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.