Weydana-6
Weydana-6 is the largest planet in the Weydana system, a massive gas giant with a frigid, gaseous atmosphere constantly swirling in great mobile storms. Orbited by 12 moons, Weydana-6 largely consists of a stew of elements and simple compounds such as water, methane, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and phosphine. In the planet’s troposphere, these compounds express themselves as enormous showers raining constantly on Weydana-6’s core, although the incredible heat and pressure at the core’s boundary instantly reduce this rain to its constituent atoms.
Of intense interest to any traveler drawing near Weydana-6— and to any explorer, archaeologist, or fortune-hunter who explores its moons—is the Swarm colony on an organic platform skimming through the upper atmosphere of the planet, about 5 miles below the atmosphere’s upper reaches. The first individuals to explore Weydana-6 found the Swarm colony in a kind of torpor, although more recent reports dispute this and state that components of the colony are very much awake and active. The platform appears to have sustained some damage, perhaps from meteorites or from some catastrophic weather formation from the planet’s turbulent atmosphere.
A less obvious aspect of Weydana-6 reveals itself only after extensive, high-level analysis of the planet’s atmosphere, intriguing stellar theoreticians. The storms that orbit the planet, and indeed all the observable elements of the atmosphere, don’t move randomly. While the number of various arrangements of these atmospheric elements is very high, it’s not unlimited. Further, the atmospheric motions are repetitive, measured over extended periods of time.
This lack of randomness virtually guarantees that some kind of intelligence is at work, but researchers and physicists can’t agree on much more than that. One working theory suggests that the gas giant wasn’t spawned from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud, as the other planets in the Weydana system were, but was artificially created. The theory hypothesizes that unknown entities or a hitherto unknown civilization, using inconceivable technological or magical processes, formed Weydana-6 in another system or galaxy and then brought it via magic or technology to the Weydana system. (This isn’t as impossible as it sounds; rogue planets cast loose from their system of origin and floating through the depths of space are a well-known phenomenon. Scans of the cosmographic boundary between the system and the galaxy might determine if any trace of Weydana-6’s passage into the Weydana system can still be observed.) The possible involvement of beings from the Elemental Plane of Air is not to be discounted; various non-sentient creatures from that plane have been detected in the atmosphere of Weydana-6.
According to this theory, Weydana-6’s atmosphere generates energy; the constant interplay between atmospheric bands and the substantial heat and lightning generated by the planet’s core creates an excess of energy on a cosmic scale. The overall emitted energy of Weydana-6’s core would be enough to power every home in the Pact Worlds, though it’s still only a tiny fraction of that given off by Weydana’s star. The energy produced by Weydana-6 doesn’t appear to power a weapon. Instead, Weydana-6 is theorized to be a stellar computer or artificial intelligence of incredible scale; theoreticians believe that entities or civilizations capable of creating such a world would have long transcended the need for simple weapons.
If this theory is true, the planet’s artificial intelligence is currently inert; no one knows how to awaken it, but that won’t stop explorers from trying.
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