BARD PAPER: OPAL8681 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
BARD PAPER: OPAL8681 | Home | Traveller | BARD | OPAL |
Avernus is one of the most mysterious worlds in the former Imperium. Solomani colonists that settled the world during the fourth century discovered a bizarre set of ruins on its most northernmost continent, ruins that included the famous Burning Man, Gateway and the mysterious Ghost Forest. In antebellum times its eerie atmosphere and "bad vibes" kept away most tourists and casual visitors, and it prompted a near boycott by the religious leadership of neighboring Deneb, though they would never give an exact reason why.
Avernus appears to have been colonised by Vilani fleeing Vargr advances into Corridor sector around -2100. Feeling themselves to be safe, the five hundred thousand colonists settled the main continent of Vorshak and returned to a simple agrarian way of life. Their population slowly grew to about two million by -900, when prospectors and ranchers moved to the smaller northern continent of Venona. The northern settlement lasted for about a decade, when it mysteriously disappeared for reasons that cannot be ascertained from colony records. Thereafter the population went into precipitious decline, losing over half of its people over the next forty years, though no few cemeteries have been discovered by archaeologists, and most of the people they contain appear to have perished from suicide. The colony disappears alltogether in -830, and the records from that period speak forebodingly of "him" coming.
The world was resettled in 103 by colonists from Deneb, who renamed it Crozet. Because of their small numbers they remained largely confined to the warmer southern continent of Ligle, where they raised grazing animals for export of their meat and hides. The discovery of Vilani crops growing wild on Vorshak attracted both explorers and new colonists, who subsequently found the remains of the older colony. At first nothing seemed amiss; the Vilani colony was simply thought at time to have died out from lack of supplies or fading gene pool. There were the discovery of so called Ghost Houses, tombs in the basements of Vilani houses that contained wooden mannequins with featureless or grotesque features, which mystified even other Vilani.
But in 318, prospectors on Venona discovered a macabre sight. In some marshy ground surrounding a small plateau, they found a small building, pierced by a tunnel that led up a road to the heights above. But what was truly grotesque was a bas relief sculpture of a featureless person, hands outstretched in a crucifixion pose, swathed in either flames or a flowing red-orange robe, with yellow surrounding an opening where the face would be. The plateau itself contained even more Ghost Houses, dead looking trees and a strange, small hominid like animal that some of the colonists dubbed Trowies, after a graveyard spirit of Scottish myth.
Trowies are 1 to 1.2 meters tall, covered in long grey or dark brown fur, and have faces with delicate features and black eyes. They have three fingers and an opposable thumb, and small mouths filled with sharp piercing teeth they use to eat local fruit and insects. They are a grumpy species of animals, showing no fear of humans or other sentient creatures, but no friendliness either. They are confined to Venona, with their range centered upon the weird graveyard that the locals dubbed the Ghost Forest.
Psions in that period felt forboding or suffered from severe neurological pain or dream trauma. Many colonists actually abandoned the world than live with such haunting creatures and ruins. But two other groups showed much more interest. One of these were the High Ecclesiastics of the To Will One Thing religion, people that had been studying the world clandestinely for decades. The other was a bizarre secret society which denied its own existence, and old Solomani group called the Calusari (see Quirinal/Zeng). In 337 the Calusari obtained the allegiance of the ruling family of Crozet, the Hewards, and took virtial control of the world. It was renamed to Avernus, after a portal to the underworld, in 403. Much animosity exists between the two groups, though for reasons little understood outside of them they have maintained a tense standoff for centuries. Venona has been interdicted by the Calusari, though no explanation has ever been given.