Daleem is a small terrestrial planet in the Nilgaard sector of the Outer Rim territories under the rule of the Vatali Empire. It currently serves as the primary base of operations of House Satele Shan and the Sentinel Network
History
Founding
Daleem was originally founded under the all-encompassing monarchy of Sephi civilization circa 657 BBY, concurrently with the founding of the system’s capital. Initially, it was settled by noble Lords that sought to exploit its natural resources, discovering vast caverns that allowed access to rare minerals buried deep beneath the bedrock. Over time, their subjects were brought to this new world to work the lives of merchants and laborers.
Naturally, the Lords’ subjects formed themselves into guilds, focusing their efforts on mining the caverns below the surface and the trade of foodstuffs and other necessities to the earliest settlements on neighboring worlds. The earliest guilds were formed with administrative needs in mind, maintaining the health of their workers and organizing labour throughout Daleem. The guilds have since grown as the Lords were no longer needed, beginning with the formation of the independent Shipwright's Guild that paved the route for others to seek political resources.
The planet was kept in a state of geological stability by a network of complex terraforming machines and stabilizers, which served to contain the mass of volcanic ranges which dotted the landmasses and suppress potential earthquakes. The machines themselves were constructed to be self-automated and serve their role with minimal oversight. Because of this, the work crews to help administer their operations were gradually scaled down over the course of several hundred years, until they were all but forgotten by the modern government.
Exiles' Arrival
Daleem would see a surprising change in 35 ABY, with the arrival of Clan Odan-Urr. The survivors of the New Tython atrocity had made their way to the Vatali Empire and eventually formed an alliance with the ruling Empress. This was accomplished through a series of agreements between the two powers, with the starwars:Jedi/Legends and their allies were granted several remote and relatively uninhabited planets. Daleem was granted to House Shan, upon which they were granted several kilometers of land surrounding a space elevator - which would become Sky Breach Base - and tasked with keeping the peace. Led by Director Kasula Daegella and Executor Maximus Alvinius at this time, one of their initial crises emerged in the form of piracy. Shan was tasked with investigating a matter relating to the Shipwright’s Guild, with the disappearance of the Kesaret. One of several bulk freighters making runs between Dleem and Kiast, the Kesaret had been ferrying valuable cargo between the two worlds only for it to disappear without a trace. Because of their new role, Shan was required to investigate and resolve this matter before the situation escalated.
Known as the The Last Voyage of the Kesaret, the incident saw House Shan employing its resources alongside the Sentinel Network in its search for the missing vessel. This saw a number of members testing abilities that they themselves were not even aware of, and soon singled out the Maelstrom Corsairs as the group responsible for the abduction. Following a direct assault by the House, the Corsairs were driven back and their base of operations was destroyed. While the Corsairs were far from broken as a power, the event proved to be a morale boost to House Shan, giving them a much-needed victory in the wake of New Tython's loss.
The Guild Coup
Following the events of the Twelfth Great Jedi War and the rising threat of the anti-Force user crusade known as the Collective, Clan Odan-Urr's attention was diverted away from Daleem for some time. Upon House Shan's return after the battles which raged across Nancora, it became evident that the defeat of the Corsairs was far from an end to their threat. The War had sapped Shan of its military might and the House needed time to heal in the wake of the conflict. Instead, they were soon faced with a brand new conflict far closer to home than before. Intelligence gathered from the Corsairs' base of operations not only implicated members of the Brotherhood's Inquisition in backing the attack, but also indicated that the Shipwright's Guild itself was preparing to stage a coup against ruling the Vatali nobles. The Corsairs were merely a front, and a means to establish military might without risking suspicion. A massed assault by the Corsairs scattered what remained of Shan's military might, and left the survivors to regroup and be besieged within Sky Breach Base.
The House was barely given time to regroup before the Corsairs main fleet arrived, rapidly establishing orbital dominance over the world. As troops were deployed planetside by the invaders, Shan was left fighting to hold its ground and dely their victory. Despite being heavily outnumbered Tython Squadron launched its ships to combat the enemy fleet, seeking to run interference until a far more substantial counterattack could be made against their vessels. On the ground, similar actions were taken as a bloody firefight broken out across the Imperial Gardens, with Shan operatives seeking to deny their enemy the Vatali seat of power on Daleem. With most of their number still besieged inside Sky Breach Base by a far more substantial force, Shan found itself fighting a losing battle on every front. As the Corsairs deployed landing ships in a massed drop operation atop of the Foundary, the Guild's main headquarters, their victory seemed inevitable.
Yet just as the world was set to fall, a new arrival abruptly halted their advance. Dropping out of hyperspace, the Shan flagship, Remembrance of Seher directly engaged the enemy fleet. This distraction brought the Shan forces some much needed time to regroup even as the Corsair fleet surged to meet this new threat. This played directly into their enemies' hands. As the Corsairs moved with all speed, their flagship was left out of position and exposed without its escorts. From the other direction, the Resolve, a newly aquired Vindicator-class Heavy Cruiser, ambushed and destroyed the Corsair flagship in a series of broadsides. Caught between the two far larger vessels and without a commanding group, the now leaderless Corsairs were left to be picked off and destroyed. Their fleet's destruction had a knock-on effect upon the ground forces below. Even inches from victory, upon learning that they were both now trapped and with reinforcements arriving to assist House Shan, their will to fight evaporated. Some tried to fight, others fled, but without coordination the momentum of their attack was broken. What had initially seemed like an inevitable victory soon became a rout as Shan's bedraggled defenders were reinforced from offworld, breaking the back of the Corsair military.
Dominion
In the wake of the conflict and attempted coup, House Shan was left to pick up the pieces. Daleem had been revealed not as a serene and controlled hub of the Vatali Empire, but a hotbed of successionist activity and corruption. Because of this, even as the other guilds moved to occupy the power vaccum left by the Shipwright's Guild, Empress Kaltani delivered an edict to remove them from positions of authority. It stipulated that each would be required to relinquish their sovereignty, disband their private armies and accept an official garrison on the outskirts of their capital holding. JTF Satele Shan was given the task of keeping the peace during the transition, and providing security in a summit between the Empress' representative, Royal Guard Commander Slynn Keldra, and the guilds. The hope was that, even during their rebuilding, the firepower and capabilities of the JTF would be enough to subdue any thoughts of further rebellion.
During the summit, Seer Junazee detected unknown forces marshaling in the tunnels below and alerted the diplomatic mission in time for them to capture the heads of the remaining guilds and flee to Sky Breach Base. Corsair Haran 'Ji' Urr and a team of crack mercenaries investigated the tunnels and found that while the guilds were not directly tied to the pending assault on the summit, they were heavily implicated in a web of corruption and black market contracts that had flooded Kiast with scores of mercenary bands. For their efforts to secure Daleem for the Vatali Empire, both Satelites were tasked with overseeing the new garrisons and installed as barons over these new Imperial fiefs. Thus, Seer Junazee was granted the honorific of 'Baroness Sajin' and Corsair Haran that of 'Baron Zadan' corresponding to the guild capital cities their garrisons overlooked.
Scorched Earth
In late 37 ABY, Daleem underwent an unexpected crisis. The planet had been terraformed into its current state, but it required constant terraforming to support its exosystem. While this technology was constantly defended and maintained for centuries, it was eventually forgotten by the ruling government following the death of its last chief mechanic. This lack of maintenance resulted in glitches emerging in the system, and the machine being thrown off by a single degree. Without warning or even fully understanding the threat posed against them, the planet faced a calamity unlike any other in its long existence. Volcanos simultaneously erupted across the world, and cities were rocked by near-perpetual earthquakes as the seas themselves turned to stone under kilotons of lava racing to the surface. House Shan fought to maintain various rescue efforts during this crisis, and succeeded in enduring the cataclysm despite heavy collateral damage to the surrounding regions of the planet.
The End of an Era
In the months that followed, Clan Odan-Urr was given full citizenship within the Vatali Empire following the events of Operation: Vanguard, but this came at the cost of its existing structure. The Clan was required to streamline its membership and ranking system in order to carry out the tasks required of it, resulting in the dissolution of both House Hoth and House Shan. Each House's ships were gifted to the Vatali Navy, and in one final celebration on Palioxis Station House Satele Shan was disbanded entirely. In its place now stood House Sunrider.
Geography
The planet displays four seasons being spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The oceans are full of non-sentient life forms in a variety of species and types. The deepest ocean depth is 1000 meters while the vast majority is 50 meters or less in depth. The ocean water is mostly crystal clear with deeper areas colored a rich blue. Daleem’s surface is covered in a large variety of plant life and non-sentient animals of varying species and type. The land has many sources of fresh running water such as rivers and streams as well as a multitude of lakes.
Spanning across a small portion of the shallow oceans near Daleem’s supercontinent lies a small land-mass made up of a sodium based substance which, under the stress of the oceans, created an almost perfectly flat surface. The surface itself formed above a reserve of an alkali-type metal, causing the entire flat to act as an exceptional natural mirror to the point that, given absolutely clear skies, it’d be near impossible to navigate the flat at all. In direct sunlight, the flat scintillates and to the unprepared pilot the blinding reflected light could prove dangerous. On exceptionally bright days this reflected light can even be seen from orbit.
Near the coast of the Satele Shan's continent lies a small island devoid of both flora and fauna. While the air is perfectly fine and life could live on the island it would be impractical as the island is made entirely of an unknown crystalline structure. The crystals span the spectrum in both color and clarity and may contain unknown properties and possible commercial use. However, Daleem’s Governor has deemed it a capital crime to take anything from the island, though tourism to see the crystals is encouraged.
The upper atmosphere of Daleem is plagued with random severe electrical storms that wreak havoc upon the electrical systems of any ship which is unfortunate enough to get caught in one. These storms last usually around a week but have been known to last up to a month. The storms appear randomly but are easily predicted with up to a few hours warning. The storms only affect the upper atmosphere and do not affect life on the ground or in the ocean.
The Tunnels
Underneath the surface of Daleem is a complex and extensive planet-wide interconnected tunnel system. These tunnels connect to many ancient ruins from a multitude of long dead civilizations and even run underneath the shallow oceans. While surface openings to the tunnels are rare find it is an almost guarantee that somewhere in each surface ruin site is a way to enter the tunnels. The tunnels generally tend to be between 100 meters to 600 meters below the surface and are situated within the planet's bedrock. The tunnels usually tend to be between 50 and 60 meters in diameter, however, there are sections which expand to several hundred meters. It is apparent that multiple civilizations over the eons have used the tunnel network as either a home or transportation means. The oldest ruins discovered have the strongest links to this network of tunnels and as such it has been speculated that this civilization created this great work of excavation, however for what purpose or means is unclear.
Structures and Cities
The supercontinent(main continent) contains 85% of the known useful resources and is where the Vatali Empire’s citizens reside and as such contains several large cities each with an industrially sized spaceport, outside the cities there are small towns which consist of housing, amenities, factories, and agricultural structures. There are several ship construction yards set away from the main hubs of society.
Off the main content remains largely untouched and contains a large number of ancient ruins from a long-dead civilization. Some of the oldest ruins contain dome-shaped structures which suggest at one point the surface may have been plagued by the upper atmosphere’s storms. It could be speculated that there may be some ancient tech buried among the ruins which have repulsed the storms to the upper atmosphere.
In response to the storms in the upper atmosphere, the empire citizens have constructed several large space elevator systems that can transport goods, people, and even ships through the storms unharmed due to an electromagnetic field and heavy shielding which helps to resist the electrical storms. This allows for the fabrication and manufacturing occupations of the imperial inhabitants to be only slightly hindered upon the planet due to the electrical storms. At the top of the space elevators in low synchronous orbit is medium sized space stations/platforms to allow for the storage of goods before shipping them back to the main world of the empire. When one of the storms is happening over the main content the space elevators are the only way to get anything safely on or off Daleem. However, when the storms are not happening the spaceports and the space elevators are utilized to increase productivity.
Population and Culture
The citizens are primarily workers and laborers that were sent to the planet to produce goods and items for the empire. As workers of various fields and specialties, they have divided themselves into many small to large guilds. Some fields have multiple guilds that are for the same specialty. Each guild holds political power equal to its number of members, use of its specialty to the Empire, and how much favor they have garnered with Daleem’s Governor.
The guild leaders hold a monthly meeting with the Governor of Daleem to discuss the state of the industries and to get production reports. This also gives the guilds the opportunity to sway the Governor into their favor.
The Imperial citizens on the planet are of many different races and backgrounds, however, they all are direct citizens of the empire. Citizens upon Daleem typically identify more with the guild they are a part of than their own race, species, city, and sometimes even family.
Daleem’s Governor is a Sephi by the name of ‘’Previt Golvrim’’
The Importance of Guilds and Political Favor
While all residents of the planet are direct citizens of the System Empire the vast number of specialties, work fields, and companies lead to the eventual creation of the Guild system. Originally the Guilds were established to help group the many different types of workers into easily reachable and manageable administrative structures while looking out for the well being and fair working conditions of their members. However, the Guilds eventually rose up and gained power over the companies. In present day Daleem while companies still exist it is a rarity to find one that is privately owned, almost all companies are now owned by Guilds or collections of Guilds. Most workers even receive their pay and benefits directly from their Guild. Guilds also control the resources and distribution of them, with the Governor's direct oversight and approval. If a Guild gains the Governor's favor they will receive more funds, resources, and land rights than other guilds, who are their direct competitors. This, of course, causes Guilds to utilize any means necessary to gain the edge over their competitors and to gain favor with the Governor. Guilds range from all types and specialties some even covering more general topics such as the Shipwright's Guild.
The Shipwright's Guild
The most powerful guild at the current time is the Shipwright’s Guild. Comprised mostly of Sephi, Humans, and Mon Calamari. The Shipwright's Guild member base is 300,000 members strong, each member hailing from a field directly associated with the construction and/or fabrication of starships, airships, and sea ships. The fields of work include but are not limited to electricians, metal shapers and producers, engineers, construction, shipwrights, and chemists. The only joining criteria for the Guild is that the member works directly in the construction or preparation of materials for the building of ships.
The Shipwright’s Guild owns outright several factories and facilities in which their members work. They also have members in many factories and even a few members working in mines which produce the metal eventually used to build the ships. The Shipwright's Guild has amassed a large amount of political power on Daleem and as such has recently formed a political branch with conducts both administration and diplomacy for the Guild and its interactions with the Governor of Daleem and the System Empire.
With the events of the Shadow of the Kesaret, and the revolt of the final Guild Master, Glav Valenforge the Shipwright's Guild has come under Imperial immediacy. Empress Kaltani has placed the guild under crown control, allowing day-to-day operations to default to a succession of Governor-Generals sitting on the guild's board of directors. It is expected that heads of the noble families will be given seats as the new board of directors gets constituted.
The Guild’s current leader is: de jure Empress Kaltani.
Pau'an Pharma and Chem
Pau’an Pharma and Chem is a small guild with an unusual amount of influence. The Guild is comprised of 30,000 Pau’an scientists. All members of the Guild also form the entirety of a pharmaceutical and chemical research company of the same name. Due to their upstanding medical products and research into beneficial chemical compounds, the Guild has gained much favor with the Governor of Daleem. Not much else is known about Pau’an Pharma and Chem as they maintain a veil of corporate secrecy on all things including the protest of, yet still allowing, governmental inspections of their facilities.
The Guild’s current leader is a Pau’an by the name of: Kintril Kastriv
The Guild's capital location: Sajin
The Indag-Conclave of Daleem
In the terms of pure numbers, the Indag-Conclave field one of the smallest memberships of any of the planetary guilds. Comprised mostly of Ithorians, Humans and known to have a few Sephi in major leadership positions. When the Ithorians first arrived they were able to aptly study the land and expertly cultivate much of Daleem by erecting specialised bio-domes and push much of the farmable land far beyond what the other locals had thought possible, at first the Ithorians were asked to remain on Daleem as Imperial Citizens on the condition that they continued to cultivate the lands for all the other citizens. However, at the time the Ithorians leaders were savvy and realised how much value they were to the planet, so they issued their own request: they would stay on the planet as citizens if and only if they were given a form of ‘grant’ to allow them to focus on scientific study whilst on the planet, despite being Ithorian, they didn’t live up to the stereotype of holding a love of agriculture and philosophy exclusively, instead they were avid scientists and engineers who longed to further their own personal study. The Sephi agreed to their terms, allowing the Ithorians to independently run their own research on the planet.
The Indag-Conclave of Daleem was founded to allow the Ithorians to conduct their research in a professional manner whilst also managing their allocated funds. The Conclave itself works both ways, allowing Sephi leaders to sit and observe the Ithorian research - sending any potentially valuable research to the Empire for further analysis. The Conclave is made up of 4 individuals, two Ithorians, usually also their racial leaders, and two Sephi with one Sephi being given more control than any of the other 3 sitting Leaders.
The current Conclave leaders are: Syko, Ilian (Ithorians), Aeryn Osstar, and Drych Stalwon (Sephi)
Recently the Conclave has been attempting, but with no success, to convince the Sephi to give them more funding in order to excavate and research the oldest ruins of Daleem.
The Conclave numbers at approximately 15,000 members.
The Conclave's capital location: Zadan
The House Satele Shan base is constructed on one of the larger continents within a few hours via shuttle from the main continent. It contains its own spaceport on top of a space elevator with specially designed electromagnetic coils that act as not just a resistant but a repulsor to the atmospheric storms. The platform at the top of the Satele space elevator is the largest orbiting the planet. This serves as a dry dock and operating base for the Odan-Urr fleet, as well as a launch pad for SeNet and Satele secretive operations that require discreet record keeping. The platform connects to Sky Breach Base, which is the ground-side station for the space elevator and the headquarters of Garza's Pathfinders.
The base is set up 25 kilometers to the south of the space elevator and is comprised of a number of buildings which contain office space, communications, training space, education, living quarters, family living quarters, mess halls, medical, and other necessities. The entirety of the house, any assigned military assets, and a support staff will live at this base.
There are several underground structures to provide shelter and protection from orbital bombardment, as well as access to the system of tunnels and ruins that cover Daleem. These were created for an unknown purpose, presumably by the forebears of the Vatali Empire before its separation from the greater Sephi Empire. The official compound is 100 km by 200 km, mostly comprised of outside training areas, however, Satele Shan does also utilize the entirety of the continent they live on as it is uninhabited.
The continent is positioned in the northern hemisphere where it experiences all four of Daleem’s seasons and is a temperate climate. The Continent has a variety of geological features such as mountains, forests, and a desert zone in the southern area. The Satele Shan Compound is located near the middle of the continent and shelters forests, plains, rivers, lakes, and mountainous terrain within separate parts of the compound.
Politically, the Governor of Daleem currently views the House like the Guilds on Daleem, and as such he expects House Satele Shan to compete for his favor.