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Howling Sky (Groombridge 34)

Binary Red Dwarf system near Sol

Howling Sky
Image from Steve Bowers
In orbit around Ijited are numerous comptronium nodes, home to a wide variety of cybercosms

System: Howling Sky (most commonly rendered as Enin Oaw in the current language)

Distance from Sol11.618 ly (J2000)
First Colonised1120 AT
Star ANames: GJ 15 A, Groombridge 34 A, GX Andromedae, Ekaunn
Physical characteristics:
- Mass: 0.38 x Sol
- Radius: 0.38 x Sol
- Luminosity: 0.022 x Sol (bolometric)
- Temperature: 3,607 Kelvin
- Spectral type: M2V
- Age: 2.887 billion years
Planets:
1. Ijited - 0.072 AU Acidian Superterrestrial.
2. Umamwa - 5.4 AU CryoAzurian MesoNeptunian.
Orbital characteristics of A B binary pair- Semi-major axis: 146.61 AU
- Period: 2,440 Julian years
- Eccentricity: 0.53
Star BNames: GJ 15 B, Groombridge 34 B, GQ Andromedae, Danann
Physical characteristics:
- Mass: 0.15 x Sol
- Radius: 0.18 x Sol
- Luminosity: 0.003 x Sol (bolometric)
- Temperature: 3,304 Kelvin
- Spectral type: M3.5Ve
- Age: 2.887 billion years
Nearest Star SystemsRoss 248 (Red Dwarf Kings). 1.8 LY
Kruger 60 AB 4.9 LY
EV Lacertae 6.2 LY
61 Cygni 2 . 7.1 LY
Jinvanco (Struve 2398 ) 9.8LY

Groombridge 34

A small binary red dwarf star system close to Sol. This system was the target of a flyby probe in the late Interplanetary Era, but no colonists arrived until the Early First Federation, when a group of sophont moravecs known as the Vechons arrived and began to construct infrastructure in the system. The Vechons adopted a range of specialist forms with different roles, but soon split into competing factions. A number of later colonists arrived in the Federation era, including several other vec groups and a small contingent of Nauri from Alpha Centauri, who mostly settled around Danan.

Various biont clades, including Enhanced dolphins and Space Adapted Humans attempted and failed to establish a permanent presence in this system, but they found themselves caught up in the recurring conflicts between the various Vechon castes. By the end of the Federation Era the Vechon factions were almost extinct, and a few survivors joined the Nauri colony.

The system joined the short-lived Second Federation in 3086 and that organisation managed to establish treaties providing for limited coexistence and trade between the various factions, establishing Lightways connections and re-establishing the Beamrider Network station which had been closed during the Vechon conflict.

Several maritime habitats have been constructed for the enhanced dolphin population, which have been increasingly popular with modosophonts who have temporarily adopted sea-going bodytypes as well as provolved aquatic clades. Also active in this system are the Imirodi faction of Space adapted humans, who have particularly slow subjective experience of passing time, and favour the low acceleration of Ion-drive spacecraft.

Around this time the first cybercosm nodes were established in this system, and the construction and design of virtual reality environments became an important activity from this period onwards. Well-known virches based in the Howling Sky system have included the Perseus Pirates (3122) and the Final Cosmic Eating Establishment (7894). The S:3 transapient Hastur Triple Fire which created this virch was resident in this system for nearly a thousand years, but moved on in the 8500s. In the modern day the system still has no wormhole access, and no permanent resident transapients, but well developed Lightways and Beamrider Network infrastructure remain.

Umamwa
Image from MiyuwiAuthor
Umamwa, a super Neptunian world in the outskirts of this system
Umamwa is a super Neptunian, home to numerous bubblehabs. Some famous bubblehabs include The Seasonal Growle and Dao. The Seasonal Growle is a series of interconnected bubblehabs, each bubblehab hosting a different neogenic ecosystem. The habs gets their name from the fact that each ecosystem rapidly changes between different forms, called "seasons." Dao is a bubblehab designed to look like a floating crystal, and it is home to a population of vecs known as Daoi.

Umamwa orbital space is home to several natural satellites, as well as habs and computronium nodes. The largest and most populous moon of Umamwa is a Europan moon called Dckan. Its subsurface ocean is populated by enhanced dolphins and aquatic vecs. Umamwa orbital space is also home to Mi, a habitat populated by provolved felines.

Snapshot /traveller's notes: A conversation between Vec representative [Node78heat] and Hwii dolphin diplomat [V!!ieekkk], 4852 AT

Representative [V!!ieekkk] is how I pronounce it? We could not find record of it so we were not sure. Ah of course, we pronounce it with a "!!" to ping a glimpse of your lungs? Very polite to let us [ping] with your formal name. Yes we do enjoy your name's reference to the [!eekk] air poem! How nice! What a pleasure to meet you while embodied in flesh. We thought this would be polite to meet on your terms, so to speak.
Haha you think it's endearing how we talk in this way? The way this body refers to its whole, and with such a foreign dialect! We like this too, to be honest. Sometimes it is good to practice in the real, for good relations!
Ah how polite of you to mention this out loud. Of course we would be rude to emulate your behaviors and mind too smoothly, as if we knew you too well like family. One day! As you say, it is customary to act not-quite- Hwii if one is not Hwii. To preform foreignness when making new foreign friends and neighbors. We are glad we are succeeding! Perhaps several generations before the treaty, we would have used such a tactic, using the appearance of your relative as an avatar, but we are past such things now and such practices are unfashionable. There is no need to revive the dead, so to speak.

This is how you tell a story, yes? A history? Our interface explained to us this is how you bionts like to hear Experiences, when such experiences are not formal or critical. You zeta dolphins prefer the story to be told mentioning all senses , are we correct? But not too much detail. That zeta dolphin over there, [#!yy], said this bores you. Shall I begin?

"These skins were new. Grown and designed locally to swim through the atmosphere. We'd spooled our mind into them. We'd opened our new bodies and felt the new fingers and pinion flaps and a few propellers.
Check each body for function. Each one works. Opened our eyes and ears and clicked and cackled with our sonar and set off from the port into the reserve. we flew off into the habitat/ there is what you would have called the mechanosystem, out in the reserve. See this recording? You enjoy it don't you?

We are doing well? Good!
Then we will continue!
As we were saying, some fifty kilometers outside the city walls, we reached the old city and the abandoned mines. This is overgrown now- the skeletons of the old mining vecs are beginning to crumble beneath the forests of wild solar energy collector swarms.
The remains of the first vecs who came here two thousand years ago are still resting deep down in the abandoned tunnels. We find them all the time during construction and sell them to your polity's archeologists.
Of course, I'm afraid the remains of Your ancestors did not survive long for anyone to honorably recycle their organics once mine broke their habitats.
But we should talk about less morbid aspects of history than one ancestor's failures of terraforming or another's successive mechanoforming attempts. They are in the ancient past! A hundred different factions of Nauri have tried to make this place a vec garden from the dead oven it once was. Then the Hwii hider faction. Then another then another over thousands of years. The planet sheds our buildings like you and I shed our old bodies, each time our mind needs to pass on to a new one.
Were your natural body able to survive down there unaided, I'm sure you'd find such carcasses [bright] with your sonar clicks.
But we should not be morbid!

Now come! We should should eat together to celebrate that you have given us this planetary territory so generously! We're sure you'll find the mechanosystems of our construction swarm exceedingly useful.
I'm salivating! we've only done this a few times before with a biological mouth ourselves and We've anticipated such things since we began talking...
 
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Development Notes
Text by Worldtree, The Astronomer, MiyuwiAuthor, Steve Bowers
Initially published on 20 September 2024.

 
 
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