Murrain

Political Affiliation

 * 3095 - Deep Periphery

Planetary History
Located 85 light-years rimward and spinward of New Sierra, the planet originally known as Richmond's World was colonized by settlers from the Outworlds Alliance in the early twenty-eighth century. When the settlers landed on the planet, they found a lush world and they established a range of settlements including cities across the world.

Unfortunately for the colonists and the planet, livestock imported onto the planet from the Outworlds Alliance brought a virus similar to a Picornavirus and introduced it to the local ecology. The native plant life on Richmond's World had unique RNA chains that made it an ideal carrier for the virus, which over the next ten years both spread rapidly and swiftly mutated. Having spread worldwide, the virus then became airborne and adapted to all Terran life on the planet. This virus utterly devastated the planet once it became airborne, with the last surviving colonists starving, rioting and fighting over the last untainted food supplies less than six months after the virus went airborne. The virus went on to wipe out almost all life on the planet, reducing the formerly lush world to a desert with no life present that was more complex than simple microbes.

The planet was rediscovered by Interstellar Expeditions (IE) in or around 3012, with the explorers discovering what had happened and recovering records from libraries in the abandoned cities on the planet that detailed what had happened up to the final days of the population. IE renamed the planet Murrain, after one of the plagues mentioned in the Bible, and implemented thorough protective measures for those exploring the planet. Any IE personnel visiting Murrain were required to wear full biological hazard gear in addition to the breathing apparatus required to survive thanks to the depleted oxygen levels across the planet. Even with those measures in place access to Murrain was highly restricted, and IE personnel who visited the planet were required to spend six months going through extensive decontamination before being returned to duty.

The picornavirus that destroyed almost all life on Murrain evidently mutated away from being able to infect anything other than the dwindling number of native plants after it had destroyed the bulk of the ecosphere, but as late as 3095 IE was taking no chances that any infection could be carried offworld in the event that an unfortunate explorer accidentally uncovered an active colony of the original virus.