Ballast

Ballast is a Human colony world in the 70 Ophiuchi system within the Tethys Sector. Ballast was settled later than many other Inner Colonies, but the the lack of a first wave of Pioneers meant that very little of the destruction of the Inner Colony Wars found its way to the colony. Ballast quickly caught up with its colonial elders and played a strong hand in UEG politics for the next two centuries. The Human-Covenant War likewise left Ballast relatively untouched, allowing it to thrive in the post-War world. Ballast is a windy place due to its fast rotation, and while centuries of tuning have reduced the chance of storms, it has still influenced how the colony evolved.

History
The Sol-70 Ophiuchi Corridor was first identified and explored in 2304, and Ballast was catalogued by the Nomura Expedition in the same year. Ballast was a barren, wet world at the time, with no native microorganisms. Of only middling prospects for colonization, Ballast was a third-rate candidate compared to the planets of the Delta Pavonis system, and exploration missions continued along the Murano Route in search of better worlds.

Decades later, Ballast was an ideal prospect for settlers in the Domus Diaspora. There were no Pioneer settlements to compete with, and advances in terraforming made the colony more economically feasible to adjust. Fifty years of weather satellite data indicated that the equatorial Salish Sound would be an ideal spot for first settlement. The area lay in the wind shadow of the Titan Mountain range, the sound and the connected sea were deep enough for splashdowns, and the complex estuary system could easily be adapted for agriculture and river-travel. The small communities and spaceports quickly coalesced around a nexus of trade, which became the capital Crux Landing.

Ballasters considered the trouble of the Inner Colony Wars (ICW) to be a foreign problem, and they worked to keep it that way. Settlers from other colonies were encouraged to keep moving, in case they brought trouble or troublemakers with them. The only skirmishes in the ICW to happen on Ballast soil were fights that the locals don't consider to be a part of the ICW at all. In 2388, labor union strikes and food riots reached a high point, and the CMA sent in troops to restore order.

Characteristics
Ballast is a cool, wet planet with somewhat primitive geology. Only two major landmasses and very few contiguous mountain ranges exist, dividing the land into windy bogs and arid highlands. Continental interiors still receive plenty of rain and so deserts are rare, but the eastern coasts are rather hazardous places to live. Otherwise, the planet is quite temperate.

Ballast has a significant axial tilt and experiences seasons, though these are shorter than on Earth due to the planet's faster orbital period. Ballast revolves around its axis faster than the other rocky worlds in the Kennewick system; this is hypothesized to be the result of a protoplanetary collision event in primordial times, significantly speeding up the planet's rotation; the next planet in-system has a remarkably similar composition to that of Ballast, suggesting that some of its mass originated from the collision. Because of Ballast's fast rotation, its days and nights are short, and the native flora has adjusted to this. The plants of Ballast soak up as much sunlight as possible and store the energy in an intermediate form, and then spend the whole night transferring that intermediate form into sugars. Plants from Earth can grow on Ballast, but they don't thrive, and are easily out-competed by native plants. For that reason, agriculture has been a niche industry for a hundred years ever since agri-worlds like Harvest were developed.

Ballast orbits within the circumstellar habitable zone of Kennewick (formally known as 70 Ophiuchi A), a K0-type orange dwarf slightly smaller than Sol. The periodic close approach of the system's second star, 70 Ophiuchi B, on its elliptical orbit every 88 years changes Ballast's lighting conditions and causes some orbital wobble; this also alters the system's viability for slipspace transits, making the major interstellar jump points of the Aquila Trunk less viable for a time.

Ballast has no moon, but is orbited by a faint ring system.

Culture and society
Ballast's unusual climate has had an effect on the local architecture, where the buildings are designed with windshields down low, but with an aerodynamic style the further up you go. The largest continent is named Firmament, and is home to the capital city Crux Landing and the agricultural-center Windswept. The smaller continent, Raqia, is home to numerous coastal cities along its outer coast and the inland sea. Windswept is starport, so in spite of the name, it was set down on the leeward side of a mountain range. This eliminates some of the wind, but also most of the weather due to the rain shadow effect. This means that Windswept lacks one of the key design features unique to Ballast cityscapes: Doglegged streets. The streets have sharp corners in them every few hundred feet and the buildings are staggered, which cuts down on the wind that gets funneled between the buildings. Windswept just has a curtain wall to tame the spring and autumn winds.

While the planet's rapid day-night cycle is a culture shock to anyone immigrating to Ballast from Earth or other colonies with a similar day length, the locals have come to adapt their daily routines and sleeping rhythms to the local conditions. In practice, this means short periods of activity during the ~4 hours of daylight, punctuated by similarly short nights of sleep. Because the local nights are so short, however, many businesses and services on Ballast remain open around the clock. As on other worlds with significantly nonstandard cycles, it is possible to ignore the local conditions and follow a more standard sleep schedule, and transitory visitors frequently do so, sleeping as long as they wish in darkened rooms which are available in most hotels. For long-term living, however, most agree that simply acclimatizing to the short days and nights is the best option. All this gives makes it difficult for Ballasters, in turn, to adapt to the 24-hour standard clock followed by most interstellar organizations, most prominently the UNSC.