Ashar

The world has been known to the Eshtem as Ashar since before their scholars began to discern the nature of the world as a sphere. It means the "Blessed Place" in Old Eshti. And as these astronomers and mathematicians continue to learn more about their world's place in the universe, the more blessed they realize it is.

 

Ashar is a large, terrestrial world with abundant water. It orbits a yellow dwarf sun, Kal, that is in a binary system with a red dwarf, Bal. And as far as anyone has yet discovered, it shares its suns with no other planets that anyone has yet discovered. The reasons for this are unknown and largely unasked. Most simply assume a single world is a normal state, knowing nothing else, though some have begun to wonder.

 

What has been determined is that the planet lies in a gravitational nexus of relative calm, dynamically balanced between the forces of two suns and three moons. The red dwarf, Bal, has an highly eccentric orbit around the gravitational balance point between itself and Kal. Ashar is kept safe from being gravitationally sling shot into the cold void only by its fortunate position, near enough to Kal for it to protect it from Bal, but not so close as to be lashed bare by solar winds or burned to cinders.

 

Ashar enjoys a similar situation with its moons. These moons have a strong effect on the tides and vulcanism of the world, but coast destroying floods and continent cracking mega-eruptions are kept to a minimum due to the relative positions of the moons that causes them to dampen or cancel out these tidal forces.

 

Priests and followers of myriad religions around the world, once having learned of these scientific discoveries, insist that this is no mere accident of fate. They nominate their gods and spirits as the true protectors of the world, deserving of praise and worship. Some miserable sceptics say though, that even if this world is supposedly protected by great powers, why haven't these powers kept it from the destructive forces it has been known to suffer over the millenia, the nightmarish cataclysms burned into the folk memories of all cultures and into the biology and geology of the world itself.

Type
Planet

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