Alegna System
System Datafile:
System: Alegna
Star: Ang (orange)
Orbital Bodies:
Name Type Moons
Mogtnom mild terrestrial 0
Ery belt asteroid belt -
Capsule: The Alegna was first scouted out millenia ago by a group of Ithorians when the Conheav sector was first opened up by the Old Republic to exloration. Aside from the asteroid belt, Mogtnom is the only sizable body in the system. The Ery belt has above average concentrations of heavy metals, enough to make mining the asteroids fairly profitable. Several different mining companies maintain operations here, using asteroid mining vessels (nicknamed Poundies) to extract ores from the smaller asteroids, and using permanent bases to mine the larger asteroids. Perhaps 10,000 beings of many different species are employed in this manner. It should be noted that these miners have virtually no interaction with the residents of Mogtnom, due to superstitions, a sort of general unfriendlyness (or at least indifferentness) on the part of Mogtnomians, and the fact that the planet has little to offer the miners in the way of entertainment or supplies.
Mogtnom
Type: mild terrestrial
Temperature: mild
Atmosphere: Type I
Hydrosphere: dry
Gravity: standard
Terrain: plains, hills, mountains
Length of day: 23 standard hours
Length of year: 207 local days
Sapient species: Humans, Ithorians, Mutcer (N)
Starport: limited services
Population: 8 million (Humans), 20,000 (Ithorians), 2 million (Mutcer)
Planet function: subsistance, mysterious ruins, homeworld
Government: Imperial governor
Tech level: space (in some areas), atomic (in most settlements), stone (in Mutcer areas)
Major exports: none
Major Imports: none
Capsule: Mogtnom, when the Ithorians found it, was a world perfectly capable of supporting a vast array of life, but for some inexplicable reason life was scarce at best. There were only a few dozen native species of plantlife, a handful of animals, and the Mutcer, a primitive but sapient species. Further investigations showed that at one point in its past Mogtnom was the home of an incredibly diverse ecosystem, but most of that life died out for no apparant reason about 112 million years ago. There is no evidence of a great plague, or an asteroid strike or other disaster, indeed there is no evidence at all aside from the fact that in the fossil record lifeforms simply stopped appearing. The small cadre of Ithorians living on the planet have been attempting to discover the cause of the massive extinctions ever since they first scouted the planet for the Old Republic, but they are no closer to an answer now than they were those thousands of years ago. In the meantime the Ithorians have worked diligently to introduce new species of life to the planet, varieties that are adapted perfectly to the climate. Slowly but surely the Ithorians have been reviving the nearly dead world. Despite the best efforts of the Ithorians Mogtnom itself seems to be resisting this process. Today the planet harbours much more life than it did when it was first discovered, but by all rights it should now be as lush as Ithor itself. Instead Mogtnom reains a fairly desolate world, an impression which is not helped by the slightly cool climate.
Despite this almost sterility, the planet was colonized not long after it was discovered by a number of species from the Old Republic. Other than the Ithorians, Humans are the only colonizing species that remains on the planet in any large numbers. Mogtnom has never really gotten past being a frontier world with little to offer outsiders, despite the amount of time that it has been settled. The only area of the planet with anything like modern technology is the district of Ssadnuor, the area surrounding the planet's single starport. This area contains the Imperial headquarters on the planet, and the majority of the Ithorian researchers live here. The Imperial government is something of a joke. Governor Stsaerb Elttil is a largely innefectual bureaucrat who was delegated to this minor world as he is considered incapable of performing adequately on a more vital planet. Elttil leaves almost every aspect of running the planet to the local assemblies, and in truth controls little more than the starport itself and his mansion. Most of the settlements on the lanet are dominated by Humans, and tend to use a much lower level of technology than the galactic norm, simply because such technology can be relatively easily manufactured on Mogtnom, and Mogtnom can't afford to import much of anything. Most of these settlements use the Mutcer to a limited degree as cheap labour, paying them in food and clothing for the most part. It should be noted that, while this seems to most outsiders to be exploitation of the naive natives, in fact the Mutcer have been offered payment in other forms, such as hunting rifles, and other moderately advanced pieces of technology, but the only items that any of them have ever shown the slightest interest in have been things such as food and textiles. In the thousands of years since Mogtnom has been settled, the Mutcer have seemingly taken great pains to keep their society on the same level technologically as they were before the arrival of the colonists. Indeed, the only noticeable change in their society has been that many of them now perform menial labour quite happily for the colonists, and that their population has grown slightly as life in general on the planet has grown more abundant.
Mogtnom itself is a planet with no oceans or seas, but its surface is dotted with lakes, and criss-crossed with rivers. The type of plantlife that the Ithorians have been able to grow with the most success is a short, blue scrub grass. Much of the planet's hills and plains are covered with this windswept grass. There tend to be small, stunted copses of trees seeded by the Ithorians throughout the planet, with no rhyme or reason as to their placement. In fact the Ithorians planted trees of all types over virtually the entire surface of the planet, all of which were ideally suited to the terrain and climate in which they were planted. For reasons that the Ithorians have been unable to explain, these trees only took hold in certain, seemingly random areas. The overall effect is one, not truly of lifelessness, but of isolation and desolation, with a sort of stark beauty (think the Scottish Highlands).
The most interesting feature of the planet, and the only reason that Mogtnom recieves any outside attention at all, is the fact that the landscape over the entire world is dotted with strange ancient towers of varying heights. These towers appear to be stonework, but all attempts at analysis of the "stones" has been in vain. Even the most powerfull and advanced sensors will show that the ruins are there, but give no hint whatsoever as to their properties. Roughly 98% of the thousands of towers are completely intact, despite their obviously incredible antiquity (most estimates place the earliest of these towers at 169 million years old, and the latest at 115 million years, although throughout this period there was no discernable change in the architecture, keep in mind that these are extremely conservative estimates, and some believe that the oldest of the towers date to more than 300 million years ago, while agreeing on the age of the latest). Those towers which remain intact have proven virtually impossible to breach. Even powerful turbolasers barely scorch the "stone" walls. Those towers which are already damaged are equally hard to damage any further, but some of the stones from them have been carted off for further (fruitless) examination. Attempts have been made to dig down and find the bases of the towers, but so far, despite the fact that one of the digs went nearly 3 km straight down, no bottoms to any towers have been found, although labrynthine passages built of the same material as the towers have been discovered far beneath the ground, sprouting out from the towers themselves in many places. Only 8 of the damaged towers are actually damaged enough to have holes completely through their exterior walls. 5 of these towers have holes large enough to allow humans access to the interior. The interiors are as much an enigma as the exteriors. No clues have been found as to the function of the towers, although those explored have consisted of many different chambers of varying size. One interesting note is that the towers contain no stairs, ramps, ladders, or other means of progressing from one level to the next, although they all have portals in the floors and ceilings of certain rooms that allow access to the chambers beneath and above. A few expeditions have been made into the depths of the planet through these towers, but these expeditions have found nothing but countless miles of passages and chambers in ever-deeper levels. No end to these passages, and no bottom level has ever been found. This is not to say that there is no end to these dusty, ancient tunnels, however, as there is simply no data available. Less than a quarter of the expeditions that went into the depths under the towers have returned. Of those who returned, one large expedition stopped exploring because it ran out of food after 4 months, 3 retuned with only a few of their members, all quite thouroughly insane and unable to answer even the most basic of questions about what happened, and 7 others returned well before they were scheduled to do so out of an inexplicable shear terror. All those who have made it back have spoken with grave fear about cold winds coming from the depths, winds which at times seemed to push them away, or, incredibly, pull them towards the direction of the wind. Indeed those who returned insane spent the rest of their lives incoherently babbling about the wind. Soon after Palpatine's rise to power, he sent a team of xenoarcheologists into the depths below the towers, escorted by a full company of 180 stormtroopers, in order to discover the dark secrets that the catacombs held. When the team didn't return, and stopped communicating via the direct cable link that they had connected to the surface (comlinks in the tunnels have proven to be effective only to a range of about 20m), a second, smaller but better equipped expedition was sent in after them. This expedition communicated to the surface that they had found a shattered piece of stormtrooper shoulder armour after a number of days, but the communication was abruptly cut off, and the second team never heard from again. No further expeditions have been made since then.
Due to these and other stories all of the inhabitants of Mogtnom shun the towers, and refuse to speak of them, indeed, they often pretend that the towers aren't even there despite the fact that they are so frequent that every settlement is within view of at least one of the terrible structures. Indeed, some of the larger settlements, such as Sgelmils, even have one or more of the towers amongst the buildings of the settlements. The Mutcer consider the towers to be sacred, yet terrifying places. Some believe that the towers were built by the Mutcer themselves, although the fossil record shows that the Mutcer began to evolve from herbivores some 2 million years after the planet's mass extinctions, which makes them at least 59 million years younger than the oldest of the towers. Those Mutcer records that exist in the written form tend to be religious in nature, and the towers figure prominently in them. In these records, which are ambiguous at best, the towers are often referred to in concert with "The Great Race," or "The Old Ones," although it is unclear whether these are two names for the same race, or whether they are two different species. Some records imply that The Great Race and The Old Ones were one and the same, while others all but state outright that The Great Race was involved in some sort of conflict with The Old Ones. One theory that has been put forth is that The Great Race evolved from The Old Ones, or that the two species were otherwise related. The records also refer to a race known as the Daeh as the builders of the towers and the network of tunnels. The Mutcer consider it blasphemous to say the name Daeh outloud, and it is more than implyed in every record that mentions them that Daeh is the true name of either The Great Race, or The Old Ones, although it is never clear which, if indeed they were two seperate species. The validity of any of these records has been questioned by researchers for years since the Mutcer were clearly not contemperaries of whomever built the towers, but the Mutcer claim that these records are based upon the translation of the strange hyroglyphics which cover the surfaces of the stonework of the towers.
The truth of the towers is a mystery that will, in all probability, never be fully explained, and the galaxy as a whole shows little interest in the mystery, although when the world was first discovered it held the imaginations of billions. Every so often researchers still come to Mogtnom to study the towers. A very small number of these researchers actually venture inside the ruined towers, and an extraordinarily small number of these researchers brave the depths of the planet. Kudos to anyone who can tell what Lovecraft story inspired the ruins of Mogtnom.
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