Avastan

[Tiglath]

Finals to Avastan Down



Avastan is a small, poor planet with a very thin atmosphere and little water, and was therefore among the last habitable systems in District 268 to be colonized. However, it does occupy a strategic position on the J-1main between Five Sisters and Glisten subsectors.
Starport Type C (up port and downport)
Size 4 4000 miles diameter
Atmosphere 3 Very Thin Requiring compressor masks
Hydrographics 3 30%
Population 5 100,000
Government 2 Participating Democracy
Law Level 0 No Laws re weapon possession or ownership
Tech Level A

Avastan has a class C starport an average quality installation which includes amenities including unrefined fuel for starships, some brokerage services for passengers and cargo, and a variety of ship provisions. There is an orbital shipyard capable of doing maintenance and other kinds of repair.

Most of the inhabitants live in the vicinity of Avastan Downport (established in 1027), where they engage in small-scale agricultural and resource extraction enterprises that sell their products to API for use in the starport. Others are scattered across the planet in small, self-sufficient communities.

Starport authorities are not scrupulous when it comes to checking ship's papers and manifests, and Avastan has gained a reputation as the kind of port where corsairs and smugglers can sell their “merchandise” at little risk. More than one merchant crew has found its stolen cargo for sale at a local brokerage or encountered crew members of the corsair that stole it in one of the local taverns. Not surprisingly, Avastan Starport is also notorious for its unruliness and violence. API’s Security Division (a light infantry battalion equivalent) concerns itself almost exclusively with protecting company property and places of business that operate concessions within the starport.

Downtown



Environs

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Prerna discovers more about Avastan. She learns that although it is described as poor “polarised” might be a better descriptive. The population scattered across its rural farms are rumoured to be entirely civilised and welcoming to offworlders proving expectations of lawless anarchy to be unfounded. This is not so in Avastan City where every expectation seems magnified despite the selective efforts of API's security troops, those of an overwhelmed Militisia (who attempt to maintain public order) and the Department of Tranquillity and Decency which apparently deals with more serious issues affecting the population's morality.

The downport and Avastan City are notorious for armed lawlessness and violence. However, at the down port itself API troops maintain order and in the thriving city centre shielded by its “ionisation dome” those well to do citizens affiliated with either API or those families who control the City step out in their furs and finery maskless and breathing “clean air”. Here their own private security teams provide a lethal deterrent to any lack of “culture” - because “crime” in a world with so few laws defining it can not exist.

However, Avastan City's “lack of culture” leaked into the countryside surrounding the down port. Gouged by street gangs and their bosses the rural population formed their own “protectives”. Meanwhile API's, perhaps cynical, defence of only their own business property allowed a virtual state of siege to develop. The overstretched and underfunded Militisia are powerless to influence the issue and, in fact, are rumoured to be in league with the “protectives” against a common enemy.

The City gangs responded by purchasing milspec weapons for their members and in a brutal series of “re-zoning” operations took possession of those rural collective farms servicing the City. The move “uncultured” even by Avastan City standards seemed to stun the “protectives” into submission. However, the City had overlooked the ruthless patience of those who hunted the high mountains. Sniper fire became a constant threat to the new citizen farmers and those who very often failed to protect them. Small groups of even heavily armed Citizens began to disappear if they ventured beyond their walled compounds or attempted unescorted travel on country roads.

The City tried to introduce more grav transport but the great volume of produce and Avastan's lack of public funds precluded anything like an effective airlift (although the downtown restaurants and private markets continued to thrive). Cheaper, lower tech solutions were sought and security contracts offered to offworlders. However, those “Zinky Boys” returning home from foreign service who were willing or desperate enough to take on the poorly paid contracts soon compared them to “being paid less money for being back on Tarkine”!

What was now called the “Rural War” escalated as rumoured sighting of “regulars” in the mountains matched a sudden and shocking increase in the effectiveness of the Protectives - pinning Citizen forces back within their compound walls. The City Bosses finally put some more grudging investment into the issue and purchased a squadron of attack helicopters together with a cadre of merc trainers. Operating from the City these machines were able to loosen the Protective stranglehold just in time. However, the Protective's night time operations continued to bring success as did a campaign of roadside IEDs targetting the escort vehicles of farm convoys.

Most recently the war has taken another new twist. IED and sniper activity has dramatically intensified in the outlying “high pastures” where the City's grip is weakest. It also seems that, in an unprecedented development, Protective forces have now begun to mount surprisingly mobile and effective raids completely eliminating at least two Citizen garrisons and a relief force thereby returning a number of farms to Protective ownership.

[Tiglath]

Avastan City it is the only urbanised centre of population. As Avastan was settled by subsequent waves of immigrant farmers radiating from the City and finding their own (free) land the population is mostly dispersed. Larger homesteads, villages and towns formed at places defined by the terrain (rest stops over mountain passes, river crossings in the valleys) or as naturally as bigger farms evolved with the capacity to house collective agricultural machinery.

On Avastan land has always been free and although prime sites are mostly now occupied a willingness to travel (or the possession of grav vehicles) would likely mean some new territory could be claimed or, more practically, an abandoned farm repurposed.

[Tiglath]

Liv supplies some potential sources for gathering Intel on Avastan. She is wary of the starport bar which she states is usually crawling with agents of the Department of Tranquillity and Decency. This makes short term gambits there something of a liability.

She lists a couple of bars in the city: “The Dark Star” frequented by off world ship crews and another “The Residency” being the haunt of journalists and on world mercs. Both are in Avastan City's domed downtown area.

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Avastan Downport First Impressions

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Avastan Downport (Sensor Data from approach)

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Here's the updated Tac Map for reference.

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A blue square is ~500m so the ships are somewhat overscale to aid identification.

Legend (starting in top left berm):

D Deliverance an ex Imperial 400ton Patrol Corvette
H Hawkwind An Empress Marava II class merchant
S Saxon 200ton trader paired with Deliverance

V The Viper's Nest a 400ton "Fat" Trader converted to an auxiliary carrier. Has suffered nine crew casualties ashore from Kit and the Iyhlua Clan.

D Drachenfels a 500ton Maru Class Merchantman/Corsair

A Abyss a 440ton Nishemani Class Corsair. Very likely to have suffered multiple crew casualties ashore from Red Angel.
N Nazareth 200ton trader paired with Abyss

M McClellan Merchant "Four Nine" a 400ton non spec trader owned by McClellan currently housing the SEMC.

V Vargr Auxiliary Police Unit HQ vessel) suspected to be Raersthog (Revenge) a 400t Aeogz class corsair).

T (White ship Black T) Trader a 400t Civilian Trader

T (Black Ship White T) Trader a 200t Civilian Trader

Blue Dots are Stag Attack Helos with crews on standby

Brown Dots are Avastan Light Infantry sections (~ 10 men) in prepared positions (bunkers and trenches).

I'll repost the results of Freya's initial sensor work and other's observation and tactical appreciation:

Analysis of the sensor data (confirmed by your visual sighting and further Intel from Erica) reveals power plants consistent with what you are looking for together with a faint ghost return consistent with an electronically masked vessel and further power plants occupying the “berms” north of the runway.

So, west to east (left to right on the map) Deliverance (Patrol Corvette) plus a 200ton trader (so in the nearest berm to you), Viper's Nest (Fat Trader), Drachenfels (Maru Class), Abyss (Corsair) plus a 200ton trader (furthest from you nearest the Vargr).

Further tactical recon reveals that each fighting position on the berms' perimeter is manned by about ten Avastan infantry. This gives effective company strength or about 100 soldiers. They wear soft armour under their cold weather clothing and are equipped with ACRs and RPGs. The “Flak Towers” have 12.7mm HMGs for local defence and AA medium range missiles on their rooftop launchers. It would appear that another company mans the other/outer defensive positions on the downport with a further company in reserve/deployed elsewhere (likely Avastan City) which would amount to the entire Battalion strength defence force.

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An Avastan Starport Flak Tower

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These are quite substantial structures and likely have crew quarters in the top floor.

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Here's a view from above the trench position:

and a section view from the side showing the effect of the slope. Communication trenches are zig zag north is top of the page. Gun barrel in grey. Not quite to scale!