Kabar Terraforming Installation

The Kabar terraforming complex.

The Mannar have always stood out a bit in the Federation. One of the founding members of the Federation and one of the largest member races, the Mannar were a bit unusual in that, at the time of first contact with Luminarian explorers, Kabar (Mannar VIII) was not unified under a central world government (although the ethnic Gallente maintained de jure nation-states, city-states, and various other governmental entities, they had long settled into a peaceful status quo under the World Democracy League and other multinational institutions; that system on Gallente Prime lasts to this day. Needless to say, the Caldari differed in, uhh, several respects). Rather, a number of nation-states still existed on Mannar, with many of them hostile to one another in the way that nation-states in geopolitical conflict are.

The three-ring station serves as the logistics station for the terraforming effort.

In fact, several of the major nation-states on Mannar still practiced slaveholding at the time of first contact, something anathema to the human rights ethos in slow development across the proto-Federation. In response, the Luminarians attempted to dissuade the major nations from their slaveholding ways by offering advanced technology. The slaveholding nations, well, continued to hold slaves. So the Luminarians instead brought the non-slaveholding nations up to technological equality with the Luminarians, who were there shocked (shocked, I say!) to see those nations use that newly-acquired technology to gang up on the slaveholding nations and declare war. Within a few years, the preferred nations of Mannar were in control, and the Luminarians welcomed them with open arms into the nascent Federation.

The main headquarters station of the terraforming effort.

Mannar’s newly slavefree world continued happily through the next few hundred years. The Federation slowly expanded, the Mannar gobbled up newly discovered worlds, things were grand. But then, 24 years before the Youil Convention and still in the midst of the Gallente-Caldari war, an ecological disaster struck: whether through environmental degradation or an act of biological warfare (many Mannar blamed the Caldari at the time, but no links were ever proven), an insect species fundamental to the Kabar ecosystem went extinct over the course of a few months from a biological contagion of some kind. The collapse came to be known as the Doa dea Kabar, or “Destruction of Home”. The effects of Doa dea Kabar were widespread and calamitous; the entire ecosystem collapsed soon after, despite the best efforts of Federation scientists. Today, Kabar is a barren wasteland, barely capable of supporting life. The Mannar, en masse, moved to Leremblompes II (“Mannar Seginde”, though frankly I think Leremblompes is a cooler name), where the main Mannar nation resides to this day.

The Federation never gave up on Kabar, however, and CONCORD has joined the effort in more recent years, helping with logistics, research, and financial subsidies. To this day, the Federation maintains a significant terraforming effort on and around the world in an attempt to restore the world’s ecosystem. In orbit of the world, a sightseer can find a number of complexes dedicated to the terraforming effort.

First, Aura has this to say about the Kabar Terraforming HQ:

This station is the dedicated headquarters of the Kabar (Mannar VIII) Terraforming Initiative’s operations established to oversee the next phase of the “remedial terraforming” efforts aimed at repairing the devastated biosphere of the planet. President Celes Aguard made Federation backing of this effort a key priority for her administration.

Kabar is the original home world of the Mannar people, a founder member of the Gallente Federation that has continued to be a vital part of the democratic interstellar polity. In BYC24, Kabar was struck by an ecological catastrophe that led to total collapse of the biosphere, eventually rendering the planet barren and barely capable of supporting life. The Mannar call this event the “Doa dea Kabar”. While the event is loosely known as the “Destruction of Mannar” in the Federation and beyond, the name the Mannar give it renders more accurately as “Death of the Heart” or “Destruction of Home”. As a result of this disaster, the bulk of the Mannar population was settled on Leremblompes II, a world that they call “Mannar Seginde”.

The nature of the ecological catastrophe has been the subject of much speculation and controversy. The essence of the matter was the sudden mass extinction of a keystone genus of insects vital to the ecology of the planet. The insects were apparently struck by a plague that rapidly destroyed their populations, leaving vast numbers of plant and animal species dependent on the insects bereft. Despite the efforts of scientists, the plague was not cured and the insects could not be successfully cloned or otherwise replaced. The entire global ecosystem unraveled and the biosphere began to collapse.

The cause of the plague and dramatic global ecosystem collapse is unknown. Fingers were pointed at rival planetary states for a time, but outside sabotage became the main theory, with many Mannar and others in the Federation going so far as to openly blame their Caldari State enemies. This theory drove many Mannar to enlist with the Federation Navy in order to strike back through fighting in the ongoing Gallente-Caldari War. Ultimately, nothing was ever proven and the trigger for the extinction and ecological collapse remains a mystery.

Along with the headquarters, a Kabar Terraforming Logistics Station can be found:

This station is the primary logistics and transfer operations facility for the Kabar (Mannar VIII) Terraforming Initiative. Massive amounts of equipment, materials, and large teams of scientists and planetary engineers are constantly moving back and forth. The station has also increased the level of support that the Federation is able to give to the subterranean settlements of Mannar that remained on Kabar after the mass evacuations. While necessarily limited in number, the underground cities and arcologies of Kabar have endured and contribute significantly to the terraforming project.

CONCORD has continued to support the Federation’s efforts to progress the terraforming of Kabar, following the Joint Federation-CONCORD Ecological Surveying and Joint Exploratory Terraforming Missions. The SCC supports transport and communications efforts with generous material aid and costs subsidies, while the various science and engineering divisions of CONCORD’s vast apparatus are also involved in the logistics of terraforming Kabar.

The last major complex in the area is the Kabar Terraforming Science Facility:

This facility contains the core science programs directed at analyzing the current status of Kabar (Mannar VIII), designing and planning remedial terraforming elements, and running extensive simulations and live testing operations. The terraforming of a barren planet is a massive, lengthy undertaking but the Kabar project is complicated by the history of a pre-existing biosphere and the remnants of life that are capable of surviving on the devastated world.

Some Federation scientists have theorized that Kabar was itself the product of an ancient terraforming project that may have resulted in a too finely balanced ecosystem, fragile and prone to sudden collapse if critical elements should be removed. Some have noted the curious happenstance of an outer planet circling a very hot star developing any kind of complex ecosystem. While this idea remains controversial, the concept has informed the efforts to use terraforming to repair Kabar, with much focus on establishing a robust and flexible ecosystem in the planning.

The main logistical platform, with a number of cargo ships anchored nearby.

Despite the impressive and wide-ranging efforts and impressive specifications, the terraforming orbital complex is, well, a little underwhelming. All three stations are of classic Gallente station design, sitting in close proximity to each other in orbit around Kabar. In addition to the 3 primary stations, 3 planetary transfer stations, using a design similar to those used as customs offices for planetary resource extraction, can be seen continually launching new resources down to the world and receiving shipments of used equipment back. There’s also a landing pad to facilitate the transfer of terraforming equipment and other materials from the rest of the Federation. At the time I visited, a few different cargo transports could be seen docked nearby.

The terraforming complex seeks to reinvigorate a dead world.

In many ways, the Mannar were lucky. In an age where interstellar travel is easy and plentiful, it was thankfully easy to transport the population en masse to Leremblompes. If the environmental collapse had happened only a few hundred years earlier (the blink of an eye, in astronomical terms), all the Luminarians would have found during their survey of the Mannar system was yet another set of ruins on yet another dead planet. Another mystery in a stellar cluster full of them. But the Doa dea Kabar serves as a stark reminder that each temperate planet is a gift that must be treasured, for they hang in a delicate balance. Although the population was able to safely escape, we must strive to maintain that balance on each world we settle, lest all temperate worlds go the way or Kabar.

Basic Information:

• Attraction: Kabar Terraforming Installation
• System: Mannar
• Security Rating: 0.3
• Region: Everyshore
• Potential Hazards: Mannar is located in low security space.  Pirates and gate camps should be expected, and caution is advised.  A cov ops or other cloaking ship is recommended.