The remains of a once verdant world, the Nizon of today is a burned, airless world of barren rock, scarred by meteor impact craters. It was not always so. As few as seven centuries ago, the planet was a green and growing world, home to its own sentient species, the Nazren, who although isolationist and resistant to the idea of modern development, were nonetheless possessed of their own unique culture, language and limited technology. This all changed when a massive solar flare from the system’s sun, larger than anything Republic astronomers had observed up to that point, and still the third largest flare and coronal mass ejection in recorded history hurled untold billions of cubic meters of plasma into space on a collision course with the planet.

Nizon’s moon, which was in the direct path of the jet, was obliterated but partially protected the planet, and as a result Nizon’s equatorial regions were merely burned down to the bedrock as the atmosphere boiled away, while the polar regions suffered the full brunt of the inferno and were reduced to a fused landscape of glass and crystal resembling the ice caps of many other planets. These so-called “glassiers” are both a tragic reminder of the planet’s past and a key reason why economic activity has resumed on the remains of the planet in the ensuing centuries.

The interaction of the solar flare and minerals in the planet’s crust in the polar zones caused the formation of a number of unique crystals as well as remarkable pure and strong glass, both of which are being commercially exploited by the numerous corporations that have recently invested in mining operations on Nizon. The removal of much soil during the solar catastrophe means that there are considerable savings on excavation costs. The lack of a need to engage in any kind of environmental conservation measures means that the cost of extracting raw materials from Nizon is significantly lower than on most other planets and many mining corporations, large and small, have established operations on the planet. The profusion of domed mining towns means that Nizon’s population is now higher than at any point in its recorded history, which leads to some strains on logistics and supply of food, water and essential supplies, with their accompanying tensions between settlements. Local and offworld supply chains have so far held up under the load, but there is no telling what would happen if supplies were disrupted for any length of time.