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Mobiyuz — Request - The Raviian System

#astronomy #scifi #solarsystem #futurehistory #constructedworld #alternatefuture
Published: 2021-12-19 19:10:19 +0000 UTC; Views: 14604; Favourites: 68; Downloads: 8
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Description A thing that DiscordForcedMe asked me to make a while ago and decided to post to try and keep things from going completely stale here.
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In the years of the After Earth (AE) Era, humanity proliferated across the local group of stars, with colony ships moving outwards in all directions to stars judged habitable or potentially habitable. HD 10647 / q1 Eridani was one of these stars targeted for potential colonization, but even as Proxima b, Gliese 832 c, and Gliese 667 Cc were being colonized, other worlds with potentially more diverse environments were being explored and studied. Among these was the system of HD 10647 (q1 Eridani), one of the first systems to be explored by a largely civilian crew rather than the military administration of the Interstellar Fleet. Leading the effort to explore q1 Eridani was Naksh Bhasin, a former jeweler of Sikh heritage whose family had been one of the first to settle HD 40307 g ("Waheguru"). Upon arrival in 1138 AE, the system's exploration and survey focused primarily on its largest planet, a mid-Jovian world with distinct bands of yellow and brown. It was from this that it was given the name Baagh, and its moon given the name Motee.

Motee in particular caught attention, as the exploratory effort had largely been based on the potential to discover a potentially habitable moon orbiting Baagh. Motee was approximately 1.2 Earth masses and the only substantially large satellite orbiting Baagh aside from a scattering of minor moons on chaotic orbits further from the planet, suggesting that either it absorbed most of the mass orbiting Baagh or its perturbations sent any other large moons out of orbit or crashing into the gas giant. It had a dense atmosphere replete with oxygen (25%) but curiously with vast amounts of argon in place of the nitrogen-dense atmospheres which humanity was most used to. Vast amounts of water made up its surface, but with largely shallow oceans and mountains which were not excessively high. This was highly unusual because the moon was still tectonically active, yet showed only moderate signs of tectonic activity. The overall result was Motee's description as a "mudball" planet, in which most of its surface was swampy mire.

The name "Motee" largely described its outward appearance, as at the time of its discovery most of its surface had been covered in a dense cloud layer which is now understood to be action of the "global monsoon", a regular feature of the moon's climate. Being within the warmer end of the star's habitable zone, its "day" is 15 sol as a result of its tidal locking and orbit around Baagh, which itself orbits HD 10647 ("Ravi")in 1024 days and has an axial inclination of approximately 7°, meaning that over a period of 33 months Motee goes through a regular cycle of warming and cooling. During this warming period increasing amounts of water vapor form large storm systems that rain down over the planet during the cooling period, creating the complex global storm systems which drive the largest part of the planet's ecosystem. It would not be inappropriate to call it a "jungle world" but calling it a "swamp world" would generally be better. Humid, large amounts of rainfall, and no ice even up to its polar regions, a "global hothouse" climate.

Manned exploration of the surface found a world adapted to humid and wet conditions, with vast forests of mangrove-like trees that utilized roots digging deep into the marshy ground for support. In fact it was these trees which formed large "organic islands" that the majority of animal life could be found on, forming distinctive ecological niches termed "uptree" and "downtree". The relationship was symbiotic: plant and animal life that fell from the uptrees would be consumed by the downtrees, and when the downtrees died their nutrients were recycled by the trees themselves and taken advantage of by the uptrees. Primate-like life seemed unusually rare, instead dominated by flying and gliding animals which used the dense atmosphere to move around. In fact one species, the "toady bloyster", appeared to lengthen its flight time through combusting natural gas within pockets folded into its wings, not dissimilar to a jet engine in function but more jokingly called "fart flight".

The settlement of Motee was carried out primarily by Sikh migrants and settlers from Waheguru who themselves had largely descended from Sikhs across the Indian subcontinent before Earth had been abandoned. Beginning a year after arrival the first city of Har Krishan was established in its southern hemisphere, followed by Har Rai and Ram Das to become the three primary settlements of the planet, with their central nexus being the same kind of "colony pack" that was expected for most interstellar colonies: advanced technology, mechanized distribution, and futuristic design. But outside of it much of the architecture and city planning drew on traditional elements of South Asian design to accommodate the planet's ecosystem and environment, angled to minimize sun exposure with large roofs to vent warm air and raised on stilts to encourage cool breezes to come below, though another benefit was keeping houses away from floodwaters and predatory animals of the downtree swamps.

Ravi also had two other planets, Neelam and Firoza, which were both Mars-like worlds beyond the snowline on eccentric orbits. With largely telluric surfaces covered by snow and ice and clinging to tenuous atmospheres, the leading theory holds that they initially formed in the inner part of the Raviian System alongside other planetesimals but were ejected along with their siblings by inward motion of Baagh, and unlike others managed to stay within the system. One other notable object was Sangamusa, a large and dark body that appeared to still be coalescing from material in the Inner Belt. In fact it seemed that an unusually large part of the system's non-stellar, non-Baaghan mass was contained in the Inner and Outer Belts, further suggesting that Baagh managed to absorb most of the system's accretionable mass and scattered much of the rest. Given the small number of planets and the size of Baagh, it seems increasingly likely that the system's sparseness is owing to both its central F-type star and Baagh itself.

Being one of the first habitable moons colonized by mankind, unique challenges related to tidal forces, weather, and yearly cycles had to be dealt with but the tenacity of humanity to continue to survive and thrive even when exiled from their home planet continued to be nothing but astounding. As they expanded to encompass most of the habitable worlds of the stars nearest to Sol, each new world encountered was not only a new challenge to face but a source of new knowledge and information, new resources to gather, new experiences to have. Motee and other worlds such as Waheguru, Proxima b ("Ararat"), and Gliese 832 c ("Gumption") have all become new homes, testament to humanity's desire to survive, but all performed with glances back towards home. Knowing that the more mankind came to learn, explore, and gather in worlds outside Sol, supplementing the human colonies of the Solar System, the closer they came to someday repairing and restoring their lost home, their cradle, the Earth.
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