Pilgrim's Folly

Pilgrim's Folly (official designation XT32443) is a desert world in the outer core of Umojan-controlled space. While naturally oxygenated, it is a barren world mostly consisting of dry desert.

History
Pilgrim's Folly was a cautionary tale of early Umojan exploration. In the late 2300s, the Umojans created the Writ of Independent Colonization in their early attempts for space travel, allowing anyone who could afford the ship and who had enough petitions for passengers access to colony ships to start their own, independent colony free of control from the Ruling Council. The only stipulations were that these colonies would allow for open borders with the Umojans, and share in any scientific research they partake in, but that all other matters, including defense and structure, would be left to the colonists.

One such group that took this up was the fanatical psudo-Christian movement under Johnathan Harker. Religion was looked down upon in the science-based Umojan society, and Harker had created a cult around his arrival as the new chosen one, sent to lead the righteous saved from the UPL to a new promised land. Seeking to take his followers to "ascend into heaven from the unworthy" after some pressure from the Umojan government, Harker used his fortune gained from helping construct Umoja's first major city of Dunia Mpya to buy a colony ship for he and his followers, and left Umoja find his promised land.

Mirroring the supercarriers that took Umoja to the sector, Harker pushed his ship's warp drive until it melted down, arriving in a fringe system today known as the Toyama System, uninhabitable except for one desert world with some oxygen content. Declaring it a world for his people, Harker landed on this world and declared it his promised land.

Fifty years later exploratory probes from the nearby colonies would discover the remains of Harker's expedition: abandoned prefab structures, huts and a rusted colony ship half buried in the sand. Estimates say that the colony did not even last a year. Yet, to date nobody has ever been able to find the corpses of the colonists. Some speculate they committed ritual suicide in the wilderness and were buried by the sands, others suspect that there may be some unknown larger wildlife on the world that eventually got to them. The truth has yet to be found, and has inspired many treasure hunters who have gone to Pilgrim's Folly in search of the fortune Harker had brought with him to the world.

Since Harker's expedition, the planet has not been officially colonized, as it is too remote to make use of as a trading outpost, though it officially fell under Umojan Protectorate jurisdiction after the independent colonies united. Nonetheless, pirate groups, bandit militias, and even the Alterian Syndicate have set up bases on the world, using it as a hideaway for stolen and contraband goods.