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Titania
Astrographical
Star, position:	Taishibeth, I
Satellites(s):	5000+
Physical
Diameter:	62500 km
Gravity:	3.8 g
Length of day:	72 hours
Orbital period:	10,000 - 20,000
Atmosphere:	Predominant: Hydrogen (1H) Trace: Nitrogen (7N) Oxygen (8O) Methane (CH4) Ammonia (NH3) Argon (18Ar)
Surface temperature:	300 K
Societal
Demonym:	Titano
Species:	Crystalien Hiver
Population:	80 billion sophonts
Government:	Hierarchy of Hierarchies

“

The mystery of a thousand thousand lifetimes.

”

Taishibeth is a Super-HydroJovian world in the eponymous Taishibeth system, erroneously classed as a double-system. It was discovered by the Argus array twenty years after the Second Collapse.

Overview

Local star

Taishibeth orbits a white dwarf star eponymously named Taishibeth. No other planetary bodies have been detected. A major ring system of Hadaen, Cerean, and Vestian planetoids numbering in the upper billions orbits out at between four to five astronomical units and spans an AU in relative size.

Orbital position

It orbits its primary at a distance of eight hundred astronomical units, 120 billion kilometers at its greatest major semi-axis. It has an eccentricity of 0.7, an inclination of 35°, and an argument of periastron of 150°. It has an orbital period of between 10000 and 20000 Terran years and a rotational period of 72 hours. It is the only major planetary body of the Taishibethi system.

Planetary system

It features an extensive ring-system stretching approximately four hundred million kilometers (2.673 AU) in diameter. Gaps in the ring system indicate the orbits of numerous satellites, over two hundred of which rival, or are double, the size of Mars; the rest average from between several dozens of kilometers to mere centimeters.

Two civilizations have arisen within the system, the Crystalien Hierarchy of Hierarchies within the depths of the Jovian itself, and the chthonic Hiver species upon Oberon. A refugee fleet made up of survivors from The Last City and The Reef has settled in orbit around the Obelisk.

Satellites

• Oberon: the second largest and most closest of these satellites, measuring at 6000 kilometers in size, it is tectonically active and possesses a sulphurous atmosphere. It is especially rich in volatiles. It is approximately four hundred thousand kilometers from Taishibeth.
• Peasblossom: similar in composition to Oberon, it is another world just shy of 5,000 km. It possesses no atmosphere but features active cryovolcanoes shooting volatiles from the subglacial ocean. It has great quantities of organic compounds and material. It is approximately sixteen million kilometers from Taishibeth.
• Cobweb: a tiny world of barely 2,000 km, it is locked in a Trojan orbit with Moth. It has little significance apart from a subglacial ocean system and groups of methane lakes on the surface. It is approximately fifty million kilometers from Taishibeth.
• Moth: the smallest of the five moons, it is in a Trojan orbit with Cobweb. It is rich in minerals and useful material for orbital construction. It possesses no atmosphere and is approximately fifty million kilometers from Taishibeth.
• Mustardseed: originally misclassed as a rocky world due to its great distance, further expeditions showed that it is in fact a MicroJovian (or a Gas dwarf) of almost 14000 kilometers in diameter, or a third of Taishibeth’s observed size, and has cleared a gap of nearly two hundred thousand kilometers in the rings, the largest yet, and is approximately seventy five million kilometers from Taishibeth. There are no signs of life recorded anywhere on the planet. It possesses two moons.
  • Puck: a tiny orbital, measuring twenty-odd kilometers in size, and has the appearance of 67P/C-G.
  • Ghosh: another tiny orbital, measuring twelve kilometers, lumpy and pitted with craters.

Orbitals

• The Obelisk: an ancient artifact of xenosophont origin, believed to have been left by the Traveler as a marker for a return visit. It is a lengthily object measuring twenty kilometers in size and is totally black, emitting nothing on the infrared or electromagnetic scales.
  • Sanctuary: a Terran space station in orbit around the Obelisk, the last known refuge for humanity.
  • Zavala's Crucible: a Terran space station outfitted for Guardian war games, dedicated to Zavala's memory.

Physical characteristics

Taishibeth's atmosphere is predominantly hydrogen with trace elements of nitrogen, oxygen, methane, ammonia and argon making up less than five percent of the total. It has a relative Jovian mass averaging 12.5, suggesting that it is close to that of a Y-type, or ultra-cool, brown dwarf; its physical size is actually five times Earth's radii.

It has an average surface temperature of 300 Kelvin, or a warm summer’s day of approximately 80° Fahrenheit. It is colder towards the poles and warmer towards the equator, made possible by immense and violent windstorms that consume the planet. The planet’s physical coloration is a brilliant sky-blue from Rayleigh scattering and has an albedo of 0.12.

Internal characteristics

Taishibeth can be divided, roughly, into three layers: the atmosphere, extensively hydrogen with pockets of trace gasses; the oceans, liquid water, ammonia, and methane; and the crust, rock in varying states and metallic hydrogen.

The atmosphere, when measured from the surface to the point where true space begins, is approximately 24000 kilometers thick. This keeps the surface, and the oceans below, warm, heated by the dual processes of the greenhouse effect and the immense pressures on the planetary core from its gravity. Despite violent storms wracking the planet on the super-continental scale there exists life aplenty drifting along the turbulent currents. Many of these are collective organisms, resembling enormous floating jellyfish. They feed on aerial colonies of plankton and algae. Others follow the lightning storms, feasting on the energy discharges. Others are massive winged entities, some of these reaching wingspans of ten kilometers or more, hunting the floaters. The most notable of these are a species of enormous bird-like creatures, tentatively termed “rocs”, apparently at the top of the food chain. Incredibly there exist floating continents, solidifed hydrogen and other gasses that have formed on the canopies of some of the most massive of the floaters, which can measure up to twenty kilometers around. Upon these alien continents live entirely unique ecosystems of wholly unique organisms similar to Terran species, not unlike the Galapagos Islands.

The surface, meanwhile, is hostile to all forms of known life in spite of the relatively balmy temperatures of 300 K prevalent upon it. Lighting storms frequently cover large swathes of the surface, pouring hydrogen and methane rain upon the scarred and pitted ground. Mountains are blasted into rounded mounds with no discernable features; caves exists on the leeward side, but are seldom protected for long. Cryovolcanoes and hydrothermal vents are common, adding their erupting plumes to join the stormy fray. Great canyons and vents honeycomb the "land", cutting across the shallow seas and join with vast underground cave systems which penetrate deep into the subglacial oceans below. The largest, and most stable, of these is called Cronus, providing a direct link between the blasted overworld and the peaceful underworld.

The subglacial oceans beneath, spanning a mere eighty kilometers deep at their most extreme, are largely walled off from the surface by shifting cave systems and crushing ice packs; seldom are these tunnels stable, the great tectonic currents of the mountains below pushing and squeezing any sort of escape. The seas are ice water mixed liberally with ammonia, methane, liquid hydrogen, and trace elements. Vast mountainous chains break up the ocean floor, anchoring the continents above; offshoots of the surface volcanoes are plentiful, and are host to vast and complex ecosystems that live near poisonous and concentrated salt oceans. Upside-down waterfalls are common sights. The spaces between the mountain ranges and volcanoes are perilous, full of supercritical fluids hostile to even chemoautotrophic life, the haunt of predators capable of surviving there.

At the very bottom is the ocean floor, a mixture of metallic hydrogen and superheated rock, provoked into searing heat by the crushing power of Taishibeth's own gravity. Even here life has made a home. Most life native to Taishibeth lives in the oceans. Chemotrophs make up the food web, their entire biosphere and global biodiversity built to live inside the ocean. Every species observed is bioluminescent.

Owing to lower genetic diversity around ninety percent of extant species exist in symbiotic relationships, forming the enormous forests of coral and seaweed that cover the slopes and hillsides of underground mountain ranges and vast drifting swarms of plankton and algaes. The other ten percent is estimated to be ordinary invertebrates, vertebrates, and other individual animals. These range from massive herbivorous beasts stretching almost a kilometer in size in their wingspan (from abyssal gigantism) to tiny predators less than a foot in size. They feed off of hydrocarbons for nourishment, such as acetylene, and either directly from other organisms or from the environment.

History

The ancient history of the Taishibethi system is largely buried in the gestalt memories of the local civilizations. The Hivers are secretive and solipsistic, limiting any information that could be gleaned from them as parochial ramblings; the Crystaliens are even more enigmatic and refused to speak to Warlocks. The few artifacts scattered about on the moons offered few clues.

Evacuation of Earth

Following the Second Collapse, and the apparent end of the Solar system, a ragtag fleet of ships numbering in the low millions arrived. They quickly discovered the Obelisk in distant orbit around the SuperJovian and built Sanctuary close by, a reminder of the Traveler's sacrifice. Then, as Guardians explored the nearby moons, came the discovery of the Hivers and later the Crystaliens.

The Ancient Past

What is known is that once upon a time, many unfathomable millions of years ago, Taishibeth had been a golden sun, warm with life and blessed all. The SuperJovian had once been a Panthallassic superterrestial in close orbit with its primary, brimming over with abundant life of astonishing diversity and variety, though lacking land-based creatures; this had been the original state of the Crystalien species' homeworld. The asteroid belt of the inner system had once been three worlds in a Janusian orbit, or in co-orbital resonance and exchanging momentum regularly, and had been the primary homeworlds (so claimed) by the Hivers. Four now extinct Meso-CryoJovians once orbited in the outer system, protecting the inner worlds from harm.

At an unspecified point in time, a white-colored and spherical entity had emerged from deep space and brought with it numerous gifts and blessings. According to the Hivers this entity had gifted them with understanding and wisdom, uplifting them from primitive insectoid kingdoms into true civilizations. At the same time it had also reached into their oceanic neighbor and uplifted the ancestors of the Crystaliens into a singularity, gifting them with powers and abilities beyond the collective imagination of the Hivers.

Here is where the agreed upon history of the Hivers diverged; some claimed the entity (which they called "the Ship") had departed whence it came, never to be seen again, others contended it stayed with them for a thousand thousand years, helping them to change their worlds into a paradise, and some few whispered it fled a civil war the Hivers had regrettably fought at some point in time. Whichever the reason, none of them seemed to acknowledge the existence of the Obelisk.

Campaign of Destruction

What is known for certain is the great cataclysmic event the Hivers called "the Shattering"—the event where their sun abruptly changed states. What is disagreed upon is the nature of the event: what caused it. Owing to the solipsistic nature of the Hivers they were of the opinion it was their ancient war which caused it. The few Crystaliens that could be convinced to speak held that it was a species that worshipped death and made of metal and chromium that caused this wanton act of destruction and cruelty.

Whichever the case, the inner three worlds were annihilated by the expanding envelope of discharged plasma, reduced to rubble, yet curiously remained instead of total vaporization. Taishibeth somehow escaped any major change except to move many hundreds of AU away from the doomed sun; the four CryoJovians disappeared with nary a trace. The advanced societies of the Crystaliens and the Hivers retreated beneath their changed worlds, the Crystaliens back to their semi-nomadic lifestyle and the Hivers back to their primitive kingdoms. They abandoned all technology to hide from outsiders and severed contact between themselves for mutual protection.

The Present Day

To be expanded