The Horizon System: Alvinella-Chrysomallon, the Twin Blasphemies
Beneath the world a simple being lies
Tunneling, boring, gnawing at the hives
Of Grand Horizon, the all-path nexus
Simple, proud, outright glamorous
A squamate beast electroplated, bejeweled
A sordid kingdom in darkness it ruled
Guardian of Wealth, the Great Survivor
Bless us with our greatest desires!
- Prayer to the Lord of Earth, ‘Corybas’ [A Not Entirely Unwelcome Subversion] (Banned by the Horizonian Cultural Department)
Alvinella (Hot Ferria, Planet)
System - Horizon-Actinophrys
Mass - 0.252 Earths
Radius - 3,808 kilometers (0.595 Earths)
Global Average Temperature - 850.7°C
Day Length - 11h 35m 5.1s (Mutual Lock)
Year Length - 118.4 days
Number of Satellites - 4
ESI - 0.256
Etymology - From the Pompeii Worm Alvinella pompejana, which can survive in 80°C hydrothermal vent waters uninhabitable to almost all other animals.
Chrysomallon (Hot Ferria, Planet)
System - Horizon-Actinophrys
Mass - 0.247 Earths
Radius - 3,820 kilometers (0.597 Earths)
Global Average Temperature - 683.6°C
Day Length - 11h 35m 5.1s (Mutual Lock)
Year Length - 118.4 days
Number of Satellites - 4
ESI - 0.306
Etymology - From the Scaly-Foot Snail Chrysomallon squamiferum, for its volcanic hydrothermal vent habitat and iron-plated body.
Overview
This pair of small worlds simmers with barely-suppressed fury. Though nearly three times further away from Actinophrys, both strikingly resemble their fellow scorching desert Rhopalura in most ways. All are small worlds dominated by volcanism and aeolian erosion, which work in coordination to produce vast deserts and world-spanning badlands no life could hope to survive in. However, Alvinella and Chrysomallon are around two and a half times more massive than Rhopalura each, allowing them to hold onto much more gas. As a close binary planet system, each raises enormous tides upon the other that stretch and squeeze their interiors, causing massive outpourings of lava and volcanic gases that accumulate into atmospheres tens of times thicker than Earth’s. Simmering under an ocean of supercritical carbon dioxide, their gloomy, ruby-streaked sands may resemble the abyssal seabeds of Earth more than the windblown deserts of their inner-system cousin.
Though they sit in a relatively empty region of space plundered of its contents by Navanax and Chironex, Alvinella and Chrysomallon are accompanied by four small moons. Peltospira, Lirapex, Ctenopelta, and Nodopelta are quite similar in size and shape to the smaller circumbinary moons of Pluto and Charon in our Solar System, but they are made of dense rock instead of frozen ice. Like the small moons of Pluto, all four are believed to be fragments of their parent planets, knocked into space by ancient impacts.
Past & Future
Though today they are never separated by more than about 20,000 kilometers today, Alvinella and Chrysomallon have quite different chemical compositons. Alvinella’s chemistry particularly resembles that of Cryogenia, while Chrysomallon’s composition is quite similar to Tonicella and the moons of Chironex. We know that Cryogenia and Tonicella formed far apart - the latter condensed near the edge of the primordial habitable zone while the former emerged from icy debris in the outer protoplanetary disk. Thus, it is not a stretch to conclude that Alvinella and Chrysomallon hail from far-flung origins, as two strangers who came together in a cosmic dance amid the chaos of the Horizon System’s formation.
The most likely means by which these two little worlds captured each other is a massive collision. This would have shed a large amount of excess speed and thrown off small fragments that could then become the binary’s small moons, explaining their existence in a region devoid of asteroids to capture. Furthermore, the thick coats of ice that both Alvinella and Chrysomallon probably formed with are gone, as is most of their rocky crust, suggesting that they were nearly vaporized by the immense energy of the impact.
Alvinella and Chrysomallon have long left their chaotic past behind. Today, they are among of the most stable of all the Horizonian planets, locked into a solid 2:3 resonance with Navanax and gravitationally isolated from all other planets. The only hazard to their continued existence is not their fellow planets but rather Actinophrys - its tidal forces sap energy from their mutual orbit, causing them to slowly fall towards each other. By the end of their existence the pair will have approached so close to each other that their atmospheres will start to touch, but by then it will not be long before they are incinerated by their growing giant sun.
Civilization
Even under optimal conditions, Alvinella and Chrysomallon are too close together in the sky to make out their binary nature, even with the comparatively good vision of the Horizonian natives. Pre-technological civilizations usually referred to them singularly, but upon the invention of the first telescopes their binary nature was discovered almost immediately. Though it has been well over 500,000 years since a telescope was used on Horizon, a vague awareness of Alvinella-Chrysomallon’s binary nature persists as strong dualist connotations in their cultural roles. Theistic cultures usually ascribe their sphere as the shared domain of two deities, while atheistic ones recognize it as a symbol of dual natures overall. However, Alvinella and Chrysomallon’s weak reddish color does not impart a more consistent specific role in Horizonian culture as, say, Elysia, so the actual details of its cultural function vary wildly from community to community.
Modern civilization is not particularly enthused to develop Alvinella and Chrysomallon. It would be unreasonably difficult to terraform them, since solar shades would be knocked out of orbit by their uneven gravitational center and tidal heating would make them uninhabitable anyway. Nor is their gravity strong enough to trap trojan asteroid swarms that could be exploited, nor do they have any resources on their surfaces that would be worth braving the 700°C heat. Besides scientific research, Alvinella and Chrysomallon are the preferred haunts of Horizon’s elite. Foreign dignitaries in the core sector of the Horizonian civilization of today are usually received at the Space Needle, a 400-kilometer-long station balanced at the gravitational center of the two planets. Such extravagant displays of material wealth and technological might are used mainly to ‘convince’ smaller civilizations in the region to follow along with Horizon’s policy choices.
Whispers From the Reach
OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE MEETING LOG ID HFLS3 - Record of 2249-03-11, UTC 08:15:27.48
Participants: OC-2 [NIGHTSHADE], OC-6 [LUMINA], OC-7 [FORMICA], OC-8 [TRIESTE], OC-11 [ALALA], OC-12 [NITOKRIS]
…
LUMINA: Incoming report from the Velamen Junction - twelve systems held by the Federation have been annihilated by relativistic kill vehicles! RAOS officials have declared a Cleansing of the Impure, local governments condemn the atrocity, … looks like the religious bastards finally had enough, huh?
NITOKRIS: Yet another terrible waste of perfectly good labor. Well, it serves them right for refusing to accept the will of their betters. We ought to bring our own holdings into the fold before they start getting ideas, international image be damned.
TRIESTE: Well, now. Didn’t we form this Collective to defend the freedom of choice for all sapient peoples? If the people’s ambitions are to fight, allow them to pursue those ambitions as they desire.
LUMINA: Trieste, weren’t you the one who sold weapons to a fascist-adjacent paramilitary in Guadalupe?
TRIESTE: IRRELEVANT!
FORMICA: It is inevitable. Unlike dear Nightshade’s Dusk Wars or the Coalition’s Dreaming Revolution, what we are seeing now is a struggle between the core concepts of civilizations. Opposing, irreconcilable forces, clashing with all their might to prove in desperation the superiority of-
NITOKRIS: Hey, Droid-Head! Got an assessment for which of those idiots is gonna come out on top? Let us know whose skulls we ought to smash.
ZERO: -will to power-calibrating-fifteen deities brought down in the last system hour-Atropa-Foundation in Tommotia-
ZERO: ….
ZERO: ….
ZERO: -CHOICE-IS-YOURS-TO-MAKE-
NITOKRIS: Gee, thanks! Way to make yourself useful! Truly, a vision worthy of the finest technology in the Reach!
ALALA: WHY NOT JUST VOTE ON IT NOW?
NITOKRIS: …
NITOKRIS: Ah, screw it. Positions on Motion 11401, Proposed Intervention in the Foundation-Alliance War of 2249!
LUMINA: Nay. Let the barbarians sort out their own troubles.
TRIESTE: Nay. The right to choose one’s destiny comes before frivolous material interests.
FORMICA: Nay. We have no right to twist the hands of fate.
ALALA: NAY. DON’T WORRY, JUST LET THEM HAVE THEIR FUN!
NITOKRIS: Ah, come on! Seriously?
NITOKRIS: …Zero?
ZERO: -WILL-ABSTAIN-NOT-MY-FIGHT-
NITOKRIS: Damn it all. We’ve got such a good opportunity here and you all are just going to p-
NIGHTSHADE: How can you all just stand around like this? Trillions are dead, cut down without even a chance to fight for their own lives! Those seditious cowards didn’t even send so much as a war declaration! How can we possibly call ourselves the honorable defenders of individual choice if we cannot even lift so much as a finger when-
LUMINA: Ugh, this kid again? Even that creeps Atropa would have been better.
NIGHTSHADE: You will not insult the Emperor’s chosen in this manner! Let it be known that I, the Uncrowned King of Horizon, the Guardian of Plutonic Wealth, the Invincible-
[Voice channel to OC-2 ‘NIGHTSHADE’ forcibly disconnected.]
NITOKRIS: Forget it. We’ll need the Horizonians’ operatives if we’re to get to Velamen. If that kid Corybas is speaking for them now, then they’re not in a position to get anything done.
An excerpt from a Collective of Sovereign Coreward Nations (CISCAN) Oversight Committee meeting log (2249). This was the 28th failed motion to intervene in the Vitalist Wars since their outbreak in 2229.
The Collective of Sovereign Coreward Nations is one of the five great federation-states who rule over the vast stellar seas of the Gordian Reach today. Though the CISCAN was formed to resist the imperialistic overtures of the then-new Hegemonic Foundation and the Siderian Ascendancy (hence its name), the Darwinian Collective of today shares little in common with their ancestors as the brutal chaos of the Cerulean Demise warped them beyond recognition. From the Horizonian Empire to MINASE to the Consensus of Oceanus, its idealistic, starry-eyed founders were beaten into jaded Realpolitik as the Reach burned around them. By the end of the Demise, the Collective had slain trillions of beings, destroyed dozens of worlds, and reduced whole galactic sectors to flaming slag all in the name of a right to sovereignty they hardly believed in anymore.
After the Demise wound down, the Collective more or less fell apart. With the threat of existential annihilation gone, its constituents went their separate ways, maintaining diplomatic ties only to dissuade other federation-states from getting any ideas. NGO members like MINASE or Protean Regenerative Industries Ltd. integrated themselves into the post-Demise world well, while nation-state members often floundered as war-jaded citizens struggled to re-adapt to normal life. Worst off were gestalts like the Horizonian Empire, many of whom became insane or catatonic as a result of Demise-related stress disorders.
The dysfunctional state of the Collective is best observed in their response to the Vitalist Wars. As the scale of the conflict increased, the Oroseirans and a coalition of smaller member states near the expanding front made a case to intervene, fearing for their own safety. Unfortunately for them, most of the Collective’s powerhouse members like Horizon, Avalon, and MINASE either got bogged down in local conflicts or stopped responding to diplomatic requests entirely, while the remainder could not be compelled to mobilize their resources to intervene in what they saw as a foreign war. By the 2270s, the Collective had gotten so idle that the Deathless Empire of Horizon collapsing entirely did not provoke even a diplomatic inquiry from the other members. Only once MINASE ended the Vitalist Wars on their own and Pleuromeia put Horizon back together was the Collective restored to its Demise-era functionality.
