Ivalis System

The Ivalis System lies deep within the Shackleton Expanse, home to a long-unified and highly developed interplanetary civilisation. For centuries, the Ivalis Union stood as a model of rational governance and scientific achievement, its colonies linked by efficient orbital infrastructure, its citizens bound by secular philosophy and shared purpose. In recent months, however, reports of violence, fanaticism, and mass hysteria have begun to spread across the system, centred on a new and unsettling faith calling itself the Doctrine of Unseeing.

Overview

The Ivalis System orbits a stable yellow-white star and contains four major planets, two of them inhabited, along with a network of moons and industrial platforms that have long supported a thriving interplanetary economy.

• Ivalis Prime, the homeworld and administrative centre of the Union, is a temperate, oceanic world of wide continents and shallow equatorial seas. Its cities rise in glittering tiers from coastal plains, linked by elevated transit lines and vast, glass-roofed civic domes. Urban design reflects the Ivalans’ pursuit of order: geometric skylines, mirrored facades, and plazas dedicated to science, art, and debate. The atmosphere is rich in blue-green hues, and nights are bright with the reflection of orbital stations and transport lanes.
• Ivalis II, the outer colony, is colder and more mountainous, known for its pale skies and sprawling research cities carved into the cliffs. The planet’s mineral wealth and geothermal energy made it the Union’s industrial heart, but isolation and hard conditions have fostered a more individualistic frontier culture.
• The Ivalis Belt, a broad span of mineral-rich asteroids, supports automated mining and ship construction, feeding raw materials to the Union’s shipyards and fabrication platforms.
• Ivalis Prime’s moons host major orbital facilities: communications hubs, data archives, and solar collectors that feed clean energy back to the surface through orbital tethers.

Trade and travel between the system’s worlds are constant, managed by a network of orbital waystations. Starships crossing the system pass through steady traffic - cargo convoys, passenger liners, and academic expeditions - though, increasingly, reports circulate of disruptions, disappearances, and unexplained attacks attributed to extremist elements of the new faith.

The Ivalans

The Ivalans are a near-human species distinguished by faint iridescence in their eyes and skin, an adaptation to the high solar intensity of their homeworld. Their physiology is hardy but refined; they are slightly taller on average than humans, with subtle cranial ridging along the temples that aids in thermoregulation rather than protection.

Culturally, the Ivalans have long prized empirical thought and collective stability. Their education system is rigorous, their sciences advanced, and their social structure largely post-scarcity, supported by automation and energy abundance. Religion, once a feature of ancient history, is regarded as an anachronism - an artefact studied rather than practiced. Civic identity centres on duty to the Union and the betterment of all through knowledge and harmony.

The Doctrine of Unseeing

In the past months, a new faith has taken root across the Ivalis colonies. Calling itself the Doctrine of Unseeing, it rejects the Union’s centuries-old rationalism in favour of revelation through denial. Its adherents preach that perception itself is the universe’s greatest deception, and that enlightenment can only be found by rejecting the senses - especially sight.

What began as obscure philosophical gatherings has grown into organised sects spanning multiple worlds. The Doctrine’s followers veil their eyes, chant in darkened halls, and speak of ‘the Deep Light,’ a transcendent truth that burns away illusion. More radical offshoots, nicknamed the Blade and the Blind, have turned violent: assaults, ritual mutilations, and forced ‘purifications’ are now reported in major population centres.

Union authorities have denounced the movement as a dangerous contagion of hysteria, though efforts to suppress it have only driven it further underground. Officials disagree on its cause - some citing mass psychosis, others a covert manipulation by external powers - but few can explain the identical dreams and visions reported by converts across the system.

Encounters

The core conceit and conflict of the Ivalis System AOR is the disruption and threat from the Doctrine of the Unseeing. The hidden truth of this violent cult is the influence of the Vezda, who once ruled the system in millennia past, when their empire in the Shackleton Expanse was at its highest. Now, hidden ruins - remnants of a Spire that was part of the Shroud network - hold Vezda technology that did not only fail when the Shroud fell, but malfunctioned. A Vezda trapped somewhere in the facility is still contained, but its restraints are weakening. It is not conscious, not deliberately using its telepathy to influence people - it is dreaming, dreaming of the old Vezda empire that spanned a hundred worlds. These dreams, escaping and amplified by malfunctioning technology of the Shroud spire, are reaching the inhabitants of the Ivalis system, showing them remnants of a dead empire, knowledge of worlds and peoples they could never imagine, and influencing them to the dark, twisted ways of the Doctrine of the Unseeing. Ultimately, the route to stopping the Doctrine of the Unseeing is to find the ruins of the Spire, and repair it or in some way remove the influence of the trapped Vezda.

Other details of the AOR - why and how the Vezda is trapped, the nature of its dreams, the actions and agenda of the rising Doctrine of the Unseeing and the response of the Ivalis Union to this threat - are for the AOR holder to determine. This AOR lends itself to a mission focusing on horror, diplomacy, and scientific intrigue. Some encounters which could be part of this mission include:

• Disrupted Meetings: Starfleet’s interest in Ivalis is in securing an ally in the region, and perhaps trade for resources and information. But soon after arriving, negotiations fall into turmoil when the Doctrine of the Unseeing brings violent chaos to the streets - and perhaps the visitors.
• Drifting Freighter: A civilian cargo vessel from Ivalis drifts into Federation-monitored space with no life signs and no visible damage. Logs show erratic course changes and a final message: ‘They told us to look away.’ Whatever is found aboard may lead a starship to Ivalis.
• The Dreamers’ Plague: Across the system, citizens - and perhaps Starfleet officers - experience identical recurring dreams of alien cities, vast spires, and skies filled with dark suns. Affected individuals begin to share knowledge they cannot possibly possess: dead languages, forgotten coordinates, or technical expertise in non-existent fields. Starfleet or Union scientists must identify the telepathic source before paranoia erupts into violence.
• Hostage Ritual: A passenger transport or building is seized by cultists who intend to ‘free’ everyone aboard from sight. Starfleet must negotiate or intervene before the ritual mutilations begin.
• The Burning of the Towers: In a mining settlement on Ivalis II, cultists ignite fuel reserves to form a massive flaming symbol visible from orbit. They fight to the death to keep rescuers from dousing the fires.
• The Empty City: A settlement goes silent. When the crew investigates, they find streets filled with candles burning in neat rows, meals left half-eaten, and walls daubed with the words “We have gone to see.” Motion sensors pick up heartbeats below the streets - hundreds of them - chanting softly in unison.
• The Crater Beneath: Deep seismic scans reveal an artificial chamber somewhere in the system, perhaps beneath Ivalis Prime’s oldest city. It is a perfect sphere of unknown alloy buried under kilometres of bedrock, with a volatile energy orb of a Shroud Spire within. Access tunnels date back centuries, suggesting earlier contact long since forgotten.
• The Broken Lattice: The ruins’ deepest level houses a web of shimmering conduits converging on a single sealed capsule. The system’s stabilisers have malfunctioned with the Shroud network going inert. The challenge lies in recalibrating the alien technology - or risk a feedback surge that could shatter the prison and unleash the Vezda. While close, its unconscious telepathic influence is greater and more malevolent.

The Ivalis System AOR is a setting of bright and ordered civilisation with an undercurrent of creeping menace and madness. While the Doctrine of Unseeing can be a violent and physical threat, they cannot be fought to defeat - the sleeping Vezda’s influence will eventually consume everyone within its reach. This is a mission focused on scientific intrigue and bleak horror, with elements of diplomacy as Starfleet engage with the shaken Union and conflict as they confront the cult.

In Play

• The Doctrine of Unseeing should feel pervasive but elusive. Its followers are not simply villains - they are citizens overcome by visions and belief. Their sincerity, organisation, and willingness to die for their faith make them dangerous, but also tragic.
• The Ivalis System should feel advanced, orderly, and luminous. Its cities are clean, efficient, and elegant, full of the quiet hum of technology built for reason rather than spectacle. Even the rural or industrial colonies show an almost mathematical precision in design: neat, rational, and serene. This composure makes the growing unrest all the more disturbing.
• The Union is not authoritarian, but communal. Depict polite, analytical people with faith in dialogue, process, and evidence. They are calm, articulate, and compassionate - until the cracks show.
• The Ivalis Union’s institutions - its academies, ministries, and research bodies - are ideal Starfleet allies. Their scientists are open-minded but skeptical of metaphysical explanations, providing natural partners and foils for Starfleet’s curiosity.