SYSTEM NAME: Belnafaer 

Star Colour:  Blue 
Habitable Planets:  None 

First Exploration:  Survey Ship Astro- 
labe (report file: BF/119/G). 
Location:  The suggested position for 
Belnafaer is at one of the four locations 
for non-binary stars between Scree Fron 
and Dixon's Star on the Frontier Sector 
Map (AD - page 51). However, it may be 
located wherever it will best fit in with the 
referee's campaign. 

Belnafaer has only three planets orbiting 
it. Two of these (Gog and Magog) are in 
close orbit around the star and are small, 
hot, rocky and barren. The third planet, 
Venturi, is a clod gas giant which orbits 
Belnafaer at a much greater distance and 
has an extensive system of moons and 
rings.

Planet Type:  Gas Giant 
Moons:  20+ 
Diameter:  129,000 km 
Temperature:  -180ºC (at top of atmo- 
  sphere) to -50ºC ( at top of liquid layer 
  - see below). 
Rotational Period (Day):  10 hours 

Venturi is a gas giant planet. This means 
that it is a massive, spherical cloud of gas 
which becomes denser and denser 
towards the center until it gradually 
becomes liquid and finally solid. Because 
of this, Venturi does not have a surface in 
the way that other ("rocky") planets do. 

The outer part of the gas giant (its 
"atmosphere") is composed mostly of 
hydrogen with some helium, methane, 
ammonia and traces of other compounds.
These trace compounds include a number
of very complex, unstable bio-chemicals
which are highly valued as catalysts for
 

MOON NAME: Snobol 

Diameter:  Average 6 km (irregular) 
Atmosphere:  None 
Temperature:  -140ºC 

Snobol is one of the many moons of 
Venturi, and very small by comparison 
with the rest. It is a large, lumpy, cold 
block of frozen water and carbon dioxide 
("dry ice"). Snobol was only recently 
"captured" by Venturi, and is unusual in 
that it has a very elongated orbit which 
takes it as close to Venturi as 197,000 km 
and as far away as 4,950,000 km. Its orbit 
takes 38 standard days. Snobol still has 
the spin which it had before it was 
"captured", and rotates about its axis 
once every 4 minutes 45 seconds.

In their eagerness to begin exploiting 
Venturi, the ByChem Corporation omitted 
to consider why complex bio-chemicals 
should exist in its atmosphere, when they 
has never been found elsewhere. Has 
they known the reason, the Venturi 
Project would probably never have been 
started. 

The Matrix 

The stormy atmosphere of Venturi has 
given birth to "the Matrix", a microscopic, 
unintelligent life-form. In its normal form, 
the Matrix consists of patterns of elec- 
trical impulses which gather together 
simple compounds from the atmosphere 
and build up large, complex bio-chemical 
 

The matrix can mutate, however, enabling 
different forms of it to live in electronic 
circuits, causing malfunctions or giving 
the circuits strange properties. These 
forms can spread through circuits and 
infect other circuits like an electronic 
virus, and are the cause of most of the 
dangers that face the characters in this 
adventure. 

Disaster on Jetsom 

About 66 days before the arrival of the 
characters in the Belnafaer system, a 
mutated form of the Matrix found its way
 

Unfortunately, the Matrix had already
spread to the shuttle computer and so
made its way up to Snobol and the
Moneyspider.

Meanwhile on Jetsom, in the middle of a
magnetic storm 5 daysafter the change-
over (Day 43), the Matrix infection caused
a critical failure of the platform's com-
puter and robot systems.