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Owen (System)

Utopia Sphere world, homeland of a number of species of Dinosaur provolves.

Owen (Borrahland)
Image from PortalHunter
Owen - showing the continent Borrahland

Stellography
System: Owen System
Primary: HD 160519
Spectral Type: GV5
Age: 3 GY
Distance from Sol: 387 LY
Luminosity: 2.97 x Sol
Constellation: Ara

Planets
The Ampere Belt: Inner system debris belt rich with vulcanian asteroids.
Kelvin : Hephaestian-class planet, tidally-locked
Pascal : Volcanically-active Cytherean world
Jewel (formerly Joule): HyperXeric terrestrial once occupied by isolationist ai, terraformed to Gaian.
Owen (formerly Alan): GaianTundral world terraformed to standard Gaian
Gray : Gas dwarf.
Tesla : Meso-Eujovian with intense electromagnetic storms

Colonized: 4296 AT
Evacuated: 4853 AT

Owen

Type: Gaian Semimajor Axis: 1.7211 AU
Eccentricity: 0.07
Period: 1.935 Standard Years (706 Standard Days and 18 Standard Hours)
Day Length: 26 Standard Hours and 7 Standard Minutes
Radius: 7835 km
Obliquity: 11.6°
Gravity: 0.9 gees

History

Owen is a Utopia Sphere world, well-known as the birthplace of over seven dozen species of saurian provolves createdd by the hyperturing lazurogenicist GEvidian. The historical world is a popular site for carefully-monitored tourism, with a regular influx of visitors from the Archosaurian Empire and elsewhere. The planet is currently under protection by the Caretaker God I Give The Horn of Plenty. The Archosaurian Entity has declared this system to be of historical significance.

Excursions had been made to this star system centuries before the arrival of GEvidian. A semi-sentient interstellar probe, launched in the Late Federation era by SecureSpace, had surveyed the system for potential colonization and discovered that Joule and the outer dust belt had been occupied by isolationist ai entities for some centuries.

By the time the news had been beamed back, the Jurassica Institute had been newly established and was eagerly looking for unclaimed planets to terraform. Brushing off concerns about the presence of the isolationist ai in the outer system, a colonization venture to HD 160519 was announced by the beginning of the Integration. With the aid of a local interested Caretaker God, a conversion drive ship with a dedicated hyperturing was procured. The ship launched by 3868 AT. That in itself was not unusual, but what made this expedition garner a certain amount of attention on the Known Net was that it was a data-only colony ship; these were still relatively rare in that era.

Data-only ships are light and fast and have smaller fuel requirements, all done by digitizing massive amounts of data instead of carrying actual cargo. All necessities would be nanofactured at its destination.

The Jurassica Institute's expedition ship, at a speed just under 0.7c, reached HD 160519 on 3937 AT. The outer belt entities quickly took notice of the newcomers and completely evacuated the system. Most of the Jurassica Institute's presence in the HD 160519 system were uploads, aioids, and hyperturing individuals who had no trouble setting up infrastructure on and around the fourth planet in the system (initially named Alan). Ecopoesis was achieved fairly quickly with weather machine technology and orbital mirrors to melt the plentiful water ice in the planet's frozen seas, and fluorine compounds were introduced into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases. By 4195 AT, the north and south oceans were blooming with tailored algae and terraforming biotech, raising the oxygen levels on the world to over 27%. Terraforming was deemed complete by 4384 AT, and the planet was renamed Owen.

Long before the terraforming was complete, the Jurassica Institute had been designing the planet's biosphere. Centuries' worth of design and experimentation gave Owen's environment a diverse variety of Terran flora and fauna, mostly lazurogenised and psuedolazurogenised specimens from the Mesozoic Era of Old Earth. Often, they modified or even killed off species to make gaps for other species to occupy while still keeping a carefully balanced yet constantly changing ecosystem (something that garnered plenty of criticism over the years).

Owen (Garooland)
Image from PortalHunter
Owen - showing the continent of Garooland

During the Version War, Owen officially aligned itself with the Utopia Sphere, one of the neutral Sephirotic empires which were non-combatants in that conflict. In 4699 AT, after the war, a Utopian linelayer reached the system and set up the small wormhole Phylogenetic Tree, only three years behind schedule. The costly link to the rest of the galaxy paid off well when bio-template sales boomed and Owen biospheric data became popular for a short time, especially in the Zoeific Biopolity and the Non-Coercive Zone.

With the local Jurassica Institute free to do as they pleased and with the original boost of initial Net popularity, Owen enjoyed a burst of activity. The Jurassica Institute began to experiment with the ecosystem to create more pleasing exhibits. One species introduced to Owen were the Borrahsaurs, created by GEvidian on the continent Borrahland (both named after an obscure Utopian lazurogenist). The Borrahsaurs were closer to being psuedolazurogens than true lazurogens. GEvidian had experimented with neural upgrades and modified mentalities for the saurians and raised them in a predator-free environment. Several more experimental species followed, and GEvidian soon became one of the leading developers of Owen.

Over time, GEvidian gained quite a following of modos who came to call themselves the Dino Kids: archosaurian rianthed bioborgs. The middle Empires period saw the Dino Kids and GEvidian, along with the help from the superbright Proto Chi (the progenitors of the Toh Chi Lok culture) work together in provolution experiments that grew ever more complex and innovative. The followers resided on the smallest continent, Cretaland.

Eventually, the Jurassica Institute's interests migrated elsewhere to what had once been the Periphery but is now the Middle Regions because of the expansion of the Terragen Sphere. They moved their headquarters to Darwin Orbital in 40 Eridani. GEvidian and several of eir associates stayed in the Owen system to keep watch over eir creations. During the ComEmp period, the Jurassica Institute relocated once more, this time to the Rho Ophiuchi Plexus.

Around the Terragen Sphere, GEvidian's effective methods of provolving species became widespread. GEvidian's provolution experiments became so successful, in fact, that overpopulation of the experimental provolves was becoming apparent on Owen. The problem was that it was not enough to just resurrect one species. The required flora, fauna, living space, and breeding populations also had to be managed. Some neosaurians, especially migratory species and predators, required many thousands or even millions of square kilometers of land to survive and thrive. Some of the provolves on Owen were beginning to go into competition with other species. Resources on Owen were plentiful but finite. The planetary ecosystem was beginning to go into decline, and GEvidian continued to create more and more neosaurians to populate the planet. GEvidian's intents to create an archosaurian paradise had taken its toll on Owen's environment.

The Jurassica Institute, along with the Lazurogenics Institute, took notice of the situation and intervened accordingly. GEvidian, with help from I Give The Horn of Plenty, a local Caretaker God, began to construct a number of massive Lofstrom Loops and long-range colony ships in what historians say was a repeat of the Great Expulsion. Starting from 4832 ~ 4852 AT, every provolve on the planet was prepared for evacuation. On 4853 AT, the fleet of neosaurians departed at relativistic velocity towards the open cluster Ruprecht 108, leaving their planet behind to recover.

The next few centuries saw the revival of endangered species on the planet, as well as a new program by GEvidian to populate the rich seas of Owen with numerous aquatic clades. In the early Age of Re-Evaluation period, I Give The Horn of Plenty took over day-to-day administration of the system.

At around this time, the SI:2 entity still residing on the planet Joule decided to pack up and leave in a conversion drive vessel, leaving the planet open for settlement. For some time afterwards until the rise of ArchSaur (later to be known as the Archosaurian Entity), Joule was renamed as Jewel, terraformed, and then guarded by I Give The Horn of Plenty.

In 5687 AT, following some rather terse communication between ArchSaur and I Give The Horn of Plenty, the Ornith system and Owen were declared an honorary part of the Archosaurian Empire. Sightseers and religious pilgrimages to Owen were accepted, but the rest of the system was declared off-limits.

Owen Map
Image from PortalHunter
Map of Owen

Planetography

There are three major continents: Borrah, Creta, and Garoo.
Borrah is the biggest continent, dominated largely by a tropical climate. Its low topography inspires swamps and large floods in the wet season, except for the center highlands, which is predominantly savanna and shrubland. Glacial melt in the highland mountains have eroded several very large rivers.

Creta has a much harsher climate, its southwest half a barren waste in the summer. The northern reaches of Creta were more hospitable and became the home of the Proto Chi, the Dino Kids, and other followers of GEvidian.

Garoo is, on average, even more saturated with humidity than Borrah's lowlands. The vegetation there is known to be very dense and dark-coloured. Up north of Garoo is the Archipelago, believed by some to be the source of the name for the Archaipelago.

Owen's seasons are caused not by axial tilt but by an eccentric orbit. This way, the seasons are global instead of hemispheral. Largely unrestricted ocean currents, the higher air pressure (approximately 1.4 bars), and the extensive use of Weather Machines results in this world having almost no polar ice caps to speak of, although it was not unknown for icebergs to be spotted in the northern reaches of the Archipelago.

Owen is still a young planet, just over 3 billion years old. Before terraforming, Owen had been completely frozen over, which had effectively halted all tectonic activity. After the oceans were melted, volcanic activity and seismic events became even more common, especially on Garoo. It is not rare for I Give The Horn of Plenty to clean volcanic ash and dust out of the atmosphere every century or so.

 
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Appears in Topics
Archosaurian Empire Middle Regions/Hinter-regionsSystems & Worlds O - P
Utopia Sphere
 
Development Notes
Text by PortalHunter
from an original stub article by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 17 December 2001.

Full article expansion written April 2015
 
 
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