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Twilight

Twilight
Image from Steve Bowers

Data Panel -Twilight (formerly Dawn)

System40 Eridani, Keid, Omicron 2 Eridani (More details here)
Primary40 Eridani A
Stellar ClassK1 V
Luminosity0.358 x Sol
CompanionsKeid B (white dwarf), Keid C (red dwarf)
RegionInner Sphere
PlanetsDawn: hot Superterrestrial world with a series of colonies in orbit

Twilight: (40 Eri A-I) Vesperian subclass, tidally locked with a primitive aboriginal ecology. The east and west twilight zones have been altered to comfortably habitable Earth-like conditions.
Shadows: (40 Eri A-III) a gas giant world with notorious electrical storms; one major moon (Orson)
Umbra: (40 Eri A-II) a rocky dwarf planet



The first colonists to arrive at Keid arrived in 789 in the Hephaestus, one of GAIA's arks, refugees from the Great Expulsion. The newly arrived colonists joined the Eridanus League in 810 AT, and together with Epsilon Eridani were the founding partners of that early interstellar empire. More colonists arrived in 810 on the Sanlung, another GAIA ark. The world was originally named Dawn, but was renamed Twilight once the planet was fully terraformed.

A TakiCorb mission arrived in 1100, and the new colonists became also very pro-League. Only a few fringe threshold bases on the planet dissented from continued League membership. Etodist, Mondecumen, and FalunDafa missionaries were not as successful here as on other League worlds due to the prevalence of animist beliefs.

Physical Characteristics

The planet is tidally locked to the star, with a hot dayside and a freezing nightside. The planet rotates with respect to the fixed stars once every 152 standard days; this is enough to encourage winds around the equator that bring moisture to the east and west terminators. As on Dante and other such worlds the conditions at the east and west poles are most favourable for precipitation, and these areas have the most moisture and are most habitable (apart from the steady winds).

History

The twilight zones were colonised by tweaks, overseeing the construction of large climate controlled habitats for TakiCorb. A very large contingent of Chinese descended baselines arrived from Solsys in 890, as part of the Phobos Expulsion Resettlement Treaty. Twilight was a firm supporter of the Eridanus league, but lacked the clout to keep the League together against the other interests.

The system never reached prominence, and the maintenance of the habitats proved expensive. Gradually they failed, the baseline population emigrated and only the Twilight Tweaks remained. They formally joined the NoCoZo in 5403. Since then they have quietly built their own culture on the planet, with minimal contact with the outside worlds, except cultures on similar tidally locked worlds (like Dante).

With the improved planetary engineering techniques available after the Consolidation wars, Twilight once again acquired a rich ecology partly derived from the aboriginal lifeforms. The Twilight culture is traditionally based around a complex animist religious philosophy involving the sun, the planet, the weather and the concept of flying (sailing on the intense winds is a common sport and form of religious worship). Tall chimney cities such as Yuancheng are scattered at the edge of the Keidward desert, generating power from the rising air within.

From time to time resurgences of expansionism occurred, and radicals broke off from mainstream interstellar culture. Twilight maintains close ties with Dante, and many of the original Eridanus League worlds.

In the last thousand years the Keid System has seen an influx of high toposophic defensive technology. For most of the history of this system the Twilightians refused to agree to the Archailects of the Inner Sphere to building in their system aside from major existing ISO structures orbiting Keid B and Keid C, and this preference has been honored. However because of the perceived increase in instability in the Terragen Sphere following the war with the Amalgamation, the Hyperutilisation Supremacy incident and the Periphery War, the Twilightian Highflight Council has more recently assented to the installation of several defence arrays in their system.

 
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Development Notes
Text by Anders Sandberg
additions by Steve Bowers, 2018, Twilight Texture by John M Dollan
Initially published on 09 January 2002.

 
 
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