Élysée… an orb of ice swept by raging winds and covered in slow crawling glaciers. Its temperate zone is a tundra where even survival is an accomplishment. A few sheltered valleys, kept warm by hot springs or some other climatic quirk, have harbored the Karman settlers who came to study an indigenous species apparently related to theirs.
However, here where life seems barely possible, Red Blok mining excavations have spread like a plague, leaving the ice scarred and blackened with slag. Collectivist industry is in urgent need of elysium, an ore that can only be found on this planet, and the mines clawing at the crystal seams survive the best they can since the beginning of the war.
The planet's ice fields lie in the shadow of the Therian doomsday devices, shut inside their gigantic fortresses and abandoned by their masters. To those turning their gaze to the poles, these buildings are a blank tombstone on which the stone carver has yet to chisel the name of the deceased. Yet everybody knows the name it will bear: Élysée.
