Verda System

An image of all three stars in the Verda System

The **Verda-Altara System**, usually simply called the **Verda System**, is a major ternary star system located in the outer Ring of The Silky Way. The system is the capital system of the Verdan Federation, one of the largest nations in the galaxy. The Verda System is comprised of two stars, Verda and Altara, and one captured brown dwarf, Taozora. The system is most well known for its most major planet, Teralla, which is the homeworld of the Terallans and one of the capital planets of the Verdan Federation. Currently, there are fifteen total planets surrounding the three stars, as well as two other planets orbiting at least two of the stars at once. A majority, seven, appear around Verda, while Altara has five and Taozora has three.

## Architecture

The inner system surrounding the primary star consists of six planets, **Moa**, **Praxis**, **Violis**, **Jevethra**, **Teralla**/**Esera**, and **Rellis**. The outer system consists of two others, **Glau** and **Nerella**/**Volarus**. The secondary star has three planets in its inner system, **Horos**, **Atma**, **Iltaka** and **Tiraka**, and **Von**/**Ora**. There are also three planets orbiting the ternary star, Taozora: **Vurana**. **Velai**, and **Makali**.

Surrounding Verda and Altara is the planet **Altos**, an exceedingly distant and cold planet which is not particularly well-populated. Even further out, beyond Taozora, is the planet **Terminus**, which might as well not exist for its extreme remoteness from the stars. Surrounding the three stellar bodies, there is a large cloud of comets unimaginatively known as the **Comet Cloud**, extending roughly 1.5 light-years out from the system.

## Formation & Evolution

1.9 billion years ago, a slowly rotating patch of nebula was kicked by the supernova of an as-yet unnamed very large star, and slowly began collapsing. As it collapsed, it split in two, forming twin disks of dust and gas made of hydrogen, helium, and an assortment of heavier elements. Over time, the centers of these disks would become protostars, surrounded by an assortment of hundreds of protoplanets. The chaos of planetary formation left most of these objects destroyed or doomed to remain as small dwarf worlds, but some managed to raise themselves to planetary mass. Von and Ora managed to capture into orbit around each other towards the end of the process, forming a wide binary system, and Glau ballooned in size by scooping up hydrogen and helium gas.

The formations of the gas giants were abruptly stopped on the ignition of Verda and Altara themselves, which blew the remaining gas into interstellar space. After that, Jevethra, Glau, Nerella, Horos, Von, Ora, and the three theorized other Verda gas giants that would later impact Glau and raise it to its final mass. However, the other planets were far from done. The inner systems were unrestricted by the new solar wind, with most of their dust consolidated into planetesimals, so the planets ther could continue their growth.

Praxis was likely impacted by a particularly large planetesimal around this time, blasting away its crust and mantle and leaving the bare nickel-iron core we see today. Teralla was impacted as well, the debris recoalescing into Esera. Jevethra's migration inward was arrested as it neared Violis, likely by a chance resonance with Glau, which ended up pulling it into the habitable zone before breaking. Jevethra's dangerous migration likely disrupted the orbit of Doresyl around Verda, leading to its capture in orbit of Violis. The Teralla-Esera binary became locked in Jevethra's trailing lagrange point as the planet settled after its migration, and Volarus was ejected from the area towards Nerella.

Meanwhile, Horos went on a similar migration to Jevethra, but nothing stopped it. It plunged through the inner Altara system, disrupting the orbits of several planets there and pushing them into each other, causing the coalescence of the monstrous planet Atma. Its influence prevented any planets from forming beneath the habitable zone, resulting in the retention of the Tantrica Belt between Atma and Horos.

Before the system would reach its present state however, a third object approached the binary from interstellar space. Taozora, a much older object with its own small collection of planets, became captured in orbit around the binary at a very long distance, completely emptying the inner Limit Cloud and bringing the configuration of Verda System to its modern form.

Over the next billion years, Violis, Teralla, Esera, Shirus, and Rellis all supported water on their surface, and may have all supported life. Violis entered a severe runaway greenhouse effect recently enough that ancient Fal Daran astronomers have records of a blue Violis in the sky and the last of its oceans vanished less than 500 years before the launch of the first orbital satellite. Shirus was unlucky enough to have missed most of the comets that impacted the others, limiting it to mere lakes in deep craters, which eventually dried up over time as temperatures slowly rose. Rellis' magnetic field faded half a billion years ago, causing its atmosphere to be blown away by its solar wind. Esera and Teralla alone retained their habitability to the modern era, and panspermia between the two continued. The two developed photosynthetic life roughly a billion years ago, developing a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, swiftly followed by the first multicellular life.

Approximately 5 million years ago, Okoro began to thaw due to increasing tidal heating from its parent planet after resonance with Shirus pulled it out of its circular orbit, and the first Terallan ancestors appeared. Being more intelligent than any other living thing in the Verda System, these creatures began to spread and make tools, while often finding the time to look up and wonder about their place in the universe.

## Verda - Primary

Verda, also known as "the sun", is a main sequence G8V (yellow dwarf) star with nine planets, including Teralla. Verda is home to the majority of the population of the system, with several terraformed planets including Shirus, Rellis, and the ongoing project on Violis.

## Altara - Secondary

Altara is another main sequence (K2V) star with six planets, four of which are members of binary pairs. ALtar is notable for its larger density of asteroids than its companion, with Horos and Von-Ora helping stop them from forming planets. Altara completely lacks naturally habitable planets, and only Anemoi is a currently reasonable terraforming prospect.

## Taozora - Tertiary

Taozora, a brown dwarf, was captured into the Verda System almost a billion years after its formation, clearing out the inner Limit Cloud and capturing many objects into its outer asteroid belt. Its three planets all orbit very closely to its dim, angry red light, with the outermost at less than 0.2 AU. Even so, they are all frozen, with only Vurana having even the slightest amount of natural surface water.

## Inner Verda System

### Moa

The closest planet to Verda and the second smallest planet orbiting it (0.5 M🜨). Moa has no natural satellites; besides impact craters, its only known geological feature is a set of canyons produced by a period of contraction early in its history. Moa's very tenuous atmosphere consists of atoms blasted off its surface by the solar wind and sublimated rocks from its oceans. Moa's orbit takes it so close to Verda that its surface has been partially melted, giving it enormous oceans of lava.

### Praxis

Praxis is the smallest planet in the Verda System (0.04 M🜨), possessing no geological activity whatsoever and little to no molten zones in its interior. Praxis' surface has very few craters compraed to the rest of the system because the enormous impact that blasted its crust and mantle away occurred after the vast majority of the Great Heavy Bombardment, lending it a cannonball-like appearance. It has no natural satellites.

### Violis

Violis is the largest terrestrial world orbiting Verda and second in the entire system, at ~3 M🜨. As recently as 24,000 years ago, the astronomers of the ancient Terallan civilization of Fal Dara had records of a blue Violis, as its runaway greenhouse effect was just beginning. The last of its oceans dried up less than a decade before the first orbital Terallan probe, and by the time a probe reached Violis itself, it was sheathed in white clouds. Before the terraforming efforts begun, its atmosphere had risen to a crushing fifteen bars.

Violis possesses four natural satellites, including three close-orbiting asteroids (Aetheris, Shoulles, and Haelir), and one large captured planet of Doresyl.

### Jevethra

Jevethra is the largest planet in the Inner Verda System, with some of the largest moons. It orbits in the habitable zone, granting the possibility of life in its vicinity. Jevethra itself is unique in its neighborhood in that it possesses a thriving biosphere within its atmosphere and ring system.

Jevethra has 39 moons, four of which (Okoro, Salidar, Shirus, and Sulpha) are considered major.

### Teralla & Esera

Teralla & Esera are two planets orbiting in a close binary pair, bound to Jevethra's trailing Lagrange point. The two planets are both naturally habitable, although Esera was somewhat dry before terraforoming efforts. Teralla itself is the home of the sapient and advanced Terallan species and is a capital of the Verdan Federation.

Teralla & Esera have a single circumbinary moon, Lenar.

### Rellis

Rellis is the outermost of Verda's terrestrial planets. It and its single major moon (Ikea) orbit on the far edge of the temperate zone, and as such its initial habitability was not sustainable. It dried up roughly 500 million years before the modern era, and was only recently terraformed back to artificial habitability.

### Kellelai Belt

The Kellelai Belt is the innermost asteroid belt around Verda, between Rellis and Glau. It has many large asteroids and is littered with smaller ones that have been carved out to place rotating habitats in them.

The Kellelai Belt's largest members (Cerea, Vas, and Palladia) were first observed by Kreio Kellelai, who kickstarted a flurry of other asteroid discoveries. The current number exceeds a million. Later, at the dawn of the space age, interest was expressed to send probes to them. The first probe to visit Cerea, Vas, and Hyga was the Sunrise Probe, carrying a revolutionary ion propulsion system. In the modern era, most asteroids were colonized, by either colonizing their surfaces (for the larger ones), or carving them out to make rotating habitats inside them, for the smaller ones.

The largest members of the Kellelai Belt include Cerea, Vas, Palladia, Hyga, and Floris. The most strange members of the belt include the aforementioned Floris, which orbits retrograde, 17 Sirka, which is primarily made of very dense metals similar to Praxis, 32 Harmony's high eccentricity and inclination, 129 Seesharp's metastable orbit, switching between prograde and retrograde via interactions from Glau, and 3271 Merna's cometlike orbit.

## Outer Verda System

### Glau

By far the largest planet in the entire system, Glau weighs in at an enormous ten Jovian masses. Found beyond the frost line, Glau is generally seen as the beginning of the "outer solar system", with the exploration of its six major moons forming a key achievement in the exploration of the Verda System. Glau possesses a very powerful magnetosphere whose radiation effects are dampened by a thick ring system extending to roughly seven planetary radii.

Glau has over 100 moons, but most of them are small minor objects acting as either captured asteroids or ring shepherds. Its six major moons are Eoros, Deia, Marthys, Liratan, Tarsis (with its own submoon of Koro) and Velar.

### Nerella

Nerella is the outermost planet orbiting Verda, although it shares its orbit with Volarus. Its atmosphere has trace amounts of methane and ammonia as well as other compounds, giving it its signature pale violet appearance. As the outermost planet of Verda, its gravity allowed it to define the inner edge of the Faledor Belt and capture many moons from there.

Nerella has 27 known moons. Three of them, Okari, Trantin, and Nerad, are considered major.

### Volarus

Volarus, while still technically a planet, serves as Nerella's largest *quasisatellite*. Volarus's orbit around Verda takes it in a very slow retrograde loop around Nerella, allowing it to sometimes catch asteroids pulled in by its "parent". In the distant past, Volarus orbited much closer to Verda near Rellis, but continuous sympathetic interactions with Glau slowly ramped up its eccentricity to the point where a distant flyby of Jevethra ejected it from the inner system entirely.

Volarus has five moons, only one of which, Rhua, is considered major.

### Faledor Belt

The Faledor Belt is a ice asteroid belt beyond Nerella and Volarus, which is unusually rich in deuterium. It has many dwarf planets and is littered with asteroids and comets, most of which have been colonized.

#### Members With Interesting Characteristics

* 103597 Ulthalo (two-lobed object)
* 3499 Haliea (unusually large comet)

#### Siskruo

Siskruo is the largest object of the Faledor Belt. Covered in pristine ice and riddled with deep canyons, this object has one of the highest albedos in the entire Verda System, and as such was bright enough to be discovered almost a century before any other object in the region. Siskruo has a single large moon, Dysanoma.

#### Theris

Theris is a Trans-Nerellan Object that rotates very rapidly. It is also well known for its large tholin deposits on the surface, making it appear pinkish.

#### Telamon

Telamon is a fairly standard Trans-Nerellan Object with little to no geological activity. However, it does possess an enormous crack riven across half its surface, which is currently unexplainable.

### Scattered Disk

The Scattered Disk is a sparse disk of objects beyond the Faledor Belt, containing few notable objects. The scattered disk peters out at ~100 AU, where Altara's gravity destabilizes any objects at such a distance. Notable objects include the secluded sednoid dwarf planet of Vaned and little else.

#### Vaned

Vaned is the second largest object orbiting Verda beyond Nerella. Unlike Siskruo, it is geologically active, likely due to a recent impact, and has no moons.

## Altara System

### Horos

Horos is the innermost and largest planet in the Altara system. The planet is a gas giant in a very close orbit around Altara, classifying it as a Hot Jovian world. Transits of Horos are clearly visible throughout the system, and its gravity destabilized the region of the protoplanetary disk out to the habitable zone, creating the Tantrica Belt.

Horos only has a single captured asteroid in a stable orbit around it, although several objects have migrated to its lagrangian points.

### Tantrica Belt

The Tantrica Belt is the densest asteroid belt found in the Verda System, orbiting between Horos and Atma around the star Altara. The Tantrica belt has billions of asteroids of widely varying sizes, most of which are in the process of being mined by various mining groups or random people who own drills.

The largest objects in the Tantrica Belt are the twin dwarf planets of Verin and Liandra, as well as the large binary asteroid of Kalir-Folor. Some objects within the belt have been captured as trojans of Horos, and the moon Ra is believed to have its origins here.

### Atma

The largest known terrestrial world in the universe, Atma orbits in the habitable zone and yet is completely inhospitable. Crushed under over a thousand atmospheres and 3g of gravity, not a single artificial object has ever reached the surface intact. Fortunately, being found in the habitable zone, its largest moon Anemoi is a subhabitable world and an easy terraforming prospect, and Atma's sphere of influence is a center of population in the system.

Atma has two moons, Anemoi and Aeolus.

### Iltaka & Tiraka (Iyas)

As a binary of two fairly small planets beyond the habitable zone, Iltaka and Tiraka are not particularly interesting at first glance. This holds true for Tiraka, with its pockmarked icy surface untouched by geologic activity, but Iltaka holds an oddly smooth surface, cracked in places by Tiraka's tidal forces. Beneath this surface lies a subglacial ocean hundreds of kilometers deep, filled with life and only recently reached from outside it.

### Von & Ora

The outermost planets orbiting Altara, Von and Ora are a binary pair of saturnian worlds in a highly eccentric orbit in resonance with the Iyas binary. The two planets each have a collection of major moons and a ring system, and their relatively quiescent magnetospheres make the system a fairly safe place to be. The outermost point of their shared orbit marks the inner edge of the Arran Belt.

Von, the primary member of the pair, has 21 known moons to itself, most of which are either ring shepherds or moderately close-orbiting captured asteroids. The largest five, Elnar, Drannis, Deranis, Umna, and Maskal are large enough to maintain hydrostatic equilibrium, and Maskal has a thin atmosphere. Its partner Ora has 9 moons, of which Ena, Meran, and Lahia are considered as major. Orbiting the binary at a great distance is a collection of 29 captured asteroids from the Arran belt.

### Arran Belt

Analogous to the Faledor Belt over at Verda, the Arran belt is a distant, sparse belt of icy bodies thinned out by the gravity of Altara's companion Verda as well as the Von-Ora binary which orbits just inside it. A small group of objects have SMAs inside the range of Von-Ora's distance from Altara and are tied to certain resonances. These are often called the Inner Arran Belt, although they are just as often treated as a separate group.

The true Arran belt begins with a group of resonant objects connected to the Von-Ora binary. These objects are unremarkable and small, although there is one group that makes regular close passes and flip-flops between orbits in the Inner and regular belt. Beyond this is an ever-thinning expanse of small icy bodies including the dwarf planet Grod, the largest object found here.

#### Grod

The largest object within the Arran Belt, Grod is a fairly uninteresting dwarf planet untouched by geolotical activity since its formation. As such, Grod's surface likely represents the oldest features on any planetary body in the system.

#### Queral

Unlike Grod, Queral's surface is very young. It appears to have been recently resurfaced by a major impact, and as such has a very smooth surface with small craters few and far between. Queral also orbits in a 3:5 resonance with Von-Ora, and therefore has a very stable orbit.

## Taozora System

### Vurana

Being a brown dwarf, Taozora has a very close-in habitable zone, with its innermost planet barely orbiting within the outer edge. Vurana is a cold, hellish, barely livable wasteland, with the subsolar point one of the few regions that has open water, and its tiny surface population lives almost entirely in sealed arcologies. Vurana is currently considered as a terraforming prospect, but the project has not begun at the present time.

### Velai

Velai is a small, cold world, covered in a thick ice shell affected by tidally-induced geological activity. Velai's thin subglacial ocean layer is deep beneath the surface and is bounded above and below by ices, and is thus completely sterile. Its surface is sheathed in a thin atmosphere, holding in none of the meager heat provided by Taozora's red candlelight.

### Makali

The largest and most distant planet orbiting Taozora, Makali is a large, frigid ice giant. The planet's quiescent weather is to be expected given its temperature, with little to no major cloud patterns on its orange surface. Only two of Makali's seven moons, Larr, and Argas, are large enough to be spherical, with Larr's volcanism creating a thick ring of dusty particles around its orbit.

### Telvalon Belt

The Telvalon Belt consists of a thick belt and cloud of icy objects orbiting beyond Makali, with a detached subgroup within Makali's orbit beyond Velai. Much of its contents were captured from the "Taozora Cloud", the former innermost region of the Limit Cloud prior to Taozora's capture, and it is primarily composed of small objects with few large dwarf planets

#### Narnis

The largest object in the Telvalon belt, Narnis is a medium-sized icy dwarf planet, pockmarked with craters and possessing a thin ring system with several tiny shepherd moons.

## Limit Cloud

The Limit Cloud is an incredibly sparse grouping of very cold icy objects found from beyond the Verda-Altara binary all the way out to interstellar space. The cloud is split into three groups. The Taozora cloud is found beneath the orbit of Taozora and contains very little of note except the circumbinary planet Altos. Due to Taozora's influence, this cloud is the sparsest section of the Limit Cloud as a whole.

The Inner Limit Cloud is considered by some as the innermost section of the Limit Cloud itself. It contains many dwarf planet and even planet-sized objects, the most notable representative being Pall, a classical ice world orbiting at nearly twice the Taozora distance and having a period of over 732 thousand years. It ends at a large, near-empty shell which contains little but the frozen giant of Terminus. Terminus is by far the largest object within the bounds of the Limit Cloud, at 8 standard terrestrial masses and a hill sphere extending almost 20 AU, and a collection of captured moons whose gathering likely caused the depletion of the Limit Cloud in its region. Beyond Terminus lies the outer Limit Cloud, which is continuous with the randomly placed asteroids in interstellar space itself. This region has virtually no population and nothing of note. Similar to the Inner Limit Cloud it contains many dwarf planets, a classical example being Errus. Errus is really the only object out here that has much of a reason to be visited, as it is a major historical site as the jumping-off point towards Ayana-Kabira, the first interstellar colony millennia ago.

### Altos

Altos is the largest object by far within the Taozora Cloud, orbiting almost as close to the binary pair as it possibly can without being destabilized. Its frigid temperatures prevent any significant atmosphere and its surface is covered in various tholins, giving it a rough, reddish appearance. Its thin ring system was likely formed by the breakup of a small moon, although Altos currently does not actually possess any major moons.

## List of Bodies

**Verda**

* Moa
* Praxis
* Violis
	+ Aetheris
	+ Shoulles
	+ Haelir
	+ Doresyl
* Jevethra
	+ Shepherd Moons
	+ Okoro
	+ Salidar
	+ Salidar Collisional Group
	+ Shirus
	+ Sulpha
	+ Outer Moons
* Teralla
	+ Esera (binary companion)
	+ Lenar
* Rellis
	+ Gillian
	+ Ikea
* Kellelai Belt
* Glau
	+ Shepherd Moons
	+ Eoros
	+ Deia
	+ Marthys
	+ Liratan
	+ Tarsis
		- Kiro
	+ Outer Moons
* Karyad Group
* Nerella
	+ Okari
	+ Trantin
	+ Nerad
	+ Volarus (binary companion)
		- Rhua
		- Lansuag
* Faledor Belt
* Scattered Disk

**Altara**

* Horos
* Tantrica Belt
* Atma
	+ Aeolus
	+ Anemoi
* Iltaka
	+ Tiraka (binary companion)
* Von-Ora (binary planet)
	+ Von
		- Elnar
		- Drannis
		- Eranis
		- Umna
		- Maskal
	+ Ora
		- Ena
		- Meran
		- Lahia
			* Lahia I
		- Racca
* Arran Belt
	+ Grod

**Taozora**

* Vurana
* Velai
* Makali
	+ Larr
	+ Argas
* Narnis

Altos

* Shepherd Moons

Pall

* Vaiwyl

Terminus

* Erebus
* Ragnarok
* Malevolence

Various other circumternary dwarf worlds