Gypsum

"Rhetoric is the fool's bane; king and stone alike shan't be moved by it. It is a weapon for slaughtering the weak alone, and for that it is the chosen tool of the deeply evil."
—Excerpt from "Qassen At'elrak", "Lessons by the Needle"

Gypsum, natively known as Radin Ihmat by the Kessenski, is the third planet from the white star Dnn Bnfai. It is a scorching silver desert in the modern age, though it was only reduced to such in the 4000s CE. With no bodies of liquid to speak of and a surface covered in sands of gypsum and planet-spanning bands of dust storms, it's difficult to imagine that it was once a wet briny paradise. The planet's sparse ecosystem is still adapting to the new face of the world, helped along by the inhabitants as the sun blazes overhead.

Gypsum is largely considered uninhabitable by most of Cosmoria's species, as it sits in an awkward range of temperature above most carbon-water lifeforms' comfortable range and its weather is extremely harsh. The biosphere is sparse and the radiation it receives from its sun is cancerous to any species without a UV-blocking layer of scales or exoskeleton.

Physical

Gypsum's primary terrain is vast dunes of sand, coarse mixed with fine and distributed in layers by the constant storms that buffet the planet in vast bands. These sand dunes are often incredibly hot, and daytime temperatures just outside the equatorial dust belt often reach over 110°C. Large mountainous formations do occur, craggy highlands which former glaciers had left pristine until Gypsum's desoformation. Where the oceans once were, large flats of salty sand now lay on beds of sparstones like gypsum, from which the planet gets its common name. The temperatures and atmospheric pressures in these bleds are higher than the former "land" terrain, leading to temperatures that scorch even the Kessenski without aid from specialized cooling technology.

Gypsum's sand composition is a mix of several hygroscopic minerals, primarily calcium chloride, magnesium sulfate, sodium sulfate, and calcium sulfate. All of these serve to sequester the planet's vast stores of water, though how much water is in any given patch of sand is difficult to tell except by weight. A general rule of thumb after a storm deposit is to dig at least a meter deep into the sand, as the lower layers will be richer in water than the lighter matter that took longer to fall out of suspension.

Gypsomn weather patterns are relatively consistent. Winds pick up more strongly around the solstices, leading to temporary breaching of circulation cells that last about a local day. These birth the next seasons' worth of wind patterns that grow slowly into cyclonic sandstorms. The Coriolis forces from the equatorial cells feed these cyclones into the equator, and as their rotations cancel out the turbulent motion across the world remains, leaving an impressively powerful permanent band of storms dividing the world in half. The equatorial superstorm is constant and chaotic, having some of the highest wind speeds of any storm, but it is navigable with the right experience and equipment.

As a desert world, Gypsum has wide temperature swings between day and night. On the equator, the part of the world with the most consistent temperature, differentials between day and night are typically about 30 degrees Celsius. Nights can reach a balmy 54°C, with days being closer to 90°. On the poles, the temperature rarely exceeds 65°C, and can even get as low as 20°C in the dead of the year and a half long winter night. Frigid for the locals, but quite comfortable for anyone else.

The air on Gypsum is breathable, with a comfortable nitrogen-oxygen base making up the majority of the atmosphere. What is not breathable, however, are the particulates of electrostatically charged dust that tend to float around in the constant winds. While most native life has methods to deal with this dust and sand, foreign travelers need to take precaution with mesh face coverings at minimum when walking outside.

Moon

Selenite is the sole moon of Gypsum, and it orbits about an hour faster than the solar day of its parent planet. It takes about thirteen Gypsomn days, around twelve standard days, to make a full motion across the sky. These thirteen-day cyclings make up the periods for the standard lunar calendar, with three of them being one Gypsomn month. The phase of the moon changes throughout the course of the day, so it cannot be relied on. Each person knows where the moon is on the starting day of their cycle from their planetary position, but selenic calendar-compasses can help if one is traveling.

Selenite is a largely white moon, rich in silicate minerals and calcides from the orbital desoformation of Gypsum. If it had an atmosphere, it almost certainly would have large deposits of selenite crystals, which are currently hindered by the lack of water vapor. The scarce water is trapped under layers of rock in lunar ices. Selenite is a name given to the moon by the Kessenski, though that is a literal translation of their word for the crystal, "Liyit'a".

Biology

Gypsum's ecosystems are adapting, slowly, to the harsher parts of the world. The poles of the planet are equivalent to the desertic climates of the older geography, and as such they have had to essentially restart from the ends of the world and reach inwards towards the equator, which now gets to boiling temperatures in the summer. Plants and animals have been adapting to stay close to the ground, working against the strong winds by avoiding them altogether. Several species have taken up the niche of sand-swimmers, forming an underground ecosystem that cycles matter from lower in the ground up to the surface and ultimately keeps the sequestered planetary water in circulation longer.

Plant life has extensive root systems not to look for water, but to anchor them against the wind in otherwise loose sands. Chemosynthetic plankton and bacteria have been introduced as symbiotes to most plants, which allow them to break up the hydrate bone-sands for their water. These plankton were introduced in the first wave of preparatory bioengineering while the world was in the process of desertifying.

Endothermy is practically nonexistent among the animal kingdom, as heat energy is more than abundant. Endogelidic processes have been engineered into several species as an opposite, in fact, using internal circulation chambers to radiate heat away from them and cool off from within.

Genetic engineering has been something of a savior for the Gypsomn biosphere, as the presence of so much mildly toxic material into the planet-spanning deserts would be lethal to the original ecology of the planet. Most species still around today have had traits introduced during the transitional period that allow them to filter the toxic compounds out of their system and avoid ingesting dust altogether.

Government

For the past fifty-six hundred years, Gypsum has been under the control of burgeoning civilizations of Kessenski. These factions became nations, loosely organized by borders that shifted as the sands did. Four hundred and fifty-one nations of varying size and governance currently exist on the planet, with most of them being member states of a quasi-spiritual multinational organization known as Abakht Seker.

Abakht Seker is primarily focused on keeping the peace between the many Gypsomn nations that make it up, usually through interstellar diplomacy to trade for resources long since destroyed in the great upheaval.

"Foreigners" as a concept are generally held to a test of whether one was born and raised on Gypsum itself. The environment and required skills to thrive on the planet are much different than most other Zalanthian worlds, and all but four nations won't consider anyone a local unless they themselves were born and raised on-world. The distinction goes into language as well, with "Abakht Hruun" (Brother of the Desert) being shortened to an honorific "Abakht" for those considered native. Foreigners are assumed default in mixed settings, but in the planetary communities they are often appended the honorific Basen. Basen-Kessenski and Abakht-Kessenski are treated as more different from one another, at least legally in most areas, than Abakht-Kessenski and Abakht-humans or Basen-Kessenski and Basen-humans.

For historical reasons, thaumaturgy of any variety is the highest crime, above even high treason and regicide. It is punishable by death so strongly that all citizens are empowered to carry out the execution themselves. None would charge murder on a magi's public killing, so reviled is their ilk on Gypsum. The only exception, and it really is a rare one, is important religious leaders, and only accessed through use of psychoactive selenite crystal compounds. Note here that the psychoactive effects are a byproduct of Kessenski biology rather than the crystals themselves. Other psychoactive substances are sold in temples, though, under regulated grey markets.

Infrastructure

Most of the constructed infrastructure of Gypsum is designed around the sandblasting storms that occur in their region. Buildings are largely underground, and what does remain above the surface is made with thick aerodynamic walls. The digging out of these great cavernous cities is often followed by a great settlement ritual, where the sand excavated is all drained of its water. The water is placed into a pool that the new settlers bathe in before entering the city for the first time.

Power generation from wind is extensive, providing during the very weather that makes solar power unreliable. Chemical power generation is tricky, and fusion infrastructure is generally not required except at the large spaceport-cities. What really needs replacement from power generators is the propeller blades that get turned by the wind, as the high amount of sharp sand in the storm-winds tends to make them break down quickly.

Roads between cities are unheard of, since they would be buried by sand faster than they can be constructed. As most of Gypsum is open dunes and has a constant wind about it, the primary method of small-scale transport is sand-sailing. Small machine-operated vehicles with little but durable sails to propel it and an experienced driver can take one across the entire hemisphere of the planet they're on. To conserve power and take advantage of the planet's natural resources, these are sometimes hooked onto large sand-swimming animals to catch a ride. For travel through the equatorial band, however, hardier vehicles are needed. Capsule-sheltered sandsleds attached to trained animals, usually the large and powerful "hahset", are the only way to do safe and efficient travel through the equator. Despite not relying on air or space travel for intraplanetary movement, it's possible through these methods for an experienced traveler to get around the entire world in three days without cargo.

Agriculture is quite easy in the sheltered cities, as their underground nature and easy access to water in the sands make climate control simple. Most crops do still grow best above ground, though, fertilized by the windfalls carried on the storms. Each city makes as much as they can expect to need in event of complete isolation, though trade with the larger capitals and dedicated farm-districts is where most of their regular food supply comes from.

Resources

Though it is generally desolate and the Gypsomn people have to trade for many resources that cannot be easily harvested on-world, Gypsum still has a wealth of resources to offer. Its economic position as a planet is not particularly prosperous, but it is stable.

Minerals

A lot of old Clahaalia structures were made ornate with the rich metal deposits of Gypsum, but have since been destroyed and weathered away by the sandblasting storms they were not built to withstand. Silver is a particularly common metal, and its primary source is from sifting sand piles rather than large ore veins. Though demand is typically low for these metals, Gypsum's nations have been making deals to act as refineries for these metals, importing the raw stuff and exporting the finished product. The slag produced from refining metals is broken down by the winds to enrich the planet more, to hopefully export later.

Technology

Extreme survival technologies have been a market for explorers for many millennia, but affordability and accessibility are often a low priority. Those who cannot afford the extreme scalable workarounds of the Pneumoraq, for example, have low chances of survival on even marginally hotter planets without difficult-to-maintain external spacesuits, which often have catastrophic consequences for minor breaches.

The inhabitants of Gypsum have worked tirelessly off of older blueprints to develop technologies for surviving their home planet, and additionally have branched out their industries to work for other environments. These augments and equipment have a philosophy of graceful degradation, allowing explorers much more time to fix any malfunctions than classical equipment for medium and low-habitability worlds. As a consumer market, Gypsomn survival equipment is manufactured for affordability and user-compliant maintenance, ideal for hobbyists and small companies.

Drugs

Psychoactive substances tend to be unique to each species' biology, and the Kessenski have no shortage of their own electrically-charged crystal dust. When it comes to other species, however, their environment seems to make a natural wealth of variety. Compounds left behind by biological processes across the ecosystem are densely packed with molecules with psychoactive effects for various carbon-water based species. Further augmented by chemical refineries and integration into foods, the market for Gypsomn drugs is immense, if not a bit strange. In a universe where pleasure and leisure take up as much mental space as war and diplomacy, something to take the edge off or put a new one on is always in high demand, and the range of experiences that can be offered by Gypsum's powders and pastes gives it a vast market share.

History

3350 CE

For some perspective on what Gypsum was like before its current state, we must look back to 3350 CE. The planet was known as Beunn Brehhail back then, a multi-biome paradise with a wide array of temperatures depending on latitude and elevation. Beunn Brehhail was extremely humid towards the coasts, though its saltwater seas were concentrated enough to class as brine. Each ecosystem flourished across its continents, and the average temperature of the world was only 30°C.

The dominant species at the time were the Clahaalia, a four-armed arboreal species who had been in the business of constructing great arcologies for their people and had dabbled in interstellar travel. The planet was fairly developed, with weather-controlling satellites forming a network around the world and a population of around 10 billion. The economy was blooming and interstellar relations were relatively strong.

Desoform War

In the late 3800s, the Clahaalia's unified state entered a formal war with the civilization of Limehold, fighting over the right to secure a deal with the Benefactor. The six foremost clansmen of the reigning dynasty declared this, though they only controlled about 70% of the land area of their own planet and had poor military prowess for space-based combat. Their failure to prepare was in anticipation of the powers one could gain through Warlockdom, and in their hubris they went empty-handed to the Benefactor while sacrificing a good third of their infantry in a decoy operation. With no radioactive metals on hand, they were not even acknowledged.

Guerrilla tactics for the siege of Gypsum, then Beunn Brehhail, as well as much more emphasis on stealth slowly and painfully turned the war back in the favor of the Clahaalia. Limehold's forces, however, were extremely unforgiving by this point and were willing to stoop as low as they needed to in order to wipe out their opposition and protect their control of the Benefactor's market.

Enormous molecular clouds of desiccant minerals like magnesium and calcium sulfates were placed in the orbital path of Beunn Brehhail, too much to counteract and too dispersed to move out of the way. Over the next century, these mineral clouds bombarded the atmosphere and fell into the briny ocean, breaking up the salt and sequestering ten times the water per salt content. Just the reaction alone would have been enough to remove all bodies of water from the planet, but Limehold went the extra mile to permanently change the face of the planet.

The sequestration of water by these hygroscopic minerals releases a lot of heat, which quickly boiled the seas and let the great clouds of dust in the upper atmosphere meet billowing water clouds above the world. Sand rain fell for the next century, and the sea level fell dramatically. The excess heat served as a greenhouse effect, and refrigerant technology increased production immensely as the world's frantically uniting governments searched for a solution.

There was no solution. This climate crisis was too large-scale and too fine of matter to deal with. Limehold had ceased the war, a clear sign they believed it was over and that they had unconditionally won. It looked hopeless, and the skies shifted from their pale blue to a silvery violet as the deserts expanded and precipitation decreased worldwide.

The Kessenski Rise

The Clahaalia had retreated largely into their arcologies, modified to keep out the sandstorms and rising temperatures. There was no solution in sight, not to the climate of their planet. Their bodies wasted too much water to replenish... yes, it was a matter of the Clahaalia's bodies. Nachleben had been known as a concept, and so a two-pronged operation was carried out, coded Kesser. A genetically engineered species, made in the design that would be best suited to the simulated future stable state of Gypsum and in the body-plan image of the Clahaalia themselves. A reptilian species, granted the capabilities of speech and cognition that the Clahaalia had, raised to become their new bodies: the Kessenski.

The Kessenski were taught to use technology and writing, to go about life as the Clahaalia did in their climate-controlled sectors of the arcologies. The first generation was to be possessed by the ten million Clahaalia that still remained on-world, and this education was purely to acclimate their muscle memory for their new hosts to take advantage of. In turn, the observation and practice of the instinctual Kessenski behavior was supposed to be beneficial for the Clahaalia taking residence in their bodies. Many were not willing to sacrifice their forms to live on a dying world, though, and took to the stars to escape.

Meanwhile, thaumtech was researched with the goal of separating the mind out from the body and implanting it temporarily into another vessel. At first the experiments were small, with remote connection to a robotic arm and making it move with one's own arm, then with just a thought, then without the machine connection set up, then while unconscious. These took decades to progress, but by ninety-five years in they had something of a prototype. A way to fully switch a mind into a vessel, able to control the original body only while the connection was maintained. When the connection was severed momentarily, the soulless brain-instinct of the subject was all that was left, allowing only basal behaviors. The question then became how to separate the Kessenski minds first to import the new Clahaalia minds, and what neurological structure would do to the minds that came to inhabit them. The concept, though, was complete. Nachleben without immortality, a simple species-swap that could theoretically be used to transfer the minds of any two beings across bodies. They called the idea Mahbaeumm, or "Outer Travel" in their tongue.

The Kessenski were told they would inherit Gypsum once it had settled into its sealess state, that the Clahaalia were looking outwards and would uplift the new species, grant them access to the stars. It was a way of handing off the world without truly abandoning it, they said. They promised use of exotic materials and thaumic education once the world had been settled adequately by its new people. A side-by-side co-imperial commonwealth, under the shared banner of the Cobalt Order. All half-truths, of course, as the Kessenski were intended to be Clahaalia internally, and specifically the ones they spoke to at that.

By some miracle, the Kessenski managed to find out about this plan three years before their implants were scheduled for the great transfer. Not knowing what would be done with their minds and being understandably violently opposed to their bodies being taken, they quietly spread word and plotted rebellion. The planet still had about three hundred years before reaching its new equilibrium, so technology was an imminent need. Fortunately, the Kessenski were armed with the skills and education needed to understand their home facility. They began requesting things, little by little, that they could scrap together into weapons and listening devices. Coordinated plans were made through the language they developed, the one they could speak without the engineered providence of their mouths.

On the day one lunar cycle before the scheduled transfer, the Kessenski used their gathered information to break into a weapons depot and begin their violent uprising. Escaping into the dying scrubland, they broke down and salvaged vast quantities of materials, rallying under a unified cry of their identity. The Clahaalia made arrangements to begin a new generation of Kessenski, to hunt down the ones who had rebelled, but the information networks over the next few days resulted in the bombing of every known major genetics laboratory on the planet. The Clahaalia had their climate control destroyed bit by bit, cornering their water-lossy bodies further into their arcologies day by day. And then their spaceborne government, controlled at the time by the Cobalt Order, admitted defeat. Every single major structure was bombed from orbit hours later. The Order, having made negotiations for their own Warlockdom now, had decided to abandon Gypsum to spite their dissenters.

The Kessenski were bombed lightly for the next three years, with efforts focusing on turning existing civlizations to ruins, reducing their failed successors to tech-savvy stone age lizards. The salvage they managed to acquire between bombings became less and less valuable each time, and sensitive components were often lost to the shearing winds of the desert. Regardless, they wrote. They wrote in the old language and the new, a script better suited to quick speed, to document everything they knew for posterity, to gather the material they could before the dunes buried the ruins that were left. The Cobalt Order left Gypsum entirely, unable to survive there and no longer having any meaningful reason to land.

The thaumic nature of the technology intended to strip the Kessenski of their bodies led to a deep and permeating abhorrence of anything less sarkic than mythrides. Only their most trusted and most controlled officials could be allowed to handle the dangerous force, and only for the purposes of countering whatever the Cobalt empire would throw at them, the relentless bastards. Over the next several centuries, they slowly advanced in ways unforeseen by their predecessors, working within the confines of the deserts to make technology that worked without the luxurious resource deposits the Clahaalia destroyed. And by the 5000s CE, they had reached space once more, only to find their system fully abandoned. Ripe for the taking, the long-gone Cobalt Order making good on the old promise to the Kessenski by way of their own failure.