Orbiting an Orange Giant, Nexus of Interpenetrating Cosmoi

Sorq has a wide, wide orbit around its primary, Bale, the Usurper, a sullen and inconstant orange giant, but a refuge from the transformations of other local stars into compact objects. Bale was once of a pair with a blazing minor giant, the Old King, that Old One the Child. The Old King's transformation into a true giant was observed by the dominant sophonts of the system, and they shaped a moon of modest size but extraordinary mass of minerals, metals, fissionables into an orb that could bear their civilization and species well away from Old King's terrible light, changing its orbit in mere decades with no damage to structure, able to deflect and manipulate objects within several planetary radii, spread wings and stretch forth its grasp.

That move accomplished, the originating civilization, the Children of the Old King, discovered talent for ontological translation, and quite soon ablated to minimal occupation and corporeal involvement with this cosmos.

1.5 billion years pass. SORQ builds upper layers by both accidental accretion of interplanetary material (some 20%) and many phases of planetary engineering corresponding to occupations of the system by other species.

Large structures built up over core, alterations to original designs that have decayed in close imitation of natural geological forces.

Several heavy bombardments: warfare with planetoids, relativistic projectiles; or catastrophic failure of planetary force fields.

Most of Sorq's present sophonts come from interstellar travellers of modest sophistication who occupied the planet and nearby stars for several prosperous millennia, until Bale and neighboring stars translated out of the familiar cosmos. The local group found itself in a region where numerous cosmoi intersect and interact. This ended conventional interstellar travel and most technological civilization for an indeterminate period.

The nexus of interpenetrating cosmoi has held the local group of stars for more decamillennial than reliable records or dating methods can determine; perhaps 60,000, perhaps as many as 250,000. The Nexus is not beyond rational inquiry or predictable behavior, but the interaction of an indeterminate number of cosmoi with independent local physics has produced.... many decamillennia of magic, wonder, false starts, and pragmatism.

Present.

The underworld's temples, thaumaturgic chambers, contemplative resonators, and other ritual spaces intersect, shape, and control numerous forces or behaviors of the interpenetrating cosmoi of the Nexus. Some of these affects are described as luculence (not light), "touch", seizing, repulsion, involuting, pseudambiguating, exigenciating, and numerous others. These effects interact with ordinary matter, bodily and mental activities, emotions, perception and physical stimuli, inertia, conductivity... the list goes on. 

Chambers produce particular effects with 'alignment' with Sorq's moons, the dark star the Old King, various ancient works within Sorq's orb and across the star system. This alignment is not spatially, although that plays a role; one without knowledge of such things would see intricate carvings, squiggles, lines, grooves, glittering arrays of fine wire and thread of gems: somewhat abstract sculpture with writing deeply engraved here and there. These are artifices and mechanism that recognize the nexus currents and interact with similarly aligned structures across the star system. 

One of the most prominent effects of aligned and tuned underworld chambers are gates connecting one space to another, disregarding intervening distance (within constraints). This allows chambers to link one to another across the orb, deep inside the nurturing core; anywhere art and ingenuity can place a chamber.

The array of gated chambers (and spaces linked by conventional passageways, lifts, etc.) form the Deep Underworld, where Sorq's encounter with nexus energies is most powerful. Underworld structures allow surface facilities and magicians to draw upon the more profound reservoir below.

astral gestalt (of temples and schools working in distributed coordination); 

magical integration of dynasties and geased bloodlines; 

astro/geognomic measurement and tracking below ground and beyond horizon; 

shape resonances with orbital relations

***

Sorq is a hair smaller than Mars, but generally dense enough for close to one standard gravity on the surface.

The hot equatorial ocean lies between 10 and 20 degrees everywhere across the orb, with saltwater tendrils and enclosed islands as far as 50 N and south, and in one case to 84 N. The ocean bottom is mostly smooth and shallow (under 200 meters, often less than 40) but there are three discontinuous abyssal trenches following the equator. The bottoms of the trenches have never been measure, but are believed to extend 1/4 of the diameter of Sorq.

The saltwater ocean continues below the landmasses and deep inside the structure of Sorq; there are also freshwater bodies in a complex subterranean geography and ecology generally called the Underdark, properly underdarks.

The contemporary Equatorial League is a mostly peaceful and egalitarian federated polity occupying both sides of the ocean, in seven traditional groupings or regions and several ambiguously named and defined areas of more recent provenance. The most common social and regional form is the polis or arcology, with concentrated populations surrounded by productive agricultural hinterlands, estates, parks, reserves, and areas interdicted against some danger, such as access to the Underworld or malicious ancient ruins.

Approximately 1/4 of the equatorial lands are sparsely populated by intelligent beings at present, with little pressure to re-settle lands filled with ruins and wild beasts. The equatorial belt ends at the Walls: the Northern and Southern Hemispheric Discontinuities, poking out from deep below ground into the upper atmosphere in segments tens to hundreds of leagues in length. The Discontinuities separate the equatorial band from the polar landmasses at between 32 and 55 degrees north and south. They are not made of rock, nor metal, although there are abundant rock deposits adhering to various parts of the Wall. 

There are several gaps between the equatorial band and the polar land masses: three in each hemisphere, gaps of some 20 to 50 leagues in width that appear to be part of the original structure; and much larger catastrophic breaks connected with the era of surface impacts: cracks in the planet reaching from one breached wall nearly to the pole.

[[Lots of stuff in Bale system: debris, old moons, old wrecks and megastructures, planets and apotheoses of ice in whimsically irregular orbits: visible from Sorq are the Shroud, well above the plane of orbit and along a line between Bale and partner, the Old King. Aoru Tsán, a brilliantly shining latice on an irregular path around the system, not an orbit but a flight path, perhaps. Before and after the lattice are the glittering Eggs, once inhabited bodies. Numerous odd moving bodies and visual phenomena, such as the red starlings.]]