Like a year ago, Charlie said on CSTSF that I could make a new planet for Serenth's Apocalyptic Wind Tower, with a planetary ID of greater than 2100, and I kinda never bothered with that until now, so... Here you go I guess. It's inspired by some wild dreams I had many years ago.


Name: Astel Aventad
ID: 3012
Sage Goddess: Claiyfoure (there are no regular Sages, she is the only one)
Adjective: Astellyan
Continents: 1
Countries: 0
Size: 1.45 Newerth diameters


The Graveworld of Astel Aventad is an inhospitable rocky planet, somewhat larger than Newerth. It was shrouded in myth until it was located in a remote corner of Serenth. It is covered in ancient Elven ruins, but now most of the planet is devoid of life.


MYTHOLOGY:
For a long time, it was only known about through the Arx mythology, a vast collection of insane stories about the distant past of Newerth, most of them entirely made up. One story claims that, some 300,000 years ago, Astel Aventad was "the city between the worlds". A later story claims that, in eons past, Newerth was part of an alliance of five friendly planets, all of which were part of a "great migration" across the universe. However, Newerth started to slowly be affected by a creeping magical corruption. Eight heroes travelled to some cave, which happened to be the most evil place on Newerth, in order to fight the corruption, but they failed. They did, however, find the source of the corruption – a human who had been granted the powers of a god, but could not handle it and went mad. He used his god powers to take the other four planets in the alliance and fuse them together to form the "holy homeworld" – a terrible molten planet which was a bastion of tremendous evil. The name Astel Aventad was re-used for this planet. One of the surviving heroes went there to find a place called the Stone Heart of Energy.


The planet was believed to be fictional, until it was discovered in 2003. The story is still made up, of course – the planet is now known to be entirely natural in origin.


CONTINENTS:
Astel Aventad only has a single continent. It has no name and uses continent ID 0.


LOCATIONS:
The planet is divided into two main regions.


The Face is a roughly circular region of pale brown rock and sand, covering approximately 1/6 of Astel Aventad's surface. It has several vast mountain ranges, which do indeed look kind of like a face if you squint a little. The vast majority of the remaining land-based life on Astel Aventad exists in The Face. Locations here include the Stone Heart of Energy, whatever that is, and a few recently-constructed research stations.


The Flats covers the majority of the planet and consists of a smooth, dark stone surface, ranging from black to red-brown. It is the remains of a prehistoric sea of lava, which slowly froze. In some places, a shallow ocean covers it. The Flats are rich in eternium. Life has survived in the ocean, but the land in The Flats is mostly desolate. This area contains many ancient ruins, some of which are quite extensive. It is thought that these were built by an Elven race, who arrived from off-planet, and were equipped to survive the harsh conditions of Astel Aventad, until the civilisation was destroyed by an unknown disaster. These people were called the Moon Elves, but they are believed to be extinct. In case they are not, they have been given racial ID 3920.


Somewhere on the planet stands Serenth's Apocalyptic Wind Tower.


SEASONS:
Various scientists and explorers still disagree on how to define the seasons of Astel Aventad because the Moon Elven calendar is not well understood. It is known that the Astellyan year is approximately equal to twelve Newerthian years.


According to one popular model, there are four different systems of seasons in play in different parts of the planet. The seasons are of wildly unequal length. There are 8 seasons near the equator, 7 seasons near the poles, and two separate regions of 9 and 11 seasons covering the remaining areas. In some regions, seasons can be up to several Newerthian years long.


DAY/NIGHT CYCLE:
Astel Aventad has days of roughly seven hours. There are exactly 15,000 days in an Astellyan year. Most of the planet experiences midnight sun, however, so the sun may not rise or set for very long spans of time.


CURRENCY:
The only currencies in use are brought from off-world. The Moon Elves may have had a currency at some point, however.