Beta Quafirus-IV, better known Tophetos, was the first planet discovered by mankind that housed lifeforms prior to our arrival. This planet is home to the first and only living truly alien life encountered by humanity and as such, is of great importance to imperial scientists.
The planet is smaller than Earth and weighs around 70% as much. Tophetos is the fourth planet from its star, Beta Quafirus prime, and is the second planet to exist within its habitable zone. Beta Quafirus-III however, does not support life, if it ever had any.
Tophetos is colder than Earth and much of its southern hemisphere is covered in a permanent ice sheet. Curiously, where iron is the most abundant element by mass on Earth, Peirnovar and Eryobis, on Tophetos it is copper that holds that title. The copper oxides in the rock give the ground on Tophetos a blue-greenish tint and results in some desert areas consisting for the majority of turquoise copper sand.
Another result of this composition of the planet is the fact that its life evolved to incorporate and use copper ions for all sorts of processes from photosynthesis to carrying oxygen to the various stages of the nitrogen cycle.
While the planet was initially hailed by everyone in the empire because it housed life and actually had an atmospheric composition that is eerily similar to that of Earth, this excitement quickly turned to horror when the first reports of the surface came back. The magenta colored autotrophs of the planet release a waste product into the air that, while having no effect on other native organisms, acts as a potent neurotoxin to any terran life and causes involuntary, violent contractions of smooth muscles in the digestive tract and surrounding tissues when it is inhaled or enters the bloodstream. This compound, nicknamed laxotoxin, caused humans to uncontrollably expel any and all contents within the digestive tract and will eventually result in organs prolapsing out of the anus.
Many early explorers of Tophetos met this horrible fate and proceeded to die of either stress from the ordeal or from organ failure. No antidote exists, nor has one been developed in the centuries since.
While Tophetos itself is of minor importance to the imperium because of its hostile conditions, its moon and Beta Quafirus-III have been colonized and are valuable for their high amounts of copper ore and other rare metals.
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