were forced to come to a power sharing agreement with the guild that ultimately marked year zero of the new calendar the strength of the spacing guild was owed to a monopoly on faster-than-light space travel which gave them a stranglehold over international transport trade and banking much of their organization remains opaque but it is clear that the heart of their operations lie with the guild navigators whom we previously mentioned were key to safe ftl space folding for ten thousand years these three legs of the empire would uphold the realm's stability however each would be in constant competition with the other their plans within plans ever threatening to overturn the current galactic order it is on the planet of a ruckus where we see these machinations converge at the start of our story let us now explore the stage on which the play shall be set aracus is the third of six planets orbiting the paired celestial bodies of cannabis and canopus b a giant white dwarf star and the white hole it feeds on this system lies approximately NUMBER_TOKEN light years from old earth falling far beyond the major population centers and trade routes of the imperium for this reason it long went ignored however exploration of the planet would ultimately reveal a secret that catapulted it from the fringes of imperial attention to centre stage to quote princess euralin arrakis dune wasteland of the empire and the most valuable planet in the universe because it is here and only here where spice is found without it there is no commerce in the empire there is no civilization he who controls it controls our destiny it will take a crash course in the planetology of iraqis to put this incredible statement in context initial long-range observations of the planet reveal it to be smaller than old earth with two satellite moons it orbits its sun in a roughly circular path with almost no axial tilt resulting in negligible seasonality it has around NUMBER_TOKEN g's with an atmospheric composition of mostly nitrogen and oxygen comparable to ancient terror however where it differs are in the anomalously high levels of ozone and low levels of water vapor these work together to produce the so-called wasteland of dune the low water levels are indicative of a planet that has almost entirely been desertified with high surface temperatures during the day and low temperatures at night the upper ozone rich atmosphere meanwhile maintains a high temperature resulting in the formation of dramatic convection currents at their mildest they form localized vortices that feed a steady stream of dust into the sky at their most violent however they become supercharged by larger flows circulating between the equator and poles forming massive lightning-ridden coriolis storms with wind speeds measured in the hundreds of kilometers per hour it is such weather phenomena rather than any flowing water which have shaped the surface of arachus while one to draw back the veil of dust clouds an incredible landscape would be revealed clustered around the poles are two small ice caps the planet's only source of readily accessible water meanwhile the majority of the surface consists of vast deserts and dunes these would dominate the planet where it not for the high levels of geological activity on auracus which have seen the rapid formation of mountain ranges and deep valleys owing to the tectonics of the planet many of these tend to run roughly north south or east west looking down from the pole this has resulted in the formation of a sort of
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