Moon of Ormek · tidally locked · the anvil
Pyra
Kurz gesagt
Pyra is a small, airless moon of Ormek, the planet closest to the star of the Aurin system. It is the Zenith’s forge and shipyard, where the metal sent up from Ormek is worked. Ormek always hangs in the same spot in its sky, so shadows do not move for the whole working day.
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The worst part is not the heat but that the shadow of your own body never moves throughout the working day.
What is Pyra like?
Pyra is one of the two moons of Ormek, the first planet of Aurin, the system’s star. Ormek is wrapped in a veil of white cloud.
- Size. 420 km in radius.
- Gravity. 0.388 m/s².
- Axis. Tilted at 17°.
- Air. It holds none: only a thin veil of sodium drawn out into a tail. That sodium comes from the basalt, the rock of the ground: bombardment from space strips it off.
- Dust. Electrostatic (electrically charged) dust hangs above the ground.
- Working outside. It takes a full suit (a full EVA). There are pressurised bases to come back to.
Where is it and who holds it?
Pyra circles Ormek at 18,000 km. It is tidally locked: it takes three hours to go round the planet and another three to turn once on its axis. So Ormek always hangs in the same spot in its sky. It fills thirty-eight degrees (37.981° on the charts) and never sets: it looks like half a white ember.
Pyra belongs to the Zenith, one of the system’s two factions: their forge and descent shipyard are here.
Its neighbour is Cinera, Ormek’s other moon, which is black. From there the Nadir, the other faction, keep a chalk tally of Aurin’s flares, the star’s outbursts. The Registro Aura, the system’s first catalogue, never even listed either moon.
What is it for?
Pyra is Ormek’s anvil. The metal is gathered down below and worked up here.
- Down below, the Calderas. On Ormek lie the Calderas de Ormek, geothermal basins (heated from underground) full of metal-laden brine (very salty water).
- A crust every day. A day on Ormek lasts six hours. Every afternoon the Calderas evaporate and leave a crust of clean metal. Before dawn they fill again.
- Up here, the forge. Down below there is time to gather that crust, but not to work it. So the metal comes up to Pyra.
Everything hangs on a narrow window: get into the Calderas and out again before the water returns. Dawn over the Calderas sets the work cycle, and Pyra’s shifts follow it.
What is it like to work in this light?
Pyra’s shifts are famous for the light. You work under a white, blinding world that does not move: Ormek’s cloud veil throws back the sun of Aurin. On the side facing the planet there is no night. And since the planet never moves in the sky, neither do the shadows, all working day long.
Then there is the fact the Cátedra, the Zenith high command, struggles to explain. The dossier on the moons records it without comment:
“Aurin, from here, measures 2.482°, more than Cinera seen from Ormek itself.”
Dossier on the moons of Aurin
The world the Zenith claimed to give light to the whole system is the only one that never knows a full shadow.
