The Prisonous Barony of Hausu (Traveller)

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(I use Wikipedia's Random Article link to name the many things I have to name when making an entire planet; I have provided links to the Wikipedia articles where useful, in case they might provide inspiration for the locations and people they named)

This planet of the Scimecan system seems appropriate for this month, as the random Wikipedia article that gave it its name is a 1977 Japanese "incomprehensible" horror comedy film.  I tried to base the planet on the film as much as possible, and am curious if I succeeded.

E64523L-3

System Nature:  Solo (Scimeca, K7 V/orange dwarf star)
Stellar Mass:  1.069x10³⁰ kg (0.5376 sol; 179,020.8 Earths)
Stellar Luminosity:  1.096x10²⁶ W, 1.8675x10²⁸ lm (0.498 Lₛₒₗ)
System Population:  355,791 Scimecan sophonts
Planets:  

• Scimeca I, 0.2 AU (habitable zone):  Hatfield (D435544-7)
• Hatfield Α, 21,120 km:  Wrecking Ball (X00024L-6, 1280 km, population 936, Nexus, Liberal)
• Scimeca II, 0.4 AU (outer zone):  Nomia (C000271-E) 
• Scimeca III 0.7 AU (outer zone):  The Planetary Barony of Hausu (described in this post), population 381, )
• Scimeca IV, 1 AU (outer zone):  Vidara, (X677000-0, population 0)
• Vidara Α:  Arthur's Missing Moon, (X000000-0, population 0)
• Scimeca V, 1.6 AU (outer zone):  Sprinters' Commonwealth, (D45021L-6, population 617, Deceptive)
• Scimeca VI, 2.8 AU (outer zone):  Julian Priestley, (X331000-0, population 0)
• Scimeca VII, 5.2 AU (outer zone):  The Planetary Barony of Morgan-Beavis, (D56044L-5, population 83,208, Fashion)
• Morgan-Beavis Α:  Weatherby Belt (XR00000-0, population 0)
• Morgan-Beavis Β:  Cover (X000000-0, population 0)
• Morgan-Beavis Γ:  Stadium (X000000-0, population 0)
• Scimeca VIII, 10 AU (outer zone):  The Baronet World of Goat's Rue (E63627L-6, population 171, Unusual Custom: Media, Unusual Custom: Technology)
• Scimeca IX, 19.6 AU (outer zone):  Robenhymer (the marquesal seat, B76733L-B, population 7459, Unusual Customs: Eating)
• Scimeca X, 38.8 AU (outer zone):  Beyond Counting (X54223L-0, population 703, Honourable, Barbaric)
• Beyond Counting Α:  Ghost Moon (X000000-0, population 0)
• Beyond Counting Β:  John Griffith (X000000-0, population 0)
• Beyond Counting Γ:  Solariella (X100000-0, population 0)

Mean Radius:  5120 kilometers (0.8036 Earth)
Approximate Surface Area:  3.29x10^8 square kilometers (0.645 Earth)
Planet Density:  3.7495 g/cm³ (0.68 standard; rocky body)
World Mass:  1.7135x10^24 kg (0.2869 standard)
World Gravity:  5.0014 m/s² (0.51 g)
Orbital Period:  291 days 17 hours 56 minutes 53.6802 seconds
Rotational Period:  29 hours 46 minutes 4.8 seconds
Axial Tilt:  25 degrees
Orbital Eccentricity:  0.025
Seismic Stress Factor:  -1.232
Atmospheric Composition:  standard oxygen-nitrogen mix, with pollutant taint
Surface Atmospheric Pressure:  48.636 kPa (0.48 atm)
Mean Surface Temperature:  -98.3814 degrees Celsius (-145.0865 degrees Faherenheit; 174.6186 Kelvins)
Hydrographic Percentage:  53% (174,370,000 km²)
Hydrographic Composition:  Normal ice
Tectonic Plates:  1
Continents:  Adieu Islands (archipelago; contains the E-class starport and 17 Hausulings to run it), Armstrong Island (major island), Babbacombe (minor; contains 66 prisoners), Battle Range (major), Chambers (major), Combined Transport (major), Control (archipelago; contains 12 Hausuling felicia-class parahumans who operate the planet, as well as the baron's planetary home), Dragon Knight (minor), Festival Number 6 (major), Greenhow (major island), Jessen (major island), Leguizamón (minor), Lundberg (major), Madigan (minor), Manta (major island), Shiqi (major), Shyamdev (major), Sleep No More (major; contains 286 captives), Spathulata Islands (archipelago), Yinon (minor)

Volcanoes:  None

Terraforming:  None
Weather Control?  No
Native Life?  Yes
Satellites:  0

Population: 381 Hausuling sophonts
Approximate Population Density: 0.000002464 sophonts per km²; 405,853.0184 km² per sophont
Exports:  Agricultural, agroproducts, ores, processed non-metals, radioactives
Cities:  None

Social Outlook:

• Progressiveness:  Radical attitude, enterprising action
• Aggressiveness:  Competitive attitude, neutral action
• Extensiveness:  Harmonious globally, aloof interstellarly

Cultural Differences:  Sexist, Barbaric

Local Customs:  Everyone lives in special locations, divorce and remarriage required for men

Government:  Self-perpetuating oligarchy

• Representative Authority:  The warden team, the products team, and the baronial project team (4 felicia parahumans each) all exert executive authority
• Baroness Geertruida Sachs with judicial authority, the coordinating council (one person from each team) with legislative authority

Known Factions or Revolutionary Groups:  

• Federation of the Improperly Detained and Enraged (FIDE), a minor anarchist group with some supporters
• Representative Authority:  None
• New Jonesville, an obscure representative democracy with no popular support of whom few have heard
• Representative Authority:  The Babbscombean team, the SNM team, and the exports team would exert executive and judicial authority if these ideologues got their way
• Other Authority:  Demos with legislative authority

Law Level:

• Overall:  3.4 (low)
• Weapons:  3 (low)
• Trade:  3 (low)
• Criminal Law:  3 (low)
• Civil Law:  5 (moderate)
• Personal Freedom:  3 (low)

Uniformity of Law:  Personal

Technology Level:

• High Common:  3 (18th & 19th centuries; Industrial Revolution, Napoleonic Era, and Colonial Era)
• Low Common:  3
• Energy:  3 (coal/steam)
• Computer/Robotics:  3 (calculus)
• Communications:  3 (telegraph, audio recording)
• Medical:  3 (surgery)
• Environment:  3 (cement structures)
• Land Transport:  3 (extensive road, high-speed stagecoaches)
• Water Transport:  3 (multi-mast sailing, navigation)
• Air Transport:  2
• Space Transport:  3
• Personal Military:  2 (early guns, jack armour)
• Heavy Military:  3 (cannons, wood armour, bronze armour, iron armour, crude steel armour)

Trade Codes:  Garden, Low Gravity, Low Population, Low Technology

Geertruida Sachs's husband flew away from the Scimecan planet of Robenhymer more than three decades ago to fight in the Great Imperial War Against the Pleiadians.  No matter how hard or how long she waited, he would never return.  All this reclusive loyalty earned her was the respect of the Marquessa of Scimeca, who after a dozen years or so granted her a baronial contract for the frozen garden world of Hausu in recognition of her loss.

Though the planet was chock full of valuable resources, the marquessa had mostly relied on the planet as a place to stick the criminals and dissidents of her system.  The prisoners were given isolated cement structures, simple things of four walls and a ceiling containing only what they needed to maintain their life and the tools to extract the resources of the planet.  Hausu's contributions to the Scimecan economy were invaluable, but it was not a good place to be.  The newly minted Baroness Sachs only made it less so.

She ruled her new fief from afar, continuing her life on Robenhymer in the marquesal court, watching the unmarried girls tittering and enjoying their carefree and trifling intrigues.  Bitterness grew in her heart.  Why should they be spared the heart-shaking sorrow of war's theft?  

Young people of any gender always have reasons to wish escape from time spent with their parents and caregivers.  Geertruida began spreading word, quietly, subtly, intriguingly, that she would offer those continents of Hausu not inhabited by prisoners as a retreat world.  For parental ears, she spoke of its safety and its nearness and, for younger ears, of the freedom and luxuries which they might expect to find there.  Skiing and exciting companionship before a roaring fire were common images in the rumors she started.

Unmarried girls, bedecked in gifts of beauty or intelligence or musical talent or athletic/martial skill or the sweetness of their dispositions or simply of an active imagination, began to follow these rumors.  Baroness Sachs's agents began to receive surreptitious inquiries about the planet.  A select few of the askers were chosen, and flown at Geertruida's expense the 12.6 AUs towards the distant Scimeca sun.

Much like the baroness's husband, they never returned.  Nor, of course, did any of the others.

Soon, the Nomian robotics workshop Millgrove received an order for 30 autonomous drones in the form of giant floating heads with viciously biting mouths.  Baroness Sachs has been using these devices to ensure the smooth running of her operations ever since the order was fulfilled.  They enforce the isolation and work ethic she wishes to see among her subjects, as well as ferrying supplies to the girls and prisoners and collecting the results of their labors.

Over the years since, Millgrove and other Nomian workshops, as well as those on Robenhymer, have received a variety of secretive and unusual requests from Baroness Sachs.  Supplementing the 30 heads, she has hidden physical dangers and surveillance equipment in the mattresses, light fixtures, and rare musical instruments (almost always pianos) offered to her prisoners and girls.  Three teams of felicia parahumans hand-picked by Geertruida see to the day-to-day operations of the planet, one overseeing the prisoners, another overseeing the captives, and the final one concerned only with the quality of the products exported off the planet.  Seats on the three-person coordinating council cycle through the members of each team; during their term, they develop rules and plans both in the moment as necessary and for the foreseeable future.

As the whim strikes Baroness Sachs, occasional captives are sent to a Nomian Trapier Clinic for medical recruitment, realigning their way of thinking to serve as the Baroness's agents, amusements, or merely to increase their efficiency as workers.  Should the whim not strike her, recalcitrant captives and rebellious prisoners can easily provide biological components for the Scimecan system's small noetic drive manufacturing industry or sale beyond its planets, or raw materials for medical education and experimentation.

Hausuling captives are gifted small wardrobes of clothing befitting brides in a handful of cultures from across the Scimecan system.  They are not given more mundane clothing, reliant only on what they had on their back as they left their home.  Recognizing that marriage and reproduction provide economic benefits in the form of more workers, the products team has successfully lobbied for a marriage cycle to occur at a rhythm determined by the coordinating council.  Every so many years, a certain percentage of the prisoners are married to reproductively compatible captives by negotiation between the warden and baronial projects teams.  They are then allowed to be married (for fewer years than the time between marriages), living together in one building before being divorced and forcibly separated again.  This has allowed a certain amount of communication to occur among the scattered Hausulings, and a culture to form.

In recent years, two resistance movements have sprung up on Hausu.  The older and more popular of the two, anarchists who call themselves the Federation of the Improperly Detained and Enraged (or FIDE), advocates simply for the abolition of baronial control, leaving the Hausulings in charge of their own individual destiny and free to leave the frozen planet if they so desire.  Only a handful of Hausulings have gathered under the auspices of New Jonesville.  These rebels would make the three teams of felicia parahumans employees of the other residents of the planet, who would send an equal number of their own population to join each team.  Imported communications technology would then provide a means for the widely scattered populace to direct their efforts by means of regular voting; their recruitment efforts have been hindered by the fact that this sounds like a daydream to many Hausulings. 

Nonetheless, the tireless work of these two groups have stoked the flames of hope in the Hausuling heart, and a recognition of their unity in oppression.  Unnoticed by the baroness or her agents, revolution is seeming more and more possible, if only the rebels could solve the inherent logistical problems.  Like siezing weaponry and vehicles somehow, for example.

A side effect of this growing collective sentiment is that wrongs committed by one Hausuling against another face two separate justices, that of the baroness's people and the bloodier version enacted by the Hausulings themselves.

Most of this is unknown to the system or Empire as a whole, except perhaps in shadowed rumors.  The face portrayed to the greater world by Baroness Sachs focuses heavily on its agricultural and agroproduct exports.  Geertruida has introduced a variant of the watermelon genetically modified to grow well in Hausu's frigid climates that she calls the icemelon to supplement the planet's indigenous crop species.  With its origins in the old Cream of Saskatchewan cultivar, its small, round fruits of less than a foot in diameter have a thin rind, striped in light and dark green, and sweet flesh of stark white with black seeds.  The freezing temperatures in which icemelon are grown make its sugars much more prominent than its watermelon ancestors, making it quite a bit sweeter; the seeds have a pleasingly crisp nutty flavor.  Many of the cement structures which house her subjects have a vine of them growing up one corner towards the roof.  Hausulings usually store these fruits in their wells to preserve them.

As the Baroness Hausu spends much of her time in the marquesal court on Robenhymer, marketing the products of her dismal planet, Hausuling recipes have become quite the trend across the system, often enjoyed by people with no idea of the bleak lives of the innovators of these recipes.  Bottles of Hausuling icemelon seed oil can be found on grocers' shelves, even a system or two away, beside plastic bags of roasted icemelon seeds, paper sacks of icemelon seed flour, jars of pickled icemelon rind, and bottles of icemelon juice and icemelon wine.

Icemelon rind stir-fry and icemelon rind stew are eminently affordable dinners enjoyed by poorer Scimecans, while those of all classes enjoy egushi soup.  Scimecan egushi soup often contains pumpkin leaf, spinach, tomatoes, okra, chili peppers, onions, beans, and some form of seafood or meat in a broth thickened with palm oil and icemelon seed flour.  Hatfielding egushi adds dumplings of pounded yam, while Robenhymi are known for cooking a less watery version of the soup down into a thick sauce served atop any number of dishes.  A jellied icemelon pudding known as jerudi muluni made of icemelon pulp, cinnamon, rosewater, and potato starch, with pistachios and candied fruits embedded in it is enjoyed after many a celebratory meal.  Icemelon agar jelly with cherries and vanilla powder fulfills the same role on a more day-to-day level.

Icemelon gazpacho with stale bread, onion, chili pepper, ginger, olive oil, wine vinegar, and garlic is a popular appetizer.  Slices of icemelon often have their intense flavors further concentrated by either grilling, pan frying, baking, or roasting.  Baked icemelon is prized for its raw-fish-like texture and slightly meaty flavor as its abundant sugars caramelize.