The Fortuna System: Temporally Disjunct
“And in the presence of the LORD our GOD [Nova] shall the horrors of the uncaring universe be repelled. The LORD holds the line, against the prying inquiries of the heathen FLESH [Denizens of Horizon]. She repels the lusting temptations of deathless METAL [Seven Stonehearts]. She shields we, Her children, from all the horror of the faithless OTHER [Dreamers of Oneirodes] that so tormented our ancestors.
And for Her service to the eternal salvation of our people, we shall know nothing but devotion to our SAVIOR.“
- Excerpt from the Book of Invasions, a contemporary Fortunian religious text
Overview
Fortuna is a relatively old, lone system belonging to the thick disk of Passiflora. Though it spends much of its live above the beautiful chaos of the galaxy’s arms, it is currently in the middle of a disk crossing as it buzzes the edge of the massive young Luminari Cluster. This neat, compact system has not seen much action since its very formation; the planets have followed their regular orbits for billions of years.
Life can be found on a whole four planets in the system, including its namesake. The planetary clockwork of Fortuna’s orbital arrangement makes it so that panspermia is a rare event, so the evolutionary history of each of its four worlds is largely independent. The inhabitants of the Fortuna System are thought to have evolved on the planet Interamnia before spreading to all suitable habitat throughout the system, possibly during the giant impact that gave Interamnia its current shape, but they have never moved between worlds since.
The piscine inhabitants of Fortuna never left the heavy gravity of their home planet without assistance. Though archaeological records are sparse and the cultural memory of extant societies has long passed these events into myth and legend, they seem to have been subjugated by an alien power that constructed the infrastructure necessary to leave the planet. This unknown group later lost control of the system (whether this was voluntary on their part or not is unclear), leaving their erstwhile subjects to strike out into the galaxy alone. Though they have roamed the cosmos for almost a thousand years, their cautious and traditionalist ways have prevented them from establishing a dominance comparable to that of the Six Great Clades.
The First and Only Sun: Phaeothamnion, the Distant Observer
Phaeothamnion is one of the oldest stars in Passiflora’s disk at well over five billion years old, forming not long after the galaxy did. It is a K2-class orange dwarf less than a quarter as bright as the Sun. Like most orange dwarfs, it is a very quiet star with an almost entirely consistent light output and will remain in such a state for 29 billion years, far longer than even the age of the Universe.
Complementing their Sun’s extreme stability, the planets of the Fortuna System are likewise exceptionally stable. With eight planets between the mass of Mars and Neptune crammed into a space only 84% the size of Earth’s orbit, its stability might at first seem doubtful. However, all the planets are locked in regular mean-motion resonances with some of their neighbors, preventing catastrophic orbital crossings indefinitely. Thanks to this stability, asteroid impacts happen at less than 1% the rate they do in the Solar System.
The Cytherian Series
The Cytherian series comprises four planets united on the basis of physical similarity rather than common origin. All are well past the inner edge of the habitable zone and complete their orbits in the space of 60 days or less. This proximity has turned three into Venus-like desert worlds and tidally locked all. Unlike most similar planetary series, the four of them do not fall into a tightly-bound mean-motion resonance chain; Flustra, Electra, and Stomolophus do, but Plumatella is part of a resonant pair with Mastigias of the Aquean Series instead.
Members of the Cytherian Series
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Observe a super-Earth stripped of potential; a nascent super-habitable world cast into the fiery inner reaches of its solar system. With its surface reduced to bleached rock, its erstwhile oceans reduced to salt pans, and its prebiotic atmosphere stripped by radiation, this tragic planet stands as a testament to what could have been.
Flustra sits indifferent, as it always has and always will.
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Witness the ever-shifting surface of a world gone bad. This planet, wracked by powerful volcanism as its internal heat bursts out with nowhere to go, bakes under a sickly reducing atmosphere choked with exotic volcanic gases. The sand drifts like water in the soupy, wave-like winds of this hateful world.
Electra remains indifferent under the searing, unblinking glare of Phaeothamnion.
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Investigate a Neptunian world forced into perfection. This massive planet is almost perfectly tidally locked to its sun, which sits near-perfectly still in its searing skies. Its rings, lined up near-perfectly with its equator as they are, are similarly plunged into darkness; the outer edges absorbing almost all light to cast a narrow but permanent shadow over the planet’s equatorial region.
Stomolophus watches peacefully as the cosmos dances by.
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Investigate the last of Fortuna’s tidally-locked worlds and the closest thing to a familiar face in this system. This small terrestrial world is strikingly similar to our Venus, with a similarly thick and acidic atmosphere crushing a baking, utterly inimical surface. However, its comparative proximity to its star means that it is fully tidally locked, casting half of its surface into never-ending darkness.
Plumatella dares fragile life to brave its hellish surface.
The Aquean Series
The Aquean series consists of four worlds, all of which are flush with liquid water and all of which host their own complex ecosystems. Two are small ice giants which host aerial ecosystems, while the two others are terrestrial worlds with Earth-like surface biotas. Though it is unusual for terrestrial planets to follow gaseous ones in any system, it is not an unprecedented occurrence in compact resonant arrangements like Fortuna; the two outer planets simply formed too late to accrue gas like the inner two.
Members of the Aquean Series
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Examine a Neptunian giant straddling the inner edge of habitability, hosting a heat-loving ecosystem of microbes high in its sulphur-rich clouds. Accompanied only by barren selenae and the asteroidal fragments of erstwhile moons, this world may not seem pleasant. Nevertheless, life perseveres uncaring.
Mastigias beckons the fool who dares eke out an existence in its toxic embrace.
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Bask in the wonder of a thriving gas giant ecosystem, suspended in the blue-green clouds of a mini-Neptune. With only two-thirds Earth’s gravity and an atmosphere made largely of heavy gases, the skies of Catostylus host a flourishing ecosystem of tremendous scale, from the smallest aeroplanktonic microbe to the largest filter-feeding sky spider.
Catostylus dazzles onlookers with its whirling, prismatic displays.
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Journey to a world trapped in the past. This primordial super-Earth is a super-habitable world, with an abundance of shallow seas and warm tropical lands to foster a truly staggering level of biodiversity. Spun up by a past collision which made its two small moons, its five-hour days force its equator to bulge outwards alarmingly.
Interamnia wheels through the cosmos for all who visit.
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Visit a pair of worlds whose fates could not be more different. An ever-living super-Earth cloaked under an insulating blanket of carbon dioxide haze dances through the silent cosmos with the dried-up husk of a huge, Mars-like moon. Though once both Earth-like and temperate, time had made them false twins.
Fortuna mourns not for what never could be.
