Outworlds, The - A Starsector Atlas

The Outworlds were settled by a varied mob of dissidents and adventurers early in the first century of the interstellar era. Isolated from the main run of developing galactic civilization, The Outworlds evolved an interstellar society quite similar to the Terran Federation and its neighboring powers.

Culture and civilization on the Outworlds themselves, however, took a variety of paths. 'Strange planets breed strange customs', said the famed explorer H. Zair Toadsticker, and the customs of the Outworlds are no exception. Midgard, the oldest of the Outworlds, has a bizarre multi-species society and even more bizarre cities. Dandalore, a vast swamp covering the only continent, is inhabited by a race of humans who consider the bog as a sort of god. Chavyry is a small dense world with a thin atmosphere; the population lives in surface domes and in the lowlands, where enough air has collected to make the atmosphere breathable without respirators. Agar is a watery globe, with only a few islands above sea level. The human settlers, all employees of a single food-processing company, make their living by skimming nutritious slime-algae off the ocean surface. These are only some of the worlds in the Outworlds.

Three alien races with space flight include themselves in the Outworlder confederation. The Chierol of Brandile are an upright quadrapedal species adapted to living in extremely cold conditions. The Geertok are a man-like race that is developing a scientifically based society after years of living under a harsh theocracy. Their homeworld is Standarozzle. The Greee of Zair's world are small, cuddly-looking octopods with an extremely long life span, but a low birthrate. Much of their work force consists of robots and genetically altered animals.

There are a few other, more primitive, races of non-humans on out-worlder planets, such as the Finned Ones of Agar and the cavern-dwelling Kobolds of Kessex. These aborigines are generally ignored by the humans on their worlds, as there is plenty of space for all on undeveloped, under populated planets.