APPENDIX C
Earths of the Empyrean Polity of Man
—as of the 700th Century A.D. / Year Zero Vindication Calendar.
FIRST SWEEP 12 th Millennium
Note that only Nocturne of Epsilon Eridani and Splendor of Delta Pavonis survived the First Sweep. The other stars were recolonized during subsequent Sweeps.
Sol—Home of the power Neptune. Includes three Earths:
Eden, also called Tellus, First Earth, or Matermundi. Original home of man. Binary planet with Luna. (Luna was inhabited by Crusader kingdoms between the 37th and 43rd Millennium.) Potentate with bouts of insanity.
Mars, cold desert planet, later bioformed with fanciful short-lived subspecies by Eventide brethren. Inhabited by Chimerae.
Venus, maneuvered into a “water ring” orbit by the Virtue Salamander. Inhabited by Fifth Men. Elevated to Potentate Status during the 54th Millennium; later, maimed and reduced to Archangelic.
Alpha Centauri C (Proxima)—Rosycross
A torch orbit world at 0.007 AU from C, flare-time red dwarf. The world is smaller and lighter than Earth, the peoples the most highly modified and strangely adapted: modifications to very deep neural structures were made which modern scruples would prevent. The main industry is “watermining” extraction of chemicals from the shallow seabeds of her inky-black, tideless, lifeless oceans. All life on Rosycross is land life.
Predominant race is Non-Orthogonal Man. Abnormally high Fox population.
Epsilon Eridani—Nocturne
Is tide-locked: the dayside is uninhabitable, covered over with acres of solar energy cells. Gene-manipulation has modified humans and livestock to allow them to survive, different species for each ever-colder zone of the night side. The Nocturnals produce many freakish subraces and breeds. They are ruled by the Actuary, a cabal of cliometric historians who force families and clans to breed children into various biologically determined castes.
61 Cygni—Odette and Odile
Have the doubtful distinction of fighting the most interplanetary wars against each other, despite the separation (86 AU). The wars were provoked by exploitation rights to a 61 Cygnus C, a dark body called Siegfried, roughly eighty times the mass of Jupiter. A permanent colony of miners lives on the surface, their bodies radically adapted to endure the greater gravity. Later, when wakened to sapience, Siegfried is a Power christened Vonrothbarth.
61 Cygnus A: Odette. The planet ventured into forbidden areas of pantropy, both mental and physical, eventually producing immortal and nigh-invulnerable Heresiarchs. The atmosphere is dense with inert gases. Only in the highlands can human life survive: poisonous clouds gather in the river valleys and lowlands at sea level. The high atmospheric pressure and low gravity allow lightweight aircraft and winged men to dart everywhere. Originally called Arcolith.
61 Cygnus B: Odile. The planet orbits within a dust ring that settled around B, and the atmosphere is continually bombarded with spectacular meteorite showers, bringing rare metals to earth: the planet surface is heavily cratered and heavily mined. The star is a variable, and frequent solar activity prevents the emergence of a working world-communication satellite network. All cities are protected by domes for fear of asteroid strikes or are underground.
The original colony work was done by monks, who still retain ownership of most of the planet surface. Ruled by a Grand Inquisitor, with local and temporary bishops, judges, princesses, and Golden Lords having sharply curtailed authority. Originally called Aerolith.
Epsilon Indi—Porphyry
A world of harsh desert, volcanism, and open lakes and rivers of lava. The equatorial regions are too hot for Earthly life: the original plant life, a coral growth of diamond spikes thousands of feet high and miles wide, endures here. Earth life is gathered near the polar regions, where large deposits of subterranean water can be found. The sun is active in the UV range, but dim to the human eye, a pale disk one can look upon without blinking. The trees and plants are leafless, but clustered with needles. Porphyry orbits one of the invisible brown dwarfs in the system and is tide-locked to its primary so that daylight (from Epsilon Indi) lasts half a Porphyry year.
The Porphyries are savage and stoical people and make no recording of their brain information. The world is noted for being entirely free of ghosts.
Predominant race is Chimerae.
Tau Ceti—December, Wintertide, Yule, and Samhain
An old, old world with silt-choked swamps, mountains worn to low nubs, a dull and salty sea without tides. Ice-coated, save at the equator, overcast, and foggy. There is a lower point of precipitation than on Earth, due to a different balance of gases within the atmosphere, so that it rains without ceasing. Ruled by Merchant Concerns, a callous plutocracy. The predominant race is Hibernals.
Wintertide, Yule, and Samhain were eventually terraformed, not to mimic Earth climates but to mimic December. All four inner worlds elevated to Potentates.
Outer giant planets were dismantled to create a Dyson sphere, a Principality called Catallactic.
Omicron Eridani—Gargoyle
A highly industrialized world where the terraforming was incomplete. The population wears gas masks, often highly decorated. Very close to her primary, Gargoyle has a year that is only twelve days long: her axial tilt is roughly the same as earth, so the temperature variation is like that of Earth. The moss-bush and colorful insect life reproduces and perishes in twelve-day cycles, which may add to the melancholy and frivolity of the Gargoyle character. All settlements and guild-mansions have large municipal greenhouses, which are a source of civic pride.
The legal arrangements of this world are draconian and inhuman, with each man renting his life from a central quartermaster. Suicide via demasking is a common penalty for nonperformance of significant contracts.
All social roles are stored in a man’s mask circuitry so that anyone donning another’s mask, for all legal purposes, becomes him.
70 Ophiuchi A—Aesculapius
Has a slow (two hundred–hour) rotation: the people sleep once every twenty hours and have a twenty-hour festival of rest at noon, resting in the great “shades” of the citywide parasols. Slightly lower gravity than Earth. The tree-life of Aesculapius is known for its large, colorful canopies and copious insect life.
For half of the 227 Earth day–long year, the companion star illumes the night sky. Solar storms and variability are frequent, necessitating the adaptation of local biota to flare-time conditions and a hardening of the cells against radiation. Upon a flare signal, all plants and men suddenly grow thick, dark skins, and the vines and trees take on a repellant aspect.
By ancient tradition, wars and murders are only attempted during flare time, when the worldwide panopticon system is down.
Vanity, or some cultural quirk of the Asclepiads, conditions their womenfolk to submerge during flares in the many pools set aside for this purpose, rather than assume an ungainly aspect. The river-going Melusine of that world, called Camenae, are famed for their singing.
The most subtle and expert of pantropists of the Empyrean, the Asclepiads are philosophically opposed to any centralized ecological control and forbid living weapons larger than a bee or wasp. The Leafsmith family is originally from Aesculapius.
The Breatharians, a green-skinned photosynthesizing variant of Locust that can live without intake of food and water, originate from here.