Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Remananos (section)

==Description==

Underbar is a gleaming ball of silver in the black void of space.  Toxic, dangerous, lightly defended, and utterly inimical to life, Underbar remains a prize for the Imperium.  Its oceans are a mixture of metal, bromine, and horrifically polluted water.  Its air is a morass of nitrogen, carbon, and metal molecules, and it has no native life.  The Imperium, however, has aggressively colonized the world, and uses mighty Mechanicus machines to extract the precious elements from the glittering oceans.
The history of Underbar is unremarkable.  Mechanicus Explorator Dammelvine discovered it in M41.201, and promptly wrote it off as a potential fourth-string mining site.  It was only after a coincidental visit by a Chartered Captain performing a routine navigation check that the Captain discovered what Dammelvine had thought to be rock formations were actually pools of liquid metal, floating under skies of carbon gas and nitrogen-filled storm clouds.
The Mechanicus ordered the phenomenon investigated, and soon enough, the world was categorized for a colony.  Shortly thereafter, the problems of such a colony became clear.  Though filtering the air is not so hard, the incredibly corrosive and hot oceans of liquid metal eat through the aluminum hulls of typical Mechanicus ocean mining barges.  This, combined with the relatively small infrastructure for permanent support of industrially demanding colonies outside the immediate area of Cognomen, made the colony unsustainable for the Mechanicus alone.  Free chartered merchant houses began competing for mining rights, which the Mechanicus stubbornly refused to give up.

Eventually, a compromise was reached with the Administratum.  The labor forces and funding for the colony would come from Thimble, while the special alloy-hulled mining equipment needed to harvest the precious metals of the world would come from the Mechanicus.  Though most labor here is compelled, because of Thimble’s vigorous crime rate and the need to do something with the convicts, there is a core of specialized, well-trained, and very well-paid professional miners on the planet.  These veteran workers direct the convicts, operate the great mineral separators, and if need be, fill the first seats on the evacuation lifters when waves in the metal seas threaten to capsize the vast processing stations that float over those same seas.
As the world is unable to spare what little manpower it has, Underbar does not raise Imperial Guard forces.  However, the vast volume of rare metals it produces entitles it to a small, permanent garrison of Celestial Guard.  Additionally, overused convicts can always be returned to employment as Servitors elsewhere on the planet.

There are other aspects of Underbar life that are potentially profitable for the Imperium.  A low-altitude survey of the planet’s south pole revealed that there are deposits of naturally occurring radioactive metals there that are remarkably similar to the corite that forms during botched nuclear power tests.  The Adeptus Mechanicus has authorized a small research lab to be set up there to study the metal, and perhaps determine a way to potentially recycle broken nuclear cores.  These are depressingly common in the abandoned cities of the lost Terran Federation that turned to primitive sources of electricity after losing contact with Mars.

There is another planet in the Remananos system that could potentially be colonized.  It is a planet of steep, alpine mountains and churning oceans.  With only a few decades of work by the Mechanicus, it could be rendered a viable human colony.  However, the Mechanicus presently has far larger concerns on its hands, and there are no attempts to build a colony underway until after the next Glasian Migration.