Iblis' Crown

(This was made using the tables in the back of A Pound of Flesh, with the addition of the tags and hooks from my planet generation tables)

Iblis' Crown

Iblis's Crown is a torus habitat in an eccentric orbit around the red supergiant Betelgeuse, owned in its entirety by Fahad Kamran and used as his personal palatial estate. Kamran, whose reputation for sadism and decadence has reached as far as Earth, broke away from his traditionalist Sunni corporate dynasty after getting passed over for the directorship in favor of his twin sister, Elham: His refusal to acquiesce to her authority is both the source of the station's name and the reason that the 91st Colonial Dragoons have been hired on as defense (His lawyers have, thus far, been able to prevent an open war. Nothing is actually off the table yet.)

Iblis' Crown is the only settlement in the system beyond communication and navigation buoys and some automated resource extractors. The one reason to go there (save a direct invitation to one of the regular gatherings of decadents and deviants) is that Kamran is willing to pay well above the already exorbitant market price for warp cores.

There is an elephant in the room: Betelgeuse is a dying star. It could go supernova tomorrow, or next year, or a century from now, or longer still.. Kamran has been stockpiling warp cores in preparation for this eventuality: he is planning on uploading himself and his followers into a linked neural network and use the cores' time-space manipulation to launch himself into the ranks of the Celestial Bureaucracy. The explosion of Betelgeuse will be both a solid protection against outside eyes and a fantastic opening gambit. He intends to arrive in style.

This will most likely fail, but Fahad Kamran is not a man who fails on his own. He will drag everyone else down with his hubris.


Layout - Torus with 6 major locations

Prayer Gardens - As much space as can be spared is handed over to the gardens that surround the primary hall, and Kamran keeps them immaculately cared for with a fleet of drones and enhanced gibbons. It is one of the few things he genuinely cares about.

Prayer Hall - The primary gathering space for the infamous bacchanals. There are no prayers uttered here (except those Kamran imagines people say to him), but it is built with all the reverence and skill of an actual place of worship.

Private Hangar - Kamran keeps his personal vessel, the Double Blind docked here. He takes it out rarely (so as to avoid his family's mercenary friends), but will occasionally go on jaunts to visit compatriots and lackeys in other systems.

Group Dormitory - The inhabitants of the Crown live on different decks, organized by rank - workers, visitors security forces, scientists, personal guests. All are monitored.

Prayer Hall - A tiny, unsanctioned mosque built down in the plumbing and wiring, run by the workers. A safe place they can gather to vent their fears and angers at their employer without retribution.

Warp Core Storage - More secure even than Kamran's personal quarters.It's too dangerous to experiment with more than one at a time, so the surplus are kept here. there's a lot of room for more.

Illegal Human Testing - Linking the upload mechanisms with the warp cores is a fraught process - half of it is a black box we cannot see into, and the other half is the human mind. Kamran is not the kind of person to make grand ideological claims that sacrifices need to be made - he just doesn't care. His scientists don't care much either.

Docking costs 200 cr and a cheap room is 16 cr / night. Goods at 20% markup. Buy warp cores at 20% off. Locals know where to get recreational drugs

Tags: Breakaway colony, eccentric orbit

Hook: Population preparing for a non-networked mass upload