Asphodel

Asphodel is a small human colony world in the Palache system, located among the Scorpius-side Inner Colonies. Much like half a dozen similar colonies in the core sphere, Asphodel is an unremarkable planet with few claims to fame. It orbits the star commonly known as Atticus, the C component of the Palache triple star system.

History
Initial colonial efforts during the First Wave largely bypassed Asphodel, with more hospitable worlds being prioritized. The planet only caught the attention of the terraforming contractor Worlds Without End during the Domus Diaspora. Using new atmospheric processing and bioenginering techniques, life-supporting conditions could be created in less than a century. Though the terraforming and infrastructure crews were present since the 2380s, Asphodel records its formal date of settlement as 2455, when the colony ship Orpheus carried the first large batch of colonists to the planet.

Asphodel and other bodies in the system are also named after places and figures related to the ancient Greek underworld. An ordinary, mediocre rocky world, Asphodel reflects its mythic namesake. Few extremes are present, and thanks to terraforming, the climate is pleasant enough in the life-supporting regions. It is reasonably comfortable but not spectacular, and can only be called a "garden world" very charitably despite its primitive biosphere. The system's nature as a slipspace waystation made it strategically important, but few ships traveling through the Atticus system along the Murano Route or the Core Trunk take the time to actually land on Asphodel. Though Asphodel and the Atticus system house some industry, these are largely subsidiaries of off-world companies from the larger nearby colonies of Cascade and New Carthage. Asphodel itself is largely reliant on offworld produce, with the agriworld Kashmir supplying the majority of its foodstuffs following the glassing of Ample Pastures; this also caused a famine for a time during the Human-Covenant War as the logistics chains had to be reorganized, with rationing policies in place for years.

Like several of the colonies around it, Asphodel was spared glassing by the Covenant. It is evident that the Covenant learned the planet's location before the end of the war and made plans for an invasion, but the fleet assigned for the task, the Fleet of Sacred Wonder, was instead diverted to Reach to join the Combined Fleet of Resplendent Immolation. Since the end of the war, Asphodel's relatively modest local defense force has had only to contend with ex-Covenant raiders and pirates. Although it is not the most attractive world for refugees, the ongoing diaspora from the Outer Colonies of the Vela-Scorpius and Sagittarius-Cygnus Quadrants has seen Asphodel flooded with migrants, directed there by the stricter immigration policies of Cascade and New Carthage, but also Asphodel's own incentives to immigrate. The colony has long experienced brain drain and has a declining population as its youth have been moving to the more attractive worlds in the surrounding systems. The Asphon government saw the refugee streams as an opportunity, hunting particularly for individuals with some form of special expertise.