Jevethra

A key strategic location within the deep core of the Vernarcan Federation, Jevethra is one of the most important planets in the region. Jevethra is the second largest planet orbiting Verda, and one of the earliest colonies of Teralla before the founding of the federation. Found in Verda's habitable zone, the planet is unique in the presence of multicellular life within its ring system and microbial life forms floating in its upper atmosphere, alongside two easily terraformed worlds.

Physical Characteristics

Jevethra, found in Verda's habitable zone, is within the temperature range for stable liquid water. Therefore, its clouds are composed of water, rather than the ammonia-methane clouds found at Glau and Nerella, giving it a unique blue-white hue. Its large size makes it a major gravitational influence within the Inner Verda System, making most of the worlds in the region gravitationally tethered to it in some way.

Similar to its much larger companion Glau, Jevethra's atmosphere consists of primarily hydrogen and helium. This atmosphere also contains large amounts of methane and a decent amount of water, which scatters light and forms clouds in a unique way to give the planet a bluish white hue.

Rings

Jevethra has a vast ring system encircling the planet beneath the orbit of the innermost major moon Okoro. These rings were formed when a large moon, probably a member of its pre-migration moon group, crossed the roche limit and got torn to bits due to gravitational interactions between it and the other moons. This formed the majestic rings we see today. Similar to modern Okoro, it was likely primarily made of silicates with a thin layer of ice over the top.

Each ring (a collection of ring material occupying a band of space in the ring system) is given a letter, ordered by the amount of material in it.

Jevethra's rings are generally split into two discrete groups, divided by an enormous, almost completely empty gap formed by coinciding Kirkwood resonances between orbits within the gap and the three large regular moons. The inner group, closest to the atmosphere, is denser on average, containing the A, B, and F rings. The outer group, spread over a greater area, contains the C, D, E, and G rings.

Countless small outposts have been established on various objects in the rings, with the largest functioning as colonies in their own right, having their own cultures and laws. The vast majority of them however have populations of at most twenty people, and are often used as communication satellites and observation posts.

Orbit & Rotation

Jevethra's orbit is within the habitable zone, allowing for habitable moons, and even strange forms of life on the gas giant itself. Due to its large size compared to neighboring planets, Jevethra is capable of retaining a full-fledged planet as a Trojan companion, specifically the binary pair of Teralla and Esera which orbits in its training Lagrange point. Jevethra holds a collection of asteroids in its leading Lagrange point, the largest of which being Ekrann at 24 km in radius.

The planet rotates roughly once every seven hours, an above average speed for a gas giant of its size. Mostly due to coincidence, Jevethra has a low axial tilt, making planetary seasons almost unnoticeable if it weren't for the presence of the ring shadows.

History

Formation

When it coalesced from the protoplanetary disk 1.9 billion years ago alongside the rest of the Verda System, Jevethra was much more distant than it is today. The vagaries of planetary formation put it in an unlucky resonance with Glau, launching it inwards through the asteroid belt and causing it to pick up a number of captured moons. Its original moon group, likely a collection of fairly standard iceballs, was reduced to just Okoro and the proto-Salidar after a few hundred million years of ping-ponging through the inner system and threatening to destabilize everything else found there.

A large planetesimal was soon drawn in by Jevethra's gravity, having the misfortune to impact the silicate moon known simply as proto-Salidar, destroying both parties and creating a large ring of diffuse material along the moon's former orbit. Much of this material would recoalesce into the modern form of Salidar, but much of it would remain in chaotic orbits near the new moon, forming the Salidar Collisional Group.

While all this was happening, a planet on an unstable elliptical orbit around Verda was snagged by Jevethra's gravity and captured into a distant retrograde orbit around the planet, finding a place among the cloud of captured asteroids and becoming Sulpha. Meanwhile, Shirus was created from the collision of several of the outer moons of Jevethra's original major moon set, becoming a hot desert world after the impact heat blasted the remaining ice away.

Modern Times

Jevethra was first known as a very bright dot always hanging 60 degrees away from Verda in the sky. Just visible in the clear daytime sky, its moon Sulpha was visible to the naked eye at night to the peoples of the anti-Esera hemisphere of Teralla. Its three inner moons would wait until the invention of the telescope, but their presence sealed the fact that not everything orbited Teralla itself in the minds of the population and begun the collapse of organized religion on the planet.

At the dawn of the Space Age, Jevethra was heavily surveyed by various probes across the planet. The Kelelai orbiter reached the planet just twelve years after the first orbital launch, proving what had been theorized by the telescopic observers: the moons were worlds in their own right. An atmospheric probe confirmed the presence of oxygen-producing atmospheric phytoplankton in the planet's atmosphere, likely panspermiated from Teralla or whatever the origin point for life in the system was. The Kasran mission that followed up on Kelelai after the latter crashed on Salidar dropped several landing probes on each of the moons, even confirming the presence of sulfuric acid oceans beneath the rust-orange clouds of Sulpha. Vico, on its way towards Praxis and Moa, conducted detailed night-side observations of Jevethran lightning during its flyby of the planet.

The Epicco Trek manned mission, which would go on to survey Glau, conducted the first landing of Alorath on these moons and recommended the beginning of terraforming efforts at Shirus and the continued thawing of Okoro's ice shell. After the Trek left the Jevethra system, a coordinated effort to colonize each of the many worlds in its orbit sprung forth from Teralla, ending the species' dependance on a single planet.

After first contact with the Kuna'uashi, Verna and Ravoryl, many of these species emigrated to the planet's moons, creating a sense of great diversity among its people. The occupation during the War of the Broken Bow left its mark as much of the system succumbed to a collisional cascade, destroying many habitat stations and cutting off Jevethra and its inner moons from the rest of civilization until cleaning efforts cleared most of the debris from orbit. Today, Jevethra is known as a major planet in the Vernarcan Federation founded after the war, and has rebuilt fully.

Moons

Jevethra has a set of four comparatively large moons, one of which has been fully terraformed. It also plays host to the largest captured moon in the Verda System. These moons are accompanied by a large set of inner minor moons carving gaps in the rings and outer minor moons which do nothing at all.

Alnym
Daph
Okoro
Salidar
Salidar Collisional Group
Shirus
Sulpha
Jakt Group
Noras Group

Ring Moons

Jevethra's rings are supported by a set of 7 shepherd moons and hundreds of moonlets carving gaps in the disk of material. The largest of the seven are Alnym and Daph, which orbit in the C ring. Each of these moons is primarily valued as a mining site, and the objects have often been expanded to much greater than their original size to accomodate habitation drums assembled out of the mined material.

Regular Moons

Jevethra has four major moons, the largest of which being the captured planet of Sulpha.

Okoro

Okoro, the innermost major moon of Jevethra, is a partially frozen waterworld, which remained fully iced over for most of its history due to the high albedo of the surface. In geologically recent history, its surface has begun to thaw, opening up a large sea on its leading hemisphere and causing panspermiated life to flourish in its oceans.

Salidar

The smallest of Jevethra's major moons, Salidar is little more than a large collision fragment left over from an ancient impact. Salidar's surface is considered unstable and extremely dangerous in most parts, and it has little value aside from a mining site. Even that purpose has been superseded by the Verda starlifting array. Salidar orbits with the Salidar Collisional Group, other fragments left over from the same ancient impact.

Salidar Collisional Group

The Salidar Collisional Group is a group of regular satellites of Jevethra clustered around the orbit of the moon Salidar. They possess a common origin as debris from an immense impact suffered by Salidar in the ancient past, and their orbits are all tightly related to stable regions relative to Salidar itself. The SCG has six members greater than five kilometers in size, alongside many thousands of smaller objects.


Name	Diameter	Period (days)	Notes
Salidar	156.2	2.497	By far the largest member of this group and common origin of all other objects. Salidar's surface is considered extremely hazardous and unstable after millennia of heavy mining operations.
Carpa	18.4	2.487	The prototypical and largest member of the group aside from Salidar itself
Jamalis	8.1	2.487	Gravitationally tied to Carpa, with the two remaining very close together over time.
Inanna	5.9	2.501	Densely populated and heavily mined, likely to impact Salidar relatively soon over geologic timescales.
Ardra	5.3	2.499	Highly unstable, orbit precesses rapidly
Nasla	5.1	2.493	Highly unstable, orbit precesses rapidly

The objects in the Salidar Collisional Group have semi-major axes between ~390000 and ~400000 km from Jevethra, inclinations up to 9 degrees, and eccentricities between 0.07 and 0.15. All orbit prograde. In physical appearance, most of the group is homogenous, displaying neutral colors indicative of silicate compositions.

The group was formed by the impact of a large asteroid onto the proto-Salidar as Jevethra migrated inwards to the inner Verda System. As such, most of the objects were formed from fragments of the object's mantle blasted off the surface, explaining their similar compositions. Over time, it is likely that members of the group will recollide into a single object or be ejected from orbit.

Shirus

Originally a stiflingly hot, inhospitable desert with a thin atmosphere and swept with constant dust storms, Shirus was terraformed into a lush, earthlike world with towering trees and forests across the surface. It exists in a 1:5 resonance with Okoro and 1:2 resonance with Salidar. Shirus was the makeshift capital of the Jevethra system during the era of separation after the collisional cascade caused by the occupation during the War of the Broken Bow, and still retains the majority of the system's population in its gravitational influence.

Outer Irregular Moons

Sulpha

The innermost of Jevethra's captured moons and the largest by several orders of magnitude, Sulpha is the largest moon of Jevethra as a whole. It originated as a planet in an unstable orbit crossing that of Violis, and would have likely impacted the planet if it had not been captured by the inward-flying Jevethra. Today, it exhibits a thick atmosphere shrouded in rust-orange clouds, as well as sulfuric acid oceans covering a large fraction of its surface. It was originally considered a terraforming candidate, but the project was cancelled after the discovery of the ruins of the Silik civilization, and the later migration of a large population of Azani after their expulsion by the Clans of Azan.

Jakt Group

The Jakt Group of captured asteroids orbits prograde and originates from the breakup of a large captured asteroid, likely of ~100 km in radius. Stabilized by a 1:2 resonance with Sulpha, the group constitutes the innermost of the captured asteroids.

Noras Group

Similar to the Jakt Group, the Noras Group also originated from the breakup of a large asteroid, but the objects of the Noras group. Noras, the prototypical object of the group, is roughly 29 kilometers in radius and is host to a large colony of Varbudians.

Other Captured Asteroids

The remainder of Jevethra's moon collection is filled out by more minor groups and ungrouped captured asteroids, extending out to roughly 80 planetary radii. There are also several quasisatellites orbiting Verda in a 1:1 resonance near Jevethra.

Life

Jevethra is one of the only known gas giants with life in it's clouds. It has only barely evolved past the single-cell stage. However, multicellular life lives on the moonlets of the planetary rings. Many exotic lifeforms have been observed to be whizzing through the moonlets, and study is still ongoing from various habitats within the rings.

Population

Jevethra itself has a relatively low population of 11.6 billion, mainly Shirusans and Sulphans, living in chandelier cities on the planet's orbital rings. However, its Hill Sphere is filled to the brim by various habitation structures and such, and its moons are great population centers.