• The Zearla system is home base for the vast majority of the miners who work the
nearby worlds and systems in this sector of space. The city of Jeffries on Fraser houses
the head office of Wreaken Construction and Mining, the most prosperous of the
independent mining and development companies which work at the edge of the Federation.
Employing over a quarter of a million full time staff and owning sole mineral rights to
some forty nine planets, the Wreaken Company can be found throughout most of the frontier
and Federation Worlds.
• With such a concentration of mining interests on Fraser it is not surprising that there
are a large number of starports, all offering excellent repair facilities to miners and traders
alike. Whatever facilities are not provided at one of the Fraser bases can almost certainly be
acquired at nearby Andceeth. The Earth like world of Charles Colony, orbiting Enaness is also
nearby, but its rigourous communist principles deter many casual visitors.
• The Zearla system is well developed, from the smelting planet of Jameson's Wreck;
named after the unfortunate Naomi Jameson who crashed while chasing a metal rich comet
towards the star but survived for three days before being rescued, to Leetown, on
Cooperworld, the seventh planet. The only solid world between Jameson's Wreck and
Cooperworld not to boast a permanent settlement of some type is Zearla 2, locally known as
Nemesis, which has no mineral wealth to speak of and whose crust contains sizeable
fractions of volatiles.
• The surface of Nemesis is unstable and six attempts to establish bases on the planet
have ended in disaster. The number of lives lost trying to populate this inhospitable world is
over one hundred, despite the best efforts of standby rescue teams. The local miners use the
planets name as a powerful curse and the more superstitious will even climb out of its orbital
plane to avoid the taint of its path!
Entry by David Massey
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