Cuillin (world)
| Cuillin/Scotian Deep (Reaver's Deep 1613) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Classic Era (1116) | B648AA9-9
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| See also | UWP | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| System Details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Primary | F7 V | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Planetoid Belts | 0 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gas Giants | 4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cuillin is a high-population, industrial world with a billion or more sophonts in population size.
- As an industrial world, this planet has well-developed manufacturing and processing industries. Manufactured goods are a major export item.
- Its economy is rapidly growing and living conditions are expected to rapidly improve barring outside forces.
- It is a member of the Principality of Caledon in the Scotian Deep Subsector of Reaver's Deep Sector.
- This world is sometimes referred to as Culillin.
Description (Astrography & Planetology)
Cuillin, with a population of 20 billion, has the largest population in the Principality of Caledon. If Caledon is the principality's brain, Cuillin is one of the key mercantile muscles.
- The system's planet is heavily involved in industry -- primarily the refining of materials from nearby mining-oriented worlds into materials that are manufactured into middle-technology products, or exported to higher-tech worlds in the Principality. It's a system that has made Cuillin's ruling elite wealthy -- and passed a good amount of prosperity to the people as well.
Monostellar System
Cuillin Monostellar System Star Name Hierarchy Category Mass (Sol) Temp (K) Luminosity (Sol) Cuillin F7 V
Primary Main Sequence 1.21 6180 - 6280 1.94872 Unit Diameter Min Distance Hab Zone Jump Shadow M-Drive Limit AU 0.0062 0.1158 1.29 - 2.24 0.62 6.2 Orbit # * 0 4 2 6
Planetary Conditions/Environment
Most of Cuillin's habitable land mass is located in one major continent ("Dickensia") and two minor ones ("Portlandia", named after Allan Portland, the captain of the first human ship to reach the planet, and "Scruggs Land", located near the equator). The rest of the planet is largely shallow oceans, punctuated by many small islands. A large icecap dominates the north polar 15% of the planet; a smaller one covers the south polar 3%.
Cuillin's atmosphere is thin, and tainted with an acrid odor that is the result of the oceans' chemical makeup. People from off-planet find the odor anything from off-putting to stiflingly obnoxious, but isn't generally lethal to people without respiratory problems (although it was a major cause of infant mortality when Cuillin was a much lower-tech world). Cuillinese tend not to notice it -- until they visit other planets, at any rate.
Also, a bacterium found in the formerly marshy lowlands within ten miles of the ocean on the main continent Dickensia has been known to cause "Marsh Sloughs", a very serious respiratory and blood infection in non-immune humans and Aslan. While native Cuillinese are immune to it -- immunity was a self-selected genetic trait, and infection is exceedingly rare among natives -- it has in the past caused immense casualties among immigrants, and still affects unvaccinated immigrants. 15% of exposed humans contract the disease, and 2% die within a week without hospitalization. Those numbers double among Aslan visitors. Although Vargr are rarely encountered in Reavers Deep, the numbers are even more daunting; 80% contract the disease and 30% die without vaccination - which is available to visitors at the spaceport for 100CR.
Cuillinese are also highly acclimated to the thin atmosphere; Cuillinese soldiers and distance runners are capable of relatively spectacular feats of endurance on worlds with higher oxygen content.
Visitors are well-advised to take time to acclimate themselves to the thin air, and wear a respirator if they have any respiratory issues.
The equatorial climate -- where 92% of the continental land masses lie, and 99% of the population lives -- is moderate and temperate, with rainy winters and pleasant summers. Southern latitudes -- between 40 and 60 degrees south of the equator -- are hot, humid and miserable to humans, and the mineral stench is oppressive and, for most humans in this area, not habitable without respirator masks. North latitudes - above about 55 degrees north of the equator -- are cold, and above 70 degrees, extremely so.
People & Customs
About 98% of the population is of human, Caledonian descent. About 30% are descended from people who immigrated to Cuillin in the past 100 years.
Biology & Wildlife
No information yet available.
History & Background (Dossier)
Cuillin - home to a few million humans in scattered, disparate, desperately poor TL-4 settlements, long-stranded by the Long Night -- was visited by RCES scouts as early as the 200s.
- Cuillin became a hereditary fiefdom ever after it was first successfully colonized, and the settlements linked (and greatly improved) by an expedition financed by Robert Dickens, a prosperous manufacturing merchant with a desire to join the nobility, in 272. The successive heads of the Dickens clan -- now entitled "Earl of Cuillinshire", having been admitted to the peerage for having opened up the planet (and, it must be said, cutting key nobles in on a piece of the action) -- have ruled Cuillin ever since. There is little evidence of much in the way of sustained attempts of colonization by any earlier waves of space travellers (other than the few fairly miserable humans left behind by their efforts), although rumors abound of what archaeology might reveal beneath the planet's shallow oceans.
- Through the era from the 300s through the 400s, the rule was autocratic and harsh -- hampered by Reaver attacks, which the Dickens' mercenary military organization and, eventually, Caledonian military power vanquished -- and the population plateaued. It was in 507 that James Dickens, 27th Earl of Cuillinshire, began a program of systematic modernization and governmental reform, including building a new spaceport for the then-TL 5 world. The Dickens family has owned and operated the spaceport ever since, and has been judiciously increasing the planet's tech level ever since; currently at TL 9, it will likely be considered TL 10 before too long.
- Since the modernization, the population has climbed; partly due to dropping infant mortality brought by improved medical care, and partly due to the immense demand for the planet's industrial output.
World Starport
Cuillin has a Class B Starport, a good quality installation which includes all the expected amenities including refined fuel for starships, brokerage services for passengers and cargo, and a variety of ship provisions. There is a shipyard capable of doing annual maintenance, overhauls and most kinds of repair, and construction of non-starships. Most ports of this classification have both a Highport and a Downport.
Economy/Imports/Exports/Trade
The economy's largest sector is manufacturing -- especially refining ores mined on nearby Caledonian and coreward worlds, and either manufacturing them into finished products for domestic use and export, or shipping them to higher-tech worlds for finishing into higher-tech products. Byproducts of this industry -- as well as from Cuillin's oceans -- have also led to a huge, thriving chemical industry, including those producing precursor chemicals for many of the high-tech chemicals produced on higher-tech worlds, as well as more mundane ones that are used in many other industries throughout the Principality and beyond.
The mineral content in the oceans that lends the planet its distinctive odor bespeaks a very high mineral content. Some minerals are readily available by distilling seawater; others are easily dredged from deposits on the ocean floor. Ocean mining is an immense industry, especially on Portlandia.
Thus, the main imports are various ores and minerals. Primary exports are metal and alloy stocks, TL-9 manufactured goods, bulk chemicals, and dry, preserved and refrigerated foodstuffs. The Dickens Spaceport and the transfer facilities at Dickensbraigh are among the busiest in the Principality.
While extensive, intensive small-scale agriculture is barely capable of feeding the population (which has grown by an order of magnitude in the past 300 years), aquaculture provides a huge part of the planet's food supply, and enables the densely-populated planet to be a net food exporter in most years. The main product is "Creelaiugh", a microscopic organism cultivated in huge tidal marshes and harvested by tons to use as an extremely potent fertilizer for onshore agriculture, as well as feeding other cultivated aquatic species. Creelaiugh is used heavily in the domestic market, and exported in its refined form as well to other worlds, where it is highly prised
Starport and Transport Infrastructure
"Port Dickens" is technically both private and government-run; the Dickens clan financed its construction, and is also the ruling house on Cuillin. The Spaceport serves as a terminal for millions of tons of finished goods, food and other export goods, and an entry point for millions more tons of ore from mines on nearby worlds. The system has been an aggressive adopter of TL-9 fusion power, and has aggressively exploited the system's four gas giants for a ready, cheap fuel supply.
A system of electric railroads -- powered by that network of fusion plants -- carries people and especially raw material and goods among the various towns and cities, especially on Dickensia and Portlandia. Sea transport is also common, with ships plying trade routes between the islands and among the continents.
Personal vehicles are rare and expensive, and civil road networks are rare and cramped, usually designed for pedestrians, human-powered vehicles (bicycles and an elaborate number of other such vehicles) and the "Rumbollies", crude electric-powered delivery carts. These vehicles provide the primary means of transit in cities less than 100,000 people. In larger cities -- of which there are many, in addition to the two largest metropoli -- electric streetcars are the backbone of the transit grid.
Offworld Connections
Clan Dickens is tightly connected to the Caledonian nobility. The Dickenses on Caledon were a "sept", or sub-family, of the Campbell clan, so the two noble lines are very tightly connected. As a result of this, the Earl of Cuillin backed the Campbells in the war of succession.
Population & Government
The Dickens family runs Cuillin, as they have since the late 200s. Supported by a system of nobles that are an integral part of the nobility of the Principality of Caledon, they rule under a system that is superficially a constitutional monarchy with a two-chamber planetary parliament that does in fact handle much of the planet's business, but over which the Earl has veto power.
- Cuillin's three representatives to the Grand Senate are appointed by the current Earl. On the other hand, the planet's large delegation to the House of Delegates (Cuillin controls 2/3 of the Parliament's seats) is in fact directly elected to the Principality's central Parliament - meaning that the people of the planet actually have vastly more clout at the Principality level than on their own world.
- That said, the house of nobles that exercises real power does in fact exercise a fairly benevolent rule; people are modestly free (although a bout of sedition in the 700s led the Dickenses to ban most civilian weapon possession, a ban that remains to this day), with a fair and judicious legal system, free exercise of speech and religion. The nobles have also engineered a system that passes good deal of prosperity on to the population (while also making them stupendously wealthy), a move that smacks of several parts pragmatic self-preservation for every part charity.
- Outside the major cities -- the capitol at Glasgow, the neighboring spaceport town of Dickensbraigh, the mining megalopolis at Cromarty, the industrial centers at Edinburgh, Dunsingh and Taggartsdoun, and Portland's major seaport and ocean mining/refining center at Barroughleith and Minchharbour -- the population is largely spread among many mid-sized cities and large towns, mostly built around assemblies of complementary industries, mostly around the planet's equatorial continents.
- Over the past 600 years, the system has been the destination for many immigrants - many from elsewhere in the Principality, more from troubled systems nearby, and many eager to escape the locked-down humdrum of life in the Imperium. Between immigration, a dramatic drop in infant mortality and increases in longevity, the population has increased by an order of magnitude in the past 300 years. Due in large part to generalized prosperity, the system's population has leveled off, leaving the planet crowded but sustainable.
Language
Gheldaght, AKA Caledonian Anglic.
References
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- Jim Cunningham, John Harshman, J. Andrew Keith, Marc W. Miller, Gordon Sheridan. Atlas of the Imperium (Game Designers Workshop, 1984), 27. (dot map, named)
- James Holden, Joe D. Fugate Sr., Terrance McInnes. Vilani & Vargr (Digest Group Publications, 1990), 11. (dot map)
- Peter G. Celella, James Holden. Solomani & Aslan (Digest Group Publications, 1991), 11,50. (dot map)
- Dale Kemper. Far Traveller 2 (FASA, 1983), 60. (UWP)
- Paul Sanders, J. Andrew Keith. Reaver's Deep Sector Sourcebook (Cargonaut Press, 1998), 18.
- ↑ "Jump Map API" and map location from Travellermap.com