settled-reach/wiki/star-systems/GJ-716/index.md

Murchison

GJ 716 | K-type | north_reach

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System Profile

Star	K1V · 43.2 ly
Gates	2 aperture · through_route
Settlement	wave_4

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Supply Dependency

Murchison exists because the frontier push needed somewhere to put supplies. The MVG preliminary scouts who charted this branch in the wave_4 period established a depot here — close enough to the outer fringe to be useful for staging, far enough from the inner systems that it would not compete with established provisioning centers. The depot is still the primary economic feature of the system. It stocks mineral survey equipment, transit consumables, emergency repair components, and the kind of bulk stores that frontier operations need close at hand. What the depot does not stock is anything that has not demonstrably been needed within the past five years; the Murchison depot manager's institutional culture is aggressively practical about inventory.

The secondary economy is mineral survey support: geological assessment services, sample processing, survey crew accommodation between contracts. The deposits in the system itself are modest and mostly worked out, but the survey infrastructure built to exploit them became a service offering for operators working the outer branch. Murchison does not mine much anymore. It helps other people decide whether to mine elsewhere.

Faction Notes

MVG's footprint in Murchison is the dominant institutional presence, but it is a light footprint — a standard logistics contract, a depot manager with regional authority, and the tacit understanding that MVG's preliminary assessment franchise on any mineral discovery within two hops runs through Murchison's registry. This is not a formal legal arrangement. It is an informal monopoly on information that MVG has maintained by being the organization that originally built the survey infrastructure here. Challenging it would require building equivalent infrastructure, which no one has done.

The local population is frontier-practical in a way that distinguishes it from the Commonwealth-institutional character of the inner corridor. Murchison's wave_4 founders were mixed — Australian-heritage in the administrative core, frontier-recruited mixed heritage everywhere else — and four generations of frontier life have produced a culture where the Assembly charter is considered useful wallpaper. Everyone knows where the charter document is. No one has read it recently. The local governance is a depot manager's committee and a settlement council, and the two bodies agree on most things without formal procedure.

Silence Topic

The MVG preliminary assessment records for the outer branch past Murchison include surveys of systems that were documented, classified as low-priority extraction targets, and filed. Several of those filings have not been updated since the original survey, which means they reflect geological conditions as of approximately seventy to ninety years ago. Whether conditions have changed, whether subsequent unofficial surveys have occurred, and whether the low-priority classification still accurately describes what is out there are questions the MVG registry at Murchison is not obligated to answer and has not been asked to.

Narrative Hook

The MVG depot's oldest survey files cover systems that have not had a formal assessment update in ninety years, and the depot manager's personal log contains a note, written six years ago, about a freelance prospector who came through asking specific questions about one of them.

Calibration Note

wave_4 through_route at hop_distance: 10 is a standard frontier-staging profile. The K1V stellar class provides a mild orange-shifted environment — habitable without significant adaptation, unremarkable in character. Murchison's economic function as a supply depot is more important to the outer branch's viability than its individual economic output would suggest; remove the depot and the systems beyond it would have to carry substantially more consumable mass per transit. The MVG connection puts this system in the industrial logistics corridor, which elevates its infrastructure maintenance standard above what its hop distance and population would independently justify.

Celestial Bodies

Orbit	ID	Name	Type	Inhabited	Pop	Mass	Gravity	Year (d)	Day (h)	Atmo	Biome	Hydro	Economy	Settlement	Industrial
1	GJ716b	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.35g	25	18.0	none	barren	none	—	—	—
2	GJ716c	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.48g	65	22.0	thin	arid	none	—	—	—
3	GJ716d	Laverton	planet	yes	30M	terrestrial	0.88g	160	22.0	breathable	temperate	moderate	transit	concentrated	mvg
↳ 3.1	GJ716d-1	—	moon	no	—	dwarf	0.05g	8	192.0	none	barren	none	—	—	—
4	GJ716e	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.40g	350	18.0	thin	frozen	ice	—	—	—
5	GJ716f	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.32g	800	16.0	none	frozen	ice	—	—	—
6	GJ716g	—	gas_giant	no	—	gas_giant	—	2200	11.0	dense	—	—	—	—	—
↳ 6.1	GJ716g-1	—	moon	no	—	dwarf	0.06g	5	120.0	none	barren	none	—	—	—
↳ 6.2	GJ716g-2	—	moon	no	—	dwarf	0.04g	14	336.0	none	frozen	ice	—	—	—
7	GJ716h	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.22g	5500	20.0	none	frozen	ice	—	—	—
8	GJ716i	—	planet	no	—	dwarf	0.11g	10000	24.0	none	frozen	ice	—	—	—
9	GJ716-belt	—	asteroid_belt	no	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
10	GJ716-oort	—	oort_cloud	no	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—

Stations & Facilities

ID	Name	Type	Orbits	Population	Economy	Governance	Docking	Gate	Districts
GJ716-oort-S1	Norseman	horizon	GJ716-oort	500	transit	—	standard	yes	1
GJ716d-S1	Leonora	industrial	GJ716d	5M	transit	—	standard	no	1

Topology

• Hop Distance from Gateway: 10
• Adjacent Systems: GJ 194B, GJ 1292