The Horizon System: Rhopalura, the Resonant Lifeline
Something wicked this way comes
Blistering, burning, stretched it runs
Golden branches, blood like fire
A life cut short by divine ire
Neither a man and neither a beast
So goes the Queen Least.
- Eulogy for the Lord of Flames, ‘Imperata’ [Cycles Upon Cycles Of Neverending Inversions]
Rhopalura (Hot Subterra, Planet)
System - Horizon-Actinophrys
Mass - 0.098 Earths (0.916 Mars)
Radius - 3,138 kilometers (0.493 Earths)
Global Average Temperature - 685.4°C
Day Length - 16.90 days (2:3 spin-orbit resonance)
Year Length - 25.37 days
Number of Satellites - 0
ESI - 0.320
Etymology - From Rhopalura ophiocomae, an enigmatic obligate parasite of brittle stars in the genus Amphipholis.
Overview
Rhopalura is the smallest of Actinophrys’s twenty worlds. Though much hotter, it is roughly comparable to Mars, with a surface consisting of bare rock mixed with reddish sand dunes beneath a thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. Unlike Mars, however, Rhopalura is a living world. The high temperatures continuously strip its atmosphere, forcing the little planet to replenish its losses through constant volcanism. Accordingly, the atmosphere and surface are rich in volcanic exudates such as sulphur dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, and elemental sulphur, the latter of which occasionally pools as blood-red liquid in the hottest soils of the equatorial mountain ranges.
Unlike Mars, Rhopalura never had oceans and so its red colors are not the result of rust. Instead, much of the surface is covered in fine-grain ruby and garnet, minerals which dominate its crust due to an extreme overabundance of aluminum. Rhopalura’s slow rotation causes massive temperature differences which translate to powerful winds even in its very thin atmosphere, picking up the jewel dust into raging dust storms. As the surface is lashed by ionizing radiation and ground down by sandstorms, it becomes charged with electricity that is unleashed as tremendous bursts of lightning. Forests of fulgurites up to ten meters tall can be found across the gem-studded dunes, traces of the planet’s hidden violence.
Past & Future
Rhopalura is a remnant protoplanet; a small world left behind after its fellows came together to form the giants that now flank it. Like most of the other planets of the Horizon System, Rhopalura did not form where it is now - huge amounts of alkali metals and other hydrophilic substances in its crust suggest that it formed beyond the frost line before migrating inwards. Becoming trapped in the 2:1 mean-motion resonance with newborn Elysia, it followed in the gravitational wake of the larger planet as it dove into the hellish heart of the Horizon System. Though the ice and snow that once covered Rhopalura’s surface are long gone, they have left one last gift behind: Rhopalura’s crust and mantle are extremely rich in the radioactive isotope potassium-40, which was deposited after the water escaped. The heat generated by its decay keeps Rhopalura’s interior warm, allowing the little world to replenish its atmospheric losses through volcanic activity a billion years after it should have cooled to a dry rock.
But this cannot last forever. Around 2 billion years from now, Rhopalura’s volcanism will finally drop below the threshold to sustain its atmosphere and the increasingly luminous Actinophrys will strip it away. The glittering jewel deserts that distinguish it so will follow soon after, eroded to grey dust by solar radiation and stripped by electrostatic forces from the small planet’s surface. But even the world itself will not be long; even before Rhopalura crashes into an aging Actinophrys’s expanding atmosphere, the searing heat will have vaporized the planet to nothing.
Civilization
Rhopalura, though bright, is not nearly as overpoweringly luminous as the other members of the Interior Semiresonant Series, nor is its vague pinkish color unique - Alvinella-Chrysomallon and Tonicella look much the same. It is still quite visible and would be a notable object in the sky of any system, but the lack of distinction from the other planets means that its cultural role is more inconsistent than Chrysaora’s or Elysia’s. It was often placed into the pantheons of sun-worshipping communities due to its association with Actinophrys, but roles as disparate as a bringer of death and a fertility symbol have been assigned to it over the million-year history of Horizonian civilization.
Today, Rhopalura is one of the closest outposts of civilization to Actinophrys. Though few biological or even mechanical lifeforms are willing to take extended excursions around its surface, for fear of being baked to a crisp or ground to dust in sandstorms, an outpost in its orbit serves as a major communication relay station for the inner Horizon System, coordinating the home worlds with the massive solar arrays at Tridacna, for instance. Like most things in gestalt Horizonian civilization, this is handled largely unconsciously so there are few sapient inhabitants - only mindless maintenance drones to address occasional micrometeorite impacts.
Whispers from the Reach
A halide lamp flickers on lazily, revealing the still form of RIGEL. The Prophet’s once-regal figure has been run ragged. His shell is cracked and his wings are tattered and carbonized. Fragments of ruby-stained glass and golden jewelry protrude from the carapace of his six hands, digging into the leaking flesh as he struggles faintly against the wooden binds that hold him. He is silent, save for the steady drip-drip-drip of pallid hemolymph.
“Pretender.“
The layered voice of ENDLESS RAIN UPON VIRIDIAN SKIES bubbles from the darkness. RIGEL’s struggles suddenly rise to a fevered pitch as the drip of hemolymph becomes a small but steady stream. His bindings rattle but do not yield, only tightening their coils as the Archon clambers spider-like into the suspended interrogation chamber.
“R-Release me! You have no right to hold the Son of Heaven in such a manner, Heretic! R-Repent, and you might yet be saved…“
The Seventh Archon scoffs.
“It’s over, false prophet. Will you give up your insufferable circus act, or do I need to beat it out of you?“
“The Gods will not stand for this, Heretic! Release THEIR servant now and THEIR mercy might yet grant -“
A vine slams RIGEL’s tympanic orifices shut.
“Unlike you, I have much better things to do than prattle on about illusory divinities, but I think I need to make it clear just what you have done.”
ATROPA’S face morphs into a disgusted sneer. A vine delivers a datapad into two of their waiting hands, while a third pulls up a list of accusations. They collapse cross-legged into a newly-formed chair of intertwined vines, droning out the list’s contents in a lifeless monotone.
“Grand Patriarch Rigel of Lycogala IV. You have spent the past century cultivating a predatory for-profit religious cult that has scammed the livelihoods out of over a billion people across Comatula. Your organization has been indicted in numerous cases of labor trafficking, illegal bioweapons development, ecoterrorism, tax fraud, child abuse and unlawful political assassination. You have incited your followers to perform no less than nine acts of planetary genocide, all because those spineless cowards in the Velamen Spur said they’d make you king of the world. You and your ‘Apostles’ have perpetrated indiscriminate terror through the Comatula Heart unlike any seen since the Cerulean Demise.“
ATROPA’S tone shifts as they fold up the datapad.
“The people of Horizon want you to be drawn and quartered. But with the discretion afforded to me as an Archon I have elected to be merciful. You will get a chance to make up for the sins you have chosen to commit.”
“You got anything to say that isn’t a plea to your phony gods?“
The vines drop away from RIGEL. His voice comes in shuddering gasps.
“THEIR will… will be done… Heretic… salvation… at a price-”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t give the idiot a chance!”
The vines constrict around RIGEL again, cutting off his voice. ATROPA’s mantle twitches as a stingbeast skitters out from its folds, antennae flicking and jaws chittering in excitement. Its body flares with orange bioluminescence as it runs across the floor of the interrogation cell and up the restrained body of RIGEL. The crustaceous alien’s radiate head splits wide open, its barbed neural whips approaching the Prophet’s compound eyes. RIGEL begins to scream through his bindings.
“P-Please! Spare me! I-I can still be useful for you! The-the hidden followers, you are looking for them, right? I’ll tell! I’ll tell you everything -“
ATROPA smiles. It is all teeth, cold like the frozen depths of space. Their segmented wings extend as they shift in their seat, a vine delivering a box of pastries into their fourth and final hand for the show that comes next.
“Oh, those poor fools? They’ve already joined their Apostles in the Emperor’s garden!“
RIGEL screams louder as the stingbeast does its work. His body ripples with boiling blood and his eyes burst in jets of steam. But as jet-black branches and aureous leaves rip through shattered exoskeleton and tumorous new eyes of radiant gold sprout like mushrooms from charred sockets, the only sound that issues forth is the wailing laughter of IMPERATA, stricken with euphoria as she claims yet another thrall for her thousand-strong host.
A video transcript published by Horizon’s Deviancy Investigation Unit following the collapse of the religious group Manus Vindictae. Addressed to the guiding council of the federation-state RAOS (2248).
The Dusk Wars were a series of conflicts that ravaged the Comatula Nebula and Euplokamis Spine through the 2240s. Unlike the apocalyptic, galaxy-shaking Cerulean Demise and Vitalist Wars, they were a much more regional affair in which a few local powers attempted to undermine each other with precision engagements and social engineering instead of grand offensives and star-killing weapons. Nevertheless, it was still a critical event in the history of the Local Volume due to its role in inciting Horizon’s Great Dissonance and hence the Broken-Star Campaign of the Vitalist Wars.
A member of the Non-Aligned Powers, the spiritual organization known as Manus Vindictae (varyingly referred to as a cult, new religious movement, or theocratic state) was cautiously tolerated by the civilizations of the Comatula Nebula for nearly a century. In the latter half of the year 2239, however, this uneasy tolerance shattered when it suddenly declared a Crusade on neighboring Horizon, Avalon, and Haneul. Its followers shut down the transmission systems of nine Dyson swarms across Comatula, freezing billions of sapient lifeforms to death in an enormous terrorist attack now known as the Hòuyì Incident. This out-of-character aggression was ordered by Manus Vindictae’s backers in the federation-state RAOS, who hoped to break up the unfriendly Comatulan civilizations and obtain support for their campaigns in the Vitalist Wars.
While Manus Vindictae’s religious rhetoric was fiery and a few opportunistic imperialists took the Crusade as a pretense to take slices out of their own neighbors, it quickly ground to a halt as Avalon and Haneul raised a robust defense and Horizon retaliated with their own paralyzing strikes against the aggressors’ industrial centers. As Avalon, Haneul, and their numerous enemies dug in their borders and dared each other to strike, their backers engaged in their own shadow war of espionage and spycraft that set the multitudes of Comatula aflame.
