Operation: DUSTGRAVE


Havelburg is a planet far from Union's core space, a mining world owned and operated by IPS-N. While some may call it a backwater, it nevertheless supports a rare combination of deep-core and orbital mining operations. More related to the Rio Grande's arrival here, the planet also houses a spaceport at its capital, Port Conroy, where ships (including the Grande) can stop to repair and resupply.
Before the Disaster, Havelburg was a tumultuous world with vast jungles and several active volcanoes protruding from great ashen deserts. All of this was spread across a single continent. While the world’s ecosystem never evolved past semi-aware plant life, it had a very diverse range of flora. Now, Havelburg’s jungles are ruined – its plants dying, suffocating, and decaying, turning the jungles into festering swamps of decaying matter. Where Havelburg was once a warm and humid world, temperatures have dropped considerably over much of the surface as its poles have expanded. Life further away from the equator has become all but impossible. While Havelburg is inhabited – mostly by workers, miners, and other IPS-N company representatives – settlements are sparse and few and far between, doubling as mining camps and smelting factories. The few cities sprinkled across the planet are comparatively small and lack the amenities one might expect on the Core worlds. This is especially true since the Ganymede Incident – more commonly known as “the Disaster.”
To talk about Havelburg is to talk about the Disaster – a cataclysm that wracked the planet 10 years ago, changing the lives of the inhabitants in ways that will resonate for many decades to come. It all started when mining station Ganymede 362-5, located in close orbit, suffered a sudden, inexplicable reactor core malfunction. The resulting explosion, coupled with the massive amounts of debris it generated, culminated in a dramatic fallout across the world’s surface. While the initial impacts were the most devastating, minor orbital debris regularly showers the world to this day. For a time, these impacts – coupled with the vast plains of volcanic ash covering Havelburg – enveloped the world in massive dust storms. “Dustfall” has since become a regular occurrence, leading to significant environmental and societal changes over the past years. Eye protection and breathing apparatuses are now as commonplace for Havelburgians as umbrellas might be on worlds where rain regularly falls . While the Disaster itself spared the major population centers, some still had to be abandoned as a consequence of localized heavy dustfall. These abandoned, ruined places – called “dustgraves” – give off an eerie atmosphere to any who venture into them. Seemingly frozen in time; their buildings and spires still stand, slowly drowning in ever-increasing layers of sediment. While IPS-N subsequently launched a thorough investigation into the Ganymede Incident, the fact that most debris from the station itself burned up in the atmosphere made it night impossible to pinpoint the cause of the malfunction. Regardless, the corpro was heavily fined and has since vastly improved maintenance and safety protocols for all orbital ring mining platforms orbiting Havelburg.