"Low, warm and wet, with one shallow ocean and coastlines of mangrove a thousand kilometres deep. The marine biology alone justifies a colony."Office of Settlement, site report on Yildun III, 2308
Dauntless is the third planet of the Yildun system and the third of the four core worlds of the human diaspora. It is a mangrove world, low, warm and wet, with a single shallow ocean and mangrove coasts thousands of kilometres deep. The UNS Dauntless landed 100,000 colonists from the Orinoco and Magdalena basins on 3 November 2314, and they built New Caracas on stilts and floating platforms where the largest river system met the sea. Yildun lay on the survey ship Grissom's arc toward the Gulf, and Dauntless became the charging station for every ship bound for Theia and Cirban.
By 2444 Dauntless had 400 million people. The Red Khanate burned New Caracas and the mangrove coast on 20 June 2444, after the Grand Armada's defeat at the Battle of Yildun, and gave the Canopy Islands to its clans as the Khanate's first human colony. The Republic retook the world in 2448 and found 40 million alive. It was rebuilt by charter from 2466, and had 120 million people by 2510.
Name
The four colony ships of the Recalada class were named for their destinations, and each was cannibalised on arrival to build its colony. The world took the ship's name. The colonists' own name for it is Tierra Firme, the old name of the coast they had come from, and it appears on the world's council seal beside the Office's.
Description
Physical characteristics
Dauntless is a little smaller than Earth, with a surface gravity of 0.8 g and a day of 20 hours. It orbits Yildun, an orange dwarf, inside the two gas and ice giants of the outer system and outside two hot rocky worlds. Its single ocean is shallow, and most of its land is low.
Geography
- The mangrove coast: salt forest thousands of kilometres deep along the main continent's southern shore, threaded by the deltas of the great rivers.
- The Orinoco Delta: the delta of the largest river system, named by the colonists for the river most of them had come from, where New Caracas stands.
- The Canopy Islands: the granite outcrops that rise above the mangroves, the colony's dry ground, the site of its fusion plant and its refuge in the first storm season. The Khan gave them to the clans in 2444.
- The Carabobo Marsh: the freshwater marsh inland of New Caracas, named for the battle of the founders' history, which the Khan's landing force took in September 2444.
- The Llanos: the dry grassland of the continent's interior, above the reach of the storm surges, where the colony's grain farms were placed.
Climate
Dauntless has a storm season. Its storms rise over the open ocean and drive surges across the low coasts. The first storm season killed 180 colonists in the collapse of New Caracas's platforms in February 2315. The city was rebuilt on deeper piles and floating districts anchored to them, on the model the Caribbean colonists of Bounty later copied.
Life
The Office chose Dauntless for its marine biology. The mangroves are true rooted forests, the first of their kind humans found, with a canopy that holds most of the land's animal life: climbing grazers, gliders and a great variety of insect-like forms. The shallow ocean is rich in reef and kelp life, and the colony's fisheries fed the Gulf's stations through the Expansion Era.
History
Selection and settlement
The Grissom surveyed Yildun in 2306 and found the Mardak Vol capsule at the system's edge in December 2307. The Office chose Yildun's third planet for its third colony. The Chamber's Ancient Sites committee chose it too, for its distance from the capsule, which the Office's planners had wanted a colony near and the committee had not.
The colony was delayed. President Halvorsen's government held the Office to two worlds from 2300 until Landfall and Circumstance had proved themselves, and the Dauntless and the Serenity were laid down at Bartolomeu only in 2309. The founding region was the Orinoco and Magdalena basins, under a Pacific Union and Brazilian quota. The UNS Dauntless, the third Recalada, landed 100,000 colonists from Caracas, Barranquilla, Ciudad Bolívar and the delta towns on 3 November 2314, nine years after Circumstance.
The charging station
Dauntless was the Expansion Era's trade hub by 2317, for its position rather than its resources. Yildun lay on the Grissom's arc, one jump from Saolea and two from the Gulf, and every courier and concession ship bound for Theia or Cirban charged its coils at the Dauntless station, built at the system's gas giant in 2316. Reliance took a shell concession in the system the same year. The colony's chandlers, fuel merchants and ship repairers made New Caracas the richest port south of the Sun before Toussaint.
The First Republic
Dauntless grew through the First Republic to 400 million people, on its fisheries, its port and the river trade of the delta. It became an area of the Republic in 2338 on the population test, the first colony beyond the Sun to do so after Landfall and Circumstance.
The Khanate, 2444 to 2448
The Red Khan reached Yildun in February 2444 from Brink and the Saolea side. Dauntless refused submission. Grand Admiral Stjepan Kvoravich brought the Grand Armada to Yildun in May 2444, against the Navy Board's advice, with 420 hulls, eight Vindications and 3,000 platforms, because the Republic could not withdraw from a third world in succession without a fight. The Battle of Yildun of 8 to 12 June 2444 was the Republic's last defeat of the war. The Armada came out on the fourth day to cover Dauntless's evacuation, and Kvoravich was killed aboard the Defiance on 11 June.
New Caracas and the mangrove coast were burned on 20 June 2444, with 180 million dead. The Khan's landing force took the Canopy Islands and the Carabobo Marsh in September, and the Khan gave them to the clans as the Khanate's first human colony. The Voor tributaries the clans brought to work the islands' timber were freed with the colonists in 2448.
Liberation and rebuilding
The Republic retook Yildun in its counter-offensive of 2447 to 2448, and drove the clans from the Canopy Islands in 2448. Forty million of Dauntless's 400 million had survived. Too few were left to rebuild the world, and under the Burned Worlds Act of 2463 it was rebuilt by charter. The Zhangjiajie corporation and the Pacific Union took Dauntless's charter in 2466. They rebuilt New Caracas, the Orinoco Delta and the Canopy Islands, and the world held 120 million people by 2510.
New Caracas
New Caracas stood near the equator on piles and floating districts at the mouth of the Orinoco, around a harbour dredged through the mangroves. Its old city, the Casco, was the first platform town of 2314, rebuilt after the collapse of 2315. Its port district held the charging station's ground terminal and the chandlers' warehouses. The city burned with the coast in 2444. The charter rebuilt it from 2466 on the old plan, and the Casco's burned piles were left standing in the harbour as the world's memorial.
Culture
Dauntless's culture is Venezuelan and Colombian, carried from the river basins: Spanish, the music of the llanos and the coast, river food and the arepa. The colony kept the founders' saints' days and their carnival. After 2466 the charter's settlers, many of them from the Pacific Union and from Landfall, added Cantonese and Pacific languages to the port.
The colonists point out the star the Mardak Vol pilot watched from the capsule at Yildun's edge, and New Caracas's children are taken to the courier station beside the capsule once in their lives.
BOOK SOURCES
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.2 "On the Solar Wind" and §7.3 "In the Shadow of Ancients"
- Solar Eternal, Part VII, §7.4 "La Recalada: The Founding of the Core Worlds"
- Solar Eternal, Part XIII, §13.1 "The Darkest Hour" and §13.9 "Counterattack"
- Solar Eternal, Part XV, §15.5 "The Burned Worlds"