Booting more old visdev for the Runaway to the Stars book off Patreon.
I’ve mentioned before that Shyam is tall for a tailed spacer at 145cm; so for some perspective here’s Killian, a tailer on the short side, standing at 108cm. Him and Tod are heads of the indoor mechanics crew for Ixion recycling plant, a job that mostly involves figuring out where and why the “automation” isn’t working. Robotic automation for factory-line processes saves Ixion a lot of manpower, it’s only automatic if you can keep it from breaking down. These two also have a revolving crew of temp workers under their management, Killian used to be one of them but he stuck around for some reason. Tod’s training him for management now.
Also pictured is a very wobbly first pass at the recycling plant layout (I need to do more research before I’ll feel confident finalizing anything) and a less wobbly diagram of the tiny habitat dome on Dirtball.
Shikaviil Port is a co-species FIFO (fly-in-fly-out) work town located in a crater on a planet with a minimal atmosphere. The planet is technically called Shikaviil in Tiiliitian and Ixion-3 in English, but the English speaking residents usually call it Dirtball. It used to be a bustling Tiiliitian avian outpost, but after enough of the rare metal and heavy water was stripped out to make mining unprofitable, Jovian humans bought it and established the recycling plant. The habitat has since been modified to accommodate human residents. A major result of this is separate housing and agriculture blocks; avians have to be on a different water treatment loop than humans because they are full of cobalt. Talita is the only centaur living on Dirtball and she has her own tiny corner carved out of the dry storage area. The other apartments are not big enough to fit her. :’) Electrical power is supplied by solar arrays on the light side of the planet, comms are on top of the central spire. Shikaviil has more housing capacity than its current resident population, so most of the time it’s super empty. There is no community center or real gathering place other than the trade center… it’s kind of like living in an airport lobby.
PATREON | STORE | Runaway to the Stars
