This Is For My Worldbuilding Class

Before the Civil War, slave hunters trawled the Northern free states in search of free blacks - men, women, and children - that they could then capture and transport to the South. Until slavery was abolished in all parts of the United States, this unscrupulous (and illegal) trade proved to be especially lucrative. Members of the so-called "Reverse Underground Railroad" often found conspirators in the form of local lawmen seeking to grease their palms. North of Kentucky, these insidious opportunists easily traipsed over the borderline and into the Indianan wilderness in search of quarry. But as these human hunting brigades stole deeper into the forests, not all of them emerged with prizes in hand. Not all of them came back alive. As the activities of these outlaws were illegal, they were loath to report the disappearances and assaults to authorities, but surviving slavers described a tall, black woman with wiry hair and wild eyes that lived in the middle of the forest, on ...

The windswept, sunblasted planet of Deo creaks along on its axis, perpetually subject to radioactive bombardment on both sides by the twin suns. From afar, the planet resembles a marble, its surface painted with bright candy cane swirls. The planet's axis is black and gangrenous like a patchy wound. On the planet's surface, the air is thick with plumes of red dust and the sky is an impenetrable crimson void. The planet's terrain beneath this poisonous canopy presents an even more inhospitable image: haphazardly jutting knifelike peaks clustered together like needles on the back of an irate porcupine, perilous canyons, basins filled with stagnant waters, and sprawling red wastelands. Days pass without any ostensible change in the sky. There is no moon and therefore there is no night, just a perpetual daylight like a radioactive glow, and the planet is flanked on both sides by a circling pair of suns. When the sky darkens, it is because of the dust storms broiling on the hori...