FOOLS RUSH IN

From its very first days, Oberon has always been a system that beckoned those seeking wealth and fortune, only to time and again leave them destitute. As the Tarsus quantum drive mod became more readily available at the turn of the 23rd century, new exploration companies were formed, eager to reap the benefits from discovering a system. The “Golden Age of Expansion” was officially underway with hundreds of ships scouring known space, hoping to push the boundaries of Humanity even farther. While the media liked to create the romantic image of the explorer’s life, for every success story like NavJumper Antoine Lebec, there were dozens more who lost everything, including their lives, hunting for new jump points. The ship that discovered the first jump point to Oberon was one such tragedy despite their success in locating a new system.

The crew of the Lindy had been exploring the outreaches of Nul since 2348 and their reserve of funds had nearly run dry, when in 2356 their scanners picked up a faint anomaly that would reveal itself to be a jump point. They successfully traversed through interspace and found on the other side a new system anchored by a neutron star. Small and dense, it turned out to have twice the mass of most G-type main sequence stars despite having a solar radius that is just a fraction of the size. Formerly a binary star system, approximately 1.4 billion years ago the main star went supernova, gravitationally collapsing and stripping the outer layers of its companion. What was left orbiting in the wake of that chaotic event was the core of the former partner white dwarf star, now known as Oberon I, and six other planets that had formed out of the debris of whatever planets had originally been in the system before. The Lindy crew, excited that their payday had finally arrived, completed their initial scans and charted their return trip to Nul.

Unfortunately, while traversing a new jump tunnel was, and still is, dangerous work, the return trip could be equally lethal due to the limited capacity of navigation computer systems of the time. Though the Lindy eventually emerged back in Nul, the ship’s hull had been horribly damaged en route and sadly the crew had all expired. A salvage vessel found the wreck days later and since no governing body controlled Nul space, the vessel exerted salvaging rights to claim the valuable navdata it found in the shattered ship as its own.

In the decades before the UNE was formed, regulations regarding the discovery of new systems were very much still in their nascent days. When the data were quickly sold at auction, the owner of the salvage operations, Stacia Rholtz, made an unprecedented amount of money for the coordinates of the jump thanks to a bidding war fueled by the recent hype surrounding the effort to terraform Croshaw. It appeared that Humans living outside of Sol were to be the future of the species and businesses were willing to pay heavily to get in on the ground floor. The winning bid for the coordinates was placed by Titania Terraforming and plans immediately began for settlement of the system.

Since so much of their budget had been spent on the acquisition of the system itself, Titania had decided upon a unique way to cut costs on their efforts to terraform Oberon II, by leveraging future profits against their present expenditures. Workers who signed on to the project would be sold plots of land at heavily reduced prices instead of receiving payment. The promise was that once the terraforming of the world was complete they would be able to settle on the surface with their families. The name of the system, Oberon, was part of the branding used in the marketing campaign to sell labor shares, “The world of your dreams is yours for the making.” People signed up by the thousands, selling all their possessions and cashing in their savings, hungry for a chance to leave Sol behind and find a fresh start. It was an interesting business strategy that might have worked if it were not for the fact that Oberon II was far from an ideal terraforming candidate.

With so little light and warmth being provided by the neutron star, one of the first steps in the process was going to have to be raising the planet’s core temperature a significant amount. This was a feat that had never before been attempted and one that proved beyond Titania’s abilities. After years of toiling, the core manipulations refused to take. The project was declared a failure and Titania dissolved as a corporation overnight. The workers were abandoned on a frozen planet that was only half terraformed with no means to leave. Using the gear abandoned by Titania, the settler’s managed to eke out a meager existence in the planet’s neverending winter, but their dreams of better days would remain unfulfilled.

Though the system has some wealth in the form of raw minerals and gases, it has never been enough to warrant any further economic investment throughout the centuries. In the late 2600s the UEE briefly looked into acquiring the system, but passed on the opportunity to make Oberon part of the Empire. Ever since, it has remained unclaimed, with only the descendants of those initial settlers, misguided fortune seekers, and various outcasts and

outlaws calling the system home. Ironically, after suffering so much misfortune throughout its history, it has been the system’s latest tragedy earlier this year that has allowed the people of Oberon to once again begin to foster hope.

Though the populace suffered heavy losses when a Vanduul clan recently raided the settlements on Uriel, Admiral Bishop and the UEES Retribution arrived in time

to hold off a second attack and establish a new order in the generally lawless system. For the first time in its history, Oberon now hosts a contingent of Navy capital ships.

Though the Retribution has moved on, a large fighting force remains in the system charged with protecting it from further Vanduul incursions. The fleet’s presence has already begun to have an effect, as outlaw activity has dropped and relief aid has begun to arrive. Though some herald this as a possible second chance for the system, there are plenty who predict that the Navy will pull out soon. If they do, Oberon may never recover.