Auster

Auster from a weather satellite

Auster is the third planet in the Arwell System and capital of the Verdan Federation's Arvela Territory. It is also one of two planets in the system known to have multicellular life.

## **Physical Characteristics**

Auster's appearance is similar to Teralla itself. It is a mostly oceanic world, with islands and small continents dotting the surface. Auster's greenhouse effect is stronger than Teralla's causing a lack of ice caps and a breakdown of the Ferrell and Polar Cells. This causes a relatively homogenous environment, with rainforests and other tropical biomes found even on the polar regions.

Its dense atmosphere and high oxygen content cause extremely large insect and plant life, causing trees to grow taller despite the high gravity.

## **Atmosphere**

Auster's atmosphere is a mixture of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, and Carbon Dioxide and has an atmosphere about 1.5 times as dense as Teralla's. The high concentration of carbon dioxide allow much larger plant life, and the oxygen content is high enough to allow for extremely large insect-analogues. Aside from this it's a perfectly normal habitable atmosphere.

## **Climate**

Auster's climate is driven mostly by its landmasses and tidal forces from Arwell and Ukas. Similar to Teralla, Auster's continents tend to drive weather patterns, but due to more ocean-cover than on Teralla, Auster's climate is more predictable.

Auster's longer day length also helps to control its climate. Longer days means that there is a larger temperature difference in the two hemispheres of Auster, meaning that winds are usually stronger than on Teralla, which is good for life on the surface.

Unlike Teralla, Auster has a very high axial tilt, probably due to a collision with a large planetoid in its formation. Because of this, seasons are less consistent and more varied, meaning that the temperatures on Auster change much more with the seasons.

## **Moons**

Auster has two moons:

* Ukas
* Kiras

### Ukas

Ukas is a grey, round body orbiting Auster. In fact, it is one of the largest moons in the Arwell System.

Ukas is the most well known object in the night sky because of its proximity and brightness to Auster. The surface is dotted with craters from 4 billion years of small impacts. There used to be large flat expanses of basaltic rock, but these were covered over by a large number of impacts over the years.

#### Exosphere

Ukas hosts a tenuous atmosphere clinging to the surface, made mostly of charged particles being blasted off of the surface by radiation from Arwell, and dust kicked up from small meteorite impacts. Even though the atmosphere can be detected with sensitive instruments, by all purposes it can be considered a vacuum.

#### Biomes

Ukas has nine biomes.

* Northern Impact Basin
* Konz Crater
* Prominent Craters
* Polar Region
* Connell Crater
* Arstran Crater
* Highlands
* Midlands
* Lowlands

### Kiras

Kiras is one of the smallest bodies in the Arwell System, and also the innermost moon of Auster. Kiras is the smallest body in the Arwell System, with a diameter of roughly half a kilometer. Because of this, even a soft nudge or careless jump is enough to send you or your entire craft into orbit if you're lucky, or out into an escape trajectory.

#### Biomes

Because of its small size, Kiras has only the standard three biomes.

* Lowlands
* Midlands
* Highlands

## **Biomes**

Auster has nine biomes:

* Water
* Inland Water
* Shores
* Floodplains
* Forests
* Lowlands
* Midlands
* Highlands
* Mountains