Copperhead
Industrial or Resource · Rocky Moon
A heavily worked, copper-rich mining body scarred by generations of deep shafts and broad modern excavations.
Overview
The Record
Copperhead supplies the copper required for conductive wiring, heat exchangers, machinery, and industrial alloys. Generations of extraction have opened the body from deep galleries to broad modern pits, keeping a common metal available at the scale on which the system’s power and thermal works consume it.
Its 27,000 residents live in reinforced former mine galleries beneath the excavated surface. New open pits repeatedly break into old shafts whose maps are missing, incomplete, or contradicted by later surveys. Crews test walls and passages before moving equipment through them, knowing that a route marked abandoned may still carry a claim, a void, or an unsupported cut. Settlement and mine are separated less by distance than by reinforcement and pressure doors.
Control is divided. Othryni interests hold most of the newer capital-intensive pits, while independent mining houses retain many old shafts and underground claims. Contracts and boundary marks settle what each may work, but neither side governs Copperhead as a whole. A pit may command its machinery and a house its galleries without gaining authority over the workings beside them.
Political Relationships
Standing
Standing at a Glance
- Civilization Status
- Industrial
- Heraldic Standing
- No Unified Mark
- Principal Power
- Othryn
Copperhead’s extraction rights are divided between Othryni industrial interests and independent mining houses. Othryni concerns control most of the newer, capital-intensive open pits, while the independent houses retain many of the older shafts and underground claims. Neither side governs the entire body, and disputes are settled through the contracts and boundary marks attached to each working.
Physical Characteristics
Ground and Sky
- Diameter390 km
- Mass0.000008521 Earth masses
- Gravity0.02 g
Copperhead has no atmosphere. Fine, electrically conductive dust clings to equipment and can foul exposed machinery, while sharp metallic fragments make surface work hazardous even outside the active pits. Its settlements occupy reinforced former mine galleries, sealed and pressurized beneath the excavated terrain.
Orbit and Time
Path Around Oranth
- Orbital Order53
- Orbital Radius890,000 km
- Orbital Period3.132 days
- Rotation75.17 hours
- Inclination0.16 degrees
- Eccentricity0.005
Copperhead is tidally locked to Oranth, and its oldest mines are concentrated on the inner face beneath the giant’s fixed presence. Later operations spread across the leading hemisphere, where the open pits pass through long periods of direct light from Vya and Veo followed by the reflected glow of Oranth. Excavation schedules are adjusted as much for accumulated heat as for visibility.
Travel
Travel Notes
Secure clearance from the operator controlling the intended pit or shaft. Modern excavation, conductive debris, and unmapped older voids can invalidate a familiar approach or underground route. Visitors may not cross a boundary mark, enter an abandoned gallery, or treat one house’s permission as authority within an Othryni working or another independent claim.