[hr][h1] [color=mediumseagreen]:: The Setting: The Shia Star Cluster ::[/color][/h1][hr] [hr]The Shia Star Cluster is a cluster of five star systems all within a distance of one lightyear from each other, all held together by a massive cluster of Dark matter. Four planets within the Cluster have been identified as being possible sources of the Hawking Radiation spike, but due to a considerable amount of interference, it has thus far been impossible to determine which of the four are the location of the Duoc Pristaliz.[hr] [hr][color=Dodgerblue][h1]Star System: Shia-5[/h1][/color][hr] [b]Type of Star:[/b] Blue Giant [b]Number of Celestial Bodies in Orbit:[/b] 10 (most are gas giants) [b]Number of Possible Planets:[/b] 2 [hider=Planet #1: Mizria] [b]Mizria[/b] [b]Diameter:[/b] 4880 Km [b]Circumference:[/b] 15329 Km [b]Mass:[/b] 5.8 x 10^24 Kg [b]Primary Composition:[/b] Osmium, Flerovium, Silicon, Sodium, Oxygen [b]Core makeup:[/b] Osmium, Nickel [b]Atmosphere:[/b] Oxygen: 46% Nitrogen: 41% Sulfur: 8% Water Vapor: 2% Carbon Dioxide: .5% Xenon: 1% Argon: .4% etc: 1.1% [b]Average Daily Temperature:[/b] 48º C (120º F) [b]Average Nightly Temperature:[/b] 2º C (35.6º F) [b]Distance From Sun:[/b] 144,744,399 Km (89,940,000 miles) [b]Description:[/b] Primarily desert, the planet of Mizria is not well-known for its hospitality to life. The planet is small and dense, thanks to a core of pure osmium, and has an atmosphere with incredibly high amounts of oxygen in it. Most of the planet’s surface is covered in oceans that have a salt concentration on par with that of the Dead Sea on Earth, and most of the continents are desert lands scattered with wet and humid salt flats. Yet still, even in this harsh environment, life thrives. Due to the high concentration of oxygen, gigantic arthropod-like creatures have been able to inhabit Mizria, and they thrive under its conditions. Extremophile bacteria under the surface of its sands produce massive amounts of oxygen, causing subterranean life to flourish. Even in its dead seas, Halophile creatures live, taking in the salt and using extremophile archaea to survive. That said, Mizria is not a place for the faint of heart. Storms cross its surface constantly, vicious sandstorms that contain clouds of hot gaseous sulfur. Various vents in the crust release toxic chemicals like methane and Argon into the air, and those who are not well-prepared for such climates should prepare for the worst. [b]Native People:[/b] Mizrians. There are two species of Mizrians, generally known as Alpha Mizrians and Beta Mizrians, with Alpha Mizrians being more beetle-like relatives of the Beta Mizrians. Mizrians themselves are bipedal, intelligent arthropods with compound eyes. They are remarkably hardy creatures, able to withstand incredible amounts of damage without dying. They are immune to extreme heat, extreme cold, radiation, and can even go up to 72 hours without oxygen. Their bodies are naturally insulated by compounds in their exoskeletons, making them immune to electrical shocks, and they regenerate so well that most wounds can be quickly repaired. Their lungs are miraculously immune to most aerosol toxins, and their bloodstream is filtered of toxins so well that no known poison works on them. Mizrians can go days without water and just as long without sleep. If a Mizrian finds itself in an environment where it cannot survive, it can go into stasis, a process where it can slow its metabolic function to 1/52nd of usual and effectively “power down” until conditions become more favorable. Mizrians in Stasis have been known to become lost in space for weeks and, once properly resuscitated, survive. Despite their hardiness, Mizrians themselves never developed spaceflight, and everything which they know of spaceflight was learned through interacting with other races. Most interstellar Mizrians were, in fact, hitchhikers at some point in their past. [/hider] [hider=Possible Planet #2: Thalon-36] [b]Thalon-36 [/b] [b]Diameter:[/b] 2,368 Km [b]Circumference:[/b] 7,232 Km [b]Mass:[/b] 328.5 x 10^21 Kg [b]Primary Composition:[/b] Iron, Silicon, Iridum, Lead, Mercury, Platinum [b]Core Makeup: [/b]Platinum, Iridium [b]Atmosphere:[/b] Helium: 20% Sodium: 30% Sulfur: 25% Hydrogen: 20% Carbon Monoxide: 3% Carbon dioxide: 1.5% Oxygen, etc.: 1% [b]Average Daily Temperature:[/b] 500º C (932º F) [b]Average Nightly Temperature:[/b] -67º C (-90º F) (Planet does not rotate) [b]Distance From Sun:[/b] 54,717,696 Km (34,000,000 miles) [b]Description:[/b] Completely uninhabitable. Thalon-36 is a molten rocky planet placed far too close to its sun. The one side of the planet is covered in lakes of boiling lead, and the other is frozen solid. The planet does not spin, so one side is always night, and the other is always in darkness. The planet contains none of the essential elements for life, and is essentially worthless if it weren’t for the fact that its core is primarily made of platinum. Due to its composition, there is a lot of mining on the planet. The only signs of habitation on the entire planet is a few engineers who work at a mining facility. Besides that, the planet is barren. [/hider] [hr][h1][color=red]Star System: Shia-6[/color][/h1][hr] [b]Type of Star:[/b]Red Dwarf [b]Number of Celestial Bodies:[/b] 3 [b]Number of Possible Planets:[/b] 1 [hider=Possible Planet #3: Okara (Thalon-39)] [b]Okara[/b] [b]Diameter:[/b] 25,484 Km [b]Circumference:[/b] 80150 Km [b]Mass:[/b] 1.194 x 10^25 Kg [b]Primary Composition:[/b] Oxygen, Silicon, Cobalt, Iron, Calcium, Sodium, Potassium, Magnesium [b]Core Makeup:[/b] Cobalt, Iron [b]Atmosphere:[/b] Nitrogen: 70% Oxygen: 25% Hydrogen: 1% Methane: Water Vapor: 2% Carbon Dioxide: 1% Assorted gasses: 1% [b]Average Daily Temperature:[/b] 21º Celsius [b]Average Nightly Temperature:[/b] 19º Celsius [b]Distance From Sun:[/b] 91,000,000 miles [b]Description:[/b] An incredibly earthlike planet which is completely submerged in fresh water. No land protrudes from its endless oceans save a few spires of granite jutting out from underwater mountain ranges. The oceans are teeming with life, alive with thousands of different underwater creatures, some of which resemble creatures living in Earth’s oceans (such as jellyfish, sea cucumbers, coral, barrel-eyes, mosasaurs [theirs aren’t extinct], and blobfish, which it is believed were actually taken from Okara and put on Earth by an alien race as a prank on humanity). Due to the planet’s strong magnetic and gravitational pull, plus the proximity of an asteroid belt, the surface is often struck by debris, and so most creatures live deeper in the ocean. [b]Native People:[/b] Diafanis. Diafanis are a race of gilled amphibious creatures which live in canyons on the Okara seafloor. They stand at about five feet tall, vaguely frog-shaped with dual-jointed legs like a frog and single-jointed arms. Their feet and hands are webbed, and their heads appear similar to a frog’s. Their eyes, however, are placed lower on the head, around where a human would have their eyes. Diafanis eyes are about the size of golf balls and glow in the dark. They are bipedal (though they need robotic supports to walk on land). Their skin is covered in stripes which are bioluminescent, allowing them to glow different patterns in the dark. This both confuses potential predators (as all they see is a bunch of crazy lines) and allows Diafanis to identify one-another. No two Diafanis have identical stripes. The unique thing about the Diafanis is that their skin is translucent, causing their internal organs to be visible from the outside. This is due to their body’s high water volume, which allows them to live at the bottom of the ocean without being crushed by the pressure. When out of the deep, Diafanis must wear pressure suits to prevent themselves from decompressing, which would be extremely painful if not deadly. Diafanis are spacefaring, flying in spacecraft filled with water, but have not discovered FTL travel, so they are confined to their local system and other Shia systems (they’re all very close together). [/hider] [hr][h1][color=Lavender] Star System: Asosa-B37[/color][/h1][hr] [b]Star Type:[/b]Neutron star [b]Number of Celestial Bodies in Orbit:[/b] ??? [b]Number of Possible Planets:[/b] 1 [hider=Possible Planet #4: Azulu] [b]Azulu Diameter:[/b] 5,826 km [b]Circumference:[/b] 18302.9 km [b]Mass:[/b] 6 x 10^24 kg [b]Primary Composition:[/b] Iron oxide, copper oxide, nickel oxide, silicone dioxide, gold, osmium, depleted uranium, a wide variety of heavy metals, calcium, magnesium, aluminum, sodium. Slag, basically. [b]Core makeup:[/b] Iron, osmium, carbon. [b]Atmosphere:[/b] Nitrogen: 61% Oxygen: 37% Other gasses: 2% [b]Average Daily Temperature:[/b] 40°C [b]Average Nightly Temperature:[/b] 30°C [b]Distance From Sun:[/b] 250,000,000 miles [b]Description:[/b] Once the dead trash receptacle of a mining operation, Azulu was composed primarily of slag and devoid of an atmosphere as it orbited around a red giant, which, a couple thousand years later went supernova, shrouding the Asosa system in a nebula of gas and making it the last place anyone would look for life of any kind. As you may or may not know, neutron stars are not very well behaved neighbors, they fire off x-rays, radio blasts and their magnetic fields are insane. They also emit very little visible light and enjoy firing off the occasional life-nuking gamma ray burst that makes sharing a system suicide. Yet, it is exactly these reasons that the colony formerly known as Utopia was put there at all. See, experimentation on sentient beings is strictly illegal. Colony crash experiments doubly so. Nebuli are very good at hiding exoplanets, neutron stars make naturally arising life sustaining exoplanets nigh impossible and said neutron star’s constant blaring of the cosmic radio makes any signs of sentient life undetectable. Criminally, it’s the perfect combo. No one’s going to know about your experiments and if they get out of hand, you get tired of them or you forget about it, the evidence will more or less self-dispose as without constant terraforming and light supplementation, the colony will die out within a few hundred years. Certainly before they’re able to achieve a type II civilization and sustain themselves. Or, at least that was Zalphar’s theory when it started the experiment. However, one of it’s more weaponized experiments (Agatha) went all terminator on it’s ass and killed everyone it had doing its bidding while it was away, stole it’s time machine when it returned and used that to steal a dyson sphere from STC, upgrading Azulu to a type II civilization with FTL capabilities. Environmentally, Azulu quite unique. They only get six hours of sunlight, most of which isn’t visible to humans, and many of its plants and animals are suited to long periods of darkness, and most of them can harvest and/or see light higher up the visual spectrum than us humans. Aside from that, Azulu is quite flat, with the exception of a few massive gorges that serve to drain away water into underground aquifers every three months when the tide comes in. The tide, consists of a two day long rise in water level from zero to a hundred feet. Many of the plants that have been used to teraform Azulu were chosen for their resistance to extreme weather and tidal forces, many of them using it to their advantage. From space, it would look like a bulge of water traveling around the equator in sync with the moon's elliptical orbit. Approximately every three months, Azulu’s ‘moon’ Quaia, comes within the range of the planet's thick atmosphere, causing an increase in geothermal activity due to it’s mass, keeping the planet geologically and magnetically active and causing a periodic tsunami from which the city Utopia is the only thing protected, though since it’s takeover, that has begun to change as the colony has expanded and mining outposts have been set. As you may or may not have guessed, Quaia, is actually a terraforming spaceship that constantly off-gasses the necessary atmospheric elements of Nitrogen and Oxygen, replacing that burnt off by the occasional solar flare. It is also highly reflective and serves as a kind of planetary heat lamp, especially now that it's been upgraded since the planet gained independence. [b]Native People: [/b]Azulians, a genetic mash-up between a wide range of different species notably including Humans and Acirians. They're made to be the perfect lab-rats, and have easily reprogrammable immune and regenerative systems, with the genes controlling traits such as blood type, neural networks, hormone levels, disease susceptibility, pathogen and toxin sensitivity, immune response and type, and aging all being easily identified and tweaked, their borrowed Acirian genetics allowing for chimeras and induced cell differentiation. Appearance wise, they're all dark skinned, either totally black or reddish brown. Females all have black hair, whereas males are almost calico. Their heads look somewhere between mammalian and reptilian, as if you took a humans head, stretched it out, increased the size of the brain case and gave it a voldemort nose and lots of pointy teeth. Other than that, they're bipedal like humans and Acirians, although their arms are longer and their legs double jointed so if they run anywhere fast, it's on all fours. Their feet are similar to those of an Acirians, in that they are prehensile in the way of a tree frog, allowing them to easily master the art of parkour. They're not extraordinarily sexually dimorphic, with a father being only slightly less likely to be the one breastfeeding than the mother, due to the fact that Azulians were designed by Acirians and Acirians don't know how gender works so gene expression of anything other than 'the essentials' and hair, strangely enough, are pretty much universal. It should also be noted that Azulians have all the same eye colors as we humans in addition to reflective yellow, which is associated with dominant Acirian traits, eg, intelligence, reckless disregard for life and safety, and a strong tendency towards sadistic behavior and psychopathy. [/hider]