Soleith

Overview

Soleith is a seasonal terra located just 23.76ly away from Earth. Home to two intelligent species known as the Soleithans and the Arioni, the planet boasts impressive coastal cities and submerged mini-cities, such as Oraktalaja ("Sea City" or "Water City"). Soleith is a deadly environment to Earth-life, with copious amounts of CO₂ making up a large portion of the atmosphere and a cool surface temperature of -18 degrees in the summer.

Geography

Due to the surface temperature on the planet, most landmasses are almost completely covered in snow and ice. The temperature has also allowed the polar ice caps to expand, further decreasing the amount of space life could thrive on. Surface temperature on the ice sheets is often as low as -33 degrees Celsius, making it a barren wasteland devoid of all life save for the toughest organisms.

History

Soleith formed alongside the rest of its system 10.008 billion years ago. Around 30 million years later, it captured the innermost of its three asteroid moons from the local asteroid belt (the belt has since declined in size, with only a few thousand major asteroids still present in it).Soleith captured its second asteroid moon around 40 million years after the first, with it also coming from the asteroid belt. The final moon was captured a mere 35,000 years ago, most likely from another nearby planet. It's thought Soleith's colder desert neighbour (often referred to as Solitude by humanity due to the lack of any life, native or foreign, on the planet) may have ejected one of its many asteroid moons, sending it on a trajectory intercepting Soleith. Geological work on the surface of the moon has shown that the abundance of certain minerals is incredibly similar to its counterparts around Solitude.

Approximately 6 billion years ago, the first unicellular life emerged on Soleith; Arionis protosolite. The species died out around 4 billion years ago, likely due to competition with more advanced lifeforms over food sources. Within a few hundred thousand years of the Arionis protosolite dying off, the First Great Extinction occurred. A super-volcano erupted near the modern city of Laneiastriya, causing ash - which blocked the sunlight - to fill the skies. Around 78% of all the various species on Soleith died out in the initial centuries of extreme winter.

By 315 million BCE, Soleith's tectonic plates began to slowly settle into their modern-day positions on the icy world. Around the same time, the first mammal-like organisms - known as the Phevarnsi - appeared in the Aleltia Archipelago.

Urban Geography

Due to the severe lack of habitable land on Soleith, most cities are located on the rocky coasts of the major continents. Thousands (if not more) floating communities exist in the highly saline oceans of the planet, though only a dozen or so exceed a population of 15,000. The capital cities of Axs-Mbos and Qetsys both carry a population of around 67 million, with just one million citizens not native to Soleith between them.