Parhelion

What is Parhelion?

It is the present-day galaxy, where the settlers live. The Flota Aura, the fleet that brought them, ran aground here after crossing the void between galaxies from extinct Solmera.

Parhelion has no mythology of its own for the settlers. To them it is simply the place where the voyage ended.

Where does its name come from?

A parhelion is a “phantom sun”: an illusory second sun that appears beside the real one. The fleet’s astronomers chose the name during the Éxodo, the centuries-long voyage from Solmera. They did so long before they knew they would reach Aurin.

Nor had they seen one with their own eyes. Today it can be seen in the sky of Ormek, the planet closest to the star. Beneath Ormek’s veil of cloud, Aurin looks like this:

• Diffuse, filtered by the cloud.
• Ringed by a 22° halo, a ring of light around the star.
• Flanked by parhelia, points of light that ice throws up beside the true sun.

They are made by ice crystals hanging between 14 and 22 km up, at more than fifty degrees below zero.

Why does the name trouble both sides?

The fleet adopted the name as an omen. It did not yet know it would split into two factions, the Zenith and the Nadir. Each is convinced it is the true light.

The archive keeps the full reading, which neither side enjoys: two suns born of the same source, and one of them is a reflection. Neither faction has ever accepted being the reflection.

Each lays claim to the light in its own way:

• The Cátedra de Ascensión, the Zenith high command, does it with its First Axiom, the one that calls for giving the universe shape.
• The Círculo del Fondeadero, the assembly that governs the Nadir, answers with its First Verse:

“The void gave us a second chance, not to repeat the same mistakes, but to learn to put down roots.”

First Verse, Círculo del Fondeadero

Why does nobody move on elsewhere?

Because there is nowhere to go. Aurin is the only system in the region with habitable worlds that the fleet could reach. Going further would have used up its propulsion and life-support reserves. There is no next system to jump to.

That is another of the reasons the war between the Zenith and the Nadir has never gone as far as extermination. The two houses draw opposite conclusions from the same fact:

	What they conclude
The Nadir	Aurin is the final home. If it is destroyed, there is no plan B.
The Zenith	It is the reason to push the MMU, their shared technology, towards a new generation of jump drives.

What lies beyond?

The canon treats Aurin as the first system of Parhelion. Other systems, with their own planets and conflicts, are left open, with no date or scope.

From within, the practical limit of exploration is the outer ice belt, the system’s most distant band of ice. On its edge the Baliza Confín listens: a long-range listening post.

The galaxy’s name also leaves its mark on the Registro Aura, the system’s first catalogue. It carries -ion, the suffix for primary objects, the same group as the -in of Aurin.