Castor

While Lo is a prime example of man’s efficient industry, Corel IV (called Castor by the natives) is an embarrassing example of his hubris. Castor orbits Corel with a 786 SED rotation, placing it just outside the star’s green-band habitable zone. Made up of vast tracts of frozen desert, Castor is a foreboding world with no immediately apparent reason for Human development. Nevertheless, the world became a symbol of intended progress during the Messer Era, another target in a dictatorial march towards new levels of science and industry. Billions of credits in terraforming technology later, the once-frozen desert planet had become a frozen desert planet with a barely breathable atmosphere.

Today, almost no one lives on Castor and few of those could tell you why. A handful of settlements dot the globe, primarily centered around deep ice-mining operations. Quantities of bad-ice have been discovered far beneath the surface and it is sometimes collected for scientific purposes. Beyond that, miners subside on occasional caches of desert-bound silica. Though rare, the discovery of a single cache is enough to make a mining operation profitable for several years. Mining contracts are the reason why the bulk of its inhabitants have come to the planet, and very few of them choose to renew for a second year. Traders looking to make a quick credit, though, could not find a more captive audience for luxury goods!