Aolius

*"...where peace and liberty reign, and evil has no home..."*

Aolius

Aolius is a highly populated planet of the Commonwealth of the Seddrath. It is the capital of the aforementioned nation, and the homeworld of the Seddrath. It is located in the Penran System, and orbits the star Fortaka, the lesser of the two stars the constitute the system. While being the most populous world in the Commonwealth by far, the world itself is not a large one compared to other worlds in the cluster, with thousands of years of head start.

Under the jurisdiction of the Aolius Union of Nations, a sub-government of the Commonwealth, Aolius has a strict Democratic-Anarchic government, where every individual is connected to "The System", a elaborate and extremely efficient voting system where every citizen is constantly queried on their opinion in every matter.

## History

Aolius formed over 5 billion years ago, as part of the lesser half of the Penran System. It developed life only a few hundred million years ago, and before then it was a lifeless rock floating in space. Aolius' bacteria-analogues immediately managed to somehow get inside of each other, and formed the first multicellular organisms. Evolution went wild, and these organisms diversified drastically until they covered the entire of Aolius. Plants using chlorophyll covered the entire planet, even spreading into the air. Large clouds of large plants who's cells were only loosely affiliated with each other float in the atmosphere of Aolius, giving the atmosphere it's distinctive green hue. Animals also spread into the air, filter-feeding upon the vast food supplies hovering in the air. They grew to immense sizes, and became huge, flat gasbags that other animals and plants life on. Recently, upon these large gasbags, aerial sentience has evolved in the form of the Seddrath. Evolved to glide between gasbags and the ground, they have now spread out to found the Commonwealth of the Seddrath, as well as colonise numerous nearby planets.

## Biology

Life on Aolius is carbon-based, and uses water as it's solvent. Aolan life is split into plants, animals, and bacteria. The ecosystem is predominantly aerial in nature, with absolutely huge beasts over a kilometre in length hovering and floating in the air using neutral buoyancy to stay aloft. Upon the backs of said beasts, animals roam and plants have taken hold. The ground is dominated by endless expanses of trees almost crushed next to each other, some over twenty thousand years old. Large tunnel systems have been carved through these trees by small animals that parasitize the trees for nutrients, shelter and water. The oceans are mostly sterile, with little life calling them home.

## Orbit

Orbiting Aolius is a swarm of thousands of habitat's collectively refered to as "The Swarm of a Thousand Worlds", or just "The Swarm". These are also connected to The System, and are all counted as citizens of Aolius. Also in orbit is Checkpoint One, the official entry and exit from Aolius to anywhere else in the system. Numerous tethers reach up from Aolius, spinning to accelerate or deaccelerate ships approaching. Only one space elevator services Aolius, mostly due to the fact that it was extremely expensive to build and there is no demand for another one to be built.

Aolius does not have any major moons, apart from five asteroids caught into orbit. One of these has been converted into a space elevator, another into Checkpoint One. The remainders are mostly shipyards or habitats.

## Population

Aolius holds a overwhelming fraction of the entire Seddrathi species; 182.2 billion Seddrath reside on the ancestral homeland. Considering that there are only 463.7 billion Seddrath in existence, this world is of vital cultural, economic, political and spiritual significance for the nation and the species. The population, unlike all the colony worlds, is spread out relatively evenly across the surface of the planet, with only a slight decrease in density on the nightside. Numerous space elevators, spaced evenly around the equator, shepherd vast amounts of people to and from the surface of the planet every day.

## Economy

The largest industry on Aolius is technology, illustrating the massive growth the technology industry is undergoing and will continue to undergo. The world is the heartland of the Commonwealth, and all resources mined are shipped back here to be processed. The nation has not yet been starfaring for long enough to develop out-system industrial colonies. Massive amounts of wealth flow back to Aolius, and the wealth is primarily re-invested in securing a more lucrative future for the nation.