Aketi

Aketi is a temperate terrestrial planet orbiting the red dwarf star Maiva, located 61 thousand light years away from Earth - making it a key planet in the Confederacy of Borealis within the Milky Way Galaxy . The Sartins and Humans have an alliance that stretches back thousands of years.

It has one barren, airless moon called Tira, which serves as a mining base for water ice and metals.

Landscape

The surface is wet with water, but frozen in a huge sheet of ice on the night-side. Because Aketi orbits so close to its star, the star's gravity tugs on it strongly, pulling its rotation period to match its orbital period. This creates two sides that permanently face toward and away from the star; the day and night sides. Between the two sides lies the terminator zone, where energy from the star is reasonably warm for the native life. It is also the only place on the planet where water can exist in liquid form. Due to tidal locking, this region always basks in permanent twilight.

The planet is geologically active. The night side is home to the Taka super volcano, which erupts every 200,000 years.

Orbit

Aketi orbits its sun: Maiva A, every 20 days at a distance of 0.083 AU from its sun. Due to its distance to the star, the world is tidally locked: one side is permanent daylight and the other side is never ending darkness. Orbiting Aketi is three other moons, two captured asteroids and one larger S-Class moon called Narda.

Physical

Aketi has 62% the mass of Earth with a diameter of 10752 km. This gives the planet a gravitational pull of 0.88 g. Aketi and its system of planets and two suns are 4.972 billion years old.

Climate

Climate changes from the day side to night side. The Eye of Aketi, the super-hurricane on the day side, rages in powerful wind speeds exceeding 600 mph. Life in the twilight zone will experience wind always travelling in one direction.

The freezing temperatures of the night side prevent any animal from flourishing above surface. Instead, they burrow within the ice and carve caves toward the warmer mantle, where they can stay for months on end. Colonies of millions of animals populate the ice sheet.

Life

Life on Aketi has evolved for the last 3.8 billion years. In the last 2.4 billion years, life had evolved to multicellular creatures on both land and in the oceans. The smallest plant lives at the bottom of the oceans and grow up to a maximum of 5 cm.

The tallest plant lives on the mainland, growing as tall as 440 meters and on extreme occasions up to 520 meters. Most animals live in the ocean, roughly about 63% of all animals on the planet. The other 37% animals live on mainland. The animals on the day side have adapted to extreme temperatures and constant sunlight. On the night side, animals here are extremely sensitive to daylight. The night side animals dig holes in the ice and hide there until they hunt for food whenever hungry.

Formation & Evolution

Aketi as viewed from its larger moon: Narda.

The Aketi solar system formed 4.972 billion years ago. The trigger of the formation was most likely a nearby supernova that sent a shockwave through the molecular cloud, thus triggering the formation of stars. After hundreds of thousands of years, the star group had dispersed, following their own orbits around the Milky Way galaxy. Maiva A and B most likely formed much closer together until a close encounter with another star had pulled the two stars further out into their current orbits. Around these two stars were disks of dust and gas which eventually formed all the planets, dwarf planets, asteroids and moons in the entire solar system.

Aketi, however, follows a very unique timeline because of its ability to support life. Its believed that water and organic compounds were delivered by asteroids and comets that crashed to the surface of Aketi and eventually formed its oceans.

Unlike Earth's moon, Narda (Aketi's larger moon) was formed from the disk of dust and gas that surrounded Aketi instead of its formation being triggered by a planet vs. planet collision.

Relations

Aketi-LaC

Originally, it was one of many major planets that formed the Lactean Confederacy. However, being a significant planet in the Confederacy meant it was among places where protests and violence broke out, the preceding events to the catastrophic split.

Aketi-CoB

When the LaC fell, Aketi was one of many former LaC colonies who desperately sought to restore peace to their planet. They were very vocal at the time of the Treaty of Albedo's signing, praising it as the greatest deal in galactic history and many pro-Aketi, pro-CoB political parties were formed.