Sirius

"The blue within white, the white in blue. The ocean is fire, in the night we must walk. Now in the ways of our forefathers we must create order anew, adrift in sunscorched stone."
—Rashaad Ibn Samir, "The Seven-eyed Twins"

The Fifth Assemblage, fifth closest star system to Sol, the brightest star in the night sky from humanity's cradle, is the binary system Sirius. Settled in the 2210s CE by the East Mediterranean Interstellar Program based in Byblos, Lebanon, it has since been a chaotic and unforgiving system with no clear world to capitalize on first. Blasted by radiation or acrid atmospheres, most of the resource-rich bodies are unfit for human habitation.

The settlers of Sirius have a long history of passion for governance, specifically methods of self-government and protection from those they view as outsiders. Their ancestors were disadvantaged before their arrival in the system, scrapping together their fleet to escape the Sol King at much greater cost to their homelands than most other space programs, with the sole determination to escape the fate of vassalization by any other state, any other people.

In a cruel twist of irony, the Aseirion polities have recreated the very situation they tried to escape, with an authoritarian superpower controlling much of the resources and readily habitable space, leaving those who disagree with the regime to flee to the inhospitable nature of the system's planets and struggle with much smaller numbers and much less at their disposal to survive on even footing.

System Architecture

Al Shira

Al Shira (الشعرا), also known as Sirius A, is a white-blue main sequence star about twice the mass of Sol. It has four planets, all of which pose extreme challenges for habitation. Blasted by the sun's incredible heat, poor in useful resources or corrosive enough to wear down the finest protective gear, Al Shira's worlds which once looked promising from afar are anything but. Regardless, the undying spirits of the settlers have put some presence on these worlds, small as it may be compared to the spaceborne civilization under the wings of the Faleyt Construction Guild and the Court of the Blue Pharaoh.

What little resources have been put into harvesting the stellar wind have been fruitful, as Al Shira's remarkably high metallicity make it a viable source of iron and other metals. The influx of available resources, high in their refinement as mere dust or vapor, has been invaluable in the past few decades in the negotiations between the Faleyt Construction Guild and the Lahiyat Aldhahab Mining Guild.

Hadath

Hadath (حدث), either the first or second planet from Al Shira depending on who's talking, is a boiling desert planet. With a moderately thick and toxic atmosphere, its temperatures consistently stay above the boiling point of water, consistently reaching 170°C during the equatorial day. The planet is inhospitable in its entirety, but rich in metals, especially iron and tin.

Hadath is sought after by the Lahiyat Aldhahab Mining Guild for its high concentration of metals and diverse array of minerals. The atmospheric pressure is comparable to Heruer's, but the boiling temperatures make mining dangerous to carry out with human teams. What few attempts to rebel from the miners happen on Hadath inevitably run out of resources, left stranded by the Guild to die and be harvested for their suit materials. Robotic oversight is the most common work for people on Hadath, and the only "permanent residents" are there by coercive work contract.

Hadath is in a horseshoe binary with Batroun, sharing the first orbital position with it. This particular configuration is rather stable, and will likely only be disrupted when Al Shira exits the main sequence. In most ordered lists, Hadath is ordered before Batroun arbitrarily, reasoned mostly through its higher temperature.

Batroun

Batroun (بترون), either the first or second planet from Al Shira depending on who's talking, is a much milder desertic planet than its twin Hadath. At a comparatively balmy 76°C average temperature, the suits required to survive are not nearly as expensive or limiting as for its hotter sister. The main concern is instead its atmosphere's composition, which when exposed to oxygen is dangerously flammable. Free oxygen is very sparse in the atmosphere, so this is only really a concern when dealing with errors in airlocks or suit air seals that would still be fatal regardless.

Batroun is extremely limited in permanent habitation, made of bases only constructed for the operations of the Mining Guild. Some small breakway groups of underprivileged employees have refactored a few of these bases into small homes, though the only thing keeping them from being persecuted is the Guild's own belief that they are expendable.

Batroun is poor in resources, but its ability to actually host life with heavy support is the reason it is most sought after. Most new conscripts for the Mining Guild are trained for survival on Batroun before being sent off to other worlds. The Guild's own headquarters is placed on Kakrik, gifted to them with extensive radiation shielding by the Faleyt Construction Guild as a sign of goodwill in the early 2320s.

Abydos

Abydos (أبيدوس) is the third planet from Al Shira and the first to be detected with actual prospects of habitability. Its water-rich atmosphere, the third densest in the system, caused brief excitement after a meteor impact blasted significant vaporous debris into space, where it was observable by Earth instruments.

Abydos is an ocean world, but far enough from Al Shira that it is partially frozen over. Almost half the planet's surface is covered in massive caps of sea ice. Once thought by the general public of Sol to be a corrosive acid sea due to fabricated research, it is actually made of somewhat alkalized water, with an average pH of 8.7 across the oceans.

The complete lack of solid rocky ground is Abydos' main challenge, as alkaline ices pose more difficulty traversing and building on than a typical rocky planet would. The only regions able to be built upon are necessarily some of the harshest and most inhospitable climates known on Earth. Plants cannot be planted into the ice, nor watered with Abydos' seawater without consistent acid neutralization, and so all hopes for bringing an Earth-like ecosystem to the planet are dashed. As Sirius ages and grows hotter, the ice caps that can even be used for construction will melt, turning it into a planet of raft cities and endless flat horizons.

Rashaya

Rashaya (راشيا), fourth and largest planet of Al Shira, as well as the largest planet in the entire Sirius system, contributing gravitational influences alongside Ras Maska that were originally hypothesized to be a very dim third star in the Sirius system. It bears striking similarities in mass and rotation to Saturn, a resemblance that is only enhanced by its prominent and vast ring system.

Rashaya's clouds are primarily ammonia, though its impurities (mostly metal dusts and other ices, likely leftover from Sothis' detonation) give it a distinct violet tint to its bands. These gases and ices are harvested for a plethora of manufacturing purposes, though crew turnover is incredibly high. The wind speeds and storm activity on Rashaya are deceptive, as the lack of massive cyclonic features gives it a somewhat peaceful appearance.

Despite its position in the system, Rashaya only has two major moons, Heruer and Harsiess. Its expansive rings may have once been two or three large moons, destroyed in a series of collisions caused by any number of possible instabilities. Its moons suffer from the issue of radiation belts, though their substantial atmospheres protect both of their surfaces from the greatest dangers of these.

Heruer

Heruer (حاروار) has acidic rain and seas, as well as a somewhat toxic atmosphere, but it's the most promising candidate for some terraformation effort. Its atmosphere is thick with nitrogen and oxygen-poor, but at such high concentrations the greatest psychological risk from this composition is nitrogen narcosis. Cognition is severely impaired by such high partial pressures of nitrogen, and physical functions are impaired moderately as well, even discounting the low oxygen content and 3% CO2. Pressurization of one's own breathing apparatus can cause "Fume Madness", which manifests as a drunken sluggish euphoria until hypoxia sets in. More mild, but still prevalent, is the issue of corrosion from acidified rain. Nitric acid produced from volcanic smog often mixes with clouds and gives the rains some corrosive properties.

Heruer is within the temperate range, its average daily temperature being just enough to keep its seas above freezing. This thermal energy is not entirely from Al Shira, as solar flux alone keeps bodies at Rashaya's distance at around the temperature of Mars. Heruer's proximity to Rashaya and its slightly perturbed orbit, likely from an ancient impact, have caused tidal heating and volcanism to increase greatly on the moon. CO2 and nitrogen compounds from within the mantle have been outgassing for tens of millions of years by the present day, giving its atmosphere that distinct thickness and corrosive haze.

Heruer is the second most populated body in the system, though it only holds a population of around twenty-two million people. It is in a 6:5 orbital resonance with its sister-moon, Harsiess, which takes the title of most populus body. Despite its risks, the prospects of terraforming Heruer are greater than that of its sister-moon. Removing about half of the atmosphere and promoting plant growth are all that would be required to set the moon on track to become fully habitable, though doing so without disrupting the habitats already on-world is an immense ask that requires centuries of continued effort. Projects have only briefly started thrice, and all failed when met with the daunting scale of their task.

Harsiess

Harsiess (حارسيس) is the outer moon of Rashaya, orbiting five times for every six of its inner neighbor. It is the largest moon in the system, with a radius greater than that of even the Earth. It is a frozen moon, completely iced over but rich in water and hydrate-minerals. Its tectonic activity and surface features are similar to moons like Europa, which suggested a subsurface ocean beneath the endless glaciers—one which was confirmed upon landing and seismic investigation. If the moon were to be heated up, however, this ocean would be deep like that of Abydos, making the real-estate of the land almost entirely useless.

Harsiess has an atmosphere of moderate pressure, though its N2-CO-NH3 composition is incompatible with Earth life. The weather systems of water-ammonia snows is primarily powered by the jets that shoot up from the moon's most prominent fissures, which shift locations over the decades.

Harsiess is the most stable and readily habitable body in the Sirius system, requiring powerful thermal protection and tanks full of suitable air to survive. Its icy surface is made up of "dirty ice"—a mineralized blend of ice and rock dust. It is solid enough to build on quite easily, though unfit for plants. However, the minerals brought to the surface through the jets are valuable with dead plant matter for the production of new soil. These conditions make it at least possible to create large cities and sustain human life within carefully controlled environments. For these reasons, Harsiess is the most populated body in the system, holding one-fourteenth of the system's total population at a sizeable 50 million individuals.

Sothis

Sothis (سوثس) is the calmer star, the white dwarf sometimes lovingly known as the Pup Star. Its light is dim even from its remaining planets, whose migration inward has given them positions near the stellar remnant's temperate zone. The planets around Sothis experience two daytimes, with Al Shira overpowering their own parent by a variable but notable amount, depending on Sothis' position in its own orbit. At its furthest, it has similar brightness to Al Shira from the perspective of its planets; at the closest approach, Al Shira outshines it by a factor of about seven for Sur and almost forty for Ras Maska. The worlds of Sothis experience extreme temperature variations throughout the star's orbit due to this eccentricity.

As of 2500 CE, Sothis is over 16 AU away from Al Shira, on its way to the far end of its elliptical orbit. Another period of separatism and turmoil for the Sothiat population may well be at hand.

Sur

Sur's hellish plains visible, its moon Anhur barely visible

Sur (صور) is a cooler sister to Venus. With one of the densest atmospheres, this planet is only fit for machines to harvest from. While the Guilds operate in tandem with Greater Byblos in almost all of their decisions and interests, they are technically independent collective economic entities, and so it should come as no surprise that their presence extends to Sur's unconscionably difficult plains.

While the atmosphere is mostly inert, it contains a 13% composition of sulfur dioxide, which is powerfully corrosive at Sur's temperatures. Most of the mining done on the planet for its metals and raw stone is performed by robots, but human overseers are subjected to literally hellish conditions in their usually coercive jobs.

At Sothis' closest approach, Sur is the hottest planet in the system, boiling itself at over 200°C. On the other end of the stellar cycle, it is tied with Hadath's scorching heat. Its atmosphere is the second densest in the system, having a pressure over nine times that of Earth's. The radiation it receives from both Sothis and Al Shira has produced many volatile compounds on its surface, which interact with its sulfurous atmosphere to produce a variety of complex chemicals that the Mining Guild sees fit to harvest.

Ras Maska

Ras Maska (رأس مسقا), the sole ice giant of Sothis, is the second planet from the star. It is a sizeable ice giant, comparable to Uranus in appearance but decently more massive. Its appearance shifts greatly over the course of its orbit, as its temperature ranges from -150°C up to -65° or so. Its atmosphere and rings are icy, hardly fit to harvest anything unique from. The consolidated powers of its moons have strong resentment for the Lahiyat Aldhahab Mining Guild, harboring their own military forces against them whenever they decide that the atmosphere's methane is useful.

During the stellar winter, its cloud formations become more prominent, as the ammonia and methane in its atmosphere begin to condense into strong cyan and dull verdigris bands. During the stellar summer, the clouds disperse into a blank cyan haze and the water content of the atmosphere rises, giving it a much paler and uniform color.

Ras Maska's magnetic interactions with its moons and with Sothis' magnetosphere produces a particular digital noise that machinery needs to be tuned around. Even when accounting for this, digital images tend to have artifacts from the frequency it emits. This is likely caused by heavy absorption of metals into the ice giant's core that occurred when Sothis went through its red giant phase.

Faraya

Faraya (فاريا), first moon from Ras Maska, is a relatively unpromising icy selena world. However, the low solar flux and stable emptiness of the icy moon make it perfect for habitats perfected by the decades spent colonizing Luna before the great flight from Sol. As Sothis is periodically far from Al Shira and the influence of the government, Faraya goes through cyclic periods of necessary independence and outright secession. With nine million permanent residents, several small states have arisen on this moon.

Faraya's greatest challenge is its low gravity; at only eight percent that of the Earth's, it poses major health risks. With relatively low solar flux and generally self-similar terrain, bases have little limit to how they can expand or be constructed beyond the ordinances imposed by the Faleyt Construction Guild that they purchase materials from. Rotating abodes are extremely common, and one of the most abundant types of building is recreational exercise areas.

During the stellar summer, Faraya's more tectonically active regions begin to melt under the icy crust, giving rise to worldwide deposits of freshly released snow vapor. This outgassing of ices is thought to contribute to Ras Maska's rings, making up for the losses that it incurs each stellar cycle.

Aramoun

Aramoun (عرمون), second moon from Ras Maska, is a relatively unpromising icy selena world. With a population of neo-Hellenic cultural revivalists forming the small nation New Aeolia, Aramoun's bi-name Dieresos (Διερεσός) harkens back to the city many of the Greek population of Sirius' original settlers came from. Overall, Aramoun is considered the capital of the Sothiat bodies.

The crust itself is semi-stable, among the older crusts of the ice moons of Sirius. However, its regions do contract and warp over the millennia, leading to prominent chaos terrain along the equatorial regions. Its older and darker regions contain trace tholins and other minerals, which are mostly harvested for construction.

Aramoun is significantly larger than Faraya, having much more distinct regions and a much thicker ice crust. Its orbit is perturbed aperiodically by Enfeh and, to a much lesser extent, Faraya. The moons are not yet in any sort of resonance chain, and with Aramoun as the middle of the three, it suffers irregular tectonic influences for it. Its crust has been confirmed to have a subsurface ocean, though its accessibility prospects are grim. The ocean begins at more than thirty kilometers through its thick ice.

Enfeh

Enfeh (أنفة) has an extremely water-rich atmosphere, but it only has shallow collections of liquid at the bottom of its canyons. While one might consider this to be perfect to harvest water from, given the over twenty-four atmospheres of pressure on the moon, the remaining composition of its gases makes the idea laughable at best, especially with Abydos easily accessible to the Al Shiran population and plenty of icy bodies around either star.

Enfeh's atmosphere is entirely anoxic, which is extremely fortunate. With the highest atmospheric pressure of any terrestrial body in the system and a temperature of 66°C during the stellar winter, its uniquely explosive atmosphere will take any chance it can get to react away any and all free oxygen. Its skies are a concoction of sulfur dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, acetylene, methane, ethylene, ethane, propane, and octane, all of which are volatile in the presence of oxygen even in Earth's atmospheric conditions. Many of these gases are also corrosive, requiring an exterior shell to any heavy-duty spacesuit in order to withstand it for even a few hours.

There are reckless groups who build on Enfeh, using water-electrolysis to gain access to oxygen in their underground homes, though even a minor leak from a suit or airlock annihilates these with quick acidic fireballs. These are usually made of extremists with nowhere else to go, choosing to hide where they won't be followed for fear of the dangers the very air presents.

Other

Keserwan

Keserwan (كسروان) is the only circumbinary planet in the Sirius system, a dim ice world orbiting both stars at a distance of over 70 AU. Its tholin-rich crust is the only real value it holds. Gravitational assists aside, its distance from both stars and heavily inclined orbit makes it a pain to access even in optimal conditions. The planet is often thought of as a "mega-Pluto", its frigid crust having the same conditions, if none of the dwarf planet's distinctive charm.

What few bases exist here are homes for extremists and extremophiles, people seeking sovereignty in a system that is all-too-heavily monitored by its foremost nation. Rather than subject themselves to another group's will, most of the fewer than twenty thousand residents are staunch independents, waging their own wars and treatises on the ice rather than be subjected to the tyranny of the Blue Pharaoh or the brutal regimes standing in defiance of him. They seek solace in isolation, peering into the interstellar void for comfort instead of the distant radiance of the suns.

Heliakria

A Heliakrion (هلياكريون; Ηλιακρίον) is a type of orbital habitat invented for the Sirius system. Consisting of a semi-conical outer shell, it somewhat resembles return capsules of ancient spacecraft. They are the size of a large city, and were drafted as a way to deal with the uniquely high-energy stars of the Sirius assemblage.

Al Shira, being the hottest and most massive main-sequence star of the Assemblages, requires extra care against its radiation. Likewise, Sothis is the hottest celestial body of all the systems yet explored. The Heliakrion habitats were designed to deal with this, filtering harmful light out through specialized layers of tinted glass to return their light to a more normal level.

A Heliakrion is usally split into five "Districts" nested in one another, based around the level of brightness they receive. The outermost district is the Daylight district, which allows almost exactly the amount of light received by inhabitants of Sol into the living area. Further in are the three Twilight districts, starting with the Twilight district proper and moving inwards to the Evening and Dusk districts. Finally, the innermost and largest district is the Night district, illuminated only by artificial light. Such a sunless and artificially lit environment is hostile to human biology, so residential property is scarce and cheap in the Night districts. Residents are advised to spend time regularly in lighter Districts to not lose their sanity. Most of this district is typically relegated to utilities or commerce.

The Heliakrion Oseiros is the first one constructed, and is the primary orbital capital of the entire Sirius system. Its own Night district is a grand labyrinth of offices and monuments to history, culminating in a pyramidiform palace where the governmental work can happen undisturbed.

Demographics

The majority of Sirius' inhabitants are descended from Lebanese expats from Sol, with ancestral lines also stemming from every other participant nation in the East Mediterranean Interstellar Program. Though vastly underfunded, the combined efforts of the Lebanese government and sparser groups from Greece, Syria, Cyprus, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey managed to successfully reach Sirius before anyone else, becoming the prime inhabitants.

Through the generations, families have mixed enough that almost all individuals can trace their heritage back to all of these countries, though they remain united under the national identity of NPGB or whatever factions still resist its hegemonic rule over the system more than they do their heritage. More strikingly, the light genetic augmentation permitted to be used on humans by the Pharaoate has given some people greater adaptability to the most difficult part of the system's habitation: the radiation. A branch population of people adapting more and more to this, mostly the on-worlders, has been emerging for the past two hundred years, noted by their darker, more blue-tinged skin and hair and dark birthmarks concentrated around their eyes. These humans, called Aseirion (الساريون, Ασείριον) for the blazing light their adaptations protect against, are a rare sight among the Heliakria and are regarded with some form of superstition, varying by locale. Rebels, oracles, true warriors or sages, their reputation can be stifling in various locations.

Around 90% of the population, totaling around 600 million individuals, live in the vast and dense network of Heliakria of varying sizes, orbiting mostly in the Trojan regions of Rashaya's orbit. The most populated celestial body, Harsiess, only holds 50 million people, followed by Heruer's 22 million. The next most populated bodies are Aramoun and Faraya, with 11 and 9 million people respectively. Abydos is the last body with over a million residents, hosting 5 million people in its ice-cap colonies. The remaining population is scattered through the system, rogue groups or wandering indentured servants of the Guilds.

Governance

While Neo-Pharaonic Greater Byblos is said to control the entire Sirius system, this governance extends practically only through the Heliakria, where the majority population of the system resides. Under the rule of the Blue Pharaoh (الفرعون الأزرق; Romanized: Al-firʿawn Al-Azraq), over 90% of the Sirius system is under the dominion of an absolute monarchy in the guise of a bureaucratic pseudo-technocracy. Officially, councils of the greatest and most respected researchers in various scientific fields convene within Oseiros' Night District to discuss issues of resources, expansion, development, and maintenance for the various locations under NPGB's jurisdiction. The Blue Pharaoh is an entirely separate entity, officially just a public speaker and mediator for the leaders of the Aseirion branches of their various religions, most prominently Orthodox Christianity and Islam. In practice, the Pharaoh sits in on council discussions "for the purposes of understanding policies and strategizing so as to not cause religious contempt". This sitting Pharaoh position has gained unchallengeable influence within the councils themselves, to the point that most decisions are essentially at his own discretion.

This is not to say that the Blue Pharaoh is a total monarch. The tradition since the secret rise of the Pharaoate's power has been to use the advice of the technocrats, converting their role from a parliamentary concordance into advisors for a shadow king. While the illusion operates well, the family of the Pharaoh is notably better off than most religious leaders, at the heart of the interests of the great Guilds, and often equated with the face of Neo-Pharaonic Greater Byblos itself.

Life under the Pharaoate is not easy, especially as local ordinances stack up at the tipping of each new incident. The harshness of the light or darkness, depending on the layer of Heliakrion one inhabits, the closed-off economies that rely more on self-sufficiency than trade, and the pervasive cultural need to make something of oneself can be staggeringly difficult to manage and navigate. Resources are provided according to one's own contributions, a constant game of selling oneself to prove worth. Fortunately, the veneer of bureaucracy means that plenty of paper-pushing and legal jobs exist, including ones based around debate and interpretation of law.

A few Heliakria are rogue, taken over by those in defiance of the Blue Pharaoh and molded into their own microstates. The self-sufficient design of a Heliakrion makes it relatively easy, if one can avoid military repercussions from NPGB. Much more common for dissenting groups is the formation of nations on-world on the more habitable bodies. Independent bases on the moons Faraya and Aramoun are the largest and fastest-growing anti-Pharaonic states in the system, with several other factions roaming more like pirates through the ices and seas of Abydos and the boiling, corrosive surface of Enfeh.

Language

The majority of the settlers spoke some form of Arabic when first leaving Earth, with the second and third most prominent languages being Greek and Turkish. Once again, the demographic split homogenized into a rather even blend of dialects, and under the philosophy of creating new traditions out of the old, a modified version of the majority dialect (Levantine Arabic) was drafted to accommodate looser grammar and pronunciation that allowed for much more pronounced Greek and Turkish accents to be recognizable. In practice, this applied several new markers to many parts of speech to free word order up, as well as putting more emphasis on stress of syllables to clear up similar sounds of certain short and long vowels.

Neo-Levantine Arabic bears in its most common spoken and written form an almost perfect similarity to its namesake predecessor, using the Arabic script as its primary writing system. Modified versions of the Greek, Latin, and Coptic alphabets have been drafted to use as alternative systems, though their use is extremely limited and usually only done for artistic purposes. These modified scripts have also been flipped, being read right to left to stay consistent with the main script.

History

Exodus

The people to settle Sirius, according to the plan by the original inventors of the Daedalus Drive, would have been corporate underministries of the company which first drafted it. After the catastrophic failure of that plan, the Drive was publicized. While study of nearby systems, especially Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star, directed much exodus efforts towards them, the increasingly strained Middle East struggled to keep pace with the interstellar programs of the rest of the world. The East Mediterranean Interstellar Program, made up of several smaller space programs that were individually worried about failure to capitalize on a body and self-govern, coalesced throughout the efforts of the 2110s, based in Byblos, Lebanon and funded by the Lebanese government. Out of the constituent members, the Greek membership came from those who had been denied positions on the fleets to Alpha Centauri rather than any official national alliance. They ended up being the smallest population in the expedition.

The plan, in accordance with trends at the time, was to create as massive a fleet as possible, filled with a sustainable population and set of resources, and send it to Sirius—a star avoided thus far for stigma of it being Amazon's chosen system for their corporate Exodus Initiative, the system's low prospects of planets, and its dangerously high radiation output. With the scramble for resources by the rest of the world, trade was difficult and engineering even more so. Attention was better paid to calmer stars richer in known worlds, but by the 2140s a team in collaboration between Brazil and the United States of America announced confirmation of a water-rich world (now known as Abydos) in Sirius A's habitable zone. The Drive had just been reverse-engineered independently by the EMIP, and they were years off from being ready to leave.

Though the Sol King's presence necessitated a unified effort to leave, the people meant to colonize Sirius were worried about being subjugated by larger military presences that launched earlier. In a nation-threatening sum of money, they bribed the astronomical association to falsely release reports of Sirius' planets, leading to the research statements that the detected water was found alongside sulfuric acid and various other corrosive compounds. This would not last for more than a few decades, but the disinterest in yet another Venutian hell-planet dissuaded other people from Sirius for long enough that the first launch was from the EMIP on October 14 in the year 2148.

The EMIP's determination to reach Sirius first drove them to pour extreme resources into their fleets, giving the ships a remarkable maximum speed of 13.6% of the speed of light. The nations involved in this exodus suffered heavily from this initiative, but in return nearly eight years were shaved off of the travel time.

Arrival

The journey was a long and difficult one, aboard a hundred and sixteen ships for just shy of sixty-four years. The melting-pot cultures were connected more within the ships than between them, but the foremost ship sent light-lagged messages to the ones behind it, eventually gaining political control due to this one-way messaging. Aboard this ship was the great philosopher-astronomer Rashaad Ibn Samir, who, in seeing the half-century of desperation to escape the encroaching powers of empires terrestrial and Solar, developed a pseudo-religious school of thought to bind people closer than their ancestral ties would. His writings and speeches would be taken as a culturally founding scripture, though he dared not take up any role of leadership on his own.

By the time of arrival—October 4, 2212, studies at speed had shown little data besides gravitational flux, allowing only very basic ideas of how much mass orbited each star. Around Al Shira should have been enough mass for a small gas giant, and Sothis had enough for a small system of its own, if anything. The prospects were confirmed upon deceleration, entering the reference frame of the system itself. What the fleet found were dead worlds, many of them just out of reach by one factor or another for being habitable. A tempting garden of worlds, but none anywhere near as ready to go as Aeros. In a great move of desperation, base camps were set up on the ice moon Harsiess and half the ships were dismantled, repurposed using the spaceborne shelter design thought up by Greek theoretical engineer and known futurist Lemnache Halaphios into the great Heliakrion Oseiros.

The form of government established, ghostwritten by Rashaad Ibn Samir so as to preserve the values instilled into the aseirion settlers, was to have a council of the smartest and most qualified in each field, as the room for error for the Heliakrion-centered civilization that was springing up was much thinner than any planetary nation would be. A spiritual leader for all major religions was to be established under the title of Blue Pharaoh. This Pharaoh would be a unifying force for the religious interests of people, adjacent to the technocats but not directly involved in their council.

(More TBD)