Iphizgna's Curse of Winter

Ohh, spark from the iron South, heavenfallen, who dares burn in the sunlit sky / Retreat, retreat, with your stolen flame! Let us rest and pray to an untainted Heaven.
—Excerpt from Voraatu admonishment of Iphizgna, the Winter Spark

The planet Naaoth is hardly known, given its obscure locale and unassuming inhabitants. As a steaming fog-world with summer temperatures approaching 60°C on average and near 75°C at the closest approach to the brighter sun, Phozgna, seasons seem to be something of an afterthought when describing the planet. Its low axial tilt further reduces the effect of seasonality, or at least it once did. The current reason for Naaoth's extreme seasons, whereby the entire planet oscillates its average temperature by an astounding 30-35°C, is its high eccentricity. Its orbit is stabilized by the only other planet in the system, an ice giant the Voraatu call Anahimmar, as well as low resonant effects from its binary suns.

Naaoth's orbital seasons cover the entire planet, though the Northern hemisphere opposes the eccentricity with its axial tilt, and so has slightly less intense temperature swings. These seasons were, as archaeologists have projected, likely only spurred on about a hundred thousand years ago at most. Behavioral adapations in Naaothan life are the furthest extent of evolution has caused in response.

Notably, Naaoth's life is adapted to survive at temperatures of ~50°C, close to the summer temperature of the planet. The long winters are what is unnatural for them, and so life seems to have clustered more towards the equator in recent history.

Key Figures

The figures relevant to the study of Naaoth's emergence of seasons exist both within the Raelhehn system and beyond.

TD-3698-D739 - "Iphizgna"

The T-class brown dwarf TD-3698-D739, suspected to be the culprit of the gravitational disturbance that caused the planet to change its orbit, is found a mere 30 light years from Raelhehn. It was given the proper name Iphizgna by the Voraatu, which has been adopted as its official name in most contexts. With no planets of its own and extremely high relative velocity to the small Callurim cluster, it is an interloper to the group. Attempts to trace its motion back, spotty due to the density of bodies pulling on it, place it somewhere near the system several tens of thousands of years ago. In all likelihood, this body is the Iphizgna the Voraatu recorded.

Voraatu Petroglyphs at Rahn-Mehya

A set of truly ancient petroglyphs, documented at a ruin site in the mountain Rahn-Mehya on Naaoth's surface, depict a trail of fire across a daylit sky, above damaged sections that likely depict some form of ruin. Other sites have been claimed to have similar artifacts, but have much more substantial damage.

Oral traditions across many cultures speak of the beginning of seasons. While not inherently a sign of a perturbation, the few similarities across the stories include something "stealing the fire" from ancient peoples before disappearing into the night or being slaughtered. When combined with other evidence, particularly ecological, it seems these may descend from true tellings of Iphizgna's appearance.

Events

Below is a telling of what may have happened on Naaoth, embellished with some pieces of various oral traditions, that gave it its awkward seasonal orbit. Where science cannot yet breach, we must hope these stories hold true enough together.

Iphizgna Appears

The summer was eternal, warm and comforting. Phozgna and Lahaaru danced and circled each other in the sky gently. They did not fight, they did not take, they needed not borrow each others' light. Worgna told the time, always as it had, and only the sparse poles held any memory of cold during the long nights. There were seasons, though very mild ones at that, and not nearly enough to force the world to hide itself during the balmy chills.

But a third sun, a spark coming from the Southern sky, as red as the iron sands of the rare deserts of the world, began appearing in the day. It grew closer and brighter, and the people grew fearful of its approach. Prophets and sages knew nothing of it, and began attempting to find omens in its sinister light. It was dim, but growing brighter still. They feared it would come between the suns and stop their dance, stop their light. They feared it would conquer the heavens for itself and usher in an age of crimson skies.

Word spread slowly to the North, and generations passed hearing of the looming red fire. Iphizgna, they called it. The Iron-Forged Fire. Years, decades passed, and it only grew brighter still. As the light grew, the heavens wobbled. Astronomers could no longer find the stars to start the year, the arc of light across the night tilted, and the bright stars of Raelhehn's cluster shifted their time of appearance. Worgna was the only constant, and even that too began to delay its risings.

At the peak of Iphizgna's indiginty and greed, it was bright enough to be seen at all times of the day, providing a slight heat to the daytime that was not there. According to the ancient Voraatu, it flashed once in a bright red light they had never seen before, right at its apex, a fifth the size of the moon in the sky.

Iphizgna Wanes

As quickly as it arrived, Iphizgna fled, in front of the suns from the perspective of Naaoth, before relegating itself permanently to the nighttime. It maintained its size as the planet orbited for half a year, before shrinking and dimming over the next years. But something had been taken. The year, now distinctly longer and with the heavens remaining stuck in their toppled state, was longer. The dimming red glow had stolen the heat from two-thirds of the year, more or less, plunging them into a catastrophically cold state. At the poles at the coldest parts of the year, frost began to form, something never seen before. Storms raged as the world flexed hotter and colder, and the summer sun raged at the equator with fury never before seen. Lahaaru, they say, was wounded, her heart stolen by Iphizgna's scheme to light itself a new dance far away.

It took only three generations for the admonished to be gone from the day and the night, too far and dark to be seen. The Voraatu, freezing outside their desperate refuges, cursed it, until the day it would relinquish the flame of Lahaaru's turn.

The WInter in Waves

Naaoth's orbit was elliptical, more so than its modern one, immediately after the system was left abandoned. Anahimmar's own was similarly elliptical, bringing it closer in than it once was. For a brief period, their original 3:1 resonance was broken, and Anahimmar's effects on Naaoth's orbit had wild effects. They say there were some years without summers, some where they thought winter had retreated for good before it flashed back, and that the stars and moon were useless to tell when the seasons would shift again. The orbit was, frankly, unstable. The first winter nearly caused a mass extinction, after all, being the longest and coldest of them. These unpredictable temperature shifts persisted for thousands of years.

The Siren Saves

The winters eventually waned, and the summers relaxed, due to the stabilizing influence of the similarly-perturbed Anahimmar. One the orbital influences had turned into a 5:2 resonance, the precession of Naaoth's orbit slowed and its path around Phozgna and Lahaaru calmed. The equatorial belt is still harsh at the height of summer, but nowhere as deadly as the recorded first summers and nowhere near as rapidly heated to prevent the atmosphere from circulating the majority of its heat. Winters have remained largely the same in terms of intensity for at least twelve thousand years, but slowly came to a more regular periodicity that aligned with the year.

During the odd approach of the two at their closest points, Anahimmar appeared much brighter in the sky than it once had. This "strengthening" of its power during the winters led some Voraatu to, ironically, deduce that the ice giant had saved them from the chaos of the seasons by attracting the frost to itself. Anahimmar gained many of the guardian associations it holds in various Voraatu cultures from this story, a commonality that took quite some time to uncover.

Projections

Anahimmar's influence will eventually reduce Naaoth's eccentricity back to a low value, though it may take millions of years. The equilibrium temperature at that time will be lower, likely around 30°C. Naaothan life will need to drastically adapt for the change in climate that will result from this. Iphizgna will likely make its way through the rest of Callurim without incident or close approach to any other system, eventually lost within the greater disc of the Silky Way.

Iphizgna likely passed outside of Anahimmar's orbit, while Anahimmar was on the opposite side of its orbit and Naaoth was closer. Various simulations of its trajectory have been plotted out, but the specifics are hard to analyze without full knowledge of the system's original orbits and Iphizgna's history before the rest of Callurim began perturbing its escape.

The climate crisis of Naaoth is one that we may still call unfolding. It remains catastrophic, though life begins to advance towards this new evolutionary norm. The face of the planet remains similar to its original climate for now, but a critical point will be reached sometime in the distant future, and the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and worldwide biosphere may not be able to adapt fully. It is, in the broadest sense, a drawn-out mass extinction. Given enough time before the orbit settles into a wider circle, the Voraatu may be able to adapt as a technological civilization and continue living comfortably on their home world. The native flora and fauna of Naaoth, on the other hand, will be forever buried under this immense change. For a planet with such a rare balance of stable hothouse conditions and habitability, it will be tragic, lost to whatever other kind of world it may become.