(Ok since nobody posted anything in a while sorry about double posting but I am going import my post from the Tech and Misc discussion thread like Follower38 asked me to so he can canonize the lore he asked us to build for planets nearby Dumassas. See post below in the spoiler)
System: Cohagen
Planet: Cohagen IV
Population: 550 000
Capital: Montana Heights
Industrial level: ?
Education level: ?
Main Industry: Salt Mining, Oil industry.
Current Affiliation: Federated Suns (Crusis March)
Military deployment:
- Islamabad Crucis March Militia
- 1st and 2nd Mountain Milita Division (local)
- Plain Militia Division (local)
Synopsis:
"Dust. Salt. Sun. Rust. And Wind. Those are the card given to us.
We answer by digging, forevermore, to carve our home. Entrenching us within the salty crust of this orange hellscape, making it our own.
You want to crush us? Good luck trying to do better than this forsaken rock, you will never pull us out, roots that can live on salt are unkillable."
A local salt miner answering the threat of a pirate.
Climate: Dry and Hot
Geography:
The capital, Montana Height, is carved within the only mountain range of the planet which practically run from north pole to the south one and is unimaginatively called 'The Ridge'. It acts a natural barrier for the moisture from the only main body of water, which created between the coast and the mountains a thin swat of greenery in this white and grey hellscape. The rain confined to this strip of land and the mountains means that the food production is exclusively concentrated within that region, the sides of the mountains covered in buildings where they can keep the moisture and protect the crops from the harsh sun.
The ocean is not home to a large amounts of life due to the high salinity but his home of various kind of algae and critters designed by DOME during the terraforming to produce oxygen.
The huge salt and regolith plains that cover the world were so large that they were recognizable from space. The salt plains were also incredibly flat leaving vast swaths of unbroken terrain covering the planet, with the exception of two ice caps, a single small ocean bordered on one side by a tall mountain range but most of the water is actually contained within the ground.
Everything is always covered in a very light coating of regolith dust and salt but mostly the ground is considered a solid block salt.
This immense desert on the planet is called The Void by the local. Orbiting a yellow sun, the salt and regolith covering most of the surface diffuse the sunlight into an orange glow that makes it impossible to tell the time of the day and the light, twisting in a certain way, made it practically impossible to see tracks on the dust covered plain since there is no shadow.
The most inhospitable place on on the planet is considered one of the harshest place to live and a death sentence to anyone who doesn't know how to navigate it. Which tells a lot about the local since a quarter of the population live there.
Population:
The majority of the people of Cohagen live within the only mountains range of the world where the terraforming made the climate somewhat bearable. It's also where the capital and main spaceport is situated. The population living there could be considered normal by most standards, efforts are being made to raise the level of education by the governor combined with his plans to raise a proper military for the planet to defend itself against pirates.
People of the monutain region refers to themselves as Mounties. People from the plains refers to them soft skined pretentious assholes or saltless bourgeois.
The other a half live in the Void and are called by the rest with colloquial names like: Voidlanders, Salt Rats, Trenchers, Empty Head, Those Insane mother fuckers.
Living within the Void: Pits, water canals and wind breakers.
Salt Mining isn't an easy job and surviving within the Void requires a certain... temperament. To survive in the Void, you first need to survive the constant orange glow in the air, with no day and no night to indicate the passage of time, the endless vast emptiness that drives people insane.
You good?
Then you need to survive the heat, the thirst, the wind that can topple mechs and the dust turning all that is metal to rust. To do so, the Locals developed a numbers of crafty solutions using what they had on hands, mainly plenty of Mining equipments and a lot of open ground.
A Village in the Void (the basis of the idea, but less deep and less wide) is usually formed when a good deposit of one of the numerous kind of salt is found under the usual first layer of white salt mixed with regolith. Near the mine, they will dig a series of circular holes in the ground, big and deep enough to host three dozen multi-story buildings or until they reach the bedrock. These holes provides shelter from the harsh wind and the sun and are connected to one another via large corridors that are curved in "S" shapes to prevent funneling the winds.
Each individual circular holes is called a Pit, a name derived from their cultural origin as mining operations that became mining camps that evolved into miniature colonies and eventually into full villages. Each pits are generally given a single function within the village and more are dug out as the colony expand over time or as needs appear. You will have Residencial Pits, Storages Pit, Commercials Pit that are in charges of the markets, shops and trade, Industrial units where various small time workshops toils to build and repairs the colony needs, Garage Pits where all the different mining equipment, the life blood of the collonies, are stored and care for. Agricultural Pits where they use vertical farming trying to reduce their dependence on the capital, Power pits where they make use of solar panels and wind turbines to generates the electricity they need, Barracks Pit and Fort Pits are in charge of defending the villages. Each are an example of necessity, practicality and ingenuity developed along the centuries to survive the environment.
Some of the biggest villages can reach up to a hundred Pits of those Pits if it's old and prosperous enough and some even have pits dedicated as landing pads for Dropships.
As the pits are dug, a wide array of canals are simultaneously excavated around the settlement and made with a concrete mostly made from regolith to collect surface water, which is all redirected towards the settlement where the salty water cascade in a wide Reservoir Pits, which are in turn channeled into a series of pits-wide solar desalination chambers. While most collected water is purified and stored with another series or reservoir, some is run through the colony within a shallow canals that traverse the various Pits, which help reduce the temperature of the village via evaporation.
Since this method isn't as productive as a Star League water purification plant, a village has to dedicate multiple Pits for Reservoir and desalination and dig a staggering amounts of canals to collect enough water but even with the biggest networks, it eventually limits the sizes of most villages. When a village population reach its limit for the amount of ressources it can produce, the residents of the Void band the excess population of each villages to create a new one within the quasi limitless expense of the Void.
The third and last measure against the harshness of the environment the people of the plains is the formation of giants walls that serves as windbreaker and dust collectors.
Yes, the villages, while being semi-underground and covered in tarps that eventually takes on the colors of the ground surrounding it, still need to respect the fearsome winds of that storms on the plains. The weather is usually as flat and calm as it's plains on Cohagen but once in a while, mother nature show her salty temperament and raise dust storms that can flip military vehicles up to a medium size and topple light mechs.
But they have one thing going for themselves, the winds are mostly comming from the east. So to help protect the salt mines and the villages, they use the machine carved blocks of "poor salt" they extracted from digging all the canals, pits and the mines themselves they can't sell, to build curved walls that span the whole length of the colony in a wavy shape. Those walls can get tall enough to block the sight of assault mechs and are thick enough that you could build a road on top where two cars could safety roll side-by-side. Of course, since soil mechanics exist and the weight they exert on the ground is considerable, those walls are put a certain distance from the pits.
And as they never stop digging new pits, new canals and expand the salt mines, some collonies even have multiple walls protecting them. So to east, you have the wall, the west you have the water canals and beyond, the emptiness that promises death to the unwary.
There is an unintended psychological effects of living in those confined pits surrounded by the wall one one side and the canals on the others as well as the mines nearby, it breaks the monotony of the scenery. Truly, the omnipresent orange light, the absence of most shadow on the ground, the no day and night cycle and the quasi emptiness of the plain can drive someone insane so having "something" to look at is as much as to protect their mind as to protect them from the elements.
Living in such conditions form close knits communities and each colonies try to stay in contacts with the others via radiocommunication or the caravans that makes the rounds, buying salt in exchange of goods from the mountain region such as water, food, tools and parts.
However, the two different lifestyle between the mountains and the plains started to create a cultural divide that the governor is a bit at loss on how to properly mend the bridges between his two people.
Side notes:
- language also started to drift somewhat and it is said that people of the salt plains have over 50 different words for salts in it's various states, colors, composition, strata and smell. It is also said that at least half of those words are also insults.
- there is a form of art on Cohagen where someone use salts different colors put in layers within a bottle to form pictures with it.
Industry:
The eastern coast and the west sides of the mountains range is entirely dedicated to agriculture, the majority taking place within greenhouse like buildings on the flanks made not to keep temperature but lower it and keep moisture. Among the field, buildings and the flanks, the scenery is peppered with dust collectors and moisture catchers.
The eastern sides of the mountains are were, habitation, factories andnl mines that aren't salt mines.
This maximization of agricultural land vs industrial land means that the planet produces enough food for it's population and barely enough materials like ore for it's local industries.
The only true export of the planet is the various kind of salt found within the vast plains of the Void with some oil and derivative, extracted and processed by the Esso-Xenon PetroChem Corporation who installed a branch on the planet.
Most of the crude oil is extracted from drilling platforms on the ocean but some deposit exists under the salt plains as well and are exploited with some more prospecting going on. The refinery are situated within the mountains region a way south of the capital.
The salt however is the true money maker and it's so since before the Star League. Extracted in the form of large blocks that are sawed with specialized heavy machinery that carves the ground in large trenches and usually ferried to the spaceport near the capital via caravans that goes between the settlements in the salt plains.
The mountain range is now devoid of salt as the locals made every efforts to get rid of it. Every deposit in the region has been excavated and scrubed off to make place for agriculture, habitation and factories or make way to reach ore deposit underneath. There are even strict rules for disposing the brine created from desalination they use to extract drinkable and less corrosive waters from the ocean.
And the more pure and diverse types of salt is found in the plains anyway. The mountain makes water, food and goods, the plains provides the salt.
There is a certain amount of military factories Cohagen is there to expand, repair and support the vast amount of AA units in the mountainous region, the Light armor division for it's Militia and a vast array weapons and equipment for it's infantry.
Military:
Cohagen can call upon the Islamabad Crucis March for protection but at also has a Militia to call upon in it's time of need. In fact, it has two! Kinda.
Once again, the divide between the relatively small prosperous mountains region and the vast empty plains are felt.
The capital and the mountains have enough prosperity and population that a wise enough previous governor invested multiple Militia division to protect the mountainous region.
The capital, spaceport, and the factories are all protected by the mountainous terrain that prevents landings nearby and are heavily defended with various AA systems peppered around and the high ground advantage heavily favors the artillery that they have plenty of.
Most of the mountains flanks are hard to impossible to traverse for wheeled and tracked vehicles and gives most mechs a hard time as well. The narrow roads are controlled by a series of man-made and natural chokes points combined with multiple small forts and bunkers installed all over the mountain range over the centuries.
To top that, the militiamen of the region are used to the terrain and it shows when they are in their elements.
There is an additional Amor division of various small and mediun vehicles to help defend the region capital and few roads. Mostly scouting vehicles, APC and tank.
Combined with the horrible periodical storm that ground most planes and Dropships, the mountain region, the capital and it's surrounding have plenty of advantages. The most money, equipment, men and infrastructure to support both division.
The plains? Not so much.
And it makes sense, after all, while the plains have a huge population, it's all spread over a multitude of various sized settlement, the terrain is terrible to defend, the ennemy can land basically anywhere and what would they even steal over there? Salt?! It's everywhere! And they basically loose a village every few years due to a mine running dry, droughts, storms and plagues. And the place is basically lawless and uneducated anyway.
Right? Well that's what most Mountainers would expect from the plains but it's not so much so. The plains are hell. It's unpleasant. It's boring. The Succession Wars sucks. The economy is bad. And Pirates will certainly try to kill you for shit and giggles because why not? But God fucking damn it, this shithole is itheirs and any bandits that wants to take their stuff is willing to try because they will have to pry it from their salty corpses!!
Here is how the Voidlanders defend themselves:
Yes, there is officially a milita division in the plains.
It's fucking everybody in it.
Even if the settlement are considered villages, they are registered as so and pay their taxes to the government like every good citizen and because of a funny clerical error with a clause in the mining charts of Cohagen, each places are also still considered an active mining site (even the ones who are tapped out), the people there are employees and if a site is considered "isolated", it has the right to provide it's own security and the employee are expected to participate.
And because of the Succession Wars killing and destroying a lot of stuff everywhere, the original compagny that owned the mining operation kinda went bankrupt and while the corporation was trying to recoup, they sold the rights and equipments to those who wished to have them at a very reasonable price. So it ended with most of the mining done on Cohagen being privately owned... by said villages that exploit said site.
So on paper, every adults in the settlements of the Void, healthy in both body and spirits, are expected to participate in drills and training for services to defend themselves and the mines.
Of course this situation is kind of worrying for the local government, when most of your population is armed with military gear but the constitution say they need to defend its constituents and they can't realistically do so with how the population is spread out. And the mines need to be defended and supplied because without it, the lifeblood of Cohagen economy would dry out. So both the Mountain people and the plains people are stuck in symbiotic lifestyle where they depend on one another and tactically ignore that while both side are heavily armed and resentful of the other, killing one another would be in the benefits of no one.
The plains got the biggest number of infantry and of the planet with a big stockpile of supply, equipment, weapons, support weapons, mines and APC's.
The numbers are hard to go by the size of each types of infantrymen per settlement goes like this:
- Footmen Infantry his the greatest majority
- Mechanised Infantry is the second biggest
- The scouts are third
- Battle engineers and Minelayer/Minesweeper are tied for fourth.
The Footmen are expected to guard the settlement, man the defenses and do most of the grunt work. They are also trained to be able to pickup and use a variety of support weapon (begger can't be chooser).
Here, the Mechanized Infantry mostly constitute of a small number of lightly armed scouting vehicles, various tank with anti-air capabilities and the rest are APC and Civilian vehicles requisitionned to transport troops between settlements.
The scouts are specially trained to navigate and be able to hide within a completely flat environment of the Void. Their specially made uniform blend with the environment and if they sprawl on the ground covered by their capes, they are completely undistinguishable from another bump in the plains. To move around, they use ICE powered motorcycles and make uses of purposely excavated mini trenches that are just big enough to lower the bikes in with the ramp and lay down beside it for the night. Each dugout are camouflaged and the scouts are trained to locate those isolated hiding hole.
The Minelayers double as Minesweeper as well because they only let the most responsible play with the explosive. You can almost always expect a settlement to have a few nasty surprises hidden in the regolith or in purpose made little hole prepared to hide the mines. With not terrain or vegetation to speak of, those militiamen are trained with who can best replicate the ground around a mine and who can spot the differences. With very few tools and material, they practically bring the task of hiding a bomb to an art form. A native Cohagenite from the Void can easily spot a strange disturbances in the surface coloration or a suspicious shape in the salt/regolith and will be warry of it. So they make it a game to be as precise as possible to reproduce as quickly as possible so that the mine blend with the rest. Frankly, even a native that try to go across a Cohagen no-mans-land quickly develop a specific form of paranoia about anywhere he walks.
And for the Battle Engineeris, like it was mentioned, each settlement is a mine specialized with excavating salt in block or in a more granular form and a mine need engineers. Here on Cohagen, school also teach how to make a battlefield.
Which leads to the next topic.
Trenches, bunkers, tunnels, moats and no-mans-land: an art form.
Or
Those horrible salt rats and their trenches.
When you live on a world so flat that can make someone seriously reconsider that they live on a globe, you need to get creative when you want to defend yourself. So here on Cohagen, the art of making trenches is still very much alive.
Remember that practically all villages live in holes with buildings barely peaking above the edge of said holes? Yeah, very hard to defend and if the ennemy reaches the edges, it quickly turn into a turkey shoot with people stuck in the holes. And when you have a neighbor who collect taxes and have a tense relationship with, live so close to the Periphery that most people are surprised you technically aren't, that the Innersphere as been in a series of Succession Wars so horrible since before your great-grandparents and Pirates were always a thing? Yeah, you dig in.
Sure the windbreaker are impressive and thick but they are usually on only one side, only made of solidified salt and very susceptible to being bombarded so they are mostly used as lookout towers.
So on top of digging Pits, canals and raising huge windbreaker walls, the people in the flats of Cohagen also dig trenches. Lots and lots of them to surround their settlements on all side. In fact, it's said the first trenches started out as unfinished water canals and quickly developed into their own things. Or it was bored soldier with too much time on their hands. Either or.
But you need to remember that the salt plains are mostly made of rock salt and considered solid rocky ground. Yes some areas are a tad more "sandy" but it's only surface stuff not very deep. A soldier cannot simply come with his shovel and start digging, oh no, it would take much too long and take way too much effort and dragging mechanized digging equipment is a strain on logistics and at risk of getting shot while digging too close and starting from afar means you are starting a siege in one of the harshest environment possible.
Enters the specialized Cohagen mining equipment. Giant circular saws put on tracks that can slice and dice the ground in very convenient block of various sizes, great drills, machines that basically devour the ground as they progress to break the salt into powder and bag it, an army of loaders, truck and flatbed to move it all. All settlement have those in great numbers and since it's unlikely that a foreign ennemy have them, you got the advantage of pre-made trenches and the ennemy is stuck with absolutely no cover but what they brings with them.
Each settlement have it's own style but you can count on the trenches to be a spiderweb of zigzag, U-turns, bunkers, hidden storeroom, latrines, tunnels that serpent underground, fortifications and guns. The trenches are all furnished with built-in step to shoot, accessible shelves for ammunition in the walls, ladders, etc. The water canals also serves as reserve trenches and some settlement have installed sluices gate with the water canals to flood captured trenches.
And as a precaution when not in use, the trenches are covered in camouflage tarps and pre-fabricated panels to hide their configuration from aerial reconnaissance or scouts.
And sometimes, the militia really don't know when to stop digging.
They make ramps in the ground for friendly vehicles to hide in and peak out to shoot.
For one case, it started out as deep and relatively thin stone-pit that they kept digging deeper, longer, larger, essentially creating a mech-moat that no Jumpjets could ever hope to cross or get out of in case they fall in, something a lot of other places started to copy soon after
The mech sized pit-trap is also a favorite of the Cohagenites.
The no-mans-land between the trenches becomes a mess of barbed wires, Dragon's teeth, Czech hedgehogs, mines and traps, all things each Militia make sure to stockpile plenty of and train to quickly deploy.
And the if the ennemy manage to pass through, the villages themselves are riddled with bunkers and escape tunnels.
Taken from The Interstellar Galaxytrotters and Business Opportunist, Guide to understanding the near-Periphery
Interstellar Publication, Federated Suns division.
3014 June Edition