An Old [Fashioned] Solar System 1: Chhaask
♀ Chhaask ♀
[Gwueng-Tsho, Auwwmbuhrra, Bhak]
♀ Boreal Plateau in northern arctic region — some peaks break cloud layer. Chhaask is otherwise 98% blocked by cloud layer. The appearance of the sun or stars through breaks in the clouds surprises, shocks, and terrifies locals, much as solar eclipses stun and amaze inhabitants of planets with largish moons. The shape and opacity of sky-breaks present auspices more in line with tea leaves or the flight of birds than astrology.
♀ Vast plants create miniature biomes — interior lakes, swamps, vast animal-plant architectonics. Archivistes of the Platitudinous school speculate that the dominant Chhaaskite plants are constructs of the Hyadaean dynastics, made to order and then abandoned to adapt some many kilochiliads ago. These plants send light-harvesting plates above the cloud layer, buoyed with pockets and veins of hydrogen. Where plants can reach through clouds, they are first rooted at high altitude, or upon high structures such as the Old Gardens, Megarmatures, or particularly tall hulks.
♀ Ruins & wrecks from wars some fifteen kilochiliads past mar many Chhaaskite landscapes. The fabric of these "hulks," "vastations," or "honored bones," though wrecked before or during crash-landing, are beyond any known art of cutting or demolition, and therefore attract settlers desirous of strong fortifications. Each hulk is its own demesne or polis, its indestructible hull layered inside with the debris of many successive habitations.
♀ Lowlands — at the very lowest altitudes, air is too dense: the lower, the hotter. Lava rivers, boiling mud, thermophiles and "golems", automata, lava-works both ancient and recent.
♀ Downs: steep hills rising out of lowlands. Each down is an island — animal bridges [what if wasp, or beaver, but many spans in length?], bridging florae, and the arches & causeways of sophonts link many downs into patchwork chains. A down unbridged is a place someone has cut off, home to something nasty.
♀ Boondocks: dense jungle reefs of wood, not coral. Exterior of boondock has light-harvesting leaves and like structures, with 95% of the mass dead and mineralizing, but providing many nooks and cavities for specialized faunae. Boondocks start like islands rising above lowlands, and grow into plateaux. In the past, they were continent-forming, but have been losing space to Hyadaean growths that pierce the cloud layer.
♀Sophonts of Chhaask♀
♀ Xumans: H. sapiens veneris. Ancestors were thrall stock imported from al-Arz in the age of the Dho Gwueng, some 250 chiliads past.
♀ Bhak-Bhak, Chhaaskese: Chhaask autochthons, humanoid, more arboreal than xumans, ill-suited to ground locomotion, with longer arms than legs. Big eyes that see in darkness.
♀ Ophidians: decadent remnant of ancient Arzi imperium. Theropods in body plan, but victims of innumerable phases of somatic tampering. Variations include wings instead of arms; limbs by the dozens; gills and other structures for aquatic life; tendency to birth defects. Many ophidians continue to grow throughout life, given sufficient nutrition and living space, and become enormous. All ophidians are effectively immortal unless killed through accident or violence; all tend toward delusions and derangement.
♀ Least Chhaaskese, Troglodites: boondock-sculpting rodentoids for whom touch is the primary sense, hearing and smell secondary, sight about as important as smell is for Arzi.
[Gwueng-Tsho, Auwwmbuhrra, Bhak]
♀ Boreal Plateau in northern arctic region — some peaks break cloud layer. Chhaask is otherwise 98% blocked by cloud layer. The appearance of the sun or stars through breaks in the clouds surprises, shocks, and terrifies locals, much as solar eclipses stun and amaze inhabitants of planets with largish moons. The shape and opacity of sky-breaks present auspices more in line with tea leaves or the flight of birds than astrology.
♀ Vast plants create miniature biomes — interior lakes, swamps, vast animal-plant architectonics. Archivistes of the Platitudinous school speculate that the dominant Chhaaskite plants are constructs of the Hyadaean dynastics, made to order and then abandoned to adapt some many kilochiliads ago. These plants send light-harvesting plates above the cloud layer, buoyed with pockets and veins of hydrogen. Where plants can reach through clouds, they are first rooted at high altitude, or upon high structures such as the Old Gardens, Megarmatures, or particularly tall hulks.
♀ Ruins & wrecks from wars some fifteen kilochiliads past mar many Chhaaskite landscapes. The fabric of these "hulks," "vastations," or "honored bones," though wrecked before or during crash-landing, are beyond any known art of cutting or demolition, and therefore attract settlers desirous of strong fortifications. Each hulk is its own demesne or polis, its indestructible hull layered inside with the debris of many successive habitations.
♀ Lowlands — at the very lowest altitudes, air is too dense: the lower, the hotter. Lava rivers, boiling mud, thermophiles and "golems", automata, lava-works both ancient and recent.
♀ Downs: steep hills rising out of lowlands. Each down is an island — animal bridges [what if wasp, or beaver, but many spans in length?], bridging florae, and the arches & causeways of sophonts link many downs into patchwork chains. A down unbridged is a place someone has cut off, home to something nasty.
♀ Boondocks: dense jungle reefs of wood, not coral. Exterior of boondock has light-harvesting leaves and like structures, with 95% of the mass dead and mineralizing, but providing many nooks and cavities for specialized faunae. Boondocks start like islands rising above lowlands, and grow into plateaux. In the past, they were continent-forming, but have been losing space to Hyadaean growths that pierce the cloud layer.
♀Sophonts of Chhaask♀
♀ Xumans: H. sapiens veneris. Ancestors were thrall stock imported from al-Arz in the age of the Dho Gwueng, some 250 chiliads past.
♀ Bhak-Bhak, Chhaaskese: Chhaask autochthons, humanoid, more arboreal than xumans, ill-suited to ground locomotion, with longer arms than legs. Big eyes that see in darkness.
♀ Ophidians: decadent remnant of ancient Arzi imperium. Theropods in body plan, but victims of innumerable phases of somatic tampering. Variations include wings instead of arms; limbs by the dozens; gills and other structures for aquatic life; tendency to birth defects. Many ophidians continue to grow throughout life, given sufficient nutrition and living space, and become enormous. All ophidians are effectively immortal unless killed through accident or violence; all tend toward delusions and derangement.
♀ Least Chhaaskese, Troglodites: boondock-sculpting rodentoids for whom touch is the primary sense, hearing and smell secondary, sight about as important as smell is for Arzi.
[ Ōmbūr, Chhaask, al-Arz, Cidēntē : an Old Solar System ]
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