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Almea is the third planet of the Class G star Ënomai. It is not known whether it lies in our own, or another universe; the fact that certain of the gods of Almea can be identified with '70s terrestrial rock stars does not really decide the question either way.

The first seven planets in the system are:

Order Name Color Type Named for
1 Vereon bright white in color terrestrial the messenger of Enäron
2 Išire bright white in color terrestrial the queen of the gods
3 Almea aquamarine terrestrial 'earth and water'
4 Vlerëi bright blue terrestrial goddess of love
5 Hírumor whitish green gas giant
6 Imiri whitish green gas giant messenger of Išira
7 Caiem dull yellowish gas giant
Almea itself has three moons, none of them as large as our own. (Almea thus has smaller, but more complex, tides than Earth.) In descending order of size, they are Iliažë, Iliacáš, and Naunai. The first of these has a period of a little less than 28 Almean days, thus marking an iliažyoš or month; Naunai has a period of just six and a half days. The moons give less light than ours; but on the other hand they offer navigators an excellent natural clock.

The Almean year is 328 days long (the Verdurian calendar has 12 months of 27 or 28 days, and a leap day, Kasten, is inserted every five years). The Almean day is slightly longer than ours.

From Almea, Ënomai is almost exactly the size and color of our own sun, although astronomically it is a little smaller.

The brightest stars in the Almean sky (as visible in the southern hemisphere; we are not certain of the northern stars) are:

Meme is an order of magnitude (2.5 times) brighter than Sirius (that is, about two orders of magnitude, or 6.3 times, dimmer than Venus at its brightest). In general there are more and brighter stars visible from Almea than from Earth; Ënomai seems to lie in a loose cluster.

The south polar constellation Čunima, the Shield, with its triplet of stars Similu, Simiru, and Simižu, is of course very important in navigation.


© 1998 by Mark Rosenfelder