Freelance Traveller

Sentry

writeup by Joel Benford

Sentry (Ley 0921) B5A8ACB-D 410 I M4 V

With 40 billion sophonts, Sentry is the economic and administrative heart of the Shanape Linkworlds Cluster. Marquis Hallentein, the local arbiter of interstellar affairs, dwells in a subterranean city on the small moon Luramii. The Marquis owns the moon outright and uses it as an administrative centre as well as a base for his small trading fleet.

Sentry has a powerful military presence, with both Imperial and planetary forces.

Sentry’s starport is huge, with a vast amount of traffic passing through. The orbital component also acts as a home to the Scout Service station maintaining the X-boat link. The downport sits on an island just off the main landmass, surrounded by a startown of five million sophonts. The starport proper has the customary low level of 3, whilst the surrounding island startown operates as a level 9 “interface zone” to the planet’s strict level 11 regulation.

Tukera Lines also have their own highport 180 degrees around the planet, which acts as their regional headquarters and a private shipping/repair hub.

Sentry is a small, cold world that’s 90% covered in water. The high level of nitrogen in the atmosphere has stopped much life evolving. The available land is largely covered by high-tech sealed cities that collectively house around four billion people. The other 90% of the population live in huge ocean floor arcologies, each home to a billion or more sophonts. Most citizens have no great need to leave their home arcology. When they do, they usually travel by submersible.

Strict laws govern Sentry’s highly ordered society. A system of guilds and professional bodies represent the populace’s interests to a World Senate, which answers to hereditary “Adjudicators”. The government has worked quite well, on the whole.

Although it’s not particularly focussed on production industries, Sentry’s sheer size and its technology level make it an industrial powerhouse exporting over several sectors. The university is a major research and teaching centre, particularly for aquatic engineering.

The rest of the solar system is heavily developed, with a naval base on one of Sentry’s moons and an industrial complex dominating another. Private outfits exploit the belt.