Cyroterm

Cyroterm (misspelled "cryos, meaning "ice" " + "thermal") is a quite small earth-like planet with noticable polar glaciers in its current state as well a less prominent ring around it. It is found in Milky Way galaxy, orbiting a star named Brimsoar. In the history surrounding it's star system, it's one of the planets colonized by Rampantaram republic, as well as a planet that for a short period of time had a native intelligent species.

Cyroterm is now gradually being set up for exploration. Here's the world map.

Exogeography

Cyroterm has lower gravity than Earth, which can be attributed to the fact that the former is twice as lighter and a tad smaller than the latter. It orbits its star fast and rotates slow, causing its life to adapt to such circumstances. Despite this Cyroterm's moons and ring still seem to influence things such as both wind and ocean currents on the planet. But the ring also brings misfortune as meteorites from it keep falling on the surface of the planet, disrupting life at certain sites. The fast orbitation of Cyroterm is not much taken into account, since it has low axial tilt and therefore that removes seasons, but vaguely different biomes are still present even though the low axial tilt would otherwise caused a single-biome planet to form.

Litosphere

Cyroterm's surface varies, but it consistantly seems to have a rather rough set of soil particles in areas where the plant analogues haven't sprouted. The tectonic processes keep happening, but they are rather peculiar, because they haven't, throughout the geological history, caused much of the continent drift, but rather caused certain smaller areas on Cyroterm to form canyons and island, regardless if its in the ocean or an inland sea.

Hydrosphere

Water seems rather clear from the space, but its pretty polluted-looking if one considers swimming in it. However, it has been that way for much of history due to how lifeforms and the inorganic particle cycle has influenced it. On some parts of planet, certain waterways or water guiding tunnels get plugged, causing water level to suddenly rise in some other points, only for the plug to dissolve and give way after uncertain amount of time, which is accountable to severly impact several ecosystems.

Atmosphere

Cyroterm's skies are mostly composed of CO2, O2 and N2, the first one being the most abundant, followed by the second and the third gas. Nowadays it doesn't result in complete global Cyroterm warming because of the water and minor gases actually having become strong cooling agents due to their composition, though it's not yet clear how. In fact that makes the average temperature on the planet, overall -11C but, in their own ways, whole biomes have managed to adapt and basically create warm spots around themselves using methods such as attracting atmosphere's CO2.

Biosphere

A lot of creatures are energetic, surface dwellers (whether land or water), which have a tendency to rile themselves up before tackling some kind of problem. At certain level of intelligence, certain animal taxons sometimes try following members that have obvious levels of success, whether to mimic, support or rob them.

Species documented so far:

Channel kryntswisher (Devincerava vadum) - an aquatic, marine waterway dwelling tylosaur-like carnivore that also ingests phosphate containing substances to support the detritivorous symbiotes living in the shell around its torso.

Lightgroove irigafrut (Inripomala lenicanalis) - low growing phytomorph (plant-like) species that grows near rivers and changes local soil via symbiotic intervention.

Shred-bearing squaripto (Muctaruptus segmenti) - A microscopic, parasitic species that inhibits ground layer and steals energy providing molecules from species that come/dig across it.

Civilization

Cyroterm has had about two civilizations, the first one arose a long time ago, but was killed off before advancing into settlement stage when heightened increase of volcanic activity caused extinction of some important keystone species, which, in turn, led to extinction of many other species with more advanced nervous system. The second one were Rampantarans, who started off as explorers and later colonized Cyroterm, yet didn't cause much damage to it, eventually learning to live in larger harmony with nature, even though at some sites, pollution was rather large. It might be that the rather cold environment kept the pollution from quickly expanding further.

History/Culture overview

As noted on the Cyntadder sector's timeline, Cyroterm has had events such as the glacier formations or the origin of gigantic ocean organisms hundred millions of years ago. The ring of Cyroterm formed much earlier than the glaciers. Much later in timeline Rampantaran Republic colonized Cyroterm and creating cities and suburbs on it, which also had monuments in them, such as the statue of Space probe Madgo. In the most recent times, ecosystems formed anew from the previous mass extinction.

Continents

Efedyte

Efedyte is one of three Cyroterm's continents, the other two being combined into one large landmass. It's separated from other continents via two unfrozen landmasses lined against the glaciers south from them and the ocean from the north. Efedyte experience quite intense weather and is remarkably populated with lots of species, part of them even taking very risky and unimaginable niches (or so it's been rumored).

Locations

Currently only one ecoregion on Efedyte continent is open for discoveries:

Automacolo desert

Maps

Much of the Cyroterm is covered in ice, with it even finding way far into the fertile area. But that's not stopping life, instead it enriches it. Having no direct waterway going through the planet, water currents are more chaotic, largely splashing around the single largest water body on the planet. The most in-land areas avoid being completely dry via the intermittant (periodically drying-out) waterways.

Locations

Currently Cyroterm has only one named continent - Efedyte.

Efedyte continent map
Efedyte continent map with annotations

Landscape Features

Automaccolo Desert

This large area seems to resemble desert a lot but still there are soils suitable to produce some quite fertile organisms. These organisms there are very focused on all available resources around, especially alien plants due to having access to accumulate lots of energy but not enough resources to efficiently use and afterwards disperse the accumulated energy. In a largely sandy type area, many sessile organisms can grow quite suddenly, whenever there's sufficient precipitation.

The river found in the middle of the desert acts as the barrier separating desert into three ecological zones. Currently only the bottom one is named. Also one branch of the river is extremely dependent on periodical drying, so it mostly appears as lightly colored trench.

Caligarvum Semi-Desert

A semi-desert area of the Automacolo desert showing partial patches of more potent vegetation. Lots of herbivorous lifeforms followed by more predatory species arrive to graze there. It doesn't wholly count as savanna due to the fact that in much areas extremely desert conditions are prevalent and it's more of a patchwork cross between savanna and desert, rather than a gradually defined fusion of both. This area also has two other conditions, one troublesome and the other comforting - the first is that wind usually brings most sand blizzards towards this area, making life harder for local life but the second is more beneficial - in this area sun rays are less UV saturated due to certain atmosphere patches blocking it and making the effect area smaller.

Teucuarva dustfields

Caligarvum semi-desert has it's own tiny sub-biome at the very south. It's a location where the sandy mineral sheet is constantly interrupted by small vegetation like groves. This in turn allows other organisms to flourish from them. An otherwise unremarkable area, it was picked by spacecraft, in order to show that it's better to start research from small, semi-isolated small areas. This is the first area from which the Automacolo desert research is beginning.

As for the general look of Teucuarva in a peculiar manner, seed like pods are found laying around here and there, still alive but not yet pushed into the ground. Meanwhile mobile organisms show a preference of relaxing together by forming a pile. The local wildlife sounds don't linger behind in the weird department as some sound as if someone was unprofessionally using a microphone on Earth.

Maps

Automacolo desert map unannotated
Automacolo desert (roughly) annotated
Zoom-in on Caligarvum semidesert
Caligarvum semidesert map with annotations
Teucuarva dustfields (the mountains are not counted in the microbiome)
Teucuarva dustfields with the separate zones annotated.