K’Shar
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K’Shar is a desert world on the outer reaches of the Shackleton Expanse, defined by sandstorms that sweep across the surface in near-constant cycles. These storms scour the terrain, shift the dunes, and periodically reveal or rebury ancient ruins scattered across the planet.
Overview
K’Shar’s surface is harsh and inhospitable. The storms are fierce enough to strip exposed machinery in days and render long-term settlement difficult without advanced shielding. The atmosphere is thin but breathable, and temperatures swing from scorching daylight heat to freezing nights. Native life appears limited to hardy desert flora and insectoids adapted to the extremes.
The ruins scattered across K’Shar are its greatest mystery. Often uncovered only briefly before the sands swallow them again, they range from toppled stone foundations to partially intact complexes. Their age is unknown, and their origins impossible to determine from orbit. Some appear built on a monumental scale, suggesting a culture with significant resources or technology. The intermittent exposure makes study difficult; what is revealed one week may be buried the next.
New Frontiers Campaign
K'Shar was one of many planets that was briefly surveyed by a Starfleet survey vessel. Although, however brief as it were, the survey vessel identified the existence of ruins on the planet and left a probe with a subspace transceiver in high orbit. This gave Framheim Station and any other vessels live access to the probe's sensors of the planet, thus able to monitor storm activity and anything else yet discovered.
USS Sovereign was assigned to conduct a full investigation of the planetary ruins to discover what had happened to the civilization that may had once inhabited the planet. At first, the Sovereign left Framheim Station at speeds of Warp Seven, which would have taken them exactly twenty-seven days to reach the system and orbit the planet.
On the 15th day of the mission, the Chief Operations and Second Officer of the vessel, used the ship's stellar cartography to gain access to the probe and discovered that there was a brutal, massive storm on the dark side of the planet, that was on a direct path towards the ruins on the other side of the planet. When it was discovered that the storm will reach the ruins in five days and that it would take two months and sixteen days for the storm to completely pass over the ruins, the Sovereign proceeded to increase their speed to Warp Nine. This reduced their remaining twelve day trip to only four days.
Encounters
Any or several of these plot hooks can be used for a mission on K’Shar. Some are mutually exclusive; it is down to the writer to select and use these (or not):
- Klingon archaeologists claim the ruins as evidence of ancient Klingon settlement. What tales can K’Shar tell of ancient Klingon travellers?
- K’Shar is found to be rich in mineral resources, drawing the attention of Romulans, Klingons, and/or other Expanse natives. But mining would doubtless damage the unstudied ruins.
- Long assumed barren, the world is actually home to a subterranean civilisation adapted to survival beneath the sands. What is their relationship with the ruins?
- The storms cloak the movement of a raider faction who moved in after the Shroud collapsed, using it as a hidden staging ground.
- The ruins show signs of Vezda design, either from the beginning or suggesting their influence among the indigenous people or colonists that built them.
K’Shar can be a fine location for a story of scientific intrigue, but also political tensions, the horror of the Vezda, or some other challenge.
In Play
- K’Shar is intended as a site of first contact with a mystery. Starfleet explorers may be the first outsiders to lay eyes on the ruins in millennia.
- The nature of the ruins is for the holder of the AOR to define: ancient indigenous people, a forgotten colony, or echoes of a fallen empire such as the Vezda.
- The storms are a constant hazard. They obscure scans, damage equipment, and can bury sites before they are fully explored.