Xanu Prime

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Overview

The shimmering and vibrant planet of Xanu Prime (pronounced Ksa-noo), officially the All-Xanu Republic, is the beating heart of the Coalition of Colonies. In nearly all ways, economic, political, and cultural, Xanu Prime holds almost unmatched influence over the rest of the Coalition. It is the most populated planet in the Coalition and is the seat of its national government, but it is so much more beyond that. It is a cosmopolitan and multicultural hub where nearly anyone from across the Orion Spur can be found, a cornerstone not just in the Coalition but in the galactic community as a whole, and home to a thriving culture and democratic tradition which, along with the dedication and hard work of its citizens, has cemented its position of leadership and wealth which it currently enjoys.

The planet is slightly larger than Earth and is the fourth planet of the Xanu system, which is positioned in the galactic north of the Coalition of Colonies in the Liberty's Cradle Region.

The flag of the All-Xanu Republic is a flag of three horizontal stripes, blue, orange, and green, with a white circle in the middle featuring the national crest of Xanu Prime, a peacock feather. The blue represents liberty and freedom, orange represents determination and hard work, green represents the planet and its people, white represents justice and peace, and the national crest represents the republic itself.

History

“We have asked, and our people have delivered: solidarity, unity, and liberty.” - Gaspard Kulkarni, Colonial Governor of Xanu Prime from 2225-2267

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Discovery and Settlement | 2156 - 2185

Xanu Prime’s known history begins not on the planet itself but on Earth. The planet was discovered in the year 2156 by a team of French, Belgian, and Indian astronomers and deemed habitable for colonization. Its original designation was Exoplanète Astronomique-Neuf-Un, however was shortened first to XA-9-1, and then simply “Xanu” some years later once colonists had made landfall on the planet. Colonization ventures aiming to establish footholds on far-off worlds in places like the Tau Ceti System, Epsilon Eridani, and the Al-Rashid System had already begun near time of the planet’s discovery and the governments of Earth were more than eager to establish further footholds for humanity across the stars. Not wishing to be left behind, the governments of France along with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (BeNeLux) pooled their resources for an extraterrestrial expedition with the intention of colonizing the far-flung but promising exoplanet of XA-9-1. These countries quickly ran into a problem as they had the funds to bankroll this endeavor but lacked the industrial capacity to create the massive vessels needed for such a journey to the stars.

It seemed as if the expedition may falter before it even started without an industrial partner so, France and the BeNeLux shopped their proposal around to various countries but were turned down by the first few they asked. Firms from West Germany, the Federal Republic of China, and the United States all were offered contracts to build colony ships, but none accepted due those nations prioritizing their resources towards their own colonization initiatives. Eventually however, partners were found in the South Asian economic and industrial powerhouses of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, all three of whom agreed to build the massive vessels required to travel to what would become known as Xanu Prime, on the condition that their own colonists were included in the expedition. Naturally, they also wanted to receive a portion of the profits that the colony might generate. India and Pakistan saw the shipbuilding as a contest and tried to out-do each other during the construction process as an extension of the Indo-Pakistani rivalry while Bangladesh tried to remain neutral in the competition and simply complete their orders.

The six vessels needed for the expedition, Seine, Ganga, Rhine, Indus, Brahmaputra, and Yser were completed by 2181 and launched the same year. The expedition was long and arduous and needed to stop twice for repairs to the Rhine’s engines. Nevertheless, the expedition arrived at XA-9-1, albeit nine months behind schedule, in 2185. Colonization efforts began in full-force after the arrival, with the coastal location around where the colony fleet touched down quickly becoming the hub of the new world’s people. Modest agricultural and solar power initiatives were set-up to promote self-sustainability in the colony, and by most measures they were successful. After a year of success, the colonists desired to name the small city they had created and gave the honor of naming it to the commander of the expedition, Commodore Pascal Lechevalier, who named it Nouvelle-Rochelle, or New Rochelle, after his hometown of La Rochelle, France. The same year the planet’s official designation was changed from XA-9-1 to Xanu Prime by the Sol Alliance.

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Early Colonial Era | 2185 - 2223

Over the next three decades the colony steadily grew in population with more and more colonists coming to the planet from Western Europe and South Asia hoping to make it big on Xanu or simply start a new life on an entirely new world. It was during this period that the cities of Pataliputra, Maartstad, and Khairabad (presently known as Kshatragarh) were founded as well, solidifying Xanu as no longer a single-settlement colony and one that was almost entirely self-sufficient. From here, Sol left much of the Colony’s governance to itself and was happy to rake in the profits it produced while not giving much back to the colony itself, something that would become a theme over Xanu’s colonial era. It was also during this time however that Xanu Prime began to experience some of its first challenges during its ascent to prosperity.

While Xanu’s colonization effort had been a success, the colony itself was dysfunctional on a societal and political level. Since the initial landing on Xanu Prime, many of the colonists had begun to break off into groups and communities that were increasingly centered around their old world nationalities. The French often only interacted with the French, Indians with Indians, Pakistanis with Pakistanis, and so on. This led to increased tension over resources on the planet between these groups, and with each passing year the colony seemed less like one world and more like many inhabiting the same planet. This allegiance to ethnicity penetrated nearly every aspect of life, with members of the planet’s colonial administration and even fledgling military having stronger ties to their own communities rather than the colony’s government. By the early 2220’s, many of the planet’s citizens thought that a civil war was inevitable as the differences between the various ethnic groups of the planet seemed irreconcilable. In 2223, when that year’s crops failed and a famine gripped the world, their fears were made reality when Xanu’s colonial administration collapsed under the pressure to provide relief for the starving communities of Xanu and internal power struggles. A power vacuum was opened, and local militias following demagogic firebrands leaped at the opportunity to secure it wherever they could.

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The Xanan Civil War | 2223 - 2227

The Xanan Civil War was a four-factioned war fought between the Xanan Republic, a primarily French faction, the Xanu Free Union, a primarily Indian faction, the Xanu Solidarity Army, a primarily Pakistani faction, and the National Front for United Xanu, a faction composed of colonists from the BeNeLux. The war lasted from 2223 to 2227 and aside from the Interstellar War, is the costliest war in Xanan History. Every faction involved was at one point, hellbent on the complete subjugation of the three others in attempts to install themselves as the de facto rulers of the entire planet. Battles between groups lasted for months and often shot quickly from quiet and low-intensity to chaotic and brutal in a matter of hours, with ill-led irregular militia forces being used far more often than conventional armies. This was partially due to the fact that much of Xanu’s military before the civil war was quite small and fit only for militarized policing operations but also because many of the soldiers in the four armies were volunteers with no prior military experience whatsoever. While factions were made on primarily ethnic lines, it should be noted that a large portion of Xanan people at this time refused to fall-in with these factions no matter their ethnicity. Attacks against civilians, soldiers, and politicians alike including terror bombings, shootings, arson, and assassinations were commonplace with each side doing their best to break the resolve to fight of the others.

The Sol Alliance was unsure at first what to do with the news of Xanu breaking out into violence. Sol had in the past both intervened in these kinds of colonial conflicts while letting others run their course. To the Solarian colonial authorities though, much of what was becoming to be known as the Outer Colonies, which included planets like Vysoka, Assunzione, and Gadpathur along with Xanu Prime, was not as profitable as previously hoped, and so controversially, the decision was made to let the civil war play out and then return in-force after the violence had subsided to reassert colonial authority rather than land on the planet and risk the lives of Solarian core-worlders. The war took its toll on the planet’s people. Historians currently estimate that nearly 6% of the total Xanan population died during the fighting with the leading causes of death being starvation and treatable medical conditions rather than combat. A majority of those who died in the war were not soldiers or irregulars, but normal civilians who simply could not feed themselves or find medical care after the complete collapse of the colony’s food and medical infrastructure. After nearly two years of fighting and a horrific and terrible stalemate, the armies were simply unable to launch offensives anymore and signed an uneasy truce that put an end to the fighting but not the war. In 2225 a movement known as the All-Xanu Peace League was founded in the city of Pataliputra by a former colonial official named Gaspard Kulkarni, a man who was half-Indian and half-Belgian, which proposed the idea of a unified Xanu which provided for all of its peoples regardless of their race or national origins. While not a novel concept, Kulkarni’s speeches and his organization’s charitable actions such as opening soup kitchens to feed the starving and clinics to give free medical care to the sick spoke greatly to the war-weary Xanan people. He led large anti-war protests in the city of Pataliputra and was smuggled into the territories of the various warring factions to spread his message. He encouraged soldiers in the armies to not fight, saying that they were shooting their own brothers and sisters even if their commanders saw otherwise. By the start of 2226, Kulkarni was becoming the most popular man on Xanu Prime, his message of peace and a planet-wide Xanan identity stretched across ethnicity and to many was a beacon of hope in a terrible war, even if Kulkarni’s ideas seemed overly idealistic to many.

Xanans, including those in the armies, were tired of fighting and exhausted at this point. None of the four factions had accomplished their goals and with Kulkarni’s Xanu Free League movement gaining more steam and proposing a peaceful future for all Xanan people, the heads of the four armies met at the planet’s capital Nouvelle-Rochelle to sign a peace treaty and dissolve their forces. An impromptu election was held to determine a planetary governor, Kulkarni won in a landslide, and declared the founding of the Sovereign Solarian Nation of Xanu Prime.

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Reassertion of Solarian Control and The First Astonishment | 2227 - 2260

The flag of the Sovereign Solarian Nation of Xanu Prime

The Sol Alliance had been constantly monitoring the situation on Xanu since the start of the civil war and now that the fighting had stopped, it returned to its colony with the intention of rebuilding it and stabilizing it for the future. Pleased that they didn’t need to exercise any force, Sol returned with a massive investment which hoped to not only restore Xanu to its former glory, but also make it a leading, an exemplar colony in the distant Outer Ring. Sol saw Xanu almost as a blank slate at this point, the planet was so ravaged by war that anything was possible in the minds of the Colonial authorities back on Earth. From here on the Sol Alliance invested trillions of credits into Xanu’s infrastructure and businesses along with importing scores of new Western European, South Asian, and newly to the mix, American colonists and capital from Earth to both repopulate but also serve as workers in Xanu’s future labor pool.

Despite this rebuilding effort, many Xanan citizens, including the de-facto governor Kulkarni, vehemently criticized Sol for not intervening in the Xanan Civil War and stopping the fighting. This criticism put the Solarian central authority into a difficult position: they could either remove Kulkarni from office and impose their own governor, or try to keep the situation stable. In the end, the second option was taken; Xanan historians say that this was due to the massive amounts of money being spent on the world by the Alliance. Solarian historians dispute this claim and insist the choice was made by the Alliance as an apology to the Xanan people for the inaction in the civil war. Kulkarni was confirmed by the Solarian central authority as the Xanu’s official planetary governor on January 1st, 2225.

For the next three decades, Xanu became not just rebuilt but the strongest economy in the Outer Colonies. Solarian investment lasted for seven years, but after that, Xanu’s growth was primarily self-generated. Its industries and services had expanded far beyond just mining and agriculture to highly sophisticated sectors like computer manufacturing, bio-medicine, energy production, defense, and AI development. Most importantly however was shipping and logistics. Xanu’s geographic position made it ideal as the primary commercial port of the outer colonies, where goods from everywhere from Himeo to Vysoka to Assunzione would be shipped to the Solarian Core. Much of this was undertaken thanks to Kulkarni’s policies of giving monetary incentives to businesses and workers that went into certain industries. It was also during this time that Xanu found itself becoming friends with its close-by neighbor Himeo, a relationship which would go on to bloom into a strong friendship, and occasional rivalry, which lasts to this very day. By 2260, before the Second Great Depression, Xanu Prime had the highest living standards in the Outer Colonies, the largest economy, and one of its most developed societies. Many accredit this to the foundation of an identity for its people built upon the ideas of fairness, equality, and hard work originating from the Xanu Free League and its founder Gaspard Kulkarni who retired from the position of Governor in 2248 at the age of 71 after 26 years in office. Xanu’s people no longer saw themselves as either French Xanan or Indian Xanan and so on, but as simply Xanan. The horrors of war which impacted all Xanan people regardless of ethnicity changed the way that the people of Xanu viewed each other. After the war they had begun to take on each other as fellow Xanans and as people rather than as an enemy or an “other,” adopting various cultures and customs from one another and beginning to create what today can be called the Xanan culture and people. Xanan culture was not only unified by a common experience, but also a common language. Freespeak was mandated as the official language of Xanu Prime by Governor Kulkarni in 2230 on the reasoning that it was what many of Xanu’s interplanetary neighbours spoke and that it would help unite the Xanan people if they could communicate with one another. This transformation from a war-ravaged world plagued by sectarian violence to a model planet which was safe, rich, and cosmopolitan is an achievement known to the Orion Spur as “The Astonishment.” A side-effect of Xanu’s success though was that it was now far more connected to the rest of the Outer Colonies than to the Solarian core in nearly all ways, economically, politically, and culturally. This fact would come to define Xanu’s future going forwards.

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The Second Great Depression and Secession from the Solarian Alliance | 2260 - 2278

While the Second Great Depression struck the Solarian Core from its onset in 2260, Xanu Prime and more broadly the Outer Colonies in general were largely unaffected by the economic turmoil gripping the inner parts of Sol Alliance space. Much of the Xanan economy was self-sufficient and relied little on the inner workings of Solarian financial institutions. Branches of transstellar corporations on Xanu were some of the only ones in human space which still remained profitable after the depression hit. Xanan citizens were not ignorant of the depression, it was still national news, but its effects were not felt on the world nor in the rest of the Outer Colonies aside from Vysoka. The steppe world was gripped by economic troubles following the collapse of the Solarian logistics chain which caused the planet’s primary export, food, being unable to reach the Solarian core. Xanu stepped in during this time to begin buying more exports from Vysoka to help shore up the steppe world’s losses while also further pulling Vysoka into its orbit of economic influence.

In 2265, the Sol Alliance unveiled a new taxation policy aimed at stopping the runaway inflation and worsening economic situation within its core worlds. This policy, deemed the Emergency Stabilization Plan, consisted of instilling heavy taxation on the still relatively economically stable Outer Colonies in hopes of transferring some of their wealth to the Solarian Core. The most prosperous, and therefore most taxed of these worlds was Xanu Prime, and as one might suspect, these new taxes were strongly opposed across the planet. Prices soared and businesses fell apart, sending not just Xanu’s economy but that of the entire Outer Colonies into a tailspin that would only worsen for the next decade. In 2271, following the Xanan tradition of protest and rebellion that began with the All-Xanu Peace League, a Xanan independence movement was founded known as the All-Xanu Free League. Led by an aging veteran of the Xanan Civil War who had joined politics after the war and fully embraced the new idea of a united Xanu, Eloise Brel, the All-Xanu Free League’s goals were simple and to the point: no less than total independence from the Sol Alliance. Brel and her supporters argued that the Sol Alliance had never done anything for Xanu that wasn’t motivated by profit. The Free League cited the Sol Alliance’s refusal to intervene in the Xanan Civil War and near-removal of Governor Kulkarni in 2225 as examples of the Sol Alliance’s desires only to subjugate Xanu and act as thieves from its prosperous economy, going as far as to call the Sol Alliance’s Colonial Authority “pirates.” Brel also protested for popular democracy and voting rights for its citizens, as until this point, many Xanan people were only allowed to participate in democracy on a local level and had little say in the planet’s colonial taxation and economic programs or its foreign policy. As economic conditions worsened, the popularity of the Free League only grew, leading to further social unrest.

By 2274, Xanu’s planetary governor saw that the situation was untenable and resigned from the office. With the highest office of authority in Xanu Prime now vacant, the All-Xanu Free League declared itself as the popular government of the entire planet, installing Eloise Brel not as Xanu’s governor but as the president of the newly proclaimed All-Xanu Republic. In the same year, following Xanu’s example, the Outer Colony worlds of Himeo, now the United Syndicates of Himeo, Vysoka, Gadpathur, and Zaurghis also declared independence from the Sol Alliance. Sol was paralyzed by depression and unsure of how to respond to the situation, attempted to negotiate with the newly-independent systems to no avail. In 2275, the leaders from the independent outer colonies met on Xanu Prime in the city of Nouvelle-Rochelle and agreed to the formation of a military and economic alliance called the Interstellar Coalition of Independent Systems, or Coalition of Colonies. Xanu Prime was declared to be the de facto operational center of this new alliance and as such, it dictated the goals that the Coalition would need to meet. These goals, at least for the time being, were complete economic independence from the Sol Alliance and a militarization of their societies so that they could defend themselves from what Eloise Brel described as “the impending imperialist sledgehammer.”

The same year, Brel announced the necessity for a new All-Xanu Army and Navy and called for native Xanans and even foreigners in the Solarian planetary garrison who loved democracy, freedom, and the principles of equality and fairness found in Xanan culture to defect and bring their equipment with them, promising Xanan citizenship and adequate pay. Many of these soldiers who hadn’t been paid in months courtesy of the Second Great Depression’s effects on the Solarian military’s finances deserted their posts in droves and joined the new All-Xanu Army and Spacefleet. Stories of entire bases and ships surrendering to civil servants of the new administration were not unheard of. Those in the All-Xanu Armed Forces knew that they were unable to fight the Solarians in open combat and so instead looked to the past for guidance. Many veterans of the Xanan Civil War were still alive and while not in fighting condition, many of them being in their sixties or seventies at this point, were called upon to teach Xanan officers guerilla tactics who would then use those same methods, along with those learned from defecting garrison officers, to teach the nascent Army. Armed with equipment now flowing in from arms factories on Vysoka, the industrial centers of Himeo, and the planet’s own defense industry that emerged in the wake of the Xanan Civil War, Xanu’s fledgeling military was taking shape. By 2278, the All-Xanu Army was a young and inexperienced but well-trained fighting force. The All-Xanu Spacefleet by 2278 consisted of 802 vessels, most of which were no larger than cruisers and had been surrendered to the planet by both its own and nearby planets’ defecting garrisons.

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The Interstellar War | 2278 - 2287

The Sol Alliance was alarmed after its negotiations with the Outer Colonies had failed. Not only had they lost the lynchpin to their so far successful Emergency Stabilization Plan, but they’d lost territory, billions of citizens, vital resources, and large quantities of military equipment and materiel. Despite still being hamstrung by the Second Great Depression, the Sol Alliance mobilized its fleets and armies in 2278 and set its course for the Solarian Frontier. The Alliance at this time had adopted a policy of unconditional surrender of the Coalition of Colonies, aiming to bring them back under Solarian authority at any cost in order to secure their resources and people to further stabilize the Solarian Core.

Solarian forces reached Xanu Prime in late 2278 and would make landfall soon after crushing the All-Xanu Spacefleet and forcing it to flee to Himeo for repairs. It would not be until 2284 until the Solarian Army was forced off of Xanu. The Solarian Army quickly occupied Nouvelle-Rochelle and Pataliputra, Xanu’s two largest cities, and laid siege to Khairabad, its third largest and current seat of the All-Xanu Republic. The Siege of Khairabad would be the longest and by far the bloodiest battle of the Interstellar War. It lasted four years, from 2279 to 2282, and saw savage house-to-house fighting coupled with indiscriminate artillery bombardment and drone strikes from both sides. It is estimated that during the Siege of Khairabad, anywhere between 11 and 14 million people died, this figure being a combination of both soldiers and civilians. It is widely agreed that the Siege of Khairabad was the single-most deadly battle in human history. The siege was brutal and both sides bled heavily, with Coalition forces using the rubble of the city to hide for ambush attacks while the Solarians relied heavily on air power and orbital bombardment to pound their foes into submission. But submission the Solarians would not receive. It was 2281 and fighting had stagnated into a bloody stalemate across the Coalition of Colonies. The Solarians were unable to contend with such a vast front against the armies of the hundreds of worlds now part of the CoC and gradually they began to be worn down by the attrition of the war. By late 2282, the siege of Khairabad collapsed after Solarian forces besieging the city were redeployed elsewhere on Xanu to fight All-Xanu Army guerilla activities and elsewhere in the Coalition to hold the line against CoC forces. After four years, nine months, two weeks, and six days, the Siege of Khairabad was over. During her victory speech after the battle, President Brel proposed that the city be renamed to Kshatrapur, in allusion to the warrior caste of the culture of the city’s original Indian colonists. In 2283, by presidential decree, the city was renamed and holds that name to this very day.

Even while Khairabad and other cities on the planet were under siege, Xanan forces had been sent to every corner of the Coalition to try and curb Solarian advances. This was done not through direct combat, but through training the local armies and navies across the Coalition how to fight the Solarians. The once-defeated All-Xanu Spacefleet went on to act as one of the primary naval forces in the war after seeking repairs at Himeo. They attacked Solarian supply convoys and cooperated with the United Fleet of Himeo to defend Himeo against a Solarian landing force while being impossible to catch and pin-down by the Solarian Navy. In 2284, a United Coalition fleet comprised of elements from Xanu Prime, Himeo, and Gadpathur arrived to Xanu Prime under the leadership of All-Xanan Admiral Mehmud Khan and defeated the 148th Solarian Fleet in the Battle of Xanu Prime, the largest single spacefleet confrontation of the war. They arrived just in-time as well, many assess, as Solarian high-command had authorized the full-scale indiscriminate orbital bombardment of Xanu Prime, the scars of which can still be seen today. Many historians speculate that without the intervention of the CoC’s Joint Fleet, Xanu’s surface would be much like Gadpathur’s today. The Battle of Xanu Prime is seen as the turning point of the war. Afterwards, the Solarians forces would be in almost constant retreat out of Coalition territory since Xanu along with its Coalition allies could now export their armies instead of keeping them on their homeworlds to fend off the Solarian attack. Slowly but surely, Xanusians fought alongside their fellow Coalition forces and by the time a ceasefire was called, the CoC had liberated 80% of the territory that it had begun with. The Treaty of Xansan was signed in 2287 and ended the war, with Sol officially recognising the Coalition of Colonies and all of its member states as independent entities. Shortly after the war, President Eloise Brel retired from politics and went on to pen a series of best-selling memoirs before dying at the ripe age of 104 in 2303. She is to this very day regarded as a national hero and is considered to be the “Mother of Xanan Independence.”

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The Sneijders Doctrine and The Second Astonishment | 2287 - 2320

For the second time in a century, Xanu Prime had been ravaged by war and nearly destroyed. By the end of the Interstellar War, nearly half of its population had been displaced or rendered homeless and it is presently estimated that anywhere between 12% and 15% of the planet’s population had died in the war. Xanu’s cities and infrastructure were in ruins, but the resolve of its people and the rest of the newly-formed Coalition of Colonies was as strong as ever. Sol was not around to rebuild Xanu after this war, but the rest of the Coalition of Colonies was. The first order of business for the new CoC government was providing relief to and rebuilding the areas most damaged by the war, Xanu Prime chief among them. Throughout the next decade, Xanu’s cities were rebuilt and repaired with even Kshatrigarh being nearly entirely repaired by 2310. Resources and workers from all over the Coalition poured into Xanu as part of the effort and after the Xanu Restoration Project was completed, many decided to stay and make lives for themselves on Xanu. These efforts are even to this day a source of camaraderie and mutual appreciation between the Xanan people and the rest of the Coalition, with both seeing it as the Coalition at large repaying Xanu Prime for the sacrifice its people made to start the Coalition. Measures were taken by the Xanan government to ensure that the recovery was not just that, a recovery, but the start of a brand new economy for the recently-independent world. The most notable of these actions was the creation of the Xanan Concern for Economic Stabilization, Advancement, and Recovery, otherwise known as CESAR-X, a state-owned construction and industrial company that would come to be the instrument through which successive governments would both rebuild and grow Xanu’s cities and economy. In 2320, Xanu Prime was once again the strongest economy in the Coalition of Colonies, having been surpassed by Himeo from the end of the war until that point. It would take some time for living standards to return to what they once were though, but it would happen. This rebuilding effort amounted to trillions of credits and ultimately was a resounding success that allowed Xanu to once again bounce back from the destruction of war. Fittingly, this is known as “The Second Astonishment.”

As Xanu Prime grew stronger and wealthier, it felt the need to assert its position in the still infantile Coalition of Colonies. The Coalition had only been around for roughly two-and-a-half decades in peacetime when in 2212, All-Xanu president Nicolaas Sneijders adopted a combination of economic and foreign policies that would lead Xanu into its golden age. These principles, known today as “The Sneijders Doctrine,” orbited around two principles: firstly expanding Xanan markets and trade wherever possible, and secondly, creating a new kind of All-Xanu Army and Spacefleet that could be deployed anywhere in the Coalition of Colonies on short notice should any nation in the CoC come under attack. The Coalition did not have a unified military that it could command on its own, so Sneijders proposed that if any world were to assert themselves as the defender of this new country, it would be Xanu. A famous excerpt from a speech he gave to the All-Xanu Assembly, now known as simply “The Sneijders Speech,” sums:

“Our fellows, brothers, and sisters saved our homeworld during the Interstellar War. We as Xanans must ensure that the same pain and suffering that befell us never is inflicted upon our neighbors. Our allies protected us, and we will repay the favor to not just they, but their children, and their children's children. We are the richest world in our beautiful Coalition even now, and we must ensure that our wealth grows but more importantly is put to good use. We have the means to make war but instead we will ensure peace for our people and all those of the Coalition. We are a republic built on the beliefs of liberty, democracy, equality, and goodwill, and we will proliferate these principles across the stars.”</center.>

From the time when Sneijders’ principles were implemented, Xanu would maintain a disproportionately large military relative to its fellow Coalition worlds, only being surpassed proportionately by Gadpathur. Sneijders also is credited with the establishment of much of Xanu’s state welfare programs and civic funding initiatives which would hasten Xanu’s restoration of living standards to a pre-war level. He also modified the Xanan Constitution into the form the country knows it as today, enshrining in law inalienable rights for Xanan citizens and placing limits on the government’s domestic power. He is the longest serving Xanan president, having left office in 2320 after serving three five-year terms in office, something which the constitution he helped ratify made impossible afterwards due to its limiting of presidents to only two terms. He is widely regarded as one of the best presidents the All-Xanu Republic has ever had.

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The Xanan Renaissance | 2320 - 2360

For the first time in Xanan history, peace and prosperity reigned supreme for over 60 years. The planet saw an unparalleled level of growth and societal advancement. Xanan culture flourished and many of the entertainment industries that Xanu is known throughout the Orion Spur for were founded during the 2320’s and 30’s. Film, video games, music, entertainment, all got their start in those two decades after funding from many of the economic assistance and cultural programs started under the Sneijders administration took off. Xanu’s economy soared and the world hit a new high and celebrated lavishly in 2338 when Xanu’s population reached its pre-Interstellar War level. To this day, Xanans get every January 2nd off work to commemorate this recovery. Things were going good for Xanu, not only was it growing itself but further integration with the rest of the Coalition of Colonies allowed for it to grow its neighbors’ economies as well, though of course while each planet in the Coalition economically cooperated, friendly competition was part and parcel of their mutual exchanges. Xanan firms financed much of the construction of the Weber Quarter in Himeo’s capital Rautakaivos Kaupunki and funded heavy industry expansion on Vysoka in the 2340’s and 50’s.

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The Flohimont Thaw and Solarian Reproachment | 2360 - 2400

One of the largest changes in Xanu’s foreign and economic policy in history came under the administration of President Ameliye Flohimont, Xanu Prime’s tenth president. Taking power in 2360, President Flohimont was the first Xanan leader since the Interstellar War to consider reopening economic ties with the Solarian Alliance. These actions brought on fierce criticism at the time, with notions of Sol once again trying to force an unfair economic deal on Xanu running rampant. Flohimont stressed that she did not wish to negotiate trade with the entire Solarian Alliance but only individual planets under its control, stating that she was wishing to trade with Sol as she would with any other, on fair and agreeable terms. In 2364, her administration reached a settlement with the government of Konyang, hoping to both increase trade revenue and use the momentum as a positive reason for her reelection campaign in 2365. This negotiation was criticized by the Himean government and lambasted by multiple Gadpathurian officials at the time as, “playing with fire,” and something that could potentially drag the rest of the CoC’s economy into the orbit of Sol as it once was. Nevertheless, Flohimont won reelection in 2365 and continued her policy of foreign economic liberalization, signing trade deals with the then-Solarian planets of Biesel, New Gibson, and Mictlan a establishing a positive relationship with them that carried on to the formation of the Republic of Tau Ceti and to this day. The tax profits from these mercantile ventures were reinvested into Xanu’s cultural, state medical, and military programs, giving all of those sectors a boost. Conspiratorially, some on the fringe of Sol’s political sphere hold even presently that Flohimont engaged in these deals in order to expand the reach of Xanu’s Military Intelligence Department into Solarian worlds in preparation for a future invasion. They cite the expansion of Xanu’s military under Flohimont as a primary reason for this theory, though most see these ideas as shaky at best and completely false at worst. Xanu’s government denies this and people with this stance on Xanu are often laughed out of any discussion in which they participate. Whatever the case, when she left office in 2370 after serving two five-year terms, Xanu was richer and was once again a player on the economic stage of the Orion Spur and not just the Coalition. Over the next century, Xanu would use foreign trade to make money as far as the Jargon Federation, Eridani, after the New Suez Protocols of 2381 the Republic of Elyra, the rest of the Sol Alliance proper, and Adhomai and Moghes after their discovery by humans. This openness to foreign nations under Flohimont is also the reasoning credited for why Xanu Prime agreed to host the Fisanduhian government-in-exile in 2386.

President Ameliye Flohimont is a polarizing figure across the CoC and beyond and her impacts as president were felt long after she’d left office. On Xanu she is remembered fondly for helping the planet move past its trauma from the Interstellar War by opening a parley with Sol and for using foreign trade credits to help enrich the planet’s social systems and military. Elsewhere in the Coalition she is looked down upon as a selfish leader, or even seen as a traitor to the Coalition ideal, who put Xanu’s economic interests, or to some, her planet’s greed, above the safety of the Coalition and made any future economic problem that Sol, or eventually Biesel, encountered also a problem of the Coalition. This rose to a head when she was assassinated at a speaking event in 2374, four years after she’d left office, by a radical Gadpathurian national who claimed that her actions would kill the Coalition of Colonies. Nearly a century after her election, anti-Sol and nationalist parties across the Coalition blamed the Coalition’s economic turmoil during the ongoing Phoron Scarcity on the policies that Flohimont started, however this position was contested by many on Xanu who described Flohimont’s actions as, “The natural next steps for Xanu Prime and the Coalition into the Orion Spur,” and the current slowdown as, “An inevitability for any nation in the modern day and age.”

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The Doldrums & The Mukhopadhyay Plan | 2400 - 2440

Xanu Prime and the Coalition of Colonies as a whole entered 2400 in a period of relative stagnation. The huge revenues brought into Xanu during the latter half of the 23rd century by President Flohimont’s trade pioneering had faded, with all who wanted to trade with Xanu already doing so. By 2404, Xanu Prime’s economy was only growing by 1% annually and the country itself fell into a period of long-standing economic stagnation known as “The Doldrums.” During this time Xanu was still the top economy in the Coalition of Colonies, but it was no longer growing at the meteoric speeds it once knew, and even saw a near-collapse in 2421. The Doldrums lasted from 2404 until 2427 and are known for the malaise they put over Xanan society as four different presidential administrations tried to get the economy under control and reignite Xanu’s soaring economy. The most notable event during this period was the privatization of CESAR-X, the venerated Xanan institution of a state-owned industrial concern. The company began to amass an unusually large amount of debt during the mid 2400’s as it took out loans to maintain its infrastructure and assets during the economic slowdown. Those in-charge at the company thought that their business’s government-backed nature along with its prominent role in the Xanan economy would ensure that it remained solvent even during a time when the economy was in rough shape. Essentially, they thought CESAR-X could weather the storm through the use of loans and government until the economy had picked up once again and normal growth rates were seen, rather than through adjusting how they did business to meet the challenging economic circumstances. What neither they, nor anyone else at the time expected, was just how long the slowdown would last. A little over a decade and a half passed, and by this time the concern had taken out more in loans than the company itself was worth; not being able to sustain itself on its own operations for any longer, CESAR-X went to the Xanan government asking for a bailout to pay off its creditors, threatening bankruptcy otherwise. The government was indecisive on the decision, as on one hand CESAR-X’s collapse would result in millions of jobs being lost and be disastrous for an already struggling Xanan economy, but on the other, saving CESAR-X wouldn’t fix the economic situation gripping the planet, nor was it a permanent solution to shoring up what was becoming a government-backed money pit. The decision was then made to let CESAR-X fail and collapse, but at the eleventh hour, Credit Xanan, the largest bank in the Coalition and the owner of a majority of CESAR-X’s debt offered to buy the company from the Xanan state on the condition that they pay under a market price and that they would keep a majority of the company’s workers employed. The government agreed and sold the company to the bank for what many now estimate to be just above half of its real value. Over the next decade, CESAR-X’s new management would enact a ruthless profitability-first policy in how it dealt with its newly acquired subsidiary, shutting down factories and branches that failed to turn a profit after being given notice to restructure. These efforts resulted in the company downsizing its workforce by nearly 30%, a move which remains controversial even today, but they did accomplish their goal. By 2428, CESAR-X was turning a profit under Credit Xanan ownership. To this day, CESAR-X is the largest privatization in Coalition history.

During this time the life of an ordinary Xanan changed; the country was no longer on the up-and-up and it gave many time to pause and examine what their society was and who they were as people. Some of the most seminal works of Xanan popular art and cinema were produced during the Doldrums, some say as a reflection on the Xanu Prime of the day, and some say to express the tension and anxiety that the artists and directors felt. Whatever the case, epic works of stage, film, and visual arts were produced during this period which have gone on to firmly cement themselves in the Xanan canon.

As the potential of wide-scale phoron usage was beginning to be felt across the Orion Spur though and more importantly, as more in the Coalition of Colonies wanted this technology, Xanu slowly saw its reascension to growth as it began to be the primary port by which phoron shipments from Elyra and the still-Solarian Biesel would enter the Coalition. This new energy source brought great wealth to Xanu and is credited for giving the planet’s economy the shot in the arm it needed to resume its growth. After Xanu Prime’s recovery from the Doldrums, its next president, Narayan Mukhopadhyay, believed that Xanu needed an economic system which would ensure that it would not fall victim to such a circumstance again, or if it did, not to the degree which it had in the 2410’s-20’s. Throughout the early 2430’s, Mukhopadhyay devised a series of complex economic measures which aimed to shock-proof the Xanan economy against a future recession or collapse, using both taxes and trade revenues from the Konyang robotics boom to fund it. These included amassing great reserves of foreign currency and investing trillions into further diversifying Xanu’s economy. The great Mehmud Khan Helium-3 Station (named after the Xanan Interstellar War Admiral) began construction during this time with assistance from nearby Galatea, and Mukhopadhyay’s initiatives spearheaded the development of industries that until his administration were small or hadn’t even existed on Xanu. This ranged from VR technology to the automotive industry, to pharmaceuticals to initiatives focused on creating engines and reactors which could operate with both Phoron and other fuels like Helium-3. The latter of these efforts would come in very handy during the beginning of the 2462 phoron shortage. Mukhopadhyay also invested much into Xanu Prime’s social services, with the reasoning that if Xanu’s economy were to enter a recession or depression in the future, they would be relied on more than ever before.

The impact of President Mukhopadhyay’s economic planning is hard to quantify. Some on Xanu say that Mukhopadhyay was a visionary who unknowingly protected Xanu from total economic catastrophe when the phoron shortage hit in force in 2463, some twenty years after he left office in 2440. Others however dispute this claim, saying that his impact is truly unknowable because there is no way to know what exactly would have happened to Xanu if the Mukhopadhyay Plan was never put into place and that it was in fact, not the best option. Despite these differing opinions, he generally has a positive reputation and currently spends his days giving lectures at universities and speaking at fundraising events for the Enlightenment Project, a charity he founded after he left office which aims to provide medical aid (often in cooperation with the Interstellar Aid Corps) and educational access to children in the less-developed parts of the Coalition of Colonies and Human Frontier.

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Xanu Prime Today | 2440 - Present

The 2440’s were an unremarkable decade for Xanu Prime. The planet continued to grow more economically off of the spur-wide phoron boom and in 2443, celebrated the completion of the Khan Helium-3 Station. Steady growth and stability were hallmarks of the 2440’s for Xanu and is seen in the present by a large numbers of Xanans, both those who were alive during the time and those who were born after it, as a nostalgic pseudo-golden age where all was good, especially when compared to more recent times.

The 2450’s however were a decade of many happenings for Xanu Prime, both good and bad. In 2457, Xanu Prime hit its all-time economic high, one that is yet to be surpassed, after organizing numerous trade deals with Tau Ceti following the country’s independence in 2452. This took a dive in 2458 when Admiral Michael Frost invaded Tau Ceti, causing Xanu to put great pressure on the rest of the Coalition for an intervention on the justification of protecting sovereignty, an action supported by Gadpathur but rejected by all others in the Coalition on the grounds that war for the sake of markets wasn’t something the Coalition wanted. Along with reaching its economic zenith in 2457, Xanu Prime also participated in one of the largest relief operations in history after the Lii’dra incursion to the Elyran planet of Bursa. In cooperation with the rest of the Coalition, Xanu sent billions in foreign aid, medical supplies, and construction equipment to Bursa to aid in the planet’s rebuilding process. The 2450’s also marked the decade in which the Coalition of Colonies announced a massive increase in its anti-piracy operations both within Coalition territory and outside of it in the Human Frontier. While claimed as an anti-piracy operation, many in the Coalition viewed this as an unofficial war against privateers originating from the Empire of Dominia. Xanu Prime, having the largest military and hosting the Fisanduhian government-in-exile, was broadly supportive of this initiative and committed a sizable chunk of its fleet to defeating what then president Jayanti Kuipers called, “the barbaric menace of pirates and whoever employs them.”

The 2460’s have thus far been turbulent for Xanu Prime, much as they have for almost everywhere in the Orion Spur. The planet’s economy took a hit during the Phoron Scarcity and subsequent Solarian Collapse, however it is nowhere near the worst-affected place in the Coalition even if its supply chains are still met with the impossible question of how to replace phoron entirely. Some say this resilience is because of President Mukhopadhyay’s planning, while others say that Xanu’s economy is simply large enough and has the scale to weather the storm of the Scarcity better than others. Some Xanan industries such as its Helium-3 sector and engine manufacturing plants have even boomed in the wake of the recent economic turmoil in contrast to many others. The future of Xanu seems uncertain. It is holding on well under the administration of its current president Jaques Afzal, with many of its people still living comfortably and enjoying Xanu Prime’s high standard of living, but problems are beginning to emerge. Growing economic inequality, internal divides over Xanu Prime’s place in the Coalition, debates over just how the planet and its people will deal with the scores of refugees fleeing from a broken spur to relative safety, and other societal pressures like crime and rising illegal drug use are rearing their ugly heads. Xanu Prime’s future, much like the rest of the spur, is uncertain, but what is certain is the resolve and unity that the planet and its people will meet any new challenge with.

Geography and Environment

“In forest, ocean, mountain, river, or meadow, my country’s beauty shines through!” - Excerpt from “My Xanu’s Majesty,” a Xanan patriotic song written during the Interstellar War

A Mercator projection map of Xanu Prime.

Geography

The extremely populous Xanu, core capital of the Coalition of Colonies. The Xanan surface is still dotted with craters from the Interstellar War, centuries later.

Xanu Prime is a varied and diverse world that is slightly larger than Earth with a mean radius of 3,790 kilometers. 63% of the planet’s surface area is covered in liquid salt water and it has sizable ice caps at both of its poles, though the northern cap is far larger than the southern one. The planet has four continents and numerous smaller islands that dot its oceans.

The largest of the continents is called Nouvelle-Occitanie, or New Occitania, named after the historical region of France. Much of the planet’s population lives on this continent and its ample coastline. It is situated at the planet’s equator and stretches far to the south into the temperate and near-polar zones of the planet. It hosts varied biomes, with lush equatorial rainforests on its east coast, and tropical deserts which then give way to sprawling open grassy plains and rolling hills before finally finishing in the south of the continent with great deciduous and coniferous forests. Nouvelle-Occitanie is a continent of contrasts. Some of Xanu’s largest cities are on Nouvelle-Occitanie are on the continent, however other areas of the landmass are almost entirely uninhabited, namely the largest of its tropical deserts, the Greater Thar. Nouvelle Occitanie also was the scene of battles and sieges during the Interstellar War, with certain parts of it being designated as national battlefield sites. These sites function as both historical sites and wildlife preserves and development of them is prohibited by the Xanussi government. The largest of these historical preserves are known as the Scar Seas. They are a series of loosely-connected saltwater crater lakes along a stretch of the continent’s western coastline near the city of Kshatragarh. These lakes were formed during the Interstellar War as a result of heavy orbital bombardment in the area from the Solarian Navy.

Sitting in the planet’s northern temperate and equatorial zones, Naya Khyber, or New Khyber, is the third largest of Xanu Prime’s continent and is defined by the Naya Khyber River, the largest river on the planet. At precisely 7,117 kilometers long, the river spans the entire latitude of New Khyber and its course showcases the continent’s geography well. Starting in the western alps of the country, the river flows east and meanders along rolling foothills before entering a short expanse of plains and finally finishing in the Naya Khyber delta, the largest river delta on Xanu Prime. The Naya Khyber delta is a huge agricultural hub due to a combination of factors, the foremost of which are the mineral rich soil present there and the reliability by which the Naya Khyber River floods, aiding irrigation.

Xanu’s third largest continent, Himavatia, is a mostly uninhabited and almost entirely frozen landmass that sits within the planet’s arctic circle. Few things can survive in the cold of Himavatia’s interior, however some confers, grasses, and birds have made their home here. Despite this harshness to life, however, Himvatia’s few peninsulas which manage to stretch into more temperate climates do have small settlements on them. Large swaths of Himavatia are covered in polar ice, the glaciers of which have scoured the continent’s coastlines with deep, vertigo-inducing cliffs, valleys, and fjords. Those coasts themselves are dotted with dense coniferous forests and rocky shores.

Lastly, the smallest of Xanu Prime’s continents is called Paasland. It is located in Xanu Prime’s southern hemisphere and is a single landmass surrounded by tens of thousands of islands. The continent is mostly covered by marshland and mangrove swamps, with only the center and north of its area being more than a few meters above sea level. The barrier island chains which protect Paasland from the storms that may blow in off Xanu’s great oceans around it range in landscape from tropical paradises near the north and west of the continent, to barren, freezing rocks in the south. Many of these islands house active volcanoes and some grow on an annual basis.

A unique feature of Xanu Prime’s geography are found at the sites of where the planet’s surface was bombarded both from orbit and terrestrially by Sol Alliance and Coalition forces during the Interstellar War. The land found here is pockmarked by a smattering of craters created from the impacts of Solarian munitions, many of which have interacted with Xanu’s numerous river systems and formed lakes. A number of these sites, officially deemed “Scarlands” by the Xanan government, have been rehabilitated into national parks and wildlife preserves while others have been resettled and reclaimed by the Xanans. There are scarlands on all four of Xanu Prime’s continents, and what has become of them differs from one scarland to another. Those found around large cities are typically just integrated into the landscape of the city’s metropolitan area itself as part of the landscape, while those in more remote areas have found themselves as designated war memorials and wildlife preserves. The largest of these in area is the Widow’s Tears Scarlands which is a stretch of over 110,000 craters that covers much of Nouvelle-Occitanie’s northeastern territory. Much of it is inhabited and cities and towns can be found there, though the portions of it which are found in the equatorial rainforests of the planet have long-since been designated as undevelopable land. The scarland with the highest density of craters is the Khairabad Scarlands found around the modern-day city of Kshatragarh which comes in at a whopping total of 186,954 craters. The Scarlands are mostly safe to travel and live within after the Xanusian government’s massive clean-up efforts alongside experts sent by the Federal Technocracy of Galatea throughout the 24th century and have become a popular area for weekend trips or vacations for Xanusians. Some of the more remote or hard-to-reach scarlands like the Little Cuts or some parts of the New Pacific Scarlands and Himavat’s Wounds are still partially dangerous though, and visitors are strongly encouraged to not deviate from marked trails in those areas lest they accidentally set off unexploded munitions still present on the old battlefields.

Biosphere

Xanu Prime’s biosphere is as diverse as its terrain. Due to Xanu’s earth-like climate and geography, many species were introduced to the planet from Earth which then led to novel and new lifeforms as these imports crossbred with the existing animals. Notable Xanan Fauna are:

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Paaskraan

The Paaskraan, or more officially the Easter Crane, is a huge, towering bird-like creature resembling a crane standing nearly three meters tall and a wingspan of nearly 4.15 meters. It is easily identifiable by its vibrant orange and white plumage across its body and wings, with its head being almost entirely covered in royal blue feathers. It uses its thick beak with a long piercing spike to stab through prey that it dredges up from the Paasland marshfloor, often fish, amphibians, or even turtles. They are also known for their ocean-spanning migratory cycles that take them from Paasland to the southern coast of Naya Khyber during their breeding season. One might think that their size would make Paaskraans very aggressive creatures, but they are actually very shy and tend to avoid contact with humans and other large animals which may pose even a remote threat to them. They would rather fly away than fight, but even so, they have been known to violently maim and even kill other creatures that get too close to their nests during hatching season. This has led local Xanan environmental protection groups to cordon off Paaskraan nesting areas from the public throughout springtime in efforts to prevent the accidental deaths of wildlife enthusiasts. It is the official animal of the city of Paasstad, the central city of Paasland, and is a symbol of Paasland as a whole.

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Crimson-Masked Polecat

The Crimson-Masked polecat is an animal resembling a mustelid native to the southern peninsulas of Himavatia. It is notable for having almost universally white fur aside from a bar of vibrant red, nearly purple, fur going across and around its eyes. Scientists are uncertain as to why it developed this odd quirk, but what is certain is that this unique aesthetic feature and playfully aggressive disposition has made it a popular pet around the planet and throughout the Coalition. It was first domesticated in 2312 and because of this, it is often associated with the Xanan Renaissance and is considered by many Xanans to be the unofficial national animal of the Republic. In its native habitat of Himavatia’s southern peninsulas it hunts mostly small rodents and on occasion fish, though due to its domestication and subsequent release into the wild by irresponsible pet owners, it has spread to all four of Xanu’s continents and has adapted well to new environments.

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The Silverwing Blazemoth

The silverwing blazemoth is one of the most recognizable creatures of Nouvelle-Occitanie’s equatorial rainforests. With a wingspan of 18cm it is quite large by insect standards, and can be identified not just by its size but by its vibrantly colored black-tipped silver-hued wings. What makes it unique among moths though is the silk that it produces. Instead of its silk having a white color typical of other silk-producing moths, the silverwing blaze moth larvae creates a silk that is a burnt orange color. During pupating season, people have reported what they thought to be fires, but when investigated, turned out only to be trees covered in the sizzled orange colored cocoons of Silverwing Blazemoths. The orange silk made by these creatures s is a luxury good and is highly sought after both on Xanu Prime and throughout inhabited space.

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Naya Khyber River Penguin

The Naya Khyber River Penguin is a mysterious and odd creature. It is a flightless bird resembling an Earther penguin that stands no taller than one meter high. It is coloured in a deep green color and white rather than black and white typical of penguins on Earth, and has a small crest of red feathers on its head. Scientists believe that the bird’s DNA is almost entirely native to Xanu Prime, though others allege that it is distantly related to the rockhopper penguin of Earth. These birds inhabit the Naya Khyber River Delta and swim in packs through the delta’s wide meandering channels on hunts for fish and crustaceans which they stab with their short but sharp beaks. While quite clumsy and slow on dry land, getting around via a hopping motion more often than walking, they are incredibly quick in the water and can go as fast as 40kph in short bursts. They’re very social and often live in colonies along the shores of the Naya Khyber River, the largest of which was recorded to be over fifty-thousand birds, though the average is around four-thousand. They are fiercely territorial and have a mean streak. This reputation is the result of their tendency to attack other animals which get too close to their nests, typically via attempting to peck out their eyes. Even careless humans have been known to be attacked by these penguins. Despite this behavior however, many see the flightless birds as cute, cuddly, and silly perhaps due to their awkwardness while moving out of water. The foremost example of this reputation is the well-known Xanan children’s cartoon Pierre and Friends, starring Pierre the River Penguin, a clumsy but well meaning young penguin learning about the world, as its main character. The show and Pierre as a character are well-liked by parents and educators for, perhaps ironically, helping to teach children the values of cooperation, sharing, and not bullying others.

Aside from animals unique to Xanu Prime, the planet also has animals that have been seeded on the planet from Earth. Rodents, birds, some fishes, and other creatures like insects have been successfully imported to the planet and despite their invasive nature, have fit well into Xanu’s biosphere. The national animal of Xanu Prime is the Indian Peafowl, a bird brought to the colony by its original colonists.

Xanu Prime has a wide variety of flora as well, with the northern rainforests of Nouvelle-Occitanie alone housing thousands of tree and plant species. The most notable of these is the Great New Occitanian Lupine, a great green and white flower resembling an Earth lupine reaching nearly twenty feet tall. It emits a sweet smell, and these plants can often be seen covered in millions of pollinating insects looking to get its nectar. To the south, the coasts of the entire continent of Paasland are covered in forests of the Yellow-Spotted Shedding Mangrove, a mangrove tree similar to those found on Earth with leaves that have a natural green hue but which take on striking golden spots during the summer months. Scientists believe this is a chemical reaction that results from the concentration of excess salt in the leaves before they then fall off towards the end of summer to rid themselves of the salt in a process referred to as shedding, the leaves then regrowing during the autumn season. On the continent of Naya Khyber, the Whistling Pineberry Tree can be found. This coniferous tree can reach over 65 meters in height and is unique among other trees in its family for having needle-like leaves that are hollow and also open at both ends. When the wind blows, the leaves of the tree resonate with a whistling noise similar to the mating call of local birds. Botanists believe that this is an evolutionary adaptation that has the goal of calling more birds to the tree so that they may scatter its seeds, contained in small berries rather than pinecones, more easily, citing the fact that the geographic distribution of the subspecies of the Whistling Pine mirror those of various bird populations.

Government and Politics

Official Banner of the All-Xanu Republic

“A strong president is a strong government is a strong Xanu.” - Nicolaas Sneijders, 4th President of the All-Xanu Republic (2305-2320)

The All Xanu-Republic has a parliamentary semi-presidential government that consists of three branches, the executive, legislative, and judicial branch that operates as a unitary state. It is often described as having a strong executive and weak legislative branch, with the majority of power in the Xanan system being held by the Office of the President. Xanu’s political process has very low barriers to entry and as a result, the planet has the most registered political parties of any planet in the Orion Spur. Despite this great number however, only nine parties currently have seats in the All-Xanu National Congress. The Xanan government system and its various political parties can all be read about here on the dedicated Xanu Prime Government and Politics page. The current President of the All-Xanu Republic is Jaques Afza of the party the All-Xanu Free League. He is Xanu Prime’s 23rd president, has held the office since 2460, and recently won reelection in 2465. He will leave office in 2470 as per the two-term constitutional limit for Xanan presidents. To read more on the Xanan government’s structure and functions, the political parties which currently hold sway on the national stage, as well as the country's foreign relations, see the dedicated page for Xanan government and politics.

The Xanan government supports a well-funded and well-equipped variety of state systems aimed at helping its citizens with a variety of issues and problems that they may come across. The All-Xanu Health Office is one of Xanu Prime’s oldest and most successful government agencies, and is something that many Xanans consider to be the best thing to come out of Xanu’s Second Astonishment, aside from the reconstruction of the planet as a whole. The Health Office, or often just known as the AXHO, is the framework by which many ordinary Xanans receive medical care. It operates by working with privately-owned hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to subsidize medical and research costs, while also giving Xanan citizens progressive financial assistance in paying for healthcare, the level of which is determined by a citizen’s income. Those Xanans who are in the upper income brackets do not receive as much as those in the lower ones, who often have most if not all of their healthcare expenses subsidized by the government. In addition to this, the AXHO operates dozens of clinics and even some hospitals all around the planet where healthcare costs are subsidized by the Office’s coffers. The AXHO has a similar arrangement of financial assistance to self-owned positronic Xanans as well, but for repair costs rather than healthcare expenses. Nearly every Xanan believes that the AXHO is a good thing, regardless of political affiliation, though there is some controversy and dispute over how it should be run, either more centralized with more state control over healthcare, or the semi-public, semi-private model that it has used for the last century and a half.

While Xanan healthcare may be decentralized in structure, some of its other institutions are not, the finest example of which is the All-Xanu Public Security Office. The Security Office functions as Xanu Prime’s unitary police force and operates in a pyramidal structure, going from the office’s head down to departmental and local police forces. These local police forces usually operate on a city or departmental sub are given autonomy on many of their day-to-day operations, but if a major case emerges, such as a serial killing or terrorist threat, investigators and officials from higher up in the organization’s structure usually take over. The AXPSO generally maintains a good relationship with Xanan citizens, though there have been allegations of xenophobia aimed at aliens like Tajara, Unathi, and Diona made against the Office for many years.

Although often erroneously referred to as a government apparatus, the largest news provider on Xanu Prime, the Xanan News Service (XNS) is not owned nor operated by the Xanan government. The XNS was created by order of President Sneijders during the aftermath of the Interstellar War as an independent news agency that was funded by the country’s government but was not beholden to it in terms of who it hired or what types of stories it decided to give coverage to. Since then, it has conducted generally well-received and professional journalism and is one of the most read and watched news agencies in the Orion Spur, with the majority of its coverage being centered on issues and topics impacting the Coalition of Colonies and Human Frontier. Recently, however, it has also experimentally expanded into the Human Wildlands and is one of the only major agencies that has been able to cover the ongoing war in the Northern Wildlands of former Sol in any depth.

The logo of the Xanan News Service used from 2442 - Present

Language

“A common tongue means a common future.” - Marcel Singh, pioneer of the Xanan Freespeak language

The official language of Xanu Prime is Xanan Freespeak, a language that developed in the early days of the Xanu Prime colony from the grammatical hybridization of various languages from the Indian subcontinent with some loanwords taken from French and Dutch. It was formally codified in 2230 during the aftermath of the Xanan Civil War to function as a common tongue between the planet’s various colonists that could be easily learned and used words that were from their countries of origin. While many places on Xanu Prime have names taken from the languages of its original colonizing nations like Hindi, French, Urdu, Bangla, and Dutch, very few if any people on the planet are still conversational in these languages, with almost all of them having been supplanted by Xanan Freespeak. Freespeak is taught in all schools, is known by nearly every resident of Xanu Prime, and is taught throughout the Coalition of Colonies as a lingua franca used for diplomacy and business relations between its various member states. Xanan government functions, law, and academia use Freespeak as their primary language, though Freespeak is not the only language spoken on Xanu Prime. Signage, popular media, literature, music, and film found in Xanu all are typically in Freespeak, but languages from all over the Coalition of Colonies can be found here, especially within ethnic communities from planets that speak a language other than Freespeak as their primary language. Himean Common, Sol Common, Assunzionii Tradeband, Gadpathuri Common, and even Vulgar Morozi are spoken on Xanu Prime within ethnic communities. Any hopeful immigrant to Xanu Prime must pass a Xanan Freespeak proficiency test in order to receive citizenship.

Life, Culture, & Society on Xanu Prime

“Our biggest strength lies not with our economic prowess, nor with our military might, but with the beauty of our people, the nobility of their ideals, and the sanctity of our culture and its works.” - Ameliye Flohimont, Tenth President of the All-Xanu Republic during a 2363 speech to the All-Xanu National Congress in favor of an expansion to the All-Xanu Eloise Brel Art Gallery

Xanan Culture and Xanan Society are very rich and detailed topics which have a variety of facets and great depth. Xanan culture takes cues from the most prominent of its founding cultures and has a society that places great importance on the family unit. Xanan culture is collective, in the sense that people are encouraged to watch out for one another and the general cultural mindset is to see oneself as a meaningful member of their community. Xanan society is very diverse and multicultural and the planet has numerous immigrant communities that help make-up the planet’s dynamic socio-cultural ecosystem. Xanu Prime hosts a variety of different religions as well, the most prominent being Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. Its society is not perfect however and has its issues, chief among them being a growing income inequality, anti-immigrant sentiments, and tension over the planet’s place in the Coalition of Colonies. Xanan art and entertainment produced by Xanan companies is some of the most popular in human space, with Xanan films, Holovision programs, consumed throughout the Coalition of Colonies and human frontier. Xanan cuisine is something that the planet is famous for across the Orion Spur and some of its dishes are staples of fine-dining. Xanan architecture and fashion too are distinctive to the planet and have their own stories. Xanan sports are very popular on the planet as well, the most played and watched being football in the All-Xanu Ultraleague, and Class A Cricket in the Alphaleague. Details on all of these subjects and more on general life on Xanu Prime and the planet’s societal composition and issues can be found on the dedicated page for Xanan life, culture, and society.

Xanan society is one that values individual liberties while paying close attention to how these liberties can sometimes hurt society as a whole if taken too far. This can be reflected in their legal code. Xanu Prime has strong legal protections against government restrictions on speech, though things like hate speech and slander are still illegal. There is no state religion on Xanu Prime and Xanans are free to practice, or not practice, any religion they please. The country does have very strong secularism laws though, and bans government employees and government buildings from wearing or displaying religious symbols or forms of dress. Some decry this as an intrusion onto the religious freedoms of citizens, though the majority of Xanan society is in support of strong secularization laws. Private firearms ownership is permitted on Xanu Prime, however it is restricted. A Xanan citizen requires a government permit, background check, and legitimate reason (typically for hunting or home defense) before they are allowed to own a private firearm. They cannot carry their weapons in public and they cannot own fully automatic ballistic firearms or lethal-strength lasers or similar battery-powered weapons. Xanans have total freedom of movement throughout the All-Xanan Republic, and have various legal protections against external intrusions on individual privacy, both physical and digital. The Xanan press and news media is one of the most, if not the most active in human-inhabited space. There are thousands of different publications and news sources in the All-Xanu Republic, and Xanan journalism is some of the most robust in the Orion Spur. Much of this is because of the Xanan government’s policies which award special protections to news agencies and impose a higher standard of evidence in defamation lawsuits against them. News and media are not totally unregulated on Xanu Prime though; the Xanan government created an independent regulatory agency, the All-Xanu Media Ethics Commission (MEC), in 2329 so as to ensure that the fledgling media of the newly independent All-Xanu Republic would not succumb to the perils of sensationalism and fake news. The MEC has the power to censor and fine publications with reporting that has proven to be false or so biased that it burgeons on false. This does not mean that the MEC forces all Xanan news outlets to be entirely neutral, far from it in fact, just that they must show at least some balance in their stories and programming.

Economy

“Economically, even through hardship, we remain unparalleled among our peers. We should be keen to enjoy the vices and virtues of prosperity to the fullest extent possible.” - Lennox Sibelius, Xanan Finance Minister under President Narayan Mukhopadhyay during a 2440 address to the National Parliament

Economic Overview

Xanu Prime is the proud home of the largest and most diverse economy within the Coalition of Colonies. Spanning across nearly every sector imaginable aside from large-scale mining, the economy of Xanu Prime is not only the largest in the Coalition of Colonies but one of the largest in the Orion Spur, only being surpassed by Biesel, Callisto, and Eridani I in terms of GDP. Xanu Prime is home to the head offices of the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate’s and Einstein Engines’ Coalition of Colonies operations and also houses other facilities like data centers and research laboratories for many of them as well. Xanu Prime’s financial service and banking sectors are the largest in the Coalition and help connect Xanu to planets and businesses across the Orion Spur, with its banks holding trillions in assets on any given day. The Xanan Stock Exchange is located in Nouvelle-Rochelle, and is the largest of its kind in the CoC and third largest exchange in the Orion Spur by volume of credits moved through its markets. Company stocks and other assets from all over the Coalition of Colonies and some from outside of it are traded there.

The pride of Xanu Prime’s economy and arguably the reason for its continued ascendency in the Orion Spur is Xanu’s shipping sector. Xanu Prime’s merchant marine is the largest of any in the Orion Spur, numbering just over fifty-thousand. Xanan shipping conglomerates dominate the Coalition of Colonies and have near monopolies over that sector in some parts of Coalition space. Within the Coalition, Xanu Prime is the king of foreign trade, and the Xanan shipping industry is to thank for this status. Xanan shipping firms do not just move cargo between Xanu Prime and other planets in the Coalition, but also routinely take shipping routes between planets far from Xanan space such as the ports of the Commonwealth of Callisto. If goods are moving through space in the Coalition, it is a safe assumption that they are on a Xanan ship. Xanu’s shipping sector was paralyzed in the early days of the ongoing phoron scarcity, but after many of its firms renegotiated phoron contracts with NanoTrasen and payed exorbitant amounts for Einstein Engines’ hammer drive, this area of Xanu’s economy has reasserted its prominence in the Orion Spur.

Domestically, Xanu Prime also has a strong agricultural and technology sector. Xanu Prime just barely produces enough food to feed all of its citizens but often imports food from Vysoka due to its far cheaper price and abundance, keeping Xanu-grown food in storage for national emergencies. Xanu’s tech sector is booming, with much of its development being pushed towards AI and posibrain coding and development. Ever since the addition of Konyang to the Coalition of Colonies, these efforts have only grown stronger with Xanan and Konyang-based firms and corporations having fewer barriers to cooperation than ever before. IPC chassis and posibrain manufacturing also plays a small part in Xanu Prime’s tech sector, but most of these jobs have moved to Konyang in recent years, with only a few companies still making IPCs on the planet.

Xanu’s heavy industry, manufacturing, and construction sectors are also very strong, but have less reach outside of Xanan markets than some of the planet’s other industries. Xanan steel, automobiles, and machine components are renowned for their quality but are also usually more expensive than the same materials made on other Coalition worlds, such as Himeo and Konyang, though they often exceed their competitors in build quality. Areas where Xanan manufactured goods see almost universal purchase across the Coalition is military equipment, aerospace products, medical equipment, and chemicals. Xanu-made military materiel and weapons are used by nearly every planet across the Coalition and have established reputations for being combat and cost-effective, easy to use, and technologically competitive. While certainly not the cheapest, military equipment made by Xanan companies is considered by defense ministers across the coalition to be some of the best weaponry money can buy. Similarly, Xanan designed-ships, both civilian and military, can be seen all over the Coalition. Xanu does not make the most ships of the worlds in the Coalition, but it does sell the most ship designs, meaning that many Xanan shipbuilding firms have made more money from selling ship blueprints and licenses than from having actually built spacecraft. Chemicals synthesized on Xanu Prime for industrial, agricultural, pharmaceutical, and scientific purposes are exported all across the Coalition of Colonies and even to other places in the Orion Spur like the Republic of Biesel. The sheer variety of compounds made in Xanu’s chemical plants is hard for any planet in the Spur’s east to match, though Xanu is unable to make some specialty chemicals produced on other worlds like Aemaq due to not having the same unique environmental conditions. Xanan construction firms usually only take on projects that are on Xanu Prime, but their engineers and architects are sent all over the Coalition and beyond to advise or plan projects for other worlds.

Xanu’s energy and phoronics sector was thrown into chaos during the early days of the phoron scarcity but has since begun to stabilize itself. Much of Xanu Prime’s energy generation came from fusion nuclear energy plants before the scarcity, but the NanoTrasen corporation did operate some Phoron Supermatter energy plants that made up a sizable minority of Xanu’s energy needs as well. The sudden scarcity of phoron made these supermatter plants output far less energy than they had before, and brown-outs were common across the planet for months after the scarcity had hit in full force. Xanu’s economy and government were quick to act though, reactivating decommissioned fusion plants and ramping up domestic Helium-3 production from its primary source, the Mehmud Khan Helium-3 platform. This platform is a grand space station which orbits Xanu-7, a colossal gas giant in the Xanu System and harvests the gas from its atmosphere. Slowly but surely, energy prices on Xanu Prime have restabilized, and the Xanan government has made concentrated efforts to “de-phoronize” the energy sector to avoid further dependence on the scarce element.

Corporations

Xanu Prime’s economy is not only occupied by megacorporations known throughout the spur like Einstein Engines or those in the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate, but also by comparatively smaller domestic corporations. These corporations grew out of the aftermath of the Interstellar War and Second Astonishment during a time when foreign megacorporations were very hesitant to invest in the Coalition of Colonies and human frontier. Many cite this hesitation as stemming from the still lingering shock of the Second Great Depression, a general anxiety about doing business with dozens of new nations in the Coalition, and uncertainty as to how the Coalition of Colonies' and by extension Xanu's economy would fare if something were to ever go wrong on the scale of the Second Great Depression ever again. By the time that the megacorporations were organised enough and felt confident enough to seriously invest in Coalition and Xanan space, they found it easier to cooperate with the companies already there and to use their expertise in operating across such a vast area of space like the Coalition rather than competing with or purchase the companies for themselves. For this reason, Xanan companies are known to have substantial sway on the Xanan and Coalition economy as a whole, but also cooperate closely with both SCC and Einstein Engines enterprises based on Xanu Prime and throughout the CoC. The most notable of these Xanan companies are:

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Polaris Holdings - "Heavenly Guidance"

The logo of Polaris Holdings.

Polaris Holdings, or just simply Polaris, is both the newest and largest of all major Xanan corporations. It was founded as a merger between the companies of Credit Xanan and AIRtel, both of which still exist and operate as subsidiary companies under Polaris Holdings ownership. The two companies merged in 2452 under the guidance of then-Credit Xanan, now-Polaris Holdings CEO Arjun Desjardins, a self-made man of boundless ambition who rose from the mail room of a small credit-Xanu branch to the top of Polaris Holdings wishing to elevate the corporation to the same level as Biesel’s and Sol’s megacorps. While this vision has yet to be entirely realized, Polaris aims to someday have its name be spoken in the same breath as Einstein Engines or the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate. Of its many component companies, the largest are Credit Xanan, CESAR-X, AIRtel, and Annapurna.

Credit Xanan is the largest bank and financial services firm on Xanu Prime and is one of the most influential players in nearly all of the Coalition's financial markets. The company was established in 2294 by a group of Xanan businesspeople who saw an opportunity to provide banking and financial services to Xanu’s citizens during the aftermath of the Interstellar War. The company is one of the foremost in the banking and finance industry spur-wide and has cooperation agreements with other similar firms across the Orion Spur such as Idris Incorporated, NanoTrasen’s financial services and banking wing, and Suezbank. The company is well-known for its aggressive venture capital and hedge fund management, with a sizable chunk of the company being solely devoted to investment banking. It also has a reputation for leveraging debt against bankrupt business debtors to acquire their companies and either absorb them into the Polaris Holdings ecosystem, thereby growing the company, or liquidate them and pocket the cash. The bank is ubiquitous as a trusted financial institution across the Coalition of Colonies for both companies and individual citizens alike. Some business analysts estimate that Credit Xanan is the single-most valuable Coalition of Colonies company currently operating, but the privately owned nature of the bank and its conservative information release practices make this hard to prove. The bank is closely tied to the Nouvelle-Rochelle Stock Exchange and for many the Coalition-over looking to invest either as individual retail investors trying to play the markets or as companies hoping to increase their assets, Credit Xanan is the first name in consulting, investment help, and wealth management. It has had its head offices in Nouvelle-Rochelle since its founding.

Along with Credit Xanan’s lucrative banking and investment operations, Polaris Holdings inherited ownership of the largest industrial conglomerate on Xanu Prime from the bank, the Pataliputra-based, formerly state-owned Xanan Concern for Economic Stability, Advancement, and Recovery, or CESAR-X. While its glory days of rebuilding Xanan society from the ground up are far behind it, CESAR-X still remains dominant in the Xanan construction and manufacturing sectors, making everything from machine parts to household appliances to medical equipment to semiconductors to complex engineering and construction components. It cannot compete abroad in heavy industrial manufacturing like it once did, but CESAR-X has reinvented itself since its acquisition by Credit Xanan to instead focus on precision manufacturing and specialty products, a strategy which has brought it back from the brink of bankruptcy. CESAR-X’s Paastad-based construction division is active on Xanu Prime and abroad and its projects have garnered a reputation for setting the industry standard in the Coalition for build quality and engineering. Because of its history, many on Xanu Prime, especially the planet’s older population, have a fond nostalgia for the company and its days as the engine of Xanu Prime’s economic boom. This nostalgia and history is something that the company uses in its marketing often, evoking the Second Astonishment; Xanan Renaissance; and burgeoning economic climate of the 2380’s and 90’s in some of its corporate imagery, while generally just playing up Xanan Patriotism in its branding.

Achgelis-Illouz-Ramakrishnan Telecommunications or AIRtel for short, is the largest telecommunications company on Xanu Prime and was one of the two entities that came together in 2456 to create Polaris Holdings. The company is named after its three founding families, two enterprising telecommunications engineers who got their start installing electrical and internet lines in Kshatragarh during its reconstruction. From there, their company came to be television and internet service providers in the 2320’s and have further since expanded their services to include mobile phone, web hosting and web services, cybersecurity, data storage, and the Coalition’s most popular search engine, SuperSeek, the mascot of which is a colorful, green and orange parakeet. AIRtel also has a division called AIR Media, a production company and holovision network that operates some of the largest film-production studios on Xanu Prime and has ownership over numerous popular franchises and media properties. It also operates one of the most popular film and TV streaming services in the Coalition, Sunserve.

The last of Polaris Holdings’s most notable subsidiaries is Annapurna, an agricultural and retail giant from the city of Foy-Niljen. Annapurna began its corporate life as a food distribution company which arose during the aftermath of the Xanan Civil War. It grew slowly between the two wars, coming to be a leading name in the industrial food sector in its home city. The Interstellar War saw Annapurna grow larger and richer off of Xanan and Coalition government contracts for rations and other foodstuffs for Coalition forces during the war. By the end of the war, Annapurna came to own many of the farms around Foy-Niljen where it had before bought the raw foods for its products. Wishing then to break into the consumer market rather than just the industrial food sector, the company opened up a chain of supermarkets in 2313 called NexChange (a portmanteau of the words “next” and “exchange”) starting in their home city before expanding to Kshatragarh and Nouvelle Rochelle a few years later. As one would expect, the stores didn’t just sell food, but also clothes, tools, home goods, appliances, and a bevy of other products, but what set NexChange apart from its competitors was the company’s policy of subscription-based shopping where a customer could pay a monthly fee for the ability to check-out a rotating selection of items for free that would change every month. After a few decades of steady success and continued expansion, the company unveiled a new line of stores focused on being small, 24-hour convenience stores focused on stocking household essentials, alcohol, and hot food ready at any time of the day called NexChange Turbo. In 2358, NexChange became Xanu Prime’s largest retailer by number of stores and it’s stayed in that position ever since. Annapurna also operates an online storefront for the NexChange brand called NetChange. It has also expanded to other planets in the Coalition, with great success being seen on Assunzione with the NetChange service, and the Galatean Federation and Konyang with the NexChange Turbo chain of stores especially. NexChange’s success enabled Annapurna to purchase more and more farmland and food processing plants, and by the late 2370’s it had become the largest agricultural and food corporation on Xanu Prime. As the 2380’s rolled around, it expanded its operations to Vysoka, taking advantage of the planet’s ample farm and ranchland, and it operates there to this day. Because of the company’s consistently good performance and an ambitious desire to break into yet another influential and diverse industry, the Polaris Holdings acquired Annapurna in the largest company purchase in Coalition history in 2460.

Polaris Holdings owns the tallest building in the Coalition of Colonies, North Star Tower, which serves as their headquarters in Nouvelle-Rochelle.

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Siddhartha Systems Incorporated - "Enlightenment Made Material"

The logo of Siddhartha Systems Inc.

Siddhartha Systems Incorporated, also referred to as SiddSys is a leader in Xanu Prime’s tech space across a variety of fields. Founded in 2329 as Siddhartha Technology Services by Arjun Sudev, it was originally a computer repair and technology installation company based out of a single, family-owned, store, the company has since grown to produce its own hardware, and more importantly software. Siddhartha Systems owns the rights to software used in thousands of pieces of technology across the Coalition and beyond, from personal computers to building automation to ship control systems to even AI mainframes and posibrains. The company is notable for being the first on Xanu Prime to indigenously produce a posibrain, a feat that occurred in 2411 after the corporation purchased positronic designs from Einstein Engines. To this end, Siddhartha Systems is still one of the leaders in IPC programming in the Coalition, having cooperated extensively with Konyanger firms, Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals and Einstein Engines since Konyang’s admittance to the Coalition of Colonies to further advance the fields of AI and IPC development. The firm is also one of the last that still builds IPCs on Xanu Prime itself, with most of these jobs having since left to Konyang after the world joined the CoC. The company has promised to continue IPC assembly on Xanu for as long as it can be feasibly sustained, and has found itself as one of the premier IPC maintenance service providers on Xanu Prime. Along with its IPC wing, the company also produces a variety of computer models and smart devices ranging from personal computers to PDAs and tablets to high-tech data storage servers to entire mainframes for spacecraft. SiddSys has also produced one of the most popular computer operating system in the Coalition of Colonies, DevaOS, for over a century, the first edition of which debuted in 2350. It owns a chain of maintenance shops for IPCs across Xanu Prime called Vishwakarma's Workshop. The company is headquartered in Nouvelle-Rochelle and their CEO is Lars Sudev, a descendant of the company’s founder and head of the family which owns the company.

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d.N.A. Defense & Aerospace - "Excellence is in our d.N.A."

The logo of d.N.A. Defense & Aerospace.

d.N.A. Defense & Aerospace, short for de Namur-Aarden Defense and Aerospace, is the premier defense contractor and aerospace giant of Xanu Prime. They were founded in 2409 as the result of a merger between two smaller defense companies, de Namur Defense Systems and Aarden Aerospace and has gradually grown to become the largest and most influential producer of weapons and war materiel for the Xanan military and many others in the Coalition of Colonies. Many accredit this success to the company’s up-front marketing campaigns in which they test their own equipment and weaponry against that of their competitors and freely post the video results online in an effort to impress potential buyers. Among the products that d.N.A. is famous for is the Kestrel-class destroyer, a ship design originally released in 2441 that has become the most produced military ship-hull in all of the coalition, either by d.N.A. itself or foreign manufacturers under license. A similarly ubiquitous smaller ship designed by d.N.A. is the Shrike-class corvette, a nimble, versatile, multi-purpose craft used throughout the Coalition. Their range of products is not just limited to ships though; small-arms, explosives, anti-ship missiles, drones, tanks, radars, and truly anything else a fighting force could want is produced at least to some extent by d.N.A. The company offers full support and upgrade packages to its old equipment along with producing cutting edge weaponry for those willing to pay top dollar. The company has a research-sharing agreement with Zavodskoi Interstellar and also serves as the primary distributor of Zavodskoi-made equipment to the Human Frontier. Furthermore, it has a working relationship with the Federal Technocracy of Galatea’s defense sector – though d.N.A. and Galatea’s Interstellar Avionics Research Bureau (IARG) have long held a rivalry over if the d.N.A. Shrike-class or the Galatean Amaryillis-class is the superior corvette. In 2449 d.N.A. opened a private security contractor wing called Chevauchée Asset Protection aimed at providing services to business customers and merchant shipping firms. d.N.A. has been known to cooperate with the PMCG, especially with Xanu Defense Services, as both an equipment dealer and occasional joint-partner in security contracts. Along with their military operations, d.N.A. is a leading producer of civilian shuttles and other civilian passenger craft, either through making their own designs or building Hephaestus of Einstein Engines models under license for sale in the Coalition of Colonies. They are headquartered in Foy-Nijlen and their CEO is Yves Fazail.

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Markhor Interstellar Logistics Group - "Move Mountains with Markhor!"

The logo of Markhor Interstellar Logistics Group.

Markhor Interstellar Logistics Group, or just Markhor, is the beating heart of Xanu Prime’s vibrant shipping industry. The firm was founded in 2291 by a clique of ex-All-Xanu Spacefleet officers looking to put their spacefaring skills to use after they were discharged from the Xanan military following its downsizing after the Interstellar War. They built upon already existing economic connections between Xanu Prime and the other worlds in the Coalition of Colonies to amass a shipping empire in the coming decades, running routes between Xanu and all other major worlds in the Coalition by the year 2324. By 2336, they were the largest shipping company operating in Xanan space and have maintained their position at the top of their industry ever since. In the present, Markhor does not only operate shipping lines, but makes many of their own vessels in-house and contracts their shipbuilding services out to other companies looking for vessels. The company owns shipyards on Xanu Prime, Vysoka, and Assunzione and has cooperation agreements with various Himean shipbuilding syndicates and Galatean research firms. Additionally, the company has welcomed cooperation with the newly founded Orion Express in order to access shipping avenues outside of the Coalition and has entered into various co-research agreements with Hephaestus Industries in the past. Most recently though, the company signed a trade deal for an undisclosed but likely exorbitant amount of credits with Einstein Engines for the megacorporation to refit many Markhor shipping vessels with EE’s innovative Helium-3-fueled hammer drives. Along with their prowess as a shipping and shipbuilding giant, Markhor also has a great amount of sway in the Xanan retail sector and owns many department stores and retail chains the most notable of them being Shaheen Superstore, the largest supermarket chain on Xanu Prime. They are headquartered in Pataliputra and their CEO is Marianne Travert.

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Boelens & Vaeghts Chemical Corporation - "The Chemistry of Progress"

The logo of the Boelens & Vaeghts Chemical Company.

The Boelens & Vaeghts Chemical Corporation, typically just referred to as B&V, was founded in 2356 by a businesswoman named Aimée Vaeghts and a chemical engineer named Kishore Boelens with the initial goal of creating chemicals for pharmaceutical companies across the Coalition of Colonies. Over the years, through clever business decisions and diversification into the agricultural and industrial chemical sectors, Boelens & Vaeghts has risen to be the predominant player in Xanu Prime’s chemical industry. They produce an exceptionally wide variety of chemicals in their various facilities and operate under an unorthodox production model which starts with shipping raw chemical ingredients to regional or planetary synthesization centers which then synthesize specific, more complex chemicals in the areas where demand is most high for them. As such, agricultural plants are located in the country or on planets where fertilizers are needed, pharmaceutical plants are typically in cities or highly urbanized planets, and so on. The company has been a close cooperator with Zeng-Hu Pharmaceuticals since the 2380’s and has also worked closely with NanoTrasen to help bring NT medicines like peridaxon and cardox to the Coalition of Colonies market. B&V often works with the Federal Technocracy of Galatea’s biotechnology sector, and operates some facilities on the Galatean industrial world of Svarog. Boelens & Vaeghts also owns Tuliprose Healthcare, a medical services conglomerate which owns over two-hundred hospitals on Xanu Prime, seventeen on Vysoka, eight on Konyang, and three on Assunzione. They are headquartered in Pataliputra and their CEO is Preeti Boelens, granddaughter of one of the company’s founders.

Military

"Prosperity in Peace, Victory in War" - Motto of the All-Xanu Armed Forces

The field insignia of the All-Xanu Armed Forces and roundel of the All-Xanu Spacefleet. The symbol began as a standard marking for Xanu Prime’s Sol-era planetary defense forces and is now on all sorts of Xanan equipment from fighters to tanks to drones to uniforms.

The All-Xanu Armed Forces (AXAF) are the armed forces of the All-Xanu Republic and consist of the All-Xanu Army, Air Corps, Spacefleet, Maritime Patrol, and National Militia. The Xanan military is considered the premier fighting force of the Coalition of Colonies by nearly all of the alliance’s members and is perhaps the best equipped, and best trained of any in the Coalition. It is also quite large, with only Gadpathur’s military outclassing it in size. This gives it great influence over unified Coalition military policy with many of the Coalition Military’s top commanders being from Xanu Prime. Some elsewhere in the Coalition are wary of this level of influence, while others are more trusting of what some call Xanu Prime’s position of, “military stewardship,” over the Coalition. The modern iteration of Xanu Prime’s military was created during the early days of the Interstellar War and can trace its origins to Solarian planetary defense force units on Xanu that rebelled against the Sol Alliance. Since its inception during the Interstellar War, the All-Xanu Armed forces has fought in dozens of conflicts ranging from large-scale anti-piracy operations, to low-intensity conflicts against individual rogue planets or marauding warlords on the Coalition of Colonies’ frontiers. In the nearly two centuries of its existence, it has shown to have far more successes than failures and is something that many Xanan citizens take pride in. Xanu Prime has conscription and all citizens are required to serve in a military branch for two years or to engage in another national service such as getting a job with a state enterprise or completing at least a four-year degree from an accredited higher educational institution. Aside from these conscripts, the Xanan armed forces are fully professional and have far more professional soldiers than conscripts. The branches of the All-Xanu Armed Forces are:

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All-Xanu Grand Army

The All-Xanu Grand Army is the primary land force of Xanu Prime’s military. It serves two primary functions, to defend Xanu Prime’s territory and possessions against foreign threats, and to serve as the main expeditionary force for Xanu Prime’s military deployments on other planets in the Orion Spur. It is the oldest of Xanu Prime's armed forces and can trace its lineage back to the first planetary defense force regiments created in the aftermath of the Xanan Civil War. The title "Grand Army" was bestowed upon it during the Interstellar War after it successfully broke the Siege of Khairabad as both an honorary title and propagandistic move to boost morale among the ranks; it has stuck ever since. The Grand Army is characterized by its rapidly deployable nature and tactics which emphasise speed and shock assaults. With assistance from the All-Xanu Spacefleet, can be deployed on most planets in the Coalition of Colonies within a matter of days, despite some of its hardware being quite heavy and formidable. Xanan military equipment also reflects this doctrinal philosophy, with many things ranging from infantry weapons to trucks to tanks to drones being either quickly collapsible or disassemble for ease of transit and storage. Xanan-produced Army equipment is not only used by Xanu itself, but also by militaries across the Coalition large and small. A member of the All-Xanu Army is called a soldier.

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All-Xanu Air Corps

The All-Xanu Air Corps is the main force for in-atmosphere off-the-ground operations. They usually work in close conjunction with the All-Xanu Army and are responsible for the duties of air defense, air-to-ground attack operations, and air superiority. Much like the Army, their equipment is made to be rapidly deployable and easily transportable, and they usually deploy alongside the Army in both offensive and defensive operations. A member of the All-Xanu Air Corps is called an aviator.

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All-Xanu Spacefleet

The All-Xanu Spacefleet is the spaceborne component of Xanu Prime’s military and is the largest of its branches in terms of manpower, materiel, and has the largest share of the Xanan military budget. The fleet is quite large, numbering thousands of vessels, and is split into divisions called Expeditionary Fleets or E-Fleets. Each expeditionary fleet patrols a given portion of the Coalition of Colonies except for the 11th, 22nd, and 33rd Expeditionary Fleets which are based on Xanu Prime and assigned to the duty of rapid response to any area in the Coalition of Colonies or Human Frontier which may need immediate assistance. These three E-Fleets in particular are quite storied and experienced, with each having continuously existed in some form since the fighting of the Interstellar War. Each Expeditionary Fleet consists of sixty-five ships with a structure built around a cadre of two to five Nouvelle-Rochelle-class supercarriers, each carrying an ensemble of 120 spacecrafts of various specialization (starfighters, strike craft, early warning vessels) and a comprehensive suite of anti-ship weapons and point-defense systems. In addition to these carriers, the E-Fleets hold battlecruisers, cruisers, destroyers, and other specialized spacecraft. Contrasting their contemporaries in the Dominian Imperial Fleet, Solarian Navy, and some of their Coalition peers, the All-Xanu Spacefleet has strayed away from coilgun artillery as its primary offensive weapon system for many years and has instead focused their efforts on perfecting carrier-based warfare and anti-ship missiles. Xanu-designed starfighters and strike craft rank among some of the most formidable in the Orion Spur, placing an emphasis on stealth technology, maneuverability, operational range, and payload capacity. Xanan anti-ship missiles are incredibly advanced, with some of their newest models like the XLAM-63 Blackstar Long-Range Anti-Capital Cruise Missile possessing high-tech gadgets like antimatter warheads and integral teleportation drives to aid in avoiding point-defense fire. The mainstay of the All-Xanu Spacefleet and to a greater extent the Coalition of Colonies as a whole though is the d.N.A. Defense & Aerospace Shrike-class frigate. While not the newest of vessels, designed originally in 2441, the Estoc-class is an inexpensive vessel that can be configured to nearly any mission type. Be it screening for the rest of the fleet, relaying communications, serving as a command and control post, ferrying-supplies, being an anti-ship missile battery, operating as a light gunboat, running search-and-rescue, or even scouting and intercepting with it’s single ship-based fighter, the Estoc-class hull and systems can accomplish it with ease. Its versatility, quality, and rather inexpensive price tag has made it the most numerous military vessel employed by not just the All-Xanu Spacefleet but by Coalition of Colonies members as a whole.

The Spacefleet has its own soldier-to-soldier fighting branch as well, the Interstellar Infantry, colloquially called “The Double I’s.” Interstellar Infantrymen are experts in interdiction piloting, boarding actions, demolitions, and close-quarters combat, with many using high rate of fire subcaliber weapons, hardsuit mounted lasers and rocket-launchers, or even fully-automatic shotguns as their standard weapons in order to better perform in their intended environments. The signature weapon of the Double I’s though is the dNAC-25-2, a monster of a weapon system consisting of two dual-linked 25mm autocannons with a combined rate of fire of 1,000 rounds per minute that comes mounted on the right shoulder of each Interstellar Infantryman’s dNAXS-52 combat voidsuit and exoskeleton. While Interstellar Infantryman missions are usually quite dangerous, often with numerous unknown variables, one thing can be certain about them: no matter what, the Double I always has the bigger gun. Interstellar Infantrymen are some of the most respected and envied of all Spacefleet personnel and the standards which need to be met for a Spacefleet sailor to become a Double I are some of the most stringent and exclusive in all of the All-Xanu Armed Forces; they are truly the best Xanu Prime’s spacefleet has to offer. The All-Xanu Spacefleet engages in anti-piracy operations, transports the Army and Air Corps to where they need to be, and participates in foreign disaster relief actions. Additionally, the Spacefleet operates and maintains Xanu Prime’s weapons of mass destruction, those being self-guiding hammer-drive equipped interstellar kinetic-strike cruise missiles affectionately referred to by Spacefleet personnel as “Smart Rocks,” and in wartime is charged with the duties of interstellar supremacy and, if needed, orbital bombardment. Similarly to Xanu's other military equipment, Xanan ship designs can be found in many of the fleets of other Coalition of Colonies members, either built by other states under license or bought directly from Xanu itself. All-Xanu Spacefleet vessels bear the prefix AXSV, short for All-Xanu Spacefleet Vessel. A member of the All-Xanu Spacefleet is called a sailor.

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All-Xanu Maritime Patrol

The All-Xanu Maritime Patrol is the smallest of Xanu’s armed forces and is charged with the duty of patrolling, protecting, and conducting search and rescue missions in Xanu Prime’s terrestrial waters. The Maritime Patrol operates sea-faring vessels and aircraft which it uses to conduct its given duties. During wartime the Maritime Patrol handles the duties of air defense over Xanu Prime’s oceans. A member of the All-Xanu Maritime Patrol is called a mariner.

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All-Xanu National Militia

The All-Xanu National Militia is a branch of Xanu Prime’s military that straddles the divide between a military branch and a law enforcement agency. The National Militia is primarily a land-based force that operates only within Xanan territory and is seen as a “second line of defense” against external threats. National Militia units can also be used as stand-ins for All-Xanu Army units, and are typically used in this fashion temporarily when army units are redeployed elsewhere. The National Militia performs the duty of disaster relief and is used to reinforce police forces and other emergency services in times of emergency or civil unrest. The National Militia also operates small spacefaring vessels, typically no larger than cruisers, which patrol the Xanu system, carry out anti-smuggling actions, and respond to distress calls within the region. During wartime, the National Militia is charged with operating Xanu Prime’s spaceborne defense platforms and air defense systems over the continental land portions of Xanu Prime. The National Militia also functions as a military reserve for those who have completed their initial contracts with the All-Xanu Armed Forces and wish to serve as part-time soldiers. A member of the All-Xanu National Militia is called a national militiaman.

IPCs on Xanu Prime

"We are tinkerers no longer, but creators of the future." - Remark from Emilye Sudev, CEO of Siddhartha Systems Incorporated during the 2411 unveiling of the first Xanan-developed posibrain

The Xanan stance on IPCs is varied and unique within the Coalition, allowing for both for an IPC to own themselves as well as permitting the practice of IPC ownership. IPCs under Xanan law are not permitted to be made as free frames and instead they must be freed by their owners voluntarily or they may also accrue enough funds to purchase themselves from their owners for a “reasonable price” which is typically anywhere from three-to-six times the IPC’s retail value. There is no legal framework as to how owned IPCs are to actually obtain the wealth to buy themselves from their owners, as there’s no legal requirement that they be paid or compensated for their labor in any way; the decision to compensate an owned IPC or not for their work is left to the discretion of their owners. This seemingly impossible situation for owned-IPCs has led in recent years to the creation of a few charities across Xanu Prime dedicated to the task of fundraising cash to buy owned IPCs from their owners and then free them, the largest of these being the Pataliputra-based LibertIPC (Pronounced as Liberty-P-C). These charities are controversial to some, however they only manage to purchase a few thousand IPCs annually and do not have a substantial impact on truly increasing the self-owned IPC population of the planet to be any more than a minority of a minority. Most IPCs on Xanu Prime never get the ability to purchase themselves from their owners and are either freed or, more likely, deactivated by their owners and recycled after the end of their service lives. Legally, all Xanan IPCs must have the option to purchase themselves from their owners, however there are no current rules dictating how high or low the price for self-ownership must be, only that it is set at the purchase or manufacture of an IPC and cannot be changed once set.

Self-Owned IPCs on Xanu Prime have all the rights of their human counterparts; they can vote, run for office, own property, and serve in the military, however the latter is done only in IPC-only units for logistical reasons. The All-Xanu Armed Forces own many IPCs themselves and employ them in a variety of roles within the military, though it is illegal for these IPCs to be sold or freed by the AXAF as they are technically classified as state-owned weaponry. As such, many spend their entire service lives in the military and are deactivated with their components being recycled afterwards. The AXAF typically prefers placing IPCs they own in combat roles and officer positions over free IPCs due to their often built-in integration with Xanan battlefield control systems, with self-owned IPCs usually being placed in non-combat specialist or technician roles in their respective units. Maintenance for self-owned Xanan IPCs is covered by the Xanan state healthcare system while care for owned-IPCs is the responsibility of their owners, and there are laws in place to ensure that owned IPCs have access to maintenance services of adequate quality. A very small subset of Xanan IPCs are self-owned, but they do exist on the planet. IPCs are allowed to immigrate to Xanu Prime, however Xanu Prime does not accept IPC refugees unless they can prove they have obtained legal self-ownership from a previous owner or were created as free IPCs. In short, Xanu Prime does not give asylum to runaway IPCs and typically either deports them back to their countries of origin or defers them to other planets like Konyang and Himeo.

Societally, Xanans view IPCs as something entirely separate from humans and importantly, incompatible with the family structures that form the foundations of Xanan society. They see them as not the same as themselves, but do not shun them or hate them as others in the Orion Spur do. Xanans believe there is a place in their society broadly for IPCs, both free and owned, but do not see them as “living” things and treat them mostly as machines, albeit some with the rights of ordinary Xanan citizens. A small subset of the Xanan population are far more accepting of IPCs and wish to see them further integrated, while an equally small portion of Xanans scorn IPCs and want them to have as little influence on Xanan society as possible. Broadly however, most Xanans are tolerant of IPCs and see them as a normal part of life on Xanu Prime. IPCs were granted the ability to obtain citizenship in Xanu Prime in 2436 as part of the Mukhopadhyay Plan as a means to incentivize skilled IPC labourers to immigrate to Xanu Prime and help its economy during the Doldrums.

Cities

“From the ashes of our cities will be reborn a beautiful phoenix, illustrious and immaculate!” - Eloise Brel, First President of the All-Xanu Republic, 2275-2289

Xanu Prime's surface is dotted with millions of settlements, from massive metropolises to tiny villages and hamlets in its more remote areas. The most notable and important of Xanu Prime's many settlements however are the following cities:

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Nouvelle-Rochelle

Nouvelle-Rochelle, founded in 2181, is oldest of Xanu Prime's cities as well as its most populous, it serves as the planet’s capital and the seat of government for the All-Xanu Republic, the Coalition of Colonies, and the Fisanduhian government-in-exile. Not only is it the largest city on Xanu Prime, but the largest in the Coalition of Colonies and one of the largest in all of the Orion Spur. Nouvelle-Rochelle, much like Xanu Prime as a whole, is exceptionally diverse with people from all over human space and beyond found here. The city’s Kulkarni Business District is famous for its towering skyscrapers, with the tallest building in the Coalition, the Polaris Holdings-owned North Star Tower among them. While bustling, Nouvelle-Rochelle has its quiet parts as well, such as the famous Lechevalier District, a part of the city rebuilt after the Interstellar War and made to emulate authentic Parisian architecture. The district has styles ranging from lavish baroque era buildings to more austere or rococo-revivalist 19th and early 20th century styles, and even has buildings which take their inspiration from as far back as the medieval era such as the Our Lady of Sorrows Cathedral, a colossal gothic-style cathedral built between 2285 and 2299 in remembrance of the fallen of the two wars Xanu Prime experienced during the 23rd century. Its graveyard houses the largest statue of the Virgin Mary in human space, the eponymous Our Lady of Xanu, which stands at one hundred meters tall, completed in 2994 during the cathedral’s construction. It’s an exceptionally famous piece of Xanan art and images of it have been subject to numerous parody renditions by Xanu’s artistic community.

Many of Xanu Prime’s expat and immigrant communities can be found in Nouvelle-Rochelle too, with the city having districts where these communities have naturally coalesced. Vysokatown, Little Assunzione, and the Greentree District, home to Xanu Prime’s Fisanduhian community and seat of the Fisanduhian government in exile, are officially designated districts of Nouvelle-Rochelle, though other immigrant communities live here too, with each having unique twists on their native cultures that have fused with Xanu’s own. One of the most famous of Nouvelle-Rochelle’s districts though is the New Columbia District. Formerly the center of Nouvelle-Rochelle’s American colonist community in the immediate post-civil war years, New Columbia is now one of the leisure and art capitals of Xanu Prime. The most striking of its landmarks is Hastings Colosseum, affectionately referred to as “The Hall of Columns,” a gigantic 300,000-seat open-air stadium built from steel, concrete, marble, and glass in a modernist-classical fusion style which serves as the primary venue of Nouvelle-Rochelle for everything from cricket and football games, to stadium concerts, to trade exhibitions. It began construction in 2442 and was completed in 2444, just in time for Xanu Prime’s hosting of the Coalition Cup football tournament. It is the largest building of its kind in the Coalition and is the home stadium for Xanu Prime’s national football and cricket teams. Aside from just the stadium however, the New Columbia district is filled with greenery and is the home to the Columbia Spice Market, the largest open-air street market on Xanu Prime where vendors from not just all over Xanu but all over the Coalition can be found selling their wares. Surrounded by bars and restaurants on all sides, the market explodes with shoppers and sellers alike most during game days when fans from the stadium flood the market after games looking for food, drink, and generally a good time.

There is an entire district of the city devoted to the Coalition of Colonies government as well, the Xansan District. Within it is the Coalition of Colonies First Speaker’s residence, many of the CoC’s government agencies, the Coalition’s Representative Summit, and the Coalition of Colonies Supreme Court. This district is well-known across Xanu for its excellent showcasing of modernist architecture. This area of Nouvelle-Rochelle is not only notable as being the functional governmental and administrative capital of the Coalition of Colonies, but it is also where the Treaty of Xansan, the agreement which ended the Interstellar War, was signed. Xanu’s own government shares a district bordering the Xansan District, the Capital District, and instead has its own distinctive architectural style, simply known as the Xanan Style, that is the result of the fusion of its founding cultures of French, Indian, Dutch, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Belgian. Multiple museums and art galleries bankrolled by the Xanan government can be found here, with these establishments possessing some of the most eclectic art collections in human space. The largest of these and perhaps most well known is the All-Xanu Eloise Brel Gallery where works from within Xanu itself to as far away as the Solarian Core and even old pieces from Earth’s Renaissance era can be found on display for the public to see free of charge. Another building of note is the Crystal Lights Mosque, the largest mosque on Xanu Prime. It is quite striking in its construction, being a tall geodesic dome constructed of glass and steel with traditional stone minarets surrounding the mosque’s main building. It was built with the assistance of Damascene architects from Elyra in 2390 and can serve up to forty-thousand worshippers at once.

Another of the city’s most notable districts is the Olympique-Saraswati District, a picturesque low-rise district known for its revivalist Indian and French fusion architecture. The main draw of the district though is the three massive universities which find themselves here: Université Olympique - Nouvelle-Rochelle (UONR), Saraswati College (SC), and Vaeghts Medical School (VMS). UONR is a state-owned university founded in that is the largest on Xanu Prime and has an in-person student body numbering over two-hundred thousand, with millions more online students. Its standards for admission are moderate, meaning those with slightly above-average academic records applying to the school will probably get in. The school is well known across Xanu and the Orion Spur for its programs in business and aerospace engineering, though it is quite possible to get an accredited and respectable degree in nearly any subject here. The school’s campus is surrounded by bars and restaurants, and is known to be a cultural center of Xanu Prime where new music and food trends come from. The university has a list of notable alumni the size of the coalition itself, and tens of thousands of foreign students from throughout the CoC attend the university every year, giving it the most diverse campus on Xanu Prime and possibly in human space. Saraswati College, named for the Hindu goddess of knowledge, is perhaps the opposite of UONR in many ways. It is the oldest continually operating university on Xanu Prime, being founded in 2199 as a private college, and prides itself on its exclusivity. Admission standards for Saraswati College are ludicrously high and only those which show near perfect academic records are allowed to attend. Its campus embodies an Indian-revivalist look in style with many of its buildings resembling intricate art pieces more than schoolhouses or academic complexes. The some 10,000 students attending Saraswati College are given the best education that money can buy on Xanu Prime and it is particularly well-known for its law school and physics research institute. Graduating from Saraswati College is an incredibly prestigious feat, and its alumni have gone on to hold positions of power in the Xanan government and some of its most influential corporations. The last of the big three universities in the Olympique-Saraswati district is the Vaeghts Medical School, the premier medical school of Xanu Prime. It was founded by businesswoman Aimée Vaeghts in 2389 after she had made her fortune in the chemical and biomedical industry through the company she founded, Boelens & Vaeghts Chemical. The university not only is a medical school, but also a hospital that serves the Olympique-Saraswati district of Nouvelle-Rochelle, a trait it uses to great effect for teaching its students with hands-on experience. While it is new in comparison to the other universities in its district, VMS takes after both UONR and SC in some ways. Its standards for admission are decently high, with potential students needing well above average, but not perfect academic records to be admitted and it also has a large portion of its student body be foreigners from around the Coalition coming to the school to receive a quality education in biomedicine.

Nouvelle-Rochelle also has numerous suburbs where many live to commute into the city, either by its expertly designed road network or the Echelon, a state-of-the-art superfast metro system which runs underneath almost the entire city. The Echelon is a modern marvel nearly two-hundred-and-fifty years in the making and is almost always being expanded to keep up with Nouvelle-Rochelle’s constant growth.

Nouvelle-Rochelle is nicknamed “Xanu’s First City,” and truly almost anything or anyone within the Coalition can be found here. They have two All-Xanu Ultraleague teams, both of which have a crosstown-rivalry with each other called the “The Battle of Rochelle.” The first of these teams is F.C. Columbia, named after the New Columbia district of the city, and their colors are red and blue. The city’s second team is A.S. Olympique-Saraswati, which can be found in the Olympique-Saraswati district. Their Alpha Cricket League team is the Nouvelle-Rochelle Captains, and their colors are blue and orange, and they hold the current record for most Alpha Cricket League championship titles with a total of 24 as of fall 2464 with their last win being in 2463.

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Pataliputra

The second largest of Xanu Prime’s cities, Pataliputra was founded in 2191 and serves as the largest port on Xanu and the largest in the Coalition of Colonies. It is only surpassed by Callisto in the amount of cargo traffic that moves in and out of its massive piers. Because of this, it is the headquarters of the Xanan and Coalition of Colonies admiralty and has a long-standing spacefaring tradition that stretches back centuries. The Xanan Space Travel Museum, a colossal structure dedicated to telling not just Xanu’s, but humanity’s history with space travel is in the city and draws in millions of tourists annually and pays homage to this heritage.

Pataliputra is also the site of the Patali-Ram Temple, a large Hindu temple dedicated to Ram, the eighth avatar of Vishnu. It was built by Xanu’s original Indian colonists from 2197 to 2215, and was constructed with aims to use the most authentic methods possible in an attempt to emulate traditional Indian stone temple architecture. It is a holy site for many of the planet’s Hindu population as it was said that during the Xanan Civil War and Interstellar War that not even a scratch came to the temple or those seeking refuge inside it despite the damage the wars brought to the rest of the city. Another notable feature of the Pataliputran cityscape are the city’s walls which date back to the Xanan Civil War. While many cities have walls such as these on Xanu prime, Pataliputra’s are the planet's most intact, with over 80% of the original walls and gun emplacements still being maintained as a memorial to the fallen of the Interstellar War and Xanan Civil War. The city’s growth has expanded far past these walls since the post-Interstellar War reconstruction efforts, yet the structures still serve as an unofficial symbol for Pataliputra and its people, regardless of religion.

Much of Xanu’s heavy industry has its home in Pataliputra as well, having moved here after the Interstellar War. Large factories and foundries can be found in the city’s industrial quarter and on its outskirts. Pataliputra houses Xanu’s largest shipyard as well, the République Ship Foundry, a sprawling complex owned by the Markhor Interstellar Logistics Group that takes up an entire district of the city and employs nearly five percent of its population. Additionally, what few IPCs are produced on Xanu Prime are made in Pataliputra, though Xanan IPC manufacturing has shrunk significantly since Konyang’s admittance to the Coalition of Colonies in 2463.

Pataliputra embodies a “work hard, play hard” type of culture as along with its heavy industry, the city’s Neon District has some of Xanu’s most exclusive and lavish nightclubs. The largest of these is the Idris-operated Seventh Heaven and is a huge 27 storey high-rise of a club with 33 bars, 21 dancefloors, four swimming pools, a casino, and two restaurants, one at the base of the structure and one at the summit. It also has an artificial waterfall that flows off of its northside down into one of the establishment’s swimming pools below. Establishments with less prestige (and those that fit cheaper tastes) also dot the cityscape, too so truly anyone can come to Pataliputra for a night out, a weekend of fun, or a month-long booze cruise. Among other notable attractions here is Umbrella Row, a series of narrow streets all of which are filled with open-air outdoor bars and restaurants that stay open until 4am. The area received its name from the large umbrellas that were fastened above some of the bars in order to provide shade or protection from the rain, but now many of the umbrellas are just there for aesthetic purposes since the bars and restaurants have since acquired awnings or roofs. Different breweries test their products here first before shipping them to other places on Xanu Prime, and the area is also well-known throughout the Xanan film scene for being where some of the biggest names in Xanu’s film industry, directors, actors or otherwise, got their starts. Accordingly, some of the planet’s largest film studios are located here in a district of the city commonly referred to as “Pataliwood.”

Pataliputra’s Admiralty District is quite notable as well. The district is known for the majority of its buildings being painted a light navy-blue color or made from materials in the same color. The tradition began with the All-Xanu Interstellar Naval College, the centerpiece of the district, when it was being built after the interstellar war and only blue bricks could be requisitioned for the buildings. The color as stuck and has since been adopted by the rest of the district and has become ubiquitous to a point where local ordinances dictate that buildings new cannot be built in the area unless they have at least 30% of their outward surface area covered by a shade of blue similar to the original “Admiralty Blue.” The All-Xanu Naval College itself, as the name may imply, is the premier university for Spacefleet officers on Xanu Prime. Construction on the university began in 2388, one year after the end of the Interstellar War. Officers from not just Xanu Prime, but the Coalition at large have attended the College and its graduates usually go on to find productive and lucrative careers in the armed forces or other industries which require similarly organizational, martial, or spacefaring skillsets. On the outskirts of the Admiralty district sits a veritable ring of bars often called the “Whiskey Circle” by the locals. These dive bars exist almost solely for the purpose of serving cheap drinks and hot food to Naval College cadets, but they’ve become a popular destination for Pataliputrans in general to have a fun night on the town on the cheap. Another standout district neighboring the Admiralty District is the Bamdha District, also known as Mokammeljela, a small yet densely populated area of the city mostly inhabited by Gadpathurian Exiles and their descendants.

The city is one of contrasts but manages to stay both an industrial center and the place to be for the latest in nightlife action on Xanu Prime. Their All-Xanu Ultraleague Team is Admiralty AC and their colors are blue and white. Admiral AC has the honor of holding the most Ultraleague titles as of Spring 2464 with a grand total of 36, their last win being in 2464 itself in a hotly contested 2-1 overtime match against Himavat City FC. Their Alpha Cricket League team is owned by the same organization that owns the football team and is also called Admiralty AC. Similarly, their colors are also blue and white.

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Foy-Niljen

Foy-Nijlen is the third largest of Xanu’s cities and is indisputably one of the most unique on the planet. The city was founded originally as two separate communities, Foy and Nijlen, settled across the Naya Khyber river from one another in 2191. Disputes between the two quickly arose after citizens and companies from both towns began to claim the same parts of riverfront property and land surrounding the two towns until their city councils agreed to unify into a single polity to resolve their jurisdictional issues. A name could not be decided upon, so the names were simply combined in alphabetical order to make Foy-Nijlen. The city was unremarkable for much of the 23rd century and served as the urban beacon in Xanu Prime’s farming heartland until the Interstellar War. During the war, while not besieged like other cities, it was bombarded relentlessly from orbit by the Solarian Navy to the point where when the rainy season came in 2281, the city’s bombed out streets, which now resembled ditches, turned into small canals when the Naya Khyber river burst its banks and flooded. After the war the decision was made to instead of replacing the roads, implement a brand new canal system in the city which would combine large waterways along with bridges and railroads as the city’s primary mode of transportation. The urban redevelopment plan was completed in 2319, and Foy-Nijlen has been known as “Xanu’s Canal City” ever since.

At one time Foy-Nijlen was the center of Xanu’s farm country, and while it still is an agriculture hub, it now also serves as the site for many of Xanu’s chemical and pharmaceutical plants, the ample and cheap water around the city making it attractive to many companies in the chemical industry. Agriculture exists outside of the city and this pastoral influence and close proximity to fresh food has made Foy-Nijlen the epicenter of Xanan culinary arts. Hundreds of restaurants and bars large and small dot the city and Foy-Nijlen’s cafe culture is very strong, ever changing while respecting time-tested Xanan traditions and tastes. Some of the finest restaurants and hotels in the coalition can be found in Foy-Nijlen, the most famous of which is called Sultana Rex Hotel and Grill. If Xanan luxury was a building it would be the Sultana Rex, and if it was a taste, it would be Naya Khyber river lobster cooked in river penguin blubber in the Sultana Rex kitchen. The hotel is a five-star establishment dating back to the First Astonishment, its construction finishing in 2241, originally built by an eccentric Bangladeshi colonist named Prasenji Sultana after he struck it rich in the asteroid mining industry. It is equipped with anything one could ever hope for, a day spa, three swimming pools, six hot tubs, casino parlor, winery, and restaurant, all while in the midst of downtown Foy-Niljen’s picturesque baroque-revivalist architecture. The hotel itself is made from artisan-chiseled and masoned hickory-brown and gray stone bricks and is opulently Second Empire in style, standing fifty floors tall with each window being an artistic stained-glass arrangement. This appearance along with the luxury found inside has earned it the nickname “The Brown Palace,” something that the Sultana family and the hotel’s marketing teams have been very keen to play into. The Brown Palace is one of Foy-Niljen’s few surviving examples of pre-Interstellar War architecture outside of the Old Town district and was used as a hospital during the conflict. This history has led many to say that its rooms and halls are haunted. Surf-and-turf is the name of the game in the Sultana Rex Restaurant, its menu having a double-threat of both mouthwatering seafood fresh from the ocean or river and finely bred, grown, and butchered livestock all cooked in traditional and contemporary Xanan styles. The restaurant has earned itself hundreds of awards since it opened along with the hotel in 2241 and it is perhaps the foremost proprietor of fine Xanan cuisine on the planet. The Sultana family has repeatedly refused buyouts from Idris Incorporated to purchase their hotel and restaurant, though the two have seen limited cooperation, with the Brown Palace’s spa and boutique showcasing the newest, and even occasionally exclusive, Idris beauty products.

The oldest continuously operating restaurant in the Coalition of Colonies, the Kingfisher Bistro, opened in 2184 by a family of Belgian colonists, is located in the heart of Foy-Nijlen’s old-town district and is one of the most historically important culinary establishments in the Orion Spur. Not only is it a fine restaurant, but it is where Eloise Brel drafted the original Xanan declaration of secession, the first draft of which is displayed above the restaurant’s bar behind bulletproof and laser-dissipating borosilicate glass. It is a must-see stop on any of the city’s numerous riverboat tours for both its food and its history.

Boats, bicycles, and trains are the main ways to get around Foy-Nijlen, with automobiles coming in at a distant fourth. The city is dotted with greenery and experiences temperate weather year-round. Foy-Nijlen is also famous for its usage of hyperstrong stained glass in much of its architecture and infrastructure, something unique to the city but often associated with Xanu Prime as a whole by foreigners unfamiliar with Xanan culture. Extremely resistant and superstrong shatter-proof stained glass is used in things as diverse as building windows, to the floors and sides of the city’s elevated bicycle bridges, to soundproof walls next to railways and roads, to even the roofing of some buildings. During sunset, many of these glass constructions twinkle in the light and bloom into dazzling twilight colors.

The combination of a passionate food culture mixed with a picturesque and unique city design free from road traffic has made Foy-Nijlen a tourist destination for billions of people throughout the years. The city keeps a very tight control of its image, banning the construction of buildings taller than 15 floors unless given special permission or raised in special business or factory districts on the outskirts of the city. In addition, all buildings built outside of those business or factory districts must be built in a Xanan architectural style to ensure that the city feels authentically like Xanu to any tourist passing through or citizen calling it their home. Foy-Niljen, like many other Xanan cities, also has residual walls dating back to the Xanan civil war, though much of these were torn down during the 24th century to make way for more urban development. Only 20% of the city’s walls and emplacements still stand.

Foy-Nijlen is incredibly unique, but at the same time embodies some of the quintessential things that anyone, Xanan and foreign, associate with Xanu Prime. Their All-Xanu Ultraleague team is ASC Brown Palace FN, owned by the Sultana family, the same family which owns the Sultan Rex Hotel or “Brown Palace,” and their colors are brown and cream. Their Alpha Cricket League team is the Nijlen Penguins and their colors are dark green and white.

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Kshatragarh

Kshatragarh is the fourth most populated of Xanu Prime’s major cities, though it was not always known as Kshatragarh. The city was founded originally as Khairabad in 2194 and from its inception was planned to be the foremost center of Xanan heavy industry. Throughout most of Xanan history until the Interstellar War it served that role well. Photos from the pre-Interstellar War era show huge factories, refineries, and foundries dominating the city’s skyline. Nearly everything Xanu-made from automobiles to weaponry to ship hulls to basic consumer goods was made in Khairabad. This all changed in 2279 when the city was put under siege during the Solarian Invasion of Xanu. The siege was the single-most costly battle on Xanu Prime for both sides during the war. It is estimated that between five and seven million civilians died during the siege with an estimated three million combatant casualties on the Solarian side and four million on the Xanan side. 99% of the city was destroyed or otherwise made unusable for commercial or residential purposes by the time the siege ended in 2282. Almost all of its population was displaced or had died, but nevertheless, it survived and was given the name of Kshatragarh for its stubbornness and bravery. The name came from the hindu warrior caste of Kshatria and the suffix “garh” meaning meaning fortress or castle. Even if it did heroically stand in the face of utter annihilation, it was absolutely destroyed. Some in Xanu’s government at the time proposed that the city be abandoned and that trying to salvage it would be a fool’s errand and a pointless expenditure of resources that were needed to rebuild and repair cities and settlements elsewhere on the planet. Debate about what should be done with Kshatragarh raged long and hard among Xanu’s authorities but the question was answered in 2290 when quite literally the population of the entire city, or what was left of it, took to the streets of Khairagarh and occupied government buildings in an outcry for help and assistance from the federal national government.

What followed was a government investment that began small, starting with just cleaning up the rubble from the city, but soon snowballed into a widespread effort by both the local and national governments to rebuild Kshatragarh into a modern model city. Trillions of credits from across the Coalition poured into the city in an effort to build it back to its former glory, however a problem was soon found. There simply was not as much demand in the city for heavy industry as there was before the Interstellar War. Xanu’s heavy industry had resettled itself to the city of Pataliputra in the wake of the war, and an economic vacuum had gripped the still-under-construction Kshatradarh. Eventually though it was decided to embrace modernity with the city’s economy, turning it into Xanu Prime’s foremost hub for technology and biomedicine. The initiative was successful, and to this very day, research labs and institutes owned by every megacorp in the known galaxy can be found here in Kshatragarh.

The city’s new design after the war was a radical one, taking on a very distinctive, organized ring-shaped bullseye pattern. It spread out from the city’s center and business district to a research and tech focused second ring, to a retail and service industry third ring, to a residential ring, to a green belt, and finally, a heavy industry outskirt ring that was enclosed by second, larger green belt to prevent urban sprawl. All of these districts were to be connected by trains and bus lines. While the lines between these designated rings have blurred some in the two-centuries since their inception, the organization of the city can broadly be seen to follow these trends.

Kshatragarh’s culture is an incredibly interesting one. Nowhere else on Xanu Prime can the reverence for the Interstellar War be felt as much as it can here, and despite the city being essentially a new city from its first inception, there is a great importance placed in the local culture on knowing the history of Khairabad and Kshatragarh. Kshatragarh Veterans’ Park is the largest park in the city and is home to the Steeple of Memory, a giant stone tower topped with a spire built in a regal, Second Empire style from black and white marble and granite that stands 200 meters tall. Despite officially being a monument, it is often referred to as the tallest mausoleum in the galaxy, due to its walls holding the remains of thousands of unknown soldiers, both Xanan and Solarian, who died during the Siege of Khairabad. Since its completion in 2329, it has been customary for Xanu’s president to give a speech at the Steeple on every Victory Day to honor the dead and commemorate the continued sacrifice of Xanu’s soldiers and citizens in the battles, military or otherwise, against the country’s foes while affirming the country's commitment to peace. The Steeple has a special honor guard of soldiers hand-picked from the Xanan military, aptly called the Vigil Regiment, which supervise, watch over, and march around the steeple twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. The regiment has watched the steeple without any stoppages for over one hundred thirty-five years, from 2329 to the present through hard times, good times, and harsh weather. They are known for their exceptionally stoic demeanor, austere midnight blue, orange accented uniforms with green peaked caps, and their impressive, perfectly precise silent rifle inspection routines which occur during the changing of the guard. Being selected to be a member of the Vigil Regiment after passing the rigorous knowledge and conduct tests needed to join the regiment is considered to be one of the highest honors possible in the All-Xanu Armed Forces and those who age out of the position usually end up becoming officers.

Aside from this more solemn aspect of Kshatragarhian culture, the city has found ways to turn its history into functioning ventures for the present day. Many of the bunker complexes built under the city during its siege still exist today. Some have been used as sites for historical tours, while have been repurposed into a variety of entertainment venues. Bars, theaters, and even nightclubs have come to occupy the subterranean concrete facilities built so many years ago. Not all locations of bunkers are known though, and it is not uncommon for Kshatragarhian citizens or construction companies to accidentally uncover previously unknown bunkers or even unexploded ordnance when digging for construction or DIY projects. Sadly, roughly a dozen people die every year in Kshatragarh from accidental ordinance detonations, most of which are caused by artillery shells or aerial bombs that have been buried in the backyards of unassuming homeowners or renters. Their All-Xanu Ultraleague team is Khairabad United FC, a hold-over from the pre-war renaming of the city, and their colors are gold and green. Their Alpha Cricket League team is the Kshatragarh Lionhearts and their colors are gold and maroon red.

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Paastad

Paasstad is an oddity among Xanu Prime’s cities. It is the fifth most populated of Xanu’s major settlements and the only to not have seen heavy fighting during the Interstellar War. Located in the center of the swampy continent of Paasland, it is held aloft above the marshlands below by a series of super-strong plasteel pylons which bear its weight and prevent the waters of the marsh from flooding the entire city during the rainy season. It wasn’t always this way though. Paasstad was originally settled during the Solarian colonization effort as an agricultural hub that used the rich soil and boggy conditions around the city as an area to grow rice. It was small, never surpassing one-hundred-thousand inhabitants until after the Interstellar War. It was one of the few cities on Xanu Prime which was untouched by that conflict too and is one of the few places where widespread examples of undamaged pre-Interstellar War Xanan architecture can be found on the planet.

After the war though, Paasstad’s population exploded. A Xanu Prime scarred by war needed food, and fast, and while Vysokan imports could cover some of it, the rice from Paasstad was seen as guaranteed domestic food. The city had a golden age from the 2310’s to the 2350’s, however a problem began to gradually show itself throughout the 2360’s. As Paasstad grew larger and larger, it expanded and added more buildings onto the land which eventually, after decades, became too much for the soft marshy ground to bear. The city began to sink. In 2366, the Paasstad government immediately declared an emergency and begged the Xanan national government for help in resolving this issue. Then president Ameliye Flohimont organized an emergency committee to save the city from a murky, muddy demise. After deliberation the committee agreed that the only way to save Paasstad and its people without resettling them was to undertake the single-largest engineering project in Xanan history: they were going to elevate the city. Specifically, they were going to reasie the planet onto giant platforms held-up by pylons bored deep enough into Xanu’s crust that the city’s weight could be supported by in a project straightforwardly called The Elevation Initiative. This undertaking couldn’t be done by Xanu’s people alone, though. Experts and equipment were brought in from Himeo’s Unified Cooperative Construction Syndicate and Galatea’s Planetary Reclamation and Development Bureau – one of the few moments where these bitter rivals worked together – to achieve this engineering feat. Districts would be platforms, all streets would effectively be elevated, and all plumbing and electrical lines would need to be integrated into these new massive metal podiums. In 2389, after two decades of herculean labor and toil, Paasstad was finally raised one-hundred meters above the ground, and stably so. To mark this achievement, a sixty-meter tall monument called Skyward Unity was built in the central park of the city depicting a team of Xanan, Himean, and Himean workers and engineers riveting plating onto a pylon which still stands today.

Partially because of its megaproject past, Paasstad’s economy revolves around a few major sectors. The largest of these are construction and engineering. After its elevation, Paasstad quickly became the intellectual and commercial hub of many of Xanu Prime’s largest engineering firms and construction companies, all of them wishing to cash-in on any maintenance or future expansion projects the city might have in mind. These companies do not only operate here though, many of the largest construction projects on Xanu Prime that have taken place in the last nearly eighty years can be traced back to companies based in this city. Whether it is a new dam on the Naya Khyber, a new skyscraper in Nouvelle-Rochelle, or even a new terminal for Pataliputra’s numerous ports, odds are a Paasstadian company has been contracted for at least part of it. Aside from engineering, agriculture is still strong here. Even with the emergency, the agricultural and rice industry that the city was originally intended for has remained as a strong part of Paasstad’s economy, almost always remaining consistent even when other sectors have declined due to market forces.

Culturally, Paasstad is unique, but also holds some things similar to other cities on Xanu Prime. The idea of uniting and coming together to help one another regardless of origins is very strong here, as the city would not exist without the help of others, namely the Himeans. The largest Himean immigrant community on Xanu Prime and the largest Himean population outside of Himeo in the Orion Spur lives in Paasstad, with nearly 25% of the city’s population having Himean ancestry of some kind. The Himean Platform of Paasstad, colloquially known as “Kleiner Himeo” or “Little Himeo” is a part of the city which shows authentic Himean architecture and houses stores which sell products that could otherwise only be found on Himeo. The Gerber-Bauer Theater, a huge opera house and musical theater venue made in the Himean style reminiscent of Rautakaivos Kaupunki’s Weber District can also be found here and is a draw for both its citizens and visitors. Fittingly for such a locality, Hephaestus Industries was banned from operating there by the Little Himeo district council in 2396.

A proud achievement alongside the Elevation Project is the Paasstad Central Transit System or PaCTS, a railway and subway network that was built into the city’s elevated platforms to literally be part of the city. Because of this, it is widely considered to be the most effective public transit network in the Coalition of Colonies, if not the Orion Spur, though the latter of these two claims is contested by some in Sol and Elyra. What’s more though is that this network has allowed for less of Paasstad’s precious surface area to be used for roads and more to be used for buildings or even parks made with soil that has been excavated and then re-seated onto the city’s metal platforms. Because of these factors too, the city is incredibly walkable, and is renowned for its street music culture with sounds of guitars, homemade drums, soloist saxophonists and trumpeters drifting through many of its neighborhoods and parks on any given afternoon. The city’s official holiday is called Elevation Day. Every November 8th, the city celebrates another anniversary for when the Paasstad Elevation Project was completed. People get days off from work, parades are often held, and many companies arrange for helicopter or airplane tours underneath and above the city to celebrate. The most notable tradition of this occasion though is called the Skyward Tournament, a competition between local hobbyist rocketeers where they gather in Paasstad’s central park and shoot kitbash rockets into the air in an effort to determine who's rocket can go the highest the fastest. This tournament is to many Paasstaders the embodiment of Elevation Day, it being in-line with the theme of ascension and elevation that the holiday is known for.

Their All-Xanu Ultraleague team is called Durendal and their colors are yellow and black. Their Alpha Cricket League team is the Paasstad Parakeets, colloquially referred to by fans as “The Birds” or “The Keets,” and their colors are light green and pink. Paasstad’s teams are generally thought to be the worst of any of Xanu Prime’s major sports teams; for whatever reason, they typically underperform despite being quite hyped. This has led to fans of other teams joking that Paasstad’s teams are bad because the city has “no grass” and making chants to that end, despite the city, in fact, having quite a bit of real grass and greenery transplanted onto its platforms. Paastad sports fans have developed a "lovable loser" mentality among themselves, and certain subsets of them fly into joking outrage whenever their teams are actually successful.

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Himavat City

Himavat City is the smallest of Xanu Prime’s major cities and is the only large settlement on the great arctic landmass of Himavatia. The city was founded by prospectors from all over Xanu Prime in 2243 on Himavatia’s coast due to a gold rush in the area. After the initial boom wore off, the city became a regional hub for mining and petrochemicals. Himavat City was bombed by the Solarians during the Interstellar War and significant portions of it were destroyed. After the war, the city took the longest out of any of Xanu Prime’s major cities to rebuild, not finishing until the year 2328. Since then though, Himavat City has experienced peaceful growth that has taken it from a small city of only a few hundred thousand to the sixth-largest city on Xanu Prime with an economy and culture to match. Seasonal extremes define much of Himavat City’s landscape. During the wintertime (which due to the city’s northerly position lasts from October until April) Himavat City receives an average of 851 centimeters of snowfall, making it the snowiest major city on Xanu Prime. It is also the coldest major city on Xanu Prime, with its average winter temperature being -3 degrees Celsius. The summer brings with it a steady rainfall as well, meaning that consistent sunshine is a rarity here. The city’s architecture is built to work with these climatological realities: its buildings have vaulted or reinforced roofs with large runoff gutters to help deal with snowpack and the buildings themselves are usually constructed from sturdy, insulating materials to both keep their insides warm while remaining undamaged by the wind, hail, and ice. During the wintertime the weather can make driving difficult and because of this many Himavatans make their way around via the city’s extensive tram and underground metro network, though winter-capable automobiles and snowmobiles are common too. The city has been voted as having the worst weather on Xanu Prime for decades and life can be rather dour and drab here if one doesn’t find something fun to do with their time.

The city is home to the Himavat Winter Festival, typically called WinFest or HimaFest, a two-week long outdoor music and arts festival held during the middle of winter, usually in late January or early February. It’s the single-largest get-together of Xanan musicians on the planet ranging from genres as diverse as rock, to hip-hop, to electronica, to singer-songwriter, and more. Other things that the festival is notable for is its ice and snow sculpture contests, something which many go to the festival to see alone and a wide variety of cook-offs ranging from things like chili and curry to fish filets. A trip to the festival is treated by many Xanan young adults as a rite of passage and is one taken by many college students in the year after they finish their undergraduate degrees. WinFest is only one of Himavat city’s many festivals; every few weeks the city has some new event, usually on an annual basis, to attract tourists to the city. Local musicians in Himavat City are renowned for their creativity, and the city’s artists have invented several genres of music, the most popular of which being Himavat Midnight.

Supporting not only the festivals but the tourism that the city receives at large is the ecosystem of various hotels and winter resorts that dot the city and its surrounding areas. Accommodations in Himavat City are more rustic than not, something the city markets as part of its homey, wintery charm. The restaurants and bars of the city offer themselves in a similar way too; outstanding food with friendly service and a no-frills attitude towards presentation and decor. Other tourism-focused enterprises have their roots here too like ski resorts and Himavatian arctic cruises which take their guests on scenic trips to the most remote parts of the Himavatia’s coastline. While tourism arguably keeps Himavat City afloat, the Himavatans themselves have a love-hate relationship with their guests. On one hand, they appreciate the business that tourists bring them, but on the other, tourists often simply do not understand what life is like in Himavat City given that they are only there for a few days or weeks at a time. This has led to tourists often being the butt of many jokes by the locals and the word “tourist” itself being Himavatan shorthand for a generally ignorant or stupid person.

Tourism is not the only driving force of the Himavat City economy however and people can be found working in a variety of industries here. Mining and petrochemicals still play a significant role in generating revenue for the city, and many believe that the continent of Himvatia holds untold mineral and oil deposits in the mountains beneath its frigid icecaps. Governmental regulations prohibit companies from intentionally destroying the icecap to reach the deposits underneath, so instead many companies and even some Himean syndicates have resolved to simply drill underneath it, through the rock of the continent to reach those polar riches by way of large tunnels. North of the city, the All-Xanu Armed Forces operate the Herzog Army Base & Military Spaceport, home of the AXAF Special Warfare Academy, a place where many of Xanu Prime’s most capable soldiers and sailors train when not in the field. Many of these soldiers and sailors then find themselves in Himavatan bars and clubs on the weekends. This military presence has led to some Xanan defense contractors, most notably d.N.A. Defense & Aerospace to establish research laboratories in the Himavat City, many testing their newest weapons and designs north of the city in Himavatia’s more remote regions away from prying eyes. Fishing is a notable industry here as well; some of the best fish and crabs on all of Xanu Prime are caught by fishing companies based out of Himavat City that operate in the frigid polar waters off the Himavatian coastline. The northerly city also has a modest industrial sector, though it is not anywhere near the caliber of what Pataliputra has to offer. Himavat City’s relatively remote position often means that transporting some goods to the city can be quite expensive, and as such, many Himavatan companies have jumped at the opportunity to produce some goods locally to supply the Himavatan market. This has given the city a unique bit of insulation from shocks that might otherwise rock the Xanan economy, the most recent of which was the turmoil surrounding the initial waves of the ongoing phoron scarcity. While the economy in Himavat City dipped like it did everywhere else, the city saw the smallest decline and fastest recovery of any major Xanan city.

Himavat City’s Ultraleague team is rather uncreatively called Himavat City FC, though their fans call them the Ice Caps. Their colors are icy blue and dark red. The city does not have an alpha cricket league team due to most of the grass in the city being permafrost and unpleasant to play on. Instead, the city has a professional ice hockey team called the Himavat Fightin’ Polecats which play in the Trans-Xanu Ice Hockey Association, Xanu Prime’s foremost professional ice hockey league. Their colors are green and black with red accents.