Noricum

Sindal Subsector

NOTAM - Amber Zone (TAS) - Noricum system - irradiation and biowarfare residual hazards in unmarked death zones. Extreme technological regression. Indigenous inhabitants can be unwelcoming due to historic looting expeditions. Looting of ruined high-tech sites and artefacts has resulted in bio-weapon contamination and spread to other worlds. Residual radiological and bio-warfare hazards highly likely. Caution and decontamination/isolation protocols should be observed.

Noricum was once the capital of the mighty Sindalian empire. That empire was destroyed with orbital bombardment with nuclear and biological weapons, the visible and invisible scars of which are still readily apparent. Ruined cities dot the landscape, all of them in death zones and shunned by the few remaining inhabitants. They lead a low tech, agrarian lifecycle on land that was not contaminated, or has been painstakingly recovered over the centuries. Rumours abound of treasures waiting to be plundered in Sindalian treasure vaults hidden beneath the surface devastation, but anything of value was really looted long ago and all the awaits plunderers is a lingering death from radiation poisoning, or a quick one from the various engineered viruses that lie dormant in the ruins. Several plague outbreaks on neighbouring worlds have been traced to looters who were exposed on Noricum but didn't show symptoms until they had reached nearby worlds. Ships with Noricum on their recent flight plans will normally be targeted for extra decontamination or quarantine periods unless they can demonstrate that they didn't land on Noricum.

Star Data

Orbital Data

Gas Giants - 4 Planetoid Belts - 0 Rocky Planets - 9

Habitats

Noricum (planet)

Noricum would be a garden world, if it were not for it's troubled history, and the parts of it that are still inhabited are a garden world, inhabited by the technologically regressed descendants of the original Sindalians who ruled the stars. Over 30% of the planet's surface is still death zones though - contaminated with lethal viruses or radiation from the orbital bombardment that destroyed the infrastructure of the world. The Sindalian Empire was notorious its wealth and for the means by which it maintained its power, and so there are no shortage of stories of undiscovered vaults containing the wealth of the Empire, or armouries of nuclear or biological weaponry. Most people who go looking for them end up dead though - the death zones are unforgiving, even to those with protective equipment.

The remaining inhabitants live in simple wooden huts tending sheep and growing crops. Technology has stabilised at Iron Age levels, and show no signs of advancing. Norician culture is tightly controlled by a great many traditions and taboos that arose out of the habits that aided survival after the destruction of Sindal. Many of these are designed to keep people safe, so for example there is a very strong taboo on travelling more than a day's walk from your place of birth. Given the number of different viruses that Noricum was bombarded with, which locals have acquired immunity to, this ensures that locals maintain their acquired immunity without encountering other viruses that they do not have immunity to, or spreading the ones they do have immunity to to other population centres. Another notable taboo is the shunning of the very name of Sindal.

World government is technically still in the hands of the Emperor of Noricum (a simple farmer like most of the others), but it is obviously impossible for there to be an active world government on an Iron Age world with a population in the tens of millions. Instead, it is the long centuries of tradition that rule Noricum, and the ever present reminder of the death zones.

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