Goldenfel – capital of the Grain Belt, bread-basket of the Communion, birthplace of Orpheus. This world, first colonised by Agri-Corp, feeds half of the Communion. Without its harvest, Centarion would be gone in a matter of months and human-space would fall into disarray. That, and its proximity to the Centar system, mark it as one of the Key Worlds of Influence.
There are numerous settlements on Goldenfel, however the capital of the planet, Goldenfel City, remains the most iconic. Its unique tiered and circular levels are perhaps the biggest reminder of its Agri-Corp beginnings, where hopeful colonists from Centarion bought shares in the conglomerate in order to secure a place in the new city. Then based on the relative value of one’s shares, tiers were assigned. First tiers were given property on the top level of the city, and those whose shares were not powerful enough to be given a tier were granted access to properties on the outskirts of the city and rights to farm the lands belonging to the tiered citizens. Of course, Agri-Corp was not very forthcoming about this, and the majority of small-stake shareholders ended up working on farms in order to feed themselves and earn wages enough to survive in this new economy and world. Agri-Corp, now with the means to farm the planet, started to make swathes on the emerging interstellar market.
In the early Third Communion, Agri-Corp was forced back into its many subsidiaries – as Centarion deemed it too dangerous to have all of agriculture riding on the back of a single group. It was already grave enough that so many star systems already relied on just this one world for their sustenance. Despite all efforts to share the weight of this responsibility, Goldenfel remains the largest producer of cereal goods by far.
The smaller enterprises, formerly of Agri-Corp, then took the mantle and have been passed down family lines for millennia. This inherited wealth brought about a certain entitlement amongst the tiered citizens. They began referring to themselves as nobles and the farmers as peasants. Today this class system has become so ingrained into Goldenfel society that most do not even know how the planet began; they believe themselves to be descendants of an ancient aristocracy that simply fled Centarion for a better clime and lifestyle. Many of the other Communion worlds believe this too, and therefore place great value on goods, especially wines and whiskeys, from particular families.
The peasant class is scattered across the surface, but largely live on the outskirts of major cities or in smaller towns and villages where there is quality, arable ground. Life is mostly peaceful for the peasant populace, however there are many that suffer beyond imagining for inhabitants of a planet of influence. When a bad harvest comes, some nobles will ensure that they keep enough grain to meet their revenue targets, regardless of whether the peasants have enough leftover for themselves. There have been some cases so dire that even cannibalism has been reported in villages belonging to certain noble families. Though attempts have been made to bring this horror before the Parliament House on Centarion, the issue never seems to be abated – and most prominent activists finally retire from this cause quietly and suddenly and with unexplained new riches.
Every city on the surface is connected by the Roots Transit Network; the hub of which is stationed underneath Goldenfel City. This remarkable rail network, improved from those lines criss-crossing Centarion, and certainly not bested by any other world since, allows passengers to circumnavigate the planet in a matter of hours. This also allows exploration of Goldenfel beyond its agricultural side.
When anyone in the Communion thinks of Goldenfel, they usually summon up pictures of the tiered capital city, three gleaming suns rolling over distant mountaintops, golden fields of wheat and other grains, and picturesque lakes surrounded by pine forests. However, this is only where human life has chosen to congregate. Other key aspects of Goldenfel go unnoticed. The southern hemisphere is home to vast swamps and marshes; they are an important base of operations for the Goldenfel Military but also the XA, who have a permanent station here for recruiting new members and engaging in confidential observations of interspace anomalies. The swamps are also home to breakaway groups of peasants who have formed their own communities far from the watchful eyes of the nobles, and since the ground here can sustain no commercial endeavour, they can go about their humble existence freely – the nobles having deemed them of little to no consequence. These swamp-people are often used in pro-peasant propaganda, with the nobles painting them as slothful characters – the opposite of a good, hardy, and proud peasant farmer.
Despite, the nobles’ millennia long monopoly over agriculture on the planet, there now exist two peasant collectives – the Freegrain Brethren and the Red Harvest. They operate on different sides of the planet’s northern hemisphere and own a city each.
The Freegrain Brethren are notably more tolerant of the nobility, owing their existence to the philanthropy of a number of sympathetic noble families; they seek to provide refuge and work to any peasant who has been mistreated by their feudal lord.
The Red Harvest are known for quite the opposite; as their name suggests, their origins were fraught with violence. Their city maintains a strict policy of isolation and self-sufficiency, and they admit only peasants with a proven track record of exceeding their quotas, or those few who will sign their lives away due to extraordinary hardships and personal tragedy. Many in the Red Harvest speak of the Communion as a failure, having forgotten the cause it once proclaimed, and they see their own movement as a coming revival – one which is being quietly echoed across the Communion, waiting for the perfect time to come out into the open…
