Ithera

What is Ithera like?

Ithera is the third planet of Aurin, the system’s star. It is the size of Earth: 6,000 km in radius.

• Air. Nitrogen and oxygen at 101.3 kPa. You can breathe it in the open.
• Gravity. 9.23 m/s², almost Earth’s. The Registro Aura, the first catalogue of the system, worked it out from afar as 0.94 g. It was right.
• Water. Oceans cover 71% of the surface.
• Land. Continents of jungle, grassland and wetland. This is the richest native life in the system.
• Seasons. Its axis is tilted by twelve degrees, so it has seasons.
• Light. The air carries spores from the plants. They tint Aurin’s light, and noon comes out emerald green.

What can you see in its sky?

Ithera has three moons. When someone says “the moon”, they mean Melvara. Melvara crosses the whole sky in under twenty minutes and turns the wetlands a greenish grey. Selvane is barely visible: a point of light. And from Tirane, every rotation, La Cicatriz shows up as a dark line.

Who is in charge here?

The 5 Global Guilds: five trade organisations that take no side. On the first orientation flight, the pilot puts it in one line: “down there the Guilds are in charge, not us”.

The rule comes from the Armisticio de Ithera, the pact that stopped the war in Year 12 E.A. E.A. stands for Años de Asentamiento, the settlers’ calendar. Since then, Ithera has been demilitarised in practice:

• The Zenith and the Nadir, the system’s two factions, may not deploy their forces here in strength. That goes for the Guardia Vertical, the Zenith army, and for the Flotilla Libre, the Nadir militia.
• Its surface is never conquered.
• The treaty also bars anyone from militarising its orbit.

The Guilds were born here, among the wreckage of the Arca Aurora, the ship that crashed during the war. That is why they are the only power that can govern Ithera without breaking the treaty.

Who is watching from outside?

Both factions keep a close eye on Ithera.

• The Nadir watch it through the Guardabosques, their watch corps on Ithera. They do it from the Mirador at El Fondeadero, their station, which always faces the planet.
• The Zenith keep observers from the Cátedra, their high command. They log every resource of interest for a possible “reassessment”.

Each house sees it its own way. To the Cátedra, Ithera is a sentimental oddity and the Armisticio a temporary arrangement. To the Círculo, the assembly that governs the Nadir, the planet proves that people can live on a world without destroying it. To them, the Armisticio is sacred.

What is around La Cicatriz?

La Cicatriz is the furrow the Arca Aurora tore open when it crashed. Temperate lowlands and grassland surround it.

Where	What is there
About 4 km west	Los Espejos de Rocío: a wetland of still water under a low mist that mirrors the sky. The Lumbros live there: armoured balls that move in herds and never attack. It is where newcomers start out.
To the south-southwest	Cañón Espina: a canyon among arid strips. It has seams of vibrosteel and metazinc in plain sight, two of the system’s five ores (see the resource guide).
To the east-north-east	El Vergel Pálido: a spore forest that glows in the dark. The Pathfinders, the explorers’ guild, have recorded nests of Rolvaks there, the small and numerous variant of the Ombrask.
About 83 km north	Puesto Meridiano, where grassland turns to desert. It is the Guilds’ neutral settlement for transit and trade.
On the edges of the continents	Tropical coasts and arc volcanoes.

What is there to fear?

No armies does not mean safe.

• Ombrasks are giant predators that defend their territory. They hunt the canyons. The largest on record live in the core of La Cicatriz, beside the remains of the Arca’s reactor.
• A sentinel patrols above that core. It is an auxiliary core, one of the small machine minds of the Flota Aura, that nobody went to rescue. It loops on an order forty-six years old.

Every recruit learns this at the Puesto de Enlace of the Pioneers, the settlers’ guild. The liaison there explains that “the Guilds don’t ask which house you come from, only if you deliver”. Meanwhile, across a clearing, the shape of an Ombrask stands out. It comes no closer.