Formerly OO#3291, the Freehold of Iaasa was established by the Dutrilik family in 5018 s.y.v.p. as a winter retreat and tax haven, part of a trend among the Viridian elite towards establishing off-planet secondary residences. While many of these asteroids were ultimately abandoned as impractical, Iaasa and a number of other freeholds were found to have significant deposits of rare minerals, and were gradually converted from luxury estates to mining camps. At its height, Iaasa supported, in addition to the Dutrilik family, a permanent population of 140-odd laborers in a nearly self-sufficient habitat.

Iaasa was one of the many such colonies afflicted by unrest at the end of the Lesser Stillness. As galactic imports resumed and the demand for raw minerals waned, profits from the asteroid fell sharply. Discontented workers, threatened with mine closure and forced relocation to a homeworld many of them had not visited in decades and whose gravity they could no longer tolerate, attempted to seize the administrative dome.

In the ensuing battle, the colony’s primary reactor was apparently damaged, resulting in a catastrophic explosion which shattered the over-mined rock into fragments, leading the fledgling UPRCOFR to declare the entire colony a “Hero-Martyr of the Great Struggle”. Iaasa featured prominently in later Confederate propaganda efforts, usually accompanied by inflammatory suggestions that sabotage by fleeing colonial administrators was behind the fatal blast.

—Heichner Kzolknov