Alerts: Hell World - Insidious Atmosphere - High Gravity - Native Sophont
Tartarus is an uninviting hell-world which is the home planet of the Tartarians, a minor race that evolved in this cyrogenic alkaline environment. The Tartarians are 'aquatic' bell shaped creatures around 3-4 long. The rim of the bell is fringed with a muscular ribbon that they use for low speed movement - for fast movement they can squeeze liquid through the bell as a form of jet propulsion. Within the bell are six long tentacles which are used for manipulation. They mainly sense using electrical fields in the liquid soup of their home planet, by listening to sounds that are transmitted vast distances in the high density oceans, by tasting dissolved chemicals, and using infra-red sensing pits. Despite their environment, they have developed spaceflight, and used this to colonise 3 other planets/moons in the Wildeman system. The spaceships are grown rather than constructed.
The planetary atmosphere will cryogenically saponify natural or synthetic rubbers or plastics - the phosphine and ammonia will cause polymers to break down leading these materials to crumble within minutes. The alkaline rain will etch glass. Most metals will become rigid and shatter under stress that they could normally easily withstand. in addition molecular hydrogen will be forced into metallic lattices under the 5 atmosphere pressure, which will then degrade the internal integrity of the metallic structure, causing many metals to just crumble away. Copper wiring is especially susceptible to the phosphine in the atmosphere, reacting to form copper phosphide, a brittle black powder.
The nitrogen/methane oceans are much lower density than water, so spacecraft will rapidly sink. Metals such as aluminium will rapidly dissolve in the alkaline ocean. The ocean is also a highly effective electrical conductor, which means that anything containing more than one metal in contact will suffer from massive galvanic corrosion.
Hydrographics: 99% liguid covered (liquid nitrogen and methane, with dissolved sodium amide and lithium complexes, phosphine and ammonia)
Average Equatorial Temperature (day/night): -187°C / -193°C
Average Polar Temperature (day/night): -223°C / -223°C
Population: 1,000
Government: Feudal Technocracy
Law Level: 9
Tech Level: 9 - Early Fusion
Tartarus Starport
Classification: X - there is nothing that humans would recognise as a starport. The Tartarians breed organic spacecraft that do not use conventional starports.
