Aziel

**Aziel** is an inhabited planet of Nilus' Auralumina System, and a former member of the United Terran Federation. Aziel saw its unexpected departure from the nation two hundred years ago through a spatial anomaly which transported it to uncivilized space in the other side of the galaxy. Aziel and its moons were deemed to succumb to mass hysteria, an event which fortunately didn't happen for most major settlements. Aziel's infrastructure would collapse shortly thereafter, leaving the planet in utter chaos and destruction. Amidst the unending chaos, the first country, Nachor's Federation, was founded after the collaboration of several loose alliances. Soon afterward, Aziel's environment would soon grow into a more peaceful state, and many began to rebuild human civilization. In the modern days, Aziel is a lush and prospering world governed by several great countries and confederations, united in global peace for only one goal: to reclaim their place in the United \*Terran Federation. Inbetween these huge countries lie smaller, less developed countries that are frequently at odds over natural resources such as water and food. Multiple nations have progressed far beyond Aziel to become independent interplanetary nations, gaining sovereignty of several of the Auralumina System's worlds.

Aziel was initially settled two thousand years before the Auralumina System's frontiers were engulfed in gravitational anomalies. Aziel was one of the first interstellar worlds inhabited by the UTF since as was a perfectly habitable world for humans in terms of gravity, temperature, and atmosphere. Several interstellar probes were dispatched to it at first to confirm its habitability. Several colony ships arrived shortly afterward, carrying thousands in search of a new home. The colony ships were dismantled and shaped into several settlements scattered over the planet in dramatically different settings upon planetfall on Aziel. Ryker's Landing was the largest of them, housing more than fifty thousand people under its protection. Rkyer's Landing would have a brief lifespan, as it was quickly discovered that it was built directly over an underground passage that led straight to Hollow Aziel. The fifty thousand inhabitants were evenly distributed among the other colonies to assure their safety. More residential complexes required to be built to accommodate the influx of new inhabitants. The colonies would soon develop into large and distinct urban centers as a result of these expansions.

Aziel is a rich world teeming with life in every crevice, from the harshest wastelands to the deepest seas. As one might anticipate from life on a planet like Aziel, the organisms that inhabit there are carbon-based and utilize water as a solvent. Microbial creatures were the first to appear, feasting on the material emitted by hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. Subsequently, fish and invertebrates began to populate the waters. Aziel's seas were teeming with life of all types in under a hundred million years. Shortly thereafter, aquatic vegetation arose as a result of the evolution of algae. The residents of Aziel, like any other form of life, began to seek out new horizons to conquer. Organisms gradually began to populate the lands, developing to cope with the new and odd terrestrial environment. The planet would be teeming with life until a catastrophic annihilation event occurred in the form of an asteroid impact. Most life was exterminated, yet a few species proceeded to thrive in the apocalyptic wasteland that Aziel had become. After Aziel was spontaneously cleansed of adverse conditions, the amount of life began to rapidly elevate.

Aziel has been the birthplace of three intelligent species, and many more that have remained undiscovered to this day. All of these intelligent species were able to engulf the planet in vast civilizations, one of which had also reached Cadonia. But as time progressed, each of these vast civilizations eventually destroyed themselves from the inside, leaving only loose clans of dedicated survivors, which over time fell into the hands of death as well. The destruction the civilizations laid waste across the planet still remains, as numerous craters of destruction dot the surface of Aziel, along with the ruins of once-thriving cities, now dead and overgrown with nature's growing dominance. These ruins are one of the more prominent tourist attractions in Aziel in the present day, inviting millions of civilians to explore. All of these species existed more than a billion years ago. As in the current eras, no alien civilizations have taken hold of the domains of Aziel yet.

Aziel is surrounded by three spherical and two asteroid moons. Since Aziel was isolated from the rest of the UTF, these moons have been a main focus of colonization. Cadonia is the first of the three spherical moons. At first, Cadonia was a dead and airless moon, but it was thoroughly terraformed soon after Aziel was inhabited. Cadonia today is a lush and tropical world teeming with lifeforms descended from Aziel, the most populated moon in the Aziel system. Altum, the second of these moons, is a hospitable but frigid icy wasteland engulfed in a global layer of ice. Altum's terrestrial zones and subglacial waters are both home to several distinct ecosystems of life. Voyager is the third spherical moon of Aziel, and is more of a megastructure than a cosmic body. A massive array of boundless exotic technology resides on Voyager, which is restricted by a safe-lock mechanism. When Aziel was cut off from the rest of the UTF, the settlements on these moons experienced widespread panic and desertion. As they were unable to be entirely self-sufficient and had to rely on exports from other worlds, the majority of the population of these moons died as a result of conflict, starvation, or dehydration. These moons are presently covered with countless abandoned settlements, and the nations of Aziel have only recently begun to repopulate them. The two asteroid moons, **Erazium** and **Krylium**, are largely used for extracting resources for the Auralumina System's worlds. These two moons are expected to be entirely mined during the next ten millennia.

Deep below the ground, near the core, is a vast subterranean environment known as the Hollow Aziel. Hollow Aziel is frequently interpreted as a gigantic cavern encircling the core several thousand kilometers from Aziel's absolute center, although this is not the case. Hollow Aziel is an interconnected network of several unimaginably enormous caverns near the core, each spanning at least a hundred kilometers in both length and height. Hollow Aziel is fully illuminated by Solar Bulbs, which are extraordinarily luminous organisms which attach themselves to the ceiling and emit massive amounts of light. As a result, the terrain of Hollow Aziel can as bright as it is on the surface. More bizarrely, solar bulbs precisely mirror Aziel's day-night cycle, albeit it is unknown how they do so. Hollow Aziel's geography is largely flat, with a few mountains, canyons, and jagged areas thrown in between  Most significantly, Hollow Aziel is teeming with all manner of exotic wildlife and vegetation. These organisms have grown to titanic proportions, considerably larger than any lifeforms on Aziel's surface, mostly by feeding on the radiation generated by the core. Nonetheless, regular diets are still typical in several animal species across Hollow Aziel. In certain areas, Hollow Aziel is so identical to the surface of Aziel that it can be nearly impossible to determine whether one is on Aziel or in Hollow Aziel, without knowledge if one is on one or the other.

Surprisingly, Aziel did not form within the confines of the Auralumina System. Rather, it formed in a different system which is now located approximately ten light-years from Auralumina. This system, named **Kalina's System**, has a blue main-sequence star as it's central star, which is orbited by two gas giants and one terrestrial planet, none of which have any semblance of life on them. Aziel was initially kicked out of its system as the planets were battling for gravitational dominance. In the following months a depressing fate met Aziel, as its parent star got smaller and smaller until it became one of the innumerable stars in the celestial sky. After millions of years of hibernation in the cold dark interstellar space, Aziel managed to be caught in the Auralumina System, in which it would remain for the remainder of it's existence. Aziel's cosmic journey saw its end when it finally got into a stable orbit in the goldilocks zone of the Auralumina System.

## **Properties**

### **Atmospheric Properties**

Aziel's atmosphere is composed of hundreds of individual gasses, yet only a few have a significant impact on the planet on a broader scale, if any at all. Four gases make up the majority of Aziel's atmosphere: nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide. Aziel's atmosphere also has a varying amount of water vapor, with an average of roughly 0.9 percent at sea level and 0.3 percent throughout the air. Aziel's atmosphere and it's pressure are ideal for humans, which was a major factor in the settlement of the planet. At sea level, the average atmospheric pressure is defined as 1.054 atmospheres.

The atmosphere of Aziel preserves life on the planet by providing pressure on the surface that allows liquid water to persist, absorbing solar radiation, warming the surface through heat retention, and decreasing temperature variations between day and night. As a result, Aziel's atmosphere is without a doubt one of its most significant characteristics, as it would be nothing like it is presently if it weren't for it.

The gasses in the Auralumina's solar nebula, predominantly hydrogen, made up Aziel's early atmosphere. Many variables such as volcanism, life, and weathering influenced the atmosphere's evolution over time. The oxygen count was more than twice what it is currently a billion years ago, allowing considerably larger lifeforms to flourish. When Aziel collided with a cloud of nitrogen in space around that same time, the composition and pressure of its atmosphere were altered to be roughly equal to that of today.

### **Climate**

Aziel has one of the most diverse climates in the entire Auralumina System. It's climate is varied depending on each hemisphere, with areas warm enough to creating boiling deserts, while others are cold enough to create mazes of icebergs. Temperatures also range from being cold enough at the poles to freeze water and warm enough at the equator to fry an egg on a metallic surface. Each region of Aziel has a unique biosphere able to support a variety of plant and animal life.

This climate is also kept in check by the planet's inhabitants, using artificial climate generators in order to keep a desired temperature and climate in the various regions of the planet. These climate generators have also allowed Aziel to become more habitable to life then it was originally.

## **Moon System**

### **Voyager**

The most fascinating of Aziel's moons is **Voyager**, also known as the **Spaceship Moon**, which is more like an alien megastructure than a celestial body. Voyager has only been in the Auralumina System for a year, and does not even orbit Aziel. Instead, it's in the borders of Aziel's hill sphere, although it orbits Auralumina, which is one of Voyager's odder characteristics. Furthermore, Voyager seems to be a prosaic, airless celestial body, yet it conceals unfathomable technology that is waiting to be uncovered deep within. Voyager to be deserted due to an onboard emergency, as evidenced by the lack of occupants and the state of disrepair. Many people wonder what caused this devastation on a regular basis, despite the fact that no possible scenarios have been proven yet

The greatest riddle surrounding Voyager is how it accessed the Auralumina System in such a massive flash, despite the fact that nothing had been supposed to be capable of passing through the gravitational anomalies at the system's frontiers. This occurrence demonstrates that it is feasible to break free from the system, prompting many of Aziel's research organizations to band together to understand more about how to do so. If mankind were to actually escape the Auralumina System's grasp, it would once again demonstrate that humans can adjust and prosper even under the strangest of circumstances.

An immense complex of control rooms, living quarters, and places with unknown purposes resides within Voyager. When fully accessed, the technology aboard Voyager might provide mankind with limitless knowledge of the Cosmos and the structure of reality. This insight alone has the ability to accelerate humanity's technological advancement to Type-3 status in a few of decades. The manipulation of space-time, natural laws, and even the Cosmos has already been demonstrated by Voyager. Unfortunately, the technology deep within Voyager can't be used in a practical fashion, as it's protected by a safe-lock mechanism. Though there has been some progress, it is still decades or possibly centuries away from being completely bypassed, depending on how quickly technology advances for humans.

## **Countries**

Aziel is home to twenty-seven large countries, the bulk of which are planetary, though several of them have colonized several worlds. Nachor's Federation is the largest country on Aziel, encompassing the entirety of Equis as well as other archipelagos and islands surrounding it, most notably the Eyus Island. However, Astiyunia is the most populous, with a population of five billion people, accounting for about a quarter of the total population on the planet. Astiyunia is also the most powerful nation, with trade relations to nearly every country on the planet. Democracy, whether presidential or parliamentary, is the most common type of governance on Aziel, with eighteen countries governed in this fashion. Monarchy is also a common type of administration on Aziel, as there are presently eight kings and queens in power. Dictatorships existed in the past, when Aziel was less sophisticated and more anarchic, but these countries have since been abolished, and millions of civilians have been liberated from the clutches of several cruel dictators.

Several countries have formed alliances and confederacies, the most notable of which is the Agran Concord, which unites 10 unique and distinct countries on the world in peace, trade, and cooperation among their citizens. Several minor alliances have formed as well, though their number has steadily dropped since the Agran Concord was established. During the Great Separation, when the planet was immersed in warfare between loose clans and nations, the greatest number of coalitions were formed. As one might expect from such closely situated nations seeking power and dominance over their homelands, several battles have erupted. The Nachor-Chevyania War, which ended the world's largest dictatorship, was the most significant conflict. A billion civilians were freed as a result of this conflict, which claimed the lives of millions of valiant soldiers prepared to die for the common good. No other wars of this magnitude have been fought since the Nachor-Chevyania War. The Great Conflict of Neerium, which claimed the lives of a million warriors and twenty million people, was the only war that could ever compare to the Nachor-Chevyania War in size.

## **Population**

### **Aquatic**

Humans have proven themselves to be adaptable to new environments countless times in history, colonizing the most uninhabitable of places. The oceans are no exception, as the abundance of water extensively complicated the construction of large-scale cities under the blue waves. Nonetheless, seven billion inhabitants live their daily lives within the waters of Aziel, whether in safer and shallower areas or in the deepest depths, where light never touches the seabed and alien creatures roam. The first aquatic cities can be traced back two centuries, when Nachor's Federation first started experimenting with the possibility of inhabiting the seas.

Shallower waters are substantially more desired areas of residence than deep sea in terms of underwater settlement, since light can penetrate the water effortlessly, offering breathtaking views of the seas and associated local vegetation wildlife. Most shallow water cities are intricate collections of resort domes, entertainment complexes, facilities and habitation complexes. Shallow seas are considered an effective environment to inhabit, most of Aziel's shallow waters have already been inhabited or are in the process of being occupied. Five billion people presently reside in shallow water cities, and this figure is expected to climb exponentially in the next decades.

Deep sea cities prevail as well, with structures comparable to those found in shallow water yet significantly stronger to withstand the great pressures of deep sea environments. Since shallow water cities are several times more spectacular and awe-inspiring, these deep sea cities are not a popular location to reside. Deep sea cities have only recently gained appeal, as they were previously regarded to be excessively expensive and complicated to construct in a fashion that would attract residents. Nonetheless, artificial environments have emerged around cities that provide abundant light, a phenomenon that deep sea animals were previously unaware of. Algae would soon begin to grow on the windows of deep marine habitats, however this problem was swiftly solved by developing artificial microbiological organisms that consume away at the algae. Marine snow obstructing the windows was also a problem at first, but it was resolved in the same way as the previous issue.

There are several construction regulations for all aquatic habitats, regardless of who constructed them or what they are utilized for. To begin with, all aquatic habitats must include sealed chambers where residents may seek refuge in the event of a flood. Furthermore, they must be either connected to other aquatic ecosystems by underwater railway networks or have an operational submarine. The former technique is used by all public aquatic communities, as they are all united by a refined system of undersea railroads below the seabed. Each train is also linked to a large public aquatic facility, which in turn is linked to a departure station on the land, providing for quick departure from an aquatic habitat.

In the seas of Aziel, aquatic arcologies, sometimes called as seascrapers, are a prevalent kind of habitat. Aquatic arcologies are only found in the ocean's deepest depths, reaching many kilometers beyond the sea level. The population of seascrapers can range from ten thousand to a million people, while the average population is estimated to be about two hundred thousand. Many seascrapers are as intricate as entire cities, yet they are all housed in one structure. Supersonic vacuum-lifts, which can carry any human from the bottom to the upper layer in less than a minute, are used to swiftly traverse through aquatic arcologies. Seascrapers, like aquatic cities, are connected to one another and to aquatic cities by maritime railway networks. Aquatic arcologies are made up of numerous layers, each of which serves a distinct function, such as residence, leisure, or business.

## **History**

### **Initial Colonization**

Aziel was one of the first worlds to be colonized by the United \*Terran Federation, shortly after the foundation of the nation. Aziel's colonization was part of **Project Hyperion**, a colonization effort which included colonization of seven additional worlds and was also humanity's first interstellar colonization endeavor in the Palioxis Starfield. Aziel's colonization would be the most pricey of all the worlds, given it was so far away from Theras and the other seven worlds that had yet to be colonized. Because Force Drives weren't as efficient back then, transit times would be several years.

On 97,305 CE, the colony ships **Ryker**, **Saragossa**, **Spartacus**, and **Manticore** emerged in a stable orbit around Aziel after five years of constant travel. The first colonies developed after only a few hours of surveying for suitable colonization regions, albeit they were primitive and soon breached by hostile fauna or destroyed by natural elements, as most of these colonies were built in severely perilous sections of the planet. **Ryker's Landing**, which was the largest settlement and was established on the placid meadows of Equis, would be the only one to remain, though it, like all the others beforehand, would soon be doomed.

By scale, overall living conditions, and safety, Ryker's Landing would quickly outrank all prior colonies, as well as the new ones that would be built shortly afterward. Nonetheless, it had one major flaw: a wide opening to Hollow Aziel around ten meters below the entire settlement. No one knew about the Hollow Aziel at the time, but they were worried that the ground might collapse and drag the structure down with it. People from Ryker's Landing would henceforth be relocated to other settlements across the world, as a sinkhole may collapse the settlement at any time. This sad tragedy occurred only two days after the evacuation, thereby bringing the settlement's short life to an end.