Ghet - The Ankalli home world (TRAPPIST-1e) by Starlite-Official on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Ghet, or as it literally translates to Terran English, "Earth." Is the home world of the Ankalli people and the closest world to the Sol System to host a native, space-fairing civilization. Ghet is tidally locked to it's parent star, the ultra-cool red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, or as the Ankalli know it as "Yooktar" which is derived from an ancient stellar deity from their ancient folklore who is known is the bringer of light and purity.

Because of the tidal locking. One side of Ghet always faces it's parent star. Making it what Humanity classifies as an "eyeball" world.

At Ghets equator on the sun facing side sits a massive series of temporary archipelagos composed of highly unstable and ever-shifting sand bars, some thousands of kilometers long surrounded by a series of shallow seas and deltas. All fed from melt water from the planets dark side, which is covered in a solid sheet of ice hundreds of kilometers thick at it's thickets.

Heat from the star near the sun-facing equator rapidly evaporates the water which creates a permanent superstorm over a thousand kilometers across that covers the entire region. Extreme tectonic activity further exacerbates the intensity of the region. Waves in the temporary, shallow seas can get as high as 100 meters; But waves on the land can get about half as high.

Planetary convection currents then pull the storm towards the backside from all directions. Making Ghets habitable region an eternally humid and hazy place covered in pitch black rainforests and strange creatures. Oddly enough by human standards, very few large predators. As a human, you can walk through the Ankalli rainforests at night and nothing out there will try to harm you. This is believed to be one of the reasons the Ankalli are such a gentile and peaceful species.

The black flora is a result of the stars spectrum and brightness. Being so dim, the plants have evolved to absorb as much light as possible and the best color for that is any dark one. Preferably black. Technically, it's largely a VERY dark blue color that makes up the majority of plant life in Ghet. Flowering plants on Ghet often take on a green pigment, so Ghettan meadows have black grass with green flowers under a eerily blue sky. They're truly beautiful and alien lands.

The far back side of the planet is uninhabitable naturally, but not any colder than Antarctica on Earth. This is due to the convection currents in the planets thick atmosphere that keep the planet warmer than expected.

This does also have some interesting effects unlike anything encountered by Humanity before. For one, the wind on Ghet is constant, and consistent. It always flows in the same direction at the surface with only a few degrees of variation. This has countless effects on evolution of life on Ghet.

Ghet also has no major mountain ranges, and the entire planet is relatively flat and fertile, which makes agriculture relatively easy on the planet. There are a few small volcanic and tectonic mountains dotted across the planet, but the largest is only a kilometer high. Ghets seas are also extremely shallow with a very low salt content. The deepest point on the planet being only 400 meters down.

The planet has three natural satellites, the largest of which, "Morkta" is a captured comet about 300 meters across. And although Yooktar is far too dim at this stage of it's life to strip the comet of it's ice layers in the brilliant fashion we're use to on Earth, Morkta is still being slowly stripped of it's material with every orbit around Ghet. Over the eons, this has formed a thin ring of water ice and dust around the planet.

The two smaller satellites, Vordish and Trillies have cleared paths through the rings. In the process collecting some of the expelled water ice, which then gets inside the many cracks within the two boulder pile asteroids. When it's then exposed to the star light again, it evaporates and takes some of the dust with it. Since the process is still ongoing, Ghets rings are actually growing.

The construction of Ghets orbital ring infrastructure began immediately after the formation of the Terran Alliance in 2145, and was completed in 2667. The two rings, built to encompass the planets natural rings, they support a vast number of different scientific, industrial, and military, and civilian facilities. A large number of Terran shipyards are housed here as is the Ghet Ultra-Massive Accelerator (GUMA) The largest particle accelerator ever built.

Because the Yooktar System is so tightly packed, and three of them are habitable with minimal technology; The rings also support one of the largest intra-system transportation networks designed solely for a single-species. Others are absolutely welcome to use it, however Ankalli are abnormally quite large beings. So they require larger accommodations.