Athena

The universe is limitless. Without ending. Ever expanding. And that beyond is where our story begins.

Athena is a terran planet that orbits Apollo, fourth in its planetary line. Other planets exist in the Apollo system, each with their own interesting quirks, but Athena has something to rival even the oddest planetary configuration-life...

**Athena**

*Mass:*

*Surface Area: 382013836.1079161 km^2*

*Aphelion: 141 935 741.578 km*

*Perihelion: 148 195 258.372 km*

*Eccentricity: 0.02010563*

*Orbital Period:  days*

*Rotational Period: 30.1 hours*

*Inclination: 27.176°*

*Precession cycle:*21,500 years

*Satellites: 5*

*Surface pressure: 28.934 psi(sea level)*

*Minimum temperature: -41 C°*

*Median temperature: 20 C°*

*Maximum temperature: 63 C°*

Athena has a large planetary family, each sibling striving to be the most interesting. Gahenna hugs Apollo in an 14 day long orbit. It's so hot there, most metals melt even in the twilight zone. A magma ocean has even formed on the day side it's so hot.

Millus is an iron planet with virtually no atmosphere. Perhaps it's atmosphere was originally much larger than it is now, but a massive planetesimal aimed a glancing blow at the planet, completely obliterated in the process. What part of the atmosphere wasn't vaporized into space in that instant fell off the planet over time as it's new 49-minute long rotation and 103-day orbit either blew the gases off with higher solar wind or made them spiral off into space.

Calx, the next planet in line, is rather similar to Earth. In fact, it might have supported life-but then it got into an eccentric orbit which boils all water in orbital summer. It's actually quite fun to watch in relapse, though of course from a distance and not on the planet. Your flesh would cook in a minute at the height of summer.

Beyond Athena is Aiolos, jovians Nubes, Geminus, and Chronis, with Khione bringing up the very rear. Aiolos marks the boundary between terran and jovian with a mass of 15 earths and an atmosphere worth half an earth. Nubes is a typical jupiter, but more massive with a larger volume and greater density from its cold orbit. Khoine is an ice planet made almost entirely out of water, methane, and CO2 ices with some other hyperchilled aqueos solutions. At first glance it just looks like the biggest ice cube ever, but it's massive enough to pull itself into a spheroid **and** clear its orbit, so it's a planet. Pluto has been avenged! As for Geminus, it is quite... let's just say-*special*.

Geminus was once two planets, named Gemina and Gemino. Gemina orginally formed at about 1 Jupiter mass, while Gemino was closer to that of Saturn. Each formed in their own seperate orbits about 60 million km apart with Gemino further out. Just barely stable enough to maintain their orbits, but The Great Disturbance simultaneously sent a flurry of asteroids into the system and messed with the inside of the system itself, effectively altering their orbits until they overlapped-twice. No amount of resonance could stop the inevitable after that. Gas and dust flew everywhere when the two planets connected. It might have been the end of Gemino, but gravity and inertia had other plans. Gemino's core got caught in Gemina's gravitational pull, but was moving with enough inertia to just simply swing back around and repeat. The two cores began orbiting each other like binary planets and their magnetic fields aligned. The gas swelled with them to form a semi-lobed sphere. With two cores orbiting each other every 15.6 hours, possibly the strangest planet in the galaxy was born.

Chronis is a large, light-green gas giant, so named for its peculiar rotation, revolution, and satellites. It rotates every 10 hours, its year is 100 earth years, and it has 3 moons that orbit in a 1:2:4 resonance. Even its orbit is almost a perfect circle. How Chronis got this way lies in the many factors created by The Great Disturbance.

But enough about Athena's neighbors. They're just jealous. Let's focus in on Athena itself.

## Athena's History

Athena first formed 5.6 Gya like nearly any rocky body, but with some interesting materials. The system itself formed from a cloud of more evenly dispersed elements with a larger amount of heavy metals. These elements were just barely spaced out enough to prevent condensing, but then a nearby star just had to blow up and condense it with a supernova and add to its heavy metal count. When fusion started and Solis was born, a large amount of proto-planets had already formed due to the high density in the gas disk. Solis feasted on the dust cloud and grew, spinning faster and faster. The heaviest elements gathered at its equator and were ejected, encouraging planetary formation even further. The planets were mostly established only a few million years later. Athena was smaller, only 80% its current size. But that was soon to be remedied.

#### The Great Disturbance-5.49 Gya to 5.46 Gya

The Great Disturbance occured when a hyperbole star passed by the system. It caused a great deal of havoc on the young Solis System. A F0 star, it was so big and close it looked like a moon from Athena. It pulled on the entire system in passing and changed the fate of every planet in doing so. It altered the orbits of every planet directly and/or indirectly and flung in bodies from the edges of Solis' reach. Millus was hit and its rotation sped up to its current state, Calx was pushed and pulled into a weird orbit, Geminus was born-I could go on. But perhaps the most affected out of all of them was Athena.

#### The Morris and Circum Collisions-5.47 Gya to 5.46 Gya

A small planetesimal almost the size of the moon struck a glancing blow at Athena, completely destroyed in the process. The ejecta collected into a moon, Morris, about 13,000 km away from Athena. Morris would later be responsible for most of Athena's tides so life was encouraged to go on land, but there was a more pressing problem on hand. The collision caused the planet's rotation to come to almost a complete standstill, like Venus in our solar system. Athena would have been stuck tidally locked to Morris had it not been hit **again**-this time by a body the size of Ceres. It picked up rotational speed from this impact, giving it a 25 hour long day-something photosynthetic life could handle easily. And what became of this small body? Half of it was ground into Athena, while the other half spun wildly away into an orbit about 50,000 km away. I quite literally mean spun away-this thing was rotating every hour or so on an axis less stable than Nix's. Nearly liquefied, the denser portions of it gathered on the Athena side, but don't think it's about to tidally lock in the conventional way. Like I said, this thing was a bucking bronco! So what was the path of least resistance? Make the axis align with the denser parts-which is exactly what happened. With one side facing its planet at all times and still rotating every 2.4 hours, Circum became the oddest moon on record.

#### The Calming-5.45 Gya to 4.45 Gya

The hyperbole star passed and let loose its grip on the system, letting things settle. Chronis established its odd behaviors and Khione was born. Everything settled into a stable condition. On Athena, the oceans and atmosphere were forming. Volcanic islands popped up everywhere through the shallower oceans. Soon, the first lifeforms would be born.

### Pre-Kimibrian-4.45 Gya to 2.9 Gya

#### Primitrius-4.45 Gya to 3.9 Gya

This period defines the span of time from the birth of the world ocean to the birth of life.

The Preceli are the first domain of life to appear on Athena. They bear a strong resemblance to bacteria on Earth, but have large para-ribosomes and a nucleus similar to a virus packet. They have started out as lithotrophs and organotrophs, but will soon diversify into all life on Athena.