The Hyades Cluster

by on October 8, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

Elnath is on the outskirts of the Hyades Cluster. Scientists claim it is not part of the Hyades at all, but its commanding position made it the gateway to the Hyades. We had to take it, but the approaches were not easy. The sub giant stars Asta and Cornus lay between Sunnydale and Elnath, and most of the best hyperspace runs ran through one of those two systems. Asta was on a direct line between them, which made it an obvious first target. That is why our first target was the brighter and hotter Cornus. We opened up with increased raids against the systems around Asta, destroying every monitoring platform we could find during a month-long campaign. Then we attacked Cornus. Their surprise was almost as complete as our destruction of every facility in the entire Cornus system.

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Sunnydale

by on October 7, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

The reason people live on a miserable little rock like Scorchdale is simple. It is rich in the rare earth minerals that all modern construction techniques rely upon. It may not be as rich as some other planets in the Sunnydale system, but it is easily ranked in the top thirty percent of all known worlds. It is far richer than Earth, and that makes it a valuable little rock in the heavens. There are riches to be found on Scorchdale, fortunes to be made, and industries to be built. It’s amazing what you can do when you don’t have a planetary ecosystem to worry about. That is why Scorchdale is home to more planet-based industries than any other rock in the Sunnydale system. And its ranking on the galactic charts is impressive to say the least. It’s one of the reasons that Sunnydale was the only non-Core World member system represented in the Group of Ten when The War began. I think they were actually the fifteenth member. Yeah. I know. They don’t like to change the name.

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Sunnydale

by on October 6, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

Sunnydale was a prime piece of stellar real estate when we colonized it. She’s hotter, brighter, and more massive than our own sun, and all of that makes her very special. Every star reaches out to nearby stars and forms links with them, the hyperspace runs that most ships use when traveling through the stars. Larger, hotter stars make stronger runs, along with systems composed of multiple stars. Sunnydale’s mass and power make her equal in strength to many of those major beacon stars. You can travel farther, faster, and safer on a Sunnydale Run than on the vast majority of runs anywhere else in the galaxy. That is why she is part of the highway to the stars we’ve used to explore the galaxy. And that is why we used her to attack the Hyades.

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The Hyades Cluster

by on October 5, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

Interstellar navigation is a complicated affair. The simplest way to describe it is to say that there are hyperspace runs or rivers between stars, and the brighter or larger stars have faster runs. Hot and bright blue giants make some of the best runs, though stars that hot are extremely rare. Elnath is one of the very few blue giants in Earth’s stellar neighborhood, and it sits on a nearly direct route between Earth and the Hyades Cluster. All of the best hyperspace runs between Earth and the Hyades go through Elnath. It is a natural choke point, and the Chinese controlled it. They fortified it. They protected it, because it guarded the approaches to the Hyades Cluster. That is why Elnath was our first primary target in the Hyades Campaign.

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Sunnydale

by on October 4, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Essential Galactic Atlas

Scorchdale is another prize in Sunnydale’s cap when it comes to providing living space for rugged and individualistic men to live on. Which is another way of saying that it pretty much ranks a zero on the habitability scale. It’s a rotten little piece of rock so close to the local sun that it’s literally tide-locked. The sun holds it so firmly in its gravity that one face of the miserable little rock always faces the sun. It doesn’t even have an atmosphere measurable by anything short of scientific instruments. It’s evaporated on the near-side and frozen on the dark-side. Even the thin line where light and dark meet is basically worthless as living space. I have been there. It is not a fun place to visit. You could not pay Mrs. Hart’s little boy enough money to make me want to live there.

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