Plastinians took the deliberate decision to revert to a simpler lifestyle. Their technological level was frozen at post-industrial but pre-atomic, a state that is looked upon with nostalgic envy by the rest of the Emissariate.

Plastin-0 was the adopted home of the Star Guard member Hyperman, who arrived as an orphan from another world and miraculously not only survived but was granted vast powers by the planet's unique environment.