The Isi

The Isi society is based around the planet Isis, which is free floating in space, having been ejected from it's parent start 5,000 years ago as the star system was disrupted by the black hole. The planet itself froze solid as it was hurled into space, with even the atmosphere collapsed down into a frozen layer of Nitrogen and Oxygen about 200 meters thick.

Before the cataclysm, the Isi society managed to move all of it's cities under ground, where geothermal energy, supplemented by matter/anti matter reactors allow life to flourish. Almost all of the planet is interlinked into one massive society.

About 2,000 years ago the Isi constructed the first orbital ring around the planet. Thermal lasers mounted on the ring, pointing down to the planet, are slowly thawing the surface. Since then 5 more rings have been completed, already raising the average temperature from -240°C to -200°C. This has melted the frozen atmosphere and the planet is currently covered in a massive slushy ocean of liquid Nitrogen and Oxygen, with the occasional island of frozen ground jutting out.

Soon the atmosphere will begin to boil back into gaseous form. Ultimately, in about another 400 years, the planet surface will be artificially heated to 10°C, capable of sustaining life once again.

Dev Notes

The Isi are almost certainly the most technologically advanced of all of the species in the rift. They are clever enough to hide this fact from the Children of Ra, not a difficult task given their extensive underground dwellings and tightly knit community. The Isi suffer the Children of Ra because they must, but their planetary course is taking them through the core systems of the Empire, but will eventually take them far away from the influence of the Empire (in many thousands of years).

For this reason the Isi do not wish to incur the wrath of the Ramans, however they have secretly heavily fortified their planet against attack just in case.

The Isi hate the Ramans, never forgeting that many Isi died while being forced by the Ramans to build planetary ring stations around their own homeworlds.