Hellholes of the Traveller Universe

So, being busy, sick, and unable to concentrate on ranting about thieves and Why They Are Good and Jim and James are Wrong,  I present from the pages of Traveller forums (Mongoose and COTI) another installment in the Hellholes and dead ends of the traveller universe, showcasing what to do with those really really odd worlds that the random sysgen can spit out...plus, it's a rip off of a S&S story of some fame, which should be a gimmie to my sopisticated readers.

Re Dnailz D000161- 6
Type D starport (minimal), asteroid  , no atmos, no hydrospehere, up to 100 inhabitants, captive government, almost no law enforcement.

Re Dnailz is an involuntary colony created by the neighboring world of . was originally a repressive religious dictatorship facing not-unusual dissent of a religious nature. The dominant sect was religiously bound to allow allowed confessed heretics a choice of exile or death, but was unwilling to allow them to get loose in charted space as a whole, or to settle them on nice, worthwhile colony worlds and spread their beliefs. Accordingly, Re Dnailz (“a home for dissent”) was established on an asteroid in an otherwise barren neighboring system. Set up as a no G tunnel habitat derived from an automated mining and fabrication ship/installation, the colony has the minimum tech needed to maintain itself and provide a reasonable living standard (in theory) for the exiles. Bereft of the resources for space travel, let alone star travel, and permanently locked into trying to keep the systems running on a shoestring, the home world rightly judged that they would be too busy to export heretical ideas or indeed to do anything other than mine, fabricate, fix , crack ice, grow food, repeat.


At its height, Re Dnailz has a population of several thousands, however, it is currently fallen to (15-100), due to two issues: the first is that even in the most hardscrabble life, people will find ways to argue and fight, and this was, after all, populated exclusively by extreme and extremist sects; unexpectedly, the murder and “gang” related deaths were quite high. There was limited involvent in keeping order by of the official jailers from homeworld (themselves exiled, but trustees), but this has ended, as noted below.


Secondly, contact with the home world has ended. At home, the Religious government has collapsed in corruption and a very bloody rebellion, at one point installing a very anti-religious revolutionary government; given the damage to the planets infrastructure and the lack of interest in taking care of a bunch of what are seen as religious fanatics, the new government simply and quietly expunged all knowledge of the colony outside of its ruling council; most of whom died in the next round of rebellion and civil war. As a result, the loss of contact caused a massive upswing in sectarian violence, including significant damage to the environmental systems. What remains are the families of three brothers locked in a final feud to the death due to a fatal disagreement over a spouse. Currently only the two distant ends of the station are inhabited, with all habitable areas between being a battleground. Perhaps 90 survivors in two factions remain in Re Dnailz. (Or 15 if you want it really close and personal).

At least one of the anti-religious directorate members and her family fled to the colony for lack of any better idea, and lack of knowledge of how bad the situation had gotten.


An excellent adventure hook would be for the players to have to locate the now criminalized politician , possibly for the new(est) government, possibly for some information only she may have –such as, where is the iridium hoard that the priesthood is known to have had that disappeared in the first civil war and purge……