.png)
Vogelheim / Adlerhorst
Vogelheim is one of the more attractive colonial worlds on the French Arm, and one of the few stops on this route where passengers may speak of “going planetside” with genuine enthusiasm rather than endurance. The world is best known for its native flying fauna, which gave the colony its name. These creatures are not Terran birds, of course, but many fill similar ecological and visual roles: flocking, gliding, nesting on high structures, and filling the morning air with alien calls that tourists insist on calling birdsong.
The main orbital and transfer facilities are associated with Adlerhorst, a name used both for the principal colonial complex and, informally, for the stop itself. The world has both German and French colonies, making it a place of polite rivalry, trade, mixed institutions, and carefully managed diplomatic courtesy. French and German interests overlap here more than they would like to admit.
To travelers, Vogelheim feels civilized, scenic, and socially presentable. It has enough wilderness to sell itself as romantic, enough infrastructure to keep visitors comfortable, and enough colonial pride to make every reception mildly political. Wealthy passengers aboard the Jean Bart often treat the stop as an occasion for dinners, museum viewings, and meetings with local elites.
Common reputation: pretty, cultured, competitive, faintly smug.
Mental image: cliffside settlements, glass-fronted reception halls, alien flocks wheeling above towers, French and German guests smiling too carefully at one another.
.png)
Dunkelheim
Dunkelheim has a rougher reputation.
Originally established as a Bavarian penal colony, it has long since become a real society, but nobody forgets where it came from. In fact, many locals embrace the old convict-settler identity with grim humor and considerable pride. Families may boast of guards, prisoners, smugglers, union organizers, policemen, and colonial founders in the same breath.
The planet is now part of unified Germany, but its relationship with central authority remains uneasy. Local politics are hard, labor politics are harder, and unrest is common enough that respectable travelers are advised not to wander without guidance. German federal officials, planetary authorities, private security, local police, former penal institutions, and settler communities all overlap in ways outsiders rarely understand.
Dunkelheim is not lawless. That is the mistake tourists make. It has law, but the law has local habits, local enemies, and local blind spots. Outsiders, especially foreign military personnel, are watched carefully. Frenchmen receive no automatic warmth.
For travelers aboard the Jean Bart, Dunkelheim is not a glamorous stop. It is where cargo transfers run late, shuttle schedules slip, customs officers ask sharp questions, and people with business on the surface sometimes return looking relieved.
Common reputation: hard, proud, suspicious, trouble-prone.
Mental image: rain on concrete, old penal walls converted into civic buildings, Bavarian-style beer halls beside industrial yards, graffiti, police checkpoints, and locals who laugh at insults before answering them.
.png)
Hochbaden
Hochbaden is the civilized face of German colonial discipline.
The planet itself is dead, or close enough that no one speaks of it as a living world. Its population survives in large domed cities, sealed habitats, underground systems, and controlled transit networks. Everything depends on infrastructure: pressure seals, air systems, power grids, transit locks, maintenance schedules, and emergency protocols.
Where Dunkelheim feels rough and improvised, Hochbaden feels managed. Clean corridors, sealed concourses, strict customs, regulated cargo, monitored transfer tubes, habitat security, scheduled shuttle windows. Visitors tend to find it efficient, impressive, and faintly claustrophobic. People from Hochbaden often seem proud of their orderliness, as if civilization means proving that nothing uncontrolled can enter.
The domed cities are large enough to contain real urban life: business districts, administrative centers, universities, entertainment quarters, wealthy enclaves, working-class maintenance zones, and diplomatic facilities. But even in the best districts, the sky is something seen through structure. Outside the domes, there is only the dead planet.
For the Jean Bart, Hochbaden is a major orderly transfer stop: passengers, sealed cargo, officials, corporate representatives, and carefully logged movements. It is safer than Dunkelheim but, in some ways, more restrictive.
Common reputation: orderly, wealthy, sealed, efficient, humorless.
Mental image: shining domes under a dead sky, pressure doors, clean transit corridors, German officials with perfect records, city lights trapped beneath glass.
Aurore
Aurore is the destination that makes the earlier stops feel civilized.
It is a frontier world, famous less for comfort than for danger. It is a large moon of a massive gas giant, a place of violent weather, difficult terrain, dangerous biology, and colonial settlements that exist because national pride outweighed good sense. Nobody goes to Aurore expecting an easy posting.
Unlike Hochbaden, Aurore is alive. That is part of the problem. Its biosphere is not friendly, not familiar, and not built for human convenience. The fact that Aurore has no known intelligent native species does not make it safe. The world is wet (or very dry), windy, muddy (or a desert), biologically active, and full of things that can ruin equipment, injure settlers, poison assumptions, or simply make daily life miserable.
The French presence on Aurore is military and colonial. The Foreign Legion is prominent there, and the world has a reputation as a place where polished officers become practical or break. For soldiers, it is a real posting, not a parade assignment. For civilians, it is a hard colony with high risks and high stakes.
To passengers on the Jean Bart, Aurore marks the end of luxury. The liner remains safely above. The shuttles descend so the passengers can experience life on the frontier for a few days before returning to Earth.
Common reputation: hostile, wet, strategic, dangerous, very far from home.
Mental image: storm clouds, gas giant looming in the sky, landing fields in rain, military concrete, perimeter lights, alien vegetation, and Legion troops who stopped expecting comfort years ago.