Pyre

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Dance, O Freest Aeon

This content is a part of Cosmoria.

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Index / Lexica / Timeline

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Pyre

Meta Info

Article Creator

TheMinmusDerp

Location Info

System

Cnara System

Society and Politics

Population

~143000 researchers from the Illuin Federation.

Capital City

Pyre Station (low orbit)

Economy

Economic Value

Medium

Production Value

Medium

Affiliation

Illuin Federation

The innermost planet of Maea in the Cnara System, Pyre is among the most hostile worlds in the universe. Everywhere on the surface is either dead rock often hot enough to glow or open gashes in the crustal material filled with upwelled lava with the consistency of hot taffy. In the early days of Florathelian civilization, ancient Erlas mined the planet to assemble many orbital structures, due to its high concentrations of very rare elements.

Differentiating it from most such airless hellworlds, bizarre silicon-based life exists in Pyre's lava oceans, slowly squeezing through its viscous fluid. This alien form of life is unique in the region, and it is unknown how it initially evolved. As such, many scientists have settled in research sites on the planet.

Pyre's volcanoes spew out vast plumes of hot gases hundreds of kilometers over the planetary surface, producing a beautiful sight from orbiting stations by refracting light from the scarily large disk of Maea into a rainbow of colors and forming complicated hazards that infrastructure has to avoid or shield against.

History

Pyre formed, along with the rest of the Cnara System, roughly 3.2 billion years ago. At that time, it was sterile, and the planet's unique silicon-based life only formed later. Pyre, just after formation, was covered fully by lava, with absolutely no solid surface. However, over the years, Pyre slowly cooled down to its present temperature, with more and more of the surface solidifying into plates as its silicon based life began to evolve.

The Glanadi Archives mention that one of the Lareas Alliance's client states came from a planet referred to as Ke'varri, located in a system with the exact same layout as the Cnara System. Most modern-day scientists are fairly sure that Ke'varri is in fact Pyre. However, there is no evidence of the existence of this intelligent civilization, with no buildings or megastructures or anything of the sort dating to this time period. Pyre was a key mining site of Ectabana and the Alshunaman Empire, as well as various successor states. The planet was also a point of contention between regional powers during the Years of Fire, and as such was mostly left alone for fear of one power provoking everyone else.

By the time of Yanaris and the Providence Union, the initial iteration of the modern Pyre Spacedock was assembled, making it one of the oldest pieces of remaining infrastructure in the system. The collapsing galactic order between Yanaris's dissolution and the end of the Peony Wars led to Pyre's small population briefly achieving independence from other states, taking advantage of the enormous power output of the nearby star to accomplish marvels of engineering. The hostile conditions that structures must surive in the area led to advances in material science that proliferated across Florathel after the Providence Union annexed the planet. Pyre would be a stronghold of the military government during the War of the Last Alliance until the climactic battle and Siege of Pyre. After this event, Pyre mostly retreated from the galactic stage as a member of a pacifistic nation, and it is today a fairly minor planet in Illuin.

Properties

Pyre's orbit takes it dangerously close to Maea's roche limit, which is the primary cause of the plentiful lava-filled rifts across the planetary surface. Alongside these tidal forces, the heat of Maea itself raises most of the crust to a temperature just a hair below its melting point, making it almost malleable assuming your hands weren't burned off on contact. Its enormous size for a rocky planet also gives it a very hot core and active tectonic systems, causing its cracked crust to shift around over periods of less than ten million years.

Life

Pyre, unlike most supercritical planetary objects, is a host to numerous multicellular organisms around its magma reservoirs. As planets like this are so rare in Cosmoria, this phenomenon draws a heavy amount of scientists from all over the galaxy. One of the most diverse regions for this life is Moresil Canyon, though there may be many more species hidden in the mantle or in crevices along the surface. A list of these lifeforms have been compiled below:

Bumblers

Bumblers are large creatures, roughly ten meters wide, which hold an appearance like that of a rock or boulder. They usually stumble around the slated surface of Pyre, searching for nutrients and smaller creatures. Bumblers have a pinpointed orifice which has the ability to consume and digest creatures as big as itself. Bumblers are considered the apex predator of Pyre's hostile surface.

Magma Rays

Magma rays hold the appearance of an aquatic life form. However, they reside primarily in the magma oceans of Pyre. Having a hard shell of silica, magma rays can cruise near the surface of lava pools, with some of them spotted near the mantle. Their survivability has allowed them to travel around under the crust very frequently as well.

Magma rays' main diet is smaller mantlefish, which they often dive deep into the mantle to get. they always swallow their prey whole, lacking any teeth or any mechanism to chew them.

Lava Skippers

Lava Skippers are bizarre life-forms that travel about by "skipping" across the surface of the lava like a very well-thrown flat rock. They aren't that large, but they usually form in groups and are often seen deterring colonists in numerous occasions. They have also been found nesting in the geothermal energy plants of some of the scientific bases.

Lava Skippers skip around the cliffs of Pyre, looking for energy-rich rocks to eat. Since the colonization of Pyre, they have found out about the colonies and are routinely found feeding on the energy coming off the powerplants.

Mantlefish

Mantlefish are basically large fish that swim in magma/lava. The term "mantlefish" is actually a blanket term for many different types of silicon-based fish, from tiny minnows to huge lava sharks. These aren't particularly well studied, due to the fact that their main habitat is miles beneath the crust and is only just being reached with drilling expeditions.

Magmatic Filtorb

Magmatic Filtorbs are species exclusively living in the great rifts of Pyre. They are most commonly described as orbs who filter chemicals from the lava, and convert these chemicals into Carbon Dioxide which it releases into the rarified atmosphere. They are considered one of the most common species on Pyre.

Landmarks

Freokna Flats

The Freokna Flats are the result of a huge outflow of lava cooling and solidifying into a vast expanse of almost perfectly flat terrain. This floodplain is being heavily mined, and some cities are being built on it for those insane people who want to live here. Occasionally, fossils of various kinds are found in the areas underground, signifying the ages of life across the planet.

Moresil Canyon

Moresil Canyon is a huge rift in the planet that reaches almost down to the planet's mantle. It is mostly filled with lava, but near the top of the canyon, there are many scientific bases bolted to the rift walls studying the planet's interior. Moresil Canyon is one of the most biodiverse regions for the strange silicon-based life on Pyre, which draws more scientists to this location than to anywhere else in the solar system.

Moon System

Pyre lacks a natural moon system, leaving it alone in its section of planetary space. Its hill sphere is barely 200 kilometers above the surface, and its central population hub, Pyre Spacedock, could only be stationed at the L2 point in the Pyre-Maea gravitational system.