Erdath

Erdath is the third planet of the Holias System in the Vernarca Nebula, of the Ervo Sector of the Silky Way galaxy. It is a temperate, if cool, world with life covering much of its surface. In the distant past, it was little more than a colony of the robotic Edrons before their destruction in war, but today it serves as the homeworld of the Lrenn, capital of the Erdathian Federal Republic, and a major world of the Vernarcan Federation.

Erdath was named so by the ancient Lrenn, after the god of the dust then believed to rule all. Its surface is teeming with life of all sizes, from bacteria to great whales, from the depths of the ocean to the most dizzying of mountain peaks. As the homeworld of the Lrenn, it has served a vitally important role in the history of the Vernarcan Federation, as the capital of the Erdathian Federal Republic, one of its founding members.

History

Formation

Erdath formed over five billion years ago, in the nascent Holias System in an ancient seed cluster which has since ceased to function as such. The planet was created from a synestia, which formed from the impacts of multiple protoplanets which orbited between 0.6 and 1.5 AU from Holias. This process concentrated the mass in this area within the new planet Erdath's sphere of influence, and created an impressive debris disk even after the planet coalesced properly.

From this debris disk, multiple large moons were created of various sizes. The largest of these initial moons is believed to have been Verto, with the others either being ejected from the system, crashing into each other to create Lirtso, or being torn apart into the Erdathian ring system. Other impacts would occur, bringing volatile compounds from the outer solar system including the water that now fills its oceans.

Evolution of Life

As the bombardment died down, it was finally possible for life to come into being in the planet's impressive array of black smokers around the mid-ocean ridges. At this time, Erdath was even colder than it is now due to Holias' decreased luminosity early in its history, so it spent the first three billion years of its existence covered almost completely in ice.

Beneath the ice and its protection against Holias' UV-heavy light, the earliest bacteria formed from the random motions of organic molecules around hydrothermal vents. These beings quickly diversified to fill all manner of microscopic niches around their initial homes. In the interim, the ice crust over the oceans gradually receded towards the poles, and the first plastids and mitochondria were introduced to Erdath's ecosystem through the work of the Ancient Builders around three and a half billion years later.

A temporary dimming in Holias' light caused by a combination of unique solar effects and a conjectured volcanic eruption resulted in the sudden resurgence of the ice caps, almost completely covering the planet once again. To an ecosystem unused to this sudden dimming, the stress was immense, and the evolutionary pressures led to the advent of the first multicellular organisms. The deep freeze continued for millions of years, as Erdath was buried in massive ice sheets with surface temperatures as low as -50º C.

While many worlds entering this state are frozen forever, Erdath's highly active volcanic arcs continued to pump out carbon dioxide as always, and the complete absence of weathering and the ice covering the oceans prevented it from being removed from the atmosphere. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions accumulated for millions of years until the ice melted and the drop in albedo triggered an abrupt shift into the hottest climate the planet had ever seen.

While the sudden 20º C weather did no one any favors, the short-lived profusion of heat-adapted plant life rapidly took much of the CO2 back out of the atmosphere and led to an enormous explosion of multicellular life across the planet. Seven kingdoms of life were established in this time, six of which hold surviving phyla today. From this point on, sapient life was arguably inevitable as life continued to proliferate around the world.

Life even began to slowly move out of the sea, with photosynthesizing organisms and small insectoid creatures leading the charge. Unfortunately, this age of plenty and prosperity came to an abrupt end with supernova of Melos around 560 million years ago, the grazing gamma ray burst strike wiping out almost 99% of all living things and 80% of species. All land life with the exception of some bacteria died in this extinction, and it was the closest Erdath ever came since its formation to being lifeless again.

Multicellular life was very much still in place after this event, but it was primarily restricted to the deepest of oceans around hydrothermal vents. It would be another 200 million years before even widespread life could be consistently found even near the ocean surface and plant life to spread back to the land. A few million years later, land animals left the water once again.

Over the next eons, life advanced further and further amidst the silent universe. An oxygen spike brought about supermassive insectoid creatures several meters in length, only for them to die off again after the concentration faded away. An asteroid strike wiped out several species, and they were swiftly replaced in their niches. Volcanoes took out yet more, and still life marched on. Continents rumbled across the globe, creating massive mountains and bottomless ocean trenches as they smashed into each other at the massive speed of a couple centimeters per year.

The Alidal family began to arise in the equatorial taiga landscape around two million years ago, marking the first native sapient life on the planet. Originating as several species, including the Drian and Lradri, this family began to slowly spread across the planet over hundreds of thousands of years. The slowly changing climate gave a boost to the populations of some species, and completely removed others from the field. Over hundreds of thousands of years, the Drian and the Lradri interbred to the point of indistinguishability, and their companions gradually dwindled in number until they ceased to be. The last species standing became known in the modern day as the Lrenn, and they were going places.

Edronian Era and the Rise of the Lrenn

The distant world of Suri gave birth to the robotic Edrons, rulers of a cruel empire spanning much of the Vernarca Nebula. As the Lrenn were a stone-age species largely restricted to a medium-sized portion of resource-poor taiga, the Edrons ignored them as they established an industrial colony on the metal-rich northern continent of Iriri. Their extraction measures utterly devastated the region, releasing enormous amounts of pollution into the air and water to fuel their genocidal wars across the stars. The few Lrenn-adjacent people who made it out that far were treated as little more than pests to be gunned down if they got in the way.

The exoduses of the Kesstra, Moco, Zemim, and other species meant that the Edrons could never focus much attention on a random, outlying colony world, and the virus introduced by the Obilehem Intelligence led to the collapse of the Edron presence there. The "death" toll of this virus combined with irreconcilable beliefs on how to fight it led to a sort of civil war in their empire, which finally finished the job of wiping them from the universe.

After this point, the Lrenn, much depopulated by the environmental ruination of the Edrons, finally caught a break. With no evil robots owning their planet, they were free to proliferate across the land. The devastated continent of Iriri was largely avoided by the expansion of Lrenn population around the planet, with the exception of minuscule nomadic groups culturally adapted to survive there.

Around nine thousand years ago, the first known permanent structure was built by the Lrenn species, in the city now known as Rital'lebir on the southern continent of Lyali. Historians believe that this structure, a stone plinth surrounded by pillars, likely constituted a primitive temple used in ancient, long-forgotten religious rituals by otherwise nomadic peoples. While such permanent temple structures became commonplace in many places across the land, the coming of large-scale permanent settlement would take a long while longer.

Almost four thousand years after the Rital'lebir temple's centerstone was laid, the great city of Tharda arose in the Aroraz river valley, followed by several others in the region as well as the far distant Varal-Suthi civilization. These constituted the first known example of large-scale farming as a replacement for a fully hunter-gatherer-based society. Erdath's perennially harsh climate meant that the hardy thick moss beds common to the Aroraz valley became the staple food of the civilization. Soon after, the Astal Valley civilization arose a few thousand miles away on the far edge of the expanding trading networks.

This set of city-states and empires, surrounded largely by comparatively primitive nomadic hunter-gatherers, were the most powerful entities on Erdath at the time. In approximately ~4,500 BC, an unknown calamity took place, likely a confluence of climate change, rapid migration of nomadic groups, and preexisting local conflicts, brought down every single one of the earliest civilizations within 100 years of each other. The Varal-Suthi civilization was the sole survivor of this calamity, seemingly ignoring it completely as it continued to expand across the southern mountains.

Varal-Suthi later fell on its own, likely to famine, but was replaced on its continent by a variety of smaller empires. Meanwhile, the earlier collapse in the Aroraz and Astal river valleys began to heal as new governments rose once again. In the far north, a civilization rose and fell, remembered only by its megalithic structures, earthen mounds, and conspicuous lack of a writing system.

As the ages passed, civilizations rose and fell across the globe. The massive Areltho Empire spread across nearly a quarter of the planet's land area, before collapsing in a generation following the death of its leader. The first age of exploration began with the religious empires of the southeast taking up their commandment to spread the light of knowledge to the world, building great ships to sail the wrecking icy seas. In their great competition, they established colonies of varying make, some simply to extract resources, others to dump prisoners, and still more acting as mere trading posts with native nations.

The classical empires were brought low by a series of wars of varying levels of pointlessness, destroying their infrastructure and resulting in a number of independence movements across their many colonies. Native peoples regained their independence in great waves and movements across the world. The weapons research of ages past was put to new peacetime use across the world, and the beginnings of a global unification were planted with the Erdathian League.

Colonization of Space

The new nation of Aralzi in the far east, taking the weapons research from the last great war and putting it to new use, made history in 470 BC with the launch of the Insithi probe into a low orbit around Erdath. Its name translating to "fellow traveler", it heralded a new age in Lrenn history.

While Insithi was little more than a test article with a thermometer attached, the next probes were leaps and bounds ahead in technological advancement. Less than a decade later, the first landing was executed on an inner shepherd moon, which would later become the site of the first extraplanetary base. The first crewed landing on Verto, commanded by Lrisi Erlebar, took place in 452 BC to much fanfare due to its much greater distance and difficulty compared to the minuscule asteroids of the previous missions.

Unfortunately, after this first age of space exploration, the Lrenn receded back to their planet. Lirtso was still untouched, and wouldn't be for the next century. The massive size of Erdath made it extremely difficult to launch large-scale missions, and Erlebar's mission to Verto already required global scientific cooperation to get off the ground at all. A return to the stars would have to wait for public sentiment to point that way again, as well as a slate of technological advancements to make things less nigh-impossible.

The economic warfare between Aralzi and Irthal Vis that was ongoing at the time gradually heated up, with a variety of proxy conflicts between smaller nations financially supported by the two superpowers. After almost fifty years of staring each other down with nuclear missiles aimed at each other, someone finally pulled the trigger in response to a cosmic ray burst mistaken by the early warning system for a missile launch. So began the Erdathian nuclear exchange in 394. This destroyed much of the established civilization, with the global far north the only region to escape largely unscathed. Millions died in nuclear hellfire in the first minutes, with billions following them in the subsequent nuclear winter.

During this time, the fall of the so-called first-world nations resulted in a global power vacuum which was left unfilled for decades as the surviving nations focused on surviving. Since Aralzi and Irthal Vis were almost completely destroyed, the more expansionist nations in the far north and south began to expand into the empty territories. Soon after this process began, the rediscovery of the Aralzi-built launch complexes in 348 resulted in a revitalization of the space age, spurred on by a realization that the species could not go extinct if offworld colonies existed.

Large-scale colonization efforts on Verto, Lirtso, and the planet's minor moons began to take shape in the next decades. By the early 3rd century BC, cloudtop colonies on Lovos and habitats in the asteroid belt and the Vulusian moon system had been established. The self-sufficiency of these colonies combined with the weakened state of the homeworld allowed them to quickly declare and maintain independence, forming a wide array of fiefs across the Holias System. The state at Lirtso began to grow more and more militaristic, while Verto retreated into protective isolationism and Lovos established a trading empire in the deep inner system.

Erdath itself remained highly disunified, split between dozens of small countries across the blasted lands. Numerous conflicts took place over disputed territory, resources, or even just misunderstandings, further diminishing the state of Erdath itself. Meanwhile, the blossoming economy of Lirtso enabled it to embark on massive projects including the launch of a fleet of probes and slower colony ships to the nearest stars. Orla and the alliance of colonies in the Eritho Belt followed suit, and the first extrasolar mission of the Lrenn arrived at Zalidor in 241 BC. But it was not to be these probes which unveiled the abundant life surrounding their home.

The E'ul 14 entered the Holias System in 229 BC by way of Vulus, using its tremendous atmosphere to brake from relativistic speeds, and promptly made for Erdath itself. It came bearing knowledge of various technologies, as well as cultural data about the then-mysterious Kuna'uashi species. As the first example of contemporary alien life known to the Lrenn, scientists in the Holias System would spend the next several years properly decoding the information and building another in response. Erdath itself had long since faded from relevance, but its scientists still had a part to play in this project. They cross-referenced the probe's transmissions and inscriptions with those of Erdath's own ancient civilizations in an attempt to uncover new possibilities for translation.

Shortly after the probe's arrival, the Erdathi Kaled movement began in 207 BC when lower-class citizens in Varsu and Irthiza began to advocate for a peaceful unification of the planet, so as to effect a restoration of the Erdathian environment. Slowly but surely, the squabbling nations in the far north and south of Erdath set down their weapons. Militarized borders became largely a thing of the past. The efforts to clean up the once-highly-populated equatorial regions of the devastation of the Great War picked up pace as the new Homeworld Alliance added more and more members and the first Kuna'uashi technological exchange advanced the art of terraforming. As the independent colonies beyond the atmosphere went about their lives, occasionally getting into fights or splitting in half, the cradle of the Lrenn was healing.

Erdathian Domain

While Erdath itself was healing and its population began to grow again, the functional center of Lrenn civilization had established itself at Lirtso. Like all the core worlds, Lirtso's government was at least ostensibly democratic, but trouble and corruption was brewing behind closed doors.

Glorious Revolution and the Federal Republic

Federation Era

Modern Times and the War of the Broken Bow

Physical Characteristics

Erdath is among the largest worlds to support sapient life within the Ervo Sector. With a mass of almost three standard terrestrial masses, its surface gravity is high enough to make living there uncomfortable for many species of the Vernarcan Federation. Its high mass leads to a substantial amount of active volcanism across its surface, as well as highly active plate tectonics. Within the Holias System, Erdath is the largest terrestrial planet by far, with both Lovos and Eloraz being less massive than Teralla.

Like most terrestrial worlds, Erdath's surface is made up of silicate compounds, around 40 kilometers thick on average. Most of its surface at over two thirds is covered in ocean water, and in the distant past it may have completely submerged the planet. A great number of freshwater lake and river systems exist as well, hydrologically separated from the salty oceans.

By Terallan standards, Erdath is deep in a seemingly permanent ice age, with nearly a fifth of the planet covered by its polar caps. This causes grievous erosive processes to take place over its non-equatorial landmasses.

Erdath's interior structure is defined by several layers, separated by differences in chemical or physical makeup. The outermost layer is made up of a silicate crust, broken into plates and floating about over the viscous but technically liquid mantle. Beneath this can be found a large iron-nickel core, with a large molten outer layer which generates the planet's magnetic field surrounding a pressure-solidified center heated to temperature hotter than the surface of the sun. The magnetic field the core generates is among the most powerful in the system, only matched by the gas giants whose fields are generated by metallic hydrogen, and protects the entire Erdathian moon system from Holias' solar wind.

Orbit and Rotation

Erdath orbits its host star, Holias, with an orbital period of 383 days and an orbital radius of around 1.06 AU within its star's habitable zone. This makes Erdath the third planet within the Holias System, orbiting well beyond Lovos and beneath the orbit of the Senith Belt near Vulus. The planet's lagrange points are occupied by the Tavi Group of asteroids, which together made up the first colonies of the Lrenn beyond the planet's sphere of influence.

Erdath rotates once every 1.25 days, with a minimal axial tilt of just 2.35º. This means that Erdath has functionally no seasons, with its "arctic circle" being almost right on top of the poles.

Atmosphere

The only world in the Holias System to possess an oxygenated and hydrated atmosphere with no artificial intervention, Erdath is a very special place. At sea level, Erdath's atmospheric pressure is approximately 3.84 atm or 389.09 kpa, with a scale height of just over five kilometers. This atmosphere like most terrestrial worlds is composed primarily of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, with half a percent worth of carbon dioxide throwing a wrench in the works. Water vapor's fractional presence is highly variable, creating cloud coverage over around 1/3 of Erdath's surface.

Like most worlds with any semblance of life, this life has greatly affected Erdath's atmosphere. Photosynthesis' introduction led to the disappearance of the primordial volcanic atmosphere, replacing it with the modern oxygen/nitrogen mix, which allowed aerobic organisms to come into being. This also resulted in the creation of the ozone layer, which blocks Holias' ultraviolet radiation from hitting the surface and killing everyone.

The enormous amount of carbon dioxide in the Erdathian atmosphere also creates a substantial greenhouse effect, raising the average temperature to just above freezing by preventing infrared emissions from the surface from escaping into space. The planet's equilibrium temperature without this effect would have been -30º C, which would complex life massively harder than it already is.

Geography

Erdath's surface, with an average temperature just two degrees above freezing, is dominated by fjords, tundras, ragged mountains, and vast ice fields covering much of the seas. Due to Erdath's size, the planet has a highly active plate tectonics system, with plates smashing into each other and later pulling apart at such momentums as to push up vast mountains even under the planet's higher gravity. Over Erdath's five billion year history, most of the planet's land area has thus been affected, creating a very mountainous surface.

Erdath's surface is dominated by a single large supercontinent, Drovala, with the rest of the planet's land area broken up into a large number of subcontinents and island arcs. The poles are largely iced over, with permanent ice caps forming over 14% of the planet.

Climate

Erdath's climate is, as a rule, cold. While calling it "marginally habitable" is a bit of a stretch, it certainly isn't as superhabitable as a world like Teralla. With Holias' light adding up to 1310 W/m² of irradiance on average, its equatorial regions possess climates analogous to the boreal or subarctic regions found on Teralla.

The planet's strong greenhouse effect and thick atmosphere also means that its average temperature is more uniform, with temperature dropping off much more slowly as latitude increases. However, it still does decrease, and the far north and south are in a permanent deep freeze with large-scale ice caps, very little precipitation, and frozen oceans.

Surroundings

Due to its size, Erdath's sphere of influence is filled to the bring with a massive and great variety of objects, ranging from its twin large moons of Verto and Lirtso to the innumerable rocks making up the Erdathian ring system, to the few outer captured asteroids, to the vast number of artificial habitat stations which exist in its orbit. From afar, its ring system is the most visually striking set of objects within Erdath's sphere of influence, but its two moons add up to more mass in total.

Verto

The first of the major moons, Verto is a barren moon predominantly covered by craters with little geologic activity. Its ancient rocky surface is covered by a massive ecumenopolis, with a great population of almost a trillion people. Verto orbits Erdath once around every five days, which marks the length of an ancient Erdathian week.

Verto's massive colonization by the Lrenn early in the history of its space travel has vastly changed its surface, from a barren rock face to a massive globe-spanning city. This city is partially covered beneath an impressive set of domes, holding the artificial atmosphere in over the urban areas. Other parts of the city are situated entirely underground, dating back to the ancient subsurface colonies using the lunar regolith as radiation shielding.

Lirtso

The largest and outermost of the twin major moons of Erdath, Lirtso is a barren moon with a pale, dusty and cratered surface and seemingly little to recommend it from afar. Unlike Verto, it has a thin atmosphere, which does very little to warm its cold surface, and indeed parts of it are even covered in ice. However, beneath the surface can be found a cornucopia of resources, valuable to the early Lrenn and necessary to expand beyond their supermassive homeworld. While most of the easily accessible resources have been thoroughly exhausted in the modern day, the moon remains useful in another way as a great population center, similar to its smaller companion Verto.

Ring System

Erdath's space is visually dominated by a vast, dramatic ring system circling the planet, formed when the mysterious third moon of Erdath crossed beneath the roche limit due to gravitational interactions from Verto and Lirtso. After this, it was quickly torn to pieces, forming the majestic rings seen today. Due to their position within the Holias System, the rings are composed primarily of silicates and iron, which are unevenly distributed throughout the system and give it its variations in color.

Countless small outposts were established in and around various ring objects, with the largest functioning as states in their own right with unique cultures and laws dating back before cheap space travel.

Shepherd Moons

The rings wouldn't look nearly as interesting if they didn't have any gaps in them. While some of them, particularly the enormous Rlan Division between the A and B rings, were created by resonant interactions with Verto and Lirtso, the majority of the gaps within the ring structure were formed by miniscule asteroids known as "shepherd moons". These moons were created from the same ring material as the rest of the rings, and barely have enough material to hold together by tensile strength.

The largest shepherd moons are host to embedded habitats containing millions of people, and were some of the earliest mining targets in the early history of the Lrenn. The resources found here were vital to allow Lrenn civilization to expand beyond Erdath's own sphere of influence.

Civilization

Population

Erdath's surface is populated by over four trillion sapient beings. Most of these people are of the native Lrenn species, as they are obviously adapted better than anyone else to the planet's conditions. The similarly superterrestrial-native Eanai and Tarasze also have substantial populations on this world, with the Eanai dominating the open ocean habitats. Other oxygen-water species engineered for higher gravity environments can also be found here including the Alorath and some rare Falaci and Kesstra.

In orbit the population is much more diverse due to the comparative ease of engineering the environment of a given habitat, and small concentrations of virtually every species in the Vernarca Nebula can be found here. Of course the Lrenn still make up the majority of the population due to simple historical realities, but populations of Verna, Ravoryl, Pr'rana, Kuna'uashi, Q'Mau, and many other species exist within Erdath's sphere of influence.

Urban Areas

Unlike many modern civilizations, the Lrenn of Erdath have mostly retained their historical city sprawl, although an eye for natural integration has developed and most modern buildings are designed for sustainable living. Arcologies are unpopular in most cultures on the planet and the largest concentrations of population can spread over vast areas.

The largest urban area on the planet is the megacity of Lri, which also functions as the capital of the planet and the Erdathian Federal Republic. Lri sprawls over almost sixteen thousand square kilometers of land, and many water-based installations exist in the Lri fjord from which the original settlement took its name as well. Other cities on the planet have been continuously inhabited for almost twenty thousand years.

Lrenn Effect on Erdath

The expansion of the early Lrenn across the planet resulted in the death of many of the contemporary species of megafauna. Agricultural civilization and the proliferation of farming also resulted in the destruction of many of the planet's old-growth forests, but all this paled in comparison to the ways the Lrenn affected their planet after industrialization.

During the industrial age and the rise of mechanized civilization, Erdath's natural environment was positively brutalized. Ocean acidification, the collapse of the temperature circulation due to global warming, plastic everywhere, and even several nuclear craters left behind by a particularly devastating world war are all on the list. Strip-mining of entire mountains devastated the landscape all for comparatively minuscule amounts of resources.

However, all was not lost, as the introduction of renewable energy enabled the Lrenn to begin to fix the damage their ancestors had wrought. The engineering of plastic-eating bacteria, pulling excess CO2 out of the atmosphere, careful recooling of the planet through the earliest Holias System megastructures, and the deep burial of nuclear waste in salt mines all went towards this end. The highest rate of extinction was still in the very recent past, and so most extinct species were able to be revived including some of the early megafauna. Reforestation across the north was also well underway before the temporary pause in those activities with the conquest of the world's nations by the Erdathian Domain.

While the popular revolution against the Domain came with even further devastation inflicted by the ailing government, the foundation of the Erdathian Federal Republic and the later creation of the Vernarcan Federation have made Erdath a veritable paradise (for the Lrenn, at least). Today, Erdath is considered to have a high quality of living, and there are many communities residing here from across known space.