Ember

**Ember** is a planet in the Helion System, visible from Erlin's Eye. Its moons are extensively colonized by corporations. These corporate towns have largely been abandoned in recent cycles (in no small part thanks to the flux events), and the impromptu refugee flotilla has fled the flux towards safer territories - namely, the Eye.

Ember, distant in the starscape as seen from The Eye.Ember, scaled up and with the starscape removed.

## Colonies

The gas giant Ember has seven moons. The three biggest are **Ember's Step**, **Ember's Song** and **Ember's Heart**. The Three Sisters are smaller moons of a similar size to one another; **Cinza**, **Petra**, and **Silva**. The final moon is much smaller, and is called **Signet**.

### Ember's Step

Step was the first to be settled, a contract old Solheim gave to the terraformers Cybele Systèmes when they first claimed the Helion system. Step was a testing ground, and like most testing grounds it didn't turn out too well. A partial atmosphere slowly sloughing off each orbit, a dysfunctional ecosystem and a whole load of dust-clogged settlers.

It was the moon's erratic orbit that made the atmosphere impossible to maintain. By the time of the Solheim collapse the atmosphere was already fading, and Cybele's attention was on Ember's Hearth. After the collapse, Cybele fell too, its researchers scattered across the moons, and any central organization lost. The colonists worked tirelessly to survive and adapt what they had to the failing moon. The stepsilk and other species are the life's work of the Step's colonies.

When the flux started to collapse the moon's computer systems, corrode and destroy life support, water supply, and agriculture, they were forced to leave. Wind's Long Shadow became the only remnant of the Step and its efforts to survive.

### Ember's Hearth

Cybele moved to Hearth, where they redoubled their efforts. The subsurface ocean and tidal heating helped, allowing them to build a real atmosphere, a real habitable world.

The moon prospered, becoming the largest and most prosperous in the system, and the capital city of Passereau grew by leaps and bounds. However, Hearth was never fully stable, and required constant maintenance for the terraforming system to work. After Solheim collapsed and Cybele pulled out, the colonists had to work hard to keep the climate pleasant, or risk it drying up and becoming another Ember's Step. As long as the evaporators kept running, they succeeded.

Then the flux hit. And another one. Systems were fried, data was lost, and a city of thousands was left without a steady supply of food and water, leading to the usual horrors.

Eventually, the settlers agreed to abandon the colony, with the vast majority of survivors boarding the Pilgrim's Seed.

The capital city of **Ember's Hearth** is called **Passereau**.

### Ember's Song

Ember's Song was the extraction site for the raw materials and energy needed to make the terraforming on Hearth work. It is a sulfur-soaked rock covered in volcanoes, tidally heated by its inner orbit to sweltering temperatures. Exactly the kind of crucible you need to fuel a terraforming project.

Song provided the raw materials for Hearth, on top of energy, industry, and fuel. Singers, colonists born into this, were as a rule hardy, stubborn people living under the thumb of the other two moons ("stoking the crucible so others might live in a paradise" in Petr's words). This servitude was what they all had to endure, until Solheim's collapse.

With Solheim and surrogate corps gone, the three moons were suddenly independent. Almost immediately, they devolved to warfare, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, and Hearth and Step came out of it ahead of Song. However, since Song provided crucial raw resources and power, neither could afford a total victory. Singers resisted takeovers, sieges and expansions, cultivating a culture of dogged resistance and fierce independence. They reluctantly participated in the exodus - and even then, half of the Singers believe that the flux was *caused* by Hearth in the first place.