Geography

Marzion IX is a gas giant, and the only true planet in the Michel/Siculus binary system. Michel and Siculus are known colloquially as “the Dancers”, due to their elliptical orbits around a shared barycentre. A debris field has formed around them, with the few planetoids within being smaller than many of IX’s own moons. 

The gas giant is an imposing sight – a mass of metallic gas, many times larger than any solid habitable planet. A ring system surrounds it, along with dozens of moons. IX’s atmosphere is rich in helium and notably stormy, with concentric “waves” of turbulence frequently erupting across its surface. Interference from these storms has prevented accurate imaging of the planet’s core, which remains under study. The harvesting of gasses from Marzion IX is as difficult and dangerous as it is lucrative; approximately 8% of the planet’s atmosphere consists of vaporous precursors to RC, or reaction catalyst, a vital chemical needed for FABREP machines to function.

Any atmosphere that could support life on the moons was stripped away by the gravity of their host long ago, but many of them are large enough to house sealed lunar arcologies threaded through their surfaces. These complexes house everything a major city would on any other settled world, from permanent habitation blocks and processing plants to factories, space ports, and entertainment districts. 

The rest of the population lives, plays and works on space stations further out in the planet’s orbit – or on the famous gas rigs. All IXTIS platforms are immense and complicated spacecraft designed for two purposes – to descend into the planet’s atmosphere and return with tanks full of precious vapour and raw materials from the solid core, and to keep a workforce with a population comparable to that of a small city alive as they achieve the former. Each individual rig operates as a worker’s co-operative under the heading of the Marz Union.

Shuttle transit between lunar installations is common and affordable, while travel on or off the rigs can only be conducted between shifts, when they bank in the planet’s safer and higher airs.

Landmarks that might intrigue a visitor to Marzion IX include:

• The political and cultural capital of Marzion IX, the moon where it all began: Brunel Station. Often repaired and just as often surpassed in processing capacity, Brunel has pivoted to a service economy – Marzionites come here to trade and to train, and to take a break from the industrial intensity of other installations.
• IXTIS platforms end in two ways: they either fail in service and are lost to the planet’s winds, or they are reincarnated through recycling and scrapping for spare parts. The G1 Arkwright Platform enjoys a rare permanent retirement as a shipyard and museum, having been declared too archaic for retrofitting – waste not, want not, and now the vessel teaches shipwrights, tourists and gas-jockeys alike about their shared history.
• The Looskoos (loh-oss-koh-oss, an Omdua word meaning “empty turning”) is a persistent anticyclone, thousands of kilometres across, marring the gas giant’s northern hemisphere. The gale-force winds have gouged out a depression in the vapour, and researchers have made use of the eye of the storm to conduct dives into the deeper and thicker layers of Marzion IX. Trevithick Deep is the name given to the marker buoy suspended at the lowest point yet reached – at time of writing, precisely 11,421.7 km below.
• Marzion IX is extremely active for a gas giant, and disturbances in its composition are a constant issue: M-hydrogen geysers and flash-bursts threaten not only the physical integrity of the platforms, but navigation across the planet’s surface. Fitzroy Base is a key part of the solution – the “brain” coordinating a “body” of satellites that fan out in consistent arrangements in low orbit to ensure that a complete image of the mutable surface is available to all vessels at all times.