Fargen

110 Aquila E332527B Non Agricultural, Non Industrial, Poor

Fargen is a rather cold and Martianesque colony world, a small globe on the outer fringe of the inhabitable zone of a dim M class star. It nearly tidally locked rotating three times in two orbital periods (about 130 days). Both the extant colonies is a university, originally founded by the EU colony on Aquila that eventually became Merovin and parts of New Dorset. The university split when a civil war separated the French speakers of Merovin and their allies from the Germans and East Europeans who later merged with New Dorset.

The two colonies are a couple of hundred miles apart. The Merovinese University is a Grand Ecole on the old French lines - actually called Le Grand Ecole Polytechnique d'Aquila - studying economics, politics, sociology, history etc. and has 10,000 or so population around half of whom are students. The English/International University of Fargen is somewhat elitist - it is expensive to live there - and emphasises the sciences. In fact there are labs here in outlying annexes and in orbit doing work in genetics and high energy physics that people might not be keen to share a planet with. This has 20,000 students, staff and employees, and owns a chain of colleges on Aquila and throughout the sector.

The two sites are a mere 100 miles apart, both in rugged mountain valleys near the equator. The air is very thin, but does have appreciable amounts of oxygen from the local plants, sturdy little things that combine aspects of the cactus and of shrubs and can stand being frozen solid for months. The glacial lakes at the equator have little except algae living in them.