=Echo= 
Named for its twin suns, the Echo system has two notable exoplanets: Echo IV, an Earth-like terrestrial planet with abundant life, and Echo V, a barren and desolate rock upon which the ﬁrst Iktomi ruins were found.
||>   ||= **Echo IV** ||= **Echo V** ||
||> **Type** ||= Terrestrial (Earth-like) ||= Terrestrial (Martian) ||
||> **Primary Star/Satelite of** ||= K0V (Orange Dwarf) ||= K0V (Orange Dwarf) ||
||> **Gravity** ||= 1.08 g ||= 0.48 g ||
||> **Diameter** ||= 12,200 km ||= 7,800 km ||
||> **Atmospheric Pressure** ||= 1.1 atm ||= 0.5 atm ||
||> **Atmospheric Composition** ||= 70% Nitrogen, 27% Oxygen, 3% Argon ||= 89% Carbon Dioxide, 8% Nitrogen, 2% Argon ||
||> **Surface Temperature (Min/Mean/Max)** ||= -90 C/13 C/70 C ||= -80 C/-45 C/ 25 C ||
||> **Day Length** ||= 28 hours ||= 22 hours ||
||> **Orbital Period** ||= 202 days ||= 284 days ||
||> **Satellites** ||= None ||= None ||
||> **Gate Access** ||= None (access via Echo V) ||= [[Pandora Gate]] ||
==Echo V: Tangled Webs== 
**Posted by:** Lord Of Light
Echo V is fascinating not for its desolation, which is apparently all too common in the galaxy, but for its ruins. The dusty remains of a fellow but long-gone sapient civilization brings to mind dear Ozymandias, but do not despair! Lo, I have knowledge to impart to you, oh scion of burning hedges!
The Iktomi, arthropodal alien chaps that they were, favored web-like constructions for their habitations. Tall spires were interstrung with thick cabled pathways. Very little of these settlements remain, time having scoured most of them down to nothing. From all indications, however, the Iktomi had spun their communities far and wide, populating this world by the hundreds of thousands. Yet the data indicates this was not their home—or at least not the world they evolved on.
Echo V’s blasted landscape is misleading, you see. Once—quite recently in fact, on geological and astronomical terms—it was home to native life. Though not as crawling with microbes and bugs and larger things as its more Earth-like sister, and considerably colder, it was hospitable, at least as much as Mars. It is not clear how long the Iktomi, who presumably arrived via the gate, were here—maybe millenia, perhaps only a few decades. Long enough to spread out, settle in, and make their mark.
Something happened, then, something most likely bad. The geologists and xenologists and planetologists are still scratching their heads. Whether the Iktomi left or were wiped out is unclear—perhaps both. In the same time frame as their sudden disappearance, a mere 10,000 years ago at best guess, the nascent life forms of Echo V all went with them. This event was most likely as remarkable as it seems. There is evidence that indicates that Echo V was heavily transformed. Its atmosphere, for example, changed signiﬁcantly. Teams of scientists from all different persuasions continue to try and wrap their neural processors around this puzzle. One of the leading questions is why Echo IV did not suffer a similar fate.
===Iktomi Pictographs=== 
Though Iktomi ruins have been found on other worlds, the remnants on Echo V are more extensive and have yielded more items useful for research. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their nom-de-guerre, Iktomi artwork is heavily influenced towards things spidery. This is also true of their pictographs, found on many long-abandoned structures, particularly in the region right around the Echo Gate. For quite some time now, xenolinguists have been unable to decipher the meanings locked within these pictographs. Indeed, some stated that the unusually raised and ﬂuted forms had no discernible purpose save ornamentation. It is in the storms of adversity that the stoutest hearts are found, however. One researcher, refusing to surrender the ﬁght, discovered entirely by chance that when viewed through compound eyes, the pictographs overlaid and created discernible patterns. Eureka screamed the chorus! And a new effort began to clean eons-old dust out of the pictographs.
Invested with this knowledge, once more into the fray went a few well-chosen intrepid interpreters. They drudge yet as you read, comprehension is hard won across oceans of time and species, yet this they know: the Iktomi worried often about the dread things beyond the Weave. A warning, an admonishment, a statement of principle, and a truism: Mind the Weave. Over and over again, thirty seven times and counting across various structures: Mind the Weave.
What is the Weave? Well that pictograph was awfully clear—it looks just like a big web with a Pandora gate sitting right in the middle. What are the dread things? We don’t know, sentinel, but you may get to shoot one some day. Isn’t that marvelous? Alarming revelations aside, the Iktomi’s pictographs seemingly revealed very little about them other than creeping paranoia.
===Iktomi Music=== 
Echo V itself decided to give transhumanity a hand in revealing one of the Iktomi’s other great mysteries. A great dust storm was kicked up out on the alluvial plains, and as it blew into a recently unearthed Iktomi settlement, wonder of wonders, the structures sang! Or rather, the wind blowing through the web-like architecture of the Iktomi created a series of aurally distinguishable patterns. As news of this spread, other research teams quickly set about exposing structures to the elements and removing scaffolding and other paraphernalia that was blocking the wind’s access to the Iktomi’s chosen instruments. Then, recording instruments at the ready, they waited.
The music—if that’s what it is—is alien and haunting. It is noticeably different from transhuman rhythms and melodies, yet it still stirs the soul. Of course, we may not be experiencing the full composition—it is being “played” by ruins after all. A single downed spire or cable web may be transforming a happy tune of idyllic memories into a moody dirge, for all we know. Or we may be wrong thinking it is music entirely, and so right now thousands of transhumans are downloading the latest recordings of what is actually an alien culture’s high-tech bug deterrent, driving insect pests away with the proper frequencies. Nevertheless, the samples have proven increasingly popular and are now spreading throughout the mesh and being remixed into current pop music hits.
===Alexander=== 
Alexander is the largest transhuman settlement on Echo V, home to around 7,500. It is a dome habitat, ensconced in a topped-over valley around 1,500 kilometers from the Echo Gate, right next door to one of the largest set of Iktomi ruins yet discovered. Founded by [[[Gatekeeper]] and [[Argonauts|argonaut]] xenoarcheologists, it is effectively an independent city, run along [[Titanian Commonwealth|Titanian]] technosocialist
lines. The argonauts have established their Xenology Institute here, their largest extrasolar project, dedicated to the study of extraterrestrial life and civilizations. Numerous other hypercorps, minicorps, and autonomist collectives focused on xenoarcheology have a presence here, sharing data on the arachnoid aliens and collaborating on solving various mysteries. Gatekeeper CEO Xander Rabin keeps a private home here, taking a personal interest in the effort to reconstruct Iktomi society. Alexander features a modest spaceport for the occasional shuttle trip to Echo IV. It also has a farcasting facility and body bank with a meager supply of available morphs.
==Echo IV: Megafauna Paradise== 
The unimaginatively named Echo IV has no Pandora gate, which means you are either taking a standard shuttle (of which there are presently two in-system) or farcasting over from Echo V. Seeing as the local choices for morphs are, in general, less than desirable, I would shuttle it or arrange for a decent morph to be shuttled over way in advance. Morph-wise, I would lean towards either “large and dangerous” or “small and unobtrusive” because Echo IV, paradise or no, is swarming with tooth-ﬁlled megafauna who will regard you as edible. I know, some of you are thinking, “Ha! I’ll get a synth!” or some other such brilliant scheme that will take you off the food chain, but sadly, no, the charming natives of Echo IV are long on appetite and short on brains.
I hope you like trees, because you will be seeing a lot of them. A whole lot of them. In point of fact, there are almost more trees than there is ground over large portions of the two megacontinents that make up the bulk of Echo IV’s land mass. The equatorial regions without trees have the quickest natives with the biggest teeth, as opposed to the arboreal sort who prefer to land on their meals from above. Of course, if you like small trees where that sort of thing doesn’t occur, you can hang out in the stunted cloud forests of the equatorial mountains. There you only have to worry about the oh-so mischievous clown sprites that do nothing more than steal small shiny objects, large unbolted-down objects, be adorable on command in order to save their skins, and occasionally try to trick you into being consumed by large angry poisonous plants. I must in good conscience note that I’m not certain the plants are angry. The land anemones may just be hungry—all the time.
The main draw to Echo IV is bio, genetics, and pharma research. A number of hypercorps have set up research shops here, all well-defended from wildlife predators and nuisances. One of them has set up with an exotourism outﬁt that sells big-game safari packages to hyperelites, capturing specimens that they turn over to the labs. The place also draws exotourists who come to hike and see the wildlife—and then usually to run from it screaming. I suspect we’ve had a few sick adventurers here who just came for that eaten-alive experience. Oddly, there is absolutely zilch in the way of spider-people ruins, though that hasn’t kept various xenoarcheologists from scouring the planet, looking for Iktomi spoor. No one has any solid ideas for why they never made a presence here; they were around recently enough that things on Echo IV weren’t so different. Maybe the Echolalian wildlife triggered their squick response.
===Sidebar: Iktomi Basilisk Hack?=== 
**To:** <encrypted>
**From:** <encrypted>
We have tracked down the rumors about the Iktomi music and veriﬁed it ourselves. Some samples have indeed produced a reproducible effect in listeners—but only async listeners. According to our studies, asyncs who experienced these tracks were subject to the same dreams. The dreams were muddy and unclear, but prominent elements involved twin suns, spider-like creatures, and curious devices, with little variation. Different tracks produced different dreams, and some had no effect at
all. Our async subjects experienced these dreams at different scales of resolution. Some received only the briefest glimpses, others could articulate their dreams in explicit detail. We are still analyzing the results for useful clues.
The quality of the recordings does indeed seem to be a factor, and experiencing the music in person seems to register a greater effect than listening to a recording. Notably, efforts to reproduce the compositions with our own musical software and instruments did not have the same effect.

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