Mapping Incomplete
Drosven Reach
Star Type: K-type orange dwarf
Sector Role: Harsh industrial frontier, where corporations battle the desert for control of rare resources.
Tone: Mad Max meets oil-rig colonialism, with a corporate edge.
🪐 Worlds & Features
1. Khazar (0402.2) — “The Dune Forge”
- Type: Arid terrestrial planet, dominated by vast salt flats, shifting dune seas, and rugged badlands.
- Atmosphere: Thin, breathable with filtration. Frequent sandstorms strong enough to strip paint off hulls.
- Resources:
- Volatic Crystals: rare energy-reactive minerals buried deep beneath salt flats. They resonate with spike-drives and are a critical component in drive stabilizers.
- Small aquifers and rare oases dot the deserts, jealously guarded by local populations.
- Settlements:
- Stationary cities are rare; most large-scale operations are mobile carrier platforms crawling across the surface.
- Independent settlers cluster around wells, small domes, or scavenger camps.
2. Zyden Belt
- Type: Asteroid belt
- Use: Source of common metals and fuel ice, mined by small syndicate operators and Helion subsidiary rigs.
- Hazards: Constant micro-meteoroid swarms, making mining highly dangerous without hardened shields.
3. Veyric Station (Orbital)
- Type: Corporate hub in Khazar orbit.
- Use: Acts as customs, export, and refueling station.
- Vibe: A mix of sterile corporate control decks and riotous black-market docks beneath them.
⚔️ Factions in 0402
- Tarkos Extraction Limited: The dominant player, but spread thin with Crawlers operating in competing regions.
- Free Miners of Khazar: Loosely organized prospectors who scavenge abandoned Tarkos sites or raid weak Crawlers.
- Greenflow Biotics (0207): Operating small research enclaves to exploit hardy desert flora for biopharma applications. They see Tarkos as ecologically catastrophic.
- Local Tribes (“Salt-Bloods”): Semi-nomadic people tied to oasis wells. Hostile toward Tarkos but occasionally cut deals with Free Miners.
🎲 Adventure Hooks
- The Fallen Crawler: One of Tarkos’s massive platforms broke down in a salt basin and was abandoned — but its reactor and cargo remain. Multiple groups race to salvage it. PCs are hired to get there first.
- Water Wars: Tarkos moves a Crawler dangerously close to a Salt-Blood oasis. PCs are contracted to mediate — or enforce one side’s will.
- Crystal Heist: Free Miners want a strike team (the PCs) to infiltrate a Tarkos Crawler and steal a newly found volatic crystal seam map.
- Desert Storm: A superstorm is approaching Khazar’s equatorial mining fields. PCs must evacuate a station or protect a Crawler against both the storm and opportunistic raiders.
- Corporate War: Veyric Resource Group (0105) considers Tarkos too reckless and plans to muscle into 0402. PCs could be hired for espionage, sabotage, or negotiations.
🎨 Tone & Imagery
- Crawlers: Rolling megastructures the size of small cities, bristling with cranes, comm towers, and massive treads or hover-skirt engines.
- The Desert: Burning skies, endless salt plains, sandstorms sweeping across colossal wreckage.
- Culture: Harsh workers in dust-stained uniforms, corporate foremen in gleaming towers, scavengers welding patchwork vehicles to trail the Crawlers.
The Carrier Platforms (“Crawlers”)
- Massive land-borne fortress-platforms that mix oil rigs, aircraft carriers, and desert crawlers.
- Each carries up to 1,000 personnel: workers, security, drones, surveyors.
- Self-sufficient with mobile reactors, spike-drive component for relocation, and heavy defense batteries.
- Slowly move across the desert to chase mineral seams and aquifers.
- Locals call them “Sand-Fortresses.”