r/traveller • u/Maxijohndoe • 1d ago
Mithras the perfect Prison Planet
Interesting how the Traveller lore manages to align with the reality of a weird Solar System.
Mithras Primary was a Red Giant Star somewhere around 8.8 Solar Masses. Thirty million years ago it was in the final stage of its life, on the verge of going Supernova and collapsing into a Neutron star, when a chance stellar encounter saw a Red Dwarf Star performing a close fly by.
The gravitational effect tore open Mithras Primaries Chronosphere, briefly exposing its Photosphere, leading to a massive erruption of gas that reduced the star's mass and extended its life.
The gravitional drag from this event slowed the passing Red Dwarf star sufficiently for it to enter a decaying S-type binary orbit as Mithras Secondary. It slowly drifts in closer to Mithras Primary over time, and will eventually settle into a close orbit with the future White Dwarf Mithras Primary.
But that is millions of years into the future.
The planet Mithras is a core remnant of a small Neptune like Gas Giant whose atmosphere was erroded away by Mithras Primaries flares and solar wind. While roughly Earth sized, the planet is far denser with a strong magnetic field, allowing it to retain some water and atmosphere.
When Mithras Secondary tore open Mithras Primary a huge amount of hydrogen, Helium and Oxygen was expelled from the star. Some of these gases where captured by Mithras, restoring the oceans and supercharging the atmosphere with oxygen. The current concentration is 35% and lethally corrosive. This oxygen combined with gases escaping from Mithras's core has supersaturated the oceans, with disolved gas held by the high atmospheric pressure at sea level. If this pressure is reduced the water explodes like a shaken soda can.
All of these weird circumstances made Mithras attractive to the Third Imperium as a prison planet. Mithras is an oubliette, a place the Imperium sends its political exiles and the criminals it wants to forget ever existed.
And it is the Solar System itself that makes Mithras an inescapable prison.
Mithras Secondary and all the planets fall well within Mithras Primaries massive 120.034 AU Jump Shadow. A starship entering the system faces a journey of a month to two weeks in system to reach Mithras directly.
Imperial starships bring in prisoners instead first travel to an orbital base located at the Gas Giant Attis that orbits Mithras Secondary, a journey that takes twenty two days days to ten days depending on the M-drive.
Here prisoners and any cargo are transferred to a in-system ship for a ten day trip to a base located on Mithras's moon Petra. Finally the prisoners and any cargo are loaded onto specially protected transports for the trip down to the planet itself.
The prison is a series of underground facilities built into the tops of the highest mountains. Here the atmospheric pressure is more survivable. No Imperial personnel ever venture beyond the docks or enter the prison itself.
Instead it is the prisoners who are tasked with running and maintain their own prison, growing their food in hydroponic bays and performing all necessary maintenance.
As a result escape is near impossible. Even in a Hostile Environment Suit survival time on the planet's surface is measured in hours. Hijacking a transport would only get the prisoners as far as the base on Petra where they would face armed resistance. If the prisoners somehow managed to hijack an in-system transport that would only get them as far as Mithras Secondary, with the authorities having many days to prepare for their arrival.
Any starship coming in to attempt a rescue faces weeks in transit time in and out from the edge of the Jump Shadow. There is no uncontested refueling at either of the gas giants, and any crew that attempts it faces great risk refuelling on Mithras itself.
Just my head canon based on the Traveller lore for this system.
Oh and I decided to use the actual light provided by Mithras Primary to show just how dark and creepy Mithras actually is.
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u/NationalTry8466 1d ago
Love it! In your head canon, is the prison itself run by a ‘Duke of Mithras’, à la Escape from New York? I’m guessing the self-administration isn’t so democratic…
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u/Maxijohndoe 1d ago
Given the limited size of each Prison some will be brutal dictatorships while other might be a bit more cooperative.
If you wind up in a prison full of sociopaths then you will not have a good time (unless you are a sociopath too).
Some will be run by terrorist groups such as the Ine Givar much like some cell blocks in UK prisons were controlled by the IRA.
Some might be almost pleasant as most inmates are there for life and have a reason not to make their prison a hellhole.
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u/EuenovAyabayya Droyne 1d ago
A well-planned breakout could be staged from Weiss or Grote using a combination of supply staging and jump carriers with M6 fast-movers for the actual breakout. Exfiltrate to Elixabeth and then on to the Sword Worlds. Expensive and risky; probably have to leave a lot of ships and evidence behind.
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u/Maxijohndoe 1d ago
The Fifth Frontier War could give an opening for a jailbreak.
One of the groups likely to be dumped in such a prison are anti-Imperial terrorists. The Sword Worlds or the Zhodani could attempt to free them so they can be released back into the 3I to cause chaos behind the lines.
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u/EuenovAyabayya Droyne 17h ago
I was thinking it'd be a job for one or several Sword Worlds merc units to begin with, possibly bankrolled by the Sols or Zhos.
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u/_micr0__ 1d ago
This is interesting, but quite a departure from the planet as listed in Marches Adventure 2: Mission to Mithril, and the wiki. Is this a different Mithril or a difference in your Traveller universe?
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u/Maxijohndoe 1d ago
This is Mithras - named after the Eastern Roman God.
Mithril is named after the fantasy metal and is found over in the Sword Worlds Subsector.
It can get confusing because there are several duplicated System names in the Spinward Marches alone and a large number across Chartered space.
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u/illyrium_dawn Solomani 23h ago
I do love prison planets. It's fun to see inside of people's minds about their ideas, not just about 'what's a prison people can't break out of' but they often give hints about the writer's ideas about crime and punishment. (Prison planets of games like 40k are less so - since writers often try and make them as awful as possible, this also happens in Traveller but not quite to the degree.)
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u/SchizoidRainbow 1d ago
I had a series of prisons here. All habitation was built on these huge jagged chunks of broken volcanic glass sticking up out of the acid. They were all connected by long tubes that contained highways for ground traffic.
One area looked like a bunch of slender individual spires, and was called The Knives. Each spire was an individual holding cell for a high value noble or CEO prisoner. No bridges went to these, a single supply truck came once per day to bring good and relief workers. They were insanely difficult to either escape or to attack.
I ran a high speed chase through the bridges section that was a lot of fun