The Independent Colony of Ellol

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Malchus
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The Independent Colony of Ellol

Post by Malchus »

Note: Decided to take a break (yet again) from the final paper I'm supposed to be finishing to put up part of this article. This is yet another polity adapted from an old 'verse idea, this time Avatar of Gaia. Although, it's only the concept and the name that's been adapted. I lost the original file for this article, so I went with

Ellol.jpg
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The flag of the Independent Colony of Ellol. The bright yellow and black fields represent the two extremes on the planet, the yellow being the searing hot day side and the black the cold, dark night side. The strip or blue and green between the two represent the small strip between the two extremes where life is possible.

The Independent Colony of Ellol

Species: Human
Capital World: Ellol (planet world)
Official Languages: Gliski, Sfaniora, Jong Wen Dong
Official Monetary Unit: Telo
Official Form of Government: Civilian-Military Junta
Executive Branch: Office of the Colonial Authority
Legislature: Colonial Legislative Authority
Affiliation: Outer Rim Coalition

History:

The Independent Colony of Ellol came into existence due to what many would see as a cruel cosmic joke. The dozen large colonization ships—part of the large scale early colonization attempts after the human discovery of graveddies—which ended up by the planet which would eventually be named Ellol were originally headed for another solar system. However, due to the phenomenon dubbed as “trade winds” the graveddy they were entering abruptly shifted its exit points and sent them to a sparse, unknown system.

The small colonization fleet realized this only after they had exited the graveddy. Before they could turn back, though, the relatively unstable graveddy they had entered reverted back to its original configuration and the graveddy they had exited abruptly went inert. As if that hadn’t been enough, the graveddy (the system’s only one) stayed inert until fairly recently, effectively stranding the crew in an unfamiliar system with no outside help.

It didn’t help that the system also seemed to be one huge punch line to the cruel cosmic joke that stranded them there in the first place. The sun was a small Class K star with two major orbiting planets. The first of said planets was a terrestrial world roughly the size of Earth which orbited just within the system’s habitable zone. The second was a relatively small gas giant roughly the size of Neptune with ten major moons. Now, while a terrestrial planet in the habitable zone might have been seen as a blessing, it was quickly apparent that the world was far from an ideal colony world.

Firstly, the planet was close enough to its star that it was tidally locked to it, meaning that the same side always faced the star no matter the planet's orbital position. This side was in a parched, hellish perpetual day and the other was in a cold, dark perpetual night. Only the strip between the two extremes had conditions anywhere close to tolerable. Further complicating things was the planet’s thin atmosphere. Still, the atmospheric pressure was enough that humans could walk around without pressure suits, although the air mixture was all wrong for humans to breathe unassisted.

All in all, the world was a regular hellhole (in fact, the name “Ellol” is a corruption of this very word). Still, the colonists had little choice in the matter. The world was the only one in the system with any chance of being terraformed since the moons of the gas giant, Ermalber (a corruption of “El Mal Verde”), were all cold lifeless rocks with no atmospheres. So, the colonists set about the long task of attempting to terraform Ellol’s atmosphere. Fortunately, Ellol’s atmosphere only needed relatively little tweaking for it to become breathable. Of course, this “relatively little” adjustment still took nearly a century to accomplish.

In that duration most of the colonists had to settle for living in the increasingly cramped and obviously aging colony ships whose hydroponics became strained with the ever increasing population of each generation. Even adding additional sections fabricated from mining on the under-terraformation-world (one good thing about Ellol was its wealth of mineral resources) wasn’t really enough to address the increasing problem. Unsurprisingly, these conditions resulted in increasing unrest which occasionally flared into riots. The worst was a large-scale mutiny in one of the colony ships that led to half of it being rendered virtually unusable. This led to the formation of what was essentially a military-civilian junta to enforce control over the increasingly chaotic situation. While this did not end the strife and unrest, there was never again something to the scale of the mutiny that gutted one of the colony ships.

Eventually, however, the terraforming became a success and colonial dwellings were set up on the planet’s tolerable strip. Due to the space limitations and the nasty climate (which still nasty despite the terraforming), these dwellings built down into large underground cities. To this day, most of Ellol’s population lives in massive underground cities. After all the time in the cramped, failing ships, these ground colonies were paradise in comparison. This did a lot to ease the tension that had built over the decades, although the civilian-military junta still had to deal with some insurrections and riots. Still, the colony has more or less stabilized over the years, and the junta is now more civilian than outright militaristic.

The Independent Colony of Ellol developed at its own pace after this for quite a while, eventually expanding onto the ten major moons of neighboring Ermalber. It existed on its own, a forgotten human colony on an unknown area of the galaxy. It wasn’t until Stansai’s (the colonists’ name for the star, which is a corruption of “Satan’s Eye”) one graveddy suddenly went active again. Curious, the colonists sent a small ship thought it and discovered that it linked to major graveddy hub in the Sagittarius Arm.

Thus, the isolation of the Elloli ended and they found themselves thrust into the interstellar galacto-political scene. Most of the races and polities they encountered initially were non-human, and it wasn’t until later that they made some contact with other human colonies. Elloli space technology hadn’t really developed much during their isolation, and they never really needed large numbers of ships. Consequently, they had to keep low profile since any of their neighbors could easily outclass them in combat.

They didn’t have much problem doing this since no one really saw them as any significant threat, nor was anyone interested in the relatively uninteresting Stansai system. They did, however, engage in some trade and limited exploration since they knew that given the increasingly volatile state of the interstellar politics between the two premiere power blocs and the number of neighbors they had, they would end up getting roped into a fight one war or another.

The Elloli used the technology they had gained to upgrade their own and engaged in a massive effort to upscale their negligible space forces. They forged ties with some of the friendlier (or at least more diplomatic) races in the Sagittarius Arm and so joined the Outer Rim Coalition.

Culture and Society:

Work in Progress

Military:

Work in Progress
Last edited by Malchus on Thu Mar 05, 2009 2:49 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: The Independent Colony of Ellol

Post by Artemis »

With all the shit these guys have had to put up with over the last few centuries, I bet they'll be high on the "don't fuck with these guys" list pretty soon!
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Re: The Independent Colony of Ellol

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I love this; from the name onwards.
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Somes J
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Re: The Independent Colony of Ellol

Post by Somes J »

Minor nitpick: a planet that was lying on its side like Uranus (as Ellol seems to be) would only experience planet-wide perpetual day/night for a limited part of the year (high summer/depth of winter). The rest of the year you'd get a more normal day/night cycle and climate, with the climate becoming gradually more extreme further and further from the equator.

That said, yeah, most of it would be pretty hellish for much of the time. 150 degree summers and sub-zero winters.

Another interesting effect is on such a planet the equator is the coldest area. Even it would probably have below-freezing winters. No wonder they live underground.
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Re: The Independent Colony of Ellol

Post by Malchus »

Somes J wrote:Minor nitpick: a planet that was lying on its side like Uranus (as Ellol seems to be) would only experience planet-wide perpetual day/night for a limited part of the year (high summer/depth of winter). The rest of the year you'd get a more normal day/night cycle and climate, with the climate becoming gradually more extreme further and further from the equator.
I'm aware of that, yes. But pre-set up discussions in the World Building sessions do allow for some leeway in science for the sake of story telling despite the relatively hard-sci aspects of the setting. I decided to do some of that here and have Ellol's axis always pointed toward the sun no matter its orbital position for some reason since living on a planet with one side in permanent light and the other in permanent darkness is part of their overall "characterization" as a faction.
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Re: The Independent Colony of Ellol

Post by Somes J »

Malchus wrote:I'm aware of that, yes. But pre-set up discussions in the World Building sessions do allow for some leeway in science for the sake of story telling despite the relatively hard-sci aspects of the setting. I decided to do some of that here and have Ellol's axis always pointed toward the sun no matter its orbital position for some reason since living on a planet with one side in permanent light and the other in permanent darkness is part of their overall "characterization" as a faction.
In that case the answer is easy: just say that the planet is tidally locked to the star, in the same way the moon is tidally locked to Earth. That's pretty plausible if you have a small star like a red dwarf or K dwarf: to be close enough to get Earth-like sunlight levels the planet would have to be so close it would be tidally locked.
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Re: The Independent Colony of Ellol

Post by Malchus »

Somes J wrote:In that case the answer is easy: just say that the planet is tidally locked to the star, in the same way the moon is tidally locked to Earth. That's pretty plausible if you have a small star like a red dwarf or K dwarf: to be close enough to get Earth-like sunlight levels the planet would have to be so close it would be tidally locked.
Huh, I thought tidal locking could only apply to moons. Then again, most of what I know about space is mostly what I remember from text books and science programs, and my memory is far from perfect.

Well, edit time.
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Re: The Independent Colony of Ellol

Post by Somes J »

Malchus wrote:Huh, I thought tidal locking could only apply to moons. Then again, most of what I know about space is mostly what I remember from text books and science programs, and my memory is far from perfect.
Tidal locking should happen to planets too, if they're close enough to the star. For a (roughly) Earthlike world orbiting an or low-end K class star it's very plausible - to have liquid water temperatures the planet would have to be closer to the star than Mercury is to the sun, and Mercury is close to tidally locked (it has a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance - three days for every two years).

Here's a link talking about the possibility of tidally locked worlds around red dwarfs.
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Re: The Independent Colony of Ellol

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

OK, the update makes this article make less sense: The planet is tidally locked but its rotation causes violent storms?
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Re: The Independent Colony of Ellol

Post by Malchus »

speaker-to-trolls wrote:OK, the update makes this article make less sense: The planet is tidally locked but its rotation causes violent storms?
Crap, I missed that. It was supposed to have been edited away. I just replaced all references of axis tilt with tidal lock and forgot about that particular detail.

Article fixed.
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