SYSTEM: Hom
ATMOSPHERE: Ultra clean, natural
DIAMETER: 7,961 miles
POPULATION: 6,594,576,712
BACKGROUND: Crius became the medical center of the Tri-System quite by accident. Early settlers were first drawn by the beautiful Crian alpine landscape. However, these glacial mountains harbored unseen peril — hardy bacteria not found anywhere else in the Tri-System. In order to make the planet habitable, considerable time, effort and research were devoted to conquering these intractable germs. In the process, research labs, medical universities and hospital complexes came to dominate the planet.
The Crian Planetary Flag shows a skiing doctor rampant on a mound of deceased streptococci, which tells you just about everything you need to know about this place. Crius has been a centre for medical excellence ever since the first settler, Jenkum Diddlybitz, stepped onto one of the many imposing glaciers, breathed deeply in the crisp, fresh air, and promptly collapsed with a triple intestinal prolapse, a consequence of a particularly virile bacilla native to the planet. Ninety percent of the first settlers died of various unpleasant diseases, and the survivors have been battling infectious death ever since, simultaneously building some of the cleanest, whitest hospitals you've ever seen. Popular with mountain sports fanatics and the terminally ill, Crius is a pleasant place both to live and holiday, with the uncrowded conditions making for some of the Tri-System's cheaper real estate. The only problem with the place is the company; after a while, beery rugby-playing doctors, technicoloured snow surfers and vacant, grinning nurses tend to irritate somewhat. Still, Medical Supplies of all varieties are cheap and plentiful, and they do a great line in restorative liver, heart and lung surgery. I wish the genito-urinary specialists didn't have such cold hands, though.
INTERESTING PLACES:
NAME: Crius Hospital
OWNER: Crian Medical Institute
EMPLOYEES: 2145
LOCATION: Salusberg
BUSINESS: Medical Care
BACKGROUND: One of the newest and most respected medical establishments on Crius. Dealing mostly with private patients, the AMC specialises in neurosurgery and herpetology, and does take specialist cases on free of charge. One of its most notable traits is its use of radical 'freeform recovery therapy', which seems to have cut trauma recovery times almost in half.
NAME: The Surgeon's Blunder Bar
OWNER: 'Stumpy' Gisburn
EMPLOYEES: 12
LOCATION: Candid Vale
BUSINESS: Public Drinking Establishment
BACKGROUND: The Crian demimonde is notorious for its obsession with cosmetic surgery, and this bar is the favoured watering hole of the surgery fetishists. Attracting a hard-core crowd of willfully mutilated patrons, this is not a suitable venue for the faint hearted, as it really can get rather gruesome of an evening.
NAME: Shernikov Medical Equipment
OWNER: Rashela Shernikov
EMPLOYEES: 485
LOCATION: Snelburg
BUSINESS: Medical Equipment Suppliers
BACKGROUND: Crius' foremost designer and wholesaler of cryogenic, electrostatic and neuroinfluential medical equipment, notably the range of superior quality NOWAKE suspended animation pods, a product so successful it is now its 32nd year of production, Shernikov Medical Equipment has recently been accused by the New Crius Examiner to be expanding into the military arena, adapting its neuroaffector and cathode projector technologies into non-lethal weaponry's, for sale to the Tri-System's less progressive regimes. However, given that journal's propensity for sensationalism and hyperbole, such information can be considered at best dubious.
NAME: Taffin Reclamation Inc.
OWNER: Hal Taffin
EMPLOYEES: 35
LOCATION: Grand Nej
BUSINESS: Transport Salvage
BACKGROUND: One of the largest companies of its kind in the Tri-System, Taffin Reclamation specialises in starship salvage of the most rarefied kind. High cost, high tech items are the preferred commodities of the magpie-like owner Hal Taffin, and the distinctive red and silver Taffin Retrieval Shuttles are an all too common sight in the aftermath of a major confrontation or disaster.