Sacrosa is a tidally locked desert planet orbiting elliptically around the brown dwarf Aberon, about 3x the size of earth. The front side exists at around -20°C to -5°C when far from Aberon, and around -5°C to 30°C when it comes close. The other side ranges from 150 to 10 kelvin. Violent winds rip across the planet's surface due to convecton, and so the surface is covered in an almost constant dust storm. Sacrosa has a small spherical moon and a plethora of asteroid moons.
Galaxy stones found orbiting Sacrosa include galaxy rubies, galaxy zircons, galaxy topazes and galaxy opals.
Chemical Composition[]
Sacrosa has an atmosphere mostly of hydrogen that it shares with Aberon on fly-bys, but also contains sulfur hexafluoride (which keeps the planet as warm as it is at its current distance from Abron) and elemental argon, as well as traces of gaseous bromine and bromofluorides, which contribute to the planet's famed sunsets, along with Aberon's vermillion light.
The surface of Sacrosa is largely desert, with small pools of condensed bromine. Gallium also exists on the surface in some amount, often bonded with fluorine, bromine, sulfur, and aluminum.
The tectonic crust of Sacrosa contains mostly silumin and elemental carbon rock and sand, with sealed pockets of antimony pentafluoride. These tectonic plates shift due to inward convection, and so produce mountain ranges, deep trenches, and volcanos.
The lower crust, which is semi-molten, contains gallium, antimony, and some aluminum, as well as traces of nickel. The molten core is mostly nickel, with some antimony.
Biochemistry on Sacrosa[]
Life on Sacrosa started out in gallium pools, where gallium sulfates and gallium bromides interacted to create life. The majority of life on Sacrosa takes in sulfur hexafluoride and bromofluorides from the air, and aluminum-carbon-silicon compounds from the ground, and release aluminum trifluoride, carbon tetraflouride, or silicon trifluoride in differing cases. Gallium is also taken up from surrounding pools when needed.
Silicate life on Sacrosa is silicon-based, made up of polymers of silicon, bromine, sulfur, and gallium1. These polymers may become sulfur-gallium-bromine compounds2, which generates silicon. The bromine may also be expelled3, allowing one link in the polymer chain to have a bent double bond. Silicate life can be identified by its release of aluminum tetrafluoride and carbon tetraflouride, and the deposits these excretions make.
Aluminide life is based on aluminum, most of which is based on repeating strings of gallium and aluminum, with the occasional bromine or sulfur attached to the aluminum to the side or at the ends, refered to as aluminide proteins4. Aluminide fatty acids5 may also form, which are an aluminum bonded to a gallium, a bromine and silicon bonded to them in a straight line; the aluminum has a free side, and so may bond to an aluminide protein. Aluminide life can be identified by its release of silicon tetrafluoride and carbon tetraflouride.
Ecology on Sacrosa[]
Life can exist in many places, such as in volcanic gallium pools, shielded from the wind by the peaks. In the rims of gallium pools, microbes and small worms exist, as well as larger organisms.
One notable example is the siliacte Arena Manducans, (arena for short) which roots itself to the bottom with branching root-like mouths that scoop up the carbon-silicon-aluminum sand, and combine it with sulfur hexafluoride and bromoflourides from the air. The gaseous carbon tetrafluorine is bubbled out from the skin, and the solid waste aluminum tetrafluoride is excreted in a shell around the organism. Areni may grow up to a meter, when it grows something resembling a pine-cone, which spreads its spores.
Another silicate organism is the Apis Argentum (apis for short). The Apis has a thin, diamond-shaped body, streamlined for navigating the harsh winds. It has an orifice on its belly protected by a beak, which may open up to suck in gallium, air, or sand. It has a second orifice on its tail resembling an elephant's trunk or a cephelapod tentacle with one main hole at the end, and multiple pores along its length, as is true for the whole skin of the Apis. The smaller holes release carbon tetrafluoride, and the main hole excretes aluminum triflouride, which it mixes with a small bit of gallium to produce a thick paste, which it uses to build its dome. Apis domes on the bare ground are either tear-drop shaped or flattened pyramids to protect against the wind, but can be any shape in caves or in un-windy areas. Apis domes can get up to the size of a large house, with multiple spheres constructed inside. Apises have small compound eyes for infrared vision at the top of their body, like the camera of a self-driving car.
The aluminide Luscus is an organism with unique way of spawning and surviving. Spores find pools of liquid gallium, and start growing around it, eating any organisms growing in it, becoming esesntially a gallium-balloon. Microvilli grow on the underside to capture carbon-silicon-aluminum material. The waste products of silicon tetrafluoride and carbon tetrafluoride are dissolved into the gallium up until the necessary point, when the biomass of the bubble grows to the point when sand-adapted cilia form that bury the bubble about a foot underground. Enzymes force the gaseous waste into the top of the bubble, where it forms a thin hollow stalk. This stalk grows above the sandy surface where the gasses form the tip into a bulb. This bulb strengthens, and ultimately releases the gasses. The bulb develops into a highly evolved multi-purpose sensory organ, with uv-sight, smell, atmospheric hearing, ground hearing and ground-sonar, etc. This organ is used alongside matured cilia to crawl through the sand to find a pocket of antimony pentaflouride, streamlining the body in the process. The creature may find other luscuses around a pocket, in which case it melds membranes with them, mixing their gallium reservoirs. A sign of a mineable pockets is multiple sensor-stalks rising from the sand. The luscus hive then builds a complex pipe and pump system to ultimately be able to spray intruders with the substance for defense, and a system to grab the pre-digested corpse into the "vat" for full digestion. An integral part of this is the gallium-insulated neural complex that develops in a single knotted structure at the center of the vat. Once this state of development has been reached, it may spread spores of the combined and mixed genetic material from all hive members.
A more evolved version of the Luscus is the Hulun (developmental differences include that when two merge around a pocket of antimony pentafluoride, the stalks merge as well, and that a valve is created along with the bubble for waste to leave), which after growing and developing from prey, streamlines its body and uses the gallium as an insulator from the antimony pentafluoride in its body. It lengthens into a jointed worm, and its sense-bulb streaches to encompas the whole face, while the pump and pipe system becomes a single hole in its face, protected by a hardened shell. A known way of killing this creature is to apply electric shock to each segment. Huli with fully developed neural knots have shown aptitude with problem-solving when presented with a puzzle-wall hiding a scrap of flesh. They also have been shown to exibit empathy for others of its kind, and have passed a simplified version of the Sally-Anne test. They live in small tribes or herds, some guarding a specific area, and some sucking up gallium to put in warm pools next to unused antimony pentafluoride, which they then inoculate with reproductive material. Further research is being conducted on possible Hulun sentience.
A parasite that exists on Sacrosa is the silicate Situs, a small shelled creature remenisant of a foram, which creates a pointed shell around itself of aluminum tetrafluoride around the size of a grain of rice. This grain fuses itself to the skin of silicate life forms (areni, api are some) big enough, and sinks in until it is fully buried. It then starts absorbing the surrounding tissue to make more siti, which are formed by slowly raising the shell to make room for the flesh, until it can break off and let the shells reform as two. To keep the host alive, globs of siti may be jettisoned and scattered to the wind, to find new hosts. The aluminum tetrafluoride shell and budding-patch may cover the organism, as long it continues to produce convertable tissue. Large hives have been known to exist centered around an arena that has been spliced into an internal skeleton and cardiovascular system.
The symbiotic organism Situs-arenii is a meld of the arena and the situs, which spread via situs organisms covered in arena spores. When this Situs-arenii seed reaches a pool of warm gallium, the arena grows along-side the situs, and as the arena grows it is spliced into a network of thin fleshy strands that distribute nutrients from the ground and air to the situs "flesh". Designated siti are innoculated by the arena growth with its spores to reach another pool. Such an organism may surround the pool of gallium.
The organism called the Serenara is an old version of this symbiosis, where both have evolved to eachother's needs. The bottom of the arena portion has developed its villi into cilia to move the organism to new gallium pools, allowing specemins to become towering structures akin to trees. To acomplish this, the inner siti have streached out and become as thin as a single cell, becoming like neurons in a brain, hooked up to sensors on the outside. Studies have shown that Serenari can feel pain.
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