TECHNICAL SHEETS | STAR SYSTEMS | VOLILOSHOKU

KOTALI'ZAPA (Great Wall Star)

In hoku astronomy, Kotali'zapa is the brightest system in the Great Wall constellation, during the autumn in the northern hemisphere this constelation stands above the horizon in a line with five other distant bright stars, Kotali'zapa being the brightest and closest of them. In Sidessian, the common spoken language of the system, the star has the name of Volkali, which means Belt Buckle in sidessian, as the peoples of the region saw the line of stars as belt constellation.

Kotali'zapa is a young triple-star system, and with its brightest component receiving the same name. The other two companions are a orange and red dwarfs in a binary configuration. This system configuration isn't particularly uncommon, though, the friendliest of worlds here is considered quite a spectacle to behold.

STARS

spectral type ID'd through temperature, luminosity might differ from real world stars with same type

KOTALI'ZAPA / VOLKALI, Alpha of the Great Wall / The Buckle

F5V yellow-white star
Temperature 6540 K
        (in solar units)
Mass 1.27
Luminosity 2.40
Radius 1.21
Metallicity Z* ~0.789 [Fe/H]
Abs. Magnitude +3.87
Rotational period 13 days

KOTALIMOKU, the Wall's Capitain

K8V orange dwarf star
Temperature 4010 K
        (in solar units)
Mass 0.39
Luminosity 0.052 ± 0.004 (x-ray variable) (64% visual luminosity of the Sun)
Radius 0.47
Metallicity Z* ~ 0.662 [Fe/H]
Abs. Magnitude +8.05.
Flaring BY Draconis variable star, emitting x-rays bursts every 36 hours.
Orbital separation from parent star 2.5 AU or 375 million km on average.
Orbital eccentricity 0.125
Orbital period ~ 3.0 Earth-years

NIGUTAL'ZA, the Wall's Spotter

M1V red dwarf star
Temperature 3655 K
        (in solar units)
Mass 0.29
Luminosity 0.0025 ± 0.01 (x-ray variable)
Radius 0.35
Metallicity Z* ~1.35 [Fe/H]
Abs. Magnitude +9.07
Flaring BY Draconis variable star,  emitting x-rays bursts every 40 hours.
Orbital separation 0.32 AU or 48 million km on average.
Orbital eccentricity 0.112
Orbital period ~ 80 Earth-days

PLANETARY SYSTEM

Kotali'zapa systems posess five planets, four of which are located around the binary dwarfs.

b) KOGEZA, the Giant

A pale blue hot-jupiter around of Kotali'zapa at 0.67 AU, 1.74 Jupiter-masses and 11.8 Earth-radii, its upper atmosphere is full of sulfides and chlorides at 140°C.

c) VOLILOSHOKU, the Fixed-Shadows World

A superterran with a shallow global ocean, in which native harmless microbes thrive, the world was once home to chelok and hoku settlers long before the Fall of Hokushoku. For being locked in the L4 lagrange point of the star Nigutal'za, the two dwarfs are set fixed in the sky from the planet's perspective, hence, it was aptly named Locked- (vo) -sunbean- (lilo) -world (shoku). Though, this planet along with its star take about 80 days to orbit their parent star Kotalimoku, so the whole system slowly turns along its orbit, pointing the planet towards and then away from the brighter star at the center of the system, giving it seasons in cycles of 80 days.

It gets 0.75x solar constants (and 0.5x luminosities) from its two parent dwarfs, plus 0.38x solar constants (and 0.4x luminosities) from the brighter star, on average. This makes the planet's temperature stay around 4°C, but over the course of those 80 days the temperature fluctuates 26 K above and below that average, and over the course of 3 years it ocillates more 22 K above and below whatever the current average is because of its eccentricity around the brighter star. For an observer in the tropics, the water would at times simmer at 60°C during the hottest summer, or freeze at -34°C in the coldest winter, getting even colder towards the poles of the planet, and at night, where it has reached historical lows of -150°C.

Those extreme and fast temperature variations create all sorts of climate intempers, rainstorms, hailstorms, and hurricanes are the default weather here, while seeing a beam of sunlight through the clouds in a day without wind is considered a gift from the gods.

However, despite the attractiveness of setting up a settlement in the equator, the x-ray bursts of the two parent stars would make maintaning a health standard, as well as exploring the surface, quite problematic - so both ancient chelok, and hoku settlers arrived to the conclusion that one has to inhabit the chilling poles of the planet to live on the surface, or build underground facilities in the twilight zone. The largest hoku settlement was the capital Kipishahit (Turning-Table, I suppose this has something to do with the clay-rich soils), though various smaller settlements existed throughout the planet, and the only reliable mode of transport over long distances is to fly, or wait until nightfall to run trucks over the ices.

d) NIGUTALINE

A rocky terran around Nigutal'za, its temperature varies between 140°C day side to -140°C on the nightside. Its barren surface is peppered by craters, while sporting solified lava flows, the geologic record tells that this was once a wet venusian kind of world, having its atmosphere blown away to a thin ghostly veil, its polar ices form gigantic pillars and glaciers. The ices were once mined here and taken to space habitats around the binary.

e and f) Unnamed Waterworlds

Planet e and planet f are two massive seasonal waterworlds, they get little light from their parent dwarf stars, instead, their main light source being the bright star. The thick atmospheres are able to hold onto decent heat and water in the surface, which freeze at -60°C during winter, and melt at 20°C during summer over the course of 3 and a half years. The atmospheres of these worlds however are made predominantly of nitrogen, oxygen, and ammonia, in proportions not suitable for life, the ammonia clouds and vapors are not enough to deter the harmful sun's rays, so they were not chosen by the colonists upon arrival back in 1150 SE.

TRIVIA & LOCATIONS

The extreme X and UV rays Voliloshoku gets every few days are the primary source of oxygen in the atmosphere, at it breaks down water and carbon dioxide into oxygen, sooth, and organics in the upper atmosphere, which rains down to the surface. The bacteria in liquid water metabolizes whatever it can while it is warm, leading to huge blooms which last a few weeks, producing a foam and a thick sirupy substrate or slime made of sugars, mucins, proteins and vitamins which they do not need during the day, starting to feed upon it as the temperatures drop and night comes. The substrate forms a hard leathery cover when exposed to the cold which insulates ponds from x-rays and the freezing temperatures outside, with some strains of bacteria here being commonly farmed for food by colonists.

A historical population of 1.2 billion colonists once inhabited the planet, making up for 4% of the Expanse's native population, being the 4th most populated outworld.

Theories suggest that Voliloshoku had a much thinner atmosphere in the past, but due to volcanism and intense photolysis of its water, it has been thickenning by a measurable amount every millenia. This would explain why, despite the current inhospitable conditions, this planet has this kind of primitive life, however doomed to extinction in a future Wet Venusian.

MORE COMING SOMEDAY!

- M. O. Valent, 08/02/2023

- M. O. Valent, last updated 15/02/2023

x

OTHER | SEEKING CREMATORIA-LIKE WORLDS | PART 1

CAN THE SUN BE A DEADLY LAZER?

Alright, let's establish some objectives with the rush of ideas, we want a planet that:

Is somewhat habitable, but only if lighting conditions are just right, that is - it has an overilluminated side and a dark side. In which case, life would need to move or cover itself when the surface passes through the overilluminated side, and do its thing when it is dark until day comes again. Like Crematoria from Chronicles of Riddick.

We will explore different scenarios in which that world might exist, and rank the possibilities from Natural / Realistic down to Designed.

One first idea that came to mind was to add more stars to the system, and organize them in such a way as to cause the desired effect... Can it be done?

RECAP ON DOUBLE STAR SYSTEMS

The illustration above sums up a simple case and a generalization of the conditions in which protoplanetary disks form in binary systems. Here we see that circumbinary disks occur only when the orbital separation is around 3-ish AU or less, and we don't see any disks around either star up to at least 50 AU separation between them - this occurs because given eccentricity of the system, no sufficient mass might be able to clump into a protoplanetary disk either because the stars scattered it all around a circunstellar cloud / off-system, or because all of the mass was consumed by the developing binary. Once distances are sufficiently large is that we start to see disks around either or both stars.

Such observations of primitive star systems tell us for example, that we shouldn't expect any planets around Alpha Centauri A or B stars, but on Proxima Centauri - which checks out so far as our telescopes are able to detect.

The dimensions of the protoplanetary or circumbinary disk in our binary system is quite important so we know what constraints the natural formation of planets and asteroid belts in our system.

As a general rule, the inner radius of the circumbinary disk is roughly 2 ~ 3 times that of the orbital seperation between the stars, and depending on the actual mass ration between the stars, a debris belt might be present in the inner system from material that was unnable to accrete into planets. BUT WATCH FOR THE MASS AND SEPARATION.

The example above highlights the need to give attention to either orbital separation or mass of the binaries in question. The case presented ends up being a sterile gas giant system because the star configuration pushes the stability zone way past the snow line of the binary (~1.2 AU).

This system can be made much more friendly to Earth-like planets or moons if the stars have greater mass, and thus more luminous output towards planets so far away. Or conserving the stars but increasing their orbital separation until we get a system around either or both stars, in which case it would be over 100~1000 AU wide.

It is possible to have both P-type and S-type planets in those intermediate distances, as long as the systems are relatively packed.

For an eccentricity of 0.2, the following is a good approximation for the outer limit of the star's planetary system:

Which results in larger limits the smaller the companion is, since its gravitational effect diminishes with mass, and the larger is the mass difference between stars, the more circular are the planets orbits around them. The planet's orbital eccentricity gets higher the more eccentric and similar are the parent stars, tending towards 1/3rd the eccentricity value of the parents as it approaches 0.5. So we would expect that the planets around our previous example to have a eccentricities of less than 0.06, which is actually more circular than the Moon's orbit around the Earth.

Given the luminosity of the stars in the example is 0.37 solar luminosities, if we want a planet on the circunstellar habitable zone at 0.6 AU with 2 AU to spare, then we have to space the stars such as that the Dsk_outer/separation value is equal to some 3 AU in this case, which ends up being 8% of the total separation by proportion, since both stars have the same mass. This gives us a minimum separation of 37 AU! If we get more conservative with the room to spare part, we easily arrive at separations far above 50 AU, which is confirmed while looking at binaries in space.

As for how far can circumbinary (P-type) planets orbit the binary, we can only estimate based on some real-life examples. COCONUTS-2b orbits its parent at distance of 6,000-7,000 AU, but remember that its system lies in deep interstellar space and might be easily disrupted by future star flybys. Given the mass of 6.3 Jupiters for the planet, and 0.37 solar masses (typical of cited M3 stars), the gravitational pull is close to 540,000 teranewtons, using F = GMm/R².

Referring to that value of 540,000 teranewtons as close to an upper limit, then the maximum distance we can put a similar planet around our binary pair is around to 14,100 AU. While the minimum distance would be above 3x the orbital separation, or greater than 110 AU, sadly too far into the depths of space for any life, but a P-type planet nonetheless. The vast distances involved for allowing P-type planets are also why they are such a rare find in nature.

Now that we've recollected everything essential into configurating such systems, let's talk about...

LAGRANGE POINTS

They are equipotential regions of space, where both the parent and satellite mass exert similar amounts of force over. 

These Lagrangian points exist between the two bodies at L1, opposite to the satellite at L2, opposite to the parent at L3, leading the orbit at L4 and trailing the orbit at L5.

In the solar system, the most notable lagrangian objects are the Trojan asteroids, which lie in the L4 and L5 points of the Sun-Jupiter system.

Now, because the "size" or "strength" of the Lagrange point is dependant on the system size and mass, the greater the mass we can shove into those points and get away with a stable system.

We have to note here that due the distances involved, the points L1, L2, and L3 are all too unstable for significant stay of any bodies, which is why we use them as gateways / low-effort insertion points for spacecraft, as you can quite easily travel through them. Points L4 and L5 are more forgiving for stability and degree of precision needed to hang around.

Going over planetary masses and doing a bit of equation balance, we find out that equation is only satisfied if the mass disparity for the primary body is gigantic, that is, if it holds 96% or more of the system's mass, which leaves us with 4% of the primary body mass to distribute amongst our satellite and Trojan-like body.

Back to the Sun-Jupiter system, the Sun being 1040x the mass of Jupiter - it easily comports at least another Jupiter-mass object at either lagrange points because of how extreme is the mass difference. Though such extreme cases are unlikely in nature, because of the way planets form and disturb nearby material during the formation process, hence why we have some asteroids with negligible mass as trojans, not whole planets.

T-TYPE  for 'TROJAN' PLANETS

For this to work out, we'd need a brown dwarf if our primary star is Sun-like, in which case, that brown-dwarf doesn't play a large role in illuminating the planet at all. If we want the secondary star be at least a red dwarf, then the primary star would need to be B7 blue giant star - that is also bad for us because blue stars are extremely short lived, just shy of 60-100 million years, enough to develop a primordial planet but no native life.

Say we want this system to live at least some 4.5 billion years, then our primary options are stars with up to 1.2 solar masses. That leaves us with up to 0.048 solar masses for a high-mass brown dwarf, low-key an actual flaring red dwarf (L0 or M9 type), with 1/1000th of the Sun's luminosity.

Located at either the L4 or L5 points of a double star system, such planets would have both suns fixed in the sky always at 60° apart, under the right conditions it is day in 2/3rds of the planet's surface at any point, and only truly night on the other 1/3rd.

But can we make it work? Uhhh... Kinda

My rendering of such hypothetical scenario, illumination is not realistic for viewing purposes

APPROACH 1: USE BROWN DWARFS

In this case, we give the planet a very slow rotational period, like +100 hours, this makes the planet have a very inefficient heat distribution, as when the night side turns back to the day side it had time to irradiate most of its energy. This is attainable in a three ways; the planet the is the tidally locked satellite of a gas giant, this way the orbital period of 4-ish days is the same as it's rotational period; or the planet has lots of moons, which slow the planet down over time; or the planet was struck in the deep past by another smaller planet, thus counter-acting its rotational momentum, or even, it has a slow retrograde rotation like Venus because of it.

We can also make this planet relatively small, so its volcanism and mass doens't make it retain a thick atmosphere, which would make this site unbearable due greenhouse effect.

And then we position such planet bit closer than what the habitable zone says it's safe, like 0.80 ~ 0.90x that distance.

The result is a world that gets near 1.5x as much sunlight as Earth (from the main star), but the thin atmosphere and amount of solar exposure would certainly be deadly to many known organisms. It might sound like a lot, given the Earth hasn't always had UV protection with ozone, but let's consider that the Earth's atmosphere has also been thicker in the deep past, but due atmospheric escape and gases becoming trapped in rocks, it has been getting thinner over time, which not only would have granted that Earth did not freeze in the Sun's early days as a main-sequence star, but also makes the planet habitable under the amount of sunlight we currently receive.

With a world getting that much sunlight from the start and having a thinner atmosphere with a slower or non-existent rock recycling process, we maximize the amount of radiation we can possibly get on the surface. The presence of liquid water on the surface also changes our outcome, since oceans are good heatsinks, the less water we get, the hotter it gets during the day, the colder are the nights. So we're looking for an alien world with a thin atmosphere and little to no water. This sounds pretty much in-line the large rocky moon of a gas giant in the habitable zone.

How large is this gas giant? Well, we cannot get away James Cameron style, with a small gas giant and it's unbelievably large moon. Gas planets are on average 10,000 to 40,000 times heavier than their moons, which means that a gas giant with an Earth-mass moon would need to be on the order of 4,000 to 40,000 Earth-masses, or at least 15 Jupiter masses. Even Saturn is 4,750x heavier than its largest moon, Titan - but for really large moons we have to get into the realm of Brown Dwarfs.

The brown dwarf aspect of the system also helps us to add more heat into the system, in which case, you wouldn't want to be under either the suns or the brown dwarf in the sky.

I suggest you too google the chosen names, cool trivia

Hekate, our moon of a trojan planet gets about 1.41x times our solar irradiation from its parent star - however, since it is only at 4 million km from its host brown dwarf, it finds itself tidally locked, receiving 1.41x times the energy we get from the sun, but most of it is in the form of infrared radiation instead of visible light and UV rays. So while the illumination of the planet is similar to that of Earth's, its infrared irradiation is nearly 4 times that received by the Earth.

The orbital period of Hekate is also about 11 days and 4 hours, which makes for 5 and half days in hot darkness, and 5 and half days in bright hotness.

The brown dwarf appears larger than the star in the sky, and would be its primary heat source.

The problems with this solution are:

1. Brown Dwarfs cool down over time. In this configuration, the system would only be overwhelmed with heat for the first few hundreds of million years after the system's formation, the brown dwarf would have cooled to a mostly inoffensive heat source at 500 K after 1 billion years, needless to say, the planet would be much more hospitable to life when older than that.
2. The planet rotation slows down over time. So we might get some "run away from the heat" action when the planet is primitive and young. But if the world is more mature, then the brown dwarf stays fixed in the sky as the planet tidally locks to it.
3. Extra heat is not the extra radition we're looking for. Of course, we want things to burn in the light of our evil star, but the extra heat is going to get distributed across the planet as the atmosphere spins, making such worlds a Venusian/Wet-Venusian by default.

How one experiences day and night cycles while tidally locked to a brown dwarf

Many bright stars hold companions which are much less luminous than themselves, it is harder to detect those around large bright stars than it is around dimmer less massive stars because of the greater effects of gravitational wobbling, hence the biases in data towards companions of large stars being generally heavy stellar remnants.

This type of system might actually exist in enough abundance as to cover several thousands of systems in the whole galaxy, for all single bright sun-like stars that's 110 candidates per 1000 stars. Even if the chances of this arrangement are 0.1% within this population, we're still looking at some 45 million systems across the Milky Way galaxy.

APPROACH 2: USE MORE STARS

We've previously calculated that even for a decently sized brown dwarf, our main star would have to be larger, and thus bluer, more luminous, and short-lived. So to circunvent this mass problem, we will not inflate a single star, but instead are more smaller stars as a center of mass.

My first example presented two 0.75 solar-mass stars, which amount to 1.5 solar masses, yet, the system is going to live for 25 billion years, and it is only 2/3rds as luminous as our Sun. Can we get away with that kind of arrangement? With that specific one, no, for already specified reasons that is rather very unlikely for planets to form that close to the binary pair as it is.

A modified version using near-solar mass twin stars for a total of 1.88 Msol would push the habitable zone outwards to a minimum distance where planets can form in stable orbits around binaries. Now, because of the distances involved, since the two main stars are so close together and far away from where we want our trojan planet, we will treat them as a single massive object with near double the mass of our Sun, pushing our 4% mass to work with up to 0.075 solar masses, which is inside the realm of red dwarfs even if we take a bit to feed a trojan brown dwarf. Interesting...

If we pack two sun-like stars 0.15 AU apart, then the next safest stable distance for another body would be around 2~3x that distance, at about 0.40 AU, where we could, put another star... or another pair of stars!

What I find interesting in this scenario is that we can get multiple eclipses in a row, or even, a multi-eclipse, because at certain astronomical alignments, more than 1 star can be eclipsed at once if the planet and star postions are just right.

Here is an attempt at showing how the eclipse shadows move as the stars move, notice that the planet zips by multiple shadows at once, the star's orbital plane is inclined 2.72 degrees from the brown dwarf's orbital plane.

You can make an animation like the previous one that by setting up a curve screen about the radius of your planet's/moon's orbit and let the sunlight projects shadows on it. In my case the whole thing spins because I've animated the whole orrery for accuracy.

I find the eclipse scenario quite enticing, as it poses a short window of safe surface activities before everyone needs to cover from intense sunlight. But here are some problems:

1. There isn't enough shadow time. The transit of a single eclipse under this configuration is ~13 hours, under the right conditons of inclination, the planet might experience a total of ~52 hours or ~2 days of eclipse per orbit, but typically over the year, the eclipses are far too spaced out, or if the shadows overlay we get darker but same-duration eclipses (assuming zero orbital inclination between planet and brown dwarf). Plus, the eclipses only happen across an arc that's 22.5° across the planet's orbit on the night-side of the brown dwarf, due the orbital separation of the stars and distance to this planet, that is only.
2. The lighting isn't radical enough. At a distance of 1.7 AU, the planet receives a collective 1.11x the solar constant from the parent stars, and an extra 0.92x all in infrared from the brown dwarf, to which it is likely tidally locked, the planet is also very likely to be a Venusian world.

The typical mass ratio in binary systems is 3:1, followed by 2:1 and 5:4, which sounds concerning at first. However, when in a multiple-star system, the tendency is for stars to settle with similar masses as opposed to unequal masses, followed then by a 3:2 ratio. So for this configuration, this system is not at all strange, however, our trojan scenario will be always a subset of those quadruple systems with equal mass, so we can confidently say that it is considerably less than 2 per 1000 stars, or about <<1 billion quadruple systems sporting sun-like components. We'd need to know how many of those systems have planets around them to narrow our subset, given we know at least 200 quadruple systems, from which we know only two that have planets (30 Ari, and Kepler-64 b), the chances drops down to about << 1% of those, that is a small subset of the less than 8 million quadruple systems with planets galaxy-wide. Pretty unlikely to occur in this exact configuration, though we get a lot of near-misses.

But not gonna lie, the dance of multiple stars is pretty hypnotizing to watch from a moving frame of reference...

IN THE NEXT POSTS WE EXPLORE OTHER WAYS TO MAKE CREMATORIA REAL

• S-type planets in close binaries
• Dying binaries
• Luminous black holes

- M. O. Valent, 05/02/2023

SCIENCE&ARTWORK | THE HOKU | STELLAR STAGE | PART 2

THE LOWER STELLAR ERA

The recorded history of the Hoku is complicated to track through certain periods of time, the pre-stellar wars and lower stellar era are two great examples of such periods.

That happens because our society's particular records only extend so far up to its annexation by the Dominion, from that point and beyond, a great deal of information became withheld and controlled by the Arrene. I believe that the Hoku born within the Dominion do know some of the stories as passed of oral tradition, but the specifics are only known or hypothesized by historians and archeologists. Such studies are currently frowned upon despite the historical importance, and I understand very well why, we spend so many resources and travel to distant places only to return with notes which must be worked on afterwards, which is why we often ferry in cargo ships venturing onto the outlands for scraps, a good portion of those scraps belong to hoku warships, starships, battlestations, transport and mining vessels scattered across what is now a wasteland space.

Apart from scrapping this secular equipment, a few communities still negotiate with the tribes of starpeople, or Chelok. The Chelok are very secretive about their ways and affairs for strangers, but my team and professors have managed to gather some interesting pieces of Chelok culture which I'm eager to share in future notes. Alright, back to the Chelok, it is well noted that they were neutral allies to the Hoku people, provinding technology and a few insights into fields they have long ago mastered, however, despite the admiration those old enough to remember feel for the very few notable Chelok warriors we once fought aside, understandably many Chelok and Hoku feel quite a resentment against each other - during the times of great need they haven't moved a single finger towards humanitary help, as well they have lost their only outworld to the Force during the Fall of Hokushoku. Despite the overall consensus that what happened is nor their fault or fight, some groups are still interested in the trades with the Dominion as we posess a few goods and spices which cannot be found anywhere else...

CIRCA 1997 PSE

It was the day of winter solstice, so of course the hoku people had parties as usual in the Muhori system, for the entertainment of the people, it also happens that Muhori traverse the orbits of several comets during the winter solstice, it was a great opportunity to take photos of the hundreds of comets and the meteor showers.

Ground telescopes looked for any new comets for that season, but amongst the bright comets they noticed outgassing and ices spraying and settling on the surface of a very dark object past the asteroid belt, later observation lead to finding the object in a very inclined and hypervelocity orbit, which meant the object did not originate from within the systems sparse comet cloud, instead, it pointed the heart of the Dominion... Authorities kept the existence of the object a top secret and limited the use of large telescopes to avoid employees and students from leaking the news, they only had a six-year window to study the object before it were catapulted out the system. It took a few weeks for the rendezvouz with the object, within a month of mission Kooratalil (in hoku mythology, the serpent that guards the gates of the Underworld) decent visual contact with the object could be made, about 752 meters long, a constellation of debris surrounded the bulky halved starship, the dark metal coating the lizard-like armor plates were flaking away due at least four millenia of micrometeorite impacts.

Exploring the ship revealed that this half seemed to be the lower deck and engine module of a sort of warship, given the amount of warheads and ammunition for energy weapons onboard, no crew in sight, but enough biological samples were collected for several species to be cloned in-vitro back on Muhori by our xenobiologists.

The warship couldn't be slowed down without risking being too public about it, and so the government scanned and collected everything they could about it and allowed it to drift away into space. The problem with the whole secrecy of the operation is that you can't tell people not not go there because you don't want them to know something is actually there. Less than 3 years later, the crew of a comet-mining ship stumbled upon the dark vessel, taking time to document, explore and stream it for the whole world to see, while they attempted to jump-start it for several days, too far to be jumped upon by the authorities, they finally managed to turn the warship on, which immediately cried for help before being shut off. The crew of the Pearly Tear IV was trialed and executed for high treason in-situ upon arrival of the navy.

"THE PING"

... As the event would come to later be called by the public was a day of panic worldwide, for centuries the consensus was that the we were safe for as long as they kept moving away from the Dominion, and now that the Ping was sent, it was only a matter of a century or two before They showed up inside the Hoku Expanse. Although the panic was quickly settled out by the authorities, various commands and investments were issued in further developing weapons and combat ships for a possible disastrous first contact with the races of the Dominion, this Lower Stellar Era had its development focusing on faster and smaller maneuverable starships, energy-based and relativistic weapons.

The intent of miniaturizing combat-able ships and starships was to ease in the manufacturing effort and the formation of potential resistance militias across Hoku space. This wasn't much of a problem due the common traditions of the spacefaring peoples, there was no shortage of work and technological niche opportunities in the industry, and the time for the outsider's arrival had been set into the foreseeable future, thus infighting almost completely ceased.

Soon enough, many of the hoku born into the LSE were enrolled into local militias, interstellar patrol groups and radar stations across known space, waiting for the Dominion to respond to the ping.

The Chelok at their nearby homeworld of Dhéģhōm were the first to detect the ping some 50 years later, and immediately frowned upon the trading with us, because they were bringing the Dominion closer to them and such an encounter could have unpleasant consequences.

At the time being, the south polar star of Auot'zae, Kuoosate'zapa (or Forzai, by its arrene name) was the nearest Dominion system and the first to respond the Ping. The message took 106 years to arrive at Forzai, and they promptly recognized the ancient ping from 5000-year old warship, upon a decade of discussion they've decided to respond with an escorted diplomatic fleet totalizing ten vessels. Being as advanced as they were at the time, the fleet penetrated far into Hoku space unnoticed, being finally detected a few weeks before decelerating near the Muhori system within 120 years of receiving the message.

CIRCA 2239 PSE

Upon arriving at the Muhori system, the Arrene fleet blasted known radio channels with a minute of noise which contained a coding key that should be used to read the data they would be sending, later broadcasting simple mathematical equations and quantum chemistry notes, some of which were commonly known by the us and some of which completely new to science. Upon being asked to point which stars belong to the Dominion, the ships simply responded with the same list of known nearby stars, claiming ownership over half of the sky. The arrene revealed that four races lived in the Dominion, themselves, the Ygiv, the Qire, and the Chelok - they were not very surprised upon finding that Chelok also lived among us, they were however, surprised by learning such a dense population center of them existed this close to the Dominion.

Rira, flagship of the Qiro-Arrene diplomatic fleet in orbit around Kip'haulte, an outgassing hot-jupiter in the Muhori system. Qire ships are coated in a dark bronze-looking titanium alloy, which makes their ships actually white in infrared, grandiose and impecable to alien eyes

Being inquired about the nature of the Dark Vessel found over 200 years prior, the arrene told with shame the story of the Qiro-Arrene wars, though enforcing they do not engage in such large scale conflicts anymore. When asked about the Hoku Expanse, the Arrene had initially no interest in the Expanse - being so far away and with plenty of space within nearby systems, it seemed irrational to engage in any further interaction with the Hoku, although praising us for their inferior but notable technological prowess. The Dominion has plenty of space and resources for both civilizations thousands of times over, there was nothing the we personally had that was of interest to them, except our known biospheres, which as arguably non-negotiable given the scale of the Arrene force. Private groups however had great interest in trading and learning the ways of the hoku to sell their culture and artifacts as novelties back in the Dominion's capital worlds.

Many Hoku, mainly as researchers, opted for returning with the diplomatic fleet to the heart of the Dominion to learn more and establish a viable pacific presence within, in such a way as to have a representative seat within the community. This was quite a historic moment for both parties, for the arrene, it would be a chance to start pacific relations from the start with a new race. Given the first encounters with the Chelok and Qire were pretty disastrous, not to speak from the outright oppressive way they colonized the Yigiv people before they became a spacefaring civilization as preemptive action. The Hoku were more like an alternate arm of the Dominion, a distant neighbor state rather than part of it, nonetheless given the power and technological disparity, many saw the relationship as a creeping assimilation. It was not without reason, the hoku had clear motives to be lightly concerned being under a duke's command at times.

DOMINION ERA

With a total population of 200 billion, the Hoku Expanse had no shortage of work to be done, though many repetitive tasks were acomplished by machinery, we were reaching a near post-scarcity societal stage, with very few places struggling with obtaining sustenance or resources and only for a lack of heavy equipment, since the off-world colonies needed vast amounts of supplies and tech coming from the core worlds in order the keep productivity and growth rate. The terrible weather and acessibility meant many of those colonies would make it cheaper to manufacture machinery in nearby asteroids, moons, or simply import it from the Dominion's merchant flocks and scout ships. So while the core worlds and capital colonies across the Expanse concentrated the Hoku tech and prowess, the Dominion basically taught colonists how to survive in those extreme environments in which the we were just barely able to settle, given the greater reliability in delivery times by the faster Arrene and Qire ships.

The flag of the Hoku Expanse, a lotus-like aquatic flower has a similar meaning in both hoku and chelok culture: strength, renovation, and rebirth

Because of the political reasons behind the expanse, colonies never had any necessity of rebel against the Hoku domain because they weren't really being pressured to produce any goods, their only goal was to be there as a backup in case of catastrophic fail of mainland society, of course, from time to time, companies, private groups, and the navy would bring new technology, goals, and gratifications to the most succesful settlements. Over time, several moon, belter, and farmer colonies were simply abandoned by succeeding generations, because of lack of greater opportunity and goals, with populations migrating towards the core worlds and even venturing into the dominion.

Though the Expanse did not posess any goods that peaked further interest within the Dominion, apart from the occasional novelties, the paved starlanes were still of importance for Dominion scouts and researchers because it signified safe paths to reaching further regions of space of particular interest like nebulae and potentially habitable star systems, without risking slow and dangerous trips across the frontier. Allowing them to remain close to civilization in case of emergencies while they venture into uncharted space.

This state of peace lasted 1000 Chelok-years, and were recorded as one of the most prosperous periods in Hoku history. A period before the 'Unrelenting Force' came upon us...

- M.O. Valent, 28/01/2023

SCIENCE&ARTWORK | THE HOKU | STELLAR STAGE | PART 1

THE CENTURY PRIOR

The great wars of the 200-100 years PSE saw the deployment of many new technologies such as machine guns, magnetic mines, rockets, chemical weapons, tanks, and TNT. Many of those technologies helped the avipodans to boost the agricultural and industrial prowess, greatly increasing not only their population, but also their economies and of course, the business and field rivalry. By the turn of the century, the eventual development of nuclear power and subsequently the theoretical use of nuclear weapons, lead to an eventual instability between the major powers at Auot'zae, as now they had another major concern to the pile. When the fourth world war circa 105 PSE erupted throughout the globe, the six great nations saw themselves not only against each other, but also against each other's allies and other previously neutral territories, fighting like dogs for the sparse deposits of oil, gas, and iron - trying to scrap each other's countries apart for resources needed for the ever growing industry, things seemed as usual for the first few years of conflict, with many generations born and growing with the war culture already, but this time the war escalated far too much over what the superpowers thought acceptable - at this point, fortifying their major cities against at least 3 foreign nations at once...

The records of the second half of the decade are blurry, destroyed and forgotten, but rumors and stories of the time said the generals accorded that it would be better to get a pruning of the avipodan society before it would destroy itself for good, erasing the worlds borders with a strong flash, to start again in a world in which hardship would inspire cooperation and innovation instead of conflict.

The bombs crossed the sky by the hundreds from east to west and west to east, and in just a few hours, the whole globe got a light barely noticeable shake, followed by the city-leveling blast, and a few hours later, the radioactive fallout covered the last day of summer in 92 PSE with a cloud of sooth from which fell the black burning rain... Over 600 million gone instantly the day the bombs fell, and 6 billion left to die out, either from contamination, starvation, or freeze with the forced winter...

🎶We'll meet again🎶

THE POST-NUCLEAR WORLD

The southern regions of the world were largerly unaffected by the immediate nuclear holocaust in long-term survival, even though every capital across northern Sidessia was leveled by 100-kiloton warheads, remaining somewhat functional with less than 20% of its population affected by the winter and fallout. The first few years were the harderst to deal with, but after the southern sooth settled out, the survivors and what was left of any organized states later coalesced into the Commonwealth of Sidessia.

Without communication with other survivor communities in the north, south sidessian engineers and scientists pieced together the best technology left in the remains of the former republic to rebuild the world as well as its former capital. The rebuilding efforts invested heavily onto genetic research, to mitigate the effects of radiation in their barely growing population and food supply such as plants and cattle. After several decades, they rebuilt a reliable society based on genetically engineered individuals and new technological advances in agriculture, factory production, and transport.

Although common folks were often the product of gene editing, or later acquired apprimorations for performance in work, research, or combat - one group invested into taking gene editing to a new level, complete design.

This went against all early regulations, but the shaky economy as well as the constant need for more work to be done rebuilding infraestructure and venturing into the wastelands for resources, meant that mass-producing that work-force needed to become a reality - if they wanted to return to their former glory and some more. The new individuals were usually imbued of all the previous enhancements granted by society and some more, like extra radiation tolerance, greater strength, or a faster efficient intellect, kept in check by constant work and vigilance. For decades, this type of individuals existed as elite slaves, as the government limited its small numbers as a policy of minimizing the possibility of accidental contacts and abuse from either side.

Eventually, as their population grew, they reached a state where for the most part, they were just working for a parcel of the population which was inferior to them in every aspect and field, since any major progress was not only thought out, but also carried by them. Soon enough, satellite and splitter communities of both enhanced and designed avipodans started forming far into the countryside.

With a far better economy and sense of community direction, though in small numbers, many of those of first generation Kahikōpafi (better translated as "Angel" or "Divine Servant") eventually came to form a schism of whether the "original" avipodans should still be fabricating more Servants by the hour like they were coke cans. And far worse, making corrections regarding the "defects" of previous generations, like shortening lifespans and hormone balances to increase subservience to their masters. Others still engaged in mass production of their kind, though focusing in enhancing their social skills or just securing a stable population number since later kinds were very hard if not impossible to breed naturally.

At this point, both sides were trying to agree and cooperate like those who pressed the buttons once hopped, with a few factions taking side against each other ocasionally thought not endorsed by any major groups, as the world was mostly empty and full of space for everyone now.

With the ever-settling of nuclear ash getting thinner each winter, a collaboration between both kahikōpafi and hoku in several fields took place, to clean the old northern cities and re-settle wherever possible, one of those many projects saw the revitalization of a telescope array called the Somoga Square Zaega Array (Okuiuka Zaaega Iutso det Somoga, O.Za.I.So. literal for Plateau), which would in a few years become able to make deep-space radio observations.

Within a few months of running the telescope, the Somoga Event happened, the evidence of violent interplanetary and interstellar conflicts happening in the far reaches of the Dominion. Upon the sudden realization that their whole society might be in very real danger from an outside force, the known governments of the time agreed upon a minimal radio-leakage term, as well as investing in ways of reaching other planets and stars as fast and silently as possible, in order to safeguard the existence of the hoku ways. It was generally agreed upon that from afar, and given the distance from the Dominion, the Paza system seemed particularly dead and non-attractive for the time being, the nuclear holocaust granted the advantage of not being of any presential interest.

THE FIRST STELLAR ERA

During the first three centuries after the Somoga Event (also abbreviated with SE, see what I did?), the space industry focused on the establishing of the hoku on Namenza, only decently warm rocky body to Auot'zae apart from their own moon. First sending a few better probes than the ones of Pre-War time, then automated equipment to pave space for bases and landing sites. Sending kahikopafis or hoku was beyond their technological and physical capabilities yet, and it is in this context of exploring and automating work in space in which appears their first spectres, similar to those developed by humans in the early 22nd century, spectres are a kind of general service A.I. platform, initially developed for simple tasks like factory management, or unmanned support combatants. The advent of better AI made independent spectres the driving force behind space infraestructure, being able to take on different orders and be easily relocated to other functions within a few hours of library update, which could be done during transport of units. Unlike genetically altered individuals, those fully synthetic workers in general got better with time, accumulating a long history of experience within several fields being able to solve complex calculations and problems on the run while doing other tasks. The spectre chassis varied with the designated tasks, from being simple cores operating whole factories, to UAVs and UTVs, down to being more avipodomorphic with recognizable and relatable faces and expressions, working as police, healthcare, or assistant units worldwide and offworld.

The development of better and even more autonomous AI allowed the hoku to dare sending precurssor missions at various extra-solar planets during their first stellar era, both habitable and uninhabitable worlds, these robotic missions had the same intent of their first efforts, pave infraestructure and acquire intel for the upcoming organic population, once they figured how the hell one does safely traverse interstellar space.

Auot'zae never became habitable again in its full extension because of the still radioactive zones, but the fallout had thinned enough in areas which could be treated and recovered with work. Because many northern cultures and technologies were lost, groups of kahikopafis adopted the ancient languages, and custoums of these lost civilizations as their own, while some created entirely new ways to have a sense of ownership over their fates, hence why we see the reapperance of old tongues such as Hukat and Entselari throughout off-world populations later on.

THE GOLDEN STELLAR ERA

The Dominion is littered with stars, and stellar systems, unfortunately many of which consist of purely gaseous or barren worlds, and very few of the latter are actually suitable for terraforming in some extent. Even though a quarter of the Dominion's potentially habitable worlds can be found within 100ly from the Paza system, few candidates ever got an acceptable degree of similarity to their homeworld in order to be put as a prime target, the closest and first off-system populational center was quadruple system with a planet aptly named Muhori (in Sidessian mythology, it is an island where demigods reside), located some 20 light-years from home, a brand new oceanic world. Barren, of course.

For security and logistical reasons, the Hoku Expanse focused on a single region of the sky along the tropics, not only because it was practical, but because it put their domain above the plane of the radio-broadcasting worlds of the Dominion, thus, putting them far and out of reach. This strategy also allowed them to make continuous used of fixed starlanes between systems.

This meant that the more the closer stations and systems developed, the faster they were allowed to move throughout known-space. And though the first ships ever sent were of the cryo-embrionic type, which incubates and raises its crew on the final years of the trip - the Golden Era ships could complete the task within a century per 20 light-years, which meant that parents and their children could hop on a trip to the nearest star and still have a couple decades to live in the new world. Meanwhile, artificial crews would still be traveling at twice the speed to other distant habitable planet candidates.

In the year of 797 PSE, hoku settlers arrived at the tropical world of Qekohoshoku, where they not only have found the first planet inhabited by forms of life apart from their own, but by technologically developed humans. The humans of this world called the planet, Niniveh, after an ancient city of a long lost mythical era, and as they have uncovered, Niniveh has been continuously inhabited by humans for at least some 30 ~ 40 thousand years to an extent or another, that peaceful society was happy to share their technology and ways with the group once attested that they posed no threat to the world. With faster and safer interstellar travel technology from the humans which called themselves, Chelok, the Hoku could take on faster and further away from the Dominion.

The Chelok have a different position regarding the urgency the Hoku give to staying further from it as possible. While the small group that arrived at Niniveh had no choice but to establish contact and make it peacefully, the ancient race is sure that the Dominion is doomed to crumble within a few thousands of years, as they claim to have seen over and over again with their own race many many millenia ago, which is why their current attempt at a spacefaring civilization has limited itself to inhabit only two systems, and it has worked so far. Firmly believing that the human ways will far outlive the expansionist Dominion. Despite the soothing piece of information, it didn't really cost much for a post-scarcity civilization like them, to help the Hoku achieve their current objectives, so long as they kept minimal noise and respected the limits of human space on the planet surface, basically allowing them to live anywhere they wanted salvo a few specific places.

Humans of Niniveh pointed to a bright star in the sky, which was their capital world for the time being, the distant world of Dhéģhōm. After a few exchanges through beamed radio, the Hoku were allowed into the system for trades and scientific research on the newly discovered alien life forms, the arrival of that diplomatic and science mission marked the start of Lower Stellar Era.

It's been nearly 2000 years after the Somoga Event at this point, and though there is exchange of goods and personnel between Muhori and Auot'zae, cryo-embrionic light-sails still had to be used to seed distant outworlds, with newer faster Chelok-Hoku ships starting to enter in service. Now, the Hoku Expanse consisted of 7 civilized worlds (minus theirs and the human capital) spanning over 200 ly in a single direction.

During one particular night of winter in 1977 PSE, a strange object entered the comet cloud of the Muhori system at hypervelocity...

- M.O. Valent, 05/01/2023

SCIENCE&ARTWORK | THE HOKU | PRE-STELLAR HISTORY | PART 2

Illustration updates coming soon...

THE DIFFERENT PHASES OF AUOT'ZAE

The ancient world as of circa 5894 BFH (roughly 2600yrs before the stellar era), opening charte in "Wonders of the Known World" by Hamanen Kalinen (5921 - 5853 BFH), Hukat inventor and mathematician.

The big text says "OCEAN", the two words above and bellow the circle are "HORIZON", and the word inland is "KNOWN-WORLD"

Since the dawn of time, all there was to the world were the four great nations of Dahet, Hōkat, Torura, and Gahal. Sometimes at war, sometimes at peace, breaking and uniting again to roughly their former shape because of the cultural similarities between the constituting tribes and the way terrain made it hard to expand much further. And when not at war with each other, it was against the "barbarian" tribes of the south - and this was the world at its finest working.

It wasn't until between 2600 and 2500 years prior to the Stellar Era (PSE) that the west and east societies connected again after thousands of years, using the steppe tribes as messengers and scouts into the far lands, however, being just as ancient as the east world, the west was pretty much on par with the east, both iron-age societies, living in the same continent and separated by an expansive montainous territory, with their only interactions being the occasional exchange of goods and technology through the exportations of wealthy and eccentric individuals, trying to figure a commerce route between the two "hemispheres" of the world. This without further development of sailing technology, this connection would remain impractical until 415 PSE, when the Ent'Shelari tried to find a way around the maritmal Gagot'ri blockade that lasted 40 years, and this pursue, making contact with the peoples of the south and the New World...

THE CONQUEST OF SIDESSIA

The south continent of Sideeshazaaet (or just Sidessia) is as large as mainland Australia, stretching for twice the extension of Indonesia, composed of 11 great islands and over 20 thousand other islands smaller than 200km

The continent is formed by an extensive chain of volcanic islands, the oldest and largest of those being mainland Sidessia. It has been continuosly inhabited by the Avipoda tropicans for at least 800 thousand years between 180 ~ 997 thosand years PSE, coexisting with the A. sapiens cer and A. sapiens australis between 300 and 180 thousand years PSE, falling during this period due disease and war with the newer more sophisticated groups.

The northernmost part of the continent is very rich in natural resources, both mineral and ecological due the equatorial climate, also sporting a great deal of deserted area like Australia. While the southernmost part of the continent is pretty frigid and deserted like the Fawklands due being inside the polar circle.

Prior to the Age of First Sail (500-400 PSE), there was no such concept as borders to the peoples of Sidessia, since anyone could set sail anywhere with enough skill and resources, and it was often done amongst the chains of islands of the Sidessian sea, conflicts were rather unnecessary since for the relatively small populations that inhabited the area, the islands were everything they needed, although this didn't stop major groups from establishing within a territory and developing rudimentary forms of agriculture for native fruits, cattle, and seaweed, which could be traded with the passing sailors in exchange of few goods, information, or even the trade of slaves and arrangement of mariages to keep the genetic diversity up a few notches.

The sidessian peoples had different levels of technological development with some central and northern tribes even having access to iron smelting thousands of years before bronze was even discovered in Azapabaet, while others remained as neolithic and hunter-gatherer societies.

The arrival of the Ent'Shelari in large ships at the Port of Geva in 385 PSE left a huge mark in Gevan culture and history. Being close but still inferior to the Ent'Shelari naval force, they became allies in the conquest of Sidessia by the northern powers, enslaving the nearby islander nations to work in the mining and farming of goods to be traded in Azapabaet. Soon followed by the Gagot'ri and the Gahel nations, exploring alternative routes to put up a competition agains the Ent'Shelari spice and metal trade, this competion started the Age of Great Navigation in 300 PSE, and this period established the basis on which major superpowers would come and rise prior to the stellar era.

In technological parity, this level of development is roughly equivalent to 18th century Earth.

THE CONQUEST AND LIBERATION OF THE NEW WORLD

 The pre-Fall continent of Jekaazapat had the greatest nations by extension since no borders were defined by centuries of war and diplomacy, but by where the major powers felt it would be fair to amongst themselves

Since 400 PSE, exploration fleets have been continuously sent to the new world by both the Ent'Shelari and Gagot'ri, followed by the eastern powers of Hukat, Torera, and Gahel-Nehil for the next 200 years. While in Sidessia those powers were met with shore-expanding armies and metal-working societies, the peoples of the new world could be said to be greatly underpowered and unbeligerant, needless to say that everything the superpowers couldn't have done in Sidessia was done to the new world, becoming a beacon of economic exploration by their ultramarine overlords.

The north mid-latitude location of the continent made it a prime candidate for intense settling waves by rich families and workers following the invention of the steam-powered ship, those families and enterpreuneurs built their fortunes with the industrialization of the countries and the exploration of resources granted by it. The rapid industrialization of the previously purely agricultural and mining center that were the colonies of the new world spiked a wave of armed revolts to try pushing the ultramarine powers off the new world, which could barely put up with an appropriate response due the large distances and amount of resources involved in such long travels.

These revolts also inspired phylosophical and political uprisings back home in the Dahetian empire and its northern colonies, now figthing at a minimum for the liberation of the northern territories and the more radicals for the collapse of Dahet in its entirety, this line of thought is what we currently understand under the banner of Socialism, which given the existence of vast corporate, ultramarine companies, and monarchies, clearly needed to be fought back.

THE INDUSTRIAL ERA AND WORLD WARS

The industrial era started back with the invention of the steam-powered ship and its sister technologies such as mass production and processing of metal, textiles, chemicals, food, and goods. In the old world the two major technological and industrial powers were the Ent'Shelari and the Hukat Empire, each controlling and influencing their neighbours and allies in Sidessia, hence why a great deal of trading and technology across the Dominion was still done in Hukat and Enselari, followed by the Gahel-Nehil Empire, but the latter was rather quickly surpassed by its new-world colony, Farkade, which not much time later after the start of the colony uprisings declared itself as a splitter Empire, and shortly after, a Union.

The Farkade Union was the richest of the new world territories and heavily funded sciences and the emancipation of the peoples across the continent from their parent powers along with East Terit Republic (splitter of the Torura Empire). Even when not directly involved, its spies and enterpreneurs invested heavily in planting and nurturing rebel movements across the globe which established puppet governments in its favor, sometimes failing into fascist and corporate regimes, and sometimes a civil war which had to be "fixed" by both sides throughout the period of 200 and 90 PSE. Many smaller and more sporadic conflicts came and went after the Somoga Event...

THE SOMOGA EVENT

In the mid spring of 50 PSE in a calm clear night for the Sidessian islands, the Somoga Square-Zaega* Array of radio telescopes received a wave of narrow-band radio signals coming from a neaby starcluster, it was known at the time that the Paza system was weakly gravitationally bound to this cluster, and so any new information about it greatly interested the astronomers involved. At first the signals came and went broadcasting for a few hours each day and sometimes every few days or weeks in a rather inconsistent but frequent enough that it was of concern and object of study for a couple of years, many astronomers tried to debunk the veracity of the signals while other debated different far out-of-this-world explanations for the origin of the signals, until they started popping around different systems across the star cluster. With better telescopes ground telescopes and later space telescopes, it was then possible to detect dark clouds of non-natural elements in the space around systems previously known to broadcast those intense narrow-band signals, and it was the piece of information they needed for the conclusion of this puzzle which extended for some 50 years... Those were evidence of interplanetary and interstellar wars in the space we now know as Dominion.

Their equivalent of the United Nations, SETI, and METI organizations all decided it was better for their own survival, to remain silent and not make contact with the alien conglomerate that seemed to expand for at least 20 systems as far as they could tell, being far inferior, they needed a plan for when the day of first contact arrived, they had a clock ticking over their heads, and no-one knew when the counter would count to zero...

They needed to go interstellar, and fast.

*Zaega, unit of length measuring approx. ~1.78 kilometers or 1.104 miles, it measures 1,024 Patas which are worth 1/32,768,000ths of their planet's circunference, or about 1.74m. 

- M.O. Valent, 23/12/2022