AW: Neue Planeten
Ivy
Ivy is a planet of majestic mountains covered in deep, green forests, vibrant with life, stretching out, broken only by clear, deep lakes and rivers, to the coastlines of the world’s oceans, blue and clean. At least it is this way to approximately 51.3% according to current estimates by the Department of Ressources.
When Thresher Incorporated made a bid for the control of the world in the late 720s Ivy’s small human population did not even number anything near ten million. The terrified people tried to fend of the perceived invasion – really nothing more than advance forces – the only way they could think of, by looking for a knight in shining armour to protect them from the predations of the wicked. That knight was SLA Industries. For some years after the signing of the 3Ps contract the status of Ivy within the World of Progress was unclear, it stood on the brink of becoming a war world as SLA moved troops in to oust the Thresher forces already in place on the planet. But war never really came, SLA’s rival company folded in quickly on Ivy, apparently not wanting to expend any more of its ressources on the world. So, in 731 SD, conflict ceased and the last of the Thresher troops had been defeated. Ivy claimed victory. SLA claimed Ivy.
Following the end of hostilities the civilian population hoped that SLA would expand upon the microindustry revolving around the careful harvesting of pharmacologicaly useful plants already in place. The industrial giant and its subcompanies considered the idea, then abandoned it. Ivy was classified as a ressource world and the ressources to be claimed were timber and fertile soil.
The first equipment was moved in and construction began, locals were hired for many of the jobs, and they got their first taste of the Progress SLA was offering them, new money, new goods, new drugs, new lifestyles. Logging had started during that first phase already, but only when the first constructs were ready did it begin in earnest. Harvesters build especially for the task of cutting down the centuries old trees, strip mining vehicles meant to scoop off the fertile topsoil.
Behind them not only no trees were left but the very foundation of the forests gone. They left dead and barren debris fields in their wake, that by now cover more than half of Ivy’s dry surface area.
Ivy is a dying world one way or another, and the natives realize it to their horror, though many of them try to console themselves with all the gifts the company has bought them in exchange for their planet’s death.
Either SLA continues with its exploitation until nothing is left for them to harvest and the planet’s ecosystem completely and invariably destroyed, or Ivy might yet get its chance to make it to warworld status and be destroyed in the process, with various groups of native activists making overtures to Dark Night, while others try to contact the enigmatic Old Angry Ghosts of the forests.
"We were working the eastern spur when we hit on a native protester, we had no SHIVERs or anything with us, but we, we have handled such situations in the past. So I tell Lenny to get out and get her out of the way, and Lenny, he nods, and begins to climb out of the cockpit. That is when I notice something about the bitch. That she isn‘t dressed like your ordinary eco freak native, but that she somehow reminds me of them Johannas back home and their hoodoo shit. Then I see her raise her arms and call something but I can’t hear her in the cockpit, but Lenny outside, he can, he stops for a moment and he cocks his head to the side. I swear I will never forget the look on his face. The look on his face before it is gone. Next thing this THING tears a hole in the combine. I have no idea how or what, it was ripping the harvester to shreds with ist bare hands, and then, then, - then I get a closer look, and I see it has a face, and it is impossibly ancient with creases and wrinkles and stringy white hair and no teeth left in its snarling mouth and I see its eyes and then it shreds the front of the cockpit, dashboard, controls and all and I can see the fire in those old sunken eyes and I cannot look away."
-from the Cloak Division interview of Jamie Ferguson, deceased shortly after the conduction of said interview, complaints of the treating physician as to the use of drugs on the unstable patient have been logged with Cloak
Designer’s Notes
Not much of a story here. I wanted to do a, say, "classical" ressource world based around logging. Here it is, though it became somewhat less classical than I original intended during the write-up. (By the way there is an answer to what the Old Angry Ghosts are, but I did not feel like including it in the text (though I did so in the first draft).)
0.5 SCL Increase für die korrekte Identifikation der im Text verborgenen Anspielung. 
Stay SLA
nga
