Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

The original story behind it was that basically the solar system was discovered in, I think it's the end of the 25th century. But the idea was that basically, at the core of it, the origin of the name, which was also, I think, Pyrotechnic Amalgamated, but it was also the fact that the central star of it was kind of a fluctuating, pulsating solar flare. So it wasn't ideal for habitation. So basically the government was like, well, we might as well just grab what we can from here. It's not going to be that great for development on a mass scale. So we'll just kind of sell mining rights to it and they can just kind of grab resources and call it a day.

Will Weissbaum · Associate Narrative Director

And then kind of an adjustment: while the planets may have been more habitable, traveling there was really dangerous at the time because of the flare star, and we have it in lore that human shield technology really took off post the Tevarin War. We learned a lot of things from them. So all of a sudden you see in lore another resurgence of exploiting the resources in the system.

Dave Haddock · Narrative Director

Yeah, what used to be dangerous is not as bad, but still not good.

Will Weissbaum · Associate Narrative Director

And there was a big resource grab, and it depleted a lot of the stuff. Now, on a player scale, there's still a lot there. A lot of times when we say depleted, we mean on a massive industrial scale that can't support thousands of workers in a unified way. But someone who's out there with their pickaxe in a tunnel can still hit the mother lode.