Moon of Kaldrek · the one that was always there
Ordrek
In a nutshell
Ordrek is the ancient moon of Kaldrek, the cold planet of the Aurin system. Millions of years ago its pull helped break apart another moon, Mornane, and today it keeps the planet’s interior warm. Every twelve hours it lines up with Renvar, the other moon, and both factions use that meeting as a clock.
Ordrek is the one that was always there.
What is Ordrek like?
Ordrek is one of the two moons of Kaldrek, the cold, outermost planet of Aurin, the system’s star. It is an old moon, of granite and ancient geology. Its neighbour, Renvar, is by contrast young rubble that remakes itself grain by grain.
- Size. 750 km in radius.
- Gravity. 0.692 m/s².
- Day. It turns on its axis in four and a half hours, with the axis tilted 15°.
- Air. Hardly any: a tenuous exosphere, the faintest trace of gas. It is 98.6% carbon dioxide and cannot be breathed. It swells into plumes, jets of gas rising from the ground, each time Ordrek lines up with Renvar.
The Registro Aura, the system’s first catalogue, labelled it from afar with the suffix -ek. That suffix marked hostile worlds with no permission to land. Ordrek is hard, but not hostile. Settlers today read -ek as “hard world”.
Where is it and who holds it?
Ordrek orbits 54,082 km from Kaldrek. From its surface, Kaldrek fills thirteen and seven-tenths degrees of sky, and the planet’s ring spans almost fifty-six degrees.
The system’s two factions, the Zenith and the Nadir, keep a symmetrical garrison here: the same strength each. From here they watch over the band of the ring.
What does it have to do with Mornane?
Kaldrek once had another moon, Mornane, which broke apart millions of years ago. Its remains now form the Anillos de Kaldrek. Ordrek has been in orbit since before there was anyone to tell of it.
According to the dossier of the Pathfinders, the explorers’ guild, Ordrek is jointly responsible for the death of Mornane. Its pull, added to the planet’s, finished breaking the lost moon open.
That pull is still at work today:
- it kneads Kaldrek’s interior with the tide;
- it keeps the planet’s valleys temperate;
- and it keeps its fissures alight, which can be seen glowing from space.
What is the conjunction?
Renvar takes four hours to go round Kaldrek, and Ordrek twelve. So every three orbits of Renvar, the two cross over exactly the same point of the ring. It is a 3:1 resonance: the meeting comes round every twelve hours and can be predicted with a pencil.
At that moment, in Kaldrek’s sky, the two moons stand aligned above the remains of the third, Mornane. Each conjunction also marks windows, set times for harvesting and for clashes, across the whole Kaldrek system.
Each side treats the moment in its own way. The Guardabosques are a Nadir watch corps. They belong to the Círculo del Fondeadero, the assembly that governs the Nadir from El Fondeadero, their station. The dossier on the moons records it:
“The Guardabosques of the Círculo del Fondeadero have turned that conjunction into a calendar and a liturgy; Zenith officers use it to synchronise shift changes and give it no name.”
Dossier on the moons of Aurin
