Samrat

Samrat is an arid desert world on the fringes of colonized space.

Samrat's surface consists of vast expanses of desert sand, referred to as "sand oceans" due to their tidal interactions with Samrat's lone moon. These sand oceans are hedged by craggy canyons and towering stone pinnacles that appear to have formed from rapid and extreme fluid erosion at some point in Samrat's past. This has proven a paradoxical mystery to geologists, as virtually no water has ever been found on or beneath Samrat's surface.

Though Samrat's atmosphere is toxic to all Earth organisms, it possesses one known native life form; a lichen-like extremophilic organism that has been found growing on cliff faces in small colonies across the planet. It is the only known life form in Samrat's entire biosphere.

A unique variety of precious gemstone was discovered in the early days of Samrat's exploration, which inspired a sudden and massive rush of prospectors to travel to the planet in search of fortune. These gems ultimately proved to be far less prevalent or easy to effecively mine than they initially appeared, leaving many aspiring gem prospectors stranded on the planet with useless mining machinery and unpayable debts. Many of these disgruntled settlers had little choice but to stay on Samrat permanently, eking out a meager living of subsistence hydroponics farming and trading scrap salvaged from mining machinery to scientific research outposts for water and other necessities. Others turned to barbarism, raiding salvager and research outposts for their resources by force.

This latter raider activity has made the planet a lawless and deadly place.While the planet is still prized by the scientific community for its unique geology and presence of native life, scientific expeditions must travel to the planet in numbers for protection, and typically hire freelance security teams to accompany them.

Samrat's lawlessness has spread beyond the planet's surface in recent times, leaving the Mahatma system with a serious space piracy problem. Many pirate and privateer vessels lurk in the system, waiting to prey on cargo transports coming to Samrat from other worlds.