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Ages ago, two ancient clouds of coalescing gas swirled into an immense
and powerful vortex. When the heat and pressure within reached a
critical point, a brilliant flash of light ensued and a pair of stars,
a massive one called the Great Eye, and its smaller, younger and
distant sister, the Daystar, fused their first hydrogen. Together,
these rare and extraordinary stars dominated the sky, sending forth
streams of yellow / blue light that warmed condensing planets long
before intelligent life raised its eyes to appreciate the heavenly gift.
Devera
image by robert luis rabello
On a tiny world orbiting
the Daystar, remote enough to hold its thin atmosphere and escape
intense radiation, but sufficiently close to retain its vast, water
ocean, races of humanoid beings arose and planted civilization upon its
forested and prairied land mass. Large cities crowded around estuaries,
spreading inland among the high plateaux, grasping for the clouds among
peaks that scraped the nether reaches of sky where no living thing
could long survive. These beings called their world "Devera", a name
meaning "our home forever" in their common tongue.
No condition, however
pleasant and necessary for sustaining life, endures without change. A
sudden and strange sign appeared in the heavens, as the massive Great
Eye, which had long ago created helium from its hydrogen, finally
exhausted its fuel and began fusing carbon in its dense core. In a
brilliant flash, the dying star blew its outer layers away, forming a
nebula of hot gases that blazed brighter than the Daystar and veiled
more distant stars in its hot, blue glare.
WIYN
3.5-m Telescope Imagery
As this
tremendous
light flashed across the Deveran sky, icecaps melted,
sea levels rose, and fire raged through forests, farms and factories.
Civilization plunged into chaos as thick dust, soot and smoke cloaked
the world in a burial shroud. Famine, extinction and war siezed Devera
in her eccentric orbit, leaving behind a legacy of crumbling ruins and
many legends of utter devastation. Few living things survived the long
darkness and burning landscape, but wise ones who heeded the forecasted
warnings dug shelters beneath the ground and wrote of their grim
existence during the deep gloom they called "The Great Cataclysm".
These writings remain cloistered in sacred libraries, carefully
preserved by diligent scribes for millennia after the intelligent
beings safely returned to the surface.
I regret that I have lost the
credit for this photograph!
The
remnants of that strange event still glows in Devera’s summer night
sky, scattering ultraviolet light on its long recovered landscape. Over
time, the Great Eye faded into an intensely hot core that remains a
ghostly shadow of its former glory, leaving only the tiny Daystar to
sustain life.
The lands grew colder than
ever before; but Devera’s thin, carbon dioxide rich atmosphere traps
heat efficiently and plant life still thrives at lower elevations.
Therefore, nearly every civilization that developed after the Cataclysm
has clung to the shoreline, where warm ocean currents moderate the
harsh cold characteristic of the highlands.
This world, so similar to
our own, differs in ways that impede the renewal of civilization. A
single, continental land mass supports a pair of major mountain ranges.
Many of their ridge lines reach proportionally higher into the sky than
the earthly Himalayan and Andean cordilleras. The passes between these
ridge lines lie beneath snow and ice for most of the Deveran year; but
even when the snow melts in summer, the high altitude discourages all
but the hardiest travelers from making the trek. Few trade routes exist
over the mountains. Most commerce traces the coast, or proceeds inland
along river valleys, where the air is still easily breathed and
settlements have arisen.
Aside from
its thinner atmosphere, Devera differs from Earth in other important
ways. In size, the planet’s equitorial radius is roughly 75% of
earth’s, but this smaller world is more dense and benefits from a
stronger magnetic field. The planet lies much further from the Daystar
than Earth does from the sun. And although the total energy reaching
Devera’s surface is somewhat less without the once mighty Great Eye,
Devera orbits the Daystar, not its companion, and has always received
the vast bulk of its solar energy from the smaller of the two stars.
The fading planetary nebula surrounding the Great Eye creates a strong,
blue colored glow in the sky. Devera is far from a dim world, but its
quality of light differs from ours.
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