Virgil I

Virgil I is a terrestrial rocky planet in the Virgil System.

History
There is a famous photograph taken on Virgil I. It shows the charred remnants of an Imperial customs house, wrecked white pillars framing a smoking, coal-black sky. A cracked signboard lies to the right of the image, its original proclamation of “EXPORTS” having had the word DEATH crudely scrawled under it. This image, along with various artists’ interpretations thereof, has appeared on UEE recruiting posters decrying the Vanduul threat for over a century.

Years earlier, the first planet in the Virgil system was the United Planets of Earth’s poster child for terraformation. If ever a world seemed custom-designed to support any easy transition to Human habitation, it was Virgil. The planet’s soil was found to contain super nutrients that would allow imported Human vegetation to thrive quickly. In a matter of years, the planet’s atmosphere had been equalized to Earth standards. Initially covered in swaths of lush tropical forest and seemingly endless plains, Virgil I quickly became both a high-productive ag-world and an exotic tourist destination. With the military buildup, the tenor of Virgil I’s society changed but the natural beauty remained. Antimatter stockpiles and spacecraft repair facilities stood naturally beside the massive trees that largely encircled the planet’s tropical and temperate regions.

Apparently viewing the target as a reward for their hard-fought victory in the Tiber system, the Vanduul ransacked Virgil I with a ferocity previously unseen. Despite the lack of fortifications (few of the Empire’s units had dug in, expecting the fleet at Tiber would be enough to keep the enemy away), the Vanduul pulverized the planet with catastrophic bombing raids that seemed intended more to establish their cruelty than to accomplish any particular strategic goal. Hundreds of thousands of Humans died in the attack, either killed in the bombing raids or churned apart by Harvesters launched onto the still-populated planet.

Today, Virgil is visited rarely. The atmosphere is poisonous, with enough ash kicked up in the bombings to leave the world in a state of permanent nuclear winter. Published reports of UEE spy expeditions have detailed the state of the planet: a harvested wasteland occasionally interspersed with the haunted skeletons of the titanic trees that once inspired awe and wonder. Those who have observed this unique hellscape are forced to ask themselves whether the Vanduul intentionally left them as reminders of the planet’s past.

Epheet
Epheet is littered with debris-impact craters from battles between the UEE and the Vanduul.

Corsito
The surface of this small moon features scars of Vanduul strip-mining.

Jai
A carbon and silicate rock tidally locked to Virgil I.