Originally called Carrion Flower.
Predominant population is Locusts and Scorpions.
Altair (Alpha Aquilae)—Covenant
The Preceptors of Covenant are known for their strict and puritanical lifestyles and their systems of mental discipline. The Covenanters lived aboard their seed ship for two hundred years after arrival, not descending to claim the planet until the long and arduous job of clearing away the asteroid accretions had been accomplished. Very little bioadaptation was needed, but the Covenanters made several mental alterations to themselves, removing them from the mainstream of human psychological norm. The Preceptors live in a polite near anarchy, their disputes determined by a specialized caste of paid arbiters: the common folk are indentured to pay for the costs of the terraforming, practically serfs.
Gliese 570 in Libra—Walpurgis
The star is energetic, and the planet has no ozone layer: the Walpurgishmen, when they emerge during the day, wear traditional parasol-shaped hats, goggles, and reflective capes, their faces painted or tattooed with radiation-blocking grease.
Year over four Earth years long, the axial tilt of the planet is more than sixty degrees, so that the sun never sets in midsummer, never rises in midwinter. The northern and southern oceans boil in summer, ice over in winter.
Roughly half the population migrates seasonally. The main industries are located aboard floating cities called rafts fabricated from the local sea-sponge. Most of the world surface is tideless ocean choked by sea-sponge, and flotilla-villages follow multi-mile-wide herds of gigantic sponge-eating sea mammals on yearly migrations.
The attempt to breed an amphibious race of humans, who could live safely under the water during light times, ended amid war and social upheaval when the Nicor (as they are called) proved ungovernable, anarchic, tribal, incapable of maintaining a social order or technological civilization.
The government is simple in theory, complex in practice. All political, religious, and economic power is vested in a figure called the Metropolitan, which is an amalgam of ghosts of the original man, Ele’ele, a monk and sole survivor of the Second Sweep, who repopulated the planet with his clones and duplicates, and retained ownership despite the influx of giants during the Third Sweep.
Eta Cassiopeiae—Outrage and Calm
Eta Cassiopeiae A. Outrage. The world has a rapid rotation (five hours of daylight followed by five of night), a long year (fifteen Earthly months long), and a highly eccentric orbit. Outrage orbits a bizarre object, called Storm Worm, whose mass is greater than Jupiter and the size less than Mercury, apparently the remnant of an exploded star. The surface of Storm Worm is mined for unique heavy elements and chemicals, so it is a source of wealth, but the tides from Storm Worm agitate the weather patterns of Outrage and trigger seasonal monsoons of uncompromising violence. There are no land masses above water, but coral structures form reefs larger than islands: famous also are the great leafy “floats” of buoyant plant life. The great polar reef is actually the safest place on the planet and the seat of the only urban population, mostly ghosts. The incarnate urban population must be fed by very-far-ranging fleets of aerial fishing craft (who dodge the horrific storms). The predominant population is Sylph.
Eta Cassiopeiae B has a world within its “water ring” (habitable temperature zone) called Calm: a pleasant, green world, heavily farmed. The planet has no axial tilt and no seasonal changes. Year is 37 Earth days. The length of the day is frequently changed by rival factions of planetary engineers to match circadian rhythms of imported Earth life versus the native life.
Calm is famed for having the most highly developed autochthonous life of any colony. The multicellular life is divided into five kingdoms rather than two: fragrant sea-jellies, canal-wading lotuses, rooted worms of prodigious length, semi-ambulatory five-sided pyramids, pentasexual pentagons with no discernible sense organs. Both pyramids and pentagons leave behind rows of shed shells as they mate and migrate, giving the Calm landscape its distinctive appearance. The majority population is Locust.
36 Ophiuchi—Albino
Albino is an icy moon of a superjovian. Albino and her companions are locked into Laplace resonance, causing tidal flexing. Albino’s oceans are heated by frequent volcanism.
There are no surface structures on Albino; the Swans live in an endless labyrinth of ice caves and subterranean oceans.
Note that the superjovian is close enough to the star to be suffering from loss of mass due to solar winds: there is a trail of dispersed atmosphere continually streaming from it, mined for tritium.
Albino is colonized entirely by Swans, who maintain no social organization aside from voluntary commensalities needed to create and maintain ghosts. The Swans enacted a cliometric end state, ensuring their history would never change.
HR7703—Gilgamesh and Enkidu
Two tide-locked egg-shaped binary planets with very severe tides and floodplains, worlds of rocky atolls rising sheer from stormy seas. The orbital period of the Twins is three days. The planets share a neck of stratosphere, allowing spaceplanes to cross the interplanetary interval. A permanent storm system sits at the near pole of both worlds. HR 7703 has the oddity that, for reasons unknown, the Hyades deracination ships never plundered it. It has no daughter colonies.
Gilgamesh, is a world of archipelagoes and floating islands, and enjoys a stable government and sophisticated aquacultural ecology run by the planetary Noösphere.
In contrast, Enkidu, which languishes at the sub-posthuman stage of development, suffers periodic convulsions and tumults, brought on by anarchistic philosophy, addiction to artificial brain-pleasure signals, or outbursts of religious zealotry: the locals worship devils perceived through ingestions of numerous hallucinogenic plants.
82 Eridani—Cyan
Low in iron and heavy elements, the Cyanese specialized in mental and theoretical disciplines and bred a race of intellectuals. The world is monobiotic, one species of bluish grass having adapted to all floral niches in the badly botched terraforming sequence. Planet has lower than Earth gravity; their grassboats are unique in the Empyrean, panels held up by the pressure of grass stems, coated with a frictionless substance. The first colony worlds to create a Jupiter Brain (known as Cerulean).
The population is divided into masters and muddles, depending on whether they wear a finger-ring appliance which gives them access to the local system-wide Noösphere. The Very Large Array radio communicates with local Dominion and Collaboration outposts. Cyan enjoys more radio contact with the Hyades than other Earth worlds and is known to have exchanged four or five messages. Cyan orbits at 0.8 AU and has a year of 275 Earth days.
Delta Pavonis—Splendor.
A cold and mountainous world occupying the same orbit as an asteroid belt, subject to continuous meteoritic bombardment. Splendor has a year 400 Earth days long. One ocean surrounds the equatorial region like a belt: the Splendids inhabit islands and peninsula of the north and south shore, avoiding the glaciers that dominate the nonequatorial areas. The Houses of Splendor still are centered on the seven competing ecological stations of the original terraforming. With seventeen large and close moons and countless lesser moons, the study of tides is both complex and necessary to navigate Splendor’s icy seas. The Splendids are the least modified of the colonial races, having achieved tremendous breakthroughs, and having been very patient during the terraforming. It is a point of pride with the Splendids not to meddle with their own gene plasm.
SECOND SWEEP 25 th Millennium