Kerillis

"Kerillis, one of the brightest stars in the galaxy. Beautiful from afar, but hell from up close. Pity it can't light our night skies for longer."

- Naler Vera, head of the Vernarcan Federation Astronomer's association

Kerillis is an O-type star that numbers among the largest stars in the Vernarca Nebula. Luckily for everyone nearby, it remains on the main sequence, although it is nearing the end of this phase in its life. It is found within the territory of Marakat, a breakaway republic from the old Tyran Empire prior to the latter's collapse in the aftermath of the Athos Supernova. Found nearby is the luminous blue variable Ilidaria, and they will pass very close to one another within the next few million years.

Properties

Being an early O-type star, Kerillis's surface is extraordinarily hot. So hot, in fact, that chemistry becomes impossible roughly five stellar radii above the surface and high-power shielding is required to reside close to it. In addition, if placed in the location of Verda, it would reach the orbit of Vijal. Kerillis has an impressively strong solar wind, beginning to blow a cavity in the gases of the Vernarca Nebula that surround it and forcing changes in trade routes through its space.

History

Ancient Past and Urann Expansion

Kerillis was formed within the Parallelogram Cluster of the Vernarca Nebula roughly 2.96 million years ago, remarkably in the same ten-thousand-years as Kegasis. This information tells scientists that it may have been caused by the Itsiquoian Supernova which occurred during that time. During the time of the Edrons, Kerillis was far from their core territory and constituted an outlying claim of their empire. Despite this, Edron constructs have been found here dating back to this time, likely as part of a power collection structure built around the star. The virus spread into the Edron network by the Obilehem Intelligence was introduced into the system at Kerillis and spread from there, resulting in the fall of the empire.

After rising from Vistari starting in 609 BC, the Urann species established the nation of Nephran in the counterspinward lobe of the Parallelogram Cluster. Kerillis marked the farthest reach of Nephran, and the border between it and Kethan-Enol. After the ecological collapse of Koraco, the Iron Thelsa established many settlements throughout the cluster, including at Kerillis' various asteroids.

During this time, Kerillis' enormous luminosity made it a very valuable position to hold for any nation near it. The desire to control the system directly led to numerous skirmishes and conflicts between Nephran and Kethan-Enol, scattering debris across it as infrastructure was destroyed in the fighting. Despite these conflicts, Kerillis never fell into the hands of Kethan-Enol and the Enolians for longer than a few decades. Nephran was likewise unable to establish much in the way of permanent infrastructure at this otherwise highly valuable star system. Kerillis spent the next several centuries falling to whoever took control of the nation that controlled it previously, as it was both too undeveloped for a losing regime to use as a redoubt and too naturally well-armed to attack directly.

This changed in 164 BC with the beginning of the Tyran Empire's conflict with Kethan-Enol. While the latter was more than a match for the Empire, this took their attention away from the border with what was then the Ilmuqah Sarichate, allowing the Urann to solidify control over the system. During this reprieve, Servant Yeha poured government funds into the construction of powerful defensive weaponry around Kerillis so that the Enolians could not return from their war and threaten the system again.

Unfortunately for Yeha and her successors, Kethan-Enol would not be what returned. In 89 BC, the Tyran Empire dealt the killing blow to Enolian independence with a nuclear strike on the moon of Durona which killed its entire population. The government at Canamar swiftly surrendered, and Kethan-Enol ceased to exist as an independent entity. Everyone in the lands beyond it knew that the military force of the Tyran Empire would be turned against them next, but no one had a clue as to when.

After the fall of Kethan-Enol, Servant Shewa was presented with a non-aggression pact by an emissary from the Tyran Senate. He knew full well that it was just an excuse for the Tyran military to rebuild its power after the conquest of Kethan-Enol, the Saladi Rebellion, and the war with the Falacian Dominion, but signed it anyway to provide his own nation the same opportunity. The project began by Servant Yeha continued and received more funding from her successor, as it coalesced into one of the first full-scale star-based beam weapons built in the Vernarca Nebula. In addition, all previous examples were around the more common main-sequence stars, while this one surrounded a star almost a million times brighter than the average.

Tyran Imperial Era

... Or at least it would if it was allowed to work. Beginning in 65, the Tyran Empire began to spread computerized viruses through the Ilmuqah defense network. Starships were unaffected, but the Kerillis beam weapon was completely neutralized, removing the nation's greatest defensive asset from the board. After Servant Shewa's unexpected death in 62, the Imperial fleet began its invasion at Kerillis before the weapon's fault could be uncovered and rectified in order to take advantage of this hole in defenses and the chaos caused by the Servant's death. While Sidama Harar was chosen as Servant just a few weeks after, she was an inexperienced heir to the throne and historians agree that her ineffective leadership doomed the nation.

As she was only 15 when she took the throne, she was highly inexperienced, and yet refused to allow a regent to serve in her stead. Servant Sidama demanded partial direct control over the military, ignoring her advisors and the actual military commanders. This only hastened the fall of the last of the Sarichates, and the Tyran war fleets almost reached the Buruli-Gatega System before the military wrested back control of their assignment in early 61 BC. It was too late for Kerillis, however, as the system was now firmly in the hands of the Empire.

With Kerillis firmly under the control of a single state for only the second time in history, the Empire began to organize its new holdings. Kerillis was to become the heart of this new territory, the beam weapon built by Shewa all those years earlier repurposed to uphold law and order in the far flung reaches of the Tyran Empire. They swiftly purged their own virus from the systems, enabling its use against those who would attempt to retake the system. As Kerillis' political situation was now more stable than it had been in centuries, various habitats began to crop up in its orbit, and its population ballooned in size as Tarasze and later Urann emigrated to the system.

This era of stability was all too short. Beginning in 34 BC with the ascendancy of God-Emperor Shahso, rebellions began to blossom in the area surrounding the system. Many of the habitats orbiting Kerillis began to quietly make life more difficult for the Tyran authorities due to Shahso's oppression of the outer colonial territories, without openly crossing the line of rebellion. Habitat constellations would change their trajectories without warning, resulting in navigation on the part of the definitely-welcome lumbering Tyran warships becoming extremely difficult.

These quiet acts of resistance went loud in 6 BC with the Marakat declaration of independence, followed by a spate of more direct sabotage of Tyran military infrastructure in the region. The virus initially used against the Ilmuqah Sarichate was pulled back out and sent after the Tyran Empire, disabling the centrally controlled Kerillis beam weapon for the duration of the Tyran War. Kerillis' massive size was used to the advantage of the rebels in 1 BC with the First Battle of Kerillis, in which an artificially triggered coronal mass ejection destroyed an entire fleet of Tyran warships. This directly led to the construction of new Tyran ships designed to be smaller and nimbler to avoid such things in the future, but this went slow and the behemoths continued to dominate the Tyran fleet makeup for the rest of its existence.

In response, the entire Tyran Ninth Fleet was ordered by Shahso himself to make for Vistari and commence an orbital bombardment. Outnumbering the rebel forces 3:1, the fleet carved a bloody path through Marakat space and entered the Deferna System later that year. While this campaign caused massive casualties, it would backfire and result in the newly formed Yazera Pact and Vernarcan Federation joining the war on the side of the revolutionaries, including Marakat. Unfortunately, this campaign would also leave Kerillis in the hands of the Tyran Empire once again.

The system's population did not like this development, and continued to act against their oppressors in what few ways would not simply result in a warship obliterating them. Luckily, Marakat managed to retake the system in early 5 AC with the help of the Yazera Pact and the help of a Tyran military officer who defected to the rebels. From this point until the end of the war, Kerillis would remain safely in the hands of its people. The stellar beam weapon was brought back online and proved effective at sniping incoming attempts to retake it.

Post-Independence and Modern Times

After the death of Shahso and the end of the Tyran War, Kerillis and Marakat as a whole lived in peace. But the inexperienced new government began its slow, inevitable backslide into corruption at an unfortunately rapid rate. The greater demographic diversity of the population resulted in conflicts of culture and politics, but also created a unique syncretic civilization within the Kerillis system and elsewhere. Ninavon 5, a habitat orbiting roughly 60 AU from the star, rose to prominence as a hub for traders, entrepreneurs, and diplomats from as far as Fass Karan, all seeking the valuable resources found in the area.

Over the course of Marakat's first decades of independence, the military gained increasing amounts of power and funding. This was justified by the supposed threat from Voyorras, the Enolian Coalition, and exaggerated internal rebellion, and led to expanded military presence in every system in Marakat. Kerillis became home to several powerful military bases even before General Ulisa's Coup and the establishment of the military government in 32 AC. After this establishment, Kerillis and the entirety of Marakat slid fully into martial law. Anti-government protests, most notably in the inner system, were brutally suppressed. Ninavon 5 and several of its neighbors seceded from Marakat to become an independent city-state, alongside all their accompanying agricultural and defensive infrastructure, and became a thorn in the side of the military government until its dissolution seven years later.

The government which replaced General Ulisa's military junta had all the problems of the one preceding it, and the populist Materica Courts Union took power just eight years later. They made quick work of all the democratic safeguards originally put in place after the Tyran War, claiming that they were leading the people of Marakat closer to the Infinite Goddess. They disbanded the military as a whole, replacing it with fanatical groups of largely informally trained zealots. Around this time, the new microstate of Ninavon became very glad that it had not returned to Marakat control after the fall of the military government, as its population was religiously diverse enough for the Materica Courts Union to take issue with them.

Over the next years, Kerillis' local culture gradually drifted farther and farther away from the rest of Marakat. Historians consider this the earliest signs of the near-complete political fragmentation experienced by the region in more recent times, but it hadn't gotten this far yet. The central government, moved to Overba shortly after the establishment of the Materica Courts Union, had a long-term goal of instituting religious law across the nation, but the more practical among them knew that the populace would not accept such a sudden change in the way of life they were used to and thus had to be "guided" towards the true way. In Kerillis, this took the form of subtle changes in the existing laws over time, and those who complained about these developments were largely seen as overreacting and paranoid. But they were correct.

Beyond Marakat, the rise of the Materica Courts Union grievously harmed the image of its chosen religion due to its oppressive policies, drastically crippling the trading revenue coming through the Kerillis system. Supreme Leader Thomar saw the Kerillis system as the source of several problems during her regime, including protests and uprisings from secularists, political leftists, and more traditional Matericans who used to be allies in the Courts Union's ascendancy. Following these events, federalist guerillas revolted, resulting in brutal fighting within the Kerillis system between rebels and the revolutionary forces.

During the Marakat Hostage Crisis, the Tyran Free State consulate on the outer station Arai 9 was seized by the government in 66 AC. The hostages were trapped on the station for 491 days in extremely unhealthy conditions, as national news services decried their prior presence as that of a "den of hellspawn". While the takeover of this facility and others across Marakat were popular with supporters of the Courts Union, these events resulted in a massive international backlash that crippled the Marakat economy and political system for decades to come. Meanwhile, Ninavon remained under what was functionally a siege as Marakat refused to import anything or allow other nations to reach it.

The population of the Kerillis habitats which remained under Marakat control chafed further under the religious laws being put in place by Supreme Leader Thomar. Grassroots uprisings began to spread from Kerillis to neighboring systems, leaving Thomar's newly appointed successor Menei on the back foot in regards to dealing with them. The movements in Kerillis and those across the country began to coalesce into the Shinmaa Front in 78 AC, which announced itself by attacking the inner system shipyards the next year. This began the Secular Revolution, culminating in the overthrow of the Materica Courts Union just two years later in mid-81 AC.

After the shipyard attack, most of the Secular Revolution took place elsewhere, leaving Kerillis largely undamaged. Ninavon 5 gleefully took part in driving the Materica Courts Union out of the system, leaving no possible foothold for their resurgence anywhere near the star – and for such a large star, "anywhere near" covers a sizeable area. The collapse of the Courts Union brought with it the reunification of Ninavon 5's alliance with the rest of Marakat, although the provisional government which took the place of the fanatics had so little power that very little changed in day-to-day life.

The provisional government's attempt to reestablish full-scale democracy in Marakat was valiant, but unsuccessful. The Materica Courts Union's rise and fall had so crippled both the image and infrastructure of government that it was nearly impossible to project power beyond the Deferna System, and so Kerillis' population were almost alone once again. The lack of central governmental power also resulted in a variety of small rebel groups and even outright pirates to arise in the outer reaches of Marakat space. Even as the Szalana Wormhole's discovery shook the Vernarca Nebula to its core, Marakat could do almost nothing about it.

Ninavon's reunion with Marakat had accomplished so little that it simply started holding senate meetings again around 125 AC to officially declare itself as an independent state. It expanded far beyond the earlier confines of the Ninavon 5 station and its accompanying infrastructure, to the entire cloud of habitats of which Ninavon 5 was a part, forming the second largest such separation from Marakat after that of Burumal. Today, Kerillis is fairly evenly split between Ninavon and various ostensibly-Marakat pirates and rebel groups, and Ninavon must put in a lot of effort defending itself against them.

Future Evolution

In roughly 1 million years, Kerillis will pass through the Hertzsprung Gap over ~1000 years or so before initiating core helium burning. By this time, its mass will have decreased to ~41.6 stellar masses, the remainder being ejected into space by the solar wind.

200 thousand years later, after this phase of its life, Kerillis will reach the misleadingly named "Naked Helium Burning Main Sequence" phase, in which all of its hydrogen will have burned away. During this phase, the entire star will be burning helium as it is fully convective at this time. By now, its mass will have dipped to 16.25 stellar masses, a far cry from its original size. This will be followed in 400,000 years by the Naked Helium Burning Hypergiant phase, which is similar, except bigger and only 10 stellar masses.

Finally, 1.6 million years from now, Kerillis will go supernova, creating a large nebula and stimulating a whole new generation of star formation before leaving behind a medium-sized stellar mass black hole.

Evolution Sim

Trivia

Kerillis is among the brightest stars visible in the skies of Teralla and other worlds within the Verda Stellar Neighborhood.
(OOU) Kerillis was the first star to be conceived specifically for the Worldbuilding Workshop universe, as prior creations like the "Sunny System" were imported from dream-solar-system ramblings.