settled-reach/wiki/star-systems/GJ-357/index.md

Altmark

GJ 357 | K | west_reach

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System Profile

Star	K · 29.4 ly
Bodies	0 habitable · 6 inhabited
Gates	5 aperture · hub
Settlement	wave_4
Industries	fusion_fuel, metallic_ore, financial_services, insurance, legal_services
Exports	financial_services, legal_services
Imports	processed_food, electronics, consumer_goods, medical_goods, refined_metals, heavy_equipment
Population	—

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Supply Dependency

Altmark is the second-largest commercial system in the west_reach after Hansestadt. Its five gates connect inward to Hansestadt (GJ 832) and Eisentor (GJ 3454), and outward to GJ 3333, GJ 635A, and GJ 103, making it the primary distribution hub for the western and southwestern outer corridor. Manufactured goods flow inward from the core through Hansestadt to Altmark; raw materials and extractive outputs flow inward from the outer systems through Altmark toward Hansestadt and beyond. Altmark takes a margin on both directions.

The system's economy is genuinely diversified in a way that few outer corridor systems manage: heavy fabrication in the inner orbital belt, agricultural production on the temperate primary habitable world, a financial services sector grown up around the trade volume the five gates generate, and a transit logistics industry that exists specifically because ships with mismatched schedules need somewhere to wait. The K-type star provides adequate but not generous stellar energy, and the agricultural sector runs on a combination of supplemental lighting and cold-tolerant crop strains developed locally over generations. Altmark feeds itself and exports modest food surpluses to the less agriculturally capable systems on its outward branches.

The name comes from the German historical region — the Altmark was the original heartland of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, a place of foundational significance in German history. The founders, a consortium with strong German heritage, chose it to signal permanence and political weight rather than describe a geographic feature. They intended Altmark to become significant. The ambition was not wrong.

MVG's logistics corridor reaches Altmark: the fabrication sector holds several MVG supplier contracts, and MVG's regional distribution hub for the outer west is located here. This makes Altmark commercially important to MVG in a way that Hansestadt is important strategically. MVG has a larger physical footprint in Altmark than in any other outer corridor system.

Faction Notes

Altmark's governance is a bicameral system with an elected legislative assembly and an appointed commercial council that holds executive authority. The commercial council's seat allocation is weighted by the size of registered commercial entities, which means MVG holds two of nine seats as a matter of structural fact, and the four largest independent shipping and fabrication houses collectively hold another four. Genuinely popular governance is represented by three elected seats that have, in practice, enough collective leverage to block but not enough to initiate. The arrangement was designed by the founding consortium to ensure commercial interests remained in control. It has worked as designed for two hundred years.

Assembly authority here is institutional and present. Altmark has five gates, which means significant Gate Corporation presence, Assembly commercial registrations for dozens of major operators, and periodic Assembly fleet visits that make the system feel more connected to the core than its hop distance would suggest. The Assembly's west_reach trade delegate is based at Altmark, not Hansestadt — Hansestadt is the Merchant Assembly's seat, which creates a distinction the Assembly enforces: its political office goes to the second hub, not the one dominated by a rival commercial body.

The Compact of Westphalia represents the most significant political tension in Altmark's recent history. Three of the five outward gate connections lead toward systems that are either Compact signatories or Compact-sympathetic. Commercial pressure from those systems to adopt Compact mutual-tariff structures has been building for a decade. MVG opposes Compact alignment because it would complicate their Assembly-registered contracts. The commercial council has not taken a formal position; the elected assembly seats have twice passed resolutions endorsing "exploratory dialogue with western corridor governance structures." Both resolutions were overridden by the commercial council.

Silence Topic

Altmark's financial services sector — the banks, bond houses, and commercial arbitration firms that grew up to service the trade volume through five gates — has been quietly processing Compact-registered commercial instruments alongside Assembly-registered ones for approximately fifteen years. This is technically legal in the grey space created by Altmark's local commercial framework, which predates the Compact's formation and does not explicitly recognize or exclude it. What the Assembly's trade delegate does not know is that the volume of Compact-registered instruments passing through Altmark's financial sector now exceeds the volume of Assembly-registered instruments on the outward routes. The system is already functionally Compact-integrated in its financial sector. The governance debate is trailing the commercial reality by a decade.

Narrative Hook

Altmark's commercial financial sector has already integrated the Compact of Westphalia's trade instruments at higher volume than Assembly-registered ones on the outward routes — and the Assembly trade delegate is conducting governance diplomacy in a system whose commercial sector finished the conversation in his absence.

Calibration Note

wave_4 settlement for a five-gate hub reflects the late emergence of Altmark's commercial significance — the western outer corridor did not develop enough traffic to justify a major hub here until Wave 4 expansion created the outward branch systems. The K-type star is accurate to the header. hub with five gates is accurate; this is the second node after Hansestadt in the west_reach and its political and commercial weight should be felt. The German historical region name reflects the founding German-heritage consortium's explicit ambition for the system. MVG's significant footprint is consistent with the MVG corridor extending to hop 7-8.

Celestial Bodies

Orbit	ID	Name	Type	Inhabited	Pop	Mass	Gravity	Year (d)	Day (h)	Atmo	Class	Hydro	Economy	Settlement	Industrial
1	GJ357b	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.40g	18	19.2	none	barren	—	—	—	—
2	GJ357c	Stendal	planet	yes	350M	terrestrial	0.92g	200	27.6	standard	temperate	liquid_water	commercial	urban_concentrated	logistics_manufacturing
3	GJ357-belt	—	asteroid_belt	no	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	mining	—	—
4	GJ357d	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.56g	620	28.4	thin	cold_arid	—	—	—	—
5	GJ357e	—	gas_giant	no	—	—	—	1800	11.2	gas_giant	—	—	—	—	—
↳ 5.1	GJ357e-m1	—	moon	no	—	dwarf	0.13g	6	134.4	trace	frozen	—	—	—	—
↳ 5.2	GJ357e-m2	—	moon	no	—	dwarf	0.08g	12	292.8	—	barren	—	—	—	—
6	GJ357f	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.44g	4800	34.8	trace	frozen	ice	—	—	—
7	GJ357g	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.35g	10800	42.6	trace	frozen	ice	—	—	—
8	GJ357h	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.27g	22000	51.4	none	frozen	ice	—	—	—
9	GJ357i	—	planet	no	—	dwarf	0.11g	44000	29.8	none	frozen	ice	—	—	—
10	GJ357-oort	—	oort_cloud	no	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—

Stations & Facilities

ID	Name	Type	Orbits	Population	Economy	Governance	Docking	Gate	Districts
GJ357-belt-S1	Walzwerk	industrial	GJ357-belt	8K	manufacturing	—	major	no	1
GJ357-oort-S1	Altmark Horizon	horizon	GJ357-oort	9K	transit	—	major	yes	1
GJ357c-S1	Markwerk	industrial	GJ357c	42K	manufacturing	—	major	no	1
GJ357c-S2	Kontor	commercial	GJ357c	18K	commercial	—	major	no	1
GJ357c-S3	Torwache	commercial	GJ357c	6K	transit	—	major	no	1

Topology

• Hop Distance from Gateway: 6
• Adjacent Systems: GJ 3333, GJ 635A, GJ 3454, GJ 103, GJ 832