Helyar

Two twins placed in the same cradle, the Humans and the Kya. Not unheard of in this universe, but never without its consequences. Explosive growth made Helyar the center of the universe for a time. Its two children demanded the attention of all those around them, but all this attention concentrated on one system was too much to bear. Both species have a higher population outside of here than within. This is what Helyar means to most people, a medium-sized star orbited by scrap heaps. Perhaps once important if they can recall their history lessons, but most know it for its resorts, tourist attractions, and poverty. Beyond this external perspective, there are many ways to look at the once-great system.

Wrested from its rightful owners, Humanity's glorious return to their home system will right millennia of wrong. There is something disgraceful about abandoning a homeworld, like abandoning one's parents when they grow old. Investment has already begun and the new real estate on Aegyn fetches a handsome price. There are certain liabilities that must be taken care of—folks practicing the old ways who can't understand progress. With reconstruction underway, citizenship available to all who are willing to work for it, and the light of civilization finally reignited, we'll see an end to their myopic attitudes in no time. Scrap in need of recycling awaits.

Left exploited and barren, the creatures from Aegyn finally left the system alone. It was inevitable; their ideologically inferior civilization could never best that of Vyllurian. Their troublesome conflict over who got to trade what or what galactic status they had was finally silenced. Sure, they remain clinging to the surface of some toxic irradiated planets, but the Kya never had a use for Aegyn's cold seas. With their rivals gone, the Kya heaved their aquatic bodies out of Vyllurian's gravity well, no small task since they needed water to breathe. The people's revolution may have slowed, but introducing these new-comers to its ideals may be the chance they need to restore Vyllurian to its role as capital of Helyar. The Kya have the papers proving they still own that scrap.

The spotlight went out. Humans abandoned their home world for Thalsiedeln, Petra, and Eos. Who needs the traitors? They can't handle a little ultra-violet radiation? What was that about there being no more ozone layer? Aegyn's inhabitants don't mind as long as it keeps everyone else away. Life was good on these so-called scrap heaps. Aegyn's populous sifted through powdered glass and plastic mixed with the soil, yielding metals from the old city. They are sold for fair market value, meaning little but enough to trade for rations. Every once and a while, the flag on some heavily-guarded garrison changes, somehow signifying that new people own the planet. It was a simple way of life until all of a sudden the Humans got bored of their new planets and returned home, it must be inconvenient for them that not everyone left.

Living on a pile of scrap with the air on the inside is far superior. The inhabitants of Santego Station or Riranuer have a fairly good position. Ancient stations maintained over close to three thousand years, a record in this violent part of the galaxy. There is no room for waste or luxury. The people living on rocks instead of in them have infinite air courtesy of weeds and infinite water courtesy of the sky. On the stations, there is plenty of work to be done and plenty of manufacturing to be done with Aegyn's exports. The resilience of the asteroid-inhabiting Humans of Helyar is remarkable; they live the same life over and over for thousands of years. As long as there is someone flying around Helyar, these strategically-placed stations have something to sell them.

There is no one way to look at Helyar, the sister star of Byutix.

Worlds

Shosturan

Useless. For a few hundred years, its atmosphere was thick enough to be interesting—seas of liquid quartz dominated the surface. They all dried up, flying into space because the place is just too hot. Before the event, its gaseous clouds yielded vast amounts of hydrogen and helium in a halo around the planet, too close to Helyar for a stable atmosphere, but not old enough for it to have all left. Now, getting those volatiles requires a trip to the outer solar system. The planet is still too hot to be set foot on, the occasional lander melts after a few days. Originally the core of a gas planet, all that heat from its formation still hasn't dissipated.

Completely irrelevant except as a strange bright star in the morning sky, unless one is a pagan. Rubedism, the worship of Mars, the foundation of modern Martial Civil Religion, is widespread around Helyar. Shosturan was a victim of one of Byutix's largest flares, aimed just so Helyar's magnetic field would capture its high-energy particles. Shosturan's magnetic field was crushed under the weight of the charged particles, exposing its atmosphere to Helyar's unabated gaze. It was caught in the middle of system-wide auroras, glowing pale blue as its hydrogen atmosphere was excited. Its moons, once plentiful, glowed angry reds, yellows, and blues. A spectacle for all in the universe and a disaster for all living around Helyar. What remained was the iron core, too stubborn to burn away.

Icaron

Icaron would be a scrap heap if there was anything that could last a few thousand years at 750 C. Instead, the ruins became mushy, as though they decided to lie down. The ruins are sparse, however. Collapsed domes, two unfinished space elevators, caves and lava tubes filled with ruins. For as long as five hundred years after the Triumvirate Civilization collapsed and investment in the planet dried up, its inhabitants would slowly scrounge together enough material to buy their way off of the rapidly heating planet. The last shuttle off world did not carry everyone with it; a handful of families remained. Icaron's last inhabitants combed the deserts for materials to extend their lives as long as possible. By 8,600, not a soul lived on Icaron, and its stayed that way save for very well-funded archeological missions.

Vyllurian

A stark departure from its inward siblings, Vyllurian is a fairly habitable ocean planet. The Kyan Commonwealth rules Vyllurian and, officially, all Kya in existence. Through extracting tribute from Kya even in different star systems, the Nooarchs of Vyllurian have amassed quite the impressive treasury. Vyllurian has been made into a center of finance and culture both by virtue of this wealth. An unintended consequence of this wealth is a cost of living higher than anywhere else in Aylathiya. Every year, its population reaches new lows.

While impressive, the rings are mostly made of silicates finely pulverized into powder. Unlike the rings of the outer Helyar system, rich in volatiles like ice and ammonia, Vyllurian's rings are mostly for show. Prospectors move millions of icy rocks move from outer Helyar toward Vyllurian, fueling the water needs of its countless stations. Careful so as to not disrupt the view of the rings from below, the stations have the same white color and float in the same orbit.

Aegyn

Two thousand years of neglect and Aegyn is now recovering from its fall. Twenty billion representing all peoples call the planet home. Since the beginning of the Helyar Reconstruction Committee, Aegyn has seen significant investment. Currently, the Helyar Reconstruction Committee acts as the default government of Aegyn. It works with private companies to rebuild. A number of quasi-independent states, more similar to gangs than proper countries, control large swathes of Aegyn. With their efforts, greenhouse gas concentration has fallen to natural levels, freezing over a quarter of the planet's surface.

All inhabitants of Aegyn walk atop a fine soil of plastic, glass, charcoal, metal oxide, and concrete. Ten years of Gran Rubedo bombarding the planet pulverized all buildings save for those made of super-alloys. Apart from the sheer loss of invaluable sites in Human history, the bombardment ended Aegyn's high status. To this day, warped skeletons of the old city planet just out of Aegyn's surface, some still taller than kilometers. With materials built during a time of plenty, much of Aegyn's economy is founded in recycling the soil and its precious super-alloys.

Olaris

Aegyn's sister and the true homeworld of Humanity, its surface has been long stripped of all resources to build up Aegyn's planet-spanning city. Olaris has been subject to over a dozen waves of colonization as Human nationalists returned to drench Olaris in their vanity. Monuments from many countries, even non-human ones gloating about their conquest, pepper the surface in various states of decay. Olaris remains less developed than even Aegyn, as nearly its entire economy is based on agriculture. Ten thousand years before the modern day, it was Olaris that was the capital of the universe. Center of the First Aeternal Society, Olaris was the epicenter of Classical Thaumaturgy and remains popular pilgrimage destination for magi across Cosmoria.

Sakurelle

Sakurelle's impressive blue rings and pink atmosphere do more than just set it apart from the other planets of Helyar. With easy access to helium, Sakurelle's orbiting fusion reactors never went dark even as Helyar's population fell. H. Aimer Corporation, before becoming The Kingdom of Tenshi, began terraforming the moon Nusti, whose rings and submoons make it a planet in its own right. Sakurelle and its moons host slightly more people than Aegyn.

Exriel

Exriel is the largest planet in the Helyar system, so large in fact that it rivals Byutix in size. With its immense size comes an immense magnetic field, protecting its moons from the worst of Helyar's radiation. As Aegyn's populace fled their home world, most found themselves around Exriel, either waiting to leave the system altogether or settling its plentiful dwarf moons. With less of a need for radiation shielding, Exriel's population became the largest in the system for a few centuries, only to collapse as its populace gradually trickled out of its gravity well. To this day, the abandoned domes, stations, and even military craft serve to house a population of a few million.

Exriel has a low cost of living for a gas planet, especially compared to far more populace planets of its type. With an economy dependent on agriculture, however, there is no way for the cost of living, or population, to increase very much.

Zepyai

Zepyai, the gas planet whose gravity is the lowest. The advent of cheap fusion power, nearly twenty five hundred years ago, caused an age of megastructures. Anything could be held together if energy were cheap enough, including floating cities around a gas planet. The largest project of Anthrovia was "terraforming a gas planet," an absurd idea. Even so, they began to work. Suspending airborne bacteria that could produce oxygen from trace carbon dioxide, then, as the oxygen reacts with methane and hydrogen to form water and carbon dioxide, the bacteria could create more sugars. The planet had a breathable atmosphere within a few centuries, and, just before Anthrovia's collapse, had a number of floating cities that, if one could tolerate frigid temperatures, were perfectly habitable. To this day, these cities remain even as the planet grows cooler and toxic gasses build up.