Kale 
Stuffed Crocodile[Traveller] Drinax pt. 2: Have Hazard Suit, Will Travel
So we talked about Drinax and what the UWP implies, but what does life there actually look like on the ground?
Well, quite terrible really. There’s not too many people around. The population code gives 70.000 people, but I am pretty sure this amount (the size of a small-medium city) is in the Floating Palace. The whole state of Drinax has to function somehow after all, and I doubt the Scout Service would have taken into account unverified reports of scavengers on the ground.
I mentioned before that I would put the population number one category up, and I think that’s the case. Altogether there likely aren’t all that many people around. On the whole world likely not more than 200.000. This allows for the seemingly widespread occupancy of tribes all over the world.
Tribes likely are not more than a few dozen people at once, often located in sheltered places underground. Fallout bunkers might be one option, but how many were there really?
Come to think of it, likely quite a lot, considering the Sindalian/Drinaxian habit of bombing worlds (I never said there wasn’t a reason why Drinax got bombed back into the stone age…). And with TL15 they might even have a chance to survive for a while. Not all of them though. Likely there is a whole network of underground shelters to be found where people died off due to sickness, hunger, or plain lack of breathable air.
Other underground installations also are likely: subway systems, underground factories, military installations, etc. Drinax was settled and terraformed for a long time, it was already a provincial capital in the Sindalian Empire, and it staid in a position of regional importance for 2000 years afterwards. That’s a lot of time to create a lot of infrastructure and history for such a small world. (If it really is about the size of Mercury the surface area is equivalent to about two Asias).
So, there likely are tunnel systems and old shelters that humans and various kinds of animals have survived in. Air might also be thicker down there, unlike on the surface which has an air pressure edging very close to the limit of human habitability, and that’s in the good parts.
Side note: during my research for this post I found the highest permanent human settlement on Earth according to Wikipedia is the gold mining town La Rinconada in Peru at over 5000m. The average temperature there is 1.3C, 25% of inhabitants have hypoxia, many have mercury poisoning, and people work the mines for free to get one day a month where they can take home as much ore as they can carry. This place sounds like hell on Earth. And it might just about be the closest equivalent to the surface of Drinax we have. Excepting the higher gravity of course.
Settlements, plants, and animals are likely as low as they can be, with most of the planet having a rather acerbic look. Most larger animals likely didn’t survive the orbital bombardment, so there might be an assortment of vermin around. Rats, mice, other rodents, insects. But also pets that might have survived. Think wild cats and dogs or similar, after 200 years of living feral. On the other hand some other creatures might have thrived in these conditions.
The Aslan might not have used nuclear weapons as such (at least they weren’t directly mentioned), but they definitely used mutating plague bombs with specifically engineered viruses. Even after 200 years these still are a danger to people and animals living there. All food gathered outside likely needs to go through a decontamination process before it can be eaten. Some of the more advanced tribes might have created greenhouse areas where food can be grown inside, lights maybe powered by ancient and barely understood power generators that need replacement parts scavenged from other similar installations, or traded from the Palace.
Anyway… the masks and the hazard suits. They are essential for survival. With those atmo-codes and the constant threat of disease having at least a re-breather with a filter available at all times is a necessity. Settlements are likely pressurized, with inhabitants ready to don their suits at s moments notice.
Interestingly the need for wearing these almost constantly likely gives the locals an edge over other low-gravity worlders. Depending on the actual TL they are at and are provided at these suits can weigh between 30kg (at TL8) and 10kg (at TL15). This assumes Hostile environment vacuum suits. I frankly doubt the Drinaxian nobility will provide the Vespexers on the ground with TL15 suits, even if they could. I find it more likely they would get something like a TL12 suit, which is about 20kg, at most. This would mean any Vespexer who is regularly out (that means all of them) would have to be used to wearing at least 20kg of HEV suit. A “pleasant” side-effect for the nobles would be getting them physically used to an environment where they weigh much more, and would make them a target for recruitment into the Drinaxian military. Yes, I assume the Drinaxian nobles are kind of scumbags.
The psychological implications of not having to wear a mask and a suit to be out and about might be different though.
In addition to that, why would they go out at all? Now we have read that they are hunting and gathering, but we also know that they are scavenging the ruins. Unless they are using the things they scavenge themselves there likely is only one place where they can get a regular “good” deal with those scavenged TL15 items: the palace. And with “good” I mean they are basically trading gold nuggets for glass pearls. I assume there are a few traders, maybe even officials, which regularly go down to the surface to trade usable items the scavengers found against hazard suits and/or food supplies. There is a whole planet that housed billions to scavenge from, and only a handful of people to do that, so even after 200 years they aren’t likely to have run out of stuff to find.
It might not even be the only place the scavengers sell anything to, there might be traders/smugglers going down there to trade with the scavengers. Drinax might be a TL15 civilization, but governmental infrastructure it is limited to a single small city with a handful of ships. There is no way they can police a whole world like that against dedicated smugglers ready to get their hands on cheap TL15 stuff, even slightly used one. And they are unlikely to give them that much better a deal as well, but they at least might give them a chance to get off-planet.
Isaías "McAllus"