The Inner Sphere: Niops Association

World Name: Niops VII

Star Type: M5V

Position in System: 7

Time to Jump Point: 2.44 days

Recharging Station: None

Political Ruler: High Associator Brandex Da-Ri

ComStar Facility Class: None

ComStar Representative: None

Population: 13,245,000

Percentage and Level of Native Life: 30%, Fish

Description:

The capital of the Niops Association is a cold, temperate planet with abundant aquatic life and fresh water sources. Like its companion planets, Niops V and VI, Niops VII was settled so that scientists could establish the first generations-long examination of a failing star. Isolated by the events of the Civil War and later the Succession Wars, the Niops community polarized into a elite scientific minority and a dependent unskilled labor force made up of refugees from the Inner Sphere. With plenty of geothermal energy and fusion technologies at their disposal, the ruling elite provide comfortable standards of living for their multitudes of "retainers," but at the price of complete submission to their wills and their desires.

The tiny three-world state lies just beyond the borders of the Free Worlds League, between the Circinus Federation and the Marian Hegemony. Originally the site of a Star League astronomical research mission, the three planets and the personnel assigned to them were cut off from the Inner Sphere when the Amaris Civil War shattered the Star League. They remained isolated until the late 2800s, when Capellan refugees fleeing the destruction of the First Succession War landed on Niops V. Poorly educated peasants for the most part, the Capellans wanted nothing more than freedom from war and modest prosperity. The tales of mass destruction and loss of life convinced the locals that they would be better off forgotten by the galaxy. While the scientific community on the planet continued their elaborate research, the Capellan newcomers were gradually absorbed into the social order as skilled laborers and agricultural specialists. In order to obtain these things, they and their descendants accepted an evolving social order in which they remained subservient to the highly educated descendants of the Star League personnel.

For centuries, the educated elite maintained its power by tightly controlling access to education, assuring every laborer a minimally comfortable standard of living and providing for the protection of ther Association against roving pirate bands. Niopian rules created an aerospace force capable of fending off most pirate attacks, and the Periphery's bandits soon learned to leave the Niops Association alone. Another factor in the development of the Niopian technocracy was the lack of a means to communicate with other states. The Association's single HPG station succumbed to multiple equipment breakdowns sometime after the Capellan refugees' arrival; preferring to remain free of outside influences, the rulers of the Niopian worlds made no effort to restore it. Unused to personal freedom and deprived of the knowledge that life could be different, the laborer class had no reason to challenge their rulers' increasing monopoly on power.

With Star League technology at their disposal, the technocrats have developed a "Master Purpose" that has grown to semi-religious proportions. Maintaining a cold-blooded aristocracy, the privileged elite are loyal only to themselves and their own petty desires.

Since the beginning of the thirty-first century, however, this solitary nation has gradually been exhausting the natural resources that enabled it to remain self-sufficient for so long. Many of its mineral reserves are nearly tapped out, and its agricultural base cannot fill the economic gap. No longer able to guarantee moderate comfort for everyone, the ruling class has cautiously begun to look beyond its own borders for ways to salvage the Association's faltering economy.

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