BARD PAPER: OPAL3060 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
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Iqorr was a minor imperial planet making its living from serving ships and passing trade going around the blight to and from the major industrial centre and subsector capital of St Denis. It was ruled by a rather staid and unimaginative bureaucracy.
Iqorr was a minor part of the imperial supply line supporting the Imperial forces fighting on the trailing border of Diaspora, and within the Solomani Rim. It also acted as a conduit for vitally need industrial supplies / raw materials to and from St Denis. This made it a target for Solomani strikes in their attempt to isolate the rim pocket.
In 1120, a Solomani strike force based around a number of Patriot class light cruisers entered the system, and used their weaponry to destroy all traces of the shipping infrastructure. The starport, its supporting infrastructure, and any ships in system were destroyed or seized. Iqorr had no real defences, and a few armed customs cutter could not stand up to light cruisers. The bureaucracy were found to be wanting when it came to reacting quickly to defend the system. Within 2 weeks the solomani had finished their task and jumped out, leaving Iqorr in ruins.
Imperial efforts were restricted to keeping open the major supply routes in the face of constant Solomani spoiling attacks, and no effort was made to repair the facilities on Iqorr. The government could not keep up with the rapidly deteriorating situation. St Denis imposed a civil administration due to the civil unrest, and managed to stabilise the TL at 5, which was the bare minimum to maintain the compressor systems (however crudely).
In late 1127, disaster befell the Iqorr system, a raider band under Taka'kul the Great (an escaped pyshopath from the mental hospitals of Jeddel) entered the system, and eliminated the St Denis imposed civil administration. He took over 100 hostages (all under 10 years of age) and set himself up as a self styled emporer, supported by his 130 followers in his three ships (a Gazelle class close escort, a Solomani Endeavour patrol frigate named the Marquis, and an Imperial Xboat tender). He then proceeded to conduct a reign of terror, and tortured those who did not obey his imperial decrees.
Only two Iqorrians were off world at the time on Iusea. They attempted to petition the government to mount a rescue, but the Iusean government were reluctant to take responsibility for the children's welfare, in the event that the rescue went wrong. St Denis were similarly reluctant, and were also having a period of internal dissent that concentrated government attention closer to home.
Rapier's transponder burst carried the virus and death to the entire Iqorr system. Both the Gazelle and the Xboat tender were disabled by virus, and their crews fought desperate battles to get a place in a low berth.
On board the Marquis, Taka'kul's personnal ship, the lights went dark for 30 minutes, and then in mid rant the ship came back to life. This weakened Taka'kul's grip on reality even further as he now convinced himself he had god like powers, and his followers agreed. Looking out from his bridge, he could see his other two ships dead and drifting, and the lights and flashes of fires and explosions on Iqorr's surface as power plants exploded and the planet died. Only Taka'kul's "divine" presence had saved them.
Overtaken by the destructive emotion of the scenes before him, Taka'kul and his remaining followers spent the next month gruesomely killing any survivors of the virus holocaust. He then was struck by a thought, this virus would have left other world in similar condition to Iqorr, and also removed any traces of governments that would stop him and his followers from their "divine" mission. The Marquis accelerated out of the system and prepared to jump, only the jump drive failed to engage.
The frigate was not free of virus after all, the virus had mutated in the solomani computer into a Hobbyist. Unfortunately, it had spent the last month, watching Taka'kul's work, listening to his ranting, and reviewing its databanks. It was more psychotic than Taka'kul. It took six months to slowly torture Taka'kul and his followers to death. It then re-infected the other two ripper ships with copies of itself, so it could torture the crew in the low berths.
After approximately two years, the Marquis decided to move on, but found that its crude suicider ancestor had erased parts of the computer memory in all three ships, specifically the astrogation databases. The ships had no data to plot accurate jumps. So they remained in the Iqorr system, maintained by the workshops on the tender.
In the years that followed all was quiet, then twenty years ago, the Merchantile Guild arose and salvage teams came this way. They expanded first into Pequot, and then further towards the bottom of the blight. The still active planetary defences and pirates at St Denis accounted for a few, a few more disappeared at Ebekhar (see the Guilded Lilly Adventures), and a couple few victim to the vampires at Iqorr.
Fortunately for the Guild, their navigators have a standing policy to destroy astrogation data if the ship is captured (to stop TEDs getting access to jump capable ships, to prevent the spread of astrogation knowledge and to prevent outsiders discovering the location of important Guild facilities). The captured guild ships were broken down for spares by the Xboat tender, and the crews slowly tortured to death, by the psychotic vampires. With these levels of ship losses, the guild pulled back to Pequot, and its safe salvage operation.
The Marquis and the Tender are normally in orbit around Iqorr. The Marquis occasionally taking enjoyment for vaporising some of the surviving native wildlife with its weapons. The "Roebuck" Gazelle normally lurks near one of the gas giants (and also gathers fuel for the rest of the fleet).