Tersta (world)

Tersta/Khouth (Corridor 0102)
Milieu 0	C574000-0 Starport C Routine: No Construction, Major Repair, Unrefined fuel Size 5 Medium (8,000 km, 0.40g - 0.57g) Atmosphere 7 Standard (tainted) Hydrographics 4 Wet World 40% Population 0 Barren (0) Government 0 No Government structure Law 0 No Law Tech Level 0 Pre-Industrial (primitive)
Classic Era (1116)	C574522-7 Starport C Routine: No Construction, Major Repair, Unrefined fuel Size 5 Medium (8,000 km, 0.40g - 0.57g) Atmosphere 7 Standard (tainted) Hydrographics 4 Wet World 40% Population 5 Moderate (300 thousand) Government 2 Participating Democracy Law 2 Low Law (no energy weapons) Tech Level 7 Pre-Stellar (electronics)
New Era (1200)	E574543-6 Starport E Frontier - no facilities Size 5 Medium (8,000 km, 0.40g - 0.57g) Atmosphere 7 Standard (tainted) Hydrographics 4 Wet World 40% Population 5 Moderate (100 thousand) Government 4 Representative Democracy Law 3 Low Law (no automatic weapons) Tech Level 6 Pre-Stellar (nuclear)
See also	UWP
System Details
Primary	F3 V
Planetoid Belts	2
Gas Giants	0

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Tersta is an agricultural, nonindustrial world still lacking adequate means to expand its economy.

• As an agricultural world, this world is a near-ideal environment for producing quality foodstuffs of plant, animal, and other forms. Quality foodstuffs are a major export commodity for this world.
• It requires extensive imports of outside technology to maintain a modern, star-faring society. Having to import most manufactured and high tech goods drives the price up for these items at this world.
• This world contains an archaeological site with suspected high-tech remnants of the now-vanished Ancients precursor race.
• It is a member of the Third Imperium in the Khouth Subsector of Corridor Sector in the Domain of Vland.

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• During the initial surveys this world was named Ishash.

Description (Planetology)

No information yet available.

History & Background (Dossier)

Tersta was a world of marginal importance to the greater interstellar community. The Vargr hardly looked twice at it, as it lacked many of the resources that would justify colonization. The Imperium wrested it from the Vargr in the final battles of the Vargr Campaigns, as part of the final campaign to push the Vargr beyond Reference, but otherwise found no value in it either. Thereafter the world elicited little interest other than an occasional foray by corsairs that built bases here to raid Imperial shipping, and these remained a thorn in the side of the Imperial administration until their final expulsion in the 500s. Lingering hostilities prevented much trade between the Imperium and the Provence Vargr at any rate, and the world seemed doomed to mediocrity.

The unnatural atmospheric pollution eventually attracted academic interest from several prominent universities. These sent a number of expeditions to discover the cause, eventually finding the fragmentary remains of an extensive Ancient site in 774. In much poorer shape than the better known site on Antiquity (Corridor 0816), it nevertheless transformed the sleepy world as tourists came to gaze at its wonders. The Ministry of Colonization publicly boosted the site, hoping to encourage goodwill between the Imperium and its less well understood neighbors. Extensive visits from nearby chapters of the racial supremacist Church of the Chosen Ones made some Imperials wonder just which kind goodwill the Ministry was trying to elicit. But the project did make the world a minor trade portal between the two sides, albeit not a very prosperous one.

The site itself is mostly static, consisting of the ruined remains of massive kilometer high towers that existed about 300,000 years ago. Hundreds of these buildings covered the world at random intervals, and the Final War attack that destroyed them must have lasted days. Most of these buildings lacked physical exits of any kind, and their interior construction was both wondrous and bizarre, consisting of shifting walls of electrodynamic copper and mercury. Metaconducter antennas built atop the towers were used to transmit large electrical currents into the atmosphere for unknown reasons. Huge spheres of melted glass or quartz have been found embedded in otherwise solid rock, sometimes hundreds of meters below the ground, and many of them were hollowed out to contain a variety of inorganic and organic materials. Even the atmospheric taint is strange, with lightning or solar flares creating huge phosphorescent rain clouds that will glow for days on end, hum with mechanical noise when they come close to mountains, and expel rain colored in purple or green hues.

History-Era: Rebellion

Tersta fell without a fight to Dzarrgh Federate forces in early 1117. For the most part the local inhabitants were ignored. While the Ancient site attracted a sudden surge of interest from the Chosen Ones, hostilities between them and the Federate government compelled a temporary closure of the world to outside contact until 1122. After the blockade was lifted, the poverty stricken population began to abandon the world for the Domain of Deneb.

History-Era: New Era

Virus came in 1138, and destroyed the original starport and the local Federate garrison in one blow. Food shortages have compelled the remaining population to allow excavations of the ruins by Vargr corsairs and Vampire Fleets in return for food from nearby worlds.

References & Contributors (Sources)

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Marc Miller's Traveller T4 First Survey
• Peter Gray - TNE RCES

[[Category: Era: Milieu 0