Earth

Earth (Unadministered World 97)

The last of the thirteen known Type-1a worlds to remain Unadministered, UA-97 has gone remarkably unnoticed for much of Dimensional Space history. The prevalence of unusual hair colours in certain areas hints at Alhazredian occupation at some point before or during the Dark Ages, which is borne out by the presence of a small set of ruins on a nearby Type-1c world that seems to have been city-sized, though from the size of the facility it is doubtful that it had a priest-king in residence. More likely, it was a remote outpost that may or may not have been the first in a wave of planned colonisation attempts. Regardless, it seems likely that when Alhazred fell and the inhabitants were no longer able to maintain the technology keeping them alive, they moved to the nearby inhabited Type-1a world and bred into the local population without further incident. If they made any use of magic, it did not last, and since then UA-97 has been largely left alone, tucked into a backwater and ignored as wars and empires raged and rose and fell in more central areas.

The planet is notable for the surprisingly low occurrence of magic, with 98% of the population possessing weak enough Linker Cores that they do not qualify for F rank, the lowest level of magical ability on record. Of the remainder, the majority are weak F to D rank mages who have never been trained, and there appears to be no evidence that any coherent magic system has ever developed to the point of becoming widespread, though crude magic systems have been developed by families like the Fuwa (later Takamachi) clan, who fashion magic into primitive Barrier Jacket-like constructs to increase their speed, strength and durability. These are inefficient, however, and notably inferior to a refined Barrier Jacket cast by a trained mage.

And then there are the anomalies, freakishly powerful and skilled mages like Nanoha, Hayate and Gil Graham, who seem to have a natural aptitude for learning magic and who are born with naturally vast reservoirs of power, such that they tend to pass A rank before they even reach puberty, solely on power alone. There is an explanation for this, but it cannot be shared at present to avoid spoiling future events in Game Theory. Thus, if you choose to use this observed trait as a plot hook, be sure to make up an interesting and evocative explanation for it.

The planet is known to the TSAB, and has been since 0011, when Gil Graham rescued an injured TSAB officer there. It has been given the designation of Unadministered World 97, but the TSAB have not made official contact. At least one group is pushing for them never to do so, as the planet is an interesting curiosity to a few scholars in how a Type-1a world develops without any magic or contact with Dimensional Space - a control group, as it were. The incidence of anomalous mages appears to be small enough that their discovery of Dimensional Space, when it occurs, has not yet made it known to the planetary governments, and UA-97 at large thus far remains unaware of magic or the existence of alternate dimensions. Writers are advised to think carefully about the consequences of such a discovery, and how it would be affected by the manner in which it was found out.