settled-reach/wiki/star-systems/GJ-204/index.md

Pedra Funda

GJ 204 | M-type | deep_frontier

The name means "deep stone" — chosen by a religious community that came here three centuries ago to worship without interference, and has been doing so ever since. The faith they practice still uses the same name as the tradition they left. The content of that tradition is no longer recognizable to the institutions they departed from. Three hundred years of isolation and M-dwarf light and local adaptation will do this. The community calls what they have Catholicism. Visiting clergy from the inner corridor call it something else.

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System Profile

Star	M · 33.4 ly
Bodies	0 habitable · 2 inhabited
Gates	2 aperture · through_route
Settlement	wave_3
Industries	metallic_ore, hospitality, financial_services, legal_services
Exports	financial_services
Imports	processed_food, electronics, consumer_goods, medical_goods, fusion_fuel, refined_metals
Population	—

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Supply Dependency

Pedra Funda is agriculturally self-sufficient — three centuries of settled M-dwarf farming, crop varieties adapted across many generations, water and soil management practices that have been refined to match the specific conditions of the habitable world. The religious community that founded the system was not unprepared; they brought agricultural expertise alongside theological conviction, and both have been maintained.

The dependency is in manufactured goods, which the community imports at intervals through the corridor to Sertão and onward toward the inner south reach. Medical supplies represent the critical external dependency — the community's medical practice is competent at the level of what can be done with locally available materials and skills, but some interventions require equipment that cannot be manufactured at Pedra Funda. The community accepts this limitation and has built its medical culture around it.

Faction Notes

There are no external factions with presence at Pedra Funda. The community is self-governing through a synodal structure that evolved from the founding religious council and has incorporated secular administrative functions over three centuries. It operates as a religious community that is also a civil government, where the distinction between those roles has gradually blurred to the point of irrelevance.

The Lattice Commission has a compliance record for Pedra Funda. No Commission agent has visited in several decades. The compliance record is submitted by community leadership on the required schedule and accepted without audit. The Commission has no particular reason to scrutinize a small, self-sufficient, non-industrial deep frontier community, and the community has no particular incentive to invite closer examination.

Silence Topic

What Pedra Funda does not discuss with outside religious institutions: the specific content of their current theological practice.

The community is not embarrassed by how far it has drifted. It is private. The inner corridor's Catholic institutional structures have, at various points over three centuries, expressed interest in sending representatives to assess the community's practice, offer guidance, and potentially — from the community's perspective — attempt to bring them back into doctrinal alignment. These overtures have been declined politely every time. The community's position is that what they practice is their own business, that they came here precisely to practice it without outside guidance, and that three hundred years of sincere practice cannot be measured against a standard maintained by people who have never tried to maintain a living faith at M-dwarf distance from everything else.

What the inner corridor doesn't know: the community's seasonal observances, which began as adapted liturgical calendar modifications, have incorporated astronomical elements tied to the M-dwarf's specific activity cycles — stellar observation, light-based ritual structure, a theology of stellar light that would strike inner corridor clergy as something they have no category for.

Narrative Hook

Pedra Funda's three-century-old Catholic community practices a faith that shares a name with the tradition that expelled them and almost nothing else; the community declines all outside ecclesiastical contact and the inner corridor's institutions have stopped sending representatives.

Celestial Bodies

Orbit	ID	Name	Type	Inhabited	Pop	Mass	Gravity	Year (d)	Day (h)	Atmo	Class	Hydro	Economy	Settlement	Industrial
1	GJ204b	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.38g	14	336.0	none	barren	—	—	—	—
2	GJ204c	Mértola	planet	yes	15K	terrestrial	0.88g	140	27.4	standard	temperate	liquid_water	agricultural	dispersed	—
3	GJ204-belt	—	asteroid_belt	no	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
4	GJ204d	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.50g	440	25.8	thin	frozen	—	—	—	—
5	GJ204e	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.40g	1200	29.4	trace	frozen	ice	—	—	—
6	GJ204f	—	planet	no	—	terrestrial	0.30g	3400	35.6	trace	frozen	ice	—	—	—
7	GJ204g	—	planet	no	—	dwarf	0.11g	8400	22.8	none	frozen	ice	—	—	—
8	GJ204h	—	planet	no	—	dwarf	0.07g	20000	18.2	none	frozen	ice	—	—	—
9	GJ204-oort	—	oort_cloud	no	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—

Stations & Facilities

ID	Name	Type	Orbits	Population	Economy	Governance	Docking	Gate	Districts
GJ204-oort-S1	Pedra Funda Horizon	horizon	GJ204-oort	180	transit	—	major	yes	1

Topology

• Hop Distance from Gateway: 9
• Adjacent Systems: GJ 138 (Sertão), GJ 868