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Planetshine

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Planetshine is a human-avatared simulation on Stacksmash.

Description

Planetshine Jumpnode Map.pngA map of jumpnodes in Planetshine (click for larger version).

Species

Terrans

Humans. Pretty self-explanatory, really.

Vorrah

The Vorrah are a species of alien that have had military clashes with the Terrans before. It's a cultural disagreement more than a real fight - whilst they share many aspects of their cultures, the rupture is just large enough to be cause for repeated disagreements, to the point of mutual dislike. Originally from Bhaskar Cygni, the Vorrah now inhabit mainly Ursae Majoris and are terraforming Rin Reticulii and Flux Piscii, having been overwhelmed by mankind's firepower, fortunate to have been given opportunity to live in those systems at all.

Needless to say their past clashes have left much room for unspoken tension, but since the species don't share systems anymore, the 'cold war' is not at real risk to explode back into a real one.

Inhabited Systems

Avani Eridani

Planets:

Firgil has several moons, the most notable of which is the inhabited Atarah.

Bhaskar Cygni

  • Old designation: Gliese 777
  • Type: Single star system:
    • Gliese 777 A:
      • Name: Bharak
      • Type: subgiant star (stellar class: G6IV)

Bhaskar Cygni, after Helios Cassiopeiae, is the most elaborate inhabited system, and the only system containing three inhabited planets, which has catapulted its importance well past mankind's birthplace, with its two inhabited planets. Bhaskar Cygni is the true center of mankind's stellar territory.

It's planets are:

As the name suggests, Icarus is the planet closest to the sun. Icarus is a gas giant that causes fairly frequent fluctuations in the brightness of the sun, even though the planet itself glows slightly due to the immense heat it suffers, being nearer to Bharak than Mercury is to Sol. These light fluctuations come with their respective tidal pull, a gravitational effect that is significantly noticable on the two innermost terrestrial planets, becoming visible in amazing springtides that the inhabitants of Earth would find awe-inspiring.
Icarus, being so close to its sun, is often seen evaporating gas, the glow of which can be seen all the way to Nephele and is a phenomenom best visually comparable with an aurora, though far smaller, and only visible by day through special lenses. It has no moons.
  • Nephele
Bhaskar Cygni's 'Earth', Nephele is a cloudy world with temperatures that are, on average, a touch warmer than on earth. It's most affected by the gravitational pull of the Icarus-Bharak duo, and its settlements and architecture reflect this. The tidal pull is further pushed to its extremes in regards to its noticable effects in that Nephele contains exceptional amounts of water, its continents appearing more like the larger islands of Earth. The atmospheric make-up contains values for carbon dioxide that are comparable to the Carboniferous period on Earth (which, in most models mapping carbon dioxide over Earth's history, is a nadir in that regard).
Nephele has two moons: Phrixus and Helle.
Bhaskar Cygni (Nereus).png
Nereus' continents.
  • Nereus
Only a stellar stone's throw away from Nephele, Nereus is world that has almost precisely the same orbitting time Nephele does, which has locked the two planets at almost constant distance to each other. They drift apart further by only about a thousand kilometers per orbit, a negligible amount at stellar scales. Currently, the angle between Nephele and Nereus is 61,8°. The climate is immediately comparable to Earth, though, and atmospheric make-up almost identical.
Nereus has no moons.
  • Narayan
Only slightly colder than Earth, with a unique atmospheric make-up that includes fairly large quantities of so-called 'green house gases' to compensate for the distance to its sun, Narayan is the third populated world in Bhaskar Cygni. Farther from Bharak than Mars is from Sol, it's proven a terraforming challenge, but was stabilised about twenty years ago.
Narayan's only moon is called Nara.
  • Mehrdad
A fairly small 'ice giant', Mehrdad is most known for its many moons. It has an only slightly eccentric orbit, which crosses that of Alodian. It's assumed Mehrdad (which will never collide with Alodian despite orbital crossing), has torn Alodian's moons from the larger planet during its near-parallel runs, given Alodian's moons were only loosely bound to the gas giant in all scientific models analysing latter planet (farther out than its beautiful rings).
Mehrdad itself has 'only' eight moons, clearly not always the winner in the stellar tug-of-war. Three of these (Mahin, Mahvash and Marama) are large, comparable to the size of Mars in the Helios Cassiopeiae, and the other five (Maleth, Me, Mayin, Meheth and Myod, named after variants of Phoenician letters), nuzzled closer to the planet, sporting a 'typical' moon size.
Like Neptune, Mehrdad has a brilliant blue colour, and is thus colloquially called Bhaskar's Sapphire.
Bhaskar Cygni (Alodian).png
Alodian's rings.
Appearing like a turquoise Saturn, Alodian's rings are even more elaborate than the famous Helios Cassipeiae system's planet. Visible are three bright rings, clearly separated from each other.'
Alodian is the second planet that was discovered in Bhaskar Cygni, way back in 2002, and was the planet speculated to have cleared Bhaskar Cygni of asteroids and other hazards, allowing for life-supporting terrestrial planets, and making the system one of high-interest for a future 'New Earth'. Given that Nephele and Nereus needed next to no terraforming to be inhabitable by mankind and terran lifeforms, Alodian has indeed proven to be the system's creator and protector.
Due to the above-mentioned tug-of-war between Alodian and Mehrdad in regards to moons, Alodian has no moons, 'just' its rings.

Helios Cassiopeiae

  • Old designation: Sol
  • Type: Single star system:
    • SOL-A
      • Name: Sol
      • Type: main sequence star (stellar class: G2V)

The cradle of humanity, as some would say, was always meant to be left and nearly abandonned - at least compared to what nostalgia would demand. In the Planetshine universe, power gradually shifted away from Helios Cassiopeiae... and into Bhaskar Cygni.

It's Planets are:

Nearly reduced to a pure shell these days, all that has been salvagable out of the star's hottest planet has been salvaged. The crust itself is uninteresting for terraforming sources, but particularly the iron core has proven valuable. Lately the trajectory of Mercury is, having lost much of its mass, veering outward and away from the sun, with likely destination being Jupiter's gravity well, if nothing is done to utilise the planet's remaining mass entirely.
Uninteresting except for retrieval of rare gases, Venus only attracts minor attention from scientists. It's too hot even for effective industrial mining.
Earth. Inhabited. Not much else to say about it - the continents are still much the same way you might remember them being, with only a few cosmetic improvements here and there... terraforming never picked up because all of the planet was inhabited before terraforming techniques on grand scales were even devised, and people are naturally resistant to change. Three major governments rule Terra (Isrigning), though the Terran council marks a single, unified front toward the universe.
No longer a red planet, Mars is lushly green these days. As the first planet to fall prey to human expansion, it is fractured into many small tribes with many differing worldviews, much more so than Earth itself is. Mars is, thusly, deemed uninteresting even for tourism, since it is in a constant social flux.
A gas giant. Jupiter has lost some of its moons to the hungry machines of terraforming companies, but it's still the largest planet. The people of Planetshine still don't understand the great red spot, either.
Much like Jupiter, Saturn has lost some of its moons to the voracious hunger of industrial salvaging. Its rings, though less proud than Alodian's, have been left in tact as a symbol of beauty.
With an axial tilt of 98°, Neptune 'rolls' along its orbital plane. Together with Neptune, there is no purpose to this planet for either industry, science, terraforming nor tourism - but its blue colour, even if not as brilliant as Neptune's, has been called beautiful, and the inhabitants of the system are fond of their two blue ice giants.
See Uranus. Beyond that, it is notable that Neptune, though much of a twin of Uranus, has far more weather than the other ice giant - and plenty of geothermal energies at its core, radiating out more energy than it received from the sun.

Tuyet Sagittarii

Tuyet Sagittarii.gif
The Tuyet Sagittarii orbits (Earth and Mars orbits relative to Sol for comparison).
  • Old designation: OGLE-2005-BLG-390L
  • Type: Single star system:
    • OGLE-2005-BLG-390L A:
      • Name: Uri
      • Type: red dwarf

Tuyet Sagittarii is a star system home to two planets: Ichabod and Miltiades.

Tuyet Sagittarii (Ichabod).jpg
View from Ichabod's orbit.

Ichabod used to be the only planet in the star system. It's at 2.3 AU distance from the red dwarf and accordingly cold - not only is the star weaker than Sol in Helios Cassipeiae, but the planet is at more than double the distance Earth has to Sol, making the star's warmth twice weakened before reaching the surface.

Miltiades was tailored manually by the reassembly of asteroids in the system after terraforming on Ichabod failed. Ichabod's atmosphere was transferred to Miltiades, where it was further transformed to a breathable one. Miltiades is about the size of Mars.

The name 'Miltiades' was initially intended for Ichabod, but the name Ichabod ("without glory") was later adopted, in favour of keeping 'Miltiades' for the inhabited planet.

Tuyet Sagittarii took nearly fifty years to allow for habitable settlements via the terraforming means described - five of those were wasted on Ichabod, and the last ten years were needed for the transfer of atmosphere and it's cultivation. To understand why this effort was done in the first place, it should be noted that Tuyet Sagittarii was the most thoroughly explored system at the time and a certain amount of desperation had set in to find new planets to inhabit: Miltiades was the first human-inhabited planet aside from Terra.

Ichabod, despite its name, is still a well-frequented planet, though only by those with industrial interests - it's made Miltiades one of the most comfortable planets to live on, as new resources can be acquired without leaving the system. For similar reasons, Tuyet Sagittarii is of high military interest, as its isolation from the jumpnodes would be only a minor throw-back for the inhabited world.

The inhabitants of Miltiades foster their isolation actively by sporting only the most necessary commerce connections with other systems - however, they're not known to be xenophobic, and are very open towards the tourism Miltiades gets, though equally happy that it had never picked up to the point that parts of Miltiades would become fully financially dependant on said tourism.

Ursae Majoris

Note: The following planet names are transliterated from the main Vorrah language. The names in brackets is what they are called in English - very much not what they're actually pronounced as. Vorrah and English are not very compatible as languages. Hell, human biology isn't very compatible intoning Vorrah - or even hearing it properly.

  • Skn (Askan)
  • Ynv (Invu)
  • Gærd (Gerden, sometimes 'Garden')
As the alternate English name implies, Gærd is the main inhabited planet of Ursae Majoris.

Terraforming Systems

Adino Vulpecula

  • Type: Single star system:
    • HD 188015 A:
      • Name: Erdenech
      • Type: subgiant star (stellar class: G5IV)

Planets:

  • Kraal
Planet being terraformed. Kraal's inhabitants are largely from Tuyet Sagitarii, who were the ones trying to expand their territory into Adino Vulpecula. The outpost has since had a notable falling out with the governments of Tuyet and the systems are at something of a tense peace with each other. There was never a war, nor are there hostilities at the moment, but some Kraal inhabitants or helpers of the terraforming effort are paranoid about Tuyet Sagitarii trying to reclaim the system.

Coma Berenices

Flux Piscii

Mu Arae

Rin Reticulii

  • Old designation: HD 23127 [still checking]

Resource Systems

Gamma Cephei

Iota Horologii

Keanu Aquarii

Khalil Scorpii

Khalil Scorpii (Methuselah).jpg
View from Methuselah's orbit
  • Old designation: PSR B1620-26
  • Type: Double star system:
    • PSR B1620-26 A:
    • PSR B1620-26 B:

Khalil Scorpii is a star system home to one planet, designated Methuselah.

Methuselah has 2.5 Jovian masses. As its mass suggests, it's a gaseous planet, with no firm surface to stand on, which makes it uninteresting both as a habitat and a resource planet. However, Methuselah has three moons: Sela, Sakhr and Cephas. With the planet being at distance of 23 AU from the twin star system, the moons are far too cold to be habitable even with terraforming measures, but Cephas is a massive copper ore that's caused the Khalil Scorpii system to be extensively mined.

Cephas itself is only slightly smaller than earth. The pulsar's radiation effects are considerably weakened by Methuselah's strong magnetic field - but mining is still almost completely mechanical, as it is cheaper to replace the straining equipment than to constantly heat the icy world for human miners.

Meir Cygni

Upsilon Andromedae

Research systems

Argider Virgo

  • Old designation: None. Jazzed up. Before I lost my notes, was probably meant to be PSR B1257+12

Epsilon Eridani

Gita Cygni

Iota Draconis

Technology

Starship classes so far mentioned:

  • BCAC Carnelian: A space battle cruiser. The Aspen Wisp is one of these.
  • BCAS Zirkon: Small, spherical scouting vessel.
  • BCAM Jacinth: A multi-purpose craft meant for scouting in enemy territory where inception is likely - has a few gun turrets, a few bomb slots, a decent scanner range and variety, and isn't the slowest.
  • BCAF Larimar: A small, agile fighter class focussing on speed and manoeuvrability.
  • BCAF Jasper: An interceptor related to the Larimar.

Plot

See also: newsletter // #171 to #193 // (23 JAN to 21 FEB)

A tragedy obliterating all communication out of the system befell the Argider Virgo system on 2054-01-27, knowledge of which reached the Aspen Wisp early 2054-01-30, prompting them to send a scouting mission into the system that same day. Data recovered included (roughly chronological in order of discovery):

  • continuing subtle spectral fluctuations suggesting a stellar pulse of some sort
  • microfractures in the hulls of orbiting ships
  • no sign of life on any ship or the research station
  • a severe tectonic fault line shift on the planet's surface, but minimal surface change accompanied with it (comparatively little seismic activity)
  • no change in atmospheric composition (= no atmosphere) | determined by Lynn's questioning
  • no (notable?) fresh crater impacts | determined by Lynn's analysis

When the same tragedy struck Argider Virgo, it became obvious that one crucial scan had been missed: A subspace scan. Prompted by his faith in Sirena's judgement, Lieutenant Cheshire begged for an armed scouting mission. The mission resulted in one crew death from carelessly close approach to dangerous material, specifically, what Kasabian is now calling "Cosmic Rain" - a plasmatic substance that can shift between real space and subspace and does so frequently and seems to travel along subspace grooves left by transiting ships (hence the Rain's attraction to inhabited planets and its passing through jump nodes).

Cosmic Rain has been made visible with EMPs, but is otherwise typically invisible. The individual 'drops' are about the size of a basketball, though do vary. Contact with them seems to be deadly.

How Cosmic Rain plays into the tectonic shift and the stellar pulses has yet to be determined.

Additionally, Kasabian currently theorises that since Mandalore survived Adino Vulpecula as essentially the only surprise survival (from what is suspected to be somewhere very near the main torrent of the Rain), the clones (= Citizens) as a whole may perhaps be immune to its effects.

Thus using Sirena as a backup pilot in case something happened to Haugen, Kasabian sent out another mission to explode a subspace drive in the path of the Cosmic Rain in Khalil Scorpii. The mission was a complete success (Haugen even survived) and bought them some time by attracting the Cosmic Rain and effectively slowing it down.

The mission inspired work on a project codenamed 'Escher' for a bomb that might twist itself into subspace in a way that would make an entry point but provide no exit, even back out the way that it had been entered. The idea was for the Escher Bomb to trap the Rain before it reached either Avani Eridani or Helios Cassiopeiae.

A first prototype was delivered by a small wing headed by Sven Haugen, but malfunctioned, instead causing a real space 'ripple' that tore Haugen's craft apart - killing the Captain - and damaged the one manned by Mandalore and Sirena.

The desperate struggle to save Atarah has resulted in subspace detonations in the Avani Eridani system near the incoming Khalil Scorpii node, slowing the Rain that had passed through (18th February), but the chinks of the Escher Bomb construct have yet to be ironed out, and time is not on their side. Now that the Rain has breached Helios Cassiopeiae (20th February) there is serious discussion about collapsing the jumpnodes out of the systems, or at least preparing such a collapse, but there are massive political wrenches in that plan.

The Puppets have also estimated a time schedule for themselves as to when a system can no longer be saved, based on extrapolation from past data and subspace jump distances.

One the 26th, after Avani and Helios were not able to be saved, the decision was felled to cut the systems off from the rest of the subspace map with the technology acquired via the Escher project - except rather than create a jumpnode, it was used to collapse them. That resulted in the completion of the sim.

NPCs

Yasmin Kasabian

See also: Yasmin Kasabian's session history

Commander of the Aspen Wisp, Kasabian is a generously minded person for one reason and one reason alone: She believes in getting back threefold what you give others. This is most apparent in her support of the Citizens to the point of vouching for them given their lack of identification - and she certainly believes it's paid off. For one, the small jobs on her ship are getting done. For two, since Mandalore came aboard, she believes she has a good shot at solving the problem.

Taneli Ulfsson

See also: Taneli Ulfsson's session history

Ulfsson is effectively second in command on the Aspen Wisp, holding the title of Colonel. He's a little less open to the Citizens than Kasabian, but has learnt to tolerate them by necessity. Kasabian wants them? She gets them. Simple enough.

Karan Cheshire

See also: Karan Cheshire's session history

Karan Cheshire is a Lieutenant on the Aspen Wisp, chiefly assigned to scouting parties, deemed an excellent observer and with a great instinct backing him up and getting him out of situations in which a safe return is more important than pressing on. Unfortunately, that very trait has tipped him into a somewhat existential crisis, since his early bail out of Argider Virgo caused the deaths of several hundred people in Adino Vulpecula since no one warned them of their impending doom, since there was simply not enough data to know how impending said doom was.

Karan killed himself after Avani and Helios Pulsed and he deemed himself of no more use (the decision to collapse the outbound jumpnodes out was irreversibly made and the technology was available).

Sven Vieno Haugen

See also: Sven Vieno Haugen

Captain on the Aspen Wisp, Sven is a fighter pilot, frequently deemed the best of the lot - which is also chiefly what earned him his rank over time. Despite his age well in his late forties, his reflexes haven't and aren't beginning to suffer, and he can put all the younger pilots to shame, or at the very least match them.

Died in line of duty (delivering the Escher Bomb prototype).

Gordon Sewick

See also: Gordon Sewick's session history

Gordon is notable as the Puppet who both captured Mandalore (with Jane Connolly, see below) on the Adwaita and then later set him free with initial intent to abuse him as a meat shield but forgetting their animosities in a hurry given the sheer amount of death around them. Unfortunately, the same ultimately afflicted him, meaning his time as a Puppet in action was short-lived.

Misc

Personnel on The Aspen Wisp:

Unnamed Avani Eridani space station (visited by Corinthian):

  • Sandra, a trucker's daughter, who values her cigarettes over abiding the law to certain degrees; actually from Nereus, Bhaskar Cygni.

Met in Rin Reticulii:

  • Kojo Arena
  • Arianna Drummond, inhabitant of Rin Reticulii, partner to Samantha.
  • Samantha Drummond, inhabitant of Rin Reticulii, partner to Arianna.
    The Drummonds were initial hosts to Amithia while she was trying to figure out how to get out of the network.

Bramblegust staff (who approached the Citizens about their identification):

The Vigilant Swan (stationed in Epsilon Eridani at the time Corinthian unfortunately manifested on it):

Adwaita (the craft Mandalore linked in on):

People

People who entered the network in Planetshine are:

  • Reggie Folsham a/k/a Mandalore, linked in on 2054-02-02, manifesting on the Adwaita, a trade ship who's crew was firmly on the side of the Adino Vulpecula 'resistence' prior to the system's collapse.
  • Christopher Leordric a/k/a Corinthian, linked in on 2054-01-16, to his dismay ending up in The Vigilant Swan, a mercenary vessel stationed in Epsilon Eridani that did not exactly welcome him warmly.
  • Heather Bonette a/k/a Amithia, linked in on 2054-01-16, completely disoriented in one of the outer most inhabited sections of Rin Reticulii's currently terraforming planet.

Name knowledge

While there was a titledrop from Lynn Laninga in Log #176, nothing has outright connected 'planetshine' with the sim name, so it is currently unknown as such.

Node

Planetshine is the destination for Citizens who've completed Thread. Completing the simulation led people into Rapture.

Activity

Newsletters and recaps

Sessions

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