Nyurteih

Note: X and Y are coordinates (light years on XY plane) relative to Terra at (0, 0)

Nyurteih was the first independent colony to be established by the Union of Samoyedic Colonies in the mid-twenty-eighth century.

System Description
The Nyurteih system - named for the Nenets word for "First" - contained at least one habitable world. Nyurteih is allegedly located approximately 100 light years anti-spinward of the Star League era border of the Rim Worlds Republic.

System History
Nyurteih was colonized at some point after 2741 and remained inhabited until at least 2847.

Political Affiliation

 * 2787 - Union of Samoyedic Colonies
 * 2837 - Union of Samoyedic Colonies
 * 2847 - Union of Samoyedic Colonies

Founding
Nyurteih was colonized by Samoyedic colonists who had emigrated from northwest Siberia on Terra through a chain of worlds in the Inner Sphere and near Periphery, beginning in the early days of the Terran Hegemony. The Samoyeds were determined to retain their deliberately primitive but spiritual culture intact, and found themselves emigrating from world after world as their more technologically-advanced neighbors attempted to convince the Samoyeds to leave their cultural trappings behind. The Samoyeds found themselves continually either unwelcome, ridiculed, or under threat. In 2741 the elder shamans among the Samoyed population convinced their people to leave the world of New India in the Erdvynn Province of the Rim Worlds Republic after clashes with the locals that threatened to see the Samoyed herds of tih wiped out. Samoyedic culture was inextricably intertwined with the tih, and the loss of the tih would have meant the complete destruction of the Samoyed identity.

The Samoyeds traveled deeper into the anti-spinward regions of the Deep Periphery until they found a habitable world, which they named Nyurteih - "First" - and settled on. Allegedly, the location of Nyurteih was ultimately disclosed via a shamanistic revelation, but efforts by Interstellar Expeditions to identify the founding world of the Union of Samoyedic Colonies were entirely unsuccessful, suggesting that that the modern Union was deliberately obfuscating its location from outsiders.

Early History
Having settled on Nyurteih, the Samoyed population found itself undergoing a philosophical crisis; initially determined to eschew all advanced technology, it rapidly became clear that the already-established worlds they had previously settled on supported a certain level of lifestyle that could be maintained via manual labor, but that this was impossible on Nyurteih. The leaders among the Samoyed population spent a month in conferences and performing soul-searching rituals, before giving direction to the population: technology that was life-saving or population-sustaining would be allowed, if it allowed them to live in peace.

Following the decision, a few JumpShips were sent back to the Rim Worlds Republic to bring back engineers, scientists, medical personnel and various other professionals the Samoyeds felt necessary to make their society sustainable. While this approach worked, it also nearly fractured Samoyed society; the more conservative elements of the population splintered away, moving to other nearby worlds, in efforts to sustain their traditional lifestyle; these groups were invariably forced to return, as their ways simply couldn't sustain them.

The Samoyed population of Nyurteih steadily increased over the next fifty years, and all four of Nyurteih's continents were colonized, with the original settlement acting as the planetary capital. The planet remained rugged and somewhat inhospitable, but the only external problems faced by the Samoyeds were a handful of random attacks by pirates.

Exodus
In 2837 the elder chiefs of the Union declared that the destiny of the Samoyedic peoples wasn't to remain on a single world, but to move nomadically from world to world, in the same way that their Siberian ancestors had migrated across the Siberian wilderness. For the next ten years, the Union's JumpShip fleet operated in groups, conducting surveys of worlds further into the anti-spinward Deep Periphery, over a distance of several hundred light years. The JumpShip groups identified a string of habitable worlds stretching out in a chain, leading further away from the Inner Sphere, and efforts went into preparing the closest of these worlds for habitation.

The eldest generation of the Samoyed population declared that they felt a spiritual connection to Nyurteih, and would remain behind when the others emigrated. These elders had all been children during the years in which the Samoyeds had been persecuted in the Inner Sphere, and their decision came as no particular surprise to the younger members of the Union. The younger generations left enough by way of supplies and livestock to sustain those staying behind for another ten to twenty years - enough to allow them to die naturally - and left Nyurteih.

Geography
Nyurteih is known to have four continents.