Pyre

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Native Species - None

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Moons - None

Description

Pyre is a large planet a significant fraction of the size of Earth. It has many heavy metals on its surface and is mined frequently. This leads to it being a key mining location. Unlike most hot planets, Pyre has silicon-based life, leading it to be an object of study for many scientists.

Pyre has roughly 15% of its surface covered in lava, which, uniquely, is home to a group of silicon-based species. This species is under heavy scrutiny to learn how it evolved in the extremely harsh conditions of the planet.

Pyre's volcanoes spew out vast plumes of hot lava hundreds of kilometers above the planet on occasion, which makes the planet rather dangerous. Pyre is also one of only three planets to have current active volcanism around Maea.

Properties

Being a super-earth, Pyre is significantly denser than Earth and similarly-sized planets, allowing it to hold a thin atmosphere (It could be thicker, but Maea's solar wind drives it away). Also, Pyre is very close to its parent star, and so its surface temperature is relatively high, leading to substantial lakes of molten rock. This, along with a large amount of silicon-based "organics" has led to the birth of silicon-based life, and maintained through Pyre's steadfast tectonic activity, bringing material to the surface and down to the mantle and helping life proliferate across the planet.

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 the Cnara-Frealee Federation, this is being studied a lot, and as a result it draws a heavy amount of scientists from all over the federation. 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.

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.

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 crack 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 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. Space stations such as Pyre Station are very easy to include as a result. The lack of moons has also paved way for potential planetary megastructures, such as Elysiums or massive planetary mining or defense systems.