Arethel (Ah-reh-thel)

Being a terrestrial planet, Arethel is roughly composed of 40% landmass while the rest of its surface is taken up by ocean. Where the north and south poles are marked by massive glaciers and mountains of ice and snow, the further toward the equator one goes, the more temperate and arid the landscape becomes. A myriad different biomes dot the landscape of Arethel as great mountain ranges, fertile river valleys, and vast open plains capable of supporting both fixed agrarian lifestyles or nomadic wandering produce the most varied living conditions on the planet. By contrast however, the equator can be marked by desolation and arid untillable soil where no-mans land may stretch for countless leagues until oasis or rivers running down from mountainous sources far away host clusters of peoples who make their home amongst an otherwise unhospitable location.  

Landmasses

  Arethel, as of the mordern day (and from the perspective of those living in the following locations), is separated into two different mega-regions. The Greater Lands and The Outer Lands.   The Greater Lands are comprised of a single megacontinent split between the lands of Flamelle, Castinis, Endarion, and Thysia. This massive stretch of land spans from the core of the Southern Reaches northward until nearly touching the Northern Reaches at the planet's opposing pole. Much of the planet's population over many thousands of years have made this megacontinent their home, springing a multitude of civilizations and seeing the rise and fall of great nations, kingdoms, and empires.   The Outer Lands, by contrast, consist of many large island nations that inhabit the periphery of the Greater Lands, dotting the oceans in the east and west of the megacontinent--namely the lands of Kyokai, Drakenlloch, Saelgard, and the Islands of Han. It is widely believed that many of these landmasses were at one point in time joined with the megacontinent, but split away due to shifting tectonic plates, volcanism, or the rise and fall of ocean levels over time.  

Beyond The Great Unknown

  Many lands do indeed exist beyond the Great Unknown, a vast ocean that is said to swallow ships whole and toss air vessels out of the sky. The storms are so ferocious that it has formed a boundary from which the peoples of the known lands of Arethel still have yet to discover what may lie beyond.

Arethel has been home to a vast variety of flora and fauna for eons, before sentient life ever took control of its surface. While its salty seas birth aquatic life in abundance, its dense oxygen-rich atmosphere has made life on the surface of Arethel possible. Sentient races of all kinds dot the planet's landscape in a wide variety of biomes, showing just how versatile and adaptable its peoples have become over millennia. From those who live high in the vast mountain ranges, adapting to thinner air and the volatile weather conditions of its high-altitude reaches, to those making their home the endless sand dunes of the Castinian deserts, migrating between oasis and thin river basins until eventually forming entire civilizations around those places. There are peoples and creatures living in the coldest of the northern and southern reaches, thought for eons as being unfit for life as its temperatures plummet well below the freezing point for the majority of the year.

Between the months of Frosttide and Evenfall, Arethel may see at most four distinct seasons: summer, autumn, winter, and spring. While those located around the equator may only experience a steady climate of heat with few fluctuations in temperature, the northern and southern hemispheres may have varying shades of each of the four seasons while the poles--like the equator--experience the coldest temeratures nearly all year round.    In places like Castinis which inhabit much of the equatorial zone within the Greater Lands megacontinent, although it is used to hot and dry weather all year round, during the spring and autumn time, great rainstorms do indeed sweep over the barren landscape for a scant period of time, often being just enough water for near-dry watering holes to fill back to their brim, village wells to be restocked, and new vegitation to sprout around existing oasis, providing nourishment to both its people and wildlife.   Meanwhile, in temperate regions such as Flamelle or Endarion, each season bears distinct flavor, often celebrated by the peoples inhabiting these regions. Spring brings rain and fertility, the perfect period in which to begin sowing crops. Autumn time, though temperatures begin to fall, is often a time of preparation for a long winter. Peoples and wildlife enjoy the days of sunlight and some warmth before hunkering down or hibernating, while foliage blooms into brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow. Winters, depending on proximity to the Reaches, mountainous regions, or cold-weather channels may be mild for some, while others can expect to be inundated with snow, often times higher than their home's rooftline. Summer for many is a time of leisure and growth, while the weather is warm.    While in many of the civilized lands of Arethel, its peoples are mostly content to remain stationary, living where they may all year long, there are some still that practice a nomadic life. In Drakenlloch, as the seasons turn, tribes will pick up stakes and move their habitation to another location, often a tenuous balance as other tribes make claim to lands they deem suitable for their needs, or as ancestral places that no others could hold claim over. Located north of the main island are innumerable smaller islands, some tiny enough to only hold a single tribe of people, where they still manage to make their livings amongst the cold northern waters of the Megalos Ocean.

Observable from Arethel's surface, though mostly around its northern and southern most reaches, aurora light up the sky in brilliant curtains of color as Arethel's magnetosphere interacts with energy-laden winds buffeting the planet's surface from Nova. They can be seen all year around, however are in their greatest visibility and prominence during the months of Winter.   A Great Eclipse occurs once every 1200 years, as cateloged by scholars throughout time, as well as some of the most long-lived Elves who witnessed the event as a small child--a moment they wouldn't forget regardless of how many years pass them by. The eclipse is formed when all 7 planets within the innermost boundary of Nova align in their orbits. While it may only last a matter of an hour or two at most, the sight of Nova disappearing into a great violet ring, while the surface of nearby planets casts a shadow and ring of vivid light across space, is said to be one of the most moving experiences one can have in their life.

Artic conditions mark both north and south poles of the planet, while the equator runs like a band around the planet's widest circumference. Northern and southern hemispheres becomes progressively more temperate the further away from the equator and poles. While around the equator weather seems predictably hot all year round with the occaisional monsoon season during the spring and autumn, temperate zones experience the most radical weather, though sporadic and in short bursts throughout the year. As the seasons shift and change, many regions through Arethel can experience heavy snows, dense rainfall and flooding, catastrophic wind storms, hurricanes, and tornados, and volcanic eruption-induced acid rains or other tectonic-related phenomena.

Roughly 80,000,000 years ago, Arethel was born of material formed from thousands of stars and other astral bodies that were ejected into a vast event horizon. It is widely believed that the myriad observable nebulae--Aspida Galaxy and the Novus System included--all exist within a gargantuan black hole, and that an even vaster space may exist outside of its boundaries. As the Novus System was created, whether by sheer happenstance of the mighty will of the gods claiming dominion over the Astral Sea, Arethel came into being as a loose conglomoration of space particulate, star matter, and gas. Eventually, compressing into one cohesive whole, Arethel--highly volcanic and uninhabitable though it may have been--was born. For millions of years, the planet slowly took shape as it orbited endlessly around Nova; first as a writhing mass of magma and in a partially solid state, then finally a fully solid planet with a metal-volcanic core.    Through its primordial history, Arethel was the target of thousands of asteroid impacts, the evidence of which can sometimes still be spotted in the present day as those impacts served to shape much of the landmass of the planet. Two such major asteroid impacts resulted in planetary matter ejecting into space, yet not far enough to escape from Arethel's gravitational field, eventually coelescing into the two moons that orbit the planet--Opus and Manus.    Over time, with the eventual creation of an atmosphere, and parts of the planet becoming host to great bodies of water as new oceans and seas form, life began to spring. Evolution created and destroyed many species of flora and fauna over the millions of years of Arethel's history, but it wouldn't be until 750,000 years prior to the modern day that sentient species began to evolve, slowly becoming the dominant creatures of the planet.