Maria - Before and After an ArmageddonRuneTrantor on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/runetrantor/art/Maria-Before-and-After-an-Armageddon-426115433RuneTrantor

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Maria - Before and After an Armageddon

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“[…] The planet of Maria, a historically rich world, it was the first Eden class world found by mankind with their telescopes, and the first to be colonized after the invention of the Goddrive. It grew to become the capital world of the Newlands region, which encompasses the Sagittarius Arm, the next from the Orion Spur corewards […]”

“[…] The first planet of the Eden system, Maria was alone in its orbital dance around its star, safe but for one companion, Joseph, as the system’s original materials were pushed out in the rather violent birth of the star, leaving only enough for two worlds and the scattered asteroid[…]”

“[…] Like all capital worlds, Maria was an ecumonopolis, or city planet, most of its surface covered in residential and commercial towers, with the industries in remote subcontinents. Its population in the hundreds of billions, the world relied of its farm towers for food, but these could only cover a fraction of the amount needed, so the next planet of the system, Joseph, was turned into a farm world, dedicated to covering the food demands of Maria.[…] Geographically it was a diverse planet before its urbanization, vast jungles covered most of the tropical regions, and large mountains ran across the continents blocking the steppes from the warm winds, making for sudden changes in ecosystems, with boreal forests on one side of the mountains and frozen tundras to the other […]”

“[…] Being a capital world, Maria saw massive amounts of traffic of ships, from traders, freighters, cruises, and military ships, all stopped in orbit to refuel and go on into the region, or leaving it through the star gate leading directly to the HUB […] To supply these ships a massive antimatter refinery was built on its small moon, as the system had no gas giants to use as an industrial complex […]”

“[…] The tale of planet Maria, one that would see it prosper for millennia to come, saw its premature ending one fateful day of 12.851AD, when a system malfunction on one of the antimatter refineries created a backlash as the generator created antimatter at an accelerated pace, and all attempts to shut down the machinery proved futile. The containment units could hold the fuel, but only for so long […] Sirens blasted across the planet, as people rushed to the gate network to try and reach the starport in orbit, and potentially flee in their ships, or take refuge in Joseph. Most however decided to make use of the bunkers of the world, a common feature of developed worlds in case of orbital bombardment, to brace the oncoming armageddon  […] Approximately an hour after the warning was issued, the containment systems finally failed and the antimatter reacted in a massive chain reaction that tore the moon apart, sending its remains all across the sky, and towards Maria […]”

“[…] The next twelve hours would see massive chunks of the moon impact the world, raining destruction across the entire surface, devastating the city world […] Rapidly all big chunks had either impacted Maria or were sent out into solar orbits, making the area around  Maria a restricted zone […] The destruction not only affected the surface however, as the starport was quickly hit and subsequently disintegrated in the atmosphere of the world, with all the people fleeing onboard. All communication satellites were also destroyed in a fast cascade of debris, making any approach to the planet impossible […] The Star Gate was fortunately spared, being far from the planet itself, it was the main escape route for the ships that managed to escape […]”

“[…] Disaster relief vessels and army ships rapidly converged over Joseph to plan a way to rescue all survivors stranded on Maria, now surrounded by an impregnable shell of debris and rocks, making any approach suicidal. Mining ships and entire military fleets joined to slowly chip away at the shell with mining lasers and weaponry, to attempt to reduce the amount of asteroids to safely approach. This would take months however […] Meanwhile, on the surface of the now ruined planet, people emerged from their bunkers, and many tried reaching the polar regions, relatively spared from the destruction, and await rescue, but millions perished in those journeys as a result of starvation and diseases, and at the hands of bandits, survivors of the disaster that never made it to the bunkers, and had turned to delinquency to survive as civilization collapsed around them […] Those that reached the poles were not safe though, food sources were scarce, and stockpiles of medicine soon ran out, killing even more in the weeks following their emergence from the bunkers […] Coupled with still falling meteors, by the time rescue vessels managed to reach Maria’s orbit and start the evacuation process, over 92% of the population had died […]”

“[…] The final death toll was never established, but most estimates agree that about 457 billion people lost their lives, with only a few million having managed to escape before the explosion, and over 23 billion managed to survive in the polar regions before being evacuated, making this the largest disaster the galaxy had seen, until Nerris[…] Maria was subsequently abandoned, left as a graveyard for all those that died, although reports and orbital pictures suggest many bandits remained on world and continue to live among the ruins, despite the army’s efforts to rescue them […] In the aftermath, new laws forbade antimatter generators near inhabited planets, and enforced more failsafes on them to prevent anything like this from happening again […] As for the political body of the region, which had ruled from Maria until then, Joseph was established as the new regional capital, but it never reached the population levels of its predecessor, both due to regulations, and the fact that Joseph was made into one of the first self-sufficient capital worlds, devoting a lot of its surface to farm towers and utilities, instead of relying on other worlds […]”
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Vumpalouska's avatar
Lol, despite the magnitude of the disaster, I can't help but to feel that the fate of the world was deserved. Who in their right mind would but an antimatter refinery in orbit of an urban world?

I hope whoever made that decision won a posthumous Darwin Award of the Millennium...