Geography
Vathos is a rust-dark globe laced with native lodestone ridges. Its internal dynamo still hums, draping the moon in thick magnetic curtains that snag ion streams and paint auroral crowns visible from Loanbula’s night-hemisphere. Ferric dunes creep slowly under electrostatic winds, exposing ancient basalt “looms” where repeating field lines have etched perfect waveforms in stone.
Landmarks
The Black Looms
Kilometer-long basalt slabs inscribed by centuries of dust-charge into sine and sawtooth patterns—literal field recordings carved into rock.
Crown Rift
A canyon wrapped in a standing aurora; anything metallic levitates and jitters within its heart. Field-crafters practice “threading the crown” with tethered drones to weave superconductive cables.
Settlements
Chainbirth Yards
Gigantic forges that smelt Vathos iron into the carbon-silicate anchor chains used across the Chain Isles.
History
When the Iron Veil clogged early anchors with rust, Vathos’s lodestone veins inspired the modern chain recipe. Since then, every major Isle installation has passed through Chainbirth—Vathos built Loanbula’s backbone as surely as the Furnace powers it.
Residents
Loanbulara metallurgists and field-priests, a smattering of hired offworld riggers, and “magneto-fauna” microfilms—self-assembling ferrous biofilms that creep toward current sources.
