Moa

Image of Moa from high orbit, with lava lakes visible

Moa is the innermost planet of Verda A. Being the closest planet, it also has the shortest orbital period, just over 7 days, and is tidally locked. It is named after an old Terallan deity Moa, the messenger of the gods, who always had a fever.

## Physical Characteristics

Like Violis, Moa orbits within Teralla's orbit and is an inferior planet. Because of this, it can cause transits. Also, like Violis and Teralla B, it displays the full range of phases as it moves around it's orbit. Although Moa can also barely be seen as a disk, its close proximity to Verda A makes it far harder to see than Violis.

Moa is tidally or gravitationally locked to Verda A and rotates once per orbit. Because of this, an observer on Moa would see the sun wibblewobble back and forth across a approximately 20º long line.

Moa does not posess any moons, other than a massive debris cloud.

## Atmosphere

Moa's proximity to Verda and lack of magnetic field allows the star to slowly strip the already-thin atmosphere away. Due to this, Moa has a faint tail of particles streaming away from the planet, similar to the tail of a comet. Moa's atmosphere is a result of outgassing from the huge lava lakes covering large portions of the planet and is composed of sodium, molecular and atomic oxygen, and silicon monoxide alongside trace amounts of metals present. Temperature differences between the day and night side of the planet create very fast winds across the planet, although these are irrelevant due to the low density of the atmosphere.

It is thought that Moa's original atmosphere was formed of hydrogen and helium and was many times thicker than even Teralla's modern atmosphere, but this was swiftly stripped away upon Verda's ignition. This was probably followed up by a steadily thinning atmosphere similar to the one found here now, although it was actually noticeable back then.

## Orbit & Rotation

Moa's rotation is not particularly interesting, rotating once every 39 hours at a 47º tilt. Its orbit is much more intriguing however. Moa possesses the most eccentric and inclined orbit of any major planet orbiting Verda. (It does not however have the most eccentric orbit of any planet in the system, being beaten by the Von-Ora binary.) This is probably due to the tidal forces exerted upon it by the alarmingly close Verda as well as the vagaries of the last few large collisions at the end of its formative period. This makes the temperature on the planet vary widely, causing the atmosphere to fluctuate in pressure from low to high at the periapse and apoapse, and for the lava lakes to fluctuate in size as the planet cools towards the outer end of its orbit.

## Geography

Moa's non-lava surface is pockmarked with many craters, forming a rough landscape with virtually no flat areas. This abruptly terminates at a smooth plain sloping down from exactly the same elevation everywhere on the planet down to the oceans. This is caused by the previously mentioned "tides" in the lava ocean, caused by the widely fluctuating temperatur over Moa's orbit changing its level. Beneath the lava is... something presumably, but we don't really have a way of finding out what the terrain looks like and we don't really care.

## Population

Very few live on the surface of Moa, with its population numbered only into the tens of thousands. Primarily, these people live in various habitats shielded from the burning light of the sun by suntracking mirrored shields and insulated from the hot surface by thin legs to minimize heat transfer. In orbit, similarly shielded habitat drums whirl around the planet at varying inclinations. Most of the surface is being exploited by various mining equipment, allowing the material on the planet's surface to be used to assemble several megastructures within the Verda System.

## History

Forming 1.9 billion years ago, Moa was significantly more distant from Verda than it is now. Gravitational interactions and tidal forces from the star distorted its orbit and shoved it down to its current position, where its surface began to melt. Moa also encountered the Selanoid Belt, believed to be a remnant of the protoplanetary disk unable to form planets, causing many severe impacts from remnant planetesimals.

In the modern day, Moa was initially surveyed by repeated flybys from the *Vico* probe, which also visited Praxis. Due to Moa's orbit-rotation resonance, *Vico* only was able to map one half of the planet up close, but the *Sakas* multiprobe mission was able to enter orbit 15 years later after dropping one of its landers on Praxis. *Sakas'* remaining landers set down at various locations around the planet's surface.

Over the intervening years, Moa was mostly ignored as a promising mission target until the Interplanetary Age, which sent the *Ikaron* mission towards it and Praxis. *Ikaron* paved the way for the first colonies on the two worlds, which eventually would hold a pivotal role in the assembly of the Verdan megastructures and especially in the Tyran War.

<add a segment about that>

Today, Moa has receded back to uninterestingness, its burning plains mostly uninhabited except the mining vehicles.