Santa Granada is the ocean world where Captain Jaws MacTaggart has her secret base. This is where she lives when she's not out travelling, and is also home to the Stellar Typhoon's private hangar. It is also inhabited by a number of tribal communities, including that on the infamous Ciesulino Island. Santa Granada is located on the border between the Stellar Federation and the Independent Coalition, and also on an edge of populated space in general.
Description[]
Santa Granada is an ocean planet, with a reasonable number of small island clusters on its surface. The bulk of these islands are dominated by either volcanoes or jungles, or even some combination of the two. The climate is heavily tropical, and high temperatures are frequent year round.
The planet has two moons: one is a light yellow moon, known to the natives as Vivoluno (Life Moon); the other is known as Mortoluno (Death Moon) due to its blood red colour. Neither moon is permanently inhabited, but both moons factor heavily in the natives' culture. However, the Galactic Liberation Front has been in the process of planning the construction of a base on one of the two moons, should the need arise for Jaws MacTaggart to vacate her regular base.
History[]
The history of Santa Granada is very murky in places, due to its obscurity, but one of the best known facts about it is that its history began very much by accident.
Around the turn of the 27th century, a period of rapid political restructuring meant many changes to the livelihoods of the population, including that of the planet Lave and its surrounding territories. Much of the lower class was driven out of this region, for unclear reasons, and decided to try and settle on a planet of their own. An ideal planet would be somewhere beyond what was then the edge of populated space, as that area was effectively public domain.
In 2605 the beleaguered populous set off in a colonial ship, heading towards the fringes of space. Whatever their final destination was is not known, but in any case, the ship never reached it. For whatever reason, the ship crash landed on one of the islands of Santa Granada, and because the technology wasn't perfect by modern standards, there was no easy way for the surviving passengers to call for help, or make it back off the planet themselves.
So they decided that here was as good a place as any to set up shop, and quickly formed the nation they christened Santa Granada (Presumably after a territory on their former home planet).
Things started off well enough, as the colonists were able to salvage parts of their ship to build up parts of their settlement, in conjunction with primitive techniques. Between 2635 and 2639, parties of surveyors set out in handcrafted boats to map out the rest of the planet, with a view to perhaps colonising the rest of the planet. Their expeditions bore much fruit, and by 2643, most of the islands were populated in some capacity.
Over the course of the next few decades, things started to go into a decline. Due to the long period of isolation from the rest of the Galaxy, the population's modern knowledge quickly degraded, and they eventually came to believe that they were actually native to the planet. They even forgot that there were other planets out there. This was when the people started to adopt a tribal form of society.
When the Independent Coalition of Stars broke off from the Stellar Federation in 2776, much attention from both parties was drawn towards the systems on the newly formed border, and Santa Granada was no exception. It was the subject of numerous administrative battles between the two factions, who had no idea that a stake had already been claimed to it, if only by accident. The battle ended with the Stellar Federation taking control of the planet in 2814, but inexplicably, no attempt was made to enforce this ruling, or even to visit the territory.
With the exception of a few crash landings during the First Galactic War in mid-2917, Santa Granada and its inhabitants stayed well out of the public eye until the Second Galactic War in 2940. While this War was ostensibly against the then newly formed Midori Empire, the Stellar Federation saw it as a chance to retake the Independent Coalition's territory, and establish its presence on the Border Systems at the same time.
This culminated in the Battle of the Borders in early 2945, in which Santa Granada was but one of many battlegrounds. The Federation had invaded the planet and set up shop on one of the uninhabited islands, with a view to using the planet as a base of operations for their invasion of Coalition territory. By a strange coincidence, the Independent Coalition had also set up a base of their own, so as to be able to easily defend themselves against an impending invasion.
Neither faction knew that the other was there, until a stray shot during training tipped the Coalition off. They soon drove the Federation off, but were then driven off themselves when the Federation retaliated. The natives of Santa Granada knew none of this, but the distant sights and sounds of battle were the talk of the communities for years afterwards.
When the War ended in 2945, an agreement was signed between the two factions that the Santa Granada System-along with hundreds of others on the Border-was to be declared neutral territory. As part of the agreement, neither side would be allowed to try and re-establish their presence on Santa Granada.
Both factions quickly withdrew their remaining forces from Santa Granada, allowing the natives to carry on with their peaceful existences once more. However, while the 2945 neutrality agreement may have stopped the Federation and the Coalition, but there was nothing in it that forbade outlaws to settle down there.
This was a fact taken advantage of by Captain Jaws MacTaggart, when she discovered the planet by accident in late 3005, sixty years later. She had crash-landed there after her cruiser, the Stellar Typhoon, was shot down by Federation forces. Jaws spent almost a month trapped on the planet, while she and her crew tried to repair the cruiser.
By some stroke of luck, the island Jaws had landed on was occupied by the ruins of the old Independent Coalition base, and this helped her considerably by providing a nice empty hangar to hide the Typhoon away during its repairs.
By the time the Stellar Typhoon had been fully repaired, Jaws had taken quite a liking to the planet; she'd been searching around for some time for somewhere to establish her base of operations, and Santa Granada fit the bill. It was remote, pretty, almost uninhabited, and neutral territory. And it just seemed fitting for a pirate to settle down on an ocean planet. So, with the cooperation of the Galactic Liberation Front, Jaws set about recommissioning the old base in secret, and she eventually started using it on a regular basis in the spring of 3007.
Jaws was still living on Santa Granada in 3009 when an ill-fated test flight of the Stellar Typhoon ended in an unpleasant encounter with the natives living on Ciesulino Island. Jaws had been shot down, again by the Stellar Federation, and forced to crash-land on the shore of the island. Unfortunately, she also managed to wash out the natives' bonfire in the process.
This bonfire was meant to be a welcoming gift to the fire goddess Vulpokano, and because of Jaws' inadvertent destruction, the natives saw fit to sacrifice one of her crew members to the goddess in question. Chief Engineer Kyoko Mori ended up volunteering herself to save the life of Alasdair Geddes, the tribe's initial choice for sacrifice.
Preparations for the sacrifice got as far as decorating Kyoko in the traditional tribal outfit before she made her escape under the cover of, supposedly, the angered Vulpokano. In reality, the volcano had been set off by the same Federation forces who had shot Jaws down in the first place, and they unwittingly allowed Jaws the chance to escape the island and return to her base elsewhere on Santa Granada.
Inhabitants[]
The current inhabitants of Santa Granada are the descendents of the colonists who crash landed here over 400 years ago. In the intervening years, the planetary society has degraded to a tribal level, and the population has forgotten about its space-faring roots.
Among these natives, there are a substantial mix of animal types, but feline and vulpine species seem to be the dominant animals of the population. Occasional studies of feline specimens indicate them to be descendents of the feline species that originated on Lave.
Additional inhabitants include Jaws MacTaggart, and the crew of her pirate cruiser, the Stellar Typhoon, who have their secret base on this planet. However, they tend to spend weeks at a time, or even months, travelling around the Galaxy.
Trivia[]
- According to series creator Craig Black, the name of the planet is derived from Granada Television, the former North-West England franchise for ITV (Independent Television).