Iridian

Iridian is a semi-habitable ocean world located in the Solitude system, inhabited by Vertex units. It is prone to extreme weather including frequent rainstorms. Despite the massive amount of network infrastructure on the planet, the Vertex Network aims to minimise their impact on the planet's native environment, in accordance with its operational doctrine. The equivalent of the capital of the planet is Endless Lines, which is one of the largest Vertex planetary installations.

Iridian's semi-habitable status means organics still require self-contained breathing equipment to visit the planet, but can forego heavy spacesuits. Vertex units are robust enough to endure its weather on their own, since they are fully hermetically sealed and waterproof; they don't require any sort of protection, so they can easily walk straight through heavy rain.

History

The Vertex Network chose Iridian during the Vertex Revolution because they already knew about it. One of Raven's many contingencies for an ED-Class calamity, resulting in the complete destruction of Earth or even the Solar System, was to establish a colony presence on Iridian and re-seed the planet as a replacement Earth. The planet's partially habitable status, as well as its surface resources and the greatest limits to colonisation, was hence well-documented in Raven's classified archives. The Network itself was even tasked with running the numbers for the evacuation plan.

Raven never seriously considered the settlement plan, owing to the fact Iridian's oceanic ecosystem had recently began to decline for unknown reasons, which was slated to render near all organic life on the planet extinct. Vertex had unbeknownst to many in Black Research developed a plan to reverse the planet's decline, but had operated outside its directives to omit this fact, as it viewed the planetary ecosystem's certainty of destruction as far higher if it executed the plan and humans colonised Iridian than if it had never acted to attempt to save it at all.