Trasvar

What is Trasvar?

Trasvar 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 takes two hundred standard days to go round Aurin, the star, keeping pace with 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 Fondeadero, the station of the Nadir.

Where is it?

Trasvar sits at the L5 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. Trasvar holds the one behind.

Its twin, Delvar, holds the one ahead. It carries El Pináculo, the station of the Zenith.

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 Delvar: 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 it.

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 who were still speaking to each other.

It placed the two stations at the stable points on the neutral planet’s orbit, so that neither can reach Ithera before the other.

It even reaches the fare: the trip to Ithera costs the same from El Fondeadero as from El Pináculo. Here, though, almost no one pays in full: there is always a package to carry in exchange for a discount.

What does being behind mean?

All that sets the two stations apart is how each one reads its position.

• From L5, El Fondeadero trails Ithera, on the side where the system leaves its path behind. To the Nadir, that means they keep watch over what they have already crossed.
• From L4, the Zenith read the opposite: we are heading towards the dawn.

The dossier on the space stations describes them like this:

“Two sister ships, looking at the same world from mirrored angles, each convinced that its angle is the right one.”

Dossier on the space stations

What is on Trasvar?

Trasvar is a protected zone: no one fights and nothing is extracted. Nor is there anything to take: the rock holds nothing worth mining.

It holds the first city of the Nadir, with the faction board, the hangars and the ship workshop.

New recruits first pass through the Arca Custodia, the neutral ship where every new settler is registered. There, before they choose a house, CUSTODIA, the ship’s intelligence, explains in two sentences why they are there:

“You are part of the new recruitment wave, the forty-sixth year since the outbreak of the war of Year 1. Both houses need hands again.”

CUSTODIA

Those who choose the Nadir make the last leg to Trasvar.

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