A thread for the locations in your Dune games that you are planning. Whether my players will get to these or not I don’t know, but they help me visualise the Houses that run them and give me a better idea of who they are so my players aren’t facing 2-d stereotypes.
Naraka
Star System: Savaraga
Moons: One orbital station
Noble House: Sunar (House Minor under the Harkonnens)
Primary Export: Metals, Rare gasses
Population: Small and primarily in the main settlement
Languages: Galach
Locations of Interest: Terminus Station, Alfaan Refinery, The Graveyard
Overview
Major mining facility on a small volcanic planet that orbits near it’s sun. If not for the abundant riches to be extracted it would have been abandoned long ago.
History
Naraka was originally settled by the Titans in the centuries before the Butlerian Jihad. Finding the radiation from Savaraga to be problematic for fully automated operations they utilised a mixture of machines and human slaves to mine the rich, molten deposits.
A slave rebellion in the closing years of the Butlerian Jihad almost destroyed the facility and it was only due to the actions of Durul Sunar that the vital support equipment was coaxed back into life.
In the subsequent centuries Naraka struggled from one crisis to another, barely surviving as the Imperium formed around it. Eventually House Harkonnen took an interest in the struggling colony and, ever in need for raw materials to feed the industries of Geidi Prime, offered to take it under their wing. The descendants of Dural Sunar became the minor House Sunar under the Hakonnens.
Culture
Nakara’s population can be split into two groups. The Technicians, who are largely connected to House Sunak, and the Workers who comprise a mix of serfs, slaves and convicted prisoners who mine the ores and gasses that make Nakara so valuable.
The Technicians have a comfortable, if not pleasant, level of subsistence. They maintain the equipment, manage the mining crews and generally make up the upper class of Nakara.
The Workers on the other hand often have short and brutal lives. The slaves and prisoners bear the brunt of the hazardous work in cheap and shoddy environmental gear while working with toxic conditions in unbearable heat. The turnover is high, but there are always more bodies available from the Harkonnens as long as production quotas can be achieved.
Environment
Nakara orbits close to it’s sun and without the shielding and life support generators humans would be unlikely to survive the night if they did not choke on the toxic atmosphere immediately.
This same environment is what drew first the Titans and then the Imperium to the world however. It is a natural furnace refining it’s buried treasure into pools of pure metal and vents of rare gasses. All that is needed is to collect the bounty and ship it off-world.
Points of Interest
Terminus Station is a tethered orbital habitat above the main settlement. The primary docking point for the bulk freighters that come to collect the metal and gasses that Nakara produces. A cramped warren with barely enough shielding to survive the regular exposure to Savaraga, it is still the first place that those whose journey ends at the planet will see of their new home.
While the Alfaan Refinery is not a refinery in the truest sense of the word it is the main hub for processing the raw materials of the colony. Within it’s cavernous halls metal is poured into giant ingots for shipment and the constant cacophony of machinery is almost deafening. Rumours persist of secret chambers where research forbidden by the convention is carried out by the Harkonnens or House Sunak.
Outside the main colony is a deep trench, known to the Workers as The Graveyard. For thousands of years it has been where the dead are disposed of. Often simply thrown over the edge, their equipment considered as disposable as they themselves were. Those who have ventured down in the hope of finding valuables on the corpses have talked about vast fields of bleached bones and, in the dregs of their cups, of numerous eyes that watch from the shadows. Few are willing to risk the journey, fewer still return…