Voeld: Frozen Angaran World

Voeld was an angaran world in the Heleus Cluster of the Andromeda galaxy, gripped by an ice age that had buried much of its surface. Once packed with dozens of urban centers, the planet had seen most of its angara reduced to scattered settlements, while the remains of vast ancient cities lay entombed in the ice. By the time settlers from beyond the cluster arrived, it had become a frozen front line where the angara struggled against the occupying kett.

A world of ice#

Voeld was passing through an ice age, its landscape locked under deep cold. Any area that was not heated or sheltered indoors posed a lethal hazard to organic life, and the freezing conditions shaped every settlement and journey across the planet. Beneath the ice lay the legacy of a far more populous age: the planet had once held dozens of urban centers, and the ruins of ancient cities remained frozen across its surface, with some pre-catastrophe sites sealed away entirely. The world also held mineral wealth and bore the marks of the Remnant, the synthetic builders whose installations recurred throughout the cluster.

The angara who remained lived in dispersed communities, the largest of the surviving settlements being Techiix. Scientific outposts studied the planet's ice, and the broader population endured under the constant pressure of the occupation and the cold.

The kett occupation#

Voeld was a stronghold of the kett, the militant force that had spread through the cluster preying on its peoples. The kett maintained a command center that coordinated their operations across the world, along with holding sites and prisons used to confine captured angara. Against them stood the Angaran Resistance, which operated from a concealed base and fought to free prisoners, disrupt kett activity, and protect what remained of the planet's communities. The struggle on Voeld was one front in the wider war between the angara and their conquerors, and the world's frozen sites changed hands amid the fighting.

The Remnant vault#

Voeld held a dormant Remnant vault, one of the climate-altering installations scattered across the cluster. When the vault was activated, it began raising the planet's temperatures toward more habitable levels, easing, though not entirely removing, the deadly cold that had defined the world. The change opened the way for the founding of Taerve Uni, an outpost established as a joint effort between the angara and the newly arrived settlers, its name meaning forward together in the angaran tongue. The outpost mined water ice to supply other settlements and angaran communities. For all the promise of the thaw, Voeld remained a harsh world where a kett presence still lingered.