Chapter 1: The rise of Holy Darwinian Empire

Prologue : The Titan King

Realm of Gods , Falmart ~50000 BIC

The first Arachnid war

"THAT'S ENOUGH! YOU GODS"

Emroy: God of Darkness, War, Death, Violence, and Insanity slammed his hand on the table to stop the quarrel between Palapon the God of Revenge, Flare the God of the Sun and the God of Light and Order Zufmuut.

"We haven't even talked for half an hour and you are already on the brink of fighting each other again. We truly have other, much more serious problems now. Just look at the map!"

He pointed at the map on the table, nearly the entire southern hemisphere was colored in yellow of the Arachnid army, and also on the northern hemisphere there was a lot of yellow, but luckily there was still a lot of unaffected area.

"We already lost half of the planet to these extraterrestrial 8-leg bastards, and you have not other problems than still quarreling? Shame on you all."

The God of Revenge had wanted to reach back with his arm to send the God of Light and Order flying through the room, but decided not to do so.

"Till next time Zufmuut", he whispered in broken Latin with his head turned away, while putting his white cape in order "You will pay for your insults."

The God of Light and Order wrinkled his nose, but didn't answer.

"Well, since we sorted that out now...", Flare: God of the Sun said"...maybe we should start with the negotiations about how we should start this alliance.

Until now each of our army has fought these bugs on his own, without any big success.

The only chance of at least holding our positions we have now is to fight together, combine our magic and develop new spells.

Only then we have a slight chance of not ending in total destruction."

"We suggest that we turn all mortals into apostles so we will have an immortal army" Elange & Ral the twin gods of study and knowledge said.

The goddess of the underworld and ruler of hell Hardy wanted to say something, but was interrupted when ball of light appeared.

From the sphere of light a man came out, he has a long black hair and a beautiful silver eyes.

"Who are you ?" asked Hardy.

"There is no need for fear, gods of Falmart. Unlike you..." he opened his helmet at took it off, shaking his hair, "...I am just a human."

"My name is Darwin, the King of Titan, and I have a deal for all of you."

Until now no-one of the gods had said anything and it seemed that neither of them would be able to within the next few minutes.

"So you came from a place called Eden with the power of the Titan King." The Tree Goddess Wareharun asked disbelievingly.

"That is true. You can say I am from another dimension." Darwin said.

"How could a human travel between dimension ? Even a god could hardly do that." asked Deldort the God of Covenants.

"The power of the Titan King is unimaginable, there is almost nothing that it can't do. It is the source of all organic life and can master all aspect of life. Its power transcended time and space and contained an entire dimension in it, the Path dimension."

Darwin boasted confidently, smirking as he demonstrated the godlike powers of Path to the primitive Gods.

The Falmartian Gods just fell silent.

Nobody said a word for nearly a minute then the God of Fertility and Birth Miritta said: "And...what are you doing here?"

Darwin knew he had the Gods attention, he leaned toward and said: "I want to make a deal with all of you, about the fate of Falmart. Like I said my empire the Holy Eldian Empire, were an ancient civilization that has mastered biology evolution. Over a million years, we alone ruled the world as the undisputed masters of our own destiny. But my civilization is facing an extinction level event as a neutron star is entering our star system. As their king I need to find a new home for my people as soon as possible. So if you let us migrate to your world, I will use my power to help you defeat the Arachnid army."

The 12 gods look at each other before finally said :

"If you have this kind of power, what will prevent you from taking over this world ?"

"Because I am willingly to share the supreme power of Path with all of you gods, if you let my people in and give me a seat in the Holy Council. This is a fair deal isn't it ?" Darwin smirked.

Hmmm..

"Welcome to Falmart, Darwin, the lastest member of divine council of Falmart." The Falmartian Gods said in unison.

"HAHAA. GOOD DECISION, NOW LET'S THIS WORLD RUMBLE. RELEASE THE KRAKEN ARMY."

All around Falmart

The world oceans were boiling : Spokojny, Antlantycki, Indyjski, ..ect.

All of them were boiling under the tremendous heat from tens of millions of Kraken. The Kraken Army is the end of the world. They were born from the titans Oceanus and Ceto, both entities of the sea. Colossal, elemental beasts. Even the gods fear those abominations.

Emerge from the deep of the dark ocean, with the height of 500 meters and the weight of 8 millions ton, those 6-leg monstrosity started to march across the continents and crushed all the arachnid under their feet.

Their tentacles are large enough to be able to pull entire ships under the water and destroy cities with relative ease. These creatures possessed endurance to match their strength.

In addition to tentacles they were armed with a gaping maw full of many sharp teeth. These creature's many tentacles afforded them great speed in swimming.

Nothing the Arachnid army could do to stop the army of walking mountains. The Kraken created a wall of super-hot steam as they moved and blown away all counterattacks. Their superior regeneration healed all the wounds, make everything the Arachnids try to do useless.

Just in a month, all of those 8-leg alien bastard were turned to pancake and from the corpse of the bugs a new era has begun.

The Age of Titan Shapeshifters. The Age of The Holy Darwinian Empire.


Earth - December 3rd, 2021

The sun is low on the sky when I finally pull into the Mauna Kea Surveillance Observatory's parking lot. Formerly an independent facility, it is now under the jurisdiction of the federal government, as to scan the skies for potential threats.

Dr. Misaki Paulson is an older woman, with streaks of grey in her dark brown hair. She is plumper than the old photos, but there remains a lively expression on her face when she greets me at the entrance. After a small exchange, we move inside for the interview.

Q: So, let me begin with, well, the beginning. What did we know about these aliens homeworld: planet Falmart?

A: To be honest, not much. We knew that it orbits a smaller, redder, and cooler star than our sun. We named it Tira 2912. Tira 2912 is a population I G-type main-sequence star (yellow dwarf), spectral class G7V.

Q: What do these terms mean, Professor Paulson? Forgive my ignorance on the subject.

A: [Chuckles] A lot of people don't know much about it. A G-type main-sequence star, spectral class G7V mean Tira 2912 have :

The Luminosity of about 0.5 of our Sol. Tira 2912's mass is about 0.9 of our sun. The star has radius of 0.92 sol. Due to its light weight, Tira 2912 can live longer than our sun, up to 15.23 billion years. Being a G7V main-sequence star mean Tira 2912's surface temperature is about 0.93 of the sun. With the luminosity known, we can derive the stars habitable zone—the region around your star where liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet. Tira 2912's Habitable Zone is between 0.6 and 1 AU.

Q: You said Falmart is a pretty special planet. Why is that, Professor?

A: Well, Falmart's a world-model challenging exobiologists like Peter Ward Douglas ("Rare Earth"), who say complex life will only evolve on worlds almost exactly like Earth.

Falmart is emphatically not Earth! Seven times as massive, in an eccentric orbit too far out from its dim little sun, with the wrong density, wrong tilt, wrong satellites, wrong geology, wrong water content... can you get wronger?

Douglas says big wet worlds like Falmart will be (at best) world-seas, poor in minerals, with sparse unicellular life at most, and if it's multicellular than not intelligent, and if intelligent than not technological.

Tell that to the Holy Darwinian Empire.

Still, I still give Douglas credit for considering large planets at all. As in 2021, we've found about 5000 planets; most are Jovian. Only 100 fall in the size range between Earth and Uranus (14 earth-masses). This month alone we discovered 4 new planets.

One, around 5 masses, is probably as cold as Pluto. Another, at 7 masses, is just two million miles from its sun: probably a lava ball. The other two, each a few Earth-masses, are mere cinders orbiting a pulsar (that is, their sun went nova). Not exactly Edens! Plenty of big rocky planets surely exist, but we can only guess what this group is like-and we rarely do! Our solar system's mass-gap between gasbags and rocks has given us an imagination-gap.

Even science fiction, usually quick to explore possibilities, has very few middleweight worlds: Silverberg's "Majipoor" series plus short stories like Tiptree's "With Delicate Mad Hands" or pulp tales like "We Guard the Black Planet" or "Heavy Planet". Scientifically, they range from sloppy and sketchy to downright silly. Only Poul Anderson's "The Man Who Counts" details a fairly plausible middleweight world-and even it has problems.

In short: such worlds are a blind spot in the human imagination-ignored as potential biospheres. So... let's put this common planetary type center stage...

Welcome to Falmart

The first special feature of Falmart is its orbit, unlike Earth, Falmart's orbit is elliptical, from 0.9 to 1.2 AU. This will greatly affect the planet's climate. Falmart Seasons have both planet-wide cycle, caused by the elliptical orbit, and hemispheric seasons caused by axial tilt. This means the equatorial belt isn't tropical in the seasonless year-round Terran sense. During global winter, "rainforests" are warm to mild with light rains; in the summer, hot and torrential.

ORBITAL VS. AXIAL SEASONS, or, THE PULSING SUN

Falmart's eccentric orbit means that the sun's apparent size changes during the year; light and warmth vary substantially. These seasons are called orbital summer and winter, and by their nature, they're planet-wide. Mars suffers strong orbital seasons, making temperature-swings harsher in the south. Earth, with a relatively circular orbit, has weaker orbital seasons-still, they're one reason Antarctica's far colder than the North Pole.

Falmart's orbit is quite oval, but in this era its aphelion (furthest point from the sun) happens to be at right angles to Falmart's axial tilt, so neither hemisphere is much harsher in climate. The northern hemisphere has a warm, early spring (short days but a big sun), a shortened fall (small sun), and an early winter-in essence, all the seasons are pushed forward. In the south, all the seasons come later.

The overall ecological effect is modest. Orbital seasons are most visible, surprisingly, at the equator. On Earth, tropical rainforests have stable climates-warm, rainy, timeless. On Falmart they have distinct orbital winters (warm and rainy) and summers (hot and torrential). In drier near-equatorial lands, this can become true wet and dry seasons like Earth's monsoons. The cause differs, of course: winds aren't reversing, the sun's changing apparent size, like a throbbing heart! From mild warmth, to heat that drives powerful hurricanes.

THE DIM SUN

Falmart is warm and wet, but sunlight's dim and reddish. Total annual insolation = about 38% of Earth's (Much like our inner asteroid belt-Mars gets 44% as much sun as Earth, Jupiter only 4%). This seems fatally low, but huge Falmart is wreathed in dense greenhouse gases!

Falmart surface radiation and UV levels is well below Earth's. The cooler Tira 2912 produces much less, and the dense air blocks most of that.

Radiation was once believed crucial to mutation, and thus to evolution itself, so cool stars might evolve complex life late or never. Today it's clear environmental stresses push evolution more than the absolute mutation rate.

The eccentric orbit creates a short worldwide summer, then a long mild worldwide winter (the outer half of an elliptical orbit is slower-takes up more of the year).The main effects on life:

FLORA

Rainforests with slow turnover and relatively open understories. In the damp warmth, decomposition is nearly as fast as in the Terran tropics, but plants can't grow as fast, and ground-level herbiage is lightstarved. The result is a dense canopy of mature trees, but little brush and few seedlings-just low grasses and herbs on the ground. Even canopy trees will be economical, shedding as little as possible; leaves will have a long life and be highly efficient. Most of the mid-story will be vines

FAUNA

The center of animal life will be in the canopy. Flyers and climbers will be lightly built and big-eyed, with slit pupils to maximize the range of apertures and a reflective layer like a cat's.

Skulls will widen to make room; faces will be flat or wedge-shaped to accomodate the huge eyes. Even diurnal demi-human will look nocturnal to us piggy-eyed Terrans! To protect such large eyes in flight, a transparent inner eyelid may evolve in many winged species. All will have long rain-shedding lashes.

Basically, Falmartian look like overly cute cartoon animals-anime characters with too much makeup. And here we thought that was just the japanese artists bad taste! This is just logical extrapolation. Ignore the snickering in the underbrush.

HEAT

Falmart temperature is 6 C warmer than Earth's global average, but such a figure is meaningless due to the northern supercontinent makes the climate fluctuates lot more extreme, even if the warmth is more evenly distributed by the dense air and world-sea, so the tropics are much hotter and more humid than Earth's, while the poles are much cooler. On our bright little thin-aired Earth, we think sunlight powers weather systems. That's naive. Venus gets more solar energy, but its weather's much blander. Its dense atmosphere doesn't just trap heat-it also distributes it better, so the equator and poles are equally hot.

So does a heat-gradient from equator to poles really drive weather systems? That hardly explains Saturn's winds or Jupiter's stormy belts. Their poles aren't much colder than their equators. But there's a second gradient hidden to surface dwellers like us (avian readers would think of it instantly): the gradient between warm depths and cold upper air. Hot air rises, cold air falls... convection loops develop even without the sun. Sunlight's more a trigger for an inherently unstable system. This explains why Saturn, say, with its feeble sunlight, still has seasons. The energy's internal-the sun doesn't drive the weather, just steers it.

But why does Venus have simple planet-wide winds, while Earth has three belts (tropical, temperate, polar), and Jupiter, many belts? You might guess that small worlds are uniform while big worlds are stripy... but that won't hold up. Venus and Earth are near-twins after all. Nor is it a heat gradient from equator to pole, or Earth would have thousand-mph hurricanes and Jovian stripes, while Jupiter and Venus would be equally bland. No, the missing factor here is...

SPIN

The faster a planet spins, the more its weather forms lateral belts. This makes sense if you recall that there's a big energy gradient (as big as the heat gradient?) between the poles and the equator-1000 miles an hour! And that's just Earth! Famart's huge, with a 12-hour day; stand on Equatoria island and you're moving 7500 kph faster than you would atop Mt Cerberus near the south pole. 4800 mph is a steep energy slope-a slope that winds must climb, or descend. Earth's modest spin twists north-south winds into spiral weather patterns-storms. But what of planets like Jupiter where the convection patterns are less sun-driven? If Jupiter had no sun at all, it'd still be hot beneath and cold on top, and still develop convection cells. But they wouldn't become belts, as on Earth-local fountains and sinks like the Great Red Spot could be everywhere. Except for spin! It sweeps even random convection cells into belts.

FALMART'S CLIMATE BELTS

Falmart's bigger than Earth, with a thicker atmosphere; but it gets less insolation. These two differences largely cancel out in terms of average temperature: less energy input, but more of it trapped by the greenhouse effect. The thermal gradient pole-to-equator is weaker than Earth, though far stronger than Jupiter. Falmart's spin is slower than Jupiter's, too-but not much. Put all these together, and you get neither Earth's three-cell system nor Jovian stripes, but...

What you're seeing are five convection loops per hemisphere, not three as on Earth. It's not quite Jupiter, but still stripy-a torrid zone at the equator, a warm dry zone around 18 degrees north and south, a temperate wet zone around 36, a cool dry zone around 54, a cold wet zone around 72, and a cold dry polar zone.

Just because you're in a dry, high-pressure zone doesn't mean it won't rain! Yes, falling air starts out dry, but after traveling a few thousand km over Falmart's endless oceans, the air re-hydrates. This is similar to the formation of waves-the longer the "fetch", the stretch of water that the wind can work on, the higher the wave. A long fetch of sea, even in a drybelt, creates clouds-and rain.

Florida and Hong Kong are in Earth's drybelt! It's only where drybelt winds sweep over a wide continent, or mountains high enough to catch most storms, that you get deserts downwind-in the interior or the west, where the dry descending air finds no place to rehydrate. Falmart's continents are relatively small compare to the size of the planet and the sea's everywhere. So most deserts are mere strips along west coasts with tall mountains; other drybelt lands are wooded or grassy, not desert at all.

GRAVITY

Falmart Gravity is 1.33 G-but it varies! Falmart spins so fast it's oblate (flattened like Saturn), so polar gravity is 1.4 (close to the center of mass), while it drops to only 1.23 G in the tropics (the swollen equator's further from the core, AND centrifugal force lightens you).

Falmart's as heavy as seven Earths, yet you could walk! Surprised?

Gravity rises only as the cube root of mass. Also, big worlds aren't as dense, since they can hang on to more light matter-hydrogen, helium, ice, carbon, quartz.

The result? Similar gravities. Saturn's mass is 110 times Venus's-and their gravities are both Earthlike! Alien biospheres may roast, freeze, drown, or poison you-but not flatten you.

On Falmart, your weight varies by latitude. The planet spins fast, and not only does centrifugal force lighten you as you stand on the equator, it lightens Falmart's hot, plastic mantle so much that the planet bulges visibly at the waist. That puts you even further from Falmart's dense core, and your weight drops even more. You're about 14% lighter on the equator than near the pole. On Earth it's less than 1%.

This gradient has some of the same effects on Falmart life as altitude: wing-to-body proportions shift. The effect's not spectacular, because (as with altitude) cold counters gravity-the need for thermal efficiency limits life's tendency to evolve larger wings and smaller bodies. Thus, gravity zones have little visible effect on life.

But travel, and you'll sure feel it. Flight is distinctly harder near the poles. Hold other factors constant-say, a warm sheltered coast in the north-and most creatures do have proportionately large wings and light bodies.

THICK-AIRED WORLD

Falmart Atmosphere is 66% nitrogen, 14% neon, 12% oxygen, 6% argon, 2% helium. It's no coincidence the air is fairly Earthlike, on a living world. Photosynthesis does that!

Air pressure at sea level is about 6 Earth atmospheres. The partial pressure of oxygen is 3.5 times Earth's. That is quite breathable short-term, but harsh on Terran lungs over time. And you might feel mild nitrogen narcosis at first-partial pressure at sea level on Falmart is like 100 feet down (30 m) on Earth.

Rapture of the Surface! Would you adjust over time?

No one's done long-term studies on rapture-too risky!

Certainly you'd be near the limit of Terran tolerance-though mountain air would bring relief.

Native life, of course, is comfortable at sea level-indeed, takes advantage of the tripled oxygen. Fliers on Falmart, supercharged, can lift more weight per kilo of muscle, and the dense air encourages wings. Living in a sea of almost waterlike air, everyone flies!

CO2 = only 150 ppm at present, but Falmart's dense air gives that real punch-equivalent to 900 ppm on Earth, 2-3 times our current level.

It fluctuates, of course, but Falmart is always a strong greenhouse (and with its dim sun, it needs to be!) Falmartian volcanoes belch far more CO2 than Earth's, though the huge seas absorb it quickly: ash and rising CO2 make the nutrient-starved deepsea plankton bloom, sucking up CO2 again.

The land surface is proportionately so small that rock-weathering, important on Earth, has little effect on CO2.

In any case, Falmart's greenhouse is double-glazed-six atmospheres of damp sea air make excellent insulation on their own. CO2 isn't as crucial as on Earth.

Air loss over time is negligible. That's a problem, not a virtue! In Falmart's early days, when its sun was dimmer (most stars slowly brighten with age) the world-sea was cold at the surface, with wide ice shelves at the poles.

There was little land yet, and all of it was ice-capped. Life began in the deep rifts, more extensive and active than Earth's, and crept up slowly into the dim, cold, unpromising light.

The land took an extra billion years to conquer. But then, Falmart has time: its sun will outlast Sol by 5 billion years!

Honestly Earth has remarkably thin air for a world its size. Smaller Venus and Titan have more. What would Earth be, if we had, say, double or six times our current atmospheric pressure like Falmart?

Such thick-air world increase both the number and richness of potential biospheres:

With dense air to distribute heat, slow-spinning worlds and highly tilted worlds may be still viable even if large parts of such planets face long dark nights-or sunless winters. Thick air may even allow life on worlds with highly eccentric orbits, mitigating the harsh orbital seasons.

If a world's habitable at all, most of it will be. Thin-aired worlds like ours can have wide sterile belts-desert zones and polar caps. Temperature gradients are much evener on thick-aired worlds. Venus's poles and equator may be hot, but they're equally hot, unlike the Terran/Martian patttern. Dense life competing in a stable environment's more likely to turn multicellular (and intelligent) than life struggling mainly against a marginal, Martian landscape.

Thick-aired worlds, with their stronger greenhouse effect, can orbit further out, where the zone in which water is liquid (and life can evolve) is much wider. This doesn't automatically increase the number of such worlds-the match between atmosphere and orbit is still a matter of chance-but rigid formulas declaring outer solar systems totally sterile are just plain wrong. Small red stars, for example, have been written off, since their liquid-water zone was so close that tidal drag becomes a problem. But thick-aired worlds could orbit further out, where they run no risk of ending up with one face always to the sun. Even if most small stars are likely to have equally runty inner planets, a minority will have an Earth (or a small Neptune) in this outer life-zone. And such stars are so common that we're talking a LOT of worlds.

Multiple worlds in one system can be viable, if a thick-aired world or two have outer orbits while thin-aired ones huddle close to the sun. If life evolves on any one world, meteor strikes will spread it to others where it might never have evolved but can survive, adapt, and flourish. It's quite possible that optimal birthplaces for life and ideal biospheres (big, diverse biomass, complex forms, intelligence) are quite different. That could even be true of us-it now looks possible life evolved on Mars and spread to Earth (admittedly, Earth's abyssal rift gardens are strong candidates for biogenesis).

BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS

Let's look closer at thick air's effects on a biosphere-beyond simply making life possible on many otherwise sterile worlds.

One obvious effect on flora is that winds will pack a heavier punch. They'll be slower, and it's tempting to conclude from the savage winds of Mars and the slow surface winds of Venus that thicker air just slows down, creating about the same wind-force on most rocky worlds. But on fast-spinning planets like Falmart this is unlikely; winds may not pack SIX TIMES the force of Earth's hurricanes (there's less sunlight to heat the air, and less of a temperature gradient from equator to pole) but I expect total wind forces to be substantially higher than Earth's.

Trees will respond with either great flexibility (the kelp solution), increased buttressing (the mangrove solution), or lower wind resistance (the, uh, fennel solution). The huge platelike leaves found in Terran jungle understories would soon be torn apart on Falmart; most leaves will be highly divided, even feathery.

A corollary: vines, which are largely parasitic on earth, could be symbiotic in Falmart's denser forests-they tie together the whole canopy, supporting weak links among the trees. It'd be a trade-off for a tree-reduced light for some extra buttressing.

The effect on fauna? Flight! Such a dense medium will allow quite modest wings to support larger animals than have ever flown on Earth-despite the somewhat higher gravity. The competitive advantage is so large and the flight-specializations so much smaller that I'd expect all small and most midsized creatures to fly. Creatures big enough to have...

PUMPED-UP BIRDBRAINS

Air pressure affects the evolution of intelligence. On thin-aired worlds like ours, the weight limit for flying creatures limits body size-and therefore brain size. The limit's not absolute-we can imagine, even perhaps bio-engineer intelligent fliers (scaled-up ravens or parrots, or pygmy angels, or giant bats, or smart pterodactyls, whatever) but such forms are unlikely to evolve in the wild, where no living fliers weigh over 15 kilos. Yet pound for pound, the smartest brains on Earth are avian-parrots and ravens rival chimps with many times their brainweight! The fact that Earth birds are as bright as they are, given their weight constraints, suggests that life on the wing stimulates the mind: 3D acrobatics, the sheer mental stimulation of travel between varied ecozones, the need to memorize landmarks and navigate intelligently, and especially the stimulation of social contact over long distances. I'd add one less obvious feature of life on the wing.

Birdwatching is popular among mammals (not just humans-think of cats!) because birds are uniquely visible. They can afford to be-on the wing or high in trees, safe from most nonfliers, they needn't hide as mammals must. But the reverse is also true-birds are mammal-watchers. They constantly observe life below them-not just for food or safe perches, but for sheer entertainment. Birds are voyeurs. We're spread out to them; they witness the survival strategies of other species-strategies with useful lessons, if they're bright enough to learn them.

Flying, in short, is educational. A rich information environment favors clever, social, observant, opportunistic generalists, and that's just what parrots and corvids are-up to the limit Earth's current air-pressure imposes!

I conclude that thin-aired worlds like Earth may not develop intelligent fliers, but worlds like Falmart certainly will. The, uh, pressure is there.

FALMART'S TECTONICS

Falmart is a tectonically busy world, for three reasons:

Sheer size. More heat from compression as the planet formed, and more radioactive elements trapped deeper. And with proportionately more core to surface area, the heat can't easily escape-the surface has to work to release as much as it can...

Strong tidal stresses. Falmart's largest moon, Oisin, is the size of Mercury or Titan-a living world in its own right. And it's not alone; even next-biggest Manannan is the size of Pluto. Falmart's elliptical orbit around its sun causes variable solar tides too. All that pulling and squeezing heats up a mantle!

Falmart spins twice as fast as Earth. The tidal massage is double-time!

All this means Falmart will be hot, thin-skinned, and busy-many plates, rifts, ranges and volcanoes; possibly so hot inside that its plates are more elastic than Earth's. If it has plates at all.

ALTITUDES

Falmart's air pressure at sea level is high, around six atmospheres. But because gravity is also high, the pressure drops off faster as you climb; 9 km (6 mi) up, the air thins by half, to a mere three atmospheres. Around 18 km / 12 mi up, pressure drops to a mere 1.5 atmospheres.

But numbers deceive! The faster pressure-drop means that even modest ranges can sharply affect local climates. Highlands are climatologically about 30% "higher" than similar peaks on Earth. Not only are they cooler; Falmart mountains also wring more rain out of storms, since clouds cool faster as they rise. At some latitudes on Falmart, mountains can wring so much water from prevailing winds that you'll find deserts downwind, even along coasts.

Earth mountains have alpine zones and cast rainshadows, of course, but they're exaggerated on Falmart. For all practical purposes, a peak 9 km (6 mi) high has much the effect of a 12-km (39,000') peak on Earth; peaks 13.5 or 15 km high (and there are quite a few) are ecologically more like 18-21 km (60-69,000')-as formidable as Ascraeus Mons, and almost Olympus Mons! Remember that, as you tour. You can freeze on the equator, if you're stupid.

Since the air pressure on even the highest peaks is still more than Earth's at sea level, life doesn't fail entirely. On most mountains, even though life-zones band more tightly and treelines are lower than they'd be on Earth, alpine life extends higher; while soil temperature and wind chill determine treelines, the cold but still-dense air of the heights holds more moisture and shields against radiation. There are few alpine deserts. If there's any summer thaw at all, life creeps up!

Weather and plant communities aren't the only things affected. A high proportion of Falmart animals are winged, including intelligent species. Since Falmart fliers evolved in such a dense soup, they're quite muscular but have smallish wings by Earth standards.

I know my sketches look cartoony, but they aren't THAT inaccurate! Stubby-winged critters. So most sea-level species won't fly more than 12-15 km up or settle above 9 km (30,000'). On mountainous islands, high-altitude subspecies tend to evolve, with more Terran proportions. Interesting compromises arise between the need for greater thermal efficiency, and larger wings and lungs.

Some Addition Information

Axial tilt = 36 degrees. Higher than Earth's, but no Uranus.

Year = about 1 Earth year

Mass = 7 Earths.

Escape velocity: 19.7 km/s

Density = 3.4 gm/ml. Mars is 3.95, Earth is 5.5. Falmart has a smallish iron core for its size (most solar systems are poorer in heavy elements than ours, AND large, cool, outer planets tend to be lightly built). Though richer in silicon than iron, Falmart is still a rocky world, no gas bag like Uranus (1.25) or Saturn (0.79!).

Diameter = 18,500 miles (29,600 km): around 2.3 Earth diameters. Circumference is about 58,000 mi (93,000 km). The map's thirty-degree lines are about 4800 mi apart (7700 km).

All the land on Earth would fit into three squares!

Note that Falmart's not spherical-its fast spin flattens it visibly. Falmart's diameter through the poles is only 17,500 mi (28,000 km).

Surface area = a billion square miles (2500 M sq km): five times Earth's!

Moons = six. Four are just rocks under 1000 km wide, but one's 2100 km (1300 mi) across, called Manannan.

The sixth moon is as big as Titan: 5000 km/3100 mi. They called it Oisin ("o-SHEEN") after a legendary mariner.

Oisin orbits 300,000 miles out, further than Luna, but it's so big its tidal pull is over 50% stronger.

Falmart is too massive for that to have slowed its spin much, but the tidal stress explains Falmart's hyperactive tectonics. Oisin's a world in its own right-a world with life.

Moonlight = bright. Oisin looks big-nearly 20% wider than Luna, taking up 40% more sky-and its icy skin is brilliant. A full Oisin is nearly four times as bright as our full moon.

Planetary nightlight! The other five moons are small, but at least one is nearly always up, so it's rarely dark on Falmart.

Tides are high, commonly 3-10 m (10-33'). Highest is about 30 m (100'). Lots of bays and straits are worse than our Bay of Fundy. But that's as bad as it gets-no mile-high tides.

Rings = one, from 12-30,000 km above the surface; rarely visible in daylight but fairly impressive on dark nights-a bronze arch (it's mostly rock, not ice like Saturn's rings).

Internal heat and volcanic potential = large. Tidal stress from the large moon and the swift spin add to Falmart's own huge internal heat reservoir.

Day Length= only 12 Earth hours! the moon's tidal drag can't slow massive Falmart much. Falmart's fast spin drives strong currents and winds. The short day evens daily temperature swings a lot.

Water = 13 times Earth's, by volume.

Sea = 77% of surface area, that's 770 million square miles (1970 M sq km) 5.4 times as much sea as Earth!

And it averages 8 km deep, compared to 4km for Earth's seas. Salinity is only 1.5%, about half Earth's.

Land = only 23% of Falmart's surface. But that's 230 million square miles (588 M sq km) four times as much land as Earth!

Another 1% of the surface is continental shelves, and mid-ocean shallows, reefs and seamounts are another 1%. Total highlands: 25%. Compare this to Earth, 33% highlands; Venus, 8%; Mars, 50%.

Falmart's tectonics create light continental rock a bit faster than Earth, over an area as big as 5 Earths, and over 7 billion years (these rocks increase over time; even a billion years ago Earth had less land).

Today, Falmart has 12 times Earth's continental rock. Wherever it breaks the surface, erosion shapes the rock into narrower, taller platforms then Earth's (for continental shelves follow sea level, whether it's high or low)

Tectonic activity = higher than Earth = Very high mountains range. The Range of Ice and Snow is over 40,000 km long with the average height of 8000 m. The highest mountain peak Olympia is 15,300 m high.

Fewer heavy elements means less radioactive heating, but a big world holds heat better, and tidal stress from the huge moon Oisin stokes the inner fires.

The heat's dispersed both by volcanoes and many active spreading zones. Without its sea, Falmart looks more like Venus than Earth-a chaos of rifts and fractured, flexing platelets.

Relief = Earthlike. Falmart's vigorous spreading zones push up many Andes-like ranges at plate boundaries, and huge volcanoes rise over hot spots. Most peaks never break the surface, but the highest rise 15.3 km above sea level (Earth: 8.85); the deepest ocean trench is 33 km (Earth: 11).

Sky color = variable. The sun looks red-orange, but the dense air scatters not just blue but green and even yellow; over land the noon sky is pale cream, tinting to light turquoise over seas.

Sunsets are spectacular, as high-floating clouds often glow ruby-red, lit from the underside by refracted rays.

Since the sun's image refracts several degrees around the planet in the dense air, daylight lasts half an hour longer than you'd expect.

At night, the main light is a firelike glow from the moons, particularly huge Oisin, and the rings; few stars can pierce the thick cloudy air.

Cloud cover = Denser than Earth's on average, comparable to our tropics. Deserts are rare on Falmart.

Albedo (reflectivity) = More clouds, but the deep sea reflects less than Earth's extensive deserts, steppes and ice caps. These factors roughly cancel out... in visible light. But in the infrared, Falmart looks dark: a strong greenhouse effect.

Climate belts = Falmart's dense air and fast spin creates five Hadley cells, not Earth's familiar three (tropic, temperate, and polar).

These five convection cells create a torrid zone at the equator, a warm dry zone around 18 degrees north and south, a temperate wet zone around 36, a cool dry zone near 54, a cold wet zone around 72, and a cold dry polar zone.

Age = 7 billion Earth years.

Biomass = 25 times of Earth's (but average density = 500% of Earth's)

Habitat diversity = high!

Biodiversity = extremely high! Over 1 billion species

Intelligent life = 1( Homo Titanien AKA titan shapeshifter ) but over 1000 sub-species : human , elf , dwarves , orge, centaurs, etc are the same race called humanoid now, thanks to Titan ADN assimilation abilities.

Continent = 3

One supercontinent and two smaller ones divided into 7 areas : Europania, Afrykania, Azjania, Terra Australis, Ameryka, Neo Ameryka, Antarktyda.

The Northern Supercontinent, is a landmass comprising the continents of Europania, Afrykania, Azjania, Terra Australis, and Ameryka. Its mainland is the largest contiguous landmass on Falmart, as well as the most populous.

The Northern Supercontinent encompasses 500,080,532 square kilometres (195,343,957 sq mi), 85% of the world's land area, and has a population of approximately 6.5 billion people, roughly 65% of the world population.

Ocean= one global ocean divided into 5 areas: Polarny, Południowy, Spokojny, Antlantycki, Indyjski.

Sovereign = 1 global empire: Holy Darwinian Empire.

+ Type of government : Theocracy mix Absolute monarchy and Uniocracy

+ Capital: Sadera

+ Head of state : Molt Sol Augustus the 99th Emperor of the Holy Darwinian Empire.

+ Language: Sadera Latin

+ Status: global hegemony

+ Population: about 10 billion people

+ Military power: 126 millions divided into 200 army groups