Lithus Sector: Telajan (06.01) [Part One]

Telajan (Coord.: 06.01)
System Overview, Part One

Telajan is a Type A White Giant star, larger (nearly triple the mass of Sol) and more vibrant than Altair, Vega or Sirius. There is evidence that there might have been a companion star to Telajan, based upon evidence collected and collated over the last seven hundred years or more...but so far no one has been able to ascertain what happened to it. Stars typically do not just disappear. This system also shows substantial evidence of radical stellar-scale engineering by some as-yet unidentified 'precursor' species*.

IZ

The Inner Zone of the Telajan System is a tempestuous, dense circumstellar-morass of dust, which would be more likely around a Asymptotic Giant Star, or around a star still caught-up in the process of developing its protoplanetary nebula. But then, just as mysteriously, the Inner Region of circumstellar dust ends abruptly at the periphery of the star's Habitable Zone, thanks in large part to a series of gravitational anomalies, what appear to be an elliptical ring of massive pylons that interact with the circumstellar dust, redirecting it, containing it, perhaps even acting as a source for more dust--studies of these structures are inconclusive and disjointed due to the efforts of Anti-Corprists and other out-system agitators and anarchist elements that have been disrupting and sabotaging the efforts of Merellon Corporation to study this system in detail.

HZ

There are five planets within the Habitable Zone. Merellon Corporation claims three of them and has been moving to annex the other two, legally, for the last two hundred years. Their efforts have continually been thwarted by a combination of several species of local home-grown resistance movements (none of which cooperate), and an ongoing influx of outside trouble-makers and mischief-peddlers who find themselves attracted to the lurid allure of fighting the good fight, leading the downtrodden masses, or subverting the Corprists. The very phrase 'Gone to Telajan,' implies a romantic notion of siding with the under-dog and joining the fight against Posthuman Oppression, Transhuman Suppression, and what some anonymous poet has described as a 'Noble, necessary, if likely doomed struggle against the insidiously encroaching forces of dehumanization.' Several very popular vidcasts have likened the situation in the Teljan system as being something akin to the revisionist version of the Spanish Civil War, the Alamo, or the February revolution. One particular netdrama coined the expression 'See You in February,' which has since become a sort of catch-phrase for individuals who have decided to cash-out, withdraw and head to Telajan to join the struggle. Of course the 'struggle' is scrupulously never clearly defined in any such netcast serial, in order to avoid any legal repercussions. Hundreds of these wannabe revolutionaries descend upon Telajan only to find themselves stuck in make-shift favelas and scav-fab slums where they must cobble together their own underground movement using whatever resources or skills they brought with them. Most only had enough credit to make it a one-way trip. Merellon Corporation has invested a great deal of time, money and effort to combat the persistent memes, pernicious nonsense and propaganda circulating across the Sector and beyond, but they cannot stem the tide of idealistic would-be freedom fighters an others drawn to the myth of what Telajan ought to be...

OZ

The Outer Zone of the Telajan System resembles the Inner Zone, only it is a massive disk of dust and ice. Nearly every published study or survey confirms that this region is the remnant of a densely-packed and artificially-maintained Accretion Disk. A series of gravitic anomalies--more of those Pylons--occupy the inner-circumference of the Outser Zone, serving in a similar role as the ones that manage the fluctuating dust of the Inner Zone.

What is Currently Known

Who Built These Pylons?

Merellon Corporation has developed a massively multinode Observational Matrix within the Telajan system. this project is a marvel of combined datascaping, evolutionary network architecture and crowd-sourcing...however the program continually runs afoul of willful sabotage, deliberate mis-entries, and other forms of malicious spamming by the disaffected cells, cliques, cadres and collectives in circulation through the Habitable Zone. A specific, dedicated Department within Merellon Sec-Section has been charged with analyzing the teraflops of data generated by the Observational Matrix Program.

Data Police do not bother with any local disturbances; they focus solely and entirely upon maintaining the unimpeded flow of data and the protection of all Program Assets. Spamming is a capital offense under the Civil Authority in effect upon Aldrin, most of Mattigar, and Shelg.

Recent Developments
Several Departments within Merellon Corporation have taken an interest in events transpiring around the Mov system (05.00). This preoccupation with mysterious events outside the Telajan system has emboldened various entrenched moles, sleeper-cells and other clandestine operatives who have launched dozens of overlapping, often contradictory and uncoordinated attacks, acts of sabotage, protests, pranks, and small-scale insurrections that have claimed entire office-suites for several hours while the agitators and provocateurs hold meetings, elect officers, vote on amending their charters or adopt stern measures to counter creeping irrelevancy and viewer ennui. All these Revolutions are broadcast across the Nets live. Few have gained any real traction. Yet.

Dozens of would-be revolutionary councils have issued hundreds of manifestos, political tracts, brochures, Netsites, and so on. Most of this material is usually caught by the Merellon Corporation's Filters. Most. A slow, relatively minor trickle of crack-pot gibberish has leaked for decades. A few small Infotainment Re-packagers have contented themselves with processing these disparate signals and garbled screeds into low-level programming to flesh-out their community-service mandates on some of the more community-conscious worlds or systems. Pretty lame, tame stuff. Until recently. Some bright-eyed idealist recently arrived to the contra-favelas of Mattigar has managed to up the bandwidth of what gets past the Filters. A lot more stuff is getting through than ever before...

Immediate Repercussions and Subsequent Events
No less than fifteen different mercenary companies have been contacted, contracted and/optioned to come to Telajan to join in the great struggle. Most of the high-end outfits have declined, usually after running a credit-check and discovering that their supposed employers are not registered as authentic governments, nor do they have any real credit available to them. A few less-disciplined (or perhaps financially desperate) units have struck out for Telajan based on the blandishments, promises and rhetoric (read: monetary inducements)  the various revolutionary groups have pitched at them.

Drastically 'revised' and politically-scrutinized documentary footage of the deplorable conditions of the down-trodden masses who are languishing under the chromalloy heel of despotic machine-societies, hypersapiens, or other transhuman or posthuman forces--many entirely fabricated by the revolutionaries in order to best create an environment conducive to their message being received and appreciated.

Several Posthuman societies have recently noticed the peculiar things coming out of Telajan. Some have sent agents, probes or auditors into the system to try and discover just what is really going on.

Other factions outside the Telajan system have begun to make use of the opportunities provided by all the distorted misinformation spewing out from behind the Filters. Digital Demagogues and worse have begun to cut-and-paste, splice and augment the Telajanian transmissions to best suit their own needs.

At least three competing cults have declared Telajan sacred, holy or the Promised Land. One newly-minted Popess has issued a call for a pilgrimage to a wonderful temple on a mountain on an island that does not exist on any of the five planets in this system. Any attempts to rectify or correct this error have met with violence and claims of conspiracy, genocide, and so forth--none of which can be proven, of course, but what is worse, none of which can be dis-proven, either--not without the cooperation of the legitimate Local Authorities...which has now come under catastrophic question due to all the competing, conflicting spurious claims and litigation streaming out from Telajan.

Money, guns and lawyers are pouring into the Telajan System...

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*Popular Contra-Media Outlets frequently assert that the Precursors are in fact known, and that various shadowy and poorly defined conspiracies by vague and ostensibly posthuman elements are holding back the truth regarding all the technological secrets they have gained by way of privatized contracts or illicit dealing with these super-aliens. The more these claims are denied or refuted, the more pervasive and persistent they seem to become.