Helios Prime
Helios Prime is the heavy-industry Core world: one billion two hundred million people, almost a third of them working the forges that produce the housings for the LaGrange Core shells -- the only physical artefact in the verse that the Fold has to fold around.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | neo-hive |
| Anchor System | helios-foundry |
| Controlling Faction | Helios Foundry |
| Fold Bleed | low |
| Habitat | urban, ashen |
| Population | 1280000000 |
| Role | anchor |
| Zone | Core |
Notes
Dangers: Heat-line bleeds: the older foundry stacks still vent superheated plasma through the lower hives; an unmaintained vent is the kind of disaster the helmets are for., Kadiss blind-spots: the forges' induction fields interfere with local Kadiss coverage; the workers call the dead zones 'the cool room' and what passes through them is not always logged.
Hooks: A Core-shell housing forged on Helios Prime has failed stress-tests three days before delivery to a Family-owned Fold ship; Helios wants the fault suppressed and the party to find who put the bad pour in the line., A Thrax labour boss on the foundry floor has organised a quiet slowdown that the line-managers cannot break; Helios hires outside muscle to break it for them and the muscle turns out to be the party., An Ark-arrival prospector brings in a slab of unknown alloy and claims it is a pre-Exodus shell material; the Foundry's metallurgists want it, the Confederation wants it quarantined, and the prospector wants both sides to bid.
Lore: Helios Prime is the heavy-industry Core world: one billion two hundred million people, almost a third of them working the forges that produce the housings for the LaGrange Core shells -- the only physical artefact in the verse that the Fold has to fold around. Helios owns the process, Helios owns the slag, and Helios owns the labour gene-stock that does the pouring: Thrax, the engineered combat/labour lineage, are the foundry's pride and its quiet scandal, since a Foundry Thrax and a Legion Thrax are kin enough to recognise each other across a yard line. The world reads as Asset Realisation doctrine turned inside out: the resource is not rek or people but heat, and the heat is not negotiable. The Inner Hives are the deepest foundries, induction-cooked and half-lit by their own slag; the Spires are the Foundry's administrative arcology, where the senior staff live above the smog line in filtered-window offices. The Cinder Yards, the surface dump, are a quieter economy -- a class of salvage outfit has built a living off the failed pours, and Helios tolerates them because the alternative is paying for disposal themselves. The forges' induction fields interfere with Kadiss coverage, and the workers call the dead zones 'the cool room'. Helios does not advertise this.
Notable: The Inner Hives: the deepest foundries, where the temperature kills a baseline human in minutes; staffed almost entirely by Thrax combat/labour gene-stock and pressure-suited Skells., The Spires: the Foundry's administrative arcology, where the senior staff live above the smog line and pretend the Spires have windows., The Cinder Yards: the surface dump for failed pours and slag; a class of salvage outfit has made a quiet living picking the Yards for re-melt.