Bright Spot

Luminé, the city once located at Eurymir’s noon pole, never had much opportunity to blossom. Originally built as a center for the exploitation of Eurymir’s resources, the largely underground complex served as a control center for solar power generation (in the continuous sunlight both groundside and in orbit) and dip-mining of liquid metals from the day side. Auxiliary facilities took advantage of the abundant energy to perform contraterragenesis (now moved to planetary orbit), as well as experiments in alchemics, power metal engeneration, high energy chemistry, and pure particle physics.

Unfortunately for the investors in Luminé, planetary conditions on Eurymir proved too harsh for the technology of the era. While Luminé could be sustained, it never proved economically viable due to the rapid degradation of equipment deployed on the surface, and the difficulty of performing maintenance and repairs in the sun’s full light. In a matter of decades, operations on Eurymir were closed down, the majority being transferred to the more hospitable Toramir.

When life returned to Luminé, it did so in the form of the Effulgent Order of Lumenna. Much of the old city remains in mothballs, although various of the original laboratory operators have returned and new facilities house the Institute for Solar Studies, as well as the creators of the experiment in artificial life whose glass, copper, and steel fractal forests now sprawl across the planetary surface, giving birth to fascinating new materials evolved for the high-energy environment.

The prosaic laboratories of old Luminé, however, are almost forgotten along with its name. The Effulgent Order, having moved the starport outside the shallow crater beneath which the city was built, filled that crater with the Zenith Temple, by which name they are now both known.

Indeed, the dome of the Zenith Temple now spans nearly two miles of surface, graceful curves of amber-tinted, gold-anodized glass sweeping up from its white marble-clad ringwall to the central dome-piercing spire, whose peak offers spectacular views of day-side Eurymir.

Yet such is not its purpose. From the balcony just below the peak of the dome, you can gaze directly upward into the face of Lumenna, larger than seen from any other world, her light made bearable by the dome’s tint, or down, into the grand sand mandala filling the dome entire. Here, the acquiescents of the Order have carefully sifted the endless sands of Eurymir for those specks bearing the most vivid color in the light of the sun, and bound each one to a motile microbot. Driven by the endless light from which they take both energy and the key to their pattern, glittering under a shadowless, eternal noon, these shifting sands spin out an ever-changing series of reflections on the sun’s power, light, and grace.

There are those who hold out Ellenith’s Dome of the Crystal Seers, the Maze of Aelalaér beneath Ambriel, or the virtual Pool of Infinite Reflection as the greatest site for meditation and spiritual contemplation that the Empire has to offer – but in this author’s opinion, gentle reader, the Zenith Temple outshines them all.

– Leyness’s Worlds: Guide to the Core Worlds

Lumenna-Súnáris System (1): The Stars

(So post. Such computation. Wow.)

Okay, folks, here we go, the Lumenna-Súnáris System. A little bit slower than expected, because it turns out that it actually takes quite a long time to gather up and re-double-check all my figures with great care.  Since I know you guys, y’know?

So starting with this post, which covers the suns, I’m going to try and hit up one planet a day, with its moons, other statistics, and a few interesting facts about it. Hopefully, it is planned, not to the exclusion of any other content.

So, let’s get started. To sum things up, first, the System is a Population I far binary (the stars vary in distance from 125 au to 358 au during their 2,864 local year orbit) which gives their worlds a nice “deep seasonal cycle” to pay attention to as well as their regular ones.

For convenience, in this description, we’re going to pretend that Lumenna is the center of the system and everything orbits around it rather than mucking about with barycenters. It has nine planets and an asteroid belt; Súnáris has eight planets and an asteroid belt; and then, of course, there is Múrcár. (If you’re into Kuiperians.)

Also, since if anyone does put this into a KSP mod it would be nice for them to start from the start, this is the system raw. Which is to say, this data reflects that status quo as of 2050, before anyone got clever ideas about strapping nuclear weapons to their ass and launching themselves into the wild black yonder, and certainly before people started colonizing other worlds, building habitats all over the place, moving inconvenient moons to better locations, girdling the equators of gas giants with supercolliders, reengineering the suns, or other cool stuff like that.

And a final word: through all of this, please pardon my eclectic mix of units; that’s just how I roll. Time units prefixed with T- indicate that I’m using your Earth hours/days/years, not the local calendar.

So let’s get started, shall we?

I. Lumenna

Mass: ~1.0 solar masses
Spectral class: G2V
Temperature: 5,800 K
Luminosity: 0.82 sol
Radius: 381,100 miles

“the Sun”; the yellow-white G2V star that everyone thinks of as the system primary even though it’s, technically, not really a concept that works all that well with binaries.

II. Súnáris

Mass: ~0.75 solar masses
Spectral class: K2V
Temperature: 4,900 K
Luminosity: 0.24 sol
Radius: 288,100 miles
Orbit (avg.): 242 au
Orbit (ecc.): 0.48
Orbit (period): 2,845.69 years
Perihelion: 125 au
Aphelion: 358 au

The system’s secondary star, slightly smaller and cooler than Lumenna, with light more orange. It’s name glosses as “shining one”, because its presence in the heavens overshadows all the other stars therein.

 

Word of the Flame (4/9)

The following, as were the preceding three (1,2,3) and will be the other five entries in the series, are extracts from the Word of the Flame, the record of the seeress Merriéle’s visions that is also the primary text of the Church of the Flame, the mainstream eldraeic religion.

More specifically, this series will contain all 51 verses of the book of Principles, which enumerate the principles of each of the eikones in the form of each’s foremost principle as they would have it expressed under Heaven, although naturally each eikone’s own book examines the fullness of the principle they represent from many more angles and in much more detail.  Nonetheless, the three verses of the Triarchs and the 48 verses of their Divine Ministers are second only to the book of Truths in Flamic moral teaching.

In simplicity the mind sleeps still;
The mazy path leads many places.
Let wit and cunning shape your life’s creation.
This is the command of Leiríah
Who swathes all things in mist.

Flawed steel splinters at one blow;
Only the tempered withstands use.
Enter into the fire, and be purified!
This is the command of Lódaríön
Who burns away the dross.

The light that grows; the fire that transforms;
The heat that warms when darkness falls.
These are mine; use them well and in fullness.
This is the command of Lumenna
Whose radiance illuminates the world.

Against the Flame, do naught.
As qalasír demands, do as you must.
In all else, do as you will.
This is the command of Elárion
Whose choice knows no boundaries.

The secrets of the world are writ in its elements;
Stone and metal, wind and rain, wood and fire.
Ask them every question, and be answered.
This is the command of Elliseré
Whose mind mothers all new things.

You are the Chosen, keepers of our dream;
Heirs to our glory, shapers of greater still.
Stride on, undiminished, until eternity’s end.
This is the command of Eslévan
Who once was Alphas’s line.