Oshora III sits just outside the system’s habitable zone, orbiting the system’s star at a distance of one hundred eighty million kilometres. Covered in a thin, permanent glacier, daily temperatures rarely venture above minus fifty standard degrees, making the oxygen rich air difficult to breath for anything more than an hour without proper survival clothing. This is especially true during the fourteen-hour nights, when the temperature plummets to minus one hundred standard degrees or lower. Life outside the environmentally sealed habitat domes is extremely difficult without modern survival equipment, especially heated suits, heated respirators and hostile environment tents. Quite apart from the generally icy landscape dominating most of the planet, large areas around the equator are covered in volcanic mud flats, the tectonic activity brisk enough to keep the mud from freezing despite the frigid temperatures. Despite this inhospitable environment, and the light pollution from the continent-spanning cityscapes, the night skies on Oshora III contain some of the most breathtaking skyscapes to be found anywhere in the sector. The planet’s distance from the sun, as well as the normally crystal clear night skies allow almost the whole galaxy to be seen on certain nights.

While most of Oshora III’s native wildlife was exterminated in the planet’s urbanisation, there is one quite notable exception, one that makes nocturnal wandering more hazardous than the climate alone would explain. A subspecies of gundark, locally known as Night Terrors, have succeeded in making the transition from icy wilderness to frozen cityscapes. These creatures, slightly more than half the size of their wild cousins on other planets, survive by picking off the odd drunken reveller or suicidal fool, as well as by breaking into poorly constructed dwellings on the poorer side of town. Perhaps because they mainly prey on the lowest levels of society, the planetary government does little to hunt down and exterminate the creatures apart from the occasional token effort. Slum dwellers are well advised to sleep with weapons close to hand in case a pair of these marauding predators comes calling.