Zemjelos Major

 

First reached eight hunded and forty years ago, Zemlejos Major is the main planet of The Threads.  In a close 0.3 AU orbit around C.271 XIV it is a Class L planet with funademental characteristics very similar to Earth.  It is of approximately the same size, and gravitation is 1.09G.  Average surface temperature is 21°C.  The atmosphere is thin, made up of 70% nitrogen, 24% oxygen and 5% argon, and is breathable without additional equipment.

Each day is 16 Standard Hours in length, and the planet rotates around the sun every 77 days.

Water makes up 92% of its surface.  Zemlejos lacks any significantly-sized moons and thus any strong tidal activity, which has made colonisation easier, although seismic activity and the accompanying risk of tidal waves causes certain zones to remain untouched.  All in all, as its 400 million inhabitants would agree, Zemlejos is an attractive planet, as long as you don't mind getting your feet wet. 

Before human colonisation, the planet was home to an extremely wide variety of original ocean-based lifeforms, many of which provide useful and exotic resources.  

Thalmarid Leviathans, which can reach a 100 metres in length, are apex filter feeders.  Their massive, translucent bodies pulse rhythmically as they glide through nutrient plumes stirred up by undersea volcanic vents.  They regulate plankton blooms, preventing ecosystem collapse, whilst their waste trails seeded microhabitats for smaller organisms.

 

Cindrel Reefs are living coral-analog superorganisms, forming reef "hives" hundreds of kilometres wide, with intelligent, decentralized communication. They reconfigure their outer crusts in response to currents, storms, or threats, and provide shelter, spawning grounds, and complex food webs for thousands of species.

The inhabitants of Zemjelos Major are lucky to have the Glaucen Drifters.  These gas-filled sacs growing up to ten metres wide, capable of floating or sinking at will, are the perfect ecosystem janitors— they digest detritus, decaying matter, and more importantly, even microplastics.  The downside is their tendency to explode, with little or no warning, into clouds of phosphorescent, mildly neurotoxic spores.  Early colonists noted how quickly they adapted behaviorally to the presence of human craft, often trailing skiffs and vessels.

 

Exploitation of Zemjelos' rich resources has reached a considerable level of intensity, with some negative impact on the planet's ecosystem already being noted.

The planet has insufficient population and trade output to warrant its own Karlenhertz generator, meaning that C.271 XIV has a wandering Weak Point, but this rarely creates any serious delays to starship navigation.

 

Khariton

Although Zemjelos Major has no capital city, Khariton is by far the largest settlement, sheltering an estimated forty million souls.  It is in any case the cultural capital of the planet, and has exported its belief system to most corners of the water-world. 

Khariton itself sprawls across a massive chain of linked oceanic platforms, built atop an ancient volcanic archipelago. It serves as the central node for intercity aquatic traffic and houses the only starport on the planet.

 

Magnetic transport glides just below the surface of the water, connecting floating boroughs across several kilometers. 

 

Khariton's society has been shaped by its intimate connection with the ocean.  Its people see the tide not as an inconvenience but as a living pulse — a cosmic rhythm that governs the pace of nature.

 

Political System

"Truth must surface in time." – Common Khariton proverb.

The city’s political heart is a semi-submerged amphitheater where citizens and officials meet at low tide for debates and ceremonies.  It is a uniquely symbolic and functional space that reflects the city’s aquatic identity and political philosophy.

Nestled within the Shifting Basin, a naturally occurring lagoon inside Khariton’s central platform chain, the Tide Assembly Forum is a tiered amphitheater carved into a reinforced coral shelf. The arena is partially submerged, with the lower tiers submerged during high tide, and revealed again as the waters recede.

The Forum's aquatic nature is intentional and deeply symbolic.

Debates and assemblies are timed with the low tide. It’s said that this encourages measured decision-making, as the water literally rises around them if arguments drag on. The idea is that speech should be succinct, and consensus timely, lest the sea silence them.  A floating hydro-clock canopy overhead tracks tidal changes and projects visual cues to speakers on how much time remains before the tide returns. 

On Solstice days, the entire Forum is opened to free speech rituals, where any citizen can wade into the basin and voice a concern. The rising tide then washes the forum clean, symbolizing renewal, reckoning, and reconciliation.

This is not just a legislative chamber — it’s a living organism within the city’s civic identity. A place where politics, tradition, and the sea intertwine.

Back home on 51 Pegasus spaceports were monuments of steel, full of angular machinery and gravity anchors.

Here?

The terminal is built upon an enormous floating kelp-based corded superstructure, bobbing gently with the swell. The landing pads shimmer with liquid-metal alloy, adjusting their shape to accommodate arriving vessels. Waterfowl and drone escorts fly side by side, the latter guiding shuttles with synchronized flares. The air tastes of salt and ozone.

And beneath the dock’s translucent panels, he sees reef systems glowing softly, disturbed only by the lazy orbit of cleaning drones and curious sea creatures.

“Where’s the city?” he wonders aloud, expecting the towering silhouettes of skyscrapers — but there’s only horizon and scattered glints of sun off distant surfaces.

A sleek vehicle awaits: a subsurface mag-tram, glides silently through an aquatic tunnel. He boards along with a few locals — people in light armorweave suits, others wearing flowing clothes that shimmer with algae-thread. One wears a rebreather collar lazily, as if submersion might happen mid-commute.

As the tram submerges, he sees schools of engineered fish pulsing with bioluminescent tattoos.

Even before the translucent tunnel breaks the surface, he can see it.

Khariton.

A vast constellation of interconnected floating boroughs, like lily pads made of coralglass and alloy, stretch across the seascape. Towers that curve like seaweed reach skyward — many of them seem grown, not built, so intimately is aquatic plant life woven into the structure. Transparent sails attached to buildings catch the wind not for movement, but to power aerial condensers. The city shimmers in hues of deep teal, sun-gold, and storm-silver.

A giant statue of a woman rising from the water, arms raised as if cradling the sky, marks the Old Agreement Point — the spiritual center of the city, he learns from the onboard guide.

Everything is strange:

• The soundscape is soft and harmonic, carried on sea-winds

• The smell of brine, spice, and synthetic coral resin mingles in the air.

• People seem to glide more than they walk, their paths shaped by the curvature of the floating structures.

He sees the Tide Assembly Forum from a distance — only a portion above water. It looks like a blooming anemone, waiting for something to pass. Strange that a government would meet where the sea could interrupt them.

“This city doesn’t fight the sea,” he realizes. “It made peace with it… maybe even listens to it.”

He suddenly feels very alien. 

The Undertide

The Undertide Division — often shortened to simply “The Undertide” — is a clandestine intelligence and influence agency operating under the authority of the Council of Twelve Currents, Khariton’s ruling executive. Officially, the Division doesn’t exist. Unofficially, it’s whispered about by rivals, dissidents, and a few journalists whose curiosity was rewarded.

 

Where other factions make noise, the Undertide works through silence, leverage, and tides unseen.

It was founded during the chaotic aftermath of the Lantern Riots — a mass uprising sparked by corporate interference in city governance.  The Khariton Council realized it needed an invisible hand to defend democratic waters from murkier forces.

 

Over time, the Undertide grew into a formidable network of deep operatives, seaborne data-interceptors, and social manipulators — all dedicated to preserving Khariton’s political flow.

Its goals are : 

To preserve the political stability of Khariton — through infiltration and manipulation,

To quietly steer the Tide Assembly Forum by manipulating which voices rise and which are submerged — literally and politically.

To suppress technologies or ideologies deemed corrosive to civic order in Khariton.

 

The operational arm of the Undertide is made up of operative cells known as Ripples.   These 3-5 person teams specialize in misinformation, subtle sabotage, or psychological pressure.  State of the art biotech surveillance systems allow them to listen in undetected.  They use memory implants to soft-rewire the memories of targets, preferring such tactics to outright violence.

Despite this tendency towards non violent methods, rumour in the Undertide itself has it that there exists a Flood Protocol, allowing entire sections of Khariton to be intentionally sunk, thus flushing out embedded threats or preventing enemy control.

 

The Free Merchants' Guild

The Free Merchants Guild is a loose yet powerful confederation of traders, transporters, and logistics entrepreneurs who operate across Zemlejos Major’s oceans and its planetary neighbors. Their motto, “Where there is tide, there is trade,” captures their philosophy: mobility is value.

They blend the traditions of ancient sea-borne commerce with the reach and ambition of modern space-faring logistics.  Their Floating Markets, massive modular barges tethered to Khariton and other cities, rotate locations weekly and are known for being politically neutral ground.  Meanwhile their Trade Skiffs iconic blue solar-sailed vessels, move goods at high velocity between floating communities, delivering both essential supplies and luxury items.

They also function as a guild, and have gained exclusive contracts for rare resources in any and all seas, like luminous kelp or sea-iron.  They guard those contracts jealously.

Thanks to their independent space-faring merchant fleet, FMG is one of the few factions on Zemlejos Major with true off-world reach. TMG's flagships generally have VTOL capacity for orbital transfer, and from their Orbital Dockway Nexus their spacecraft carry:

• Luminous Algae: Used in bioluminescent architecture and low-energy lighting. Highly sought on darker or deep-dwelling colonies.

• Synth-Coral Alloys: Lightweight, flexible construction materials with self-repair properties.

• Saltglass: A hybrid product of volcanic sand and desalinated brine. Used in luxury optics and aeronautic hull coatings.

• Medicinal Sponges: Aquatic organisms with rare enzyme production useful in neural therapy.

• Culinary and Cultural Exports: From fermented tide-wine to reef-grown spices, Khariton’s gourmet products command high prices in elite dining cultures of other planets.

 

The Council of Bearings leads the FMG — a rotating board of high-wealth merchants, VTOL barge-lords, and logistics magnates. Each is known by a ship-name rather than their birth name (e.g., Hollow Keel, The Second Wake, Skyscour).  FMG maintains its own defense fleet on Zemlejos' oceans, known as the Waveguard, to deter piracy and protect convoy routes and monopolies.

To the inhabitants of Zemjelos, FMG is respected but resented. They make life possible for many outlying communities, but their prices and exclusive control of routes breed quiet dependence.  Only their loose structure, which members fiercely defend against the ambitions of the Council of Bearings, prevent them from gaining more significant political power.

To off-worlders: The Guild is charming, mysterious, and fiercely pragmatic — a uniquely aquatic corporate entity with strange manners but reliable cargo.

To political powers: They are a double-edged current. Supportive when aligned, troublesome and unpredictable when crossed.

Rumors swirl that the Guild occasionally moves things no one else will — people, information, even biological anomalies.  A secret “Salt Accord”, betrayal of which is punishable by death, allows Undertide Ripples to acquire passage on FMG ships, no questions asked.

 

Orren Bell wasn’t born into wealth — or into the Guild, for that matter. He came from a free-floating commune in the South Lantern Sea. His parents were sea-growers, barterers, and sometimes smugglers.

He earned his first trade credential ferrying medicinal algae spores between aquafarms. Over time, he bought out his partner's share of their boat, fixed it up, named it The Sun’s Wake, and took it further than most dared — beyond the trade routes, into independent and often overlooked settlements.  He owns a dozen other vessels, but always pilots The Sun's Wake himself.  He also owns a part share in a spaceship that he has never set foot upon and probably never will.  The story goes that most of the other planets in the solar system don't even have liquid water !

Now in his late 40s, he’s a respected if unassuming merchant-captain.  Orren specializes in gap trade — identifying shortages before the market notices, and arriving just early enough to beat larger Guild convoys.  Orren is a reliable outlier — not prestigious, but always welcome at the mooring rings. Known to offer fair percentages to junior traders trying to get their start.  Among locals, he is often greeted like an old friend. For some small settlements, The Sun’s Wake is their only contact with the outside world for weeks.

He keeps a small corked bottle of water from every sea he’s ever crossed, stashed in a crate marked “Not for Sale.”.  It is pretty much full.  Orren worries about increasing Guild centralization and a push toward automation. “No one shakes hands with a drone,” he says.  He also worries that he’ll die out at sea, and his ship will drift until the reef takes it. Not because it’s scary — but because he knows how quickly memory fades.

 

The Helion Front

The Helion Front is a hardline, accelerationist paramilitary movement born on 51-Pegasus.  They believe that the symbolic politics of Khariton in particular, and Zemjelos in general, are a cancer— and that strength, speed, and unilateral control are the only viable modes of survival in a dangerous galaxy.

Though not officially a state or corporation, the Helion Front operates with military precision, and has embedded itself in infrastructure, private security, and transport hubs on the three primary planets across the system.

They have long despised Khariton and its tidal consensus model, calling it “the drowning parliament” in their propaganda.  They refuse to hear the need for a more reasoned exploitation of Zemjelos' ocean resources.  They would rather zip across the planet in VTOL craft rather than travel, however swiftly, across its expanses of water.

With the Solar Chord Pulse having severed orbital coordination, they see their moment.  With the satellite surveillance system massively disrupted, they move quickly to militarize key docking nexuses.  They claim they are “securing cargo for redistribution”, but in practice, they are commandeering goods, rerouting medical supplies, and denying access to anyone not aligned.

In smaller, more isolated settlements, they offer fuel, rations, power cells — in exchange for governance concessions, like dismantling civic councils or installing Helion "advisors".  Locals are told "You’ve floated too long. It’s time to march.”

On Zemlejos Major, Helion sleeper cells awaken — saboteurs, agitators, and disinformation agents already embedded in lower-city networks.  They broadcast pirate signals calling the government of Khariton a “crippled elite,” urging seasteaders and outer reefs to declare independence and accept Helion "structural assistance".  In some areas, hydrogrid nodes are mysteriously disabled, giving the appearance of council failure.

The key figure that has emerged on Zemjelos is Commander Vir Rend.  He defected from military service after witnessing what he called “the bureaucratic paralysis of peacetime command.”  He is charismatic, ruthless, and deeply disdainful of what he calls “ceremonial governance.”  He believes the electromagnetic pulse was “the natural culling of stagnant systems” and is urging Helion operatives to "strike before the tide turns."

Khariton’s reliance on deliberation, balance, and memory makes it anathema to the Helion worldview. Where Khariton sees the Forum basin as a place to listen, the Helion Front sees it as a vulnerability — a culture waiting to be swept aside.

 

Below Deck, The Sun’s Wake – 800 klicks and 3 Hours to Insertion

The sea is calm above. The ship hums, its gentle systems contrasting with its incredible speed.  The sea seems to lift The Sun's Wake and pass it effortlessly from wave to wave.  The blue solar-sails are tucked away, and inside the cargo hull, lights are dimmed to twilight levels. Between crates trade goods are cases of well-disguised equipment.  Orren Bell leans against a railing, arms crossed, watching the water fold.  Across from him, Thessa Vurn, leader of Ripple Team Ten, sits composed on a closed crate, hands interlaced, her posture immaculate. Beside her, Miro and Rellon check gear in silence.

ORREN BELL
(quietly, but with steel beneath)

"You’re sailing straight into a lion’s mouth.  With reeds instead of knives."

THESSA VURN
(level, patient)

"Not reeds, Captain Bell. Leverage. Memory. Fear of a tale gone awry."

ORREN

"You’re telling me you’d rather spook them with shadows than end this before it begins ? These people—Helion—they don’t trade in symbols. They trade in blood and fire. You’ve seen what they’re doing on the outer reefs."

THESSA

"I’ve seen. I’ve read the logs. I’ve wept at what they did in the Bastion Arcs. And still—every Helion operative we kill becomes a martyr, a broadcast, a reason for the next fire. If we kill them, we help them."

ORREN
(sharply)

"And if they kill you?"

THESSA
(softly, without flinch)

"Then my silence speaks louder than their noise."

A long pause. The ship creaks with the shift of current. Orren paces, boots thudding softly on damp plasteel.

ORREN

"You know, I've watched men kill for protein paste. Yet I believe still in Khariton principles. I do. But this? This feels like trying to reduce fire to smoke with poetry."

THESSA
(still calm, but more direct now)

"Orren… do you not yourself reduce fire to smoke with the water of the ocean, rather than kicking it out ?  Believe me when I say that we can break their foothold without shedding a drop of blood, and that matters. That tells our people that fear hasn't rewritten our laws."

ORREN
(quietly)

"But if you fail, we’ll have to rewrite them anyway."

Another silence. Outside, the sky deepens to a pre-dawn blue, sea blending into horizon. A distant lightning flare lights the edge of the clouds — not a storm, but a battle on another island, already underway.  A small knot of resistance, no doubt.

ORREN
(sighs, relents somewhat)

"You’ve got half a tide from me. No longer. If I smell Helion backup closing, I’m hauling your team out or leaving ripples as my only memory. You don't have to like it."

THESSA
(rises slowly, nods)

"Understood, Captain Bell.
But if we succeed — quietly, cleanly — you’ll help me write the debrief. Quiet victories deserve chroniclers."

ORREN
(soft smile, with the tired edge of realism)

"You get out of this alive, Thessa... I’ll name a spice run after you."

The two stand together for a moment, neither quite conceding, but both acknowledging the other’s weight. The sea does not care who is right — only who returns.

 

The Green Horizon

In response to environmental degradation and unwelcome modifications to the natural patterns of the ocean, the Green Horizon was initially formed by concerned scientists and activists.  Over half a century, it gradually transformed into a world assembly, recognised by the governments of the large cities and funded by them.

Any independant settlement, from the size of a kelp farm up to the greatest megapoles, can claim a seat in the assembly of the Green Horizon.  Of an estimated fifty thousand across Zemjelos, eight thousand are thus represented, one seat each.  The larger cities tend however to exert a certain degree of control over the assembly, as they are generally elected to its government.

The Assembly meets in Khariton for the first five years of each new Sitting, then spends the following five years moving about the globe.

There are, of course, politics, but scientific concern over the fragile ecosystem of Zemjelos primes.  The vast majority of representatives have scientific backgrounds.

Thus, the Green Horizon decides ecological policy at a worldwide scale, its laws taking precedent over all others in these domains.  Only very few settlements refuse to recognise its authority.  The Green Horizon also sponsors educational programs.

On the whole it is neither purely utopian nor wholly radical : the Green Horizon is a visionary movement struggling to balance planetary stewardship with practical governance.

The organisation is credited with such sea-changing initiatives as :

-  Reseeding the Scarred Belt.  These are formerly over-exploited mining zones, concentrated along the Equatorial Rifts.  Over a century of careful management, they have been biologically rehabilitated using engineered seedstorms, with aerial drones dispersing genetically tailored bacteria, flora and biological regulators.

-  The Veltrine Project, whose artificial bioluminescent shoal matrices have coaxed Thalmarid Leviathans back into migration patterns that human colonisation had pushed them to abandon.  Another century-long project, it has been partially successful.  The leviathans return in sporadic waves but their behaviour remains altered and unpredictable.

-  The umbrella treaty banning High-Orbit Laser Mining has completely eliminated coral fracturing, at least in theory.  It caused severe tensions with various off-world corporations, who have often resorted to alternative extraction methods that are just as damaging.

-  The development and implantation of Cindrel Listening Arrays is a controversial effort to communicate with these reefs via protein signal mimics.  Although the results have stood up to scientific examination, the Green Horizon is diversely accused of either making them up, or trying to put native lifeforms before humans themselves.

 

The Green Horizon is an increasingly costly endeavour.  This is natural, as the human population grows, but obviously provides ammunition for its critics.  The refusal to aim for short-term but fragile gains means that the policies sometimes require decades or even centuries to produce tangible results, and many suggest that it is just one big smokescreen to cover up massive fraud and profiteering.

Refusal to use certain invasive off-world crops and organisms genetically modified outside of their control, in a context of food shortages in certain isolated zones, has even caused internal debates, which rage between "green purists" and "adaptive pragmatists".

Critics often cite the "Red Bloom Incident" to point out the hubris of actively intervening in ecology at a planet-wide scale.  This was a premature reintroduction of Glaucen Drifters into a group of coastal ecosystems.  This led to mimic behaviour and an unexpected coordinated release of their neurotoxic spores, which killed hundreds and ruined the health of many more.

• 

  Scene: A dome-roofed learning hall overlooking the ocean. Bioluminescent kelp glows faintly at the base of the glass walls. Dozens of children sit cross-legged before a weathered Green Horizon militant in a faded sea-green uniform. A Glaucen Drifter floats serenely beyond the glass.

  Militant (kneeling to their level, voice calm and firm):
  “You know, long before we ever stepped foot here, the ocean was already full of voices. Not like ours—not with words—but with balance. The Drifters, the Reefs, the great Leviants… they all kept each other in check. What we’re doing now—what the Green Horizon stands for—is restoring that old conversation. Letting the planet speak again.”

  Child (nervously raising a hand):
  “But… but my cousin said the Glaucen Drifters poisoned a whole town. What if they come here? What if they kill us?”

  Militant (nods, not dismissing the fear):
  “That’s a fair question. And you're right—the Red Bloom did hurt people. We rushed. We thought we understood the Drifters. We didn’t. We made a mistake.”

  (Pauses, gestures toward the ocean)

  “But learning means listening, not just acting. So now we track them. We study the tides. And we’ve learned how they drift, how they pulse. The sails on our skiffs can now detect their spores before they even surface. We don’t fight them anymore. We just make sure they don’t surprise us again.”

  (He picks up a small model of a Glaucen Drifter—red, smooth, almost beautiful.)

  “They’re not evil. They’re part of this world. Just like storms. Or salt water. Or us, now. And it’s our job—not just mine, not just the Horizon’s, but yours too—to be smart enough to live with them, not against them.”

  Another child (wide-eyed):
  “But what if they change again?”

  Militant (smiles, gently placing the model in the center of the circle):
  “Then we change too. But we change with care. That’s what being protectors really means.”

   

  The Solar Chord Pulse

  The EM waves have shattered Zemjelos' sattelite network.  Primarily built by The Green Horizon to assess the impact of ecological policy, the network also provided information and thus security for the numerous isolated settlements across the oceans.  

  Now that it is down, Helion Front sleeper cells have been awakened and are carrying out disruption on a massive scale across the planet's surface.

  
  
   

  To make matters worse, it is no longer possible to detect potentially dangerous natural occurrences, such as tidal waves and Glaucen Drifter migrations. 

  The FMG have, inevitably, been badly hit.  Merchant vessels rarely have the high-end protection of military craft.  Depending on where they were in the solar system, they were hit with more or less greater intensity, with long terms effects ranging from outright destruction to the crippling of key systems.  Many commercial records that had not yet been downloaded into the central database on Zemjelos were also lost, creating chaos and uncertainty.

  Just like Zemjelos itself, the FMG is built around a subtle balance of power, which normally shifts as slowly as the tide.  With some merchants having come off a lot better in this crisis, it will be interesting to see what restraints such a loose governing body as the Council of Bearings will be able to exert, and to what extent Khariton cultural philosophy will prove to be a compass in choppy waters.  Indeed, to what extent their own varying fortunes will lead to a fierce power struggle.
  

  In the meantime, Zemjelos is generally self-sufficient in food, and saline-extraction plants provide enough fresh water, although they will be strained without imports from the White, and may become key strategic resources.  Tensions are likely to focus on the disruption caused to trade in medical and high-tech supplies, including of course malasite-b.  The more isolated communities, who also rely on their exports for prosperity, will no doubt be the worse hit.  Key local governing bodies such as the Council of Twelve Currents will need to move energetically to avoid the Helion Front - or indeed any off-world corporations with ambitions and still with means - making inroads.