Kelsor 7

Kelsor 7 is one of the Third Generation seeded worlds. It was originally settled by refugees, mostly scientists and technologists, from the destruction of Belside, a world devoted to science, and has since encouraged immigration by the best minds from other worlds. The Kelsorians are best known for their invention of the Quantum Electric Drive (QED) which has put them on the Galactic map.

Kelsor 7 orbits a red dwarf, Kelsor 6, which in turn orbits the B2 Class star Kelsor. There are no other habitable planets in the system, and Kelsor 7 itself is bleak compared to most seeded worlds. Only an eccentric orbit of about two weeks, with the consequent libration, renders it habitable at all, and most of the light actually comes from Kelsor. The choice of such a world was quite deliberate on the part of the Belsidean refugees: a world nobody else would want. It is now a very prosperous planet, thanks to its monopoly on the QED, and tries hard to stay neutral officially by marketing QED modules to all sides, but has lately come to favor the Enlightenment. The secret of the QED is carefully guarded, for it is the planet's main defense, although it maintains a fleet of mostly phony (Quaker) warships and a military force made up in part of Alecans of Tanzrobian ancestry. The planet's governing body is known as the Secretariat.

Kelsor's priorities are mostly Science and Exploration, and it has been the first to open contact with a number of alien worlds, including the tragically doomed Domyr. Although most Kelsorians are irreligious, there is a religious minority called the Christla, a reformed Catholic sect that originated on Nova Iberia. The Christla are morally conservative compared to other Kelsorians (who are not averse to orgies at periodic festivals), but are as committed to science and exploration as the rest. While easy-going generally, Kelsorians observe a customary formality in official situations, as with the dual honorific ("Sir and Captain," "Dame and Scholar" and the like). They have a rogue Velorian living among them. A P1 caste woman named Alisa Liddell who refused to undergo the Rites and fled to Kelsor 7 to ask for sanctuary. She features in several of our stories. She likes to hang out with other physicists at a bar called the Dirac Hole.