List of Revelation Space Locations - Other Planets - Diadem

Diadem

An icy planet orbiting the star Ross 248 and the first of many to be explored by the Conjoiners outside of our own Solar system. It was colonized by Americans approximately 100 years before the Conjoiner explorers arrived. The Americans sent self-replicating robots to Diadem with frozen human embryos, since transporting living humans across space was not yet possible at that time. However, after building the colony and raising the embryos, the robots were destroyed by the resulting humans because it was believed that the robots were "holding them back" and "mollycoddling" them". Subsequently, the colony collapsed apparently because of the spread of a psychological disorder that slowly killed the human colonists.

However, as it turned out, the collapse of the colony was all part of a plan by Martin Setterholm, an American scientist who spent his life studying a species of worm that lived in the Diadem ice. During his studies he discovered that the worms that lived in the ice left chemical traces wherever they went, leading him to theorize that the planet was a sentient being, which used the worms in a similar way that the human brain uses electro-chemical impulses. Setterholm gradually poisoned the rest of the population to stop the colony from using the habitat of the worms, the ice, as fuel for the main fusion reactor. He then assumed the identity of Iverson, another colonist. However, 100 years later (after being unfrozen from a makeshift cryonic chamber by the Conjoiners), his deception was discovered and he was brought to justice by Nevil Clavain.