Post
by Professor Fenway » Sun Oct 05, 2014 8:59 pm
The Sayria system. A bright blue star, locked in an eternal cosmic dance with the 5 planets orbiting it. Two of them failed stars, brown dwarfs dipping just barely into the star's corona, being ignited by the fury of Sayria, before being flung back out again, their hopes dashed once again. A mad frenzy of gasses and asteroids in a massive, brilliant ring circles just beyond them. It twinkles and shifts in the star's light.
Beyond that, a dazzling green Jovian, massive and looming in the still-bright light of the star. Clouds race across its fiery surface, swirling and twisting in countless bands. 46 moons circle it in an almost sinister dance, timed and synchronized almost perfectly with the movement of the Jovian's bands of clouds. And the largest of them a deep blue ocean world, the surface roiling and never still, the waters acidic and hostile. But from orbit, it almost seemed at peace with itself. A perfect blue marble, unblemished by clouds or islands.
Beyond the Jovian lay another, this time sparkling blue. Its surface was almost completely unmarked. A light smattering of pure white clouds betrayed its calm appearance as they raced across the surface. And beyond this final Jovian, lay a solitary world. A very strange one, indeed. It was exceptionally flat, more so than even frozen ice worlds. Its surface was composed of a light grey sand, almost like an eternal beach. What meager atmosphere it had occasionally roused up a great sandstorm, obscuring the entire planet for years before settling down in its ever flat nature.
A pristine system, and a barely cataloged one at that. A NeoRoman scout passed through this system 38 years ago, noted nothing of interest, and jumped away. Most star charts don't even include it on the chart; for the rest, it's hardly mentioned and glossed over.
A mighty solar flare erupted from the star, almost grazing the passing brown dwarf, and came smashing back down. But as it did so, it shifted. It dimmed, almost, slowed. The star seemed to lose its brilliance, the dance seemed to slow down. The entire system wavered, the belt of asteroids stopped twinkling, the oceans froze in their roiling, the great sandstorms remained motionless. The star dimmed, reddened, slowing down before blinking out entirely, covering the system frozen in time in an eternal black blanket.