Genarius

Genarius is a bloated gas giant located just inside the asteroid belt. Since habitable cities were established in its thin atmosphere, Genarius has rapidly developed into a commerce and population center to rival many Outer Rim systems. Over 5 million individuals live in the floating cities surrounded by Genarius’s orange and blue-hued clouds. Citizens work in a multitude of professions, although some are more publicly accepted and acknowledged than others.

From orbit, the appearance of swirling clouds made it seem as though horrible internal storms racked the planet, possibly supported by the strange glow that emanated from below. Further survey work demonstrated conclusively that while storms were not uncommon within Genarius’s atmosphere, the glow resulted from very deep, very intense nuclear reactions. The core of the planet, a mass of ultradense matter hot enough to nearly qualify it as a protostar, is in a continual state of low-grade fusion. This gives off heat, the strange glow that lights the clouds every hour of the day, and a good deal of energy that is harvested by wily entrepreneurs.

Different cities have implemented the necessary technology in different ways. Ipsus created an almost boxlike radiation shield, a cube of chromium-treated alloys that served as a barrier to the physical winds and the ravages of radiation. Tolea Biqua, on the other hand, has shields designed to use the radiation brought by the winds as a source of energy. They power the bright lights that mark the city’s position among the clouds. There was no sense, the city’s designers reasoned, to waste a perfectly good source of energy. The storms are now a boon to Tolea Biqua.

The mixture of gases on Genarius is unique in the galaxy. Most of them are unstable by nature, but in combination with one another and the radiation from the planet’s core, they stabilize each other. Pockets of argon mix with heavy beskium and three distinct gaseous carbon isotopes to create strange swirls of orange and blue. Over 150 other elements are present in trace amounts (less than 50 parts per million).

Such a mixture of gases would normally prohibit life from developing. Not so on Genarius. A single species of creatures, the jellyfishlike cochlera, have evolved within the dense glowing clouds. Hardy and adaptable, cochlera have never been found elsewhere in the galaxy. This has led to speculation that they are creatures born from the strange mix of gases, organisms that cannot live without the precise conditions that developed on Genarius. No cochlera taken from Genarius has ever lived more than a day.

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