Natrium-Blüte

The somewhat unusually-named world of Natrium-Blüte (so-named because the Type-5 world, when first discovered, had a large salt-desert left by a dried up sea which was roughly flower-shaped) might be taken as an exemplar of a certain kind of periphery-type world. It happened to be Administered, but Aligned and Unadministered worlds also exist which are similar. The centre of dimensional space civilisation has always been historically based around Type-1 and Type-4 planets, where the environments are close to human-norm, and where the oldest Alhazredian civilisation was established. From the fall of Ancient Belka onwards into the Warring States era, a noted fracturing of civilisation occurred, with new small mono-system polities established, collaborating and cooperating only to be conquered and unified into larger powers away from the older core. These places were often built off places where Alhazredian civilisation had once been, and the clashes between the Belkan Sankt-Kaisers and the Larindh Theoimperium, an independent post-Alhazredian state spread among a cluster of Type-5 and Type-2 worlds, ended with Larindh sacked, and the lands handed to various victorious Belkan nobles. Natrium-Blüte (then called Devangar in Larindhi) was one of these worlds.

Time and tides change, however, and in the chaos of the Warring States era, it was perhaps inevitable that the world end up drifting away from the Sankt-Kaisers. Orbital dockyards blossomed with ships made from metal from the mines, and it spread out, taking over other former Larindhi worlds, until it was the crown world of a four world polity. Natrium-Blüte was one of the worlds which was one of the coalition-worlds which stood against the last Sankt-Kaiser. And they were massacred, Belkan assets sweeping in to wipe out the small periphery empire even before Olivie's death. Belka did not even bother to occupy the world; it was enough to smash its shipyards and ports, and break its cities. In the aftermath of Olivie's death, the world was mostly abandoned, populations moved away from the blue-white sun, leaving a few populations in old cities, ruins, and noble territories.

As a Type-5 world, surviving on Natrium-Blüte poses difficulties, and the major centre of population left is around the spaceport, which is located on the coastline of the continent which overlaps the North Pole. Technically built in one of the shallow, plant-choked seas, the port is built on stilts, with the buildings themselves built underwater so there's a protective layer of water keeping it cooler. Heavy metal salts coat the structures, such that the underwater elements look more like some kind of strange coral reef than something constructed. There is also a population centre near the south pole, in the ruins of the old capital, which once sprawled across an island archipelago, but was mostly shattered by Belkan orbital bombardment. The palace itself is entirely missing, as is the island it took up, from use of magical weapons which dropped it into imaginary space.

There are also ruins scattered across the world, of the remnants of the civilisation of Larindh, and its Alhazredian origins. Archaeological evidence reveals that the Fall of Alhazred was far enough away that several Priest-Kings survived the catastrophe. It also reveals that the Priest-Kings wiped each other out in magical fire within fifty years; there are still areas where plant life does not grow, because of the still-present mana contamination and the ruptures in dimensional space. Naturally, humans being humans, the largest Larindhi ruin is right next to one of those contaminated areas, and it appears that they had developed a way to use the waste elevated mana levels to enhance their own skills. The Larindhi never developed the standardised magical styles of the Belkans, but they did appear to start from scratch with Alhazredian methods (not by choice, it should be noted), and as a result, they had a pseudo-standardised magical system, lacking the formalism of Belkan, but still easier and simpler than the bloated elements of late-era Alhazredian.

As a result, there are overgrown cities, many of which are built to a large extent underground, in the more equatorial continents. Volcanic basalt was used for a lot of them, being a common building material, and so especially among the oldest ones, strange towering basalt cities are overgrown with thermo-synthetic metallic plants. The remains of the technology used to keep the low-intensity magical fields which kept an oxygen atmosphere in and the plant-life out is by now gone, broken or stolen apart. There are a few areas where it is kept working, but many of these have been repaired with modern magitech, mainly because this kind of low energy, passively powered field is very durable, and so when an archaeological team repairs them so they can do a dig, it's easier to leave them active.