Freelance Traveller

Mining ColonyE-78

by Gaizka Márquez

This article originally appeared in Spanish in Vuelo Raso N.9 and was translated for the March/April 2025 issue by Google Translate and Jeff Zeitlin

This article presents a mining colony that has fallen into disrepair. It has no pre-established location and can be placed anywhere convenient, or even as a secondary planet. In any case, it is ideally placed where there would be no trade routes running through the system due to the colony’s own background. If you don’t mind making changes to Traveller’s own official maps, Judice in District 268 (Spinward Marches 1337) is a good candidate to host this planet.

Mining colony E-78 is in decline. The decline in trade route traffic through the system has been causing the facility to slowly die.

What started as a thriving tech level 9 mining colony with myriads of people living there, was seeing other worlds increase their trading capacity and importance on the routes. This, combined with an inefficient ruler (the father of the current ruler, King Afthur III) who failed to react in time, waiting for “things to get back on track”, led to a slow decline in the technological level of the system, mainly due to the lack of spare parts and products that were impossible to create in the mining colony itself. For a few years, things went well, until breakdowns began to occur, with no replacement parts in key energy systems or life support areas.

The space available for life was reduced and the most remote mining towns began to collapse, creating a strong migratory wave that accelerated the collapse of other cities in an equally precarious situation. To top it off, the population began to abandon the system in the few commercial ships that arrived and spread the word that “E-78 has collapsed” further reducing ship traffic passing through the system.

Currently, under the rule of King Afthur IV, the system remains at a technological level of 7, only the startown (known as the Noble City) remains standing and a population of around 350 people of which only about three percent are actively engaged in resource extraction. This is because the vast majority of the population is focused on meeting the daily needs of the colony, leaving little room to invest time and resources in mineral extraction.

Perhaps out of nostalgia, perhaps out of feeling indebted, there are still two or three commercial ships passing through the system each month. These tend to be low-income merchants with small ships, for the most part relatives of locals or descendants of those who fled the system who, in a way, have been able to make a living as merchants and from time to time they stop by to buy, sell and move settlers looking for a new place to live. The loss of population is a constant trickle in E-78.

The Noble City

Delving beneath the world’s surface, this city of axial architecture and more than 400 plants feels terribly empty, cold and dark. What energy is available is reserved for the inhabited plants. Nothing remains of the large supermarkets; the production plants are activated when necessary and the hydroponics have been moved to the upper floors, near the habitats to save energy.

Energy

Previously generated by fusion and geothermal plants, breakdowns and lack of supplies have left the city to operate constantly on emergency power (solar panels and batteries).

Repairing the fusion plant is one of the current king’s main goals at the moment, as it would allow for increased life support and food production.

External exits

For the entrances and exits of the city, an ingenious siphon system loaded with anti-corrosion gel has been devised, which allows passage through it without the need to pressurize or depressurize sections in order to eliminate corrosive elements from the atmosphere. This gel is manufactured locally with bulbous plants called “lanterns” by the locals. The lanterns are collected from outside, pressed and subjected to thermal stress that evaporates certain components of the plant, thus correcting its acidity factor. Once subjected to heat treatment, the resulting clear juice is thickened and artificially dyed to create the characteristic anti-corrosion gel of E-78. Due to its high cost of collection and processing, it is not an item that attracts the attention of traders.

In practice, it is a simple, though uncomfortable, process. Subjects equipped with anti-corrosion life support suits must descend a 4-metre-high staircase, completely submerging themselves in the viscous gel. Then, holding on to handrails installed for this purpose, they move submerged in the gel for several metres along a 2-metre-high corridor, until they reach the other side, where they will climb up another 4 metres to emerge, in a clean atmosphere, where they can take off the suit and clean off any gel residue that may have stuck to it. The principle of communicating vessels itself keeps the siphon isolated from air and when the gel level drops below 3 metres, it is refilled again to 4 metres to ensure that it remains watertight.

Motorcycles and tunnel boring machines are parked outside as they are resistant to corrosion due to being made of ceramic materials. On the other hand, the goods must pass through a similar siphon designed with a conveyor belt of much smaller size but, due to its design, not suitable for people. Recently, a system of anchors and hoists has been developed to facilitate movement through the siphons for people with reduced mobility.

Hydroponics

Hydroponics is currently the only food source for the system itself. There are a number of native fruit trees, which if subjected to a process similar to  that for creating the siphon gel, can reduce their pH to the point of being edible (although not tasty). However, this process requires a great deal of energy, which is not currently available. If main power is restored, the next step the king plans to take is to enable a harvesting group dedicated to increasing the amount of food available and even create a small distillery to process the excess fruit into liquor, in order to have more resources to trade with.

Elevators: Quality of Life

The use of elevators is limited to goods over 100 kilos, smaller quantities are moved between floors by pulleys and people must move using stairs. This is not only due to the lack of energy, but also the risk involved in using these elements given the poor maintenance they receive. The overhaul of some elevators is one of the quality-of-life improvements the king deems necessary.

Vehicles: Old and Tough

The only heavy vehicles left in service are the oldest (and toughest): the first tracked drills that came into the system. Not that these primitive vehicles don’t break down occasionally, but their rugged, built-to-last design allows for constant repairs and replacement of parts with ones made locally with a simple lathe or a 3D metal printer.

Additionally, self-made (almost hand-made) triangular tracked motorcycles have been developed for small drilling, for harvesting trips outside, and for basically getting around the planet.

Attracting Miners: The Door to Tomorrow

Once the power source has been fixed, food production has been increased, and the quality of life has been improved by enabling elevators and having old vehicles available, the King believes that the E-78 colony should already be ready to attract new waves of miners. The arrival of these workers could boost the extraction of common and special minerals exponentially. This, added to a small 7% tax, would provide sufficient profits in the medium term to acquire spare parts for abandoned facilities and machinery to create factories to produce the necessary elements in order to stabilize society at a general TL8 and a minimum of TL9 in the energy field. This stability would allow the recovery, albeit slowly, of all the abandoned cities and little by little restore the glory of yesteryear. It is also an exponential improvement: the more miners, the greater the budget to update facilities; better facilities, more miners and traders etc…

Lanterns and Suncatchers

Lanterns are small, leafy plants, barely 1 metre high, that grow individually forming extensive patches with one plant every metre or two. They have woody branches reminiscent of bioplastic, covered with narrow, elongated, dark green leaves. The top of the plant is crowned by a round, bluish fruit with a waxy skin that slightly reflects sunlight (hence its name). These fruits weigh about half a kilo each and have a spongy, slimy interior. They are not edible.

Suncatchers, on the other hand, are trees with a false trunk (stipe) without leaves, whose almond-like fruits grow attached to the trunk in a tangle of strands. Initially, it was believed that it was a parasitic system that had adapted to this environment, although it was finally shown that it is a single organism, although its evolutionary origin may be due to millennia of symbiotic relationship.

A Sea of Ammonia

The hydrosphere of the system contains a large amount of ammonia, which can be considered practically as ammonium hydroxide. Although there are native life forms adapted to this environment, none of them are even remotely edible, and due to their small size, they are not considered dangerous either: they are simply of no interest at present. The more immediate concerns of the local inhabitants mean that curiosity about these animals is practically non-existent.

From this sea, water is extracted and filtered for consumption and fuel for the starport.

Afthur IV: A King without Subjects

Afthur IV 6887B9
King of Mining Colony E-78

STR 6 DEX 8 END 8
INT 7 EDU B SOC 9*
* Despite being a king, his small kingdom keeps him in a limited social position

SKILLS: Administration 1, Diplomacy 1, Engineering (power plant) 1, Suits 1, Athletics 0, Science 0, Persuade 0.

After the death of his father (Afthur III) 5 years ago, King Afthur IV returned to the system to reign, since he was at that time attending university, which he decided not to finish in order to take charge of his work. Despite this, the openness to the outside world and the knowledge acquired have made him a much more efficient governor than his father, al-though it seems that for the moment he is quite late. Since he came to power he has lost about 200 subjects, and he will surely continue to lose more despite his efforts to reactivate the colony. The few inhabitants that remain are, however, the most loyal, both to him and to the colony. Afthur was the brains behind the siphon system before he left for university, and on his return he was also the one who promoted the installation of systems for people with reduced mobility, since during his time at university he met the woman he would like to be his future wife, who had these problems but her family did not have the money to resort to technology or cyber implants (hence his desire to repair the elevators).

ANIMAL	HITS	SPEED
Acid Worm	15	12m
SKILLS	Athletics 0, Survival 0
ATTACKS	Bite 1D+1, Acid 2D
TRAITS
BEHAVIOUR	Herbivore, migratory
NOTE

The largest known life form on the surface of the planet, despite its misleading name, is actually a myriapod with soft scales. It reaches a length of 1.5m in adult specimens, and can rarely reach 2m. They feed mainly on fruits, helping plants spread their seeds. They move in herds of between 20 and 60 individuals and are not usually aggressive as long as they do not feel that their current food source is being threatened. They have no natural predators so they tend to live quietly, eat, reproduce and migrate depending on the availability of food. As we have already said, they are not aggressive, but if a group of gatherers starts to collect fruit near them or if they arrive at a place where there are gatherers working, they will see their food source threatened and will show themselves to be terribly territorial and aggressive. With this in mind, it is easy to avoid any kind of conflict with these beings. If a pack finds you while you are collecting, simply run away and drop the fruit you have collected.