Qasqi is the fourth planet in the Centares system and the largest. The planet’s slow rotation, a solar day lasting almost one thousand three hundred hours and a solar orbit lasting over sixty-two standard years, makes time seem to pass with glacial slowness on the planet. Like its sister gas giants, Filo and Far Qasqi, the planet also serves as one of the major industrial and manufacturing hubs for the entire system and boasts a heavy cover of cloud city platforms that envelop the planet. Much of the heavy manufacturing capacity in the system is concentrated on these three gas giants and the system government has divided the different manufacturing sectors among the three to avoid unhealthy competition. In Qasqi’s case, the planet’s factories, manufacturing centres and workshops produce ships, shipboard components, engines and propulsion systems. The planet also hosts significant ship repair and maintenance facilities, as might be expected from a large ship manufacturing centre.

Located relatively far from the system’s star, Qasqi’s swirling gaseous atmosphere is extremely cold. The multitude of cloud cities within its frigid atmosphere require constant and continuous heating to prevent the engines and repulsorlift generators from freezing. Local engineers extract combustible gas from the planet’s atmosphere to fuel the heating engines, thereby assuring an uninterrupted fuel supply and allowing the factories and industries to keep manufacturing costs down. Ships approaching any of the numerous cloud cities will be able to see glowing heating coils surrounding the platform’s lower levels. While this method of heating might be considered wasteful compared to completely sealing the platform in a climate-controlled shield, it is significantly cheaper.

Qasqi’s bluish purple-hued atmosphere has another interesting advantage for manufacturers. A small, but significant chemical difference in the tibannagas extracted here lends itself to bolts of a brilliant purple hue, quite different from the more common reds and blues produced using blaster gas sourced elsewhere. Several tibannagas refining corporations, most of them state-owned, extract and refine this gas and market it as a slight premium over gas that produces the more commonly coloured bolts. Certain government navies and independent ship operators have been known to willingly pay the additional cost in order to be able to differentiate the fire of their turbolasers from that of other ships, the better to spot the fall of shot in pitched engagements. While this does have the drawback of making their ships easily identifiable during space combat, the advantage of being able to easily see where their bolts are impacting is enough to justify the slight cost increase.