Delvar

What is Delvar?

Delvar is a trojan of Ithera: a rock that shares the planet’s orbit, at one of its stable points.

• Size. Six kilometres in radius.
• Air. None: it is an old stone in a vacuum.
• Rock. Mostly breccia (rock made of fragments stuck together), with basalt and a little ultramafic rock (very rich in magnesium and iron). It is porous, with a density of 2.6 g/cm³.
• Year. It goes round Aurin, the star, in two hundred standard days, at the same pace as Ithera. It runs along the same orbit, fifteen million kilometres from Aurin.

The system catalogue lists it as a station because it is the anchor of El Pináculo, the station of the Zenith.

Where is it?

Delvar sits at the L4 libration point of Ithera’s orbit. L4 and L5 are two stable points on that orbit. One lies sixty degrees ahead of the planet, the other sixty degrees behind. Delvar holds the one ahead.

Its twin, Trasvar, holds the one behind. It carries El Fondeadero, the station of the Nadir.

The star, the planet and each station form an equilateral triangle, with all three sides equal. The distances work out like this:

• To Ithera: about fifteen million kilometres, the same as from Ithera to Aurin.
• To Trasvar: about twenty-six million kilometres.
• Halfway between the two stations: El Fulcro, the customs post of the Guilds, which take no side.

No eclipse ever reaches the station.

Why is there a station here?

The Cláusula de Equidistancia put it here. It is part of the Armisticio de Ithera, the pact that stopped the war. That was in Year 12 E.A. (E.A. stands for Años de Asentamiento, the settlers’ calendar). The clause was drafted by the few engineers on either side still on speaking terms after twelve years of war.

The idea was simple. The two faction stations would go to the two stable points on the neutral planet’s orbit, one ahead and one behind. The dossier on the space stations sums up its logic:

“If neither station can reach Ithera faster than the other, neither can claim a military advantage over the zone both swore not to touch.”

Dossier on the space stations

The clause even reaches the fare: the trip to Ithera costs the same from El Pináculo as from El Fondeadero.

What does being ahead mean?

From L4 the station runs ahead of Ithera, in the direction the system is moving. To the Zenith, that means they are heading towards the dawn. From Trasvar, the Nadir read the same geometry the other way round.

What is on Delvar?

Delvar is a protected zone: no one fights and nothing is extracted. There is nothing to take anyway: the rock holds nothing worth mining.

It holds the first city of the Zenith, with the faction market, the hangars and the ship workshop. Their new recruits arrive here. First they pass through the Arca Custodia, the neutral ship where every new settler is registered. The Armisticio moored it at a neutral point, the same distance from both stations.

Whatever falls on Delvar is dragged along by Ithera’s orbit. The rock has no swarm of its own, that is, no cloud of stones travelling with it.