Uncle Ingvar the Rose Gold Star

Ingvar is an unusual star; he should already be dead. Stars don't tend to make it to Ingvar's advanced age without collapsing and exploding. Where other stars give in, Ingvar carries on, attentive to his duties - but not without a loss in stability. Ingvar's rose-gold light is wobbly now, and sometimes slips a solar flare that bathes Goliath, Dust, and a handful of other planets in waves of electrostatic energy. This condition may last up to 100 million years.

History of Dust

After accretion, Dust cooled into a barren rock. Comet impactors pounded the surface into lava and regolith, but also brought forth algae, crustaceans, mineral fish, and coralite trees. Insects evolved; the arachnids taught themselves to use tools and tell stories. The cave city Kith Mogul was founded 6000 years ago as a charismatic monarchy, and remains so to this day. The spiders knew nothing of space, and hid from alien visitors.

But then the Merfolk came, and so beloved this wetland paradise that they altered their own DNA to remain here indefinitely. A colony sprang up and gradually disintegrated, mercury befoulments in the water supply poisoning their fragile, overtuned bodies. The eerie, melted ruins they left behind crawl with bespoke life-forms and ominous myths. Meanwhile, in the darkness underground, Kith Mogul wove its bloodlines with great patience.

1kya, an Earth-based telescope lab logged the existence of a gas giant they named Goliath. Its diminutive companion they named Secluda. Earth's great wave of expansion aimed a colony shell at Secluda/Dust: the Goliath Screw. A vast city was built inside the inverted pyramid embedded in the regolith. There, the Founders studied Dust's gravity, exploited exotic minerals, and when bored, pushed further on toward the galactic core. The feeble merfolk were forced up into their mountain ruins; Kith Mogul whiled away the decades training its princes, arranging marriages, and cautiously observing.

When the Earth went quiet and ceased shipping supplies, her other colonies soon followed, dropping off the deepwave bands one-by-one. A ramshackle rescue armada was dispatched and never heard from again. The Dusters who remained had to rely on each other, and learn to live with the world they had conquered, its remnants and their ghosts. Eventually, Space Truckers made Dust City a turnoff on their interstellar highway, an act of mercy without which the Dusters would not have survived.

Decades ago, the long, spindly arms of the Solari Co-operationists swept Ingvar into a cold-blooded embrace. Dusters were wheedled into joining the "Helpful Habitat" program, earning rewards in exchange for their cooperation. Up to now, six cutting-edge solar habitat domes were dropped onto Dust, and nearly 6,000 locals of all dimension have been shipped off to colonize some other star system.

But something is amiss. For the first time in decamillennia, rosey old Uncle Ingvar just burped up a wobbly flare that can disable the entire Solari fleet in-system, most other unsuspecting ships nearby, and the lion's share of electronics on Dust's surface besides. The ruthless Trucker Barons knew this was possible, and await the optimal time for their twin-fuel engines to propel them into the power vacuum.

The Co-op will return after relativity delays, eviscerate the Truckers who don't flee, and attempt to neuter Ingvar. Until then, societal collapse threatens to crack through to the subsurface psychic maelstrom that's been bubbling up for centuries!
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