Sidhe

Name	Sidhe
Affiliation	Five Arrows
Stellar Class	Orange Main-sequence
Orbiting Bodies	Abhartach, Daoine, the Pixie Belt
Colonized	2315
Government	Sidhe Reconstruction Government
Distance from Sol	27.3ly from Sol

Sidhe was first colonized by a small research team from the Angelic College at Makon, Heaven in 2315, seeking leads on the mysterious Singulitarian species first discovered on Sophia. After first contact with the skrell, a Fleet base was established to project power at the Skrellian monarchies and control the pirates operating out of Ue-Orsi. The result was an awkward separation between the burgeoning system's academic, military, and working classes. Centuries of budget cuts to the Fleet base as other military priorities proved more pressing resulted in disaster when the Fleet was unable to effectively protect the system from the Skathari Incursion and concomitant surge in aggression from the Ue-Katish. Today, Sidhe is a devastated shell of itself, and one of the bitterest and most devoted members of the Five Arrows.

Geography

Sidhe is a red dwarf star orbited by the rocky planet Abhartach. An enormously thick outer asteroid belt, ironically nicknamed the "Pixie Belt", is believed to be the shattered remains of a primordial collision between two former planets in the system, though some generally-discredited theorists believe the Singularitarians took the planets apart by force. Further beyond, the planet's outer ice belt is pockmarked with long-abandoned Ue-Katish bases and the remains of archeological digs. Throughout the entire system, patches of debris and fine dust mark the remains of ships and stations lost during the Incursion.

Infrastructure

The Daoine Institute had one of the most robust gateway systems in the SCG, knitting its far-flung digs and disparate campuses together. It broke down in the prelude to the Incursion, and while it has been restored to some limited functionality, many of surviving habitats off of Abhartach remain deeply isolated, some still relying on overtaxed emergency power systems running far beyond their intended capacity. Xion Manufacturing Group automated mines supply the system with essential raw materials, while food, medicine, and other organics are produced in industrial agri-domes on the surface of Abhartach.

Population

Almost 45% of Sidhe's peak population in 2565 was killed or displaced during the Incursion and subsequent Ue-Katish invasion, with the system's academic and military populations hit the most harshly. As a result, the system's population is nearly one-third Skrellian, mostly Tanin-Katish laborers and the descendents of Orsian pirates, with another substantial minority of positronics. No one species constitutes a majority of Sidhe's population. There is a very small Zaddat presence with outsized cultural relevance, made up of the survivors of the Colony Possible.

Government

Sidhe previously practiced a form of limited democracy, ostensibly inspired by the Skrellian academic system, that was in practice used to disenfranchise Abhartachic workers in favor of the Daoine Institute's academic and technical staff. This system collapsed following the tachyon downtick and subsequent destruction of important civic infrastructure, and has been replaced with the notionally more democratic but vastly less organized and more executively powerful Sidhe Reconstruction Government, which lays claim to Sidhe's entire system. Attempts to change the nation's name have wound up consistently bureaucratically deadlocked for five years running.

Notable Locations

Daoine Institute Main Campus

While many of Daoine's affiliate campuses were destroyed, taken over, or abandoned by administration, their main facility on the metal-rich planetesimal Daoine remains intact and functional, though its position as the Heights' foremost technical school is now somewhat questionable. Each of the school's 17 major departments have been crammed into the habitat modules that honeycomb Daoine's interior. Elbow room is low and academic tensions high.

Sidhe Alsace Fleet Base

Alsace Fleet Base was the SCG Fleet's major installation in Sidhe, developing the stable, isolated population of military personnel and their families fairly common for installations of its type. Located within Sidhe's ice belt, many in the system accused it of being slow to respond to incursions and piracy, concerned mostly with protecting its own population and assets. It was seized by the Reconstruction government and currently hosts Five Arrows and Skrellian patrols on a fairly rapid rotation. The "Excalibur" long-ranged bluespace laser it once held ceased functioning after the tachyon downtick and is now leased to Daoine as an observatory.

Qux'Xinu

The largest dome on Abhartach, founded by rich Qerr'Katish emigres bringing along an entire Skrellian workforce in an attempt to gain influence in Sidhe's local government. Qux'Xinu has been rapidly transformed from a dreary agricultural institution to the bustling civic center of the reconstruction government owing to its size, central positioning on Abhartach, and general mistrust of its previous civic authorities.

Colony Possible

An enormous Zaddat Colony of mixed Unathi and Skrellian construction, Possible was controlled by the Az-Izti Agricultural Guild, which sold produce and biomatter at prices well below that of local supply. Initially viewed as intelopers and job thieves, Possible became a key bulwark against starvation during the Incursion. Abandoned by its Hegemony escort, the ship was rendered uninhabitable by Ue-Katish pirates in 2569 despite repeated, desperate hails for assistance to Fleet assets in system. It is now the system's largest of many derelicts.

Colony Impossible

A converted 2444 Major Bill's bulk freighter, the ironically-named Impossible hosts what remains of Sidhe's Zaddat population, who have been reduced to salvage and make-work. Considered a 'special administrative territory' of the Reconstruction Government, the local populace has become increasingly isolationist and pessimistic due to a perceived lack of care for their situation by Sidhe at large.

PBU-316 School of Tachyon Physics

The largest of Daoine's branch campuses, renamed after the school's first positronic professor, the School of Tachyon Physics conducted research into early gateway technology, more refined methods of tachyon density measurement, and a wide array of bluespace weaponry. Isolated within the ice belt, it was overrun by skathari almost immediately during the Incursion, which continue to intermittently plague the system despite efforts to contain them.

XIS Hawthorn

The ore processing and maintenance hub for Xion's drone mining fleets, the Hawthorn is a sprawling series of platforms connected by long umbilicals in a seemingly random pattern. It bristles with mass drivers used to transport metals throughout the system, and which has been used to great effect as an improvised gun battery during the Incursion. The Hawthorn's management has, increasingly, been departing for the system for more comfortable and centrally located positions in SolGov, leaving the massive drone fleet and mass drivers in the hands of sometimes erratic A-class minder systems.

Xe'xi

During the Ue-Katish invasion, a Daoine satellite campus centered around material science was captured and occupied by Skrellian pirates intending to turn its fabrication facilities to profitable ends, renaming the habitat to Xe'xi. They proved difficult to unseat and uninterested in continued hostilities against the people of Sidhe, and after the formation of the Reconstruction Government, Xe'xi petitioned for and (surprisingly) received citizen status within the new polity.