Thalsiedeln

Thalsiedeln may be the jewel of the Confederacy of Borealis, with its massive population and productive capacity, it serves as the organization's de facto capital. It is the most populous planet in Martial Space and is effectively a second home world for Humans, its principle species. Thalsiedeln is immensely influential; for thousands of years it served as the capital of both the Confederacy and the Dominion of Astraeus. Orbiting the star, Arlioux, it is the only major inhabited world around it as all others have remained barren, their resources feeding the Confederacy's ravenous growth.

Officially, the world is a part of the Greater Martial Consilium and is so large that it represents its own Palatinate, a high-level internal division. As such, the planet has a great amount of representation within the central government, its populous granting it about five percent of the representation to match its 760 billion inhabitants, about five percent of the people represented in the Consilium.

The iron age on the planet Aegyn brought with it an explosion in the art of Thaumaturgy. With Thaumaturgy came the power to traverse the stars with little more than a talented Magi and a crude pressure vessel. As Humans began exploring the universe, they came across the barren world of Thalsiedeln, its oceans full of little more than algae and its land dominated by fungi. Non-magi peasants were exported to the planet in large number to fuel the wealth of the Magi upper class. Despite its barely breathable atmosphere, dangerous fungal life, and toxic water, the population would rise by millions.

Its population continued to rise as introduced plants made the ecosystem far more tolerable. By the beginning of the common era, the population had risen to over one billion and, since this population made it a "minor" world, it was able to escape the worst parts of the War of the Final Transition. It would become a financial center as the Confederacy of Borealis gained power and began heavily industrializing the world. For a brief moment, it outproduced even Eos, a megastructure with a surface area billions of times greater and a population ten times larger.

History

Early History

Thalsiedeln formed 2.2 billion years before the present day. As it cooled, it gained large seas but with those seas came ultra-high salinity at over fifty percent. Life may have emerged early in its history, but the runaway saline build-up in the oceans destroyed any chance it would have. This was likely caused by a hypothetical salt-rich moon that strayed to close to Thalsiedeln, causing it to be torn apart by tidal forces. For a few million years, this would have creates a brilliant ring system. As the ring dissipated and fell onto the planet, the oceans grew saltier.

Thalsiedeln was visited a handful of times by Spaceborne Life, but the high salinity of its seas deterred even these hardy species from spending much time on the planet. It was Ma'eau, a naturally-occurring hivemind bent on the terraformation of as many worlds as possible. Thalsiedeln represented a unique challenge as the cells Ma'eau deployed on the world quickly died. Ma'eau developed a fungal-like organism capable of surviving on land that would extend roots into the sea. After developing a network of these fungi, fed by algae that were embedded with them, the fungi began slowly pumping the salt out of the oceans, depositing it deep underground so as to not poison themselves. Over the next 30 million years, the seas would become fresh enough to sustain life.

Ma'eau seeded both the land and sea with primitive life of all sorts, but stopped short of full terraformation as it was distracted by a war. Thalsiedeln remained untouched until Humans discovered the world in 51,204 CE, catapulting the world into the modern era.

Settlement

As Humans were the first species willing to put up with the harsh conditions on Thalsiedeln, they found themselves upon an unclaimed world. Free to do as they please, Human aristocrats imported large numbers of peasants to work the land. Since the soil was poorly-suited for agriculture, the peasants began farming the plentiful fungi on the world while giving their poorly-grown vegetables and grain to the aristocrats.

With time, Humans would introduce hundreds of plants to Thalsiedeln, most of them faring poorly. Eventually, however, after thousands of years of this, the soil would build up and a healthy ecosystem formed. Agriculture finally started booming as bees and other pollinators were introduced.

Anthrovian Civil War

The Anthrovian Civil War began as Humans from across the province of Anthrov began rebelling against the Magi-Aristocracy. Thalsiedeln quickly overthrew its leaders who were overwhelmingly weaker Magi that could not compete on the much more heavily populated Aegyn. Thalsiedeln became ruled by a decentralized union of various organizations, dictatorships, and peasant armies that worked tirelessly to support their fellow rebels on other worlds. After hijacking a spaceship sent from the Triumvirate Government, the rebels formulated a plan to end the war.

They found an ancient device that used nuclear explosives to propel ships forward. An innovative but ultimately fruitless idea, the device was abandoned around Aegyn. The bombs on board, however, were still perfectly usable. The rebels flew across space without the help of Magi; for the aristocracy on Aegyn, this was highly unexpected. Rebels primed the nuclear explosives and then began dropping them across Aegyn. The capital, Ongak, was entirely destroyed as were many of its satellites. The Triumvirate eventually stepped in to end the conflict shortly thereafter, giving Thalsiedeln a local independent government and letting its various organizations rule undisturbed.

Interwar Period

The population did little growing following the war, most of the populous left the planet as Aegyn became freer and more industrialized. Those that remained enjoyed productive soil now enriched by the native fungi but at the cost of hard manual labor. Advanced farming equipment would take millennia to reach the planet and even then the majority of the population continued to use beasts of burden and manure rather than tractors and pesticides.

The term Interwar Period applies to Thalsiedeln for nearly 4,000 years, the culture, population, and society only slowly changing over time. Since it was thoroughly cut off from Aegyn, its people readily accepted the religion of Ibaradism free from most Terranist influences. Additionally, the utter lack of Magi created a far more egalitarian society. While the emphasis on heavy farm labor had things slant patriarchal, the results were not as extreme as some worlds. The population, what little of it there was, spread out across the planet. The largest city throughout most of the period was Hahibi, a town centered on a space-elevator whose peak population was a little under 200,000.

The population of the planet learned to vehemently defend their way of life from hostile forces. Dozens of times did dictators or conquerors attempt to unify the planet under one banner. With little oversight from the Triumvirate, they were on their own. Like an immune system, villagers would gather their weapons and transition from a farming to war economy. Threats would not always come in the form of local warlords, but would occasionally be external. Corporations, both Human and otherwise, attempted numerous times to exploit Thalsiedeln's resources. After a fourth and bloody attempt from H. Aimer Corportation, a small portion of the planet shifted from agriculture to mining, trading their resources and bringing in a constant flow of external funds to the planet.

War of the Final Transition and Post-War

During a period whose brutality transcended all comprehension, Thalsiedeln was largely left alone. While a small portion of its population would end up drafted as H. Aimer Corporation fled, taking their workforce with them, Thalsiedeln largely remained undisturbed. Its small population would, in fact, grow as it was one of the few worlds spared from the conflict. Humans from the war-torn region settled the world in large number. The population would increase to well over three billion over the course of the century following the War of the Final Transition, promoting Thalsiedeln to "Major World" status.

With this status came immense amounts of trade and wealth. With most of Eos leveled and most of the former Triumvirate desolate, enterprising merchants chose Thalsiedeln to be the next center of commerce. The world's position directly along the most major trade Hyperlane made it the main port of the region. With only three billion people but commerce fitting for a proper ecumenopolis, Thalsiedeln grew immensely wealthy. Even a small tariff would be enough to create a post-scarcity lifestyle for the planet's inhabitants and for quite some time it did.

Erstes Konsortium became increasingly powerful and centralized by the 84,400s CE. With this centralization came a restructuring of trade towards Aegyn, its capital. With much lower density, what remained was quickly subsumed into large merchant guilds. However, since trade had been declining and the planet lost much of its income, a new industry needed to be fill the gap. The vast financial interests on the planet decided that land would make the perfect commodity to continue creating wealth. To maximize demand, and thus the amount of wealth, most regions passed laws placing limits on population density. New communities needed to be made up of free-standing structures separated from others by large tracts of land. Additionally, height-limits meant that this land, often larger a hectare or more, could realistically only accommodate a handful of people.

These laws had the effect of creating wealthy communities outside of cities, highly spaced-out communities, and, most importantly, generated vast amounts of value out of land that was originally almost worthless. Thalsiedeln maintained a high GDP per capita as an increasing amount of its land became occupied by these spread-out houses. Those unable to afford the ludicrous prices were either shipped off of the planet or forced into dense slums. The majority of the population lived in these homes while the guilds that created this new system enjoyed ultra-luxurious lifestyles in the few places they had the local government allow for tall buildings.