The planet of Valhalla was once a temperate paradise of forests and broad fertile plains. There is no record of its settlement, but legends recall a world ripe for colonisation and development. Its people spread across the world and prospered. The planet's main land masses were distributed more or less evenly, one centred at the northern pole and the other at the south. The equatorial regions themselves were dominated by a huge warm ocean eleven thousand miles wide.

Approximately ten thousand years ago Valhalla was struck by a comet of immense size and weight. The planet's defence lasers poured shot after shot into the comet. This did nothing more than break off several smaller fragments of what proved to be virtually iron. A mile wide fragment struck the northern continent causing massive earthquakes and destruction, but the main comet body landed in the sea.

At first the confusion and devastation made it hard to gauge the full effect of the strike. The boiling seas, clouds of vapour and pall of dust cut off the light. Temperatures plunged to freezing over the whole planet. Even more significantly, the impact had knocked the whole world from its orbit. For ten years Valhalla spun eccentrically until it finally settled some fifteen million miles further from its sun. By then the planet was a very different place indeed.

Valhalla had become a frozen world of ice. The survivors of the disaster found themselves pushed further and further towards the equatorial oceans as glaciers engulfed the polar continents. Eventually, there was no more land left, and they were forced to live upon the ice itself. Though 99% of all life had been destroyed the people struggled through, building their cities deep inside the ice. What little life remained they carefully cultivated, growing nutrient slimes and algae's in vats heated by thermal stills.

Planetary Governor: Mikhail Romanov, Imperial Commander.

Planet Type: Civilised World.

Regime: Dictatorship.

Defence: Medium.

Notable History: see above in the main text.

Notable settlements: What settlements there are, are built under the ice of Valhalla's inhospitable surface.