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Barawatten

70 Ophiuchi II-2

Barawatten
Garell as seen from the cold, ice-covered surface of Barawatten. Garell and the inner moon, 70 Ophiuchi II-2 are illuminated by the two suns in this system, 70 Ophiuchi A+B

Barawatten, or 70 Ophiuchi II-2, is a Europan type moon of the major gas giant Garell. The current allegiance of the inhabitants is to Keter.

This world became home to Europan tweaks, who installed the extensive ice transportation system of the colony. In 1644 AT the Klarawappen habitat mysteriously vanished; the most likely explanation is that the colonists decided to suddenly migrate to the Oort Cloud to become Hiders, but no evidence for this move has ever been found.

During the late Federation era the otherwise unremarkable colony suddenly, for complex taxation reasons, became a haven of high finance, terraforming funding and space engineering. The golden days lasted for nearly two centuries before fading. The successful multicopy businessbeing Erikk Holsta was born there in 2101 AT.

Many of the Barawatten tweaks gradually came to embrace Keterism, developing many highly obscure and radical enhancements and incorporating nanotech into their bodies. In 3100 migration began into bubblehabs in the atmosphere of Garell. Some of the most radical Keterist tweaks opted to live freely in the planet's atmosphere as sybonts, many becoming posthuman. One faction became Mirrored Owls, a clade of distributed intelligences hosted between several subsentient joviform bodies. The Owls sometimes came into conflict with other inhabitants of Garell and Barawatten over the relatively scarce metallic elements in these worlds.

Barawatten's icy surface and the outer envelope of Garell became home to a number of magnetovore aioid entities, including the historian Meghaduta and the solipsist cliometrician Yongbo Wu.

In the Current Era the system is home to a varied population of modosophonts and posthumans, with very different lifestyles and metagoals, inhabiting many different environments.

 
Related Articles
  • EuEuropan Subtype - Text by John M. Dollan
    Major sub-type of Europan Type planet. Distinguished by a rocky core with an ice mantle. A subsurface ocean 10 to 100 kilometers in depth is almost always present, due to tidal stretching of the world. Surface movement is constant, and obliterates all impact scars in a short amount of geologic time. Life may be present, but is likely to be primitive, if it is even beyond the microbial stage. Atmospheres are transient.
  • EuJovian Type
  • Europan Type World
  • Europans
  • Evanescence
  • Mirrored Owls
 
Appears in Topics
Inner SphereKeter DominionSystems & Worlds A - B
 
Development Notes
Text by Anders Sandberg
additional material by Steve Bowers
Initially published on 08 October 2001.

 
 
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