Neuostland
From Acw
Neuostland is a planet in the Chimera system. Named for the Eastern Province of terrestrial Grossdeutschland (comprising Rumania and the Czech Republic), from the start the planet was destined to become like its namesake, an agricultural powerhouse. From the beginning of terraforming plans it was decided to encourage the planet to support massive agriculture and not much else. The resulting program created a very hot and wet world caught in an almost perpetual spring, with a mild and almost nonexistent winter. 200 years of careful selection and indoctrination has kept the population in a state of almost medieval subservience to an unseen ruling caste of German administrators on Arminius.
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History
The Accidental Colony
The planet that was to become Neuostland was claimed by the German FTL ship Seevogel after it was denied access to the world that would become New Ukraine by the Alexander Nevsky (See also the Battle of New Ukraine). The name had been chosen for the larger world by the newly established Reichs ministry for the Outer Colonies. When the colony ship fled into orbit round the smaller planet, hurried calculations on board revealed to the Ministry that their supplies could, in a pinch, be used to create habitable conditions on this world too. It was decided to commence terraforming operations, and name the planet, as if it had been the original target.
Terraforming and the Labour Battalion
When the colony FTL ship Seevogel reached orbit around Neuostland in 2149, the colonists were made up of some 1000 ethnically German engineers, and about 2000 further arbeiter, organised in a 'labour battalion' mostly of Polish and Czech stock. They engineers set about seeding the planet's atmosphere with a chemical soup designed to aid the development of the water and oxygen-creating bactieria they unleashed on the planet's surface.
In early 2150, most of its planetside work completed, the arbeiter labour battalion was shuttled out to Arminius to commence the construction of the arcology housing on Arminius. The head engineer, Hermann Teilhard, had reached the conclusion that they would receive no aid until the Alexander Nevsky had been neutralised, and that it may be some time until that occured. He knew the terraforming would take between ten and thirty years to stabilise, and that it would be almost a century before the planet's new ecosystem could truly support sustained agriculture. He also knew that if a siege mentality set in amongst the colonists, unrest might cause food riots, or worse, cause a mutiny amongst the Labour Battalion. He formulated an ambitious and adventurous plan to keep the workers busy, and to grant the early colonists shelter while the terraforming took hold and relief came from Earth. He decided to use the gravity well from the Seevogel to construct the shell of the arcology. Under the direction of some 100 German personnel, the Labour Battalion commenced the work of stripping their erstwhile transport and rebuilding it in a new form on the small moon.
It was a dangerous and arduous undertaking. Of the original 2000 arbeiter, 137 died during the terraforming, of exposure or disease caused by the bacteria and algae. In low-orbit work, a further 432 died, mostly from low-gravity fatigue. As the Battle of New Ukraine drew to a close and the resulting uneasy peace re-opened access for German supply ships to their new colony, the remaining labour battalion returned to Neuostland's unstable surface to build sealed habitats and prepare for the first farming efforts.
Spitzer's Compass
While Teilhard was trying to keep order, the small team of surveyors were excitedly observing the changing face of the new colony. The original survey team for the planet was headed up by a man who would become first Planetary Governor and be ennobled for his efforts: Johan von Spitzer. Spitzer's team produced the first post-terraforming maps and named many of the geographical features they saw. The first task set in front of the team leader was to define which pole was North and which was South. In the Solar System, this had always been simply defined by Terrestrial conventions - Mars and other bodies simply had their poles defined by how the planet was in relation to Earth.
On New Iowa, North had been chosen almost through an accidental consensus by the multinational colonists. Some early British maps did go against other British maps by defining what became South as North, but the majority of UIS and British maps agreed on North almost by accident. Chimera had no such conventions. The Soviets' colonisation of New Ukraine was not yet underway, and there were no other inhabited or claimed planets.
Not so for Neuostland. Von Spitzer had nothign to guide him in his choice. He tried choosing it according to orbital direction, but noticed that when he did so he was unhappy with how his maps looked. In the end, his perception of Earth as having more land masses in he Northern Hemisphere tipped the scales - so the map of the new globe would not look bottom-heavy, he chose the hemisphere with more terrain features to be North.
Early Agricultural Failures
Immigration and Indoctrination
To tend these fields, the Ministry began negotiations with the SS and the The Reichs Ministry of the Interior to round up people deemed to be too racially impure to be part of terrestrial Grossdeutschland, and commence plans for transporting them to the new colony en masse.
The "Neuostland Crisis"
Politics
The inhabitants of the planet are deliberatly ill-educated and kept that way in order to increase their servility. They use only the most primitive farming methodologies. Because this Bauernwelt is ruled from Arminius, its moon, the serfs of Neuostland know very little of their masters or their predicament.
Recent Political Agitation
Geography
Bodies of Water
Due to the high heat brought about by the terraforming process and the proximity of the sun, there are no large bodies of water at all, and very few rivers. There is a very large swamp in the planet's lowest basin, known as 'Varus' Lament'. Most of Neuostland's rivers feed into this area,and the one large lake, known as 'Johan's Eye', after the first planetary governor, Johan von Spitzer. Spitzer had trouble naming it, and his team bandied the name around so much that it stuck. The original map held by The Reichs Ministry for the Outer Colonies still has Spitzer's scrawl on this one terrain feature, while all other features are named in type. Other than these bodies, much of the planet's small amount of water spends much of its time in the atmosphere.
Mountains
The poles are giant plateaus of solid, almost featureless ice that cover massive mountain ranges underneath them. A number of mountain ranges march outfrom under the ice in three main northerly ranges, and two southerly ones. Apart from the mountains, the remainder of the planet has been landscaped to be flat and almost entirely featureless. This makes it perfect for farming, but not particularly conducive to the development of regional difference or national organisation - with no natural borders and low population density, the people of Neuostland have trouble banding together in groups larger than townships.
Northern Ranges
The longest of the northern ranges, which is also the thickest and long enough that it crosses the equator, is called 'The Spine'. The other two create a long, elliptical valley beneath the polar regions and are collectively known as 'The (Eastern or Western) Arms'. The Arms create a basin in which the largest body of water, 'Johan's Eye' resides.
Southern Ranges
The longer of the two southern ranges comes up as if to meet the Spine, but stops about four hundred kilometers short. It is known as 'The Tail'. The other southern range is quite short and curls almost immediately west after emerging from the ice. The area between it and the pole is rocky and barren. The inhabitants call it 'The Barrens', bu the original surveys state that the range is called 'The Niebelung's Smelter'.
