AERLAAN – A playground built for a muse

[PaGaN]

Hello all and a quick thank you for stopping by!

As I mentioned in my “Introduce Yourself” post, my main reason to return to world-building is provide myself with an inexhaustible source of inspiration for various other artistic projects (though mostly painting). There is nothing more frustrating than staring at a blank canvas/screen whilst you berate yourself for not being able to think of anything cool to breathe life into.

So, what are my goals? Well, I want to build a world that is, for the most part, coherent and believable. And when I say believable I suppose I am more specifically referring to ecology, climate and biomes. No floating mountains, no rivers flowing uphill, no jungles in the middle of a desert etc…

To that end I intend to follow Pixie’s climate guide at least up to calculation of precipitation patterns for the world and then will most likely switch across to Azelor’s guide to figure out the climate zones. When it comes to the actual biomes I will probably refer to Mbartelsm’s very handy appendix.

Know upfront that Yes, I have taken artistic license in a couple of areas and I will sacrifice a little bit of plausibility for a big dollop of “Cool” each and every time.

I love fantasy so Aerlaan will grow up and be all sassy in that particular genre but will also have a few elements of a powerful long forgotten technology from an antediluvian past that will honestly have nothing to do with justifying my aforementioned “artistic licenses” (WINK WINK).

So, with that being said let’s begin at the macro level shall we? Let me present to you the Bahl System: NOTE – She isn’t finished and is likely to have a handful more planets and moons over time.

The Bahl System (so far).jpg

OBVIOUS DISCLAIMER 1: this is NOT to scale…LOL. I will be designing a relative size chart and relative distance chart soon(ish).
OBVIOUS DISCLAIMER 2: I am not an Astrophysicist. I know that there may well be aspects of this system that should not work. Remember that ancient tech I told you about??? Good.

Let’s take a walk:

BAHL:
She is a K class yellow sub-giant star who has firmly started her journey of transformation into a red-giant. Her habitable zone is likewise significantly pushed out farther than ours. In human years she is rapidly approaching retirement but has a good number aeons left in her. Bahl has already consumed her inner most planet, a now unknown small rocky world that no one in the system will ever knew existed (well, maybe not “no one”…WINK WINK). What does this mean for Aerlaan? It means that Aerlaan has a gorgeous warm golden “large and in charge” mother sun looking over her.

SKAH:
Whilst not yet consumed by his mother, this innermost planet is the second casualty of Bahl’s expansion. Skah was, in a now distant past, a handsome, habitable and inhabited world. Skah is now a barren tortured rock with almost no atmosphere left. His surface is broken by huge molten rivers that continuously form, bleed and subduct as the encroaching sun exerts increasingly disruptive forces upon this long ago paradise.

AERLAAN (& MOONS):
Here she is, the new golden child of the system brought in from the cold.

Aerlaan & Moons.jpg

As Bahl grew, her warmth and light reached further out thawing Aerlaan and bringing her to life. Aerlaan has had at least 500,000,000 years of being inhabitable and has developed a very rich and diverse ecosystem (with a little accelerated help…WINK WINK).
Here are some stats:

AERLAAN
A) Orbital Period = 432 days
B) Degrees/Solar Day (DSD) = 0.8333
C) Solar Day = 24.00 hours
D) Sidereal Day = 23.57 hour
E) Diameter = 5,729,58 miles
F) Circ = 18,000 miles (Earth is 24,901, Mars is 13,263)

Valhenta
• Synodic Period = 6 days
• Sidereal Period = 5.917
• Synodic Degrees per day = 60.8333
• Aerlaani Orbital Degree/Period = 5
• Periods/Year = 72
• Semi Major Axis = 10,000 miles
• Diameter = 350 miles

Olarune
• Synodic Period = 16 days
• Sidereal Period = 15.43
• Synodic Degrees per day = 23.3333
• Aerlaani Orbital Degree/Period = 13.333
• Periods/Year = 27
• Semi Major Axis = 25,000 miles
• H) Diameter = 800 miles

Therandor
• Synodic Period = 144 days
• Sidereal Period = 108
• Synodic Degrees per day = 3.333
• Aerlaani Orbital Degree/Period = 120
• Periods/Year = 3
• Semi Major Axis = 80,000 miles
• Diameter = 1500 miles

The intricate interlocking precision of these celestial bodies are a favorite subject of Aerlaani philosophers who have been known to debate for entire lifetimes about the presence of an intervening hand that would have caused such a statistically unlikely array of such synchronicity (LOL…WINK WINK).

Why do the moons nest so precisely? Because new year on Aerlaan is awesome and marked by a great convention of the 3 moons above the equator. And this occurs EVERY YEAR like clockwork. Why are the moons at the size and distance they are? Because I think that there is nothing cooler than seeing giant moons coming up on a horizon. It’s an old sci-fi trope I know, but it’s STILL cool.
If you want a little more flavor then below you can find the Aerlaan “Ætheric Calender” (I’ll get into what “Æther” is later).

Aerlaan Lunar Calendar.jpg

SHOM
(So far) the only gas giant in the system, Shom is truly a giant at about 15 times the size of Aerlaan. This big blue beauty also resides in the habitable zone. what does this mean? well it means that Shom is also mother to two large terrestrial and tidally locked moons that are also teeming with life (NOTE: I am also likely to throw a few more barren moons in there for good measure).

Pernessa
Shom's closest and most hospitable world. Life is complex and beautiful on this moon though largely confined to the planet facing side. She orbits her parent planet every 14 days and so does not have to endure as wildly fluctuating extremes as her brother moon, Elwynn. The side of Pernessa that faces away from Shom is somewhat less friendly to life however with much more extreme differences in temperature and climate (Roasting then scorching on a significant scale).

Elwynn
About twice the size of Pernessa, Elwynn is the big brother and, in the past, has taken many a beating for his little sister. His surface bear the scars of many huge impacts that have provided him with water but also, over time, unbalanced his atmosphere. Whilst Elwynn supports life, it is not as complex or rich as Pernessa. Elwynn orbits Shom every 37 days.

Storms on both of these moons are certainly something to see.

For the remainder of the system, i will more than likely add some more children to this family as they come to me but for now, that's about it. With that being said, that’s it for this post. Next post I will show you the actual landmasses, tectonics and a VERY quick and dirty elevation map. Also, what I envision Aerlaan’s atmospheric circulation would look like (spoiler alert: I have small Ferrel Cells…LOL)

See ya on the flip side!