Leroy

Physical Characteristics: The 7th furthest from and 3rd largest moon of Atlas, as well as it’s smallest to have an atmosphere. It completes a full orbit of it’s planet in about 78 hours, and almost 58 of them are spent in the shadow of Atlas.
Geography & Climate: 82% ocean and lake, with the remaining 18% dry land consisting largely of wet and barren rock. The moon is volcanically active, though most current activity is under the sea. Much of the dry land is host to mountain ranges, often dramatically steep due to lack of soil. Beaches and lowlands are peppered with geological evidence of microbial activity.; Temperatures range from -212 to 90 Fahrenheit on the surface, but are typically stable and remain comfortable for humans around the equator. Seasons are similar to Earth’s, dependent on the hemisphere as Atlas’ axis is tilted. By far the most notable weather feature of this planet, though, is the thick, permanent, cloud cover over the majority of the surface. It rains or snows heavily just about everywhere, and in certain places even thunderstorms nearly constantly. The first major challenge the original colony faced was building a city to survive the forces of erosion the perpetual downpour caused, as they hadn’t had to deal with free water in a couple hundred years.
Ecology: Aethra is host to massive oceans and abundant single-celled organisms, but that’s just about it. No multi-cellular life has yet been discovered here. Little sunlight reaches the surface of this moon, which means the most diverse organisms live off the abundant geothermal activity on the ocean floor. Terra firma and the surface of the ocean are dominated by a single clade of photosynthesizers that have managed to evolve unparalleled efficiency in light-processing. The atmosphere contains just enough oxygen to sustain human life because of them.; Only just enough though, humans have done a little terra-forming in certain areas, namely Eventide, to make it comfortable enough to live on long term. The most obvious and distinctive example of this is the street lights in Eventide. They use tall columns of seawater sat on top of powerful lights, filled to the brim with Aethran microbes modified to handle the extra strain. These belch oxygen into the surrounding area at a rate that no earth organism could ever come close to.; The lack of previous multicellular life here means that the microbes on Aethra aren’t capable of causing serious illness in humans or the creatures they brought with them. This is the primary reason Aethra was chosen as the host of first colony site, other than it being the least hostile of the habitable moons in terms of killer weather and dangerous alien animals anyway.; In certain places they’ve grown into colorful microbial mats stretching miles across, hundreds of thousands of years in the making. In the ocean they form massive blooms in a variety of colors, depending on the conditions. This gives Aethra a distinctly alien sort of beauty, especially from afar. A Little closer and it’s still a welcome accessory to the otherwise drab terrain, but can be a little slimy and a lot smelly in places, if mostly harmless.; Sadly, humanity and all the life forms that come with us are not nearly as kind to the native microbes as they are to humanity. As slow growing and defenseless as they are, any contamination is very dangerous to the ecosystem. Certain groups have voiced this concern, asking the WI’s administration to choose new expansion sites wisely and keep strict procedure to reduce disturbing any important areas, but it’s hard to garner sympathy for microbes, and some argue that in the long run, it’s too late for them anyway.

AETHRA

Western Integrity